The Gospel in Just Two Verses | Pastor Josh McPherson | Made Alive

Welcome to Grace City Church Online.

This is our podcast channel for all sermon content from Grace City Church in Wenatchee, Washington.

We exist to help more people meet, love, and follow Jesus.

We're praying this message encourages you today, wherever you may be listening from.

Father in heaven, as we open your word, we ask that you would use your word and your servant Paul to open our eyes to see the glory of Christ Jesus.

And we're asking for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Bible's open.

Here we go.

The gospel in a greeting.

Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

We're going to look at three things.

Say the author, the recipients, and the message of Ephesians.

And it goes like this.

We have the author in the first portion, we have the recipient in the second, and the message in the third.

And in these few sentences, in two verses, we have the entire message of Ephesians encapsulated and put in a power punch.

You know, Pastor Adams had a great analogy.

He reminded me of this this week.

He said, you know, you used the imagery analogy of the Grand Canyon.

And we're going to traverse through the Grand Canyon of Ephesians together and look at all the wonders of the gospel and be changed by the grandeur of the size of God in Ephesians.

And he said, Remember what happened when we went into the Grand Canyon?

I was like, oh my gosh, I had completely forgotten because Adam and myself and a couple guys took our boys to hike through the Grand Canyon a few years ago from one end to the other.

It was an adventure.

And so we started like at three or four in the morning.

It's dark, we've got headlamps.

You're standing on the precipice of this dark void.

And you're like, I know there's like a historic natural wonder in front of us, but I just can't see it yet.

But I'm on the edge of it.

And we began our hike, and not, I mean, I don't know, Adam, 50 yards?

Where's Adam here?

A hundred yards.

I mean, just down the trail.

Adam, a couple guys were, what's that?

20.

20.

I mean, just boom, right off the top of the trail, Adam, a couple guys were in front, and they're like, guys, and I mean, right off the parking lot trail, a giant elk walked right across the trail, and we're like, the Grand Canyon, baby, we're always seeing wildlife.

And we weren't, we were two minutes into the adventure, and we were already seeing glory and majesty.

And we couldn't even see the rest of the Grand Canyon.

That's like verses one and two.

You can't yet see the glory of chapters two and then chapters three and wait till chapter four and chapter five and chapter six.

Whoa! I mean, that's how you're gonna feel by the time we get there.

This is just like the greeting, the intro.

And I'm telling you, by the end, by God Christ, you're gonna be like the elk of verse one.

Woo! It's like that awesome.

So are you ready?

Let's go.

That's as excited as I can get.

If you can't get excited with that intro, you're on your own.

Totally helpless.

Okay.

Chapter 1, verse 1, here we go.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what I want to do is I want to teach you how to read your Bible.

Because when you're in narrative, you've got to read large chunks to get the story of the flow of where the story is going.

When you're in an epistle, which is a letter, we're going to slow things down and we're going to kind of go word by word.

Because there's a lot in the Greek language, there's a lot in every word.

And when I say Greek language, I'm not trying to say you can't understand it unless you know Greek.

What I'm saying is the means of the vehicle of the Greek language that Paul is using has capacities that the English language quite frankly does not in containing words that speak volumes of things.

So for instance, America uh English has one word for the word love.

The Greek language has five to unpack the different shades and angles and beauties and dimensions of the nature of love.

Now it's not to say that that English is is inferior and Greek is superior, but what I'm saying is the language that God sovereignly chose at the time of the writing of this that he used to convey the message has capacities to convey shades and dimensions of reality that, quite frankly, the English language lacks.

And that doesn't mean that we can't get to the meaning in our English Bible.

Of course not, otherwise we'd be reading from the Greek language.

We can get there, but it's worth the time to stop and look at it so that we don't run past it.

For instance, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, contains 800 pages of systematic theology to unpack.

And then he goes on and he says, to God's holy people, to the saints in Ephesus, who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace and peace to you from God.

What's happening?

The author, Paul.

What should you think when you hear Paul?

Well, you should hear the man who's going to embody the very message he's writing.

Paul, former God hater, Christian persecutor, Allah Acts 7, radically saved through God's sovereign intervention, interrupting his current path that he had deep convictions about walking, giving him a new identity, filling him with a new power, baptizing him into a new reality, brought into a new family, then sent on a mission with new purpose.

That's who's writing this letter.

When they saw and heard the name Paul, they'd smile.

Paul.

Wild.

The reason it's important to understand who Paul is is because when you read Ephesians, you might be tempted to think, oh, he's unpacking some complex systematic theology as an exercise of intellectual ascension to these glory.

No, no, no.

Paul is telling the story of the gospel from his experience and his perspective.

Meaning, Paul would never be tempted to think in a million years, upon pondering and deep reflection and intellectual rigor, I found Christ.

He would never say in a million years, because that's not what happened to him.

The picture of salvation wasn't Paul, like, Jesus, Jesus, where ye at?

Come here.

Come on, buddy.

Gotcha.

That's not what Paul Paul's like.

