Ephesians 1 - The Glory of His Grace

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and uh we have extra copies.

If you did not bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle.

Uh we actually like to open the Bible and study whole portions of it.

Generally, we're studying verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book.

Um, today we've been thrown a little bit of a curveball.

Our our uh plan, our method, our you know, this is this is such a brilliant uh catechism here because of that, right?

You get thrown a curveball every now and then.

The question is, how do you respond, how do you react?

And uh so about seven o'clock this morning we discover Mark uh not feeling well and can't lead worship.

Tommy calls and says, Hey, uh uh we're we're we're gonna have to move things around this morning.

Oh, good.

I'm really excited about coming into worship today.

Because you know, I'm I'm I'm just gonna be leading the creed, and that's gonna be really exciting for me.

And uh and so uh so Tommy goes, Well, here's the thing.

Uh uh Mark's six, so I'm gonna have to move over to the worship seat, and Matt's gonna lead the creed, and I go, Oh, well, good.

You just want me to stay home.

What do you want me to do?

Um, I'm happy to.

And he goes, No, no, you you're actually gonna you're gonna preach.

Okay.

So, so uh uh, do you think he could do that?

And I go, well, um uh let me work on that real quick and let's see what we can do.

So so we have some of you know, we have been doing lunchtime talks, and our lunchtime talk series uh currently is in the book of Ephesians, and uh uh starting August 7th, I'm actually going to take uh sort of a walk through Ephesians in my daily devotional podcast, which goes Monday through Friday.

So um I'm all Ephesianed up.

You know, I'm I'm like I'm like ready to rock and roll with Ephesians, and I hope you are too.

So we're gonna take just a little look at Ephesians chapter one.

I hope you'll turn with me there.

Um we we typically uh on lunchtime talks, we call this the glory of his grace.

This is a phrase that recurs two or three times in this uh ancient letter of the Apostle Paul, probably written around, uh, we think, we think, we think 60, 62, right in there, maybe, maybe to the mid-60s.

We're not sure.

They didn't date their stuff, and it will, it's not a document you can open up and look on your computer and see when it was written, but it's a powerful letter.

And uh he's writing, I'm pretty sure he's writing, from a prison cell in Rome.

And um uh that he could write this stuff from those sit from that kind of a situation is remarkable to me.

Um that uh you know, when it when we know that he writes books like Philippians talking about joy so much from a prison cell, um, you just have to, you know, you just have to look and you just have to know that God must have been providentially working in his life because his attitude toward his creature comforts or lack thereof was not negative like mine would be.

I mean, most of us we get so upset when it takes two or three more seconds for our text to make it up to the satellite and back down than normal.

We get so upset over the silliest little things that we'll look in the rearview mirror in about six months from now, and it won't even have mattered.

And yet we in that moment just got so upset by it.

So the providence of God and being aware of the providence of God is so amazing, so powerful.

And I love Ephesians because I feel like as I'm reading this letter and as I'm studying it, um, I'm seeing that same kind of uh disposition of heart.

Now here's where Ephesus was.

It's up on the screen.

There's gonna be a map there.

Uh the kind of purple-pink area there says Asia.

That's actually what we call Turkey today.

You might not be able to see it, but there's a white line that comes in from the left and goes into that area across the Aegean Sea, and it comes into where it says Ionia, right above the word Ionia, there it says Ephesus.

It was probably the second largest city in the Roman Empire during certain seasons of the Roman Empire.

In other words, um, whether it was second or third or fourth at any given point in time, here's the point: big city.

Lots of market-driven forces at work, lots of cultural forces at work, lots of education, um, lots of schools and things like that.

So Paul, on his first uh uh visit to Ephesus was was on his uh uh second missionary journey.

And then his third missionary journey, he stayed there like for three years or so.

Today, Ephesus, and we hope to visit this in a year or two.

If some of you want to go on the footsteps of Paul trip, let us know.

But the but the ruins there are amazing.

There's a library there uh from the second century, which I'll put a picture up there, the library of Celsus.

Had 12,000 scrolls.

I mean, a pretty serious library in a city like that.

