Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
Hi, everybody. Man, it's good to see you here.
It's a little cooler than it was last week.
We fixed the air conditioner. I told you we would.
You know, we care about things like that.
We also care about telling the truth.
And so we begin each week with a confession.
Our confession, again, confession is doesn't mean that
I always feel it. It doesn't mean that I always
understand, certainly doesn't mean that I always like it.
But we plant our flag, we stake our anchor and what we believe
is truth. And we keep coming back to that.
And so our confession this week and every week you say we're
badly broken. Yes, you are.
Grace and peace to you. We started looking at the book
of Ephesians last week and I'm going to tell you we're going to
be in Ephesians forever. It just seems like that maybe I
do want to acknowledge, like Johnny taught last week, this is
a truly we're going to do a team teaching.
So I'll teach a couple weeks and then you'll hear from Johnny
again and then I'll come back for a couple weeks and Johnny,
we'll do it because it's really important to get this book into
us. I love it.
It's one of my favorite books. It is powerful and, and, and
unashamedly. Our goal right now is to study
what we're doing in this book is picking it apart.
And so my encouragement to you is to work along with us.
We're going to go slow. Several verses in Egypt.
In fact, we're going to look this week at what Nikki just
read us verse 3 through 14. We're going to pick up again
next week. We'll still be in chapter 1.
That'll be 3 weeks just on chapter 1.
It's a six chapter book. You do the math, you can figure
it out, right? But here's what you can do to be
ready. I do believe we're going to try
to handle this in such a way that if you just show up, you'll
be able to get along. We're going to try to unpack it
and we're going to talk about what the.
Words. Mean and what the ideas and
where they came from and the context and all of that.
But you. Can be a participant in this and
what you can. Do is just read the book of?
Ephesians And then when it's done, read it again.
And then when it's done, read it again.
And here's what you say. You say, but I'll get bored.
Yes, yes, probably. But the boredom will be the
expectation that I know what's coming next.
Is that all? I've already, I've already read
this. The hope is that when you read
it for the 14th time, you'll see something that you didn't see on
the 13th time. You go, Oh my gosh, what's that
about? That I believe is what God
speaks. That's how he leads US and
guides us. And so my encouragement it.
Doesn't have to be the only thing that you read if you want
to do something else. But my encouragement for you
would be to come back time and again, back to the word, back to
the book of Ephesians, and just approach it with a listening
spirit. What are you trying to say?
What do you want to tell me? I would encourage we when Nikki
read it, she read verse 3 through 14 out of the New Living
Translation. I love.
The new Living Translation. That translation is what we call
thought by thought. The translators, they took the
the kind of thing and they just say what's he?
Trying to communicate here and he read and he translated that
that idea. It's great, super readable.
We'll read some out of the, the message, which is one guy's
translation. I call it a paraphrase, right?
Like it, it's just kind of one guy.
So there can be some bias in it, but we'll read it out of that
too. But when I preach from this,
when I teach from this and Johnny's going to do the same
thing I'm going to teach out of the New American Standard 2020
version, right? Some of you started crafting
during COVID. This group of people, they
translated this scripture. You know, it's what they do, how
they go, and again. Is it a?
Perfect translation? No, probably not.
There will probably be another one after it.
But the way the new American Standard was translated was word
by word. So they go to the original
language is the Greek and the Hebrew in the Old Testament, and
they put us like, what does that word mean?
And they adjust it. So sometimes it can be a little
bit clunky in English. But that's OK.
And what I would tell you is if you go and it's clunky in the
New American Standard, go read it in the Christian Standard
Bible. Go read it in the go, read it in
the New Living, read a bunch of them, and then you'll kind of
start to get an idea of the big broad texture of the script.
This is my favorite kind of teaching to do.
It's because, listen, I think in a straight line, right?
And so we can just work through the text and just pick this up
and see and highlight what does it say?
I especially love teaching like this because I love the book of
Ephesians. When we started this year, when
2025 started, I was talking, I actually had had a conversation
with Johnny about something I wanted to teach this entire
year. I wanted to talk about the
church, the body of Christ. Active in the world, active in
our community and what it looked like and what it meant.
And the book of Ephesians is all about that.
It's got some. Deep theological, like when we
talk about about the Church, about they call it ecclesiology,
right? The study of the Church.
It's got some deep theological insights into what makes the
church the church, but it's also got, at the end, some extremely
some annoyingly and frustratingly practical ideas
about how to walk out what we've seen.
And so we're going to get to all of that slowly, but the reason
that we're kind of going so slow on this is because I believe
that the book of Ephesians is so relevant for where we are today.
It's important to remember, and Johnny touched on this last
week, what we call as what we call the book of Ephesians is
actually a letter. It was a letter written by a
guy, the apostle Paul. We know him from the biblical
record and he wrote it to it says to the to the Saints and
the holy ones who are. In Ephesus.
