What God has done in Christ Jesus, how the church is to live in Christ Jesus

[0:00] If you'd like to turn in your Bibles, please, to Ephesians chapter 2. As you know, we're making our way through the New Testament one book at a time.

[0:16] We're in the book of Ephesians this morning, so we're a fairly long way from the beginning. As we read this together, I'd like your prayers, because I feel the kind of weight this morning with Isabel leaving, with a number of people in the fellowship and hospital, you know, with the Brian passing away.

[0:42] I don't feel all that comfortable simply to stand here and, you know, preach. But, what I'm called to do, right, but I'm not, if honest, I'd rather be sat where you are this morning than here.

[0:59] But, so. Please, Margaret, yeah.

[1:20] What passage was it? Send me Ephesians 2, 1 to 10.

[1:30] Just one. Yeah. The reading is from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 10.

[1:45] Made alive in Christ. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work, the spirit who is now at work, in the rules for our disobedience.

[2:11] All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

[2:22] Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive at Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions.

[2:39] It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

[3:05] For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves.

[3:16] It is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us.

[3:35] To do. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for these words written to the church in Ephesus so long ago and so relevant for us today.

[3:50] We ask that you would fill down with your spirit to enable him to preach the word that you have given to him for us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

[4:05] Thank you, Margaret, for reading.

[4:31] I appreciated that. Anybody think I was crying so much because I've missed Andrew Morton? It's nice to see you here, Andrew, but I save my tears for later for you.

[4:56] So, we are making our way through the New Testament one book at a time. Recognizing that we can't say everything that a book says or letter says, but at the same time, recognizing that in each letter there are key points.

[5:17] The whole book is valuable, but of course there are key points throughout each letter. Well, we come to the book of Ephesians this morning, and just the other evening we were looking at man's search for meaning.

[5:30] The very famous book written by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, sold over 25 million copies. He was a Holocaust survivor, and he wrote this book, Man's Search for Meaning.

[5:46] But the book that we were referring to, of course, was the book of Ecclesiastes. It was man's search for meaning of life under the sun, and how God uses means on earth to change things on earth.

[6:00] Well, this morning in Ephesians, we have the picture of the eternal God coming into a temporal world to make things eternal.

[6:14] So we've got God the sun, you know, the Godhead, sending God the sun into a temporal world.

[6:25] And by temporal, I mean that this world is passing, and the new heavens and new earth is coming. And that'll be eternity as it was.

[6:36] So we have eternity at the beginning of the Bible. We have eternity at the end. And with the introduction of sin, we have temporal things. Things live and they die.

[6:49] And so you experience the temporal blessings when you're alive, and of course the temporal difficulties when you're alive. But they come to an end when death comes.

[7:02] But the very end is not temporal at all. The very end is eternal. It's where God restores all things in Christ Jesus. And the book of Ephesians clearly addresses that very near the beginning.

[7:17] And it's one of the reasons why Paul opens with this lengthy praise to God for what he has done for the world and for us in Christ Jesus.

[7:28] Ephesians is really clearing up what the real meaning of life is. It is to be found in Jesus with your sins forgiven, knowing that you have life eternal only by being in Christ Jesus, only by being in that relationship do you escape the temporal and move into the eternal, properly understood, eternal by the means of good eternal, life with God forevermore.

[7:56] And this is spelled out, you could say, in one verse, in chapter 1, verse 10, where it says that in the end, as it were, that God's, which the plan of God, which he set forth in Christ, verse 10, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

[8:23] There's the end. In the very, very end, everything gets united. Things in heaven and things on earth are one.

[8:34] They are united. And of course, the unity there is brought about through Christ, because of Christ, only because of Christ. And so if you lose your way through the book of Ephesians, if you were to read it, then go back to chapter 1, verse 10, and it'll reestablish your footing.

[8:50] It'll give you the very direction of where things are going. It is all moving towards God, unifying everything, things in heaven and things on earth. That's what's happening.

[9:01] As you look out into a disordered world, as we saw last Sunday evening, then what, one of the realities that you live with is God is doing up the house while you're still living in it.

[9:12] Okay, God is doing the renovating work while you're still living in it. And like all types of work, it gets messy before it gets better. And this is the type of thing that we experience in life.

[9:25] We look out the window and go, how can that be, given the fact that God is making all things new? Well, he makes all things new in the same way you move into a dilapidated house and do it up while you're living in it.

