Ephesians 2:1-10
Let’s go to Ephesians chapter 2.
Well, as you know, if you’ve been here, we are spending the late summer and fall. studying the book of Ephesians. So this is our third time in the book, third Sunday morning. And we spent the first few Sundays in this study looking at some foundational things.
And I’ve shared what I believe is really the thesis of this book, if you were to say that. I mean, there’s a lot of different themes, but the prevailing one I see as I read this is that the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is knowing the love of God, who we are in Him, if we receive that and walk in that, it will and has the power to radically transform every part of our lives. Now, I’ve spent the first couple Sundays covering a lot of history, and I’m not going to do that again, but if you’re new and you’re interested in that, you might go check one of our previous messages where we talked about the history of this letter and the church and Paul’s involvement there and Timothy’s involvement there and such things. So I won’t do that again because it takes up a good chunk of time. But you might check that out because it is helpful to know the history of where this letter was written. But we’ll jump right into it. And the first couple weeks, we did start and spent a lot of time on foundation talking about what has been done to us Christians, what defines us as Christians, who we are because of our faith in Jesus Christ.
Last week, we looked at a prayer that Paul prayed for the church, and it was a really beautiful service. And this week, we are going to talk about the past, present, and future you. Are you ready? And so, building on that foundation of what has Jesus done for us, who are we in Christ, we now begin to talk about how that transforms our lives. And so as I looked at this passage and spent time looking over and over, we’re going to look at 10 verses, I really saw this progression of he begins talking about who you were, what you were saved from, and then he begins talking about who we are.
And then on the tail end, he talks about now you have this purpose, who you will be, what you will spend your life doing because of your faith in Jesus. And I want to just really say this before we pray and read the passage. Your life has a purpose. Your life has a purpose, guys. I think I shared this a few weeks ago that I read this. It was a blog about men, and it said the greatest way to destroy a man is make him feel he has no purpose. And I think that’s true of everybody. I would say as a man, it’s very much something that I understand. I think for all of us, though, you know, sometimes when life is hard, we go up and down, we fail, we mess up, we sin, we lose ground in our faith walk. People hurt us, tragedies happen, and you might just be sitting there staring at the wall at some point wondering, why am I even here?
Is any of it worth it? And the Bible gives a resounding call to us saying that you and I were made in the image of God. You were made for good things. It’s going to be hard. There’s going to be lot of hardship, but you’re here for a reason. And in our Christian faith, we can find that reason. We can find, why am I here? And, you know, I found that when I can tap into that, life is a lot more exciting and fun. And I feel alive instead of feeling like I have no purpose. So this passage talks about that. We’re going to look at that toward the tail end, but we will take that progression as we look at these verses of the past, present, and future you. And let’s start and pray, and then we’ll read this passage. Please pray with me now. Lord, we invite you to speak.
Your word says that it is alive and active. It’s like a sword that pierces and divides what’s real and what’s supernatural. And it brings about the thoughts and intentions of our hearts to the surface. We ask this morning for the power of your word to come. It’s hot in here, Lord. I just want to stand in front of this vent as I pray because it’s kind of hot. And we just were so distracted by the heat. We’re distracted by what we brought in here.
But we want to hear you. Just think of those people, it says in Luke, that walked days to hear Jesus say something.
And maybe our feet hurt. Maybe we’re sweaty. Maybe we’re hungry. Maybe we’re just discouraged this morning.
But we think of those people, and we want to be those people this morning that walk and search and knock and keep knocking so that we can find you because you make life worth living. You give us beauty, and you give us purpose, and you give us affirmation. And all those things are lost in the world, but when we find you, Lord, when we are in your presence, all things are made new and right.
So we ask you this morning to open your word to us. I pray that the power of the word of God would come and increase in this room as we read it, and it would have effect and bear fruit.
We welcome you. As we’re praying, I just want to remind us, as we’re still sort of in a prayer mode,
we’re listening to some things that are going to be said today, but each of us this morning, guys, each of us, we want to listen to the Lord. Lord, what are you saying for my life right now? Not what is the sermon even about. What do you have to say to me? I am open, Father, to what you would say in my life, and I want to hear it. I want to meet with you. So I give you permission to give me ears to hear what you’re saying.
Come, Holy Spirit.
We welcome you.
