God, as we know that you have continued to be the one to lead and guide us.
We know that your designs, your plans, they are good, they are right.
But God, we ask that you would make us mindful,
that you would help us to be able to see the ways in which you are leading us
to be a part of your plans.
Lord God, help us not to sit by idly,
but rather is to joyfully take up the cross
and to walk with you along this journey.
We thank you, God. In Christ Jesus. Amen.
Howdy!
So, I had somebody in the first service say that he was surprised
that I didn't preach on the Gospel today.
It was the first time that somebody was actually really sad about not having a beheading.
I was a little surprised on that one.
But with it though, is I was a little bit more distracted by the fact that I heard a rumor
that there was a storm that blew through on Monday.
I don't know, there might have been a little bit of rain and wind somewhere in there.
Clearly it could not have been that big of a storm because big storms only happen
when I go out of town for at least a week at a time.
So, clearly it could not have been that large.
But the thing with it is that Hurricane Barrel came barreling through
if I had a penny for every time I heard that pun over this last week on my word.
It's like I'm the one who's supposed to have the bad jokes.
But it was amazing. It was like people kept describing these maps as the spaghetti map.
And it was like because nobody had any real idea of where in the world it was going to go.
And apparently we got to enjoy quite a bit of it.
Thank you, Barrel. Much appreciated.
There were a lot of people that were going through quite a few things.
But I did want to point out though, if over this last week,
if you didn't have somebody from the congregation that reached out to you
to check on you and see how you are, please let us know.
Because that's one of the things we've been working on refining is just making sure
that our heart is in the right place, just making sure that we've checked
to make sure that everyone is okay.
So please let us know if there was anybody that we missed in that regard.
Okay. Now with it though is also pointing out though, this last week we had a lot of issues
that came up. All right. We had parts where there was no power throughout the area.
Times where the cell phones were dead in the water. You couldn't get text.
Phone calls sounded like somebody was underwater.
You thought they were actually in the storm themselves.
The internet was spotty at best and sometimes absolutely useless.
I'm currently having to use the notes from my phone because I couldn't print them today.
All sorts of stuff going on in that regard.
But you see, as much as we can look at our city and we can say that things should have been done better.
There's also something else that we do need to realize.
We had a hurricane. I know everyone's surprised.
But some of the decisions that were made in advance of what happened,
they should have taken preparing for the storm more seriously.
But we also need to consider we are a city near the Gulf of Mexico.
We haven't funded infrastructure projects as effectively as we should have for decades now.
And on top of that is that we need to always be prepared to handle the disasters that we come across
and to help our neighbor in any circumstance.
So while we should be able to trust those in authority to be doing their job and looking out for us,
there is still a level of uncertainty.
A level of uncertainty in life that requires that we go the extra mile in these uncharted waters.
Hopefully figurative and not always literal.
See, the idea of trusting in a greater plan but still facing uncharted waters.
I want you to have that in your mind.
Trusting in a greater plan but facing uncharted waters.
Because this is what I want you to have in your mind as we are looking at Ephesians.
We're going to be spending the next few weeks looking at Ephesians.
And I want us to be able to realize that there's a lot that we take for granted here.
The missionary, Paul the Apostle, we take it for granted, oftentimes,
that Paul was this great missionary and that he took care of reaching out to all the people outside of the Jewish community.
All of those Gentiles, those non-Jewish people in the world.
And yet, the issue is that Paul was facing new and difficult situations that were uncharted for him.
See, Paul had been brought up in a community where they were expecting the Messiah to come at any day.
They knew there was this one God.
And they knew that this one God was going to be sending his Messiah to come.
So to reach the Jewish community is you've already had the way prepared for you.
We're just showing you that Christ has come.
But now imagine to be in a world where nobody has any concept of what you're trying to talk about.
See, the thing is that while the Jewish people could know that God had chosen them and had called them to be his own,
it was a very different message and a very different picture as Paul is going to the Gentile community.
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,
is that instead there's this pantheon of God's out there.
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
really matters much at all.
And you can't really say it was right or wrong.
You just go with whatever it is.
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
or believe that there's a right and wrong.
