Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Let me prove how much of a dad I am. When I saw the little tortoise thing, sea turtle, whatever you want to call it, all I'm thinking about is you were like, whoa. And I was like, whoa.
[00:00:13] If you know that reference, then you had a kid and watched Finding Nemo. Or you just watched Finding Nemo. Okay, I'm serious. That's all I was thinking about the whole time. Hey, real quick. I want to have a moment where we as brothers and sisters begin to pray. So in a month, there's going to be an election. And as followers of Jesus, it's our responsibility to steward that opportunity and just be responsible as brothers and sisters in Christ. So what? I would encourage you to do two things.
[00:00:41] Be prayerful over the next month. Seek God's face on behalf of the candidates and all the different places that are being elected. Pray. So seek God's grace, discernment, wisdom, wanting to know who we were supposed to pray for. And. And then part two is pray for their hearts. Pray that they would come to know Jesus. If they don't, and if they do, that they would make sure that their life is known by him. And so let's take a moment as brothers and sisters and pray for that and prepare our hearts for that to seek his guidance and wisdom in regards to that.
[00:01:13] So let's do that together. Father, in Jesus name, we thank you that we get to be part of a country, that we get an opportunity to steward our. Our citizenship in this way. And Lord, we pray that you would just give us discernment and just wisdom related to this. And the different candidates, the different just things that are happening that we're going to vote for as well.
[00:01:34] Lord, I just pray that we'd be led by you.
[00:01:37] You are faithful. And Lord, we depend on that. And Father, we pray for the hearts of the candidates. We just pray that your Holy Spirit would soften them. And Lord God, that would follow after you.
[00:01:48] That would be what they're known for.
[00:01:50] Father, we thank you for all that you've done for us. We just trust you with this. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:01:56] All right. Well, I am super excited about the opportunity to study Ephesians. I want to make a couple notes before I start. Here in the back there is a packet if you want to use the packet that has the journal, places and all that stuff. If you didn't get a journal the other week, there's journal and margins to write notes and stuff like that. So if you want to be studying this at home, it's going to Be back there. You can grab it and go with it, or you can do it in your own Bible. Bible.
[00:02:21] Whatever you want. Whatever you feel comfortable with that. The other thing, too is I changed up our sermon notes that we hand out on Sunday mornings. And I've tried something new.
[00:02:30] We did some fill in the blanks this day, and I'm excited.
[00:02:35] But if you're anything like me and you're like, did he say the answer to this blank?
[00:02:40] And you go past it and you feel, like, empty, like there's this void because you didn't find the answer.
[00:02:47] I threw you a bone at the bottom. Is all the answers on the back?
[00:02:52] Because I'm that guy. Okay, so that's it.
[00:02:56] So I don't know if you've ever had that moment in a public place where somebody nice, nice older man comes up to you and just looks at you, just kind of catch eyes.
[00:03:08] Maybe you're checking out at Walmart or you're at a restaurant or whatnot, and you catch eyes. And you know that once you do, you're in for it. I mean, your schedule is not gonna be like you planned, okay? And he says, how you doing? And you're like, fine. And you could just stop it there and move on. Take eye contact away and just keep moving. But you are nice because you were raised right, and you say, fine, how are you?
[00:03:34] And then all of a sudden, 90 seconds later, you're holding his phone and he's like, showing you all the pictures of his grandkids, right? And after a while, you realize that you have seen the 400th picture of the same kid, almost the same picture, but to him, every picture is different. And he's excited about it. And so that overwhelming sense and all those pictures in that moment, this is what Paul feels about God's salvation that he gives us in Christ so much. So we're going to see from verses 3 to 14, it is one sentence in the Greek. Now, English, we had to, like, put some periods and commas and stuff. But for Paul, he was just so overwhelmed by the grace of God that he just went after it and didn't even care about punctuation. And just in the Greek, it's all one sentence. So it's amazing. Anyways, so if you have your Bibles, we're going to be looking at Ephesians, chapter one, and we're going to be studying this as brothers and sisters through November, and then we're going to pick up again in January and in February.
[00:04:37] So I'm super excited that we get to do this together.
[00:04:40] So notice with me Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. And here's a great detail. By the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So bear in mind, who is writing this? It's the Apostle Paul. This is the man that in Acts, chapter nine, it says that he was breathing threats and murder on. On the church, okay? And then all of a sudden, something shifts, right? He didn't volunteer to be this apostle by the will of God. He was apprehended and arrested by the grace of God before he ever writes the word choose. He is living proof of that kindness of choosing from God. And he opens as the apostle by the will of God. Assigned, not self selected, okay?
