Alive — Ephesians 1-2

0:00 Working for us. And and just for all those detail oriented people out there who asked the question that Andy didn't hit on is where is... Where are we gonna meet on the thirtieth for the harvest party? What do we call it? The fall festival party.

0:15 It's gonna be at the Morris's. And more details specifically on the porch. Or the deck. I'm sorry. So, now you know.

0:26 Let's pray before we get started. Father, we're grateful that you've given us this opportunity again to gather. Lord, we pray that you'll lead our our our our time together. Lord, that you'll lead my voice to be proper. My thoughts to be towards you and that all of us can learn something from this opportunity to study your word today.

0:48 We thank you in your son's precious name. Amen. Amen. So, I was hoping that you might be able to start off with me by changing scripture scripture just a little bit for today. Now, I'm not suggesting that we need to, you know, the word is the word.

1:04 It's the way it's supposed to be. But but could you could you indulge me for a moment and read the beginning of Ephesians like this. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Westlake and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the reason I say that is not because I'm trying to, you know, walk on the wild side or create some, you know, new revelation.

1:34 That's not the point. The point here is that if we don't read it like this, if we don't read it as if it means something to me, to us here today. And that was the purpose. We heard from Ray several weeks ago now that this was a, say that word for me Ray. Encyclical.

1:54 Encyclical. Yeah, that word. It was meant to be read other places. It was meant to be an influence on the church. And I would submit that it's meant to be an influence on us here at Westlake today.

2:10 So foundational principles I want to get you started with today. I want you to remember these things before or as we go along. Okay? This first one. It's written to the saints.

2:21 That is the believers at Ephesus. Okay? It's an important truth that we need to understand. Okay? These are not things that may apply to those that are not believers.

2:32 And not only that, may not be understood by those that don't have the Holy Spirit. So so it's important to get this straight today. Okay? This is not like a basic course. This is a graduate course.

2:43 If you want basic, go back to Romans. And we should we should start there someday. But this is a graduate course. We need to stand on top of this. These were well taught people.

2:52 Okay? Paul had been there for a couple years. Right? Teaching them every day, every week. And so these believers were somebody that Paul, after having done that, left and then years later as he was in prison, wrote this letter back to them.

3:08 So let's stand on that foundational principle to begin with. The second one is this, chapters one through three, as we've been told, are foundational to understand our position. Okay? We need to understand chapters one through three before we move on to chapters four through six. So, this is a small slice of that.

3:29 Okay? And some of it's hard to parse out. We would have started by Ray saying, we start from a point of victory. Okay? And then we heard John say, we need to know what we have.

3:42 Or we need to understand what we have. And then last week, I appreciated Andy saying, this is what not only we should know, but what we can know. Okay? And now today, I'm going to make the argument that we need to understand that we are alive. Okay?

4:00 There's a lot of run on sentences in Paul's writing. This is no exception to that. We're going to parse it up into an and you, but God, and for works type of a section here as we go forward. I want you to remember, and I'm gonna challenge you to think about what we're talking about today. What we're talking about in this whole series.

4:19 Because our faith is a thinking person's faith. It's not one where we have a feeling and it drives our thoughts. It's one where we have thoughts or we have knowledge, we have understanding, we have truth and that drives our response. Okay? This is a thinking man's faith.

4:36 It isn't one that was made up on a whim or in a drug induced state like some theories that are popular in today's language or or you know in past. Okay? It is important for us to understand that. And so that's why when we say we are from victory, we have to know this, we need to know. Now, we're gonna talk about we live.

5:01 We can think of renewing our mind or transform ourselves by the renewing of our mind from Romans. John would say, I write these things that you may believe. Okay? You know these things. And finally, I have to give some disclaimers.

5:17 This is a very difficult spot for us to preach from. And it's difficult spot for me because I'm trying to, I'm gonna try and give you some definitions of things like dead and alive. Mercy, grace, love. Those are very hard to do because every definition that I'm going to give you is going to be limited in some way. Okay?