With it is that Paul understood that.
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
from a community that did.
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,
you know what, God can do something himself.
God can send someone or something miraculous.
God can go take care of that in order to get their attention if he really wants to.
If God really wants to get a hold of the Gentile people, he can take care of it.
This isn't really my job.
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.
That's going to be for somebody else to do.
Over this last week, there were a couple of times where we came to the church and we were like moving branches around.
We ended up dragging a bunch of them to a giant pile.
Another person took the pile out to the road and there was a lot that we were taking care of.
At one point we saw that there was a bunch of trash next door out around the dumpster.
The thing is that people in the neighborhood going through all these issues, they saw the dumpster was full,
but they still left trash sitting around the dumpster.
In seeing this, the thing is that there were winds, there was rain still happening,
there was all sorts of things. You don't want to leave that trash just sitting there.
We didn't know how long it was going to be before any of the services could come and take care of it.
Let me just make it very clear. It was wet. It was nasty.
You do not want to know what was growing inside of it. It was terrible.
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,
because we weren't sure who else would be able to do so.
But what stood out to me was later on someone's response to what we did,
because the response was, you know, that was good of you to do that, but it isn't your job.
Isn't it amazing how often we find ourselves in a world where everything is somehow designated and delegated as someone else's job?
Someone else is always supposed to be the one doing it.
Someone else mows our lawn. Someone else cleans our bathrooms.
Someone else does surveys for us. Someone else writes our reports for us,
even if we go and use chat, GBT, and open AI.
For the record, I wrote this sermon myself. All of the terrible jokes are completely blamed on me.
But, you see, we could not possibly be expected to do something that we feel someone else's job.
So we walk around it, ignore it.
We tell ourselves that God or somebody else has it all figured out.
We can just go back to our usual schedules and routines and not worry about it.
But, you see, as we read Ephesians 1.5, this is oftentimes the way that we treat the concept of predestination.
Predestination by God of the elect is this idea of, that's not for me to deal with.
I'm just not going to even bother.
See, we talked about this somewhat a few months ago, but it bears revisiting when we see how Paul is talking to the Ephesians.
Every time that we hear the term predestination, we know that God chose many people to be his own,
since before the world even began.
Now, it's not based on whether we're good enough, but rather on God loving us.
So, see, as soon as we hear this idea that God was choosing us before time began,
what is the automatic question that we ask?
Why did God choose to love some people and not others?
Did he always want to condemn those other people?
See, the idea that God created some people specifically because he wanted to condemn them,
it's not actually scriptural when you look at Scripture as a whole.
Yes, you could take a few verses here and there, pull them out of context and say,
oh, see, there you go, that's proof.
God wanted these people to be condemned.
But it's sort of like, imagine that you're getting on your parents' nerves,
which I'm sure none of you have ever done at any point in your life.
I know I'm the perfect son, clearly, but believe it or not,
now you go to them and you say, after you have made their lives miserable that day,
and you say, but you still love me, right?
And now imagine your parents are exhausted and all they can come up with is,
you know, you probably just shouldn't have asked me that today, it's been a bad day,
or, well, you know, you have a lot of good qualities and you're kind of like, thanks,
I really appreciate that.
You know, one of those moments, one of those moments.
But you see, of course, they love us if you look at your life as a whole with them.
But it's the same thing about what Scripture is doing with God,
is that every time Scripture points to God knowing from the beginning of the creation
that there would be those who are condemned, is that there's also something in that passage
showing that God has brought so many of his enemies into his kingdom,
is that God is deliberately giving everything he can to change it,
everything he can, even his own son.
Just a few examples.
Isaiah 5, okay?
God ducked up the vineyard and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it and cut out a wine press as well,
and then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
He didn't build a vineyard to make bad fruit.
He did everything possible for good grapes, and yet still they rejected his design.
Romans 11, just as you were, who were at one time disobedient to God,
have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience.
So they too have now become disobedient in order that they may now receive mercy
as a result of God's mercy to you,
for God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
The disobedience part is that God is seeing it as saying,
now I'm trying to get my mercy to you.
I'm communicating my mercy to you.
In Proverbs 16, the Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.
