Identity

Welcome/Intro

Hey - welcome to Prairie Lakes and…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hey: no better way to kick off the first Sunday of 2024 than being together, at church, with each other, and with God and his Word. Good job.

I’m sure the holiday season of 2023 brought a mix of things your way—but I do hope that there were some good things in that mix, and that you got a little time off, maybe did a little traveling, some time with family and friends, and hopefully some time reflecting on just how good God has been.

WHICH… I want to do for a little bit here as we start not only this part of our service but this part of our year together: reflect a little bit on just how good God has been to us at Prairie Lakes.

So, first:

Back in the very beginning of December, you might remember me putting a sobering dollar amount up on the screen: $190,000. That was the amount of revenue we fell short in the previous month—in November. A good chunk of that was due to a lot of us being a little slow to make the switch over to our new giving system.

Well, I have some good news:

We had a strong December, and were able to play a little bit of catch up, even.

Now, I don’t want this to turn into a financial report here, because it’d take awhile. And we still have quite a few headwinds financially, even with a good December.

Nevertheless:

So many of you pushed through and made the switch in December—and not only that, but also decided that you were going to give over and above at year end to help us keep moving forward with the mission. Thanks for being obedient. God is faithful. And we’re grateful.

That’s the first thing. Here’s the second:

Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve.

Let’s do Christmas Eve “by the numbers:”

START TV SLIDE

24

END TV SLIDE

Across Iowa and online, we held 24 Christmas Eve services. So cool—and so mind blowing.

And here’s why we share that number:

Our own ego. Just makes us feel good about… us.

Here’s what is so cool about that number to me:

It opens my eyes to how many opportunities we have to impact people literally across 1/3 of our state and beyond.

That’s a big, wide, kingdom net.

And it gets better:

START TV SLIDE

24

5894

END TV SLIDE

That is the amount of adults and kids who attended one of those 24 services. Around 400 or so of those are online views—single IP addresses which we know very likely have more than just one person watching. So, safe to assume that we reached over 6,000 people with those services.

Next one:

START TV SLIDE

24

5894

2000/762

END TV SLIDE

Part of the reason we made a switch in our financial system is that we made a switch in our databasing system. And the reason we did that was that our new system allowed for us to do silly but cool things like integrate with text-in polls.

If you came to one of our Christmas Eve services, you were invited to vote on your favorite Christmas movie by texting in. And 2,000 of us participated (including me, around 5 times).

Well…

762 of those numbers are numbers we did not have in our database.

And so we were able to text them a “thank you” for coming to the service, as well as an invite to our services this weekend. Which is awesome.

But of all of those numbers, here’s my favorite one of all:

START TV SLIDE

91

END TV SLIDE - PLEASE KEEP THIS ON THE SCREEN

We had 91 people fill out a card, give us their name and number so that we could reach out to them, and tell us that they stepped across the faith line, confessed and believed, and started to follow Jesus.

God reached 91 people at Prairie Lakes, at Christmas Eve, and made them his sons and his daughters. God’s family got 91 people bigger.

So:

Praise God. And good job. Good job praying, good job inviting, good job showing up. And look at what God can do with just a little bit of faith and a little bit of obedience.

Alright. That’s as good of segue as any to what we’re talking about this weekend.

As we launch into 2024, we’re kicking off a new series at Prairie Lakes where we’ll be walking through the book of Ephesians, chapter-by-chapter. That’s where we’re gonna be—the book of Ephesians. So go ahead and navigate to Ephesians in your Bibles if you brought one. We’ve got them in the seats as well if you want to follow along. Also on the screen for you.

But we’re calling the series “Everything is Different.” Everything is Different.

For 91 people, Christmas Eve 2023 will forever be the day where everything is different. If you were one of those 91 people who stepped across the faith line a couple of weeks ago, everything is now different for you.

Here’s why, and here’s how. Take a look at Ephesians 1 with me, starting in verse 13:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”

END TV SLIDE

That’s what it meant for you to cross that line of faith.

