Last week for those who were here they would remember, for those who were not here we had a baptism service and on one occasion you will remember that one of the folks said, Leanne said that she couldn't wait now to get into the water and I just felt like that coming to the pulpit this morning because we are turning to a most magnificent portion of God's word, Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And what luxury to be able to devote attention to this magnificent piece of scripture for the early part of this year at least. How blessed and privileged are we to have the scriptures and how blessed and privileged are we to have letters like Ephesians contained within them. And so I felt like sort of nudging Jeff out of the way and saying, right, let's crack on with it. And what a wonderful song to start with. I know the song that we've just sung, in terms of its wording, is a little bit, perhaps, quaint for us because it was written so long ago. But in terms of what it's saying, it takes us right to the very, very heart of what Ephesians is all about. It's telling us the true perspective from which we must view everything. A true perspective from which we must view ourselves and the world and the church and the opposition that God has against his kingdom, everything has to be seen from the point of the risen Lord Jesus Christ now ascended to God's right hand. And so that's what we'll be concentrating on today in a bit of an overview of Ephesians and looking at, in particular, at the perspective, the point of view from which alone we can see all things truly. Because if we do not see them as they are in Christ, risen and ascended to his right hand, if we do not see ourselves, the world, the church, the battle in which we are engaged and the nature of the ministry that the Lord has committed to us, if we do not see all of that from that point of view, then we don't see it at all really. We are still somewhere battling through the undergrowth and we haven't seen the great picture that the Lord has revealed to us. It is fitting, I think, that we turn to Ephesians this year after we turned to Galatians in the first part of last year. books like Galatians and Romans in particular, Paul does not give to us a fully developed means or mechanism by which the work of justification and sanctification and so forth is accomplished. Those great epistles of Romans and Galatians take us to the very center of the mechanism of the cross if we could speak in that way. where Paul talks to us very clearly about how it is that God has removed our sin from us by making him a propitiation for our sins or redemption for our sins or justifying us. Those sorts of words do not appear in Ephesians but all that we've learned in Galatians and all that is embedded there in the teaching on the cross will come through this book again and again and again. even if those exact words are not used. And so in a way it is very fitting that you have that foundation laid for us in Galatians and then we turn to Ephesians this year. Not that you would ever go beyond the teaching that God has given us in Romans and Galatians in relationship to the cross. But there is something rich and full and wholesome, something which is enormously wonderful in Paul's description of the church in Ephesians that does not really appear in some of the other books. If you're familiar with the letter to the Ephesians and you're familiar with the history of it and the history of the interpretation, you'll know that there are scholars who make quite some mileage out of the questions like who wrote it and when was it written and from where was it written and to whom was it written and I'll leave you to read commentaries on those things because they might be interesting but they're not necessarily edifying to the heart. I will be assuming all the way through that Paul wrote this, his name appears in it many times and I will be calling it the letter to the Ephesians though in some of the very early manuscripts the word to the Ephesians or to Ephesus that does not appear in some of the very early manuscripts and that's led some people to think and it's quite possible that Paul wrote this letter intending to send it into Asia Minor and it would sort of be an encyclical, a letter that would go from church to church to church. It was a letter that was for public reading across all of the churches. But it would certainly make sense to send it to Ephesus first. because Ephesus was the chief city of that region and when we come to look at some of the themes in Ephesians you'll see how well they match the spiritual climate that was in place at Ephesus but we'll touch on that as we go through. So I don't know how familiar you are with the book of Ephesians. I don't know how many times you've read it. A friend of ours would sometimes say, have you read a book 10 times or 20 times and a few hands would drop off when you got to about 40 times. It would be a really good thing to just keep reading Ephesians through the first part of this year as we did with Galatians to take the opportunity to read it in a number of different translations. because each translation will highlight certain things that others miss and as you read it through in a number of different translations over a period of months, you find the Lord feeding your heart very richly on it and it is just luxury, it is pure luxury to lock yourself away in a room and to read even just the first half of the first chapter of Ephesians and that will keep your soul going for many a long minute because you'll need to read it again and again and again. So let's make some observations generally about the nature and the content of the letter. And