The Purest Form of Worship

Go ahead and have a seat. Grab your Bibles and go ahead and open to Ephesians chapter 5 today. Ephesians chapter 5. Thanks for letting the Spirit take over there for a minute. Praise the Lord. And grab your Bibles; open up to Ephesians chapter 5. And I’ve been so thankful for what the Lord’s been doing as we’ve gone through Ephesians chapter 4. It took us six weeks, and I’m hearing from several of you who are just thankful that you’re a part of a church that doesn’t have to rush through what the Bible is saying. And each of these verses we could take one week at a time. Several faithful pastors in history have.

And the faithful obedience to just open God’s Word and allow it to speak to our hearts is what stokes the fire of revival in the souls of people. And so I want us to be confronted, continue to be confronted with the truth of God’s Word, because that alone will move us forward as we await the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

But I’m going to jump straight to the big idea for today in the sermon, and it’s this. Imitation is the purest form of worship that redeemed sinners can give to a perfect Father as they learn to walk worthy of their call. Imitation is the purest form of worship that redeemed sinners can give to a perfect Father as they learn to walk worthy of their call.

Remember when we got into the section of our walk versus our wealth. Chapters one through three dealt with our wealth. We’ll kind of jump back into that a little bit today. But as we started to focus on a walk that is worthy, now as we jump into five he’s telling us yet again, a very important command, an imperative that we be imitators of God. We’re going to look at that today. It sounds impossible, and yet I will show you from God’s Word and the truth of the gospel that it’s very possible with the help of the Spirit of God.

So imitation is the purest form of worship that redeemed sinners can give to a perfect Father as they learn to walk worthy of their call. Let’s look at Ephesians 5:1-2 and that will be our text for today. Now hear the Word of the Lord.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
This is the Word of the Lord for us today. And already as we begin our text, you should sense an overwhelming need for the Spirit of God in your life. You should have a feeling of insufficiency, a conviction, to change and a need to change. Because the first five words in Ephesians chapter 5 say, “Therefore be imitators of God.”
The Greek word is mimeomai or mimetes, which means “mimic or be an imitator.” Believers are called to mimic the God of glory, who created everything. Why should that statement rock you this morning? Because you probably are far more aware of your inability to do it than you are with your ability to do it well.
I just know for me even this week that pressures have led me to anxiety, that decisions have caused me to get grumpy, that circumstances have caused me to speak in a short tone of voice, that tasks have caused me to lack joy, that questions have caused me to doubt things that I know are true. And all of these moments are revealing my human weakness and show me that I have work to do when it comes to imitating God on the earth. I would venture the same is true for you.
And a prayer that we could all leave with today is, “Lord, let me imitate you in every area, every aspect, of my life.” Now understand that like Ephesians 4:1 told us that it’s imperative that we should walk in a manner worthy of our call, 5:1 is letting us know how imperative it is that we mimic the God of glory. It’s not a suggestion, but this is a command. Your life and my life should be a daily imitation of the almighty God.
And before we dive into how we can do that, I want to get practical with it and I think God’s Word gives us the answer. But there are some aspects about God that you cannot imitate. So what’s he talking about when he says that you are to mimic God and you are to imitate God? What is he talking about and what is he not talking about?
Here are six traits that belong to God alone, ok? Six traits that belong to God alone. They’re all on the screen. But you’re not called to imitate His omnipresence. That means that God is everywhere and He is fully present. These traits are known as the incommunicable traits of God. it’s impossible for you to imitate these things. You’re not called to imitate His omniscience, the fact that God is infinite in knowledge and all-knowing. Some of y’all try to imitate that one. But that just makes you a know-it-all, right? His omnipotence. God is almighty and able to do whatever He purposes. God has immutability. God is unchanging, yet He feels emotion. His self-existence. God always was. And before anything was made, God was in His eternality. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
These attributes are what make God, God. They can’t be transferred to somebody else. They can’t be transferred to another God of another religion. These attributes set our God, Yahweh, apart in all of the world. It’s why we worship Him.
1 Chronicles 17:20 says, O Lord, there is none like you, nor is there any god beside you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
But Ephesians 5:1 it’s very clear, right, that we are called to imitate God. How could I imitate an omniscient, all-knowing, all-powerful, immutable God? And Paul, he is serious as he writes in Ephesians, and I would venture to say that the truest sign of a real believer living in the already but not yet is their consistent perseverance, repentance, and action to imitate God in all that they say and do. It’s a big statement. The truest sense of an actual believer living in the already but not yet this side of heaven is their constant perseverance, repentance, and action to imitate God in all that they say and do.
So if we’re not imitating God’s incommunicable traits, we are aiming to mimic the character of God. His character was perfectly displayed in the person and the nature of Jesus Christ. All of it is from God, and so as we imitate Christ we are imitating or mimicking the God of glory. So on the screen are six traits of God that every believer should imitate. I just want you to sit in this for a moment.
You are called to imitate His mercy. You are called to imitate His justice. You are called to imitate His forgiveness and His holiness, His love and even His perfection. And as you just write those characteristics down or stare at those or think about those, understand that this idea of imitating God is not just Paul in Ephesians chapter 5. It’s all through the Bible. Let me read a few passages of Scripture over you.
Micah 6:8. He says, He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
So you don’t execute justice the same way that God executes justice, but you love justice the way God loves justice. That’s why there’s no room for racism in the Christian life. There’s no room for abortion in the Christian life. We love justice. We do justly to one another. We love mercy. Do you love extending mercy, understanding that God has extended mercy onto you?

