Grace and peace

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do I want you to turn to the
book of Ephesians to chapter 1 I had a number of pastor friends who I interacted
with this week last couple of days and the question was whether as pastors we
should continue with what was our normal plan for this Sunday and Preach from God's
word as we were planning to do or if we should set it aside for a season and
instead look to God's word and speak about the events of this week and about the
assassination of Charlie Kirk and most of you know I wrote in the newsletter on
Wednesday night just hours after Charlie was murdered I wrote about responding to
that and it does seem like in our culture in our country right now this
assassination might be a an inflection point a culture altering movement we we can't
tell that from this perspective but it has that feeling for those who have lived
through these kinds of moments before that this could be something like that and I
listened carefully on Friday morning to the governor of Utah. I don't know if you
heard him as he spoke but I just want to read to you some of what he said
because I found it helpful in my own heart. He said and he started by speaking to
young people, and he said, "Young people, you are inheriting a country where politics
feels like rage, and it feels like rage is the only option." He said,
"But we can choose a different path." He said, "Your generation has an opportunity
to build a culture that's very different from what we're suffering through right now,
not by pretending that our differences don't matter, but by embracing differences and
having hard conversations.
He said history will dictate if this is a turning point for our country, but every
single one of us has to choose right now whether this will be a turning point for
us.
All of us have an opportunity right now to do something different. At some point,
we have to find an off -ramp or it's going to get much, much worse. He said, I
believe this is a watershed moment in in history, the question is what kind of
watershed will it be? This chapter remains to be written. Is this the end of a
dark chapter in our history or is this the beginning of a darker chapter?
That's an important question. And then the governor added this. He said a few months
ago, Charlie Kirk posted this on social media and this was the tweet. He said when
things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it's important to
stay grounded, turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, remember
that internet fury is not real life, it's going to be okay. And we hope that's
true, that it's going to be okay. But I think the prescription is right. I said to
Marianne this week, if I was Elon Musk's friend, I would say, Elon, why don't you
just do a 30 -day moratorium, turn off Twitter for 30 days, and just Let us catch
our breath and and not go crazy. So this morning, we're gonna do what Charlie
recommends. We're gonna read scripture. We're gonna spend time together as friends
we're gonna remember that internet fury is not real life and
With that we're gonna turn to Ephesians one, but before we get there. Let me just
say We should all as we look at the events of this week. We should all take note
of the comfortably bold way in which Charlie Kirk shared his faith in all kinds of
settings and learned from that. He never was reticent to share his faith.
He was always forthright and outspoken and was gracious and comfortable as he engaged
with people. And we should be a little more outspoken than we are and a little
more engaging than we are. He did it unashamedly and joyfully, and I think we can
learn a lot from that example. And there's a second thing, and it's completely
understandable that the events of this week would cause any of us to be concerned
or even enraged by what we have seen, and the Bible says to us, "Be angry but do
not sin."
And what begins as maybe a righteous impulse of indignation can easily migrate to
contempt and become toxic in our lives. The Bible says you are to put away anger,
wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
I read from somebody this week who said, "I find it very easy to dismiss people I
haven't met because of things that the internet tells me that they're doing. And
then I feel happy about myself for being the right kind of person with the correct
political or religious view. This person said, I know I'm not alone in this. This
is literally how the algorithm is designed to work.
Most of the political movements of the last 10 years have been driven and fueled by
anger.
That's how you get clicks. That's how you get attention. That's how you get
followers is by being publicly angry and outangering your opponent.
And it's how we get to where we are. Jesus is the one who connects calling
somebody a fool to murder. And he says the line is not that far from calling
somebody a fool to taking up a gun and shooting. So guard your heart,
your mind, your tongue. If it looks like anger and hate are winning and you think
you got to fight fire with fire, no you don't. That's not what God calls us to
do. Jesus did not fight fire with fire.
In fact, when they were railing insults against him, he didn't say anything.
He remained silent.
I started by saying we need to speak more boldly, and we do, but we don't join in
the fray. We have to fight hate with grace and truth,
with grace and peace, which by the way is what our text in Ephesians is going to
tell us this morning. So let's look to Ephesians chapter one beginning at verse one.
And I'll start by telling you that many Bible teachers, when they introduced the
book of Ephesians, they loved to tell the story of a man named John Mackay. John
Mackay, when he was 14 years old, living in Scotland in 1903,
was one evening walking by himself in the Scottish Highlands. And he had his Bible
with him, and he had been reading in the book of Ephesians and as he read, he
wrote later, he experienced a boyish rapture in the Highland Hills that led him to,
he said, right there make a passionate protestation to Jesus Christ among the rocks
in the starlight. Reading the book of Ephesians caused him to surrender his life to
Christ. Here's his account of what happened to him. He said, "I saw a new world
reading Ephesians. Everything was new. I had a new outlook, new experiences,
a new attitude toward other people. I loved God. Jesus became the center of
everything. I had been quickened. I was really alive.
