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For this reason I, Paul, the
prisoner of the Jesus Christ, for the sake of you Gentiles..."
And notice what happens here, right? He just stops. This is
one thought. I want you to understand while
we're reading all this together. This is one thought. He kind of goes,
for this reason I... Wait! Do you all know who I am?
And so he's about to go into this little excursus explaining
who he is. An excursus is kind of like a
long parenthesis. Surely you have heard about the
administration of God's grace that was given to me for you.
That is the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have
already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will
be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which
was not made known to men in other generations, as it has
now been revealed by the Spirit of God to God's holy apostles
and prophets. This mystery is that through
the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members
together of one body and shares together in the promise of Jesus
Christ. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's
grace given me through the power of the working of his power. Although I am less than least
of all God's people, this grace was given me to preach to the
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. and to make plain
to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages
past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent
was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should
be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,
according to His eternal purpose, which He accomplished in Christ
Jesus our Lord. In Him, and through faith in
Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask
you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for
you, which are your glory. For this reason..." Now he goes
back to his original thought. "...For this reason I kneel before
the Father, from whom this whole family in heaven and on earth
derives its name. And I pray that out of His glorious
riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit
in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith, And I pray that you, being rooted and established
in love, may have power... Stop for a second. He's building you up. Are you
ready? Do you get that sense? He's building you up. I mean,
if you're going to pray, if this is an apostle praying for you,
somebody who's seen the resurrected Lord, he's saying, out of God's
glorious riches, this is the thing I want you to have. That
you'll be rooted and established in love. And that... What, Paul? He'll give you the power to do
what, Paul? We're all ready to go join the
power team. The power to do what? To smash
boards? To do what? Understand this. Alright. That you may have the
power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and
high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love
that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure
of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to
His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Were you a little let down? I mean, he's asking God out of
the very depth of your being, this is what I want for my people. They would know how much you
love them. You were kind of hoping for more than that, weren't you? Isn't that interesting? Why would
that be so important? Why would that be so important? When you are a parent one day,
as I hope you will be, so that you can know how bad of a child
you were, you will be forced to spend hours in the car with
your children. And as you have that glorious experience,
you will, too, go looking for CDs or tapes that your children
will listen to that you can tolerate. Because some of them are just
horrible, you know? It's like salty dog type stuff. Your parents are going to give
you the worst ones because they want you to be tormented because
you tormented them. And you're going to spend hours
listening to these terrible ones. So you're going to go looking
for better ones. When you go looking for better ones, do not
get the Jungle Jams radio show. A friend of ours sent them to
us, all six volumes, in some kind of twisted joke. And the title of one of them,
it's all about these animals that are learning these moralistic
kind of things that somehow they really stretch some Bible verse
and kind of tag on there. And one of them, I can't say
my least favorite because I hate them all equally, but one of
them was called, If any of your parents are responsible for riding
the Jungle Jam, just tell them I love them. Thank you very much.
You never know. Somebody's got to write that
stuff. One of them is called Hermie the Love Bug. Hermie,
as you might have guessed, is a bug. And he so desperately
wants to be loved. He so desperately wants to be
friends. He's constantly flying up to
people, right? He's constantly doing what bugs
do. Bugging people. And this constant seeking after
affection and attention. And he's so sure that you don't
like him. He's so sure that you don't want him to be there, that
he drives you absolutely crazy to the point that you really
wish he wasn't there. That's Hermey the love bug for
you, wrapped up. You don't have to listen to the
story. That's the way it goes. On the other hand of the literature,
children's literature spectrum, there is other great stuff out
there. Is this a beer cap? Who brought this? Sorry. On the other end of the spectrum,
it's not, by the way. It's a Stewart. I don't know
what that is. Maybe it is a beer cap. You have Winnie the Pooh, the
best of children's literature. And Winnie the Pooh, Not the
Disney stuff, the real stuff. Go read the original stories.
If you don't have anything to do one weekend, that'd be a hilarious
thing to do. Go get the original in the poster and read it. You'll
laugh, it's so good. It really is. But you have Eeyore.
Now, Eeyore is as far away from Hermione the love bug as he can
possibly be, right? He knows you don't love him.
