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It’s easy to be busy with the Christian life—programs, good intentions, real effort—and still be missing the one thing that keeps it all from exploding. In Ephesians 1:15–16, Paul looks at believers whose faith in Jesus is visibly pouring out as love toward one another, and what he does in response is the piece we most often skip.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts fiddling with the “peripherals” (programs, styles, marketing) versus focusing on what actually matters—Jesus’s love flowing through us to others. What are some examples from your own church experience where you’ve seen this tension play out, and how can we tell the difference between helpful structure and distraction?
Paul affirms that the Ephesians are already doing the right thing—their faith in Jesus and love for one another are evident. When you look at your own Christian life, what does it mean to know that you’re actually loving others with Jesus’s love, rather than just telling yourself you are?
The sermon emphasizes that Jesus’s love isn’t just the “launch pad” but the “fuel mix”—everything that holds the mission together. How does that change the way you think about your daily decisions and actions as a Christian, particularly when you don’t feel very loving?
What does it look like practically to lean on Jesus’s love and the Holy Spirit’s work instead of relying on your own determination to be a good Christian—and what tends to happen when we try to do it on our own?
Paul doesn’t stop with affirming their love for the saints—he moves into prayer and thanksgiving. Why do you think reflection, prayer, and gratitude are crucial responses to seeing God’s work in other people, and what happens when we skip that step?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, we have something fun in store for you today, hopefully, which is that Jason and I are going to co-preach this sermon and, you know, just to keep it interesting, Jason, maybe we’ll just go ahead and have you start it instead, right? Doesn’t that sound better? Didn’t you say I was going to preach the second half? Just making sure you’re awake. Yeah, yeah.
We actually, you know, there are things that get thrown at us, right? And we are not ready for them. Now sometimes it’s because someone’s pulling our leg at a moment like this and I’m just, I can’t resist a good time to give Jason a hard time, but sometimes it’s genuine things that we’re called to do, right? We’re called to do something. We’re trying to prepare for something and it doesn’t work.
A couple of years ago, SpaceX launched the first attempt at their new, totally reusable rocket, the Starship, and if you’ve seen it, it’s the largest rocket of any kind ever put together by human beings. It’s never been this powerful before, something that contains that much power in a single spot because the goal is not to just get us into orbit or even to the moon, but to get us all the way to Mars and maybe beyond. And so they need something that can lift the sort of equipment to get there and also, once you’re up there, can keep going. And so they’ve been building this incredibly powerful craft.
Well, they were ready to launch it, but the launch pad, it was ready but not perfect. They had all the concrete down, it was reinforced, ready to go for the Starship, but it didn’t yet have a liquid cooling system they were planning to put in on it. They thought it could handle it without it, so they decided to try. The Starship launched, exploded, and the force of these giant engines taking off on this more powerful than ever before craft managed to throw the concrete of the launch pad up to six miles away. There were chunks found in nature reserves miles and miles away, and thankfully no one was hurt, but can you imagine if you have a chunk of rocket launch pad coming down at you from the sky?
They were mostly ready, right? They had the power, they had the drive, we’re going to do this. They’re still working on it, incidentally, they’re getting there, but something was missing. One element of this, the thing to keep the heat from melting the concrete, it literally melted concrete. Can you imagine that? And so what happens? You have concrete tossed all over the place, into the ocean, over into the gulf, over into the nature reserve. Thankfully, like I said, no one was hurt, but it wasn’t productive, and they had to wait months before they could even try again because of the destruction cost.
Well, sometimes when God sends us to launch, we’re kind of like that rocket, right? We have part of it. Even though we’re trying to get to some faraway goal, and it takes a lot of power, we have certain aspects, right? We study God’s word, we pray over it, and we feel like we’re going in the right direction, but the question is, are we really genuinely fully there? Do we have everything that we need? And then are we ready to actually fire the thrusters and get going when it’s time to?