And 45 years later, John Mackay was the president of Princeton Seminary,
and he was invited to give a lecture series at the University of Edinburgh in his
native Scotland and he decided he would lecture on the book of Ephesians, make that
his topic, and in those lectures he said Ephesians is the greatest and maturest
epistle in the Bible. He said, "For our time it is the most relevant of Paul's
works." He said, "In this book is the distilled essence of the Christian religion,
the most authoritative and most consummate compendium of our holy Christian faith.
This letter he said is pure music. What we read here is truth that sings doctrine
set to music. It's a great description of this book and this morning we're beginning
what will be a multi -month journey. In fact as I have begun studying this book I
have begun adding months to how long it's going to take us to get through this. We
are going to go slow through this book because it would be a mistake to rush past
some of the jewels that we find in this book. And so we're not going to try to
hurry to the end. We're going to go leisurely as we go verse by verse through this
book. It is worth a slow stroll more than a brisk walk. There is so much to see
in these pages and this morning at the trailhead of this journey we're going to get
a brief overview of where we're heading because there's a background I think we need
to have in place before we actually get to the text. Here's the main thing I think
we need to know that gives us an overview. So instead of starting at the trailhead
I'm going to take you up 30 ,000 feet we're going to look down on the whole book
of Ephesians and like the book of Romans the book of Ephesians has two main parts.
The first part of both of these books is the theological or the doctrinal part.
It explains in detail here's what God has done for you in Christ.
So in Ephesians chapters one two and three are an overview of the work that God
has done for you in Christ. The spiritual blessings that are yours because of what
God has done for you in Christ. And then the second three chapters in the Book of
Ephesians are the question of how should we respond? What is our spirit -empowered
response to the first three chapters? If this is what God has done for us in
Christ, then we should be living this way. Now, this is not to say that the first
three chapters are not practical or that the second three chapters are not
theological. The first three chapters are more theological than practical. The second
three are more practical than theological. But there's practicality in the theology,
and there's theology in the practicality. They overlap. But we will spend more time
in the first three looking at theological truths, and more time in the second
looking at the implications of that. In fact, this is how it's often referred to.
The first three chapters are called the indicatives. If you look at the verbs in
the first three chapters of Ephesians, there's only, as far as I can tell, there's
only one imperative verb. There's only one verb that says you should do this. The
rest of the verbs are, here's what God's done. They indicate, indicative, they
indicate what God has done. When you move to the second half, it's filled with
imperatives. You should do this. So The first half is the indicative,
the second half are the imperatives. And the turning point, in fact it's interesting,
you've got your finger there, go ahead and turn to Ephesians four and just look at
verse one.
Ephesians four one, Paul says, "I therefore," that word therefore is there to say,
"because of everything I've just told you "in the first three chapters, "I therefore,
a prisoner for the Lord, "urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to
which you have been called. In light of everything you've read so far, here's how
you walk, here's how you live. Walk in a manner worthy of that which we've just
read in the first three chapters. So first three, what God has done, last three
chapters, how we should live our lives in response. And let me just say, a lot of
us are how -to people. Anybody who preaches and does this knows that you more often
will get a response from a how -to sermon than you will from what God has done
sermon. People will come up and say, "That's helpful. I needed that information. I
can do this. I can live my life differently." That was very helpful to me and as
pastors we want to be helpful.
But I want to encourage you, because a lot of people will say, "Could we just kind
of run past the first three? That's kind of technical theological stuff and It hurts
my head and it's too hard to think about, "Can we just get to the how -tos?"
'Cause that's what I need to know, I need to, and the Holy Spirit writing through
the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians says, "No, we can't do that." You can't
get to the therefore until you have first understood the first three chapters,
until that's really sunk in deep in your soul. In fact, if you try to go to
chapter four and just start there and say, "Just tell me what to do. I don't need
all that theology stuff. Just tell me how to live. You're going to mess it up.
You're going to become a legalist or a moralist. You're not going to live out of
the gospel. You're going to live trying to gin it up on your own, and it won't
work. You have to have the seedbed of the first three chapters in order for
chapters four, five, and six to ever work the way they're supposed to work in your
life.
So these first three chapters are chapters are vital and critical and crucial To how
you live your life as a believer if you ignore them or minimize them It will be
to your spiritual detriment. You will become a frustrated faltering Christian if you
try to implement The Bible's ethics without a gospel understanding.
