Count Your Blessings (Part 1) - Ephesians 1:1-14

Well, good morning. Happy Mother's Day. I know a lot of you are grateful for your moms whether they're still with us or not. Thankful as you think about the memories that you have of them. My mom will be here in the 1045 service. excited to have her worship with us today. I think back about all the blessings in my life that come from my mom. One of the things I'm most grateful for is her commitment to raising her, my sister and I in a solid church where the Word of God was preached every week, and the Word of God was taught in his children's ministry, and student ministry, where she surrounded me with friends who were following after Jesus to be an encouragement and accountability and help to me along the way, so grateful for the chits that I had, to worship all those years as a little boy with my mom, my grandma, all that, and the beauty of that little church. It was a small little church, very traditional church. It was back in the 1900s when I was going to this little church. And very traditional church. We sing a lot of old hymns, by all the songs we sang world hymns. And one memory I have that I thought of this week as I was studying our text, was we used to sing that old hymn, Count your blessings. You remember that song? Count, your blessings named in one by one. Okay? And we'd see that song, and the music minister would do something that, I guess it's kind of a little awkward, but I think back on, it was kind of cool, is he would stop in the middle of the song, and he'd say, all right, let's count our blessings. What are you thankful for? And people would like just name things that they were thankful for. And you go, all right, let's sing verse two, Cal, your blessings then. And he'd stop and we'd count more blessings. And I thought of that, how we would name out loud the blessings of God in our life. We're going to count our blessings today that we find in the word of God. Today and next, we're going to count the blessings of God that he lines out for us in his word in Ephesians chapter one. We're going to see today, next week. These are spiritual blessings. A lot of the blessings that we have, and we're certainly thankful for them. Every good thing in our life, everything in life comes from the Lord. And there are a lot of blessings that you would probably name. If I said to you, name the things you're thankful for right now. What are you thinking God for right now? And it wouldn't be wrong to do this? But our minds would probably go immediately to temporary earthly blessings that we have. You would say, I'm grateful for my family. You might say that today. I'm grateful for the house that I live in. The bed that I got to sleep in last night, the job that I have. I'm thankful for my health. I'm thankful for the freedom I have to come here and worship today. We think of those things. But want to ask you, if those were stripped away, would you still give glory to God? Would there still be reasons to praise God? We would say today, I'm grateful for my health. Well, there's a lot of people today whose health is struggling. There are people who are facing a very difficult health issues, maybe a terminal diagnosis of some kind. Are you still blessed if your health is fading? You may say, I'm grateful for my home. Well, there are people around the country that this time of year their homes are wiped out by tornadoes. If God took away your home tomorrow, would you still be blessed by God? You think about your family. There are those who are, I'm thankful for my wife. Well, I know there's some that are seeking a wife. Are they still blessed by God? You're thankful for your children. No, there are some who are struggling to have children. Are they still blessed by God? I want us to think today, not of the temporary blessings we have while we're grateful for those. But if all that is stripped away, if all that is taken away, would we still have blessings to count? Would we still have reason to give glory to God? We're going to look this week and next at the spiritual blessings we have, regardless of the circumstances of today, there are spiritual blessings that we have from the Lord. We're going to be counting these the next couple of weeks. We're jumping into Ephesians, a new book of the Bible. We're going to be looking at the 1st 14 verses today and next week. And so if you have your Bible with you today, grab it and turn to Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, if you don't know where that is, that's near the back of the Bible. Now back here at these letters in the very back. When I was a kid, I was trying to memorize the books of the Bible, and someone gave me this little thing, go eat popcorn, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. So maybe that'll help you. Find Ephesians. Or going to be chapter one. If you didn't bring a Bible, you want to grab the Bible underneath the chair in front of you, just grab that. So the Bible I have right here, if you turn to page 976, 976, you'll find this passage. If you have your Bible app, go ahead and get that out and go there. We use the ESV at Northland. The English standard version is the translation that we preach from from the pulpit here at Northland. So if you want to get, write what you're doing, go to your Bible app, change that translation to ESV, and you're going to be ready to go when we jump in here. Let's get a little background before we dive into the heart of where we're going today. Let's look at verse one that says this. The book starts this way. It's a letter, and the letter starts this way. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God. Let's stop right there. Who is Paul? Paul was an early missionary of the church. He was used by God to spread the gospel across the Roman Empire in the 1st 30 years of church history, from the time that Jesus died on the cross, resurrected a synod of heaven, a Paul was one of those early people used of God to spread the message of Jesus. Now, he wasn't always committed to spreading the message of Jesus. When we 1st meet Paul, you can go to the book of Acts and you can read his story, we 1st meet Paul, he's an opponent of Christianity. He has dedicated his life to stopping the spread of the gospel of Jesus, and he was imprisoning Christians. He was overseeing the execution of Christians so that he could stop the advance of the gospel. And then God got a hold of his life, radically changed his life, and he began to follow Jesus and become, in the history of the church, one of its greatest missionaries. I heard someone say one day that the apostle Paul was like going from Osama bin Laden to Billy Graham, that would put kind of modern context to it, someone who was committed to destroying Christianity to someone who became one of the most influential missionaries of the message of Jesus Christ. He is a missionary of the church. He wrote a number of letters during those years to the churches that he was helping to start. And many of those letters, God has ordained that they'd be in the word of God in the Bible. And Ephesians, one of those. Start out as a letter written by Paul to a group of Christians, and God has used this as his inspired authoritative word that's before us today. He calls himself here an apostle of Christ Jesus. The word apostle simply means messenger or ambassador. Someone sent out on a mission. You could translate this an ambassador for Jesus or a messenger of Jesus. He says, it's by the will of God, not by his own qualifications or some particular talent he possessed. It was simply God chose to use Paul as his messenger and to send him out. It's written to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful to Christ Jesus, to the saints who are saints. In the Bible, the word saint means anyone who's a follower of Jesus. We need to understand that because today we use that saint a lot of other ways. Think of like a saint of like the Catholic church, after this person dies and they vote, whether they should be a saint. The Bible, we're all saints. You're following Jesus, you're trusting Jesus. You've been set apart from your old life to be a follower of Jesus. The Bible calls you a saint. That's what he's referring to here, the followers of Jesus. The followers of Jesus. Originally he's writing to those who were in Ephesus. Now, where is Ephesus? I think this is really cool to always remember this. Sometimes this gets lost. When we mention places like this, These are real places. These were real historical events. This isn't myth or legend or lore that we get encouraged or inspired by. This is a very real place. You could go there today. It's located in Turkey. My wife and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last year, and we did a cruise, then the cruise went to Turkey, and we got off the cruise ship. We went to Ephesus. We walked the streets of Ephesus. You can see the places mentioned in the Bible, the places that Paul would have gone to, the streets Paul would have walked. These are real places. Ephesus was a really important influential city in its day. It was the primary port of Asia, in the Roman Empire, and the intersection of many trade routes are there. It was a center of learning. They had a famous library there that contained over 12,000 scrolls, and there was a 25,000 seat amphitheater, as well as the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, located here in the city of Ephesus. But it wasn't just to those in Ephesus. It was to all the followers of Jesus, not just the faithful saints at Ephesus, but this letter began to be circulated more broadly. In fact, it's kind of interesting if you study the manuscripts of this letter. You go back, you can find old manuscripts, old copies of the original letter, that say to the saints in Ephesus, and then you'll find many copies from the same time period that don't have the word Ephesus. You say, why does this copy have the city of Ephesus mentioned, and this copy not have the city of Ephesus? Well, what's probably happening is the church at Ephesus said, other people need to read this. And so they just copied it and they left off the word Ephesus. You could kind of plug in your own city, whoever you were. This isn't just to Christians at Ephesus, it's all the believers, and not just all the believers in the 1st century, it's to all of us today. This letter is a book of God's authoritative, inspired, inerrant word, you have it before us today for our encouragement and to challenge and convict us as well. Verse two, grace to you, peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Paul's trademark greeting, opened his letters this way. And he writes this letter from prison. We know that because verse 3, he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus. In chapter 3, in chapter 6. He says, I'm an ambassador in chains. Now, when did he write it? From which prison did he write it? There's a little debate there. It's either written from prison in Caesarea. We knew he was in prison in Caesarea, we knew it was also the end of his life imprisoned in or the end of the book of Acts in prison in Rome. Either from Caesarea, around 57 AD or from Rome, around 60 AD. But it's written from prison along with 3 other letters, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon. You'll often hear these referred to as the prison epistles. These are the letters that Paul wrote while imprisoned that are in the Word of God. So we're going to look at this word today. We're going to look at it this week. be back up next week because verses 3 through 14. Now in English, it's