OCT 5 2025 | Seated with the King

Sea Change Church · "Seated with the King" Pastor Harry Wilson · October 5, 2025
Ephesians 2:6-10
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

verses six through 10. He also raised us up with him and seeded us with him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus. So that in the coming ages, he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is God's gift not from works so that no one can boast for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

This is the word of the Lord. Good morning church. It is good to be with you this morning. Good to see all your faces again. Uh, I was gone for a little bit on a sabbatical and I am so happy to see so many faces. I'm my name's Harry, I'm the family pastor here. And, uh, open your bibles to Ephesians chapter two verses six through 10. And our passage, uh, or our message today is titled, seated with the King. And I've learned that sometimes in life it's really important where you are seated.

I was a sophomore in high school taking an intermediate algebra class, and I had the, I'm not good at math, and I had the worst teacher I have ever had in my entire life. Uh, her name was Miss Zink. Probably shouldn't tell you her real name, put her on blast like that. But you know, maybe, maybe she'll hear this message and repent of her evil ways. And Miss Zinc's probably a made up name anyway, you know, like that's a, like an alias of some kind, I'm sure.

But, uh, she was really bad. And what made her so bad was that it was mostly her teaching strategy. And her teaching strategy was that she did not teach, uh, she would sit on in the corner in the classroom and almost the majority of the class, she would be talking on the phone, usually yelling at somebody on the other line of the phone, and then she'd come up and she'd yell at us and class would be dismissed. And so she was, she was, she was very strict.

Uh, she was very mean. She often wore just one color. She would pick a color and just all one color. I remember very specifically, there was a day where she chose a red and she wore a red leather jacket with red leather pants and large streaks of red like eyeshadow I think it's called. And, uh, which, you know, might have been appropriate if you're a public school teacher in hell. But, but this was La Jolla High School, you know, and, um, I guess every school in hell is probably a public school, right?

Like, there's no, no one's getting a private education down there, right? Anyway, uh, so it was really bad. It didn't go, it didn't go well. And the majority of the way, the, the way that we survived the class, any student survived the class, is that everybody was just cheating. Everyone was cheating off one another. And I'm not condoning cheating, I'm just telling you this is what was happening. And the class was kind of split up into two sides, really just like this, honestly, a right side and a left side.

And, uh, the right side of the classroom had somebody who was, is this student who was just so good at math, like one of those kids who just could read the textbook, understood it was great at math. So the right side of the room was doing great. Uh, they were getting A's and B's because they were all cheating off, literally one student. I was seated on the left side of the room and we were not more moral, we were also cheating off one another.

Our problem was, is that we were very bad at math. We did not understand math. So we were the blind cheating off the blind, right? It just wasn't going well. And the re the result was, is that most of us on the left side of the room failed the course and had to go take it in, uh, summer school. And so how you did in this class actually greatly influenced, or sorry, where you sat in this class greatly influenced how you did in the course, right?

And what I want us to see in, in our passage today is that God also has a specific seat for us, and the seat that he has for us should greatly influence how we live in our life today. And so I want us to jump into our text and read verses six and seven again. And it says this, it says, he also raised us up with him and seeded us with him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus. So that in the coming ages, he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

So this passage in Ephesians chapter two comes right after a, it's a very, Ephesians two is just a very famous gospel centric passage, right? If you've been in church a while, you've been reading your Bibles a while, you know that Ephesians two is that famous, you were dead in your trespasses and sins following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air that is now at work and the sons of disobedience and whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of our flesh in the mind.

We were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God being rich in mercy, outta the great love in which he loved us, he has made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved. That's a very familiar passage for most of us. And just following this passage is I think, uh, a part we talk about less in church. And so Paul makes it clear in that previous part, we have gone from death to life, from children of wrath to children of God.

