Apocalypse Now: Part 2 - The Apocalypse

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

Hi, everybody. Man, it's good to see you here.

It's a little cooler than it was last week.

We fixed the air conditioner. I told you we would.

You know, we care about things like that.

We also care about telling the truth.

And so we begin each week with a confession.

Our confession, again, confession is doesn't mean that

I always feel it. It doesn't mean that I always

understand, certainly doesn't mean that I always like it.

But we plant our flag, we stake our anchor and what we believe

is truth. And we keep coming back to that.

And so our confession this week and every week you say we're

badly broken. Yes, you are.

Grace and peace to you. We started looking at the book

of Ephesians last week and I'm going to tell you we're going to

be in Ephesians forever. It just seems like that maybe I

do want to acknowledge, like Johnny taught last week, this is

a truly we're going to do a team teaching.

So I'll teach a couple weeks and then you'll hear from Johnny

again and then I'll come back for a couple weeks and Johnny,

we'll do it because it's really important to get this book into

us. I love it.

It's one of my favorite books. It is powerful and, and, and

unashamedly. Our goal right now is to study

what we're doing in this book is picking it apart.

And so my encouragement to you is to work along with us.

We're going to go slow. Several verses in Egypt.

In fact, we're going to look this week at what Nikki just

read us verse 3 through 14. We're going to pick up again

next week. We'll still be in chapter 1.

That'll be 3 weeks just on chapter 1.

It's a six chapter book. You do the math, you can figure

it out, right? But here's what you can do to be

ready. I do believe we're going to try

to handle this in such a way that if you just show up, you'll

be able to get along. We're going to try to unpack it

and we're going to talk about what the.

Words. Mean and what the ideas and

where they came from and the context and all of that.

But you. Can be a participant in this and

what you can. Do is just read the book of?

Ephesians And then when it's done, read it again.

And then when it's done, read it again.

And here's what you say. You say, but I'll get bored.

Yes, yes, probably. But the boredom will be the

expectation that I know what's coming next.

Is that all? I've already, I've already read

this. The hope is that when you read

it for the 14th time, you'll see something that you didn't see on

the 13th time. You go, Oh my gosh, what's that

about? That I believe is what God

speaks. That's how he leads US and

guides us. And so my encouragement it.

Doesn't have to be the only thing that you read if you want

to do something else. But my encouragement for you

would be to come back time and again, back to the word, back to

the book of Ephesians, and just approach it with a listening

spirit. What are you trying to say?

What do you want to tell me? I would encourage we when Nikki

read it, she read verse 3 through 14 out of the New Living

Translation. I love.

The new Living Translation. That translation is what we call

thought by thought. The translators, they took the

the kind of thing and they just say what's he?

Trying to communicate here and he read and he translated that

that idea. It's great, super readable.

We'll read some out of the, the message, which is one guy's

translation. I call it a paraphrase, right?

Like it, it's just kind of one guy.

So there can be some bias in it, but we'll read it out of that

too. But when I preach from this,

when I teach from this and Johnny's going to do the same

thing I'm going to teach out of the New American Standard 2020

version, right? Some of you started crafting

during COVID. This group of people, they

translated this scripture. You know, it's what they do, how

they go, and again. Is it a?

Perfect translation? No, probably not.

There will probably be another one after it.

But the way the new American Standard was translated was word

by word. So they go to the original

language is the Greek and the Hebrew in the Old Testament, and

they put us like, what does that word mean?

And they adjust it. So sometimes it can be a little

bit clunky in English. But that's OK.

And what I would tell you is if you go and it's clunky in the

New American Standard, go read it in the Christian Standard

Bible. Go read it in the go, read it in

the New Living, read a bunch of them, and then you'll kind of

start to get an idea of the big broad texture of the script.

This is my favorite kind of teaching to do.

It's because, listen, I think in a straight line, right?

And so we can just work through the text and just pick this up

and see and highlight what does it say?

I especially love teaching like this because I love the book of

Ephesians. When we started this year, when

2025 started, I was talking, I actually had had a conversation

with Johnny about something I wanted to teach this entire

year. I wanted to talk about the

church, the body of Christ. Active in the world, active in

our community and what it looked like and what it meant.

And the book of Ephesians is all about that.

It's got some. Deep theological, like when we

talk about about the Church, about they call it ecclesiology,

right? The study of the Church.

It's got some deep theological insights into what makes the

church the church, but it's also got, at the end, some extremely

some annoyingly and frustratingly practical ideas

about how to walk out what we've seen.

And so we're going to get to all of that slowly, but the reason

that we're kind of going so slow on this is because I believe

that the book of Ephesians is so relevant for where we are today.

It's important to remember, and Johnny touched on this last

week, what we call as what we call the book of Ephesians is

actually a letter. It was a letter written by a

guy, the apostle Paul. We know him from the biblical

record and he wrote it to it says to the to the Saints and

the holy ones who are. In Ephesus.