You skip the gospel truths and move to the how -to's, you're doing what the apostle
Paul scolded the Galatians for. When he said to them, you've begun in the spirit,
but now you're trying to perfect in the flesh. You've jumped from the spirit, and
now you're trying to do it on your own. No, it's all gotta be done through a
proper understanding of what Christ has done for us. So these gospel truths in the
first three chapters need to be, and my prayer is as we go through this, these
will become bone deep in your heart and your soul and your mind.
They will undergird and support every action you take, every choice you make, every
word you speak. It's all got to come from that gospel framework. You can't get to
gospel living without a clear gospel understanding. That's why we have it, gospel
truth, gospel living.
You can't live your lives as good Christian people Without being firmly rooted and
anchored in the gospel soil that is found in these first three chapters Here's how
John Stott the British theologian described the book of Ephesians. He said the whole
letter is thus a Magnificent combination of Christian doctrine and Christian duty
Christian faith and Christian life What God has done through Christ and what we must
be and do as a consequence. That's the overview So when we turn to the text this
morning and begin our study of this book I want to encourage you if you find
yourself in the middle of the theological Conversation starting to drift and go this
is hard to understand and I can't really stay with it And what are we gonna have
for lunch today? And what times the game come on If you find yourself doing that
pull yourself back and go I got to stay with this I got to get this I don't
understand this because I got to live out of this and
And here's what will happen You will find that the first three chapters as you
understand them as you start as we start to unpack What it means that God has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places when you start to
understand what that means That will inspire in you passion and worship and joy and
and praise and thanksgiving to God for what he's done that you won't get anywhere
else. So we're gonna read the first 14 chapters this morning even though we won't
get anywhere close to first chapters the first first 14 verses.
They feel like chapters to me because every verse is that rich first 14 verses and
And we won't get anywhere near verse 14 in our study this morning But I think it's
good for us to see the overview of where we're headed So I want to read this text
together with you. Let me pray before I do father Again, we come to you dependent
on your spirit to be our teacher our guide our instructor, give us ears to hear,
open our eyes, open our hearts, help us to see wonderful things in your word,
and Lord we pray that the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart would
be acceptable in your sight today. We pray this in your name, amen.
Ephesians chapter one verse one, this is the word of God for the people of God.
The Bible says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints
who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption
to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the
praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him
we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to
the riches of his grace, which he has lavished on us in all wisdom and insight,
making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set
forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ,
things in heaven, things on earth in him. In him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things
according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in
Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also when you heard the
word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the
promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire
possession of it to the praise of his glory. Amen. May God bless this reading of
his word the grass withers and the flower fades the word of God will stand forever.
I said we're going to focus this morning on the first two verses, the greeting.
Sometimes people rush past the greeting and think, well, that's just kind of like,
hello, how are you? It's just a simple, yeah, yeah, can we get to the important
stuff? There's a ton in these first two verses, as we'll see this morning. First,
the author identifies himself. Paul says, I'm Paul, and he wants his readers to know
two things about him as he identifies himself. He says, he is an apostle of Christ
Jesus and that apostleship comes by the will of God. Now let me explore this first.
Let's talk about Paul. So Paul, as you know, this is the apostle Paul. He is
identified in Scripture as the apostle to the Gentiles. He was used by God to take
the message of the gospel beyond Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of
the earth. He took He took Asia Minor to Greece and Rome, maybe to Spain. We don't
know. We first meet Paul at the end of chapter seven,
the beginning of chapter eight in the book of Acts. He is called Saul there. He
doesn't have a name change. So there's a difference between his Hebrew name and his
Greek name. But when we meet Saul, he is a vigorous opponent of the Christian
faith. He's a Pharisee, he held the coats of the men who stoned Stephen,
who was the first Christian martyr in the early church. So as Stephen was being
stoned because of his public profession of faith, Paul was there holding the coats.
Presumably he was too young to join in the stoning, but it says he approved of
what was going on. He was a supporter of what was going on. So we see Paul,
we're introduced to him there first, and then the next time we see him, he is
traveling on the road from Jerusalem, north to Syria,
to Damascus in Syria. He's traveling with a group of men, and he has in his hands
official papers that announce him as authorized to round up Christians,
and to either convince them to renounce their faith or to jail them in prison,
them to persecute them for their belief in Christ. And while he is on the road to
Damascus, he has his famous Damascus Road experience. He's walking along, there's a
bright light, and he looks up at the bright light, and he hears a voice, and the
voice says, "Sol, Sol, why are you persecuting me?" And he says, "Who are you?" He
doesn't recognize the voice and the voice says it's Jesus who you're persecuting and
Saul at that moment is struck blind and he falls down and Jesus tells him to get
up and to go on to Damascus and to go to a street called straight where he will
meet a man named Ananias and it will be revealed to him there what's happening So
Paul gets up by the way his Companions never heard the voice. It was just Paul who
heard it, Saul. He gets to Damascus, he arrives, and Ananias,
who was a believer, who had heard that the persecutor, Saul, was coming, gets a
visitation from an angel or a word from the Lord who says, "Saul's coming,
take him to your house." And Ananias goes, "Are you sure you have the right guy?