1 Peter 1:15-16. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all of your conduct since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

I remember reading that in college from 1 Peter and thinking, “That’s impossible.” How could I, a sinful human being, be holy as God is perfectly holy, holy, holy? He is other. He is set apart. There is none like Him.

1 John 4:7-8. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

And Matthew 5:48 Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.”

The Bible is crystal clear when it comes to your life imitating and mimicking God, even to the point of calling you perfect. And that’s because imitation is the purest form of worship that broken, redeemed sinners can give to a perfect Father as we learn to walk worthy of our calling. You were created to worship God and to glorify God. And so you give Him your whole life as you imitate His character on the earth.

Now it’s easier said than done obviously. And yet we have to get painstakingly clear as we look at the book of Ephesians to take it in its whole, understanding that you will not be able to do this on your best day. You can’t do this on your own. And even with the Spirit of God, you will fail time and time again. But praise God for the glorious gospel. Amen?

And so here’s point number one that I want to lean into because I think it’s so important for us to grasp together. Number one is this. Imitate God by remembering the doctrine of the salvation. Imitate God by remembering the doctrine of the salvation. This is why believers need to deepen their doctrine. This is why believers need to be theologically sound. Because in order for you to carry out the things that the Bible asks you to carry out, you have to understand what God has done for you.

So verse 1 it says, Therefore be imitators of God. If you were to circle the word “therefore” in your Bible and then spend a day unraveling everything that Paul has already said to you in the book of Ephesians, you would see that the answer to how you can imitate God is found in the doctrines of what God has already done for you as the believer. It’s imperative that your walk stay connected to your wealth in Christ. It’s impossible to walk worthy if you forget the wealth that you’ve been given or you don’t understand or even know the wealth that you’ve been given in your salvation.

The conduct and the morality and the lifestyle of the believer must always rise from the doctrine of the believer. It’s why we spent the whole fall looking at this doctrine of how God has saved you and how God has brought you from death to life. Because from it rises a walk that is worthy of God. Your imitation of God depends on Ephesians 1 through 3.

And so your inability to imitate God may be because you have no doctrine. It may be because you have not truly grasped the power of God through salvation in your life. And the opposite is also true. You can know a lot of information, but if it never leads to transformation of your heart, then your walk with God or your imitating of God will become stiff and lopsided and hypocritical, just like the Pharisees.

So our imitation of God must always rise from the glorious doctrine of our salvation. And as you circle the word “therefore” and look back (because “therefore” when you’re studying your Bible, it’s always referring to what came before it ) there are so many things that I could point to. Pick one from the book of Ephesians.

