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Podcast for Meadowbrooke Church

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Podcast for Meadowbrooke Church

    What Can be Worse Than Death?

    What Can be Worse Than Death?

    Well, we have arrived at Ephesians 2, and the very first thing we are told is that the Christian was once dead. I love the irony in the fact that we are entering Ephesians 2 on the day where all of us are suffering from one less hour of sleep this morning (Daylight Savings Time). So, what I thought I would do before we plunge ourselves into our passage this morning is to first reflect on four of the weirdest ways people have died.


    For those of you who are still angry that you lost an hour of your sleep, just know that it is a miracle you made it this morning. It is estimated that 450 people die falling out of bed every year.



    According to statistics, you are twice as likely to die from an angry vending machine than a hungry shark.



    It is reported that about 24 people die annually from being hit by champagne corks in the face, mostly at weddings. Less people die from poisonous spiders than flying corks from champagne bottles!



    The weirdest death I learned about was that of Joao Maria de Souza of Brazil, who was killed in 2013 when a cow fell through his roof and crushed him while he slept.


    Whether it is by falling out of a bed, a falling cow through your roof, or the inevitable and eventual failing of your health, all of us are going to die one day.

    What does Dead Mean?
    I do not need to spend a whole lot of time explaining what dead means. The word the apostle Paul used from the original language means exactly what the word dead means. If you are confused as to what the word for dead (nekros) means, it means this: no longer having life. However, why does the apostle Paul use the word dead to describe who or what the Christian used to be? Paul could have said, you were sick in your offenses and sins. He could have chosen the words, handicap, wounded, or he even could have used the same line from The Princess Bride, which was: mostly dead. The difference between dead and mostly dead is that when you are mostly dead, you are slightly alive. Of all the words the apostle could have used, he chose the word, dead. What if Ephesians 2:1-4, stated this instead? And you were mostly dead in your offenses and sins. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were barely alive in our wrongdoings, made us completely alive together with Christ. But that is not how Ephesians 2 begins is it?

    To understand what Paul means by the word dead we need to go to the place the apostle pulled the word from in the Bible, and that place is found in Genesis. You remember the story; in the beginning, even when, the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1-2). Then, after all but mankind was created, on the sixth day God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness (1:26). God created mankind above and separate from the rest of creation, for unlike the rest of creation, mankind was created in His image: So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth (vv. 27-28).

    It is from Genesis 2:15-17 that Paul pulls the word dead from to explain what the Christian once was: Then the LordGod took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die. The Hebrew word used for die (מות) in Genesis 2:17 means death, and every other time the word is used, it is used for death.

    When we come to Genesis 3 and Adam and Even

    Greater than the Power of 300 Billion Suns

    Greater than the Power of 300 Billion Suns

    Two Thursdays ago, my wife and I left our home around 8AM for a doctors appointment in Colorado. Every time I get into our Subaru Outback, I plug my phone into our car so that I can use my maps app and listen to my favorite playlist during my drive, our drive down to Colorado on Thursday was no exception until about 15 minutes into our drive the radio let out a irritating high pitched sound prohibiting me from listening to my newly downloaded navigation voice from one of my favorite movies of all time: Po, from Kung Fu Panda. We have a 2021 Subaru Outback, there was no reason for the audio to have abruptly stop working, but it did. However, nearly an hour later, after stopping for a pit stop, the audio mysteriously was fixed as soon as I started the car to continue our trip to our doctors appointment.

    After we reached our destination, I immediately google searched on my phone to see if anything weird happened that would cause the audio in our car to do what it did. Here is what popped up in my search: Two outbursts from the sun occurred as widespread cellphone outages were reported throughout the United States on Thursday morning (Feb. 22). I am not sure it is related, but on Sunday we learned that all but four of our brand-new pagers stopped working over the weekend, our live stream audio stopped working properly, and a sim card in one of our Elders phones weirdly got fried.Thats not all, on Monday while checking out from Albertsons, I was told that they were having trouble with their computers.

    Now, I dont know if any of this is related or if it has anything to do with Solar flares or the mysterious balloon that happened to be floating 43,000 feet above, the mountainous Western United States. Here is what did come to mind though: Our electrical grid is fragile, and it is vulnerable. With all our military might and power as a nation, we are not in control! I dont know what happened on Thursday, but here is what was reported in New Delhi, India just this past Wednesday (2.28.2024) on WION with the news caption: Massive sunspot wider than Earth is now aiming directly at us. Is it cause for worry?
    Recently, scientists noticed that a hyperactive sunspot, first detected on February 18, is now swelling at a faster rate and is pointed right towards Earth. In 2024, the biggest sunspot named AR3590 first appeared on February 18, on the Suns Earth-facing side. It quickly started swelling into a dark patch, much wider than our planet.