[9:38] Okay, it takes time, and in the fullness of time, it is as it's meant to be. So in summary then, this letter divides into two parts, very equal parts, verses, chapters one through the three, really focus on the sort of doctrine of God, the accomplishments of God in Christ Jesus.

[10:00] The gospel is where we learn what God has done and what God is doing. And Paul gives praise to God for this work, this accomplishment that God has accomplished in Christ Jesus.

[10:13] That not only has God reconciled us to him, but he has reconciled us to each other in Jesus Christ. The new humanity, the new community that will occupy heaven, are already together.

[10:28] They're already together before they get there. They've been made as one body. They've been made as a new humanity, a new community. And yet we don't even get to enjoy that because we look throughout the world and see hundreds and thousands of Christians across hundreds and thousands of different denominations and, you know, different backgrounds.

[10:48] And we find it very hard to understand what should Christianity look like. But it's very simple. It looks like anyone who belongs to Jesus. Okay?

[10:59] And in the end, I don't think Christianity is going to look like a Scottish version of Christianity or even a Cornish version of Christianity.

[11:10] Though I think the Cornish version will be a lot closer to the truth. That was a joke. Meant with a hint of seriousness, of course. But we don't know, do we?

[11:22] We know that that's going to be true. But we can't really picture that kind of unity because unity to us looks more like uniformity.

[11:35] And yet the book of Ephesians is very clear that unity is not uniformity. God makes everything work together. God unites everything by making everything different, which is not the way you would do it.

[11:48] Okay? God creates unity in his church by making everyone different. And that's not the way you would do it. But that is the way God does it. And of course, if that's a picture of the church, it is a picture of the new community in the new heavens, in new earth.

[12:04] And it's one that I don't think we're used to looking at. So Paul gives thanks to God for these blessings, for what is and what will be. Then in chapters 4 through to 6, he focuses on how the church is to live in light of the blessings that they have received in Christ Jesus.

[12:24] And one of the key blessings that they've received, as we saw in Galatians, is freedom. You need to be fully aware and have a strong grasp of the freedom that you have in Christ Jesus.

[12:39] You are not free from constraint, as if you can do whatever you please, but you are free from any accusation against your life, any accusation against your character.

[12:51] You are free from death itself. You are free, ultimately, from pain and sorrow, because that is what the future will bring. But remember, we're living in the temporal.

[13:02] We're not yet experiencing that. But that is part and parcel of the freedom you enjoy. Some of it you get now, and some of it you have to wait for.

[13:14] But the freedom that comes is very similar in the temporal, is very similar, as it will be in the eternal, as that which the people of God receive when they're brought out of Egypt. They're brought out of slavery.

[13:26] They're brought out of bondage. They're brought out of a place where they were overpowered. And then God brings them out, telling them that they're free, and then gives them ten commandments of the things they can't do.

[13:41] Doesn't look like freedom. You know, you be, I'm free. Thou shall not, thou shall not. And that doesn't look like freedom. But this is because we've misunderstood what freedom is.

[13:53] True freedom, as God describes it, is freedom to be faithful. It's the freedom to no longer to be held back by sin. It's the freedom to be faithful to God, to obey him.

[14:06] And that's a freedom we did not have before we belonged to God. Before we belonged to God, we had a, we have, sin was the dominating force. Sin was the thing that could tell us not to pray, and we wouldn't pray, right?

[14:20] Because it was that powerful. But in Christ, sin no longer has that power. It no longer has that dominion. We have been set free from that. But we've not been set free to do as we please.

[14:32] We've been set, true freedom is freedom to be faithful, which is a freedom we never had before. A freedom to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that doesn't sound as though it's, it sounds a lot easier than it really is.

[14:49] And this is because every morning you wake up, you live in like these crossover of spheres, that what is true of you in the future is partly true of you now.

[15:00] But what was true of you in the past is still around. It still hangs around in the morning. You wake up and you, you get out of bed and you go, well, I know what's true of me in Christ Jesus.

[15:11] And I know that in the future, I'm not gonna have any trouble enjoying it. But right now, I still seem to be living in what was true of me in the past. And these two overlap each other all the way through your life as you live, causing constant trouble.

[15:27] Hence the great frustration of wanting to obey God, wanting to be faithful, and then not actually doing it. That is the very definition of Christianity, Romans 7, that you experience now.

[15:40] Nobody gets to obey Jesus Christ without sin trying to stop you. It just doesn't happen.

