Unfathomable Riches of Christ - In Christ, position and possessions

So we have, since the beginning of the year, we started into this elective called the Unfathomable Riches of Christ. And so we have on the top of the page of your handout, and yes, I know, we went over two pages, right? So, it rolled over into part of three.

But... That's terrible. What's that? That's terrible. Oh yes, yes. We just violated all sorts of, you know, new traditions. You know? So, anyway, yeah. Sometimes we'll say that we have... Here's an old, old tradition that we've just begun. So anyway, this is a new tradition that we've just begun and we've just stepped out of it. So through the month of March we'll be looking at these particular topics.

So what we looked at last week is In Christ, Position and Condition. This week looking at In Christ, Position and Possessions. And actually it's not written in that title, but we'll add one more to it. position and possessions and predestined. So, and then in Christ's location and means is what we'll look at next week. So then, one of the things we've said to the Father's credit is the believer is blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

And one of the things we've made note of is that Ephesians 1.3, this is, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, that that's actually a summary statement. It is not just simply a statement that we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing and then we go on to other things. But it's actually a summary statement introducing that section in which the Apostle Paul then begins to lay out, here are those spiritual blessings that we've said in summary are in the heavenly places in Christ. And so he then begins to enumerate them one by one. continually having them be in Christ.

One of the points we've made at different times is Ephesians 1.3 verse 3 through 14 in the Greek is all one sentence. So here's one thing, how many of you major in English? You may have some that have done that. I see Some people are shaking their heads. One of the things you have to adjust yourself to is what is improper in English. For example, a run-on sentence.

The Apostle Paul never heard of that. He wrote verse 3-14 is the longest sentence in all of Greek literature of all time. In the English, we break it down into separate English sentences, but it continues on and on and on in the original language that Paul wrote. Now, so what happened is he said, you know, blessed be the God and Father who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and he just couldn't stop his pen. He just, you know, writing, writing, and finally verse 14, he stopped, and I'll put a period there, run-on sentence, Then, in verse 15, he started writing again, and verse 15 to the end of the chapter is the second longest sentence in all of Greek literature. Why would he do such a thing?

The reason for that is that as he's laying this out, he's making Ephesians 1.3, that we looked at here, we quoted in the handout, He's making that the summary and introductory statement, and then he's enumerating and laying out all those blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. So that's why Ephesians 1 comes off as it is, and it's actually broken down in English to be a little bit more comprehensible to the English mind, the English-speaking, English-reading mind. But in the original, it's, we've been, you know, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, is just the introduction. Yes, Jim?

If the Greeks didn't have any punctuation in the original Korinic Greek, how did they know what is the beginning and the end of the sentence? It's not that they had no punctuation, they had minimal punctuation. And their practice, so far as punctuation, so far as even identifying different words, was different. Several centuries after the New Testament era, the copies of the New Testament moved to what's called unshuls, and basically everything went all caps, no spaces.

Yeah, and so you have to read in to it, you know, okay, this is what they intended. So what we're accustomed to in terms of, you know, we have a period here, and we have a comma there, and we've got an exclamation point, and we've got a quotation mark, all those things are modern developments in English. That was not the case in ancient times.

Even how you emphasize something. How do we emphasize something in our modern, not just writing, but in our modern, especially computer-generated things, how do we emphasize something in English? Bold, underlined, italics, we might do all caps, something like that. And those are things we all understand, but that wasn't the case. So they would emphasize things in different ways than we do.

Probably by parsing. Things would be done by emphasis with repetition. Some places, the Apostle Paul will put in a definite article. And in English, a lot of times I'll drop that out because it seems like it's a little bit too much, but it was intentional. So different means of emphasizing things was the norm.

One of the things we see here, believers made to be in Christ, which is where and in whom we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. The only thing we did to have the Father bless us with every spiritual blessing is to believe. Did we do anything else? in order to be blessed.

Could we do anything else? No. What if I try to do other things? Does that help? Can I help God? No. As a matter of fact, there are different ways that might appeal to people, you know, giving your best to the master, try your hardest, try to be a good person, whatever. There are various things that might appeal to people But they're not necessarily biblical, and frequently are just not.