Paul's like, Jesus, screw you, march away, march away.

Assaulted.

Paul's picture of salvation is not I found Christ.

But rather, Christ violently assaulted and found and rescued me.

And he's going to use words like election and predestination and foreknowledge.

And Christians get nervous because that they don't want to lose their autonomy and they don't want to, you know, become robots and cast dispersions on the nature of God, but blah, blah, blah all these confusing things.

And I want you to hear as you read Ephesians, why am I winded right now?

Am I that out of shape and fat?

Wow.

My wife looks worried.

She's like, why are you sucking wind right now?

You're just talking.

I don't know.

I'm getting excited looking at the elk, you know what I mean?

If you know, you know.

You know, you've been out there.

Oh, oh.

Anyways.

I do not remember what I was talking about.

What?

Oh, yeah, thank you, thank you.

Hopefully, I wasn't predestined to forget that.

Um you'll get that when you go home.

Words like election, foreknowledge, predestination can get people, kind of get their theological, you know, you know, panties in a bunch.

And it's like, hey, hey, hey, calm down here, calm down here.

These doctrines were not given to confuse us, they were given to comfort us.

And here's what I want you to know.

How many of you are hoping that your wayward son or daughter, or that neighbor friend who's been hard-hearted and far from God, you're hoping that they, that you're you're you're counting on their salvation on the basis of them coming to their senses one day.

Does that get anyone excited and hopeful?

It's like if if them waking up on their own is what we're basing this off of, then then then they're host.

I talked to someone yesterday, they're like, they're like everyone in my work, they're good people.

And their goodness, I feel like, blinds them from their need for Jesus.

And I wanted to say they're good, huh?

Well, what you should ask them is good according to what standard?

Now we're in it.

Good according to who?

You, me, the world?

Where does your definition of good come from?

And in contrast to what definition of evil?

There is no definition of good unless there's a lawgiver above us and outside of us defining what good is otherwise.

You may think you're good, but I don't think you're good.

And now where are we at?

Everyone needs to have a reality-altering encounter with Jesus.

And what Paul's gonna say is we pray for that to happen confident confidently in the work of Christ because the work of salvation is not ultimately resting on man figuring it out.

How many of us think, you know, if a corpse is dead, you know, you know, um the only thing that has to happen here is for them to bring themselves back to life.

Never going to happen unless a power source outside of themselves causes them to come alive.

And that's what Paul is going to unpack for us here.

Paul, that one who was made alive in Christ, and then watch this: an apostle of Christ Jesus.

Now, the word apostle is actually getting kind of thrown a lot right now around online, and you don't, if you're not following, like you know, you're welcome.

Don't don't you don't need to go track this down.

But there's lots of like consternation over apostle and the use of the word apostle.

No need to get excited about it.

Very, very simple.

The word apostle, as it's used in both classic and Koine Greek, means something or someone who's been commissioned to carry and deliver cargo of immense importance, like a ship carrying precious goods or an emissary carrying an important message.

In biblical Greek, it's always referring to a person.

And that person has been marked by a commission sent to deliver and proclaim a very particular message to a specific people.

Now, here, Paul within the first five words of the letter, signifies that he belongs to Christ as a messenger and emissary, carrying a message he's been assigned and commissioned to deliver to a very certain people regarding the gospel.

He's saying, I'm not only possessed by Christ, but it's for the purpose of propagating a particular message.

Now, the the tension becomes, well, do we still have apostles today?

And look, a longer conversation we'll get into later in chapter four, which is really great.

But Paul's gonna identify apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, as this oftentimes called the five-fold gifting to the church.

And the question becomes, well, isn't that kind of dangerous if we give guys these titles?

Here's what I want to say, very simple.

So here's the question: Are there still apostles running around today in the same vein as the apostle Paul?

To which the answer is a resounding no.

One of the marks of an apostle was that they had witnessed Christ first hand.

They had met him personally, they had met the risen Christ personally, and been commissioned by the resurrected Christ to go to the churches with the good news of the gospel and go to the Jews and Gentiles with the good news of the gospel.

And Jesus had 12 ascends, one fails, and then Jesus comes back and has a face-to-face encounter with Paul, where he knocks him off his horse, punches him in the face, saves him, and then sends him.

And so Paul now is in the line of apostles, even though he'll say, I'm the least of all the apostles, as one abnormally born in 1 Corinthians, when he talks about he's he's conscious, he's conscious of the unique way he came into the office of apostle, and yet even in his humility, he becomes the apostle of apostles.

And so the question is, are there still apostles running around today sharing message that's equal in revelation to the canon of scripture, to which we say categorically no.

If any dude's out there going, I'm here as an apostle with revelation from heaven, with a revelatory gift that's equal to the canonized scripture, they need to go to a funny farm locked inside a small cell and the key thrown away.

That is, that woo-hoo, like not a good thing.

Then the question becomes, is the gift of the apostolic still at work?

And I would say yes.

