Recap: Identity | The Book of Ephesians | 04/12/26

All right. Well, great to be with you

this Sunday. I missed you all week. Um,

who here watched the Artemis 2 landing?

A good Okay, it felt like way more

people watched this than other stuff in

the past. Um, that was really incredible

to see. Um,

I guess you know, you sort of think

space travel, that sounds pretty

intense, but then when you listen to

them talk through what's happening as

they reenter the atmosphere, it's so

much more gangster than I thought it was

going to be. I mean, this,

you know, how we were joking about when

you don't mean to make a joke, but

everyone laughs, how should you respond?

I don't know. Um, that's just how I

talk. Okay, I'm sorry. These these

astronauts are coming into the

atmosphere at like 25,000 miles an hour

and then their communication goes silent

because the temperature around the heat

shield of their re-entry is like 4,000

degrees. And so you have to sit there

for 6 minutes as these people are

plummeting towards the Earth at 25,000

miles an hour in an oven that's heated

up to 4,000 degrees and you're just

waiting to see if they made it. Um, I

don't know if you had that feeling as

you were watching the broadcast that I

had. I was just praying like, "God, keep

them safe." And I felt my heart kind of

like pumping until we heard their voices

and they were okay. And I was like,

"Wow." Then you see him, you saw the the

parachutes deploy and you're like,

"Thank God." And then the main parachute

deploy and you're like, "Okay, they're

going to be okay." You finally could

like relax. And then they hit the water

and they come out and you're like, "Man,

they're here safe." And it feels like

this enormous deal.

Um, it felt like an enormous deal to me

yesterday.

And as I was thinking about it, I was

thinking, you know, it's it's that

mission is just part of a whole series

of missions that are upcoming over the

next 5 years. Um, I can't remember what

the numbers are, but it's like in excess

of 20 more missions planned and a bunch

of those they're hoping to actually land

on the moon. And so it's interesting as

you as I watch that I was thinking about

the fact that you know the significance

of this landing. It's it's hard to know

what it means in the moment. Uh it's

sort of something that's happened along

an progressing and unfolding story of

our journey to sort of colonize the

moon. And we won't really understand

what it meant for them to land safely

until we see the end. We see the

beginning from the perspective of the

end.

And so that's one of the things that I'm

taking away from the book of Ephesians

is that God in the book of Ephesians

shows us, he tells us the story. He

shows us the end that we might

understand what it means for us today.

And now,

the funny thing about what the book of

Ephesians was doing and and one of the

things I'm going to focus on this

morning, when you read chapters 1

through three, as we have in detail,

word for word, you see there's a lot of

cool theology going on. There's a lot of

prayer going on.

But at a really basic level, Paul is

telling you your story.

Paul is telling you the story of you

from a perspective that you've probably

never thought of before, eternity past.

He's telling you your story in light of

what God is doing in the world, what

he's been doing in the world, what he is

doing, and what he will do forever and

ever. And he expects us to take that

information and let it reshape how we

see ourselves of one another.

That's my main point today. Your story

is God's story. Your story is God's

story. So, you have to trust him to

bring you to the joyful end. Please open

your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

And as I said a moment ago, this is

going to be a summarizing of our

findings. So, we've looked at all these

texts in detail. I want to try to bring

together connect some big dots um in a

way that's difficult to do when you're

focusing on small text so that we leave

with a clear sense of what we're

supposed to do with some of these big

ideas.

For the last several months, we've been

studying the content of this letter. Two

weeks ago, we finished.

And in the first three chapters of

Ephesians, Paul is doing a number of

things. The most important being he's

reframing how we think about the world.

He's reframing how we think about God

and ourselves in light of God's bigger

story. And he's teaching us to see

ourselves and our lives in light of what

God has done across time and to see each

other in that same light.

I'm going to look at four things. I'm

rather than rereading the first three

chapters, I'm just going to talk about

it. We've gone through it in detail. I

want to talk about what God's plan was

from the beginning. I want to talk about

how God's plan makes contact with our

life. Third, I want to talk about God's

plan on earth and in heaven. And I want

to close by considering together the end

of God's plan, what it is God's

ultimately doing. And this is not to

comprehensively summarize the first

three chapters, but to try to tie

together this fundamental idea of how

our stories interact with God's plan.

So, let's start by God's plan from the

beginning.

It's really interesting to me and it

super jumped out to me this time going

through this book that Paul begins his

circular letter with a deliberate and

sustained emphasis on Christian

identity.

All of you, he might have said, are from

different places, different backgrounds,

different languages, different cultures,

but you have to be learn to be one in

Christ. He could have started there.

That was probably what people were

looking for from him, but he doesn't say

that. These are groups of people meeting

in houses for worship. And you know

they're people. So you know there was

probably already problems. There was

probably already disagreements. There

was rich people and poor people. There

were citizens and slaves. There were

Jews and Greeks, old and young, all

meeting in these little house churches

and trying to get along. I guarantee you

there were some problems. These are

congregations that have millions of

relational landmines that are scattered

all over the place. And so Paul likely

has a million different problems in mind

that he could have chosen to address.

But rather than addressing any of those,

he starts by trying to shepherd them in

light of their differences.

In chapter 1:3, he calls all of their

attention to the profound and staggering

way in which all of the saints are the

same.

Blessed be the God and father of our

Lord Jesus Christ, he says, who's

blessed us in Christ with every

spiritual blessing in the heavenly

places.

So writing to a bunch of churches who

all are dealing with their differences,

he looks at them in their very real,

very raw, very honest place and says,

"Praise God that we all belong to

Christ. Praise God that we're all heirs

of this incredible blessing.

Thank God." He says that he chose us,

all of us, you and me, all who are

faithful in Christ. And he did this. He

decided that we're going to be in this

church together from before the

foundation of the world.

He chose us for two things. To be holy

and blameless and to adopt us to himself

as sons through Christ.

We should thank God, he says, because

your life and your identity were

ordained before the foundation of the

world.

We should all be really amazed by that.

Before you were, God knew you and had a

plan for you. Do you think you have big

plans for your life? Look up.

look higher.

It's very likely that a lot of Paul's

moral exhortations in the second half of

the book emerged from very real

complaints that very real people had in

various congregations. It's likely there

were converted thieves who were not

working diligently with their own hands

to provide for their own needs. There

were very likely members of the various

congregations who had not yet put away

falsehood and were not yet speaking the

truth with their neighbors.

There was people sitting in their anger

and letting out all kinds of corrupting

talk. He addresses that in chapters four

and five. I don't think that stuff

arises out of a vacuum.

Yet, when Paul chooses to address these

things, he treats them as secondary

matters.

You only do this kind of thing with each

other, toward each other, because you're

not thinking clearly about who you are,

about who you are in light of what God

is doing.

We, you and I, are so used to looking at

the world through a broken lens. We're

so used to looking at it through a

corrupt perspective, a selfish

perspective. When someone upsets me, I'm

tempted to speak to them in a way that

does not give grace to the one who

hears.

This person is a part of God's plan from

eternity past. When someone does

something I don't like, my brain doesn't

immediately rush to this person's

inclusion was for the purpose in this

church was for the praise of God's

glorious grace. I mean, he does all this

stuff. He's going to tell us three times

in this chapter to the praise of God's

glorious grace. You're here so that the

rest of us would praise God for his

grace toward you. And that's why I'm

here. And that's how God's grace is

manifesting among us is in us needing to

forgive and show grace to each other.

We might look at each other and think,

well, that guy's done some terrible

stuff or this did some person did

something I consider utterly forgivable.

to which Paul continues in verse 7 that

in Christ we have redemption through his

blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses

according to the riches of his grace

which he lavished on us.

Being a forgiving person is not a simple

moral imperative for Christians. It's

not just something we ought to do

because it's right. It's a way of

orienting ourselves towards each other

that flows from our identity. We should

be looking at each other and seeing

forgiven written on each other's

foreheads

through the blood of Christ

even as we work through our real sin is

issues, our real conflicts that occur in

church life.

Paul goes on in chapter one to make the

point that we all have this shared

inheritance which has been sealed for us

by the presence of the Holy Spirit and

that the intent God's intention is to

bequeath to us the cosmos and this was

all predestined according to the council

of God's will. This was all God's plan

from the beginning and to the praise of

his glorious grace.

All of this came as a consequence of

forethought, pre-planning, predestining,

predetermining grace and blessing.

And he did all this to the praise of the

splendor of his grace and holiness.

God's story is our story.

Who you are and who I am were set in

motion long before either of us ever

existed.

That's meant to shape how we think about

each other. You can look at each other

and see a person who made an insensitive

comment. You can look at each other and

see a husband who could be doing more

around the house or a sister who could

be making more of an effort in your

friendship or whatever. Or you could see

each other in chapter 1 verse 18 as the

riches of Christ's glorious inheritance

in the saints.

That's what the Bible calls you.

I have said this many times and it's the

truest thing I ever say. You are not

what you think you are. You are what God

says you are.

There's nothing more true than what God

says. And it's God who talks to us like

this.

I'm sure there's a cynical part in all

of our hearts that think, "Scoff,

if if you just saw what was really going

on, you would never think that way about

me or that person."

And what I'm telling you and myself is

this. This is how God tells our story.

This is how God has ordained our story.

He wrote the script. He chose the

adjectives.

They're God's adjectives.

Forgiven, blessed, redeemed, chosen.

Heirs, sealed by the spirit, the riches

of his glorious inheritance.

You have the lens you're using to look

at the world and at each other. You have

your adjectives that you would use to

describe each other. And here we're

looking through God's lens.

I don't know what happens to you when

you look through your lens. Your

adjectives

might be good, might be neutral, might

be bad.

But looking at the world and the church

through God's lens creates joy and peace

and love because we who are in Christ

are God's children, God's family. All

the faithful are his redeemed and all of

us need grace. And because of that, all

of us are called to walk in Christian

grace towards each other and to rejoice

on account of each other and to give

thanks for the grace at work in each and

every person's life.

When you think of you and your story,

it's very important to incorporate God's

story into how you understand your own.

That's my big point in this first part.

When God tells us the story of what's

really going on in your life and the

significance of all that he's doing in

all of our lives, the right response for

us is to listen carefully and to believe

it because he's telling us the truth.

Let faith shape how we think about each

other. So that's the first thing. That's

God's plan from the beginning. Let's now

turn to God's plan for our individual

lives.

When we get to Ephesians 2, Paul tells

us our story again,

except this time he involves you.

First, it was just what God was doing.

Chapter 2 starts with what you were

doing all this time.

And he starts from the beginning of our

personal experience with the world. He

says, "You were dead in the trespasses

and sins in which you once walked,

following the course of this world,

following the prince of the power of the

air, the spirit that's now at work in

the sons of disobedience."

So Paul when he wants to include you in

the story says that each and every one

of us are born by nature as servants of

the evil one. The natural inclinations

of our heart was not to readily and

heartily submit to the lordship of

Christ. It was to submit to the lordship

of what I want, which makes us a tool of

the enemy, a natural servant of the

enemy.

And what happened to you, if you're now

a follower of Christ, is not that you

grew out of it. It's not that you

matured to the point that you don't do

that kind of thing anymore or that you

had a good upbringing or that you did

anything at all.

Paul doesn't say you were lost and that

you were found. The ped the metaphor

that Paul uses is that you were dead and

God caused you to live.

Verse 5, he made us alive together with

Christ. By grace you've been saved.

Verse 8, for by grace you've been saved

through faith and it's not your own

doing. It's the gift of God, not a

result of works.

Everywhere that the Bible talks about

how we came to be in Christ, it very

forcefully and specifically asserts that

it wasn't you who did it.

This is something God did to us. God's

mercy and love overflowed towards us

into the action of making us alive with

Christ. We're saved by God's grace in

verse 5. It's not your own doing in

verse eight. It's not a result of works

so that no one can boast, no one can

take credit. He did it, not you and me.

You are in Christ for no other reason

than God through Christ in his rich

mercy and great love drew you in to the

great thing that he's doing.

It's not like a lost person being found.

It's not like a foolish person being

made wise. It's not like an ignorant

person becoming enlightened. It's like a

dead person becoming alive.

And that person now resurrected has been

raised up into heaven and seated right

beside the very throne of God.

It's actually difficult to overstate how

low

we were to how high we've been elevated

in God's kingdom.

It's not like we were temps in a

government office and we were promoted

to like manager. It's like we were spies

for the enemy government and now we've

been granted to sit at the right hand of

the king

or something like that.

And so all the first stuff Paul said

about God choosing and predestining

before the foundation of the world, all

that stuff is true. But there was a

moment when your story came into contact

with his story. When your awareness of

what he was doing switched on in your

mind and it began to overlap with what

he was doing in the world.

The first story focused on on God and

all of it was pure and holy and loving

and merciful and good. And then in

chapter two, our motives get introduced

and we were kind of the opposite.

We were kind of what messed everything

up.

And Paul's point is that God's great

plan accounted for all that. The entire

point of the story is that God has

provided a way to overcome all the

obstacles that we introduced with our

sins and our trespasses and our evil.

Through his son Jesus, he has given us

life from the dead. He's given us grace

in the face of our wicked rebellion. And

my only point here is to say that this

is how God's plan has touched all of our

lives. All of us were dead at a certain

point. And in Christ, all of us had to

be made alive by the grace of God.

And that should frame how you think

about yourself, but it should also frame

how you tell your story.

When someone asks you about you, do you

mention God?

When someone says, "Tell me about

yourself," what do you say? What are the

bullet points? What are the highlights?

I'm from here. I went to school here.

This is a little bit about my family.

this is where I work. I I know that

that's

uh what all of us do. I know that that's

a very common way to talk about

ourselves.

It's just so critical to see here that

that's not how the Bible primarily talks

about you. Um that's not what Paul

thinks of when he thinks of you. That's

not how Paul tells your story.

Here in chapter 2, the great act of

grace that God has done in Christ is the

focal point of the church's story. It's

at the center of who they are and why

they exist.

Here's where I work. Here's my family.

Well, what about the part of your story

where you used to be dead and by the

power of God, you've been made alive in

Christ? I mean, it seems like it should

make the top three.

Fun fact about you. You used to be

estranged from God and he sent his son

to rescue you. So what am I saying? I'm

saying chapter one tells you how to

think about yourself and each other and

to see it all in light of God's story.

And I'm saying here in chapter 2, this

great act of grace should shape how you

talk about yourself. It should influence

the kinds of things that you bring up in

conversation.

Sometimes people tell me, and this is

it's totally fine. It's I love it. But

like sometimes people tell me, "I was I

was talking to this person and trying to

evangelize to them and I told them your

story about how you used to be a drug

addict and God saved you." Which is

fine. I that's great. That's awesome.

And like in so far as that's helpful,

that's great. But my story is not more

remarkable because I used to be on drugs

and God saved me.

You all used to be something, too.

My wife has never wandered away from the

faith. She's been following Jesus since

she was a little girl. But you know

what? She entered the kingdom of God the

same way I did with contrition over her

brokenness and a desire and a need to be

saved.

Maybe it isn't something that your thing

isn't the same shock value saying, "I

was I used to be a coke addict." But

some of you used to be liars.

Some of you used to be porn addicts.

Some of you used to be perpetually

anxious or vain and in love with

yourself or you know uh greedy or gossip

dishonoring your parents. Some of you

used to walk in utter self

self-centeredness as a way of life. You

were all together dead and relying

dependent on God to raise you up to

resurrection life. It's all by grace

that you've been saved.

No one is morally superior under the

shed blood of the perfect son.

We are all incapable of making a way for

ourselves to come to God. And God in

Christ reached to us. That's your story.

And what I'm saying is we should think

critically about how that truth about us

should shape how we talk about

ourselves.

So that's God's plan in our lives. Let's

now transition to God's plan on earth

and in heaven. God's plan, it turns out,

is to create something on earth in order

to reveal something in heaven.

In chapter 2:es 11 through13, Paul says,

"Hey, Gentiles, hey non-Jews,

you used to be far away, cut off from

all these amazing amazing things that

God's been up to. But now in Christ, you

who were far off have been brought

near." In verses 14 and 15, he clarifies

that the old covenant, the law

used to divide us. But in the death of

Jesus, he abolished that old covenant so

that he might create from the two

people, Jews and non-Jews, one person,

one new person.

He abolished the old covenant which

constituted the Jews as a nation and

established a new covenant that has at

its heart a global reconciliation.

In verse 18, Paul says, "Through Christ,

we have access in one spirit to the

father. So then you are no longer

strangers and aliens, but you are fellow

citizens with the saints and members of

the household of God built on the

cornerstone of Jesus."

All of that is a theological way of

saying God's plan has expanded beyond

the borders of Israel to the whole

world. God wants to save everyone.

God's saving grace is no longer confined

to the to the borders of a nation. It's

now the ends of the earth.

And you might think, well, doesn't God

promise in the Old Testament to rebuild

the temple and fill it with his presence

in the land? To which Paul says, yeah,

he did promise that. Turns out in verse

22, the land is the world and you're the

temple. His thing is to fill you. Now

you are being built together, he says,

Jew and Gentile into a dwelling place

for God by the spirit. That is temple

language.

How does that make sense of the Old

Testament promises? Well, Paul says in

chapter 3 that he's been given insight

into a mystery. And that mystery in

verse 5 was not made known to the sons

of man in other generations and former

generations. And what mystery is that

Paul in verse 6? The mystery is that the

Gentiles are fellow heirs. They're

members of the same body, partakers of

the promise in Christ through the

gospel. The mystery is that God wasn't

doing an Israel thing and just allowing

the Gentiles to sort of come along for

the ride. The mystery was that God was

always fully intending to make all of us

members of his family.

We are all the firstborn is one way of

putting it. Sons, heirs.

Regardless of where you come from or

what you've done, what your family was

like, or what you have or haven't

accomplished in this world, God's goal

is to fill you with himself and to make

you a part of this glorious thing called

church that he's doing in the world.

So that's what he's doing on earth,

creating a new humanity out of those

saved by grace, a new community of

people who follow Jesus from everywhere.

And God is doing this, Paul says in

chapter 3:9, to bring to light for

everyone. What is the plan of the

mystery hidden for ages in God who

created all things so that through the

church, the manifold wisdom of God might

now be made known to the rulers and

authorities in the heavenly places. This

was according to the eternal purposes

that he realized in Christ Jesus our

Lord.

God in doing this thing on earth is

aimed at showing forth his glory in

heaven.

The always growing, always expanding

earthly church. And this great gospel

that keeps creating and sustaining the

love among us is defeating the powers of

sin and death in the world. And it's

creating life and joy and peace in our

midst. And all of it is meant to display

God's manifold wisdom to the universe.

That's a really enormous point. And I

could go in a number of crazy directions

here, but I'm going to just say this one

thing about that. Everything that is

happening around us is happening on

purpose.

It's happening on purpose.

You are part of an unfolding plan, but

it's only unfolding from our

perspective. God has it all mapped out

already.

The tr that truth that everything's

happening on purpose, that there's a

plan, that things are not out of

control. That truth doesn't feel

precious when everything's going well.

That truth feels precious when it feels

like everything is falling apart.

when it feels like life is going off the

rails.

What is the context of this assertion

about God's cosmic plan? Verse 13. In

chapter 3, verse 13, the context is

Paul's desire that they would not lose

heart over what he is suffering for

them, which is for their glory.

Paul's probably in prison when he wrote

this.

Paul is cut off from family and from

loved ones.

He can't see his friends. Probably can't

go outside. And yet for him, all these

things he's experiencing, all these

things he says he is suffering are

happening under the umbrella of God's

perfect and loving plan.

So, let's turn this teaching towards

ourselves. Maybe your life feels

overwhelming and out of control.

Maybe you feel like in your

circumstances you're suffering.

Maybe you don't know what tomorrow's

going to hold and that really stresses

you out.

Maybe there are actual legitimate issues

coming down the pipeline towards you in

your life or something terrible actually

is coming over the horizon and there's

nothing you can do to prepare for it.

Here's the comfort of this promise. None

of this none of this is happening

outside of God's loving direction and

control.

He's sovereign.

All All things are unfolding according

to his plan in chapter 3.

Are there evil people who would do

terrible things in this world? Yeah. Are

bad things going to happen in this

fallen world? Of course they are.

Terrible things happen every day. God

nowhere promised that the cross was

going to make everyone start to be nice

to each other. He actually kind of

promised the opposite. if you follow

him, you're going to be opposed and

persecuted.

Instead, God sees all this brokenness.

He sees how terrible we are to each

other. He sees how terrible sin and

death are. And he chooses to intervene.

He chooses to get involved.

He intervenes

by entering in.

He doesn't fix our griefs and sorrows.

He bears them with us in Isaiah 53.

He doesn't take all our pain away. He

comforts us in the midst of our pain and

teaches us, instructs us how we can then

turn and comfort others with the comfort

that we've received.

We look at this cross

and consider every day, every Sunday,

how God is so wise that he can take what

is probably the worst, no, it is the

worst thing that's ever happened to

anybody anywhere, ever in the history of

the universe. When Jesus, the innocent

one, was condemned on a cross, he can

take the worst thing that's ever

happened to anyone anywhere and turn it

into the greatest thing that's ever

happened for anyone anywhere. That's how

wise and powerful he is. That's what it

means. That he's in control, that things

are going according to his plan. Not

that there's not going to be suffering,

not that there's not going to be pain.

It's that he all of it, all of it, all

of it is on purpose. And one day you

will see.

One day you will see the good he has

always been doing.

Because God has appointed the end from

the beginning. And because God is using

all things for our good and for our

blessing, we can face tomorrow with

confidence that the risen Christ holds

the future in his hands. This is God's

plan for earth and for heaven to display

his manifold wisdom

to show us how wise he truly is. and to

glorify his grace through his people,

the church. Which finally brings me to

the end of God's plan. We've seen how

God's plan in the present in in the past

should affect how we think. We've seen

how what he's done in our lives should

affect how we speak. We've seen how the

fact that he's holding all the future

together in his hands ought to affect

how we engage the thoughts of tomorrow.

But let's now close by considering the

ultimate end of all these things.

This last point is simple and quick, but

it's worth thinking about for the rest

of your life.

Paul ends chapter 3 with a prayer that

the God of creation would strengthen us

psychologically, emotionally, and

spiritually

to receive the love of Christ that's

being directed at you in the gospel.

Paul prays in verse 16 that according to

the riches of his glory, he meaning God

the father may grant you to be

strengthened with power through his

spirit in your inner being. So that

Christ may dwell in your hearts through

faith and that you being rooted and

grounded in love may have the strength

to comprehend with all the saints what

is the breadth and length and height and

depth and how and to know the love of

Christ that surpasses knowledge that you

may be filled with all the fullness of

God.

I don't even like know how to imagine a

bigger blessing than what he just

described.

Paul is like, I'm praying that God will

make you strong enough to handle his

undivided attention.

I don't know if you um

you know when you ask where is my future

headed? What is going to become of me?

Each and every one of you, all of you

who are in Christ are marching every day

closer to entering into the

incomprehensible revelation of this

thing called the love of Christ. This

thing that's too big to measure, this

thing that's too big to imagine.

Paul's a pretty imaginative, creative,

eloquent guy. He can explain some some

really difficult, complicated things in

a way that's comprehensible. And he's

like, I'm not even going to try to

explain how vast and enormous and dense

this love is that's waiting for you.

The end of God's plan is to fill you

with all the fullness of God and to fill

you with the love of Christ.

I don't know if that language

immediately makes sense to you. We don't

talk like that normally, you know. Um,

what does it mean for me to be filled by

someone else's love? It's an interesting

phrase, but I think I can I can help us,

I think, get our our heads around it. If

you've

um felt that sense of emptiness

that comes from wanting love but not

receiving it. Does anybody know what I'm

talking about? I'm sure many of you do.

eagerly desiring love from someone and

not feeling like it's returned. It

creates like a void.

And maybe that's not the best word, but

I don't know a better one. It creates

the sense of like something's missing.

Something significant

is missing.

The desire to be accepted, wanted, and

cared about, but not feeling like you

have that with anyone. If you've ever

felt truly alone, you know, I think what

this is talking about, how significant

it is to finally have someone look you

in your eye and tell you that you're

they're glad you're here, that they're

really happy just to be with you,

whether that's a friend or a spouse or a

child or something. To be fully loved

and accepted by someone provides this

thing that is difficult to explain, but

it's like being filled. It's like a

hunger being sated. It's like a pain,

like a like a thing in your shoe finally

coming out and feeling relief.

It's like hunger being satisfied.

All of you, even those of you loved by

many people, still love live with a

sense of incompleteness in this area. We

all do.

Even those of us who truly truly know

the love of God, we still see our own

sin. We still see the ways that we fall

short. We still see the ways that our

attitude and our hearts introduce

barriers to his desire to come and be

close to us. We still do that. But a day

is coming, brother, sister, when that

battle will be over

where the hunger and the thirst and the

pain and the ache will cease

because you will finally be fully filled

more and more forever by the love of

Christ and the fullness of God.

When we stand before Christ's face,

it will become clear to us that we were

never really home in this world.

We have all been on a pilgrimage. We've

all been on a spaceship.

We've all been on a journey to make it

back to the place where we actually

belong.

And Paul tells you that that is your

future touching down in the very

presence of Christ forever and ever.

Let's pray.