From His Tent to Ours

This morning. We're going to step out of Ephesians for the next couple of weeks with Christmas around the corner, and I'm going to. Do a different kind of message. Normally we get in a text, stay in that text, and we're not going to do that this morning. Instead, we are going to do a message that's more topically driven a bit, but really kind of trying to make a theological larger statement and construct.

So we're going to work through a number of texts. If you need a Bible, there are Bibles on the chairs in front of you. Grab one, keep it. It's our gift to you. If you don't own a Bible, we want to make sure you have one.

I'm going to start, and you can turn there if you want to. It'll be good for you to kind of page through Scripture with me, but you can turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 12. And in some ways, this message is more of a uh Almost like a pre-Christmas message in a way. to set the table a little bit. I want to begin with Maybe an odd text for something that points toward Christmas.

Ecclesiastes 12. Um Verse one. Remember also Your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw near, of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble.

Strong men are bent. And the grinders cease because they are few. And those who look through the windows are dimmed. Do you see what he's doing? It's giving a poetic description of growing old.

Right?

So the keepers of the house tremble. You don't think as clearly, maybe, as you used to think. The strong men are bent physically. You're not what you used to be. The grinders cease.

You got a lot of trips to the dentist. That's the polygrip verse. Those who look through the windows are dimmed. You don't see as well as you used to. That's the progressive lens.

verse And the doors on the street are shut. That's the, what'd you say, honey? When the sound of the grinding is low and one rises up at the sound of a bird, all of a sudden you used to sleep in until 10, and now you can't sleep past 5:45. They are afraid also of what is high and terrors in the way. The almond tree blossoms, you get in gray hair.

White hair, hoary-headed, they say. The grasshopper drags itself along. Don't call your older spouse Grasshopper today. And desire fails, sexual desire. Because man is going to his eternal home.

And the mourners go about the streets. Before the silver The cord is snapped. Or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Four different ways of speaking. poetically about death.

And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. And then the preacher who narrates aspects of Ecclesiastes says vanity of vanities says the preacher. All is vanity.

Now, if I close in prayer, you're all going to need some medication. What's the point? You know, I was looking this week And I was curious, at what point does your body start to die? Like at what age? Does your body scientifically and medically start to wind down?

And before I looked, In my naivete I thought, well, I mean, I'm I'm 48, I'm going to be 49 in February, and it sure feels like that.

So I figured I'm probably there, you know, it's probably like last couple years, you know, sort of. cresting and now it starts turning down. Um Your body starts the tissues in your body start to deteriorate at age 30. Age thirty.

So if you're 29. This is it for you. All right, enjoy it. Live it up. Have a great time because once you hit 30.

It's all falling apart after that. You're in Ecclesiastes 12, young grasshopper. Your body starts breaking down. And you're marching somewhere in it. That means that.

Um if the average life span is, you know Close to 80. That means that you're going to spend three-fifths or so, something like that, almost, of your life. Winding down. Wind it down, right? Five eighths, I guess, of your life.

Just wind it down. Um I tell you that. Because The one thing That is true. Of all of us. There's a lot that's not common to all of us by way of particular experiences.

There's a lot of joys that you might have that I might not, or I might have that you might not. And there are a lot of life experiences that you'll have that I won't have. And yet Uh the idea of suffering. The realities of our bodies The dynamics of a human cresting and winding down is something. That will be for most of us, unless we go earlier than that to be with the Lord, it will be a common experience.

And yet you and I are all called. to a particular kind of fruitful life. while the cells are breaking down and the tissues are falling apart.

Well all the aches and the pains and all of the added stresses and all of the relational discord that comes with life and all of the midlife buy your gold medallion, unbutton your shirt with your Peter Penn collar and get your Corvettes going on. Like while all that goes on you and I Still. are called to something.

So I've been thinking about the humanity of Jesus a bit and wondering how the humanity of Jesus might help me be a better me. In a world where I suffer and my body is falling apart. Where I get old and where relationships have tension. Where I have expectations that aren't met and may never be met. And what is it that Jesus in his humanity might have for me.

In that.

So that's what this message is about. I'm going to invite you to, again, we're just going to go to some different texts. You go to John 1 with me. As we begin, John 1, from his tent to ours, and you'll see that we're going to start at his tent. Mm-hmm.

John chapter 1. And we have to go somewhat quickly through some of these texts because there's a number of them. Verse 1, of course, begins famously, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him.

And without Him was not anything made that was made.

