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Good morning, church. It's always great to be here. Amen? Amen. Will you please stand up and let's worship God.
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My desire this morning as every Sunday, as you know me now, I'm a little bit crazy, but crazy for God. Amen? Let's have a great time worshiping God. Amen? Amen.
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Amen. And of course, I have to tell you this all the time. Please follow me.
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Oh, Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the woes thy hand and day. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder thy bow throughout the universe display. Then sings my soul, my savior, to thee. How
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Amen. Y'all can have a seat. I followed you as far as I could. So, we have a few announcements this morning and they're more in the bulletin of course but connect hour is happening and that happens between services down the hall down here. There will still be coffee and donuts and things like that depending on who's doing that each Sunday but we are doing that.
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Connect hour, it kind of keeps the church together. Hopefully, so we don't turn into two churches. One at nine and one at eleven. We also have Monday nights at First B. That happens also in the fellowship hall down on that end of the building, and we are still meeting.
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We're still eating. In fact, it's potluck because it's the first Monday of the month. So if you would like to come join in, come and bring something with you tomorrow night at 06:00 and Carl is has made preparations for somebody to handle meals, somebody to handle music, and somebody to handle message for the next few weeks while he's away. So, please do come on in and join us for potluck Monday night. Run Ministries is going to be here next week.
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Actually, two of em are here this week. There they are. Eric and Becky, would you just stand up and say howdy? Thank you. Thank you.
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He follows instructions very well. Next week, July 9, in the evening, they're going to do a presentation. That's one of my favorite events of the whole year, by the way. I love that. Just to hear what's going on in the rest of the world.
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Reach and Unreached Nations, Eric and Becky are here, and they'll be here this week, and next week they're going to be presenting on Sunday evening. Y'all are invited to Turning Point's annual gala. That's happening the thirteenth, so it's not this Thursday but next. It's going to be up at Spring Creek Ranch, and that is a great time. That's a good time to support Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center.
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And anything new or different I need to mention on that? Anybody? Anybody? No. Yes, Wendy?
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He's yeah, the speaker for that event is Ken Sandy. I'm given a little time for we're going do a video about popular demand. We're doing another commercial.
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Mayday. Mayday. Hello. Can you hear us? Can you hear us?
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Can you over. I mean, we are sinking. We are sink
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Hello? This is the German coast guard.
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Are thinking. We're thinking.
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What are you thinking about?
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Yeah. So, relational wisdom three sixty is a ministry that is particularly dealing with relationships and being understood and that sort of thing. Ken Sandy is the guy in charge of that ministry. He's the fellow who wrote The Peacemaker several years back. He's all about stronger relationships and it is going to be he's going to be speaker for the Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center Gala.
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Since he's going to be here, we invited him to come on Saturday and present kind of do an all day thing. So from 09:00 in the morning until 03:30 in the afternoon, he's going to do a relationship seminar. Who doesn't need to understand people better, right? Right now, this week I think, he was actually invited and was speaking to Congress of the United States of America to help them get along better. So pray for him because he has a huge job, and coming up here should be fun after that, I think.
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So that's Relational Wisdom three sixty. And if you would like to join us for the fourth, join us for the fourth, out here is where the parade goes by on Glenwood each year and there's usually a pretty strong concentration of first B folks and friends and family and everybody else right along the street out here. So please plan on joining us for the Independence Day Parade right out here.
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And I'm going be in the parade.
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You're going to be in the parade. Fire department. Fantastic. Conway will be there. All the more reason but you're always there.
8:36
Okay. And something. Very good. Would you all stand up? We have one more.
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What time? I think it usually starts at ten. Am I right about that? Ten. But if you want to get here and get on this side of the street, you might want to get here a little earlier than that.
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Anybody else? Testimonies? I would just stand up and we'll we'll greet one another and we'll bring you back together with a song.
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Glory to God forever. Amen? Amen. Creator God, you gave me bread so I could praise your brave and matchless name on my days on my days, so let my whole life be ablazing, hovering, a life that shouts and sing the greatness of a king. Glory to God.