Ooh, that's a weird passage.
Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord.
To be assured, he will not go unpunished by steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for.
And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil.
When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.
This whole part about the wicked for the day of destruction, but when you look at all of it,
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.
Imagine that parent has a child who is now a criminal.
They could easily say, I gave birth to a criminal, or they could say, I raised a criminal.
That's not because they meant for their child to be that in the first place.
But rather is that they acknowledge where their child ultimately went, and they're taking responsibility as the parent.
That's the thing about God, is that he's not desiring this, but he's acknowledging, I am God overall,
and I still acknowledge that there are those who reject me, even though I've loved them.
See, if we start looking at the world, as those whom God wants in his kingdom, us great people,
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.
All of us. We started in the same place.
We look at Ephesus, and it's this place with temples to various gods in a way of looking at the world differently.
But instead of assuming that it was someone else's job to reach them, because, well, God is ultimately in charge, right?
So God can figure it out himself. God's got something he can do, right?
Instead, Paul made every effort to connect with them, and even he had passed through and shared the gospel,
hey, that's great, goes out of his way to come back again and spend three years with them,
to start a church and to make sure that they knew God, because we all start in this place of not knowing God.
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.
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.
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.
God still wanted them to know him as well, and that was the whole point about why Paul was focusing on predestined,
because up to that point, the Jewish community saw themselves as chosen by God.
So what is Paul letting the Gentiles know? So are you.
You were also a part of the plan from the beginning. This isn't, oh no, the Jewish religious leaders crucified Jesus,
well I guess maybe we'll let the Gentiles in. God always wanted the rest of the world to know him.
That was always the plan. That was always what he intended. In verses 13 and 14,
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.
Because all of those who believe in Christ are then called predestined, elect and sealed, end of story.
All of them, and Paul is making sure that the Ephesians know, you didn't start off with this story,
but God still had a plan for you to know him too.
Wherever you are from, whatever that background was, the plan was always for you.
But the question is, do we have the same intentions?
Do we seek to save the lost? Or do we just, we'll just see what happens.
How many times, how many ways is it that we would go out of our way to save the lost,
and yet how many times do we just assume God will figure it out somehow?
See that's the thing that we ended up seeing with this storm this last week.
It was so easy to be able to say, you know what, it'll get figured out.
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?
They're probably fine. I'm sure they would have told us if something was an issue.
Well, you know what, it's not really that hot outside.
You know, it's not really that big an issue. Everybody knows the Wi-Fi is out.
We'll just take a break from the, you know, social media for a bit.
It'll be okay. I'm sure it'll all get taken care of.
But that's one of the things that we realize is that it doesn't always all get taken care of.
But even more than that, why do we assume that we're not supposed to be a part of that plan ourselves?
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.
This is also for us. This is our world. This is our community.
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.
The question is, do we want to do that with the Gospel? Just because the people around us, they're a little bit different.
Maybe they're not expecting it. Maybe we have to do things a little differently than the way we expected it.
But you see, it's more than just waiting at what may happen.
It's not just, maybe God will let somebody stumble across my path and then the right moment, the right instant,
where, hey, I think they want to know about Jesus and then I'll say it, are we also preparing for it too?
Are we also looking for the ways in which we in our world can share the Gospel?
Are we planning that we're going to be out there doing it?
Do we realize that our planning to get out there is part of the plan God had in mind from the beginning?
You, you are a major part of that plan and you're meant to be.
So that's the thing about this is that God has a plan for reaching the lost. It's us.
Rather than assuming or hoping that somebody else will take care of it, that's for us.
But even more than that, as Paul closed this particular section in talking about Christ being above all,
as Christ sees us and knows what we are doing, do we want Christ looking at us and we can say, hey God, yeah,
don't worry, someone's got it taken care of. I'm sure you've got it all on plan.
I'm just going to sit here and do my thing, but hey, good job.
Or is he looking down saying, you, my child, are the one to take the message to the world?
So wherever we see we can do so and however we see we can do so, may we realize that we're the plan
and may we be willing to go into the uncharted world no matter what disaster may come
because we know that God is in control and his plan involves us.
Thanks be to God.