Now Ephesus was a city we saw last week.
It was probably a circular letter when we read in
Revelation chapter 2, right? Like there's this, he says this
is a message to the churches, right?
And it goes to Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and
Thyrotyra and Sardis and Colossi.
All of these cities that were on this global route, Ephesians was
on there. We think that Ephesians was
probably a letter that was to be passed around that.
And you know why we call it Ephesians?
Because the copy that we found. Was an Ephesus OK right so it
was the letter was it to the Ephesians Of course it was to
the Ephesians also to some other people right.
We said it was written to the Saints who are in Ephesus and
around and we said that that word Saints can be a stumbling
block to someone's because when I asked you are you a St. you're
like heck no, I cuss like a sailor.
That's not what he's talking about necessarily.
To say that you are a St. doesn't imply that you are more
morally superior to someone else.
When Paul writes to the the Saints, to the holy ones, he's
talking about. Are you listening?
He's talking about those who have chosen.
The. Crucified Jesus over everything
else. He's talking about the Saints
are the ones whose primary, whose first love an allegiance
is to Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that they don't
love their neighbors. It means that they love their
neighbors because they love Jesus.
It doesn't mean that they're fire starters in their
communities. It means that they love Jesus
and everything else. Flows out of that and that
causes problems. To be Allegiant to to I must
have my son Jackson, which is not even in the city, which is
weird. To pledge one's allegiance to
Jesus. Like that would cause problems.
We saw last week that the city of Ephesus was a major city in
the Roman Empire. It was the third in size and
economy after Rome itself. And then Alexandria there was
Ephesus and Ephesus had a booming economy.
And they're kind of two parts to it.
The first part was the port ships would come around the
world and they would have all their.
Stuff. So it was a.
Major center of trade, right? So you have all the stuff, you
have people coming in and selling stuff and passing it on,
right? The second source of their
income was the temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world, the temple to Artemis, and it was huge and it was giant
and it was a significant part of the economy because there were
local. Artisans in Ephesus and in the
community, and what they would do is they would create all
kinds of trinkets and idols. There was particularly a silver
industry in emphasis that would make these silver idols and
these silver statues and trinkets and all of them were
for use in the temple to worship, to worship Caesar, who
was the king. And so here we have these
Christians, they're these Ephesians, Romans, and they're
in their city and they're doing the thing and they, they, you
know, Caesar's going there like man, Tiberius is our guy or man,
I long for the days when we would have, you know, Bob was
the Caesar on that. So they're participating in
that. They're going to the temple.
They they're doing their thing. They're buying their trinkets.
They're doing that. And along comes Jesus.
And what Jesus says is. I'm the king and a new Kingdom.
Remember Matthew chapter 4 what he says that the Kingdom of
heaven is at hand and so you can.
Only have allegiance to 1 king, and so if Jesus is king then
Caesar's not king, and if Jesus is king then Artemis.
If Jesus is God, then Artemis is not God, and so not only can I
not declare that Caesar is king, because that's how it comes,
right? Hail Caesar.
Caesar is Lord. Well, as a Christian, I can't
say. Caesar is Lord, not even tongue
in cheek. I can't declare that there's any
Lord over him. I certainly can't buy idols to
take to the temple to participate in worship there.
And so as Roman followers of Jesus, the Ephesian Christians
found themselves in a tricky spot, in a difficult situation.
Men and women who had maybe worked their entire lives in one
industry now found that that industry not only just didn't
serve them, but was opposed to the direction that their new
faith that they came to believe it, called them to walk.
And there's when you see it like this, there's wasn't just a
faith that said, do you believe that there was a 1st century
Carpenter named Jesus? That's easy enough to verify or
not verify if you want. The question wasn't did Jesus
live? The question was, is Jesus Lord
the Anointed One, the King, the Ruler, the King over all
creation? Because that's a pretty
exclusive claim. And so as the Ephesian Christian
said, Jesus is Lord and we worship him.
That placed them in a pretty fractured situation.
To be a Christian in Ephesus was to be disloyal to Rome.
Not only that, right? Because you're thinking, oh,
well, that's fine. I can be disloyal to Rome
because I'll just run to my homies in Jerusalem, right?
Like, like I'm a Christian now. We're all together.
No, not exactly. Because you're still a Gentile
dog. You're excluded from the
promises. You're not invited into the
temple. You don't get the worship with
them. You're an outsider.
To be a. Christian in Ephesus was to be
outside of the power structure in the economy of Rome and to be
outside of the power structure in the economy of Israel.
It was to be staked to Jesus and Jesus alone.