Amen. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 10. Let’s read that. You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that’s now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you’ve been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus in order that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, And that not of yourselves is a gift of God, not as a result of works that no one should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
All right, we’ll stop there for this morning. So let’s look at this flow of thought that I see very clearly in this passage and talk about the before, during, and after salvation. Who was I? I was a different person before Jesus.
And you were too.
We were different people before Christ. In verses 1 through 3, we see some horrible descriptions of human beings. And there’s a lot of human beings that live this way. In verse 1, it says that we were dead.
We were dead. And that’s a scary thing. Have you ever felt dead? Like just you have no life in you. Like maybe your body’s alive, but your soul is dead. Dead in trespass and sin, covered over us. See, all of us have a B.C. and A.D. version, right? We have a B.C. before Christ, and then we have an A.D. We could say after deliverance or, you know, when you were delivered from yourself and your sin and you came to Jesus being the Lord of your life.
But before that, he gives these really brutal descriptions that we were dead in our sin, that we, in verse 2, walked according to the course of the world. Now, if you look around right now, that verse will be very relevant. Walking according to the course of the world. So, if you are perhaps, you know, distracted constantly, if you feel the pull of the things around you, maybe the things that we wake up thinking about. Maybe you wake up thinking about movie stars or new fashions or things like that. Or maybe you wake up thinking about the girl at school you like or the boy at school you’re like. And those may not all be bad things. Some of you are giggling right now.
But I would suggest to you that you were made for something more than that. You were made for more than just walking according to the course, the road, the path of the world. Why is that? Well, in verse 2, he also says something very scary. This is very, very scary. You walked according to the course of this world. This is who we were. According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that’s now working in the sons of disobedience. So who is the prince of the power of the air?
Well, the prince of the power of the air is the devil. And you might think, well, is he in the air? What are they talking about? Well, here’s what he’s talking about, the air. Everyone look around at the air. Can you see the air? You can’t see the air. But it’s there. is it not? And this is the deception. This is what Paul is describing to us. He’s saying there is someone in control that you can’t even see. And that someone is moving and manipulating things all around you. Perhaps, I’m not saying there’s a demon around every corner, but it might very well be possible that when you are tempted into anger and rage or lust and greed, there is the prince of the power of the air, the air right in front of you that you can’t see. And again, that’s why he uses this idea of air. It’s an unseen thing. And he doesn’t say it worked only in Job and it worked only in Judas and it worked only in Jesus’ life. No, he says is now working.
So that means Katie and Tess and it means, you know, Jackie and Ron and Wendy and Bryce. and it means all of us in this room now working, it is now working to undo you and defeat you and cause you to steer your life and affections and emotions and money and gifts and all of you, your very soul, steer it toward the course of this world that you would live just like every other lost sheep on this planet, bumping into each other with no purpose, no passion, no love.
It’s just all about what I want out of life. And that is a dead life, guys. And it’s not was working. The prince of the power of the air, it’s now working all throughout the world. And it is vying for us right now. Interestingly, I was thinking of Psalm 19 because that’s the one that says the heavens are telling of the glory of God. Again, not were, they are. So right now you have the voice, you have the influence of the prince of the power of the air that you can’t see vying for you. And at the same time, God Almighty who made you, his glory covers the earth and his testimonies are in the sky right now. And his glory now is being declared throughout the world everywhere you look.
If we will look for it, we have two forces working for us. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll just throw AI under the bus. I’ve never used AI yet. I’m not saying it’s evil, but I just read this awful, awful article. And it’s true that there’s been multiple cases of kids, and these are some of the people in this room, and adults, going to AI for advice, having perhaps a romantic relationship with the perfect being that a computer creates for you, which, by the way, will destroy any future attempts you have at love. Don’t do it.
because you’re giving emotion to something that does not exist and is not real. And when you try to do that in real life, you will suddenly learn that love is not about you feeling good. It’s about you giving to someone else, and your attempt at love will fall apart.
