"Made New" | Ephesians 3 | Russell Cravens

Series through Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

The message of Ephesians is this you are rooted in a love you didn't earn before you're sent into a mission you couldn't live on your own.

So if you have your Bible open, I want you to look with me at Ephesians chapter three, and we're actually going to start right away in verse 20.

So go to verse 20.

Now we aren't putting most of these verses on the screen in part because we want to encourage you to bring a Bible and to open it up.

And if you don't need, if you don't have a Bible, we have some on the table in the back that we would love for you to take with you.

So Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20 says this.

Ephesians 3:20

Let's pause there and let me ask you a question.

What would you have to see to conclude that God has done something powerful?

Think about that.

What would you have to see to conclude that God has done something powerful?

I think back over the course of my life.

Think about the moments where I asked God to do something powerful.

I can think back even as far as whenever I was applying to college, and I said, God, I would like for you to work powerfully so that I could get into this college.

And in those days, it's very different than it is now.

Now we are now working on our third child getting ready to go to college.

In those days, I applied to one school, I got into it, and I just went.

It's just a very different day.

Think about when I was knowing the time was coming to find a wife.

God, would you work powerfully and do this for me?

Would you provide a wife?

And of course he did.

When I was looking for a job, maybe you can identify with this.

Like, God, I need you to help me find a good job.

Like work powerfully for me.

Or when I had that job, I began to pray.

Like some of you are in this stage right now, where you want God to do a miracle so that you can get a pay raise.

Can I get an amen?

Or when we had children, some of my most fervent prayers were when that child was needing to sleep through the night.

God, would you work powerfully so that this child can sleep through the night?

Or there have been times in my life where somebody that I love is very sick.

God, would you do this for me?

Would you heal that person?

Certainly, God can do all of those things.

But what if in asking God to work powerfully or expecting God to work powerfully, we're overlooking one of the greatest displays of God's power, and that is what He wants to do in us.

Not just for us, but in us.

So we are in chapter three of Paul's letter to the Gentile Christians in Ephesus.

But I want to, before we move on, I want to just kind of do a brief review of where we've been for the last four weeks.

So these are the main ideas of the last four weeks.

I'm just going to put them before you.

And if you were here, it might remind you of them, or if you weren't, maybe it'll help you understand how we got to chapter three.

So the first message, which Dr.

Jake did, told us that before God tells you what to do, he wants you to know what he has done.

And then I preached verse 15 through 23 of chapter one.

In Christ, you already have more than you can see.

And then in chapter two, we begin to see that if the problem is death, we don't need an improvement, we need a resurrection.

And then last week, Dr.

Jake preached a great message that in Christ, outsiders become family, and strangers become a home for God.

So these first two chapters of Paul's letter to the Ephesians are really about what God has done for us in Christ.

Like he has the power to raise the spiritually dead, he tears down dividing walls, he brings outsiders near, and he makes strangers family.

We know all that to be true, and certainly those are displays of God's power.

And where we're going in chapter four is how we're to live in light of all that, of like what God has done for us.

But before we get there in chapter three, which is where we're going to be for the whole chapter today, we see this writing that Paul gives to the Ephesians that is really about what God wants to do in us.

He's praying that something would be rooted so deeply in us.

And what God wants to do in us, and as Paul is writing this letter, part of which is a prayer for them, he burst into praise, knowing that God can do more than we can ask or imagine.

When we think about God working powerfully, certainly we would think about a pay raise or a child sleeping through the night or the finding of a spouse if that's in your heart to do.

But what we're seeing in this passage is that there is something that God wants to do in us that's gonna require a tremendous amount of power as we measure it.

The main idea for my talk is this God isn't just making you new, God is making us new together.

There are three parts to the sermon: identity, love, and power.

I want to frame it up in that way.

So, identity, we're first gonna talk about what has God made us, then love, what must take root in us, and power.

How does God make this new life possible?

So we're gonna look at the first part here, identity.

What has God made us?

Identity is about looking at what grace has done in us.

So let's look at verse one.

If you have your Bible, I hope you'll follow along.

Just start there in the first few words.

Paul says, For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles.

Now it's interesting the way he writes this chapter because right after these first few words, he actually kind of like interrupts himself and he picks back up in verse 14 and continues, but in verse 2 through 13, he actually takes an aside.

And it's so curious to me that he does this.

