02-“Redeemed, Forgiven, Sealed” | Ephesians 1:7-14

Chapter 1: Last Week's Unfinished Sentence

Well, as we begin this week, we're going to step back a bit uh to last week where we introduced the Apostle Paul and we touched on the beginning of the book of Ephesians, specifically touching on verses 1- 6. But if you had been paying really close attention when we were going through that section, you may have noticed that we kind of left things hanging, almost like Paul was communicating a thought and then we just abruptly ended. And if you did make that that observation, you were not wrong because Paul literally starts this thought in verse three and he doesn't conclude that one thought until verse 14. And what's interesting is that when Paul originally wrote verses 3-4, he wrote it as one sentence. I want to let that sit in for a second. one singular sentence from verse 3 to 14.

Now, when I first heard that, I thought to myself, wait a second. I I know I'm getting older, but I remember back when my lit teacher told me that run-on sentences were not appropriate. Those of you that are students are like, "Yeah, that's what my teacher says, too." Some of you might be going like, "What's a run on?" But there's like literally no punctuation, no stopping, right? There's no periods that are there. Now, some of you are observing and going like, "But my Bible shows at least four independent sentences that make this up." What if I told you that

Chapter 2: The 202-Word Waterfall

when Paul wrote this, he literally wrote a 202word sentence, right? You're like, I I mean, come on, what's the difference between that? Cuz I'll be honest, my lit teacher spent a lot of red pen on my writing cuz I was a fan of the run-on. Like, I didn't know how to use commas. I half the time didn't know how to use a period.

I certainly didn't know how to use exclamation points properly and so forth. There was a lot of red that was on there. I'm like, I don't understand. How is this allowed? But what I did in high school and college, why was that not allowed?

And so I found this illustration that put it pretty well. Was that basically imagine that you walk out into your yard and there's just a pile of bricks in the middle of the yard. And you could think of that as a run-on sentence. You walk up to it, you grab a brick, you pull it up, and there's this individual thought. Every other thought still on the ground.

That's not what Paul is doing here. What's amazing with what Paul is doing here is he literally is speaking this with this one continuous thought. And the way it was described was like a waterfall. You have this water just pouring over the edge. It's falling down.

It starts at the top with this idea of being blessed. Blessed be God. It then it hits another portion of the waterfall where he chose us. Then it continues its way down and he adopted us. And it continues either even further and he redeems us.

In a runon, you're lost. In a waterfall, you're just soaked by the same water. And that's what Paul is doing is he's just continuously soaking us with this beautiful water. Every link in Paul's long sentence is connected by phrases like in him, through him to the praise of his glory. He isn't losing his train of thought.

He's building one unbreakable chain. Now, with this in mind, I'm going

Chapter 3: Reading Ephesians 1:3-7

to start back in verse three, and we're going to read all the way back up through to verse 7, which is the beginning of this week's message. And so, let's go back to verse three. We read this. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. by which we which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

So what we've seen is that God has blessed us. We've seen that God has chosen us. We've seen that God has adopted us. We've seen that God has accepted us. And now as we transition into verse 7, we see that God

Chapter 4: Redemption: Out of the Slave Market

has redeemed us. Now redemption or redeemed is what I call a medium big word here at Sunrise. I haven't used this term for a while. Those of you that have been around for a while, you know what I'm talking about. We have little big words, medium big words, and big big words.

And these are oftentimes just churchy words that we use. And a lot of times people in church hear these words and they don't even know what they mean. Now redeemed is actually very simple. And I made mention earlier of the state that I came from. Um, if you hear the the state of Oregon, you often think of rain, but another thing that we have are these things.

And you're like, "But we have those also." Yes, we do have these here in Utah. And here we recycle them. There we collected them and turned them in for cash because what would happen every time someone goes to the store and buys a can or a bottle in Oregon, you have to pay a deposit for that. And if people don't actually turn those back in for cash, well then you just give away that money. And so as a little kid back in the 80s, going and collecting a can for 5 cents, kids, 5 cents used to be something, right?

