So Ephesians, remember, is all about who you are in Christ. And the first three chapters of Ephesians are all about who you are and then because of Jesus. And then chapters four through six are how do we live the Christian life as a result of who we are? And so we're in chapter one. And we stopped with verse 10, which tells us that now, because we are in Christ, we are redeemed. We are purchased from the slave market of sin, and we no longer have to return to our old life. So look at verse 10, it says, or actually beginning in verse 7, In Jesus, in Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in earth, things in Him, things in heaven, and things on earth. Our redemption, the price that was paid for our souls, is not just about us. Yes, God shows us mercy, but when he shows us mercy, it reflects back on Christ. So, what we have here is this freedom. Redemption means freedom because the idea is when in the ancient world, half of the population were slaves, right? In the Roman times, you were either a Roman citizen or you were somebody's property. That's just how it worked. Now, it wasn't like the African slave trade where you didn't have any rights as a slave. I mean, you don't have rights as a slave, but the slaves of the ancient world were very educated. They were very skilled, they could be an engineer, they could be a philosopher, they could be a manager, they could be a finance person, and they were often very skilled. That's the whole point of being a slave, is to be useful. So they were not uneducated or in shackles. But if you didn't have Roman citizenship, you belonged to somebody else. They paid for your food, they paid for your lodging, and you did them whatever they needed for you. And certain slaves were worth more than others, and so there was a slave market, right? Well, even though slavery maybe was not as harsh, and sometimes it depends on the master, it could be much harsher than whatever it was in modern times. It just depends. Human behavior is unpredictable. But it's not good to be a slave in whatever era you are in. So if you're in the slave market and somebody buys you to be their son, no longer are you a slave, now you have rights. Now you can't just be treated just any old way. Now you can do whatever you want, you're free. And that's the point of verse seven when he says that we are purchased, we are bought. So he says, in him we have redemption. Now redemption is a theological term, but it's just a regular old term that means to be bought. We're bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus. That's redemption, okay? And that means we're free from the old slave master. And what's the old slave master? The old slave master is yourself, like your flesh. And so maybe when you were lost, and you were depressed, there was nothing you could do to get out of that depression. Maybe you drank, or maybe you stayed in bed all day, or whatever it is. And as a Christian, we're prone to that as well. It's not that we're not prone to that. We're prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. God dwells within us as Christians, so we can't stay in sin because we have a new nature. No Christian can be comfortable living in sin. Why? Because we've been bought and paid for by the blood of Christ. And what we're going to learn today is Christ is exalted in us through his Holy Spirit. So His Holy Spirit comes in us and seals us for the day of final redemption. We've been bought and paid for, so we're freed from the harassment if we choose to look to Christ. Now, if we don't choose to look to Christ, As a Christian, we can still be harassed in the same, very same way that we were when we were lost. We can get ugly and nasty inside, just like anyone else. Can I get a witness? We can get beside ourselves in fear and anxiety and worry. We've done that. We can become hopeless and hardened and cold and calloused. That's all in the despair realm, right? Or we can become foolish and flippant and silly and dumb and make bad choices. You know, I'm really going to show you, and then you end up shooting yourself in the foot, is usually what happens. So we're prone to all of that, but we are not predestined for that life. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus, right? So when the slave master, if you're free, right, and let's just say you were a Roman slave and you were under a master, let's say he was a harsh master, man, he just beat you, and he didn't care because you don't have any rights, you're property to him. He can do whatever he wants with you. Let's say he was a wrong scoundrel. And then you got free. Let's say he showed up at your door. Are you going to obey him? You shouldn't, but that's what we do when we're saved. We get the slave master of anxiety and anger showing up at our door as a slave master and we go, okay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll listen to my fear, I will listen to my anger, I will listen to this, I will listen to that. No, we have to cast down every imagination under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Because he's our new master and he's a benevolent, loving, gracious, kind master. So that's what redemption in verse 7 is referring to. It's about being bought, purchased by the blood of Christ out of the slave market of sin. And so then he talks about a plan for this redemption. The plan is not just for you to live your best life now, as some people say in churches. That's all hogwash. If this is your best life, I'm scared for you because this is a pretty lousy life. Even if you had everything you needed, it's still