And what I would say is that kind of fractured reality is
similar to ours. It's similar to what we walk
through and experience. Because today everything demands
your primary attention, doesn't it?
Everything wants to be first in your brain and in your mind and
in your head and your heart. And it tells us why it wants to
be first. It tells us why it demands to be
first, right? And it the way it tells us this
is it. It promises your work, promises
you that if you'll just work a little bit more than you'll be
secure, you'll have enough, You'll be safe.
I just need an extra shift. I just need a little bit more
time. I just need you to work a little
bit on the weekends. I need you to take some work
home. I need you to be available.
I need when I call. You to answer man, that's tough.
Work promises security for more, but in effect the only more that
we get is anxiety. My guess is if I could talk to
most of you about your work history, the chances you make
more money now than you did when you began working.
My guess is if I could go back 15 years to you when you started
working and I could show 15 year ago you the house that you live
in and the paycheck that you bring home and the family that
you have surrounded yourself with.
My guess is 15 year ago you would say, well, I have
everything that I ever need. That's enough.
And yet in our hearts, we don't, do we?
We put our hopes in family and family promises.
We grow up. I'm looking at our youth over
here, right? And we dream and we just look
and see, man, if I could just get married and have a house and
have have, you know, a dog and 2.3 children and make it
instead, then I would be fine. And you know, here's the thing.
And right? And that's a great deal.
Family is so significant and it's so important.
But here's the thing. When you get married, you know
you're going to get married to a person.
Listen, that person is going to have expectations of you that
you can't possibly fulfill, and then you know what you have in
your marriage? Disappointment and pain.
See, it promises you if you'll just do the stuff, then you'll
be OK. What about politics?
Our politics tell us that we will be safe.
If we are strong, then we'll be safe.
If we have power, we will be. Safe if we can find the bad guy
and just eradicate them and excuse them and get that away.
And what I want to tell you is that's false gospel.
That's not the good news. What that breeds is more fear,
more distrust, more anger, more separation, more division.
We're as powerful now in this country as we've ever is.
It maybe any other country has ever been in the history of the
world. If there were peace through
power, we would have it. How we doing?
Is this the most peaceful and at rest generation that's ever
lived? Recreation tells.
Us that you are one vacation away, you just need a little
bigger boat right, that's a little bigger boat then I could.
Get more people than I could have community on the waters and
we can catch fish. And it could be all that.
Just one more boat. You just need a little bit
bigger house. You need a play room.
You need a little bit bigger TV and a new game system.
If you just had that, then you would be OK.
Listen, here's what my problem is.
My problem is the mountains are too far away.
The only place I can go is the beach.
And the beach is fine. It's fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine with the beach. But the mountainous, if I could
just go where it's cool, then I would be at rest.
But you know what? I've been to the mountains and I
come back and here I am. Wherever you go, there you are.
We live in this fractured world. And listen, I'm not saying to
holding this up to shame anybody.
I'm holding this up. So that we can all identify and
just go, hey, we've all heard the promises.
Not just we've heard the promises.
We've all chased the promises. We have all been a part of full
till boogie, flat out all the way chasing the promises and
what they want. And when we don't experience the
promise, what we're promised, we think it's our fault.
And so we just try a little bit harder and go a little bit more.
What if the promise can never deliver?
What if your work can you can never be what you need it to be?
Are you listening to me? What if your family can never be
what you need it to be? What if you can never recreate
yourself and to rest because you weren't created for that?
What if there's something deeper inside you, woven into the
fabric of your life and all of creation that is meant to set
you free, but all we have? To do is break away from the
fractured promises, but instead what we do is we lean into them.
We double down and when it doesn't work, when we still feel
anxiety, when we work hard and we go to work and we do all the
things and it doesn't pay off and we start to get restless and
we start to get insecure and we start to wonder, is this the
right thing? Am I doing it right away?
Do right? What do we do?
We go talk to people. Or we turn on the news, we just
go what's wrong and we're looking for diagnosis and listen
out. There is always willing to tell
you what the problem is. You know why you're not
achieving what you're supposed to achieve.
You know why you don't have way like you're going to work,
you're doing it. You know who's the fault, You
know who's the blame? Them.
It's their fault and them can be
anybody. You know why you're insecure at
work? Because at any moment they could
hire someone younger with a better degree or more
willingness to work, or less scruples.
Wow, right. That new guy at work is a threat
to you. You got to watch him.
You got to be careful because what if they come and get you?
And then what? Then now your future is shaken.
They'll tell you it's the foreigners fault.
The reason you don't have enough is the foreigner they're taking
from you. They're stealing from you.
You got to be careful. You got to watch out for him.
The foreigners, they're bad. Which foreigners?
All of them. But I'm kind of a foreigner.
You're not the bad one. It's them out there, the ones
that aren't like you. You got to be careful.
