Contemporary Call to Worship Since then it is not so much they that have lost, but man in and by Christ that has gained such a place as they never had nor could have. "Unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." He does so by conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within us; he does so by giving to men the wisdom and the commandments of his book; he does so through the advice of good and godly men. You are princes of the blood imperial. but it fills our hearts we can feel it! The first place where Christ is seen is in the grave whence God according to the mightiest action of His almighty power raised Him up. You notice places is italicized.So it's far more than just saving me from my sins, it is making me alive unto God and then raising me up into the heavenly levels. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. If you haven't previously submitted something but would like to, you can find my email address by clicking on my name in the "About Me" section below. Not with equal footsteps, but with tottering gait, we follow in that selfsame path that God has marked out for himself. When a man has allowed some habit, some indulgence, some forbidden practice to master him, he becomes its slave. We cannot earn God's love; but we can and must show how grateful we are for it, by seeking with our whole hearts to live the kind of life which will bring joy to God's heart. Friends, our God has poured out grace upon grace. the One who would calm our fears with peace and hope. [4] The full thought would seem to be "all kinds of sin.". We are made partakers of the divine nature, or course, in a modified sense, but still in a true sense. Everything else in Ephesians 2:1-7 is of subordinate importance. There was a time, more than four hundred years before this, when Greece was threatened with invasion by the Persians. Unto Good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Christianity demands service, but the world cannot understand the missionary for instance, who goes away to some foreign land to teach in a school or heal in a hospital for a quarter of the salary he or she might obtain at home in some secular service. The word course has its root meaning in Greek weathervane. That is, we can't earn it. This engineer was soundly converted. There is the whole Trinity in that one verse, Christ, the Spirit, the Father. Living God, thank you for re-working us to become more like Jesus. "I see you've changed your house," he said to her. Praise to the Father of Lord Jesus Christ! there are some of the merchants of London who practise lusts that are abominable. ye daughters of Sion, who are ever at the house of prayer, oh! Now note the next case. In body and mind they are under the control of Satan, and consequently are rebellious against God (2:1-3). My dear friends, you who are quickened, let me advise you to take care of the devil; he will be sure to be after you. His grace has predestinated us to the very highest relation that of sons unto Himself by Jesus Christ "according to the good pleasure of his will." Talking about that forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Let them obey in the Lord. Date Service Readings Ephesians 3:1-12 Matthew 2:1-12 Read all. Ay, but those salt tears are tears of barrenness. (ii) We saw that sin killed the ideals by which men live. Had He brought the Gentiles into the place that Israel once occupied? You know what that means? And yet, people so blindly flow along with it. Through faith they can only turn to God in their helplessness, and humbly accept the salvation that God offers. And so they wrote "hath he quickened" in italics in order to indicate the fact that they themselves added those words. The apostle treats it as our business diligently to observe it. These are the things that were the motivation behind our lives. "There is none righteous, no not one." Livy writes: "The Greeks wage a truceless war against people of other races, against barbarians." Such an one is the harlot, from whom one's head is turned in the very street. young man, I weep, I weep over thee; thou art not yet so far gone, that they have rolled the stone against thee; thou art not yet become obnoxious; thou art not yet the staggering drunkard, nor yet the blasphemous infidel; thou hast much that is ill about thee, but thou hast not gone all the lengths yet. Such is not the character of God's dwelling now. His love does not depend upon what we are; it flows from his own heart. One of the regular passengers commented on the change. For we are his workmanship.". Now my eyes will be open and my ears will be attentive to the prayers offered in this place. Men are justified by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. That is living prayer. And they began to be merry (Luke 15:21-24 NASB). Tell a fish in the sea there is no water. The mark that God has established for you is perfection. But if you had been quickened by the Holy Spirit fifty minutes, this would have been the first fact in the front rank of all fact, God is, and he is my Father, and I am his child. Now, as life comes thus with strange surprises, and mingled with pain, so, dear friends, it comes often with many questions. fol. Clearly life was going to be completely different for any nation which had a consciousness of destiny like that. Many a man's life is embittered because he feels that he has never had what his talents and his work deserve; but in the sight of God no man deserves anything but condemnation. This he did that in himself he might make the two