[15:52] But nevertheless, you have, as one theologian put it, you have been definitively sanctified. You have definitely been set free from the bondage of sin.

[16:04] And therefore, when a Christian sins now, it's because they want to. And so when Paul, in chapters 4 through to 6, is saying, look, live the Christian life, he knows that he's talking to people who can live the Christian life because God has given them the blessing and the ability to do so.

[16:24] And so if they're not doing it, fault doesn't lie at the door of God. The responsibility lies at the feet of the Christians. And of course, this very much has to do with maturity, like anything.

[16:38] You know, you look at a child, I mean, I'm not a school teacher, but you look at a child, and I'd imagine that some teachers would go, well, I would really expect you to know this by now.

[16:49] You know, I'd expect you to know this by now. At one point, okay, you're still learning, but at this point, you're a couple years older, you ought to know this by now. And in the same way, Paul speaks like that to the church in the New Testament.

[17:03] Okay, okay, maybe a couple of years ago, but now, now you should really know this by now. And that maturity never, never, never stops. This is why ministers and congregations are forever repenting and believing because we're learning more about what the scripture means because none of us have got it right on graduation, being the day that we were born again.

[17:29] Okay, we only began it then. So I want you to consider the following. Here's the first thing to consider, that God is the one who produces faithfulness in the church by giving it to, giving that freedom to his people.

[17:45] So the life of Christ and the life of the church is one that is witnessed by faithfulness, a freedom to do what God wants. And that's good works.

[17:57] Now, the challenge here in chapter two, verses 10, as it was read out to us by Margaret, is for we are God's workmanship. So God is the one who's taken us aside.

[18:08] He has created us in Christ Jesus. But as he's making us, as he's forming us, as he's shaping us, he has a purpose in mind. And the purpose is, I'm gonna make this person so that they're able to do good works.

[18:24] I'm gonna build them so that they're able to do good works. Now, I don't know what it was like for you when you were young and if you ever made something. And at the end of it, it was often said to me, and what is it?

[18:38] Well, I'm not too sure, but it took me a long time. Well, what does it do? I don't know. And it's one of the true things about life is that you don't know what something is, even your life.

[18:54] You don't know what your life is unless you know what it's for. In other words, I don't use my watch to hammer in nails. And the reason I don't use my watch to hammer in nails is not because I know what a watch is.

[19:11] I know what a watch is, but it's more importantly that I know what a watch is for. It's for telling the time. It's not for hammering nails in. And so God wants us to understand what we have become.

[19:24] And the way that we understand what we have become in Christ Jesus is by understanding what we are for. And we're for good works. And this is something that only a new person in Christ Jesus can do.

[19:38] And therefore, the good works are distinct from any type of good work that is found by unbelievers in the world, of which many do many good things. But this is a different type of goodness and a different type of good works.

[19:54] But these good works is something, as we see in verse 10, which only someone created in Christ Jesus can actually do. So you know who you are because you know what you have been made for.

[20:08] You have been made to do good things for God, that God will do them through you. You are not useless. You're important. And you're important because God made you with a level of importance, an incredible level of importance.

[20:24] And that level of importance is this, that God is going to change the world, chapter 1, verses 10. In the fullness of time, he's going to unite all things.

[20:35] And guess how he's going to do it? Through you. And we know that because chapter 2, verse 10, tells us that he's made you to do those works, to do those good things.

[20:47] So no one can ever sit here and go, I'm not what I should be. No, you're exactly what you should be because God's made you.

[20:58] And you may look back on the things that you've done or not done and think it doesn't amount to much. And I want to sort of perhaps encourage you, saying that there's no way you're going to be able to measure it down here.

[21:10] There's just no way you're going to be able to get close to the value that you've added through your service. It's all going to be measured in eternity. You'll get to see benefits down here.

[21:22] People will thank you. And you'll be recognized as the go-to person for this or for that. And that's a kind of recognition. But at the end of the day, God recognizes that he has made you to do what he has made you to do.

[21:37] Therefore, we don't get jealous about what somebody else can do. I'm not jealous of the Christian farmer who gets to spend several hours out in the field rolling it, driving the tractor all day.

[21:53] I couldn't do it anyway. But let's just say, or the fishermen, spending all that time out on the boat, which is something I would like to do. I can't get jealous of that because God didn't make me for that.