    On February 21, AR3950 spit out a pair of X-class solar flares, which are known as the most powerful type of solar flare, with magnitudes of X1.7 and X1.8. On February 22, the same sunspot released a massive X6.3 flare, the most powerful solar explosion recorded in over six years.

    All three flares caused temporary radio blackouts on Earth, but none of them launched coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are clouds of magnetized plasma that can ram into Earth's magnetic shield as they fly through space.[1]

    We are fragile and we are not in control! You, dear friend, are fragile and have little to say over whether or not you will survive the next 24 hours. Consider that reality against the backdrop of the fragility of your faith and determination to live a life pleasing to the One who made the sun, and billions like it, that has the power to wipe out all of Earths power grid in seconds. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light (Gen. 1:1-3).

    Christian, the same God who spoke into existence more than 300 billion suns like ours, is the One of whom we are told in Holy Scripture, has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). This is the God who called you, redeemed you, and sealed you. This is the God wh

    The Three What’s of the Christian Life

    The Three What’s of the Christian Life

    Let me begin by stating some truths about what it means to be a Christian that most of you already know: because you are in Christ, you are a son/daughter of the almighty God (v. 5), you are forgiven (v. 7), you are a new creation (vv. 9-10), and you have a glorious inheritance waiting for you that will never fade with time, can never be destroyed, and will forever be untouched by sin (v. 11; see also 1 Pet. 1:3-5). If you are a Christian, your reality and identity include all things made new (Rev. 21:1-5), all things for your good (Rom. 8:28-30), and all things for Gods glory! If you are a Christian, the God of Isaiah 46:9-11 is for you and not against you, for He has declared: For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My plan will be established, and will accomplish all My good pleasure. When it comes to your struggle(s) in living out the Christian faith, it has more to do with a lack of knowledge of who you are in Christ or an ignored knowledge of who you are in Christ.

    All of what we have read and studied in Ephesians 1:1-14 can only be true of you if verses 15-17 are true of you: For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. The four character traits Paul lists in these verses are true of those who have been saved and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ:


    A faith that is IN Jesus.
    A loyalty to the LORDSHIP of Jesus.
    A LOVE for those who belong to Jesus.
    A pursuit to KNOW Jesus.


    Two Types of Knowing for the Christian
    Now, I want to show you something that I did not have the time to show you last week, but you need to give me a little space to geek out a bit over two different words that Paul uses in the original language (Greek) that you cannot see in your English Bible; all that you see in your Bible is the word, knowledge (v. 17), and know (v. 18). The word for knowledge in verse 17 is ginōskō, and I made a big deal over that word for good reason. The knowledge of Jesus that Paul refers to in verse 17 is the kind of discovery that involves more than your mind, for it includes the experience of your whole person and is the kind of knowledge that is relational.

    The second Greek word for know is used in verse 18, and that word is oida. This kind of knowing can be experiential, but it is also a cognitive awareness of something or someone with certainty; it is the same word Paul used for know in 2 Timothy 1:12, For this reason I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know [oida] whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him until that day. In the case of Ephesians 1:18 and 2 Timothy 1:12, you cannot have oida unless you have a relationship (ginōskō) with Jesus. Let me say what I just said differently for clarity: The kind of knowing Paul is praying for in verses 18-19 by way of the enlightened eyes of your heart cannot be experienced unless you ginōskō (know) Jesus (v. 17). In other words, there is no life-giving calling from God (vv. 3-6), no belonging to God (vv. 7-12), and no resurrection power from God apart from knowing Jesus.

    Illustrations tend to fall short when it comes to explaining who God is or the dynamics of what it means to know Him. However, when it comes to what Paul means by the eyes of your heart the best illustration I can think of for what he wanted these Christians to discover is the experience Roimaw and I had when we decided to have children. There was a difference between knowing Nathan with the first store-bought pregnancy test that was positive, and the first images we saw of him on the ultrasound.

