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God, as we know that you have continued to be the one to lead and guide us.

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We know that your designs, your plans, they are good, they are right.

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But God, we ask that you would make us mindful,

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that you would help us to be able to see the ways in which you are leading us

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to be a part of your plans.

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Lord God, help us not to sit by idly,

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but rather is to joyfully take up the cross

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and to walk with you along this journey.

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We thank you, God. In Christ Jesus. Amen.

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Howdy!

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So, I had somebody in the first service say that he was surprised

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that I didn't preach on the Gospel today.

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It was the first time that somebody was actually really sad about not having a beheading.

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I was a little surprised on that one.

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But with it though, is I was a little bit more distracted by the fact that I heard a rumor

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that there was a storm that blew through on Monday.

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I don't know, there might have been a little bit of rain and wind somewhere in there.

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Clearly it could not have been that big of a storm because big storms only happen

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when I go out of town for at least a week at a time.

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So, clearly it could not have been that large.

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But the thing with it is that Hurricane Barrel came barreling through

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if I had a penny for every time I heard that pun over this last week on my word.

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It's like I'm the one who's supposed to have the bad jokes.

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But it was amazing. It was like people kept describing these maps as the spaghetti map.

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And it was like because nobody had any real idea of where in the world it was going to go.

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And apparently we got to enjoy quite a bit of it.

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Thank you, Barrel. Much appreciated.

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There were a lot of people that were going through quite a few things.

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But I did want to point out though, if over this last week,

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if you didn't have somebody from the congregation that reached out to you

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to check on you and see how you are, please let us know.

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Because that's one of the things we've been working on refining is just making sure

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that our heart is in the right place, just making sure that we've checked

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to make sure that everyone is okay.

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So please let us know if there was anybody that we missed in that regard.

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Okay. Now with it though is also pointing out though, this last week we had a lot of issues

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that came up. All right. We had parts where there was no power throughout the area.

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Times where the cell phones were dead in the water. You couldn't get text.

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Phone calls sounded like somebody was underwater.

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You thought they were actually in the storm themselves.

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The internet was spotty at best and sometimes absolutely useless.

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I'm currently having to use the notes from my phone because I couldn't print them today.

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All sorts of stuff going on in that regard.

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But you see, as much as we can look at our city and we can say that things should have been done better.

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There's also something else that we do need to realize.

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We had a hurricane. I know everyone's surprised.

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But some of the decisions that were made in advance of what happened,

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they should have taken preparing for the storm more seriously.

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But we also need to consider we are a city near the Gulf of Mexico.

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We haven't funded infrastructure projects as effectively as we should have for decades now.

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And on top of that is that we need to always be prepared to handle the disasters that we come across

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and to help our neighbor in any circumstance.

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So while we should be able to trust those in authority to be doing their job and looking out for us,

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there is still a level of uncertainty.

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A level of uncertainty in life that requires that we go the extra mile in these uncharted waters.

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Hopefully figurative and not always literal.

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See, the idea of trusting in a greater plan but still facing uncharted waters.

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I want you to have that in your mind.

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Trusting in a greater plan but facing uncharted waters.

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Because this is what I want you to have in your mind as we are looking at Ephesians.

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We're going to be spending the next few weeks looking at Ephesians.

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And I want us to be able to realize that there's a lot that we take for granted here.

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The missionary, Paul the Apostle, we take it for granted, oftentimes,

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that Paul was this great missionary and that he took care of reaching out to all the people outside of the Jewish community.

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All of those Gentiles, those non-Jewish people in the world.

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And yet, the issue is that Paul was facing new and difficult situations that were uncharted for him.

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See, Paul had been brought up in a community where they were expecting the Messiah to come at any day.

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They knew there was this one God.

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And they knew that this one God was going to be sending his Messiah to come.

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So to reach the Jewish community is you've already had the way prepared for you.

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We're just showing you that Christ has come.

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But now imagine to be in a world where nobody has any concept of what you're trying to talk about.

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See, the thing is that while the Jewish people could know that God had chosen them and had called them to be his own,

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it was a very different message and a very different picture as Paul is going to the Gentile community.

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See, the thing is that trying to teach them, it's reaching out to people who, instead of thinking of there being this one true God,

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is that instead there's this pantheon of God's out there.

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And instead of believing that there is mercy and grace, is that instead it's a place where people don't really believe that anything that they do

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really matters much at all.

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And you can't really say it was right or wrong.

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You just go with whatever it is.

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I'm sure that we in 21st century America have no idea what it's like to live in a community that doesn't necessarily believe in one God

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or believe that there's a right and wrong.

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With it is that Paul understood that.

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But teaching the people of Ephesus about a Messiah that they hadn't known to expect, this is something that makes it difficult when you're coming in

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from a community that did.

