 I'll begin reading at verse 19, read at verse 22, give you an introduction, develop a few things reminding you of a few things we've seen, and then move on into our study. So I'll begin here at verse 19, Ephesians 2, now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. And so as we concluded last time our last study, we concluded with Paul stating that Jew and Gentile in verse 18, that Jew and Gentile have access to God through Jesus Christ. Now the word that was translated access is used three times in the New Testament, and it's a Greek word that speaks of a believer's entrance into the presence of God. It was used in that verse as well as in chapter 3, verse 12, in Romans chapter 5, verses 1 and 2. In Romans 5 I'll give you an example verses 1 and 2, it says, therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. In Ephesians 3 verse 12 he had said, he says, in whom Jesus, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him. So this word access speaks of our relationship with God and how that we have an entrance into his presence by faith. And so I want to develop that a little bit as I lay a foundation for our study. The first thing I want to point out and remind you of is that the New Testament message declares that Jesus is humanity's mediator. And this is something that Jesus himself said as well as other writers of the Bible. In John 14 verse 6 he had said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me. In Acts 4 verse 12 we read salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. In 1st Timothy 2 verse 5 there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ, Jesus. And so that's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying that it's through Jesus Christ that we have access to God. He's also saying that this access to the Father is not just for Jew and not just for Gentile but it's for both Jew and Gentile. And it occurs by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes the Jew and the Gentile the one new man thus establishing unity. He had pointed that out again in verse 14 when he had said, he himself is our peace who has made both one and has broken down that partition, that dividing between us. So the Spirit makes the Jew and the Gentile into what is called the one new man and that means that we have in Christ unity. And then the third thing is by one Spirit both the Jew and the Gentile together have access to the Father. And I'll refer to the word access originally referred to a court official who introduced people to a king. The term carries with it the idea not of possessing access in our own right but of being granted the right to come to God with confidence knowing we will be welcomed by him. So we have access to God through Jesus Christ and that's the message that is proclaimed in the gospel. It's a message that God has given to man in order to make it possible for man to know God. And that's why we need to be careful and we need to be accurate when we share that message with other people. As I was preparing this study I came across a letter that I had received a while back from a person who listens to us, listened to us on the radio. This is an older letter but it's worth repeating. It makes me look so good but this is the letter. Dear Pastor Rosales, I wanted to write to let you know the great influencer radio program has done for me and my family. I live in Utah and was raised Mormon but I did not attend regularly. About a year ago I felt that God was telling me that I needed Jesus in my life. So like a good Mormon I started going to church more. But that didn't satisfy me and I started to realize that they were not teaching about Jesus very much. To make a long story short I started listening to your radio program almost a year ago on my way to work. Now I, my husband and my two children regularly attend Calvary Chapel in Salt Lake City and I'm getting baptized. I've invited my entire family and close friends, all of whom are Mormon, to the baptism and I would very much appreciate it if you would pray for them to come to the service and accept Jesus into their lives. Thank you so much for your ministry. I pray for you often and hope that you can touch more lives like you touched mine. God bless. That's the gospel. See that's what the gospel does. That's why teaching and preaching the word of God. That's why giving the gospel is so important. Again it's the only message that completely can transform a person's life. In 1 Corinthians 1 17 and 18 Paul said it like this. He said, Christ didn't send me to baptize but to preach the gospel. Not with wisdom of words. Lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it's the power of God. And so we are to give out this gospel. A gospel that makes the Jew and the Gentile one in Jesus Christ. That breaks down that middle wall of partition that had kept them separate for so long. And it's that gospel that brings us into relationship with both God and others. And so Paul is making that very clear. Notice in verse 19 how he says, Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. So Paul reminds the Ephesians that they're no longer strangers and no longer foreigners. When he uses the word stranger that word means a resident alien. It's somebody who settles in a country as a short term resident. It's also used of those who could be called guests in the country. The word foreigner speaks of someone who is dwelling near but not in the country. It's a picture of dwellers who were just outside the house of God. So both of these terms denote an inferior relationship. A short term resident living near a