So it talks about the eternality of the Word. That this word has always been the Lagos, and it's a reference to Jesus. And he's beginning, right, ironically, in a similar rhetorical flourish that Genesis 1 starts with in the beginning. And it's as though he's saying, here's how the new creation starts. The new creation starts.

with Jesus. Skip to verse 14. And the word became flesh. And Dwelt. And dwelt.

Among Us. And we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So this. Word dwells among us, John says. And he uses a word. That is for this the Pitching of a tent. In the ancient world, often it's been translated something like tabernacled among us.

But set up a temporary dwelling.

Now, here's where the wrong emphasis gets placed in the use of this word, and we should make sure we place the right emphasis. The wrong emphasis gets placed on the temporary. idea They'll say it's a temporary dwelling.

Well, that's not. actually and fully the case with Jesus. Because Jesus takes on a body for how long? He takes on a body. Forever.

In perpetuity. In fact, the same word is used in Revelation 12 and in Revelation 21, and they're talking about eternity in heaven. Those texts are. This is not The idea is so much about temporary as it is about this metaphor of the pitching of a tent. The establishment of something among.

Now, The the readers are supposed to let their minds go back. And their minds are going to go back to the use of this word in the Greek Septuagint. That many, that was in that way the Bible, if you will, of the first to second century.

Okay. And they're going to go back in their minds. and think about how that term is used for the tabernacle. Not because it was pitched down, then taken up, pitched down, then taken up, pitched down, then taken up. but because of the second part of this verse.

We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son, from the Father, full of grace and truth. The focus is not on it being temporary. The focus is on what's in the tent. And what was in the tabernacle?

Well, that was the locus of the glory of God set among the people, and they came and worshipped, and here this Shekinah, radiant, self evident glory Comes from the tabernacle in John saying, Jesus comes and takes on a body. And what is in it? The glory of God. The glory of God. So that as he goes around Palestine, the glory of God is on the move around Palestine.

As he touches people and heals them, the glory of God is made evident in what it is that Jesus touches. As he's worshiped, the glory of God is put on display. As he suffers and dies, as he rises again, his glory is made available. What I want to do is take Jesus God incarnate, and I want to think about incarnate. Incarnate.

Think about this glory. Among us. And I want to think in terms of three movements. From Jesus' tent to our tent.

So what is it that we might see in Jesus, this one who tabernacles, who is the instantiation of the glory of God among humanity? And what is it that we might look at? What is it we might observe? In his tent. that we could then say By way of implication, about our tent that's turning into a grasshopper who drags himself along.

What might we learn? About our lives in that.

So here's the first movement. There's a move. from identification to imitation. Identification to imitation. What do I mean?

From identification to imitation. I mean that Jesus comes, and when he identifies with you and with me, He does so. Fully. He doesn't live in that way above the fray in his incarnation. Yeah.

So just a couple of points, and then to sort of drive a central application home. When Jesus goes. Uh to is and is in Samaria. He stops at Jacob's well, and we read Jacob's well was there, so Jesus. Wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

Now in John chapter 4... You might recall what happens after this. He's by the well, A Samaritan woman comes to him. She's drawing water from the well. He ministers to her.

He offers her living water. She doesn't understand what he means when he offers her living water. She thinks he's referring to water that runs or moves, essentially, a kind of plumbing. And she says, that'd be awesome. Then I wouldn't have to come all the way out here to this well and get water if you could make it run.

But he's speaking metaphorically of a kind of life sustenance. that will invibe her inner life and transform and change her. And he identifies to her prophetically how much she needs to change because she has been moving from man to man to man to man. She's so astonished at it all that she ends up going away and grabs some people from the town and says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Jesus, in that context, it's often missed.

Is what? Wearied is the word. In secular Greek, kopiatmo is the word, and in secular Greek the word is used for Being beaten. Being beaten. The idea in the term here is that he is physically completely beaten and spent.

He just is literally when you when you finish a day and you feel physically worn out and you can't hardly think about anything except crawling into bed. That's when a woman shows up. who needs ministry. When he's in the middle of being weary, just hold on to that for a minute. He knows what it is to be weak.

Luke chapter 4. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. If you haven't eaten for 40 days, listen, if I go about 40 minutes, I feel a little bit hungry.

Forty days. And he is Hungry. We might even say starving. And it's in that context of depletedness. I mean, how long really do you go without eating before you get not hungry, but hangry?

Right?

Where you start feeling little bit on edge. Gotta get something in your system. Right?