[22:08] And so if the Christian fisherman is faithful in what God has made him for, then that's it. So it's completely impossible to measure one person against another person because we have been created to do the things that we've been given to do by God.

[22:27] The only measurement is not against each other. It's only before God as to whether or not we've actually done it, whether or not we've actually fulfilled those purposes.

[22:38] And keep in mind that God so loved the world, okay? And don't reduce that to people. It includes people, but it shouldn't be reduced to people.

[22:53] For God so loved the world. In the fullness of time, God will unite all things in heaven and earth. God loved everything he created, okay? And God is at work in everything that he created.

[23:07] And so let's not limit the scope of what will be. Understand what God has actually done and what God is doing. In the fullness of time, we're gonna get to see the unity of everything.

[23:20] We're gonna get to see everything fit together and work together perfectly. Families, okay? Well, not families, because, you know, in glory, there is not those type of relationships, although we are all one in Christ, Jesus.

[23:38] So how does that happen then in the here and now? How do we make our way to the fullness of time? Well, one of the ways that we do it is by non-conformity, okay?

[23:50] Now, that freedom that I spoke about, the freedom that God's people were given when they were brought out of Egypt, was a freedom of non-conformity, no longer to conform to the ways of Egypt, no longer to conform to the ways of anywhere else, the Canaanites or whoever else might come their way.

[24:09] It was a freedom to be transformed by God. It was a freedom to live faithfully before God. So a non-conformity looks as though it's a bit sort of aggressive, but it's not aggressive at all.

[24:21] It's the very demonstration of what witness is. You stand out because you don't conform. If you go back and look at the early church, one of the reasons why Christians stood out is because they only worship Jesus Christ as Lord.

[24:37] Now, you've got to remember, this was in an environment where the Romans had multiple gods, multiple gods. And so you've got Roman citizens who are tolerant, absolutely tolerant, with everybody worshiping a number of gods that they choose, but then became incredibly intolerant to Christians who said, no, there's only one God who is to be worshiped.

[25:02] And that intolerance was an intolerance towards a non-conformity. They stood out because they did not conform to the ways of the world. They stood out because they said, Jesus is Lord.

[25:15] And when you say Jesus is Lord, you're saying that Caesar isn't. You're saying that Nero isn't. So it's a very, very bold statement.

[25:27] And you've got to remember that Christians were not persecuted because they were saying Jesus is Lord. They were persecuted because the implication of Jesus being Lord meant that they were saying that Caesar wasn't.

[25:39] And that was a threat against the establishment. That was a threat, okay? So non-conformity to the world is how the light is seen on the top of the hill.

[25:51] Non-conformity to the world is how the salt remains salty. A non-conformity to the world is what it means to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus.

[26:01] You stand out because you have the freedom to do it God's way. You're no longer bound to do it the way of Egypt, the way of Rome, the way of the world.

[26:14] And the benefit of this is, as it says in Matthew 5 and as it says in 1 Peter 2, that the people in the world are going to notice that your good works don't look like their good works.

[26:26] And they're not going to be quite how to figure out why that is the case. why it is that your good works are so different from theirs. And so in 1 Peter 2, it says that the people in the world will see your good works and on the day of God's visitation, they will glorify God.

[26:45] They will see what you do, okay? God's made you to do those things. They will witness those things in 1 Peter 2. And as God arrives, they'll give glory to God because they'll recognize that it is the life of Christ in the life of his church.

[27:03] The life of Christ in the life of his church through non-conformity to the world. So what then about the applications? How do we put this kind of truth or this truth rather into action?

[27:18] What do we do next? How do we live it out? What do I have to do differently? How do I have to think differently? Well, it means that you as an individual, you in your home, you in your church, the non-conformity has to spread out over all areas of life.

[27:38] So each part of my life has to live in a way that doesn't conform to anything else than the Lord Jesus Christ. Even my thinking should not conform to the ways of the world unless, of course, there are certain things in the world that just so are a reflection of the way that God thinks.

[27:59] And, of course, there are those things, those common graces are there. Not everything is bad on one side and good on the other. There is an overlap. And that takes a little bit of discernment to be able to figure out because sometimes people can get the qualities of both wrong and get muddled.

[28:18] But generally speaking, we live a life of non-conformity in every part of our life. This may mean that I have a job that I have to give up. Okay?

[28:30] You may have a job that's causing you to conform in ways that God doesn't want you to conform. And your answer to that job is, I'll have to leave it. And you're going to say, well, that's going to have a knock-on effect.