country is not the same as a citizen of that country. So Paul is saying this is no longer true concerning you Ephesians. You are members of the kingdom of God. You are fellow citizens of heaven with the saints. You one time were far off but now you have been brought near. You were once aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. You were once strangers from God's promises. But now you are fellow citizens with the saints. You're members of the household of God. You are fellow citizens with saints including those of the past. Those who are present and those who are yet still future. So when he says that, that would include saints like Abraham and Moses, David, Daniel. Elijah would include the apostles. It would include people who are believers today and people who are still yet to believe. You see, when Gentiles began to attend church meetings, they would have felt a bit awkward. At that time the church was mainly Jewish. They could have felt uncomfortable. Religious and national culture sometimes creates barriers between believers. That was true in the early church. In Acts 6, 1 and 2 it says, in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. The first division or problem the church had was a cultural one. The national Hebrews, the Hebrews who were born in Israel, were having difficulty with the Greek-speaking and Greek-cultured Jews. So there was a cultural problem that was taking place in the early church. The first problem that the church actually had to encounter. So it happened then and it still occurs to this day. There are people who can go to church and feel uncomfortable around people who are of a different color or nationality or ethnicity. And some churches actually cater to those differences in order to attract members. Years ago I was interviewed by a representative of a national Christian magazine. And as I was being interviewed by this person, it was a magazine that was distributed to pastors throughout the nation and throughout the world. And as I was being interviewed, I was asked a question that is, for those of you who may be familiar with this, there is a word that is used concerning the makeup of your church. It's called your demographic. And anybody who's gone to Bible college or whatever, you've heard the term. If not, perhaps you've read it and heard it somewhere else. But it's your demographic. It speaks about the ethnic, the cultural, racial makeup of the church. And it speaks concerning the city that you minister in and all. And it's a term that's used by church growth specialists and all. And so I wasn't surprised when the guy asked me about our demographic. Because that's what he did. He said, well, tell me about your demographic. And I said, well, I've got a lot of beaners. No, I said, I'm sorry, John. I didn't mean to offend you, my brother. I said our demographic. And I knew where he was going with that. So I said, what is the population makeup in the church? What is your demographic? I said, we have a variety. We have a variety. The church is open to everybody. And all he says, yeah. But he says, what is your demographic? I said, well, we have a high percentage of Hispanics. And I'll never forget his question after I had said that to him. He said, we have a large percentage of Hispanics with us. So the next question that he asked was this, do you have special music to attract Latinos? I said, yeah, yeah, I go up there with the tambourine. My wife plays maracas. We have a mariachi band. I said, no. No, why would I do that? I said, no. No. And I explained to him, I said, listen, the church is not a white church. The church is not a brown church. The church is not a black church. The church is not a yellow church. The church is not a red church. The church is just the church. That's what we are. We belong together because of Jesus Christ. But there's this mentality in all. And see, so sometimes somebody may feel uncomfortable because the people around me are not like me. They call that the theory of homogeneity in church circles. Once again, that you're going to go to a church that makes you feel like you're part of that group. You're homogeneous with them. And I understand some of that I do. I understand that one place may make me feel more relaxed than another. I get that. But if the church is built on the reality that we are together in this, we are family, we belong to one another because we all received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And therefore, it doesn't matter what my background may be or what my ethnicity may be. The language that I'm most comfortable speaking or any of that, those things matter, of course they do. But they're not the premier thing that matters. The premier things that matter are the things that pertain to the unity of the spirit that comes through Jesus Christ. And so that's what Paul is dealing with here. He's speaking to Ephesians who have been brought in to the body of Christ where the church, the original believers were Jewish and the original ministry was in Jerusalem and Judea. And yet the gospel was intended to go throughout the world. And as it did, it attracted many people and made this great group of people into the one church. In Acts 2.17, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. And that's why I dream so much lately. In Romans 3.22, it says this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. And there is no distinction. And so the Gentiles go to felt like visitors to the church instead of family. And this is what Paul's pointing out. The Jews and the Gentiles are now one in Jesus Christ. They're