And what I think part of what's happening here is that the people to whom he's writing, I mean, they've already read through in great with great attention the first two chapters, but maybe they got to chapter three in their reading, and Paul knows what's true about them, and what can be true about us is that we can kind of skip over the beauty not only of what God has done for them, but what he wants to do in them, so he begins to drill down even deeper in this space.

All of you, like me, have a tendency to hear what God's word says, and then we would just want to act.

But what Paul's going to do here is he's gonna go, okay, before we act, chapter four, because there are some things we ought to do to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called, but before we act, there actually is this needed work deep in us as an individual and deep in our church as a people.

So he starts this prayer and then he interrupts himself, and he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.

He identifies himself.

You may have already heard this, but Paul, while writing this, is literally in prison.

But being in prison is not his identity.

And what we're gonna hear here as he's sort of talking about what's on his mind to the Ephesians, we're going to hear him talk about where the work that's needed in him is deeply rooted, and it's in his identity.

He is, at the time that he writes, in a prison in Rome.

He could have said, I am Paul, a Roman prisoner, or I am Paul, the person that's been mistreated.

No, he identifies himself, how as a follower of Jesus, he is in Christ.

This is his identity.

He's a prisoner of Christ on behalf of you Gentiles, who is the audience that he's writing to.

Now, do you know how Paul got put in prison?

Well, and Acts chapter 1, just quickly, Luke tells us how this imprisonment began.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

I'm telling you the story.

So Paul was in a temple in Jerusalem, and this crowd who saw him in this temple in Jerusalem accused him of bringing the Gentiles into a certain area of the temple where they were not allowed to go.

And the Gentile that they accused Paul of bringing into this certain area of the temple that was not allowed to go there was actually from Ephesus.

His name is Trophimus.

So here is this man Paul, as he's writing this letter to the Ephesians, he has just spent quite a bit of time in chapter 1 and chapter 2 declaring that Jesus has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility between the Gentiles and the Jews.

This is the new identity made available to them.

You're no longer Gentile primarily, you're no longer Jew primarily, but you are in Christ.

So the dividing wall between the two of you is broken down.

And it's interesting because Paul here identifies himself as a prisoner of Christ, and he's speaking to a group of people who had just spent an entire chapter telling your identity is no longer your ethnic group.

It is actually that you are in Christ.

So there's not walls between the two of you.

So when we think about what God wants to do in us, we cannot talk about that without also talking about what he wants to do in us, all of us.

So this is not only about the individual, what God has done in us or wants to do in us, but it's what God wants to do in us as a church.

Let's talk about identity.

Most of us are tempted to build our core identity around things that can be taken from us.

I am an athlete, I'm a doctor, I'm a dad, I'm an analyst, I'm an assistant, I'm a girlfriend, I'm a runner.

All those things.

That's very normal.

And those certainly are things that can be true about you, but if your identity is in those things, those things can be taken from you.

And when you suffer, what oftentimes happens is it's very disorienting, and you begin to blame God.

Paul, in the way that we would think about it, had every reason to blame God.

God, I have done what you've wanted me to do, but yet here I am in a prison.

But instead, what he does is he goes, actually, my suffering and my circumstance and my disruption of my everyday life is not actually what's most true about me.

What's most true about me is that I'm in Christ and this is a part of my life.

If your deepest identity is in Christ, suffering may change your circumstances without changing your understanding of what he is doing in you.

In fact, God might be using the very thing that strips away some of these tangential identities or these outside identities or what people might first think of when they think of you.

Suffering has the potential, and I'm not certainly not wishing suffering on any one of you, but it has the potential of stripping away some of those identities that you've depended on so that you can root more deeply in your identity, that is, you are in Christ.

Because that cannot be taken from you.

This is what God has done for us, and this is a part of what God wants to do in us.

And this identity of Paul, as he's talking about it in his letter to the Ephesians, it's a part of this bigger reality.

Look at verse 3.

The mystery was made known to me by revelation.

This thing that God is doing in Paul and in the people to whom he writes is actually a part of this larger thing that God is doing to reveal who he is and how people can be reconciled to him.

And it's a mystery that is being revealed in a special way through Paul's ministry in this letter.

This means that there is something, this mystery has been planned since the beginning.

God is just now revealing it in its fullness.

And the mystery is not simply that God wants to save the Gentiles to whom Paul is writing this letter.

The mystery is look at verse 6.