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See, it would have been really convenient for Paul to look at all of those who are outside of the Jewish community and to say,

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you know what, God can do something himself.

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God can send someone or something miraculous.

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God can go take care of that in order to get their attention if he really wants to.

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If God really wants to get a hold of the Gentile people, he can take care of it.

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This isn't really my job.

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It's not my job to worry about it because, well, I'm a Jew and I need to reach out to the Jewish community.

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That's going to be for somebody else to do.

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Over this last week, there were a couple of times where we came to the church and we were like moving branches around.

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We ended up dragging a bunch of them to a giant pile.

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Another person took the pile out to the road and there was a lot that we were taking care of.

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At one point we saw that there was a bunch of trash next door out around the dumpster.

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The thing is that people in the neighborhood going through all these issues, they saw the dumpster was full,

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but they still left trash sitting around the dumpster.

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In seeing this, the thing is that there were winds, there was rain still happening,

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there was all sorts of things. You don't want to leave that trash just sitting there.

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We didn't know how long it was going to be before any of the services could come and take care of it.

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Let me just make it very clear. It was wet. It was nasty.

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You do not want to know what was growing inside of it. It was terrible.

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But we took the time and got as much of it as we could into our dumpster to try to help out and take care of it,

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because we weren't sure who else would be able to do so.

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But what stood out to me was later on someone's response to what we did,

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because the response was, you know, that was good of you to do that, but it isn't your job.

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Isn't it amazing how often we find ourselves in a world where everything is somehow designated and delegated as someone else's job?

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Someone else is always supposed to be the one doing it.

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Someone else mows our lawn. Someone else cleans our bathrooms.

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Someone else does surveys for us. Someone else writes our reports for us,

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even if we go and use chat, GBT, and open AI.

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For the record, I wrote this sermon myself. All of the terrible jokes are completely blamed on me.

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But, you see, we could not possibly be expected to do something that we feel someone else's job.

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So we walk around it, ignore it.

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We tell ourselves that God or somebody else has it all figured out.

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We can just go back to our usual schedules and routines and not worry about it.

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But, you see, as we read Ephesians 1.5, this is oftentimes the way that we treat the concept of predestination.

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Predestination by God of the elect is this idea of, that's not for me to deal with.

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I'm just not going to even bother.

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See, we talked about this somewhat a few months ago, but it bears revisiting when we see how Paul is talking to the Ephesians.

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Every time that we hear the term predestination, we know that God chose many people to be his own,

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since before the world even began.

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Now, it's not based on whether we're good enough, but rather on God loving us.

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So, see, as soon as we hear this idea that God was choosing us before time began,

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what is the automatic question that we ask?

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Why did God choose to love some people and not others?

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Did he always want to condemn those other people?

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See, the idea that God created some people specifically because he wanted to condemn them,

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it's not actually scriptural when you look at Scripture as a whole.

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Yes, you could take a few verses here and there, pull them out of context and say,

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oh, see, there you go, that's proof.

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God wanted these people to be condemned.

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But it's sort of like, imagine that you're getting on your parents' nerves,

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which I'm sure none of you have ever done at any point in your life.

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I know I'm the perfect son, clearly, but believe it or not,

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now you go to them and you say, after you have made their lives miserable that day,

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and you say, but you still love me, right?

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And now imagine your parents are exhausted and all they can come up with is,

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you know, you probably just shouldn't have asked me that today, it's been a bad day,

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or, well, you know, you have a lot of good qualities and you're kind of like, thanks,

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I really appreciate that.

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You know, one of those moments, one of those moments.

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But you see, of course, they love us if you look at your life as a whole with them.

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But it's the same thing about what Scripture is doing with God,

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is that every time Scripture points to God knowing from the beginning of the creation

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that there would be those who are condemned, is that there's also something in that passage

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showing that God has brought so many of his enemies into his kingdom,

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is that God is deliberately giving everything he can to change it,

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everything he can, even his own son.

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Just a few examples.

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Isaiah 5, okay?

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God ducked up the vineyard and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines.

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He built a watchtower in it and cut out a wine press as well,

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and then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

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He didn't build a vineyard to make bad fruit.

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He did everything possible for good grapes, and yet still they rejected his design.

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Romans 11, just as you were, who were at one time disobedient to God,

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have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience.

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So they too have now become disobedient in order that they may now receive mercy

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as a result of God's mercy to you,

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for God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

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The disobedience part is that God is seeing it as saying,

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now I'm trying to get my mercy to you.

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I'm communicating my mercy to you.

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In Proverbs 16, the Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.

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Ooh, that's a weird passage.

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Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord.

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To be assured, he will not go unpunished by steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for.

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And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil.

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When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

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This whole part about the wicked for the day of destruction, but when you look at all of it,

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this is not some parent trying to say that they have a child that became a criminal as if they wanted them to become that.