I'm supposed to bring in this persecutor and wants to kill Christians, put him in
my house. He says, yes, God's going to do a work. He brings in Saul to his home.
The scales drop from Paul's eyes. His sight is restored and he is baptized.
It's the first thing that happens. He's baptized there in Ananias' house and he's
discipled and he's restored. And from there, he begins his new life in Christ,
and he's been set apart by God for a special purpose. He spends the next three
years of his life in Arabia. We don't know much about it, but apparently in that
three -year period he was personally discipled by Jesus.
It's amazing to think about. Jesus' disciples spent three years with him, walking
with him. Paul had apparently a three be an experience where Jesus mentored him,
discipled him, equipping him for the ministry that he'd been set apart to. And then
there's another, there's a 14 year gap before Paul emerges again now in Jerusalem
and where he begins to interact with the early church. He meets with the other
apostles. He's commissioned and sent out on his first missionary journey,
the first of four missionary journeys where he is, he's set apart and sent and
commissioned as an apostle. Now, apostle, that word means literally sent one.
That's what it means. God was sending Paul as a missionary to the Gentiles, but not
everybody who is sent as a missionary is an apostle. So you can think about the
idea that there might be a little, there are no capital A in our day to day. We
might call somebody a little A apostle, like when you send somebody out as a
missionary, they're going on an apostolic mission, they're going to take the gospel,
they're doing what the apostles were called to do. But the Bible tells us that
after Jesus had his group of 12, the apostles, after Judas committed suicide,
the other 11 replaced him, and the requirements in order to replace Judas was the
person had to be an eyewitness to the resurrection, and had to have been personally
discipled by Jesus while he was alive.
This is, by the way, why we have no apostles in our day -to -day. We may have sent
ones, but not sent ones with the kind of apostolic authority that these twelve had.
We have no one today who was alive during the time of Jesus, who was an witness
to his resurrection. You remember in Acts chapter 2, the early church, they devoted
themselves to the apostles teaching, it says. So these twelve were set apart to be
the channel, the vehicles, the people through whom the official teaching of God for
the church was to come. That's what made them unique. The book of Ephesians will
later tell us that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles. And as
any builder will tell you, once you've laid a foundation, you don't build a
structure and then lay more foundations. You have one foundation on which it's built,
it's the foundation of the apostles. So there's nobody around today pouring new
foundations for the church. It's been poured through these apostles. And when there
were questions in the early church about what God's purpose for the church was or
what the gospel message And those questions were taken to the apostles. They were
the arbiters. They were the officials who God had set apart by this. And God
authenticated them as the apostles were told in 2 Corinthians 12 by what are called
the signs of a true apostle through miracles and signs and wonders. So Paul,
not one of the original 12, not a disciple of Jesus during his lifetime,
but set apart by God on the road to Damascus. He had an encounter with Jesus, and
then so he sees the resurrected Christ, and then he's discipled by Christ one -on
-one in those years in Eureka. Here's why all of that's important as we get to our
study in the book of Ephesians. When Paul says, "I'm an apostle," at the beginning
of this letter, he is exerting apostolic authority. What he's about to write is not
just a "hi, how are you" letter from any old guy, not even from somebody who's a
spiritually wise mentor. Paul says, "I'm an apostle, what's coming is the word of
God." He may not have understood that this letter was going to be a Bible. We, in
the Bible that we're studying 2000 years later, he likely didn't understand that, but
he understood something about God had prepared him to be an authorized official
dispenser of biblical truth. So what we read in Ephesians is not Paul's opinions,
not his theories, not his speculation about life, Jesus, the implications of all of
that. This is a letter from an apostle having authoritative information.
This is God speaking to us through Paul. He's commissioned by God himself. This is
God's word. Thirteen of the New Testament books are written by the Apostle Paul,
roughly 25 % of the New Testament. Outside of Jesus, there is no one in human
history who's had a greater impact for the kingdom, for the gospel, than this man
who's writing this letter here. And as we read this letter, as we study it,
do you understand what it is you're reading here? This is not something that we're
to debate or adjust or speculate on or give our consideration to.