filled with sorrow, suffering, disease, and death. And so Our life is headed towards what is described here in verses 9 and 10. What is that saying? It's referring back to the beginning in Genesis. when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, right? And the cherubim, right, were stationed at the entrance to Eden with flaming swords. Remember that? Because they were not allowed to go back in and eat of what? The tree of life, right? So heaven and earth There became a separation between God and man. And now we say, our Father, who art in heaven, and he is in heaven, right? But, you know, there's a separation, and that's the idea. Sinners are on the earth, you know? Except when Jesus entered into this world, only sinners dwelt on this earth. Jesus was the only non-sinner that ever was on the earth. So the plan to unite all things is that heaven and earth once again unite. They become one. That's when Jesus, you know, the trumpet sounds, we meet him in the air, we come back with him, and he sets up his kingdom on earth. I can't wait for that. The trumpet's gonna sound. And if we're living, we're just gonna immediately get a new set of clothing, so to speak, a new body, a new tabernacle, a new tent. Not one that is falling apart, right? But one that is alive and well. Sorry, y'all. I'm preaching to one side of the audience here. I gotta move here. Y'all came in late, so, you know, they were here first. So now that we see that God's ultimate plan is eternal, and our destiny is not just for this earth, we were made for something bigger. So that's why we're always thrilled by that which is large. Some of you are not sports people, but I don't like to watch baseball, but I like to go to a certain park that they have a stupid name for in Chicago. No idea why they chose that. Rate Field. Guaranteed Rate Field. But I love to go there, you know, and see it. Well, it used to get packed out. It really doesn't anymore. But when it's packed out, there's tens of thousands of people, and it's big, and there's this game going on, and everybody's focused on these players, and it just seems like bigger than what I would ever do. So we're always attracted to that which is bigger than life, you know, because we were not made for the small. We were made for God himself. We were made for the infinite. And so that's why in Ecclesiastes 3.11 he says, God has made all things beautiful in his time. He has put eternity in our hearts. So our hearts are made for the infinite, for the eternal. And that plan is coming to pass because of our redemption. And heaven and earth are gonna unite as one. And it's going to be so big and so glorious and so infinite and so eternal forever and ever and ever. When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. And that's what he's talking about in verse 10. So Eden, the separation that occurred in Eden with Adam's fall and Eve's fall is going to be restored. Heaven and Earth will be united once again, God and man. You will be my people and I will be your God and the marriage supper of the Lamb and the everlasting wedding between the Son of God and His Bride will take place. And the wife of the Lamb will be arrayed in white, that's you, and you will be eternally in God's embrace forever. And it's not about walking on clouds. It's not about playing harps, floating around like Saturday morning cartoons depict. That's not heaven. Heaven is very earthy. Heaven is cities. Heaven is technologies that you've never even dreamed of. Heaven is music that you can't even sing. You don't even know the notes. There's colors in heaven that you've never seen. There's so much spectrum, not just the colors in the rainbow. There's so many colors. that we can't even comprehend. And all of those will be enjoyed. And so many other things. Eye has not seen nor ear heard. Neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him. But those who know him, God has revealed them to him and her. Right? That's what it says. We get to see a taste of this now. All right. So all that was intro to what we're going to talk about today. which is the exaltation of Jesus Christ. Verses 11 through the end of the chapter is all about the exaltation of Jesus. And first we see his exaltation in giving us the Holy Spirit. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, right? He's gonna say that in chapter two. But what happened? We were made alive. How were we made alive? Well, that is kind of explained in verses 11 through 14. This is how we were made alive. It just says, kind of summarizes the whole thing in chapter 2. We were made alive. Well, exactly how, Pastor Matt? Were you made alive? Well, he says it right here. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. So do you notice a word that is repeated in verse 11 and in verse 14? The word is inheritance. The Old Testament idea is birthright, right? All of that was important in the Old Testament. Remember Jacob and Esau, Esau was older than Jacob, but Jacob got the birthright because Esau got hungry one day and bartered his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup. And before you get down on Esau, you gotta taste lentil soup, cuz it is so good, right? But his stomach, his earthly cravings were bigger than his eternal perspective. And so, inheritance, he lost his inheritance. Doesn't mean he didn't get anything, it means that he didn't get to divvy it up. The one who is the firstborn son gets like 50%, and then the rest is divvied up between everybody else. So he gets the house, he gets the land, he gets the cattle, and everything else is divvied up between