Now Ephesus was a city we saw last week.

It was probably a circular letter when we read in

Revelation chapter 2, right? Like there's this, he says this

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

is a message to the churches, right?

And it goes to Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and

Thyrotyra and Sardis and Colossi.

All of these cities that were on this global route, Ephesians was

on there. We think that Ephesians was

probably a letter that was to be passed around that.

And you know why we call it Ephesians?

Because the copy that we found. Was an Ephesus OK right so it

was the letter was it to the Ephesians Of course it was to

the Ephesians also to some other people right.

We said it was written to the Saints who are in Ephesus and

around and we said that that word Saints can be a stumbling

block to someone's because when I asked you are you a St. you're

like heck no, I cuss like a sailor.

That's not what he's talking about necessarily.

To say that you are a St. doesn't imply that you are more

morally superior to someone else.

When Paul writes to the the Saints, to the holy ones, he's

talking about. Are you listening?

He's talking about those who have chosen.

The. Crucified Jesus over everything

else. He's talking about the Saints

are the ones whose primary, whose first love an allegiance

is to Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that they don't

love their neighbors. It means that they love their

neighbors because they love Jesus.

It doesn't mean that they're fire starters in their

communities. It means that they love Jesus

and everything else. Flows out of that and that

causes problems. To be Allegiant to to I must

have my son Jackson, which is not even in the city, which is

weird. To pledge one's allegiance to

Jesus. Like that would cause problems.

We saw last week that the city of Ephesus was a major city in

the Roman Empire. It was the third in size and

economy after Rome itself. And then Alexandria there was

Ephesus and Ephesus had a booming economy.

And they're kind of two parts to it.

The first part was the port ships would come around the

world and they would have all their.

Stuff. So it was a.

Major center of trade, right? So you have all the stuff, you

have people coming in and selling stuff and passing it on,

right? The second source of their

income was the temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient

world, the temple to Artemis, and it was huge and it was giant

and it was a significant part of the economy because there were

local. Artisans in Ephesus and in the

community, and what they would do is they would create all

kinds of trinkets and idols. There was particularly a silver

industry in emphasis that would make these silver idols and

these silver statues and trinkets and all of them were

for use in the temple to worship, to worship Caesar, who

was the king. And so here we have these

Christians, they're these Ephesians, Romans, and they're

in their city and they're doing the thing and they, they, you

know, Caesar's going there like man, Tiberius is our guy or man,

I long for the days when we would have, you know, Bob was

the Caesar on that. So they're participating in

that. They're going to the temple.

They they're doing their thing. They're buying their trinkets.

They're doing that. And along comes Jesus.

And what Jesus says is. I'm the king and a new Kingdom.

Remember Matthew chapter 4 what he says that the Kingdom of

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

heaven is at hand and so you can.

Only have allegiance to 1 king, and so if Jesus is king then

Caesar's not king, and if Jesus is king then Artemis.

If Jesus is God, then Artemis is not God, and so not only can I

not declare that Caesar is king, because that's how it comes,

right? Hail Caesar.

Caesar is Lord. Well, as a Christian, I can't

say. Caesar is Lord, not even tongue

in cheek. I can't declare that there's any

Lord over him. I certainly can't buy idols to

take to the temple to participate in worship there.

And so as Roman followers of Jesus, the Ephesian Christians

found themselves in a tricky spot, in a difficult situation.

Men and women who had maybe worked their entire lives in one

industry now found that that industry not only just didn't

serve them, but was opposed to the direction that their new

faith that they came to believe it, called them to walk.

And there's when you see it like this, there's wasn't just a

faith that said, do you believe that there was a 1st century

Carpenter named Jesus? That's easy enough to verify or

not verify if you want. The question wasn't did Jesus

live? The question was, is Jesus Lord

the Anointed One, the King, the Ruler, the King over all

creation? Because that's a pretty

exclusive claim. And so as the Ephesian Christian

said, Jesus is Lord and we worship him.

That placed them in a pretty fractured situation.

To be a Christian in Ephesus was to be disloyal to Rome.

Not only that, right? Because you're thinking, oh,

well, that's fine. I can be disloyal to Rome

because I'll just run to my homies in Jerusalem, right?

Like, like I'm a Christian now. We're all together.

No, not exactly. Because you're still a Gentile

dog. You're excluded from the

promises. You're not invited into the

temple. You don't get the worship with

them. You're an outsider.

To be a. Christian in Ephesus was to be

outside of the power structure in the economy of Rome and to be

outside of the power structure in the economy of Israel.

It was to be staked to Jesus and Jesus alone.

And what I would say is that kind of fractured reality is

similar to ours. It's similar to what we walk

through and experience. Because today everything demands

your primary attention, doesn't it?

