January 16, 2022 - Sunday Service Live Stream

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to the corporate worship of our God. Please stand. Call to worship today is drawn from Psalm 90, the prayer of Moses. Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth or you ever formed the earth in the world even from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn man to destruction and say return O children of men for a thousand years and your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night.

You carry them away like a flood they are like asleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up. In the morning it flourishes and grows up. In the evening it is cut down and withers. For we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath we are terrified.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins and the light of your countenance. For all our days have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are 70 years and if by reason of strength they are 80 years.

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow. For to soon cut off and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger for as the fear of you so is your wrath. So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Return O Lord how long and have compassion on your servants. O satisfy us early with your mercy that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days in which you have afflicted us.

The years in which we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants and your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands for us.

Yes establish the work of our hands. Please pray with me. Oh Father in heaven we have come to worship and bow down before you to kneel before you. For you O Lord are our maker. You are our God and we are the people of your pasture, the sheep of your hand.

We come to you today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the only mediator between God and man. He always lives to make intercession for us.

Through him O Lord we come boldly to your throne of grace. In his name we earnestly seek you. Our soul thirsts for you. Our flesh yearns for you like a dry and weary land where there is no water. We ask now that you would bow your heavens and come down.

Inhabit the praises of your people. Remember your promise O Spirit to be present in the midst of your worshiping people who gather in your name. Condescend to us. Grant us the joy of your fellowship. Speak to us through your word and be blessed by our praise and adoration.

We pray all these things in Jesus name. Please kneel for the confession of sin, the corporate confession of sin. Let us now confess our sin in unison. Gracious God we confess that we have longed too much for the comforts of this world.

We have loved the gifts more than the giver. In your mercy our shadows, but you are our substance. We believe in your forgiveness on the merits of Jesus Christ. Accept his worthiness for our unworthiness.

His sinlessness for our transgressions. His fullness for our emptiness. His glory for our shame. His righteousness for our dead works. His death for our life. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Please stand.

Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out. So that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Oh take heart people of God. If you be in Christ your sins are forgiven.

Amen. Please turn in the hymnal to number 295. Crown him with many crowns. 295.

For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest. Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a lamp that burns. The Gentiles shall see your righteousness and all kings your glory.

You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will name. You shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no longer be termed forsaken nor shall your land anymore be termed desolate.

But you shall be called Hepzibah and your land Beulah. For the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin so shall your sons marry you. And as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride so shall your God rejoice over you.

I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem. They shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord do not keep silent and give him no rest until he establishes, until he makes Jerusalem a praise on the earth and sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength.

Surely I will no longer give your grain as food for your enemies. And the sons of the foreigner shall not drink your new wine for which you have labored. But those who have gathered it shall eat it and praise the Lord.

Those who have brought it together shall drink it in my holy courts. Go through, go through the gates. Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway. Take out the stones. Lift up a banner for the people.

The Lord has proclaimed to the end of the world. Say to the daughter of Zion, surely your salvation is coming. Behold, his reward is with him and his work before him. And they shall call them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord.

And you shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let us confess our faith now in the singing of the Apostles' Creed.

Please turn in your hymnals to number 164.

We're continuing a kingly theme in our hymn singing in the month of January. Number 164.

Let us now pray together in unison.

Almighty and everlasting God, we your blessing for his sake we fulfill now. I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world, for the covenant Presbyterian denomination, for this church, and for all ministers and missionaries.

Pray for the church. I ask your prayers for the poor, the sick, the bereaved, the burdened, and for the widows, orphans, and prisoners. Pray for those in any need or trouble. I ask your prayers for those who do not know Christ and for those who seek a deeper knowledge of him.

Pray that they may find and be found by him.

Lord, hear our prayers.

This morning, those who have not yet come to know you, we pray, Father, that you would be a swift redeemer of your people, that those who do not know you would come to know you, and that they would desire only to love and serve you, and that they would become faithful servants of you.

We pray, Father, also for all of those who do know you. We pray that you would help them to know you more and more, that you would guide them in the way that they should go. You'd guide them toward people and churches that will grow them in their knowledge of you and their love for you.

And that in all things, that each and every one of us here today, that we would be constantly seeking out first your kingdom, and that we would always be seeking out to emulate your holiness before men.

It's in your name that we pray. Amen.

I ask your prayers for our children and future generations which will be born to them. Pray that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth through them.

Lord, hear our prayers.

Father, we're thankful that you richly give your people blessings. We ask that our children would succeed us in success, and that they would go farther than we have, and not remove them, and strive to honor you.