But now our passage today tells us that God has also raised us up and he has seeded us with Christ. And I think this is in the past tense, seeded us with Christ because this is as good as done for us. That God has secured this, he's saved our spot. It's as good as done for those of us who are in Christ. It's one of those realities sometimes we talk about in theology as already, but not yet. It's secured and it's saved.

And if we are seated with Christ, then I think one of the questions we should ask ourselves is, okay, well where's Christ seated? What does that actually mean for me? Where's Christ seated? And if you go back in your Bibles, uh, just a chapter before in Ephesians chapter one, verse 20 through 22, it tells us, it says, he being God exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seeding him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he subjected everything under his feet. So Christ is seated at the right hand of God, above all powers, all dominions, all rulers, all authorities, everything subjected under Christ's feet. And now our passage tells us that you get to sit with him the most loving, kind, beautiful, generous, holy, powerful being in all of existence that is over and above all things invites you to sit with him. Do you see what a high honor that is?

Why would God do this? Why would he do this? Wasn't it already enough that he saved us from our sins? Wasn't it already enough that he bore a Roman cross suffered and died? Wasn't it already enough that he sent us his Holy Spirit to comfort us and lead us and guide us and bring him back to himself? Why would he give us even more a seat with the Father and the Son in the highest heavenly places? Why would he do that? Verse seven tells us, why does he do it?

Verse seven, he seats us with in the heavens with Christ, why? So that in the coming ages, he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. So why does God do it so he can show off? So he can just show off the immeasurable riches of his grace, of his kindness, of his love for you so he can put his love on display for all of eternity. That he would take children of wrath, who, who according to Ephesians two, followed the devil dead in trespasses and sins.

He'd redeem 'em, he'd make 'em alive, and he'd give them a seat in the highest places. And all of heaven will see his handiwork. And all of heaven will be amazed at his kindness. He does it as a, as a display, as a demonstration of his love. I put in your notes that in the temporal God's love was put on display by his position on a cross in the eternal god's love will be put on display by your position on a throne. In this temporary life, in this temporary period, Jesus Christ, a historical figure went to a historical cross, died a public execution, hung up on a cross God's own son for all the world to see.

And it was God's love put on display for us in this temporal time historically. But in the eternal, how does he display his love? It's you on a throne next to the Son. He didn't just save you from your sin and then leave you alone. Like Pastor Adam sometimes calls it a cosmic lifeguard. He didn't do that. Instead, he saves us from our, the consequences of our sin. And then he seats us with himself. It says this also in Revelation 3 21 says to the one who is victorious.

These, this is Jesus speaking in Revelation 3 21, to the one who is victorious, meaning the one who has, as it's put in, Timothy fights the good fight, finishes the race, keeps the faith to the one who is victorious. I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat down with my father on his throne. See, we don't serve a God who sits on his throne and looks down on humanity with a scowl.

We serve a God who left his throne to go get humanity and to bring him back to his, to himself. And when he gets to the heavenly throne room with us, he says, Hey, I can scoot over. I can make room. Come sit with me. I challenge you. Find a God, this kind, this generous, this loving. In any other religious tradition or text, I can tell you this, it doesn't exist. And if you're here and you're new to checking out Jesus, and, and maybe you, maybe you've just been longing for something deeper, something real, something meaningful, and somehow you found yourself in this space and you're new, I'm just gonna tell you now in your seeking for depth and meaning, the love of Christ is unparalleled.

You will not find it anywhere else and it's available for you today. And if you'd like to pray to receive the Holy Spirit, to pray, to be forgiven of your sins, I wanna encourage you, if you're here, come up after the service to our prayer team and receive prayer so you can begin to follow Jesus. Let's keep reading in our texts, go to verses eight through nine. It says, for you are saved by grace through faith. And this is not from yourselves.

It is God's gift not from work so that no one can boast. I, when I was in high school, I had a friend who, uh, he was probably 16 or 17 years old, and he was driving home late one night past midnight from a party. And uh, he'd been drinking and he's driving home and he gets in an accident. And uh, he hits this embankment and no one was hurt. It was just him in the car. He was okay, but he completely totaled his car. And uh, he's just sitting on the side of the road with his total car, totaled car.

