Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. And I'm Dan Breitwieser. Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message.

Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening. Well, we are here. It is cut for time, time. And, we're not you know, we're we're stopping with the acts, but we're gonna continue to act, you know, as we talk about this little book called Ephesians.

So we're open for time, Pastor. I thought I thought you were doing, like, your own little reverb effect like there. It's cut for time, time, time, time. No. That'd be good.

That'd be good. Now, you know, it's just exciting to, you know, have puns and have dad jokes and have all the things that are included, because I'm your host today, you know, at the wonderful Claire. So pastor Jeff, thanks for joining us. And, it's exciting because, you know, we're starting a new sermon series and, starting in Ephesians. I'm very excited about it.

It's such a rich book. There's so much here. And and I know we've got actually a lot of things to get through today just from looking at the first few verses and a lot of good questions that come to mind. Absolutely. Alright.

Well, first of all, let's start with kind of an overview, of your, sermon on Sunday and as you looked at the first three verses. Yeah. So we just looked at the first three verses, gave a little bit of context of, like, who Paul is, who he's writing to, and looked at this stuff that we often, I think at least I know, can tend to just sort of skip past, like, ah, this introduction. Right? It's like, here's Paul writing these people.

But the words are there for a reason, and and there's actually weightiness and significance to what Paul is writing in the beginning. Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. So I just want us to start with asking ourselves the question, what does it mean to be blessed? How do we use that phrasing?

And and what do we think of when we think of what it means to be blessed? And I think there's in those verses some significant things that Paul is pointing out. He's writing to the saints in Ephesus, those who are faithful, the ones believing in Jesus. And this prayer, this greeting, grace and peace to you. So we just looked at those elements of what it means to be blessed, that we are called saints.

We are God's holy set apart ones. By his grace. It's all because of his undeserved goodness. And out of that a reality, we live with a deep and abiding sense of peace in our lives, knowing that God is not holding out anything on us, any good thing in Christ, which is a challenging thing for us to think about in our lives and in a world where there's a lot of brokenness and stuff that isn't right. But Paul says God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, or we could even say blessing in the spirit in Jesus Christ.

And, I mean, I just honestly, there are plenty of times where I don't think about my life that way. I yeah, I can see good things and I'm grateful so much to God for all the good that he's given me. But man, do I really live with a belief and an awareness that God has blessed me with every blessing in Christ, that he's not holding out on me. And that was really what we were looking at Sunday. Just, I think, an encouragement slash challenge from Paul to see our lives and to see ourselves this way that we are blessed.

And it's not defined by what we own or, where we live or what God's, you know, what kind of success or prosperity or material things that we have. But we are blessed in Christ, and that has to be true regardless of some of those material circumstances of our lives because Paul's writing to people who are suffering for their faith. The vast majority of Christians in the world live, you know, in in poverty, and the earliest followers of Jesus knew suffering, imprisonment, and martyrdom. And yet Paul could say about them and about us, we have been blessed, and we are blessed. Yeah.

I, I wanna make a plug for people to, you know, text in your questions. You can text me. You can text the number that's on the screen on Sunday mornings. You can send in a, an email, for that. And and the the question that I did get, through this was, you know, let's talk maybe more about the the overall structure of Ephesians.

And so I wanna I wanna get there first, and I wanna kinda come back to the sermon and and what we talked about because I but I wanna respect you know, people are texting questions. Let's get to right to it. Because I know people are interested in that. So let's first question then just being in terms of what is the sort of the background of Ephesians, you know, the key themes that we should be looking for. Is there a key verse?

I mean, just kinda as we're thinking about this, as we're getting into it, you know, what are the things that we should be looking for before we even get there? Yeah. We talked a little bit about it on Sunday. So, you know, even we were just in the book of acts. Paul goes to the city of Ephesus.

He preaches the gospel. Some people come to faith. He lives there for almost two years, teaching and preaching and grounding these new believers in their faith and that and then this riot from the silversmiths because their business is starting to fall apart. I mean, it's a kind of wild. Right?

