Well, I've provided an outline and the outline is more for me than for you to try to keep me, you know, on the straight and narrow. So, tonight we've read Ephesians 1, 1 and 2. You see the outline there. A little story about Ephesians. Ephesians was the first book, the first letter I ever read through. as a young Christian. And it was Ephesians chapter 1 that stopped me in my tracks as a young lad. I remember I was leading a Bible study for Campus Crusade for Christ. Excuse me. And the young guys in my Bible study, poor lads, you know, a couple of 18-year-olds like myself. I was a brand-new Christian. I was leading a Bible study. That was a mistake, you know. I was reading through Ephesians 1 and I was completely blown away by this passage of the Bible. Pardon me. And I was trying to explain to him what it meant and I was having such a hard time. Election, all these big huge ideas in Ephesians chapter 1. I made a mess out of it. I still do. It's very hard to try to express what God has done for us. And I always have a hard time with it, always do, even today. It's been an exciting two weeks for me. I have had the opportunity to study diligently for the first time in a long time, actually. the scriptures, in a way that I haven't done before. It has been a pleasure. And I hope, I hope this evening as we look at these first two verses of Ephesians, that it will bless you as well. So I'll try to get out of memory lane here and come into the present. Ephesians 1 and 2. Let's look at the author first, Paul. Paul, you know, the first word of Ephesians is Paul. And so he kind of wondered, who is this guy? What kind of man was he? Where did he come from? What was the essence of this individual who turned the world upside down for the gospel? The Bible says that he was Saul of Tarsus. Tarsus is in southern Turkey, modern Turkey, then Asia Minor. It was the chief city of Cilicia, about 12 miles from the coast. It was located in a very fertile plain where there had been agriculture and livestock. There was a river that ran through it all the way to the mid, so it was a city of trade. One of the Roman roads ran right through the city and connected it to the rest of Asia Minor and to the rest of the world. Some historians say that Tarsus is known for two things, one for its wealth, but other, it was a center of learning. And a couple of historians I read said it rivaled even Athens and Alexandria. If you know of those two cities, those would have been the seat of learning throughout the ancient world for many, many years. Tarsus was one of those cities and this guy Paul grew up there. He was born there as a Roman citizen enjoying the privileges of Roman citizenry. His parents would have obviously been pious Jews. He grew up in a Jewish household. In the synagogue, hearing the scriptures read daily, he would have learned a trade, as Jewish families then did. And he was a tent maker. He manufactured with his hands cloth. that was used in making tents, and it would have been used for other things like setting up booths for tradesmen, and Jim and I were talking about recently, may have been used in the theaters of the Roman Empire at that time, the old Greek theaters. So he would have understood the Greek culture, the Gentile culture around him. He would have understood a lot more than that, too, because Tarsus was in the, in that area that was the linchpin between East and West. Asia Minor has always been that place that's gone back and forth between Eastern culture and Western culture or Muslim culture or Christian culture. It's the crossroads between Asia and in Europe or in that time, the Roman Empire. So he would have been familiar with a lot of cultures. Learning that trade, he would have sold his wares in the streets or in the, what do you call those places they sell that, you see them all over the Middle East now. Yeah, the marketplace. He would have been a savvy young fella. at developing skills, maybe even despising the cultures around him, drawing closer and closer to his own. Maybe that's part of what made him such a zealot, seeing the unbelief, rampant unbelief, rampant idolatry. the love of wealth, the trade would have brought that, the travelers coming through. Maybe he drew tighter and tighter to the law of Moses as a young man in Tarsus, but those things I can only guess at, but it wasn't an accident that he was from there. It wasn't an accident that he was a Roman citizen by birth, nor was it an accident that he would have left Tarsus and gone to Jerusalem as an older young man. I don't know what age he was, there's no real record of it, but he would have left Tarsus, the place of his training where he cut his teeth, and moved to Jerusalem where he studied under Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the quintessential rabbi of the Jewish faith, a Pharisee. Strict Pharisee. The School of Gamaliel produced all the best Pharisees. Paul was one of those. He would further have developed his ability to know the law, memorizing the law. If you're familiar with Pharisees, these guys, they had all of it in one bag, you know. They had the ability to teach. They were rulers. They were authoritative. They were all these type A guys, you know. They were the Marine Corps of the Jewish faith. But he was an orator, fluent in three languages, at least three languages, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, maybe another, living in Asia Minor. But he could speak, he could debate, he was a brilliant man. He wrote brilliantly. And I've learned in my life that those who write well think well. Those who think well can write well. That's why I don't write well. Probably why a lot of us don't write well. But he was a gifted, gifted man. In the Bible we read about the, you know, the parable of the talents, right? There was one who got five, one who had two, one who had, well, Paul's the guy with five in the extra. That was him. Interesting to note that in historical record that Paul was not exactly, he wasn't, you know, a tall man. He wasn't a, when you were in his presence, he was a rather puny man. He wasn't that much to look at, you know. Dynamite comes in small packages and that was Paul. But he was tremendously gifted. Type A guy. Highly intellectual. And born for a particular work. So that's Paul and he. But there's other things about Paul that are kind of important to remember, and we get those from the scripture. Jesus in Matthew 23, I just picked a couple of things out that he said about Paul. Pharisees, they preach, but do not practice. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. Woe to you, blind guides. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside are full of greed and indulgency. That was Paul. You blind Pharisees, you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. That was Paul. Highly talented, extremely capable, wicked man. That was Saul, actually, I should say. He says of himself, 1 Timothy 1.13, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent of Christ. He was plagued by the flesh. I mean, this is the man who wrote Romans 7. After his conversion, he wrote the words that you and I are so familiar with. I do not understand my actions. I do not know what I want. I do the very thing I hate. The thing I want to do, I don't do. The thing I hate to do, I do. That's what he says. Wretched man. That was him. But he was highly skilled, extremely talented, type A leader, a man of vision. What a sinful man. Before his conversion, he was so zealous that he went from his own country to other countries to get Christians, have them put in jail, have them killed. You know, today in that region of the world, Damascus, there's a lot of that going on. so zealous for what they believe that they'll cut off your head if you don't believe what they do. We're in a little fight with them right now. See how that goes. Paul was like those guys. He was like that. And then something happened to him. He came to Christ. He was on the road to Damascus. Everyone knows the story here, I'm sure. The light. Why do you persecute me, Saul? Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. And his life was changed. Our lives are changed. Paul goes to Damascus now on a quite different mission. Imagine what it was like for him, would you? Having grown up and been so zealous and studied and committed his whole life to the law of Moses. And then in a moment's time, realizing that everything he did was wrong. Everything that he believed was wrong. And you can think of his mind as it clicked, click, click, and all the, all the connections coming together. I was all the dots began to connect. He knew the old Testament. He knew the law by heart. Oh, and the days he spent in blindness, crying out in repentance, becoming reformed, right? As the dots began to come together, Paul began to see. And all of the skills, and ability, and capability, and talent, all were turned in a completely different direction. Completely different direction. And he became an apostle. So in your outline, you have apostle. What is an apostle? Well, according to Acts 122, an essential qualification of being as apostles, you had to, you had to see the risen Lord. You had to be a witness of him, the resurrected Christ. And he was, he was a little different than the other apostles, but he saw the Lord. Acts 9, 15, 16, Jesus said to Ananias, this is what Christ said to Ananias about Paul. He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. First Corinthians 4.1, Paul says of the apostles, not just himself, but all of them, we are servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. They were responsible for the gospel. for preaching it, for teaching it, for writing it. So an apostle was an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ, personally appointed by Christ to teach and act with the authority of Christ himself. They were a unique people with a unique office for a unique period of time. By the will of God, that phrase there, by the will of God, is one of the things we have in common with apostles. You know, John 1, 11 through 13, where John says, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God. That's us, born of the will of God. Paul was made an apostle by that same will. He was also born the will of God, just like us. And the writings of Paul and the other apostles and godly men of the church have undergirded our faith and the faith of the church ever since the office 2000 years ago. Where would we be without them, without their letters? I wouldn't know my left hand from my right hand without the scriptures. I wouldn't know anything. Certainly wouldn't know what was true or untrue. But this is what, this is what God gave to us. This is the gift that Paul and the other apostles were to us, to the church. That's kind of a big thing to me, uh, that, that God would use Paul. God would make him an apostle. That staggers my mind, honestly. We've kind of focused this section here on Paul, but this tells us more about God than it does Paul. That the Lord would choose him to begin with, that he would place upon him the office of apostle. He was a murderer. He was a hypocrite. A blasphemer. An insolent man. He was all the things that we are. Except worse. That's what he said. I'm the chief of sinners, he said. Then why? Would God save him? Because He's got our grace. He does the same thing for us. I mean, wrap your mind around that. God