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Glory to God. Take We sing, take my life and let it be yours.
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Life and let it be
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sing, glory to God glory to God glory to God forever glory to God
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What a beautiful song. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly father, thank you so much for the privilege that we have to be here as a church. It's great to gather and worship your name.
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We're thankful for everything you have done for us. We have our names written in the book of life because what you've done on the cross. I'm thankful. I'm thankful for this church. I'm thankful for our family church.
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I'm thankful for Mike Dimitri. He always comes in the morning and prays for everyone. And I know that the worship service is in good hands. It's your name. Please bless us and help us always to stay focused on you to understand more and more of your goodness, of your kindness.
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In Jesus name I pray, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Let's sing one more song.
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Actually, two more. Yes. This one. So good. If you if you don't wanna sing, that's fine.
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Just look at the lyrics and fill those lyrics because it's so good. Look. So take me as you find me, all my fears and failures, fill my life again. I give my life to follow. Everything I believe in, I surrender.
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I I see myself in that one. It's so good. I hope you like
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the song, Anderson. It's a
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hard one. So it's hard to sing it and play it, but I love the lyrics and I choose the song just because of that. And I said, I might do lots of mistakes on this one. You but you know what? Well, the angels take the songs and present them to God's hands and and it's beautiful over there.
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Amen?
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Name of Jesus.
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We for
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the grave. Jesus conquered the I give my life to follow everything I believe the glory of the reasoned care. Savior, he can move the mountain. My God is mighty to save he's mighty to save forever author of salvation heals and conquered the
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Amen. What a beautiful song, isn't it? Sing them over again to me wonderful words of life. And I know that those beautiful words comes from the holy Bible. Amen?
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Jesus only savior sanctified forever beautiful words wonderful Amen.
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Y'all can have a seat. I'm going to invite invite the frontline team to come forward and would y'all pray with me God, I thank you for this blessed and beautiful morning. Thank you for every soul that's here in the in the building here with us, lord and every soul that they will encounter as they leave today. God, I pray that your kingdom would be made manifest, that you would show other people, that you would reveal to other people your plan, that you reveal to other people your son, who is your plan. He's your plan to deal with sin and death, and he did so by way of the cross.
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Lord, would you let us, Lord, live lives that declare that without words and lord, would you give us the peace and the confidence and the boldness to be able to put it to words. Lord, grant us fresh and new understanding and lord, I pray that that fresh new understanding that you give us would be something we would share just as we have it. We'd be a conduit. And so Lord, I thank right now about provision that you've made. You are Jehovah Jireh and you have given, you've given out of your abundance, Lord.
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And we wanna give back to say that we trust you and we recognize your plan. God, may this church and the Church, capital c Church, be what it is intended to be. May we declare the mystery of the gospel among those who don't know it. Whether they be here in Teton County or on the other side of the earth. Lord, would you use the offerings that are put in these plates right now?
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Would you multiply those and use them to do your kingdom's work to the end of the age. Jesus name, amen. Amen. So, in our chronological study of the New Testament, we have reached Ephesians three. So, we finished up chapter two last week and Ephesians, are y'all enjoying Ephesians?
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Like, I'm digging it. I'm having a ball because it's so encouraging. These first three chapters are all about being and the next three chapters are going to be about the application of what that being means. So, we're up to Ephesians three. And as I got to Ephesians three, I thought of a place that I studied Ephesians in-depth a while back.
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So in anticipation of a big conference, and I'm not a conference dweller. I don't really like conferences generally. Went to a Dale Carnegie course one time. Maybe it's because, I don't know. Maybe it's just the way I'm built, but that, I've been to several conferences that have names this long, the Fellowship of Short Term Mission Leaders, the FSTML.
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You know, I've been to a few of these kind of conferences, but I I typically don't enjoy conferences. Some people really, really do dig them. I I don't so much, typically. But there was one that I was able to be a part of while I was in seminary. My school, Columbia International, sent me to be a steward.
