If you have your Bibles, if you could make your way to Ephesians chapter number one this morning. Ephesians chapter number one. Ephesians chapter number one. Okay, you can stay there while I Introduce what we're gonna be speaking about over the next forever, how long the Lord would have us there. When we speak through a book expositarily, it means just going through it line by line so that we don't miss anything. Ciarán, can you turn the game down on the lapel, please? Oh, not the lapel, this microphone here, the pulpit microphone, please. That's it, that's better, all right. So we're going to go through the book of Ephesians, and that's going to take as long as it takes. And whenever I start an expository series, I always caveat it with that, that it's going to take as long as it takes. Because honestly, I look at it and think, well, we could probably do 10 messages on this. And then it becomes 15, or maybe it becomes six. Who knows? The Lord will lead on that. We're just getting to the end of Revelation. Tonight we're in Revelation 21, and then we've just got one more chapter, and we're gonna wrap it up. But that's been going for a while, and there's breaks in there and stuff like that. So what I'm saying is buckle up, buckle in, we're here, and we're gonna spend as much time as we need to so that we understand the truth of this glorious letter, this epistle written by Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God is guiding this process, and we have this word. And it's glorious. Listen, let me read to you what some of the commentators write about this epistle. They say, Ephesians tarries largely among the heavenlies. It is characterized by dignity and serenity, which is in harmony with the elevation of its thoughts. There's scarcely even an echo of the great controversies which ring so loudly in the epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. It's the divinest composition of man. Others have called it the crown of Paul's writings, the queen of the epistles, the greatest and most relevant of works. W. Carver said, Ephesians is the greatest piece of writing in all of history. It may well be the most influential document ever written. A.T. Robinson says, Paul has written nothing more profound than chapters one to three of Ephesians. The expositor's commentary says, it's the grandest of all the Pauline letters, all the letters that Paul wrote. There was a peculiar and sustained loftiness in his teaching, which has deeply impressed the greatest minds, has earned for it the title, the Epistle of the Ascension. Let me give you my commentary. Ephesians, a commentary by Pastor Kevin. Here's my synopsis. It's glorious. It's glorious. It's glorious. Don't think so? Stay with us. Spend time in this. Take the sheet home, go deeper. Allow the word of God to wash your soul, to help you and guide you. Ephesians is majestic. Men's prayer breakfast yesterday. Great time of fellowship. Men missing. Should have been there. You've missed out. You're not doing one another. That's on you. It's your choice. But one another's good. To meet together, to pray together, to share together, to know as men we're not alone. Once a month. They're missing out. What I said to the guys we're sharing, I'm saying, you know what? I need Ephesians. I'm saying to myself, I need Ephesians. I need gospel truth in my life. And I believe if we commit to this, we commit to the Lord, to hear what he wants us to hear, and we walk with him through his word, he will change our lives. I absolutely believe that with all my heart and all my soul. It's the word of God. It's alive. It's a logo. It's a member of the Old Testament. It's glorious. It's glorious. So if you stick with it, I believe by the time you get to the end of it, you'll confess with me that it is truly a glorious word from God. So what do we want to do this morning? We want to start, and we're only going to look at verses one and two. We're going to look at verses one and two this morning. That's all we're going to do by way of introduction. So the first thing we want to pick up as we look into this beautiful epistle is simply this. The author of the letter, or the epistle, is Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. First of all, we're greeted with what? A name. What's the name? Paul. Paul. We know who Paul is? Paul is writer of majority of the New Testament. Paul is an apostle. This letter bears his name. No problems, right? Not for us. No problems for us in this church. But unfortunately, again, and I've spoke about this before and I'll speak it again, that it may come as no surprise to you that there are those today within the academic world, I put that in quotation marks, that doubt that this was from Paul. They have doubts that he wrote the letter, that it's authentic, that it's from him. The reasons that they'll quote when they come up with this sort of stuff is they'll say, well, actually, when you read Ephesians and you look at some of the language that Paul's using, it's not consistent with some of the other letters that he wrote. They'll say that there's different styles. And again, this is this higher criticism where everything needs to be taken apart. We just can't simply take it as it is. They actually know this is not Paul because it doesn't seem like Paul's writings. Doubt comes in, they say, this letter doesn't look like Paul's writings. Some other stuff that actually he's not writing in a familiar way to a church that he should know. We'll talk about that when we get to the recipients. But it's simply this state of mind that nothing is what God says it is. So here's what I want to say to quite, I don't want to say this irreverently, I want to say this in a nice way. To the beards in the book room that just want to take apart everything that God says, sometimes it's just simply what it says. It's just simply what it says. What's their problem? Their bibliology's all wrong. What do you mean by that? Their understanding of scripture. That this is a preserved and inspired word. And if it's preserved and if it's inspired, we believe in this church, I've said it before, verbal plenary inspiration. All the words are inspired by God, all of them. It's a preserved word. Now, translations, we differ. We're gonna talk a little bit about translations this morning and why we only use a certain line of text in this church, different story, but. And here, Paul introduces himself as Paul. In chapter number three in verse one, he again references himself to Paul as a prisoner of Christ. Paul and Paul. What does that mean for me? What should that mean for you that this is Paul? Because if we have our bibliology right, hear me, this is my argument here. If we're to take what the modern critics would say about this, and it's not Paul, it's a pseudographical writing, meaning that it's somebody falsely came in his name and writing. What are we to do with that in our bibliology? We put it through our bibliology, we take it, we put it through the machine of verbal plenary inspiration, and we have to then make a choice. Has God allowed a letter of deception based on a lie, because it's not Paul, to be in the canon of Scripture, to be preserved and be presented to the saints all the way down the ages as from Paul when it's not from Paul. And our little machine of bibliology spits that out and goes, uh-uh, wrong. If this is God's Word, then this is Paul, the apostle. It's what he says, he even gives his title, an apostle. So my thoughts are simply God says what he means and he means what he says. He's preserved this word. He wouldn't deceive us. God cannot lie for he's not a man. This is from Paul. So taking that premise, this is from Paul. What do we want to gain from what Paul says initially in that first verse. As he introduces himself to the church at Ephesus, we'll talk about the recipients next. As he introduces himself, he introduces himself first, what, as an apostle, and then he says, by the will of God. Apostle, that's his position. By the will of God. That's the practical element of this, working out. So he's using the word apostle, which can be used in two tenses. I'm not here to get into teaching about apostolic succession. Here, Paul was an apostle, capital A. The word apostle can also mean just simply sent one, in a simple sense. Paul, when he writes in Philippians, when he says, I consider it necessary to send to you apophroditus, that's that word root in there, sent one, apostle. But here Paul's talking about his position within the early church, as set up, as designated by God. And he says, I'm an apostle by the will of God, positional by the practical truth of the savoring, sovereign grace of God and his command in my life. This is Paul we're talking about. Paul Saul, Saul Paul. You heard Saul became Paul? No he didn't. He didn't become him, he was him. Saul, Jewish name. Paul, Greek, Roman name. Member of Jewish citizenship and he appealed to that in his life. Later on he's referenced more by Paul. Why do you think he's referenced more by Paul as we go later in church history? Because he's the apostle to the Gentiles. He's going out there. But the name Saul was still there. But by the will of God, Acts chapter nine, this is the man, so if you read in Acts chapter nine, turn there with me this morning. I'm gonna paraphrase a little as I go through, but in Acts chapter number nine, you'll get the gist of what I'm saying if you turn there and get into verse number one. I want you to understand what Paul, or Saul, was about, who he was before God got a hold of him. Verse one, what does it say about him? That Paul, or Saul, breathed out. Threats and murdering. He was after, initially, the disciples of Christ with vengeance. Literally, this concept of braving out really means that it's his life. He is absolutely given in the cause, committed to Judaism, and the holy mantra that sits around that tradition, he's committed in that. And he sees these upstarts, this small cult as they're called, followers of the way, you're gonna see this in Acts. I think it's the most beautiful and perfect title. What are you? I'm a follower of the way, John 14, six. That's what they were referred to. before Antioch, followers of the way. And Saul hated them. The establishment hated them. Why? Because they were bringing this truth of the gospel of grace that had always existed but was revealed in the person of Christ and given to the disciples to minister to, empowered by the Holy Spirit. And these were the disciples that were turning the world upside down as they went. They were changing communities. They were changing lives. How? by the power of the word of God and the spirit of God. That's what's happening in the book of Acts. And Saul is absolutely opposed to it. And he goes after those Christians violently. He leads them to the Starks. He leads them to their death. He's there at the martyrdom of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, if you like. He's consenting to it. I believe that Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin, the top religious body in that system. He was their up and coming star. The one that they were putting their hopes on to go all the way. And he was proven his dedication to that cause. He talks about this in Philippians. The Hebrew, the Hebrew. born of Benjamin, stock of Israel, all these things. For the Lord's zealous, I did all these things. I pursued it to the best of my ability. I give it my all, and part of that was going after those that would threaten that. That's Saul. But you read on in Acts 9, and what happens? Something changes, doesn't it? What happens? He's in encounter with God. More specifically, the word of God, the logos, Christ. And Saul is chained. He's chained and all that zeal, all that enthusiasm for false religion as it were, not practiced perfectly in the will of God, he turns against, he realizes that it's nothing, that all his works, all his legalism, that's what we turn sometimes, all these things where we stand before God and we say, you know what God, watch me work. I'm gonna earn favor with you by the things that I do. And the more I do for you, the more I'm gonna get from you. And I'm gonna work my way up that heavenly ladder, that stairway to heaven until I've done all the good that I can do in and of myself. And then you can look at me and go, there's my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased, and then I can enter heaven. That moment, that encounter with God, he realizes that that is absolute foolishness. that all of his righteousness, all of his good works are like filthy rags before God. Because there's nothing we can do to work our way up that heavenly stairway, nothing. Nothing. The message of grace that's in the gospel that changed Saul or Paul's life that day, that got him on this place where it set him up and put him in Jesus Christ, changed his life, is anathema. It's against all that world teaching of works. The world wants to tell you you've got to work to make yourself look good before God. And it doesn't matter what religion or system you're in, as long as you're doing good things, then you're going to be pleasing to God. I want to tell you this morning, by the word of God, that that is absolute rubbish before God. It's garbage before God. That's what Paul says. Philip Ben's. I looked at all that stuff and I've counted it worthless before a holy God. Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, as he stands before God, he has an encounter with God, with the Logos, I believe. I believe that's a Christophany there in Isaiah six, that it's a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. What does he say? He says, woe unto me, I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm not worthy to be in the presence of absolute holiness. And God has to do something to cleanse him. In that passage, Isaiah doesn't do anything. He can't do anything. All he can do is fall on his face before the one who is eternally holy, eternally good, eternally powerful. He is in the fear and awe of the Lord. I've been teaching Proverbs this week to New Tribes students. And the beginning principle for anything in the Lord is the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That word beginning in the Hebrew means first controlling principle. that is behind everything. Fear as in reverence and awe. This is the God that created the universe. This is the God that spins the planets and holds them together. This is the God that science cannot work out how the world exists, why the world exists, how it's held together. And the God of all creation shows us that and more so he shows us that there's nothing we can do. Nothing. to make ourselves holy to be in his presence. Nothing. There has to be an encounter with God, word presented with the truth, that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes unto God but by him. That's why Jesus came, to bear our sin, to bear our shame, all our unholiness, let's put it like that, so that we might be holy, have Christ's holiness. I like to talk in terms of the credit report. We live in a society, the younger you are, the more you're introduced to the credit report. Credit score says no. Christ has a perfect credit score, always will. Ours is always absolutely rock bottom. And we may try and pay some of our debt off to improve our score. We may try and pay the interest. We can never pay the debt. Christ's offer, His transaction is simply this. You can have my report and I'll take yours. How amazing is that? Paul was changed. Why? In an encounter with God. And he talks about his