the rest of the kids, right? So he's now the new patriarch. And instead of Esau being the patriarch, it was Jacob, right? So in this sense, Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. He gets the whole inheritance. But instead of just divvying all the rest up, we get everything with him. Isn't that wonderful? And one of the key things that we get, and it's not a thing, it's a person, the person of the Holy Spirit. When you are born again, God begins to draw you. In fact, He draws you way before you're born again. He draws you from your mother's womb. You have many, many experiences with the Holy Spirit before you're ever converted. And a lot of people get confused because they do taste of the heavenly gift. They do experience the powers of the world to come before their conversion because God is drawing them and speaking love to them and it's powerful. But you're not converted until you believe and surrender your life to Jesus Christ as a miracle, as a gift of God. Repentant faith is bestowed, 1 Peter 1.1, it's bestowed to the believer by the Father. He is the infinite divine benefactor. We are the beneficiaries of faith. That's how the Bible talks about faith. We're given it to us. And God bestows it to us. How does he do it? We are born again, James 1.18 says, by the word of truth. We are begotten again by the word of truth. Peter says it as well. We're begotten again to a living hope. So the Word does the work by the Spirit in the heart, and God, through the Word and through the Spirit, bestows faith. And what is faith? It's the ability to see God in all of His beauty. We ignored Him for all those years. Maybe we saw glimpses of Him as He was drawing us. But one day, He seized us. And as it says in the book of Acts, God opened the eyes of Lydia. And so it is with all of us. God opened the eyes, fill in your name, of me. I was born again. And I remember when I came to know Jesus in September of 1989, I was a sophomore in high school. That morning I woke up ready to continue my life of sin. Getting high, drinking, stealing cars, whatever it was, stupid stuff. Wasn't killing anybody, but it certainly wasn't anything honoring to God. And then I was invited by someone who was lost but to an evangelistic meeting. And I heard the gospel, and I was converted. And my eyes were opened, and I said, if this is true, everyone in the whole world should know this. So I was born again. And I don't know how it was for you. Maybe you were just a little child. Maybe you were a tiny kid. That's the best testimony to have. But God uses the Word and the Spirit to convert. Now, if you're a parent or a grandparent, you need to be using the Word of God with your kids in loving ways, just normal ways. Deuteronomy 6 says, when you walk by the way, when you sit down to eat, when you rise up from bed, when you go down to lay down for bed, whatever you're doing, be just incorporating the Lord into all things, incorporating the word, the Torah, the instruction of God into all things. The gospel is the ultimate instruction from God. Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It's not about our works. It is about his grace. There's nothing we can do to save ourselves. There's no amount of good works we can do to save ourselves. It's all about surrendering to his mercy and then he comes to dwell in us and that's what he says. So, One of the things that we see in salvation in verse 11 is that we have been predestined to the purpose of him who works all things, all things after the counsel of his own will. So that's sovereignty. God is going to send His Holy Spirit into our hearts, just like Ezekiel 36 and Ezekiel 37, the dry bones. The Word of God goes forth. The Spirit, the Ruah, as it's the word in Hebrew in the Old Testament. The Ruah goes forth. The Spirit of God, just like it was in the beginning, hovering over the chaos, bringing order out of chaos, and raises that cemetery of soldiers from the dead. So it is here, God sends forth his spirit. He's the absolute sovereign. Why are we saved? Because God works all things after the counsel of his own will. He decrees it before the foundation of the world. You say, Pastor Matt, would you explain how that works with the responsibility of man? I can't, because I'm only a human. Only God can understand the mystery of how God's sovereignty and the responsibility of man works together. But it does. God does not violate the will of man. God frees the will of man. And then man freely chooses the Lord. And the way one preacher in London named Charles Spurgeon said, he said, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man are like train tracks. that never meet on this earth. We cannot know how one corresponds with the other until we get to the very throne of God. Those train tracks lead into eternity to God's very throne. So you cannot know. Don't try to figure it out. Some emphasize the responsibility of man to the point where they manipulate people into emotionalism and they have them pray a prayer and they give them false assurance, right? Others, on the other extreme, will say, well, God is sovereign, so we should never evangelize, right? Because he's sovereign, he has to open up the eyes, he's the great evangelist. And we don't hold to either of those two extremes. We believe that man is responsible and that we are responsible to evangelize every creature, right? Everyone on Earth. God wants all men everywhere to repent, it says. He's not wishing that anyone should perish. But neither are we saying that man has any power to come to God on his own. He's dead in his sins. He's dead