Pray that we may have grace to glorify Christ today. Lord, hear our prayers.

Father, grace is the greatest gift that you bestow upon us. It is that which brings us up out of our mire. It allows us to just come and worship you, and adore you, and to see you for who you are, God.

And I just pray that today that we revel in this fact, and in this love that you have given to us, and that from a God who will be renewed in you, and be able to just go forth into this world and be shining beacons for you.

Amen.

Please stand and take up the insert again for the Psalm of the Month. In Psalm 103, I want to encourage you this week, if you have not done so, to sing this privately and with your family, that it may be further burrowed into your heart, that you might call it to remembrance.

And we are singing it pretty well. Let's sing it with great joy.

The January Psalm of the Month, Psalm 103, included verse 11, 2 Corinthians.

This is God's holy and infallible word. Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality.

For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we should receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints.

And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and then to us by the will of God. So we urge Titus that as he had begun, so we'd also complete this grace in you as well. But as you abound in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all diligence, and in your love for us, see that you abound in this grace also.

I speak not by commandment, but I am testing the sincerity of your love by the diligence of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

And in this I gave advice, it is not to your advantage not only to be doing what you began or desiring to do a year ago, but now you also must complete the doing of it, that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion of what you have.

O great God, you have shown us wondrous love and grace. We thank you for practical instruction in the scripture that teach us how to live and how to glorify you and how to bless our brethren. I pray today, O Lord, that your people would just know how rich they are in Christ.

And as a result, new fruits of obedience and worship and praise and good works would flow out of this grace that you've shown upon us. And I ask all these things. Be seated. Reflecting on the message from last week, I was a little disappointed with my treatment or lack of full treatment on verse 9 and 10, and I'm going to spend most of the time today on that subject, particularly verse 9.

And I want you to be reminded of the context. We have been in a long series in 2 Corinthians prior to the holiday season, Thanksgiving, and Advent. But we have been going through 2 Corinthians, and it's been very rich to study Paul's defense of his apostolic authority because of all this rich doctrine, practical instruction comes to the surface as he deals with the issues of a local church, much like ours, no doubt, a little bigger than ours, but similar in problems.

We don't have some of the problems that Corinth had, but we have an acquaintance with the issues that are being brought to bear here. You'll remember from last week that Paul is eager for the Corinthians to participate fully in the relief of the Judean saints.

He was urging them, exhorting them, admonishing them to follow the example of the Macedonian churches. And those churches there in Macedonia did it under a great trial of affliction, our text says. They did it in the abundance of joy.

They did it beyond their ability, and they had this earnest desire to minister to the saints. Powerfully, last week we considered for some time that they entirely consecrated themselves to God. That was our hope from last week, that we too would be consecrated in that way.

And out of that consecration, their generosity was certainly the natural outworking of God's grace to them. If God's grace has come upon you, if his bright light has shone upon you, if you have known something of the goodness and mercy of God, you are changed, and new things begin to happen.

I want you to pay attention and look close again at verse 9 of chapter 8. It says, I'd like you to take up the hymnal and turn in the back to page 871. Instead of just quoting the Shorter Catechism, I thought it would be helpful for us to read it together and learn to see it with our own eyes.

Question 27 of the Shorter Catechism. It's on page 871 in the back of the hymnal. And there's something I'd like you to have in view in this. Christ's humility, his poverty, is, in our text, the source, the mechanism that God uses to make us abound and to be rich.

So today, we're going to fill a little bit of the void in our understanding of this. We're going to consider the humiliation of Christ very briefly here first. And then we're going to consider the surpassing richness of Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ.

And that's going to be the main idea of our discussion today in the message. Look at question 27. Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist? Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, and being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.

And now, question 28. Wherein consisteth Christ's exaltation? Christ's exaltation consisteth in his rising again from the dead on the third day, and ascending up into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and coming to judge the world at the last day.

Now, this is a very powerful concept, and what I'd like to point out as a way of introduction to where we're going to go with this, one of the thoughts I had in relation to this subject is this question.

Isn't part of the incarnation of Christ the idea that the heavenly and the spiritual has really come down, and that Christ's incarnation sanctifies the physical and the material? If we have been united to Adam and his sin and its consequences, which we certainly have, it would follow then that if we be united to Christ, something of that glorious, redeemed life that he has bestowed upon us transforms our physical and material life.

When we think about the exceedingly great riches, the unsearchable riches of Christ, we always spiritualize them, and always separate them from the real world. It becomes very internal. It is immensely spiritual to be made rich by Christ, and I'm going to hopefully point out some practical ways where that is true.