    You Were Saved to Know Jesus

    You Were Saved to Know Jesus

    There is a story about a baby eagle who fell out of his nest and into a chicken coop. As the little eagle grew up, he began to cluck like a chicken, strut like a chicken, think like a chicken. But every day he noticed the eagles soaring high in the sky, always sensing that he was meant for something more than the chicken coop, but never realizing who he really was. The difference between the eagles that soared and the one living in the chicken coop was his understanding of who he really was. I think the Christian can go through life in the same way.

    I said at the beginning of our series in Ephesians that Pauls epistle answers two questions for us: 1) What does it mean to be a Christian, and 2) what does it mean to be the Church. When it comes to your identity as a Christian, some of you may be living like you belong in the chicken coop.

    Think about what it means to be a Christian according to Ephesians 1:3-14. You, Christian, have all the spiritual blessings listed throughout Pauls magnificent sentence of more than 200 words! You, Christian, have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (v. 4). You, Christian, have been predestined to be the adopted son/daughter of the living God through the redemption of Jesus Christ (vv. 5-7). You, Christian, have been completely pardoned of past, present, and future sins only because of the grace of God that has been lavished upon you as a result of the Fathers wrath that was lavished upon the Son for all of our wrongdoings (Eph. 1:8; 2:1-4). You, Christian, have an inheritance that will not fade with time, cannot be destroyed, and will never be stained by sin (v. 11). You, Christian, have been sealed by Gods Spirit as His guarantee of salvation that will be completed and the full experience of all Gods blessings that you will receive (vv. 13-14). You, Christian, are loved by the God of Isaiah 46:9-11, and you are the beneficiary of all His good pleasure.

    Christian, you were saved not for the sake of being saved, not for the forgiveness of your sins, not for a pain-free eternity in heaven, not for loved ones who preceded you in death, or for any other reason but for the purpose of knowing Christ, and by knowing Christ, you can know God. I can say this because of the first three words in Ephesians 1:15-23, which state the reason for why Paul prays, what Paul prays, and how Paul can pray for the Christians in Ephesus, and those three words are: For this reason

    Now, I know that these verses teach us something about how we can structure our prayers. I believe that the way Paul expressed his thanksgiving for the Ephesian Christians and why and how he prayed for them can serve as a model for how we can structure our prayers for one another, but that is not how I want to use our time this morning. What I want to do with our time together is glean what we learn from these verses.

    Why Paul Prays for the Christians (vv. 15-17)
    How do you follow one of the most majestic statements about the salvation of lost humanity found in Ephesians 1:1-14? You do it with Ephesians 1:15-23. The apostle Paul begins, For this reason. For what reason, Paul? For the reason contained in the over 200 words that make up Ephesians 1:1-14. For the reason that the Christian has been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (v. 4). For the reason that the Christian has been predestined to be the adopted child of God the Father through the redemption of Jesus the Son (vv. 5-7). For the reason that the Christian has been fully pardoned of past, present, and future sins because of Jesus (Eph. 1:8; 2:1-4). For the reason that the Christian has an inheritance that will not fade with time, cannot be destroyed, and will never be stained by sin (v. 11). For the reason that the Christian has been sealed by the Holy Spirit as Gods guarantee of salvation and redemption that will one day be fully complete (vv. 13-14). For all of these reasons is the reason the apostle wr

    The Assurance of Our Salvation

    The Assurance of Our Salvation

    Before we can jump into Ephesians 1:13-14, I must address what or who it is that Paul is talking about in these verses. Until you understand what or who the apostle is talking about in these verses, you cannot understand or feel the gravity of Ephesians 1:13-14 upon your life. So, to feel the full weight of these verses, permit me to introduce you to the Holy Spirit.

    The first time we are introduced to the Holy Spirit is in Genesis 1:1-2 with these words: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for Spirit is raḥ, which can also mean wind or breath, but when used in association with God, it often refers to the Holy Spirit, not as a thing or a characteristic like love or holiness, but a person. This same word is used in Ezekiel 36: And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances (v. 27). So, when we read through the Bible what we discover about the Holy Spirit is exhaustive.

    Of the Holy Spirit, we discover that He is the giver of life (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6; 104:27-30). As the giver of life, He raised Jesus from the grave on the third day and will give life to the body of every person who is joined to Him by faith, through a physical resurrection like the one Jesus experienced (see Rom. 8:11). As the giver of life, He caused Mary to conceive with the incarnation of Jesus (Luke 1:35, 41-42). The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus before He performed any miracle, after He was baptized by John, as a way of giving life and power to His earthly ministry; it is important to note that at Jesus baptism all three persons were present and witnessed: After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him, and behold, a voice from the heavens said, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matt. 3:16-17; see also Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32).

    Throughout the Bible, what we discover is that the Holy Spirit sustains and empowers the people of God to do the work of God. The Holy Spirit indwelled and led Israel out of the slavery of Egypt into the wilderness (Isa. 63:11-14), the Holy Spirit empowered Israels judges after they entered the promised land (i.e. Judges 6:34), and anointed Israels kings to lead the nation (i.e. 1 Sam. 9:27-10:1; 16:1, 13). From the beginning Gods plan was to do the same not just for a select few, but for all of His people as foretold in Joel 2:28-29, It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days (Joel 2:2829).

    Gods promise from the beginning was that a deliverer would come, and that deliver was God in the person of Jesus the Son; this is the great theme of the Bible. This is why the Bible declares: For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you was not yes and no, but has been yes in Him. For as many as the promises of God are, in Him they are yes; therefore through Him also is our Amen to the glory of God through us (2 Cor. 1:19-20). In other words, there is no pouring out of the Holy Spirit apart from the redemption that can only come through the shed blood of the Son of God for, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Eph. 1:7).

    Against the backdrop of all we have considered so far, I want you to listen to Ephesians 1:13-14, for it will help you feel the weight of these verses for your life today: In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvationhaving also believe

    The Three R’s in God’s Salvation Plan

    The Three R’s in God’s Salvation Plan

    What does it mean to be saved? When sharing the gospel with people, we often focus on getting them to decide to follow Jesus which often is concluded with a prayer where the person acknowledges some form of allegiance to Jesus as his or her savior. In sharing the gospel, we rightly focus on the need for a person to believe and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins because after all, the Bible does say: if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation (Rom. 10:9-10). However, biblical salvation and what it means to be saved is so much more than the forgiveness of your sins.

    There are over two hundred words in the apostle Pauls long sentence that makes up Ephesians 1:1-14; within these verses we discover what it means to be a Christian. When it comes to what it means to be saved, Paul shares with us the role of a God who is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When it comes to the salvation of our souls, we discover that the Father planned our salvation (vv. 3-6), the Son provided our salvation (vv. 7-12), and the Holy Spirit applied our salvation (vv. 13-14). It is in Ephesians 1:7-12 that we now turn our attention where we discover the three Rs of what it really means to be saved, and the three Rs are redemption, regeneration, and reconciliation. It is my hope this morning that by plumbing the depths of these very rich verses, that you will discover that your salvation is so much more than the forgiveness of your sins.

    Because you are in Christ, you are saved! But what does it mean to be saved? That is the question I hope to answer with the time that we have left.

    Gods Plan for Redemption is by Jesus (vv. 7-8a)
    To be saved is to be redeemed. To be redeemed is to be ransomed. And for the Christian, to be ransomed is to be freed from the captivity and slavery of sin; to redeem something is to reclaim or take back something that has been taken away or is held captive. One person said of redemption, Sin (both our personal sin and the sin nature we inherited from Adam) takes away the righteousness God intended to characterize our lives and holds us hostage to Satans purposes.[1] How was this redemption accomplished? Through, His blood. Not through your pedigree, not through your religious devotion, not through your Christian upbringing, and not by showing up to Church today, but through his blood you have been redeemed. No, your redemption is owed to one person through one act, and that one person is Jesus and His one act was His death upon a cross for all your sins.

    There are three Greek words used in the New Testament for redemption. The first word is the Greek word, agorazōand means to buy or to buy in a marketplace. When used in the context of Jesus death, it refers to the price he paid for our salvation, and what it cost Him was His own life. The second Greek word used for redemption is closely related to agorazō and that word is exagorazō, which means to buy out of the marketplace; it is the kind of purchasing that once purchased, that thing or person might never return to the marketplace again. When Jesus died for our sins, both words are used to describe what it was that He accomplished upon the Cross:
    Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought [agorazō] for a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Cor. 6:1920)

    Christ redeemed [exagorazō] us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for usfor it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree (Gal. 3:13)

    Now, when it comes to what Christ accomplished on the cross, He purchased us as His own (agorazō) and He purchased us from the slave market sin (exagorazō), and Paul no doubt looks back on both of these ways in which Christ

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