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I got to wear an interesting costume. They ask us our size and to pick a color. Pick two colors. There you go, orange. I got to wear these for the whole of the conference.
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It was in South Africa. These are Madiba shirts. Madiba is Nelson Mandela's nickname. And so Madiba, he wore these kind of shirts, so they get to be called Madibas forever now. Pretty neat.
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While there, we studied Ephesians together. And in anticipation of going there, since I was in seminary, I got to sit with a couple of my professors and study through Ephesians. One of them had written a handbook on the Greek text, and you know, he had really quibbled over this. He knew he was going to this conference for several years, so he wrote a book in anticipation of it, and he's not the only one that did that. And so we got to study this together.
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The conference was Cape Town, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa. It was the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. And the Lausanne Movement is something that got going in 1974. Billy Graham, John Stott, a few other white guys, Americans, and people got together. They were actually really seeking to do the right thing.
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They got together in Lausanne, Switzerland, invited people from all over the world. There were 2,500, maybe close to 3,000 at that 'seventy four meeting. In Manila in The Philippines in 1989, they did it again. It was a little bigger there. And then in Cape Town 2010, they invited 5,000 people to come to this event.
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And they tried to break it up based on the population of the church, the evangelical church. They broke it up. If 2% of the world's Christians are Brazilian women, then they invited 2% of these 5,000 as Brazilian women to come to this conference. All of the people that they sent invitations to to be participants, and then they had several that they wanted to be stewards, so I was a steward. I got to basically wait tables.
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I literally was in the plenary hall where all of the plenary speakers, the big action was. I was in there, and so I stood at the back of the room. Actually, I got pictures of this. So Cape Town's the only other place I've ever been that I thought was as pretty as Jackson. Obviously, I'm not from Jackson.
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You can hear it in the accent. But I mean there's something gorgeous about this place, and Cape Town is really pretty. That's Table Mountain. Most of the time a cloud sits on top of it. They call it the tablecloth.
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And it just sits there most of the time. This is what that room looked like. So the stage is right here. This is my vantage point from back here usually. I had the A section of the hall was mine to deal with, but I was also over the B, C, and D people, leaders.
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So I don't know how I got in that position. Maybe it went by height like King Saul. I don't know. 5,000 people invited. 200 didn't get to make it because the Chinese government did not want the Chinese officials going, and so there were 200 empty seats where the Chinese, just to represent that they were not there, they held their passports and kept them until the conference was over.
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There are still impediments to the gospel. They're man made impediments. So there were dancers, that's Africa. There were singers. That's Cape Town, another shot from the marina there.
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That's what the hall looked like straight on from the center back. 5,000 folks. And they got together and you can see they're at tables and each one of those tables has six chairs and they were studying Ephesians together. So in the morning, every morning, it was my job actually, to put out on the tables a copy in whatever language the people at that table spoke. And the only way that they were grouped was by language.
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Like if they're English speakers, it doesn't matter where they're from. If they're English speakers, they were with other English speakers. And we had translators going all the time in seven other languages, but English was spoken from the platform the whole time because it was the one that most people there would understand. But it was audio devices so they could hear in real time translation as it's going on seven other languages. And then for smaller groups of people, affinity groups, we would even translate even closer to that if we could.
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So that was the job. But what we were studying together was Ephesians. And so on the first day of the conference, it was Ephesians one. And on the second day, it was Ephesians two. Now we were there a week in advance kind of getting ready for what was going to happen, and this was the most powerful part of the trip where we got together around scripture and just paid attention to what it said.
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And if you're paying attention in the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul, a prisoner, The apostle Paul, by the will of God, he is proclaiming this mystery of the gospel and he's proclaiming it and then he goes into this long doxology for, you know, two zero two words in Greek. It's like five sentences in English. It's just one sentence. It's just overflowing doxology and then in the second chapter, he gets into about reconciliation and bringing together, tearing down the dividing walls of hostility and bringing together the church. Unity was the message, and so this gathering was a great place to study Ephesians.