Because what we see in this passage, we’re going to see two things we’ve been building as we go through Ephesians chapter one, how God has called us into his family, how he’s brought us together and made us sons and daughters of the living God. But now we get to the point, what are we doing with that? Today we’re going to see two things. I’m going to start us off today by looking at what we’re called to do in the faith that God gives us, and then Jason’s going to talk about how we reflect back on that, and then do something else that’s crucially important that we often overlook in the Christian life.
And if we miss either one of these, we may just be hurling chunks of concrete, because we’re not actually acting in a God-glorifying way. Lots of power, lots of activity, but not necessarily going where God wants us to. So let’s pray that God helps us to see where we’re hurling concrete today, and how he can bring in the needed systems to make it work.
Father, we do pray that you would guide us as we come to your word today, that you would help us to see what you would have us to see, that you would help us to be the men and women that you’ve called us to be. As we ask that, Lord, help us to start with understanding exactly what you’ve done for us. It is your love that empowers us. No rocket fuel could ever have the power of your love. Nothing we could muster does, Lord. So would you remind us that is where we are rooted. That is our launch pad. And would you guide us as we go off on the missions that you send us on. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Really getting down to the basics. And this is where we’ve been. It kind of feels like we’re coming back to this over and over again over these last weeks, but that’s because it’s so important. Here’s the thing we need to remember. Everything else we’re going to talk about, it’s all because we’re rooted, we’re situated in Jesus’ love.
Take a look at verse 15, Ephesians 1:15, “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.” For this reason what? Well, that goes back to verses 13 and 14 that we were just looking at last week. If you think about what Paul says there, he says that we have that sealing of the Holy Spirit, right? We can go and do God’s work because one, we know that he’s going to protect us, that we’re not going to lose our salvation because he has put his seal on us. And two, we go with his authority because we go with the letters showing that we are ambassadors of the King, that his seal is on us.
And so that’s what Paul seems to have in mind here as he says what he’s heard of them. Now, if you remember from Acts, Paul spent a lot of time with the Ephesians, and some people have said, well, why is Paul saying he’s heard of their faith? And there are a couple of possibilities. One that is true of the whole letter is that Paul’s actually writing a letter going to a bunch of neighboring towns, and so he hasn’t met the people that are hearing this letter that’s being passed on. One town reads it, the church in that town, then they pass it on to the next one.
Of course, that’s ultimately what happens, and maybe that’s what Paul has in mind. But I think perhaps even more likely is that Paul’s reflecting on what God’s been doing in their lives since he’s been gone. He’s been thinking about how God’s love is developing in them, and maybe one of his partners in ministry, maybe, well, we know from different times in ministry, Timothy does this, Barnabas at times before they’re split, then Epaphras we find in Colossians, for example, he’s going and reporting back to Paul. So we know there’s these different missionaries going out there associated with Paul that report back what they’re seeing when they arrive in a town. Maybe that’s what Paul has in mind here. I think it is.
I think what Paul’s doing is saying, okay, I’ve heard this, and so we do have something interesting here. Oftentimes when we’re looking at one of Paul’s letters, he’s talking about what isn’t happening. Here he’s going to talk about what is, but it’s so important they don’t miss it. Because a lot of times God’s working in our lives, and he actually is doing it, the work is happening, and yet we still miss it, and so we miss the benefits of it, and that’s going to cause us to miss what Jason’s going to take us to in a moment, to actually reflect and bring that back to our God.
So Paul’s looking at these believers, and he sees God working in them. That’s the thing that we know clearly. And here’s something else that we know clearly, and we’ve seen this throughout the last few verses, that these are believers who are not the initial group of believers. They aren’t those that were there when Jesus ascended into heaven. They’re probably not even amongst those who were there on Pentecost when all those thousands came to believe. These are men and women who have had Paul and the other missionaries come to them, tell them about the gospel, and they believed.