They'll tell you know who the problem is?
It's the rich people. Rich people have too much.
They have more than yet. It wasn't for those stinking,
selfish rich people. Then you would have enough,
right? It's always out there.
This this feeling I'm seeking and searching and fractured and
insecurity. This is the emotional bridge to
the text that we're going to look at today.
Like I said, this passage, verse 3 through verse 14, if you go
back to the Greek, it is one long sentence.
So here's what I'm going to give you some good news for that.
If you've ever read the letters of Paul in particular and you're
like, what the? Heck, are you talking about bro
mix in a comma mix in a period every now I want you to tell you
have been reading faithfully because he didn't and he hasn't
and it's 1 long now in the Greek it is beautiful and flowing and
all of it, and it's less so in English.
So we're going to do our best and we're going to go and we're
going to unpack and we're going to walk slowly and we're going
to sing, but then we're going to look at it, but we're going to
remember that Paul is talking. He's not talking to us.
He did not have your more specific context in mind, but he
did have people trying to figure out what it looks like to follow
Jesus in a fractured world. So all you have to do to
identify with the Scripture is recognize where in my life do I
feel fractured? Where in my life do I feel like
I'm chasing a promise that hasn't delivered?
That I'm looking for something that I can't?
Find that's not out there because what I believe Paul can
show us is deep into the heart of God where we can begin to be
transformed. So he starts, remember last
week, right, Paul to the Saints that are in Ephesus, grace and
peace to you. So I just want to start.
Are you listening? Look, grace and peace to you.
This is good news. It's good news for you.
It's good news for your neighbor, It's good news for the
world and he talked. So how does Paul start talking
to this fractured culture? The first thing he says, grace
and peace you. The first thing he says is
blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He begins with blessing. And here's one thing, he begins
by blessing God our Father. Now here's a let me back up and
just give you a 10,000 foot view of what we're going to do.
What we're going to see in Paul's blessing is this
trinitarian movement. He begins with the Father, and
he moves. To the Son and he culminates
with the Spirit and his praise is just overflowing for the work
of them. But notice again where he
begins. Blessed be the name of God our
Father. I want you to notice how He
didn't introduce our Father. He did not introduce God as
King. He didn't say, blessed be the
King who bosses you around. Hallelujah.
He did not say blessed be the creator of all things.
He didn't say blessed be the one who is coming again in my and
power. He said blessed be the God and.
You should say that out loud. Before he was your creator, he
was a father. Before he was the ruler, the
Redeemer, the Savior, he was your father.
If you ever want to know what fathers, what God feels about
you right now in this moment, he feels about you like a father.
And what? Paul then goes on and shows us
throughout this passage what that means.
Why is he blessing? What is it like to have this God
as a father? Because your father may have
been cranky, he may have been mean, he may have been abusive,
he may have been absent. You may have all kinds of ideas
about what Father means that we're only too happy to plug in
and apply to God. So let's see what He says about
this Father first thing and says He has blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
So one of the things that's going to happen as we read
through this, there's a couple of words, specific words or
phrases that really mean everything to this.
One of those words and phrases is that phrase in Him.
It implies being in Him. Do you remember a couple of
weeks ago in our membership series, we talked about
immersion? The symbol of participation in
the church, in the Kingdom is to be immersed, to be immersed in
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And that's what Paul's talking about.
If you are living that immersion, he says, you're
blessed in the heavens with every spiritual blessing, some
spiritual blessings, a few a lot, every spiritual blessing.
Every single spiritual blessing you can imagine, we're told in
Jesus. We have access to that.
You know what that means? That means our father is
generous. He is good for you.
He has enough. He's not on a budget.
He's not counting pennies. Me, I'm on a budget a lot,
right? My Father, not so much.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
just as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world. Listen, He chose us.
Who's us? You think you know what if
that's the surprise today? He chose us where in Him He
chose us, in Him. The choice was Him.
He chose us in Him before the Foundation.
Of the. World that means that God is
intentional. To choose is to say He picked.
Matt and not Al. He chose Jason and not Greg.
And see listen. There are some theological
constructs that tell you exactly.
In fact, they attach this next theological word onto it.
Right. He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless
before Him in love. He predestined us to adoption.
As sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to himself,
according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of
the glory of His grace, which it which he favored us in the
beloved. Here we see God blessing, we see
Him choosing, we see him predestining.
Here's a good theological word. And what I want to say is some
of you went to churches and they told you something theologically
like this before the foundation of the world.
God said you are going to spend eternity with me.
Isn't that good? Aren't you glad that decision he
also. Said you are not.
I have predestined you for glory.
I have predestined you to show my glory through destruction.
You don't know who's who. You don't know who was
predestined and who wasn't predestined.