5:36 You're going to have to work with me. You're going to have to, you know, follow along because we're gonna have to do our best. I'm gonna give you pictures of heaven. Now, I'm sure your picture of heaven and mine are a little bit different, if not anything else. So, I'm gonna ask you to use your imagination.

5:53 Okay? We're gonna have to see what it looks like to see the father of glory. Maybe the throne room if you will. And finally, so use your imagination. And finally, there's gonna be a few analogies in here.

6:05 Now, how many of, just to prepare so I know what crowd I'm looking at here. How many, how many of you played football in high school? Okay, so a few of you will get that, get this analogy. How many you actually watched it on TV? Okay, we're getting a little bit better there.

6:22 So hopefully there's a football analogy in there. I'll try not to stumble you And then we're gonna talk about millionaires as well. Probably we're all short there. But every analogy also comes short. I didn't want to embarrass anybody or or or you know send anybody up on a pedestal here.

7:08 Have any of you ever realized there are pages to read in your Bible before Genesis one? How many of you have actually read them? Okay. You need to read them. Okay.

7:22 You need to know what version of the Bible you're looking at. Okay. Jeremy, it's really important that you pick up a Bible in the back. You know which one you're reading from so you don't get up here and get confused. Right?

7:35 So I wouldn't have I wouldn't have brought that up if he hadn't have said earlier that that's what happened. So it's important to do that. Okay? And we need to know things like, is this a translation or is it a paraphrase? Is it a word for word translation?

7:52 And are there any any things that have been changed or any things that that conventions that these authors, if you will, or these translators made. Okay? It's very important to understand that, very important. Probably, you all know which translation somebody's reading from because it's not like yours or it's close to yours and that kind of thing. So so here's the New King James.

8:16 The New King James has several things that are important about it. Okay. The first one is it's an update to the language to the King James Bible. That was one of the most important things that they tried to accomplish in doing this, bring it into more of a modern day language. Right?

8:32 But they also realized that there had been discoveries made. There was information that was available when they did the translation for the New King James version that was not available at the time of the King James. And so they tried to adjust or you know, work that stuff in and it's primarily worked in to the notes. Okay? Frequently, if you see a note in the New King James Bible, it's gonna have like an adjusted language or a suggestion that maybe it's a little different.

9:03 And if you read it that way, it's gonna sound a lot like the New American Standard, which has incorporated that as part of their translation. So you can see as we go, on we go, we need to understand this. I would encourage you to make sure that you're reading from a translation and not a paraphrase. A translation means they did their very best to translate the Bible from the original language it was written in. Now, don't forget, the New Testament was originally written in Greek.

9:36 And except for maybe John Woodham's, most of you are probably not reading from a Greek Bible. So you're not reading from the original language. Okay? Well, maybe, Shelley has some experience with that, because she's a linguist of sorts. So the point is that if you're not reading from that, we have a little bit of a handicap, and that we're reading it in the English language.

10:00 So, this is an important study that you need to understand and you need to figure out in your life, how... What am I reading from? And when you're reading from that, no. I prefer the New King James for reasons that are mine. Okay?

10:14 And you prefer something else, that's okay. But I also prefer JB Phillips. Phillips really helps me understand things from a different way, but he's a paraphraser. Okay? He's taken thoughts and put them in his own words.

10:30 Okay? As opposed to translating. Alright? We need to we need to sort that out, have it in your mind, and this is why I brought that up. When you look at the New King James Version, you're gonna find out that these words are in italics.

10:45 Some of your translations may not have this these words or this thought. Okay? And therefore, it's important for us to know why this is the case. Okay? Now, when we take those out, let's just read it again.

11:00 And you who were dead versus and you He made alive who were dead. So there's that were in there. Right? This idea that you were dead, but now if you're not dead, what are you? Alive.

11:15 Okay. So so this isn't inappropriate to have it in here. I'm not I'm not speaking against the translation, But, I am speaking to say, we need to realize that this was not part of the original words, but it's part of the original thought. Okay? At least the translators believe that.

11:30 That's why if you're reading a different version, you might not have this in there. Okay? And so we're gonna we're gonna also look at this verse in verse four. It says, but God made us alive. So there's the thought.