Long conversation we'll get to in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

The point being is does God still give the gift of the apostolic, meaning to men who pioneer gospel works in unreached places, establishing churches and kingdom outposts with kind of the unique, courageous, prophetic, entrepreneurial gift that's moving the front edge of the kingdom, advancing out into darkness in a way that the apostolic gift is uniquely wired for?

I would say totally.

And we would call that the small apostolic gift.

Not an office of revelatory authority, but a gift that God gives to advance the kingdom.

Amen?

We'll get to that later.

But when Paul says here, an apostle, this isn't a guy acting in a gift.

This is a man assigned to an office as an emissary carrying a message of great worth and value.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, what he's saying is this: he has been sent to speak, and we have an obligation to listen.

Hey everybody, midterms are coming up.

How should you think about it?

What should you do?

Well, as Christians, we're called to pray for those who are in authority over us.

And so we've put together an incredible 21-day fasting and prayer guide for you.

If you're a pastor or a Christian, you can access this.

We'll include the link below.

It starts October 14th.

It leads all the way up to the midterm election.

And it's 21 devotions and installments from men like Eric Metaxis, Frank Turek, Josh Howerton, Nick Freitas, Russell Johnson, Adam James, Nate Shatzlein, John Lovell, and myself, biblical, historical, and practical insights to guide you through how to think about elections and politics and Christianity and how to pray for this midterm election we're coming up to.

You can check out the link.

It's a free PDF ebook.

You can download, you can have it on your phone.

In the back, there's an appendix that has a ton of quotes from our founders in relationship to the critical nature of Christianity.

On the front end, there's a guide to help you think through how to fast, if it would help serve you or your church.

We're making it available to you free of charge.

Check it out.

I hope it helps.

Then he ratchets this up by the will of God.

It's of note here that Paul has become an apostle, apostles, but he does not necessarily identify himself by what he has done and accomplished.

Rather, the emphasis he's putting here is on what God has done and accomplished.

Paul's identity was firmly rooted in his heart.

I am God's because he chose me.

The primary actor, the decisive agent in the story is the will of God, not Paul's wherewithal and common sense.

The calling is not rooted in Paul's record of works, but rather in God's work and Christ's work.

In doing so, Paul's framing God as the primary actor.

He's not stressing so much that he was an apostle, so much as he's stressing how he became one.

He didn't volunteer, he didn't get assigned the office from a church, he was selected by the sovereign hand of God.

Meaning, Paul was given the responsibility and authority to speak, and we've been charged with the responsibility to listen.

Amen?

Amen.

Number two, the recipients of the letter.

And this is gonna be very important for us to understand because this is this gives us kind of the four marks, the irreducible marks of what it means to be a Christian.

Number one, he writes it to the saints or to God's holy people.

Now, the biblical meaning of the word saints or holy people is different than what the current church or even society deems it to mean.

And so I want to clarify it.

Today, when we hear saint, we hear a person who's been nominated because of their merit and virtue for a position of elite religious stature.

A person who, because of their own virtuous merit, has been declared through ecclesiastical procedures to be a saint.

In other words, sainthood is based on how many poor people they fed.

Sainthood is based on how much good works they were perceived to do.

This could not be further from the tr from the biblical meaning of how Paul's using God's holy people or saints here.

He's not referring to an elite minority in the church.

Rather, he's referring to the church.

This is definitionally, categorically, how he's defining one of the marks of the church.

And if you're new to Christ or checking Christ out online or listening to this on a run somewhere, or you're here in this very room, one of the reasons this has been called the manifesto of the church is that it describes for us in very clear language what the church is.

It's not first an organization, it is certainly not a building, although the church must be organized, and owning buildings is totally fine and wonderful and advances the kingdom of God.

The church is first and primarily a people.

And there are local expressions of the global reality of the people of God.

And what we're gonna see as we go through the book of Ephesians is the glory of how God's filling the earth, the fullness thereof, with his body.

And you've heard me say this a lot, but I'm gonna say it again.

There's nothing like the church.

The church is everywhere.

I regularly hear stories of people from our hometown.

They're moving, they're going to school, or they're going to work, and they go somewhere, and lo and behold, wherever they go is the church.

And because God has his people everywhere.

And how God is filling the earth is he's filling it not with some ooey-gooey substance, he's filling it with real people who have his real spirit.

You are the manifest presence of Christ on the earth.

That's wild talk.

Have you looked at yourself recently?

I mean, this is how we start tapping into the mystery of the gospel.

That God's filling the earth with his manifest presence through the church.

This is why gathering and worshiping and praying and going to the capital and worshiping and praying, this is why these are important.

This is why you should start businesses and go into the communities, because you're carrying the manifest presence of God into the earth.

That's how God is filling the earth.

Every Christian is a saint.

Every Christian has been separated from the world and yet not taken out of it, because that's not how God operates.

We don't build monasteries and become monks.

We build outposts and become missionaries.

Very important.

Christendom and the coming of God's kingdom is not monasteries and monks pulling out of the world, it's outposts and missionaries going into the world as those emissaries, as those ambassadors carrying a message.