The uh next shot is the ruins of the 6th century basilica of St.

John.

So a church named after Saint John.

John, who we have just been studying, 1 John, and this same John actually ends up living in Ephesus uh toward the end of his life, and he he um uh he is he's so loved in that area that they uh remembered him well, and somebody built a church to his uh to in his memory.

The earliest known mentions of the temple of Artemis, and you'll just see here a column and a half is left there of the temple of Artemis.

Artemis was uh a Greek goddess, and uh the Roman counterpart was Diana, so sometimes you see in these these pantheons, the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon, you see, you see it's it seems like it's the same, yet it has different names, and that's just because the Greek Empire was around first, the Roman Empire came second, and they kind of venerated and worshiped these these uh nature deities.

And um, this uh temple of Artemis goes all the way back to um uh way, way predates uh the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire.

Um goes all the way back to the Bronze Age, which in human history and world history, that's thirty, that could be 3300 BC to 1200 BC, anywhere in there.

We're not really sure.

Again, it's not stamped with the we built this on this date.

But the ruins of the second century temple of Hadrian is there too, dedicated to the deified emperor Hadrian.

He reigned 117 to 138 AD.

And a lot of these emperors, Roman emperors, they demanded to be seen as gods.

So if you think that you know what a narcissist is in our day and time because of some of the religious leaders that are so narcissistic.

You thought I was gonna say the politicians, didn't you?

Okay, them too.

Um if you think you know what a narcissist is, and how many of you live with, don't do that, don't do that.

No.

If you think you know what a narcissist is, you have not met a Roman emperor.

Especially Nero, who's the emperor while Paul is writing the letter to the Ephesians.

Uh Nero reigned, I think, 54 to 68 A.D., and this is uh early 60s, as I said.

So this uh this site for Ephesus, and by the way, here's the amphitheater, this remains, this is one of the most well-preserved ruins of uh biblical history.

Um this would be that same place where in Acts chapter 19, on his third missionary journey, the Apostle Paul is dragged into the theater, and all the people are screaming and yelling because he's been preaching the gospel, people have been turning to Christ, people have been turning away from the worship of Artemis and Diana, and all these businesses, all these, all these businessmen were making lots of money selling little statues, statuettes of Artemis, Diana, and of the temple of Artemis and Diana, once considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And they were making all kinds of money.

Here comes this guy preaching Jesus, crucified, risen, ascended back into heaven, promised to return and set things right.

People are moving away from needing those little statuettes and uh idol worship falling away as they worship the one true and living God in this theater and the harbor street that leads right up to it, uh, really powerful.

So here's the glory of his grace.

Here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna look at uh Ephesians uh chapter, like I say, chapter one.

And I think what we'll do today is we'll just take um we'll just take verses one through fourteen, if that's okay.

And um, as as I as I roll into just reading those, uh, this next slide, I want to give you the theme for the book a little bit too.

Chapters one, it divides right very nicely right down the middle.

And um in chapters one through three, you really see the Apostle Paul uh writing and summarizing the beliefs of the Christian faith.

In chapters four through six, he talks about what those beliefs then turn into in terms of behavior.

We talked, we have the new t-shirt that says, you know, faithful to his calling, cheerful in his service, fruitful in his kingdom.

That is, we're moving from belief into behavior.

It's affecting us.

It's not merely behavior modification.

The gospel is not that.

It's heart transformation.

And all of a sudden, what we say we believe impacts the way we behave.

It's not the requirements for salvation, it's the results of salvation.

And so chapters one through three, doctrine, chapters four through six, practice.

Chapters one through three, indicatives.

The the they indicate what the contents of the Christian faith are.

And today, for instance, you'll see in verses one through fourteen, you'll see there there's some indication of who God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are.

We're very Trinitarian, even though the word Trinity doesn't show up in our Bibles.

We're Trinitarian because the God of the Bible has revealed himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And so we see that here, these indicatives, really important, but they help us learn how to walk out the imperatives.

In other words, when I tr when I believe the gospel, I'm not on my own.

This is a gospel that God the Father planned.

Jesus Christ came and died for my sins.

I now can walk in the freedom of his grace.

And I don't walk on my own power because the Spirit is at work in me.

And all of that can be true for you as well.

We have these spiritual riches, this wealth in Christ, and we walk in Christ.

And so the first half and the second half go together as well.

The first half being about what Christ has done, the second about our responses.

The next slide, um, this is going to be so important as we read these 14 verses, but you're gonna see in the book of Ephesians as you study it, some of you may want to join us on our lunchtime talks or or perhaps plan to uh pick up the podcast later on when it starts in August.

But you'll see that in Ephesians, just these two words, in Christ, appears 13 times.

In him, which is also another way of saying in Christ, eight times.

So you got 21 times where the apostle Paul is saying, You are in Christ.

You are in him.

Indicative.

Therefore, this is true.

Okay?

And chapter one, and we won't read them all, and I won't stop and point them all out as we do, but I just want you to know, just in chapter one alone of the 21 times, ten of them are in chapter one.

It's like the Apostle Paul says at the beginning of this letter, I'm gonna set you up for the whole rest of this letter, and you will be thinking about your life in Christ.

And it really, really is important.

It really matters.

It's uh, as I say, a strong Trinitarian focus, verses three to six, about the Father choosing and calling you, me.

About the Son saving and redeeming in verses seven through twelve, and the Spirit sanctifying and sealing us in verses 13 and 14.

All right, without further ado, let's look then at verses 1 through 14 of Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

And as we do, Lord, I pray by your Holy Spirit that you've set us up for this this morning, this little change in our plans that we had so carefully laid out.

Um so now uh we're in the position, Lord, of finding ourselves um shifting and changing with expectancy.

In other words, because you did this, because we see that you are in charge of every molecule of your universe, that not one hair on our heads uh has been somehow or another misplaced by you.

You've numbered every single one of them according to Jesus.

Now we now expect, Lord, that you'll speak to us in some way because you wanted to steer us in another direction from the one that we thought we were supposed to go in.

So we pray, Holy Spirit, that you'll uh open our eyes to see what we might not have seen, open our hearts to believe and trust what we might not have come to believe and trust today.

Lord, that you would make us what we are not right now, that you will transform us into your people who would be faithful to your calling, who would be cheerful in your service, a people who would be fruitful in your kingdom.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen and amen.

So um Ephesians answers some really big questions, big questions we deal with in our own day and time as well.

Uh identity is a massive question right now.

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be a person?

Are we creatures created by, designed and created by a God, or are we our own?

Do we belong to ourselves?

Or do we belong to the culture and the influences of the culture around us?

Who are we?

And the apostle Paul comes right out the chute answering the question who he is.

He knows who he is.

And it's refreshingly clear, I gotta be honest, to me, to read this guy say, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we could stop right there, and I could probably go a half an hour just on those two verses.

Paul is his this is his Latin name.

We used to know him in the early chapters of the book of Acts.

We knew him as Saul.

That's right.

That's his Hebrew version of his name.

And so as he moves westward with the gospel out into the Mediterranean, away from Jewish territory, he kind of is willing to put on his Latin name and go by Paul.

I love that about him.

He's not too good.

No, you call me who I am.

You call me my Hebrew root.

No.

He is so putting the gospel first that he sets aside his own name, even and says, You call me by what can get me to the gospel quicker with you.

Paul, an apostle, that means a sent one, a messenger, if you will.

And you remember, a lot of you, when we study the book of Acts, that day on the road to Damascus, when Jesus interrupted his trip, and literally at the noonday sun, this boom, you know, just did a spiritual smackdown on Saul as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians.

Jesus interrupted him.

Jesus literally stopped him in his tracks.

And Jesus changed him forever in that moment.

Who took the initiative there?

Jesus took the initiative there.

Who was first the initiator?

Jesus was the initiator.

Paul or Saul was not looking for Jesus.

Saul was not even looking for God.

He was looking for God's people to persecute them.

And Jesus intruded, interrupted.

Maybe Jesus will intrude your life in some way.

He does it in large and small ways.

He does it in refreshing ways, even as we've experienced this morning for some of us.

But he's an apostle of Christ Jesus, not just an apostle, he's not just a messenger of his own story.

He's a messenger of Christ Jesus.

See?

He is there, not for himself, he's there for Christ.

By the will of God.

Who are you?

By the will of God.

Who am I?

By the will of God.

Do I even stop and think about that?

Do I even stop and think about my life being found in the will of God for my life?

Or am I so busy building my little kingdom, my brand, my wishes, my agenda, me, my, me, my, over and over.

And if we all get that way, society crumbles from within.

Because it's just the cacophony of competing autobiographies.

And we never will ever be able to get along that way.

And we see it in our own day and time, don't we?

He is an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints.

The saints?

We're all, we used to, we're all thinking of that that must be, they must be really holy people if they're called saints.

No, they're just believers.

We believe in the the priesthood of all believers.

That's what the New Testament teaches us.

You are, if you are in Christ Jesus here today, you are a saint.

A saint means one who has been set apart.

It doesn't mean one who is perfect.

It means you've been set apart for him.

You're faithful to his calling, cheerful in his service, fruitful in his kingdom.

It's all about him, not about you, not about me.

And they have two addresses, don't they?

Verse one, they are at Ephesus and they are in Christ Jesus.

I love this about the Christian faith.

You have two addresses, I have two addresses too.

They're at Ephesus, that's where they happen to live, and they're in Christ Jesus.

I heard one preacher say, I wonder what it meant to Ephesus that these saints are in Christ Jesus.

And then he said, he turned it around, he said, and I wonder what it means to Christ Jesus that he has saints at Ephesus.

I want to say the same thing for us right here in Nashville.

And if you're watching online, wherever you may be, fill in your city.

But what difference does it make to Christ Jesus that he has us here in Nashville?

And what difference does it make to Nashville that I'm in Christ Jesus, that you're in Christ Jesus?

Very important, I think.

And you can see again how these indicatives, chapter one through three, lead us to these imperatives.

The way it looks when we live it out matters.

Because we have two addresses, and they're both important.

Verse 3: 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.

There's another one of those in Christ, okay?

Just 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 to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory, of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

Now, some of your English translations have a period at the end of verse 6, but that's just not there in the Greek.

You know what?

Verses 3 through 14 are one long run-on sentence.

How many, I know a bunch of you are familiar with C.S.

Lewis, and sometimes I read through uh like Mere Christianity, I try to read through mere Christianity every single year.

And um, there are some sentences in there that like he's going for the long throw.

I mean, this is like, wow, that's fly fishing all the way across the state, you know what I mean?

And um, but he got that just the apostle Paul's pretty good at this long sentencing.

And partly that's uh him just he's he's so exuberant.

He's exalting God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Here it's it it's meant we we are meant to see this as almost a breathless presentation.

There's one theologian that says these verses should have been set to an epic music score and become a part of some you know giant, massive world, no worldwide known you know, oratory, uh type of an opera or something like that.

Verse three, again, I'll try to read it without a breath.

Ready?

Here we go.

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.

Oh, I breathed.

See?

See, I'm a loser.

I don't have this, just as he shows us in him before.

The foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will.

I'm glad it's not according to my performance as a Christian or as a pastor.

I'm glad he chose me.

Not because oh, he looked across.

Oh, oh, I want that one right there.

Look at that guy.

You know, he can stand up and say a few words every now and then at the last minute or what.

No, that's not, that's not why he chose me.

It's not why he chose you.

And in the Old Testament, the same thing is true of Israel.

He chose Israel, God's people, not because of anything that was in them at all, but because of what was in his heart.

He set his love.

In other words, he took the initiative himself and set his love on them.

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

In other words, before you were even you, he knew you fully and loved you completely.

That's so mind-blowing in our day and time.

We're all so afraid of being known fully because we're afraid we won't be loved very well if we're known fully.

And here comes his Bible.

Here comes Paul in the book of Ephesians saying, No, before you were even born, before you were coming out, you know, before you were born, you had that cute little baby kind of thing.

