God's Guarantee For Me Series

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Who are you pulling for this evening in the Super Bowl? Tampa Bay? The Chiefs? Or you don’t care ??

I’ll be making some excellent points in today’s message, you might even call them touchdowns but nobody needs to think about dumping me with Gatorade after church later.

New Car Window Sticker

Have you ever looked carefully at one of those window stickers of a new car as it details everything that comes with the car? The listing details all the features your new car has because it’s not obvious to the immediate eye. You have your model information, your standard equipment, your optional equipment, and your warranty information. Ephesians 1:3-14 is really one long sentence in the original language of the New Testament. The sentence operates like one of those listings you see on the window of a new car. The Bible also has a sticker window because God really wants you all the equipment that comes for you as His child. So the Bible puts together this really long sentence to communicate all the blessings God is piling up for His children who are in Christ.

Now, no English translation attempts to make it just one sentence because the sentence is so complicated. The version we are looking at together makes it five sentences. This one long sentence is detailing for you the ways God has blessed you if you are in Christ. He’s just piled them up with one blessing upon another upon another. But my fear is you don’t feel this. This is a nose bleed sort of text if you will. We are way up high in the clouds. But we don’t sense how high up we are when we read this. It’s like you’ve been transported to the top of the Rockies but somehow you cannot sense it.

There is a time when you recognize you are obviously way high up but there are times when it’s hidden from you just how high up you are.

Deep-Sea Fishing

If you follow me on social media, then you know that I was in Florida this past week. After the conference was over, my wife and I had the chance to take our youngest son fishing off the coast there. There was a little seasickness by one of us but we had a lot of fun. It was really cold early in the morning as we skipped over the waves to find just the right spot where the fish were biting. Now, I had never done any deep sea fishing before and I had no idea of what we were doing. In fact, I wanted to share a little of the video – pay attention to how long he reels the fish in. But the fishing guide has a little computer onboard that tells you what’s happening in the Atlantic Ocean below us. As he navigated us, he had a little screen right in front of him and we stopped at this one spot where all this color was below us. There were red, yellow, and green colors on the screen indicating something was below us. And he tells Matthew and me as he points to all this color, “That’s fish right there.” There were a lot of fish on the screen.

And just above the colors was a number that indicated how deep the ocean was to the floor below. It was around 250-290 feet to the floor of the ocean below. We were around a mile off the coast of Fort Lauderdale – you could see the buildings clearly. Yet, you drop the line all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor, 250 plus feet deep. Pause now and consider the following: do you have any idea how long it takes to reel up a fish at this depth? I counted how long it took my 16-year-old – it took him more than a minute to real him in all the way. Take your left hand and reel for an imaginary fish in for around 75 seconds or so. You just keep reeling and reeling and reeling. You wonder, “Will I ever get this fish to the top of the water?”

Do you have any idea of the depth of God’s blessings He has in store for any one of His children in Christ? God has Really Blessed You, my friend. Again, God has put the longest sentence in your Bible to outline for you how much God has blessed you.

Let’s count the ways God has blessed you, my dear Christian friend.

• You are chosen (verse 3);

• You are adopted (verse 5);

• You are redeemed (verse 7);

• God’s very Son shed His blood for you (verse 7);

• You are forgiven (verse 7);