And the question becomes, well, how do we carry the message?

And we're going to see that in the life of Paul himself.

But not only are Christian saints, they are full of faith.

And this is where I think it's helpful to look at this.

There's the passive or active way to look at the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Passively, it means those who have acted and lived in a faithful manner.

And while in one sense that that is true, the primary active meaning is more accurately stated as such: those who are full of faith or those who are believing.

Meaning to the faithful in Christ is to say those who are actively exercising faith.

Isn't that a cartoon or something like that?

A movie?

I'm sailing.

What's that from?

Okay, don't tell me.

Is it a bad movie?

What is it?

What about Bob?

Why do my kids know that?

That's amazing.

What about Bob?

Look, I'm sailing.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Look, I'm sailing.

Christians are like, look, I'm faithing.

Look, look, I'm faithing.

That's what it means to I'm I'm act actively acting.

Out my faith.

The primary mark of us as Christians is our belief and faith in God.

However, it does not mean that we throw the bat baby out with the bathwater.

In that while the active meaning here is, in its primary sense, the active expression of believing God, the passive meaning is still true, in that those who are believing in Christ, who are full of faith in Christ, will ever increasingly live faithfully for Christ.

You see in that connection?

But it's important not to flip the order.

The reformer said, sola fide, sola vive, faith alone, but faith that's alive.

We're saved by faith alone, but not a faith that stands alone.

It's a faith that grows the fruit of sanctification.

In other words, the greatest evidence for sins forgiven are sins forsaken.

Isn't that good?

The greatest evidence of sins forgiven are sins forsaken.

And because that that's the prog progression of the gospel.

The danger is we flip the order.

If I forsake my sins or just work harder at doing better, then maybe I'll be loved and forgiven.

That's not the gospel.

That's works-based righteousness, and it's exhausting, and it just doesn't work.

I met a sweet gal yesterday and she said, Pastor Josh, I want to meet you and say hi.

And so I love this church, so incredible, great people, and I'm growing in my faith.

I'm gonna get married, I'm so excited.

And she's like, you know, I've been scared to go to church.

Because when I was 18, I was in her church and I was smoking.

And they said they said, You can't come to church if you smoke.

That's that's it's a bad habit, and Christians don't smoke, and blah, blah, blah.

And she's like, I became so terrified, embarrassed, and shame-filled, that rather than stop smoking, she stopped going to church.

And and and as God's my witness, I don't know if she if she still smokes or not.

And I and I don't know if I care.

She's like, I feel like I have a family that loves me and accepts me, and I'm feeling my faith growing.

Now, now watch this very careful because that the world is using that language.

It is a sweet and glorious thing to be loved and accepted and forgiven.

And if that is true in Christ, what will also simultaneously be increasingly true about that person?

Sins will increasingly be forsaken.

The gospel is not God loves you, he's for you, he's accepted you, and you stay in your sin.

The gospel is God has loved you, reached out to you, made a way for you to be saved from your sin and then experience victory over your sin, increasingly so as you walk towards him and away from the world.

But here's the danger is we tell people to clean it up before they show up.

Think of how little value the church would be is if as a result of Grace City Church being in business for 30 years, you know, watch the internet take that phrase, being in business.

You know what I mean.

Showing up, doing the church stuff.

As a result, hundreds of people stopped smoking and went anchor.

And then all died and went to hell.

What's the point of that?

You do realize not smoking is not what gets you into heaven.

And so the danger is we present Christianity as as an a self-improvement plan with religious language that helps you get fit for Jesus.

And it's like, well, who who who cares?

Well, what's happening here?

Look, I can do more push-ups now because I stopped smoking.

Glory to Jesus.

Well, that's great.

You're gonna die and go to hell as a as a push-up champ.

That helps nobody.

What Paul's saying here is those who place their faith in Christ, and I'll say it like this.

I was talking to uh a man this week in a I was out of town with my son, and and he said, you know, I'm I've been thinking back on how I was discipled into the faith.

And I'm I'm increasingly becoming more grateful for the man who mentored me in my faith.

Because when I came to faith in Christ, man, I was a mess.

Drinking, porn, smoking, all the habits and trappings of the world, friends, entertainment, music, just just fully lapping in the offerings of the world.

And and and there was a genuine conversion, and I love Jesus.

And then what that man began doing was not helping me lose all my bad habits, but helping me grow in love with Jesus.

And as he was telling me this, he got emotional.

He said, Not once did he tell me to stop smoking, not once did he tell me to stop looking at porn, not once did he tell me to do these things.

And and and um there is a place for that.

I mean, so don't take this as like, oh, let's just kind of nope, there is a place sometimes, because other stories that a brother's like, bro, knock it off, and God uses that as well.

But the point he made, I thought, was very sweet.

He said he knew that I was fragile in my faith, and I had been, I had been kind of beaten down emotionally and spiritually by a very overbearing dad.