into one new man, by making peace between them, and that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the Cross, after he had slain the enmity by what he did. Call to Worship #1: L: Darkness is banished! We must not overlook the fact that those who neglect (Hebrews 2:3) or choose not to receive forgiveness for their sins before their physical death (2 Corinthians 5:10) will experience a "second death" at the judgment (Revelation 21:8). There are three directions in which the effect of sin is deadly. It is just the answer to the grace of God in Christ. It is a present thing in every sense, though, of course, needed for heaven and eternity. They are both the cause of death and the evidence of death. Here are some indexes that might be helpful: INDEXES: For a complete list of all the indexes on this blog, click here. "Well, I would like to know that for sure. I would say, "Why, Mom? Life will not be bound like that, I love to have an appointed season for prayer, and woe unto the man who does not have his time for prayer! to you who were far off and to you who were near. 2. Are you. The whole work is thus presented in its completeness from first to last; nevertheless, it is only "through faith" as yet. Outsiders, rank outsiders, far away from any rights, or any participation in the rights of God's children. (ii) Paul says of Jesus that he wiped out the law of the commandments with all its decrees. Have we reached the goal of efficiency and skill that our gifts might have enabled us to reach? It is not so in the word of God. Naturally this prayer grows out of the two great truths he had been urging. 9:2). "Among whom also we all had our conversation in time past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. Now, dear friends, if we have received spiritual life, you see what a range of being we have, how we can rise up to the seventh heaven or sink down into the abyss. height; and to know the love of Christ." HOMER: I do know you would. When a person really and truly falls in love, his love compels him to goodness. He always comes back to that theme. There it is God Himself displays most His own glory; there He displays Christ Himself to all the heavenly hosts, delighting to put honour on that Man whom He raised from the dead and set at His own right hand. There was Jesus lying in the grave; and from that grave God raised Him, and set Him on the highest pinnacle of heaven's glory not only of that which then was, but that ever shall be. They said that the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell; that God loved only Israel of all the nations that he had made; that the best of the serpents crushed, the best of the Gentiles killed. Through Jesus there is a place for all men in the family of God. (iii) Through Jesus both Jew and Gentile have the right of access to God. Blessed be God! Try it FREE right now! My life was ruled and dominated by the lust of my flesh and by the lust of my mind. The panoply is against Satan and not God. You have much about you that is lovely, but you have just begun to indulge in evil habits; you have not yet become the desperate sinner; you have not yet become altogether noxious in the eyes of other men; you are but beginning to sin, you are like the young man carried out on his bier; you have not yet become the confirmed drunkard; you have not yet begun to curse and blaspheme God; you are still accepted in good society; you are not yet cast out; but you are dead, thoroughly dead, just as dead as the third and worst case. Then, everything surprises you. How dies the wise man as a fool, this too is empty, it doesn't satisfy. Life sees no charm in death. There was a lot of things I didn't want to do. This clearly is of the deepest possible interest to the saints. Let us take a crude and imperfect analogy. Sin kills the will; the thing so grips a man that he cannot break free. The Holy Ghost gives us the certainty and joyful assurance of our place as saints; the Holy Ghost at the same time gives us the foretaste of the bright inheritance of God that lies beyond. We would probably rather resent being called hell-deserving sinners. There is, indeed, life, and energy, and motion. We wait for nothing greater nor its match; we await the results of this glorious power for the body and the creation; but we look for no new putting forth of power which can enter into competition with that which God has already shown in Christ. The result is that sin leaves a permanent effect on a man. But Jesus calls all sorts of people together. Stand, oh stand away from him. They had seen creation, and sung at the sight. The one was not at all, nor was the other in such sort before. We are by nature bond-slaves to sin and Satan. We remember with gratitude how people shared their faith with us so that we are no longer strangers and aliens. You can scarcely get hold of the idea; death doth such awful work with us, it is such a Vandal with this mortal fabric, it so rendeth to pieces this fair thing that God hath builded up, that we can scarcely bear to contemplate his works of ruin. But the Son being before the Father as His supreme object of love and delight from all eternity, to bring us as sons before Him was as much a part of His counsels as to make us partakers of divine nature. It is not now either sovereign love, or love of complacency. He gave Himself for us. Isaiah 59:1-2. The flesh is anything in us which gives sin its chance; it is human nature without God. There is a certain spiritual competence supposed, a due preparation not only of heart, but also