But there’s been several situations that these are all documented. There’s people getting sued where the AI companion or the AI has told kids to kill themselves and they’ve taken their own life because the computer told them to. So I’m not throwing AI in. I’m not one of these people that says, you shouldn’t have a cell phone. You know, stay off social media. I’m not saying all that, okay? But I’m telling you that the prince of the power of the air is at work all around us. And if you read an article like that and say, boy, that sucks. I mean, that’s a really sad thing that that happened. Get some discernment and wake up and just for us to, like we talked about last week, enlighten the eyes of my heart so that I could see what’s going on and look at life. Guys, it’s not just me. I seem like the spiritual one. You are just as spiritual a being as me. And there are spiritual beings at work in your life to pull you here or there just as much as me. I’m not the only one that this applies to. Sometimes we think, he’s talking about stuff in the stratosphere. Now I need to go back to my office and, you know, to do these, you know, fill out these reports. It’s not the case. Every one of us, this dynamic is at work. Every one of us, it’s at work. And we want to open our eyes to it. It’s very real.
If we’re tempted to do something that seems small, like cheat, steal, maybe become drunk, look at the wrong thing, lash out, cut other people out of your life, it is very, very possible that we are in a spiritual fight. And we need revelation. We can’t see it. Again, back to the prints the power of the air. There’s parts of this passage I’m emphasizing. There’s other parts I’m not going to talk as much about, but this is one I feel the Lord wants to highlight. We can’t see it, but it’s right there. I’ll give you an illustration. You guys, most of you guys know, I like to buy old cars. No one should buy. I buy cars for like a thousand dollars. I have a black Pathfinder out there I got for a thousand dollars a few months ago, and I’m trying to slowly work and make it nice, and it’s getting there. And another one I got not long ago, I bought an old 01 Toyota, And I was underneath it trying to fix the motor mounts.
And I had it propped up. And I slid myself on a piece of cardboard, which is really nice because you can slide easier, tip of the day, than on concrete. And I had my head under the car. And my body was hanging out of the car.
And I’m laying on my back. And it’s dark, you know, under the car, a little bit of light. I look to my right, and there’s a black widow spider on a piece of spider web. I’m not exaggerating. It was about eight inches from my face.
So I’m under the car. I got tools. I’m dirty. I got a motor mount in my hand. I’m thinking about this bolt, and do I, you know, let me get some leverage on it. And I look over, and this thing is just, it’s right there. And you know what a black widow looks like. They’re unmistakable because they’re little black evil-looking spiders. And then if you, like, look, like, let me look at your belly, like, you know, flash me. And there’s a red hourglass.
And, you know, and it was a moment. And I’ve, you know, I’ve been bit by spiders, and it’s not fun.
It was a moment of wow. And so what do you think I did? Just let me just get that motor mount, you know? No, I very slowly slid out. Toyota’s no longer the thing here. And he didn’t move or she. And I took care of it.
And no, I did. Because it was apparently living in the wheel well of the car.
Now, I share that story to tell us that, again, things that can kill you and harm you are much closer to you than you think. And Paul’s warning us here, the prince of the power of the air, working in the sons of disobedience. And I love what he says in verse 3, Among them, we too all formerly lived this way, indulging in these desires, but we’re not that way anymore. And I want to say this too. This is very important. You might think right now hearing this, well, I never did any of those things.
I grew up in the church. I’m 15, and I just picked Jesus. And, like, I don’t have a past, you know. And I just want to tell you, like, your salvation is just as valid as someone who came out of the pits of hell because you made a decision to follow Jesus, not the world. You made a decision. If you were 8 or 15 or whatever age you were and know you don’t know what it’s like on the other side, God bless you that you don’t know what it’s like on the other side. But you made a decision to follow after Jesus, to walk on the narrow road, to spend your life doing that. And your salvation is just as valid as any person who’s got some huge, big story.
And so we were taken from these things, he says, this deception. And we think contextually just a tiny little bit more before we go on to the next point of the Ephesian people. We talked a lot about this in the first two weeks about how this very much, they were wrapped up in the worship. Does anyone remember the deities in the city of Ephesus? Artemis, and the Greek for that is Diana. And they were very much wrapped up. You remember the $12 million of magic books that got burned? So for them, the past life, you know, he’s speaking this to them. They very well know what it’s like to be under the influence and controlled by the prince of the power of the air. And so just contextually, we see that what was at work there.
But I think Paul’s reminding them and us of this because sometimes like we get faith when we remember how far we’ve come. Some examples in the Bible are Mary Magdalene. She was delivered from seven demons. Legion was delivered from self-harm, cutting himself with rocks and living in caverns. Zacchaeus was delivered from extortion. Paul was delivered from religion. And you and I are no different today. Jesus comes, he saves us, he redefines us, and he repurposes us to become people, children, sons and daughters of his kingdom. And I remember, have you ever been to Riverwalk down at Riverwalk? I remember one time I decided for exercise, I can’t do this anymore because I have knee problems, but I would go to the stairs, you know those horrible stairs?