So we have here, we believe God did the rest. God says, that's it. I'll take it from there. And by the way, is believing, is that something that gains us merit? It doesn't, right? We don't get brownie points. buttons, extra stripes, nothing for believing. Believing is all not our accomplishment and not to our credit, but it's believing in His accomplishment and His credit. Right? See the distinction there? That's important. Yeah, Jack?

But this is also a great testimony that this is God's Word. Yeah, certainly this is God's Word. God lays it out. In truth, would we know the things that are in the Bible if it were not revealed? So that's why the Bible is a special revelation. Now, what are things we can know in nature? What can you tell from just looking at nature? A lot of power. You see design and intelligence and purpose and intent. As Scripture puts it, His eternal power and deity are made evident. But would you know that Christ died for you on the cross without it being revealed in Scripture?

You wouldn't know that, right? Would you necessarily even know that there was a sin issue? No. And sin, you may have a sense in which things ought to be different. You might say, well, everything isn't just right. But in terms of really understanding sin as being an issue between myself and God, we wouldn't know that unless scripture laid it out and made it clear.

So what we have here is we have every spiritual blessing. We might hear that all that we have in Christ summarizes our position. And that's frequently the language you'll hear at Holly Hills. Is it incorrect to talk about our position? No, it isn't. But what I will point out, if we look carefully, there are some distinctions that I think are helpful in terms of the way Scripture expresses things.

And so what we have are actually three things that are expressed the way they are, and this is a distinction between the believer's position, possessions, and predestined outcomes. Position, possessions, and predestined outcomes. So let's talk about position. As we've written previously, and we covered this last week in more detail, the position that we have as believers is accomplished by God. Can I work on improving my position? No. Why not? It's objectively there. It's accomplished by God. We wouldn't even know about it. unless it were revealed to us.

Do you remember being identified with Christ in the crucifixion? Do you remember going through that? I was crucified with Christ, and of course that really hurt, and I remember that and have nightmares about it. Is that what happens? No, we read about it in scripture. It's revealed to us intentionally, but it's not by our experience and memory. So, the position that we have as accomplished by God is fixed and unchangeable. Why is that important? There's nothing I can do to tweak it, improve it, kind of nudge it up.

I'm about 60% seated with Christ and I'm hoping that by next Sunday it will be 65%. But what if it was 50? Oh, that's a problem too, right? So the problem is, if I can do anything to improve it, I also have the potential to mess it up. Can I improve it? And can I mess it up? Not at all, right? So this is a thing about our position, it's all accomplished by God. And we have great peace about that. Yes, and we should have peace and comfort about that, including the fact that I can't mess it up.

So it's in the heavenlies as to location. But is this all about real estate? No. And because it goes one step further, it is in Christ, so it's personal. In the heavenlies, in Christ. It's personal, not just about place. Why does it matter that it's personal? Why does it matter that our position in Christ is personal? It shows His love for the individual, and the fact that it is personal relates to relationship and fellowship.

And it's not something that I can just go down to the recorder's office and just, hey guys, put this on the record here. And I can't ask the title company to go do a search on it, right? It's a part of our new nature. Yeah, so it's a part of our new nature. There are very personal things about our position. Of course, we'll be going through that more item by item as we go through this elective.

But understanding is personal is key. So it is objectively true, it is revealed by God, but in the end it's very personal, and it's personal as to relationship with Christ. We say that it's God's perspective and we come to learn His perspective. It is God's perspective that He has revealed. We wouldn't know it otherwise. But it's His perspective of us. That's what the personal part comes in, right?

Yes, God's perspective of us that He has accomplished and it's specific to Christ. Ephesians is a marvelous book. Eight times it has the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit together as you go through the book of Ephesians. But, as Paul underscores many times in Ephesians, about three dozen times, it is in Christ, in whom, in the Beloved, in Him. So it's personal to him, but in fact the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all three involved in it.

So one would look at it as the entire Trinity, the entire Trinity, every person of the Godhead is involved in your position. Okay, so we have position. The next thing we want to point out is that there are things that are expressed as possession because of our position. We will often summarize those as just a part of our position, and that's not bad for starters, but as we read carefully, what we'll see is we have possessions because of our position. And so one example I have here, Romans 5, 1 and 2, therefore having been justified by faith, and we'll talk more about what justified means, right?

We have peace with God. Is peace with God kind of come and go? Could you let loose of it and just kind of lose track of it? Oh, I had peace with God until this morning. You know, and this time change has really thrown me, and so I just, you know, I don't know, I just... Can I get messed up on this peace with God situation?

Well, we can feel like we're messed up. So our feelings can get messed up. But that doesn't change God's view of us. So our feelings can get a little messed up. Also, from one moment to the next, I may not be living consistent with the peace that I, in my position, have. So that's what we talked about last week, is position and condition. Moment by moment, I may not be living and walking consistent with the peace that I have.

Yes? I'm wondering, it's like a suitcase word, reconciliation. Does that fit here? Is this our reconciliation to God? Yes, and we will be talking about that more. So this is explicitly stated, we have it. And so reconciliation is a related idea, and we will be looking at that particularly. But the main idea we're going to get across here is possessions, that we have spiritual possessions because of our position. I'm wondering if peace has two aspects.

I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but we were his enemies, actually overtly his enemies before salvation. And then we come and we're born again. And then he is at peace with us. Is that part of our position? is that from his viewpoint we're no longer his enemy. Where before he saw us as, and we were actually, it wasn't just that he saw us that way, but we were actually his enemy. And now the peace is there from his viewpoint even though we don't necessarily feel it.

One of the things, just to kind of do a rabbit trail from what you're bringing out here, one of the things that has been done in the past is Lewis Barry Schaefer wrote at length about here are 33 things that are true of the believer and that kind of thing. And then Hampton Keithley III shortened that up and then Nancy got permission to shorten that up some more.

But what you see here, and we'll be going into it, is what are the relationships between some of these words. Because, for example, how is peace related to reconciliation? And so that's something we'll be exploring in more detail. And it's worthy to explore and to understand. One of the things we'll be looking at on the 25th, so just two Sundays from now, in Christ we are redeemed and forgiven so as to be justified. So there's a relationship between those words.

They're not just stand-alone So, we'll be taking a look at that, and there's a relationship between peace and reconciliation. How did we come to a place of having peace? We came to a place of having peace by being reconciled. So the reconciliation is the action that brings us to a place of having, as a possession, peace.

Flipside of that first page there, 2 Corinthians 4.7, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that their surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. This is another one we'll be looking at in more detail. But again, to look at it, these are possessions that we have.

Next one, Ephesians 1.7.8, in him we have redemption. through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. So we have possessions and they are expressed often, not always, often as we have. And so we find those in the New Testament. So we have possessions that come from our position. possessions that come from our position. And then let's ask something else about the we have statements. Are those we have but might be different five minutes from now?

We have peace with God but it's going to get messed up about 11 o'clock. Is that going to be what happens? No, it won't be. So we are new creatures, we have, and it's not we have for the next five minutes, we have for a couple of hours, a couple of decades even, we have it as a permanent and continuing possession. Are we going to get halfway through the Millennial Kingdom and Christ says, well, that's it. Your peace ran out. Reconciliation, it just got undone.

We've got to start over here. Is that the way it's going to work? Yes. Yeah, so you look at it, this isn't going to get someplace where it expires. Have you ever noticed that? It's on food and on drug packages, you know, this expires at a certain time. Or you may see that on your driver's license, and it's really kind of unnerving to discover that a little late. But anyway, so you see, expires, right? But there's no expire date on any of these things. We have, has no expiration. We have peace with God and it's not until 2020.

In earthen vessels, so that's something we'll take a look at. There are things that we have in earthen vessels. Will we stop having a vessel? We'll stop having this vessel. That's one of the neat things about having the opportunity to do graveside services. don't always do them, and that's okay, but what I get to tell people is that I said, you know, this is good and respectful that we're doing here, you know, here's the earthly remains of this person, but you got to know this is temporary. All this burying we're doing and putting in boxes and lowering, you know, it's all temporary. It's not permanent.

Okay, in addition to the we have statements in the New Testament, that we have as a spiritual possession by reason of our position, there are those spiritual possessions that are stated in other ways, such as things that are given to us. 2 Corinthians 5.5, Now he who prepared for us prepared us for this very purpose as God who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.