not simply God fearing people. They're full participants in the body of Christ. You see, Gentiles were religiously unclean. Kosher Jews had no fellowship with them. And that kind of attitude was still present in the early church. It had to be addressed. In Galatians 2.11 through 13, Paul writes, when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back, separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. And so that was something that had to be dealt with. It was in the church in its early beginning. So Paul is making it clear that they are fellow citizens of heaven. In Romans 10 verse 12, again, there's no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. And so we are presently now members of the household of God, we are his children. In John chapter one, verse 12, it reads, as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name. In Romans 8.16, the spirit himself testifies with our spirit, we are God's children. So when we came to Christ, we were adopted by God, we're his children. Romans 8.15 says, the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you receive brought about your adoption to sonship and by him, we cry Abba, we cry father. The word Abba is a word that is a tender word. When you go to Israel, you'll hear it. The little children will say that to their father. When their dad and this little child walks by, I've seen it many, many times, the little one will look up to dad and we'll say Abba, Abba. The word Abba means daddy. It's a tender word. And so when we are told by the Holy Spirit that we can refer to him as not only our father, but we can call him our daddy, that's a word of tenderness. That's a word that tells us there's a closeness. And we have been adopted to sonship. Under Roman law, adoption was a very important legal procedure. The person who was adopted had all the rights of a legitimate son in his new family and completely lost all rights in his old family. In the eyes of the law, he was a new person. He was so new that even all debts and obligations connected with his previous family were abolished as if they never existed. So we are God's children through faith in Christ, members of his household. All our debts have been canceled because of the blood of Jesus and we are members of his family. So he's saying again, verse 19, you are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. And so we have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. We're built on that foundation. We're looking at Mark this upcoming Sunday and I'll probably touch this a little bit, this upcoming Sunday. But remember when Jesus was there in Caesarea Philippi, how that he had asked his men, whom do men say that I, the son of Man Am? And remember how they responded, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah and others say one of the prophets. And remember how Jesus asked the question, but who do you say that I am? And then the answer came, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus goes on to say, blessed are you Simon Barjona for flesh and blood is not revealed as to you, but my father who is in heaven. My father is the one who revealed this to you. And he goes on to say, I say unto you that you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Is he saying that he's building the church on a fallible weak human being? One who denied him shortly thereafter, no. He was speaking concerning the confession of reality and faith, you are the Christ, the son of the living God and the church is built on that foundation, that fundamental Jesus Christ is that rock. Jesus Christ is the fundamental foundation of the church. When he said you are Peter upon this rock, he wasn't referring to Peter, but the confession Peter had made of faith in Jesus Christ. But the church has been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So when he speaks concerning this, Jesus being the chief cornerstone, but the foundational work being apostles and prophets, the foundation would be Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel that is given by the apostles. In 1 Corinthians chapter three, verses 10 and 11, it says this, according to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I've laid the foundation and another builds on it, but let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. No other foundation. In the here and in the main sanctuary, I've shared this with you before but some of you have not heard this. When we built that sanctuary back in 2002, and before we put any carpet down, I asked the church, invited the church to come and we gave them pens, sharpies and all, some brought their own and they marked up the bathrooms, but we gave them pens and we told them, and we told them, write your favorite scripture. So if we were to rip up the carpet, the whole stage area up there, the whole platform, filled with scripture everywhere, all the way to the doors, people came and stayed, we stayed for hours and people were writing their favorite scriptures everywhere and whenever I preach every time I stand and give a Bible study, I'm standing on this particular verse here, no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ. That's my foundational scripture. Every time I give a Bible study, every time you come on a Sunday and you're here for a study, I'm standing literally on God's word, on the foundation of the word of God. And that's what it is. The foundation is Jesus Christ, Chief Cornerstone and the message of the gospel that he gave to his apostles. And so the apostles and prophets are the ones who laid the foundation that the church