Song Sheets & Sermon
Christ Is Risen He Is Risen Indeed
Verse 1
How can it be the One who died
Has borne our sin through sacrifice
To conquer every sting of death
Sing sing hallelujah
Verse 2
For joy awakes as dawning light
When Christ's disciples lift their eyes
Alive He stands their Friend and King
Christ Christ He is risen
Chorus
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
Oh sing hallelujah
Join the chorus sing with the redeemed
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
Verse 4
Once bound by fear now bold in faith
They preached the truth and power of grace
And pouring out their lives they gained
Life life everlasting
Verse 5
The power that raised Him from the grave
Now works in us to powerfully save
He frees our hearts to live His grace
Go tell of His goodness
Chorus
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
Oh sing hallelujah
Join the chorus sing with the redeemed
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
Ending
He's alive He's alive
Heaven's gates are opened wide
He's alive He's alive
Now in heaven glorified
He's alive He's alive
Heaven's gates are opened wide
He's alive He's alive
Now in heaven glorified
Chorus
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
Oh sing hallelujah
Join the chorus sing with the redeemed
Christ is risen He is risen indeed
What Love my God
Verse 1
What love my God would bring You down to earth
What king would take a low and lonely birth
Yet to this dark and broken place You came
To sleep beneath the stars that You had made
Verse 2
What love my God would send the Way of Life
To walk the road rejected and despised
That You might know the weakness I possess
And be my rock of strength and righteousness
Chorus
O Your love my God like a flood
As heaven opened up pouring out on us
O praise the King who came to the world
In His love like a mighty flood
Verse 3
What love my God could hold You to the tree
To bear that overwhelming debt for me
The Son of heaven leaves the Father's side
The Healer bleeds the Life was made to die
Chorus
O Your love my God like a flood
As heaven opened up pouring out on us
O praise the King who came to the world
In His love like a mighty flood
Verse 4
What love my God so gracious and extreme
Was strong enough to come and fight for me
To go through hell and down into the grave
And raise me up to see You face to face
You raise me up to see You face to face
Chorus
O Your love my God like a flood
As heaven opened up pouring out on us
O praise the King who came to the world
In His love like a mighty flood
Jesus Strong and Kind
Verse 1
Jesus said that if I thirst
I should come to him
No one else can satisfy
I should come to him
Verse 2
Jesus said if I am weak
I should come to him
No one else can be my strength
I should come to him
Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus strong and kind
Verse 3
Jesus said that if I fear
I should come to him
No one else can be my shield
I should come to him
Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus strong and kind
Verse 4
Jesus said if I am lost
He will come to me
And he showed me on that cross
He will come to me
Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus strong and kind
Act Justly, Love Mercy
Verse 1
It all comes down to this
What you require of me
Love my neighbor as myself
And You above all things
Chorus
Act justly love mercy walk humbly
With You God
In all things in all ways walk humbly
With You God
Verse 2
It all comes down to this
To be Your hands and feet
Good news to all the world
The truth will set us free
Chorus
Act justly love mercy walk humbly
With You God
In all things in all ways walk humbly
With You God
Bridge
It's beauty for ashes
It's mourning to dancing
It's closer and closer
The Kingdom of heaven
Bridge
It's beauty for ashes
It's mourning to dancing
It's closer and closer
The Kingdom of heaven
Verse 3
In years from now we'll see
The fruit our hands have sown
Faith just like a seed
The only way it grows
Chorus
Is to act justly love mercy walk humbly
With You God
In all things in all ways walk humbly
With You God
Chorus
In all things in all ways
walk humbly with You God
Chorus
walk humbly with You God
Chorus
walk humbly with You God
Living For Jesus
Living for Jesus a life that is true
striving to please him in all that I do
yielding allegiance glad hearted and free
This is the pathway of blessing for me
Chorus
O Jesus, Lord and Savior I give myself to you
for you in your atonement did give yourself for me
I own no other master my heart shall be your throne:
my life I give henceforth to live, O Christ for you alone.
CCLI licence number 486616
Adam Veenstra
Ebenezer CRC
April 28, 2024
Message Introduction
SERMON INTRO SLIDE I invite you to turn to page 1820 in the Bibles in front of you, to Ephesians chapter 3.
This passage provides some of the background to the story of Queen Esther, and any of God’s people who are able to rise up and grow because they are rooted in the love of God.
Being rooted and grounded is the Cadet theme this year, and it’s what we see here in this passage, which is part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Last week we read a letter specifically to the minister of the church there, but now this letter is for the entire church. By extension, then, it’s also for the entire city; it’s for the Cadets, the Gems, and all of us here today.