So we’re seeing the gospel moving forward, and the beauty of it is that Paul can say here, I’ve heard the report, there’s no doubt the gospel’s moving forward, because I can see, I can hear the Holy Spirit’s working in you. Here’s what they need to remember in that, and here’s what we need to remember as we continue to be the same, we’re the recipients of that. The focus is on Jesus. It’s in him that everything comes together. Notice what Paul says here as he writes them. He says, “your faith in the Lord Jesus.”
What’s going on here? We could even maybe play with that translation a little bit. It’s the faith that’s dwelling in Jesus. It’s the faith that Jesus has given them. It’s not just that they believe in Jesus, that they can check off certain boxes, yes, I believe this about Jesus, yes, I believe that about Jesus. What is it? It’s the very gift the Holy Spirit’s given them, that Jesus is with them, that they are those in Christ.
And we need to understand that being in Christ, that’s not just the launch pad. Sometimes I think that’s what we think it is. Jesus loved me, this I know, and so now I can go and do things that I should do. No, Jesus’ love isn’t just the launch pad, it’s the fuel mix as well. Everything that’s going to happen comes from Jesus, and what binds everything together and makes it work, well, that comes from Jesus too.
First Corinthians 13, Paul says, “‘For now we see an imperfect reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.’ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Jesus’ love is what binds it together, the mission of the church, the calling of each and every one of us. If you don’t have that, why are we even here, right? We do have really good coffee, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason. Especially since I don’t drink coffee. Well, we need to pray for Jason about that later on.
You know, we’re all in the process of sanctification, we’re not there yet. Funny thing, I had to stay awake for the entire first part of this sermon, I usually take a nap. Yeah, yeah, see? So this is sanctifying for you in all sorts of ways. Now why would you stay awake for the first part of the sermon? Well it’s because you’re showing Christian love, because you know if you’re snoring right here next to my microphone it’s going to get picked up, it’s going to make me feel sad, and that’s not good. So even though you’re missing that refreshing sleep that you were counting on, you restrain, right? That’s that Romans 14, loving one another in our weakness.
Yeah, yeah, and so you’re being strong right now, you’re staying awake, and you think about that. This is, of course, mostly unjust, at least, I can’t make any guarantees on how much Jason Sotwalek preached in the past, but we know this is a bigger issue, right? Because we have to forbear with each other a lot. There are a lot of times where we don’t feel like doing what God’s called us to do. And that’s why I say that the love of Jesus isn’t just the launch pad, the love of Jesus is the very binding together of everything, because here’s what happens when we try to do it on our own, right? We say, okay, Jesus loves me, I’m going to go and do what God’s called me to do, and we launch and we explode right over the launch pad.
Because our own human attempt at love, our own human attempt at being determined to do what God wants us to do, it isn’t strong enough. It isn’t strong enough to do much of anything. Just like that ship wasn’t yet ready, right? The engines weren’t fully on, the launch pad itself needed something more. It wasn’t really ready, but they tried, and sometimes we think, well, I’m ready, I’m ready to do this.
Here’s the thing, we’re never going to be ready to do this on our own. The launch pad needed cooling, and we continue to need the cooling of the Holy Spirit. We need God’s continued work in us, or we’ll explode. We’ll find that reason, we just don’t feel very loving, and all the intellectual knowledge that Jesus loves us isn’t going to be enough. Are we actually being bound together by Jesus’ love? Are we allowing him to fuel us, to bind us, to strengthen us, to direct us, and to launch us?
How do we get those pieces together? Because the thing is, he does want us to launch. He does want the spaceship to take off, but he doesn’t want us to explode right over the pad. He wants us to lean on him and go on the mission that he sent us on. And so we focus on Jesus’ love, that’s where we start, and then, and then we go and we run off of that love. We run off of it by pouring that love back out to those around us, loving the other saints and then beyond.