So Jesus Physically depleted, that's when the devil comes to him, right? You may have heard the acronym HALT before in counseling. If you're hungry, you're angry, you're lonely, or you're tired, halt, you should stop. Because you're low-hanging fruit for the devil.

So you need to attend to your body because your body ends up compromising in real ways your soul because you exist as an embodied soul.

So you need to attend to it. You need to be wise in the rhythms of your living. Here's Jesus. And what does Jesus do in the midst of that? He appeals to the resources outside of himself.

In the midst of being tempted three times, and he goes to the word of God repeatedly, repeatedly, and resists the temptation, you get to the end of that section of verse 13, and it says, And the devil left him, but he waited for another opportune time. He's going to keep coming back. to the points of weakness. Jesus knew what it was to be weak. He also knew what it was to be weak, listen, and not fail.

And not fail. You also learned something else that I hope could encourage you, and it's this. If in fact You are tempted. You should not Intuit from that, that somehow you can't be tempted and filled with the Spirit at the same time. Jesus is tempted.

What does this say? Full of the Holy Spirit. Right?

So he's tempted, and yet he's full of the Spirit, and the Spirit strengthens him amidst his hungry. State, his weakened state. Let me give you one more. I'm going to skip that verse for a second. He weeps.

Now, this in John 11, I want you to turn to this text with me, John chapter 11. The shortest verse in English in the Bible, it's not the shortest verse in Greek in the Bible, but it's the shortest verse in English in the Bible. Yeah.

But I want you to pick up in verse 28. John 11. When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, The teacher is here and is calling for you. and when she heard it she rose quickly and went to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but he was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out. They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet. saying to him, Lord, if you'd been here, My brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

Now I want to make a comment about this. uh verb I think it was deeply moved. deeply moved. The verb literally means to snort like an angry horse. That's what it means, to snort like an angry horse.

Why would Jesus look at this? and respond in a way that seems almost filled with disgust. Is that he looks around and he sees these weaklings? Who are weeping? And he's moved and said, come on.

Get over yourselves. Is that what it is? Yeah.

Not at all. B. B. Warfield, the 19th century Princeton theologian, wrote this. The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions.

Enraged Jesus. Inextinguishable fury seizes upon him. It is death that is the object of his wrath. And behind death, him who has the power of death, and whom he has come into the world to destroy, tears of sympathy may fill his eyes, but his soul is held by rage. And he advances to the tomb in Calvin's words, quote, as a champion who prepares for conflict.

What is it? And snorts in disgust that death has robbed the joy of life. from people he loves. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved, and his spirit greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him?

They said to him, Lord, come and see Jesus Wept.

So the Jews said, See how he loved him? But some of them said, Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man? From Dying.

So what happens next? Jesus In the midst of feeling a righteous indignation, Jesus, in the midst of that, mingled with sorrow. Weeps, Jesus, in the midst of an emotional. existential kind of crisis moment. Acts on the behalf of people he loves.

And extends himself in ministry and raises Lazarus as a precursor of his own resurrection, and in that way outside, so much so that verse 54, if you let your eyes go down there, after all this happens and the dust settles, we read: Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with his disciples. The previous verse tells you. that from that day they made plans to put him to death. He, in the midst of anger and sadness mingled, risks ministry to the point of outing himself, such. that now The full light of the wrath of those Jewish leaders now.

comes in upon them. Weary. Weak. Weeping. Here's what I want you to see.

He identifies with you as a weary person. He identifies with the grasshopper dragging himself along. He identifies. With here. As a week Fragile.

Person. Who feels this way one day, goes to sleep, wakes up, and feels kind of different. And one day you're strong, and one day you're weak, and one day you're in the middle. He identifies with that. He identifies.

With the emotional discombobulation of the human heart that experiences this wealth of emotionality in the same context. He sees, and yet what does he do? And this is the imitation. He does not let His personal existential, his personal physical. Any personal relational debilitation, crisis, Tension.

Stop him. from keeping his eyes up and is heart available. for the people in his life. I told you I've been reading a book on getting out of bed. by Alan Noble, so I'm going to give you a long quote from it.

What do we learn? What do we learn to imitate? Here's Noble. Your loved ones don't stop needing you just because you're suffering and stuck in your head or pinned to the bed. You can't know exactly how much freedom you have to fight back against the darkness, against your own mind, and choose to be present with those who need you, but you must try.