You know, I love it when we dedicate papers.

I love this, you know, and they're all pulling at the mic, and they're all, you know, and every now and then one of them will say something at the wrong time or say something awkward or whatever at the wrong time.

I love all of that.

But before any of the cuteness, and before any of the rebellion, for that matter, he had set his love on you.

And uh this is amazing.

According to the kind of intention that's your praise of his glory, of his grace, there's our theme, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

How much did it cost for you?

Freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

Whose cost was it?

It was Christ.

The cost was to Christ.

But Jesus paid it all.

And now I can say, you can rest in his love because of that.

Okay.

Verse 7, in him, another one of those.

We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

According to what again?

According to the riches of his grace, not according to my performance.

Again, see how this is just, he keeps knocking down the whole performance mindset.

And so many of us, we say we believe in grace, but we live out, even emotionally and spiritually sometimes, we live out as if God's really mad at me today.

Why?

Because I blew it.

And he'll never love me again because I blew it again in that same area.

It's not true.

His love for you, his grace for you is according to his own heart and his own capacity.

And here in verse 7, he has forgiven you and redeemed you according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom, and inside he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his kind intention.

There it is again, which he purposed in him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of time.

That is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens, things upon the earth.

In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise.

So now we've got the Father blessing us.

We've got the Father choosing us.

We've got the Son saving and redeeming us.

Now we've got the Holy Spirit sealing us with this promise.

And he's given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.

Take a breath.

That's just beautiful.

Now the rest of the chapter is a prayer, and we won't have time to look at all of that.

But I know some of you have questions about election and predestination, so I'm going to go ahead and answer all of those questions right now.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Overpromising, underperforming here.

Here's three things about it, though.

I'll say this.

First of all, uh predestination and election.

These are not human speculation, these are divine revelation.

These are not matters of uh, you know, this didn't all begin.

The idea of predestination election did not begin with John Calvin.

Why?

How do I know that?

Ephesians.

Romans 9.

It predates John Calvin.

It didn't begin with Augustine either.

I know a lot of fans of Augustine here too.

Didn't begin with him either.

It goes back to the New Testament.

New Testament, namely right here in the Apostle Paul's writing in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 9 as well.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

So if I've if I've got to start with that as divine revelation, not human speculation, now what do I do with it?

That's a really good question to ask.

So that leads me to my second thing.

I know a lot of people when they when they think about that, what they're dealing with or wrestling with is justice.

You know, how's God being just and equitable with everybody?

And I just want to say to you as as your pastor, um I don't think you want justice in this matter.

Because if I get what I deserve, if that's what justice is, I get death and hell.

Because the Bible very clearly teaches that I'm a sinner.

So I'm not really interested myself in justice in that category.

I like justice in a lot of categories, but in this category, soteriology it's called, the the the matters of salvation.

I don't want justice.

I want grace.

And grace is for the guilty and undeserving.

And brothers and sisters, that is me, and that is you.

Now, that God would show favor, that he would be merciful and gracious to anyone at all, is just mind-blowing.

He doesn't owe it to us.

We don't deserve it, we don't have a claim on him, we can't demand it from him because we're guilty and undeserving.

So you've got to start with this idea that it was, it's God's divine revelation here that he's chosen and called some.

And then you have to understand that he's done that not because of anything that is worthy in them themselves.

It's not because you go to the village chapel.

It's not because some of you have upped your tithe to like 6%.

Okay?

It's not because any of you are doing really wonderful things like going out into the world and serving the poor or fighting for just causes as you might be.

That's not what gets us approval from God.

Is he pleased with some of that work?

Sure he is.

But that's not what makes me righteous in his sight.

That's not how I come to the place of having my sins forgiven.

I receive that by grace.

I cannot achieve that myself.

And so that's really important.

And then thirdly, um, uh some would argue, well, if you believe in that, and you believe therefore that you can just live however you want because you're uh predetermined that you're going to go to heaven, all that sort of thing.

In other words, as if it were an incentive to riotous living to know that God has set his love on me, not because of anything in me.