saves sinful men and women. And then He uses sinful men and women to save other sinful men and women. Why? That's how he does it. That's how he does it. He gives pastors and teachers, evangelists, people with gifts to us. He gives us to one another to help us in the faith. It is possible for a sinful person who's all gooned up. To help another person who's all gooned up. That's right, that's how God does it. It's really a remarkable thing. He's full of grace. And peace. That's how he does it. He still does it, and that's how he's going to do it. So there's a guy standing up here right now. Kind of messed up guy. hopefully is helping you think through some things. I mean, for the last two weeks, I've spent like 36 hours studying this stuff, you know. It's been great. I've benefited tremendously from it. I hope you will as well. So Paul introduces himself as Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. But you know, he introduces himself that way in Romans and, um, first and second Corinthians, Galatians in a big way, Galatians, uh, Ephesians, uh, first and second Thessalonians. Most of the epistles, he addresses himself this way. He starts off Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, or some version of that. Well, why does he do that? Well, as we've learned in Galatians, when the pastor preaches that he's defending himself, he's doing two things. He's reminding people who he is. Not that he's Paul, the really smart guy. That's got all the talent and all the gifts and all that, but he's an apostle appointed by Christ. He was reminding people. I remember when I write these things to you, I'm an apostle. So you might want to listen. You might want to pay attention. And the other reason is because he's always having to defend himself from his enemies. Paul had adversaries because he was an apostle and because he was a talented guy full of all these kind of attributes that made him good at what he did. You look at the qualifications of an apostle. In Acts 121, when they're selecting Mattias, talk about, well, who are we going to have to replace Judas? Who do we choose? And in Acts 120 and 121, Peter gets up and says, well, it's got to be somebody who's with us from the beginning and who saw Christ resurrected. So it's got to be one of us. So they rolled a lot and it falls to Mattius. Paul doesn't qualify if you look at how they viewed it in Acts 20 and 21. And then Christ in John 5, 26 and 27. I got to look that one up because I don't remember it. Don't remember it. Uh, 20 verse 27 of John 15. And you also bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning. That's what he said to his disciples who obviously were amongst the ones who were his apostles. Now, Paul didn't come. He didn't become a possible that way. It was a little different. So, uh, I'm thinking he may have had a, a rival or two amongst Christian men. followers of Christ. He had a pretty good argument with Barnabas, if you remember. Kind of kicked John Mark off the team, if you remember. He got into it with Peter, if you remember. So, I imagine there's one or two folks out there who are loyal to those guys. You ever see anything like this happen in the church? Yep. So Paul probably had to defend himself against other folks who maybe just didn't believe him or didn't like him, just didn't like him. And then he had to defend himself against the Jews who really didn't like him. He betrayed them. He was a Pharisee under Gamaliel's school. He was like top grad, you know? And he turned around and he started preaching the way against the Jews as they interpreted all that. He was a traitor. He was a dangerous man. He was undermining everything. He was on the side of this Jesus. They killed him. The Paul reminds him, I'm an apostle of Christ. He appeared to me. Fellas. And then he would have been defending him, uh, himself against, you know, some of the Gentiles in the church where he went. Oh, I mean, he called it like it was. That's one of the things about old Paul that made him who he was. He could see the truth and people don't like the truth. Do they? No one likes the truth because the truth stings. The truth hurts. Well, Paul did not shirk from his duty to preach the gospel, to tell the truth. Paul went straight, when he went to a city, you'll remember, he went straight into the middle of the synagogue and mixed it up right away with the Jews. Wherever he went, convincing them, reasoning with them, arguing with them that Jesus was the Christ. And eventually he got kicked out, and he would go next door to somebody's house that was a Gentile or down the road, and he would meet there every day, or at least routinely, and preach the gospel. He stood in the Areopagus in Athens. I mean, wow, right? The guy was fearless. Therefore, he made a lot of enemies. And then one other reason maybe he would have had to defend himself was probably because of jealousy, I imagine. Successful minister, people coming to Christ, churches being planted all over the place. Probably had some jealous folks running around out there, not to mention false teachers. The guy was in trouble all the time. All the time. And so he begins this letter. I am Paul. I'm just Paul. But I'm an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ by the will of God. That's why he does it. That's why. There's a great quote here. I was reading John Stott. I read it to you, he said, we must regard Paul neither as a private individual who is ventilating his personal opinions, nor as a gifted but fallible human teacher, nor even as the church's greatest missionary hero, but as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and therefore as a teacher whose authority is precisely the authority of Jesus Christ himself. It's what he was chosen to do, represent Christ personally. In whose name and by whose inspiration he writes. So the very first line of Ephesians tells us this, listen up, listen up. Everything in this letter is true. Everything in this letter is God-breathed. Everything in this letter will give you life. The first line of Ephesians, upon Apostle Jesus Christ by the will of God. That's what we're to learn from that line. And he repeats it several other times in the New Testament. So whenever you see that line, listen up. Listen up. Well, let's move on here. That's Paul the man. That's Paul the Apostle. Remember, it tells us a whole lot more about the Lord than it does Paul. God chose this guy to be his representative. Isn't he merciful? Indeed. So Ephesus, we look at Ephesus. This letter was written to the Ephesian church and the Ephesian church was located in Ephesus. So what was this place like? Well, Ephesus was the capital city, the principal capital city of the Roman province of Asia. Ephesus would have been a seat of government for Rome. Ephesus was a cultural center for the Roman Empire. Ephesus was a center of commerce. It had a port that ships could winter in. It was perfectly situated for sea trade. It was located on the western coast of Asia Minor today, modern day Turkey and the Aegean Sea. It was connected to all of the east through Roman roads, old travel routes, old trade routes from way back when. Depends on what story you read, but billions of years ago, not really. But as far as we know. There's old trade routes that go right through, right up the coast, right in the middle of Turkey. They go right up towards Incirlik, where the coast of the Black Sea and the strait that goes through from the Aegean, the Dardanelles, a lot of World War II battles fought in there. And it splits right in the middle of Turkey and goes straight over to where Ephesus sits, sat, I should say. Ephesus was a city of about a quarter million people. In Ephesus, there was an amphitheater that held about 25,000 people. It's still there. The ruins of it are still there. You can go to Google Maps, and you can type in Ephesus, Turkey, and it'll, boop, right there. And there's nothing there anymore. It's just a ruin. There's the amphitheater, which is very, it's really intact, very well intact. But the chief geographical feature of this city was not the amphitheater. It was the temple to Artemis, okay? If you remember in Acts 19, there's a riot in the city. Paul's preaching the gospel. So many people start to believe that it impacts their, their wallet, right? They stopped selling as many idols. People start burning stuff. And, uh, some of these guys get con concerned. Hey, there are businesses being undermined here. Let's riot. So they riot. They riot because their precious goddess is being undermined. The Roman name was, I think, Diana or something like that, but the Greek name was Artemis. The Roman name was Diamondus, something like that. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians, they proclaim. Well, there's this temple, and that temple was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. And the thing was huge, you know. Ptolemy writes in his history that the thing was 425 feet long. You know, we're playing football tonight, right now, as we speak. I was just thinking, and that thing's only 300 feet long, that field. Thing's 425 feet long. It's made out of marble. 125 feet wide. And it had 127 columns, 60 feet high, that went all the way around. This place was huge. Made out of marble. Probably loaded with stuff inside, gold and who knows what was in there. They found artifacts when they dug the place up and stuff all over the place. A lot of it's in the museums in Great Britain today and it's been scattered all over the place. But you can go there today and you can see the foundation of this place, one or two little pillars left, and that's it of the theater. I'm okay with that, by the way. I'm okay with temples to goddesses being torn down, completely okay with that. It's not a bad thing. But that was the geographical You know, that was the biggest thing there. It would have marked the city. It would have brought tourism in. You know, read cash. They sold all these little trinkets. You know, when you go to, you know, like the Niagara Falls, you go get a magnet of the Niagara Falls, you stick it on your refrigerator. Well, they would just buy a thing of silver of the goddess of Artemis or some artifact of the temple and take it home with them, stick it on their refrigerator too. They really didn't have refrigerators. But they would have taken something home. Probably would have stuck it on their mantle and that day bowed down to it. Manufacturing of idols. So there was a land bridge that came across Asia to Ephesus. There was the seaport trading. There was a seat of government there. There was culture, the theater. Paul goes right in there, straight into the synagogue. Gets kicked out, goes to a Greek house and teaches and stayed there three years. A large percentage of his time was spent in the city, unusually large percentage of his time, three years straight. He leaves Ephesus. Departs there and later on, a few years later, he sails by, stops in the port of Miletus, calls the elders of Ephesus down and has a discussion with them. It was a tearful farewell. They loved Paul. He loved them. The NIV, I think, says that he tore himself from them. He put a significant amount of his personal effort into this place. So knowing what we know about Ephesus, what kind of church was it? Well, the people, they were Jews and Gentiles there. You can read the scripture. We'll see that in a