Because you love them. You cannot ask them to suffer needlessly for you. You can't leave them alone while you lose yourself in despair. You don't get to renounce your brother and sister. of your son and daughter.

or your friends and neighbors, even when you feel like you have nothing to give them. To the best of your ability, which is more than you imagine and less than the moment demands. You must set aside your suffering to bear the burdens of others. Because the world cannot and will not stop. For you.

And it needs you. Whether or not you want it to need you. It may be that you feel less and less adequate to the task of loving and serving others. It may be that you feel so broken by a mental disorder that you are unfit to be a parent or a spouse or a brother or a sister or a neighbor of any kind. But that is a lie.

No, you can't bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. but neither can you deny the efficacy of your paltry offering of love Choosing to remain present with your friends. to take the dog out. To listen patiently to your coworker even while your mind is screaming. And you want to hide or pound your head until it stops.

Such things are small offerings, small sacrifices, little acts of defiance against your suffering that may mean the world to them. And anyway, those small offerings. are all that God asks of you. This is a good dose, a sober dose. of the reality.

That when you're living in Ecclesiastes 12. You don't get to complain all about your corns and your bunions all the time. You don't get to spend your life and how awful things have been. You don't get to drive in the rearview mirror all the time. You're not allowed to.

You're not allowed to. And we need to be reminded of that. And we need to see. that Jesus came. to show us what a life like that looks like.

Weary, weak, and weeping. and yet every instance Eyes up, heart open, hands out. Secondly. We move. And we're going to spend the least amount of time here.

from suffering to salvation. This is the heartbeat of what we celebrated a moment ago when we. looked at the Eucharist. Hebrews 2, 14 through 17. You got to see the first part.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He himself likewise partook of the same thing.

So, this is telling you. Why did he become human? Why? What was at the center? of the venture of God in condescending in human form.

That through death he might destroy The one who has the power. of death. That is the devil. and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong Slavery.

So I I read Ecclesiastes twelve to you. And the pale of death hangs over the text. And if you're afraid of that. He came so you don't have to be. That's what that text is telling us.

He came to pull you out of the cave.

So that you could see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, and you would no longer. have to fear. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. He didn't come for angels, he came for you. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation, a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.

One other text for you. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law. To redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. to come to us who could be tempted to strive. To work for our salvation, who could be tempted to strive in a gospel of sin management.

Where we try to manage all the things in our life and not give into sin as much as possible, to live under God's law as best we can and do all the right things. He came and perfectly obeyed the law and then died as a sacrifice to offer us his lawful keeping life so that in his lawful keeping life we could receive righteousness. The word is imputed, given to us. translated to our account.

so that we could, coupling with the previous text, no longer be afraid of what happens when we breathe our last breath. He came to move. from suffering. to salvation. His suffering offer you salvation.

in your suffering To look with the expectation of future salvation so that you don't get lost in your suffering.

So you don't get head down.

So you don't get lost in the brokenness. And forget about all the blessings that He has afforded.

Now, final point. And this is too much fun for me. From foreshadowed glory to future glory. Foreshadowed glory to future glory. I'm gonna put a text up.

You can turn there if you want to. It's a lengthy passage. Actually, I'm gonna I take it back. I'm gonna ask you to turn there. I could get back here.

Turn your Bibles. Matthew 16. Matthew 16. Louis verse twenty-seven. Yeah.

Matthew 16, 27. For the Son of Man. Is going to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he'll repay each person according to what he's done. Second coming. Verse twenty-eight.

Truly I say to you, There are some standing here. who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Keep that in mind. Jesus Coming in his kingdom. Putting on display His Glorious nature.

His glorious nature.

Well We lost it.

Well It'll come back. Verse 1. And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter. And James. And John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Now, I want you to keep in mind: why is it? Then Matthew couples these events right next to each other. Other stuff happened in the six days. But he moves from You're gonna see. The Son of Man in his kingdom.

to this text. And he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun. His clothes became white as light, and behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it's good that we are here.

If you wish, I will make three tenths here. One for you. One for Moses and one for Elijah. Still speaking, when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my beloved Son, with whom I'm well pleased. Listen to him.

When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, Rise and have no fear. And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus. only and as they were coming down the mountain Jesus commanded them tell no one the vision Until what? The Son of Man is raised.

From the dead Now do you remember? When Jesus was raised from the dead, What happened? Just this morning Before the end of the year, I had a little money left in my church expense account.

So I was like, yeah, there's something I want to get for the office up there. I needed another copy of a different Rembrandt for the office up there, and oh, I got one. You'll see if you go up into that office, probably sometime by the end of this week, when you walk in on your left, the first thing you'll see. is a thirty by thirty amazing painting. A Rembrandt's rendition of the encounter Jesus had with doubting Thomas.

