Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 29, 2016 | Timm Collins - Labeled, Part 1

Transcript

May 29, 2016 | Timm Collins - Labeled, Part 1 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning Topeka Bible Church.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're glad that you're here.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us on this holiday weekend.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The sun really is out.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been a it's been an interesting week for sure.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: The sun's out.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's a great uh time for for swimming and for barbecuing and for all those great things that we would do on Memorial Day weekend.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's also important for us to remember that Memorial Day weekend is not just about those things.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's about people who uh paid the sacrifice for you and I to have freedom.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's uh your friends or family members or you know someone like that, uh you be sure to tell them uh thank you uh and and uh be thankful this weekend.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh we're gonna launch into a three-week series uh starting today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: As uh some of you may know, our pastor, Pastor Jim, uh, is in Israel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He took a group from TBC over and they're doing a holy land tour.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's out of the country, so you and I are gonna see if we can get in trouble over the next three weeks.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna kind of see what happens.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh uh we're starting today a series called Labeled, and we're gonna talk about the labels that people put on us, the labels we put on ourselves, and then ultimately what has God said about us.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter one.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to turn there, if you brought your Bible.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to, it's gonna be on the screen behind me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, I want to talk about sports.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you are sports fans in the room?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Quite a few, yeah, right?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we love sports at our house.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously have two sons, they love sports, uh, love to play them, love to watch them.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: My wife actually loves to watch sports as well.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We love the Super Bowl.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Super Bowl's a big deal.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um we love to watch the World Series, especially when we win, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hey man, praise the Lord.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we uh we're from Central Florida.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, my wife and I moved here about three years ago from Central Florida.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, really the closest sports market for us was Tampa.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we were in that black hole of never win anything, just like many of you are familiar with.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they won the Super Bowl one time, uh, and that's about it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, it's a big deal when you get the chance to watch this stuff.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But for me personally, one of the most important sporting events of the year, and I know this may you know tell on me, uh, one of the most important sporting events of the year to me personally is the Masters.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love to watch the Masters.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love to sit and watch it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there have been a lot of years where I took that entire weekend off and I just sat in my chair for four days and I watched the Masters.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I watched every round.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love the pageantry, I love the tradition, I love everything about it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you got a chance to watch it this year at the beginning of April.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was a fascinating thing to behold.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: There was a young man playing by the name of Jordan Speith.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple of pictures of him here.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Speith is 22 years old.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he's really a phenom when it comes to golf.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, also, if you if you watch me in any interviews or hear anything about him, he appears to be just a really nice kid.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's also very good at golf.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this year he had led the Masters, and I don't know how much you know about golf, but they play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Play 18 holes each day.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he had led Thursday and he led Friday and he led Saturday.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Sunday at the Masters is the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, okay?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the bottom of the ninth and game seven of the World Series.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is a big, big deal.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Biggest tournament of the year.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Jordan Spieth starts off on Sunday and he's playing okay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he makes the turn, he he makes it through the first nine holes, and on the back nine, something happened.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: He got to hole number twelve, which is a par three, and in about a 12-minute span, he quadruple bogeyed that hole.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now that might not sound like much to you, except for those of you who play golf.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know that was a huge thing.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was like dying slowly on national TV in front of everybody.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was very similar to that.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And those was I remember my phone started blowing up because I had friends who were watching it, and all of a sudden I'm getting text messages going, Are you watching this?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe this.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that we were excited to see, because like I said, he's a nice guy, seems to be a nice guy, kind of rooting for him, wanted to see him make history, but it just didn't happen.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: In simple terms, most people would say, he choked.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want to read to you some of these quotes, and we're going somewhere with this, so stay with me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is from a guy named John Straig who uh wrote a column that was picked up by uh Sports Illustrated and also by a couple of golfing magazines.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: This was a quote that he said, Now, this is a guy who writes about golf for a living, okay?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he said.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing on this golf course or any golf course has been harder on the eyes in the history of the sport than Speith's Quadruple Bogey 7 at the 12th.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even if you don't know anything about golf, just from reading that quote, you kind of go, man, this was a big, big deal.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: This was huge.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was from Nick Faldo, who is a golf commentator and was a commentator at the Masters.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he said.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Speet went from commanding leader to zombie film victim in 12 minutes that no witness will ever forget.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, why in the world are we talking about Jordan Speith?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you why.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I find fascinating.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Speith went into that tournament, not only favored to win it, but really viewed as this golf phenom who is unstoppable.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The reason we're talking about Jordan Speeth is I want to show you one more picture of him.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture from a year ago when he was the 2015 Masters Champion.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: He won the whole thing last year.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, when he won it last year, he won it at 21 years old.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was the second youngest player in the history of golf to win that tournament.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: The second youngest.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody want to guess who the first youngest was?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tiger Woods, that's right.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Spiet was about five months older than Tiger Woods was the first time he won the Masters.