What's the price of having the Holy Spirit? Can you go down to the store and pay for it? Can you buy five pounds of it? You can't. Why not? It was given to us and it was free. One was given, it was free, and then Gail said... It's not for sale. It's not for sale, right? You can't go down to the store and say, I want five pounds. You can't even order it on Amazon. Imagine you order everything on Amazon, but not that.

By the way, there are amazing things you can order, that you can get a full-scale replica of the Ark of the Covenant on Amazon. You can get the whole outfit for a Roman soldier, the helmet, the Lorca segmentata, the colligae, you can get the whole outfit on Amazon. You can order it and we'll have it delivered to you in a day or two if you like. So, I mean, you could do that, but you can't find this on there.

Amazon would love to be able to sell it to you, right? And hopefully get it delivered on time. But, it's not going to show up there. Why? It's not a commodity and ultimately where are our blessings? Centered and originated. In the heavenlies in Christ. Amazon can't get there. There is no heavenly UPS or FedEx. or anything of the sort. They deal in material things and this is spiritual?

Yep. And so you can't package up five pounds of it. You can't, you know, there's no place here on earth. You notice if you ever go through the, you know, you track your package, there's no way to track it. Why? It doesn't come from here. It's not centered here. You can't get it delivered here. He gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Did I earn it? Nope. I didn't earn it 100% in the past. I don't earn it step by step. I don't earn it grayscale gradually.

He gave to us and it's a done deal. The Holy Spirit is a pledge. Could you explain it as a pledge? We will be going into this, so there are three locations, two of them in Ephesians, this one here in 2 Corinthians, where the Holy Spirit is given as a pledge, a pledge meaning an earnest, a deposit. This is a down payment guaranteeing the ultimate fulfillment. To use an analogy, which of course breaks down like all analogies, if you put an offer in on a house, what do you do? You don't just give them the offer, you give them some significant amount of money, which is to be a guarantee that you will follow through on the rest of it.

And so that's what this is. The Holy Spirit is given as a guarantee for all the rest of the fulfillment. of what's to come. So, we will go into that in more detail, but that's the quick answer. Here's 1 John 3, 23 and 24. This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in Him. We know by this that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us.

Didn't earn it. Don't deserve it. And there's not a, you know, you've got 30% spirit, but, you know, you've got to kind of keep working at it and maybe you get that to 40%. It's not the way it works, is it? It's 100% He has given. We didn't earn it. We don't deserve it. It is entirely a gift from God and it is a done deal. You can put no price on it. You can't order it on Amazon. You can't find it at the local Walmart. Not happening.

This is something only God does. So, we have position. This has to do with location. and person, position, we have possessions, things that we have, things that have been given to us. Yes? If we didn't have the spirit, we wouldn't have the mind of Christ. Well, this will be something that will be interesting to explore, because you really opened up a huge question, and that is, can we have parts and pieces of our position, possessions, and predestination? It's up to God who causes us to grow.

If you look at it, these things all go together, don't they? They all go together. He doesn't say, well, you know, you're in Christ, but that spirit thing, I mean, he hasn't quite pulled that off yet. No, that's not true, is it? So what we find is all these things go together and come together. That's why there's not just one item, but possessions, positions, and we'll find out here in predestination. These are all things that go together. And why do they go together? What's the reason why all of this goes together? definition of who we are, what we have, and what's predestined.

I don't know if it's a full answer, but this is the work of God. And a partial answer to her question is, this verse here in 1 John says that we know this that He abides in us by means of the Spirit. The origin of that knowledge, of that interaction with these things, is the work of the Holy Spirit. So, to answer your question partially, if we didn't have the Holy Spirit, we wouldn't know these things. All of these things go together. God has not given us an incomplete set of things true of our position, possessions, and predestination. So we don't grow in these things in the same way we are told to grow in grace and the knowledge.

Is that different? Yeah, and that's something we actually spent about six months last year talking about, you know, how we grow and what that means. There is a growth, but it is not a change. We don't grow in possessing something more. We don't grow in having our position change. So these things are fixed and absolute, and there is no growth in them.