You used to be able to collect a bunch of those and you could go down to the store and you could buy a bunch of stuff. I mean, I used to be able to get a handful of gum for a penny. It was amazing. Some of you are like, "Yeah, I totally know what you're talking about." I mean, some of you remember 15 cent hamburgers. Imagine that.

Turn it in. Turn in. My mom used to work at Arctic Circle back in the day and yeah anyway so 15 cent hamburgers you turn in three three pop cans and you got a hamburger. So we would collect these things and what you would do is you collect them and then you go and you would redeem them for the money that suddenly just settled in your mind. You don't think about that when we go to stores.

We don't use that kind of language but that's what's being talked about here. Now redemption literally comes from the slave markets. This is what they would think about in Jesus's time. It denoted a release of payment of a price. You would redeem a slave for a price.

That kind of brings things a little bit real, doesn't it? Kind of puts it a little bit uh more down to earth. Now, you might be asking yourself, okay, but what are we being redeemed from? Well, we're being redeemed from sin. Now, this is kind of weird because you're like, but but isn't sin like a a concept?

I mean, can you can you redeem something from a concept? What does that even mean? Well, the thing is is that sin is literally anything we think, say, or do that displeases God. It's literally missing God's mark. But Paul describes sin as something very real.

In Romans 6, Paul basically turns sin into a noun. Person, place, or thing. Those of you, since we're talking about grammar and stuff, literally treat sin as like a slave master. We've been freed from sin. We are no longer slaves to sin.

We have been set free from sin. This freedom, this redemption then costs something. If somebody goes to a slave market and they pay for a slave, they are giving a price. And that is the picture that Paul is painting to the Romans in Romans chapter 6. And then the but the thing is

Chapter 5: The Currency Was His Blood

what is Christ's currency? What is God's currency for that? Because it wasn't coin. It wasn't dinari. It's not dollars.

It's not franks. It's not yuan. It's not any kind form of currency. What is that currency? Well, it literally was his blood.

We sing Jesus paid it all. Well, what did he pay it with? He paid it with his blood. We read this redemption required blood. We read this in Hebrews 9.

But Christ came as a high priest of the good things to come with a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands. That is not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all. Having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood and goat blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a hepher sprinkling the unclean sanctifies the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God cleansed your conscience with dead from dead works and to serve the living God.

Now the Apostle Peter says it maybe a little more easily for some of us. He says, "Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, from your aimless conduct, received by the tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot." Our God bought us who were once slaves to sin, and he bought us out of that slavery. Now what we could not pay, what we did not deserve, God paid for and he offered to everyone who believes.

Chapter 6: Forgiveness: Debt Wiped Clean

But not just redemption, he also offered us forgiveness. And this is the thing that's so easy for us to forget. See, we're we're in this slave market, right? Sin is there as a slave master and Jesus comes in and buys us out of that. Well, back in the first century when you went to the slave market and you bought a slave, that person was your slave, right?

And and there is a part where you get into the word and it'll say we're slaves of God. But it's it's different because what he ends up doing is he buys us out of that slavery. And then he says, "Guess what? Your debt's covered and now I'm adopting you into the family of God. you become an heir with Christ, co-airs with Christ. It It's this picture that this is what I thought of.

A lot of the adults in here, those of you that are in journey, you remember a couple weeks ago we were talking about debt and those kinds of things. And that's our high school group, by the way, for those of you who don't know. And we talked about debt and how we don't want to be in debt. But many of us in this room are either currently in debt or have been in debt. And as part of being in debt, you've probably seen that debt from move to different people.

So like one of the things that that can happen is you get a mortgage company. This this bank owned your mortgage and then suddenly you get notification that it has now moved to a different bank. Right? So that just moved. Now when that moved, did they wipe out your debt?