That the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So this is a little bit of a review of what Jake talked about last week, but it's necessary because those first listeners, as I mentioned, they woefully underestimated their new identity in Christ and what it means and how the gospel shifts our identity from I am a Gentile who's also a Christian to I am a Christian.

Hard stop.

And I'm also a part of the Gentile people.

My ethnic group is Gentile.

The mystery here for Paul in particular is that these Gentiles who would have been seen by the Jews as very much outsiders, even if they acknowledge that, okay, God loves all people, this new identity in Christ means that for them, they are allowed to be a part of God's greatest blessings.

They are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise.

Same ones that the Jews were.

The Gentiles, the people outside the faith, do not merely get into the house, they get the inheritance.

There's an interesting phrase here that's translated into English, members of the same body, and it begins to paint the picture in our minds of what it means to be the people of God on mission.

So he's speaking specifically to the Gentiles about how God has done something for them and is doing something in them, and that they are heirs.

But this phrase members of the same body is so e interesting, and it's kind of an unusually strong word in the Greek, and it literally means co-bodied.

So oftentimes when we hear sermons or we read the Bible, we think about kind of individually what it means for us.

And I just want to put before you when our understanding of who we are in Christ begins to take root, that it is in becomes inseparable to us that it means something not just for me, but for us as a people.

No longer hear Paul saying, Do we say I'm a Jew and you're a Gentile?

Instead, we say we are Christians.

We're a part of this thing where God is putting on display his glory for all people to see.

We're one body, together with one promise, standing together, we have the same access to God.

This is what it means that God has done something for us, and our increasing understanding of this roots and works in us so that we understand what God is doing in us.

Co-bodies.

This is so powerful because the question goes beyond what has God done in me, which we thought a lot about in chapter one and chapter two.

Because there's a better question of what has God done in us.

And this is the mystery that grace brings outsiders all the way in.

And if you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus, you would not call yourself a Christian.

You would not identify as a Christian.

It matters.

Because sometimes what happens when you look into what the Christian faith teaches, you begin to think that you've got to kind of clean yourself up.

You've got to learn the culture of Christianity, become more religious, like the people in the room, and then perhaps God will accept you.

Perhaps God will begin working in you.

But what we see in this story, in this passage, is that God's grace is doing something in us, and he's doing something in all of us, and all people are invited into it, even you.

Through Jesus, those who are far away are brought near.

You receive a new identity, a new people to belong to, and access to God Himself.

Paul is saying these things to the Ephesians, and he declares that it has been his privilege to announce this.

It's his work as a follower of Jesus to announce this.

He says this in verse 7 of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

And even in his ability to fulfill this commission, in your ability is the working of his power.

So you say, okay, I acknowledge that because of what Christ has done, I was spiritually dead and now I'm alive.

And okay, now I'm beginning to understand that because of what Christ has done, that actually the dividing walls between me and others are lowered because my identity is no longer I am an Aggie and they are a longhorn.

It's no longer I'm from Oklahoma and they're from New York.

You know, it's no longer I'm an athlete and they're not so much.

It is I am in Christ, you are in Christ, and so we are co-bodied together as a part of this local expression of the church.

Because of Christ.

Those who are brought far away, whoever that might be for you, are brought near.

And for Paul, he's declaring that like I am a minister of this message to people, and it's because of the power of God working in me.

Verse 8.

To me, though, I am the very least of all the saints.

So you may be thinking, well, that's awesome that Paul thinks like that.

He understands his identity and the identity of people around him, but Paul's like a super Christian.

He identifies himself as the very least of all the saints.

This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

This is a great phrase.

Paul has spent almost three chapters telling us about what is ours in Christ.

And you might begin to think, and for some of you that have followed Christ for a long time, you're kind of like stuck.

You kind of feel stunted.

And if you're honest, a little apathetic, maybe even a little bored with the Christian message.

Here's what is true.

What is available to you because of what Jesus has done is unsearchable.

You've not reached the limits of it.

What God wants to do in you to help you understand your identity in Christ, what He wants to do in you as a part of a larger community because of what Christ has done, it's unsearchable.

There is more.

You will never reach the bottom of its beauty.

You will never totally capture with your mind how incredible it is.

And what can stunt us sometimes in our Christian faith is because you might know more than the people around you, you stop seeking to know more of what God wants to do in you and through you.