He's intoxicated. He calls his dad as the only thing he knows to do. His dad shows up to the scene. Eventually a cop also shows up to the scene and the cop asks the father, he says, who was driving? And the father just looks at his son who's sitting on the side of the road just with his head and his hands, like, just knowing this is gonna go poorly. And it was obvious to the cop who was driving and what happened. And so the cop says, here's what we're gonna do.

His punishment's gonna be great because not only has he been drinking and driving, but he's also underaged. So his punishment, punishment is large. So what we're gonna do is, dad, we're gonna say that you were driving, we're gonna say on this record that you were driving. And because you're sober, you're an adult, you can pay the penalty for this, you can step it, your insurance will go up, but you can actually pay this penalty.

This is a heavy penalty for him. And so that's what happened. And I'm not presenting this to tell you that that's what the right thing to do was. I'm not telling you that's what the cops should have done. I'm presenting it to tell you that's what's been done for you. Each one of us in this room are my friend sitting on the side of the road with our head in our hands, buried in the shame and the things we've done and the guilt and the sin, knowing that the weight of what we've done is too is is too great for us to bear.

And then someone else more capable, someone else more able comes in and takes our place. That's what Jesus has done for us. And so the most arrogant thing my friend could possibly do in that moment, which is not what he did, but it would be the most arrogant thing for him to do, is to boast, is to say, look how special I am. Look how amazing I am. Look what I got away with. Oh man, I just must have favor. I just must be awesome.

Look, it would be the most ridiculous thing for him to do, is to boast in this situation. He has no boast but the love of his dad and a mercy of a cop. And it's the same for us. Jesus is our only boast. My only boast is that I know the king. He's my bragging rights. He's my claim to fame. He's my song to sing. And my deep hope is that I could introduce you to him. That's all. That's all we got, which is why I put in your notes.

Humility must belong to the believer. For the only thing more abundant than his debt is God's love bestowed on him. And because God's love is a gift that actually means you'll use none of your strength to earn God's love. It's a gift. You'll use none of your skill to keep God's love. It's a gift. But you will use every strength and skill to participate in God's love. And I'll show you what I mean by that. Uh, as we continue, let's read verse 10.

Verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do so, Paul has outlined in Ephesians to the whole gospel for us, dead to sin alive in Christ, raised up, seated with him on the throne. But Paul doesn't even stop there. He says, now that we understand this gospel reality, there are some good works that God has actually set aside for us to do.

And if you're seated with Christ, that means you have authority in Christ to go out and do the good works God has set aside for you to do. You have authority to go be a light in the darkness. You have authority to go dismantle strongholds. You have authority to go love your neighbor. Well shake the gates of hell and do it all in Jesus' name. You have authority to do the things God has set aside for you. And I put in your notes that one of the greatest miscalculations of the modern church is to prioritize.

Prioritize a form of Christianity that is comfortable over actionable. It would be a mistake for us to only emphasize a private spiritualized religious experience instead of something that also, not that you don't experience that, but something that also then goes out and disrupts the status quo, the way Jesus disrupted the status quo. And if you're gonna do it like Jesus, and this is really important for us, I think as Christians to understand it always was motivated by deep love for people.

His deep motivation was not power, was not to be seen. It was his deep compassion and love for people. Often the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the ones he disagreed with. We have to, man, we have to remember that as followers of Jesus, go disrupt the status quo. God has set aside good works for you to do based on how he has carefully crafted you as His handiwork. His workmanship. I don't think anyone has ever said it better than Saint Theresa of Avila.

She was a, uh, 16th century nun. And she said this, she says, Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with with which he blesses all the world. You are God's Plan A right now until he returns it's you. And so our response to the gospel, as matured Christians should be to go do Jesus stuff in this world, which again, always motivated by love and maybe the right question then is to, okay, well what does this actually look like practically for me?

