Last Sunday, we started a brand new series called Blessed. And what this actually is is a study of Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 14, which is this really incredible section of scripture where Paul, who's the author and probably the most influential Jesus follower of all time, lays out for us the blessings that God has given us. He begins in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3. We looked at this last week, and he says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. And by the way, I'm just going to follow along on the mobile app. If you have that, you can follow along with all the scripture, just have that for reference later. But he says that. And it's funny because the word we translate praise at the very beginning of that verse can also be translated blessed. So some translations actually say, blessed be God who has blessed us with every blessing. Though it's not hard to see where we got the phrase blessed from when it comes to the name of this series. This is all about the blessings that God has given us. And they're very profound and they're very powerful. These are not modern-day social media hashtag bless type blessings. This is not all the lights turn green on your way to work. This is not that the best spot in the parking lot was available right when you pulled in. And so you feel blessed. Those blessings are fine, but those are the kinds of blessings that don't mean anything as soon as we encounter real problems. As soon as life gets hard and we encounter something really difficult, those blessings mean nothing. These blessings are different. These are spiritual blessings. These are things that are so powerful and personal. They are so core for us as human beings that they supersede our circumstances. To follow Jesus is to live a blessed life. We simply need to know and understand what our blessings actually are. And so Paul goes on throughout this section in Ephesians to lay out for us and explain for us what our blessings actually are. And that's what we're going to explore together. What does it mean to live a blessed life? If you've been following Jesus for years, I'm so excited to go through this because sometimes as a Jesus follower, I've been following Jesus for over 20 years. Sometimes I forget what my actual blessings are. And I start putting my trust and my faith in much more temporary blessings. And I'm excited to shift my attention toward the blessings that I've really been given. And if you're not a Jesus follower, if this is something you're checking out, you're thinking about it, you're still not sure, I think it's really good for you on the front end to understand the blessings being offered to you and to make a decision based on that. We're going to start by looking at Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4, very next verse, and Paul writes, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. There's a lot there we could spend like a month on this one verse alone. Says that we're loved, and that is awesome. We talk a lot about God's love here. It's a thread that runs through everything we do. Jesus said that the world will know you belong to me by the way you love one another. We could talk about the fact that we're chosen because that's a big deal. Every one of us knows what it's like to not be picked. Every one of us knows what it's like for someone to look at you and say, nah, we're gonna go with someone else. Whether that was a career thing, a romance thing, whatever. We all know how that feels, so it's pretty awesome to know that no matter who's passed you over before, God has looked at you and he says, Yes, I pick you. But as I prayed and prepared this week, it became really clear to me that we needed to put our attention on the second half of this verse, on what it says that we've actually been chosen to be. That God has loved us and he has chosen us to be holy and without fault in his eyes. So we have been blessed with holiness, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. What does it mean to be blessed with holiness? Like, what does it even mean to be holy? It's one of those words that we see in the Bible a lot, and we we sort of get. There's a lot of words like that, there's a lot of concepts like that in Scripture, and we hear it and we go, yeah, I get what that means, and and we get it maybe in kind of a hazy way, but it's not a word we use very often in life. Like we don't tend to describe things as holy, but the Bible uses that word a lot. In fact, God is described as holy throughout the Bible, pretty much from start to finish. So, for example, in the book of Isaiah, this is several centuries before Jesus shows up on the scene, Isaiah has a vision from God. He's a prophet. And in this vision, the room that he's in sort of transforms, and he's all of a sudden in the throne room of heaven, which is pretty crazy to think about. And and he's in the presence of God, and there's these angels that are flying around God, and they're just shouting out and singing this statement over and over again. We see it in Isaiah 6.3. It says, They, meaning the angels, were calling out to each other, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heaven's armies. The whole earth is filled with his glory. God is holy, holy, holy. Jesus' best friend John had a vision toward the end of his life, and that vision is recorded in our Bibles as the book of Revelation. It's the very end. And in this vision, John sees a multitude in heaven singing a song about God, to God, and hear the lyrics to that song. Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord, the God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations, who will not fear you, Lord, and glorify your name, for you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous deeds have been revealed. It says that you alone, God, are holy. And so we're told in Scripture over and over again, God is holy, He is holy, He is holy. But what does that mean? The actual word holy is a very simple word, it means different. And God is definitely different than you and I. He says in Isaiah that his ways are not like our ways, that his thoughts are not like our thoughts, that his thoughts are actually higher than our thoughts in the same way that the heavens are higher than the earth. That's really humbling to hear that God is different than us in those ways, because let's be honest, sometimes, if we're really being honest, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm the messed up one, um, which is totally possible and true, but like sometimes I think God could do things differently. Sometimes I think, you know, if if I had like a day, one day, and I had all of God's power and resources, I could really make an impact. In other words, sometimes I think I could do better than God. And we all feel that way sometimes, right? Like, hey, God, you know, I know you've got your ways and your will and all that kind of stuff. However, there seem like there are some clear issues happening here right now, and it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to fix it. And so, you know, if you could just do this, and sometimes when we get in that mode, it's almost like we believe at some level that we're more compassionate, more fair, more understanding than God. And if he could just think like us, he would he would fix things. But he reminds us, I don't think like you think. I'm different, I'm holy, and I'm really glad he's holy. I think we should all be glad that I'm not God and that you're not either, right? He's holy. That word it means different, but it doesn't just mean different for the sake of being different. It means different in a sacred sense, something that is set apart, something that is so unique, so amazing that it's it's like in a whole other category. And the truth of the matter is we all understand holiness in that in that light. We all have things in our lives that we view as holy, we just maybe don't use that word. Like you probably have something in your life that is so sacred to you, it is set apart for a special purpose. When Megan and I got married, my grandmother gave us uh her fine china. It was like a big deal for her. She's like, she told us, she actually brought us into the room and sat us down. And and she began by saying, you know, I may not be here for many more years, because my grandma's been saying that since I was four. Um, you know, this may be the last Christmas, so I just want you to know, you know. And it was this like a big deal to her. She said, I love you guys, and I'm so proud of you, and I'm so excited that you're getting married, and so I want you to know I'm giving you the china. And we were like, the plates? Was that cool, like that's awesome. And so she gave us these plates, and they're very nice, and they're probably expensive. I don't know, they're probably old. We've been married for 13 years, we've never used them. Not once, not one time. They've been in a box for 13 years. I feel guilty every time we've moved, and I've found the box, I've forgotten that it exists. I'm like, oh yeah, grandma's china. It would probably really hurt her feelings if she knew that we had never taken this out of the box, but I don't want to tell her because after all, this might be her last year, and like, you know, um, I just don't want that to be the thing, you know? And so I just moved the box to the next house. And maybe there'll be a day where that china is as sacred to us as it is to my grandma, because she would only break it out for special occasions, but we got four small kids. Breaking out fine china would just mean fine china gets broken. That's all that would mean. And we're at the point, honestly, where disposable dishes are sacred. You know? I'm like, maybe if you're a conservationist, you're like, blasphemy, but we have like if we don't have to do dishes, I think paper plates are amazing and we should recycle them and use them all the time because I love no dishes. That is sacred to me. But we all have things that are sacred to us. My wife has things that are sacred to her. Um, at our house, she has all these pens. My wife loves to journal. And when she journals, she means business. She opens up her Bible, she opens up another book in a journal, a notebook, and then she lays like 30 pens out, and they're all