So I’d like to invite Josh and Peyton to come forward, and they’re going to share this passage with us today, starting at verse 14:
Scripture Reading
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Message
SLIDE 1 By the time this letter was written, the church in Ephesus has been established, and both Jewish and non-Jewish believers of Christ who were living in the city had started to recognize that they both a part of God’s family in Christ.
So now they’re learning what it means to be established in him.
SLIDE 2 What it means to be rooted and grounded in him, so that they can rise up.
This is the next step as they have the desire and opportunity to grow in their faith.
As they grow to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
This part of the letter is a prayer that grows out of Paul’s awareness of what God is doing among believers, and that there are key gifts of love and power ready for them to experience.
Paul himself has experienced the love of God. He has experienced firsthand what it means to be rooted and grounded in Christ.
That’s why he prays this prayer for us.
I don’t know why the Cadet organization chose this particular theme verse this year.
But I have to imagine that it’s in part because they themselves have experienced firsthand what it means to be rooted and grounded in Christ.
And now they want the Cadets, and all of us, to experience that too.
To experience the fullness of the love of God, and to live new lives in Jesus Christ.
That is Paul’s prayer, the Cadets’ and Gems’ leaders prayer, Ebenezer’s prayer.
Paul actually begins this prayer in the first verse of chapter 3, before almost being distracted: he couldn’t help but expand upon God’s grace, and is now bringing himself back to the prayer in verse 14.
He is writing to them not so much to address a particular concern, but to help give them a general better understanding of God’s interaction with his people, and purpose for their lives.
The Jewish and Gentile believers, as outlined in earlier chapters of the book, are now seen as one body, living side by side in the city, and worshipping side by side in the church.
SLIDE 3 Chapter 2 tells all of us that we are “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people”.
And so the desire is that they continue to be united by knowing God’s love and exhibiting it to each other, no matter what other differences they may have had before.
SLIDE 4 The desire is that that love would be what we are all rooted and grounded in.
That love would be our lifegiving foundation, and the way we continue to live.
So that will be what enables us to grow and flourish—to rise up.
In the month of May, we’re going to be starting a new sermon series that will take a longer look at this spiritual growth.
But it begins now already: if we want to rise and follow the example of Esther and other leaders who have come before us
SLIDE 5—leaders like Ed and Travis and Carey and Ali and Hannah and Joy—
we have to be rooted and grounded. Don’t they look like the kind of leaders we should all be learning from??
SLIDE 6 Bible scholars have said that the love of God is both “the source and the goal” of this passage, and really of the entire Gospel message: being rooted in Christ’s love enables us to live and grow and work and play, and share that love with others.
It enables us to navigate life like the leaders we admire, and become more and more like Christ himself as we do.
And any real strength that we have for that is a spiritual strength that comes when Christ dwells within our hearts.
The need to put this prayer into the letter shows what a priority it is.
The desire to have this passage be the theme for the Cadets this year, all over North America, shows what a priority it is.
It’s been said that to be strengthened by Christ is to experience his love, and it puts us on the path of understanding love in our world.
Because there’s a difference between knowing God, or just knowing about him. And what Paul is praying over us today is that we would really know him.
And since it is a relationship, it is mutual: Christ wants to know us! He desires to be with us. His love for us is so great that he came to be with us!
SLIDE 7 Author and lawyer Bob Goff has become known for his writing about love.
Our Coffee Break here at Ebenezer did one of his studies a couple of years ago, and it’s still available for small groups to use.
Bob has been described as a man who “loves effortlessly, as though love packs annually in snow on a mountain, melting and rushing through him in an infinite loop. There’s no explanation for a man who can love this well save God. I think…[he] knows God, and I think God’s love flows through him.”
Bob is described as a man who is living the love story Paul is praying about.
A man who has experienced the love of Christ, rooted and grounded himself in it and been strengthened by it, so that he can rise up grow and share it with others.
Knowing what love is might not change much in us. But knowing how love feels, knowing what love does, that can have immeasurable impact on our lives!
When Bob was much younger, he decided to drop out of high school, pack up his belongings, and start a new life working across the country at a national park.
It was a bit of a spontaneous decision, and on his way out of town he figured maybe he should stop and let his friend Randy know what he was doing. Randy was probably a decade or so older, and had been a mentor and a bit of an older brother for him.
So Bob drove to his house, got him out of bed, and as he was saying goodbye, Randy said “I’m with you”.
But he didn’t just mean metaphorically, he didn’t mean he was just going to wish him well. Within a few minutes Randy had packed a bag and was sitting next to him in the passenger seat.
Less than a week later they were back home, and Bob realized it might not have been the best plan.
Only when he was dropping Randy off did he realize that his wife was also home. And that she and Randy had just been married, only a couple days before Randy left with him.
Bob says it was then that he realized that Randy really loved him.