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Those are the stewards. There were 300. They had hoped there would be 500 of us. Only 300 were able to come, and so we worked double shifts most of the time. I got up and worked from six in the morning until after midnight, the whole time I was there during the conference.
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I'm right sorry, y'all can't see that. I'm right there in that big orange shirt. These two guys are techies in their homeland, they're tech guys. And about the second day of the conference we had all of the satellite sites, and this was all over the world. There were satellite sites happening at the same time as the conference, and somebody did an access denial attack, cyber attack.
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And so it shut down our ability to broadcast this, you know, momentous occasion, I guess, the best way to look at it. People, Christianity Today and a few others called it the most diverse and largest assembly of Christians since, Nicea. That's a long time. These guys figured it out. They were stewards just like I was.
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They were not the experts that they thought. They had a team of experts to fix all this sort of stuff, make sure it happened. And these two guys said, Hey, I think it's this. I was rooming with these guys. And they said, If we just did this, I think we could fix it.
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And they, the people in charge, backed away and said, Fix it. And they did. Praise God. It was back up and running before the end of the day. That was pretty amazing.
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The first day when we studied Ephesians one together, they gave a long time in conference standards for people to sit around the tables and study it themselves. And then they had speakers get up, and they didn't they had some big name speakers, but they didn't give anybody more than eighteen minutes. It was eleven minute, fifteen minute, eighteen minute increments. This guy, Ahith Fernando, is amazing. Sri Lankan guy, Methodist, National Director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka, had some of his education in The US, some in England, some in Sri Lanka, and he was an amazing speaker about Ephesians one, talking about that great doxology and pointing out how that doxology basically covers the whole of the book.
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Good, good speaker and effective Sri Lankan Methodist. Next day was Ruth Padilla Diborst. She's the Costa Rican Director of Christian Formation and Leadership for World Vision International. Y'all have heard of World Vision. You've got the catalogs for World Vision stuff.
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She was born in Colombia, raised in Argentina by an American mother and an Ecuadorian father. Her father is Rene Padilla, if that means anything to you. He's a pretty big name. Good, good guy. I got to serve communion with Rene Padilla.
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And I did it like the Bar J actually. They let me figure it out since I was in charge of the hall. I just said, hey, when that table when that passage your table, just like we do at the Bar J. But she, Ephesians two is a lady from Costa Rica, Latin American lady. I don't know her denomination.
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I'm not sure about that. John Piper was the next day for Ephesians three. He was a pastor of Bethlehem. It turned out it is a Baptist church. I wasn't sure.
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I thought it might be Ephesians Bethlehem three. Church in Twin Cities, Minnesota at the time. He was a pastor. He did Ephesians three. Diane, would you go to the copier and bring me a page?
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Should be the only page on there. Bring me everything on the copier if you would. Von Roberts was the next day, Church of England preacher, Anglican, you know, Church of England. So have you heard the diversity there? Methodist, Costa Rican, really kind of a liberation theologian, very hands on social justice for Ruth Padilla, Piper's a reformed Baptist pastor, Von Roberts Church of England.
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He did a great job bringing all kinds of cultural references. The next was Colisto Odede. He's from Kenya. Thank you very much. Kenyan pastor from Nairobi Pentecostal Church.
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He did Ephesians four seventeen through six:nine, which is hilarious to me because it's a huge section of scripture. He did it in two parts. He had been given fifteen minutes for each time and he did like African pastors do and he went 19 for one and twenty two for the other. And that was every bit of it was wonderful, really, really good. For Ephesians six, it was Ramaz and Rebekah Atallah, who he is Egyptian, she is Canadian, he's the general secretary of the Bible Society in Egypt, she's a social worker, she's worked among the poorest of the poor since the late sixties.
