Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Let's turn our attention to Ephesians.
This is the as I mentioned in my
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prayer, the last few verses of
this book. I counted online thirty sermons
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and rather than start a new series
next week right before I leave for vacation,
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I think we'll do what we've often
done when we've finished book, and
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that will read it in its entirety
next week. So I need to figure
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out a plan for doing that still, but please come for that. I
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think that will be a real blessing
to be able to hear the whole thing
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at one time. So let's turn
our attention now to Ephesians, chapter six,
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the last few verses Twenty One through
twenty four. This is God's word.
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Let's give our attention to it.
The Apostle of the Lord rights so
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that you also may know how I
am and what I am doing. Tichcus,
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the beloved brother and Faithful Minister in
the Lord, will tell you everything.
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I've sent him to you for this
very purpose, that you may know
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how we are and that he may
encourage your hearts. Peace be to the
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brothers and love with faith from God, the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Grace be with all who love our
Lord Jesus Christ, with love incorruptible.
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You may be seated. So as
we come to the end of this
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book, that's very excellent letter.
Paul closes his letter as he often does,
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but it's brief, briefer than some
other letters we have, some of
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the other closings that we have.
He closes with two things, as he
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as I mentioned, as he often
does. One of those two things is
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a certification that the letter is authentic, a certification that the letter is authentic.
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The other is is a blessing,
and I g guess we could toss
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in there some personal comments as well
regarding Tikkus and the things that he will
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do. That's related to the authenticity
of the letter. Now it's true that
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this section doesn't soar in the way
that the beginning of the book does with
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that very long and beautiful sentence,
but that doesn't make it any less important.
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This is still God's word. It
hasn't finished until until it's finished,
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and there are things here that we
find in this passage that in some ways
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some up much of what we've heard
as well as give gives some strength in
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other ways to our faith. I
want to briefly mention the first of those
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two things the authenticity of the letter, and then second less one. Very
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briefly, Paul gives this assurance of
the letters authenticity when he says that tickekus
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is coming. I have so that
you also may know how I am,
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how I am and what I'm doing. TIKKUS, the beloved brother and faithful
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and in the minister of the Lord, will tell you everything. I've sent
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him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are
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and that he may encourage your hearts. So one of the things that Paul
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is doing here is he's is,
of course, sending them someone, and
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he's sending this letter with Tikis,
with greetings, with information, a reminder
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to us that the church is not
lived out in isolation with each other.
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Here we see the apostle doing his
work through other people or in conjunction with
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other people, tikkus included. He
is called the beloved brother and the fate
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and a faithful minister. Encouragement,
no doubt, to tikkus himself, but
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also a reminder to the Ephesians that
he is one that can be trusted.
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This is also one of the ways
in which Paul and ancient writers would ensure
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that the letters that came and that
the the letters that were received were were
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authentic and true. And this is
still important. Right, if you get
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a great email, but if it's
fake, hopefully it ends up in your
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spam filter right, no matter how
long it is, how beautiful it is,
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how whatever, if it's if it's
not true, if it's pretending in
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some way, if it's well,
it's junk. We call it right,
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no matter how much it might promise
or how much it might entice. This
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is important to remember because sometimes in
our modern world we stand at such a
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great distance that this from the ancient
world that that distance becomes a kind of
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foolish pride. We think that we
care about things like authenticity in ways that
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perhaps they didn't, and so we
ask silly questions like could all the Christians
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have been fooled by forgeries? Is
there a possibility that all the letters that
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we have in our bibles are actually
fakes, written and at much later dates
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by people faking it? Well,
of course that does happen. But the
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reminder here of what we have here
in tickicus and what Paul is doing here
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is a reminder that the ancient world
cared about these things just as much,
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if not more, than we do. And then there were complex and important
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systems in place to guarantee that the
letters would be authentic, that there were
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ways of trusting and knowing this.
Is TCHICUS. You know him. He
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is certified ying that this is coming
from me. There of course, other
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ways that this could be done as
well, and we see this at the
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end of some of other Paul's letters
where he talks about I'm writing this in
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my own hand so that you might
recognize on that this is coming from me.