No. Now you're just you're paying this new group. But what ended up happening with our God is he said, 'Look, I'm transferring the debt over to me and I'm wiping it out. It's completely free. You don't have to pay anything anymore.

And yet, there's so many of us and so many people that, you know, who think, "Well, now I've got to pay it back. It's my job to work my way there." And guess what you will never do? You will never work your way there because that is a debt that you could never pay ever in your life. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can say.

There's no amount of money that you could pay that would ever be able to pay our God back. That would ever be able to make yourself right with our God. That is why Jesus did what he did and he wipes it clean. And we are no longer slaves to fear as a result of it. Amen.

Chapter 7: The Riches of His Grace

The riches of his grace has made this possible. And that idea of grace being something that we did not deserve. This is the thing that so many of us get caught up with is this idea that there's nothing that is free. Because so often we communicate wrongly about grace because it was free to us but it was not free. It cost Jesus his life.

It cost him everything. And that is why we don't deserve it. We do not. And yet he offers it to us anyway to any and all who believe. But Paul is not done here.

He says he made to abound towards us. This grace, he made it to abound to us in all wisdom and prudence. You might be asking, well, what is Paul saying here? He's saying that when someone has the riches of God's grace poured out upon them, he's saying that something happens and that something is not something that's minor. He's saying that it is abundant like God is not cheap.

God is pouring out his grace upon us. Uh the 1828 Webster dictionary says that this abound, this abundance is to progre to to possess in great quantity. God is not cheap with his grace. Anything and everything that you have ever done or will do, God has covered by his grace, his overwhelming abundant grace. But we also receive additional abundance.

We're told that we have received the abundance of wisdom and we also receive the abundance of prudence, which is just understanding. Like there's knowing something and there's understanding something. You know what I mean? Right? You can know something and not understand it.

Like I know my wife, I don't totally understand her. I'm understanding her more and more every day, but this is that godly understanding. Some of these concepts, a lot of people, like the Pharisees, an example, the Pharisees knew the Bible, but they didn't understand it. How do I know that? Because they crucified God himself.

They crucified the Savior. Telling you, they didn't understand it. And there's many Christians, Christians that you've known in your life who have known a lot of stuff, but they haven't understood it. And so that's the thing that we ask ourselves. How much do we actually understand?

Lord, give me that understanding. And what we're hearing is when God has poured out his grace upon you, he then gives you this understanding. Now,

Chapter 8: Two Kinds of Wisdom

the key to wisdom, we need to understand that there are two kinds of wisdom in the world. There's the wisdom that most of us know, and there's another wisdom. And what do I mean by that? Well, we have the wisdom of the world. We see this represented in James 3:es 14 and 15 where James says this.

But if you have bitter envy and selfish self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. And you're like, I don't know. That doesn't make any sense to me. I'm like, oh, it makes more sense than you think.

Right? You have that colleague who positions for the promotion to take quiet and takes quiet credit for other people's work. Planting concerns about rivals and one-on-one conversations with leadership playing the perfect team player in every meeting. It look they look savvy and professional. They're just playing the game, right?

But what ends up happening is bitter envy is rebranded as drive. Self-seeking is re rebranded as career management. All the while they're stabbing everybody on the back and stepping on everybody to get theirs. Anybody in this room ever see that? Any men in this room ever experienced that?

And a big part of the world will tell you it's like, well, yeah, but look what they get. They get all the promotions. They get all the money. They get all the stuff. That's wise.

And yet that's totally contradictory to our king. Right? James continues and tells us, "But the wisdom that is from above is pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." Family, this is the quiet caregiver, the adult daughter caring for a mother with dementia, years of meals, medications, embarrassing cleanup, repeating the same answer to the same question 12 times in an afternoon, being forgotten by the parent she's serving. No book deals, no social media post, no speaking circuits. She just shows up.

Every mark of James 3:17 is present. There's a pure motive there. She's not doing it for applause because there is none. She's peaceable. She's not fighting her siblings over what or who does does what.