Because maybe it's easy to say from a pulpit and maybe it's, I understand like it's, you're like, okay, preacher, easy for you to say like this is your job. Uh, that's fair. But it, this is not a letter to preachers. This is not a letter to pastors. This is a letter to the church. So this is for all of us. So what does it mean for us in our every practical, every everyday lives? Uh, and if you go to in your notes, to your practical takeaway section, I, I first put a step one for us, if we want to go out and do Jesus stuff, step one for us is to build your foundation.

We have to have a foundation of prayer, scripture and community. We have to source godly action from a prayerful place, a biblical place, and a communal place. You can't do this alone. You need community. You need your secret place of prayer as Jesus called it. If he needed to pray and secret, we probably do too. And you need a time in God's word to learn and continue to know him and his character. So we need those things.

And then number two, in your secret prayer, get specific. Ask God to reveal the works he has for you. And then pay attention. God does have work set aside for you. So ask him and then pay attention. I think much is missed because we are too distracted, bused and overstimulated, and we need to re cultivate our attention. So pray and then pay attention. Number three, then if God puts something on your heart and it aligns with this foundation we just spoke about, then go do it.

If God has put something on your heart where you know, man, this is what's been set aside for me. I just, I feel called to go do this. And it aligns with those three foundations, go do it. Just step out in faith and do it. And if you don't know, I'll tell you, a great place to start is right here in the local church. Go, go do come, come on missions, go with Jeff Rucker and help bring sight to the blind. Go, go, uh, ask, uh, ask Joe Brandy about how he can help with how he can help with orphans in Mexico.

Come to Africa with myself or Phil Emme. Like get involved or keep it local, right? You could keep it easy and local. Just go help colleena, raise up children in the faith. Bless the families here at our church. Go disciple some teenagers with Pastor Vinny. Some of you're like, I'd rather go to Africa than disciple teenagers. Fair. They're great. I promise. Uh, whatever. But whatever the calling is, this is a great place to start, is right here in the church.

And maybe for you, you're just like, dude, I have a deep calling to be a great dad and to raise up my kids, man, the world needs good dads. Or, or, or maybe you're, uh, it's same thing for our moms here and you're just like, I have to, I gotta mother my kids and make sure and lead them spiritually. 'cause you know that you're the pastors in your own home and maybe that's the calling. We can have callings that feel ordinary, but when you give them and put them on the altar to Jesus, watch 'em light 'em on fire, watch them become extraordinary.

So it doesn't always have to be like coming Africa. But I do want you to come to Africa 'cause it's really cool. And I'm not trying to Christian guilt trip, you know, that's not my point. Uh, I don't think your church attendance counts as your good work set aside. I will tell you that. But that's not me. That's not a Christian guilt trip. I'm just telling you there are good works for us to go do. And if you're gonna be mad at anyone, uh, Paul is a great person to be mad at because he's the one who says it right.

He says there's good works for you to do. James the brother of Jesus, you can be mad at him. He says, faith without works is dead. So, you know, take it up with James brother Jesus. Jesus says, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing. And they will do even greater things if you wanna be mad at Jesus. That's up to you. Uh, I was asked this question, this is for your number four. I was asked this question twice on sabbatical, and so I know it was the Lord speaking to me.

And so I'll, uh, share this question for you. And someone asked me, two different people asked me, what would you be doing for the glory of God if you knew it wouldn't fail? If I think sometimes our fear of failure or our practical barriers get in the way of us taking risks for God's glory because we're just fair enough, we're just afraid of like, can I really step out in that? What about my finances? What about, what about my obligations? What about my family?

And we, if we get nervous, but what would you do? What's the thing you would do? Is there something on your heart was like, man, if I knew that would work, I'd just go do it. I'd say maybe take that thing, bring it back to your, your foundation. And if it aligns with your foundation, you might need to just go do it. If you really believe, Hey, I'm seated on the throne with the king, maybe I'm gonna just go step out and do it.