position. I'm an apostle. And he says, practically by the will of God. God stepped into my life, he called me, I answered, and he's put me on this path. And what's the same for Paul is the same for anyone sitting here this morning that doesn't know the Lord is Savior. It's the same for anyone sitting here this morning that does know the Lord is Savior and is not practically serving him. Positionally, we're gonna look at this next. That can't be changed. But practically, how are we living it? So the will of God's what simply is, number one, you're saved. That's it. No name given on their heaven whereby which we must be saved. That's God's will. Full stop for everybody. You get that bit right, position is sorted out. But the practical element needs to be dealt with. Because that's the second part of the will of God. Serve him. Serve him, Paul. Writing in Romans 12 on, said over and over again, I beseech you therefore brethren, what? By the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, unto God. You know what, sometimes I get sick of saying those words. Because I look at my own life and think, what am I doing in relation to that? How often do I say it, and how much do I live it? Paul was changed. I was changed. by the will of God. Nuwan, I believe if we read Ephesians and get into Ephesians and understand gospel truth, we will be changed by the will of God. I absolutely believe that. Listen to what John Stott writes. He writes of John McKay. John McKay was a former principal or president of Princeton Cemetery. Cemetery. Probably is a cemetery now. Seminary. Freudian slip. And he, He recalls, at the age of 14, that he went into the highlands of Scotland, spent some long time in the creation, took a Bible with him, studied the book of Ephesians in the hills of Scotland, and he said, he wrote these words, I saw a new world. Everything was new. I had a new outlook, new experiences, new attitudes to other people. I loved God. Jesus Christ became the center of everything. I had been quickened. I was really alive. What had happened? He realized the glorious gospel truth, gospel power, that God changes lives, and the lives that he changes, he sustains, and the lives that he sustains, he calls them to serve, that we might take the gospel to others, that we might build one another up in those gospel truths. This is the will of God. Christians come to me and say, oh, I don't know what the will of God for my life is. I say, I'll tell you. Serve where you're set. Show yourself faithful. Show yourself true. Talking about faithful and true, let's have a look then at the audience of the letter as we march on. The saints that are in Ephesus, faithful in Christ Jesus, again. As you deal with it, it seems like every book, you have to deal with controversy around the introduction. So you get in, you read the commentaries, if you study Ephesians, look in the commentaries, they'll say the classic statement, they'll say, in some of the oldest manuscripts, Ephesus, the word Ephesus, doesn't appear. So they'll say, in the oldest manuscripts, because the Bible's translation, in this church, we use KJV, we use New King James, and that's about it. because they come from a translation line that follows a text called the Majority Textus Receptus Masorotic Text. These are the majority of manuscripts. I'm not getting into the translation process. But there are other manuscripts available that are being dug up later, found later, that are in the minority. And some of these don't have, not all of them, but some of them don't have the word Ephesus. So again, the modern critic comes along and says, well, this isn't a letter to the Church of that, Ephesus. Because in the older manuscripts, that little word doesn't appear, Ephesus doesn't appear. Now, the problem is, when you deconstruct the Greek and look at it, that without having something there, there's a huge problem. So what they've said is, modern thinkers have come along and said, actually, this was a fill-in-the-blank letter. so that it was passed around Asia Minor, so this is modern day Turkey, and rather than putting the actual destination, it was left blank so that you could fill in the destination and give it to whatever local church you met. Ridiculous, right? It's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. The other thought then, is that people will say that this is the letter that Paul references in Colossians chapter four and verse 16 when he talks about epistle or a letter from Laodicea. So they call this the Laodicean epistle that we don't have the records of it. What they say is that actually Ephesians is that. And the emphasis has been added in later. Again, problems with bibliology, number one. Because this has been the historic text through church history. So is God allowed to lie in his word? I don't think so. Number two, because a manuscript is older, it does not necessarily mean that it's more accurate. It just doesn't mean it. We don't apply this principle in life. I was thinking about this. If you use your computer and you do electronic documents, you start to type out, I used my sermons uploaded to the cloud, but in a previous day you would do it and you would save it, one