the first and most important thing to say perhaps is that Ephesians roots us in God, not in ourselves. Ephesians roots us in God, not in ourselves. Now we all know only too well the problem of looking within ourselves in order to find some firm footing, do we not? We know that issue is particularly pressing when we are in times that we might call spiritually dry or barren, sometimes when all around seems darkness and when it seems as though there's no work of God going on in our hearts or lives. At those times the tempter can drive us inwards and he can cause us to try and find some firm foundation and some firm footing within our own soul. And when we start diving around in there we don't find too much that looks very firm. because the evil one stirs up all of the muck and the mire and brings up the accusations and suddenly you find yourself wondering, have I ever really been a Christian? Have I really believed anything? Have I ever really come into the kingdom? And then suddenly you find yourself wondering, well perhaps I haven't and therefore perhaps I better stay away and the whole thing just becomes terribly messy and mucky, doesn't it? And I'm sure that you've been in those states more than once. And here we have a letter which takes us out of all of that and roots us firmly and securely in God, not in ourselves. And from the beginning to the end of the letter, the action, the initiative, the plan and purpose, and the culmination of that plan and purpose, every element of all of those things is shown to lie in God, not in ourselves. So that all things are done to the praise of the glory of his grace. Or all things are ordered to the praise of his glory. Now already we don't want to go into detail here, we're doing a quick overview this morning. But there's a difference, we'll come to this in a couple of weeks time perhaps. There's a difference between things being to the praise of the glory of his grace and things being to the praise of his glory. When we are saved by grace through faith, when we recognise that whole action of forgiveness and justification, the washing away of our sins, the obliterating of our guilt, we recognise all of that has happened in Christ on the cross, we then rejoice in praise to the glory of his grace. We were dead in our transgressions and our sins, but God, That's to the praise of the glory of His grace. But God does not leave us just simply being thankful for what He's done in the past, even though that will never be, there will never be any other foundation than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God in his plan and purpose is to take us on so that we as the bride of the son will be totally and completely conformed to his image and there it will not just be to the praise of the glory of his grace, but to the praise of His glory. Can you see the difference? That we will be as glorified in God the Father as Jesus Christ Himself is glorified in God the Father, and it will be to the glory of God the Father that it is so. Yes, it is to the praise of the glory of His grace, but more than that, He has this purpose for us that we, the whole of His redeemed humanity, would live and rejoice in the praise of His glory. because we will be glorified with him. But as we said, we don't want to go into too much detail at the moment. But everything is to the praise of the glory of his grace or to the praise of his glory. It leaves us nothing within ourselves that we can boast in, nothing within ourselves that we can look for to have our security. And in rooting us in God, the second thing that this letter does in a most wonderful and magnificent manner is to take us personally to the action of each of the three persons of the Godhead. This letter teaches us of the action of God the Father, who has predestinated all things and planned all things and who's bringing all things to their goal, to the praise of the glory of his grace. And it introduces us to the action of God the Son, who is the one appointed by God the Father to be the Redeemer. He's given us head over all things to the church and he's the one in whom all things are and will be summed up. He is the one who is the ruler of the cosmos and he is the one upon whom the church is built on the one hand, but he is also the one who is the husband of his bride. And that relationship between Christ and his people is portrayed in the most stunningly glorious terms that you could ever imagine in this letter. But it also introduces us to the person of God, the Holy Spirit, And he's the one who seals us in Christ. And he's the one who's been given us a pledge of our inheritance in Christ. And he's the one who enables us to minister as Christ at the ascended right hand of God has given gifts to ministry, for ministry. It's the Holy Spirit who empowers all of that in the life and action of the church. And he's the one who's leading us in the fullness of Christ's power. There are these magnificent statements in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a statement simply like this which will keep you meditating in your hearts for many, many, many years, that the Church is the fullness of Christ, that we here this morning are the fullness of Christ. We can't even begin to understand that. But I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may understand. the riches of his calling, or the hope of his calling, and the riches of his inheritance in the saints. And it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who opens our hearts, who opens our eyes, who enlightens us, who brings us the fullness of what the Father and the Son have done. And then it's the Holy Spirit who teaches us how to live and to walk in the truth