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Other things like that are done so
they were not easily fooled. These
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things were very important to the early
church. Right they believed, just as
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we do, that these were letters
from God, that these they were came
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from his apostle. was very important
to them to know that they were not
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being fooled by a forgery, some
apostolic spam or Junk Mail, that it
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was the real thing, and indeed
it was and it is. The generations
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of Christians that came before us were
people of the word, just like we
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are. They cared very much that
these things were true. They cared deeply
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about what they really read and what
they believed, and we ought to do
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the same as well. So that's
my comment. They're in a good reminder,
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I hope, on those first couple
verses. And now let's turn to
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the last two verses where Paul speaks, and not through tichicus but directly,
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and he pronounces this blessing. He
says peace be to the brothers and love
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with faith from God, the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be
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with all who love our Lord Jesus
Christ. And then it's translated here with
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love incorruptible all suggest in a moment
that there's perhaps a better translation for that.
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Before we get to that, though, let's think about the nature of
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a blessing in ancient letters. You
can compare on these letters with other ancient
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letters and see what the writing conventions
were. And often they ended just like
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a lot of our letters do.
Farewell, greetings, see you later,
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write, just pretty sort of standard, fair, nothing. I'm extravagant.
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You know, occasionally every now and
then you get a love letter or something
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like that, and you know those
deserved special things. Here, though,
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we have something that is intensely religious, you might say right intensely religious.
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Paul doesn't just say farewell, I
look forward to seeing you soon. He
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says, peace be to the brothers
and love with faith from God, the
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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
See what he's doing. There he is,
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and he's not just wishing it either. He's pronouncing this. He's saying,
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in the name of God, I'm
pronouncing peace on you, I'm I
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am blessing you. That's what he's
doing. He's not wishing for a blessing,
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he is blessing look really amazing thing. That's why I say intensely religious,
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even intensely personal about this. Now
we know from the rest of the
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letter that this is not grace or
peace that would begin in their lives,
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but this is grace and peace,
faith and love that would continue. It
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would spe something that would God was
already doing and he was asking that God
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would continue to pour these blessings out. He was pronouncing the pouring out of
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these blessings by the gracious work of
God. Now, perhaps you noticed that
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it is a little bit unusual that
he speaks in the third person here.
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Peace be to the brothers, some
which of course includes the sisters as well,
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to all who were hearing, even
the children. Remember that, as
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we've heard in this letter Paul addressed
a husband's and wives and children of all
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the families here are included in this
word brothers. Peace be to the brothers
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and love with faith. Dr Bab, Steve Bab, WHO's commentary I've been
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very blessed by and reading this,
he suggests that perhaps Paul uses the third
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person here because of the grand and
cosmic way that he has been talking about
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the church all the way along.
If you remember, though, Paul is
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addressing the Ephesians in this very you
know these these people in particular. He's
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been framing who they are and what
they are in this world in light of
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things that have happened even before time
began. He's talking about them in light
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of the eternal grace of God that
is poured out on the world. He's
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been talking about the incorruptibility and the
everlasting life and Kingdom of God that Jesus
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has brought to all, and he, the Ephesians, are a part of
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this. Perhaps this is why Paul
speaks in this broad way. Peace be
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to the brothers. We think about
what it is he's blessing, God is
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blessing through the Apostle, through his
word. The first thing we see is.
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It's peace. Peace is what we
have with God as those who are
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no longer at war with him.
Again, as we think about the way
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that Paul is sort of taking these
various strands in his letter and tying them
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together here at the end, you
remember that we just came through a section
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that is sometimes titled In our bibles
the armor of God. Right that we
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are in a battle against the spiritual
forces and powers of this present age evil
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that is around us. We are
reminded that we came out of a position
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in chapter two the where we were
dead in our trustpasses and sins by nature,
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children of Wrath and enmity with God. That was this is I'm not
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these are this is war language,
not peace language. But as Christians who
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are able to stand in Christ and
put on the armor of God, that
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means we're not at war with God. Yes, at war worth the flesh,
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with the devil, but not with
God, and that's what really matters.