rests on. Now pastors as well as Bible teachers are to remain faithful to what they have received. They're to teach the word of God and not modify it. They're not to give their personal opinions, they're to give a right exegesis, a right understanding of what that scripture is saying so that the people are receiving it in a proper sense. And those who handle the word of God are to be faithful. In Deuteronomy 1232, whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it. Jesus is that Chief Cornerstone. The word is the foundation. It must be taught correctly. Titus chapter one, verse nine, remember it says he must hold firmly to the faithful word as it was taught so that he can encourage others by sound teaching and refute those who contradict it. In 2nd Thessalonians chapter two, verse 15, therefore brethren, stand fast, hold the traditions which you have been taught whether by word or epistle. And so the foundation of the proclamation of the gospel, Jesus appointed these apostles and prophets to go forth and to bring that. And he's speaking concerning the church that has been built on that foundation. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being that Chief Cornerstone. Now, the Chief Cornerstone is the stone that aligns the building. It actually is the most important stone and everything else is built from that. So Jesus is the Chief Cornerstone, but he was also rejected by the people. And Psalm 118, verse 22, the stone which the builders refused has become the headstone of the corner. Isaiah 28, 16, this is what the Lord God says, behold, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation, the one who believes will never be shaken. Jesus actually applied this to himself. In Matthew 21, he said in verses 42 through 44, have you never read in the scripture the stone which the builders rejected has become the Chief Cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing, it's marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you, given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. And whoever falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder. So the cornerstone is the Chief Stone of the building. It needed to be strong enough to support what was built on it and it aligned the rest of the building as well as uniting the building into one structure. And that's what Jesus is to the church. He supports, he aligns, and unites the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1-10, Paul said it like this. He said, I appeal to you brothers and sisters in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. In Philippians 2 verse 2, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, the unity. That's something that Jesus prayed for, that they may be one, so that the world may come to believe that Jesus Christ was sent from the Father. One of the evidences, and one of the prayers, which shows us how important it is, but one of the evidences that God has actually come upon man by the Spirit through his son Jesus Christ who died on a cross for us is the unity of the body of Christ. It's the church loving what another, moving forward in the same direction, united in one heart as we apply the scriptures to our daily lives. And that's something that's a tremendous testimony, and that's what we're supposed to be. Notice he says in verse 21, in whom the whole building being joined together grows into a holy temple. When he says it's been joined together, the church has been carefully fitted together. Each part has been carefully crafted to fit perfectly. And that building by the way is still incomplete. So new stones are being set in place as God is continuing to add to this temple of the Lord. It's in continuous growth, continuous modification, or continuous building. When you go to Spain, if you ever have a chance to, and some of you perhaps have, and you go to Barcelona, I've been to Barcelona a number of times, and when we've gone, they speak Spanish with a lisp there. So to get Marie upset, I'll say let's go to Barcelona. She does not like the rank. She really gets mad at me. That's why I do it. But when you go to Barcelona, Barcelona, there's a basilica there called La Sagrada Familia, the holy family. And it was started, I believe I wrote this down to make sure I, yeah, it was begun. It began to be under construction in 1882. And it is not yet finished. So you'll go there and you'll see there is by an architect named Gaudi. And you'll go and you'll see it. And it's really an odd looking, I have to be honest with you, it is not an attractive. Gaudi had an odd kind of way of thinking his brain might, anyway, it was just, it's just different. But when you look at it, it's fascinating in the way that it looks almost like it's something from a cartoon. It's just odd looking, but it's been into continuous construction and is still unfinished. And that's really, in a similar way, that's like the church today, the church under Jesus. It's in a state of continual additions. And so it has yet to be completed because every time a new person is added to the family of Christ, the temple continues to be expanded. And that's the point that he's making here that we are being built into the holy temple in the Lord. So we're actually in the state of growing. Every time somebody gets saved, that temple grows a little bit larger. And so the church is being carefully fitted together. The Gentiles were part of the construction. He says again in verse 21 that we are growing into a holy temple in the Lord. We are God sanctuary. We are the dwelling place of His Holy Spirit. There is a concern