Eastside Church Sermons

Ephesians 1:1-14 by Houston Tucker

• Eastside Church • Season 24 • Episode 15

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Unlock the timeless wisdom of the Book of Ephesians, a gem in the New Testament that continues to guide and inspire believers with its profound teachings on Christian living. With its circulation intended for a broad audience, Ephesians gives us a deeper look into unity in Christ and the transformative power of divine love. This week, join us as we dissect the intricate messages Paul presents, discussing how these teachings can profoundly impact our lives and reshape our understanding of faith.

Through our engaging conversation, we'l analyze a particularly complex passage from Paul's letter, breaking it down to uncover the powerful truths about God's grace and the notion of predestination. By peering into the theological depths, we'll reveal the beauty of being chosen and adopted by God, akin to the heartfelt decision of families who embrace children from the foster system. Our episode brings these concepts to life, offering clarity and insight into the rich symbolism that Paul uses to express the boundless grace bestowed upon us.

As we wrap up our exploration of this pivotal book, we reflect on the universal themes that resonate with the core of Christianity. From understanding adoption as children of God to the uniting of all under Christ, we discuss how these ideas are not only liberating but deeply transformative. Absorb the profound message of grace that Ephesians imparts, and see how it continues to mold the lives of Christians around the globe, reminding us of our identity as beloved children of a compassionate God.

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Speaker 1:

All right, good morning guys. My name's Houston, one of the pastors here. It's good to be with you guys this morning. As you heard Jess talked about, we're starting a new series in the book of Ephesians and I feel like it's really cliche for the pastor to be like, yeah, I'm excited about this series, if you've been here for a, to be like I'm excited about this series. If you've been here for a minute. I'm excited about every series, but I'm excited about this series.

Speaker 1:

The book of Ephesians is a really special book in the Bible, and by special I mean really different. It's very different. It's weird, you might say, in the New Testament and Paul. Let me give you a brief overview of this book. Paul wrote this book near the end of his life. We know that because there's a lot in this book that is very developed in what Paul had to say. And he wrote this book as a. We call it a circulatory letter. Here's what that means.

Speaker 1:

Most of what Paul wrote were letters. He wrote something to a group of people 2,000 years ago. The letter to the Corinthians was there was a church in Corinth and he said hey, I know you guys, I know what's going on. I'm writing to you. The book of Ephesians is different because this was designed to be a letter not to a specific group of people but to be passed around amongst Christians. And that's significant because the book as a whole, it works very differently than Paul's other letters, and one of the hallmarks of a letter like this, a circulatory letter, is the content. So the themes are going to be much more generic in the book of Ephesians. There are many times in his letters where Paul is talking to a specific group of people and he's got a specific message for them. You know he's taking this theological idea and he's saying here is how it ought to play out in your lives. But this letter, ephesians, is different. This letter was made to go around to lots of Christians, people he didn't necessarily know, and so the things he's talking about are very general, broad.

Speaker 1:

What does it mean to be a Christian? And that's why we picked this book, because if we've been with us, we've been in a series of John since the beginning of the year and we kept asking this question you know, who is Jesus, what is he about? And we saw, we saw all kinds of things about Jesus, what he said, about himself, what he did. Now we're asking the question who is a Jesus follower? What is he or she like? And that's why we have Ephesians, that's why we're here. So Paul is going to talk about these broad ideas. What does it mean to be a Christian? So, as a result of this, the concepts are going to be broader than we might usually expect.

Speaker 1:

Paul is going to take high-level ideas and, instead of very narrowly applying it, he's going to apply it to Christians everywhere. And that's why, if you're familiar with Ephesians, there's sections in chapter 5 and 6 where Paul talks about how Christian families ought to operate. And that's why Because, hey, this is wisdom, this is theological implications for all Christians everywhere, not just to a specific group. So what are these theological implications? What are these ideas? Well, really, there's a lot going on in the book of Ephesians, there's a lot here. You heard that passage that Jessica read.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot going on in this book and some of the more famous passages in Scripture we find here. We find sections about Christian households and how they ought to work. We find some vivid imagery about the armor of God. If you're familiar with that, we see all kinds of things about like worship, language and doxologies, and it's easy to think that Paul has set up, essentially a buffet for Christians. Come and take the thing that you want, see the thing that you need, take a piece of it and go back home. But really it's not that. So when we zoom out, we see that it's not just a smorgasbord of different things, it's actually one idea. Paul presents one unified idea in the book of Ephesians and it's this what Jesus has done is make us into a new people. God has made us into a new people. God has made us into a new people, and what we're going to see as we go through the book is that every single thing that Paul talks about is connected to this idea. God has taken all of us in our disparate places and he's repurposed us and he's built a new thing together out of us. One of the pictures we get in the book is that God is like a master builder right and he's gone to the junkyard and he's found the strangest things you can imagine and he's crafted this incredible house out of it.