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So from the platform, you can see the diversity, and this was just the main speakers just on expositing Ephesians. So if we were to go through more pictures, Lindsey Brown was there. This is a Palestinian lady and an Israeli man standing next to each other, and that was powerful. If you're reading Ephesians two and it talks about the dividing wall of hostility. If you want to see a dividing wall of hostility, whoo Jerusalem between Palestinian and Jew He said his father would be furious if he knew where he was right now Chris Wright, if you've read anything by this theologian Christopher Wright that's Samuel Escobar I forget this guy's name because I can't pronounce it.
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Something like that. There may be a click or two in there, I'm not sure. Dancers, that's Tim Keller. This is a student from North Korea. Her testimony was probably the most powerful thing I heard all week long after Piper and Keller and Callisto O'Debi.
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Amazing. 16, 17 year old North Korean student whose parents had been killed, and she's looking to go back to bring the hope of the gospel to her native land. So that's the way that that went. Not everything went well, not everything was good, not everything was right. Stewards were running around.
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They had not anticipated how many people were coming when they invited 5,000 and we had to figure out how to get them all. They promised that we'd get them all back to their hotel rooms. 5,000 people. We turned the Cape Town International Convention Center into a bus station. All the stewards were the ones responsible for making sure this happened.
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They hired a cheaper bus company from a different place that didn't know the streets or the hotels. This church is supporting one of the missionaries, the guy who was put in charge of traffic at this thing, of transit. This church now supports him and his wife as missionaries in North Africa because he was handed a a gargantuan task and by the by by the third night, it had started to happen. This is uncharacteristic for me. I haven't said anything about the scripture yet.
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I just want you to see that this, I've been studying this book for a long time and it is so encouraging It is so good and if we would take it seriously, we would take our sin more seriously. We would take church unity more seriously and we would be doing something. We would be out there doing something Do y'all get it? Y'all know what I'm saying? So, Ephesians three oh, I was going to say, I think that's me right there because my head's sticking up above everybody else's.
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They're sitting down. That's where I stood the whole time. Alright. So here we go. Ephesians three.
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Paul says the mystery of Christ. Now, I said last week, if we would just hold on to a little bit of the mystery because we do not understand perfectly how this works. If Baptists would admit that we don't understand this perfectly, exactly how this works. If cessationists would admit that they don't understand exactly perfectly. If hyper this and hyper that would admit that we don't understand it perfectly, but we do understand that it is the mystery of Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, and we come together around him through suffering and prayer, I think we'd be better off.
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So, here we go. This is Paul three one. It starts off a lot like one one one, two. For this reason, all of chapter two, that unity talk that we've been talking about recon and bringing us together to tearing down the dividing wall of hostility. He did that in his flesh For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you, the nations, the Gentiles Assuming that you've heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, he's he's probably known pretty well as the apostle to the Gentiles and he's saying, I'm assuming that you have heard of that.
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He knew if Ephesus really well and he knew the Ephesians church really well. He'd been there for about three years but he didn't know who was in the Ephesians church because it been a while since he had been there. So, he's saying, most of you know me. Assuming that you've heard from the ones who do of the stewardship that God had been had given me for you Gentiles. How the mystery was made known to me by revelation.
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Do you remember the story from Acts? Do you remember how Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, and you remember that he says in other places that it was revealed to him as I've written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. So they had been looking through a glass dimly at Messiah. They had a lot of prophecies.
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They had a lot, especially the Jews, had the Torah. They had their prophets, and they were looking forward to Messiah, but they had taken you're my chosen people the wrong way. They had stopped with you're my chosen people, period. You're my chosen people, a light to the nations to bring them in. So they didn't completely understand it.
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It was a mystery to them. They knew that they were God's chosen people and they trusted in him. They were not strangers to the promise as chapter two says. They were not alien to it. They understood that God had blessed and had chosen and was working.
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It was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. Those other guys that have been with Jesus and had been sent out by Jesus, Paul directs his direct encounter with Jesus and then following the spirit wherever he would send him. And the mystery is this verse six is key The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. The good news that God has made a way. He's made a way for sinful people to be saved.