few weeks. Jews and Gentiles. So they would probably be rich and poor. City of commerce, tourism. There probably would have been people who previously worshipped Artemis. There are probably some well-educated people in that church. Probably some big dummies too. Big church. Big city. Lots of stuff going on. Port City. Let's see. Port City. Lots of roads. Lots of money. Hmm. Sounds like Norfolk. Doesn't it? Very similar to Norfolk. Maybe it was like this church. Who knows? But Paul says that they were saints. What's a saint? It's a football team. No, it's not a football team. A saint. What's a saint? The word for saint in the New Testament is the same word for holy. It's the same word. You read that Greek word and you look at where it's translated in the Bible, it's either translated holy or saint. One of the two. These were the holy ones. These were God's people. They were folks who were chosen by the will of God, just like Paul. They were believers. And it says here that they were faithful in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? Faithful in Christ Jesus. What does it mean to be faithful? Do you feel faithful? I don't. I feel like Paul. In Romans 7, wretched man. Well, what's a faithful person? What's a faithful Christian? Well, a faithful Christian is somebody who's full of faith in Christ. See, because everybody's got faith. Everybody, even the lost have faith. Everybody's got faith in something. Some people put their faith in themselves. Some people put their faith in the old George Washington, right, the dollar. Some people put their faith in, the list is quite long. We walked in tonight. We didn't check our chair out before we sat down. We just plopped right down. We put our faith in the chair. What makes a person faithful in Christ Jesus? They put their faith in Christ Jesus. And a real faith, by the way, is one you can see. You can see it. It's not invisible. It's real because you can see it in our life. A person who's faithful in Christ is in the fight. They're in the fight. They haven't given up. They haven't given up. They're struggling through sin, they're struggling with the old man. They're repenting, they're reforming, as our pastor said this morning. And it's like that until we go to Christ, until we depart this life. A faithful person in Christ is a person who has no kidding put their faith in Christ and who is in a fight. Bruised and bleeding, but in the fight. That's who they were. The pastor read a couple of, uh, Wednesday nights ago and revelation chapter one. Chapter one verse. Well, maybe it was chapter two, verse one. It's a section about Ephesus and in the Lord, Jesus describes this church toil, patient endurance, bearing with can't bear with those who are evil. You've tested those who call themselves apostle and are not and found them to be false. You are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake. You have not grown weary. That's the church at Ephesus. When it was first established and Paul was there, this wasn't true about them. He says, but I have this against you that you've abandoned the love you had had at first. That was the message from Christ to Ephesus. But that wasn't them when Paul wrote. This is a pretty fired up crowd of folks. That was the church in Ephesus. That's the city. That's the church. So, you know, what kind of church are we? It's really kind of the, so what of this? What kind of church are we? Faithful in Christ Jesus. What kind of saint are you? Are you a saint or are you not a saint? A saint is one who has put their faith in Christ and only in Christ for their salvation, all their hopes, all their dreams, everything they've got is in him. He's it. He's it. There is no other it except him. What do you put your hope in? What are you putting your hope in? That's the so what of that verse. So let's go to the last point, and that's the blessing. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, Sometimes you'll see people that, hey, peace out, you know, peace, peace. The words here that Paul uses are not sentimental little blessings, you know, with little bunnies hopping around and all that stuff. This is not what this is. Grace and peace to you. Grace, what's grace? First of all, it's from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're not talking about this kind of grace. We're talking about immeasurable stuff. Gives us the first indication of what this means when Paul uses this word. It's, uh, it's huge. It's not a small thing. Grace is unmerited favor. We, we, we, uh, who have grown up in the church and have heard grace defined unmerited favor. Oh yeah. It's unmerited favor. Yeah, it really is unmerited favor. Lots of it. Undeserved special favor of the Lord. That's what it is. And lots and lots and lots of it. It's a small word, but it's not a small thing. An immeasurable gift poured out upon us, not because we deserve it. Wouldn't be grace if we deserved it. I think Paul says something like that, doesn't he? Listen to how John says it in chapter one, verse 12, for from his fullness, we all have received grace upon grace. I can see John going upon grace, grace upon grace over and over. never-ending river flowing just continuously, continuously. And it's God's grace that upholds us. Paul says in Romans 5, 2, through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. It's that which sustains our life moment by moment. day by day, year by year, for our lifetime. Without it, we're in trouble. But we're not without it. We're with it. You with it? We're with it. It's not just a word. But it's a continual flowing, continual flowing, ever abounding, never ending, special unmerited favor of the Lord upon me. You. Us. What a gracious