Speaker 1:

And you know, lately I've been really interested in small home design. If you've been in my house, you know why. It's very pressing, and one of the things that I love is these people who are really pushing the envelope in designing small living spaces. They're people who live in big cities and if you live in the Madison area, you know property costs are high, square footage low right, I mean, can I get an amen, right. And so people who live in these cities who are thinking about these things, they're thinking about architecture in general, and one of the things that a lot of these guys are seeing is that the general solution to this problem tends to be destroy what's there and build a new thing, a bigger thing, a better thing or whatever, and the problem is that that creates a ton of building waste, as you can imagine. You know cities like Madison. We know there's always 100% of the time there's construction going on somewhere, right. And so what's the consequence? Tons of building waste.

Speaker 1:

So these people who are doing these small home designs also tend to be really big on reusing and repurposing spaces and materials. And I think it's really cool, because there's something really cool that happens when you take this old building, you know 100 years old and it's not really functional the way it is, Then you get a master builder in and he can redesign this space, repurpose this space to really work. Or when you get this like discarded materials from old building projects you know old pieces of foundation, old lumber like and they take this and they build a new, exciting, beautiful space out of it. Man, there's something really powerful about that, right, and that's the picture of the book of Ephesians. That's the picture is that God has taken people who were broken, people who were corrupted, people who were enemies, and he's remaking them into something beautiful. And he's building something. He didn't just repurpose the wood so it looks pretty. He's building something together out of this, something that's going to work. And we find out he's built his own home out of this, out of these pieces. So he's taking people like us, who were all a mess and all over the place, and he's built something new out of us. And because of this image, we're calling this series Renewed. Because that's it. God has renewed us. He's made us into this new, beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

And today we're going to kick off this series in Ephesians by reading how Paul starts his letter, and it's we call it doxology. It's a fancy theological word. This is just a big prayer song, like Paul is just feeling the spirit move and he is laying it out in a big, rich, complicated prayer, and so what we're going to do is we're going to unpack this today. We're going to see that Paul is kicking off this foundational theme of God remaking us, renewing us, and we're going to see that, in Christ, god has blessed us, and he's blessed us in three ways he's blessed us in the past, he's blessed us in the present and he's blessed us in the future. Again, we're going to see that, in Christ, god has blessed us in the past, present and future. So let's pray, god. I just come before you today feeling like an old building material and, god, I just pray that you would take this time, that we're sitting under your word, that you would take us and that you would repurpose us and make us into something beautiful, something that glorifies you and God. We just pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts will be glorifying to you, lord, our God and Redeemer. We praise in Jesus' name, amen, all right, first let's talk about how God has blessed us in the past.

Speaker 1:

So if you open up your bulletins, you'll see I have put this little insert in here and it looks confusing and I'm sorry. This is our passage today. If you look at our passage just written out like how it's written in my Bible. It is hard to follow because this is one big, long, complicated prayer, but what I've done is I have broken this down into sections in this insert, and looking at this is very helpful for me. I hope it's helpful for you too.

Speaker 1:

This passage is difficult to read and here's why there's 12 verses here verses three through 14, and there are only five sentences. In fact, if you take out verse three, there are four sentences and 13 verses or 11 verses. So these are long winding, run-on sentences, and the reason why it's hard to tell that is because in English it just does not work to do big, long sentences like that. Now, some of you have listened to my preaching long enough and you think you can handle it, but you know no. So in the Greek it's more clear that really Paul is getting at three things here, and so I've organized it into the sentences and you'll see I've got a few sections bolded here.