[00:05:35] And then he says he calls his readers saints.
[00:05:39] Now, that word isn't for the spiritual elite. Even though you may think you are well in Christ, you are. It's the ordinary word for every believer, okay? Set apart by an extraordinary God. It's the ordinary word for every believer set apart by an extraordinary God. So many scholars believe that Ephesians was kind of meant to be a letter that was circulated among all churches, not just in Ephesus, like in Philippians. It's directed to Philippians based on issues they had there, Corinthians and Galatians and like, so it's all that. But this one is not. This one's to all believers. And so that's directed even to us right here, right now, which is powerful. But pay attention to some things. Here's some details. As you study Ephesians with me, it's gonna be super cool. There is a lot of repetition. There is some nuanced phrases that Paul uses over and over again that he layers and weaves throughout the whole letter. That is really worth your paying attention to. One of those, like from verses 3 to 14, is mentioned almost 10 times in him. In Christ, right? This sense of. In the beloved, this reality of being united with him is part of our life. And if you study throughout the whole of Ephesians, you're gonna see. Which makes me happy, you're gonna see it about 36 times, okay? Which is awesome.
[00:07:04] So Paul isn't just handing us a list of what we have in this particular section. He's telling us where we have it. He is giving you the understanding that every blessing has an address, and it's in the person and work of Jesus Christ. I want you to see and you can write for Yourself. This theological outline of this passage. In verses 3 to 6, the Father chose you for adoption. Okay? In verses 7 to 10, the Son redeemed you for unity. In verses 11 through 14, the Spirit sealed you for an inheritance, all to the praise of his glory, which we'll see in a moment.
[00:07:43] He will unpack this. So four, five, six. Okay, let me get. I'm excited, so I'm jumping ahead of myself. His will is where this starts, but his glory is where it's headed.
[00:07:55] His will is where it starts, but his glory is where it's headed. So chapter three, verse or chapter one, verse three.
[00:08:02] Blessed.
[00:08:03] This word in the Greek means good word. It means to praise. So praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has. Here's the word again. Blessed. Same root word, but this time it means favored, meaning you're getting this amazing favor. But what's great is the tense in the Greek is powerful. And this is how means right. It means that God's act of bestowing spiritual blessings as a complete, decisive, definitive, comprehensive reality. And it's an accomplished fact based on the tense, meaning this blessing is so secure that your whole life can depend on it. Now, real quick, if you knew that you can put your weight of all your life, all your decisions, you're good, you're bad, all of you all on something.
[00:08:55] And it doesn't matter the circumstances in and around you in your life. If you could trust God that much, I believe it would make a difference. And that's what we're trying to get to.
[00:09:03] So here it is. He's accomplished that.
[00:09:06] Bless us in Christ. There's in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We're come back to that, even as he chose us in Him. And I mentioned this last time, I want to say it again. If you see me like talking in the air with my hands and that's me, like circling the text, how I would do it make sense. So if you're like that and just pay attention to this, when I do this, I'm circling that phrase. So even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless. That's a purpose. Holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to another phrase that you're going to see several times, according to the purpose of his will. That word for purpose there has the idea of pleasure according to the pleasure of God's will. He did this work to the praise of His Glorious grace to which he was.
[00:10:01] He has blessed us in the beloved, he has blessed us in Christ. This is what we get.
[00:10:06] So what Paul's doing here is a declarative praise. He's making a declaration. Truth and why God's praiseworthy because of that declaration.
[00:10:17] Not one paragraph, one sentence full of reasons to worship.
[00:10:22] He is writing this while in chains. He has no complaints.
[00:10:28] Notice he's not updating about his different things that are in the jail cell with him, but one long, overflowing exhale of praise to God the Father, weaving praise with the work that God has done.
[00:10:43] And again, those same root words as I mentioned earlier, blesses us, we bless them back. And one of the things that I want to kind of talk to is after God is we have this. And this is what Paul's doing is he's responding back. When we worship, our worship is an echo of the work that God has done.
[00:11:02] So God's grace redeems us, saves us, forgives us. We have this work being done. And when you and I obey his word, when you and I forgive others, when you and I do good works, we care for the widow, the orphan, the prisoner. When we do those things, those are echoes of the work that's been done to us. And that's an act of worship. Not just the great singing that was up here, but it's also our obedience and responding to this. Okay, so reading that was me reading. By the way, Paul uses this phrase to heavenly places. Again, if you're studying Ephesians with us, I want you to highlight that because it's mentioned five times in this letter here in chapter one, verse three, these heavenly places are where our spiritual blessings come from.
[00:11:56] In chapter one, verse 20, it's where Christ is enthroned. In chapter two, verse six, it's where you are seated with him.