different. If there's any Greek scholars in the crowd, and you could look at this in the Greek, or you would have read this in the original language in Paul's day, which you would cut your tension, is that verses 3 through 14 is one big run on sentence. I don't know there's the English teachers in the class, but do not write a sentence that is 11 verses long. You're going to get counted off for that. There's going to be a lot of red ink on your paper if you try to do that today. And so it's one big, long sentence. So we're gonna put it into one, two-part sermon. So we can cover this whole sentence all at one time. All right? We're going to see 9 blessings, 9 blessings from the Lord in these verses, 3 through 14. We're not going to get all 9 today, so relax, but you're going to want to come back next week so you can finish your notes. You don't wanna have half your notes here. And so let's jump in here. Well, three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To bless is to say, you are worthy of praise. In fact, some translate this. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's offering up praise to God for, look at verse 3, for the spiritual blessings we have in heavenly places. Now we have a lot of blessings, a lot of things you think, thank God for. These 9 blessings are spiritual blessings, and these are blessings that are found in heavenly places. Now, when you think heavenly places, do not think location, think dimension. It's not that there are blessings that God has up in heaven, and we're going to have to live our life on earth and die and then get to heaven to get those blessings. They're blessings of a heavenly nature. They're blessings that exist in a heavenly realm or a heavenly sphere, even that we enjoy, even while walking on this planet. For example, we see this concept other places. Ephesians 2.6. We're going to get back in our text in him. Let me give you a couple examples. Ephesians 2.6. God has raised this up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So you're standing on this planet, but you're seated in a sense in a heavenly place. chapter 6, verse 12. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers, over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So we're living today in this realm, but we're wrestling against spiritual forces in heavenly places. Colossians 3, one. He'll later write, if you have been raised up with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above not on things that are on earth. See what he's saying here? We're living on this world, but there's a spiritual dimension to it. There's a spiritual realm that we need to be mindful of. We are, even though we're walking on this planet. The Bible says we have citizenship in heaven. Our minds should be fixed on heaven. We battle against spiritual forces that are at work in heavenly realms. We have to maintain this eternal focus. Let me give you an example of this, that we don't think about it, is an illustration. I was doing some landscaping at my house years ago. We had a house that was built in the 70s. Anybody have a house built in the 70s? You probably have railroad ties in your backyard. That was everyone used railroad ties for landscaping. And I was gonna rip out these 1970s railroad ties and put some landscaping block, and I kicked over this big railroad tie, and the whole hill kind of crumbled down, and it was teeming with life. There were ants and bugs and beetles and grubs and snails and snakes, all this life in there. And I realized, wow, I'm walking around in my yard. And there's a whole world under my feet that I'm not even aware of. There's all this life that's going on underneath my feet. And I thought of that when I think of this verse. We're living on this planet, but there's a spiritual realm. There's a spiritual battle. There's a spiritual thing taking place, and my mind should often think about the heavenly realms, the spiritual aspect, the eternal focus that I ought to have while I'm on this planet. So what we're talking about here are spiritual blessings, the things that are still going to be there when your temporal things are taken away. They exist not in this life, although we enjoy them today. They're of a heavenly nature. Now we're going to jump in and list them here in a minute. But I want to get kind of a 30,000 foot view and see the beauty of these verses before we do. The all encompassing nature of these blessings is really beautiful. We're going to see as we walk through it. You're going to see the work of the 3 persons of the Trinity at work in this. The Bible says that God exists as God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, one God, 3 persons, and we see all persons of the Godhead talked about in this text. Verse three. He says, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus has blessed us. In verse four, he chose us in Jesus. Verse five, he, the father predestined us for adoption. Verse 7. We have redemption through the blood of Jesus. Verse 10 all things are reconciled by Jesus. Verse 13. We are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Verse 14. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance. And then we see that it's a past, present, and future dimension of what he's done. Versus verse 3 through 6. He talks about the past. He blessed us. He chose us. He predestined us. Verse 7, in the presence, we have today redemption. Verse 11, we've obtained an inheritance, verse 14. There's a guarantee that one day will acquire possession of it in the future. See the beauty of this? God, the Father, has been working in the past, God, the Son, today, has redeemed you, and God, the Holy Spirit, guarantees an inheritance for you in the future. See the beauty, the all-encompassing nature of what he's going to line out here. So let's dive in. My hope is you'll be encouraged today next week, as we draw some hope from these promises, some great encouragement from these promises, of these spiritual blessings we have in Jesus. The 1st was found in verse four, and that is we were chosen to be holy and blameless. We were chosen to be holy and blameless. He chose us, verse four. He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. We come across these words a lot in the Bible, chosen, elect, predestined, and sometimes that causes us some confusion. We wrestle with that. We try to understand that. And let me just give you a little comfort here that these are confusing concepts. The greatest minds and all of the history of theology have wrestled with these concepts we see in scripture and land in different places because we're trying to understand the most complex thing you could ever try to understand when we think about salvation. You're trying to understand how an infinite, holy God redeems his finite fallen creation. Can you think of something weightier than that? Something more complicated than that? And so we come to these, and it's going to be natural to say, I don't quite understand this or get this. And sometimes these words can cause a lot of discussion, debate, confusion, even division, but we find these in the scriptures. And we say, there's an element to what God is doing in our life that is a false to the sovereignty of God from the foundation of the world. I want to encourage you today to let that be a source of praise and a source of comfort rather than being a source of division and a source of confusion in your life, to not fixate so much on what's confusing, but to see why it's set, why does God say that? Why did he put that there? What's the point that he's making when he says this? Three things I want you to notice about this verse and this point. Number one, I want you to notice here the full context of this, that he chose us. We didn't choose him. He chose us. We didn't choose him. And that's really good news. That's really good news. That God has decided to reveal himself to us. We're going to talk more about that next week. One of the blessings is that God has determined to reveal things to us that would have been a mystery had he not revealed it, that he has chosen to do this in our life, because apart from that, we would have been lost in our sin and our rebellion, but he chose us before the foundation of the world. We're not saved by anything we have done or any goodness in us. We are saved by God's a plan to save us. Now, every earthly, excuse me, every human sermon illustration I can come up with breaks down eventually. I've used illustrations and someone will see, yeah, but, yeah, if you push this too far, I get that there's a, it's hard to explain this. But let me give you an example of this that might help us. Anybody expecting a baby that just wants to announce that today. Okay, we had a couple in the early service that we knew about. When you're expecting a baby. Mother's expected baby. If people have had babies, you've had babies, right? When you were pregnant, this is your little girl right here. you loved her from the time you were pregnant, right? You didn't say, but I don't know, you didn't know what she was going to look like. You didn't know what she was going to be like, you didn't know her personality, you know your children's character. You knew nothing about them, but you love them from the beginning. That's the beauty of what God is saying here. Because if God had waited to see how my life played out. I would have massively disappointed him. Now, I know he sees the future, he knows those things. I know this falls apart. My point is this. God at the foundation of the world chose to save us. And that's really, really good news. Because he had waited for you to live a little bit of your life and then looked upon your life to see if you were worthy of salvation, you were certainly not. And so if you feel today, I feel unworthy of this. This is really good news. God has chosen to love unworthy people. Notice also in this verse that he chose us, excuse me, he did not choose us because we were blameless, but rather we are blameless because he chose us. Our holiness. The fact that God looks upon us and doesn't see our sin, but sees the righteousness of Jesus. That's a result of what he's done in our life, not the basis of what he's done in our life. Holiness is the result, not the basis. I heard someone say this week, I was listening to a sermon about this and the guy said, we did all the sin and he did all the saving. That's what the preacher, the guy preached that said. He doesn't look at our lives, oh, there's some good in you. I'll save you. He saved us, and as a result of his saving of us. We are now holy in his eyes. Notice also he's chosen to save us through Christ. We're going to see the references to Jesus throughout this text over and over and over again. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, before Jesus were chosen, and Jesus were saved by Jesus. We're blameless because of Jesus, not because of anything good in ourselves. That's good news. That's good news for those today who might not feel worthy of God's love. might not feel their lives are worthy of salvation, because you don't bring anything to it. You say today, I'm not worth saving. That's not your call. That's not your call. You say, I'm not worth loving. That's not your decision. And that's the beauty of this. That God has chosen to love you. God has chosen to save you by his plan for your life, not by your own goodness. Second, we were predestined for adoption, we were predestined for adoption. verse five. He predestined us for adoption to himself, as sons, through Jesus Christ. Again, we see the reference to Jesus, according to the purpose of his will. His will, his plan, verse 4 says from the foundation of the world, was to save you through Jesus, and by saving you through Jesus, you become an adopted member of the family of God, God has determined to save you through Christ. In advance. Adoption was common and Roman law. And then the Roman law, you were adopted as a son, you became heirs of all of the, you had all the status, all the privileges of a biological son. We're adopted by Jesus, and because we are adopted through our faith in Jesus, we're now children of God, and have all the benefits of adopted children of God. Again, notice it was the purpose of his will. He didn't look on you and find something worthy in you. I was thinking of adoption. I was, several years ago, we took our kids to Silver Dollar City. It might have been a civil large city. They had at that time, I don't know if it's still there. They had a dog show where they would throw these Frisbees and the dogs would jump and catch the Frisbees. That was so cool. That was so cool to me because I could never get a dog to do that. I don't know if I'm just terrible with dogs or I've just always had broken dogs. But I could never get a dog to do any kind of tricks like that. And so I'm like, how can I teach? That'd be so cool. I go to the park, like throw in the Frisbee and my dog's catching it and bringing it back? That'd be so fun. I'm going to go up there. showy ends, crowd clears out. I go up there, the guy's picking up his Frisbees. And I say, hey, I'm gonna ask you some questions. How do you get dogs to do this? Because what they said earlier in the show, all of these dogs have been adopted from animal shelters. We've rescued these dogs and taught them to do this, and now these, all these dogs entertaining have been rescued out of shelters. And I'm like, so you can take a dog out of a shelter and put them in a show at Silver Dollar City. Teach me how to do that. So he gave me a few tips and goes, but now he's going to be honest with you. Not all dogs are gonna do this. He said, we go to a lot of shelters and look at a lot of dogs before we pick the ones to be in our show. Oh, wait a minute. That's not such a touching story now, is it? You went to a bunch of shelters across the country, through the Frisbee, and picked the dogs that could catch the Frisbee, and then put the rest down. I don't know, they'd put them down. That took a dark turn. But the point was, they just picked the dogs that they wanted to pick that showed some promise for what he wanted to do in the show. Here's the beauty of adoption. God does not look at your life and say, let me pick the ones that look worthy to me. He chose you from the foundation of the world to save you through faith. You're adopted to his family, not on the basis of anything you've done. So if you think, man, no one's going to pick me at the shelter. No one's going to look at my life and want to adopt me. God's not going to look at me and see good things in me. He doesn't. This is why it was just by his plan. He looked upon you and chose to save you, not out of any goodness in you. That's the beauty, the comfort, the joy we find in these words. And as a result, you have all the privileges of an adopted child of God. My mind went to pop culture, I think, of Little Orphan Annie, adopted out of the hard knock life with Mrs. Hannigan, and now lives in the home with the billionaire, Oliver Warbox. Or if I'm mine went 1st to Will Smith being red escaping troubled Philly for his life with Uncle Phil in Bel Air. You got to rescue out of the old life. Some people aren't gonna get that reference. You get it. You with me. Your child of the 80s. But, um, We're rescued from this old life into a new life. How much greater is our life in Christ. How much greater? to leave behind a life of brokenness. and live as children of the king. There's no greater earthly blessing. There is no greater earthly blessing on earth, greater than that. Third, we're recipients of his grace. We are recipients of his grace, for 6, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us, in the beloved, this grace that he lavished on us, that he blessed us with in Jesus. We received the grace of God, regardless of our sin, despite our sin, he has brought us from death into life because of Jesus. Remember again, with which he has blessed us in the beloved, in Jesus. All of this is through Jesus that we have received, the grace of God. A lot of definitions for grace. I heard someone one time define grace with the acronym God's riches at Christ's expense, GR-A-C-E, God's riches, at Christ's expense, because what Jesus did on the cross, we get the grace of God. Which brings us to our 4th point, our final one this morning, that we've been redeemed and forgiven. We have been redeemed and forgiving. Look at verse 7 in him. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sin, forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. Again, we see this is available to those who are in him, and it's the result of his grace. We are redeemed. Now, that may not jump out to you in our culture today. That would have really captured the attention of Paul's reading, of Paul's early readers, because they would have immediately caught the reference to slavery, as much as a 3rd of the Roman Empire were slaves. So slaves, slavers very common in Ephesus. And many of these followers of Jesus, perhaps were slaves or former slaves, and they would have been surrounded by others who were slaves. And so to read these words, your freedom has been purchased. That's what redemption means, the freedom purchased for a slave. Someone ransomed out of captivity. He says, he's taking you out of slavery, and he's purchased your freedom in Jesus. A price was paid for our freedom. The blood of Jesus was shed