And so what does he do? He gives you hundreds of excuses
to not love him. Or her. I never get to figure
out what he or her was. So he constantly or she is constantly
assuming that you don't like her, and she's constantly giving
you reasons. We'll go with the her because
she has a little pink ribbon on her tail. We'll go with the her.
And I want you to understand something. Most of you fit into
one of those two categories. If not with each other, because
some of you have at least learned kind of the social grace thing.
So if not with each other, then with God. You're either so insecure
and desperate to be loved that you're just flying all over the
place. Do you love me? Do you love me now? Do you love
me now? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Or you just
know nobody likes you. And if somebody starts trying
to pursue you, you begin to throw up roadblocks. You're going to
give people reasons to not like you. And you're going to get
all prickly. Because you're not going to get
your hopes built up on anything. And you know if you get your
hopes built up on one person's opinions, they're just going
to let you down. So maybe you'll do what I did and become just
a real smart aleck and be sarcastic to protect yourself. Maybe you'll
just be gloomy. Maybe you'll just kind of be, what do we like
to call it, I'm just an honest person. If you ever watch Blind
Date, the person always says, well, I'm just real honest. That
means mean, jerk. Why? Because I'm going to be
the one to tell you all first. Most of us are in one of those
two categories, and because of that, we never really develop. We never become. We never live. We're so worried
about, does God like me? That we're never able to just
be. And what Paul wants you to know more than anything else,
what Paul wants you to know is how much Jesus has loved you. He shows us, first of all, the
dimensions of Christ's love, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted
and established in love, may have power together with all
the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of
God. What is this love thing? It's
as if all mankind, shrink all mankind into one person. It's
not that hard to do. Six million into one. Six billion. Is in the bottom of a trench,
of a miry pit. And everybody's trying to figure
out how to get them out of the pit. You know, you have kind
of the The secular humanist has basically said, you know, it's
always been a pit. It's never been anything better
than a pit. That's just the way it is. You need to just get over this
whole idea of this being a pit. This is the way it is. It's just
pitness. You have others who want to elevate man by saying,
well, we just need to study. What we need to do is know the
pit better. You have the kind of politicians
who want to just throw tons of cash into the pit with us. And
you have the religious moralists. And we're trying to construct
ladders for us to climb out of the pit. But the problem is that
the bottom of it is so miry that all we do is we keep pushing
the ladder down into it. And we can't find the bottom.
And that's where a lot of us grew up, with the religious moralists,
right? We're constructing that ladder. You know, Sunday school,
church, and Bible reading, and prayer, and evangelism, and bracelet
wearing, and book reading, and small group Bible study attendance,
and large group Bible study attendance, and theological learning, and
what else? Sunday school STARS. We've done
that already. What? Vacation Bible school,
volunteering, youth group. Man, we've got all those wrongs.
It's just more, and it's more because we're trying to get things
better. Camp. Big one. It's not working. It's not working. We're still
down here. You know, that's that gross feeling, right? It hit
a lot of you when you got back this summer from camp. And the
world was still here. It's still here. And you have other religions
trying to tell you, you know, that it's about obedience. And
it's about just quiet submission. You just need to learn to take
it. You need to learn to not want out. You need to learn peace
and patience within it. And Christianity stands up and
says, no, God Himself has come into this pit not to understand
you, but to pull you out of it. He has come and experienced what
you have experienced. He has come and lived what you
have lived. He has come and taken the punishment
that you deserve to get you out of it. To carry you out. That's what Jesus has done. He
has left heaven. He has left glory. And rather than just completely
wipe out a world full of suffering, He has experienced a world full
of suffering so that He can have fellowship with you. It makes
no sense. It's simply what you do when
you love somebody. And that is the height and the
depth and the breadth and the width of God's love. that He
was not content to just let you suffer there. He wasn't content
to just give you stuff to do to get out of the pit. He came
and experienced it with us. He picked us up and removed us
from it. How wide is it? It's wide enough, as Paul started
out saying, to love both Jews and Gentiles. Who are the Jews?
They're the washed, the circumcised, the clean. Those people who grew
up with the commandments and the rules. Who are the Gentiles?