in different colors, and she she journals and she gets different pens, and I don't know if those pens are color-coded for different emotions or whatever, I don't really get it. But but like it's this work of art when she journals. And if you were to be at our house, if you came over to my house and said, Hey, can I borrow a pen, I can promise you my wife would not give you one of those. Our children are not allowed to use those pens. I am not allowed to use those pens. And I understand why. I'm I'm a pen chewer. You know? I don't know if anyone else is like that, if you're willing to admit it, if I have a pen, I don't know why. Subconsciously it ends up in my mouth. It's just, I don't know. I don't know what that means. Is something wrong with me? Maybe? Okay. Or or if I don't chew a pen up, I I play with it. And it's totally subconscious, but you know the little clips on the end of pens, in case you want to put it in your pocket or something, like I will I will flick those off. I'll break them. And I don't do it on purpose, it just happens. So she's like, you are not gonna touch my pens. Those pens are sacred to her, they're holy, they're set apart. The only thing I have like that in my life would be basketball shoes, which is really, you know, embarrassing to admit that the only thing I can think of that I treat as holy would be my basketball shoes. But I love basketball shoes. It's all I wear. As a kid, all I wore was basketball shoes. Then I became an adult, and I was like, I should probably branch out, and I should probably get like dress shoes and boots, I don't know. Like there's a lot of different kinds of shoes in the world. And I tried all the shoes, and they're not as good as basketball shoes, in my opinion. So about a year ago, I said I'm going back, and all I wear now are basketball shoes. That's all I wear. That's it. I'm trying to find a pair of shoes that are basketball shoes that would go with a suit. And I'm searching because then I have it all, I'm complete, I don't need anything but basketball shoes. They're comfortable, they're great, they're nostalgic for me, they remind me of my childhood, and I'm very particular about my shoes. And so when I was a kid, I played, and every year my mom and dad would buy me a new pair of basketball shoes for my season. And when they would buy those, those were sacred to me. Like I remember in 1996, I'm telling you this as if it's an important memory because it is. In 1996, my parents bought me a pair of Jordan 11s. These are Jordan 11s. You may look at them and think, shoes. But I look at those and I think, Jordan 11s. See, in the mid-90s, Michael Jordan was basketball, and the movie Space Jam had just come out, and I was in the sixth grade. And if you've never seen Space Jam, Michael Jordan plays basketball with Bugs Bunny, and it's awesome. And can I just say, as a quick side note and tangent, that Bugs Bunny is way underrepresented in the world today, and my children have no idea who the Looney Tunes are. They're like forgotten. They know all the Disney characters, but but there's no knowledge of Bugs Bunny and all those, and I think that something should be done about that now. Okay. That's important. I had to get that off my chest. But but Michael Jordan plays basketball with Bugs Bunny, and it's awesome. And Space Jam was amazing. I thought it was the coolest movie I'd ever seen, and those were the shoes that Michael Jordan wore in that movie. That's where he like debuted them. And so they were a big deal. My parents bought me Jordan 11s, and I was like, wow. And these were sacred to me. I did not wear them to school, even though my friends would have thought they were cool. I didn't wear them to church. They were too sacred for church. I only wore them. I only wore them when I was inside a basketball court, like an indoor court. I didn't even wear them to practice or to my games. I wore a different pair of basketball shoes, and then when I got there, I took those off and I put my game shoes on because they were my game shoes. They were holy, they were sacred, they were set apart for a very special purpose. That's what something that is holy is like. It's that special. And the Bible tells us constantly that God is holy. He's holy. And it's not hard for us to see that he is, but here's the thing God's holiness, it like it has a way of becoming a problem for us. Because some things just don't mesh. Some things are like oil and water, they don't really go together, and holiness and unholiness, they're kind of like that. And so God is supremely holy, and we are less holy. And this becomes an issue when it comes to us relating to God. How can an unholy person coexist with a holy God? How does that work? See, we we are people that have an easily corruptible nature. It's not always popular to talk about, but the Bible teaches about it really clearly. In fact, Romans 3.23 says very plainly that everyone, all people, all have sinned and fallen short of God's glorious standard. We've all lost. Woo! Okay? You guys aren't excited about that. Um because we're born with a sinful nature. That is a term that's offensive to many people in our culture. These