We have the Holy Spirit and We just have the Holy Spirit. There is a place for growth and for change, right? And that, at least as we've taught it before, we call the continuing person. So here's the Apostle Paul who would talk about all these things about our position and possessions and what's predestined and those are all fixed and absolute and true of every single believer here this morning, right? Unchanging, fixed and unchangeable in the heavenlies. But there is, in us, a growth in those things which do not change. So, yeah, Jim? And that growth comes from knowledge about them. If we don't choose to know about them or find out about them, we won't grow in our condition.

Now, you bring up a very good point, and it's the reason why we're meeting here this morning. Suppose I said, you know, all these things are true of you, but you're not going to change it, so we're just not going to talk about it. But what would that mean if we just said, you know, you have a position in Christ, but you're not going to change anything, so we're just not going to talk about it. Class cancelled.

So there is a knowing about it that is important. It is why God has revealed it. He has inspired His Word to reveal these things because we need to know them. Is knowing about them the only thing that we have to do? Okay, so there's living in them. We don't grow in these things in terms of being more in Christ. We don't grow in these things in terms of having peace, somehow getting a higher and higher percentage. But there is a growth, there is a growth in these things that takes place, not by percentage increases. but a growth in us. One way I put it is, you think about your position and possessions and everything that's predestined, those things were all true of you from the moment you believed, right?

Here's Vern, a four-and-a-half-year-old kid, you know, becomes a believer in the hallway in Sunnyvale, 1485 Floyd Avenue. So there I've become a believer. All these things were true of me. Did I know everything about them there at age four and a half?

No. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life catching up to what he's already done. We're going to spend the rest of our lives catching up to what he's already done and you're correct. When we get past heaven's gates, it's not going to be, okay, now I get everything.

No, He's going to show us, Ephesians 2.7, the riches of His grace, that is, visibly demonstrate, is what that word means. To visibly demonstrate the riches of His grace, the multiple magnitudes of wealth of His grace, on into the rolling ages to come. Age after age after age. And we're just going to go Wow! Forever.

So no, we don't just stop learning about it here, but we do begin learning about it here. Yeah? A thought just occurred to me, well I'm a new body, we'll probably have to learn all about how that works. Yes, yeah, I probably won't have to go see the doctor and get a blood draw, you know. At intervals. And there won't be an expiration date. No expiration date on it. That would be really good. Yes, that would be really good. There will be no such thing as heavenly pathology. Will heaven have an ER? No, none of that.

So let's look at the last one, given that we are in the last minutes here. predestined. So we have a position, we have possessions, we have things that we have, things that have been given to us. We next have predestined. And this word predestined is not used very much at all. As a matter of fact, I quoted what I'm aware of, Greek word proorizo, you can remember that or not, it doesn't matter.

But here, Romans 8.28-30, and we know that God causes all things, how many things? What percentage? 100%.

All things to work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed in the image of His Son. What got predestined? Is every choice that you make, is every move that you take, predestined?

What's predestined? to the image of the sun. The outcome. The future. The outcome. And what is that outcome that's predestined? To be conformed to the image of the sun. To be conformed to the image of the sun. That's fixed. Can I blow it? And who's doing the working? God's doing the working. I can't mess it up. That's how it's going to end up. So God predestined the outcome. Did he predestine the outcome for every single person walking the planet? No. Why not? He only predestined the outcome of those who believe. He only predestined the outcome for those who believe.

This is not, you're going to go to hell, and you're going to go to heaven, and that's the way I want it. You see the difference? You got predestined for heaven and you got predestined for hell. This is called double predestination Calvinism. And do you know who were the double predestination Calvinists during the New Testament era? The Essenes. The Essenes were the ones who authored and hid the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which, by the way, is coming here this week to Denver Museum. Highly recommended. But, the Essenes were the ones who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their capital city was Qumran, on the Dead Sea, on the Israel side, at the north end. So that was their capital city, but they believed in double predestination. That is, God chose us Essenes. God hates the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And we should too. They believed in double predestination Calvinism centuries before Calvin was born. And I'm not sure Calvin believed in that. But anyway, so yeah, this is really an amazing thing. It's been around a long time. But this does not say that God predestined these people to go to heaven and these people to go to hell. It doesn't say that. So, next one. Oh, one of the other things.