And so the wisdom of his approach was not to work hard to get me to do better things, but to cultivate in me a deeper love for Jesus.

And here's what I found as he walked me closer to Jesus, the glory and the radiance of Christ began burning away the chaff of desires for worldly things.

So that I felt appropriate shame and guilt in the presence of Christ with what I was bringing into the presence of Christ.

And what I found was it wasn't guilt and shame from a man, it was conviction from the Spirit of God that made me want to change.

Therefore, there is now no longer any of those who are condemned in Christ, right?

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ, but there is conviction to turn from that which is not of Christ.

And so he said it was it was wow, like the closer, so he'd come back and I'd be like, Hey, how's that drink?

How's that drink going?

And he would and he was like, Well, I just decided this week I didn't want to anymore.

He said my mentor would be like, That's good.

Let's read some more.

And then next week, hey, how's uh how's that issue of of of pornography going?

And he said, I would just say, like, the more I read of the Bible and the more I get of Jesus, the less I want to look at it.

He'd be like, he just smiled.

And he said, it was if he knew something that I didn't know but was discovered over time, and that is that Jesus is better than everything the world was offering to compete with Jesus.

Isn't that awesome?

And so discipleship wasn't so much him going, stop that, don't do that, never do that, knock it off.

Discipleship was, hey, look at Jesus.

And we're gonna get into chapter 1, verse 3, which is like maybe my favorite sermon next week.

And I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but Paul gives us, I believe, the superpower of the Christian life.

He gives us the superpower that is the Christian life that enables you to push through any circumstance, that enables you to persevere through it and endure any tribal trial.

It is the superpower of Christianity, the Spirit of God, that makes you something completely different than you were before, and it's all it's shot all through the next 10 verses in Ephesians.

And what happens is when you look to Christ and you see all that you have in Christ, you begin getting supercharged with that superpower.

And then you just begin living a new life.

Hey guys, interrupting the podcast real quick to let you know that October 24th, 2026, before the midterms, we are inviting all Christians and churches in Washington State, if you live in Washington State, to come to our capital in Olympia.

We're gonna take a few hours on that Saturday.

Details are in the description below to worship and pray.

We're gonna ask the Lord for righteous outcomes in this midterm election.

And I would love to see you there.

Now, maybe you're listening and you're not in Washington State.

I would encourage you, if you're a pastor, take your church.

If you're a Christian, talk to your pastor, go to the capital of your state, take a day in October, show up on a Saturday, worship Jesus, pray, get into the building and ask the Lord to rule and reign in that place.

Wouldn't it be amazing if all through the month of October Christians were rallying at capitals all across the country, worshiping Jesus and asking God's blessing on this midterm.

I love you guys.

If you're in Washington State, October 24th, check out the details in the description below.

We'll see you there.

To the saints who are full of faith, connected to Christ, the church, number three, in Christ.

This may seem obvious, but Paul goes to great lengths to make it.

Union with Christ is the very essence of salvation in him, used no less than nine times in the first chapter, or 164 times in all of Paul's writings in the New Testament.

Here, Paul is saying two things that we are connected in Christ to himself and to his people.

And that's the important part to see.

To be in Christ is to be personally and vitally connected to Christ as branches to a tree, as arms to a body, vitally and inseparably connected so that what is true of one is true of the other, so much so that Paul can say, we've been raised up with Christ and seated in the heavenlies, and therefore, in being connected to Christ, we are connected, watch this, to the church.

How?

Because it's impossible to be a part of the body without being related to both its head and its members.

Much of what will be the message of the rest of this book is here in bud or seed form.

To be a Christian is in essence to be in Christ, one with him and his people.

Which means by implication, you don't get to say, I love Jesus, I just don't like his church.

You don't get to say that.

You don't get to say, I love Christ, but I'm not part of the church.

That makes no sense.

It's like I love the head, I hate the body.

Like, you can't be like, oh, I'm I'm connected to the head, I just don't want the body.

No, no, you are connected to the body if you are in Christ.

And watch this.

If you don't like the body, I question if you're in Christ.

This is real talk.

If you regularly, and this is the danger of social media and being online, and this is just a warning to us as a church, I don't care what the internet does, I care what Grace City does.

Can I just be very clear?

I don't care what people who've never been here or know us or met us say about us.

I care about how we act.

Okay?

And there needs to be a holy fear of God that returns to the church that causes a hesitation in those who claim to be Christians to shoot at the body of Christ.

You do realize it is a terrifying thing to hate the bride of Christ and in the name of discernment and pious purity constantly attack those who are in Christ you've never met, to the point where I would say that one is in danger of not being in the body.

Because in any any part that's like it's like cut that thing off.

Why?

Because it's hurting.

That actually hurt.

I didn't plan on doing that.

I'm like seeing stars right now over there, right now.

I want Paul said I beat my body, I just beat my face.

This is wild.

The things I don't do to get the message across.

No, I'm kidding.

What what what what's the point?

I want us as a church to grow in our love for the church.

Okay?