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so for a year, everyone was singing his praises.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so he led all of last year.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: He comes into this year's tournament, he leads three of the four days, and then he falls apart.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly he's a choker.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing how quickly you can get a label?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing how quickly people will label you?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's people that you care about, maybe it's people that you don't.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's amazing to me how one 12-minute, one hole of golf could change his label.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the rest has yet to be seen for him because he's 22 years old.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's a fascinating case study.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is, for you and I, there are probably some 12-minute segments of our life that we'd like to have back.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of some 15-minute segments, some 30-minute segments, I can think of some weekends I'd love to have a do-over on, right?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of some periods in my life, in my past, where I wish I could get a mulligan.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could start over.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to give me a time machine, I have probably have a list of some things.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go back and change this, and I want to go back and not say that, and I want to go back and not take that job, and I want to go back in, and I want to go back in.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we're not careful, we pick up labels.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we don't want to, and sometimes we didn't ask to.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But other people label us.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It starts when we're kids.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you're a kid, you can remember labels like this.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, as I say these, you're going to think about people that you went to school with like the weird kid.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't there always a weird kid, or maybe a few weird kids?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we use a label like that, and what we don't think about, and what we're not always aware of, is that labels can really, really hurt.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The troublemaker.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who was the troublemaker when you were in school?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Was it you?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who was the troublemaker?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: We all know these labels.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're familiar with these labels.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The gifted kid.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that was you, or maybe that's your kids, and we hear that and we think, oh, what a great thing to be labeled.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it backfires on you.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: As we get older, the labels don't go away.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: They just get more harsh.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because as adults, we get labeled things like an outcast or an outsider.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Alcoholic.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's a label, isn't it?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a tough label.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Childless.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: For some of us, that's defining.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the interesting thing to me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just that other people are labeling us, although they are.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's also that we label ourselves.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have you figured out that you have kind of this internal dialogue going on in your head and in your heart?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of constantly having a conversation with yourself.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: We label ourselves.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: We call ourselves things like inadequate.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: We call ourselves inadequate.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: How about this one?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I talk about this all the time.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The pressure that moms feel to be a good mom.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, it's internal.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: For many of you as moms, you have this dialogue going on in your head where you're saying, I'm an inadequate mom.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not good enough.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something you're telling yourself, I'm a bad mom.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: For those of us maybe who've been unemployed and we've had a hard time finding a job, you slowly begin to think of yourself as broken or as unemployable.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's something wrong with me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm defective somehow.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then for some of you maybe who aren't married yet and you would like to be married, and you've been praying about that, and you've asked God to send you someone, and you're beginning to think of yourself as forever single.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: See, labels are mean, and labels are unfair.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But like it or not, labels are defining.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, and for the next three weeks, what we're going to talk about is what does our Heavenly Father say about us?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: How has He labeled us?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me talk about one more label.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian versus the non-Christian, the believer versus the non-believer.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Very likely in a church this size that there are people here who aren't sure about God and they haven't put their faith in Jesus Christ, and you would be what we would call a non-believer.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you're any worse than the rest of us.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just means your belief system's different than us.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want to say to you this morning.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: If that's you, if that would describe you, if you would not call yourself a Christian, here's what I want to say to you.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want to let you off the hook today.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to invite you to listen in to what we're talking about because I'm going to talk to those who are believers this morning because the verses that we're going to read were written to believers.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're investigating what it means to have faith in Christ, what a great time to show up.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: What a great conversation to listen in on because you're going to hear what we as his children, as believers, as Christians, as followers, you're going to hear some of the language that God uses about us.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very likely that the description that we're going to work through today could one day describe you.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we hope that it does.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So for the next three weeks, we're going to work our way through Ephesians chapter 1.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today is kind of our big idea, is going to be something really simple.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's that God has labeled us favored.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: God has labeled us favored.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is that you and I, as believers, have been blessed in ways that we may not even understand.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would say it's very likely that we don't understand it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that blessing is a result of God's choosing.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Backdrop of Ephesians.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of the background of it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was written by the Apostle Paul.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was in a Roman prison and he was in prison for his faith.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was not in prison because he had done anything wrong, because he had broken any laws.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: In essence, he was in prison because he had upset some religious people.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you know it's easy to upset religious people?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: It actually can be done fairly easily.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul had upset some religious people.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: They had pulled some strings.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was in prison.