The Power and Authority of Jesus - Ephesians 1:20-23

And so every day after school, just about every day, there was just constantly a basketball game going on in the evenings or on the weekends. And so any given day, you just kind of ride your bike, or you get a ride to that friend's house, and this was the spot. Like, this was the place you wanted to be, always a game going on. All my friends would be there. And then after school and on the weekends, they were just always a game going on. Now, there was this one guy in the neighborhood who was a bully. He was a grown man, which is kind of weird, right? But he would always drop by, or on occasion, maybe once a week, drop by the group of us, and he would always just pick on us kids. So we did our best to just kind of stay out of his way, and when he came by, maybe we'd retreat, like, closer to the front porch, or even go inside for a little while, because he just liked to pick on kids. And there was one day that we were out in the driveway playing, and I decided, I'm just going to go in real quick. I need to get a drink of water. And so I came back out, and I noticed everyone's, like, crying and sad. And I'm like, what happened? I just went inside for, like, three minutes to get a drink of water. And they're all like, yeah, well, you went inside. He came out. And I didn't even have to ask who the he was. I knew exactly who it was. It was the bully. And they said, uh, yeah, uh, he picked on us this time, and I'm like, well, what happened? What did he do? And they said, well, while you were inside, he came out. And he grabbed the basketball, he threw it into the trunk of his car, slammed the car, leaned on the car, and started making fun of us. And I was like, that's kind of normal. Like, that tracks. That's what he usually did with us kids. And they said, yeah, Tyler, but this time it was different. This time, your dad was driving down the road to come pick you up and he saw it. And man, he got out of the car and veins started to pop. I didn't know where veins were. And my an aggressive or violent or mean guy at all, but he got up on this dude because he saw what he was doing, and he was like, you don't mess with these kids. You act right. And then all of a sudden this guy just started to like melt under his car. He folded like a lawn chair, right? He opened the trunk of his car. He gave out the basketball back. He got some money, he was like, Here, kids, I love you guys. And then, like, he retreated, he got on his way. And I noticed, in that moment, my biggest enemy, folded like a launch here. All the power, this powerful force, we all watched this guy in our lives just have no more power over us because of this. And man, that was just so comforting. That's my dad. The guy who loves me can take out my biggest enemies. And for the rest of my childhood, whenever it came to that debate of, like, whose dad would win a fight, I didn't have to say anything. They'd all be like, well, we all know Tyler's dad would be the first. I submit my dad for the number two spot, right? And that's just kind of how it worked, because my dad protected us in that moment. He took out our biggest enemies. Now, why do I tell you that story? Because I think that's what Paul wants us to feel at the end of Ephesians chapter one. That's the scene. That scene at my friend's house is so similar to what Paul wants you to feel as you read Ephesians chapter one, 20 through 23. Because there's power in this world. There are bullies in this world that are devastating. There's a power in this world that's devastating, but there is a power over all the other powers that's come. Let's pray once more and we'll dive into this passage together in Ephesians one, 20 through 23. Let me pray for us. We thank you, that you've gathered us here on this rainy Sunday morning to worship you through song, through the reading of your word, through the preaching of your word, through our brief fellowship together. And so, Lord, I pray that you would speak to each and every one of us this morning, myself included. God, teach me in this moment what you have for me. And Lord, we know that you're faithful, you're good and you're kind, and your kindness leads us to repentance. So I pray that if any of us need something to repent of after this message this morning, I pray that we would do that, that we be quick to confess our sins so that we can receive healing from you. And so, Lord, we love you and we trust you. We ask that you would use this time for your glory and our good. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. So last week, Dalton took us through the 1st half of Paul's prayer in this chapter. It started back in verse 15. And remember, the 1st 14 verses of chapter one are just praise. Paul rolls through all these blessings in Christ, 8 blessings all together that you have if you're in Christ. If you surrendered your life to him, that you're chosen, you're blessed, you're forgiven, you're redeemed, you're adopted, you've been brought into the family, you've been sealed by the Spirit, you've been made an inheritance and given an inheritance. And then all of those blessings, according to God's kind intentions, according to his grace, according to his kind purposes for us, leads Paul into praise or into prayer. And so verse 15 starts off a prayer for the Ephesians. That's what we started last week. And now we're picking up in verse 20. So Paul prays for 3 things. The 1st is that we would know the hope to which God has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and then three, the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. And so that last one, that's where we're going