They're the worldlings. Those who grew up without the
rules, the unwashed, the unbaptized. It's wide enough for both of
us. Wide enough for all of us. There
was a physician. Isn't it weird that the 20th
century is now the last century? It's kind of a weird thing to
say. There was a physician in the last century. That could
have been six years ago. But in the 1930s, named Martin
Lloyd-Jones, and he was on his way to becoming... he was studying
to be a surgeon. He was studying under the Royal
Surgeon, actually. He was at the finest hospital
in London. And what he began to realize as he studied his
case file after case file after case file, was that the reason
why people were coming to the hospital was not physical ailments,
but it was spiritual ailments. And he wasn't even a Christian
yet, but he was figuring this out. The people were destroying themselves.
And he realized, as a doctor, you know, I could fix somebody's
liver because they've been drinking too much, and then they're just
going to come back in five years with lungs because they've been
smoking too much. There's something wrong that's got to be dealt
with at a deeper level. And he was converted, and he
went into the ministry, and he started preaching the gospel
at a time when nobody was preaching it. And he went to a place called
Sandfields. And under his preaching, there
was this revival. Hundreds of people were converted.
You know who the first person converted was? His wife. Funny would that be? She kind
of came in the room and said, you know, listening to you preach,
I'm not sure I've ever been converted. And he said, well, you better
go deal with Jesus. The second person converted under his revival
was his boss. The guy who had spent his entire
life working for this mission realized that he wasn't a Christian.
that he was doing the religious stuff to keep from having to
deal with Jesus. Isn't that funny? It would be like
a preacher getting converted in the middle of his own sermon.
This happened before too. Maybe it happened to me tonight,
let's hope. At the other end of the spectrum, just weeks later,
there was a guy named Brushy Bill. Brushy Bill was a town
drunk. He was a fish salesman and luckily
he had a smart horse. His horse would often just bring
him home in the middle of the night and he'd just be drunk laying among the
fish. He was so foul that the other drunks wouldn't drink with
him. He would just go to bars and sit by himself. And while
he was in the bar one night, he overheard some guys talking
about how they weren't going to drink that night because they were going
to go back and hear this young creature. And they heard the words uttered,
that guy said that no one is beyond hope. And so he went to
church, and as he got there, his legs just froze on him, and
he felt like he couldn't go in. As he waited for the next Sunday,
and he got to the gates and doors, and he saw that he was late,
and church had already started. And he spent the entire afternoon
just in absolute depression. He wanted to hear this message,
but he was scared to hear it. And he went back to the church
again that night, and he couldn't go in the gates. And finally,
he heard somebody say, Bill, are you coming in or not? You
can come sit with me. And he went in, and his life was changed.
Isn't that amazing? God's Word is enough for the
preacher's wife, and it's enough for the town's drunk. It's broad. It's wide. God's love is high. It doesn't fall short. It raises
us all the way to heaven. It's all that we need. My kids are watching Apollo 13
this week to learn about space travel. Y'all seen it, right? The rocket movie. Funny scene
where they're getting ready and the whole rocket starts to shake.
And one guy looks over and says, actually, it's not Apollo 13.
This is in Armageddon, when the rocket starts to shake. And the
little smart aleck looks over and says, you know what? We're
sitting on about over 1 million movable parts, all built by the
lowest bidder. Isn't that scary? Can you just imagine that rush
and these unbelievable powered boosters coming behind you going,
I hope it's enough. I hope it's enough. And we don't
believe that. Ultimately, as we begin to experience
grace and live our lives, we don't think that the gospel is
enough. We don't ultimately believe it's enough to fix us sometimes.
We need something else, we think. A man named Jack Miller preached
this very topic that the gospel is enough to heal anybody. And
the pastor of the church where he was preaching stood up in
the middle of the sermon and said, that's not true. Some people are just
too far gone to be healed by the gospel. And Jack Miller talked
to him about it and discussed it and explained his belief that
the gospel was enough. And to prove it, he went out
and took two girls into his home that the medical establishment
said were bitter, unto depression and beyond hope. The medical
establishment had given up on them. And he took these girls
into his home, and one of them named Tina, through his constant ministry
was converted, and he said this. She said, I had made dozens of
decisions for Christ, and none had helped. I had no idea of
the inward evil ruling my life. And had I not realized that faith
is a simple resting and trusting in Christ, my pastor's questions
woke me up to my rebellion and dislike of God." I want you to think about that
for a second. Because there are some of you that I love dearly.