First, you “heard the gospel.” Your ears listened to the message about Jesus—who he was and what he came to earth to do.

But you didn’t just hear it—you believed it.

You believed that God sent Jesus to earth. You believed that Jesus came to make a way back to God by dying on the cross for your sin. You confessed that your sin separated you from God, but that because of Jesus and his death on the cross, your sin was paid for and no longer stands in the way. And you believed that what Jesus did for you made all the difference. Everything is different.

And now, just like Ephesians describes it: you are now God’s possession. You’re his. He’s got you.

In fact, he’s marked you—tattooed you, so to speak—by putting his Holy Spirit in you for the rest of your days on this earth, until one day your redemption from the power of sin is complete. It’s guaranteed.

For 91 of you, Christmas Eve was the day that everything changed. Everything is now different. Because in Christ and your belief in him, God began a process in you to make you different that he will be sure to complete.

And it gets even better. Same chapter, chapter 1, but jump back to verse 3 with me. Here’s what else is different for you in Jesus when you believe in him and what he’s done for you:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

END TV SLIDE

Every spiritual blessing. Like what? Verse 4:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”

END TV SLIDE

If you’ve been following Jesus for just a couple weeks, this is pretty fresh for you, because you just experienced this. When you confessed your sin and the need it created for Jesus, but then put your trust in what he did on the cross for you, you probably felt it: you felt washed clean. You felt his peace. You stopped trying to hide or pretend that you were ok or good enough. You surrendered to your need for Jesus and what he did for you.

That’s what this verse is describing: in God’s sight, because of what Jesus has done for you and your belief in him, you are holy—which means you’re different, set apart. AND, you are blameless—meaning God doesn’t hold your sin against you, but has instead considered all of it… past, present, and future…paid for.

And this is what God chose. It didn’t happen by accident. You didn’t sneak in or stumble in. Maybe you felt like you did. But you didn’t; not really, anyways. Jesus happened to you because God wanted him to happen to you!

Verse 5:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:5–6 “In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

END TV SLIDE

Adoption to sonship. Let me talk to you about this for a second.

The book of Ephesians was originally a letter that a man named Paul wrote to all of the Christian churches in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus, like most big cities 2,000 years ago, was established and governed by the Roman Empire. And so this phrase, “adoption to sonship,” is actually a Roman legal term that Paul commandeers and uses to describe something that is true for those of us who have put our trust in Jesus.

Here’s what it means:

It means that you have the full legal rights of a son or a daughter, including the rights to an inheritance.

It means that if you’ve been following Jesus for 5 minutes, you have the same access and status of someone who has been following him for 5 decades.

You get Jesus and his Spirit now. You get heaven later. And you get citizenship in his kingdom now, later, and one day, forever.

And you get all of this simply because it makes God happy. He’s just so happy to give all of this to us. It’s like the joy you got as a parent watching your kids open presents on Christmas morning. I watched my daughter lay eyes on her new writing desk and chair, and almost immediately convert it into a little art studio. I watched my son dive into his Scratch-programmable robot build. I loved the look on their faces when they first saw those gifts.

And that’s just a sliver of what God has in his heart as he watches you and me see and receive the gift of Jesus. He takes such great pleasure in giving him freely to you—because He. Loves. You.

And finally:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:7–8 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”

END TV SLIDE

Redemption is being rescued from the power and control that our sin had over our lives and our destinies.

And forgiveness, of course, is God saying that the debt that our sin created with him has been paid for because Jesus’ blood, like a sacrificial lamb, paid that debt in full.

So, if you’re keeping score, here’s everything that is different for you:

START TV SLIDE

In Christ, when you believe, everything is different—because God blesses you with everything:

Chosen

Holy

Blameless

Loved

Adopted

Grace freely given

Redemption

Forgiveness

END TV SLIDE

Isn’t that awesome? Imagine unwrapping all of those gifts one morning. That’d be a pretty good haul.