[00:12:03] In chapter three, verse 10, it's where the rulers and authorities are watching.
[00:12:08] And then these heavenly places in chapter six are where the battle is fought. In other words, what Paul is trying to like, nail down for the Church is the most real part of reality that you can't see yet you've already been given in Christ the hope, eternal future. What happens in the heavenly places is already yours in Christ.
[00:12:37] He is saying that you were wanted. I love this. You were wanted before you were ever even trying to be wanted. You were wanted before you ever knew what wanted was.
[00:12:50] Further proof of it being only by grace. Verse four, we see this. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, before you were born, before Your first sin before. Your first excuse for your sin before Genesis 1:1. Notice the purpose of this. That's the key. The purpose is that we should be holy and blameless, set apart. Which, by the way, goes back to the phrase, the word earlier. Saints. Right, Hagias. So it's this work of being set apart, holy for Him.
[00:13:21] And here's what's great. He did not choose you because you were holy. He chose you to make you holy.
[00:13:29] Election isn't a VIP list.
[00:13:32] It's a rescue with a purpose.
[00:13:35] Some of us flinch at words like chose, elect, or predestined. I understand.
[00:13:42] But watch what Paul does with them. He doesn't build a debate, he builds a doxology. He builds a reason for praise.
[00:13:50] Nobody in Scripture meets election with a smirk.
[00:13:54] They meet it with wonder.
[00:13:56] If this doctrine makes you proud, then you've misread it. If this doctrine makes you fearful, you've also misread it. It was written to make you experience the awe of God, to be blown away by him in a Roman world.
[00:14:13] This phrase, adoption as sons. This is basically legal language. This is normal for his readers to understand.
[00:14:20] Adoption took someone out from under one household authority and placed him under a new one with a new father, with the full rights of an heir. Not tolerated, not put on probation.
[00:14:36] Placed deliberately.
[00:14:39] Notice according to the purpose of his will. Like that's the pleasure behind it. It pleased God to do this. It wasn't a reluctant decision. It was something he desired and had pleasure in doing. Also, in that world, the inheritance went to the sons, right? The firstborn son. This is called the law of primogeniture. Okay. Which you guys will have a test on that. It'll be great. Okay? Paul looks at a church of men, women and former slaves and says, all of you are sons.
[00:15:11] He isn't erasing anyone. What he's saying is every one of you gets the Son's portion because you've been placed in the Son in Christ. It's not about biology, but about his will. And behind his will is his pleasure, and behind his pleasure is his love.
[00:15:31] You don't get a servant's wage, you get the whole estate.
[00:15:35] It's your inheritance. Now check out verse seven with me. Now we get to the work of Christ and His redemption.
[00:15:42] And again in Him. Circle right.
[00:15:46] In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Here it is, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. That idea of lavished here is like showered upon us in all wisdom and Insight. Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, his good pleasure, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time. For this purpose, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. This work of redemption is to unite.
[00:16:25] So you and I have been bought back. Everything is being gathered in this to unite, right? Redemption through his blood. That's ransom language. We get this from Exodus, right? We're bought. The people of Israel were bought out of slavery under a lamb's blood, the Passover lamb. Redemption always cost something.
[00:16:47] And here, this redemption costs blood.
[00:16:50] But not yours. It costs the blood of Christ. The tense here is we have it, not we hope to have it. We have it. It's already yours. This redemption, this work is already yours. In Christ you get the forgiveness of our trespasses. Picture the goat in Leviticus 16. The scapegoat, right? Carrying sin into the wilderness away. Your sin wasn't ignored. It was placed on someone and that was Christ.
[00:17:16] This is lavished upon us. The root word here is the same word that we see in John chapter six. If you remember a couple weeks ago where that little boy gave his lunch and Jesus multiplied the food, the fish and the loaves, right? And there were 12 baskets left over. Same word here. Leftover, lavish. There is more than enough. In fact, I love. If you think about God's mercy, that attribute of his mercy. In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah says that his mercies are new every morning. Meaning you can't exhaust the mercy and grace of God lavished on you. Think about Psalm 23, where it says, my cup overflows.
[00:17:57] Overflow. This idea of lavishing, this is amazing. Then this is the mystery. A mystery. What he's talking about here isn't a puzzle. It's something that was hidden that God has now revealed. And what he revealed is a plan to unite all things in him, both Jew and Gentile. Mal female. Right. And doesn't matter your background. He is uniting, doing this work of bringing you together. Unite means the sum under one head to bring about into one. God is gathering the whole broken creation under Christ.
[00:18:28] And you're in it now.