people obviously don't have children. Um, but like we're born as sinners, meaning that we will inevitably choose selfishness, and we'll inevitably choose selfishness just because we really, really want to. In fact, you can look a lot at a lot of the things that people struggle with and battle with and wrestle with, and at the end of the day, it really boils down to this is as the basic argument, but I really, really, really want to. We're like kids in that sense. And so, oh you guys hear that? Okay, good. It's not just me. It's doing a hey Alex, the thing's doing a thing, the speaker right there. I sounded like footsteps, and I thought I was about to get killed, but I'm not. I'm good, I'm safe. It's just a speaker. It's all good. What was I talking about? Holiness, probably, sin? Yeah, so we have this thing called a sin nature. And it and it's funny, it basically means that we're flawed, and and we will just choose something that is our way, not God's way. And even though our culture really, really denies God much of the time, it still agrees with this basic idea, it just uses different language. So it's not uncommon to hear a phrase in our culture like, well, we're only human. Right? We can't help it, we're we're only human. In other words, we're we're weak and we mess up. And that becomes a problem because when we sin, and everyone give a round of applause to Alex Benell, our sound guy. Go, Alex. He's a fixer. Go, Alex. When we sin, it corrupts us and it makes us less holy. And we see this actually in the Old Testament, really hammered home. That if you you do certain things, you're you're unclean, you're less holy. And it's it's actually kind of kind of inundating if you read like Leviticus or Deuteronomy. If you want to have a really great Saturday, read Deuteronomy or Leviticus. It's a jam. And like it just says over and over again don't do this, if you do this, you're unclean. Don't do this if you do this, you're unclean. I'm gonna give a shout out to my friend Ben Sykes because this is an analogy that I first heard from Ben, and it's awesome. It's like a fly landing in your soup. Okay? The Old Testament gives us this idea that the unholy thing has all the power, that the unclean thing is the one with all the real power. Because if you're eating a bowl of soup and a fly lands in that soup, do you go, oh well, it's just a fly, and you flick the fly out of the soup and then you keep on eating? Right? A few of you are like, yeah, but don't say that. Don't admit that in front of other people. Keep that to yourself, okay? But no, no, no. I mean, how many of us, if a fly landed in our soup, even if it was like an amazing soup, if it's lobster bisque or it's that soup at Olive Garden with like sausage and kale that's super spicy, like if it's that and a fly lands in it, you're like, I'm done with this soup. Because that fly has in your mind ruined the soup. Even though the fly has only touched a very tiny part of the soup, you don't keep eating the soup. Because that unclean thing in your mind has contaminated the whole thing. And we're taught in scripture that the unholy things, the unholy actions, they they corrupt everything. That it's the unholy thing that has all the power, and that becomes a real problem for us because God is holy. And holiness and unholiness, they don't seem to mix well. We see that, for example, when God gives instructions to Moses for building this thing called the tabernacle, which was like a mobile temple that the Israelites, who were nomads at the time, would carry with them, and they would worship at the tabernacle, and God's actual presence dwelled in this one specific room in the tabernacle, and it was called the most holy place. And we see God giving Moses instructions in Exodus chapter 26 for how to handle the most holy place, and here's what he says. For the inside of the tabernacle make a special curtain of finely woven linen. As we read this, by the way, you will learn that God is a very, very detailed person. Decorate it with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and with skillfully embroidered cherubim. He doesn't want any sloppy cherubim, he wants skillfully embroidered cherubim. He says, Hang this curtain on gold hooks attached to four posts of acacia wood, overlay the post with gold and set them in silver bases, hang the inner curtain from clasps and put the ark of the covenant in the room behind it. This curtain will separate the holy place from the most holy place. And so God is saying, Hey, I'm gonna dwell in the most holy place. But there's gotta be like a curtain. Something's gotta separate me from you. And we might think, well, what is God up to? Is he just being snobby? Is he just saying, I don't want to be around you, I need my privacy? Like, what's going on? But we see actually in Leviticus chapter 16, God give a warning to Moses. And he says, warn your brother Aaron, who was the high priest, not to enter the most holy place behind the inner curtain whenever he chooses. If he does, he will die. Now we could read this and be like, okay, God is being pretty severe here. And we read that way sometimes. Like, like if you look at Genesis, the