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: However, about a decade before he wrote this, about a decade before all this went down, he had spent an extended amount of time in Ephesus, in the city of Ephesus, which is who the Ephesian believers were.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's where they lived.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had spent an extended amount of time in the city of Ephesus.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: He had helped them found their church and he had helped them kind of get things going and get things launched.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So a decade later, he writes them this letter, and it's really a theological treatise.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know for many of you, if you know anything about the New Testament, you know Romans is really kind of the ultimate.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is where Paul was at his finest theologically, and it's so deep and it's so rich and it's so long.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long book.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians is kind of known as the Little Romans.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what many scholars call it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's also deep and rich, it's just a little bit shorter.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing I want you to catch about this.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I find this fascinating.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to lean in on this.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: The way Ephesians is structured has always kind of been very interesting to me.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you why.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you look at your Bible, if you look in the book of Ephesians, it's six chapters long.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when Paul wrote it, it didn't have chapters and verses, but just stick with me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Six chapters long.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are 35 imperatives in the book of Ephesians.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a the tense of the verb, uh verb forms that are used in the book of Ephesians.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I find fascinating.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: An imperative is what you tell your kids to do, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like yesterday, I said to one of my kids, take out the trash.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do this, don't do that.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sense of command.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you when you give an imperative, you're giving someone a command.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when you and I think about our faith, when we think about what it means to interact with God, if we're not careful, we think in terms of imperatives.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that, Tim?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean this.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you and I were to sit down and have a conversation right now and we were to discuss what does it mean to be a believer, it's very likely that you and I would use words that center around the idea of command.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, believers do this and they don't do that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: We say this and we don't say that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's we we begin to think of it as a list of behaviors.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I find fascinating.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Of the 35 commands, they're in the book of Ephesians.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thirty-five of them are in the last three chapters.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I was no math major in college.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: What that would tell me is that in the first three chapters, there are zero.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are you trying to say?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listen.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to say this.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I find it fascinating that it paul that Paul wrote this beautiful, deep, rich theological treatise.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when he did it, the first half of it, he didn't tell them to do anything.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're anything like me, I'm always thinking, what am I supposed to do?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: God, what do you want me to do?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: God, what do you want me to do?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's almost as if the Spirit of God is whispering to us and saying, First, I want you to be.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to let me explain to you who you are in Christ.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not do anything just yet.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's figure out and find out and discover who we are in Christ.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who did God create us to be?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are all the things that He's done for us that maybe we're not even aware of before we start acting and practicing and doing all this stuff?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are important, okay?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But they have to spring out of who we are and who God made us to be.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, let me give you one more warning as we start to read this because this warning is going to carry for the next three uh three weeks as we work our way through Ephesians 1.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul was an English teacher's nightmare, okay?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you are really into grammar, but I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you this.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Paul just, his writings are just kind of one long run-on sentence.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in fact, we're gonna be reading out of the ESV, the English Standard Version.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You may be reading out of a different version, and it's likely that if you are reading out of a different version of the Bible, you're gonna see some punctuation in some different places.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because Paul didn't really care for punctuation.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: He just wrote.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you may see some differences, and and so as we kind of dissect this, it may seem a little unnatural where we're ending.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, wait a second, you ended and it wasn't the end of a sentence.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I get that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of stick with me here.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna kind of navigate Paul's writing together.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go, Ephesians chapter 1.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, we're gonna begin reading in verse 3.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with, say it with me, every spiritual blessing.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know I was gonna quit, did you?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: How many spiritual blessings in the heavenly places?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's true, that therefore I don't have all the blessings that he has.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what Paul said.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: He said that God, our Father, has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean, Tim?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That means if you gave your heart to Christ last night, you have it all.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have it all.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you've been a believer for a week or a month or a hundred years.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: You and I often don't feel blessed.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that true?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: We often don't feel blessed because if we're not careful, we get into a mindset where we pray to God and we say, God, give me the thing.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really need this thing.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what your thing is.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a job, it might often changes.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Might be a job, might be a car, might be a house, might be a whatever.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Health, not bad things to pray for, okay?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you pray and you say, God, give me this thing.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have you figured out that sometimes God doesn't give you the thing that you've been praying about?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's where it gets dangerous.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we're not careful, when God doesn't answer our prayers the way we want Him to, we adopt a posture of saying, God, why won't you bless me?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: God, why won't you bless me?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: God, why is it that you don't want to bless me?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think God is saying back to us, I have.