And So what I would say is when we hold up this predestination,
where we got to look at that search, right?
What's the subject? Who's who's doing the
predestining? God, what he's doing is
predestining. And who he's predestining is US.
Who's us? You're not so sure anymore, are
you? All right, that's good.
That little hesitation is OK, right?
So he chose us. He predestined us.
He predestined us to be what? Adopted.
In Roman culture, to be adopted was to be an outside person,
whether it was a slave or a neighbor, whatever.
To be outside the family and to be adopted in and to be an
adopted child in the family was to have all the rights and
privileges of the family. You don't get to say like I have
my my children Jackson and Reagan and Madison.
And if I were to adopt my friend Matt here, Matt, it wouldn't be
like their inheritance and then a slightly lesser inheritance
for Matt. It's everybody.
They get all of that. And what what we're told is that
God predestined us to be family. That's the good news.
God's solution to. Fracture is to build a family
the way that he expresses his grace, the way that he.
Expresses his choice right. He chose us.
The way that he does that what he chooses is family.
The way that he expresses his love and goodness and grace and
mercy to you is by creating a family.
So now we go to this word us, right?
You think about us. And I asked him the first time I
said, who's US? Several people like me.
I'm us. Here's the problem.
Are you ready? You are all Gentile dogs.
You don't like that when Paul writes about us, he is not
speaking individually to individualistic believers.
He's talking about Israel. You don't believe me, But we're
going to see it and it's going to come, right?
Here's what that means. The one predestined before the
foundation of the earth was Jesus.
Before there was. Anything.
There was Jesus, his Son, the God who is going to reign and.
Rule. Over all of the earth and the
choices he chooses, Jesus, along with whoever is in him.
Does God's. Is God's choice sovereign?
Yes. Does he give you, Now listen,
this predestination, that doesn't mean that you can't go
to other passages, right, And kind of make the case that
predestination is about your. What I'm saying is this passage
isn't about that. This passage is about since the
beginning, before the foundations of the world, It's
all been about Jesus and the family that he was making.
And here let me say this. You remember when he called
Abram in Genesis chapter 12, what did he said?
He said leave your father, the father of natural birth of a sin
on that. And he said, and go to your
land, go to a different land. I'm going to show you a
different place. And what did he say?
He said I'm going to make you what a people.
I'm going to make you a family. And he said, I'm going to give
you a son, and your son's going to have sons, and your son's son
is going to have sons. And we see Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob, and that family becomes the nation of Israel.
In Egypt, Dodd planned the family and then Jesus comes in
and what Jesus does is complete it.
This is deep. This is biblical theology, OK.
This is the story of scripture written out.
This is the whole story. Anywhere you find it fits in
this line, right? So we go find Jesus verse 7 in
him We also we always know who him is, right?
It's Jesus in him, we us and we is the same person.
Who's we? Israel.
Good. Who's us?
Israel. Are you Israel?
No. Are you feeling left out?
Do you feel uncomfortable right now?
Are you worried that I'm going a little crazy?
We have elders in the room, right?
The heresy whistle. Is ready to come out if we need
to, right? I just want to hold up and talk
about what Paul is saying right in him.
We, we were Jews, have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our wrongdoings according to the
riches of his grace, right? We have forgiveness now.
The Jewish people have been forgiven, which He lavished on
us in all wisdom and insight. He made known to us the mystery
of His will according to His good pleasure.
What he which He set forth in Him regarding His plan of the
fullness of times to bring all things together in Christ,
things in the heavens and on the earth.
He's making a family. He's building something.
But it's not just about Jews and Gentiles.
It's about all the things. It's about the sky and the
water. It's about powers and
principalities and spirits and economies and government and
everything. He's bringing all.
Of it together. In him and how is he doing it?
This is so important, you listening the way that he does
it. How does he take and bring it
all together and make one and bring unity with strength and
might and power and force or with forgiveness and redemption
and reconciliation. You know why we're so fractured?
Because we're not using the right tools.
I can listen, I can use this to drive a nail, but it's probably
not going to work very well, is it?
It's going to break everything, right?
We're using might and force and gossip and strength and self
promotion and selfishness and all this to get we want and it
doesn't work. And God's got a plan to bring
everything together, he says. Oh, do you want to be less
fractured, more unified? Stop talking about yourself and
start forgiving. Start building bridges.
Stop burning them. Start reaching out.
Start going. Start fighting it.
Right. And what he says is this has
been a mystery, not a mystery. Like nobody ever told me that
before. Listen, mystery is like an open
secret. It's something that if you look
at it, you look back, you. Oh.
Yeah, I know. I was right there the whole
time. I should have seen it.
Do not believe me. Listen, you go to the book of
Judges. Do you know how the Israelites,
you know how the Jewish people got into the promise?
