Praying For Others

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter one, verses fifteen to twenty-three.

It says, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We are in our second week in our summer series, in which we're going to be moving through the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus.

Now, this is another just dense and almost overwhelming passage that we're going to move into this morning.

So before we get started, make a couple of quick announcements.

Uh this summer we're doing a book club, and we're doing it on this book.

It's called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

Uh and uh who's in the book club?

I want to how's it going?

I love doing that because it's like such an undersell.

I'm gonna do it every week.

Yeah, it's like, did you see that response?

I mean, this book is it's really good.

So it's an exploration of uh modern identity, and doing a bad job selling it, but we're meeting one more time, and that's on the 23rd of this month, and uh it'll be our uh second and concluding time.

Now, next month we're going to be doing another book club on a book called Gentle and Lowly.

Has anyone heard of that?

Yeah, it's like tearing through uh churches right now.

It's it's so excellent.

These are like my two favorite books that I've read in the past year, and so uh I wanted to do a book club on them because I'm the pastor.

So it was a perk.

Uh uh it's like you're you're all mandatory friends.

Uh so it both one book is this book's pretty cerebral.

Uh the next book uh it just connected with my my heart in showing the heart of Christ um in a way that I just hadn't seen.

I was listening to a podcast and a pastor that I respect a lot and really look up to said that uh this was the best book that he had read about God since the book Knowing God by J.I.

Packer, which if you know that book, that's incredibly high praise.

And uh it's a it's a wonderful book just showing us the heart of the tagline is the heart of Jesus for sinners and sufferers.

So raise your hand if you're in that category, right?

That it covers us.

Um so that'll start next month.

More details to come.

Today, right after church, uh, we'll have a membership info meeting.

So if you're interested in becoming a member at Redemption Church Denver, stick around.

It'll be about an hour.

Uh, myself and and John Kushnroff will be teaching that.

Um, so just stick around, we'll be in the overflow room.

All right, let's pray and get into the text.

Holy Father, we pray that you would transform our hearts to be able to receive what you have for us in your word, that you might create us as as vessels to be able to receive the revelation that you've given to us in Scripture.

We praise you for revealing yourself to us in ways that simple creatures like us can know you.

And Lord, we pray that the work that needs to be done in our hearts to make us holy before you, so that we can see you and praise you, that a bit of that might be accomplished this morning as we look into your word together as your body.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.

Last week uh we kicked off this sermon in this sermon.

This has been a very long sermon.

Last week we began this series going through Ephesians, and we looked at the first half of chapter one in the letter to the Ephesians, and it's this overwhelming hymn of praise to God that uh Paul lays out, and it's just this glorious picture of who God is and what he has accomplished for us in Christ.

And I I throughout the week of preparing for that sermon and and while preaching it, I just had this sense of like this is so overwhelming and so glorious, my heart feels unable to connect with this, with any sort of reality.

It feels like it's just too far off, too wonderful, and too great.

And it there's even a sort of sense of embarrassment.

I remember preaching it and thinking, like, I'm not holy enough to preach this.

It's too wonderful.

It's it's too good of a thing.

It reminded me uh after my wife and I got married for our first anniversary because of some family friends and sort of a happenstance thing, we uh went to Italy for our anniversary, which was which was really cool.

And we went to Florence, which is basically a city uh whose entire economy is based on study abroads.

Uh if the study abroad industry stops, Florence will vanish and the Medici's will have no money.

And that's where the Statue of David is.

And we went to see the Statue of David uh with everybody else from UCLA.

And I remember I remember standing in front of it and looking at the Statue of David and knowing this is a masterpiece.

This is one of the great works of the art of art that has ever been produced in the world.

And I I I was like, I I I should be more moved than I am.

I I there should be something happening in my heart.

And the pro I I I know that's one of those situations where you know, like the Statue of David is a masterpiece.

You know, the the problem was not Michelangelo's handiwork for me not being moved effectively.

The problem was my eyes.

I didn't know what to see.

I I didn't I didn't have the concept of what it takes to you know unleash this creature from the marble, uh, of how to see the statue of David.

And then how much more when we're looking at this glorious description of what God has accomplished for us in Christ, this hymn of praise, like we saw last week.