It's extraordinary. After he raises from the dead, he zaps into A space And he shows him His side, and you can see the astonishment that Rembrandt puts on the face of Thomas as he looks and as everybody else stares at him, showing him his side. And he tells him what? Touch it. Yeah, still just touching.

Well, there's this odd metaphysical-physical intersection. They're touching someone who zaps in a room. You touch people who walk through the door. Who climbed through the window? But now to zap in a room.

And so somehow he has a body now. That's different and yet continuous. They don't look and go, who are you? They look and go, it's Jesus. 'Cause he looks like Jesus.

And yet they can extend and touch him. He can sit on a beach in a different encounter and eat fish with them. He can stand and communicate and they see him. and engage him in a full kind of physicality. Later on In reflecting on this transfiguration.

Peter says this: For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. When did we see the power of his coming, the Son of Man? Coming. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son.

with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. He's talking about the Transfiguration. Remember that? Remember when we saw his glory?

Put on display. Remember that? Let me take you. to another text. and pull all this together.

Beloved, we are God's children now. 1 John 3:2. And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we'll see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes and purifies himself as he is pure, we will be like him. for we will see him As he is.

what has happened as we tell the story of the transfiguration. We tell half of it. And the half we tell is He unbuttons his shirt and zaps up to glory. And they get to see. This God, man, they get to see one who the glory has tabernacled.

among them and he goes Right? That's only half of the story. What else is he showing them? What else is he showing them? He is showing them, listen carefully to me.

The glory that awaits Them. He is giving them a foreshadowing of humanity Glorified. It's not merely Here's deity. It's At the end of all things. as a result of the resurrection What will you be?

And Peter goes, we gotta build some tents. That's unbelievable. A vision. of what's to come. Foreshadow glory.

in the transfiguration. is a vision A future glory that is available. to you. Grasshopper. 1 Corinthians 15, 45, thus it is written: The first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam, that's Jesus, became a life-giving spirit.

How so? Resurrection? That's the whole context here. But it's not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, then the spiritual. In other words, you get a physical body first, then you get a spiritual body.

The first man was from earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven, as the man of dust, so also are those of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those of heaven. Do you have a spiritual relationship with the Lord? Have you been delivered from death?

Have you entered into his sufferings in that way? Then you're a man, you're a woman of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You aren't getting in a spaceship.

You aren't getting in a rocket ship and going to heaven. It's not out there somewhere out beyond Pluto. It's a different dimension of existence. Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you, a mystery we shall not all sleep, but will be changed.

In a moment, the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trump will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable. And we shall be changed. Like Jesus, see my side. for this perishable body Must put on the imperishable. This mortal body must put on immortality.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written from Isaiah 25, verse 8. Death is a death. is swallowed up. In victory.

So how does it move from his tent to ours? For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, That's your body. Same word, same root word for dwelt among us. Skinos. Same word.

That's used for tabernacle in the Greek Old Testament. We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan. Longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. Why?

Because the grasshopper's dragging himself along. If indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked, for while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we'd be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. It's an allusion to Isaiah 25:8, same text. It's 1 Corinthians 15, 54. He who has prepared us for this very thing, is God who has given us the Spirit.

as a guarantee.

So what's all that mean?

Well It means a number of things. It means That in the obvious, you didn't need me to read Ecclesiastes 12 to figure out that your body's breaking down.

Now, if you're 31, you needed me to tell it to you because you think you're all that in a bag of chips. You're falling apart. But you needed to know. That while this Body. is weary.

While the soul and body feel weak, While the soul mourns and grieves and is tempted to look back in the rearview mirror at regret on the one side and nostalgia on the other. Wishing you'd go back and undo stuff and wishing you could just live it again. He says, put your eyes down through the windshield. Look out at who God has. Be faithfully present in your life today, like Jesus was.

And do it because you know that every day is a gift from Him given to you for this moment to give your all because you can spend yourself, because you don't have to save anything for the future, because He's giving you glory waiting for you.

So we can say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:9, What no eye has seen, Nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him. Lord God, thank you. For the incarnation. The infleshing. of your dear son.

Who has given us life? Full, free, abundant, joy abounding. Lord, we look to you. In vibas in the present. Turn us outward.

Let us pour ourselves out. Thank you. For securing future glory and showing us and giving us glimpses along the way of it. May you be glorified in our lives today. In Jesus' name, amen.