Like, so many people are coming to faith in Christ and abandoning idolatry that it's hurting the local economy founded on, you know, idol manufacturing, which leads to a riot. Paul has to flee the city. And now probably about ten years later, he's writing back to these people. What's interesting is the earliest manuscripts of Ephesians, you know, which date back to the, you know, second century AD, don't have in Ephesus at the beginning. So to the saints and faithful ones in Christ Jesus.

And most of the early manuscripts don't identify it specifically as going to Ephesus. So, yeah, there's a we could really go down rabbit holes of, you know, what that means. But, I I think the the probably a real likely scenario is that maybe it was originally written as a circular letter to a group of churches in the area where Ephesus would have been located. It may have you know, there's also the possibility that there are still early manuscripts that we don't have access to that did have in Ephesus written there. But it'll be interesting.

Pay attention as we go through the letter to notice a couple of times where it seems like Paul does not know these people personally ever since I heard about your faith. Well, wait a minute. I mean, he's the guy who planted the church and spent two years teaching them. So it's not like he had to hear about their faith. He knows these people if it's written to people in Ephesus.

I think it's likely that he has in mind the church in Ephesus, but also that it's going to be a circular letter that's going to go to a number of churches. So he doesn't wanna write just to the people in Ephesus, but it's likely that because of the impact of this church, the gospel spreading out to the whole region, and he wants all of those people to hear this message that's going to ground them in their faith, encourage them, help them. So, yeah, it whether it was a circular letter that also went to Ephesus or whether he's thinking about Ephesus, but also these other churches, you know, it's debatable. That's the kind of stuff you, you know, if you get a PhD and go into academia, you can, you know, write scholarly articles about. But it doesn't make a huge difference one way or the other, for for the significance of the letter.

And and, so in terms of structure, I had, you know, a couple of great professors in seminary and, you know, other writers sense who have acknowledged what's, you know, pretty commonly, you know, obvious as we read through, for example, Paul's letters. They all kind of follow this typical structure of what is true and what to do. I love that phrase. So the first half of the letter is, guys, let's just worship and be amazed and in awe at what God has done for us in Christ. All the implications of that, all the all the imagery of being brought from death to life, from from being alienated to being adopted, from being broken to being restored and, all these.

And it's all because of God's grace. And it's all because of what Jesus has done, not because of what we've done. And it's and Paul just wants to so get that in our heads and ground us. So ground us in our identity in Christ and who we really are now as genuinely new people. And then the second half of these letters is, okay, so out of that reality, what does that mean for how we live out our faith as a community of people?

The impact that that makes in the communities where we live, how we live in our families, the difference it makes as how we live out our roles as husbands and wives, as employers or employees, as parents, as children, and and how how our identity and our newness in Christ starts to get lived out and the impact that this makes. So so some of the key themes that we'll see in Ephesians will be formerly and now. Like, once you were in darkness, now you are in light. Once you were objects of wrath and children of disobedience, now you are beloved sons of daughters, and you've been forgiven and restored. And, once we were hostile to God, and and now we're reconciled.

And once we used to live according to the pattern of this world, but now we have a new way of life. Another big theme in Ephesians is, can we could probably say, like, unity and and oneness, like, God has in Christ started this work to reconcile to himself all things in Christ, that, we are united if we are in Christ. And we talked about that in the message on Sunday. That phrase in Christ is one of probably in the entire New Testament the most common way that Christians are described, not with the term Christian, but with a relational identifier. You are in Christ.

That's what being a Christian is, that we are united by faith to Christ and all the benefits of his work on our behalf and all that that the father sees about Jesus is true of us positionally. And that has huge implications for how we relate to one another. We're not just related. We're not just united to Christ vertically, but that means we're united to one another in some radical different ways that tears down dividing walls of hostility makes one new united people out of those who were formerly enemies and how we live that out. A unity and mutual submissiveness is a demonstration of the power of the gospel.