to start this morning. We're going to back it up a little bit to 19, because it's kind of an odd transition at verse 20. But Paul wants us to know the immeasurable power of God, the Father, and God the Son. And so in verses 20 through 23, what he's going to do is he's going to prove it to us. So he pulls back the curtain of God the Father and God the Son's power, and we get to see what the Father is doing through Jesus. So Paul's 1st point for us this morning is that God raised Jesus from the dead. Take a look at the front of verse 20, that 1st half. It says that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. Now this passage has a lot of male pronouns through it. It has a lot of his and hymns. So I've done this a little bit of the hard work in Greek. It's a little it's a lot easier to know who the he is referring to. So I've just put kind of a bracketed F for father and a bracketed J for Jesus next to those. in the original text, are they not in the translation that you have, but just to show us that who the he or the his is actually referring to. So F for the Father, and J for the Son, Jesus. So I've added that for your benefit. Now, here's an interesting question. Rhetorical question. You don't need to answer this. But what would, if I were to ask each of y'all, what's the greatest demonstration of God's power in the Bible? What's the greatest demonstration of God's power in the Bible? If I asked everyone in the room, I bet we'd hear a lot of different answers. If I asked you guys, some of you might say, well, creation. Like God spoke everything into existence, what incredible power the universe came into existence? Some of us, we might say, the parting of the Red Sea, like incredible, this incredible moment, the powerful, the most powerful enemy in the world, the Egyptian army is bearing down on these Hebrews. They've got nowhere to go. Moses is led us to this water, and then God parts the seas, right? Others of us might say, man, it's the wall falling at Jericho, how incredible that would have been be there. We could have all sorts of answers to that question. incarnation. Maybe you'd say, well, when the eternal sun, God, took on human flesh, what an incredible cosmic event. And those would all be incredible displays of God's power, but that's not where Paul lands. That's not the example he gives. Paul says the supreme display of God's power is the resurrection of Jesus. Remember last week. Look back at verse 19. We'll back up one verse. Paul was telling us about the measurable greatness of God's power. And when he wants to show us that the immeasurable, what it actually looks like, the 1st place he goes is Jesus' resurrection. Now, how can that be true? Like of all the things in scripture, of all the examples we could give of God's amazing demonstration of his power, why is the resurrection, the greatest? Well, when God created the universe, there's nothing opposing him. Right? There's no resistance, there's no enemy, there's no rival, there's no curse, there's no devil, there's no death. just nothing. And so out of nothing, God speaks into being. That's a magnificent display of power. Just by a word, everything that we know, beyond everything that we know, beyond everything that we see just comes into existence. But the resurrection is something different. At the resurrection, there's sin to be conquered. There's death to be defeated. There's a Satan and all of his accusations to be silenced. There's the curse to be broken, but in raising Jesus, God doesn't just speak into the void. God reaches into the grave and he brings his son back. And in a different way than in creation, he brings light out of the darkness, right? And so that's why the resurrection is the single most impressive display of God's power. I was thinking about it this week. It's like watching a guy at the gym, right? Some of us go to the gym. What if you watch a guy go and squat a 1000 pounds? All right? If you don't know how much squats, just in relation, £1000 would be like pretty close to a world record. So the guy's pretty big. Most of us were probably squatting like maybe £100, okay? So a 1000 pounds, 10 times more than the average guy would squat. Uh, that would be incredible. And as you watch him do that, you're not gonna wonder if later on in the day, he has problems lifting his kitchen chair. Right? Like, it's categorically different. You wouldn't be like, guy who squats a thousand pounds now has problems picking up a simple thing at home. The kitchen chair isn't even a question. It's not even the same category as a £1000 squat. And the Bible said, man, God raised his son from the dead. So your situation in life, Whatever it is, It's like the kitchen chair. whatever you're facing right now. Whatever wall that you're up against, Whatever sin that you feel like you just can't shake. Whatever anxiety that keeps you up or it wakes you up. Whatever broken, you just can't see a way through. Whatever financial hurdle that you're like, this is gonna take months, if not years to get through. Maybe decades. Whatever diagnosis came back recently. You're like, I don't know how this is going to work out. If it requires that it requires them to raise Jesus from the dead. then we can be guaranteed he knows what he's doing. He's got it taken care of. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to go the way you want it to go. It doesn't mean it's going to be your prayers are going to be answered just the way you want them. The answer might be no. But we don't have a generic God who's just generally strong. We have a savior who takes out our biggest enemies. Sin, Satan, death done. paid for. So when Paul prays that we would know the immeasurable greatness of God's power towards us. The 1st thing that he wants us to see is that God raised Jesus. He raised him. And the 2nd point is this. God seated him. God seated him with authority. Look at verse, look at the rest of verse 20 and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. That's the 2nd time that we've gotten in the heavenly places in chapter one. We got it earlier at the beginning. I think it's like verse 5 or 6 where we got heavenly places. All the blessings, the spiritual blessings that we have in the heavenly places. They're secure for us. They're not here. They're not based on us. They're in the heavenly places. And so God raised him and God seeded him. Now, what does that phrase at his right hand? What does that mean? Well, see, in the ancient world, the right hand of the king was the place of like ultimate honor and authority. It was where the kings, like chief advisor, the chosen one, I've picked my chief, my most trusted advisor to sit next to me, govern with the king. And so God didn't just resurrect Jesus and then send him back in the crowd. He didn't just bring him back from the dead and then just say, okay, like, do whatever you want now, walk around. No, he resurrected Jesus and then seated him next to him on the throne of the universe. One scholar called the 2nd half of verse 20. Anization of supreme glory and majesty. of that word, enthron, right? Raised Jesus, he enthroned him. It reminds me of Acts chapter 7. We finished going through Acts recently, a few months ago. And it reminded me of Acts chapter 7, you don't have to turn there, but we're Stephen. Many of us know the story. Stephen, he's the 1st Christian martyr after Christ has died, resurrected, and ascended back to heaven. And so Acts tells us the story, that's the end of the chapter. Stephen looks up to heaven, and he's about to be stoned. Like he's been proclaiming Jesus. He's been proclaiming the gospel, and he's taking heat for it, and it's getting violent. And they're about to kill him. And he sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He looks up to heaven, and God gives him this vision. And it says Jesus is standing. Did you catch that? Jesus had already sat down when he ascended. But for Stephen, just before he's killed for his faith, Jesus rises. He stands up. Because I think he wants Stephen to know, I'm not indifferent towards your suffering. You're not serving a savior who's not paying attention. You're serving a savior who loves you. And even in your most difficult moment where you're about to come see me face to face, I'm standing for you. I'm not indifferent. Because the one on the throne of the universe isn't indifferent to his people in their suffering. The Father seeded the sun and the sun rises off his throne when his own are bleeding for his name. That's the story of Acts 7. And then Paul wants to tell you what that throne is above. So look at verse 21. He says, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. So Paul packs in these 4 words, rule, authority, power, dominion. And in the 1st century, at this time, those were categories that people would often talk about, every kind of kind of like cosmic and earthly power. And so there's spiritual forces, there's these demonic forces, there's political rulers, kings, and magistrates, and governors, the institutions of the day, the kingdoms of the day. And so Paul just piles all of them on top of each other and then says Jesus is above them all. But not just above, far above. Do you see that word? Not just a little higher, categorically higher. Jesus is not like the LeBron or the Jordan of the cosmic powers. Yeah, you know, he's like the best in the league, but the rest of us guys, we can kind of hang with him. That's not him. Paul's saying that Jesus isn't even in the league. He's far above it. He's in a category by himself. He's not just the 1st thing that you put on your list of priorities in life. Like, I gotta make my list. God and then church and then family and friends and work. He's not number one on the list. He's over the list. He gets to decide what goes on the list and what order they going. He's not just 1st and then you move on with your life. He governs the list. It's his list. It's his life. And this isn't just here in Ephesians. It's the beat of the whole New Testament. So in Matthew 28, Jesus says to himself, hey, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. In Philippians chapter 2, God has, it says that he has highly exalted him. The Father's highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. Revelation calls them the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. Every author in the New Testament just hitting the same drum, the Jesus who walked the words of Galilee, who watched the feet of his disciples. That Jesus is the one on the throne of the universe. And so then Paul says this phrase, above every name that is named. Look at that. Above every name that is named. Why does Paul say it like that? Like, we sometimes just gloss over phrases like that because they're in the Bible, maybe they're kind of just Christianese phrases, but what does that mean above every name that is named? Well, in the ancient world, to name something was to claim power over it. Okay? So names mattered. Names carried a lot more weight than they do today. And I don't know what name has been hanging over you. It's been hanging over your life. Maybe it's the name of an illness. a diagnosis, cancer, tumor, Maybe it's the name of an addiction that you just can't break? As hard as you try. Maybe it's the name of a fear that's just followed you around. Maybe it's the