[28:42] That's going to, you know, that's going to, how am I going to pay the bills? Well, that's cruciform living. Jesus said that the way of the Christian would be sacrifice.

[28:53] And yet we tend to think that those sacrifices can be determined by ourself. And yet that's not the case. And so, when Christ works through our life, sacrifices inevitably come.

[29:09] sacrifice is painful. It's sacrifice. And this, you don't, you're not to go out and think, right, what things might have sacrificed for the sake of sacrificing?

[29:21] That's not the way it works. You sacrifice those things where the conformity is happening in an area where it shouldn't be happening. You don't want, you don't want to look like anyone else but Jesus.

[29:34] Do you? You don't really, in the depth of your heart, you don't want to look like the world. You want to look like Jesus. You want that life.

[29:45] And, you know, going out into the world and not being able to spot those things which change us in the opposite direction, it's not just a lack of discernment.

[29:57] It sort of, it sort of has a more detrimental effect than just not being a witness. It changes us. And so the spiritual blessings that we receive in, you know, that we're told that we receive in chapter one are to be lived out in the individual's life and the life of the home and the life of the work.

[30:17] And you've got to remember that in the early day, the husbands didn't go out to work. The wives didn't go out to work. You know, you've got men and women work in scripture of equal measures.

[30:29] We tend to think that it's, well, back in the day, the man just, surely just went out to work. That's clearly not the case. Read Proverbs 31, read Nehemiah chapter five.

[30:40] You know, the woman is as much of a business woman as the man might have been, okay, even in the home. But what you had, what you've had happen in modern day society is that the world is conformed to a new standard.

[30:56] And the new standard is we'll take the man out of the house, we'll take everyone out of the house and they'll work in these areas and then they can go back. And the house is turned into this place of rest and leisure, but it never used to be.

[31:10] The household in scripture is a place of produce, is a place of production, it's a place of work, okay? You work together as a household for the betterment of the home and society at large.

[31:26] But of course, we don't live in that kind of world anymore, hence some of the difficulties that we now experience. So as we grow up, we've got a lot of growing up to do into the fullness of God and God, in doing this, will fulfill his purposes through us.

[31:44] It happens over time. Now what does this mean? Well, it means this, that you're in the church, therefore you are part of the church, you're part of the body of the church.

[31:56] Therefore, your main contribution to the church is one that edifies the church, is one that builds one another up. It not just encourages with words, but it encourages through a spiritual edification that you're able to contribute.

[32:14] In Thessalonians, it says, you know, if the man doesn't contribute, he doesn't eat. Now that's speaking, of course, about natural food. You know, if he doesn't want to work, then he doesn't get anything to eat.

[32:28] You know, this isn't a social state. He has to contribute. Now we recognize that that contribution doesn't have to be a financial contribution, and that's one of the awful things that's happened in the modern world.

[32:40] We tend to value contribution only in terms of monetary terms. But biblically, that's not the way contribution is valued. Okay, the mother who doesn't get paid anything for being a mother probably contributes way more.

[32:57] And she deserves, you know, the blessings should fall upon her heavily because her contribution is valued by God. But in the eyes of the world, it doesn't receive a great deal of value because it doesn't produce any financial benefit.

[33:12] Right? And so when you measure things in terms of the world measures them, it's no wonder that they can become incredibly skewed. food. So what happens in the church if we don't understand this principle of edification and contribution is very similar to a mother who feeds everyone else and then wonders why she's hungry.

[33:33] And then she remembers that she hasn't actually fed herself. She's been so busy making sure that tea is on the table for everyone else in the home that she gets to like an hour after and wonder why am I hungry?

[33:47] And then it dawns on her. She hasn't actually eaten. Now when this happens in the church and can I gently say it happens in all churches even this one.

[34:00] What you have is you have people sat around the table enjoying the contributions of others. Right? And then not thinking about the mother. Okay? And I'm not referring to me here.

[34:11] I'm referring to people in this church who's serving. At what table does she eat at? Right?

[34:21] She's contributing for everyone else but whoever comes aside and makes a meal for her or him. And this is spouted in Psalm 1 that the man who devotes himself to God day and night meditating on God's word day and night you know who receives these rich spiritual blessings is told we're told that he is like a man planted by streams of water a tree planted by streams of water bearing its fruit in its season.