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The God that cannot look on sin, the God that is holy has made a way. He satisfied the demands of our sin in Jesus. The mystery is that the Gentiles or the nations are fellow heirs, members of the same body. You hear unity is still resounding there and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Partakers of the promise.
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They have the same incorruptible hope that we have been looking forward to. They're partakers in the promise. In Christ Jesus through the gospel. If you just sat on that for a little while, it'll blow your mind. I'm going to read the whole chapter.
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I'm going just tell you right now. I'm reading it to you this morning. It's good. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace and he says it was a gift. He didn't earn it.
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He didn't have any special claim on it. It wasn't because he was smart. It wasn't because of who he was or what he had done. Of this gospel, I was made a minister. That's a divine passive.
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God made me a minister. He entrusted me as a steward of this gift of God's grace which is given me by the working of his power. Paul knew that he was going on that road to Damascus to persecute Christians. He had writs to bring him back to Jerusalem for them to be prosecuted, punished, even killed, and that's where Jesus met him according to the working of God's power or as chapter one one two says, by the will of God. I was entrusted with this message.
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The message is the Gentiles, our fellow heirs, that whole light of the nation stuff really means something, and we should be bringing them into the kingdom of God. 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. To me, though I'm the very least of all the saints, can you imagine what it feels like to know that you had killed people who had it right? Though I'm the very least of the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. God Almighty, may we try to plumb the depths of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
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Lord God, I pray for that peace and that comfort that Christ offers for every soul in this room and every family they represent. Would you lord do your mighty work? Would you transform and change us and make us into the people that you would have us to be? Would you give us the humility lord of recognizing it's not because of what we have done but it's because of what you did on that cross, Jesus. Amen.
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And to bring the light for everyone. What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so that through the church. This is what I said last week. Ecclesia called out ones. Those who have been called out of all other things and into one thing.
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There's one faith, one body, one baptism, and the unity is important and so that those called out ones, they're called out of every other tribe, tongue, and nation and into one capital C Church so that through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. And if you look in chapter six, there's no doubt about who the rulers and authorities in heavenly places is. It's the demonic realm. It's spiritual. Baptist, I'm sorry.
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It really is. There is a spiritual realm. It is the neglected part oftentimes in our tradition. So that the church through the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. The prince of the power of the air, he mentions in the first part of Ephesians.
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That first part of chapter two when he talks about how we just were going along like everyone else and children of wrath by nature, just going after the normal things, desires the mind of it, desires of the flesh, prince of the power of the air, that's a ruler. That's an authority. And God's plan a, and there is no plan b, is that the church would dispel the darkness. That by carrying the manifold wisdom of God, the mystery of Christ, that we would dispel the darkness. It's not just by proclamation.
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It's not just by deeds. It's by word and deed, and it's word and deed for all of us. Now at Lausanne, those various people I saw bouncing around. Now, it's great. Kumbaya, we all come together.
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It's wonderful. We're going to have a Coke and a smile. It's lovely. We're getting together. Great but when you get together and you start expounding scripture together, the first guy, everybody was excited.
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Second day, social justice person talking about reconciliation. That's uncomfortable for some of us, and you could feel the tension in the room. And Piper felt it. He was in the room. And so the next day, he gets up, and as he's going through chapter three of Ephesians and he gets to this he is starting, you can hear hear his thinking.
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He's starting to say, can we do, can we say something here? Can we come together on this? Can we get around this? I'll tell you what it is in a minute. Eleven says, this was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized past tense.
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He has already realized this. It was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in the finished work of Christ Jesus, our lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. Boldness and access to approach God with confidence through our faith in him. So, I ask you not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you which is your glory. So, he said he's a prisoner in the first verse and he's now saying, I'm suffering for you and he's not doing it like, you need to pity me.