11:44 Right? They just sort of previewed it in the first verse, what was actually being said in the fourth verse. So so understand that this is how we're gonna sort it out. For our purposes today, I'm just gonna say, and you were dead. You who were dead.

12:00 Okay? That's the point of this. Dead or alive. You know, down when I was in Memphis, they said something like, man, oh, howdy. How did I get myself here?

12:10 I'm having to figure out what's dead and what's alive. Well, that's what we're gonna try and do today. Alright. It seems like we should have, you know, like a banjo playing or a fiddle or something. I don't know.

12:20 But... So that's easy. Let's let's just go to dictionary.com and see what they would say. Dictionary.com says dead means this, no longer living deprived of life. Well, that's helpful, isn't it?

12:35 If you're not dead, you're alive. If you're not live, you're dead. That didn't help me a whole lot. So then I thought, let's go to the... See what the National Institute of Health says.

12:46 And the National Institute of Health refers to this paper by this guy, J. Lawbioski, if that's the right way to say his name. And there's this portion of his paper that says the commission, apparently there was a group of people, very smart and important, that sounds like it, right? Ultimately recommended a Uniform Determination of Death Act, UDDA, which aimed to make the total brain standard into law in The States. This recommendation has been adopted by the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association and made into law in some form in all 50 states.

13:29 The UDDA or the Uniform Determination of Death Act simply states, an individual who has sustained either one, irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or number two irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain including the brainstem is dead. So that was really important, okay? Because technology has made it so that dead doesn't really mean dead. If you didn't have a heartbeat, you were dead at one time. Today, you can live without a heartbeat.

14:14 Okay? But the thing that we're talking about here is really about a body. Right? I have many things that I'm grateful for Dave Bingham for. Okay?

14:30 This is one of them. He used to wear a t shirt primarily I think because it was red. When he came to Awana and he was a Sparks leader. Right? So he was...

14:38 It says, I am a spirit. I have a soul and I live in a body. So this definition or these definitions that I've been putting out here are about a physical death, a body that dies. The tent that we have on. This is the death that's talking about.

14:54 Okay? A bit confusing, but it's important to measure these things. That's what lawyers and doctors have to do is to measure. When is a person dead? When are they not?

15:05 It's a big debate. But suffice it to say, generally, when we're talking about a body, what are we talking about? One that was alive and then became dead. We only know stories of a few that were dead and became alive. But this this says, and you who were dead and God made us alive.

15:31 So we went from dead to alive. Now if that doesn't spark your interest, nothing will. Right? So that's what we're talking about here. You who were dead are now alive.

15:42 That's the premise of our discussion today. Dead or alive. So let's read chapter two verses one through three. It says, and you who were dead in trespasses and sin, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath just as the others.

16:25 There you go. So, and you were dead. That's what we're gonna we're gonna talk about right now, being dead. Okay. The passage says that it basically illustrates our point of being dead or the process of being dead as a walk.

16:45 We once walked in, right? It's a walk down a path. Right? And in some sense that doesn't sound too, it's a little bit innocuous. Right?

16:54 And we're heading for what? We're heading down a path in our lives, we're walking in our lives, down a path towards a pot of gold. That's a good way to describe it, because frequently, we're walking in our life to try and do what? Make money. That's a common occurrence.

17:11 But the Bible would say that it's really about the lust of our flesh. Something we want. Okay? Something that we desire to fulfill. Fulfilling our desires.

17:24 Our flesh. Thinking, what will make me look better? What will make me higher? What will make me important? Okay?

17:33 That's what we're seeking after in this walk in life. Okay? So, it says that we follow the course of the world. There it is, right there in the path. A well worn path.

17:47 If we look at, there's thousands of books that you can go to the library, half of them are about how to be rich and famous. Right? How to get better. How to do something different. How to, how to.

17:58 That's the course of this world. It's a well worn path. One that we easily follow. One that we easily walk down. Because we have somebody whisper in our ears.

18:07 The prince of the power of the air. Or the spirit of the sons of disobedience. That would be the devil. The enemy is whispering in our ear. That's the right way to go.