early chapters of Genesis, when God makes the world and he tells Adam and Eve, hey, you can eat freely from every tree in the garden. There is this one tree though, don't eat its fruit. If you do, you'll die. And we read that almost sometimes as if God is making a threat. But he's not. He's not saying, if you eat this, I'll kill you. And he's not telling Moses, hey, tell Aaron, if he comes in my room, he's dead. I'm gonna kill him. Right? He's saying it very matter of factly, tell him that if he comes in here, he will die. And it's because his holiness would like consume Aaron. It would overtake him. He couldn't handle it. He would just die from holiness exposure, essentially. And so what the high priest would have to do was once a year, when the high priest would go into the most holy place, that high priest would have to make a series of sacrifices. And these sacrifices, blood spilt to pay the price for sin, would act like a covering, a protective covering, so he could enter into God's presence and live. And that may sound really superficial and silly and like, come on, that's just craziness. But what's really awesome is that creation has a way of imitating the creator. And we see things like this in our world today. For example, there are certain materials in the world that are highly radioactive. And in the first gathering, uh, there's a guy who goes here who's awesome, but he's a nuclear engineer. And so as I was giving this analogy, I was very fixated on him, and I kept looking at him like, is this basically accurate? And he's like, You're good. So I have been given endorsement by a nuclear physicist or engineer. If I don't know if those are different things, they probably are, but either way, he said, eh, not bad. So there are certain materials that are highly radioactive, and if you were like in a nuclear reactor and you were in the middle of it where the reaction is happening, and that core is exposed. And the materials that are causing that nuclear reaction to continue happening are just it's just you and them in the room, and you don't have anything protecting you, you're gonna die. You can't see the radiation, but it's this force that is so powerful that your human body will literally deteriorate just by being close to it. It's the same way with God. His holiness is apparently so intense, so powerful, that for us as unholy people to be in his presence without something, without something covering us, we can't handle it. In the state that we're in, we would die. And so God has to create all these barriers of separation, not because he wants to be far from us, but because he loves us. And he's literally protecting us from his own holiness. It's a weird thing to think about. But what if something could change our state? What if something could actually change who we are so that we we could exist with God, we could be with God, we could be near his presence and near his holiness, and it wouldn't kill us. That would be amazing. That would sort of do away with all of these rituals and sacrifices that the people of God in the Old Testament had to do over and over again just to temporarily be okay to be in the presence of God. And that's exactly what Jesus did. It's exactly what he does when he makes us holy. We actually see hints of this in the Old Testament. In fact, that vision that Isaiah had that I mentioned earlier, where he sees the angels and they're flying around and They're saying holy, holy, holy. A few verses later, Isaiah realizes where he is and he freaks out. Isaiah 6, 5. Then I said, It's all over. I'm doomed, for I am a sinful man, I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I've seen the king, the Lord of heaven's armies, and then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. And he touched my lips with it and said, See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven. So in this example, Isaiah realizes that he's unholy. And typically the unholy thing has all the power. So if the unholy thing, if the unclean thing touches a clean thing, it's the clean thing that becomes unclean. But it's like reversed here, it's the opposite of the fly in the soup. This coal touches Isaiah's lips. And apparently it is so holy that it cleanses him of his unholiness. And now he's he's somehow fit to be in the presence of God. This is just a picture of what Jesus would do, who Jesus would be. This is so, this is so like Jesus. This is how he lived his life. For example, early in his ministry, Jesus healed a leper, which is something he actually did pretty often. But but this time he caused quite a stir because when Jesus healed this leper, he healed him by touching him. He put his hands on the leper. And that was a big no-no. You didn't do that. Because if you touched a leper, you could contract leprosy. And so lepers were viewed as unclean. They didn't know how germs worked back then, but they had spiritual language that sort of explained the physical world. And so, if you touched a leper, you were now unclean, and that leprosy could have spread to you, so you would be cast out, you would be put aside because they didn't want leprosy to spread. In those days, leprosy was