Everything wants to be first in your brain and in your mind and

in your head and your heart. And it tells us why it wants to

be first. It tells us why it demands to be

first, right? And it the way it tells us this

is it. It promises your work, promises

you that if you'll just work a little bit more than you'll be

secure, you'll have enough, You'll be safe.

I just need an extra shift. I just need a little bit more

time. I just need you to work a little

bit on the weekends. I need you to take some work

home. I need you to be available.

I need when I call. You to answer man, that's tough.

Work promises security for more, but in effect the only more that

we get is anxiety. My guess is if I could talk to

most of you about your work history, the chances you make

more money now than you did when you began working.

My guess is if I could go back 15 years to you when you started

working and I could show 15 year ago you the house that you live

in and the paycheck that you bring home and the family that

you have surrounded yourself with.

My guess is 15 year ago you would say, well, I have

everything that I ever need. That's enough.

And yet in our hearts, we don't, do we?

We put our hopes in family and family promises.

We grow up. I'm looking at our youth over

here, right? And we dream and we just look

and see, man, if I could just get married and have a house and

have have, you know, a dog and 2.3 children and make it

instead, then I would be fine. And you know, here's the thing.

And right? And that's a great deal.

Family is so significant and it's so important.

But here's the thing. When you get married, you know

you're going to get married to a person.

Listen, that person is going to have expectations of you that

you can't possibly fulfill, and then you know what you have in

your marriage? Disappointment and pain.

See, it promises you if you'll just do the stuff, then you'll

be OK. What about politics?

Our politics tell us that we will be safe.

If we are strong, then we'll be safe.

If we have power, we will be. Safe if we can find the bad guy

and just eradicate them and excuse them and get that away.

And what I want to tell you is that's false gospel.

That's not the good news. What that breeds is more fear,

more distrust, more anger, more separation, more division.

We're as powerful now in this country as we've ever is.

It maybe any other country has ever been in the history of the

world. If there were peace through

power, we would have it. How we doing?

Is this the most peaceful and at rest generation that's ever

lived? Recreation tells.

Us that you are one vacation away, you just need a little

bigger boat right, that's a little bigger boat then I could.

Get more people than I could have community on the waters and

we can catch fish. And it could be all that.

Just one more boat. You just need a little bit

bigger house. You need a play room.

You need a little bit bigger TV and a new game system.

If you just had that, then you would be OK.

Listen, here's what my problem is.

My problem is the mountains are too far away.

The only place I can go is the beach.

And the beach is fine. It's fine.

It's fine. I'm fine.

I'm fine with the beach. But the mountainous, if I could

just go where it's cool, then I would be at rest.

But you know what? I've been to the mountains and I

come back and here I am. Wherever you go, there you are.

We live in this fractured world. And listen, I'm not saying to

holding this up to shame anybody.

I'm holding this up. So that we can all identify and

just go, hey, we've all heard the promises.

Not just we've heard the promises.

We've all chased the promises. We have all been a part of full

till boogie, flat out all the way chasing the promises and

what they want. And when we don't experience the

promise, what we're promised, we think it's our fault.

And so we just try a little bit harder and go a little bit more.

What if the promise can never deliver?

What if your work can you can never be what you need it to be?

Are you listening to me? What if your family can never be

what you need it to be? What if you can never recreate

yourself and to rest because you weren't created for that?

What if there's something deeper inside you, woven into the

fabric of your life and all of creation that is meant to set

you free, but all we have? To do is break away from the

fractured promises, but instead what we do is we lean into them.

We double down and when it doesn't work, when we still feel

anxiety, when we work hard and we go to work and we do all the

things and it doesn't pay off and we start to get restless and

we start to get insecure and we start to wonder, is this the

right thing? Am I doing it right away?

Do right? What do we do?

We go talk to people. Or we turn on the news, we just

go what's wrong and we're looking for diagnosis and listen

out. There is always willing to tell

you what the problem is. You know why you're not

achieving what you're supposed to achieve.

You know why you don't have way like you're going to work,

you're doing it. You know who's the fault, You

know who's the blame? Them.

Them. It's their fault and them can be

anybody. You know why you're insecure at

work? Because at any moment they could

hire someone younger with a better degree or more

willingness to work, or less scruples.

Wow, right. That new guy at work is a threat

to you. You got to watch him.

You got to be careful because what if they come and get you?

And then what? Then now your future is shaken.

They'll tell you it's the foreigners fault.

The reason you don't have enough is the foreigner they're taking

from you. They're stealing from you.

You got to be careful. You got to watch out for him.

The foreigners, they're bad. Which foreigners?

All of them. But I'm kind of a foreigner.

You're not the bad one. It's them out there, the ones

that aren't like you. You got to be careful.

They'll tell you know who the problem is?

It's the rich people. Rich people have too much.