18:17 Take that course. It's the best path. Can't you see it's well worn? Why wouldn't you want to be better than everybody else? Why wouldn't you want to have more?

18:26 Why wouldn't... Why? Why? Why? Right?

18:28 But as we do that, we stumble along. Right? We cross boundaries. We jump fences. We go on the other side of the tracks.

18:36 You pick your analogy, whatever happens, that's what we're doing. We know that's wrong because built in with within us is a sense of right and wrong. That's part of the creation. Okay? The the Lord or Romans chapter one verse 20 says, we all can see his invisible attributes.

18:54 And because of that, we are clearly without excuse. Now, that's my version. I'm sorry I didn't quote it exactly right. But you understand what I mean. You've heard that before.

19:03 The creation says it groans within us that we don't... We know things are wrong. We know where we're going is not right. And and society would say that as well. There's very important standards that we know.

19:15 Okay? And when we cross those, it's a sin. We fall short of the glory of God as we're walking along this path. Now, we might be told that. We might have heard that.

19:26 We might have. However we know, we do know. Okay? And, Paul would say, it's not just those heathens on the other side of the course. He said, we also did it.

19:38 We, as Jews, having what we had, the special dispensation from the Lord, the special privilege that He gave us, we were just like everybody else. We just manifested a little bit different way. So that we were considered children of wrath. Now, I had to write down, do you know what wrath means? It says, wrath is a strong, stern, or fierce anger.

20:04 So we're children of a fierce anger. Somehow, we're not satisfied with this. Somehow, we're angry about this course that somebody's leading us down. Somehow, we just don't understand it. And we're confronted by this.

20:20 And this, my friends, is what Paul is describing as death. It's a walk of separation. A walk through life that separates us from God. That is a dead position. One where we will eternally be separated from God.

20:39 We are a walk. Or we are venturing on a walk of separation. So let's continue to move along. Don't forget, everything we've talked about is about me. What I want, what I'm gonna do, what what...

21:04 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, Even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Excuse me. What a passage. How many times have you heard people quoted there?

21:34 Right? So here we're gonna talk about, but God made us alive. Okay? So if you if you read those verses, it's hard not to hear an echo because we can go back to verse chapter one and read these verses too. There's here's the echo.

21:52 Starting in verse 17, it says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory and then skip down to verse 20, which he worked in Christ when he, the father of glory, raised him, Jesus, from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age and that which is to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all. So here it is. We we we can't help but compare those two passages. Right?

22:35 Because it would say the father of glory took a man, Jesus, raised him from the dead. Right? And brought him to the heavenly places. This is where you need to use your imagination. Okay?

22:49 This is just my representation of what I'm trying to say. You have to use your imagination into the heavenlies. We could think of the Acts chapter one where people looked as they saw the Lord ascend into the clouds. Right? And it says, seated him at the right hand of the Father of Glory.

23:07 I didn't put the son in there. That's a throne. Right? He's sitting there somehow in your imagination again. But he said he put all things under his feet, all principalities, power, might, dominion, all things.

23:20 He's above everything. He's higher than all. He rules. Right? That's what he's trying to say.

23:25 So that's where he brought him. Okay? He lifted him up. So that then, which includes now and in the ages to come, that he will be honored. Okay.

23:40 There's two analogies here, though. Okay? Two ideas. One, that He's seated Him in the throne, but He's also created this body. Okay?

23:49 Which is the church and Christ is the head. Okay? So there's two analogies here. We're with Him, we're in Him. This is what you have to understand too.

24:01 So there's a body called the church, the head of which is Christ. This introduced here in this passage as well. So it also says that we, now we know we're gonna skip from chapter one over to chapter two for a minute, we'll go back and forth. Okay? It says, we were dead in our trespasses.

24:22 Well, here it is. This is that old picture. This is the walk of separation where we found ourselves. Okay? We were walking down a path that separates us from God, And that is the definition that He's given for dead.

24:36 Okay? But it also says we were lifted up into the heavenly places too. Those of us... Remember, who's it written to? It's written to the saints in Ephesus.