Those horrible, horrible stairs in the amphitheater. And I would go up and down. And I remember one time I was walking up there, I think I was with Jennifer, and I walked up the stairs and your thighs start cramping. And you get to the top and when you look back, it’s a long way down. It’s like way down. It’s like 40 or 50 or something stairs. And, you know, you kind of realize, like, man, I climbed a long way up. And I think it’s the same in faith. Like, when we only take, like, one stair, when we only take one stair or two at a time, it doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten very far.
But, you know, you log in a few weeks and months of going in a good direction. For example, let’s say there’s a guy that’s bad for you. And you get up the courage to just get away from him because he’s sucking your soul. Okay? Young ladies, hear me.
And you get up the courage finally to break away from that codependency. And the first couple days probably kills you. But you know he’s not good for you. But then a week goes by and then two weeks goes by and turn Taylor Swift off because she’s going to give you all the wrong advice. But you walk in good decisions. And then a month later, you start feeling the draw of that is not on you as much. And then two months, and then three, and it’s the same way. Let’s say you’re like big into drugs or alcohol or a substance. Or let’s say like you’re losing weight. You know, really anything, things that control us.
And a few days go by, and you feel like you’re going to die. But you get 10 stairs, 20 stairs, 30 stairs, and you look back, and you say, wow, look how far I’ve come. And it’s not like I’m great, but look where I used to be and look where I am now. And I’ll tell you as a Christian now of 35 years, when that starts compounding over the years and decades, it becomes beautiful. It becomes so beautiful. And not that we become like free of sin, but like when we start finding God working in our lives over time. So, you know, just to encourage you, if you’re in a place where, you know, I just encourage you, like get two weeks in. Get three weeks in, detaching yourself from the old self, and look back, and you will say, man, it’s like walking. It’s like before I had a backpack full of rocks on my back, and I just feel like now I’m walking free of that, and it’s a wonderful feeling.
The next step, the past you. Then he talks about the present you. The gift of God’s love has redefined me. It is a gift. It is grace. He speaks here in verse 4 through 9. He talks much about the grace of God. that it’s not a result of works, that it is something that God has done for us. And so it’s that gift that God has given us, and it redefines who we are. A few of the contrasts he brings out here between the old you and the new you. Before you were dead, now you’re brought to life. Before Satan was the master, now Jesus is the master. Before we walked according to the course of the world, now we’re raised and seated in heavenly places. Before we indulge in the desires of the flesh. But now, verse 5, you’re saved from indulging in the desires of your flesh. Isn’t that great?
In Jesus, we can be saved from those indulgences that we just give ourselves to and live our lives into. We were turned around. We are different now from the world. And I think this is why, like, this is why great stories inspire us. Think about some of the most popular movies, and I left some of them out because I’m just not going to go there. But let me talk about a few that maybe all of us have seen or most of us. Here’s a big one is Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit story essentially is a story about friendship. Very much at the core, you have a bunch of characters, and the central ones in those books are the Hobbits, one of the central characters. And the Hobbits tend to be, for the most part, both Bilbo and Frodo are just reluctant little guys.
They’re little. You don’t think they could do much, right? And they’re sent on this great adventure, and they’re given this incredible task. And they go through this adventure, and it’s a long, long, long adventure. And they come out on the other end, a sedentary, faithless, risk-averse hobbit, essentially, with the help of a lot of other people, especially Samwise Ganji, saves the world, right? Here’s another example, Star Wars. Dreamer farm boy, at the beginning of Star Wars, he’s playing with toys. Do you remember? Do you remember the beginning of Star Wars? This may be too old. He’s playing with toys. At the end, he’s flying one and saves the universe from the evil powers for three years. Or the newest one out, the big movie now, is Spider-Man. Have you seen Spider-Man? I’ve not seen it yet. I probably will. But the reason that that movie’s making a billion dollars, it’s cool, I guess. It’s probably great. But what’s at the core of that? The core of that was a high school loser that did something great. That’s why people love him. I just watched this podcast, and they’re like, why did no one hardly go see Superman or Fantastic Four or Supergirl?