document, two documents. If you were to go onto my computer and search for different documents, search maybe even on Ephesians, you'd find different documents in there. You know, I was dead and buried and gone. There'd been a huge earthquake and you dug up my house, found a computer, powered it on, started looking for my amazing sermons that were very valuable down the line. You started looking at the documents. Could you use the same principle, that the oldest document on there was the most accurate? No. What happens to old documents, sometimes they get bent. because there's mistakes in them. This is the copying process. What I'm saying to you, just because it's older doesn't mean that it's more accurate. That's a false assumption that's made. So, may surprise you or not surprise you that we are taking the line that this letter is written to the Church at Ephesus, the Church at Ephesus. Some people might counter and say, oh, but Paul doesn't reference any familiarity when he writes this because Paul planted the church at Ephesus, Acts 18. He spent nearly three years there, Acts 19, you can read that. And then he writes this letter and he doesn't reference any names. There's no personal kind of, like his other letters have. So the critic will come along and say, because that's not there, then this can't be Ephesus, and this can't be Paul, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The thing is, while they have slight weight as an argument, they aren't conclusive arguments. There are other theories, because we're dealing with, there's no concrete evidence other than what God's word says, that it's to Ephesus. So the burden of doubt lies with the scoffer. The thing is, Ephesians is written years after Paul was in Ephesus. The early church has progressed on. In Asia Minor, it's Gentile area. So you're going from the dispersion, from Jerusalem, the Jews, early church, heavily Jewish. We're transitioning, as the gospel of grace comes in, the Gentiles are to be the light to the world, the church, that it's becoming more and more Gentile. And Paul, when he writes in Ephesians, writes to Gentiles. You can see that language coming through. So maybe it's not personal, because maybe he doesn't know these people that he's writing to, because they weren't there when he was there. There are arguments. But we're going to take it for what God says. And if it's wrong, if this isn't from Paul and this isn't the Ephesus, then I'm going to take it up with God and have a strong word with him when I get there. That's not going to happen, is it? Who are we to doubt God? Sometimes we've just got to take God's word and trust that he has divinely preserved it and inspired it. And this is Paul, and he's writing to Ephesus. And it doesn't matter how many buffins, beards, people with names before their letter, or before their name, letters before their name and after their name come and wanna line up and wanna say, no, no, no, we've examined this and we think God always reigns supreme. What does God say? What does God say? That's the most important thing. So what does Paul say about, the folks in Ephesus, and this is what he calls them. He calls them saints, saints. Again, this is positional. So Paul talks about his position, an apostle. Here we see Paul referenced to the saints in Ephesus. That word saint means set apart one, holy one. Despite what Roman Catholicism has done, despite what man-made religion has done, saint is not preserved for those that have done miraculous or mighty or recognized works. I want to say to you that if you're here this morning and you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your savior, what does that mean? It means that you've acknowledged there's nothing you can do to save yourself. that you're in terrible trouble with God, that he's holy, he's just, and we're not. It acknowledged that Christ came to be the bridge, the way to God, that relationship could be restored by Christ's blood. We understand that, we believe that, we trust it's called repentance, turning from your old life, turning from your ways, change of mind, change of heart, change of action, turning to God and saying, Lord, there's nothing I bring, I need your grace. It's only by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that I can be in the right relationship with you. God saves you, we call that theologically, justifies you. So he looks at you and doesn't see your report, he sees Christ, which is perfect. He doesn't see your sin, past, present and future from a judicial point of view, he sees Christ's life and he declares you're free. At that point, you're sanctified, which means what? Set apart. At that point, you're a saint. Holy, Greek hagios, holy, set apart, separated for purpose, for God's work. So if you're here and you're a saint, you're a saint, positionally. And the good news about the gospel The good news about the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving work that we need to apply, that we can draw here from Ephesians verses one and two, is that that position, once entered into, never changes. Never changes. That you are always a saint in that term. That when you're saved, it doesn't matter if you've had