24:48 Those that believed, those who were believers were lifted up into the heavenly places. Okay? Just as the Lord was lifted up as well. But it's different, isn't it? He was lifted up because He was sinless.

25:06 Because He made a sacrifice for all of us and a payment that was sufficient to cover all of our sins. He deserved it. He earned it. He had the right to be lifted up into the heavenly places. But he was lifted up physically, wasn't he?

25:24 He was lifted up from that grave. Physically, we can say if we believe the Bible, that's what the argument is, that He was physically rose from the grave before He was dead, and then He was alive, and then eventually He was lifted up as they saw him go into the clouds. We can believe that truth. We have to believe that truth because if we don't, our faith is in vain. So now we said that because he earned it, the sinless sacrifice and payment, he was lifted up.

25:55 But what did we do? Why were we lifted up? We were lifted up because of this love. It wasn't my love. It was God's love.

26:06 Because of the mercy That wasn't my mercy. It was God's mercy. Where He didn't give us what we deserve. We were trying to separate ourselves from Him and He should have let us go. Okay?

26:17 But He didn't. He decided I don't want to have that happen, so I won't separate them. But I will give them grace. I will give them something they don't deserve. Okay?

26:26 I want to lift them up. So the believers, in that case, because not of what we did, but what he does are lifted up in a spiritual sense. I don't know about you, but my body's still here. Right? I wasn't physically lifted up.

26:46 You weren't physically lifted up. I wasn't physically dead. I am alive. So we get confused with this whole thing, but it's a spiritual lifting up. Okay?

26:57 Alright. I want you to keep this in context. Okay? This has to be in context with the rest of Ephesians. Okay?

27:04 He wants us to know something that not only do we have all this, we should know this, we are alive like this. This is this is something for us to know as believers before we walk forward into chapter four and beyond. Okay? We can get confused. I got confused in this mess when I was trying to apply salvation to this process instead of just the position that he has here.

27:33 Because just as there was a time when Jesus was in that grave, there was a time before that when he was on the cross. And a time before that where he kneeled and said, not my will, but thine Lord. Just as we have. If we walked the Romans Road, we'd find out that we have to confess with our mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead. So that's not all in here.

27:56 So we have to parse that out. There's more to be discussed about this. Okay? But I want you to understand, we need to keep it in context. Okay?

28:20 This is where things are done. He says, He seated us in the heavenlies. We are with Him and we're in Him in the heavenly places. How do you make that sense of that? That's hard for me to make sense of.

28:36 I'm sorry, but it's just my limited mind. Right? But it says, for the purpose that He might show the exceeding riches of His grace. I I I use this. In my mind it's a trophy.

28:47 Right? Like we're trophies that He sets on a... In heaven on a shelf. And He shows them off and He says, you can't believe this one, but essentially what I think that trophy is, is our testimony. Okay?

28:59 The testimony that we have. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I went through this, but the Lord still loved me. Our testimony. He can say, even that guy, even that guy is here in heaven.

29:13 And that's showing the exceeding riches of His grace. Okay? What does 73 have to do with anything? Anybody got an idea? Oh, you rat.

29:25 You got it. That was my number in high school football. Now, some of you can... So those of you who played high school football would know what it's like on Friday. Right?

29:38 Friday is a special day. There's not much like it when you wake up in that morning and you think, oh, man, we'll play a game tonight, and I can't wait. And, you know, as as I've talked to some of these younger folks, it's true that you're waiting to get popped that first time. You need to get it. You know?

29:59 You know you're gonna get it. It's just like how hard and bang. Here it comes. Okay. Now I'm ready.

30:05 You know? Now I can give it back. But it hurts. You know? It it...

30:09 It's... But there's nothing like that feeling of I'm playing football. I'm representing my school on that field. Okay? Now, when I played, one of the things they would do is say, you know what?

30:21 When you come to school that day, I want you to do one or two things. Either wear your jersey, in an alternate week you wore a tie. Okay? That was not common in school where I went to school. And so we looked different.

