Andrew Fountain - His great love with which he loved us
- Artist: Andrew Fountain
- Title: His great love with which he loved us
- Album: Newlife Church, Toronto
- Track: 3
- Genre: Ephesians
- Year: 2012-10-14
- Length: 37:15 minutes (14.92 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 56Kbps (CBR)
Full sermon notes - Ephesians pt3: His Great Love
- First a summary of last time:
- I’m going to just quickly go through some Scriptures about this power
- First to show that the Spirit is in all Christians
- Not to say we are all “filled with the Spirit” —the subject for another day
- But every Christian is born again by the Spirit who lives in them, as Paul says:
- Now we will look at a couple of passages in Ephesians that clearly state that the power of the Spirit is really available to us:
- Does everyone agree that lack of power is a common problem?
- We don’t experience victory in our lives over the old way of living.
- How do we access this power?
- Ideas?
- e.g. dishes
- e.g. I’ll make a confession to you—If I have something stressful to do, I think “I’ll have a quick game of solitaire first”
- And then I get distracted with something else and the stressful thing gets put off till tomorrow
- But if I say “God, do you want me to play solitaire right now...” usually I don’t even have to ask, I know the answer
- So the question comes down to a choice—do I surrender?
- e.g. do I phone that awkward person
- This is what you want me to do, so I trust you will give me the power as I step out in it
Explanation from Scripture
- Something in you knows what Jesus would do in this situation
- It is the new self, in the likeness of Jesus
- Used to be very shy, and still have trouble making smalltalk
- Worst possible thing for me was to talk to a visitor after church
- I just surrender to Jesus, and actually it’s not nearly as hard as I thought
- It seems like this is some alien power that is within us!
- Actually it is the new us but because it is totally a gift, we don’t even get merit points for it because it’s no credit to us
- Eph 4:9 said that we can’t boast (previous slide)
- How do we access this power? —surrendering
- My problem is that I forget about this new way of living and realize I have been slipping back into the old for a few hours
- Presenting yourself as a slave sounds pretty much like surrendering
- Not a negative connotation, but a totally devoted and loyal servant
- Big picture—jigsaw puzzle
- Get focussed on the wrong part
- Power, love and destiny
- He is going to unpack this last bit to say that the church is the new body that God lives in, the new temple
- The purpose of the power is this new relationship with Christ in us
- The purpose of this new relationship is that we become the dwelling place of God
- So let’s look at the new relationship:
Ephesians 2:1–10
- And you being dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience,
- among whom also we all once lived in the desires of our flesh doing the wishes of the flesh and of the thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath as also the rest.
- But God being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us,
- 5even being dead as we were in transgressions,
- made us alive with Christ—by grace you have been saved!—
- 6and raised us up with him
- and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
- that he might show in the ages to come the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.
- For by the grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you , of God is the gift; 9it is not from works, so no one may boast.
- For his work are we, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that in them we might walk.
Version: NET Bible
- Notice the time: before and after, once and now
- Notice this world vs age to come
- We have actually been re-created as something new
- Union with Christ
- We are JOINED to Christ.
- Brothers and sisters, we are joined to him if we are Christians.
- United. Inseperable. He in us and us in him.
- Ex of helicopter rescue from ship off Cornwall
- moment is when man is joined to rope.
- This is a precious truth. One that we should take home with us and think often about,
- till its sweetness begins to take hold of our heart.
- George Muller was transformed by this
- But are you joined to Christ?
- I am a new creation? (although there is a battle)
- I am stuck in the old
- Ask him—it is a free gift
Updated on 2013-01-17 by Andrew Fountain
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