this morning, Ephesians. Ephesians 1, as we continue looking through this prayer. This is a prayer that Paul is giving to the church there at Ephesus. Now, the believers in Ephesus, they did not live in a vacuum. When you read this letter, this epistle that most likely was circulating, when you read through this, it came within a context. It came with real messengers and real people who were living and breathing and they had issues and they had problems. They had concerns. One of the big concerns that the church there at Ephesus had was the feeling that they were great outsiders, that they were very, very different from everybody else. It was a slow news week this week, right? Nothing much going on. But there's nothing new under the sun. We talk about riots, for instance, and well, there was a riot in Ephesus. If you read in Acts 19, you can see and read all about the riot that occurred there. And by the way, the word riot is actually used. And it ties into this because it connects to the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul had been in Ephesus, this is prior to the writing of this letter, and he had been ministering there and he had gathered some disciples and was training them up and the Lord was doing miraculous things. It was such that nobody could deny what was going on. And that was creating some problems. There were people who did not like that. Paul got caught up in this riot. It was not over some political action, but rather it was over money and religion. You see, there was the spread of the gospel, and as it was taking effect, people were changing. People were changing their views, they were changing their minds, they were changing their understanding of who God truly is. You will recall that in Ephesus, this was the great place of the temple of Diana, of Artemis, and this was big money. There was a silversmith whose name was Demetrius and he was making a lot of money off this. He would make silver shrines to Artemis. People would come and they would buy these things and it was a whole production. There were a lot of people involved in this. You had the people who were getting the silver and the people who were molding it and selling it and doing all kinds of stuff. And so when the Christians were coming into town and as the belief in the gospel was spreading, it was undercutting their bottom line. And so he gathered together all of his workmen and he said, guys, listen, we have a major problem here. It's called the way. The way. Because Jesus is the way. It's what they called the Christians. The way. The way. This is a major problem. They were a threat. And so what they did was they grabbed some of Paul's co-workers and fellow laborers in the gospel. And this Demetrius gets up and starts shouting about all of the things that this guy Paul is doing. He said, this guy Paul has the audacity to even say that The gods made with hands are not gods. Can you believe that? And the people were in an uproar. He literally said, if we continue to allow this to occur, we're not going to have any jobs. We're not going to have any money. And so a riot ensues. And there's great confusion. The scripture says that people were yelling all kinds of stuff. Some of the people didn't even know why they were out there yelling. They didn't even know what was going on, but they didn't have anything to do and it looked like fun. So they got out there and so they were rushing these companions into the theater. And finally, it was calmed down. But one of the things that Paul, later on, he wanted them to understand was this. See, the people in Ephesus, they placed all of their hope, they placed their hope in the gods. They even had an area where they spoke of this rock that had fallen down from the sky along with Artemis. And they worship these things. They would pray to these many gods that these were the ones who had the great power. These were the ones who had the things that we needed to trust in. And so Paul is writing to these believers here at Ephesus and he says, absolutely not. I want to give you the truth of who the true and living God is. The one who you can actually put your faith in. He is the creator, the one who sent that rock to fall from the sky. He is the one who created that silver. He is the one who has the true power. And that is what Paul is praying for here. Our theme this morning, and it has been and will be for a couple more Sundays probably, is that followers of Christ should be thankful, praying effectively for their fellow believers to deeply know their God. to deeply know the Lord. If you'll notice in verses 15 and 16 of this, he gives the reason why he has heard of their faith. He has heard of the faith that these people have, and the people in Ephesus here, it's true because they love God, they love the fellow believers, they are working out their faith. Everything that he has said about God, in verses 3 through 14 has taken place. The Father has chosen them in His election based upon His love and adopting them. That they are now His people. And that this was done out of love and that Jesus Christ is the one who purchased them or redeemed them through His blood. And it was the Holy Spirit who has given them the seal or sealed them with his promise and has given them the inheritance. And so this whole aspect of everything that is going on, he wants them to deeply know God. He wants them to not just be happy that they're