And of course, the other key theme through all this is grace, the undeserved goodness of God that we just live in, that we experience daily, our salvation, the reconciliation, our being sanctified as we grow in Christ likeness. Our ultimate glorification with Jesus is all because of God's grace. And and living in that awareness and living out of that reality just, Paul says, becomes more and more to define us, to define who we are and how we relate. And, it's not so much, a specific verse or a passage in Ephesians, but this book is just saturated with worship and prayer and praise to the father. We're gonna see that multiple times.

Like, Paul starts writing a thought, and it's almost like the literally he's just so overwhelmed with what he's writing about that that he just, like, puts that aside and just has to spend a paragraph praising the father for what he's done for us. And and all these expressions of praise and prayer and, praying for one another. There I mean, it's great examples of how Paul is praying for us that become models for how we can pray for one another. So it's just there's a reason it's such a beloved book. And honestly, I I feel like this mixture of both real excitement and a little bit of, being awed and intimidated at preaching through this book, because it's there's just so much there.

And if anything, just pastorally as as a preacher, it I just feel so inadequate to do justice to this in in a in a in a genuine way. Like, it's almost like Paul, like, writing this letter. Like, human language doesn't even suffice to give us the words to express all that God is and all that he's done for us and all that means in our lives. So, yeah, it's, mostly exciting and and also kind of humbling and awe inspiring to to preach through this. I can I can hear your voice, what it means, to you?

What do you hope Faith Church takes away? I mean, I also any individual, you know, people and and coming away with individual conclusions, but, you know, why unions at this time for our church and and hope the church, takes away this. You know? Now we know the the theme is renewed with that, you know Yeah. This is on new, but, you know, what do you hope?

Yeah. Wow. Well, some of it goes back to those themes that we talked about. You know, we just came out of, again, this long story in the book of Acts. It's about the theological history of the church, we said.

So so we've had all this grounding in where the church has come from and who we are and our mission and our identity as God's people. And so Ephesians feels like a a really great follow-up to that, to say, like, okay. Here's even an example of one of these churches that has come into existence through Paul's ministry and the work of the Spirit. And now he's writing to say, man, here's what I hope you guys understand. Here's what I want to hand off to you, to grow deeper and deeper in your understanding of who God is and what he's done for us in a way that leads to awe and worship and gratitude and praise that that deepens us in our faith.

And and our understanding, our growing awareness and understanding of who God is and what he's done motivates us to to live in light of all of these amazing realities that that we now experience that are now true of us. So, yeah, I I'd say, yeah, a deeper awareness and understanding appreciation of all those key themes that we just talked about that just become more and more our understanding of ourselves, and and in an awe filled, amazing, encouraged way to live out of that and to live live that out with one another. I love the, you know, the the former and the new. I think that Yeah. You're thinking through.

But, like, those questions again, keep those coming. I'd love to Yeah. Please. Get into our conversation. But I wanna kinda anything else that you cut for time, I should say, before I forget and and go off on other tangents?

Yeah. I think I think we've, yeah, there there'll be a lot. We we'll keep having so much stuff here because yeah. K. As we go through Ephesians.

But, no, I think I think that's good for Back for today. Okay. Well, the the line is where it really stood out to me as I was thinking through this was, something you said at the very beginning of your sermon really and like to kinda ask you about this a little bit more in terms of our pleasant circumstances alone, evidence of God's blessing. And I think that's a interesting theological balance, maybe. I mean, in terms of, you know, from one hand, yes.

Literally, every breath that we have, like this one right here, is, you know, doesn't happen without God's grace and Yes. Yeah. Being an active part of that and his his blessing. Yes. But at times, you know, I could thank him for the T shirt that I'm wearing, the glass that I'm drinking water.

I mean, like, it Yeah. It could be maybe a little excessive. I mean, not that it isn't what's what what's the balance between, you know, just saying that was a really nice thing that happened, and that was really God's blessing. I mean, what no. Is there a balance there?

Is there a way to to Yeah. Yeah. I You know, be a theologically sound where where I'm acknowledging that I don't know. Did did God really, you know, give me that extra penny that I found on the ground? I don't you know, I just where where do you Yeah.