Gentle, full of mercy, willing to yield her own plans. The fruit is a parent who dies with dignity and a family held together through something that could have torn them apart.

Chapter 9: At My Mother's Bedside

Family, many of us have sat at that bedside. I've sat at that bedside. I've cleaned a mouth and held a hand and I felt life leave my mother's hand. Some of you as well have experienced such things. And what I can tell you from that room is that the wisdom of this world has nothing for us there.

It has no tools for that moment. But the wisdom that comes from above that does. And it brought me to that bedside and it brought my mom home. And it has also brought understanding that there is more beyond this world. That there is more than the struggles of this this life.

It's all too easy for us to get caught up in the dayto-day, is it not? The bills we can't pay, the relationship that's on the rocks, the wars that rage around us that we have no control over, that continues to cause prices to go up anywhere and everywhere around us, the latest technology that threatens our jobs and those of the next generation. If we live in the perspective of the wisdom of wisdom and understanding we've been given, we realize that having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he has repurposed in himself.

Chapter 10: The Mystery Revealed in Christ

You might be asking yourself, what is this wisdom? One of the beauties, and we talked about this last week, is this is one of Paul's prison epistles. He wrote others, Colossians and Philippians specifically. We're going to be wrestling while Paul is in prison. He's writing these letters to these different cities.

And to the Colossians, he wrote about this very mystery. And he said, "The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God will to make known what are the riches of the glory of his this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." The Old Testament saints had longed to see this day. The prophets wrote about it without fully understanding what they were writing. The angels looked forward to it.

And you and I are in this place right now. Most of us Gentiles by birth. Not had one person come up and declare themselves a Jew that I'm aware of, but Gentiles by birth. And if we are in Christ, because of this this mystery that has been revealed, we're going to see here shortly, we have full inheritance with God. We have been sealed by the Holy Spirit because the mystery has been revealed and each and every one of us who are in Christ are as a result standing inside that blessing.

Amen. Now Paul continues into verse 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times he might gather together the one thing one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him. Now, dispensation, this is what we call a big big word, right? How many of you use dispensation on a regular basis? Those of you online, I'm not seeing a single hand at this point.

It literally means management of a household. How many of you manage households? Okay, I'm seeing some teens raise their hands. That's was scary. But so this is literally the word in its original where we get our word economy.

Right? So this is the idea of managing assets, managing things. And so what is Paul talking about here? God is managing the fullness of time that he might gather together in one all things in Christ. Or God is literally managing time to bring all that he will bring to himself together. gathering in one all things to Christ.

We need to think of it in terms of Philippians and uh 2:9, another one of the prison epistles. We read this, "Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name that the name of Jesus every knee should bow and of those in heaven and those on earth and of those under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Everything's going to be gathered to him. And this is the thing we need to understand though because there's people out there right now that try and teach that yes, God is going to bring everyone together.

He desires that none should perish and he's going to bring everyone together and every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess and he's going to save every single person for all of eternity and and snatch every single soul that has ever lived out of the out of the clutches of the devil. And a whole bunch of that is not in the word of God. Amen. It's just not. We know that a large number of people are going to reject our God, but that does not mean that they will not be humbled and will bow before him.

Every knee will bow. The enemy himself will be brought to his knees before our God. All of the rebellious angels will be brought to their knees before our God. Every single man, woman, and we can throw in children have rejected our God will be brought to their knees before him. But not all will

Chapter 11: The Inheritance of the King

receive an inheritance. Not all will be adopted into his family. In him also we have attained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. That we who first what is this? Trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.

Do you see the key there for the inheritance? that is for those who have trusted in Christ. We receive this inheritance. Now, many of us, this whole idea of inheritance is a foreign concept. You maybe heard it. You watch shows where somebody gets an inheritance and suddenly they got a whole bunch of money.