But I could look back to verse 32, the verse that came right before chapter 5. And it tells us to forgive as God forgave us. Therefore, be imitators of God. That’s definitely an aspect. I could look back to verse 30, which speaks of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that has sealed true disciples for the day of redemption. You understand that the Holy Spirit has been placed inside of you. The Holy Spirit has sealed you. He who began a good work in you will complete it to the day of Jesus Christ. And when you fail to imitate God, it actually grieves the helper. It actually grieves the Holy Spirit that is within you. So speak words that build up. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Therefore, be imitators of God.

I could even look back to verses 22 through 24, which spoke to the doctrine of recreation and the new creation of believers. The old is gone in your life; the new has come. God in His sovereignty has put off the old man and renewed your mind and put on the new life in Christ so that every day you would wake up and you would put off the things of this world, you would put on righteousness. Therefore, be imitators of God.

But I want you to check out something that I thought was just really cool. I read Pastor Tony Merida, I believe his name is, and he pointed something out. And I gave it a creative name. Have you ever played video games? I’m not a video gamer, but there are like cheat codes that come with video games sometimes. So I put this down as the Ephesians cheat code, ok? It’s on the screen.

But 5:1 is possible because of 1:5. Kind of a cool thing that you can pull out while you’re studying your Bible. Chapter 5 verse 1 is possible because of chapter 1 verse 5. Look at what it says in chapter 1 verse 5.

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. (Ephesians 1:5)

Chapter 5 verse 1. Therefore, be imitators of God. (Ephesians 5:1)

How is it possible for me, a sinner, a broken individual, to imitate the God of glory? Because He predestined me for adoption through Jesus Christ to be His son or His daughter in the faith. What preceded His adoption? It was His choosing. You, to be holy and blameless on the earth. Your positional perfection is with the God of glory, and He has made you holy. He has made you blameless, though you live in the already but not yet and you realize you’re not holy and blameless like you should be, like you are in the heavenly places.

What comes after our adoption through Jesus Christ? It’s the redemption and the forgiveness through His blood. What came next? The indwelling, the sealing and the guaranteed deliverance to your inheritance by the Holy Spirit. You were dead in your sin but God made you alive. He didn’t ask you to become alive. He made you alive. He breathed life into your dead, dry soul.

And the Father chose you to come to Him before the foundation of the world to the praise of His glorious grace. And Jesus redeemed you to the praise of His glorious grace. And the Spirit has sealed you to the praise of His glorious grace. Therefore, be imitators of God.

Would God ask you to do something that He did not empower you to do? Absolutely not. God has called you. God has redeemed you. God has sealed you. He has saved you and given you everything that you need in order to be an imitator of God on the earth. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing. Amen.

This is why Paul goes to prayer at the end of chapter 1. And it’s why Paul goes to prayer at the end of chapter 3. He doesn’t give a bunch of doctrine and then move straight to the rules. But he doesn’t say, “Lord, would You help these people to follow all of these rules.” He prays that they would see and that they would know the power of their salvation, that they would see and they would grasp all that they have because of the grace that has been lavished upon them.

So at the end of chapter 1 he prayed, “Open the eyes of believers’ hearts Lord, that they would know the hope that is in heaven, that they would know the riches of their inheritance, that they would live and operate today, this side of heaven, in the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.” And he prayed at the end of chapter 3 that there would be glory in the church, that the Spirit of God would renovate our hearts and Jesus would come and indwell our hearts and we would know the height and the depth and the breadth of the love of God that is toward us through Jesus.

And so you ask the question, “How can I overcome sin today? How can I overcome this thing that I keep failing in? How can I imitate God?” And the answer is in the doctrine. The answer is in what Jesus Christ has done, what God the Father has done, what the Spirit of God has done to the praise of His glorious grace. So your striving and your achieving on your own is in vain. And yet isn’t it easy to wake up and to strive and to achieve and to overcome that which feels impossible?

And yet Paul Tripp he said, “Jesus is the achiever that you need.” Jesus is the achiever that you need. He’s done it all. He’s overcome it all. And so we look to Jesus and we look to God and we look to the glorious salvation that has brought us from death to life. He’s put off the old self and he’s put on the likeness of Christ, so we anchor our battles in Him every single day as we seek to be strong in the Lord together.