They have more than yet. It wasn't for those stinking,

selfish rich people. Then you would have enough,

right? It's always out there.

This this feeling I'm seeking and searching and fractured and

insecurity. This is the emotional bridge to

the text that we're going to look at today.

Like I said, this passage, verse 3 through verse 14, if you go

back to the Greek, it is one long sentence.

So here's what I'm going to give you some good news for that.

If you've ever read the letters of Paul in particular and you're

like, what the? Heck, are you talking about bro

mix in a comma mix in a period every now I want you to tell you

have been reading faithfully because he didn't and he hasn't

and it's 1 long now in the Greek it is beautiful and flowing and

all of it, and it's less so in English.

So we're going to do our best and we're going to go and we're

going to unpack and we're going to walk slowly and we're going

to sing, but then we're going to look at it, but we're going to

remember that Paul is talking. He's not talking to us.

He did not have your more specific context in mind, but he

did have people trying to figure out what it looks like to follow

Jesus in a fractured world. So all you have to do to

identify with the Scripture is recognize where in my life do I

feel fractured? Where in my life do I feel like

I'm chasing a promise that hasn't delivered?

That I'm looking for something that I can't?

Find that's not out there because what I believe Paul can

show us is deep into the heart of God where we can begin to be

transformed. So he starts, remember last

week, right, Paul to the Saints that are in Ephesus, grace and

peace to you. So I just want to start.

Are you listening? Look, grace and peace to you.

This is good news. It's good news for you.

It's good news for your neighbor, It's good news for the

world and he talked. So how does Paul start talking

to this fractured culture? The first thing he says, grace

and peace you. The first thing he says is

blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He begins with blessing. And here's one thing, he begins

by blessing God our Father. Now here's a let me back up and

just give you a 10,000 foot view of what we're going to do.

What we're going to see in Paul's blessing is this

trinitarian movement. He begins with the Father, and

he moves. To the Son and he culminates

with the Spirit and his praise is just overflowing for the work

of them. But notice again where he

begins. Blessed be the name of God our

Father. I want you to notice how He

didn't introduce our Father. He did not introduce God as

King. He didn't say, blessed be the

King who bosses you around. Hallelujah.

He did not say blessed be the creator of all things.

He didn't say blessed be the one who is coming again in my and

power. He said blessed be the God and.

You should say that out loud. Before he was your creator, he

was a father. Before he was the ruler, the

Redeemer, the Savior, he was your father.

If you ever want to know what fathers, what God feels about

you right now in this moment, he feels about you like a father.

And what? Paul then goes on and shows us

throughout this passage what that means.

Why is he blessing? What is it like to have this God

as a father? Because your father may have

been cranky, he may have been mean, he may have been abusive,

he may have been absent. You may have all kinds of ideas

about what Father means that we're only too happy to plug in

and apply to God. So let's see what He says about

this Father first thing and says He has blessed us with every

spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

So one of the things that's going to happen as we read

through this, there's a couple of words, specific words or

phrases that really mean everything to this.

One of those words and phrases is that phrase in Him.

It implies being in Him. Do you remember a couple of

weeks ago in our membership series, we talked about

immersion? The symbol of participation in

the church, in the Kingdom is to be immersed, to be immersed in

the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And that's what Paul's talking about.

If you are living that immersion, he says, you're

blessed in the heavens with every spiritual blessing, some

spiritual blessings, a few a lot, every spiritual blessing.

Every single spiritual blessing you can imagine, we're told in

Jesus. We have access to that.

You know what that means? That means our father is

generous. He is good for you.

He has enough. He's not on a budget.

He's not counting pennies. Me, I'm on a budget a lot,

right? My Father, not so much.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has

blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

just as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the

world. Listen, He chose us.

Who's us? You think you know what if

that's the surprise today? He chose us where in Him He

chose us, in Him. The choice was Him.

He chose us in Him before the Foundation.

Of the. World that means that God is

intentional. To choose is to say He picked.

Matt and not Al. He chose Jason and not Greg.

And see listen. There are some theological

constructs that tell you exactly.

In fact, they attach this next theological word onto it.

Right. He chose us in Him before the

foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless

before Him in love. He predestined us to adoption.

As sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to himself,

according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of

the glory of His grace, which it which he favored us in the

beloved. Here we see God blessing, we see

Him choosing, we see him predestining.

Here's a good theological word. And what I want to say is some

of you went to churches and they told you something theologically

like this before the foundation of the world.

God said you are going to spend eternity with me.

Isn't that good? Aren't you glad that decision he

also. Said you are not.

I have predestined you for glory.

I have predestined you to show my glory through destruction.

You don't know who's who. You don't know who was

predestined and who wasn't predestined.

And So what I would say is when we hold up this predestination,

where we got to look at that search, right?

What's the subject? Who's who's doing the

predestining? God, what he's doing is

predestining. And who he's predestining is US.