That's not a lot of people's experience that I know. Most people that I know end up getting a a a disaster handed down to them. That just seems to be 21st century America at this point. We live in a different time where a lot of the things that are being passed down, it's just been ravaged, destroyed, in disrepair. What whatever it ends up being, maybe you get a pile of bills.

Some of you have dealt with things like that that you end up having to deal with. So, this idea of a positive inheritance inheritance isn't necessarily there. But let me let me give you what the Bible's picture of an inheritance is. It's great riches from our king. Amen.

Great riches from our king. for those who have first trusted in Christ. And I want to paint this picture and this is this is going to seem amazing because of like our our our human limits, but then I'm going to try and paint a picture beyond that because this is what God says through the psalmist in Psalm 50. This is God saying, "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills, I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you. For the world is mine and its fullness.

Now, those of you who understand something, this is such a teeny speck of all that is his. Everything that can be seen. Everything that cannot be seen is all his. That is what our God has and that is what he has said he has made available to us is we share in that inheritance together. Our God is far above anything that we could hope, think, dream or imagine.

His pro his provision is inconceivable. This is one of the things where we're going to talk about this here in like the next probably 45 minutes to an hour when we get to the annual meeting. We're going to talk about the desire to to build here. And family, we're well over $2 million that's needed for that. I I'm just going to be honest with you, and this is me taking care of some of the stuff that's later.

So, all of you that are going to be here, pay attention. So, we have to say this again, but when when I get told, hey, we have this many people who give to the church, and I'm like, okay. And then I start running the calculations of like, all right, so what is what is required for us to be able to practically do this? And you want to know what I was told? I was told that if every giving family gave an extra $1,100 a month for the next five years, we could do it debtree.

I want you to think about that for a second. Now, a whole bunch of you just suddenly went like, "Well, that ain't going to happen and that ain't going to whatever." And then we filter it through what our God has just said. Family, is our God capable of doing such a thing? Absolutely, he is. And what he wants us to do is what was that word that we said for those who have the inheritance?

We trust in him. Amen. Not just for our salvation, but for everything. Because our God's got all the things. Not some of the things, not part of the things, not most of the things.

He's got all of the things. And so when I look at something like that, I often get asked, "Well, how are we going to do that, pastor?" And I'm like, "You want to know what my answer is?" Don't know. Other than trusting our God. Amen. All I can say is like, look, I'm doing my part.

I'm like the widow there with her two little mites dropping them into the bucket because that's really what that means in the scope of what's required, but our God can cover those things. And there are so many people in this room right now. There's so many people watching online right now that are facing situations in your life that you're like, I don't know how this is possible. And I'm going to tell you right now, it's be possible because of him. And the thing that's so amazing about his grace also, and I'm going to tell you this also, is he works in your stupid.

He works in my stupid. Some of you are like, "I'm not worthy of this thing." Guess what? We're not worthy of any of it. We're not worthy of salvation. We're not worthy of him taking all these dumb decisions we've made in our past and then coming in and showing us how we can get out of whatever mess it is that we've created.

And he can see us through those things. So right now, if you're sitting in here in this room right now, if you're sitting at home, if you're walking or you're doing whatever it is you're doing, understand that our God has the ability to take and transform your life through anything and everything because he's the one who provides everything that we need. Amen. From our grace to our provision, for inheritance, for our eternity, for it all.

Chapter 12: Hearing the Word of Truth

In him, we're told, you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, we trusted. These are people who have put their faith, hope, and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like, look, I never met him physically, but I've met Jesus. Amen. And I put my trust in him.

And I'll tell you, I trust him more now after 30some years than I did back then. And I will tell you what, he has proven himself to be trustworthy time after time after time. Even after I continue to do stupid, right? He continues to be faithful. Right?

And this comes after hearing the word of truth. I came to Christ because someone told me about Jesus. Is it any wonder then that we who are his hands and feet in this world are told to go tell other people about this word of truth? It's not just about me. It's not just about brother Jimmy.