This is from an authorized agent commissioned by God to tell you what is true. And
I think this is important 'cause sometimes people will get to things like the
household codes, which you're gonna get to in Ephesians five. Husbands should do
this, and wives should do this, and they'll go, "Oh, well, maybe that was cultural,
or maybe I think we should see it." Well, it's right to study to interpret, but
you've got to be very careful that you're not putting yourself in the position where
you become the apostle, and you're trying to tone down what this guy said. No, no,
we are under this authority, and Paul's declaring that by saying, "I'm an apostle."
So we read that with this in mind, And he makes it clear that he's not just an
apostle, but he's an apostle by the will of God
Paul did not Seek this assignment on the road to Damascus Paul was not thinking you
know what I'd really like to do is be an apostle I'd like to I'm gonna run for
apostle and see if I can get elected for that because he had no idea that being
an apostle would mean beatings and stonings and Being scourged 39 times and being in
prison he shipwrecked He had no idea that that would follow and that would be a
part of being an apostle But but he did not seek this. He did not aspire to it
Galatians chapter 1 Paul says about his apostleship. He says he who had set me
apart before I was born
Set me apart before I was born when he called me by his grace, was pleased to
reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. Paul
said, this was God's plan for me before I was born and God was pleased to reveal
his son to me and to commission me to do this. Paul understood that he functioned
as an apostle because of a sovereign work of God that had set him apart for that
role before he was born. And God was then pleased to reveal his son to him and
commission him. Three things you should note about that. First, Paul did not see his
authority somehow based on his own intellect or his own credentials or anything that
was special about himself. He was an apostle by the will of God, not by virtue of
something about himself. Second, Paul is establishing what will be a major theme for
this book right up front, which is God is sovereign in the affairs of men. The
sovereignty of God. We just read those 14 verses by the will of God. He did this.
It's all the sovereignty of God. This is the first of four times in chapter one
where Paul talks about something happening by the will of God. Paul understands human
affairs happen by the will of God. The affairs of your life happened by the will
of God. God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. And Paul is saying,
"I'm an apostle because God ordained it. It's by the will of God." We'll see this
clearly as we go through these upcoming verses and look at subjects like
predestination and election. Some of you have already talked about that this morning
in the class that we had before we started church today. today, but we're gonna
look at the mystery of God's will and the purpose of his will. So Paul wants to
start this letter by saying, God's in charge, he's in control. I know this
firsthand, and that's true, not just for apostles, that's true for all of us.
And then third, while Paul is saying that his appointment as an apostle is by the
will of God, he goes on to say, not just your appointments by the will of God,
salvation's by the will of God. So, you may not be appointed to an apostle, but
you are a child of God by the will of God. We'll see that again as we get into
this chapter. If you are here this morning as a child of God, if you've repented
of your sins, you believe the gospel, you've turned to Jesus, you've asked Him to
forgive your sins, then all of your life was by the will of God. All of that in
your life is by the will of God. It's not of works lest one should boast, we will
read in chapter two. Now I'll have more to say about that as we've moved through
chapter one. But right now, the idea of God's sovereignty is right up front in this
letter, and that's who's writing it. The apostle Paul, a former persecutor of the
church, the church, now an apostle set apart by the will of God. Let me just note
here before we move on, it's possible you would run into somebody Later on,
students, you might run into this when you get to college or any of you could run
into people. You could see this on the internet. There are people who would say,
you know, most scholars agree Paul did not write the book of Ephesians. I've seen
that statement over and over again in my study this week. Most scholars agree this
was not written by the apostle Paul. And these are kind of high -minded. We know
better than you. Most scholars agree, and it's designed to intimidate you and to
cause you to lose confidence in what you've got here. Now, the reason that some
scholars assert that Paul didn't write this, one reason is because the vocabulary of
this letter, there are 40 words in the book of Ephesians that are not found
anyplace else in the Bible. 40 words and there are another 40 words that are in
here that Paul doesn't use in any of his other letters So 80 words in this book
that Paul never uses anywhere And so they say how could this be written by Paul?
It's written by somebody who has a different vocabulary To which I say sometimes
when I write a personal letter, I use one vocabulary when I write a formal document
I use a different vocabulary. When I know what I'm writing, I write differently.
I use different vocabulary. I don't think we can say because Paul used different
words here than he used elsewhere. This is not by him. If I was invited to speak
to a seminary class, I would speak differently to them using different vocabulary
than I would if I'm speaking to the kids that don't wanna, right?
So I don't think that vocabulary argument holds up and says we shouldn't believe
that this is Paul. Second reason that scholars doubt that Paul might have written
Ephesians is because in most of Paul's letters, when he gets to the end or at the
beginning, somewhere in there, he starts throwing around a bunch of personal names.