Lord. It's because of that grace that we are able to have peace. One of these guys I was reading, yeah, William Hendrickson. I really like the way he painted this picture. He said, peace is one of the streams issuing forth from the fountain of grace. You have the fountain of grace. You can see all these streams coming up. One of those streams is peace. Peace. Are we talking about like a peaceful, easy feeling? What are we talking about? In the New Testament, peace is used in a lot of ways. It's all different shades of peace. Some examples would be Galatians 5.22, it's a fruit of the Spirit. Now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and so forth. It's a fruit of the Spirit. It's something we're called to do, be a peacemaker. Matthew five, blessed are the peacemakers. It's a word that describes peace between people, you know, between Jew and Gentile that Paul will get to in the rest of this letter. And some of this letter, he's broken down the wall of hostility between them and enmity, but it's peace with me and you get peace with your brother. Aim for restoration. Second Corinthians 13. Aim for restoration. Comfort one another. Agree with one another. There's that kind of peace. There's the kind of peace that you get when you're not worrying. You know, Philippians 4.7. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, present your requests to God and the peace of God that passeth all understanding. regard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord there's that kind of peace there's all kind of peace this ain't what we're talking about Ephesians chapter 1 verse 2 grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ this is the peace he's talking about it's the peace that we have between us and God we were once his enemies We were like Paul, like Paul, persecuting or choosing against him or just a straight up hypocrite. We were like Paul, an enmity with God, an enemy of Christ. And then he brought peace. He did it because he's full of grace. And He did it through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He obeyed God perfectly. Christ the Son, our Lord and Savior, did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. He paid a price that we couldn't pay. He brought us peace. Peace with Himself, peace with His Father, peace with the Triune God. Good thing. James 4.4 describes this problem. When he says, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You know, in every war, I was gonna say there's a winner and loser. That's what you try to do, you try to win. There's always somebody that gets a more favorable outcome than others. In every boxing match, let's use that one, it's easier. In every boxing match, there's a winner or a loser. So the enemy of God, he's on the losing side. So if the Lord had not, by his will and his grace, done something to save us, there would be no peace. There is peace because of Christ. Having justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 5. So we've talked about grace and peace. We've talked about the city of Ephesus, the church of Ephesus, the man of Paul, the apostle Paul. So what? What's the so what? You know, we've gotten to a lot of it. So the Lord gives us his peace. Do you feel at peace? The world's a pretty crazy place, isn't it? It's pretty crazy. But it's no crazier than it ever has been. The world's a pretty wicked place. I mean, look what's happened in our own country. But it's no more wicked than it ever has been. The world is, you can't tell what's happening in the future. I mean, there's the proliferation of nuclear weapons. By the way, that's pretty dangerous stuff. There's extremist groups cutting people's heads off. There's certain economic collapse coming upon us. Right? That's what some people say. You turn on the news and it's a mess. It's a mess. So I think back to Tarsus, a city that's still there, by the way. Still there. It was the place, the crossroads of culture. Wars have been fought through that place for centuries. Think about Ephesus, the western coast of Asia Minor, where a temple to Artemis was, and commerce and culture, and the unpredictable nature of the world, and all the same stuff. So what really matters around us? Here's what matters. that we be like this church, faithful in Christ Jesus, faithful in Christ Jesus, at peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And all peace, all the other peace that we talked about emanates from that. Peace we have in prayer, peace we have with our friends, peace we have with our brothers, peace we have with whoever. And so Paul brings us a message of mercy. God chose him to be an apostle. Wow, what a merciful God. There were people then and there are people today who put their faith in Christ and are faithful in him. And we have peace. And we can be at peace because of the grace that he has showered upon us. And so let us remember and have confidence in our Lord. For as we will get to in the next couple of weeks, he is in control. He is in control. And there's no God in heaven wringing his fingers or trying to figure out what's going on. That's just not the case. He is in control. And so the words that Paul has said here, he will back up later on in the passages that we read. For the Lord is on his throne. And we are at peace with him. Praise God. Let me pray for us. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the message of grace and peace. Thank you that there were saints long ago who were faithful in Christ Jesus. And thank you for the example of this man who labored for your kingdom a man chosen by you because you are full of grace. Lord, help us to internalize that these words be doers of the word and not hearers only. We pray in Christ's name.