It's not just about other people in this room that are ones who have a a passion about sharing the truth of the gospel. This call is to each and every one of us. And I'm going to tell you something else. Some of you are like, I don't have the ability to do that, pastor. I'm just not I'm not gifted to do that, pastor.

It's like that's the Holy Spirit in you. We're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit here in just a second. But the Holy Spirit does so much more than what we're about to talk about. The Holy Spirit gives us the power that we need to do everything that Christ has called us to do. Amen.

We need to be telling people about the good news. We need to be telling people about the fact that there is salvation beyond this world. That in this world, yes, we will have trouble, but we have peace in eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ. That is for everyone who confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus who believes in their heart we will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Amen. Here's the thing some of you are going to say because because there's this I I just call it false. It's it it's just a false attempt at a gospel. There will be people that will tell you it's like well nobody can reject Jesus. Well, that's not true.

Jesus is the one who like he desperately tried to get anyone and everyone there to come to himself. I am a firm believer that the Bible teaches that every single person has an opportunity to receive. And people are like, "But we can't choose him." See, this is the thing that we forget. God gives us the ability to choose him. Will we use that ability or will we lay it down at the ground?

Will we throw it on the ground? Will we stomp on it? And plenty of you know people who have who received the word of truth and all they do is throw it on the ground and they stomp on it. Now let me ask you a question. Whose responsibility is that?

That's on theirs. They own that. There's one thing I want you to understand because people will tell you, "Well, God sends people to hell. That can't be a living God." Well, that's just false. God doesn't send anybody to hell.

God lets them choose to go to hell. God lets them choose to walk away from him, to reject him. He gives them what they want. And this is going to be something that will break some of your minds. He loves them enough to allow them to reject him.

Probably never thought about it that way, have you? So the next time you're hearing people spout off this nonsense that God sends people to hell, no, he doesn't. He loves them enough to let them reject him. All right, continuing on.

Chapter 13: Sealed with the Holy Spirit

We were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory. Th this picture of ceiling I I don't know if some of you probably seen like medieval kind of movies and things like that and what you'll see is the king will write out like an edict or something and they roll it up and then they'll put a bunch of hot wax on it and then the king will just press in his signant ring. That's the picture that this is our God when we trust in him says look I am adopting you as my kid and I am sealing you with the Holy Spirit of God who is himself God. You are mine. You are mine.

And let me ask you this question. I love asking this question.

Chapter 14: Can You Break God?

Can you break God? Okay. There wasn't a lot of response there. Can you break God? No.

The answer is no. Because how many of you, how many people do you know is like, well, I can lose my salvation. I'm afraid that I have lost my salvation. I'm just going to tell you right now, if God has sealed you, you've lost nothing. And you want to know why that is?

Because you can't break God. And he tells you, I will never, what was that word? never leave you nor forsake you. And if there's one entity, one person, one individual in this entire universe, this entire creation who has never lied that you can always trust, it is our God. Amen. And if he tells you something, it is true.

Amen. So if you got in your mind, I lost my salvation, you're giving into a lie. You're giving into a lie. You cannot break God. The thing is is this marks us as God's possession, which sounds horrible, but it's true.

It's like look, my kids are my possession. Our possession, they're our kids. They are ours. When God adopts us into the family, we are his. We are no longer our own.

Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God? And what? You are not your own. What's that? You are not your own.

For you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. The seal of the Holy Spirit authenticates our faith as genuine. And we see this as we continue on. For you did not receive a spirit of bondage again to fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Aba, Father, Daddy, Father." The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are what?

Children of God. We are his. And it secures us from loss. Right? I'm not just making this stuff up.

We're continuing on in Romans 8. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall what? shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have security in our king. There is nothing that we can do, nothing we can say, there's no amount of money we cannot pay that will ever separate us from our God. There nothing can separate us from our God.