Please turn to the book of Ephesians, just a book over, books over, Galatians, Ephesians, and chapter 3. We're going to touch on a couple of verses here, so maybe put a little mark on where to come back to Ephesians later, most likely.

I want us to think about first, and the main point today, is the unsearchable riches of Christ. I think you'll see how this all ties into us contextually by the end. The unsearchable riches of Christ, Ephesians 3.

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which was given to me for you, how that by revelation he made known to me the mystery, as I have briefly written already, by which when you read you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets.

He's answering the question now, what is the mystery? Verse 6 tells us the answer, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ through the gospel, which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of his power.

Now listen to what Paul says about himself and what he preaches. Verse 8, to me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles. Children, what does it say?

What is he saying? The content of his message is going to be the unsearchable riches of Christ. And to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

Now, as Paul did for the Ephesians, so too Paul preached the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Corinthians. We've already established from last week they knew the grace of God. I have an interesting illustration that was originally pointed out by Thomas Brooks 400 years ago, basically, a long time ago.

And I'd like to talk to you and relate to you the idea of the inexhaustible riches of Christ. This is Brooks's illustration from a long time ago. The Spanish ambassador coming to see the treasury of St. Mark in Venice, which was famous throughout the world, fell a groping whether it had any bottom.

So he comes to a room and there's a lot of gold and silver and things, and he falls to the ground looking for the bottom of it and being asked why answered. And this, among other things, my great master's treasure differs from yours.

He's referring to the king of Spain. My treasure, my master's treasure is different than yours in that it has no bottom as I find yours to have. Here he is alluding to the mines of Mexico, Potosi, etc.

So what the Spanish ambassador says to this caretaker of St. Mark's treasury is, I can see the bottom of the gold. There's a floor, there's an end, there is a finiteness to the gold of your treasury. The illustration is certainly Christ's treasures have no bottom.

All his bags are bottomless. But scripture, history and experience do abundantly testify that men's bags, purses, coffers and mines may be exhausted or drawn dry. But Christ can never draw dry. Millions of thousands live upon Christ and he feels it not.

His purse is always full, though he is always giving. What an amazing concept to consider. So contextually, you'll remember that Paul is hoping that the Corinthians will participate in this ministry to the saints of Judea who are suffering a famine.

Interjecting into this idea, the riches of the people of God in Christ opens up this whole huge avenue for us to consider. What are the unsearchable riches of Christ? What are they? How do I know? Where do I find them?

What's the content of his great riches? Well, there's another helpful thing for us to consider along these lines. Let's turn to Matthew chapter 13. This is another little cog in our wheel that we're trying to put together here.

Matthew 13. Very quickly, what we're going to consider here. Go to the end of the chapter, verse 44. Again, this is Matthew 13, verse 44. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid.

And for joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. The second parable in this illustration. Again, verse 45. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls.

Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. How precious are the unsearchable riches of Christ? Time's not going to permit it, but Hosea points out that the idolaters use the wealth that comes from God himself to purchase their idols.

The very ground that we stand on belongs to our God and our king. All the cattle on a thousand hills. And that notion is all the cattle everywhere. They belong to the Lord. And the Lord is not only the creator and sustainer of all things.

We're going to learn in a minute. In Hebrews, he's the heir of all things. All of these things belong to him. Glories, mystery of mysteries. And he has wedded himself to you, the bride. So the unsearchable riches of Christ.

And we're going to spend the rest of our lives in eternity plumbing the depths of what that is. Because of our union with Christ, we are now partakers of the wealth of all that. We share in it because he's brought us into this covenant union with himself.

This is where we're operating from. So this is a lofty, grand idea. And you can see it's very practical import into a situation like we have in 2 Corinthians 8. If these things are true, certainly I can contribute to the Judean saints who are starving in a famine.

Well, let's turn to Hebrews in chapter 1. Thank you for being page turners today. Hebrews, chapter 1. Think about the honor and dignity of the Son. How he became poor. Think about the glory of Christ prior to his incarnation.

You think about his humiliation, which we talked a little bit about there in the confessional citation. And now, in his exaltation, he has all of his glory and all of his wealth. It's all in his possession.

That's the present reality today for Christ. Listen to Hebrews 1. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son.

Died with Adam, right? Adam was a representative. But there's a greater Adam. Listen to it. Think about your identity in union with Christ in light of this next phrase. He has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things.

Today, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, the Congo, and Africa, all of these are in the possession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every grain of sand belongs to him. All the stars in the sky twinkle at him and for him.