He starts saying, by the way, greet this person thanks to this person, what about
this person? You get to the end of the book of Romans, there are 26 different
people who are listed there where Paul is saying, and Paul'd never been to Rome.
But he's saying, greet this person, he'd heard about this person, so he's giving all
these personal greetings. You get to Ephesians, there's no personal greeting. People
say, Paul always used personal greetings, why didn't he do it here? Well, here's the
answer that makes sense to me. I Really, Paul was writing the book of Ephesians as
a clear, succinct statement of what the Gospel is and the implications, and he
intended for this letter to be circulated and read widely in churches, starting in
Ephesus, but throughout Asia Minor, and so he did not include personal notations
because he was sending it to different churches. He didn't want to acknowledge people
in Ephesus when he intended that this letter would find its way to Laodicea or to
Pergamum or some of the other churches that are in the valley there. So he left
out names not because this is not because this is not so much a personal letter as
it is a gospel primer. He had a different design in mind. In fact it's interesting
the oldest manuscripts of the letter to the Ephesians delete They don't include two
Ephesus in verse two or they're in verse one It's just not there the oldest
manuscript state to the Saints faithful in Christ Jesus I think the in Ephesus or
in Ephesus two Ephesus Was probably a notation from later scribes to indicate this
is the first place this letter went
That's a theory Again, I'm not I'm not here saying that's exactly what happened.
I don't know, but I think that's a good speculation related to that. I say all of
this because I want you to know that anytime you're studying the Bible, you will be
able to find people who will attack or criticize and say, you can't trust your
Bible. Paul didn't write this, this happened later. This was written by somebody who
just attached Paul's name to it. You just need to know, when you face stuff like
that and you hear most scholars agree? Come talk to me, okay?
Not that I have every argument against every scholar, but trust me, these things
have been asked and answered by people who understand the Bible clearly, and you
shouldn't fall prey to some bozo on the internet who says, "I shouldn't say bozo."
You're not supposed to say, "You fool, I already said that this morning." So don't
fall prey to some fellow on the internet who might say Paul didn't write this.
Good principle to keep in mind when you're doing Bible study, Proverbs 18 -17, the
one who states his case seems right at first, but the until another one comes along
and examines it. So if you hear people attacking the Bible instead of going, "Oh,
no, there must be a problem with the Bible. I can't trust it." Other people have
lied to me. Just say, "I need to hear the other side before I do anything else."
Okay, enough about the author, the Apostle Paul. Let's look at his readers.
He is writing to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.
And again, I told you in Ephesus, not in the earliest manuscripts, but virtually no
debate that this letter wound up going to Ephesus first, that was the original
audience. The early church understood that. That's why they noted as they copied
this, this went to Ephesus, went on to be circulated widely. I'd encourage you to
spend time this week reading Acts 18, 19, and 20 because those three chapters tell
you about Paul's time in Ephesus. Paul had two visits in Ephesus.
He was there on his second missionary journey, and again, on his third missionary
journey. On his third missionary journey, he was there for almost three years, it's
the longest he stayed anywhere. And so he was very familiar with the people of
Ephesus. And it's interesting to see what happened. In fact, initially when Paul got
to Ephesus, he was there the first three months, he was teaching in the synagogues
and then there was opposition. So he moved his teaching to the lecture hall of
Tyrannus. He taught there daily. During this time there was significant spiritual
success. People were being converted and that led to a problem because the people
who are being converted were people who used to go down to the temple of Diana.
The big large was one of the Seven Wonders of the World in Ephesus. They would go
down and worship there. It was a place of occultic worship and temple prostitution.
It was horrible But they would go down, they'd spend their money and their time at
the Temple of Diana, or the Artemis. You read it either way, Greek Artemis,
Roman Diana. They would go to the Temple of Artemis, Temple of Diana, and they'd
worship there, spend their money there. When they got converted, they quit going and
they tried to tell their neighbors, "You shouldn't go either." And the merchants who
made a living at the Temple of Diana did not like that there was somebody there
who was messing with the economy in Ephesus. and that's what created riot, it
created persecution, and in Acts, so we read about that in Acts 19, then in Acts
20, when Paul leaves Ephesus, there's a moving account of his interaction with the
Ephesian elders, as he's saying goodbye to them and warning them about what's coming.