It's far more than standing in front of the statue of David and finding yourself unimpressed.

There's the that could be just like a matter of taste.

Standing in front of God and then finding your heart unable to connect in a real way, that's a moral issue.

There's something objectively wrong with the eyes of our hearts when we hear this hymn of praise and yet we're unable to receive it.

Well, it's as though Paul knew that that's what he would be provoking in our hearts when he began Ephesians with that glorious hymn of praise that he began it work with, because immediately afterwards he moves into a prayer for the people that he's writing to.

So we'll take this as a prayer for ourselves as well.

And what he prays is that we might be changed so that we will be able to know God better.

So if you find yourself coming to the scriptures or meditating on the gospel and thinking this just isn't having a real impact on my heart, it feels like it's just glancing off of me.

And you realize that there's something wrong with me that needs to be changed.

Today's sermon is hope for that condition, that our very hearts can be changed to see God.

And that's what Paul prays for us.

Now, as we look at this, we're going to see Paul's motivation for prayer.

We've kind of got two objectives.

One is to receive this prayer for us so that our hearts can be changed to see the beauty of God.

But the other is to learn how Paul prays.

So we're going to be prayed for, you know, it's like we're going to take Paul as he's discipling us, and he he sits down with us and we're about to close out our time at a coffee shop, and he says, Let me pray for you.

And while he's praying for us, we're going to learn two things, right?

We're going to learn how to pray for someone just by seeing our mentor pray for us.

And we're going to learn to receive the prayer itself.

So those are our two objectives this morning as well.

We're going to see Paul's motivation for prayer, what Paul aims at when he prays for others.

And then we're going to see the path that Paul invites us down in order to know God better.

So, first, this Paul's motivation to pray.

Ephesians 1, verses 15 to 16.

Ephesians 1:15–16

It says, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

For this reason links back up to verses 1 to 13, really like 3 to 14.

I don't know why I said 1 to 13.

It links up to verses 3 to 14, where we see this hymn of praise that God that Paul gave to God.

And what that describes is these glorious things that every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Christ Jesus, to those who put their faith in Christ.

We see that for those who put their faith in Christ, they have been chosen from eternity past, that the particulars of our salvation were predestined even before the world was formed, that we can rest in the blood-bought salvation of Christ now.

This is this glory that we see in Paul's song of praise.

And he says, now for this reason, because of God's overseeing work to rescue you, I don't stop praying for you.

That is the reason that it's connected to.

But then he shapes his prayer, uh not just in understanding what God has accomplished, but in seeing the results in the people that he's praying for.

He says, Because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints.

He sees these two qualities in the church body that he's writing to.

He sees, look, I've seen your faith in Jesus.

It's been unwavering even through hardship.

And I see your love for one another.

And in seeing those two qualities, he says, I have been unceasing in giving thanks for you.

Now, do you see how those two ideas are related?

What he sees in the church body that he's praying for and what he knows about God for how that could be accomplished results in unceasing thanks to God.

You know, if Paul came into our church and said, you know, I've seen your just unwavering faith and I've seen your unseat and I've seen your love towards one another, he he wouldn't say, so thanks, guys.

Thanks to all of you for keeping that up.

You know, really great work.

He would thank God for what he saw.

That's because he understands that when he sees a group of humans who have maintained a faith in Christ and then demonstrated love towards one another, Paul understands that he's bearing witness to a miracle.

He's seeing something that cannot be accomplished outside of the glorious work of God.

We might glance over it and say, they just seem to really get along.

Paul knows what he's looking at.

And that's why when Paul sees Christians acting like Christians, he thanks God for what he sees.

He knows that he's witnessing a miracle.

Now, at the same time, we see that Paul is demonstrating the very characteristics that he's praising and thanking God for in the church in Ephesus.

We see that Paul is demonstrating this very faith by his prayer, because why would he pray a prayer of thanksgiving to a God that he didn't have faith in?

And we see that he's demonstrating this love for the saints, because Paul himself in this prayer is holding it up this church in love.

These are the characteristics that drive our prayer for others.

Faith and love.

An understanding that because God works all things in his church, because God is the one who creates the faith and love that are to define a church, that it is to God that we should give our thanks and pray for one another.

Paul is always praying for others.

It's constant.

I'm reading a book called The Prayers of Paul or something.

And in it, the author just compiled all the prayers of Paul, which wasn't surprising, judging by the title.

And he says, just read through all the prayers of Paul and uh see see what it is that you notice, like what are the recurring words.

And it's just like four or five pages in a book.

You know, it's not a lot to read.

So you can read through it in uh you know just a little bit of time.

And it's over and over again.

It says, you.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

I pray that you may be strengthened with the power of the Spirit.

I pray that you, you, you, it's all you.

Paul is constantly thinking about and praying for others in his prayer life.

Now hold your prayer life up against that.

And if you don't have a prayer life, hold hold the life of your anxieties up against that list.

Is it for others?

Is it is it for people or is it for certain events to resolve themselves?

Is it for certain things that you might receive, or is it for certain seasons in your life to be over?

Paul is constantly concerned with people.

Our concept of church is so disembodied.

It's it's we think of a church as like a brand or an organization.

You know, those things can can exist without you having to develop any sort of personal real life connection to them.

But Paul thinks in proper names.

You know, uh Paul thinks in the names of people, and that's what he's occupied with.

That's where he considers the real work of the church taking place.

And so that's what his prayer life is always caught up in.

There's not just like a church, there's there's people that are the gathered body of Christ.

And so we see that this motivation to pray, Paul has because he sees the faith and love that other saints have, and in Christ he shares in that very same faith and love.

And so his heart is transformed to be unceasingly praying for others in gratitude to God.

Now, what are the aims of Paul's prayer?

What is it that he prays for others?

What does he want to take place in the lives of the people that he loves?

Ephesians 1, 17 says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.

Now that's a lot of beautiful words, but we can put it in an even more simple phrase.

What does Paul unceasingly pray for the people that he loves?

That they would know God better.

An alternative translation of revelation in the knowledge of him is literally to know God better.

Know God better.

That's what Paul aims at in his prayers for others.

Now, once again, just hold up your prayer life.

What is it that is your impetus to pray for others?

You usually it's it's just some problem that we want solved.

You know, even like some material that we want brought into their life.

Paul aims really high.

His aim is the highest of all possible aims, that we might know God better.

And from that, Paul understands all else will flow from this.

You know, it's like when I'm sitting with my son or my daughter, and you get really honest.

Because when they're when they're these tiny little things, you you kind of hope for their whole life.

You know, you don't really know what they're gonna be yet.

And when you're hoping for someone's whole life, then you go to these highest aims of I I pray that when it's all said and done for them, that they they will have known God.

It takes just a just a little bit of time to consider that is the highest aim for a human, that we could know God.

It's almost true by definition.

The one than whom nothing greater can be known.

It almost works as a definition for God.

That there's nothing higher that we could pursue than knowing God.

There's a couple of glorious assumptions in this.

One is this idea that God can be known.

My son's going through a real bug phase right now a couple of weeks ago when it was really rainy.

We had worm week at our house, and uh all we did was just dig up worms and just look at them and and then put them in a container to ensure they're sooner death.

And this is just cute.

My son called, he named them his fellas.

That's a great name.

I'm gonna go check on my fellas.

What do you what do you name them, fellas?

So we were we were looking at these worms, and you think of the creaturely difference.

The the worm, you know, we did all sorts, took all sorts of precautions, put dirt in a container before we put the worm in, and then you put the worm in, and we we showed this worm a level of ha hospitality.

But there's this incredible distance between the worm and us.

I can almost guarantee the worm doesn't know me.

We're too great of a thing for the worm to possibly know.

Now, the distance between the worm and me is far less than the distance between me and God.

And yet, God makes himself so that we can know him.

How does he do that?

That he may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.

God makes himself known to us by giving us by the Spirit the wisdom of God.

Who is the wisdom of God?

It is Christ, the revelation of God.

What is the highest Revelation of God.

Nobody has seen God, but Jesus has made him known.

God imagine imagine making yourself a worm.

That the worm might know you.

How much more is this spirit of revelation for how God condescends to our frame so that we might know his glory.

Now, this is the aim of Paul's prayer.

And so when you have it in this context, you think Paul is asking for this unthinkable thing.

He's asking God to bring himself to this lowly position so that we might know him.

And then Paul prays from the other side as well.

He doesn't just pray that God would show himself to us because we know that that wouldn't be enough.

Remember the statue of David?

It's good.

Remember my response?

It's fine.

There's a problem with our hearts.

It's not just that we can put something beautiful in front of us.

We have to be transformed to be able to see something beautiful.

Otherwise, it will just glance off of us.

We won't even be able to conceive it like the worm to us.

So Paul prays from the other side next.

Ephesians 1.18, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.

Paul prays that the eyes of your heart, he's saying there's this organ by which you can know God.

The eyes of your hearts can be enlightened, that you would be transformed to be able to see and receive this glorious revelation of God.

So that we might be able to see something beautiful and receive it as beautiful as it actually is, so that it doesn't just glance off of us.

So if you find yourself that you were dull of hearing when we went through that glorious picture of God last week, this is the prayer for us.

That's a little distracting, isn't it?

This is the prayer for us.

That we might be transformed to see God.

There are three crucial truths that our hearts need to be transformed to hold.

These things are what's to come, who you are, and the power that's on your side.

This is particularly what Paul prays for you.

In verses 118 through 19, it says that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might.

So, first, what's to come?

Know the hope to which he has called you.

This is what your heart needs to be transformed to be able to receive the hope to which he has called you.

So Paul is going very big picture, very future here.

He has called you to a particular thing that will happen in the future.

And the Christian story is that the new heavens and the new earth, all that has gone wrong with the world will be restored and made even more glorious than it was in Eden because of Christ's redemption of it.

We will be resurrected with eternal bodies that will be a part of that glorious future.

Now, if you were to read a book about how to help with your anxiety, what it would say is you need to stop thinking about the future so much, and you need to learn to live in the present because your anxieties are just in the future.

And in a world like ours, in which all of us meet the same futile end, which is death, that's good advice.

But in a world since Christ, in which death has been conquered, and what we look forward to is an eternal, glorious participation in the creation that God has made, where we get to know God intimately and eternally, then how do we deal with our anxieties?

It's not by thinking of the future less.

It's by thinking of it more.

It's by looking at our present, even through the lens of this future glorious grace which is stored up for us that we will one day receive.

We have such small frames.

We rarely treat the heavenly glory that's headed our way as a reality.

But Paul is saying, let your heart be transformed.

Do you know what this gets rid of?

This gets rid of the the one of the one of the main drivers of Colorado's economy, which is the fear of missing out.

In the fear of missing out, we have a tool that's that's perfectly designed to stoke it.

It's called Instagram.

And what Instagram allows you to do is, I've said this before, but allows you to think you've had a good morning because you got up and had a good cup of coffee and saw the sunrise or whatever.

Some of you may do that.

And then to look at what your friends have been doing and realize, oh my goodness, they they biked a 14er and then skied down.

And then then you realize all I'm doing all the time is just missing out.

There's not enough space for me to cram in these delights that I feel like are mine.

And then you you start pushing relationships out of the way so that you can grab hold of more of the delights that that this place that we live offers us, just uh unceasingly offers to us.

But when we see the glorious future that's headed our way, we realize we can sacrifice anything and not miss out at all.

See how this creates the type of person who can lay down their present in love for one another, but not become bitter or resentful in doing so?

Because when they lay down what they might have otherwise feared missing out on, and at the same time are taking up this glorious hope of a future in which, look, what is the reality for us in Christ?

We'll be in the presence of God in a newly created world for an eternity of joy.

There's no mountain that we will leave unskied.

There's no camping trip in which we will miss out on the glory of it.

We can lay down all kinds of things and remain joyful in doing so.

Who you are.

Paul says the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

We need to have hearts changed to be able to take this up.

Who you are in that same kind of vein.

In in Colorado, we don't have hobbies, we have identities.

We learn how to express ourselves through these different sort of tribes that we link ourselves up with.

What Paul says here is the true category of you.

That you are an heir.

An heir of Christ.

The saints who are co-heirs with Christ, you are counted in that number.

Who's it?

What are the princes?

You know the princes that are always on like the Today Show?

What are they like Prince Harry?

And uh thanks.

So Hank and Bill.