a bad day, had a bad week, had a bad month, had a bad year. It doesn't excuse that life. It doesn't excuse your sin. But it doesn't change your position as a saint before God. That's unchangeable truth. And I don't know about you, but I need to hear that this morning. I need that gospel truth in my life. Because I mess up. I trip up, I fall. Sometimes thoughts come in here that shouldn't be in here. Usually by church members, but no. No. I need this. We need this. that God will never love us anymore, He will never love us any less, that He's loved us perfectly in Christ Jesus, and we can never escape that love. It's not conditional, it's not dependent on our works and what we do. Our position is eternally secure in Him. And Paul reminds these readers, and he reminds us today, that they are saints set apart. practical or positional truth that they need to apply. Why? Because that's the theology. But they need to apply it. And what does Paul say about them? They're faithful. They're faithful, verse two. This is practical. Positional never changes. Saint is set eternally by God, held by him forever under his grace and his power and his mercy. Faithfulness from God never changes. Faithfulness from us is variable. My oh my is a variable. If you've been a Christian long enough, you'll know the ups and downs of the Christian walk and the Christian life. What's going on there, it's the practical side of living out gospel truth. That we're saints, that we're saved, that were set apart. But these believers were faithful. Positionally they were saints, but faithfully practicing that position. And this was amongst a difficult arena. We talked about this in the men's meeting yesterday. About persecution and difficulties. And very quickly, the Lord's reminding us as a group, thinking about, Romania, we're talking about Romania and just the missions trip that we did, reminding us that we do not have it hard in this country. That we don't face persecution. I mean, it's pathetic to even try and claim that. And that doesn't downplay if you're suffering for your faith in work or whatever. I understand that. But in the scheme of things, the cost we have to pay isn't that much for most of us. There are some people that have to pay a cost and are willing to do that. I don't know if you're reading the news at the minute, praise be to God about this, but there are lots of people that are starting to win their cases for unfair dismissal because they stood up against what they were told to do in the world that has lost its mind, that is selling the illusion that people can identify as whatever they want to. And they've stood up against that and they've lost their jobs. But recently I see that they're winning their cases of unfair dismissal. Long may that continue. Long may that continue. But the Ephesians, they had a battleground. They were at the hotspot of pagan worship in that area. Ephesus was very important. in that time and its location. Really, it was the kind of entry point into Asia Minor. And it had a temple dedicated to Diana or Artemis. Artemis is the Greek god version. Diana is the Roman god version. This is not standing today. This is a replica. If you go, there's just one or two pillars probably. But this is what it would have looked like, they believe. Huge thing. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. People would have came all over. To do what? To worship a false god at this temple. Here we go, here's Artemis, ancient era. She moves, because what you'll see when you look into history, you will see that these gods and goddesses, you take them all back, all back to ancient Babylon. We've done this in Revelation. And then we go from there and we see that Satan puts on many guises. He's many disguises. And you see these gods emerge and morph and change. Artemis moves along into Diana. Diana is the Roman god. She's a god of hunting and moon worship. So that's just back to Babylon. If you know your Bible, it's back to Babylon. Tower of Babel was the centre of astrology. The pagan religions spring from worship of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Nimrod was what? The mighty hunter. This is just proliferated all the way through. Wonder Woman. It's Diana. Where have they got all that from? Greek and Roman, false gods. False gods. Paul is in the midst of ministry in Acts chapter 19. You can read through it in your own time. You don't have to look at it. Acts chapter 19, I encourage you to go home, have a read through verses 9 to 34. You're going to see that there's this false God worship. It's a whole ecosystem. to worship this false goddess Diana. The blacksmiths, the coppersmiths are making tokens just like they do today. You go to these religious sites and they'll fire out all the little models. They're making money off it. Along comes Paul and these men with the gospel, turning the world upside down, saying, this is a false god. Get away from this. The power of God is working in Ephesus. Those that are making money out of this worship find out quickly that when God comes in, he changes lives, and changed lives change the culture that they live in if they're faithful. And these believers in Ephesus in the