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't see it and feel it and touch it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, here's the thing: when you and I think that God hasn't blessed us, we're living in the wrong realm.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I find fascinating.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you a statement that Paul made in the book of Colossians, another prison epistle he wrote while he was in prison.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians chapter 3, verse 2.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Very simple verse.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you find these types of teachings all through the New Testament.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Set your mind on things that are where?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Above, right.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Set your mind on things that are above and not on things that are on the earth.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fascinating.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Listen.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a present continuous.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Set your mind as a present continuous.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you could literally translate it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Keep setting your mind on the things that are above.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: As a lifestyle, as a mindset, as a way of thinking.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Keep setting your mind on the things that are above.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where your blessings are.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's where God deals.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I know he blesses us here, and he has blessed us here, and we're thankful for that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when we don't get everything here the way that we want to, or when we suffer here, let's not fall into the trap of believing that God hasn't blessed us.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because He has blessed us.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I heard somebody say something a couple weeks ago, and I don't even remember who said this.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I heard somebody say something a couple weeks ago that really stuck with me.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it fits here really well.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they said.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: They said, you know, a parent's job is to think long term.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good parents are always thinking long term.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can illustrate that for you.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a five-year-old and a ten-year-old at my house, and if I let them, they would eat candy for meal, every meal.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have candy?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, could I have it now?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: What about now?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: What about now?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: As a good parent, what do I say?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe yes.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do I say as a good parent?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I say no.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know that's not a good long-term plan.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your teeth are gonna fall out, you're not gonna grow the way you're supposed to grow because you're not gonna be getting all the nutrients that you need.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they're focused on now.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: As a good parent, I'm focused long term.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And your perfect Heavenly Father has chosen to give you the blessings that exist in a place that can't be taken from you.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can't lose them.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because the stuff that you and I focus on, like cars and houses and jobs and health and all that stuff, you can lose every one of those things, can't you?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: He could give it to you today and it could be gone tomorrow.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: How amazing is it that when he chose to bestow his blessings on us, the first place that he started was in the heavenly places where they can't be touched.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: I seem to remember some teachings of Jesus that talk about that, right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we keep reading.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 1.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Ephesians 1.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go, verse 4.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be, say it with me, holy and blameless before him.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but I wonder how many of us in here ever feel holy and blameless?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not very many.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hardly ever feel holy and blameless, and the reason for that is I hardly ever am holy and blameless.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, and I know this is true for me, if we're not careful, we begin to think kind of in the back of our minds that the reason I made it into Christianity, the reason I made it into the kingdom of God is that God wasn't paying attention, and I'm really hoping that he just overlooks all the stuff that I've done.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: You ever feel like you're here and you're going, I'm really not supposed to be here, and I just hope nobody figures out that I'm not supposed to be here.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: We feel like God's love is a mistake because you and I know deep down that we're unworthy.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, look at these verses.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: These are three verses that Paul wrote actually in the book of Romans.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 5, verse 6, Paul says, While we were still weak, say it with me, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: While you and I were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But God shows his love for us.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to look at me.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't see that you were worthy.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: He decided you were worthy.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: He decided before the foundation of the world that he was going to make you holy in spite of yourself.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let that sink in.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has nothing to do with performance.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, God favored us by labeling us holy.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: God decided that you and I would be holy and blameless, which is really a long shot.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he did it before the foundation of the world, before you and I had showed up.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: He decided this was going to happen.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love this quote from Tim Keller.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You get the verdict before the performance.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: He decided before we showed up that we were going to be his, and he decided that we were going to be like him.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: He decided that we'd be holy, but he knew that we weren't.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he provided a way.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now you and I take that for granted.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But for just a second, I want you to think about this.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you meditated on the fact that God didn't have to save you?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have to save you.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't owe it to you or me.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I heard somebody say one time, and this has really resonated with me over the years, that after Adam and Eve sinned, when God created the world, and Adam and Eve sinned, God could have walked away.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: He could have said, I'm through with that whole creation.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do something else with who I am and with my existence, and I'm going to not have anything to do with that anymore.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he could have left the world to dissolve into a sinful cesspool with no help and no hope.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he could have walked away and he would have still been perfectly holy and perfectly righteous and perfectly just.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't owe it to you or me to save us.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: He did it because he wants to.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And nothing in you or me earns that.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I know for me, the reason I don't worship the way that I ought to and serve the way that I ought to and give the way that I ought to is I lose sight of that exact fact.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: The God of the universe chose to love me.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to send his son on my behalf so that I could be holy and blameless because I'm not holy and blameless.