There are some of you that I don't love. There are some of you that
I love dearly. that the gospel does not seem
to be helping. And I don't think it's the gospel's
fault. And it might be that you're making
decisions for Christ, but ultimately your interpretation of the world
is so self-centered. You're constantly asking, what's
in it for me? Why are you treating me like
this?" But you have no idea of the bitterness within you, the
anger you have at God. And you're unable to lay your
own concerns aside enough to even acknowledge that there is
an inward evil within you that's keeping you from truly, simply
resting in Jesus. Now, I'm not even sure how to explain
that. We'll get back to it in a second, but just think about
that until I'm done. The gospel is high enough to get us to heaven.
It's deep enough to cleanse us down to our deepest sins. You
know, the problem with me is me. I believe that. You know,
I've been told before. One guy told me. Every preacher
I've ever had has told me they were a sinner. You're the only
one I've ever believed. I think he meant that as a compliment.
I don't know. But I am my problem. I am a bad problem. And when
you begin to realize that, it's a big deal. Because right now,
some of you are still optimistic enough about yourself to think,
yeah, I've got annoying habits and whatnot, but I can stop doing
those at any time. And the day is going to come
when you're going to realize that your problem is you, and
it goes down to the very core of your being. I was publicly
called out last year as being arrogant, and my arrogance had
ruined this entire Presbytery thing. That's always a good day,
you know. I think I ended this meeting,
it was a huge meeting. I think I ended the meeting by
saying, well, really the problem with this whole thing has been
Ricky Jones. Glad I could help. Peace out, dawgs. You know, and I walked over to
him, and every cell in my being is saying, defend yourself. Every
cell in my being is saying, no, he's the problem. And I walked
over to him and I said, I wish I had an excuse. I said, I wish
I could say, I'm sorry I appear to be arrogant. It's just who
I am. Will you forgive me? If you realize
that, when you realize that the problem is you to the very deepest
core, then you're going to want to know that the gospel is deep
enough to wash you even all the way down to that. When you were
a child, the gospel was a stream that you could play in. Now that
you are a grown-up, I want you to realize the gospel is a river
you can swim in. And it's deep enough for you. And it's deep enough for you.
And it is long enough for you. It is long enough for you. I
know that he's talking about length. We're going to just play
with this. You ain't going to outrun it. And God's not going to get tired
of you. Have you ever been, I don't know,
You ever been on a trip with a bunch of people and just had
that icky feeling about six days into it that nobody on this trip
can stand you anymore? I get it, man. I get it. You
know, you begin to kind of... You're in the car, you can't
get away from them, and you want to be away from them not because
you're tired of them, but because you're just confident that they're tired
of you. And you start moving around, you feel like your cold
clothes aren't comfortable anymore. And it's not really your clothes
that are the problem, it's your skin that's the problem. You
want to be out of it. You want to be somebody else.
I feel that way a lot. That's why I usually go home
from spring break trips early. I feel that way a lot. Jesus
is telling us, I'm not getting tired of you. I'm not getting
tired of you. It's a beautiful story. My favorite
verses in the Bible are weird ones, which seems to suit me. One of my favorites is in Mark,
when the angel is announcing Jesus' resurrection, and the
angel says to Mary Magdalene, go tell the disciples, and Peter to meet Him in Galilee. You know what I love about that? Can you imagine how that made
Peter feel? Yeah, he betrayed me. He did
exactly what I thought he was going to do. He absolutely failed
me at the key hour. He failed me. He let me down.
You tell him I want to see it. You tell him. Jesus wants to
see him. He is not getting tired of you. It is high, and it is wide, and
it is deep, and it is long. Why does Paul want us to know
these things? The first benefit that comes from it It's a benefit
of humility. How does Paul describe himself?
He says in verse 8, I am less than the least of all God's people.