[00:18:32] Verse 11.
[00:18:33] Here it is again.
[00:18:35] In him we have obtained an inheritance. It's the work of the Spirit.
[00:18:41] An inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose, the pleasure of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Notice that according to. Like that's going back to.
[00:18:53] So that we who are the firstborn to hope in Christ, the first. Excuse me, the first to hope in Christ. I was mixing Colossians one up. All right. Who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
[00:19:08] So he says we here, that's first person plural. And now he goes this verse 13. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
[00:19:24] Speaking of the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Now, something powerful happening here. You are not just saved, you are guaranteed. When Israel heard inheritance, they heard land. But Paul says our inheritance is Christ Jesus himself and everything that comes with Him.
[00:19:46] It comes from the God who works all things according to the counsel of his will. A purpose bigger than your mess. A purpose that is more steady than any of your circumstances you have in Christ.
[00:20:01] And notice the small shift, as I mentioned, he says we have. And then he says, you have we who are the first to hope in Christ. He's speaking of himself and other Jewish believers. And then he says, you also. Now he's speaking of Gentile believers. And in the latter half of chapter two of Ephesians, it's going to unpack the call of that.
[00:20:23] Both groups get the same sequence heard, believed, sealed. There's no second tier believers, no waiting room, no standby flight. They heard the word of truth, believed, and they were sealed by the Holy Spirit. This isn't a second experience for advanced Christians. It's what God did for you when you believed.
[00:20:44] A seal in their time did three things.
[00:20:47] It marked ownership, it proved authenticity, and it guaranteed security.
[00:20:53] Then he says he calls the Spirit, the guarantee, the already and not yet already true of you and will be true of you.
[00:21:03] He says the guarantee of our inheritance is like a foretaste. Now, real quick, some of you had really fancy weddings. Me and Aaron got. We met and married in two and a half months. Okay, true story. October 14th, which is coming around, right? Of 1999. And we got married January 1st of 2000. Easiest anniversary ever. I know you're jealous, okay?
[00:21:25] But here's the deal. Any of you, before you got married, it was actually planned and revved up that you had a cake testing for the cake that you're going to have at your wedding. Anybody do a cake testing before? Do some samples.
[00:21:37] Couple of you. Anybody over here? Yes.
[00:21:41] Hey, these young ladies here. Okay, so you're going through, and you got the chef and they made all these amazing cakes and you go through all of them and then you get the one. It's this one, right?
[00:21:53] Real sweet, really. Chocolate, you know, or whatever it is. And then the other one tastes like chalk. And so we're not going that way.
[00:21:59] But you pick the one, that cake that you chose, that's a foretaste of what's coming on the wedding day.
[00:22:09] The Holy Spirit of God is our guarantee of our inheritance.
[00:22:13] This foretaste of what's to come, of what we have waiting on us.
[00:22:22] You've been redeemed, and it is true of you already.
[00:22:29] So think about this. The guarantee of our inheritance is like a foretaste. So every time, right? Every time you felt forgiven, that's a foretaste of the work of Christ reminding you of your inheritance, that it's sealed by the Holy Spirit. Every time you prayed and knew someone was listening, right? Every time the Spirit gave you a goodness that you did not earn.
[00:22:55] Every time you prayed, like I said, and knew you weren't talking to the ceiling. Every time you forgave someone who you thought you never could forgive them. Every time a verse of Scripture stopped you in your tracks and stopped being just words on a page and started to be in a life that you wanted to live. Every time you sit with other believers and felt like they were family. Every time the Spirit used you when you felt like you had nothing to give. Every time you felt peace in a situation or in a room, that peace was not natural.
[00:23:28] The hospital bed, right?
[00:23:33] Those moments where you're sitting there at a funeral and all of a sudden, in the midst of that chaos, you feel peace over divorce papers.
[00:23:43] And somehow or another, even in the midst of that turmoil, you're able to have peace in all that is foretaste of your eternity.
[00:23:54] The Spirit of God is a seal guarantee of that for us.
[00:24:02] So the next time your feelings tell you that you've lost it, consult the seal.
[00:24:11] Your salvation isn't resting on how you and I feel this morning. This is where we say amen, right? High five. That was a high five. Amen, right? It's not. What we have in Christ is not based on how you and I feel this morning. We could have, like, not had any sleep last night. We could have an upset stomach. We could be stressed out. But who we are in Christ is settled, regardless of how you and I feel.
[00:24:39] That's the gift here.
[00:24:41] The seal isn't a reason to stop caring. It's the reason to stop panicking.