So if you were to if you were to meet one of them, and I guess be like me, and uh they them introduced themselves and um oh they were like, hey, so my name's uh what's your name?

My name's William.

Um what is it that you do?

Oh, I participate in some like humanitarian aid, um, work with a lot of nonprofits around the world.

We'd be like, oh wow, that's really interesting.

And you were to leave, and then your friend would be like, Do you know who you were just talking to?

That was Prince William.

He's he's like royalty.

You'd be like, What?

He introduced himself and left that out?

That's definitely the most fundamental aspect of him.

That he's heir to the throne.

You know, he you don't get to talk about yourself when you're heir to the throne, and you don't you don't get to leave that out, sorry.

It's who you are.

That's why your nonprofit work is a thing.

You know, that's what's fundamental.

And yet we sit around as Christians looking at fellow heirs to the whole world, sons and daughters of the Most High God, and we introduce ourselves as though we're cyclists, as though like we're into backcountry skiing now.

I mean, the it's it's it's silly, right?

When when we put it in that context, and that's why our hearts need to be transformed.

They need to be changed so that we can hear something like the the riches.

I gotta read it, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

What is fundamental about you?

We live in a culture that is shouting at you all the time.

Find out who you are, and the way to be moral is to live by truthfully expressing that.

This is saying you will need to lay yourself down to love others in all kinds of ways.

We think lay ourselves down.

That's the that's the opposite of how to live a moral life.

Isn't that being repressive and inauthentic?

Who I really am, lay myself down, but at the same time, it is telling you, but when you lay yourself down, you are taking up this identity which calls you heir of the world, son and daughter of the most high God.

We take up that identity by laying down all of these other opportunities to express ourselves.

Next is the power that's on your side.

Paul prayed the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

What makes you feel powerless?

Here's one way to tell.

Or a couple of ways to tell.

What is it in your life that you're hiding from and ignoring or trying desperately to control?

Those are things that make you feel powerless.

A lot of the most important things in life we are powerless over.

You can't reach into someone's heart and change them.

There is no magic sentence for that.

Some of you are wandering around your mind constantly, thinking of someone that if you could just get them to see this, then that relationship would be mended.

So you're wandering around your mind looking for that perfect sentence to say.

There's no such magic sentence.

There's only one who can change hearts.

That's God.

But what's on our side?

The immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

Our world is obsessed with power and obsessed with understanding who has the power.

If we could just distribute the power more equ more equitably, more truthfully, then we would finally be able to settle into a just world.

But here is the hope that we have that God's power is demonstrated towards us, given to us.

It is, listen to the words, the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

And it's immeasurable.

So those places in which you feel powerless, they're his.

Your heart needs to be transformed to be able to receive something like that.

Now, Paul won't take up the theme of power again until Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

And when he does, he does it in this shocking way.

Because when we think of power, we think of something that's used to get someone to comply with us.

When I think of power, I think this is more related to an idea of like justice, uh, throwing off the oppressors.

So it's done by power.

But the next time that Paul will use this term power, do you know what God uses his power towards us to do?

Paul says that we might be strengthened by his power to know what is the height and breadth and depth of his love, which surpasses knowledge.

What does God use his power towards you for?

So that your heart might be transformed to know how much he loves you.

I can't begin to describe the number of problems that you have in your life because you don't really think he loves you.

It's the type of thing you are.

The worm needs dirt and it needs to be a little damp.

Otherwise, it's got a pretty short shelf life, let me tell you.

You need to know that God loves you.

Your heart has to be transformed to be able to receive that.

But without it, you've got a pretty short shelf life as well.

These three things that our heart needs to be transformed to see.

What's to come, the glorious hope of our future, who you are, heir of the world with Christ, the power that's on your side, that's towards you in Christ.

And then Paul begins to show us the path of how this transformation starts to take place in us.

And that's because Paul, even in discussing the power of God, he gets drawn up into this worship of Christ and of what Christ's authority expresses itself as.

What are the tangible ways or the particular ways that we can talk about Christ's authority?

And so we see that in order to be transformed, if we're going to follow this path of Paul, then we likewise must be drawn up into the glory and wonder of who Christ is.

Ephesians 1, 20 to 21.

This power that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

Now, if you were going to describe God's power, you would think, well, what's the hardest thing that God can do?

