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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.
A Glorious Greeting
Series Glorious: Ephesians Unpacked
Part 1 of our Ephesians Sermon Series.
| Sermon ID | 724231345552493 |
| Duration | 47:57 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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