is dead. And that means he's not just fighting for life. No, no, he's not fighting for life. He doesn't need a lifeline. He needs a resurrection. They have that song, and I do like to sing it throughout the lifeline, across the wave. It talks about the salvation. But we're not swimming in an ocean of sin looking for a lifeline. We're dead on the bottom of the ocean. We are dead in our sins. We have no ability to come to God. No one seeks after God, it says in Romans chapter 3. So this is a mystery, the mystery of his will. And he talks about it as a mystery. He's sovereign and so we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, believed. And so you believed in him and were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So you have the sovereignty of God, and then here in verses 12 and 13, you have the word of God. So this is so important because really, the lifeline is the word of God. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So think about in your own life, how can I share the gospel? And it can be just simply, Jesus died for my sins. Now, that's not the full gospel, but it's at least an introduction to it. Yes, Jesus lived a perfect life. He died a substitutionary death, and he rose to demonstrate that The payment is accepted by God for us. The payment is accepted. We're justified by the power of His resurrection. God says, OK, I will accept that payment. That's the resurrection. And the ascension of Jesus is that now He is the King of kings over a people that He has saved. He's the King. He's the Lord. Every knee bows. Every tongue confesses. So our sealing is guaranteed by God's sovereignty, by God's word, and by his spirit. It says we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. So he's talking about the inheritance. And so the Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance. He's the earnest is the idea. He's the earnest. He's the down payment. So you already are part of the new creation. Even though Jesus has not yet come, you are experiencing some of what you will be experiencing when Jesus comes. And you are also experiencing the best part. Now, you can't experience it perfectly because you are harassed day and night by the world, the flesh, and the devil. So there's a war going on, and it's hard to sleep. It's hard to do anything because you've got a war going on, and you're always fighting that war. But we do have the best part of the new creation already at work within us. So theologians call this idea the already but not yet. Christ is already king, but he's not yet king of the whole world. Every knee will bow, but it's not every knee is not yet bowing. But you are bowing, so it's the already. You're already bowing, but not the whole world. The whole world is not yet bowing to him. You're already experiencing the new creation by the Holy Spirit. You're experiencing fellowship and communion with God, the peace and the joy and the love and the patience and all the fruit of the Spirit, but it's not yet in its fullness. It's veiled. We live, as C.S. Lewis said, in the shadowlands. So, we have the Spirit, but this Spirit is the down payment of our salvation. Now, why does he say you are sealed? You are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. You have an inheritance. It means that you were sealed with God's seal of ownership. You belong to his family. You've been adopted. That's another use of language that is in this passage. Are we here? Yeah, there we go. So a ceiling means the wax seal of ownership. That's the idea, is the wax seal of ownership. So in the ancient times, when they had a letter, and instead of signing their name, they would seal the letter, and they would put a piece of wax on there, a square little piece of wax, and then they would heat up the signature and put it in there. Now, that stone that they would heat up that seal of ownership. We have, for instance, we have Hezekiah's seal, his kingly seal. We have it today. We found it several years ago in a garbage dump in Jerusalem. And I say garbage dump, it was just a dump of old ruins. And archeologists went through that and they found Hezekiah, it says Hezekiah, son of Ahaz. And you know what his seal was? It's a winged son, the son of righteousness with healing in his wings, a picture of Jesus Christ. The son who is omnipresent as it seems and omniscient and sees and knows everything and goes everywhere where you are and follows you wherever you are. The son of righteousness with healing in his wings. Thank you. So you belong to God. So this goes back to the adoption idea where God adopts you into his family and you belong to him. You've been purchased. Redemption, that's another term. These are all theological terms that are illustrations of what God has done. So adoption has to do with your rights and privileges as a child of God. The redemption has to do with the price that Jesus paid. And sealing has to do with God's ownership. It's a kingly idea where kings would put their seal and they would say, this is mine. It belongs to me. And it's not as ownership as property. It's like ownership as you're God's precious possession. You are his crown, you know, the jewel in his crown. You are the one that he loves and you belong to him. So all of that revolves around God's absolute sovereignty. If you look at the things at work in verses 11 through 14, you have that all things work after the counsel of His own will. You have that it's the Word of God was what opened your eyes to believe, and then God sealed you with the Spirit of God, and He actually indwelt you, and that whole process is spoken about in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 36, verses 25 through 27. And it says that God will sprinkle clean water upon you and cleanse you from all of your idols. So he's not talking about literal water, he's talking about the Spirit. He's talking about the Spirit coming into your heart, cleansing you, forgiving you, and taking away the old enslavement, the mastery of the sin. It doesn't mean we're not tempted by sin, it means that we no longer have to be enslaved to it. So we have a new master, and that's why he says, I've given you my spirit. I've taken out the heart of stone, put in the heart of flesh, given you my spirit. And he will cause you, he's a new master, a good master, he will cause you to walk in my statutes and keep my judgments. So that's the whole idea of the sealing of the Holy Spirit. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. And that was the promised Holy Spirit from Ezekiel 36. This is what he's talking about. What promise is he referring to in the Bible? Ezekiel 36, Ezekiel 37, the dry bones prophecy. Israel's going to be raised. So because you believed, you're grafted into Israel, it says in Romans chapter 11. So Christ is exalted in the sealing of our souls. He's also exalted in the salvation that results from that sealing. Look at verses 15 and 16. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. So he says, I heard about your faith, and now I'm praying for you. He's heard about the miracle of faith in you, and now he's praying for them. And he prays a very powerful prayer about experiencing the infinite power of the Spirit, knowing the immeasurable love of Christ, and being filled with all the fullness of God the Father. So it's a very Trinitarian prayer, But it's a prayer that is answered 100% because he ends this prayer by saying that he'll do exceeding, abundantly above all that you could ever ask or think. So if you want this in your life, If you want the immeasurable love of Christ, and if you want the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, and you want to be filled with all the fullness of God, you pray that and you will get that. Now you have to pray truly in faith, and that means that you are surrendered to Christ. You need to be surrendered to him. But when we talk about faith, We're not talking about mere acceptance of facts about Jesus. Remember, James says the devils believe and they tremble. So it's not just facts about Jesus. This is a radical trust, a radical change of how you see everything. So if a person tells you that they believe, but Jesus is not the blazing center of all that they do and all that they love, then they haven't believed, or if they have, they're certainly not on the pathway at that moment. They're sidetracked, they're distracted, they're nearsighted. Faith is always alive. Faith, when you experience faith, it is an actual yielding of your life to Jesus Christ. It is a true trust of God in every area of your life. It doesn't mean it's perfect trust. None of us is perfect. But there is this desire to glorify your Father in heaven. But now look at verses 16 and following. And this is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. It talks about our growth. He says, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. So, I got ahead of myself and gave you chapter 3. That's actually all that prayer about Paul praying for those 100% prayers is in chapter 3. But this is speaking of having the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. And it says, having the eyes of your heart enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. According to the working of his might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in heavenly places. What's he talking about? Well, the spirit of wisdom is to truly know how to live life the way God designed it. Proverbs is a book. It's all about how to live life the way God designed it. But yet the Bible says that you can't even appreciate the word of God without having the spirit of God first. So 1 Corinthians 1.14, or is it 2 Corinthians, where it says that those who don't have the spirit of God, the Bible, the word of God is what? Foolishness, it's nonsense. So, when we think about growing in Christ, when we think about being predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, maturity begins when you say there is no wisdom outside of Christ. Because you can have all the knowledge of engineering, you can be a scientist that no one could ever compare to like Albert Einstein. You could have a brain like Elon Musk. But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, if he gains all knowledge in the world but he loses his own soul? He's a fool. That's why you cannot have wisdom outside of Jesus Christ. So a lot of times people come to me with their problems and they have all their ideas And they have their plan already made, and they just want me to kind of stamp it. Especially if it's marriage conflict, right? It's like, I'm right, he's wrong, or I'm right, she's wrong. And I got this plan, and I say, it's not about marriage. We're not talking about marriage. We are not talking about marriage in this room. We're gonna talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. Because all of your supposed wisdom is actually foolishness. We need to come under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and that's where we have the wisdom, and then there's a word here, revelation. And that's where the word is applied to your heart by the spirit. Theologians call this illumination. So when it says the spirit of wisdom and revelation, it's