redeemed, but that they would go deeper in this. You'll notice that he says in verse 16, I do not cease to give things for you. I'm remembering you always in my prayers. So how does Paul pray for these people? He prays that they would know God in a greater, deeper way. Notice it says there in verse 17, it says that they would grow in the knowledge of him. This is what he wants them to know. He wants them to have the, first of all, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and knowledge of him, because in verse 18, their eyes have been, of their hearts have been enlightened, and he wants them to know three things, and this is where we're coming to now. He wants them to really dig down and understand three things, and it's really like a crescendo here, okay? That's what we're looking at. The first thing he wants them to see You have it there in verse 18, is He wants them to know what is the hope to which they have been called. And this calling isn't a general call to the gospel, it is the specific call. When God calls, people respond. This is the hope, the hope that they have. And the hope in the scripture is not, well, it's not a wish. Boy, I wish this would take place. It is a confident expectation based not upon some silly wishes, but rather upon objective truth. And so the objective truth is the fact that Christ is the one who purchased their redemption, that God has done something. He has chosen them before the foundation of the world, before you even existed. The Lord has done this in his love. This is and it is sealed by the Holy Spirit so that this is guaranteed. It's the hope to which you have been called. So there's a security there. There's an assurance there. He, second of all, wants them to see not only the hope, but he wants to see them as the inheritance. The second thing is he wants them to understand that they themselves are the inheritance of God. This is different from what Paul talked about a little bit earlier in verse 11, where it says, in him we have obtained an inheritance. And even there, the inheritance that we have is ultimately God. And if we understand how great God is, then you realize that that indeed is the greatest inheritance you could ever have. God himself. The fact that God wants anything to do with me, let alone embrace a relationship with me, that is the great inheritance that we have. But here, it's flipped. We are the inheritance. We are God's people. That should bring some comfort, knowing that we are God's people. He knows us, he cares for us, he has adopted us into his family. We are his sons and daughters, and because of that, we are the objects of his love. It is referred to in Deuteronomy, Moses writes and speaks of how God views us as his treasured possession. He loves us, and so we should not doubt his love. Now the grammar here actually explains that our third point is separate, it's deliberate. You should also note in seeing this that he only gives two quick phrases to explain you have hope, he wants you to know, in verse 18, he wants the eyes of your heart, your spiritual eyes to be awakened so that you can see things differently, to give you first of all the hope, to which you are called? And then second of all, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, which is you? Two very quick phrases, but then the last thing that He wants you to understand is, notice verse 19 where He says, and, and, and it goes from verse 19 all the way down to 23. That kind of clues you in that he wants you to really understand something here and that is about the power of God. Our God is not weak. Our God is not at the mercy of anyone else or anything else. We are often at the mercy of things. You know? Hey, I want to go fishing. Hey, I want to go golfing. And it's raining. Well, what are you going to do? You can't turn that off. But God can. I mean, He's the creator. He's the sustainer. Of all things and so our God is powerful. He is not beholden to anything and he wants us to understand the greatness of his power that is not just. Apart from us, but he says is toward us. Look at what he says there. He says I want you to know. What is? the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His great might." Now, I want you to see all of the words for power in this text, in that verse, in verse 19. Now, I'm reading from the ESV. I'm going to give you another translation as well. But if you look there, he gives four different words. The first word is power. according to the greatness of His power to us who believe, and according to the working, that's another word that's speaking of His power, the word great, it's not translated very well here, but the word great, and also the word might. Those are four words, you can underline them in the ESV if you want, so it kind of shows you these are all synonyms. In the New American Standard it translates it this way, and what is the surpassing greatness, and here it is, of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might. That's a better translation. It flushes out all four different aspects of power. These are not things that you can really pull down and look at and say, well, working means this and power means this and greatness means this. It's really just meant to be one on top of another, just to keep, just to really emphasize and to exasperate the awesomeness of it. So this is how I explained it to my kids. It's kind of like if, you know, you, you see something in the kids, you know, in those of you from different generations will have your own, you know, some of you go all the way back to groovy. But if you just see something that is really cool, or rad, or awesome, or gnarly, or sick, some of you that might be a new one, but you see what I mean? Those are all those words, they mean the same thing. You're not going to sit there and go, well, I mean, you know, this is... It's just heap one upon another. Why? Just so that we will just be pelted one after another with the understanding that God's power is great. That's what he wants us to understand. He wants you to know that power. He wants you to know the hope. He wants you to know the love that He has. You are the glorious inheritance and He wants you to know the immeasurable greatness of His power. immeasurable. Like you can't even measure it. We love to measure things. We base all kinds of things on measurements. Hey, when are you going to get to my house? I should be there in about 15 minutes. All that is based upon measurements. I know about you live eight miles away and it takes me about 15 minutes to get there. Those are measurements of time, measurements of distance. We measure everything. What if you just said, when are you going to get there? I don't know. Can't even measure it. Don't know. We like to know stuff. Well, here God's power is immeasurable. You don't even have words. There's no even classification. I mean, just go back to creation. He spoke the universe into existence. I mean, as I've said before, some of you don't even have enough power. Some of us, I should put it down. You can't even speak and have your kids take out the trash. You see what I mean? You think, oh, I'm powerful. Really, are you? I mean, you know, you can't say, God created the universe with a word. This is his power. But he wants us to see something so much greater. You see, in Ephesus, there was a lot of belief in magic. If you don't believe me, go read Acts 19. There were people, they took their magic books and they burned them. When they became believers, they took their magic books and they burned them. They're like, we don't want anything to do with this horrible stuff, these evil spells, these evil things. We used to put our hope and our trust in these things. Now we don't want any of that. We want only Christ. And so there was this belief that all of the gods, the various gods that you could go and buy and you can see and you could do magic to improve your life and all of these things, that if you had these things, your life would be much better. He says, I want you to see there's one greater than them all. And His immeasurable greatness of His power, it is not apart from us, but it is to us. That means He does something to us, but also that power is available for us. You're going to see that playing out here in just a second. God's power is often displayed. I love this passage. If you'll turn with me to Joshua 2. God has just delivered the Israelites. that some great things have happened. And as they have come out of Egypt, I mean, here were these slaves. Okay. And God showed his great power. And I love how God does this, by the way, God always He always takes the things that people put their faith and trust in and then he kind of gives a little dig at that. And here's what I mean by that. The Egyptians, all of the, and I don't have time to go into all of it, but all of the plagues correspond directly to Egyptian gods that they all prayed to. So in other words, there was a god of the flies, and a god of the cattle, and a god of the blood. There were Egyptian gods that they prayed to. The god of the frogs, that would have been a cool one. The god of the darkness. And God said, you pray to these gods. These are not gods. I'm going to take my plagues and show you who the true God is. God did that also here in this passage, remember, and also in Elijah and the prophets of Baal, remember that? And he mocks him, oh, you think you're God? Maybe he's off sleeping somewhere, maybe he's taking a nap. My favorite one, he goes, well, maybe he's off using the restroom. You know, our God doesn't sleep. He's always in. And then God answers by fire. And the prophets of Baal, they couldn't get their gods to answer. And God showed himself powerful. Here in Joshua 2, God is showing himself powerful. Word had spread about what happened. Egypt was the most powerful place on earth at that time. Pharaoh was the king. He was the ruler. You didn't cross him. You did what Pharaoh said. The spies are sent out and they go into Rahab's place. And it says in Joshua 2, beginning in verse 8, it says, before the men laid down, she, that's Rahab, came to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land. Isn't that great faith right there? She says, here's this woman living, she says, I know the Lord's given you this land. That's really interesting. How did she know that? What displayed that to her? Did she go to ladies Bible study and sit there with her Hebrew scroll? That's not what happened at all. You ever think about that? How did she know that? Well, this is God revealing. And God reveals things in history. You're gonna see that right here. He says, I know that the Lord's given you this land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us. So in other words, all the people around, they're all fearful. They're fearful of God. Why? He says, she says, and that the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. Why? What has happened? For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt. I mean, that's a miracle, right? That's miraculous. That doesn't happen. There's no scientific explanation for that. When I was a kid, my grandfather used to get Popular Mechanics, that magazine, and I remember there was one and it said, miracles of the Bible explained. And they talked about how the Red Sea was parted because there was a really big wind that came down. And I'm like, so the wind came down and directly blew it both ways at the exact same time. And then the Israelites got in that wind tunnel and then walked through. Man, I was really glad I read that article. I had always wondered how that happened. I mean, just foolishness, right? These people, they saw it. They heard. Here are all these former slaves that were just released, and now they're coming out, and not only are they worshiping the Lord with the normal means of worship, but they're worshiping the Lord by taking what the Lord has given them, the land. It's not their power, it's God's power who is doing this. And so she says, not only did we hear that, but we also heard what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sion and Og, whom you devoted for destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted. So they heard this, they heard what had happened and it was so bad. It says that there was no spirit left in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, look at this declaration that Rahab makes, for the Lord your God, He is God, notice where it says, in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now that is going to picture exactly what God is going to say regarding Jesus in His ascension in verse 20. That at His right hand in the heavenly places, the ascension is what gives Christ the rule, not only now in heaven, but also on earth. And so here we see the greatness of God and His power displayed. And Paul wants the Ephesians to look around and see all of the gods that they are being either tempted with or pushed away towards or that their friends and family are saying, you need to put your trust in this. Let me just pause there. What are some Things that we are tempted to put our trust in instead of the Lord, the power that we're supposed to put our trust in instead of the Lord. I would say the biggest thing is we put ourself. We put ourselves in control. I trust myself. I trust who I am. I can be whatever I want to be. I have a self help. I can make myself better whatever it might. And there are lots of other things we may be placing our trust in our own money and our own. wisdom, whatever it might be. But here he says you need to not have your trust in that kind of power. You need to put your trust in the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe. You need to know that. It is because of His great working of His might. Thielmann, a good New Testament scholar, writes this, when Paul lists the heavenly powers that God conquered for his Messiah, he uses terms that in religious environment of his readers typically referred to as to the gods who were thought to control the fate of human beings and the destiny of nations. Fear of such powers was common, as was the belief that honoring the deities who controlled the fates of the nations could bring social and individual prosperity. Paul prays that his readers might understand that God has given the Christ, the Messiah, in whom they believed when they embraced the gospel, victory over all such powers. You see, this power, these are things that they need to put off. They need to not think of these powers. They need to think about the power that God has given them because God himself is great in his power. This power that he's speaking of is the power of God to transform, to see with new eyes, to have the eyes of their hearts enlightened. to change their hearts, to give them victory over sin and the devil, to transport us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear, beloved son, and to give us victory over the grave. This is the God who is great, and this is the God who changes people. Point one, I want us to recognize something. Notice what he says in verse one. 20, that this is according to the working of His great might, verse 20, that He worked. What is the first description of this power? The first description is that this is the power that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. That is indeed great power. We are going to see that this is great power that God has. God does the first thing to change us, to bring about new life. I want you to see God's power in people. I'm going to just be brief on these, but the first one is just the Apostle Paul himself. Paul was on his way. He was a very high leader in his religious community. He was on his way persecuting Christians, and the Lord God said, no, you are mine. You are a chosen vessel for me to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and he knocks them off of his horse. And when he knocks them off, he doesn't say, you know, I think I might if, you know, I'm gonna think about choosing Jesus as my Savior. He says, what do you want me to do, Lord? He knows who the Lord is then. God changes him. He takes him in this dramatic conversion experience. This is the power of God on display. But God not only does that in our lives in that conversion, but He also does it in transforming us. And sometimes it takes a long time, sometimes we're a little slow, and sometimes I think Scripture shows us these things so that we can be encouraged. It can be pretty discouraging if you think, I should be here, but I'm way back here. The point is that you're not going backwards. The point is, even if you're going forward a little more and growing to be a little more like Christ, that you are going to get there. Ultimately, you'll get there when you die. But we should be progressing, and the only way we can progress is through the power of God. And if you don't think that that happens, look at the apostle Peter. I really think that we need to think about who Peter was. This is the second example, Paul and then Peter. Two great men who had lots of flaws. Peter, I want you to turn to Matthew 16. It's not comical, but it almost is. And I want you to put yourself, pretend that you are Peter. And I want you to see the audacity of this man. Here it says, beginning in Matthew 16, starting in verse 21, it says, from that time, So there's a point in time Jesus shifts in his ministry. And he says, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer, and that suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and to be killed and on the third day be raised. So there's hope. And here comes Peter. And it says Peter, it's very clear in the original text, he says, he takes him aside. It's kind of like this, he says, Jesus, hey, Jesus, come here. Come here, away from everybody. And it says that he rebuked him. Peter rebuked Jesus about the plan of God. Think about that for a second. you are not going to earn Christian of the Year. Let alone would you think be given the keys to the kingdom when you are rebuking the Messiah. And it says he began to rebuke him. The word is very strong to show disagreement with. And he says, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. Now, you would almost think that our Lord would be, his response would say, Peter, you just, listen, there's a whole thing going on here, okay? You're just a little behind. You don't fully grasp everything that I'm saying, okay? I know it's hard for you to get this through your thick skull, but there's gonna be, that's not what Jesus does. Jesus calls Peter something. He calls him Satan. Now, I don't know about you, I've had some rough weeks, but I'm not sure if the Lord ever looked at me, maybe he has, and he says, you know, Shepherd, you're Satan. That's kind of the lowest that you could go, right? You know, you're not trusting in me. You're trying to go your own way. You are Satan. Wow. Peter rebukes him, and then he calls him Satan. Well, he's going to learn, slowly, later on in Acts. Peter's been, I mean, Peter is, he's greatly improved. He's been preaching, and people were getting saved, and he's being persecuted, and he's in prison. And while he's in prison, he's singing. I mean, he did have that little time where he denied Jesus, and Jesus restored him. But, you know, he's doing pretty well now. And in Acts 11, Peter hears a voice from heaven, and it says to him, rise, Peter, kill and eat. So the Lord speaks directly to him. And he says, no. No, not going to do it. I mean, the original text is even clearer. It says, by no means. In other words, absolutely not. You know, it's like a little toddler. You know, when you say, pick that up. No, not going to do it. You've got to think where Peter has been all during this time. And it says, but the voice answered him a second time from heaven and said, what God has made clean do not call common. And then this is a kicker here in verse 10. This happened three times. Three times. So my whole point in that is Peter was not perfect. The Lord was working on him So much that at the end of his life Peter under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Could write something like this in first Peter 5. That's why I love I've mentioned as many times you read first Peter and you're like who wrote this and This must be a different Peter because the way that this guy is writing like a mature believer, not the guy we see in the Gospels. God has changed him. That is the power of God. Listen to what Peter says in 1 Peter 5, 5-6. Why? Because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And that's where you just want to push pause and say, how do you know that, Peter? And he probably would go, from the Holy Spirit. And he said, well, how else? And he goes, yeah, from some experience too. God opposes the humble. But you know what? Peter was a humble man. In the end, Peter was a humble man. Who did that? That was God. That was the resurrection power of God. Point one there. We need to know the greatness of our resurrection power. 1 Corinthians 6.14 says this for us, for our encouragement. It tells us that God raised the Lord and he also raised us up and will also raise us up by his power. That is great hope. That is great hope. How important is the resurrection? Notice how he invokes, what kind of power? We're talking about resurrection power. Don't think about resurrection power. I just hope that you will this week, this is enough to chew on just for this week. This is the only blank we're going to get to today, but I want you to think about resurrection power. That's not something we commonly think about, but that's something that is shown and displayed here. Paul wants you to know the power of the resurrection. Go home and mull that over. Think that through. Let me help you out a little bit here. First of all, the resurrection is of utmost importance in the New Testament. It is for our justification. That means it is for God to declare us to be righteous. The resurrection had to occur. Otherwise, Jesus is just dead. He's in the tomb. He was just a teacher. And he wouldn't have even been a good teacher because he's going around telling people that he's God. And he's going around telling people that he's going to die and be betrayed, and on the third day he's going to rise again, and he doesn't. So then he's a liar. And so when we look at this, we see the resurrection is so important because he prophesied about it, but he also did it. It says in Romans 4, 24, in talking about faith and justification, he says, we are declared righteous. It is our faith that will be counted to us as righteousness. We who believe in him, who God has raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord. But it's also not just to get us started. It's not just for us to be placed in a new position with God, now that we are declared to be righteous. It is also this resurrection, this power of resurrection, is for us throughout our whole life. Just like Peter demonstrated, right? He goes from telling Jesus, no, I'm rebuking you, God calls him Satan, to now he's saying, hey, you need to be humble. You need to be humble. Here, sanctification occurs. Romans 6 verse 4 says this, "...we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death." Why? Why is this associated? In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, by the power, Of that, he says, we too may walk, may live, may have our being in newness of life. We also have the deliverance from the wrath. 1 Thessalonians 1.10 says that the resurrection is important, not only for our justification, not only for our sanctification, but ultimately for our deliverance. 1 Thessalonians 1.10 says, And to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. There is wrath coming. And the only way to find deliverance isn't through riots and protests. The only way to have deliverance is through faith in the power of Christ. Only in Him. Now, God gives us, first of all, the power of new life. You'll see that in Ephesians 2. You were dead, but God has raised us up, has interceded and given us new life. But second, God gives us this power to live out the life to which He has called us to live. It was Paul's power. I want you to meditate on this verse. If there's one verse I want you to take home and I want you to think about, it comes from Philippians. Another one of the prison epistles. So around the time when Paul was writing this, this is something that Paul is thinking about. Philippians 3.10. where he says that I may know Him. So we're talking about knowing Christ. We're talking about having a deeper knowledge of Him. What does Paul desire to know? He says that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection. Think about that. That this week you say, Lord, I don't just want to know you, but I want to experience the power of your resurrection. I want to experience this great power in my life so that I could be different. I could be changed. That you can conform me into the image of your son. I want to be different. That is what He wants. He wants to know Him and the power of His resurrection. What is so powerful is He doesn't say, I want to know about your resurrection, and I want you to, boom, ascend me to heaven right away. Because notice what he says in chapter 3 verse 10 of Philippians. I want to know you and I want to know the power of your resurrection so that I might share in his sufferings. Wow! That is resurrection power. To be able to see the sufferings and say, yes, Lord, this isn't fair. This isn't just. This isn't right. I don't like what's happening here. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. But I, by your power, am going to suffer through it. Give God the glory. Our natural response is that I can't do something. I can't. Well, the Lord wants us to do do this. I can't. I can't do that. And you're right. You can't. You cannot do that. You cannot do what God has called you to do except by His power. If you try on your own strength, you'll quit. If you try on your own power, you'll quit. When you're faced with that trial, with that suffering, whatever it might be, you will quit. You'll stop. You need God's resurrection power. to do this, to get over whatever it is. Look at, first of all, it's for service there. 1 Peter 4.11 says, whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, he's talking about spiritual gifts here. And then whoever serves, he just breaks them down into two different groups, speaking gifts and serving gifts. So whoever speaks, you better make sure that whatever you speak is the oracle of God. OK, so whatever that is, preaching, teaching. And in this context, speaking in tongues, when you were prophesying, whatever you were doing, it better be the oracles of God. And the second thing he says is serving when you serve You serve, here it is, by the strength that God supplies. You can't do it on your own. You can't. So you need to rely on the power, the resurrection power of God to work in you. Notice this isn't just, hey, I know about the resurrection, because look back in verse 20. Okay, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. That this is according to the working of his power. This is something that the power is toward us who believe. So it's something for us. So Paul has this great belief in this power. It's gonna unfold as you read the rest of the letter. That's the point. Like, if you just start in chapter four, And you read through chapter 6, there are all these things, these, live this way, do this. There's all this, we could almost say, law. But prior to the law comes the gospel. There is the undergirding, the foundation. And you're going to be able to do chapter 4 through 6 because of chapter 1 to 3, because of the gospel. If you don't have the gospel, and you try to do chapter 4 to 6, you're a legalist, you're a Pharisee. That's not what we want. We want people, we want to do these things from our heart, through the power of God. So these are some things you're going to find in chapter 4 to 32 and so on. He wants you to have He wants you to be people who experience the power, the resurrection power of God, so that you were bitter, but now you can become grateful. You were jealous, but now you can be content. You were angry, but now you can be joyful. You were lazy, but now you can be hardworking. You were sexually immoral, now you can be pure in your heart. You were liars, now you can be truth tellers. You were worriers, Now you can be people who trust. You were people who You refused to forgive, but now you can forgive like Christ. That's what he says. You read through those things, our natural inclination is to be bitter, jealous, angry, sexually immoral, liars, worriers, and people who hold grudges and won't forgive. And he says, you need to do the exact opposite. And the only way that we can do that is through the resurrection power of Christ. New life in us. That's why he tells us in Ephesians. 610, finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength or in the power of His might. So we are people who have this resurrection power. Notice, and we're not going to get into this, but notice that when He worked this resurrection in power in Christ, verse 20, that He seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. He seeded him. And it says in Colossians 3.1 that if you have been raised with Christ, we are to seek the things above. We are to seek and to be different. May God grant us grace to have Christ's resurrection power. To know Him in such a way. To know that we are seated with Him in power at His right hand. And that as these people, as the Ephesians had nothing to fear of the gods and the people, the political leaders on the outside. We have nothing to fear. Because we have God. We, of all people, have every reason to be hopeful, the hope to which we are called. We are loved and we have God's power. And thus, we have every reason to walk in a manner that is worthy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead, that we will give Him glory. Let's pray. God, we are thankful for the depth of your Word. Lord, we just scratched the surface a little. But Lord, this is meant more than to just be heard. This is meant to be lived. I suspect, Lord, that if my brothers and sisters here are like I am, We need your resurrection power. We need your power to change. We need your power to be free from bitterness. We need your power to be free from laziness. We need to be people, Lord, who are free from immorality. People who need to be free from speaking lies. Lord, we need to be changed into your image. We need to be people who spread not discord but unity of love in you. We need to be people who walk in a manner that is worthy of the gospel. This can only be done, Lord, by your power. Left to our own devices, we will default and go and do, as James says, what is in ourselves, what is in our hearts. That's why there's wars and disputes and all kinds of bad things that happen when we lash out, when we're not sensitive to the Holy Spirit and the power that God has given to us. So Lord, I pray that you will take us and that you will help us enlighten our hearts. Lord, help us not to look at our neighbor and figure out, oh, so-and-so needs this. Help us to look at our own heart and say, this is an area that I need your resurrection power in. Lord, help me. Lord, I pray that we would not be overwhelmed or in despair, but we would have hope. taking steps forward and walking in this way. Lord, help us to be like the Ephesians here, to not put our trust in principalities or powers or anything like that, but to place our trust in Christ. And Lord, I pray that you will help us to view all of life with spiritually enlightened eyes. Thank You for Your sovereign grace in our lives, Lord. And God, if there's somebody here that doesn't know You, they've never had an encounter with the resurrected Christ. That today they will see their sin before you. That they will say, today is the day of salvation. Today I will cast off my self-trust, my pride. I will repent of my sin and believe on Christ. I will place my faith in Him. And He will declare you righteous. And so God, I pray that they will place their faith and trust in Christ. The resurrection power that gives them new life is the resurrection power that gives us all life to walk in newness of life. So God, use these feeble words to instruct our hearts, we pray. And now, may the grace and power of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who was and is and is to come, May His grace and power be upon you now. Amen. May the Lord bless you today.