And like Spider-Man’s made as much money as all three of those movies combined. Why is that? And it’s this. People say, well, people can identify with the every man. The normal guy that is under his Toyota gets bit by a black widow. No, just kidding.
We can identify with a normal person who then is invited into doing something extraordinary with their lives. And so when I watch those movies, I’m moved, but I’m smart enough to know that I’m not just gonna be moved here. I’m not just gonna think, oh, where’s the convention? Where’s the toy? Where’s the comic? Where’s the video game? How can I keep living in this dream? Because here’s the deal, guys.
You’re never gonna destroy the Death Star. You’re not getting Spider-Man powers, and you’re not gonna burn the ring up in molten lava, okay? But all of that is a picture of what can happen, the aspiration of the human heart to rise above, Rise out of a life that’s sedentary and meaningless and purposeless. And I’m just here like everyone else when God says you were made for eternal, incredible things. And your life can be wrapped up in those things. And, you know, it’s kind of anticlimactic in a sense. But I really think the story and the inspiration behind those things, it’s because we know we were made for something more.
We know there’s something that we can be about. I’m going to read you a quote from a book that I’ve really been enjoying. And it’s a bit lengthy, so I’m going to read well. Sometimes he’s talking about what he calls the yearning life. The yearning life. Sometimes it’s the whole totality of the bourgeois life that covers over our deeper regions. We’re just going about life doing our normal prosaic things like shopping and commuting. A film of dead thought and cliched emotion covers everything. Ultimately, you get used to the buffer you’ve built around yourself.
You feel safer living a bland life than a yearning one. The result is not pretty. This was best described by C.S. Lewis, who says, There is no safe investment. To love it all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies. in little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock your heart up safe in a casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not become broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. Nobody makes a conscious decision to entomb their heart and to anesthetize their vitality. It just sort of happens after a few decades of prudent and professional living. He’s being sarcastic at this part. Let me read that again. No one makes a conscious decision to entomb their heart and then anesthetize their vitality, it just sort of happens over a few decades of prudent and professional living.
Ultimately, people become strangers to their own desires. One man believed that most people devote themselves to avoiding their genuine self, silencing their passion, and refusing to hear it. We bury the faint crackling of our inner fire underneath other safer noises, and we settle for a false life. But there is a kind of life that keeps your heart and soul awake every day. That’s what I believe Paul is calling us into. Out of that place of I’m professional, and I’m in this rut, and I’m living. And maybe this morning this passage could shake us here as we read this final verse and conclude. Verse 10, my third point. I’m here for a reason. Verse 10. We are his workmanship. I just want to, like, you know, I’m going to tell you guys honestly, like, as I prepare this,
the choice to wear a t-shirt this morning is not normally what I do. I did it because I believe in the youth. I know we’re normally trying to look a little more presentable. There’s even the thought in my mind of like, you know, some person who’s going to see me in a t-shirt is going to send me an email. How dare you? And it’s like, I don’t care, whatever. Like it’s for the youth because t-shirts are cool, by the way. But I say that because I just, I want to speak to the youth more than anyone right now. So if you’re a kid and you’re not on Twitter right now, ignoring me, I want to just ask you to think about this. I want you to think about verse 10. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
And to simply say this, and this is the kids, but it’s all of us, that we are here for a reason. We’re here for a reason. We’re here to do good works. There’s things God has given to us. I was just talking to my daughter the other day. We were talking about, you know, when I’m having these conversations with my kids, and I always just, you know, try to introduce deep topics and talk about anything, and they tend to take the bait a lot of times, and then they start asking about deep topics. And so we were talking, and I said, Abby, there’s two kinds of people in this world.
It’s off the top of my head. There’s people that live their life, and there’s people that watch other people live their life.
And you have to decide you’re going to be the first kind. And I would say this to the teenagers and to the adults, too. Check your screen time. It may be that the amount of screen time I have on my phone, iPad, and laptop has a direct proportion to how much I’m watching other people live their life instead of living my life. And you are not designed to be entertained, inspired, and compare yourself. Most of the time, just watching other people live your life. God put incredible things in each of us, guys. And sometimes people get lucky and they get a break and they go get to live that life that looks like the great one. But I’m telling you, 99% of the times it’s the people that punch through the walls, that push through the depression, that make themselves get up off the couch or the chair or the bed and say, I am going to find out what I’m for.