middle of this battleground, this hotspot of pagan worship, they're being persecuted, they're being beaten, they're being mocked, they're being taken away and led away, they're facing it from all sides, yet they're faithful. And their faithfulness is putting the ones that are making merchandise out of idolatry out of business. Out of business. The Ephesian church was birthed in the battlefield. Milton Baptist Church was birthed on a battlefield. Any church that is of the Lord founded upon his word by people filled with the Spirit is planted on a battlefield. The difference between us now and the church at Ephesus is the church of Ephesus knew it because it was clear, as clear as it can be, that they were on a battlefield. We live in a world today, we are absolutely unaware that we are in a battlefield. They knew it and they lived it, they were faithful. So we've got the author, we've got the audience, what about the authority? The authority, verse two, is grace and peace from who? God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In these first two verses we've got this positional truth, practical truth, positional truth, practical truth. Now we've got practical truth from a positional truth. That the authority of this letter is ultimately God. He's the one that provides grace, charas in the Greek. 12 times it appears in this letter. I don't believe that 12 is a coincidence either. And peace really comes from the Hebrew connotation shalom. Grace and peace from God the Father. That's that fatherly Abba relationship. And the Lord carry us, Jesus Christ. The sovereignty, what do you have? You have the sovereignty of God and the love of God providing grace and peace to the people of God. What's Paul saying? Grace and peace, life and hope. You're in a battle, but God's with you. You're in a battle, but you're a saint forever. You're in a battle, but God the Father, the one you can say, Abba in the Greek, Daddy, loves you and cares for you sovereignly, Lord. He's in this. You've just got to be faithful, faithful. This is called inaugurated eschatology. What does that mean? It means the early church took the truth that Christ has everything in his hands, that one day he's gonna deal with it all. And they take that future hope and they apply it in present life. And what do we find them? We find them faithful. Faithful. And they needed that grace and peace. Because Paul left them. You read Acts chapter 20 and you can have a look there in your own time, because we're gonna wrap up, but in Acts chapter 20, Paul calls the elders of Ephesus and tells them that they'll never see him again, he has to go. And it's a moment of tears and weeping and sorrow. They needed the grace and peace that comes from God in the difficult times. We need the peace and grace that comes from God, because we do face difficult times. It's hard out there. So Paul is gonna provide this letter, this epistle that's glorious, because it's filled with grace and love. It's filled with positional truth of who we are in Christ. Actually, the entire letter's split into two halves. Three chapters on positional truth, who we are, and then three chapters on practical truth, how that should be applied in our lives. But he gets to the positional first. Doesn't deal with this is what you should be doing, this is how you should be doing. Why? Because we need the gospel truth first before we ever apply that truth. We need to know who we are this morning in him. What he's given us and how that should then affect how we live. So my time is up. I've run over by five minutes, but there you go. You're gracious people. You'll allow me this. Let me finish with two points of application that I want you to take away this morning. I want you to go away, I want you to read Acts chapter 19 verse 20. I want you to take the sheet and go through the questions and think about these truths. But these are the main points I want to take as we read this from Ephesians this morning. Number one, our position should affect our practice. Let me say that again. Our position should affect our practice. But our practice can never affect our position. Who we are in Christ can never be changed by what we do. But what we do should be determined by who we are in him. You understand that this morning, Church? You can never lose your salvation but you can choose not to live it out, as God will have you live it out. And then number two, God's grace, when readily realized and applied, brings God's peace. You're struggling with your peace this morning, not where you should be, not thinking like you should be, get to Ephesians, understand who you are in him. There's Paul writes in Colossians, the sister letter, you're complete in him. that he loves you eternally and he'll always love you eternally and he'll never let you go no matter what you do and let that truth change you let that grace fill you with peace for the only one that can give eternal peace Ephesians is glorious but what are you going to do with it? You're going to take it and just hear it here and not apply it. It's dead. You're going to let it come alive. And when you do that, the grace and peace of God will come upon you in a mighty way. Let's pray.