I what do you think about? That's what I think about when I think about Yes. Circumstances. Those are great questions. Right?

Those are great questions. You know? It's like, you get a parking spot close to the entry to the store. Oh, praise you, Jesus. You're so good to me.

Right. That's not necessarily wrong or bad. I think what I was trying to get across and maybe what Paul is suggesting, pointing us towards is I'm not any less blessed by God if there's no parking spots close to the door that I have just as much reason to praise the father for having to walk 50 yards in the, you know, brutal humid summer heat, as I do if, you know, I'm five feet from the door and I walk right into the air conditioning. I I think that's I think that's what I was hoping to get across, that it's not that it's wrong to say, you know, oh, I'm blessed because of this wonderful new job that I have, or it's not wrong to say, oh, God bless me with this new car. The the the problem is if that if those kinds of things become the way that we think about what it means to be blessed by God.

And and that's what I think Paul is trying to help us see and what I was trying to communicate in the message is whether in want or in plenty as Paul writes, I have reason to praise God. And, yeah, it's totally appropriate to say thank you Jesus for this home that I live in, for this beautiful sunset, for this delicious meal, for, you know, the friends that I have, for the family that I have, for the the health that I have. I think what Paul is trying to help us think through is, am I not blessed by God if I don't have those things? Am I am I somehow outside of God's blessing if I don't have good health, if I don't have, you know, wide a wide range of friendships, if if I'm not able to travel and see the world, if, you know, my circumstances are more harsh and difficult. Right?

Like, I I that that was the kind of the question that I wanted to leave us with that I think Paul is trying to help us say I am fundamentally blessed, profoundly blessed because God calls me a saint, a holy one. I'm set apart to belong to him. It's all because of his grace. And I know a profound peace with God and inside myself because of that, through what Jesus has done. Those are the things, even in the in these few verses that Paul wants us to see, that's what it means to be blessed.

And it's not that all those other things aren't blessings. I mean, Paul Paul writes in another letter, God has given us all things richly to enjoy. Nothing is to be, trying to remember the exact nothing's to be looked down on. Everything's to be received with gratitude and with prayer because it's a gift from the father. So absolutely give thanks to God for for those kinds of, you know, material blessings and pleasant experiences and circumstances.

I think Paul is just saying that's not the only thing that it means to be blessed. And maybe those are even some of the lesser things that we ought to see as blessings from God. They're they're real and they're things that we should praise God for. You and I were talking a little bit offline before we started recording. I know.

And you said you're okay with you know, me sort of sharing this as, you know, an example from your life. Like, your son, Noah, has some profound physical challenges and, you know, long term health issues that are really significant, that are increasingly making it difficult for him to just get around and go up and downstairs. And and you guys, I think, would say we are blessed that God answered this prayer of, a one level ranch home for us to live in because it allows Noah to get around more easily. And he's getting to an age and a size where physically carrying him upstairs is a challenge. And so having a one level home to live in is a blessing.

Absolutely. That's a blessing. Yes, of course it's a blessing. And praise God for that. So, no, it's not wrong to to say that those are blessings.

I think Paul is just saying yes. But there's something more fundamental and more true about what it means to be blessed. And, I want us to see those things as expressions of God's goodness in the context of the the profound eternal realities that he's blessing us with. And that if I if I don't have those things, if my life is challenging and and difficult and more of a struggle and and I don't have the good health that others have, It's not because God is holding out of blessings for me. It's not because at the most fundamental level I'm less blessed than others.

That's really worth thinking through and and wrestling with because that even raises some questions too, is it even as I'm saying it. Yeah. Well, I think it's a couple of things. One, I think, yes, a one story ranch is has been a real big blessing, but there's still difficulty with it. I mean, there's a little bit of grief and mourning that our neighborhood we're on the other side of town.

And the next gen and relationships that we've developed, that our kids have developed, it's just not gonna be as easy to to make that happen. You know? So it's Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are there are aspects that absolutely.