We're predestined to be conformed to the image of the sun. Is there any other process that is in that same direction of being made in the image of the sun? Does scripture provide any other process? Being transformed. 2 Corinthians 13 is a different word, it's not the same as conform, it's a different process that is parallel and is in the same direction as being conformed. Both of them are into the image of the Son. Two different processes that go on in parallel, both working in the same direction.

Knowing these things, do we know the ways of God? Isn't that part of knowing Him and His ways? And this is an important question. You ask a very important question. We don't have time to answer it all. So your question is, knowing these things, do we know the ways of God? So what's the answer to that? Do we know the ways of God knowing these things? We know some of the ways of God.

So this is key. We need to stick with what the scriptures say and reveal and not try to jump past it. That's where people make huge mistakes. The figuring, oh, I can figure out with my human brain and with human logic everything about how God does salvation from beginning to end.

That mentality is the source of Calvinism, Arminianism, and open theism. Calvinism, God's sovereign. Arminianism, man's will is sovereign. Open theism, God doesn't know the future. All three of those are in agreement on this. I can understand it in my human brain. It takes and reduces what God's word says to something I can understand. That's a problem. We won't go there.

So, instead of being Calvinists and Arminianists and Openthiests, be Biblicists. So then the last one, Ephesians 1, 3-14, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself." Outcomes are predestined. There are some things here that Calvinists like to glom onto and try to overstate them.

The question is, what does it say? What does it not say? Where it stops saying something, I'd better stop. That's the difference. I don't try to extend it using human logic and extrapolations, but simply say, what does the Bible say? And we teach that. And when the Bible doesn't say it, and when the Bible stops, then we stop. Because His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts are higher than my thoughts.

The next part in Ephesians 1 is on page 3. So it has in him also, we have a Canaan inheritance starting on top of page three, having been predestined according to his purpose who works all things, works all things, where did we see that before? Romans 8, right? Who works all things after the counsel of his will to the end that, outcomes, right?

To the end that we who were first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory. Could we say that the word decreed could be put in there for predestined? God made it. This is the way it's going to be. Yes, and one of the things we show in God's will and kind of that we show at Target, you know, the three circles, the outside circle is those things that God has fixed in place. These are things that God has fixed in place. Are you going to be conformed to the image of his son? It's going to happen.

So rather than look at these things as God decides everything and I don't get to choose and He even decides what I'm going to sin and everything else, rather than look at things that way, predestination is looking to outcomes, to spiritual outcomes. And rather than being something that causes dread, or apathy, because I feel like, well, I can't change anything, God's going to do whatever He's going to do. Rather than that, it gives me comfort. Rather than that, it gives me assurance, because I know what God's going to do, I know where He's headed with these things.

And I know that he's working all things. That's Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 message. God's working all things. Is God involved in what's going on in my life? Yes. Absolutely. And he is working in my life individually and that will not be thwarted. He is, Ephesians 1.10. going to be summing up all things in Christ and that will not be thwarted. God is managing all of history from the fine detail on up to the big picture so that everything will be summed up in Christ and you will be conformed to the image of His Son. And that's cool. So He can solve the glory? To the praise of His glory. And that's predestined. Is that going to get messed up? Nope.

So that's one of the reasons we can, as we showed this sort of target thing, and here's the outside circle. These are things that God has fixed in place, and they're not things that should cause us dread. They're not things that should cause us angst. They're not things that should drive us to apathy, where we're throwing up our hands and say, I don't know, God's going to do whatever He's going to do. Instead, we see that God predestines outcomes.

And rather than giving us dread and angst and apathy, it's assurance. If you want insurance, you can buy that for here. If you want assurance, God's Word provides that, and you can't buy it or sell it. There's all kinds of people who sell insurance. We call them insurance agents. But there are no assurance agents.

John says these things have been written that you may know that you have. Yes. And so for us to have knowledge and assurance is exactly what God has in mind. And that's a good thing. Alright, I've got people milling around out there, peering in, wondering when we're going to get out of here, so I better pray so we can get on to what's next.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for what you've revealed here, what amazing things you've not revealed exhaustively, but you have yet revealed things that are infinite. So we thank you for that, we thank you that there's no end to the depth that we can explore and learn from here, and yet you've made it clear what is certain and absolute and fixed in place. We thank you for that assurance that we have, the knowing that we have because of what you've revealed and what you've told us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.