name of a person. Someone who's literally hurt you or is currently hurting you. Maybe it's the name of just failure. My name is unloved. My name's unforgiven. I just know what I've done and that name is just gonna be over me for the rest of my life. Paul says Jesus is named above every one of them. If you can name it, He's over it. That's what Paul says. And listen, the world is gonna keep naming things over us. The doctor will name a diagnosis for every one of us. The lawyer may name a verdict. The HR director, going to name a layoff. The enemy, the voice in your head will name your shame. The enemy will name your guilt. But it says none of those names is the highest name. The highest name is Jesus. And the verdict over his people, the church, paid for. Done. Completed. And not just for now, look at verse 21. Not only in this age, but he says also in the one to come. Man, all earthly kings are powerful in their own time, right? Every earthly king, prime minister, president, you've got power. A lot of it, a lot of influence. They get their moment, But time keeps moving on. And eventually their kingdom passes to someone else. Their rule, their authority, their influence will end. But Jesus isn't seated only in this era of history. It says Jesus is reigning right. Jesus will still be raining. In every age to come. And then look at verse the front of verse 22. It says, and he put all things under his feet. Now that phrase under his feet, that comes from the Old Testament, comes from Psalm 8, and the language is of just like total subjection. So when an ancient king conquered another king, he would sometimes put his foot on the neck of that conquered king in front of his army. He might tow him back to his city with a noose around his neck, behind the parade of his army. Usually that conquer king is stripped naked to just be embarrassing in front of everyone. And so you show that this person is under my feet. They are behind my parade because I conquered them. It's a sign that the enemy has been finished. And so Paul says, God put all things under the feet of Jesus. Not most things, not some of the things, not just the things that get your peeves, all things. One of my favorite preachers said, it may be over your head, but it's on his feet. So whatever's looming in our lives this morning. Whatever feels like it has more authority over you than it should. Whatever bully is showing up in your life, pushing you around, intimidating you, Guys, we have to know it's under the feet of the one who gave his life for us. Which leads us to our 3rd point. God gave him to the church. He seeded him. He raised him, he seated him, and he gave him. Paul could have stopped right there. He could have stopped at our 2nd point. He raised them from the dead. He seated him with authority. If he ended at verse 22, he put all things under his feet. That would have been pretty powerful enough, right? We could have all gone home this morning going, wow, Jesus is in charge, good for him, right? Like, that's amazing. But Paul doesn't stop there. What he says next is, I think, the most personal moment in all of chapter one. Look at verse 22. After he put all things under his feet, he gave him as head over all things to the church. Did you catch that? He gave him as head over all things to the church. Some translations say for the church. Both are working at the same idea. God just appointed the cosmic, exalted, all conquering Christ as the head over all the universe, he did it for his people. He did it for you. He did it for every Bible believing gospel preaching church that meets this morning. around the world, throughout history. All of that resurrection power, all of that exalted authority, all of that supremacy, over rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, all of that named above every name, the Father did all of it, and then he turned and looked at Jesus, and he gave Jesus to the church, to his people. He give Jesus to corporate America. He didn't give Jesus to parachurch ministries. He didn't give Jesus to NGOs and just the people that overseas. He didn't give Jesus to the wealthiest and the smartest, that just kind of like have their life put together. He gave Jesus to the people who make up the church. Those who have surrendered their lives to Jesus. He says, I'm giving Jesus. The Father says, I'm giving him to you. Guys, I don't want you to miss this. is just kept on a shelf for show. It's not just like, oh, wow, cool. That's awesome. The father took the, took the power that raises the sun, the authority that sees, strength that subjected all things under the sun, and he poured it into the body of Jesus, the broken people that he calls the church. And he didn't just unleash all that resurrection power and then not know what to do with it. It says he aimed it. at people, at his people. You are who his power is for. You are who his authority is for. You are who his good news, his gospel is for. Then look at the front of verse 23. Which is his body? The fullness of him who fills all in all. So Paul calls the church the body of Christ. We saw that at the 1st Corinthians when we were going through that series. That means raised and seated and exalted. We, the church, the universal church was attached to him. The head doesn't get exalted without the body following along, right? Wherever you go, wherever your head decides to go in your house, your neighborhood, your work, your body follows. We belong to him so closely that what is true of his position is true of us. And so when you hear the church, don't just picture like a building or something happening on a Sunday morning. That's not what Paul, that's not