that I have that I'll share with you at this moment. And that is that there are many people that I have seen who go to church, who have the belief that because they attend a church service that they are the body of Christ. The fact is that's not true. One, there are those who are right now watching online. They can't be here with us, but because they're born again, they are automatically part of the body of Christ. But just because somebody may show up in a building and know when to stand, know how to sing the songs, know when to smile or to clap or whatever, they may know all of those things. That does not in any way, and we know this, but that does not in any way mean that they're born again. There is a very religious spirit that people can have. A religious spirit. They're good people. They do good things. They live a good life. They can be honest. They can be faithful to their family. They can be a hard worker. They can be involved in a church. They can have all of those things, and yet that doesn't mean they're born again. It's been said that a pagan in the 50s lived a whole year life than Christians in the 2022s. And in some ways there's an appearance there that you can't really argue with. I read a while back that atheists have a lower divorce rate than evangelical Christians. Atheists who don't believe in a God believe strongly in their vows. Whereas Christians, sometimes professing Christians, they don't even have the belief that they can work things through in their marriage. They divorce a lot easier, and then they say, God gives me the grace to do that. We've seen that many times. Well, God gives me the grace to do that. I'll never forget a guy who came into my office. He actually called. It was in the early days of our ministry. He called me and I took the call and I was preparing a study, but my secretary said, this fellow needs to talk to you and he's insistent. And I said, okay, and so I took the call. He said, Pastor, I need to ask you a question. I said, okay, but I can't ask it over the phone. Can I come and see you? I said, I'll be honest with you, can this wait? No, it can't. It's an emergency. I need to, he says, I'm gonna take lunch at such and such time. I promise I won't take too much time. I know you're busy, but this is important. And I said, you know what? I'll take a break, come and I'll talk to you. So he did, he came and he sits in front of me. And I'll never forget this conversations. As he sits in front of me, he asked me a question. He said, is divorce an unpardonable sin? That was his question. And I said, is divorce an unpardonable sin? And I'm thinking, why, why were you asking, why? Were you so insistent? That's a question that, but then again, everybody has a reason for asking questions. And it's, it's right that I should do my best to answer it. So I said, well, the only unpardonable sin that I know of in scriptures rejecting the grace of Jesus Christ or refusing him, it's called blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you cannot be saved neither in this age or the age to come because you've rejected salvation as offered by Christ. That's the only sin that I know of that Jesus said will not be forgiven in this age or the age to come. He said, so divorce is not a sin that will send me to hell. And I said, well, no, it's not. It's, so what, what happens later I find out. He took that as permission. He went out, he was having an affair, divorced his wife and then married the woman he was having an affair with thinking that I had biblical giving him permission to do such a thing. So people who come to church, just because they show up, I learned that a long time ago, doesn't mean that they're right with God. Doesn't mean that they're part of the body of Christ at all because they may be seated and they may listen and they may act like they believe, but in fact they're rejecting all along. And so it takes the Holy Spirit to bring us into a relationship with God and it's by His Holy Spirit that we come into relationship with Him. And I'm thinking that one of the things I'm greatly concerned about is that we the church, our fellowship in particular, but others can become people who do good things without the power of the Spirit of God. And I'm greatly concerned that we as believers that we walk in His Spirit, that His Holy Spirit baptizes us, that we understand that we are in dude with power from on high, that He has given to us spiritual gifts that we can exercise, that we have the ability to share His word because God has given to us His word. We have tasted of the Lord. We see that He is good and we can communicate that to others, but that we don't fall into the trap of trying to change the world or change our lives or change our home by our own fleshly efforts, but that we learn to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit who is the one who does the work through us. And I think that sometimes we can get caught up wanting to do good things without the power. We can even be moving thinking that we're moving in the Lord but in fact, we're not. I was driving home one time. I was coming home from a big barren and those of you, all of us probably know big barren the road that it is a sharp decline as you're coming. So as I was driving, I took the car and I put it in neutral and I just coasted because you can do that. So I'm coasting, I'm going a good distance, going a good speed, just 50, 55 miles, whatever, just coming on down. Then it starts to level off and I put it back into drive. I had run out of gas and I didn't know it. You know, so when I put it back