And that’s what Paul is talking about here, if you think about the second part of this. He starts by affirming that they have their faith in the Lord Jesus, and then he says, well, why the saints? Because if we’re going to go on a mission to show God’s love to the world, and that’s what he’s called us to, the first thing we need to do is actually love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Some people misunderstand this and they try to say, well, all we need to do is love our brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s it, right? We do that. It seems like all we can do, and I think that’s why we want to limit it to that, right? The world, you know, the world, it’s all messed up anyway. We don’t need to love the world, but we’ll love each other. But what Paul’s referring to here, and what our calling is, is to start with loving one another and then have that love flow beyond that.
It’s not enough to get the spaceship off the ground, you also want it to get out into space. And so we start in the right order, which is different than to say that’s the only thing we’re trying to do. But the key thing here, and that’s what Paul can affirm, and it’s not always true in the New Testament church just like it isn’t always true in the church today. Nothing has changed on that. We don’t always manage to love one another. But that’s where we’re aiming to go, and we start by loving each other.
Because sometimes we try to do the reverse, right? We try to think about what we’re going to do when we get into orbit before we manage to actually get off the launch pad, and that goes back to trying to do it on our own. Because if we love Jesus, how can we not love the body of Christ? Doesn’t mean that it’s always easy and perfect, but when we look at each other and we see people that God looked at and said, I love you and you are worth shedding blood for, you are worth dying for, and we know that’s what God said about each person that he calls into his church, how do we look at each other and not love? And how do we tell the world that’s how God views them if we don’t start by loving each other?
And so the key thing, the starting point, after we’ve cleared the initial safety checks and we’ve cooled the launch pad by focusing on Jesus’ love, is that we launch by loving each other.
Galatians 5:6 says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.” Notice here what Paul is saying. Do we want people to know that we’re Christians? Well, how do we do that? Well, we get a bumper sticker, we get the t-shirt, we could play Christian music, right? You have a business and you make sure to play Christian music in it. You can make sure people know that you go to church. You can put up Christmas decorations that are more religious and less secular, right? No Frosty the Snowman for you, no, or for me, please no, we have to have snowmen. But we’ll get rid of those, right? We’ll make sure that everyone knows, but the real way that God wants us to advertise to the world that we’re Christians is that people see us loving other Christians and they see that genuine love, that love that can only come because we’re fueled by Jesus’ love and say, wow, there’s something different here.
It’s the hymn from years ago, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Do they? It’s a good challenge. Too often we get busy fiddling with the wrong things, unimportant things, and not with what really matters. You know, we get maybe the style of worship right, we get the signage or the marketing or the programs right, but do we get the thing that really matters right?
Some of you know that I am a keyboard geek. Well, I know you could take off keyboard, right, and just go with geek, but I am a keyboard geek amongst other things, and so I love a good mechanical keyboard. A friend of mine years ago got me into the IBM Model M keyboard, which if you remember it from the 1980s, it had a spring under each key. And you type on that thing, it sounds like a machine gun’s firing, but boy can you type on it.
And it’s so good for your fingers, your fingers aren’t bottoming out every key press on the circuit board beneath it, the springs are pushing back and you can feel that satisfying buckle of the spring, and it’s just so good. And so I started with that, and then I discovered modern mechanical keyboards, and you get ones with different switches. The one in my office back there, if you were to go back there, has clear switches, which are unusual. That’s the reason I wanted to try clear switches, and I’ve had that keyboard for years now, and it has more resistance, a little different kind of resistance on your fingers, and you know, some of them you can type faster on, some of them you can maybe feel a little bit more relaxed with your fingers.
But then you get all the other things, and if you’ve ever opened up, say, a Best Buy ad nowadays that mechanical keyboards have become more of a common thing, you’ll see here’s a keyboard with 10 different color patterns, or infinite different customizable color patterns, or keys that look this way or that way, and there are literally thousands of keyboards you can now get that look different ways. And so you can pick out the switch for the feel, and you can pick out the switch for the sound of the keys, and you can pick out if you want high keys or low keys, you can pick out if it’s black or white, or maybe different shades of earth tones, or maybe you want summer colors.