30:35 You know, we were on the football team and everybody could look at you and say, oh, on a football team. Yeah. But when I'm sitting in class, in math class, even though my mind might have been on the football field, I wasn't on the football field. Okay? I was in class.

30:53 I was representing that I would be on the football field because football players aren't football players unless you do what? Practice. Play the game. You can practice all you want, but until you play the game, you aren't a football player. Okay?

31:07 Until the stars haven't gone in your eyes, you're not a football player. Okay? And that was the point. Even though I was on the team, I wasn't on the field. It's like this concept.

31:20 It's the only one. And the analogy falls short somewhere. I'm sure you've thought of it. But that's the point. We are in heaven, but we're here.

31:28 The the Lord has us spiritually speaking in our mind's eye. We need to be thinking about ourselves as being with Christ. You have to have that in your mind. You have to get that because that's what they're trying to teach us today. Okay.

31:44 This is all about God though. The last slide was about me. This is about God and what he's done. Okay. So John did a great job of this.

31:54 Ray listed them up for us. What we have are all of these things. Every spiritual blessing. He had us in mind before the foundation. All this kind of stuff.

32:02 We have that. We have to understand what we have. It's important. We also have to know what we should know. Right?

32:10 Know that we can know. And Andy did a big job of talking about that. And now we can know that we're alive. Okay. We're alive because he made us alive.

32:21 What's that t stand for? Together. He made us alive together. We're not alone. We're with Christ.

32:30 Okay. He raised us up together. We're not alone. We're with the church. Those of us who believe, we're together with Christ.

32:38 Made us sit in the heavenly places together in Christ. We're in Jesus Christ. That's what we have to have in our minds. That's the basis from which we need to walk forward from here and that's the argument that Paul is making in Ephesians up to this point. My goodness, I don't know about you, but from a spiritual sense, what can you say?

33:11 We are rich. So with that foundation, and there we just shrunk it down a little bit. Now we get to read verses eight through 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of god, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

33:44 So we're rich. When you think of rich, what do you think of? It's okay. Shout it out. Money.

33:53 Everybody thinks of money. What's that? Okay. So most people think of money. And then we would say we're rich.

34:04 We have millions. In in our case, we're spiritually rich. We have gazillions beyond what we could imagine or ever spend. And so, in that particular case, we need a comparison. So I know there's a comparison out there of a millionaire.

34:18 Okay? Very famous millionaire that they reduced his whole story into a poem that some people sing. Right? It goes something like this. I'm not going to sing it, but let me tell you a story about a man named Jed.

34:35 He was a poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed. And then one day while shooting at some food, up through the ground come a bubbling crude oil that is. Texas black hole Texas tea. Thanks for the help. Well, the first thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire.

34:54 The kinfolk said, that's his relatives by the way, move away from here. California is the place you ought to be. So they did what? They loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly Hills that is, where all the swimming pools the movie stars are at. So now what can that have to do with what we're talking about today?

35:16 Well, let's make a comparison, okay? He was a poor mountaineer. He was born there, right? He didn't have any chance of getting out of there. Probably he was gonna live and die in the hollow he grew up in, or so we're led to believe by Hollywood, right?

35:30 And there we were. We were wandering down this path of separation where it was our nature. We in a sense born to do. We were born into Adam. We were born.

35:42 We're gonna make that choice. He was shooting at some food and some dumb luck happened and something happened where all of a sudden the boil was bubbling up out of the ground. We're confronted by this great love with which the Father loved us. And it's nothing we did. I wish I'd put a star there that's important for us to remember.

36:03 Okay? It's important for you to understand that Jesus paid it all. It was was dumb luck for Jed, but it's great luck for us that we have this great love. Okay, crude oil was a hidden treasure. Love, mercy, and grace is what the treasure was that lifted us up, which put us into heavenly places.

36:24 Dollars are the world's currency, which he got. Here's this, to have and to know and to be alive and what we're gonna learn going forward is God's currency. He got a new zip code out of it into Beverly Hills, right? And we also, in a spiritual sense, in our mind's eye, have a new zip code. We're in the heavenlies.