The second thing I want to look at is this. Imitate God by staying dependent as His child. Imitate God by staying dependent as His child. I want to look at the next phrase in verse 1. Therefore, be imitators of God, mimickers of God, as beloved children. So our ability to imitate God is because we are legitimate sons and daughters of God. We saw that in chapter 1 verse 5 that we’ve been adopted as His beloved sons and daughters.

You’ve heard someone say maybe, “Hey, he’s the spitting image of you. He’s your spitting image.” You ever heard that phrase? Well the gospel makes us the spitting image of God. and Jesus Christ Himself becomes our brother through the gospel. And so that’s why when our walk doesn’t reflect our wealth in Christ, it’s offensive, because it’s not building up, it’s not reflecting the inheritance that we have been given. It’s all the more offensive if you live in your own truth whenever you know what God has done for you and what He has sacrificed His Son in your place for.

We should be confronted with the offensiveness of our sin and drop to our knees in repentance because it doesn’t image our Father when we put on the old self. Notice that the text in Ephesians chapter 5 it says to imitate Him as beloved children.

This would be a great week in your personal devotion time even. I did this. I went back to some of my notes from Ephesians chapter 1. And you could go back to some of those messages where we unpacked in great detail. Now you’re seeing it all kind of come together. And yet a lot of people want to focus on 4, 5, and 6 of Ephesians. You need 1, 2, and 3, and you tie it all together in a neat bow.

But in the sermon, the third sermon, “Redemption through Christ” in Ephesians 1:7-9, I talked about the word “beloved” in the Bible. And if you notice in chapter 1, Paul uses the word “beloved” to describe Jesus. He says that in the beloved we have redemption through the shedding of His innocent blood. The word “beloved” is a word in the bible that means “esteemed, favored, or worthy of love.” It’s often used to describe the love as being given to the beloved.

So God’s love is given to Jesus at Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:11. A voice comes from the sky, and God says, “You are my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” At the Mount of Transfiguration a voice comes from the sky. And this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”

So remember, in Christ is the most important you could ever find yourself in this side of heaven. And we’ve unpacked that so much throughout the book of Ephesians. But in the beloved we become God’s beloved children. The same affection that God looks at Jesus with, He looks at you with. And you think to yourself, “What did I do to deserve that love? I didn’t bring anything great to the table. I certainly haven’t done anything on my best day to earn the love of God. what do I deserve His affection for?”

And God, He doesn’t begrudgingly give it to you. It says in verse 8 of chapter 1 that He lavishes His love upon you. I want you to see in 1 John chapter 3. Listen to this. See what kind of love the father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The reason the world did not know us is because it did not know him. Beloved, there it is again, we are God’s children now and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)

Isn’t that awesome? It’s coming full circle, because imitation is the purest form of worship that redeemed sinners can give it a perfect Father. And so as you become as beloved children, recognizing the love that He has lavished upon you and bestowed upon you as His beloved child, you can be an imitator of your Father in heaven. The unconditional, undeserved, unadulterated, pure love of God should motivate you to imitate Him today. You’re loved more than you can fathom.

And let me just speak to you in the room. You probably view God’s love through the lens in which you’ve experienced love on this earth. There are people here today who have never truly experienced true love because the people that God has put in your life who were supposed to love have not loved you. And that’s heartbreaking and that’s sad.

And rather than receiving love from the people that God has called to love you, you’ve experienced heartache and trauma and brokenness. That is not the love of God. God is a loving Father. God is a gentle Father. God’s arms are open wide for you. God wants you to run to Him. God wants to comfort you with His love and be compassionate to you with HIs love and stand in the gap for you with His love. God loves you so much more than your brokenness can even attest to.

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And then there are those in the room you’ve had great experiences with love on the earth. God loves you so much more than your best experience with love on the earth. I try sometimes to tell my daughters at night, or I used to when they were younger, “I love you. You know that I love you, right?”

And they would say, “Yeah, I know that you love me.”

“Do you know that God loves you so much more than I could ever love you?”

And they would say, “I think so.” And we’d unpack it a little bit.

But God loves you so much more than your best experience with love on the earth. So run to Him. Come to God. Bring everything to Him, your questions to Him, your pain to Him. And recognize that He is a perfect and gracious Father willing to meet you exactly where you are.