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Poor pitiful me, Paul. I'm suffering He's saying, don't lose heart over this. I'm willing to suffer for this. Martin Luther King Junior, willing to sit in that Birmingham jail to get to write the letter from the Birmingham Jail to the rest of the pastors calling them out, bringing them to the center of the gospel. You cannot remain divided.
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You've got to be together. So, I ask you not to lose heart for what I'm suffering. No big deal. That's your glory. You are in touch with Christ because of people willing to pay the price.
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So Piper says this, one truth is that the gospel takes root in our souls. As the gospel takes root in our souls, it impels us out toward the alleviation of all unjust suffering in this age. That's what love does. The other truth, and he was talking about, that's the social justice side. Do you all know that after like the nineteen ten Edinburgh Missionary Conference, that was the kind of a new wave of missionary activity in 1910.
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That's why they did this one in 2010, a hundred years later. And that new wave of missionary activity actually promoted a split in the church. It went social gospel and priority of proclamation. I hate to even mention the two because I don't want to start a split here. Social gospel is doing these deeds and acts in the name of Jesus, and not really mentioning the name of Jesus in a lot of cases, and prior priority of proclamation is Jesus is the Lord, and you need to accept him, but without doing anything else.
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Both of those are aberrations. Word indeed is the gospel. So Piper says one truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls, it impels us out toward the alleviation of all unjust suffering in our age. That's what love does. The other truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls, it awakens us to the horrible reality of eternal suffering in hell under the wrath under the wrath of a just and omnipotent God, and it impels us to rescue the perishing and to warn people to flee the wrath to come.
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And so I plead with you, don't choose between these two truths. Embrace them both. It doesn't mean we all spend our time all in the same way, God forbid, but it means that we let the Bible define reality and let the Bible define love. Could we say, and he said, could Lozanne say, I'm saying can we say, Could we say? Could the evangelical church say that we as Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering?
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I hope we can say that. Then he followed it up. He says, if we feel resistant to saying especially eternal suffering or if we feel resistant to saying we care about all suffering in this age, then either we have a defective view of hell or defective heart. I agree with him. I pray that we would have neither, and I'm going to cover Ephesians three again next week.
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I just wanted to read it to you this week. It really is that good. Would you dig in this week? Would you get in there? Read everything we've read so far.
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Read it all at one time. Let it flow. Do it every day if you can. Read forward up to chapter three because it's about being a Christian, not about doing. It's about being.
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The doing will come. The doing will follow, but stick with that who you are in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. Now Ephesians three fourteen through 21 is a prayer, and it's a prayer that God may bring about everything that Paul's been discussing, and the main reason is because it's outside of the human realm. I'm telling you, 5,000 of the world's Christians that made the trip to South Africa and got there and all get together and there's tension in that room, there's tension. Has the world ever been more divided than it is right now?
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Then this is the time for the church to come together, to declare it to the powers and the rulers of the authorities and so, Paul prays and I'm going to pray too. It's also a lot like one seventeen through 23 but I'm asking you to read. One, two, and three for next week. 14 says this, for this reason I bow my knees before the father from whom every family in heaven and 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 and that you being rooted and grounded in love. That's the middle of the key construct right there for you grammar nerds, okay?
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That you being routed, being rooted and grounded in love. 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. I love how he asked us to know something that's absolutely unknowable To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God Amen. Would y'all stand Come on up band and we're going to play a song and I'm going to the last two verses we're going to use as our benediction today but if you would read through that and dwell on it and pray that God would bring it to a reality in your life that you would start to get it.
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We believe in God the father we believe in Jesus Christ we believe in the Holy Spirit and he's given us new life we believe in the crucifixion we believe that he conquered death we believe in the resurrection and he's coming back again we believe we believe in God the father we believe in We're one the only who's
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and now, this is the last two verses, same chapter. Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Is this a prosperity gospel verse? It is not. That's where we hear it all the time.
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Everything that he's been talking about is church unity. Everything he's been talking about is the blood of Christ that brings us together. Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Amen.