of all of that. It's the Holy Spirit who teaches us how to love our brothers and so forth. And so there's passages here which talk about grieving the Holy Spirit and we'll return to those in due course and there's passages which talk about the power for ministry that the Holy Spirit brings. So this book roots us in God and it roots us in all of the three persons of the triune God but then it also does something which some of the other New Testament letters do not do at least in this fullness or in this way. letter, this book, gives us to understand who we are as the church. This book more than any other New Testament letter describes to us who we in fact are. Not just who we will be, but who we are as Christ's beloved bride. And so the church figures large in the epistle to the Hebrews, Ephesians. I'm in 2008 already. The epistle to the Ephesians. And here we have a problem you see, because the moment I use the word church, we think just of what we see with our eyes. The moment I use the word church, Even in an assembly like this, there will be something happen amongst us which immediately brings our eyes down to this level. And we are suddenly looking at one another and thinking, oh that's the church. And yes, from one point of view, that's exactly the case. Some of you would be familiar with C.S. Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters. I don't know how many of you have read that. If you haven't, find a copy and read it. But this is a book for those who are not familiar with it, in which C.S. Lewis writes as a senior devil, Screwtape, who is giving instructions to Wormwood, a junior devil who is also his nephew, and Wormwood has a patient, a patient is a Christian, And the idea is to stop this man either becoming a Christian to start with and then when that fails to stop him growing as a Christian, trying to keep derailing him all the time. It's a magnificent exposition of the way in which you can see the forces of darkness operating. But in one of the very early letters, Scrutate writes to Wormwood about the church. And he says, one of our greatest allies at the present is the church itself. Do not misunderstand me, he says to Wormwood, I do not mean the church as we see her, spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately, it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. So when we use the word church, one of the things that immediately happens and I think it is a deliberate action of the evil one to do it because the church is God's precious possession. his chosen people, his bride for his son. I think he desires to see his glory known in the church. I think one of the things that immediately happens in the world and the flesh and the actual direct action of evil itself is immediately we use that word to fill our minds with all of the failings that have ever happened in the name of the church. And so we are blinded from what is really so. And sometimes those failings can heap up within ourselves so that we let the sun go down on our anger and we do not forgive one another as we ought, as it says in Ephesians 4, and so we give the evil one an opportunity. This is not talking about the church as the half-finished sham Gothic construction on the building estate. This is the church as she really is. This is you and I as we really, really are. And it's only when we see how we really are, and what we really are, that we can live in the joy of being God's special possession. So it does not only root us in God, and in God is the three persons, but it introduces us to the church and tells us who we are, and tells us who we are in relationship to God. And in particular it tells us who we are in relationship to God the Son. Because nothing that we have as his people is separate from him. And so as we read through the book of the Ephesians you'll find again and again words like in Christ, with Christ, through Christ. Even in the readings that we've, no we didn't have this reading this morning, but he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in him in the heavenly places. And so we're taken to the glorious destiny of what it will be to be the bride of the bridegroom, to be filled with his glory, to be presented before the father without spot or wrinkle or blemish. And even now to have that bridegroom so tender and so focused and so full of His care for us that He prefers, if I could speak that way, to nourish and cherish us even above nourishing and cherishing Himself. So we have this magnificent picture of who we are and the destiny for which we have been created and how all of that is focused in the Son. So by the time we come to the end of Ephesians I trust that we would never ever find ourselves thinking of ourselves by ourselves. That at every point you think of yourself, you think not as you are in your own estimate but as you are in Christ. And so this great letter tells us all those things but it tells us something else. It tells us that the plan and purpose of God, the destiny of Christ's people and the fullness that we have in Christ is deeply contested. And that deep contest is unrelenting and it comes with enormous hostility. So at various points we read about the spiritual forces of darkness and wickedness which are opposed to God and to his people. We read of the prince of the power of the air who is now at work in the sons of disobedience amongst whom we all once walked. We hear of spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places against whom we wrestle. It's very interesting, again not going into too much detail now, but Paul is actually describing us as the church taking up the shield of faith and all that in Ephesians chapter 6, you might remember