Speaker 1:

These are the only verbs in these sentences. Again, language nerds like buckle up, we're going to go for a ride today. Well, maybe I should say, if you're not a language nerd, buckle up, we're going to go for a ride. And the rest is participles. Participle is I was thinking about this clearest way to explain this to you. I'm sure you know what it is, but if you don't know, a participle is a verb turned into an adjective or an adverb. Here's what that means. If I was to say to you a clear sentence, I would say Friday, kinsey and I went to Chick-fil-A, right. And if I was telling you a clear sentence, I would say Stella threw a tantrum at Chick-fil-A.

Speaker 1:

If I was to use a Paul-like sentence here, I would say something like this Having left the play place while still sitting in a poopy diaper, upset about her playtime being cut short, stella screamed you get it. It's like it's a lot, a lot going on. And so the the, when we break it down, we say how many actual sentences are here. There's not many, and you can see them Verse four starts, sentence verse seven, verse 11, and then verse 13. These are the main ideas of this passage, and what it actually works out to is that the very first sentence, verse three, is actually kind of a thesis statement for this passage. It's like an introductory statement of what Paul's talking about, and then the next sections make up three points. You could say Paul is preaching a classic three-point sermon here. Right Intro and three points. He's nailing it, and I mention this because when we first read this it's hard to hang on. There's a lot going on here. But when we break it down again we see it's actually he's just saying three things.

Speaker 1:

In verses four through six he says God chose us. So this is that past part. This is God has blessed us in the past. Verses four through 6. Verses 7 through 10 says talks about the things that God has given us, that he gives us now. This is the present blessing. Verses 11 through 14 is kind of a two-parter, but it's all talking about the promises that God makes to us. This is the blessings in the future. So let's look at the things they did for us in the past.

Speaker 1:

Look at verses four through six with me the first big chunk. It says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. So, as you can see from the bolded word, the only true verb in the sentence. God has chosen us Right out of the gate. We're walking into some difficult theological territory, right? If you're familiar with these kinds of things at all, you know this is a contentious idea to talk about, and here's the deal. Idea to talk about, and here's the deal.

Speaker 1:

Many women much smarter than me have tried and failed to really capture exactly what it means that God has predestined us, and so I'm going to stick with the things that I know for sure we can say. First of all, in verse four, it says God chose us before the foundation of the world. Here's what's important to see there. Here's one of the things that's important to see. What this is saying is that God chose us. He chose to save us long before any person ever made a decision to reject God. See, what you could say is that what we know for sure is that long before there was even a problem, god had a solution, and this is key, because this helps us understand the other thing that we can definitively say from this, and that's the intent behind God choosing us Verse 6, you see what it says, to the praise of his glorious grace. So the end goal of choosing us is that he would receive praise for his grace.

Speaker 1:

Now, what does that mean? It means that that there is one thing that is true of god in a foundational, in an ultimate sense, and that is he is gracious. You know, we say this person is filled with grace or this person is a very gracious thing. What we're saying is that they show degrees or shades of this thing that God is. Ultimately, that he is the ultimate example of, and, functionally, how this plays out, it means that God is so gracious to us that he chose to save us when we didn't deserve it, when we didn't do anything to warrant saving, without any evidence that we would become people who would be worth it. So when the Bible talks about God choosing us or God predestining us, this is difficult. This a lot of questions come with that, but what we should see very clearly is that this is supposed to point us to how gracious God is. God you God knew definitively that you and I would be disasters, that we would be massive people, and I'm sorry, but it's true, right like he knew before anything ever happened, that we would be massive people, and I'm sorry, but it's true, right, like he knew, before anything ever happened, that we were just going to make a wreck of things. He knew that we would be destructive because we would be sinful, and because he is so good and gracious, he still chose ahead of time to save us from that. You know, one of the images that Paul uses in fact, the main image in this whole passage is that God has adopted us. He predestined to adopt us, and this is such a great example of what I'm talking about here.