what the Bible refers to as the church. Paul says the church is the body of Christ. So what's happening with Jesus is happening with us. Where the head goes, the body goes. If the head is far above every rule and authority and power and dominion, then no rule, no authority, no power, no dominion, can crush us. We are caught up in his victory because we're caught up with him. That's the way that the Bible shows us that we're moving. We're moving with him. And so then there's this little last phrase. The fullness of him who fills all in all. Now you can see a J slash S here. And that's because some scholars are a little unsure. Is this last pronoun, male pronoun, referring to Jesus, or is it referring to the spirit? Now, Paul has already referred to the Spirit several times in chapter one, so it's not out of the question. And regardless of whether he's referring to Jesus or the Spirit or perhaps both. It really doesn't change any of our doctrines. It just makes it more full. And so here's one way to picture this. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, and then from that throne, he sent the Spirit, right, to live inside his people to live inside those who have surrendered their lives. In fact, when Jesus was on this earth, he said, better for the spirit to come, better for me to go and for the helper, the spirit to come to guide you and direct you. Jesus says better to have the Spirit in you than me next to you. That's what he says. And so the spirit's role is then to point us, to point others, to point all creation back to Jesus, to what he's doing, to his authority, to his power. That's how you know you're going to a spirit led church. It's all about Jesus. And so as the spirit works through the church, Jesus is being made known in this world. He says the fullness of him who fills all in all. is making himself known through the people of God. And God fills all. He created it all. Governs it all, he sustains it all. And the church, what Paul is saying, the church, his people, are the fullness of his presence on the earth. So we are where he shows up. We are where God makes himself known. We are his dwelling place of we are the dwelling place of his resurrection power. So if God wants to reach people in Riverside, He's going to plant a church in Riverside. He's going to gather a body of believers at Walden Middle School every Sunday morning. Because what's on the head, on the heart of God, is worked through the people of God. We follow where he goes. That's us. That's his church. That's this church. So we're a Bible believing, gospel centered, discipleship focused church. And there's a lot that Dalton and I have talked about that we can unpack with those 3 things. But as we get our feet underneath us as a church plan, a little over 2 months in, Dalton and I, we want you guys to know that we are similar to our parent church, Northland KC, in a lot of great ways. We're also already different. in some ways. And we're going to continue to be different in some other ways. One of the places that we want to be distinct is how we focus on the church, how we focus on discipleship. So Dalton, Shannon, and I, we've been discussing, we've been praying for months now before we even launched about our culture and our discipleship, our structure as a church. And we have some really exciting things coming this fall. Guys, we are we are so thrilled. We've been praying and seeking the Lord in all of it. And so we're thinking through a church wide culture and structure that engages those who are already engaged in discipleship. But we're also thinking through how do we engage those who aren't engaged in discipleship, who don't know what that looks like. And I want to be careful here as I am. about everything coming this fall, as a church, I think there's a real danger in hearing all that, and then walking out here this morning, walking out for the next several weeks, thinking that the Christian life is mostly about events. or programs. or structure. activity, or serving. Those things will come. In some ways are already going. And there's nothing wrong with those things. There's nothing wrong with doing this. It's a beautiful thing. But if that's what we think Christianity, Christianity primarily is, We've missed what Jesus came to do. We've missed it. If we think it's all about activity. Before any of us run off to fill our calendar with the next ministry thing, we've got to stop and reflect on the greatness of Jesus. Understand who he really is. What he came to do. What he's doing now. And remember, any commands in this chapter, right? In the 1st 3 chapters of Ephesians, Paul really only gives us one command, and it's to remember in chapter two, we're getting there. We haven't even gotten there yet. It's to look back fondly on what God has done. It's just like, what do I need to remember, God? Remember chapter one. Remember what I have done for you? The 1st 3 chapters, one command, and then we get to chapters four, 5, and 6, and there's more than 40 commands. So we're going to get there. The commands to do things don't really start until chapter 4. And I think honestly, as I was reflecting on it this week, that probably bothers some of us. Because we want a Christianity we can accomplish. We want a Christianity that we can kind of check the box for. Give me a list, pastor, just give me the list, give me 3 things, 3 application points. I can write down in my journal, I can start doing this day or this week. But see, we talked about this the 1st week. The base of Christianity is not us centered. It's not you centered. It's Jesus centered. It's not about what we do. The 1st thing that we need to know