talking about you surrendering your heart to Jesus, And Him, by the Spirit, applying the word so that the light is shined on the word. And you go, aha, I understand, I get it. I have those moments all the time. Recently, I was like, why do I worry so much? You ever had that thought? Why do I worry so much? I'm not supposed to worry. Apparently, I'm not getting any taller. I think I'm getting a little shorter. But worry does not add one inch to my stature, does not add another month to my lifetime, so why do I worry? And as I was reading, and as I saw a quote somewhere, and I was reading Philippians 4, but Elizabeth Elliot said, worry is taking on responsibility that is not yours. Wow. So what I started telling myself, the spirit of wisdom and revelation, right, is actually this is not my responsibility to worry about this. The only one I'm responsible for is me and my family, and to a certain extent, our church. But there are so many things that I am not responsible for, and I need to leave that in the hands of God. And as I started to do that, my worry started to be relieved. That's the spirit of wisdom and revelation. You're just like, aha, oh wow, I can breathe again. Oh, that's so nice. Or sometimes when things don't go your way or you get upset or whatever, or somebody hurts you or whatever, you know, you're like, oh, how did that happen? And you could be so stirred up about it. Usually it's with family, it could be your job, it could be at church, it could be anything. And we get all stirred up, right? If you read Luke 6, it says, for those who offend you or those who hurt you, what are you supposed to do for them? You're supposed to pray for them, you're supposed to bless them, and you're supposed to do good for them. So much that you don't have any time to fuss. Isn't that wonderful? And so you start doing that, you get a happy heart, you get a joyful heart, and you have the Spirit of Christ giving you that wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. So that's where spiritual growth comes. Now, I just have to ask, and we're just out of time, we've got about three minutes left, but what are you doing in your life to grow in the spirit of wisdom and revelation. You've been given the Holy Spirit of promise, haven't you? He lives inside of you. What are you doing to grow? Are you just reading the word, or are you going to the place where the word, it cuts you. I call it a golden nugget. Every day I read the Bible and I get at least one, usually I get about 10 golden nuggets. But I used to only get one, and I was like, ah, this is amazing, because I was a brand new Christian, and I would write it out on a three by five card, stick it in my front pocket, because I went to Christian school, we had to wear ties to Christian school. And I felt like a businessman. I was like, okay, I got my card in my front pocket. And I remember just every day having that little card, and I would have a stack of cards. And by the time I got married, I had a big treasure chest of cards, of verses that I had meditated on and memorized. And then I found out that my wife is an anti-hoarder. Do you know what that is? It means she throws your treasure chest into the trash because it looks like garbage. That's what it means. And I went dumpster diving the first week of our marriage. I found the treasure chest, but the paper inside was no longer good to keep, so I lost all of that. But that's okay, I hid it in my heart that I might not sin against the Lord, right? But anyway, that's the spirit of wisdom. What are you doing? What are you doing in your personal life to grow in Christ? You've been sealed, you've been redeemed, you've been adopted, you've been elected, all of these things. What are you doing with that? Are you growing? Are you learning? Is there these aha moments that you're having on a daily basis? Because if you're not, you're going to become so nearsighted with all the troubles of life. that you're blind, having forgotten that you're cleansed from your former sin. As Peter says, you're gonna become unfruitful and ineffective, just like a plant that you rip out of the ground. You know, the other day I planted sod where we had something in the lawn that had been there for a long time and we moved it, you know? And so it was just dirt, it was just like a little square. And so I put sod down, And you know, when it was kind of hot, you know, and I didn't water it, and it started turning brown, right? Well, that's how we get as Christians, when we're not in the Word, when we're not interacting with the spirit of wisdom and revelation. You know what I did? I got a sprinkler. What an idea. And I turn it on a couple times a day, just for a few minutes, you know? I don't have to use that much water. You know what? Now it's green. It's nice and green. In fact, tomorrow I'm gonna get the, I gotta go cut the lawn, and I'm gonna have to, because it's all, now the roots have gotten down, and that's how we need to be as Christians. We need our roots down. What is it that brings our roots down into Christ? It's reading the word of God, and applying it to our lives, and letting the Spirit apply it. And that's how our roots get intertwined with Jesus. And it says in chapter four, that we grow up into Christ our head. And the joints of the body, mixing metaphors here from agriculture to anatomy, but the joints of the body are fitly joined together as we build each other up in love. But you cannot do that if you're not in the word of God every day. Well, I tell you so much more that's in this passage, but we're out of time, so let's pray.