We went up to carry Noah up the stairs that make it absolute yeah. It's a 100% a blessing. Mhmm. But there's also difficulty, you know, in that and that, and I think I always think, you know, because it is a genetic disease. And every once in a while, you know, I'm close enough with someone who believes in Jesus, who sorta has you can kinda tell their underlying question is, well, like, sort of who sinned?

Was it you guys, or was it him? I mean, that type of, you know, not a biblical story that, you know, that, you know, they and I I don't think it's a, you know, an invalid who's brought to Jesus, and the religious leaders say, well, basically, like, who sinned? Was it his parents or or him? And the answer is no. It was so that my power could be shown, you know, through these circumstances.

And Right. You know, for the people that you know, for face stories that have shared this, you know, this summer, you know, about, you know, some, you know, a brother who was, you know, their family has been changed alter complete change because Right. A devastating car accident and someone who, needs help, someone who used to be the rock of their family, then now with every single thing. And, you know, knowing of people who, have lost children to miscarriages or, you know, things like that. Like, it Yeah.

If pleasant circumstances are the foundation for your understanding of what it means to be blessed by God, just wait. You know? Like, it's, that's gonna be changing. And so it's but I will say, you know, the the blessing that I experienced with that is, man, when I share my my relationship with Jesus and, what it means to trust him in this time, it sure feels a lot different than when I've had a pretty easy lifestyle for the, you know, the previous time. You know?

And so Yeah. You know, it it does Yeah. You know, it's just you know, there that and so that is a blessing, but it doesn't make it easy. And that's that's that flip side of the theology that can be really difficult when we're talking about this. Yeah.

Well, I mean, we could we could do, like, a whole, probably, multi segment podcast on on these issues and and how we wrestle through them and what it means. You know, again, I think of, you know, someone like Joni Eareckson Tada, you know, the the story of this. She was a teenager in the sixties, swimming, dives, you know, dives into the water and has a traumatic injury that leaves her a quadriplegic for the rest of her life. And that's not an objectively good thing. And yet, out of it, God has brought amazing blessing.

I mean, it's profoundly difficult. Right? And yet, through the ministry that Johnny has been able to have over the years, literally millions of people have been positively impacted. They've come to know Christ. They've they've found community.

They've been helped and supported in their struggles. People have found encouragement. So I, you know, I think one of the things that comes to mind is, you know, in Romans eight, Paul does not say all things are good. He's saying God is working for the good in all things, which I I think is it's good for us to reflect on. Right?

Like, genetic diseases are not good. Every everything that we experience in this life is a mixed blessing, even the best of them. Because we still live in this world that has not been fully redeemed yet. And one day, we will live in a renewed heaven and a renewed earth where there will be no unmixed blessings. Right?

There there will be no, you know, mixture of good and evil. And, and and how do we sort through those? And is this a good right? Like, it's it's just going to be all the way it's supposed to be. No more tears, no more suffering, no more pain, no more loneliness, no more brokenness or infirmity.

It's all going to be redeemed, restored and healed. And right now we get glimpses of that future reality. And and and I think Paul is just encouraging us to to think through and maybe, how right, how we define what it means to be blessed. To be blessed is to have Jesus. To be blessed is to have his peace, his grace, to to to be a part of his family.

And, yes, God doesn't care just about those things, but those are the most important things. And God also cares about our physical bodies and the world that we live in and the kind of communities that we build and how we do our work. And and we have opportunities in them to bless others out of the grace, peace, and adoption and identity that God has given us in Christ, in a way that, yes, we're able to lament the the brokenness and the incompleteness that we still experience in this world while also acknowledging God is still good in the middle of it. And lamenting and experiencing the brokenness and loss does not mean I'm not blessed. It may mean I have a harder road to walk.

I'm carrying burdens that other people aren't carrying, but it doesn't mean God is holding out on me. It means that my story is different than someone else's story. And in the story that God is writing in my life, I am blessed, and I have an opportunity to experience and reflect those blessings to others in whatever my story ends up looking like. Yeah. And that mean, there's just again, there's even saying all that, I know that that does not answer the questions.