Speaker 1:

I used to work for the state of Missouri in children's division. This is the group that when parents were abusive or neglectful, they would come in, take the kids out of the homes. Really hard, really hard job, and one of the things that you would see more often than I ever wanted to believe is a child would be removed from the parents, removed from the home, and the parents, for one reason or another, would just not get things together. They would keep using drugs, they would keep being abusive or neglectful, they would keep not being safe for the kids, and the thing that you do after enough time, after years, is the state would come in and cut parental ties, cut custody, and the best case scenario is that these kids would already be living with some foster family or some relative or loved one who already knew and loved these kids and they would just adopt them. And the worst case scenario is that these kids would not be adopted and they would just be wards of the state until they turned 18 and aged out. And the thing that was really hard is that as these kids got older, most of the kids who aged out came into the system or were in the system as like teenagers and, at that point in their lives, like man.

Speaker 1:

The thing that was like almost universally true of them is that the scars from the abuse or the neglect or the time in the system, to be honest, were so deep. These kids were very hard, very hard kids. They were destructive. They were harmful to themselves and others. It made it hard for families to adopt them. But every once in a while you would see something incredible. You would see a family or a person come in who decided on the outset that it did not matter what these kids were like, they were going to adopt them, and that meant that you knew definitively that you were going to adopt a child that would destroy your home, that would cause harm to you, possibly your family, a kid who could not and probably would not ever reciprocate the love and the care that you would show them, but they did it anyways. Why? Because it came out of love and grace. Didn't matter who this kid was, didn't matter what they'd done or what they would do. It was an expression of pure grace and love and friends.

Speaker 1:

That is the picture when it says that God predestined to adopt us. That's what he's saying. He's saying he went in knowing that we were going to be those troubled kids, that we definitively were going to be destructive and harmful, and it didn't matter, because he is so gracious, so loving, that he chose us anyways. That's the blessing that we have in the past. That's how we've been blessed through Christ, that he chose us, chose to adopt us. So we've seen that past. We've seen God chose to adopt us. Let's keep moving. Let's see the current blessings.

Speaker 1:

Look at verses 7 through 10 with me. Look at verse 7 first. In him we have. That's the key.

Speaker 1:

This is the list of things that we now, in Jesus, have. We have redemption through his blood. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses According to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his grace, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things to him, things in heaven and things on earth. So the kind of three broad things we see. We have redemption and forgiveness verse seven and then end of seven into eight. We have god is lavishes on us wisdom and insight, grace. And then in verse nine through ten, we see that we have a picture, a glimpse into what's coming for us, what God's big, mysterious plans are, and so again it looks like there's a lot going on here. There is a lot going on here. There's kind of one thread that runs through this that I want us to see. It's that we have been freed from evil and that we've been freed to life in God. I say that again, the current blessing we have, the way that God blesses us in the present, is that we are freed from evil and freed to a life in God. So let's break that down.

Speaker 1:

Verse 7 says we have redemption and forgiveness. So we've already talked about now, but God chose long before we were around that he was going to save us. But here is where we're really breaking down what that means. A big part of what that means In redemption and forgiveness. These are words that we throw around a lot in church Very fun Christian buzzwords, right and I think the consequence is that they tend to get flattened in their meaning. Now, if I say we have redemption and forgiveness, most of us, I think, are hearing the same thing twice. Right, but the thing is is in the Bible. These are actually two very different ideas, and this section actually kind of captures a range of things that God does for us.

Speaker 1:

Redemption when we say that, we think it means the same thing, like if we talk about a TV show. We just watched Ted Lasso, kinsey and I, and in this show there is a great redemption arc of a character who was bad and then by the end of the show we love him. He's good again, right, that's how we use redemption usually. It's like how we describe something going from bad to good. But that's not the way the Bible uses the word redemption. That's a different word actually, and so when it says that God has redeemed us, it doesn't mean that God has made us from bad to good Again. That's something else.

Speaker 1:

What redemption means is to be freed from something, and so usually this is the word that you use. If someone was being held hostage and if someone paid the ransom, you would say they redeemed the captive person. Or if someone was enslaved and you paid their price for freedom, you would say you redeemed them. Or prisoners like the movie Shawshank Redemption Actually a perfect use of that word. Redemption Two main characters, andy Dufresne, red Both of these guys get their redemption when they're released and then escape from prison. And so to say that God has redeemed us doesn't mean that we were given this story arc from bad to good. It means he set us free from something. But what? What did he set us free from?