Paul is saying, hey, I am in prison, but it is my joy to tell you not only what's happened in my life, but what's happening in our lives because of Christ.

And as soon as you think that you've kind of run out of reasons to give glory to Christ with your life, you can't because the riches of his grace are unsearchable.

And that same grace that saved us and is saving us, it continues to work in us, making us new.

And that work isn't just individual.

See, I'm holding here the tension in this passage, which I think exists, between what Paul is saying about what's true about them as individuals and also what's true about them as a people.

And though I have my hands on each side as I'm telling you that, really it's all together, it's one thing.

The work isn't merely individual that God wants to do in you to help you become a seeker of the unsearchable riches of the grace that's made available to you in Christ, not just because in when you were saved, but for your whole life.

Look at verse 10.

So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.

I've been building to this moment to try to elevate in your mind the place of the church.

And what God is doing in the world.

The church isn't merely the audience hearing about God's wisdom.

The local church becomes the means by which God's wisdom is displayed.

This word, translated into English manifold, it carries this idea of something that's richly varied and multifaceted, like an intricate pattern with many colors.

This is what we're doing here.

This is what it means to be a part of a church.

It's not just Christianity, it is not just about you as an individual being saved.

It's not just about a place where people from varying backgrounds come together to worship because we all believe what's true about Christ.

The church is God's primary machine for putting on display to the world who he is.

This is the place of the church.

So if you know anybody that says, I'm a Christian, but I don't need the church, that ought to offend you.

Because the church, not just one person, but the people who understand their new identity in Christ together, according to Paul, is the very institution where God has ordained for his wisdom and his beauty to be put on display.

And not just to other people, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

So this is meant to speak to the highest powers that exist a Jew and a Gentile, a southerner and a northerner.

A Texans fan and a cowboys fan.

Sharing a table and being a part of the same church may not look cosmically significant, but Paul says it is.

People who in the world's mind should be separated because of these differences are a part of one family.

And that togetherness, that belonging that exists in one local church puts on display to the powers of the universe about who is actually in charge, and that's God Almighty.

The church doesn't merely announce what God is doing, the church is supposed to be the evidence of what God is doing.

I really believe an enormous problem that exists in our day is that Christians woefully underestimate or undervalue the church, the local church.

I think part of it is because when we think of church, oftentimes we think of going and hearing a sermon, and you have access to the greatest preachers that have ever lived via your phone and internet, all that kind of stuff.

You have access to information and resources.

So you think you can be a part of a church and not make the people of God on mission with united purpose the people that you're most committed to.

I really do believe that Christians today undervalue the church.

And there's all kinds of reasons where that happens, also.

It's not just easy access to information, it's because some of you have had a bad experience in history of the church.

I get all that.

But when people from different backgrounds and generations and ethnicities and economic circumstances and personalities and stories are reconciled to God and reconciled to one another through Jesus Christ, God says to the world and to the heavenly powers, look at what I am doing.

Look at what I'm doing.

Verse 11.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This has been God's purpose all along, and because of Jesus, verse 12, we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

Now, Paul in chapter 4 is about to spend three chapters telling the church how we're to walk together according to these truths.

We have a new identity in Christ, not just as individuals, but as a people.

But before he gets there, he does something really special.

He gets on his knees.

Now, standing was a normal posture in this day for a Jewish prayer.

But Paul is telling them in his letter that he's gotten on his knees, and this is meant to represent a level of intensity.

Have you ever spent some time with somebody you manage at work, or maybe somebody that you parent, somebody that's not quite as far along as you, and something's going on with them, and you're trying to explain to them the truth of something, and you just wonder whether or not they're getting it.

And they may be kind of nodding their head up and down, but you can kind of see it in their eyes.

Like, I'm not so sure you get the seriousness of this for each one of my kids as they've gotten to a place in their life where they begin to drive.

I sat each one of them down and I've just said, listen, I know that you've been like riding in the car your whole life, like no big deal.

You see people driving, you have friends driving, but let me let me just explain something to you.

I need you to understand in your core how serious you getting behind the wheel of a car is.

I mean, it's serious.

You could kill somebody, you could kill yourself.

I think this is some of what Paul's doing here.

He's saying, I've told you all this stuff for two, almost three full chapters.

And now I know that I can't quite get it across to you.

So I am on my knees and I'm begging you, I need this thing that I've told you about what Christ has done for you to raise you from being spiritually dead to new life.