Who's us? You're not so sure anymore, are

you? All right, that's good.

That little hesitation is OK, right?

So he chose us. He predestined us.

He predestined us to be what? Adopted.

In Roman culture, to be adopted was to be an outside person,

whether it was a slave or a neighbor, whatever.

To be outside the family and to be adopted in and to be an

adopted child in the family was to have all the rights and

privileges of the family. You don't get to say like I have

my my children Jackson and Reagan and Madison.

And if I were to adopt my friend Matt here, Matt, it wouldn't be

like their inheritance and then a slightly lesser inheritance

for Matt. It's everybody.

They get all of that. And what what we're told is that

God predestined us to be family. That's the good news.

God's solution to. Fracture is to build a family

the way that he expresses his grace, the way that he.

Expresses his choice right. He chose us.

The way that he does that what he chooses is family.

The way that he expresses his love and goodness and grace and

mercy to you is by creating a family.

So now we go to this word us, right?

You think about us. And I asked him the first time I

said, who's US? Several people like me.

I'm us. Here's the problem.

Are you ready? You are all Gentile dogs.

You don't like that when Paul writes about us, he is not

speaking individually to individualistic believers.

He's talking about Israel. You don't believe me, But we're

going to see it and it's going to come, right?

Here's what that means. The one predestined before the

foundation of the earth was Jesus.

Before there was. Anything.

There was Jesus, his Son, the God who is going to reign and.

Rule. Over all of the earth and the

choices he chooses, Jesus, along with whoever is in him.

Does God's. Is God's choice sovereign?

Yes. Does he give you, Now listen,

this predestination, that doesn't mean that you can't go

to other passages, right, And kind of make the case that

predestination is about your. What I'm saying is this passage

isn't about that. This passage is about since the

beginning, before the foundations of the world, It's

all been about Jesus and the family that he was making.

And here let me say this. You remember when he called

Abram in Genesis chapter 12, what did he said?

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

He said leave your father, the father of natural birth of a sin

on that. And he said, and go to your

land, go to a different land. I'm going to show you a

different place. And what did he say?

He said I'm going to make you what a people.

I'm going to make you a family. And he said, I'm going to give

you a son, and your son's going to have sons, and your son's son

is going to have sons. And we see Abraham and Isaac and

Jacob, and that family becomes the nation of Israel.

In Egypt, Dodd planned the family and then Jesus comes in

and what Jesus does is complete it.

This is deep. This is biblical theology, OK.

This is the story of scripture written out.

This is the whole story. Anywhere you find it fits in

this line, right? So we go find Jesus verse 7 in

him We also we always know who him is, right?

It's Jesus in him, we us and we is the same person.

Who's we? Israel.

Good. Who's us?

Israel. Are you Israel?

No. Are you feeling left out?

Do you feel uncomfortable right now?

Are you worried that I'm going a little crazy?

We have elders in the room, right?

The heresy whistle. Is ready to come out if we need

to, right? I just want to hold up and talk

about what Paul is saying right in him.

We, we were Jews, have redemption through his blood,

the forgiveness of our wrongdoings according to the

riches of his grace, right? We have forgiveness now.

The Jewish people have been forgiven, which He lavished on

us in all wisdom and insight. He made known to us the mystery

of His will according to His good pleasure.

What he which He set forth in Him regarding His plan of the

fullness of times to bring all things together in Christ,

things in the heavens and on the earth.

He's making a family. He's building something.

But it's not just about Jews and Gentiles.

It's about all the things. It's about the sky and the

water. It's about powers and

principalities and spirits and economies and government and

everything. He's bringing all.

Of it together. In him and how is he doing it?

This is so important, you listening the way that he does

it. How does he take and bring it

all together and make one and bring unity with strength and

might and power and force or with forgiveness and redemption

and reconciliation. You know why we're so fractured?

Because we're not using the right tools.

I can listen, I can use this to drive a nail, but it's probably

not going to work very well, is it?

It's going to break everything, right?

We're using might and force and gossip and strength and self

promotion and selfishness and all this to get we want and it

doesn't work. And God's got a plan to bring

everything together, he says. Oh, do you want to be less

fractured, more unified? Stop talking about yourself and

start forgiving. Start building bridges.

Stop burning them. Start reaching out.

Start going. Start fighting it.

Right. And what he says is this has

been a mystery, not a mystery. Like nobody ever told me that

before. Listen, mystery is like an open

secret. It's something that if you look

at it, you look back, you. Oh.

Yeah, I know. I was right there the whole

time. I should have seen it.

Do not believe me. Listen, you go to the book of

Judges. Do you know how the Israelites,

you know how the Jewish people got into the promise?

And listen, the promised land is God's presence, promise of rest.

This I'm going to give you a land and it's going to be

flowing with milk and honey so you don't have to plan all the

time. It's going to be a fruitful land

so that you can have the promises and you can experience

what God has, but you got to go get people out.

So you know what they did? They walked in to Jericho and

you know who they met? They met a prostitute named

Rahab, and she was a foreigner. And you know what she said.

She said, she said I've heard about your God.

She said when you take this land, Remember Me.

And you know where we read about Rahab after the book of Judges,

we read about her and Matthew in the lineage of Jesus.

We read about another foreigner named Ruth, and Ruth was a

Moabitess. I don't know that there is a

cultural. Kind of similarity to that, she

was a A despised people who used some shady maybe kind of means

to endear herself kind of to power.

And she snuggled up late at night next to a guy.

But she believed and she told her kind of cranky Jewish

mother-in-law. She's like, well, I'm sticking

with you and I'm sticking with your God.

And where y'all go? That's where I'm going.

And that's what that's what we're going to do and we're

going to figure it out, right? And we read about Ruth became

the grandmother of King David, a Moabite woman.

She's not Jewish. She's not Israelite.

She is outside by every measure. What about if we go to

Deuteronomy and read the book of the Law over and over and over

again? Take care of the foreigner

that's in your presence. Don't abuse them.

Don't neglect them. Don't dismiss them.

Treat them well, he says. Because you're my people, and I

chose. You, you didn't belong here, but

I picked you and I showed grace to you.

Now you as my people go and do the same.

The prophets talk about Zion as the city of God on his mountain.

And what does it say? It says all nations will stream

to Mount Zion. This is a mystery.

And again, the Jewish people, they got so and they got the law

and they got so wrapped up in keeping and protecting and, and

boundaries and economies and and, and temples and and

politics and all of a sudden they got.

So. Intrigued at in what Paul says,

This is that apocalypse. Remember, we saw last week.

Apocalypse isn't just like, It's not like a nuclear bomb.

It's a revelation. It's the scales falling off.

It's the cover being pulled back.

It's Paul. Going Oh my God, now I.

See it? I see.

What it's been about since the beginning, it hasn't just been

about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He told Abraham at the

beginning, I'm going to bless the whole world through you.

God desire has always been about not just one group of people in

one place with one thing. It's about all things.

Listen, Jesus didn't die on the cross so that we could have some

like social. Harmony.

Jesus died to bring all things together, to make one body out

of the nations. And the only way to do that,

Jesus showed us. What did he do?

He forgave, he redeemed, He reconciled.

The family of God begins in the grace of Jesus.

God's plan to bring all things together fulfilled in the life

and the ministry of Jesus, who redeemed and reconciled people

to himself. And then finally he comes back

to the Spirit and listen. I want you to feel the weight of

that US thing. All these things that he's

talking about, they're not for you, they're not for you and I

want you to feel how weird it is to sit in the church and to hear

that my gut listen, I'm going to be 100% honest you until I

studied for this, I didn't know that and I'm just happily going

oh every. Blessing all the things.

Oh good, like God you've been. Thinking about me since the

beginning like yes but no, he started somewhere else.

And so I want to say to you is this.

I say this with. Love because I love you.

You're an outsider. You're an outsider to this.

This isn't your story that you were born into.

So what's the good news Is there good news in this You're like

yeah, you're bumming me out man. Verse 11 in him we again there's

that we right like we have obtained an inheritance so

anytime that. The Jewish people would have

talked, thought about an inheritance, They were thinking

about the promised land rest they have received an

inheritance. They were waiting for the

inheritance, right? He says we received an

inheritance having been predestined again.

So who's we Israelites who's been predestined?

The Israelites in him, according to the purpose of him who works

all things in accordance with the plan of his will, right.

So remember, Israel was first right to the end that he, we who

were the first to hope in Christ could be to the praise of the

glory. Here's our like, you can't argue

with me on this, right? Because it's the deal.

Who were the first people to trust in Jesus as a Messiah?

Who were the first people to hope for Messiah?

It wasn't the Romans, it was the Jewish people from the beginning

when Adam and Eve fell, he said, I'm going to send someone who's

going to crush the head. He made promises to God's

people, I'm going to redeem the world through you.

The 1st the ones to hope for Messiah were the Jewish people

who were the first ones to believe in Jesus, a group of

Jewish. Boys named Peter and Andrew and

James and John, Thaddeus and Bartholomew.

They believed that Jesus they had they had seen the

resurrected King. The entire First Church was a

sect of Judaism based in Jerusalem promises, the temple,

God's presence, the law, God's character, the land, his rest

those were all promises and inheritance to the people of of

Israel. Man, I wish I'd kept my place

right to the end that we who were the.

First, those are the Jews would be the praise of his glory.

Now here's the good stuff. You ready?

In him how's that listen? In him you also woo.

That's the gospel bomb. That's the good news right

there. In him you.