I don't want a pastor of cranky people who think we're on the mountain and everyone else is just struggling to get to the top.

That is a wickedly arrogant, self-righteous, condescending position that I think does not carry with it the aroma of the spirit of Christ.

The irony is it's being done in the name of being pure for Christ when I think it actually lacks the aroma and spirit of Christ.

Because the man and woman filled with Christ, they want to serve the church, strengthen the church, honor the church, protect the church.

They want to give and serve and honor the church.

They care about the reputation of the church, not to bury or hide things, but not to unnecessarily create public spectacles in attacking Christians they've never met on things they don't know about and exercise in gospel and slander and thus drag the name of Christ to the mud.

It happens all the time, I've heard.

And here's what I want you to hear.

I don't care what the world does out there.

I'm very jealous for the house of Gray City to be a place of honor and respect where we extend grace and love to the body of Christ.

And where we don't have facts, we believe the best.

Because there's a danger in becoming so preoccupied with the perceived lack of sanctification in people you don't know that you miss the sanctifying work of God in your life, and then you become an empty, hollow, shallow, religious hypocrite that's an enemy of God, not a member of the family of God.

I'm online with with my buddies a lot, and it's like we just tremble at the at the general lack of the fear of God that it appears to be over the church of Christ right now in America, at least those who claim to be in the church.

A little more fear, a little less certainty on your judgment of people you never met, and a little more commitment to walk faithfully where God's placed you would go a long way in the Church of America.

And I want Grace to set the pace.

So you don't get to say you love Jesus but don't like the church.

And you're you're like, well, yeah, but this church or that church has all these problems.

And I'm like, it you're right.

You know why?

Because you're there.

You bring your sin, you bring your baggage, you bring your narrow-mindedness, you bring your criticism, you bring, and here, guys, I'm just gonna, guys, I just called you guys.

Hey dudes, let's just be real talk right now.

You know my proclivity is critical spirit.

It's the dark side of the of the of the of the nature of the prophetic.

In the spirit, it's clear and sharp and helpful and edifying to the body of Christ.

In the flesh, it's devastating to my wife, my kids, and then everyone around me.

And so I have to constantly walk and check is am I having a critical spirit?

Calling in discernment, or am I truly walking in the power of the spirit to be a helpful tool in the hands of the king?

I'm asking myself that question all the time.

And there's something about just the corrosive nature of a critical spirit that works against the health of the body of Christ.

And it's like if you if you if that is you, God will remove you from the body of Christ to preserve the body, and you'll think you're that you're doing it because you're a gift to the body.

I see it all the time.

And so we want to walk in the humility that says, I want to see how I can strengthen, serve, support, give, pray, care for, exercise my gift.

And look, here, this isn't this isn't an argument to like uh uh uh uh make Grace City your home.

If you're listening online, you don't have to move here, you know, from somewhere, but you can find a church where you can be that kind of Christian.

God has the expression of his church all over the world.

And I'm saying find a local church where they preach the gospel and open the word and call their people to mission, to walk in faith, to worship unabashedly, and to walk out the obedience of faith.

And then get in there in warts and all, love it and work for the strengthening of it.

I was talking with some friends at at um uh the Noble Women Conference yesterday, and they've been here from day one.

And I said, you know, I said, you'll have no idea the stabilizing effect of people who commit to the body of Christ and walk in the obedience of faith for a long time.

And so wherever you're at, I'm saying it doesn't be great, I'm saying find a church, pick a church, no perfect church, find a church, anchor in, and to the glory of God, short of them teaching apostasy, serve, give, strengthen that place.

Oh, that 20 church plants would start in Winanchee.

30 church plants for the glory of God, that there'd be there'd be 10, 15, 20 more great cities, 20 more sage hills, 20 more.

Like, like let's go, let's let's watch this place be filled with the fullness of God.

As God fills his people and they go, plant churches to the glory of him.

You can't love the head and hate the body, the big idea.

Last tension here citizens of heaven.

Christians are saints, full of faith, connected to the to Christ and his body, working for its good, and they're citizens of earth.

Watch this.

Christians are seated in heaven, walking on earth.

Christians are citizens of heaven, located there eternally, while their residentship is here temporarily on earth, like someone on a trip just passing through, except it gets better.

We're here as sojourners, but the trip isn't eventually to get to heaven, the trip is to bring heaven here.

You do realize that that will be the consummation of all things.

The consummation of all things will not just be caught up into the air, like the song says, as the world burns behind us, waha ha ha ha.

And then we're boop, get put on a cloud, handed a harp, drawn a robe, and bling, bling, bling for eternity.

Like, kill me now.

Like that is not compelling to me.

Nor is it the picture of heaven that we have in the words.

Heaven is heaven thundering to earth and establishing the rule and the reign of Christ Jesus on this earth as it is in heaven, where his will is done perfectly, the Son is worshipped eternally, and all wrong has been made right, all sin has been paid for, and all evil has been punished, and what God intended in the garden is restored now in the great city of the new heavens and the new earth here on this planet.