And listen, the promised land is God's presence, promise of rest.
This I'm going to give you a land and it's going to be
flowing with milk and honey so you don't have to plan all the
time. It's going to be a fruitful land
so that you can have the promises and you can experience
what God has, but you got to go get people out.
So you know what they did? They walked in to Jericho and
you know who they met? They met a prostitute named
Rahab, and she was a foreigner. And you know what she said.
She said, she said I've heard about your God.
She said when you take this land, Remember Me.
And you know where we read about Rahab after the book of Judges,
we read about her and Matthew in the lineage of Jesus.
We read about another foreigner named Ruth, and Ruth was a
Moabitess. I don't know that there is a
cultural. Kind of similarity to that, she
was a A despised people who used some shady maybe kind of means
to endear herself kind of to power.
And she snuggled up late at night next to a guy.
But she believed and she told her kind of cranky Jewish
mother-in-law. She's like, well, I'm sticking
with you and I'm sticking with your God.
And where y'all go? That's where I'm going.
And that's what that's what we're going to do and we're
going to figure it out, right? And we read about Ruth became
the grandmother of King David, a Moabite woman.
She's not Jewish. She's not Israelite.
She is outside by every measure. What about if we go to
Deuteronomy and read the book of the Law over and over and over
again? Take care of the foreigner
that's in your presence. Don't abuse them.
Don't neglect them. Don't dismiss them.
Treat them well, he says. Because you're my people, and I
chose. You, you didn't belong here, but
I picked you and I showed grace to you.
Now you as my people go and do the same.
The prophets talk about Zion as the city of God on his mountain.
And what does it say? It says all nations will stream
to Mount Zion. This is a mystery.
And again, the Jewish people, they got so and they got the law
and they got so wrapped up in keeping and protecting and, and
boundaries and economies and and, and temples and and
politics and all of a sudden they got.
So. Intrigued at in what Paul says,
This is that apocalypse. Remember, we saw last week.
Apocalypse isn't just like, It's not like a nuclear bomb.
It's a revelation. It's the scales falling off.
It's the cover being pulled back.
It's Paul. Going Oh my God, now I.
See it? I see.
What it's been about since the beginning, it hasn't just been
about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He told Abraham at the
beginning, I'm going to bless the whole world through you.
God desire has always been about not just one group of people in
one place with one thing. It's about all things.
Listen, Jesus didn't die on the cross so that we could have some
like social. Harmony.
Jesus died to bring all things together, to make one body out
of the nations. And the only way to do that,
Jesus showed us. What did he do?
He forgave, he redeemed, He reconciled.
The family of God begins in the grace of Jesus.
God's plan to bring all things together fulfilled in the life
and the ministry of Jesus, who redeemed and reconciled people
to himself. And then finally he comes back
to the Spirit and listen. I want you to feel the weight of
that US thing. All these things that he's
talking about, they're not for you, they're not for you and I
want you to feel how weird it is to sit in the church and to hear
that my gut listen, I'm going to be 100% honest you until I
studied for this, I didn't know that and I'm just happily going
oh every. Blessing all the things.
Oh good, like God you've been. Thinking about me since the
beginning like yes but no, he started somewhere else.
And so I want to say to you is this.
I say this with. Love because I love you.
You're an outsider. You're an outsider to this.
This isn't your story that you were born into.
So what's the good news Is there good news in this You're like
yeah, you're bumming me out man. Verse 11 in him we again there's
that we right like we have obtained an inheritance so
anytime that. The Jewish people would have
talked, thought about an inheritance, They were thinking
about the promised land rest they have received an
inheritance. They were waiting for the
inheritance, right? He says we received an
inheritance having been predestined again.
So who's we Israelites who's been predestined?
The Israelites in him, according to the purpose of him who works
all things in accordance with the plan of his will, right.
So remember, Israel was first right to the end that he, we who
were the first to hope in Christ could be to the praise of the
glory. Here's our like, you can't argue
with me on this, right? Because it's the deal.
Who were the first people to trust in Jesus as a Messiah?
Who were the first people to hope for Messiah?
It wasn't the Romans, it was the Jewish people from the beginning
when Adam and Eve fell, he said, I'm going to send someone who's
going to crush the head. He made promises to God's
people, I'm going to redeem the world through you.
The 1st the ones to hope for Messiah were the Jewish people
who were the first ones to believe in Jesus, a group of
Jewish. Boys named Peter and Andrew and
James and John, Thaddeus and Bartholomew.
They believed that Jesus they had they had seen the
resurrected King. The entire First Church was a
sect of Judaism based in Jerusalem promises, the temple,
God's presence, the law, God's character, the land, his rest
those were all promises and inheritance to the people of of
Israel. Man, I wish I'd kept my place
right to the end that we who were the.