Also, where are you? After listening to the message

of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed,

says, yeah, you heard about Jesus, you believed in it.

You were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who

is a first installment of our inheritance in regard to the

redemption of God's own possessions to the praise of his

glory. What he's saying is I'm not.

It's not done yet. The story's not done yet, but

he's going to get put like a little a down payment in your

eye. And this is where we see the

movement from Israel to us. See what he told the Israelites

was I'm going to give you my law to show you my character.

I'm going to show you what I'm like.

I'm going to show you what holiness and righteousness looks

like. It looks like my law.

Here's the problem. We looked at the law and it

said, bring the foreigner in. And we looked at him and said

don't want that. Not interested in that at all.

It said every seven years, forgive the debts of everybody

who owes you. Anything and we said don't like

that, not going to do that. It said don't charge any

interest on the money that you lend.

We're like, well, I sure don't like that.

Jesus. I, I, I like, I don't want to do

that. So in the Old Testament, he gave

us his law, which we couldn't, we didn't want to do.

We didn't barely even try. We used it for our advantage.

Do you know what we get now? We get the holy.

Spirit who comes into our hearts and transforms us from the

inside. And so sometimes he may go in

the whisper of your heart. He goes, you know what?

I don't think you like people who don't look like you.

I don't think you like people who are different from you.

And we now have that choice. Do we agree with that voice and

look and see, or do we deny it and keep going?

He gave them a temple. The presence of God dwelt in the

temple so that everybody in Israel could go and know where

the presence of God was. Do you know where the temple is

now? It says you, right you or later

on you. Here's the thing.

This is so important. I'm going to make you Immaculate

Bible interpreters in the book of Ephesians.

I don't have to remind myself of this because I forget all the

time. In the book of Ephesians, every

single time OK, remember every time Is there one time that this

isn't true? No, never of the time.

Every time it says you, you should read all y'all right?

There is no individual you. This book isn't to Jason or

Ephesian Jason, this is. To all y'all you've heard,

wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there I am

with you and. That doesn't just mean saying in

Jesus name at the end of your prayers, it means when we gather

to be the body of Christ, He is there.

Israel had a temple and that was great.

It was a picture of what he was doing, but it wasn't the

completed work. Now we have His spirit and our

hearts making us his people. We had the law and the

inherence, the land, right? The Israelites had the land and

they're fighting for it and they're defending it and they

sucked at it and they were terrible at it and they couldn't

hold it. But that was to be their rest.

Our hope and our rest is not in landscape.

It's not in things that we can do.

It's in an eternity where he has set all things right.

We haven't achieved it yet. We're still.

Looking for it, we're waiting for it.

But what he says is in Christ. All these things have been

summed up in that, in Jesus and by his Spirit.

We are God's family and this is the deep theological truth for

our fractured lives. The fractured part is that we

read the scripture like it's a letter to me and I try to make

it make sense. And not only do that, but once I

try to make it make sense, now I start to see Eddie is my enemy

in this because God has promised something to me and Eddie's

trying to get it. Know this is for y'all, for us.

You want to know who we is? We was them and you were on the

outside. So what do we do with this deep

theological truth? So real quick, how Ephesians

lays out is there's three chapters right up front that are

pretty serious theology, right? Some pretty deep stuff.

And then in the backside we start working on some

application of that, how we walk that out.

But I think they're the big thing for us right now is to

just acknowledge kind of where we are in the story to begin to

re examine some things that maybe we bring to this a

narrative, things like identity. And here's the important thing.

Here's what I want to say, and I want to say this lovingly.

When I started this passage and I was reading about all the

things that God had given to us and then God had planned for us

and then got it predestined before the foundation of the

world to give to us. And by us you thought I meant

you, and you were wrong. You thought that your.

Identity meant something that it doesn't mean.

And what I want to humbly and lovingly invite you to consider

is what other labels about people might you be wrong about?

What other ways of seeing and classifying people may you have

gotten wrong? Who have you considered of them?

That very well may be us and who have you considered us that may

very well be them. My invitation this week is to

just challenge your labels and let me tell you something that

will be in make this incredibly difficult for you.

Incredibly difficult for you. Maybe the greatest obstacle to

people today identifying and challenging their you know, I

assumptions about identity is the news because CNN is going to

tell you who the problem is, Fox News will tell you who the

problem is, and Jesus will tell you who the problem is.

You're going to only believe one of them because their messages

are contrary. My hope and invitation is that

we'll believe Jesus, however much reworking or re evaluation

that requires of us. So how do we do that?

How do we begin to to evaluate our identity?

Well, the process of that is worship.

We re examine identity and we examine worship.

See, we think worship is what we do when we come into this place

while the band is playing. But worship is not a feeling.

Worship is attention. Worship is focus.