That's what we're working towards.

That's exciting.

So when we think about what's gonna happen, it's the golf clap for the new heavens, new earth.

That was great.

That was great.

What's gonna happen is not that we we we escape earth, but the heaven comes thundering down and encapsulates earth.

This is what is so exciting.

And when he says to the saints in Ephesus, he's he's he's using Greek parallelism to speak to the Christians in their physical location, saints in Ephesus, while simultaneously connecting them to the reality of their spiritual standing in Christ Jesus, meaning surrounded by gross paganism, materialism, and false spirituality and sensuality and idolatry, they are nonetheless secure in Christ, not on the basis of their own work, on the basis of faith that unites them to Christ's work, seated in the heavenlies, walking through earth.

And in doing so, Paul frames the tension that is your life.

He frames the tension that is the Christian's life, to be a stranger in a foreign land, identifying with Christ in the heavenlies, while walking through our temporary home in Ephesus or Winanchee in its broken state.

One of the great privileges of the church is to be the answer to Jesus' prayer, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Finish it on earth as it is in heaven.

You do realize that when you gather here on Sundays and we worship King Jesus and we lift our voices and our hands and our hearts, we're answering that prayer.

Because in heaven is the eternal worship of the Son.

All the creatures and the elders are falling before him and casting their thrones, their their crowns before him, and they're worshiping the king.

And when we enter into that slipstream of worship, we're bringing heaven to earth.

When we enter into our prayer meetings at church camp and our prayer time afterward, we're bringing heaven to earth.

Heaven is not only brought to earth when you go and preach the gospel at your workplace, heaven is brought to earth when you come into the house of God and lift up your voice to the people of God to sing his praises because he attends the worship of his people.

I had the unique opportunity of being in a room recently where one day a group of folks sang and they worshiped and they and they praised and they and they extended their hands to heaven and their hearts were poured out the longing for the presence of God, and it was palpable and powerful, the presence of God.

The very next day, same room, sang songs with a room full of people that were not worshiping Jesus, they were singing lyrics to chords.

And the room, the vibe, the vibe, the presence could not have been different.

One was attended by the power of God, the other was just the singing of clashing cymbals.

Do you realize that your longing for God, your hunger and heart for the presence of God is what draws the presence of God?

And that you come in here every Sunday.

This is your assignment to come in here and to worship God.

Because this is not about us.

We come to exalt Christ, worship Christ.

When we sing, we're worshiping Christ.

When we preach, we're proclaiming Christ.

When we take communion, we're declaring Christ until He comes.

When we pray, we're looking to and talking to Christ.

This whole service is not about you.

This whole service is oriented to get our gaze on God.

That's the point.

And if you're here as an unbeliever, we're glad that you're here.

We're so glad that you're here.

But would not be helpful for you if we made this whole service about you.

That's why you are currently where you're at.

You need someone to turn your gaze away from you onto Jesus and watch things begin to change in powerful ways.

Because life is not solved by looking inward, life is solved by looking outward and beholding Jesus.

That's the good news of the gospel.

Christians are saints, full of faith, connected to Christ in his church, walking out that reality in this life.

They are in the world, but they are not of the world.

What's the point?

Paul is a real man writing to real people in a real place about real realities of spiritual salvation and physical location of how our Christianity is to be lived out.

Lastly, the message, and the band can come out.

Grace.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to God's holy people, and emphasis to the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace.

In using this word, Paul begins Ephesians with profound theological importance.

For grace in the New Testament characteristically denotes God's unmerited or undeserved favor in providing salvation for sinners through Christ's sacrificial death.

Used 155 times in the New Testament, 100 times by Paul, 12 times in Ephesians, grace to you and peace.

Well, having different meanings, grace and peace, it's it predominately means peace with God.

So grace to you and peace is not grace to you and peace with the world.

It's grace to you that brings peace with God.

Now think of the opposites of those words.

The opposite of grace is law, demands, duty, discipline, merit, conditions, earning, burden, despair, hopelessness.

So if you don't get grace, that's what you get.

5G farmers, the first one is grace.

Everything begins and ends with grace.

Every breath you've taken, every beat of your heart is a gift of grace.

And one of the marks of Christians is that they are able to give grace precisely because they have what?

Received grace.

The oxymoron of our time, that those reformed theologians that have broad social media platforms that proclaim the doctrines of grace would be the most graceless, critical people I know.

It's wild.

It makes no sense.

You shouldn't be proud of proclaiming the doctrines of grace and then demonstrate a wholesale inability to extend that grace to anyone.

And so if you're wrestling with extending grace, it might be because you've stopped or failed or have never received actual grace from God.

Because when you receive grace from God, you're like, whoa.

Wow.

It gives you new eyes to see everyone.

Because when you receive the grace of God, what the grace of God does is opens you up to how little you deserve what you just received.

You're like, well, this doesn't make any sense.

Uh uh, oh, I've been forgiven, but does he know what I've done?

Yeah, that's the point.

That's why it's called grace.