Because he didn’t just say “I’m with you”, but he really, truly was.
SLIDE 8 Randy was so rooted and grounded in God’s love that he could rise up and go with Bob in that love.
Esther was so rooted and grounded in God’s love that she could rise up to help his people.
Our Gems and Cadet leaders are so rooted and grounded in God’s love that they can rise up and be there for our kids and youth.
At some point in our lives we have hopefully all had leaders and mentors and friends who rise up for us.
Because they are rooted and grounded and modelled on Christ.
And because that’s who we all have who is rooted in love, and very literally rose up for us.
Someone who really loves us. And who doesn’t just say “I’m with you”, but really, truly is.
To know that Randy loved him, to really know? Nothing compared.
To know that our leaders and our mentors and our friends love us? Nothing compares.
But to know that Jesus Christ loves us? It’s beyond comparison. It surpasses knowledge.
Nothing compares with knowing that Jesus doesn’t just say “I’m with you”, but came down and joined us.
That he was so rooted in the love of his father that it enabled him to rise up from the dead to save us from all of our sin and fear and shame, so that we can have eternal life with him.
He is Immanuel, “God with us.”
For the Jewish people in the book of Esther, for the people of Ephesus, for our Gems and Cadets, and all of us here today.
SLIDE 9 In his prayer Paul desires that we may know Christ’s love.
That we may know how wide and long and high and deep is that love.
He uses this language deliberately to demonstrate just how infinite this love is.
SLIDE 10 1 John 3:1 assures us “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
That might be hard for some of us to grasp.
It might be hard to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is God’s love for us, when love can be so hard to see in the world around us.
Sometimes we don’t find it where we’re meant to, or where we expect to.
Sometimes it might feel like it’s disappeared altogether.
Maybe that is something you’re feeling right now. Maybe it’s something you can see in your life, the life of someone close to you, or that you can see in our world. Our communities are undergoing confusing times of change and uncertainty. And we see conflict happening in our homes, our neighbourhoods, and around the world.
SLIDE 11 Part of the reason Gems and Cadets exist is because we want our kids and youth to know that they are loved, no matter what their experience has been outside these walls.
We want them to know that they are loved by their leaders, by each other, and by their God.
SLIDE 12 We want them to be rooted and grounded in that love.
And we want that for all of you, as well.
We hope that by being here today, or being a part of one of our programs, you can have power together with all these saints to grasp that you are loved by the leaders of this church, by each other, and by your God.
We hope that you can root and ground yourself in that love, and know that God will give you the chance to rise up.
The Bible is an incredible love story.
But it’s so much deeper and more intense than the words “love story” usually mean.
SLIDE 13 Right from the very beginning, in the book of Genesis, God breathed us into existence, forming us in his own image, and filling us with his lifegiving breath.
We are born of him, and we live because he gave us life.
God’s love for is has a depth and intensity that goes beyond any love story.
SLIDE 14 It is a love that surpasses knowledge.
Famous Reformed theologian John Calvin has said that the full nature of God is so far beyond our comprehension that he has to speak to us in the same way a caregiver speaks to a child: at their level, and in ways that their hearts and minds can comprehend.
SLIDE 15 And so it’s only by being rooted and grounded in it, and strengthened by him, together, that we can even catch a glimpse of the enormity of his love; that we can begin to be filled with that fullness of God.
That we can begin to rise up to the challenge of life around us.
No matter what that challenge might be.
SLIDE 16 It reminds me of one of those inspirational quotes that you can buy on barn board from Etsy or Michael’s: that you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
Anyone want to guess which great theologian said that?
SLIDE 17 It’s that great thinker of our times, Winnie the Pooh.
But despite the fact that you can buy it on Etsy, there’s a lot of truth to it.
We are all of these things. But because of Christ’s love in us.
Because he is braver than we could ever believe, he is stronger than he may seem to us, and he is smarter than we sometimes think.
SLIDE 18 We are these things only because he fills us with the fullness of God, giving us his bravery, his strength, his wisdom. His love.
Because his fullness is beyond our understanding.
So we root and ground ourselves in his love so that we just try to come close to grasping it.
That is Paul’s prayer for us today, it’s the prayer of the leaders of Gems and Cadets, and the prayer of the leadership of this church.
That you would be rooted and grounded in the love of God.
Conclusion
When something is rooted it receives the nutrients it needs from the soil around it.
When something is grounded it has a solid foundation so that it’s not blown away.
And all so it has the right conditions to grow—to rise up— to live and work and play and worship in the way God has called us to.
And so in the doxology of his prayer, Paul offers it up to the one who is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.
So I invite you to rise, and hear again the words of that prayer as our parting blessing and encouragement today.
Closing Blessing
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.