36:45 Okay? He spent his money on the course of the world swimming pools and movie stars as it was. What are we gonna spend ours on? Well, the proposition is that we should spend our wealth on good works because we're motivated that way. What we've learned up to this point motivates us to good works.

37:21 And that I realized it. Okay? But that's the end of it. Okay? It pleases me.

37:26 Because if I go beyond there, then I'm saying, oh God, you did that. I've got something else for you. And I want this and I want that. Please me. He's not here to please me.

37:35 He's not a cosmic vending machine. If God's work is intended to bring glory to me where I'm saved, therefore, I'm better than you. Or I'm higher and above or I know something better. You know, if it's to bring glory to me at your expense, that's not right either. Okay?

37:53 Let's talk about my work. If I'm working to please God, what good is that? Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. Why do I want to make the second payment?

38:04 Right? It's all done. It's all been paid for. You don't need to add to it. You can't add to it.

38:10 He's done what you could not do. Let's be thankful that's the case. But if my work brings glory to God, and that's the point. We heard that from John, glory be to God, or glory to God in the highest. My work brings glory to God.

38:25 That's what we're looking for. Okay? Now, would say, it goes on to say that we were created for good works. That God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He has works for you to do.

38:40 He has works for me to do. That's what we need to understand. This is a stepping off point. We're getting ready to step off into chapter four where he's gonna say, now walk. Okay?

38:52 He created us for good works. So this idea of good works is not a bad one. Okay? It's not even one that you should be ashamed of because you were created that way. It's just how do I apply my good works?

39:07 Where do I apply my works? What is my mindset as I apply them? Okay? Well, one of the things is that we are alive now. We once were dead.

39:18 Now, we're alive. And we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. That's one thing. What we have. What we know are other things.

39:27 And we'll find out more. So, it's not bad. Okay? How are you gonna spend your wealth? I've made the argument that you're rich.

39:36 Now we get to spend it. If we spend it on ourselves saying, I got fire insurance. I don't need to do anything else. I don't have to worry about anything because God's got my back. No, no, no, no, no.

39:47 That's not what he's... That's not the proposition he's making here. Okay. Final thing. Let me summarize this for you.

39:52 We already saw this. The body is a church. Okay? And the head of the body is Christ. I'm sorry.

40:01 It's like a body drawn on the chalk in the ground, but that's for you to fill in the imagination. Okay? And and I think Paul, or my opinion is Paul is going to make the proposition that we need to walk. Christ is asking you to walk forward. So there's the body having to walk.

40:20 Okay? But the body is made up of so many. It might be one little big toe there. So let's let's let's focus in on that little big toe. Okay?

40:29 And and or the big little toe. Whatever it is. Let's one of those, a toenail. Whatever I am down there. Okay?

40:35 That helps the body move forward. Let's let's focus in on that. Well, there I am probably in my younger days, but still the point is, in order for this body to move, this body needs to move. Okay? In order for the church to be fulfill its purpose, those within the church need to fulfill theirs.

41:14 Before we go to walking, there's some things we need to know. Okay? So let's take a peek into the mind of the believer. Or what should be in the mind of the believer. That's the point of Ephesians up to this point.

41:29 Get this straight first. Okay? And we're gonna stack them up. We start from a point of victory. We need to understand what we have.

41:41 We need to realize that we can know and we should know some very important things about our faith. And now, we're alive. But we're not done yet. We got another chapter and a half to go. And we're gonna stack up some more of this on top of here.

42:03 This is what you need to know. And then chapter four is gonna say, now walk. This is how I want you to walk. So it's important that we get these things straight up front. That's what we're trying to accomplish.

42:17 So I appreciate you indulging me for a couple extra minutes, but let's pray. Father, we're grateful. Very grateful that you've written to us, Lord, as it were. Because this book of Ephesians was passed down generation by generation to us. We're grateful for those that took care of it, that that got it to this point.

42:43 Lord, we pray that we wouldn't change anything about it, but that we might learn from it. Lord, we pray that you will help us to continue as we continue to study the book of Ephesians to see what it is that you would have us to know as a local body here. It's in your precious name that we pray, your son's precious name that we pray. Amen.