Now one more observation about imitating God as His beloved children. Children are very dependent individuals, aren’t they? They’re supposed to be. When they get sometimes to two they’re not so much. But the younger they are, the more dependent they are. And the word in the Greek here refers to a small child, one that is fully dependent on his or her parents. And that’s a beautiful depiction of how we are supposed to come to the God of glory. We are to be fully dependent children cared for by our Father, learning from our Father, and imitating our Father.

You think about like a six month old baby. Dependent on mom and dad for nourishment and for clothing and for sleep and for travel and for soothing. And maybe you’ve had a baby or a niece or nephew or a grandchild. And you stare at that six month old baby and you make noises and you make faces. And what does the baby do back? Sometimes the baby starts to mimic the exact faces that you’re making, the exact noises that you’re making. And they eventually start to speak the things that you tell them to speak.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be with our Father who is in heaven. As we stare into His loving, glorious face through the person of Jesus Christ, we begin to mimic and take on His characteristics. We begin to speak like our Father. We begin to act like our Father. And every time we sin, we recognize that we’re giving into our independence rather than our dependence on the God of glory.

Jesus was all over this. In Matthew 18, remember, the disciples arguing, “Who’s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” What did Jesus say?

“Bring me a child.” Bring me a small child. And He set that child on His knee and He said, “And unless you become like this little child, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Unless you’re as dependent and helpless as this child in the father’s arms, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

So you’ve got to give up control. You’ve got to humble yourself. You’ve got to come to God knowing that He’s the Father who can care for you, who can help you, who can cause every move that you make to be an imitation of Him.

Now point number three this morning is this. Imitate God by walking in a sacrificial, Jesus kind of love. Imitate God by walking in a sacrificial, Jesus kind of love. Verse 2 says, And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

One of the greatest ways to tell if someone is imitating God with their life is to see that they are loving others like Jesus loved us. In Mark chapter 12 Jesus is asked, “What is the greatest commandment?”

He says, “Love the Lord your God with your heart, your soul, your mind and all your strength.” That’s imitating God. That’s looking like God. That’s giving everything to God. “The second, love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And the scribe that was listening, he replays back to the Lord exactly what He just said. And Jseus says, “You are right. You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

We are not far from the kingdom of God when we love like Jesus loved. And Jesus, He was called a friend of sinners in Matthew 11 and in Luke 7. Jesus often surrounded Himself with society’s outcasts and marginalized, the drunkards, the tax collectors, the gluttons, the thieves. Jesus was ok with hanging out with the marginal, the poor, with the destitute, and we should be too. Jesus stood up for sinners against the murderous, puffed up Pharisees. Jesus associated with prostitutes and the sexually broken.

And Jesus always told the truth, absolutely always told the truth, but He did it with an extreme amount of grace and love. And His compassion enabled Him to call out sin, to uncover adultery, to expose the wickedness of the earth and still gain followers. His kindness led people to repentance.

And in the book of Luke Jesus said, “Those who are will have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” And understand that many admire the love of Jesus but many miss that His love came with radical truth. His love came with clear instruction to die to this world and to turn from sin. Everyone was extended the love that Jesus had to offer, but only those who accept His message can truly experience the depth of His love.

And love is not this acceptance without change. It’s a reforming and a remaking of you into the image of God. Love is not affirmation of sin, but it’s a gentle and humble, forbearing and urgent opportunity to turn from sin. And whatever you bring to the table, if you’ll give God everything, He’ll change your life. And the sacrificial, Jesus kind of love was not a love that makes Jesus a radical, pop culture activist to admire.

I’m thankful that the name of Jesus seems to be everywhere right now. And the “He gets us” commercials that were on at the Super Bowl. I don’t really know anything about it. I went and read the front page. Great. Name of Jesus, love of Jesus on display. But understand that He wasn’t really like this pop culture activist, and because of His love He’s so popular. The sacrificial Jesus kind of love got Him ridiculed, beaten and hung on a cross by society. He was so loving toward the broken that the ones who knew the law and had the book had him crucified.

Their law, the Pharisee’s law, was greater than their love, and that is the saddest picture of the gospel that the world has ever known. And yet as Jesus laid down His life to die in the place of every broken sinner, He gave us the greatest picture of love in all of history.