And So what we do too much right now is we focus on them and what

they're doing. They're taking from us, they're

causing problems. They're not representing us

well. They're they're, they're the

problem. If we could just be more like

we, then we'd be fine if we could just do one of them.

And what worship instead does is it turns our attention from them

to him, to the blessedness of God our Father.

Paul can hardly say the name without just overflowing and

rapture about this great God. Oh, He's blessed us, He's chosen

us. He's predestined us.

He's adopted us. He's done all of these things

for us. That is the attention.

As long as we're worried about what someone else is taking from

us or getting from us, we're oblivious to all that God is

pouring into us that He's giving us.

We're not abandoned. We are chosen.

We are His. We focus on grace that we

receive from Him moment by moment, morning by morning.

And then you know what? You don't have to protect

yourself. I feel like if I could take a

picture of your life in your house today and your bank

statement today and I could travel back in time 25 years and

I could. Show you a.

Picture of your life today. My guess is 25 year ago you

would say I don't have any problems.

I have every single thing that I've ever wanted.

What possible problems could that person have?

And at that point you would go into the litany of all the

problems and all of the things, right?

There will never not be problems here.

But our worship focuses on our God who puts back our focus

worship. Our worship focuses on a God who

gives to us and to them, not because of who they are.

See, we're real concerned about who they are.

God gives to them because of who He is.

That's worship. When we identify that and walk

in that, we don't have to protect ourselves.

We don't have to stay of the pack.

And when we begin to worship and we begin to identify His grace

and goodness towards us, it overflows into gratitude.

And gratitude is how worship and identity take root.

And they take root in a family. Listen, you didn't earn your

family. You had no choice whatsoever.

Where to be born, When to be born, under what circumstances?

You have no say over the economic factors that allowed

you to become who you are and who you are.

And I'm not saying that you haven't done anything.

I'm saying that your life is marked by grace.

Your your life is marked by the goodness of a God who sees you

and his intention for giving you grace is to bring all things

together. He may have put some in your

hands so that you could put some in the hands of someone else who

doesn't have he may have given you a voice.

I said last a couple weeks ago. We were talking about the apest

right, apostles, prophets, abandons, talked about like

justice and all that. And I'm and I'm AI have that

kind of prophetic thing, right? Like I want to find the smallest

person and I want to give them a voice.

I have a voice, I have a stage, I have a place I can stand.

People will sometimes listen to me, not my kids, but some people

will listen to me sometimes, right?

And so, you know, what I want to say is I just want to say is we

have enough. Let's find people that don't

like let's find more foster kids and make sure that they have

everything that they need. Like let's let's gather food for

hungry. People and listen, I don't think

you're rich. I think you're banging out a

living just like everybody else. I think there's what listen,

this coming pay period's got three weekends in it.

I know you're all eating ramen three weekends from now.

I get it. I know it runs out.

We live in a world of scarcity, but I want to tell you, if you

are a child of the King and you are part of his church that is

going to reign with him forever, you have enough to be generous

because of who you are. And we worship that God, blessed

be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has

blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual

blessing. It's hard.

This teaching is heavy. It challenges us.

It flies in the face of conventional wisdom and

everything that we see on the news and on the team, and it

tells us what I want to say is the practices of this aren't

heavy. To acknowledge that you're going

to be in between and to find Jesus there and his church.

There is rest, and it is comfort.

These practices will shift how you walk through this fractured

life. It will undermine the things

that separate us from what God is doing.

Paul had his apocalypse, and my prayer for you is that you'll

have one too. Next week we're going to look at

that Paul's prayer for the apocalypse of his people.

I hope you'll come, I hope you'll spend this week reading

about what He's done for you and how much he loves you and for

us, and how he has taken us who were outsiders and He has given

us a place at his table, blessing and goodness and peace

and mercy. So Jesus, blessings to you

seated in the heavenly realms at the right hand of the Father,

give us your grace today. And Jesus, we acknowledge and we

accept. We have been conformed, we have

been shaped. We believe the things that we're

told and we believe all of this Father, but we also recognize

man, It's, it's hard and we don't want to live fractured

lives anymore. So I pray that you would help us

to see people as you see them. I pray that you would help us to

worship you well. And I pray, Father, that you

would meet us, make us a grateful people, grateful to

have been included in this unbelievable story of grace and

mercy and life and abundance and blessing.

Jesus, we love you and we thank you.

And we ask all of these. Things in your name and for your

glory. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about

experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and

community, and we hope that you've been able to experience

that today. As grateful as I am that you've

spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no

substitute for full participation in a local church.

I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it

is those who show up week after week, faithfully giving their

support and time and resources that make all of this possible.

If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,

or support you in any way, click the link in the description and

let us know. If you'd like to financially

support the ministry of River City, click the give link on our

website in the description. Don't forget to subscribe and

don't forget to share this with your friends.

Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you

in all grace and peace.