of knowledge; or, as the apostle said, "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect," Here no lengthy exposition would be wanted about it, because they were not so infantine as to suppose that the truth of God depends on the number of times that a thing is asserted. (AM) 18For through him we both have access(AN) to the Father(AO) by one Spirit. As the Father is everlasting, so is the Son. I believe it to be true; and believing it to be true, I feel its living force upon my nature every day. It was all a known thing that they were blessed by yea, with Christ, forming a part of Christ, expressly fellow-heirs, and of the same body. We confess our praying to you, and ask for your Spirit to pray within us. Israel entered into a covenant with God by the sprinkling of the blood. How did Christ destroy them? InEphesians 1:1-23; Ephesians 1:1-23 he began with the Jews, and then showed the Gentiles brought in; but now he begins with the outer circle where the Gentiles were. Finally, there is the activity now for others, just as before there was dependence for ourselves. Sin is the failure to hit the target of life. But profound truths are for those who have spiritual understandings; and such do not require many words to comprehend them. hath he quickened, is not in the original text, but is supplied from Ephesians 2:5, where it will be met with and explained: here those who are quickened with Christ, and by the power and grace of God, are described in their natural and unregenerate estate. In 1871 one of these prohibiting tablets was actually discovered, and the inscription on it reads: "Let no one of any other nation come within the fence and barrier around the Holy Place. The Lord is close to everyone who calls upon God; God hears our cries and will save us. The miserable condition of the Ephesians by nature is here in part described. The mark of the pierced hand is on everything: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.". I spent my life trying to satisfy my fleshly desires.We read concerning Solomon the king, as he was trying to find meaning in life how that he pursued so many different directions. The Jews had rejected their own Messiah. Do a certain thing. You remember that our Saviour raised three dead persons; I do not find that during his lifetime he caused more than three resurrections. The fallen nature of man, which is dominated by his flesh, and thus is ruled by his fleshly desires. He's just sort of wandering, meandering. You have a wide range, for the life of God, his life in his new-born child, is the same life that is in every Christian. The first thing sin does is create a feeling of estrangement between us and God. Oh! We are his workmanship say some of the translations of Ephesians 2:10. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. It is not the source of the blessing (Ephesians 1:1-23); nor the place into which we are now brought as being made one with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-22); nor the objects to whom we are bearing testimony. 2. l Caphtor, fol. Neither in that blessed state in Christ, nor in the wretched condition mentioned here, is there any such thing as "being dead to sin" in the sense of exemption from the temptations to sin. Here the apostle would have Christ to be more the satisfying object of our affections. And then, as He begins to minister His truth to our heart, and He begins to really speak to us, they don't understand that thrill of God's Word really ministering to our lives and to the things of our lives. You don't know the heavenly Father. Impossible that the creature could be or do so; and therefore the creature is never said to be love. Note the difference: the young maiden's new life was given to her secretly. "Like trying to get an octopus into a paper bag." But I must add that we are also capable of acute pain to which we were strangers once. Once is enough for the intelligent. When two parties are at variance, the surest way to bring them together is through someone whom they both love. The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity transcends all their local and racial difference; it produces men who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces men who are one because they meet in the presence of God to whom they all have access. They have to be covered up in the tomb of secresy; for men would scout them from society, and hiss them from existence, if they knew all. No statement can be conceived more exact. X, p. 638. It is not Jesus' purpose, however, that we should turn all men into one nation, but that there should be Christian Indians and Christian Africans whose unity lies in their Christianity. So the apostle says, "You hath he quickened, who were dead in offences and sins;" for now we can bear to learn anything, however humiliating, and He can speak of anything, no matter how exalted or holy. Then we hear the particulars, and in a very orderly manner. Thus is touched, incidentally, the need of our souls as offenders against God, but only so far as to show that it was in no way overlooked. But God who is rich in His mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead has made us alive. for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins ( Ephesians 2:4-5 ). 2:11-12 So then remember, that once, as far as human descent goes, you were Gentiles; you were called the uncircumcision by those who laid claim to that circumcision which is a physical thing, and a thing produced by men's hands. 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