First, those are the Jews would be the praise of his glory.
Now here's the good stuff. You ready?
In him how's that listen? In him you also woo.
That's the gospel bomb. That's the good news right
there. In him you.
Also, where are you? After listening to the message
of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed,
says, yeah, you heard about Jesus, you believed in it.
You were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who
is a first installment of our inheritance in regard to the
redemption of God's own possessions to the praise of his
glory. What he's saying is I'm not.
It's not done yet. The story's not done yet, but
he's going to get put like a little a down payment in your
eye. And this is where we see the
movement from Israel to us. See what he told the Israelites
was I'm going to give you my law to show you my character.
I'm going to show you what I'm like.
I'm going to show you what holiness and righteousness looks
like. It looks like my law.
Here's the problem. We looked at the law and it
said, bring the foreigner in. And we looked at him and said
don't want that. Not interested in that at all.
It said every seven years, forgive the debts of everybody
who owes you. Anything and we said don't like
that, not going to do that. It said don't charge any
interest on the money that you lend.
We're like, well, I sure don't like that.
Jesus. I, I, I like, I don't want to do
that. So in the Old Testament, he gave
us his law, which we couldn't, we didn't want to do.
We didn't barely even try. We used it for our advantage.
Do you know what we get now? We get the holy.
Spirit who comes into our hearts and transforms us from the
inside. And so sometimes he may go in
the whisper of your heart. He goes, you know what?
I don't think you like people who don't look like you.
I don't think you like people who are different from you.
And we now have that choice. Do we agree with that voice and
look and see, or do we deny it and keep going?
He gave them a temple. The presence of God dwelt in the
temple so that everybody in Israel could go and know where
the presence of God was. Do you know where the temple is
now? It says you, right you or later
on you. Here's the thing.
This is so important. I'm going to make you Immaculate
Bible interpreters in the book of Ephesians.
I don't have to remind myself of this because I forget all the
time. In the book of Ephesians, every
single time OK, remember every time Is there one time that this
isn't true? No, never of the time.
Every time it says you, you should read all y'all right?
There is no individual you. This book isn't to Jason or
Ephesian Jason, this is. To all y'all you've heard,
wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there I am
with you and. That doesn't just mean saying in
Jesus name at the end of your prayers, it means when we gather
to be the body of Christ, He is there.
Israel had a temple and that was great.
It was a picture of what he was doing, but it wasn't the
completed work. Now we have His spirit and our
hearts making us his people. We had the law and the
inherence, the land, right? The Israelites had the land and
they're fighting for it and they're defending it and they
sucked at it and they were terrible at it and they couldn't
hold it. But that was to be their rest.
Our hope and our rest is not in landscape.
It's not in things that we can do.
It's in an eternity where he has set all things right.
We haven't achieved it yet. We're still.
Looking for it, we're waiting for it.
But what he says is in Christ. All these things have been
summed up in that, in Jesus and by his Spirit.
We are God's family and this is the deep theological truth for
our fractured lives. The fractured part is that we
read the scripture like it's a letter to me and I try to make
it make sense. And not only do that, but once I
try to make it make sense, now I start to see Eddie is my enemy
in this because God has promised something to me and Eddie's
trying to get it. Know this is for y'all, for us.
You want to know who we is? We was them and you were on the
outside. So what do we do with this deep
theological truth? So real quick, how Ephesians
lays out is there's three chapters right up front that are
pretty serious theology, right? Some pretty deep stuff.
And then in the backside we start working on some
application of that, how we walk that out.
But I think they're the big thing for us right now is to
just acknowledge kind of where we are in the story to begin to
re examine some things that maybe we bring to this a
narrative, things like identity. And here's the important thing.
Here's what I want to say, and I want to say this lovingly.
When I started this passage and I was reading about all the
things that God had given to us and then God had planned for us
and then got it predestined before the foundation of the
world to give to us. And by us you thought I meant
you, and you were wrong. You thought that your.
Identity meant something that it doesn't mean.
And what I want to humbly and lovingly invite you to consider
is what other labels about people might you be wrong about?
What other ways of seeing and classifying people may you have
gotten wrong? Who have you considered of them?
That very well may be us and who have you considered us that may
very well be them. My invitation this week is to
just challenge your labels and let me tell you something that
will be in make this incredibly difficult for you.
Incredibly difficult for you. Maybe the greatest obstacle to
people today identifying and challenging their you know, I
assumptions about identity is the news because CNN is going to
tell you who the problem is, Fox News will tell you who the
problem is, and Jesus will tell you who the problem is.
You're going to only believe one of them because their messages
are contrary. My hope and invitation is that
we'll believe Jesus, however much reworking or re evaluation
that requires of us. So how do we do that?