But here’s the thing:

Those gifts are for you, because God loves you.

But they’re not just for you.

I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of doing extended family Christmases where there’s 3 or sometimes even 4 generations in the room as all of the little ones are opening up presents. It’s pretty cool.

But if you’re a parent of one of those little people, also kind of nerve-wracking.

Because you don’t want your kid to be the one who acts disappointed with what he got, or doesn’t say thank you, or doesn’t let her cousins play with her new whatever, or…

Family gets awkward when we get more attached to the gift than the giver, right?

Same is true in God’s family. These gifts are for us, because God loves us. But they’re not just for us.

Verse 9:

START TV SLIDE

Ephesians 1:9-10 “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”

END TV SLIDE

This Christmas Eve moment that 91 of you had. That was a moment that changed everything for you—but not just for you.

God doesn’t just want everything to be different for you.

He wants everything to be different.

Period.

Here’s the big idea:

START TV SLIDE

The gospel cannot stop with me. It must go to we.

END TV SLIDE

(And yes: I’m aware that’s grammatically incorrect. But the rhyming was too hard to resist.)

God’s vision isn’t to just save you. He wants to save everyone AND everything.

And he wants us, his children, to be unified around that. Unified around the all-inclusive scope of his saving vision.

He wants us, his adopted kids, to see it and pursue it and participate with him in it.

Everyone and everything.

Everyone and everything.

All things in in heaven and on earth under Jesus’ saving love and gracious rule.

Nobody gets written off. Nothing gets neglected. Everyone. And everything.

It’s right there in the text.

Listen:

When you and I reduce this gospel down to what God has done for me—

And he’s done so much. For you and me. He has; he has—

But when we start to think that the gospel is about what individual people believe so that they might inherit heaven—and that’s it; that’s the big story—

And it’s not whole world, top to bottom, all things in heaven and on earth—

Nations, and politics, and economies, and societies,

And my jerk of a boss, and my ungrateful kid, and my resentful ex,

And the people on the other side of the aisle, and the people who don’t share my values,

Everyone, everything—

It’s right there in the text! It’s right there. “Unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” That’s the vision. That’s God’s vision.

But when we compress and reduce that all down to some sort of individual decision,

And that’s the biggest story we’re telling ourselves,

And that’s the only thing we’re really unified around—

What someone says that they believe,

Then…

Well, then that’s not really a gospel at all, is it?

What kind of good news is that?

Why does that matter?

So you believe that you’re going to heaven. Great.

But when you believe that you’re going to heaven because of what Jesus has done,

AND you believe that through Jesus God wants to bring heaven down to earth, so that all things in heaven and on earth are under the rule of Jesus,

Then you start looking at everything differently.

You look at the next presidential election as an opportunity to love people who want to spread hate.

You look at poverty as an opportunity to be generous.

You look at struggling schools as an opportunity to serve.

You look at financial uncertainty as a chance to be content and have faith.

You look at racial strife as a chance to immerse yourself in someone else’s story and experience; wrap a towel around your waist and start washing some feet.

You look at your broken relationships as a chance to love your enemies.

You look at your horrible boss as a chance to bless those who curse you.

You look at your neighbor who has the wrong candidate’s sign in their yard as a human being, made in God’s image, for whom Christ died.

Because everyone and everything. Everyone and everything.

START TV SLIDE

Are we known as the church that believes…

and worships…

and gives…

and serves…

and loves…

like God wants to save everyone and everything?

END TV SLIDE

Or is it just kinda about…

Me? My family? My tribe? My preferences? My little soapboxes?

Friends:

God loves you so much. And he’s so delighted to give you this wonderful gift of his Son, Jesus.

And he wants to do amazing things in your life.

And:

He wants you to see that his vision goes so far beyond you that it’s breathtaking.

And he wants you to be a part of realizing it.

And he wants us to do that together. To be unified as a body, as a church, around that.

Everyone. And everything.

PRAYER EXPERIENCE: EPHESIANS 1:15-23