I have a keyboard that has watermelon colors, so it looks like a watermelon as you’re sitting there typing on it. I mean, there’s all these different things. And sometimes when I’m not feeling very focused and I need to, say, write my sermon or write an article or whatever it might be, you know, I start to think, well, maybe if I try a different keyboard, I switch out keyboards, maybe if I change the light pattern on this, it’ll be less distracting or more encouraging. Maybe if I add a new macro so that when I press one key, it presses several keys.
And suddenly, you know, half hour, hour later, I’m working on this keyboard, and I’ve been fiddling with it. But one thing I haven’t done is whatever I sat down to do with the keyboard, right? When it comes down to it, the point is to type. Now, as Christians, we can fiddle with an awful lot of things. We can fiddle with all these different things, even good things. I mean, some of those keyboard fiddles are actually practical, right? There are keyboards I can type faster on.
And so if I’m really trying to get something done, there is a practical aspect to it. Just like there’s a practical aspect to the programs we introduce at church, the ways we try to do different outreach events and try to reach into the community, those are practical things. But if we keep fiddling with those, and we forget the reason that we have that keyboard of the church is to type out Jesus’s love, then we’re missing something.
So for the first part of our message tonight, before I hand it over to Jason, let me just leave us with a question: What does a healthy Christian life look like? We’ll hear a lot of people say things, oh, you have to have the thicker keycaps. You have to have the color patterns. It has to be clicky, or it has to be quiet so you don’t drive everyone nuts. You’ll find all those things. But what does the healthy Christian life look like? That Jesus’s love is pouring out.
And so as Paul gets ready to take us to where Jason’s going to take us here, that’s where he takes us first. They’re focused on Jesus. They’re focused on Jesus, and they’re focused on showing Jesus’s love to others. Am I doing that? Are there places where I’m not focused on Jesus? Well then it’s clear, right? We can say, we get this, oh, that means, yeah, I’m missing something. But then sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we are because we’re trying to get that Jesus keyboard so nice, we say, of course I’m focusing on Jesus.
The second part is, am I actually loving others with Jesus’s love? Because if focusing on Jesus is loving people as Jesus loves them, then if I’m not loving people as Jesus loves them, well, I can draw my own conclusions about how I’m doing. Am I just fiddling with the theological peripherals, or am I doing what Jesus has called me to do with those peripherals?
Well, here’s the good news on the Ephesians. They are doing the right thing. They’re typing away, they’re clacking and making a giant racket with Jesus’s love, right? They’re doing what Jesus has called them to do. And when we’re doing that, or when we see others doing that, then there’s another thing we are called to do in response. And I’m going to hand it over to Jason to talk about that.
All right. Man, it took 24 minutes. We’re going to go over, okay? Please do. Please do.
Somebody give me verse 15 and 16. Can we go back? I want to look at both of them. Can you do that? It’s not lack of love that I’m leaving you. It’s to go change the script. Yeah. Words of Jesus. Get ready.
Apart from me, you can do … Let me say it one more time. Apart from me, you can do … So I think let’s do it three times. Three times. It’s the Bible.
“Apart from me, you can do …” So I think Tim set us up here beautifully because apart from Jesus, we can do nothing, nothing. We can’t do a few things. We can’t do most of the things with Jesus flavoring. We can do nothing.
Why? Because everything that is happening is through the work of God in us and through us.
“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” Is that 16? Yeah. Very short verse.
Let’s go back to 16. Let me go back to it one more time. Oh, he gave me a new countdown clock. This could be exciting. This is very exciting. Okay.
He does not cease giving thanks. And actually, who is he giving thanks to? Feel free, audience participation. Who is he giving thanks to? Yes. God the Father.
Why? Because everything is coming from God. It is through God, and it’s going back to God.
Romans 11, verse 36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever.” Oh, forever. Amen. Well, you can say and ever and ever. It works.
So, we see the love of God going in a big circle. That’s what we see. God’s love, it’s a big giant circle. He created everything. He made it good. We botched it up. He’s been in the process of fixing it ever since we botched it up.