it, and it looks as though he's describing a military image, and he is, and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and so forth. But then he uses this word wrestle which seems so unusual because it seems as though it's going to be a great militaristic army and he's describing what is a hand-to-hand encounter and some commentators point out that one of the great things that happened in Ephesus and Asia Minor was wrestling. It was the home of wrestling in those days, probably not WWF or whatever it's called. And that wrestling was linked with something else. It was linked with magic. You remember we spoke a little while ago at the end of last year on the nations, God's plan for the nations and we talked about Ephesus as being a centre of power because there at Ephesus was the great temple of Ephesus, Artemis of the Ephesians, and we saw how that drew monetary and political and spiritual power into itself, and how in that place where there was that great seat of principality of wickedness, there needed to be extraordinary works of the Spirit of God in order to attest to the truth of the Gospel, And you remember that so great was the influence of magic and occult practices and wickedness in the city that when these people had received the gospel they brought out all of the things in which they had been trusting, their books and their spells and their amulets and all of the other magical paraphernalia. Well, one of the things that sometimes would happen in the wrestling There were some things called the Ephesian Gramata. You don't need to know what they are, but these were six highly sophisticated special magical words. And if you knew the Ephesian Gramata, you could control your enemies, and you could prosper, and you could win at dice, and you could win at wrestling. And there's an account of one man who was disqualified from a wrestling match because they found tied around his ankle a little bracelet thing and he had the six magic words written around it and they said that gave him enormous power over his enemy and that's why he won all of these events on the trot. And so when Paul's talking about the principalities and powers and the spiritual forces of wickedness and the hand-to-hand combat and the wrestling that takes place, there's a context in which all of that has to be read and the context is that this centre of Ephesus and the surrounding regions were deeply committed and deeply influenced by all of the things that we would call darkness. So when the church is the church, like the church is always the church, but when the church realises what it is as the church, when it realises that it's not the half finished sham Gothic construction on the building estate, then those principalities will do everything in their power to stop the church living as the church. And so the wrestling becomes very intense, very personal, very hand to hand. So as the book unfolds we see how much this theme of power and strength and might, how much that theme occurs again and again throughout the letter. And when we read of that we also read of this, that when God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit operate in the world to overcome all of their opposition, One of the chief things that they must overcome is us. Because we have not been innocent bystanders standing by watching a wrestling match. We have actually been darkness. That's a remarkable statement that Paul makes. You were darkness. Children of wrath. even as the rest, we walked as children of disobedience and in that place we loved evil and we hated God. We were dead. So the victory that God wins is not a victory simply over some external forces of wickedness which press against us, it's a victory which he wins over us who have aligned ourselves with them and so the book tells us about how we as human beings have been beaten and conquered by grace. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He has loved us, has disarmed us. He has turned us from being enemies and haters of God to being men and women filled with His Spirit who love Him. So Christ has come to conquer. Conquer those spiritual forces of wickedness, but He has to conquer us. that we might be released from them, willingly. And so this letter deals with expansive themes, doesn't it? And you might think, well, because it deals with all those wonderful things, it doesn't seem like it might be very practical. Probably going to be a very theological series we'll do and we'll get all hung up on questions like predestination and election and I don't really want to come for the next couple of weeks because it starts out that way. And then it's just going to go from bad to worse. In fact, it's all intensely practical. Perhaps more than any of the other New Testament books, that might be an overstatement. The letter to the Ephesians tells us just how to live and what to do. It tells us what to do with our anger. Is anger ever a problem with you? No, never for any of us, is it? He tells us what to do about anger. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity. Oh, but that person did something that was wrong. Forgive, just as Christ has forgiven you. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. It is intensely practical. It tells wives how to love their husbands. Wouldn't that be a good thing? And it tells husbands how to love and respect their wives. That would have been an even better thing. And it tells parents about their children and it tells children about their parents. Probably wouldn't want to come for that one either. And it tells masters about how they are to treat their workers. And it tells workers how they are to relate to their masters. And then it tells you about prayer. Would it be true to say that of all the spiritual aspects of your life as a believer, prayer is the most embattled. Hands up the person here who finds prayer really easy. Hands up if you find prayer a real struggle. So you need to read Ephesians, don't we? And we need to read Ephesians because, interestingly enough, the whole of the book takes us to the point where Paul says now, having done all of that, having heard all of that, Now you actually can pray. But unless you've heard all of that and you've taken up the shield of faith and all of the other instruments in God's armour, when you go to pray you'll just be prayed upon. And you know what that's like, don't you? You just kneel and suddenly the shopping list is in your mind or something worse. So prayer is, from one point of view, the pinnacle of our life as the people of God. So it tells us about all those practical things. It tells us if we were thieves, how to now live. It tells us if we had an immoral past, how we are to now live. It tells us if we are plagued by issues of sin and guilt, what we are to now do as God's people. So in particular as we come to this letter we look for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to open up our hearts, the eyes of our hearts being enlightened. I or Wayne or Ray or others could stand here in the first part of this year is going to bring to us a series on prayer. He's had that laid on his heart by the Lord and it just goes hand in glove with Ephesians. And we could hear all of that and we could think well there's another book I can tick off, we've done that one. But if the eyes of our hearts were enlightened and if we were to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we would be filled with all the fullness of God and filled so that we might know the love which passes knowing, do you think that might affect a few things about the way we are? Like just in our families for example. But there is a perspective from which all of that has to be seen and it's with this we close in the last couple of minutes. You could take the cross and the resurrection out of Galatians and you would be left with nothing. You could take the cross and the resurrection out of Romans and you wouldn't have any apostolic teaching at all. The cross and the resurrection are here in Ephesians all the way through but there is something here emphasised perhaps that you don't see emphasised quite in the other letters. If you take the ascension out of Ephesians, Christ now reigning at the right hand of God the Father. If you take that out of Ephesians, you're left with a shell. The whole of Paul's teaching revolves around what has happened in Christ being raised up to the right hand of God the Father and therefore what has happened to us. Because Christ is not a private person, if we could speak in that way. He is a public person and in his public office he has identified himself with us and he has taken us with him so that we are no longer just living in this earthly plane trying to work things out as we go. He says we are seated with him in heavenly places. And that phrase, in heavenly places, comes through time and again in Ephesians chapter 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. chapter 1 verse 20, these are in accordance with his great power which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at God's right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority, power and dominion. And as you go through the letter you find it repeatedly, chapter 2 verse 6 We were dead in our transgressions. He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you've been saved and he's raised us up with him, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And so we could go through chapter 2 and chapter 3 and chapter 4 and you'll find it again and again and again. And so, where are you this morning? Everything of the world and the flesh will tell you that you're stuck here. You might feel that way. You're not. You're in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. You think, why is my life such a battle? Because that's where the principalities and powers are. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. So we'll come against that phrase on a number of occasions as we come through the epistle, but that's the perspective from which everything must be viewed. Beloved in Christ, we as his people are seated with him in heavenly places and that is the place of blessing. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. You'll never get any more than what you already have in Christ. The problem is that we don't realise what we already have. Sometimes we are like when children were little, I won't say our children because some of them are here, but when children were little and you give them a lovely gift and until they really realise what gifts are, they really just get distracted with the ribbon and the wrapping and they never actually go into the heart of what it is and some of us have been that way spiritually. We never entered into the fullness and the heart and the richness of what's actually been given to us in Christ, blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. But that place is also the place of great battle. It's battle and blessing both together, because the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places are there, accusing the brothers and sisters day and night before the throne of God, for example. And that's why we need to hear what Christ has done and who we are in Him. So that gives us an introduction to a book. I hope that sort of leaves us drooling and longing for more and longing that God would come and visit us as we go through these great things together.