Grace to you is a thundering statement of reality that can only be made if there was a price that was paid to satisfy the righteous justice and wrath of God.

When he says, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, he's saying it took both to make that happen.

The idea and plan of the Father, the work and actions of the Son, and then as we'll see later, the application of the Spirit in bringing grace to you.

If you've experienced grace, it's because a good Father, who oversees all things, saw and forknew your need for it and took decisive action steps to make it available before you even knew you'd need it.

It's mind-blowing.

Think about the opposite of peace: conflict, turmoil, tension, stress, anxiety, enmity, strife, dissension, anger, angst, unrest.

These are not merely cliche throwaway words.

Grace and peace is both the cause of God's work and the expression of the effect of God's work contained in a greeting.

The grace of God that brings about the peace of God, without which you be left to your own works and be at war with God.

From our Father and Lord Jesus.

What's the big idea?

Here's the big idea.

When God wants to make a point or send a message, he often wraps it in a person.

What do I mean?

This is what I mean.

Don't turn there, I'm gonna read this and be done.

In Acts chapter 7, and the band can come out.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

I want to read this to you.

In Acts chapter 7, when the members of the Saint of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at Stephen.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

Stephen's preaching the gospel publicly.

The religious folks don't like it.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

Look, he said, I see heaven open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

At this they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragging him out of the city.

They began to stone him.

Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

A young man preaches the gospel, they say, Stop.

He says, Sorry, can't do it.

And he sees Jesus stand from his seated throne to give a standing ovation to the young, bold, courageous voice in the wilderness.

And they begin stoning him publicly, which is a very slow, painful death.

And to make sure it was sanctioned by both the church and the state, they laid their cloaks before a guy named Saul, who was overseeing it to make sure it had the proper administrative and magisterial support.

And that man's name was Saul.

While they were stoning Stephen, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold it against them.

Do not hold this sin against them.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep, and Saul approved of their killing of him.

Now picture it.

He's preaching Christ.

Paul says, Stone him.

And as they're murdering him, Saul smirks.

And then Saul hears Stephen pray, God, don't hold this sin against him.

And I can't help but think that smirk grew into a confident smile.

You smug little punk.

You have no idea.

And Paul, in misplaced zeal, does the following.

You think COVID was bad?

Imagine, imagine them coming to your home.

Do you believe in Jesus?

Copy that.

Dragging you out of your home, stoning you on the front steps, or throwing you in jail so you never see your loved one again.

And Saul was the one doing that.

You turn the page, and one chapter later you read this.

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus, and at once, being full of the Holy Spirit, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.

What in the world happened between chapter 7 and chapter 9?

I'll tell you what happened.

Saul met Jesus.

Jesus happened.

Jesus forced his will on Saul and saved him violently.

And here's what's wild.

And this is just in the mystery of God.

Was God planning on using Saul before they stoned Stephen?

I think we could say in the mystery of the will of God, yes.

And what was God doing when he saved Saul?

Answering the prayer of a dead man.

I mean, he isn't a wild.

I mean, Stephen never got to see in the flesh the answer to the prayer he prayed while his flesh was being murdered.

And he prayed, God, forgive these men, don't hold it against them.

And then he was taken home.

And God said, Copy that.

Saul, you're done.

You're mine.

What's the point?

Friends, you and I may pray prayers and dream dreams we never see come to fruition in this life.

But in the spirit, by faith, we're gonna pray them, we're gonna dream them, we're gonna pursue them, and then in God's perfect timing, He'll take us home.

And I believe that which is sown in faith will be brought to fruition in faith.

And friends, I'm telling you, we could not pray big enough prayers that God would be like, I'd love to help, but that's a big one.

Stephen says, Lord, don't hold this against them.

And God's like, copy that.

That one's mine.

And so what I want you to see is that Paul is not an intellectual elite writing ideas down in the theory world for us to apprehend.

He is a man who is embodying the very message he's proclaiming.

And isn't it how God's always done it?

When he wanted to send a message, he sent Jesus.

When he wanted to communicate about Jesus, he sent Saul who came, became Paul.

And when God wants to take his message to an Anche, he's gonna do the same thing with you.

Paul was the epistle.

And God's still writing letters today.

They just have a different name.

This one is in Ephesians, but this letter is called Josh Draper.

Josh Draper is a living epistle.

Writing the story, declaring the work, unpacking the message of the gospel through telling his story just like Paul's gonna do.

So, Father in heaven, would you use Saul who became Paul?

Would you use the letter that he wrote, the epistle that he penned, and the truths that he unpacked to stir in us glory, to draw those who are lost to yourself, to save and then fill and then send more epistles of glory, more letters of gospel glory to a lost, dark, and dying world.

We're asking, Father, for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for listening.

If you want to learn more about Gray City, check out our website listed below and check out the Stronger Man Nation podcast with Pastor Josh McPherson for regular podcasts tackling issues on marriage, fatherhood, growing as a stronger man, and how to be a faithful Christian in a world of depravity.