in the gear, it's slowing down. So I put my foot on the gas pedal to accelerate and then I look and empty, I was running on empty and a lot of people in our spiritual lives do the same thing because we're coasting, we think we're empowered. When we need the power, we put our foot down and we've been in the flesh all along, didn't even know it. And so it's very important. And if I could give you a pastoral encouragement in the morning, when you wake up every morning and when you go to sleep too, but every morning you wake up and I'm not giving you a prayer to pray, but a thought, father, fill me today with your spirit. Father, I wanna walk in your spirit. Because, well, the devil never sleeps and he's been waiting for me to open my eyes because he's already got a plan for my life that isn't good. And without your help, I may succumb to his temptations. Without your help and without your power, I might be deceived today. If you don't understand that yet, you need to understand that's absolute truth when I'm telling you because you can't drive from your home to your job without seeing billboards or advertisements or hear something on the radio if you're not listening to a Christian station. And even if you are listening to a Christian station, you may hear something wacky that's coming out over the air in the name of Christ. You can be deceived very easily, we all can. So if we go to sleep at the wheel, we're in danger. And what we need is to understand who we are in Jesus Christ. We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We are the temple of the Spirit of God and God has already treated us as if we're already there even though he have yet to arrive. So we travel in hope, knowing our destination is sure, this last Sunday there was an amazing game on TV and I decided to watch it. But I'm one of these people who pauses because I really don't care that much. It's not like my life. So I'll pause it and I'll talk to Marie or talk to my kids or whatever and put it back on. And I do that because I just, I get bored. And so it's like six and a half, almost seven minutes and the game's almost over and we're losing. You can guess who I was rooting for and we're losing. And I tell him, my wife Marie doesn't care that much either but I'm saying, this doesn't look good but they came back against San Francisco. Maybe they, I hope so, whatever. So I'm just kind of, and I'm talking and then the phone rings and I pick it up. It's my son, Davey, Super Bowl champs. I said, what? Yes. Are you watching the game dad? Well, yeah, I've got it paused, but thanks a lot. True story. Thanks a lot. Oh dad, I'm so sorry. I said, don't worry about it. John did that when we beat San Francisco. It's all right son. So I watched the game with a different attitude because we were losing and I had no assurance that there was a possibility at all for them to come back. They hadn't been doing that well throughout most of the game. Those of you who perhaps watched it. Now I'm watching the game with a different perspective. We won. So six minutes and 52 seconds and then I'm thinking, oh, if I'd have had a chance to see this in real time, I'd be bummed right now because they're not connecting or they're not making yards. And so I'm starting to think something must happen. Something's going to happen because I know we're going to score. Something's going to happen. I'd start looking at the game that way. Something's about to happen. Bang, here comes Cup. A believer in Jesus by the way and he's making these amazing catches and then boom, we win the game. And then I thought, you know what, that's my life. Not that I'm a ram, but that's my life. It looks like we're going to lose sometimes. It looks like we have no hope sometimes. If you just look at the news, you're losing every moment of every day, right? You are. But we read the last verse of the last book of the Bible and we win in Christ. And that's the whole thing. So I was telling my daughter in La Corina. I said, wow, yeah, I watched the game in hope. A confident expectation, the knowledge that the results were already determined and that's your walk in Jesus Christ. You may feel like you're being beaten. You may go down, but you'll always get back up. You cannot be defeated because in him we are more than conquerors. Understand that. You are more than conquerors. You didn't lose. It may have looked when Jesus died on the cross, it looked like he lost. But three days later, he showed that he won. And so in us, we need to understand that. God is working together in our lives. He is in us. In 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body, your spirit, which are gods. And so we belong to him. We have been bought by him. And again, we're being built together for a dwelling place of God in the spirit. The apostles and prophets laid the foundation that Jesus holds the temple together. The Jews were among the earliest stones. But Gentiles and Jews now make up a new community. It's called the Fellowship of the Redeemed. And this fellowship transcends race, gender, status, and every other barrier. And if that is the case, we need to live in such a way that people will know that we are his temple. We need to live in that way so that people will know we are the temple of the spirit of God. And that's what holy life does. It reveals that the holy God dwells in this body of clay and has made our life holy because he is holy. And so Paul is speaking and he's saying, you have been built up into a living temple and God's spirit dwells in you. So live for God. Father, we ask that you would work in.