What's the most challenging or difficult thing that God can do?

And it's like, well, make the world, it's probably what I would think, creation.

But this we're thinking in like human terms.

This is not hard for God to make the world.

It's not hard for him to uphold it by the word of his power.

When God, excuse me, when Paul wants to show the wonder of God's power revealed, he shows that Christ has conquered death by this power.

This thing that is coming our way, Christ has halted.

That Christ has been granted all authority in the heavenly places, that He is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

We're having the curtain peeled back on existence for us.

And we are being shown there are realms beyond the human experience.

Creatures like us, we're middle types of creatures.

You know, we're just below the angels.

And that means there's these heavenly glories that we participate with in real, tangible ways.

It's very difficult for modern people like us to even have concepts like this because we rebrand things in just materialist ways.

But we understand that there's something real like the spirit of a place.

You know, there's a difference between my expectations for when I go and uh visit Florence versus when I go and visit London.

And it's like, well, how do you describe that difference?

Well, there's just a different spirit of the place.

I'm trying hard to give us some sort of category that we can relate to for the spiritual realm.

That we're engaging with all of these things that seem to be ruling and commanding our actions.

We call it like culture, you know, but the Bible doesn't depersonalize things in those ways.

And the Bible is speaking, saying that all of the authority in the world belongs to Christ.

All of it.

His authority over culture, his authority in your organization, his authority at the national level, his uh his authority within particular relationships, the authority that I have over my child.

This is Christ's authority.

It belongs to him.

He is the one from whom it all flows.

And then listen to this.

Ephesians 1, 22 through 23, and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

An alternative translation, which I think is is better and captures this more completely, would say, and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things for the church.

Yeah, it is.

It is the same old song and dance.

Um uh but a good time.

Head over all things for the church.

Look, church, this book is is about you as a church.

And what do we learn from Paul's prayer?

He prays for people.

So look around.

Okay, you're doing this now.

The the thing that is that is at the center of all this authority that's all out in the world, what has it been given for?

For the church.

And how do we express it?

Express it in love for one another and faith in God, and then we take on the practice that we see Paul modeling here, which is that we might pray for one another to know God better.

Then, do you know what begins to change when that happens?

Well, if we believe that God is as in control as this book says that He is, then we will begin.

To see our very hearts transformed, to be more faithful to God and to be more loving to one another.

And what has that authority been delegated to Christ for?

It's so that the church might be transformed in that way.

And then from the transformation of these people, all of those other levels of authority begin to transform.

And so there's a simple thing that I think we can do to begin participating in this unthinkably great story.

So I want you to think of someone in the church.

Did you do it?

I can tell a lot of you haven't done it.

And I want you to commit.

Write it down on your phone.

I'm serious, let's do this right now.

Think of someone.

For real.

For real.

I'm done preaching.

This is pastoring now.

Pray for them to know God better.

Pray for them to know God better.

Let's see what happens.

All right.

Any questions today, Matthew?

No questions today.

We covered it.

One of the ways that God gave us to help and uphold our weak faith is the sacraments.

In baptism, we get to witness the washing of regeneration that the gospel shows to us.

In communion, we get to participate in the nourishment of Christ's giving of his body, in its brokenness of the bread, in the pouring out of his blood for the forgiveness of our sins.

That way we can share in this experience of God's love towards us.

This is a celebration that we get to come to to feast.

I want you to consider that while you're feasting, this is called communion.

We're coming to the same table.

This is not called in individu.

It's not called that.

We are communing because the glory that God desires for us is demonstrated in the simple thing that you would miss the faith of one another and our love for each other.

Why can't we grasp this glory that we see in God?

Because you're not meant to grasp it just sitting alone.

You're meant to need each other and Christ's work in one another to even be able to.

So let's feast together.

If you're a Christian, come feast with us today.

If you're not, look at the love towards one another that you might see in this room.

You know, keep your eye out for it.

And then maybe wonder has a miracle happened?

All right, let's pray.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this time of communion.

Lord, that our hearts would be transformed.

Lord, that you would begin teaching us how to pray for one another like Paul prays for us.

Lord, that we would we would begin to move in this practically and start to participate and experience the glory that you have stored up for us in Christ Jesus.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.