It's a very moving account, I'd encourage you to read it. The reason we're not
digging into that background here is because a lot of Paul's letters,
he is writing about specific things that happened like when he writes to the
Corinthians he's answering specific questions they had about things or when he's
writing to Colossians he's writing about a heresy that they're facing in Ephesians
he's not writing about anything that's really directly related to what he experienced
during his time there so while it's interesting I don't know that it's essential for
you to and what's going on as you read the book of Ephesians. He's writing this
letter five years after he had been in Ephesus. He's now in Rome. It's his first
imprisonment in Rome. And he writes this letter. He says, I'm writing to the saints
in Ephesus. That word, saint, is the Greek word hagas. It means literally set apart,
the set apart ones. So he's writing to those who had been set apart by God in the
same way that Paul was commissioned as an apostle. We've been set apart by God as
saints and set apart from what and for what? Well, the Bible goes on to talk about
being set apart from the kingdom of darkness and set apart from the world and being
brought into God's family, adopted into his family, brought into the citizenship in
his kingdom. Colossians says he delivered us from the domain of darkness and
transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. That's what it means to be set
apart, to be a saint, to be a hagiás. You've been called from this place to that
place, called from this way of life to this way of life. A hagiás is a word that
applies to every Christian. You're all saints. Paul is not writing this letter to
some super spiritual, super select people in Ephesus who are the saints there. He's
writing to everybody who's a believer. This is for the whole church. They were all
saints, and you are too if you're in Christ. Harry Ironside, who was the pastor at
Moody Church back in the 1920s, told about a time when he was on a train trip. He
was traveling from Chicago out to the West Coast and train travel in the 1920s if
you were going from Chicago to the West Coast that's a four -day trip on the train
So he was on there for a while four days and there was a group of nuns on the
train with him And they met they talked to one another they had conversation They
found out what he did he knew what they did because they were wearing their habits
and he says one day I asked the nuns if any of them had ever seen a And they
said, "Oh, no." And he said, "Would you like to see one?" And they said, "Oh,
yes." And he said, "I'm a saint. I'm Saint Harry." And then he took them to verses
in the Bible that show them that if you're a believer, you're a saint. And James
Boyce recounting this story says, "So it is with us." He said, "Your name may sound
funny when you preface it with the title saint but rest assured it does not sound
funny to God. Whether you are Saint George or Saint Lucy or Saint Harriet God knows
all of us by name and he calls all of us saints in Christ Jesus. You have been
set apart by God for this. Being a saint is your central identity as a Christian
but it's more than that because being a saint has an obligation attached to it. If
that's who you are there's an obligation. If this is what God has set you apart
for, then you should be living this way. It's fair to say, if you've been set
apart for God, if your citizenship is in the kingdom, are you living your life
accordingly? You may be a saint. Do you look like a saint? Do you walk like a
saint? Do you think like a saint? Do you speak like a saint? Is it clear to
others that you've been set apart by God for his work? Are you living a set -apart
life. You're not a Christian because you have professed faith in Christ. You are a
Christian if you possess faith in Christ. We say that again. You're not a Christian
if you profess faith in Christ. You're a Christian if you possess faith in Christ.
And the way to know if you possess faith in Christ is to look and see if Christ
is doing his saving work in your life and making you more and more into the image
of his son. You haven't arrived there, nobody has, but you're on a journey and
you're growing there. Martin Lloyd -Jones says this. He says, "You can't be a saint
and a Christian without being separated in some radical sense from the world. You
don't belong to it any longer and you are in it, but you're not of it. There's a
separation which has taken place in your mind, in your outlook, in your heart, in
your conversation, in your behavior, you're essentially a different person. A Christian
is not a worldly person. He is not governed by the world in his mind or his
outlook. So is that true about you? A saint should be growing in his set apartness.
He should be looking more like Jesus all the time. Are you? Are we?
Paul has two descriptors when he talks about saints. They are faithful and they are
in Christ Jesus It's a simple definition of what it means to be a Christian Set
apart one who is faithful and who is in Christ Jesus So a faithful person means
somebody who is Animated by faith full of faith Faithful doesn't mean that you never
falter, it means that faith is the animating principle of your life. We'll talk
about a faithful friend and we mean this is for somebody who's reliable or
dependable. That's not what this is. Faith here means this is somebody whose life is
animated by a trust in God. That's what faith is. A person of faith takes God at
his word and lives his life accordingly. We don't do it perfectly, but we do it
with growing consistency. And when we falter, we get back up and we walk by faith
again. So a faithful person is somebody who follows by faith and walks by faith.