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Imagine that parent has a child who is now a criminal.

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They could easily say, I gave birth to a criminal, or they could say, I raised a criminal.

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That's not because they meant for their child to be that in the first place.

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But rather is that they acknowledge where their child ultimately went, and they're taking responsibility as the parent.

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That's the thing about God, is that he's not desiring this, but he's acknowledging, I am God overall,

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and I still acknowledge that there are those who reject me, even though I've loved them.

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See, if we start looking at the world, as those whom God wants in his kingdom, us great people,

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and those who are not really worth his time, don't bother, then we forget that we all started out in life as God's enemies.

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All of us. We started in the same place.

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We look at Ephesus, and it's this place with temples to various gods in a way of looking at the world differently.

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But instead of assuming that it was someone else's job to reach them, because, well, God is ultimately in charge, right?

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So God can figure it out himself. God's got something he can do, right?

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Instead, Paul made every effort to connect with them, and even he had passed through and shared the gospel,

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hey, that's great, goes out of his way to come back again and spend three years with them,

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to start a church and to make sure that they knew God, because we all start in this place of not knowing God.

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We don't know his grace. We don't even want God when we first get started, crying, raising of a baby that we are.

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Somewhere along the way, we have been brought to know Christ Jesus and what he did, washed in baptism, following him each and every day.

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That is what Paul knew about the Gentiles, is that God wanted them, even the ones who knew nothing about him, and had no interest in them, in him.

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God still wanted them to know him as well, and that was the whole point about why Paul was focusing on predestined,

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because up to that point, the Jewish community saw themselves as chosen by God.

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So what is Paul letting the Gentiles know? So are you.

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You were also a part of the plan from the beginning. This isn't, oh no, the Jewish religious leaders crucified Jesus,

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well I guess maybe we'll let the Gentiles in. God always wanted the rest of the world to know him.

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That was always the plan. That was always what he intended. In verses 13 and 14,

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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,

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who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

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Because all of those who believe in Christ are then called predestined, elect and sealed, end of story.

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All of them, and Paul is making sure that the Ephesians know, you didn't start off with this story,

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but God still had a plan for you to know him too.

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Wherever you are from, whatever that background was, the plan was always for you.

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But the question is, do we have the same intentions?

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Do we seek to save the lost? Or do we just, we'll just see what happens.

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How many times, how many ways is it that we would go out of our way to save the lost,

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and yet how many times do we just assume God will figure it out somehow?

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See that's the thing that we ended up seeing with this storm this last week.

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It was so easy to be able to say, you know what, it'll get figured out.

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There are people coming, they're going to take care of it, it's figured out, okay, well should we check on the neighbors that we have?

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They're probably fine. I'm sure they would have told us if something was an issue.

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Well, you know what, it's not really that hot outside.

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You know, it's not really that big an issue. Everybody knows the Wi-Fi is out.

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We'll just take a break from the, you know, social media for a bit.

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It'll be okay. I'm sure it'll all get taken care of.

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But that's one of the things that we realize is that it doesn't always all get taken care of.

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But even more than that, why do we assume that we're not supposed to be a part of that plan ourselves?

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We're also meant to be. This isn't something just to put off onto an energy company or onto a city or onto some other group.

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This is also for us. This is our world. This is our community.

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This is our opportunity to be a part of what the plan is, to love and to share grace and mercy with those around us.

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The question is, do we want to do that with the Gospel? Just because the people around us, they're a little bit different.

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Maybe they're not expecting it. Maybe we have to do things a little differently than the way we expected it.

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But you see, it's more than just waiting at what may happen.

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It's not just, maybe God will let somebody stumble across my path and then the right moment, the right instant,

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where, hey, I think they want to know about Jesus and then I'll say it, are we also preparing for it too?

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Are we also looking for the ways in which we in our world can share the Gospel?

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Are we planning that we're going to be out there doing it?

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Do we realize that our planning to get out there is part of the plan God had in mind from the beginning?

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You, you are a major part of that plan and you're meant to be.

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So that's the thing about this is that God has a plan for reaching the lost. It's us.

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Rather than assuming or hoping that somebody else will take care of it, that's for us.

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But even more than that, as Paul closed this particular section in talking about Christ being above all,

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as Christ sees us and knows what we are doing, do we want Christ looking at us and we can say, hey God, yeah,

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don't worry, someone's got it taken care of. I'm sure you've got it all on plan.

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I'm just going to sit here and do my thing, but hey, good job.

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Or is he looking down saying, you, my child, are the one to take the message to the world?

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So wherever we see we can do so and however we see we can do so, may we realize that we're the plan

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and may we be willing to go into the uncharted world no matter what disaster may come

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because we know that God is in control and his plan involves us.

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Thanks be to God.