[00:24:48] Now step back. Again, the outline. The Father choosing the Son, redeeming the Spirit sealing. Each movement ended the same way, right? To the praise of his glorious grace, right? Verse 6. To the praise of his glory. Verse 12, verse 14. To the praise of his glory.
[00:25:06] Everything God does has one ultimate aim, that he be worshiped.
[00:25:13] And here's the beautiful part.
[00:25:16] That aim is also your joy.
[00:25:19] God isn't asking you to praise him at the expense of your happiness. What he's saying is, once you see that, that's your deepest happiness.
[00:25:27] The praise of his glorious grace is natural. It's what you want.
[00:25:31] I don't know about you, but there's been this cool verse of scripture that when I was younger, I kind of used it as a genie lamp. I don't know if you guys ever have any like that, some verses of Scripture. You're kind of like, I'm going to use this when things get really rocky, and I'm going to apply it to my circumstance, and it's going to rock.
[00:25:48] Psalm 37. 4.
[00:25:51] Delight in the Lord.
[00:25:53] And you're like, okay, formula. Write down this formula. Delight in the Lord, okay?
[00:25:59] And he will give you the desires of your heart. I like this one. And we apply it, right? Rub the genie. Boom, I'm having this.
[00:26:07] But that's not what that's about.
[00:26:12] When God is your delight, he also becomes your desire.
[00:26:20] He's not a genie trying to give you something that will not last.
[00:26:24] He's trying to give you something that will last for eternity Himself.
[00:26:31] He wants you to have Him.
[00:26:35] So what do we do with all this?
[00:26:39] We notice the order in this whole passage. God acts, we respond.
[00:26:44] Nothing here says, do this and God will choose you.
[00:26:48] Everything says, God has done this. And that's why Paul is praising.
[00:26:54] So here's how we can answer.
[00:26:57] First of all, as I said earlier, we can answer naturally in worship. Again, worship is the echo of the grace you have received. Obedience, good works, stewardship of gifts. All these things is an echo of what you received from Him.
[00:27:11] But if you're here, here's one way you can think about answering.
[00:27:16] And you are carrying shame for some boneheaded thing you did in the past.
[00:27:23] Or maybe some boneheaded thing you did last night.
[00:27:33] I want to encourage you to stop paying for something that's already been paid for.
[00:27:39] Anybody would call that crazy, right?
[00:27:43] Like if you go to a restaurant and I don't know if you've ever had it, where somebody pays for your meal, right?
[00:27:50] Waitress comes up and says, hey, it's already taken care of. And you're like, no, I must insist. Let me pay more.
[00:27:57] No, what you have that you may be ashamed of your brokenness, your past, your mistakes, your sin against God has been paid for in Christ.
[00:28:10] So think about this. Name the one mistake in your life that you keep trying to work off as if you can, like, earn your way back.
[00:28:20] Instead of that, hand it to the one who's already settled the debt. Give it to him.
[00:28:29] If you're exploring faith today, if you're here and you're like, man, Louis, it's been cool to hear this stuff.
[00:28:36] Can you tell me more?
[00:28:38] Well, notice the sequence heard, believed and sealed.
[00:28:44] It isn't probation.
[00:28:46] The invitation for this is open now.
[00:28:50] It's live right now. You can claim it in this moment.
[00:28:55] So tell one person, if you're here this week and you're like, what can I do with this? This isn't me. This isn't me. This is me. Tell one person this week what it means that God's own spirit is your guarantee.
[00:29:09] Just next steps. I'm going to do this.
[00:29:12] And so what I want to do is just pray for us brothers and sisters. Because this journey that you and I are going on through Ephesians really is powerful.
[00:29:21] It's an opportunity. And so all these notes are great.
[00:29:25] There's not going to be a written test, but the test for these things and you believing them will happen in rush hour, over a phone call, a crazy kid in your classroom.
[00:29:42] The test for this obedience of God's word and echoing this will happen in real life, in real time.
[00:29:50] Chapter one of Ephesians is salvation from God's point of view down to us.
[00:29:56] Chapter two, once we get there in a couple of weeks, will be our perspective back up to God and what he's done, looking up.
[00:30:03] And so we're going to see how this fleshes out over the next few weeks. And so I'm excited to take this time with you. So let's pray together. Father, in Jesus name, we thank you for your mercy, your kindness, your faithfulness, the many ways that you have shown yourself to be good.
[00:30:20] We pray that you would take this scripture, Lord God, and that you would, Lord God, just help us apply it.
[00:30:30] If we're hard hearted toward it, soften us, Lord God, draw us to you.
[00:30:35] Lord God, prepare our hearts to receive these things. We trust you with this. In Jesus name, amen. Please stand as we sing.