And this is important. Faith is an instrument in our salvation, but it's not your
faith that saves you. We're going to read in chapter two that we are saved by
grace through faith, but we are ultimately saved by Jesus, the means of our
salvation is the grace through faith, but it's Jesus who saves you, not your faith
that saves you. Your faith is weak and imperfect and will falter. Jesus is strong
and never falters. You are saved by Him, not by your faith. The faith is just the
instrument that connects you to Him. It's the trust in which you walk. So Paul
refers to these letters as faithful. He's talking both about a one -time act when
you put your faith in Jesus, and then the ongoing act where you keep putting your
faith in Jesus day in and day out. You don't do it once and then never do it
again. You start a new manner of life where you put your faith in Jesus. You trust
Him. I'm gonna trust you today. I'm gonna trust you again. It's why we talk often
about re -believing the gospel. You're re -putting your faith in Christ every day.
You're deciding, "I'm going to trust you today. I'm going to trust you in this
circumstance, in this moment." That's what it means to be faithful.
And the idea that it's one and done, that you do it once and then you never have
to do it again, that's not how it is. It's a both end. You do it at the
beginning and then you keep on doing it. You continue to walk by faith. So he says
they are faithful. The other descriptor here is that they are in Christ. This is
something that Michael Cantrell explained at link last Sunday in the class before our
service started, what our union with Christ is. Union with Christ very simply means
he's in us, we're in him. We're connected, we're united. The phrase in Christ,
in him or the equivalent, occurs in the book of Ephesians nine times.
It occurs a hundred It occurs 164 times in Paul's writing. You hear that? 164 times
in him, in Christ, or the equivalent. The phrase means more than just believing in
Christ, it means you're joined to Christ as a result of believing in him.
What's true about Christ is now true about you. The truest thing that we can say
about ourselves once we become a Christian is We have a new identity, a new nature,
or a new creation, and the center of all of that is Jesus. He's in us, we're in
him. Here's one way to think about it. When an actor steps into a role and plays
a part in a movie or a play, for the duration of that play, that actor sets aside
his true identity and embodies a new identity, a character, that that person is
playing for that 90 minutes or that two hours, whatever the time is, he becomes a
new person during that time. Of course, with an actor, it's all pretend.
He's acting. When we become Christians, we take on a new identity and we now live
out that new identity throughout our lives. It's not an act, it's something new, but
we're a new person acting in a new way, responding to life in a different way. We
may look the same just like Brad Pitt looks one way in one movie in another same
way in another movie But he's playing two different parts. You may look the same as
you did before you became a Christian But now you have a new motivation. You are
in Christ
You are a new person with a new identity given to you by God Animated and powered
by God the Holy Spirit who is Christ in us. We are in him. He's in us. These
readers in Ephesus are also in Christ. So they're in Ephesus but they're in Christ.
You're in the world but you're in Christ. You're in both places simultaneously. You
have a new allegiance to a new king and a new country while you live in this
world. So Paul says to his readers men and women who have been set apart by God
brought into his family to serve him and they are faithful to serve him and follow
him by faith. And as they walk with him, they're aware that he is with them,
and he's in them, and they're in him. Finally this morning we get to verse 2, and
we're not going to have time for it.
That's how this study is going to go. We get here and it says, "Grace to you,
and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." You could look at verse
2 as a summary of the whole of the book of Ephesians. It is about peace coming to
us through grace from the Lord Jesus and how that changes our life. And that's what
we're gonna get unpacked in chapters 1 through 6. And I'm gonna leave it here this
morning. We'll pick it up next week and see how these ideas of grace and peace
undergird this entire letter. In fact, if you want a great definition of what grace
means, it's verse 3. God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing God not
because you deserve it or earned it or or merited it God has blessed you
Unmeritedly with every spiritual blessing. That's grace But again, we'll get to that
Next week just a few minutes. We're gonna celebrate the grace of God in the work
of the lives of some of our own as we hear their Testimonies, we're gonna have two
baptisms here this morning and that's always a joyful time but this has been a good
foundation for us to think about what God is doing and giving us new life in
Christ which we're gonna see played out before our lives here in just a few
minutes. So let's pray together as we wrap up and then we'll have communion. Father,
thank you for this time together in your word. Thank you for the truth of your
word, the power of your word, the clarity of your word. Thank you that we get to
soak in your word here and for months to come in this glorious book.
Speak to us through your word we pray and Lord I pray this morning for those who
are not in Christ. Any here who has they've been listening would recognize that what
you've been talking about I don't know that I've been set apart. I don't know that
I am a child of God that I've been adopted. My life doesn't look different than it
ever has. Lord, I pray for anybody. If your spirit is pressing on their heart,
on their soul this morning, I pray that you would
continue in that work in their lives, that you would draw them to yourself just
like you met the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, that you would meet them
today that you would cause the scales to fall from their eyes and that they would
surrender their lives to you and walk in newness of life and move from the kingdom
of darkness to the kingdom of your son.
Lord prepare our hearts now as we come to the table to receive communion. We ask
it in Jesus name. Amen.