In John chapter 15 it says, Greater love has no one than this than someone lay down his life for his friend. With all of His innocence and with all of Christ’s compassion, with all of His gentleness and kindness and humility, He loved us and gave Himself up for us as it says in the text. Jesus willingly took the suffering and crawled onto the cross and died in the place of the broken, the destitute and the sinful. And His sacrifice is not just your salvation today, but it is your example to live out on the earth.

You walking in a Jesus kind of love looks like you going to 1 Corinthians 13, replacing the word “love” with your name. Do that this week. Read like this. If I put my name in the place of “love.”

“Micah is patient and kind. Micah does not envy or boast. Micah is not arrogant or rude. Micah does not insist on his own way. Micah is not irritable or resentful. Micah does not not rejoice at wrongdoing, but in the truth. Micah bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love.”

You go spend some time on that and you’ll be shown your desperate need to imitate God and to walk in love.

Verse 2 of the passage closes with, Jesus gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

I’ve been reading through the book of Leviticus last week, trying to keep up with my wife in her reading plan. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read Leviticus, but my brother-in-law texted me this week, “Yo, what’s up with Leviticus?”

I was like, “Yeah, there’s some good stuff in there.” Let me share what Ephesians 5 is helping me with, even as I’ve been in Leviticus. The first four chapters of Leviticus give you several sacrifices that needed to happen so that the nation of Israel could be in right standing with God.

There was a burnt offering, which was a whole life sacrificed for forgiveness. There was a grain offering, which was a sacrifice of perfection to a perfect God. There was a peace offering, peace between sinners and God. And then there was a sin offering.

So the first three were just because you’re unclean naturally as you’ve been born on the earth and you’ve got to make peace with God. And then when you mess up, when you fail to keep the law, you bring a sin offering. And it goes on and on. But the sin offering is paying for the crimes committed against a holy God.

And there’s an interesting thing throughout the first thirteen chapters of Leviticus. When the people of Israel and their priests carried out these details and the specific requirements for sacrifices, they bring these lambs and this food and these goats and they do the shaving off of the entrails and the legs and the fat and they put it all on the altar and they burn it, there’s always a phrase that comes at the end of all of the chapters, and it’s this. It was a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

And you’re like, “What’s up with that? Why does God like the smell of that? It’s a bunch of dead animals burning.” But isn’t it amazing that the idea of a fragrant offering is said of Jesus lying down His life in Ephesians chapter 5? A fragrant offering and sacrifice of God.

Every painstaking detail, every ritualistic hoop, every spotless animal slaughtered in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament was completely and perfectly fulfilled in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Jesus was the burnt offering of a whole life sacrificed to God. Jesus was the grain offering of a sacrifice of perfection. Jesus was the sin offering that brought sinners peace with God. Jesus was the sin offering paying for the sins of His beloved children past, present and future.

And the death of Jesus was a pleasing aroma to God, meaning it satisfied the requirements necessary to set the guilty and the unclean free forever. And through the shedding of the innocent blood, my sinful soul is counted free. And through the laying down of the perfect, I have been made perfect in the heavenly places. And through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross my life can now be a sacrifice to God in the world.

When God gets all of who we are, all of our brokenness and all of our questions and our gifting and our identity, when we give it all to God, He makes us into HIs likeness that we might imitate Him on the earth, that we might walk just as Jesus walked toward the unclean in the world. This is our opportunity to reflect the glory of the gospel that is within us, to imitate God and to walk in love.

Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to stand to your feet. We saved a little time. I kind of blew past it. But we’re going to worship for the next eight minutes or so. I just want you to respond. If the Spirit of God is convicting you to repent of sin, repent of sin. The front of the room is always open. You can come and get on your face before God. This is space for the people of God to repent and to cry out to Him and to give praise to where praise is due. And so we worship Him and respond.

Let’s pray. Father, we come. We desperately need you. Meet us here in this place even now as we respond to the truth of the gospel that has set us free, that has saved us. Lord, would You by the power of Your Spirit show us the places where we are grieving the Spirit? And Lord would You move us toward holiness and toward righteousness together? Help us to be imitators of You, for it is the purest form of worship that redeemed sinners can give to a perfect and loving Father. Lord, we love You and we give You praise. In Jesus’ name, amen.