So the key here is if we’re gonna do what God is calling us to, we have to recognize how God is at work in others. We’re not looking for the good that those people are doing in their own strength because they have no strength in which to do it. We’re looking for what God is at work doing in the people that surround us.
And we are looking for what God is at work doing in us. Every moment of every day, we are in the shadow of the cross. We’re in the shadow of the cross and it is no longer an instrument of shame. It is no longer an instrument of humiliation. Because Jesus poured out His blood in accordance with the Father’s will. He says in John 12, right as the gospel is shifting to the second part of John’s gospel, and He says, “After I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.” John 12, 32. So He’s at work taking this humiliation and He’s changing again to glory.
Glory for Himself, glory for the Father, glory for the Holy Spirit. Amen. He’s taking something bad and turning it in to something good. Just like all the way back in Genesis, chapter 50, verse 20, it says, “God meant it for good.” Yeah, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.
God is at work taking the evil that humanity has done ever since we fell and turning it into something good. That’s what He wants to do in us. When we want to gain the strength to do what we’re being called to do, we must go to the cross, because the cross is the ultimate expression of God turning evil into something good.
Never be sad about that cross. Certain aspects of it, the physical suffering of our Lord, the spiritual suffering of bearing all the sins of mankind, we could venture to contemplate that more than we do. But the wider thing and how the Lord is taking sin and turning it into something beautiful and how He’s calling everyone back to that cross.
We’re going to have the Lord suffer here in a few moments. We’ll see how few of those moments are. You know how I get when I get to going. But He’s taking that humiliation and He’s turning it to glory and He’s bringing everyone back to the cross. Tim will say the words, “Each time you do this, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
You can’t get away from the cross. Even if you wanted to try to, you can’t. And why would you want to? That’s the question. Why would you want to? Because there’s nothing worth doing outside of kneeling at that cross. There’s no place worth living outside of kneeling at that cross.
I want you to think about how the Holy Spirit is encouraging our hearts. He doesn’t send us away. We confessed our sins earlier. He doesn’t send us away. He brings us back with comfort and strength and power. Why? Because we were already the enemies of God. It can’t get any worse. We were the enemies of God. Now we’re His friends. We have no right, in fact, to continue to feel shame when the Lord Jesus, through His grace and His power and the power of the Holy Spirit, says otherwise.
We have no right to say that what He has done, somehow He did not do. That’s the power of that cross. We’ve got to recognize that cross for ourselves. We’ve got to recognize the gifts that flow from that cross, that flow from the Holy Spirit to our neighbors, our brothers, our sisters, in the body of Christ.
And then get to celebrating. Because when we celebrate in the strength of Christ, it says elsewhere, St. Paul says, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He doesn’t say, “Never boast.” He says, “Don’t boast in anything except the cross.” There’s nothing better worth boasting in, because the Romans, they use it to humiliate, to punish, to deride, to make people less than human.
And now, because of that cross, we are more than human. We are humans remade in the image of God and in the grace of Christ. And in that strength, we can do anything. In that strength, we can do anything. We talked about, apart from me, you can do nothing, but elsewhere it says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
That makes no sense if you think about it. But with spiritual eyes, we can see it, can’t we? Because the cross empowers, the Holy Spirit empowers, the Father’s love empowers. How many times, when we get confused, when we get lost, it’s because we forget that we’re sons and daughters. We forget the sonship, the daughtership. We forget this as a family.
Tim brought up, he was sort of hinting at the social gospel in his part of the sermon. And that is indeed pernicious, but why is it pernicious? It is pernicious because the strength by which we do anything has been taken away in the way people think of what you should do and why you should do it.
If there is no cross, if there is no Jesus, if there is no salvation, why are we making the world a better place? Why? Why try? In the Our Father, which you all tend to call the Lord’s Prayer, I still call it the Our Father. Okay, sometimes I still call it the Lord’s Prayer too. But it says, “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses or our debts, if you like, as we forgive those who trespass or sin against us.”