And I would say, no, I don't, I don't think that's the case.

I know I see I know that we have all seen that in some human beings from time to time, that their parents love them and love them and love them and love them, and yet they turn into the worst, darkest, kind of reckless, most kind of lifestyle or whatever that a prodigal could ever do.

I understand that.

But that's not what's happening here.

God has lavished me with his love, he's lavished you with his love.

And along the way, the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts to reveal to us that it's in spite of my rebellion, in spite of my sinfulness, that he has loved me.

And that causes me to crumble, to tremble, to fall to my knees, to lift up the empty hands of faith, as Francis Schaefer would say, and receive what I cannot achieve or purchase on my own.

And then the proper response is what we read about in verse chapters 4, 5, and 6.

I want to rise now and live for my Lord in such a way that I'm cheerful in his service and fruitful in his kingdom.

There's so much here.

Look at what God in Christ has done.

I think it's gonna be, oh, well, all right, roll these slides for me up there, will you?

Because there's a bunch of these things I want to say.

He's blessed us, is that there?

Okay, yeah.

He's blessed us, he's chosen us, he's predestined us, he's adopted us.

In other words, you're no longer just property.

He owns the whole universe.

Why?

Because he's the creator of everything in it.

But he wants you, specifically you.

You collectively, but you specifically to be his son or daughter.

Would you like that?

Would you like to know God like that?

He's graced us.

We just saw that in verse 6, verse 7.

He's redeemed us, revealed his will to us, verse 9, he's granted us an eternal inheritance, verse 11.

He sealed us in Christ with the Holy Spirit.

Now, these notes are not up on the thing that we loaded up earlier this morning because we had to change things at the last minute, but they will be available to you in the pretty near future.

I love the way Dr.

Klein Snodgrass says this.

Ephesians presents a gospel of union with Christ more powerfully than any other New Testament letter.

Nothing short of attachment to him will rescue us from the human plight.

Nothing can define us as human beings more than attachment to him.

From living with him, we learn how to live for him.

That's just awesome.

See, all of this is about what God has done in Christ.

And again, ten times in chapter one, in him, in Christ.

So the challenge all of us, the charge all of us now is here's the indicatives of chapter one.

Now live in Christ.

Okay?

And we again, he'll tell us more about what how that looks in uh in the actual uh uh goings-on of our lives as we get to uh uh chapters four, five, and six, which we won't be doing here.

We're going back to 2 John, by the way, here so next week.

So when we say read ahead at the end of today, we just want you uh to to go back to 2 John and then we'll pick up uh 3 John as well after that.

But what a rich opening uh for Ephesians this is.

And uh to have us sort of focus our attention back on our lives in Christ.

So important, I think, for us.

I love the way that John Stott says this in the message to the Ephesians.

He says, divine illumination and human thought belong together.

All our thinking is unproductive without the Spirit of truth.

Yet his enlightenment is not intended to save us the trouble of using our minds.

It is precisely as we ponder what God has done in Christ that the Spirit will open our eyes to grasp its implications.

Oh Lord, move on us today.

Spirit, open our eyes.

Some of us got stuck spiritually, some of us are stale spiritually.

Holy Spirit, move in our lives, stir us up by way of reminder, awaken us that we might learn to walk in the spiritual riches we have in Christ.

I'll close with this Sinclair Ferguson quote The grace of God in Christ provides us with a new identity, a heavenly one.

It follows that this and not our natural identity determines everything we do.

Our identity, our citizenship is heavenly.

What difference does it make to Nashville that Christ has the village chapel here?

And what difference does it make to the village chapel that Christ has us in Nashville and online as well?

What difference will it make?

That's right.

Lord, thank you for this inspiring letter.

Um can tell how exalted this language is and how caught up in your glory the apostle Paul was from that prison cell.

And when he talked about you, Father, when he talked about you, Son, when he talked about you, Spirit, when he talked about all three of you, and the work that you are doing in our lives.

Um Lord, have your way with your people.

Christ be in every bit of our lives, we pray.

And may we live in union with you, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.