I've told you what God is doing for you in abolishing the walls that separate people groups, talking to you about what God is doing in you to work powerfully, and all of this matters because it puts on display to the world who God is, but I'm not so sure you're getting it.

And so I'm on my knees and we're asking the question well, what's going to drive it deep in our hearts?

What's going to drive it deep in the heart of us as individuals and us as a people?

Listen to verse 14.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father.

He picks up back where he left off in verse one.

After this aside, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he 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.

He's taking this truth about who they are in Christ, and he's asking that God would just drive it deep, deep, deep in them, beyond the doubt, beyond the struggles, beyond the apathy, beyond the sort of cultural differences.

And it's requiring the work of the triune God, Father, Spirit, and Son.

The whole triune God is involved in making these people into what grace is calling them to be.

And it's happening in their inner being.

That is the deepest part of you.

It's interesting that Paul is saying he's praying this for them because they're already Christians.

He's not saying to them, I want for you to believe what's true about you, what Christ has done for you.

No, you you already believe this, but I want you to really, really believe it.

I want you to understand it.

I want for it to root in you, not just an intellectual agreement that, okay, I understand the message of Christianity.

God became flesh in the form of a man.

He lived a perfect, sinless life.

He died on the cross in a mysterious exchange.

Our sin goes to him and his righteousness comes to us through faith.

I don't want you just to understand that like an intellectual level, although that's a part of it.

I want for the truth and the beauty of this and how it represents the unsearchable riches of God's grace to take a deep root in you.

It means to settle down, to take up residence in you, to make itself at home with you.

Paul is praying that Christ would be fully home, invited into every room of their lives.

Imagine inviting someone to live in your house, but saying, you can use the living room, but you cannot use the bathroom.

Like this is where some of us are, and this is one thing that's stopping us, I think, from chapter 4, 5, and 6, where we're going, is we believe something is true about what Christ did for us.

But yet we still have areas of our lives where we've got rooms closed.

And Paul is saying, I'm praying for you that you will welcome Christ into every area of your life, into your finances, into your sexuality, into your sense of purpose.

Paul is begging them to, or begging God for them to fully surrender.

Because what he's gonna tell us we have to do in response to this in chapters 4, 5, and 6, which will be in the next few weeks, as I've mentioned multiple times, it's going to require this.

There is no room.

This is what we say.

Jesus, there is no room in my life, and there's no room in our church that is off limits to you.

But Paul's not finished.

He goes on to say that you, being rooted and grounded in love, what is the thing that takes this truth and drives it deep into your interior person?

It's Christ's love.

The magnificent and the beauty of it, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

You see, we want to to quickly go, okay, I believe these things about Christ, and I want to do these things for Christ, but without deep roots, roots that are taken down by way of our understanding of Christ's love, then the fruit that our life produces will not be what it could be.

So in front of our house, we have two enormous water oak trees.

They're enormous and they're they're very old.

I think they should be dead, but we have enough neighbors with pools.

I think that the water is keeping them alive.

When people come over to our house, this is oftentimes one thing that they would say about our house, like, wow, that is a magnificent tree.

You know what has not been said one time?

I wonder how what those roots are like.

I mean, those roots must really be deep.

I mean, they're only commenting on the magnificent of what has happened because the roots have been driven so deep and so wide that it's able to support this big, beautiful structure.

This is what Paul's praying for them.

Hey, before we talk about what everybody sees, I pray that the love of Christ will be driven so deep in you, and your understanding of how this love has revealed itself and Jesus dying on the cross for you.

It drives itself so deep in you, so deep, that you would just begin understanding what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

It's not about our ability to generate more love for God or for one another.

It's a kind of love that comes out of us when we have a growing understanding of what Christ has done for us in love.

This is difficult to grasp, and as Paul does for the Ephesians, my prayer for you is that you would be able to grasp it in increasing measure.

We need the reality of Christ's love to root deeply enough that it reshapes how we understand what it means to be made new as an individual and as a people.

This can never be a solo project, and this is where the place of the church is so valuable.

There are dimensions of Christ's love and it taking root in us, which we will only experience through Christ's people.

When someone forgives you, when someone stays, when your life is falling apart, when somebody carries your burden, when someone tells you the truth because they love you.

We don't like that one, but it's true.

When someone is different from you, welcomes you into their lives.