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Our Father who art in heaven, let’s do the beginning part. Our Father who art in heaven, how would be thy name? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. On earth as it is in heaven. We’re trying to make the earth into heaven because heaven has come down.
If heaven hasn’t come down in the person of Jesus Christ, God of very God, God in human flesh, who then was born to die on the cross and rose again, then we have no reason to try to make the world into a better place. Everybody trying to do that is like hearing the echo of the gospel, but not recognizing the song, not being able to sing the song for what it is.
Because if there’s no gospel, there’s no strength. If there’s no salvation, there’s no heaven. Sometimes you got to hear the bad news before you hear the good news because maybe the good news isn’t quite as good as it could be unless you have something to be saved from. Let me wrap it up this way. There is nothing that you need to be saved from that I need to be saved from that He doesn’t already know.
There is nothing we need to be saved from that He doesn’t already know. And He saw that when He went to that cross. He saw it when He went to that cross. You can’t possibly cry enough. You can’t feel sorry enough. You can’t feel guilty enough to trick Jesus into somehow forgetting that He doesn’t know exactly who you are.
He knows exactly who you are. And He loves you anyway. When He empowers you with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, then you have everything you need. It’s all up from here. It’s all gravy from here because when you’re living in the strength of the Holy Spirit, it never came from you to begin with.
Never came from you to begin with. We get off the deck. We get off the ground. We get off the launch pad by knowing that we’ve been in the worst place that could be. We were enemies of God and now we’re friends. Look for the evidences of that friendship in your brothers and your sisters. Look for the evidence of that friendship in yourselves.
Look for God being at work because He is. In a sense, we can say He made the whole gospel story about you. I promise I will wrap it up eventually. I had a friend who said one time, and I don’t want to mean to beat up on my friend, but he said, “I don’t like the song ‘Above All.’ It ends, ‘He took the fall and thought of me above all.’” He said, “That’s a little self-centered, isn’t it?” He said, “Reformed people shouldn’t think like that.”
We’ve got any Calvinists in here? We’ve got…here and there. But the truth is, He did think of you individually. He did think of me individually as if we were the only one. I know I say that in every sermon, but it’s true. Christ died for everyone, but the beautiful part is He died for you specifically. He died for me specifically.
He gave that life, and if the grace that comes to us to have faith has come to us, then that blood is affected. We’re drowning in it. I’ve told this one before in the men’s Bible study, but I was talking with a pastor, and I was confessing my sins. Believe it or not, he looked at me and he said, “Remember, the blood of Christ is still fresh for you.”
Even if we’re sitting here over 2,000 years later, and you somehow think that the mess that you’ve made of your life this week, or the mess that I’ve made of my life this week, is somehow beyond the blood of Christ. He doesn’t need to go to the cross again, but He will. He would. As if you were the only one. As if today, as if this week, were the only sins that He needed to forgive.
That is the power of the gospel. That’s the power of the gospel, and it’s hard to get your mind around. It really is. But we don’t get our minds around it in our own strength. We don’t get our hearts around it in our own strength. John says, “If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. Let the Holy Spirit empower your heart.
Let the Holy Spirit enlarge your heart to see the love of Christ, to make it bigger, to show you the depth of His love.” Will you pray with me? Lord Jesus, we come before You as those who need Your forgiveness today, just like every day before this. And somehow we know that You’ve already dealt with the gift, dealt with the guilt.
By Your gift, You’ve dealt with our guilt. But we need reminding. It is us who forget. It is us who fear. But You said, “Perfect love drives out fear.” We ask You to teach us and to give us through the Holy Spirit the perfect love that drives out fear. Give us the strength that we need to go out of this place in Your love.
Give us the strength to forget what lies behind and strain towards a goal, because we’re still here. And while we’re still here, we strive. We strive in Your strength and in Your power. Give us the strength to endure until we meet You in glory. We ask all this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
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