Our God has appointed Christ to be the heir of all things. I listened to a rabbi this week, as I sometimes do, trying to hear from other scholars about biblical texts, and he's disparaging Christianity.

He said, Jesus could not be God. God would not come in the flesh, is what this rabbi was so devastating to hear. So knowledgeable in the scriptures and denying who Christ is. Denying the very God he thinks he serves.

What does it say? Through whom also he made the worlds. Christ is the one who made the worlds. He's the heir of all things. He's preeminent over all things. The fullness of his riches belongs to you as the people of God.

It should change the way we live and walk around, and the boldness and the courage and the confidence we have in him. Description is reminiscent of John 1, that great prologue to the gospel, verse 3. Who being the brightness of his glory, referring to Christ, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance a more excellent name than they.

He's made a little lower than the angels in his humiliation, but now he's exalted. The heir of all things, the creator and sustainer of all things, the one who holds it all together, the one who made the worlds.

It's the start of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Verse 5. You are my son, today I have begotten you. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says,.

Let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels, he says,. Who makes his angel spirits and his ministers a flame of fire? But to the son, he says,. What an amazing statement. Forty five. Your throne, oh, God, is forever and ever.

Mary's son. God, the father, says to him,. Your throne, oh, God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your God, Has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companion.

Again, children, listen. Referring to Christ. Using the covenant name of God in reference to him. You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth. And the heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but you remain. They will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak. You will fold them up and they will be changed. But you are the same. And your years will not fail. Sometimes I'm asked why I'm a post-millennialist.

And this verse will give you some clues as to. So you are millennialists. Abraham, listen.

Pay attention.

But to which of the angels has he ever said. Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies. Your footstool. This is all his. This all belongs to him. And the simple yet profound truth is. You too belong to him in a way that's different than just the created order.

You're the redeemed in Christ. You're the ones who are the objects of his affection. You're the ones who are now seeing and being revealed. What's being revealed to you is the unsearchable riches of Christ.

I want you to imagine for another illustration. That you and I have been bequeathed each of us. A sizable piece of property. And we learn that our benefactor, who is the Lord himself, has put gold. All under the dirt.

In the ground. Under the rocks. Under that field. And he says to us. I have given you the field. The wealth and the riches of the field are yours. Now you have to go and dig it up. You have to discover it.

You have to create a refinery where you can burn off the dross. That the pure gold might be there. There is a limitless bottom to my blessing and my treasures. And it is yours for the taking. Now go out.

And mine it. Go out and dig it up. Brethren, that's what we're doing. You and I are seeing all the precious jewels. We pull a shovel, a spade full of dirt off the topsoil. And there are some diamonds.

And there are some rubies. And there are some emeralds. And we scoop them up. And we realize under there is onyx and silver and gold. You and I hold up this scripture. And every day we get into it. And more of the treasures and riches are being revealed to us.

Page after page. Jot after tittle. We are being exposed more and more to the unsearchable riches of Christ. This is what has been given to you. Back to our context. The Corinthians are much wealthier.

They're middle class and upper middle class in comparison to the Macedonians. And they had an idea, we will remember from the week prior. The first Corinthians, they had already started talking about giving to this project of relieving the Judean saints.

This famine lasts for a long time. There's a lot of offerings that need to be taken. But apparently they don't go through with it. They don't finish the job. It takes us to the second point I have today.

And that is you have been made rich in Christ. You've been united to Christ. The unsearchable riches of Christ. You have access to the depths that cannot be plumbed. You've been given a road map and a scuba tank and a snorkel and a mask.

You've been given the ability to go down and see what all of these things are. What are you going to do with your wealth? I don't feel like I have a lot of wealth. You see the lack. You see the sin in your life.

You see the deficiency. You see maybe a lack of knowledge or understanding in some of these things. What should you do with your wealth? Well, first you should worship. You should bow down on your knees and give thanks to the God who has included you in this wondrous endeavor to redeem men and to make them joint heirs with Christ.

You should be more obedient. As last week I challenged you. What area are you not being obedient in? And repent of that. And start being obedient today. These two categories of love for God and love for others.

Plenty of work to do there. And when you've sinned and you've fallen short of your higher calling, what should you do? You should repent. Each of us should be repenting daily, multiple times a day, turning away from our sin.

And do we believe that we found treasure in a field? Do we believe that we have the pearl of great price? And it would seem to me that evangelism and the proclamation of the gospel would be very natural and ordinary and common.