an epidemic, and they could barely contain it, and so you could not by law touch a leper. But Jesus did. But instead of him contracting leprosy, the touch of Jesus cured the leper. Instead of the unclean thing corrupting the clean thing, it was the other way around. Jesus' holiness and his goodness and his purity like transferred to this guy, and his leprosy is gone. So apparently that there's a power in Jesus. There's a holiness in Jesus that is so powerful and so incredible that it has the ability to overcome the unholiness in us. That's exactly what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. When he took our sin on his shoulders, paid the price for our sin, he became that final sacrifice, and he gave us his holiness. It's interesting, we we mentioned the curtain that separated the most holy place in the temple. And in Matthew 27, 51, Jesus is on the cross. It says, then Jesus shouted out again and he released his spirit. At that moment, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. It was from top to bottom because this was God's doing, not man's. And you look at that and you go, okay, Jesus dies on the cross and a curtain tears. But it was super meaningful. Because that was that was God's saying the separation between me and you, it doesn't need to be like that anymore. Because Jesus paid the price for your sin, your unholiness, so to speak. He's gifted you his righteousness. Righteousness means right standing with God, something that none of us could ever earn in and of ourselves. Not one of us in this room is good enough to earn perfection. But the Bible teaches us that when Jesus died on the cross, not only did he take our sin, he gave us his righteousness. It's almost like you can imagine a conversation between Jesus and God the Father, and Jesus is like, hey, what if I take their sin on my shoulders? What if I bear the brunt of that? And then I'll pay the price, and that'll be taken care of, that'll be dealt with. And then what if I actually take my holiness that I've actually earned? And what if I give that to them so that when you look at them, Father, you see me, you see my purity, you see my goodness. And that's what happened on the cross. And so, because of Jesus, we've been blessed with his holiness, and now there doesn't have to be separation between us and God. We can actually be in his presence, and that's what Paul says when he wrote Ephesians 1:4, when he says, Hey, we've been loved and chosen to be holy and without fault in his eyes. It's really cool that last part, without fault in his eyes. The word that Paul used that we translate without fault, you can also translate it blameless. And it's a word that always had a ceremonial connotation in their culture. It really meant something that was worthy of being offered to God. Something that was acceptable to God. And so what Paul is saying is because of Jesus, we've been blessed with holiness. And because we've been blessed with that holiness, now when God looks at us, he does not see our faults, he does not see our failures. He sees the righteousness of Jesus, and we are now acceptable to God. It means that God looks at you and he looks at me and he says, Yes. It's incredible. It's incredible. It might fall on deaf ears for us sometimes because this is so familiar to us if we've grown up in church. But if you're Paul and you've lived your whole life in this religious system that has constantly told you, do more, do more, do better, do better, and whatever you do, do not let a fly land in your soup. And that's that's like, or a gnat. In fact, if a gnat landed in your soup, that was a big deal. Gnats were the smallest of all the unhealthy animals in Jewish culture. If you grew up like that and you're just living constantly on edge, trying to do every single thing you can to guarantee that you don't slip up at all, because if you slip up at all, you are now unholy and unclean, and God will reject you. If that's how you would understood God to understand that God Himself came as a person to live in the flesh as one of us and experience death on a cross so that he could just give you his holiness and it's done and it's finished. That's awesome. That is awesome. And that's how it is for us. On Easter Sunday, there was this really awesome young woman who stuck around for a few minutes after the service and we prayed together, and Elon and I were standing right there, and she came and she said, You know, I'm so close. I love God so much, and I feel like he's really close to saving me. I'm just not quite finished yet. Those are the words that came out of her mouth. And we got to sit there and say, Man, when Jesus died on the cross, he said, It is finished. So you don't have to be the one who finishes it. I mean, you're sitting here saying, like, like, I know I've got a few more things I've got to get right, and then it'll be finished, and then God will really be good with me. And I'm like, that's not what God says. That's religion, that's not Jesus. He finished it. He's looking at you and saying, Yes, if you'll accept him and believe in him and put your faith in his son, then you are holy in his eyes and it is finished. It's