[34:48] And all of us know that trees don't eat their own fruit. You know you've never gone out into an orchard if you've been in an orchard or something similar and see apples eating apple trees eating their own apples.

[35:01] It doesn't happen. What happens is you go into the orchard and you take what has been produced by the tree. And what you've got a picture of in Psalm 1 is a man who stays close and clean to the Lord produces this spiritual fruit but we understand it's not for him.

[35:17] It's for everyone around him. Now what happens if that man is in a fellowship where he's the only one doing it? Well it means that everyone else has got something to eat. Okay?

[35:30] Where does he eat from? So the idea the idea that some of us can contribute and not be exhausted is not the case.

[35:43] Everyone has to eat. Everyone has to come around the table. Everyone has to have equal share. But in order for that to happen everyone has to give equal contribution.

[35:53] And the way contribution is measured is different of course because we do different things. And so the church suffers in its unity and it suffers through exhaustion because you've got the mother preparing food for everyone else who doesn't eat for herself.

[36:13] And that can't happen for long before at some point everything shuts down. And that could happen for a number of years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, maybe even 50 years and then all of a sudden the church isn't there anymore.

[36:27] Why not? Because the cook's dead. No one else has got anything to eat. So spiritual edification in the church is a sign of maturity.

[36:40] We all grow up so that we can all feed one another. We stay close to the Lord so that we can produce fruit so that other people can eat. And the idea is in a unified community we're all eating one another's fruit that each other is producing.

[36:58] That's the picture. That's what it ought to be. So do you live hand on heart an edifying lifestyle? Do you have an edifying contribution to make?

[37:12] And it may be different. I'm not saying that you don't. I'm simply asking you to question what you think your edifying contribution is. Because everyone needs to eat.

[37:26] Everyone needs to be able to sit down at the table at the same time and benefit. Okay? Now the mother will still carry on as she always does.

[37:37] Right? Because she's got the burden of feeding her family. But everyone needs to eat including the mother. And that's the kind of depth that Paul gets to in Ephesians.

[37:48] That maturity that he speaks about, that growing up in Christ, it's really for the unity of the body. It's so that everybody can sit down, enjoy the rest, enjoy the fellowship, enjoy the food, and be fully rested, fully blessed by the spiritual fruit.

[38:08] So, as we close, Ephesians helps us to identify the difference between the nice and the necessary. glory. It helps us to identify that which enables from that which doesn't able anything.

[38:27] It teaches us to notice the difference between that which edifies and that which only exhausts. And therefore, by understanding these simple distinctions, we're able to understand why God made us for good works.

[38:44] He made us for good works because we are to contribute in such a way where not only are we a benefit to the world, but we're a benefit to each other in the church. And if we can show the world how it's done, if we can show the world how it's done, that's why they will look at us and give glory to God on the day of his visitation.

[39:04] No one can do it like them, the world will say. No one can do it like them. That's how glory will be given to God because the only way we can do it is because we have been created for good works, been created to do so.

[39:19] And those works, remember, just in case if you are a little bit unsure on salvation by grace alone through faith alone, those works are given to you after you're saved.

[39:30] Those works are not completed by you in order to be saved. They are works that are given to you. You're made for those works in Christ Jesus after salvation. You're saved by grace through faith.

[39:42] To do these things. They don't save you, but they are marks of your salvation. So here's the exhortation. There have been many things in the book of Ephesians.

[39:53] If you read it, you'll notice that I haven't addressed. But the things that I have addressed is fairly simple. That you are created for good things. And your contribution matters because God made you to contribute in a way that matters.

[40:10] You're also made to enjoy freedom to be faithful. And that faithfulness is witnessed in your life and in the world by a non-conformity. Now that non-conformity is a non-conformity that blesses the world.

[40:24] It's a non-conformity that does good works to the world, which they will recognize when God returns. But at the same time, it comes with the necessary sacrifices that have to be made.

[40:39] God is at work in the world through you. something that only a new person can do. A new person in Christ Jesus. So go away from here and from the book of Ephesians understanding that God is at work in the world.

[40:56] But go away from here understanding that God is at work in the world through you. Okay? It's not as if he's out there doing things while we're in here doing something else.

[41:06] No. God is at work in the world through you. And in the fullness of time, this is the joy. In the fullness of time, as we live in this house, as God's doing it up around us, in the fullness of time, God will unite all things in heaven and on earth.

[41:23] And then we will see his work completed. Amen. Amen.