It should be ever on our lips, speaking the praises of Christ and what he's done for us. Should we have now a life of service where we're seeing and looking for ways that we might be a blessing to Christ and his body, that we might serve the church in our vocations and callings?

Are we desiring to live productive lives for his glory? It would seem to me these would be appropriate responses to great wealth. Now, the question we have to ask, I had a little discussion with my children recently about this.

Do we actually believe that Christ is the greatest treasure? Abraham quoted my favorite verse in the Bible. Abraham, I am your shield. I am your exceedingly great reward. Do we believe that? Intellectually, we all believe it.

Theologically, we all believe it. But now, it now has to turn into praxis. We have to live as though Christ is our greatest treasure, not some other things. That we find our greatest delight and joy in him.

We don't have Christ that we might get gold and silver. We found something better than gold and silver. We found and been united to Christ. It's far better than all these other earthly pursuits that we get entangled in.

So the question is, do you believe you're rich in Christ? And if you've been made rich in Christ, what are you going to do with your wealth? Well, as I mentioned, I think we tend to spiritualize all these things and detach it from ordinary life.

There are evidences that our richness in Christ is spiritual, but it is evidenced tangibly. There's something tangible about peace with God. It's not just in the clouds. It's not in the ether. It's not just that.

There's something about peace with God. There's something about joy in the Holy Spirit. There's something tangible about that. There's something about having a God-glorifying purpose. Whatever you do as a child of God, your pants weighed down with the wealth of Christ's riches, knowledge, wisdom, righteousness, you have a God-glorifying purpose to fulfill in whatever vocation it is that you're in, whatever your calling is.

What about fellowship with the saints? There's something tangible about it. Today, I will sit on the porch in the back of the church, and I will be nourished and enriched by the fellowship of my brethren.

I will sit across the table and share a meal with people whom I love and adore. There's something tangible and real and physical about that. What about the grace of God who gives you a very godly wife, a very godly husband?

What about the grace of God on display, the unsearchable riches of having children to pour into and to shape and to teach and to disciple and to lead that they may know the unsearchable riches of Christ and their children may know the unsearchable riches?

We're going to say, kids, we have the back 40, which God has given to us. I, for now, 50 years have been digging in the shovel on this land. Grab a shovel and let's unearth more and more of the glorious, unsearchable riches of Christ.

And you're going to get your kids to do this as well. And he puts us together in a fellowship of believers called the church, and we together in our collective fields unearth more and more of the unsearchable Christ.

What about the wisdom he grants to us to discern the right path from the wrong, to see the evil behind the veneer of the flash and the shine, to see the reality of things in Christ? There's something tangible.

What about a different kind of appreciation for a beautiful material world, which Christ created for his glory? A sunset this morning before dawn, a dark red sky which says to the sailors, there's trouble, don't go on the ocean today.

All of this speaks to the glory of God. The Christian sees the world, experiences the world, smells and tastes the world differently because the riches of Christ have been exposed and revealed to them.

The fish in the sea, the stars in the skies, and gifts. We think about spiritual gifts, but there are also material gifts. And everyone in here, it's so fun to get to know you and to learn about you. Every one of you has incredible material gifts and the ability to create and build things for the glory of God.

There are things you can do that I could never do. It's amazing to me that God equips us and gives us all of these graces, not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts that we might build and reflect the glory of the unsearchable riches.

Well, time's short. The last thing I'd like to ask you, there's only two options. As I mentioned, the celebrities who worship Satan and the athletes who spend all their wealth on women and wine and their pleasures, they're thieves.

All of the wealth belongs to him.

It's all his.

We're all stewards. We're either a steward or we're thieves.

That's it.

Maybe vandals. Stewards, thieves, and vandals. That's all we can be. So I think we should be stewards of the good gifts. Positionally, you are stewards. You know it to be true, but practically, are you living your life as though you recognize who Christ is and who you are in him and all that he owns and all that he possesses and all that he has bestowed on you because of his grace?

That would be life-changing if we were to live as though we really believed it. Finally, isn't it something that the church is referred to as the body of Christ? I had the Lemke's up here a couple weeks ago for their time of membership before the baptism service.

I said something to the effect that you are uniting yourself not just to an idea but to some real people, tangible, physical, breathing sinners. Who make up the body of Christ. Isn't it something that the one who possesses all things makes us so close to him, unites himself to us so intimately that he calls us his body.

And then, out of his great love for us, he feeds us himself, essentially. He gives himself entirely to us that we might be entirely given. So I hope this starts something in your mind about finding the rare and precious jewels of who Christ is.