done. That is powerful. The blessing we have here, guys, this blessing that will change our lives if we'll really grab a hold of it, is that no matter no matter your performance this week, this month, this year, no matter how good of a husband or wife you've been, no matter how consistent of a father or a mother you've been, God is not looking at you right now, judging you based on your track record. He's not judging you based on your most recent performance. God judges you through the lens of the righteousness of Jesus. You've been made holy. He has given you his holiness, and when he looks at you, he sees something holy, something pure, something acceptable to him. Worthy as an offering to him. You are worthy in God's eyes because Jesus has given you his holiness. And practically speaking, and we'll wrap up, practically speaking, this has huge implications for the way that we live our lives. Because it really affects us if we'll believe it and live out of it, it affects us in two major ways. Number one, it takes care of striving, and number two, it takes care of struggling. Oftentimes we find ourselves either striving or struggling. What I mean by striving is we're always trying to do better, to do more, trying to earn what we've already been given. And so we might look at a verse like 1 Peter 1.16, for example, which says this 1 Peter 1.16, the scriptures say, You must be holy because I am holy. And we look at that and we're like, oh my goodness, I gotta be holy. Oh, okay, because God's holy, I gotta be holy. And so we strive. And we're like, I gotta read my Bible every single day, and I have to pray three times a day, and I better make sure that I bless my food every single time that I eat, and I better make sure that I never let certain words come out of my mouth, like even if I'm really angry. Um I better make sure that I do this and this and this and this, because I gotta be holy, and we strive and we strive, and we always feel like we've got to do more so that God will be pleased with us. But if we're already holy, if we've been made holy, it's done, it's finished. And you don't have to strive anymore. There's some of us in here, we've been gifted something by God, but we're trying to live our lives as if we don't have it. I heard a person say it this way once. It would be like if someone wrote a check to pay off your mortgage, and then you just you just decided to keep writing checks to the bank. You know, the bank actually wouldn't be able to receive those checks. The bank would say, like, I don't, you we can't even take this because your mortgage is paid off. Some of us have had that experience, but for some reason we just can't accept it, and so we still keep trying to earn the love that God's given us. We keep trying to make ourselves holy, even though we've already been made holy. And I'm not saying your choices don't matter, they do. I'm not saying it's not important to live a good life. It is. But if you're trying to do that so that God has favor with you, so that God loves you, so that you're acceptable to God, you're you're just gonna be running in circles because God has made you holy. So stop striving and rest and enjoy your relationship with God. Struggling, that's it's kind of a different thing. Struggling, what I mean by that is when we feel like we just can't do it. You know, there's certain things that we all have in our lives and we know that they're not right, we know that they're not in line with what God teaches. That's challenging. It's challenging for me. I was talking to someone earlier today. When I open up my Bible, oftentimes I read something and I'm like, ooh, yep. I do that. That's not good. And sometimes I just feel like I can't help it. Like there's nothing I can, I just can't. It's it's a struggle for me. And I even speak that out. I just, you know, I really struggle with this. And so I I'm bad at this. But God says, You're holy. So be holy. Like God says, no, no, I made you holy, so so be holy. I've cleansed you, so live a clean life. You can do this. You're no longer a slave to sin. You're no longer a slave to that nature that we talked about earlier, that nature that compels us, like you can say no. You can say yes to God things and no to the the desires of the flesh. That's what the Bible teaches us. Because you're holy, so be holy. Sometimes we just don't believe that we really are, and so we we live as if we're still a slave to our desires, even those that don't line up with with God. And the thing is, like, I could give you a list of five strategies, and if you do these five things, it'll help you live a better life, whatever, but if you don't actually believe that you can do it, it won't matter. If you believe it's impossible, it won't matter. And and and some of us need to learn today that we are capable of living the life God asks us to live. You can do it. Because you've been made holy. Last year I was working with my son and playing basketball. Do you guys know that I have an older son that plays basketball? Have I ever mentioned this before? Sometimes I forget if it comes up from time to time. Um, yeah. And so Liam and I were in the yard