Speaker 1:

Well, later on, paul's going to talk about how all of us were once following the prince of the power of the air. This is poetic language. What he's saying is that all of us were once slaves. What he's saying is that all of us were once slaves, and slaves to evil, slaves to the devil, slaves to death. And what he's saying is that because we were slaves, even when we tried to do good, we didn't. Everything is marked by that slavery and so we just see, the primary thing Paul is getting at here is that we were freed from slavery to evil. We were freed from being slaves to sin and through Jesus' death. But it's important that we see that we haven't just been freed for freedom's sake, like we haven't just been set neutral right. We were freed for something and we were freed to live for God. Look at verses 7 and 8 again. It says In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. Paul goes on to say that God lavished the riches of his grace on us.

Speaker 1:

This is kind of a specific picture. This is the language of a king giving gifts, lavishing gifts on people, and it kind of makes this composite picture. And it's, if we imagine, like a king who has gone to war with this enemy ruler, corrupt, evil ruler, who has oppressed his people, when this good king has gone to war as a result of the battles he's winning, and people who were once oppressed, people who were prisoners, people who were slaves, the king has now freed them. But it doesn't stop there. It doesn't. It's not just okay, now you're neutral, go do what you want. He's freed them. And then we get this picture that he's like, brought these people into his court, into his own personal throne room, and he started giving them gifts, giving them really lavish gifts. He's taking the clothes out of his wardrobe and put them on their backs. He's pulled up a chair at his table. He says sit with me. He's made beds in his own home. You get the picture.

Speaker 1:

It's not just that he has freed them from captivity, it's he's given them a place they can belong. And, man, what's the consequence of that? Are these guys going to be like cool thanks, peace out. I'm done no way. They've been elevated. They have a place where they belong. Now.

Speaker 1:

The natural consequence of this is that these people now have a new allegiance. They're not just freed from the evil king man, now they have a good king whom they serve. Now they have a place where they belong, a place where they matter, a place where they have important work to do and friends. That's the picture. That's the picture of what is true of us in Jesus right now. We have been freed from captivity to sin and evil and freed to new allegiance and serving the Lord. Right now, you and I, if we're in Christ, we have a new king, we have a ruler who loves us, we have someone who doesn't just free us, but he lavishes things on us, lavishes his grace on us and friends we have to see is that it's like it's not just new king, new kingdom. He's freed us from slavery and brought us into his own family. He's adopted us. And that brings us to our last section. Because he has adopted us, he promises us that things are going to be true in the future. So we've seen so far. God's blessed us in Christ in the past by choosing us, in the present by redeeming us, and he blesses us in the future by adopting us.

Speaker 1:

Look at verses 11 through 14 with me Again. Pay attention to those verbs. In him we've attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised holy spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. So if we zoom out, we see verse 11, it says we've obtained an inheritance, and in verse 13, it says that we were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is the down payment of an inheritance. Both of these are getting at the same idea. Specifically, we've been given a sure promise, a sure promise from God, that we have an inheritance. Why do we get an inheritance? It's because of what we said earlier. God's adopted us, and a part of that being adopted is it means we're his children, and not just that, it means that we are shareholders of his kingdom, of his things.

Speaker 1:

When we think about inheritance now, we tend to think in terms of what we get when our parents die. Right, but here in the first century, when they talked about inheritance, there was much more presentness to it. There's the idea that if your parents were landowners, they had a business, they had a farm, they had cattle, whatever, if you had an inheritance, it meant that there's a sense in which there's a portion of this that is currently yours. It may not be fully yours, but it's currently yours. And so if you go out in the field or go out in your pasture, you got hundreds of sheep, a dozen shepherds. There's a sense in which, if you're the person who's going to inherit this, you're currently the boss. Right, this is yours now.

Speaker 1:

And so when we talk about we have an inheritance from God, what it should do is it should kind of unlock this way of thinking in our minds where we start to ask okay, what does God own? What's his? And man, I love this God. There's a section in Psalm 50. It says God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. God's rich, he's super, he's loaded, he's got it all. And so when we talk about what is our inheritance, we have to see the things that Paul is talking about are God's riches. He owns stockpiles of grace, god has storehouses of wisdom, god has hectares of love. These are the things that Paul is saying. These are the things that God owns, and these are the things that we have a piece of right now, because we have an inheritance in him. He's the richest, he's the most powerful, most benevolent. Being in the universe and through Jesus he's chosen to adopt you and me means we get a piece of this coming for us. And the second piece of that is that we know there's a time coming when we will fully have this inheritance, when we will fully experience what it's like to inherit the things that God has promised us.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember that scene in the Lion King, mufasa and Simba, and they're looking out over the whole savannah, and we all remember this line, right? Mufasa is telling Simba what he will inherit when he becomes king. What does he say? Everything the light touches will be yours. But, guys, the picture of the inheritance that we have because God is our father is that it's like, instead of just looking out over the savannah, looking at all the things the light touches, it's like we're in God's heavenly throne room and before him is all of reality, all of the universe, and it's like he waves this hand across it and he says everything you see here will be yours. Why? Because these are the things that rightfully belong to Jesus right now. Because of what he has done. He's given it to us, and that's the key.

Speaker 1:

That's the key to this whole passage, to understanding what Jesus has done for us. We have to understand that long ago, god chose to adopt us and we have to understand that Jesus came and shed his blood and died for us and we have to understand that the Holy Spirit is a promise that, looking forward, it's all going to be ours. That was the plan all along. See, when it says that God chose us long before the start of time, what it's really saying is that before he made everything, he had a plan to make us his kids, and the plan was to send his son, who would come take our place and that he would die, to take on the consequences of our messed up-ness, of our sin, of our death. And then we'd trade places with us and we would be brought into the king's family.

Speaker 1:

A picture of the Bible is that we all have this sin problem. We're all slaves to sin. It's ruining us, it's ruining the world around us, and the price to free us from this sin was Jesus' blood. And in doing this, jesus, the Son of God, gave us a place at his table, brought us in. Now we get to be a part of God's family. I mean, so often when we think about the gospel, we make it so transactional, right, like we make it this thing, like God is a judge and he's just stamped this, like I'm not going to hold your charges against you thing anymore, but man, the picture is that God is this loving, benevolent king over everything, sent his precious only son to trade places with us. So merciful that he's set a place at the table for us. So gracious that he made us right with him. He's so gracious that he made us right with him. All of this, as Paul says twice in this passage, is to the praise of his glory, so that we will say, god, you are so good. So I want to end with this.

Speaker 1:

Usually, when we look at a passage like this, we pull out the important themes, talk about how does this impact our lives right now. Usually, when we look at a passage like this, we pull out the important themes. We talk about how does this impact our lives right now? And I want us all to catch something today. I want us all to catch something really important. I want us all to catch that this big cosmic story that we read in Jesus is a story about God adopting us as his children and man. There are so many ways. There's so many things that this means for us, so many ways this impacts our lives. I just want to pull out one thought.

Speaker 1:

You know our culture loves to talk about how people are valuable and how everyone needs and deserves love. And as Christians, we say yes and amen, right. But what we have to see is that, as Christians in Christ man, these are not just platitudes, these are concrete ideas. We've got the receipts to show this. Because why can we believe that things in our lives, that our story, is ultimately going in the right direction? It's because our dad's the king and he's super powerful. He can do anything. It's not a matter of resources. And and in your culture likes to say you know things are going to work out. Why? Maybe it's because you know humans are resourceful and they'll fix things. Or or maybe it's because you know the, the universe, you know, gives back what, what you give you know, kind of like karma or whatever. And as Christians, we just say no, we know things are going to be okay because our dad is the king, he's going to fix it.

Speaker 1:

And the second piece of that man we'd love to say in our culture that people are deserving of love. And again, yes and amen. But what we have to see as christians is is is we're not just talking about this abstract idea of like, yeah, you know good feelings, love everybody. It's like no parents, do you love your kids. Yes, no question about it.

Speaker 1:

So to say, as Christians, that we are loved is not just hey, good vibe, we feel great. It's the God of the universe who made everything, loves you. He's crazy about you. How do you know? Look what he did. He crossed heaven and earth and hell to get to us, to bring us in, and then he just lavishes his gifts on us. That's how we know, christians, that you are loved, Because God has shown that he loves you, because he's your father and man. Guys, if all of this, this whole section, this whole passage has one purpose and that is to elicit worship, and if this idea of God adopting us man does nothing else, it should elicit worship. He is a good God, he is gracious, he loves us, he's our good dad, and that is worth praising him for. Let's pray.