The grace was given me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable
riches of Christ. Once we're secure that Jesus
loves us, we relax and we become real persons. Until then, we're
afraid to admit our mistakes. Until then, our entire life is
our covering up of our mistakes. I watched a movie last week that's
due back tonight before midnight. I'm glad I remembered. And it's
called The Big Kahuna, and we're going to watch it Sunday night,
Sunday Night Fellowship. We're going to watch the last
45 minutes of it, okay? It's got profanity in it. If
that offends you, don't come. If that's going to cause you
to sin, then don't come. Seriously. And some of you may
have a bad mouth like I do, and you just can't be around those
kind of movies without sinning. But we're going to watch it,
because I think it communicates exactly what the world thinks of Christianity
in a great way. And in this movie, it's about
this young Christian. And, oh yeah, and by the way, don't tell
your family we're going to watch it, OK? Because I don't want
you all going home saying, we watched this awesome movie called The Big Kahuna,
and your parents go get it, and then I get fired. And so we're
not going to do that, OK? So, you know, just kind of chill. But in this movie, it's about
this young Christian who's out with two older businessmen at
this convention. And the Christian is so afraid of doing anything
wrong. They ask him what kind of girls get him excited, and
he's like, oh, I wouldn't know that. Jesus says to look on a
woman to lust after her is to commit adultery. And his entire
life he's identified with that fear of being wrong, of doing
anything wrong. And at the end of the movie,
this older man tells him that he has no character. He says,
you asked me earlier if you have any character. And the answer
is, no, you do not. But one of these days, you will
have regrets. And those regrets will give you
character. And the Christian looks at him
and says, you mean I can't have character until I do things wrong?
And the man looks at him and goes, no, you've already done
things wrong. You just can't regret them yet.
Doesn't that describe you? Aren't you so afraid to identify
the things that you've done wrong in your life? If I admit that
I was wrong, that it was me, that it was my fault, then all
my self-righteousness is going to come crashing to a halt. Then
this ladder that I'm using to get out of this pit is going
to come crashing to the ground. And Jesus is saying, yeah, exactly.
I want you to come crashing down here so I can grab you and take
you out of this pit. It is there that you begin to
develop the truth. It is there that you begin to
receive grace. When you begin to understand
God's love, not only do you become humble, you become courageous.
In Him, and through faith in Him, we approach God with freedom
and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to
be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are
your glory. Why does understanding God's
love for us give us courage in the face of events? Because of
this. You've got two different ways
of viewing life. You can either view life and
look at every circumstance in your life and through that try
to figure out what God thinks about you. Or, you can know that
God loves you and therefore use that knowledge to interpret your
life. For instance, Let's put it on
another level. Just like anybody else in your
life, right? You can know them, and therefore understand why
they do what they do, or you can try to pick apart everything
they do to determine what they think about you that day. You
know, I was sitting at lunch with one of you this week, and
it was just funny. Five friends walked by. And the
guy goes, can you believe that? Five people I knew just all walked
by and didn't say a word to me. Well, you know, all five of them
are right now saying, can you believe that we just walked by
him and he didn't say a word to us? Who's the sinner here? Are you
going to, you know, if Bianca doesn't speak to me, then I know,
I don't immediately begin to think she doesn't love me anymore.
It means something's going on in her life and I need to find
out what it is. If God doesn't give me something I want, then
I don't immediately begin to think, man, He must not love
me. What did I do wrong? Why is He punishing me? I know
that He loves me. I know that He gave His own Son
for me and He's not going to withhold anything good from me. Therefore,
if He's not giving me something, it must not be good for me. Can
you believe that? I had a friend and his girl working
for me. He's a youth minister. And his
intern had run the cell phone bill up to $250, and it was only
like the 12th of the month. And so he called her in, and
he said to her, now listen, we don't need a big crying discussion
right here. I like you. This is in no way
a reflection of my concern for you. I need you to take a deep
drink of Jesus right now, and I need you to turn the cell phone
off. Is that the kind of way you live?
Are people afraid to move around you for fear of hurting your
feelings? Do we have to go through these
long speeches with you every time we need to sit you down
and ask you to turn the cell phone off? They can only be because you
have no confidence in how much God loves you. I can't give that
to you. You've got to rest in Jesus to
get it. I wish I could do it for you. Finally, knowing how
much God loves us brings us to fullness. To know this love that
surpasses knowledge. That you may be filled to the
measure of all the fullness of God. That you may fill out the
uniform. That you may be complete. That you may be what God has
called you to be. That you may understand the love
of Jesus and apply it to your life. Now you're free to not worry
about how you look, to not worry obsessively with what people
are thinking of you, but to grab the towel and clean their feet
as Jesus did, to grab the wrench and clean their toilets, to do
whatever you need to do. Because you know Jesus loves
you. And it enables you to be what He was when He came to this
earth. Let me give you three brief suggestions on how you
get to know this love better. And these are for both believer
and unbeliever. If you have been a Christian for, I don't know,
how old are you all? Eighteen? Eighteen years. I'll
give you the benefit of the doubt. Or if you are walking in here
for the first time and you think, well, oddly enough, this doesn't
sound like junk. If you do think it sounds like
junk, hang in there with me. We'll be done in five minutes. How do you know this love? First
of all, you've got to get your eyes off yourself and on to Jesus.
Guys, if you're just sitting there staring at anybody, wondering
all the time, why do they do that to me? Why do you not wave
at me? Why do you not speak to me? Eventually,
you're going to start hating me. You've got to get your eyes off yourself
and look at Jesus. What does Hebrews 12 says? It
says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter
of our faith. who for the joy set before Him
endured the cross, scorning its shame, sat down at the right
hand of the throne of God." Focus on what He's done for you.
Focus on the death He died for you. That should be enough to
convince you. Then begin to interpret your
life with that knowledge. Focus on Jesus. Secondly, you
slay Satan with his own sword. What does Satan come at us and
do? He comes at us and condemns us. You're not good enough. You're
not righteous enough. You're not holy enough. You're
a sinner. How dare you go to Bible study?
How dare you stand up in front of that group? You're not worthy. When Satan does that, you slay
him with his own sword. 1 Timothy 1.15 says, Here is
a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners. of whom I am the worst." That
text does not say Christ Jesus came into the world to save rickies,
of whom I am the rickiest. If it said that, I would be good.
I would be in good shape. But it doesn't. But because I
know myself, I know that if it did say that, it couldn't mean
me any more than it means me when it says sinners. That's
me. If it said, Christ Jesus came
into the world to save fairly good people, I'd kind of be out
of luck. But it says sinners. I mean,
that might as well be my name tag, of whom I am a chief. When Satan
tempts me and tells me I'm too sinful, I say, you know what?
You're right. I've got to deal with a God who
delights to show mercy. And finally, we ride the back
of our failures. We ride the backs of our failures.
When we fail, it makes us need Jesus. And so we throw ourselves
upon Him, and that's a safe place to be. You know, I don't remember
if this thing is actually in the book, The Great Divorce,
or I'm just making it up, but it should be. The Great Divorce is this
parable of all these people who've gone on a bus ride from hell
to heaven. And they get to heaven, and all
these angels come out to greet them, to try to convince them
to come into heaven, to not get back on the bus back to hell.
And this one guy's got a lizard on his shoulder. Now, Les Newton
says it's a head on his shoulder, and he doesn't remember this
at all, so maybe this doesn't happen, but this could happen. And what this lizard is doing
is it's constantly reminding the man of his failures, and
it's tempting him into sin. And this angel is begging him,
Let me kill it." And he can't do it. He can't
give up. Because somehow, see what we do when we glorify our
failures is what we're doing is we're constantly saying to
ourselves, I could have done more. I should have done more. And Jesus said, no, you're a
failure. That's what you are. Let me save you. And he throws it to the ground
and it becomes a stallion. And he rides it into heaven. We acknowledge our weakness.
You see, that's what repentance does. We acknowledge that we
are the problem. That takes us to Jesus. When we're insisting on being
the solution, then our righteousness keeps us away from it. Embrace your failures. Don't
hide from them. They'll take you to Jesus. The
only place where you can be healed. Please pray with me. Our Father in Heaven, I pray
that You will make this practical in our hearts. We each know where
we've failed. Father, we want to just run away
from that. We want to close our eyes to it and plug our ears.
I pray that rather than doing those things, we would embrace
them. And embracing our failures, we would embrace our Savior.
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Hermy the Love Bug
Series Ephesians
What kind of confidence would we have if we knew how much God loves us?
| Sermon ID | 130611423 |
| Duration | 39:11 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 3 |
| Language | English |
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