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to have that standing if I'm going to be in relationship with God.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So God says, I can take care of this.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is huge, man.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Last couple of verses.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Ephesians 1.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: According to what?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of his will.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: According to the purpose of his will, not according to your performance, and not according to my performance.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Has nothing to do with performance.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: According to the purpose of his will.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, he decided he was going to love us.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go, verse 6.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you relate with God?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think of your relationship with God?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know you're not a student that has to be graded?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that you're not an employee who's in danger of being fired?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how your heavenly Father sees you.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: He sees you as one of his children, who he paid a high price for.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're valuable.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're valuable to him.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't this be the label that defines us?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of all the labels that get slapped on us during the week, and some of those we're slapping on ourselves, shouldn't this be the label that matters?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: That our God in eternity past chose to do this for us.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, that last phrase.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 says, To the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Greek word that's used for with which he has blessed us could be translated, with which he has graciously accepted us.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: God has graciously accepted us in Jesus Christ.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: You see, God favored you by labeling you holy.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: God also favored you by labeling you accepted.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: See, God decided not just to make us his servants, he decided to make us his children.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: 1 John 3, 1.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love the wonder of this verse.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear it.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: John says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called, can you believe it?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Children of God.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I can almost hear him saying, can you believe what kind of love God has bestowed on us?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not just that he would forgive us, not just that he would make us his servants, but that he would make us children of God.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he attacks this little phrase on there.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't just decide to call us children of God, and so we are.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he sits down and he writes, and the first thing right out of the gate he says is, Let me tell you how much God loves you and how God loves you, how eternal his love is.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be stopped.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be hijacked.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: All the demons in hell can't stop it because they weren't there when it started.
• 32:32
  unknown: Wow.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the God that you and I serve.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we get to the imperatives, when we get to the let's do some stuff and let's don't do some stuff, we don't do it out of guilt and we don't do it out of performance because that's all been taken care of.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: We obey, we respond out of love to the God who first engaged us with love.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: See, I don't know what kind of week you're gonna have this week.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how your story turns out.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you get the job, I don't know if you get the promotion, I don't know if you get the house, I don't know if you get the girl, I don't know.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what I do know about you is if you're a Christian, God called you favored.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he's blessed you more than you'll ever know.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in ways that you will just begin to understand when you step into eternity.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: You could spend the rest of your life trying to comprehend how much God has blessed you and all the ways God has blessed you, and you're not gonna get there.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: How incredible is that! I don't know what kind of sin you're gonna commit.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what kind of stupid decision you're gonna make this week.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that if you're one of God's children, he's called you holy.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: As wild as that sounds, he's made it possible for you to stand sinless and thoughtless in your status before him.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's made it possible for you to be dressed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how often you feel like an outcast.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how often you feel like an outsider.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that your Heavenly Father has labeled you accepted.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: That you belong.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would say this Christianity is not just about a set of beliefs, it's also about having a place to belong.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: We need beliefs.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Beliefs are important, beliefs define us, beliefs are how we learn about God and what we believe about God and how our conversations go as we talk about God.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't stand on their own.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not just about believing, it's also about belonging.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: God called you favored, he called you holy, and he called you accepted.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: In short, he's called you his.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: See, here's what I think.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think no one deserves to be fine, defined by their worst moment.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think we spend our lives not wanting to be defined by our worst moment.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I think the gospel is so powerful, because the gospel is God's message to us saying that if we'll put our faith in Jesus Christ, we don't have to be defined by our worst moment.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if God doesn't define you that way, what business do we have allowing anyone else to define us that way?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: We've been labeled as favored.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: God, thanks for all that you've done for us.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this incredible salvation plan that we never could have imagined, we never could have dreamed it up, and yet it's so beautiful and it's so perfect, and it was exactly what we needed.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: At the right time, you sent your son to die for us.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And even as humanity continues to rebel against you and try to hijack what you're doing, you still choose to make things go your way.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that we serve a God that's so big that you could do this in love.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for sending Jesus because you didn't have to do it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't bound to do it.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't required, it wasn't your duty.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: You chose to do it.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that this week we would not take for granted all that you've made available to us, and all that you've called us, and all that you've said about us, and the labels that you put on us, because these are the ones that mattered.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: God, help us to live a week where we live as favored, not in arrogance, not in pride, but God in humble thankfulness.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Forever grateful that you've invited us in.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would have a great week, no matter what happens to us, because we're setting our mind on the things that are above.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name that we pray.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to pray with someone, there'll be someone down front for you to pray with.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.