so that we could be freed from our sin, freed from bondage to sin, to walk in freedom in Jesus. I have a friend who is a missionary. And he does a lot of different things around the world, but he was having, I had coffee with him a couple months ago and you share him. One of the things that they're doing now in part of the world, they don't publicize this in their Facebook post and all that, but he said there's a part of the world where slavery is still very common in the form of people who will borrow money from someone they come into like a medical emergency, something in their life. They need money, and they'll borrow money from these people. And when it comes time to pay them back, they won't have the money to pay them back because it has really high interest. They say you can come work at the factory where we make bricks. And you can work at the brick factory, and you can live there, and all your meals will be provided, and you can earn the money to pay off the debt you owe us. But the problem is, the interest keeps accruing while they're working, and you have to pay to live there and you have to pay for your food, and the cost of living there is greater than the money you make every day. So the longer they work, the deeper and deeper into depth they go. Imagine that every day working, working, working in the brick factory, and the debt gets greater and greater and greater. And so he started this organization where they get donations to go in and purchased freedom of these people who are enslaved to this brick factory. And I thought of that story my friend was telling me when I read these words because that's our problem. We're trying to work off our debt, and we're going deeper and deeper in debt. If you think, well, okay, I've sinned, let me just do some good, and I'll make up for it. you can't, that doesn't work. The math doesn't work. Just let me keep doing more and more good and it'll outweigh all the bad. We're doing more sinning than we're doing good is the problem. And so we can't work our way out of this. And so that's why we needed Jesus, who paid the ransom, who purchased the freedom. First Peter 118 says you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. The blood of Jesus bought my freedom, bought your freedom, so we can be set free from sin. We could experience his grace, we could be his adopted children. And we could inherit the blessings that come with being a child of God. going to continue next week. But let me give you some application at this point. Now what? What does this mean for me? Let me just hope this will encourage you. First of all, if you're not a follower of Jesus. Let me encourage you today to put your faith in Jesus. You can be saved by his grace. You feel maybe you're unworthy of his love, you feel inadequate, you feel like there's nothing you can do to make up for it. You're absolutely right. If you feel today, there's no reason why God should love me, there's nothing of any good in me. Let me tell you, you're in a really good spot to receive the grace of Jesus. You can turn to him today. You don't clean yourself up. You don't get yourself back up on your feet. You turn to Jesus and he saves you. I went for a walk with my granddaughter Marcy a couple weeks ago. We're crossing the street in the neighborhood to side street. We're trying to cross Berry Road. Okay, for the story. No traffic coming. And she let go of my hand because she dropped her stick or her worm or whatever she was carrying. And I said, well, Marcy, come on, let's get out of the road. And she ran and she hit the curb and she fell. And she scraped her knee, she scraped her elbow, started to cry. The snot was flowing, like everything, right? And I said, see? Told you, be careful. No, I didn't. I didn't. That would have been heartless, right? I didn't say get up, walk it off. Come on, the house is about a half mile. There's some Band-Aids in the bathroom, go in there and get yourself a Band-Aid. No, what did I do? She reached up like this to me and I picked her up and I carried her back to the house. And I wiped her tears, and I wiped her nose, and we bandaged her wounds. That's what Jesus does. He doesn't say, see, that's what you get. Now get up and go clean yourself up. He doesn't say that. We turn to Jesus and by his grace he saves us. With his unconditional love, he saves us. By the blood of Jesus, he rescues us. If you've never given your faith your life to Jesus today and caught them Jesus, I know I need a savior. And I know you're my only hope. I know I can't say myself, Jesus, I want to turn to you. If you've done that, let me encourage you today to fix your eyes on the spiritual blessings. in heavenly places around you. In the midst of your temporary and earthly struggles today, fix your eyes on the eternal blessings that we have, on the spiritual blessings. If life is difficult in this realm, fix your eyes on the heavenly realm. Where you're a child of God, you're saved by his grace, you're adopted in his family. Your freedom from sin has been purchased. Count those blessings today in the midst of the challenges and trials you face. And then finally, share the gospel with confidence. pointing other people to Jesus, seeing other people follow Jesus, does not depend on your ability. So your goodness, your eloquence, rather. But your ability, someone's salvation is like, man, if you would just learn to say it better, people could get saved. If you would just learn to answer their questions better, they would get saved. God is at work. It's through his grace. It's through his sovereigntes, through his mercy. It's going to his plan. So we go out of the world tomorrow, this week, share the good news, knowing that from the foundation of the world, God has been at work in the lives of those you will encounter.