is about, it's not about what we do. The 1st thing that Paul wants us to know is what Jesus has done for you. And so he's going to spend 3 doing it. The commands are coming. We'll get most of them in the back half of this letter. Paul's going to tell us how to walk, how to fight, how to love our spouses, how to raise our kids, how to put on the armor of God, but in the 1st half, He has to sit to behold him. to sit and understand him. He wants us to rest deeply in the truth of who God is and what he's done for us and how we ought to think about him. Scholars, you know, in seminary circles, we have one of the largest seminaries just down the road. Many of us are students there or professors there. We might say something like orthodoxy before orthopraxy. Big words we don't use often. Orthodoxy before, orthopedics. That just means understand before you practice. Understand before you do. That's all it means. It's just a fancy way of saying, understand before practice. We have to understand rightly before we live rightly. So much of what separates a mature Christian. From an immature one is how we think. what happens between the ears. Not all the things that we're doing. A lot of us, I know we'd love to believe maturity is marked by all the things that someone accomplishes for God, how they fill their lives with just activity and ministry and programs and all these wonderful things. But maturity is most often marked, right thinking, flows into right doing, right living, and not the other way around. The mature Christian. Not the one who's just accomplished a lot of things for God. Paul wants us to know the mature Christian is the one who has believed the right things about God and about themselves and about the world, around us. And then with that right thinking, engages in the right things, at the right time, in the right way. The mature Christian doesn't just fill their schedule with a bunch of movement, like an octopus on roller skates. A lot of movement, not going anywhere, right? That's not the mature Christian. It's the person who's eager to see who God is. It's not the person who's eager to do a lot of stuff for God. It's the person who's rightly seen God. wants to be with him. So before any of us run off to do ministry this week. We have to believe rightly. believe that the Father has raised the son from the dead, that he's seated him with authority, and that he's given him to the church. That bully. In the neighborhood. that took the basketball when I was a kid. Why was it so comforting to? It wasn't just that my dad was wrong. Plenty of dads in the neighborhood were strong. Plenty of dads could have done what my dad did. What was so comforting was the strength, the strongest force in the neighborhood was mine. That's my dad. He was for me. For my friends. He was on my side. The kids who were staying, my dad, they weren't my sisters, right? They were just my friends. But because they were with me, the protection that my dad offered went to them too. My dad didn't just clear the bully off the driveway for me. He cleared that bully off for everyone playing basketball that day. That's the church. We're the ones that are kind of playing basketball in the driveway of God's grace. So church, here's the question. No commands in this passage, no commands for the last few weeks. Here are the 2 questions I want us to ask. Are you seeking to know, love, and obey this Jesus? The Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus of scripture, the Jesus that's been raised, seated, and given. Second question. Is there a wrong belief that you've held of Jesus, that you need to repent of, that you need to confess this week? Confession is so good for us. Oftentimes we think of confessing just the things that we did wrong, which is good too, confessing something we did wrong or didn't do. But confession, repentance can also be a wrong thought, a wrong belief. God, I'm so sorry. Jesus, I'm so sorry that I viewed you lesser than you are. I've repented of that often. Jesus, I had a framework for who you are. You're beyond that. You're greater than that. Here's the reality. We were born in sin. Cut off from God. And we cannot fight our own sin. We are outmatched and outgunned. We don't have the power, we don't have the strength, the dominion, the authority, but scripture says the Father loved us. So he sent his son so that we might live through him. that he lived the life that we couldn't. He died the death that we deserve because of our sin. He paid for arson, with his own blood, for everything that we've ever done. And then 3 days later, he rose from the grave, the work of the Father. And God seated him at his right hand. All things under his feet. God gave him his head over all things to the church. And because of what he has done, we turn away from what we've done. And we turn towards Christ. And the moment that we do, says he gathers us. into the church, the body of Christ. He gives us his spirit, and the bullies of this world, sin, Satan, and death, our biggest enemies are crushed. They're beneath his feet. So the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, has walked up on all of our enemies and they're now under his feet. And then for the rest of our lives, when the bull come to us, the shame, the guilt, the failure, inability, the diagnosis, the loneliness, the depression, the anxiety, it's done. It's taken care of. It's defeated, and you'll watch what is watched in that driveway. You'll watch them have no power over you because of the strength of Jesus. And it says, no rule, no authority, no power, no dominion. In this age or the one to come, can ever change that. So let's pray together.