practicing and and we just had a game and we got crushed. And I'm like, well, that can't happen again, right? Because as a man, must win. Um, even if it's through my children, vicariously, which is totally healthy and normal. So, like, I no, I want him to be successful if he's gonna do something. And so I was like, hey, I can help you with this. And I walked him outside and I said, Hey, I think you need to learn how to shoot it from further out. Because I noticed that that team you were playing against, they weren't letting you get close to the basket, so you gotta work on how to shoot it from further away. So I want you to stand right here and shoot the ball. And Liam looked at me and he was like, I can't. I can't. I can't get the ball there. And I said, Son, you can, and I can show you how. You just have to bend your knees this way and then do this, and it's gonna go there. And again, he's arguing with me, I can't do it. I can't, I'm not strong enough. And eventually I had to have that moment as a dad where you sort of you don't yell, you actually lower your voice, and you just go, shoot the ball. And so he just nodded his head and he shot it, and he made it the first time. And uh, and I looked at him and I said, you know, it's really interesting because 30 seconds ago you told me you couldn't even get it there, and you made it. And I wonder how often that's the perspective of God with us. He's called us to be holy, he's told us, you're holy, I've made you holy, so be holy. Go live a great life, live a godly life. Do things that are honorable. The Bible says that whatever is good and right and and and pure and honorable, do those things, think on those things. And sometimes we say, Oh, I just can't help it, I'm only human. And God's looking at us going, no, no, no, you're not, you're holy. I made you that way, so live that way. And we're like, I can't. And he's like, I promise you can. And we're like, no, I can't. And then he he has to look at us and go, be holy. And we go, okay, I can do this. Some of us here we're struggling with things that we don't need to struggle with. And we've got to stop speaking things out, we've got to stop saying and re-re-emphasizing and reinforcing these ideas that are really lies from Satan. You know, you might be here today and you might say, I'm really depressed. And I'm not trying to devalue that feeling, but but God would look at you and say that joy is yours, that the joy of the Lord is your strength, and that the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy, and you can have joy. And we might say to ourselves, yeah, but I'm depressed. And he would look at you and say, You have joy. Take it. You don't have to struggle. You've been made holy, so be holy. This is a gift, this is a blessing. And worship team, you guys can come on out and finish this up. If you're here today and and you feel like you're striving or you feel like you're struggling, just trust what God says. I think so much of our lives with God boiled down to do I actually believe what God has said? And he tells you that you are holy, that you are made right in his eyes, that you are without fault. When's the last time you saw anything that was without fault? Honestly, when's the last time you saw something and said, It's perfect? We have an amazing way of finding fault in about anything we look at as people. And so think about the fact that God looks at you and he says, Yeah, I can't find anything wrong. And it's not because of you, it's because of what Jesus has done. You're holy, so be holy. Stop striving, stop struggling, and just live the life he's called you to live and believe that you have the power to do it because it's been given to you. And if you're here today and you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, I want you to know that this blessing of holiness, it's yours for the taking. If you ever live life feeling like you're not enough, feeling like you don't measure up, feeling like something's wrong with you, that can go away. Because when you accept him, he accepts you fully and completely. And if that's something you'd like to talk about, if that's something you'd like to ask questions about, pray about, I'm gonna hang around afterwards when we're done after this last song. I'll just hang out right over here. And I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to pray with you. So stick around if you'd like to do that. For the rest of us, let's worship God, let's go out, let's live a holy life this week because we can. Because we're holy. All right, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for making us holy. We could not have done that ourselves, it would have been impossible for us. But you say in your word that when it comes to you, when it comes to God, all things are possible. So thank you, Lord, for the gift and the blessing of holiness. Thank you that you've made us right. And help us this week, Lord, really understand and embrace the power that comes from knowing that when you look at us, you don't find fault. You love us, you care deeply for us, and we just we lift you up, Lord. We praise you, we thank you for blessing us like you have. Amen.