How do we begin to to evaluate our identity?
Well, the process of that is worship.
We re examine identity and we examine worship.
See, we think worship is what we do when we come into this place
while the band is playing. But worship is not a feeling.
Worship is attention. Worship is focus.
And So what we do too much right now is we focus on them and what
they're doing. They're taking from us, they're
causing problems. They're not representing us
well. They're they're, they're the
problem. If we could just be more like
we, then we'd be fine if we could just do one of them.
And what worship instead does is it turns our attention from them
to him, to the blessedness of God our Father.
Paul can hardly say the name without just overflowing and
rapture about this great God. Oh, He's blessed us, He's chosen
us. He's predestined us.
He's adopted us. He's done all of these things
for us. That is the attention.
As long as we're worried about what someone else is taking from
us or getting from us, we're oblivious to all that God is
pouring into us that He's giving us.
We're not abandoned. We are chosen.
We are His. We focus on grace that we
receive from Him moment by moment, morning by morning.
And then you know what? You don't have to protect
yourself. I feel like if I could take a
picture of your life in your house today and your bank
statement today and I could travel back in time 25 years and
I could. Show you a.
Picture of your life today. My guess is 25 year ago you
would say I don't have any problems.
I have every single thing that I've ever wanted.
What possible problems could that person have?
And at that point you would go into the litany of all the
problems and all of the things, right?
There will never not be problems here.
But our worship focuses on our God who puts back our focus
worship. Our worship focuses on a God who
gives to us and to them, not because of who they are.
See, we're real concerned about who they are.
God gives to them because of who He is.
That's worship. When we identify that and walk
in that, we don't have to protect ourselves.
We don't have to stay of the pack.
And when we begin to worship and we begin to identify His grace
and goodness towards us, it overflows into gratitude.
And gratitude is how worship and identity take root.
And they take root in a family. Listen, you didn't earn your
family. You had no choice whatsoever.
Where to be born, When to be born, under what circumstances?
You have no say over the economic factors that allowed
you to become who you are and who you are.
And I'm not saying that you haven't done anything.
I'm saying that your life is marked by grace.
Your your life is marked by the goodness of a God who sees you
and his intention for giving you grace is to bring all things
together. He may have put some in your
hands so that you could put some in the hands of someone else who
doesn't have he may have given you a voice.
I said last a couple weeks ago. We were talking about the apest
right, apostles, prophets, abandons, talked about like
justice and all that. And I'm and I'm AI have that
kind of prophetic thing, right? Like I want to find the smallest
person and I want to give them a voice.
I have a voice, I have a stage, I have a place I can stand.
People will sometimes listen to me, not my kids, but some people
will listen to me sometimes, right?
And so, you know, what I want to say is I just want to say is we
have enough. Let's find people that don't
like let's find more foster kids and make sure that they have
everything that they need. Like let's let's gather food for
hungry. People and listen, I don't think
you're rich. I think you're banging out a
living just like everybody else. I think there's what listen,
this coming pay period's got three weekends in it.
I know you're all eating ramen three weekends from now.
I get it. I know it runs out.
We live in a world of scarcity, but I want to tell you, if you
are a child of the King and you are part of his church that is
going to reign with him forever, you have enough to be generous
because of who you are. And we worship that God, blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual
blessing. It's hard.
This teaching is heavy. It challenges us.
It flies in the face of conventional wisdom and
everything that we see on the news and on the team, and it
tells us what I want to say is the practices of this aren't
heavy. To acknowledge that you're going
to be in between and to find Jesus there and his church.
There is rest, and it is comfort.
These practices will shift how you walk through this fractured
life. It will undermine the things
that separate us from what God is doing.
Paul had his apocalypse, and my prayer for you is that you'll
have one too. Next week we're going to look at
that Paul's prayer for the apocalypse of his people.
I hope you'll come, I hope you'll spend this week reading
about what He's done for you and how much he loves you and for
us, and how he has taken us who were outsiders and He has given
us a place at his table, blessing and goodness and peace
and mercy. So Jesus, blessings to you
seated in the heavenly realms at the right hand of the Father,
give us your grace today. And Jesus, we acknowledge and we
accept. We have been conformed, we have
been shaped. We believe the things that we're
told and we believe all of this Father, but we also recognize
man, It's, it's hard and we don't want to live fractured
lives anymore. So I pray that you would help us
to see people as you see them. I pray that you would help us to
worship you well. And I pray, Father, that you
would meet us, make us a grateful people, grateful to
have been included in this unbelievable story of grace and
mercy and life and abundance and blessing.
Jesus, we love you and we thank you.
And we ask all of these. Things in your name and for your
glory. Amen.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
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substitute for full participation in a local church.
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.