And the thing is is we

Chapter 15: The Fruit of the Spirit Test

have a demonstration of whether or not we are his. And this is a thing that can be really difficult for some of us because we'll question whether or not we are his or not. Now, the first thing I'm going to tell you, and this is another Romans 8 thing. I don't have this this slide for you, is that we are being con conformed into the image of the sun. And now, I don't know how well you know that word conformed.

This is another one of those like medium kind of big word things. But we're being molded and shaped into the image of Jesus. That implies that we are not yet in the image Jesus. It implies that we are a work in progress. So some of you, you'll tear yourself apart all day long because I I don't act good enough.

I don't act like a good enough Christian. I just don't act like a good enough Christian. I must not be saved. It's like, well, what does that even mean? Well, I'll tell you what it means.

And this is a way that it's a litmus test that you can gauge yourself against. It's called the fruit of the spirit. Now, right before this, if you want to go to Galatians 5, you can see what the fruit of the what I call the fruit of the flesh are that'll tell you what that looks like. And what you can do is you can sit down and have an honest conversation between yourself and God and say, "God, which one of these do I look more like?" Now, I'm going to tell you in this world, you're going to have bits of both. But the idea is to be having more and more and more of the fruit of the spirit.

Like if you got that bitter en bitterness and envy and selfish ambition and being conceit and all these kinds of things over here then and and that's dominating your life then you might have to actually pause and go like okay Lord am I really yours? But if you find yourself growing in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and it's like hey I'm starting to look more like Jesus because that's what this is. I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint. This is a thing that's important for us to understand. Note that it says the fruit of the spirit, not the not the fruits of the spirit because I had this said to me recently.

It's like, well, I'm really struggling with the fruit of self-control, pastor. Not looking at anybody in particular because I you think that it might be that you or that person. But I said, "No, no, you don't. You misunderstand." It's like, look, if you're struggling with self-control, you're struggling with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness. You're struggling in all of those things.

But this is a way that we can say like, "Hey, the Lord's growing me." And I'll tell you what, and I think Mrs. Thompson would agree, Pastor Chris is showing more of the fruit of the spirit now than when we got married almost 30 years ago. She just gave me a thumbs up. This is good. But that's a way that we can gauge this.

And I'll tell you what, the thing that I've given myself a little bit of um grace for myself is the fact that that I don't look like I need to yet. Every time I continue to go in the word, I'm like, I still have so much further to go. I'm thankful for where I'm at now, but I continue to pursue my king. I continue to trust him more and more and more and trust him to continue to do a good work in me. Amen.

Chapter 16: Three Things This Week

All right. All right. Well, family, when we look at what we've walked through together this morning, we've looked at a single sentence. We've looked at one waterfall, a cascading river of grace that started the blood of Christ and does not stop until we're sealed with the spirit of God himself. We've been redeemed.

We've bought out of been bought out of slavery to sin at the price of the precious blood of the lamb. We've been forgiven. Not negotiated, not partial, but paid full forever. We have been flooded with the riches of his grace, given wisdom from above to see beyond this world. The mystery hidden for ages has been revealed, and that's Christ in us.

Amen. And we've obtained an inheritance sealed by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. And so for this week, I want us to do three things. First, I want us to go back and I want us to read this one sentence of Ephesians 1:3-14. I want you to read it out loud before the Lord.

And I want to let I want you to let it soak into you. Second, walk in the freedom of the debt that's already been paid, refusing to make another payment on what Christ settled at Calvary. Amen. And third, live like someone who's been sealed by God himself. Amen.

Because you have if you are in Christ, the king is paid. The spirit is sealed. The inheritance is guaranteed. Amen. And all God's people said, "Amen." Let's pray.

Father God, thank you again for the blessing of this section, this assurance, Lord. this just beautiful sense of the gospel that has been demonstrated in just such a beautiful way orchestrated by the Holy Spirit himself inspiring Paul to read write that 202 word just beautiful sentence that speaks so powerfully to us and I do pray Lord God that we who are your people would live that more and more and more on a daily basis and we praise you in Jesus name amen