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Of course we belong to God,
we stand in God's strength, we
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have peace with God in Christ.
We are no longer his enemies, we
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are reconciled with him. Paul,
in another benediction and second Thessalonian says peace
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be with you all. Peace in
every way. People are constantly striving for
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peace. It's something that we want, that we need, but God doesn't
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say we need to strive for it. He gives it to us as a
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gift. That's why this word grace
is used. It's this gift that's given.
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He doesn't say, may your role, may your reward and payment,
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be with you if you follow these
rules and do these things. He says
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grace be with you. People strive
for peace all the time. They travel,
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they go on vacations, they climb
a status ladder, they look for
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influence, all kinds of ways that
we look for peace and we think,
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well, if I finally arrive at
my destiny nation or my financial goals or
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my daily morning habits or my whatever, if I finally arrive, then I
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will have peace. But flights get
canceled, friends tab you in the back
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and arrant tweet crumbles, your reputation, all kinds of things that have you
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ever gone into the backyard? Even
like I have talked in very broad terms,
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but what about something really simple?
You go into the backyard, you
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know, you take some iced tea
or some eliminated with you, like I'm
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going to go rest and then your
neighbor just won't stop trying to start his
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lawn more. You know, like
this is not what I wanted, right
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I said everything up, I'm going
to go, I'm going to relax.
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Or maybe it's not even external,
maybe it's inside, maybe it's always inside
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our thoughts and our minds, our
hearts. Inner peace can perhaps overcome any
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outward circumstances, but we never have
inner peace. Apart from Christ. We
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are anxious and troubled, grousing,
complaining, bitter discontent. We spin lies,
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we lose hope, we're restless,
we're distracted, we're weary. It's
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not really the neighbor's lawn more that's
bugging us. That's what's going on in
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here. And so of course we
want peace, right. We want to
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find inwards, spiritual peace from the
storms is in our souls. We can't
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get it in the world, we
can't get it inside, the Paul tells
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it, we can have it in
God. Peace be to the brothers and
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love with faith. From where?
From God, the Father and the Lord
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Jesus Christ. Each of us does
need peace. What we ultimately need is
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peace with God, which comes to
us, as we have learned, through
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Jesus. How does Jesus Bring Peace? He brings it by removing the enmity
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that is between us and God.
He removes it by making us acceptable to
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God and making God acceptable to us. Now you're what I'm saying. I
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don't mean that he sort of mediates
to sort of unruly difficult parties. It's
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not like that. It's not like
you have one to side a and side
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be and both have a little a
bit long in a, both a little
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bit right, and Jesus comes as
a mediator and sort of takes God's hand
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in our hand and puts it it's
not like that. When I say that
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Jesus he makes us as acceptable to
God, I mean that we are rightly
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not acceptable to God. We are
unrighteous, we are unholy. He is
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righteous, he is holy. We
cannot stand in his sight. We read
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a psalm fourteen earlier. The fool
says in his heart there is no god.
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The fool relies on his power and
his strength and ignores the fact of
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those who are that those who call
on God have rescue in him. The
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next Psalm, Psalm Fifteen, says
who can ascend the hill of the Lord,
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the one who's perfect and does what
is good, the one who goes
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and does not blaspheme and and lives
his life in a way that is holy,
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that's the one who can ascend.
Our problem is not that God is
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grumpy. Our problem is that God
is holy, that God is perfect in
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every way. Of course, there's
nothing wrong in God for that. Where's
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the problem in us? So,
when I say that Jesus makes us acceptable
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to God, he doesn't do that
by kind of changing God's mind. He
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does that by perfecting us, by
justifying us, and he does that by
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giving us his own righteousness, by
cleansing our sins so that we might be
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acceptable in God's sign. But he
does more than that. If that weren't
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enough, he also makes God acceptable
to us. It not only in this
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legal act of justification, also in
an internal act of sanctification. He changes
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our hearts so that we don't stand
at the bottom of God's Holy Hill saying
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there is no god. He changes
our hearts so that we want to go
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up, so that we want to
put our faith in Jesus, who takes
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us up we put he changes our
hearts so that we might believe in him
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so that we might rest in him. If you need proof of this,
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listen to Paul's words, and the
Fesians too, and you, who were
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dead in the trestpasses and sins in
which you once walked, following the course
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of this world, following the Prince
of the power of the air, the
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spirit that is now at work in
the sons of disobedience, among whom we
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all once lived, in the passions
of our flesh, carrying out the desires
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of the body and and the mind. And we're by nature children of Wrath,
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like the rest of mankind. But
God, being rich in mercy because
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of the great love with which he
loved us, even while we were dead
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in our trespasses, made us alive. Together with Christ. By grace,
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you have been saved and raised us
up with him and seated us with him
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in the heavenly places, in Christ
Jesus, so that in the coming ages
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he might show the immeasurable riches of
his grace and kindness towards us. In
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Christ Jesus for Grace, for by
grace you have been saved, and this
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is not of your own doing.
It is that the gift of God so
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you see what I'm saying, then
here are Jesus does this. He creates
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peace with us by transferring us,
by by by giving to us gifts so
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that we might no longer be sons
of disobedience, but sons of obedience instead
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of children of Wrath, children blessing, who are blessed in the heavenly spiritual
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places, who are lifted up with
Christ into the heavenly places. This is
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what Jesus has done for us,
and it's in it because the Ephesians and
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all Christians who have put their faith
in Christ, because all Christians have done
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that, who are truly Christians,
that Paul then says peace be to you.
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It's not. You see why I
say it's not just a wish,
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it's not just I really this would
be a nice thing for you. I
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hope that you can have this.
He's saying this is going to happen,
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this already is happening. This is
yours, it is your blessing from God.
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Well, that brings us to the
next thing Paul mentions. He says
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peace to the brothers and love with
faith. Perhaps it goes without saying,
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but you can't have peace with someone
you're fighting with. Love doesn't fight,
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not in a sinful way that we
do with God. Rage and anger,
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frustration with God, none of these
things are come with peace, but love
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does. When God adopts us,
is his children, he creates happy home,
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we might say, home filled with
love, a family which is marked
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by love. Now, of course, it's not always perfect, because the
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flesh is still in us and the
flesh is warring against the spirit, but
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nevertheless God is loving us, as
we read just a moment to go an
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Ephesians to even when we haven't loved
him. Remember that the letter begins this
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way. Want to read you now
from Ephesians chapter one. Blessed be the
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God and father of our Lord,
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in
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Christ with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places, even as he chose us
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in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and
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blameless before him. In love,
he predestined us for adoption as sons through
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Jesus Christ, according to the purpose
of his will, to the praise of
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his glorious grace with which he has
blessed us in the beloved. You See,
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Jesus Christ, the beloved, the
beloved son, our beloved husband.
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He has he is the source of
our blessing. He is how we come
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to call God our father. And
this all happened not because God was bored
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one day or because he is evil
in any way. The thing that he
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says is because he loved us.
So again, when Paul Pronounces this benediction
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here at the end this blessing,
he is not merely wishing for love,
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he's pronouncing the love of God upon
us, a love in which we already
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stand. A Paul ends the his
blessing with a note that I said I'd
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come back to. He says that
grace be with all who love our Lord
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Jesus Christ with love incorruptible, for
has perhaps a better way the to trans
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this. Translate this something like grace
be with all who love our Lord Jesus
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Christ, who dwells in incorruptibility.
I'm there are different ways, are different
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reasons that you might translate it this
way, this phrase regarding incorruptibility. It
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kind of depends on which clause you
attach it to in the sentence and grammatically
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you can do it with different ones
if you want to. I I posted
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something on my website that gives some
more details about this and you can look
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at that there. But the basic
argument is that in all of Paul's other
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Benedictions, when he pronounces grace and
peace and love and these sorts of things
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on people, you never see in
them any sort of conditional clause like this.
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Not It's, of course, true
that we do love Jesus Christ because
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he first loved us, and there's
even a sense in which that love is
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incorruptible and so far as it comes
from the Holy Spirit. But another reason
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to take this as Jesus who dwells
in incorruptibility, as instead of a reference
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to the kind of love we give
to him, is that that's what the
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whole letter has been about. It
hasn't been about our incorrupt incorruptible love.
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It is a been about him who
is Riz and into the heavenly places and
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established these blessings which he is pouring
out to us, blessings which don't go
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away, which are perfectly holy,
which are incorruptible in every way. The
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purpose of God's pronouncing Ben His benedictions
on his people is to bless them with
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his glory and the gifts of salvation, the blessings of God tend to spotlight
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his work, not ours, and
that is, I think, what is
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going on here as well. And
so he is reminding us of this theme
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that he has brought about in the
are he's been speaking about in the letter.
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The whole time he says, grace
be with all who love our Lord
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Jesus Christ, and remember he dwells
an incorruptibility. Again, remember back to
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what I read in Chapter One,
that we have been blessed with every spiritual
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blessing in the heavenly places. Right
the things which come to us, the
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grace which comes to us, all
of these ways in which God is giving
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us peace and love in our lives. They come to us from Jesus Christ,
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who has risen from the dead.
They come to us from a place
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that is secure, that is everlasting. This is a comfort to us as
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Christians. It's a reminder to us
that when God gives us His grace,
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it's something that stands on heavenly ground, something that can not be moved,
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something that cannot be changed. We
stand in Christ because of the love of
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God. We have been incorporated,
as he talks about, into an in
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another place in Ephesians, into a
body of Christ. That's an amazing thing
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to say, that we belong to
the body of Christ, a body which
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is incorruptible. Amazing. Before God
loved us, in Christ we were corrupt,
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we were dead. We were a
corruptible, able to decay and already
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dead. But in Christ we become
incorruptible. In Christ our love, our
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our peace at all begins to change. That's what Paul wants us to understand
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from this letter. He wants us
to understand who we are in Jesus,
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who has risen from the dead and
and stands at the right hand of God,
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interceding for us, and who now
pours out these blessings on us in
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grace. He wants us to understand
that this life in which we stand,
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this Christ in which we stand through
faith, how it affects our lives,
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our relationships with one another, in
the family and society, etc. That
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this heavenly blessing, though far above
anything that we could ever imagine, is
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where our life is grounded and where
ore and from and from which we live
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our lives, even as we live
them in this world, even as we
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deal with difficult family situations, is
with difficult situations in society, even as
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we face fighting evil, the evil
powers of spiritual darknesses that exists. Salvation
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changes us from corruptible to incorruptible through
the incorruptible one, our beloved savior.
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It turns us from enemies into friends
with God. It puts peace in our
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hearts instead of hate. It teaches
us a new way to walk in Christ
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and, as such, in this
salvation we learn this new way to live,
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a lay that is marked by love, a way that is sustained by
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grace, the grace of our incorruptible
Lord from his incorruptible kingdom. How do
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we receive all of these things?
Will, just as he said throughout his
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letter, underline and several different ways, receive them through faith, which is
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a gift of God. We receive
them through faith, which is an act
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which is itself an act of His
grace. Grace describes the way in which
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God gives us these things. We
don't earn his love. In fact,
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we earned his hate, we are
earned his wrath, but he loved US
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instead, a love that he offers
us in grace. So, beloved of
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the Lord, we've got to humble
ourselves. We can't stand before God,
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we can't and on the things of
this world, on the things in our
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lives, on our own righteousness.
If we want peace, if we want
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love, if we want incorruptibility,
if we want things that truly last and
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aren't worn away or stolen away at
a moment, we must trust Jesus Christ
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what he's done for us. When
we do, God gives us everything,
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every spiritual blessing lavishly poured out on
us in every way, and not just
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in the ages to come, but
that world, that life, has already
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begun breaking in in such a way
that it affects our church now, it
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affects our families, now, it
affects our world now, all to the
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praise and glory and the workmanship of
God. Let's pray and ask that God
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would bless us with these very things
and with the things that we have learned
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in this letter.