I’m going to dig through this depression. I’m going to fight through this temptation. And it’s hard. I’m not saying it’s not hard. I’m still doing it myself. But don’t waste your life. If you hear that, especially if you’re a teenager, I just want to tell you, like, God has something great for you. He has something amazing for you. And it’s probably not going to look like the person you’re following. So seek him and find out what that is. Your life is very, very valuable. I read this study recently, and they went and they asked like a thousand people this question.
I’m going to give you, and I’m asking you this question now. What if I said to you, I’m going to give you $10 million cash? $10 million.
There’s only one stipulation. At sundown, your life is over.
Would you take the money? Just think for a moment. Everyone think. $10 million right now.
Right now you get $10 million. The only stipulation is at sundown, your life is over. It’s the last day of your life. What would you do?
The majority of people in this study thought about it, and their answer was, I think I would not take it. Now, there’s a small margin of people that were dying of a terminal disease or extremely depressed and wanting to end their life anyway, and they thought, I’ll take the 10 million, I’ll give it to my mother, and then I’ll die and my life will be worth something. But that was like the 1%. The 99% of people in that study said, No, I don’t want $10 million. I’d rather have today.
What about you? I think most of us probably are in that 99%. Nod your head kind of if you’re there. You think you’d probably not take the money and take the day? One person I was asking this to, they’re like, well, if I could get like an hour with Hayden Christensen, I would do it.
How do you even do that? I don’t know. Then I pushed it. I was like, so a day of your, like the rest of your life is worth one hour with a movie star? And they’re like, yeah, that’s probably true.
But here’s what that tells us. If you answered that you wouldn’t take the money, which I think most of us statistically did, then here’s what that means. This is a staggering thought. Today, today for you is worth at least $10 million.
If you wouldn’t trade tomorrow for $10 million, what that means is that today, or you could say tomorrow, one day of your life to you is worth $10 million at least. What does that mean? I think it speaks to the incredible gift we have. And Paul tells us, you were made for a reason. You were made for something great. You are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus for good works. This Greek word here for workmanship is poema, which doesn’t actually mean poem. It’s translated sometimes that way.
But it’s actually a word that comes from artisans back in the third world in the first century when this was written. And it’s come to mean poem in our language. But it’s actually something, I think, more intricate than that. And it had to do with someone took wood and carved something and made something. They crafted something. So you and I are the workmanship of God, created to do something good, that he prepared before we were ever even born that we would walk in them. And I want to encourage you as we close today, the past, present, and future you, From now onward, you have the privilege of walking, finding out and walking in good works, whatever he has for you.
And Paul’s calling this church and he’s telling them, guys, you’re in that city for a reason. There’s all kinds of great stuff for you to do. And I want to tell you, what I’m doing right now is not it. This is what I’ve called, but if what you’ve called to do is be nice to the new 10th grader that just moved here from Arizona in your class, guys, that is just as valid as me preaching this sermon. It really is. I believe that with all my heart. If you not being angry when a person is cut off is the thing that you have to do, that’s just as important as a person that might go off and seem to do something big for Jesus.
We have some new neighbors in the house across from us.
They’re new. And there’s a kind of story going on there that I’m slowly learning and I’m excited to get to know. But we started our relationship with them. It’s a mom and her daughter. And maybe you’ll see them here one day. I don’t know. But we started our relationship with them saying hi while they were walking their dogs. And then we had a bumper tomato crop this year.
And I got their numbers at one point. And I said, hey, you guys want some tomatoes? And the mom was like, I love tomatoes. So I brought him a big bag of tomatoes a couple months ago. And we slowly just started this little relationship. I was at the curb, and they were at the curb a couple weeks ago. And Abby and I actually were talking to the mom. And we were just talking about nothing. And she looked at me, and she said, and they’ve been here like a year now, like-ish. She said, you know, you’re the only neighbor that talks to me.
Wow.
And I just thought, what a privilege.
I’m so glad I made the decision to turn the lawnmower off and walk 30 feet and say, hey, what’s your name? I’m Jeff. This is my daughter. This is my wife. You’re made for a reason. And I would argue that the reason we’re here is to love other people. Now, that’s going to manifest itself in a thousand ways.
But let’s go for it. Amen? All right, let’s stand up and let’s pray.