When someone you would never naturally have chosen is family becomes family because Jesus has welcomed both of you.

The church, this church, is not merely a room where we listen to the same sermon.

The church is a people among whom the love of Jesus becomes tangible.

This is what we're about.

And Paul wants you to know that you will never finish knowing this is true.

Because of your identity in Christ and our identity as a people.

Changes what we're capable of together.

We are one body.

Now we learn to live as one body.

We have been loved.

Now we become rooted in that love.

Christ lives in us.

Now Christ increasingly makes himself at home in us.

God has made us his people.

Now he is making us into the kind of people who created us to be.

This is what it means to be in Christ, and this is what it means to be in the Christian church.

But even as I say it, maybe you're hearing it, I think this feels impossible.

Paul gets to verse 20 and reminds us of the power of God to do the impossible.

He says, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

Now you remember the question we started with.

What would you have to see to conclude that God had done something powerful?

Paul is saying in this chapter that it is about what is God is doing in us as an individual, in us as a people, not just what God is going to do for us in our everyday lives.

And what God is doing in us is He's taking people that are far from God and bringing us near.

Grace welcomes all outsiders.

What God is doing on us because He's able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think, is He's He's taking what should be division and making us family.

What God has done in us, according to the power at work within us, is He's taking this truth and the beauty of Christ's love for us, and He's rooting it deeply in us, so that in time what will come out of it as an individual and as a people is a display that's so great that the highest powers that exist will know that God is glorious.

And all of this happens, it will not happen unless you can see your identity as a part of a larger identity of people together on mission for Christ.

So here's my one question, and with it will come a call to action, and then I'll be done and we'll take the Lord's Supper.

Where are you undercommitted to the people God has joined you to?

Where are you undercommitted to the people God has joined you to?

Maybe you're so committed, overcommitted everywhere else, that the gathering with the church is the first thing to sacrifice when you get tired.

If we see our identity in Christ as an inseparable part of the identity of a group of people, then it will be of the highest priority when that church gathers to open God's word, to pray together, to sing songs to God together, to encourage one another.

Maybe you're so overcommitted elsewhere that gathering with the church is the first thing that you sacrifice when you're tired.

And I get that.

Understanding and operating in your everyday life with an understanding that because of your identity in Christ, you now identify with a group of people on mission to put on display the glory of God.

For that to be true about you, it's going to require you to say no to some things in your everyday life.

I get it.

For those of you that are in a loop group, when you show up to the loop group, do you show up prepared, really anticipating or really being able to participate, are really ready to carry somebody else's burden.

Because that small group is a small expression of what must be true about this larger church, and that is that we together are putting on display to the highest of powers that exist in all the world the glory of God.

If you're not in a loot group, why not?

I get all the reasons, why not, but why not?

Maybe it's time for you to take a step.

Maybe the reason you're not in a loot group is because if you're honest, it's just not as the church is not as high of a priority for you as other things in your everyday life.

Now, let's talk about your gifts.

Maybe maybe you're undercommitted in the use of your gifts for the building of a local church.

Gifts of service, whatever talent you have.

Or let's talk about finances.

Maybe you're undercommitted in how you honor the Lord with your finances to allow the mission of the church to go forward because you're overcommitted in other areas that, if we're honest, are just not as important.

They do not have eternal significance.

What I want to challenge you to do is I want you to identify one place where you're undercommitted to the people of God, the people of God that He's joined you to, and I want you to choose to live differently in the month of October.

Identify one place where you're undercommitted to the people of God, the people that He's joined you to, and live differently in October.

And if you would say to yourself, Well, I don't even really like the people that are call themselves near town church.

Anybody say that?

Well, what I would encourage you to do is like this church has four, this city has 4,000 churches.

There's got to be one that you can fully commit to.

Because here's what's at stake the glory of God.

Because the world is watching how his people that gather together and call themselves Christian as an identity are identifying with other Christians on one mission together.

And we do all of this not so that God loves us more, he loves us completely and fully because of what Christ did on the cross.

We do this, we ratchet up our commitment to the people of God on mission because we understand now, as Paul is telling the Ephesians, that what God is doing has cosmic significance.

It's not just a place I go, I listen to the preacher and sing a few songs.

This is the people of God together on mission for the glory of God.

And how does this truth get rooted in us?

It's only by the power of God.

And so I'm going to pray that this happens not only for you, but for me.

Would you bow your head?