So what would you be doing for the glory of God if you knew it wouldn't fail? Number five, do not forget the position of authority and favor you have in Christ. Don't forget this, you are seated with the king and that should influence your life. Don't forget that. How many, if you remember the uh, parable of the talents, Jesus gives this parable and it goes where there's a master in the parable, okay? And the master is about to go away on a long trip.

And as the master goes away, he has three servants and he gives each servants talents according to their ability. It says, and the talents are like bags of gold. They were large sums of money. So one of them gets five talents, one of them gets two talents, one of them gets one talent. And the servant who gets five talents doubles right away. It says, puts his money, his master's money to work and doubles his money. Now he has 10. The servant who gets two talents doubles his money, puts the money to work.

Now he has four. But the servant who was given one talent, it says, buried it in the ground and did nothing and waited for the master's return. And when the master returned, he says to the servant, who just says the one talent, he says, why did you bury it in the ground? And the servant responds, I knew you to be a hard man, you reap where you do not sow. And so I was afraid and I hid and buried the talent here, take what's yours back to you.

He do you understand the perspective problem he has? He knows and believes the master to be a hard man. The other two servants don't seem to have that problem. They're willing to take risks. They're right away getting their money involved. But the only one who does not actively use the talent they've been given is the one who does not understand their position with the master. He doesn't think he has a high position with his master.

He doesn't think he has authority with his master. He just believes them to be a hard man. We as Christians have to understand how favorable our position is with God. We will be seated with Christ in glory, in authority, and so we can afford to take some risks for his glory. And then by his grace, we might hear those words that say, well done, good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your master. And again, none of this is to earn God's love and none of it's to keep it.

It's all to participate in it. Amen. Amen. We're going to transition to a time of communion. And this meal is not only a meal of remembrance of what Christ done, and it certainly is that, but with our passage today, I also want us to understand that it's also a foreshadowing of future dining with the king. That we will sit next to the king in a heavenly banquet dining with him. So it's a foreshadowing of that. I wanna invite up my wife Colleena and she's gonna lead us in communion.

Hi, I'm Kaleena. Um, I'm the children's director here and I'm so honored to take communion and Terry's wife. Um, I'm so honored to take communion with you guys today. Um, so yeah, like Harry said, communion is something that we do as believers, um, to remember what Christ has done for us on the cross. And if you're serving the communion today, you can come up right now. Um, but right now what we're gonna do is listen to our own Lily King's version of the song Communion.

And as that plays, you guys can come up and receive the elements. And as the song continues, you can go back to your seat and please pray. Please take a moment to remember what Christ has done for you, and even ask him to reveal what works he has for you and what he has in store. So, um, hold onto that bread and cup when you get back and we will all take communion together in a moment. Take me back me back to the moment I heard your voice.

Take me back to lead me back to the moment I saw Your Face. Because It was so, so simple. It was easy to love No Space between us. It was easy to try. You are To, this is the goal, Find you close. This is Fully and It was simple Space between us. It was easy to try. Here's where the dad back. I feel heart. This is where I, you and you and me. And I don't have to prove the thing you already proved of me. This is where me and you, you and you already are closer.

All right? So let's all take together. So the Lord Jesus on the night of his arrest took bread. And after giving thanks to God, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, take eat. This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. So let's take the bread together. In the same way he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood. Shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together then. He said, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the saving death of the risen Lord until he comes. So let's pray. Gracious God, may we who have received this sacrament live in the unity of your Holy Spirit, that we may show forth your gifts to all the world. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, we are gonna, I'm just gonna invite you to stand and uh, as we bless you today, we like to end our communion Sundays with the Lord's Prayer and just saying all the Lord's prayer, um, together, uh, we use trespasses.

And so let's just, let's just say the Lord's Prayer together. Our Father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread,