Genesis 22:17-18, Romans 6:3-5, Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:4-7, 11-16, 1 Peter 2:9-10
January 11, 2026
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change…. In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs…. The contemporary climate is therapeutic…. People today hunger…for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.”

~Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), American historian and social critic

“He who wants more than what Christ has established, does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience…. He who loves his dream of a community more than Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

~Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German pastor-theologian

“He washed us clean
Then wrote His name on our hearts
He’s claimed us as his daughters and sons
Nothing can change who we are.

There’s nothing better than to know we belong
We’ve been adopted by the Father of love
Our brother suffered on the cross in our place
We are kids of grace.”

~ “Kids” by Citizens

“They all therefore were glorified and magnified, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doing which they wrought, but through His will. And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning; to whom be the glory forever and ever.”

~Clement of Rome in 1 Clement 32:3-4, a letter written to Corinth in c. A.D. 96

Sermon Passage

Genesis 22:17-18, Romans 6:3-5, Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:4-7, 11-16, 1 Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)

Genesis 22

¹⁷ I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, ¹⁸ and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Romans 6

³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Ephesians 2

¹⁹ So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²² In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Ephesians 4

⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ⁷ But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift….

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. ¹⁵ Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

1 Peter 2

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.