And there's so much that we could, you know, spend so much more time trying to unpack and wrestle through and and go back and forth throughout. Well, this is your opportunity for other people listening. You know, you can text you Yeah. Questions. We can bring this up again.

And I, yeah. I was just yeah. There's different things, and I think you did had such a powerful story that you share on Sunday. And I was sitting in the first service, and I mean, I don't know if you did this in the second service, but I mean, you you got emotional. I mean, just thinking the woman of, you know, not blessed that are, you know, not sorry.

Stressed, I'm blessed. I I or whatever her hat said, you know, and Yeah. And so too blessed to be stressed. Too blessed. There you go.

Known, loneliness, pain, lack of romantic love, incredible physical difficulty in her latter years, struggling to draw breath into her lungs, and yet her constant response was, I'm too blessed to be stressed about those things. Now, obviously, that's. It's not not meant to be a simplistic answer. Back to the blessing thing, one other, you know, one other thought comes to mind. Amelia and I were really grateful and blessed, a couple of different a couple of related but different ways recently.

So we were part of a team, going to Poland to serve our brothers and sisters from Kyiv Theological Seminary and had a week of just kind of trying to encourage and refresh and support them and love and serve them. We had a couple three days going to see Jacob and Becca Hash, some faith missionaries in another part of Poland, and then we had almost two weeks of vacation after that. We would say we were blessed through all of that, but they were very different experiences. There's a blessing that comes from serving and investing and loving and helping and encouraging people that at the end of the day and at the end of that week, you may be tired, right? Like you're just kind of spent because it's an investment of yourself to to love, to give, to sit with people in the stories of their suffering, and their profound questions about God's goodness in the middle of an unjust war where people that they know and love are hurting and dying.

And, and and to to hear that and to bear that with them and to pray with them and to, worship with them, That's a profound blessing to get to do that. Which is very different from a vacation. A vacation was wonderful. It was a blessing. Right?

But it didn't ask anything of us. And we stayed in a nice hotel. We stayed in a nice hotel in Poland. We stayed in nice hotels on our vacation. We had good food in Poland.

We had good food on our vacation, but the vacation didn't ask anything of us except to just have a good time. That was a blessing, right? Like we were blessed by that, but it's a very different kind of blessing from pouring yourself out on behalf of other people and bearing burdens with them to encourage them and lift them up and and refresh those who are weary. That that just kind of came to me recently thinking about, you know, as Amelia and I ignot recognize that about these, you know, different parts of of our time away. Like, we were blessed the whole time, but in very different ways.

And maybe that gives us some ways to think about what it means to be blessed. It even to say to be blessed, like, it can look like a lot of different things. And, and that's that's helpful maybe to acknowledge too and what it means to be blessed. Yeah. And I want to finish off with one other kind of maybe related thing, because I think when talking about we are blessed and that being a universal truth, to to those who, you know, know Jesus.

I think, you know, I was intrigued by the just the the tube of saints idea that, you know, you're talking this is that's to all of us. It's not to a subset. I had an interesting experience where I was at, first, somebody I knew, you know, passed away in a funeral and so in a Catholic church. And so it was just it was a very different type of funeral, you know, and different type of you know, with I believe I would assume it's Mary and Joseph on either side of the cross. I mean, I wasn't asking too many questions.

They didn't have a little Yeah. What what would your what would you say to the different faith traditions that elevate some people as saints and to, you know, to to Paul who writes to the saints, which I think I think we would understand this as to everyone. What what would your be about that? Yeah. Certainly in the New Testament and in the Bible as a whole and in Christian history.

Right? Like, there there are people that we would look at that I mean Paul can write, imitate me as I imitate Christ. There are certainly people that whose lives we would look at and say, I want to be like that person. I want to emulate them because wow, that's just the the the grace, the beauty, the goodness, the kindness, the compassion, the perseverance, the the hopefulness of Jesus, you know, just is so evident in their lives. And, or that, you know, this person lived a life of kind of exemplary service and sacrifice, in in ministry to others, and Bible certainly recognizes that.

But but I I don't think the Bible draws that kind of a distinction between, like, different categories of or levels of closeness to God or because again what Paul has pointed out and what we're especially gonna see over and over again just in this first chapter of Ephesians is the definition, the description of a Christian is being in Christ. If that's what it means to be a Christian is to be in Christ, how there there's no divisions there. There's no levels. Like, I'm either in Christ or I'm not. If I'm in Christ, the implications of that for how the father sees me, what my future hope is, what what my, you know, future reality looks like are based on what Jesus has done fundamentally.

And that's in fact the the peace and the freedom and the and the assurance that Paul wants us all to know. Now within that, there's certainly as again we're getting into the second half of the letter, right? Like Paul and in many places in the New Testament, Paul tells us like work out your salvation with fear and trembling. But he goes on to say, but because it's God who works in us. Right?

Like, God will complete the work that he's begun in us in Christ Jesus, while Paul is also saying, run the race, fight like a good soldier, endure, persevere, work tirelessly with the strength that Christ Jesus provides. So the fact that it's all about what Jesus has done does not say like, oh, well, you know, then I just kick up my heels and it's all because of what Jesus has done. No, Paul is saying that's the reason that we work, but we're not working out of the need to get something to to climb up the ladder, to get closer to to work off our sins and be more worthy. Right. Right.

Like it's out of the assurance and the confidence that I'm a beloved child of God That actually is intended to lead me to say, like, if I really love my parents, I want to do what is going to honor them, what's going to please them, what's right? Does that make sense? Right. If I don't know that, I'm still under the the pressure and the the drive and, you know, gosh, I've gotta prove myself. I've got I've gotta I've gotta earn it somehow.

I've gotta be worthy of it. And just part of your job, and you've gotta impress your boss and make Right. That that kind of thing. Yeah. Right.

And that's why we have such a hard time really understanding what grace is biblically because that's not the way this world works. The world doesn't work on, oh, you're in. You're guaranteed. So work hard out of the the assurance and the freedom and the gratitude that it's not about you. The world operates on you earn, you produce, you deserve.

You've gotta you've gotta prove it, and that the kingdom is entirely it's not even you wouldn't even say opposite of that. It's just a totally different framework. It's it's a whole different reality that we live in that it's it's sort of like, you know, we say there there are no good analogies for the Trinity. If you think that you can look at something in nature and say that's what God is like, you you've got it wrong. God is not the three phases of water, ice, steam, you know, water.

God is not a three leaf clover. God is not the sun, like the heat, the light, and, you know, the energy. None of those work because God is in a totally different category of him of himself. And in the same way, like the the grace and and assurance of the kingdom and what it means to be a saint, there there is no analogy in in our human society. And it's a totally different framework.

And that's why Paul is going to such lengths. And, you know, this letter of the Ephesians to to help us be reminded and get it into our heads that it's a is an absolutely unparalleled different way of living and seeing ourselves and relating to one another that we are continually in need of being reminded of and, having our minds renewed because it's so foreign to us. And that is the biggest blessing of all. So that ties it in perfectly. There you go.

Yep. I'm not gonna call you pastor Jeff. I'm gonna call you saint Jeff, and you can refer me as saint Dan because we're all saints. So there we go. Oh, man.

Conversation is part of the circle indeed. Yeah. But it's been it's been a pleasure, saint Jeff, and, I look forward to, having more of these as we, get more into Ephesians. I I love you. Spots before we go.

I I love doing this with you, Saint Dan of Carmel. Yeah. That's right. That's you're a Carmelite. You're a Carmelite.

That's right. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. My own order. It'd be great.

Alright. Well, thanks everybody, and, we'll look forward to, doing this again, next week. Great. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast@faithchurchindy.com or text them in to our Faith Church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. We'll be back again next week.