If you're visiting with us today for the first time, we want to
welcome you. The word of God, we believe is
to, is, was breathed out by him, all of it, every word.
The Word tells us that all Scripture is God breathed and is
useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training and
righteousness. And that means as Christians we
should come with great expectancy every time the Word
is open that His Spirit will do a work in our hearts.
I'm going to begin by reading part of a sentence.
And I want you to finish the sentence, and I'm going to give
you time to do that. So listen, here's the sentence,
or at least the first part of the sentence.
Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is fill in the
blank. Our greatest hindrance in the
Christian life is fill in the blank.
Now, I'm going to do something that's a little bit disruptive
to what we normally do. I'm actually going to give you a
minute to think about your answer.
Don't talk to one another, but just sit quietly for a minute
and fill in that blank. Our greatest hindrance in the
Christian life is. Our greatest hindrance in the
Christian life is I so want to know what you wrote.
If we were in a different setting we would probably break
into small groups and I wonder what list your group would come
up with. I'm sure it would be really
significant and important stuff. I'm most interested though,
though, and where your eye went when I asked you to consider
that sentence and finish it. Our greatest hindrance in the
Christian life is where did your eye go?
Did it go immediately to just the awkwardness of the silence?
Did it go to other people? Did it go to culture?
Did it go to problems that you perceive to be in the church?
The greatest hindrance in the Christian life is where did your
eye go? What did you think?
What would you write? Did your eye turn inside to you
and me, sinners? John Owen is the one who wrote
this sentence, the great Puritan.
Listen to what he said as I complete his sentence.
Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack
of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our
privileges. Let me read it again.
Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack
of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our
privileges. The privileges he's Speaking of
have to do with our union in Christ, who we already are,
secure in him. Ian Hamilton and his commentary
on Ephesians starts his introductory chapter with that
quote from John Owen. Our greatest hindrance in the
Christian life is not our lack of effort, but our lack of
acquaintedness with our privileges.
Hamilton goes on to say this in his letter to Ephesians.
Paul elaborates and expands in a most wonderful way on the
God-given Christ, secured, Holy Spirit, applied privileges of
the Christian life. Let me say that again.
In his letter to Ephesians, Paul elaborates and expands in a most
wonderful way on the God-given Christ, secured, Holy Spirit,
applied privileges of the Christian life.
And I can almost guarantee you that none of you went there.
Some of you might have, maybe you've read ahead even that
commentary, but most of us didn't go there.
We went to some sin, some aspect of culture, some sin we see in
the church or even in ourselves. But he says whatever that list
is, that's not our greatest hindrance.
Our greatest hindrance is that we are not acquainted with the
privileges that are ours in Christ.
And Hamilton says Paul is giving us this letter carried along by
the Spirit to elaborate and expand in a most wonderful way
this God-given by the will of God.
From the will of God, according to the will of God, Christ
secured, there couldn't be greater security.
Holy Spirit applied the Spirit living in US privileges of the
Christian life. I mean, I have I, I, if you're a
New Year's resolution person, I bet none of you wrote, let me
think this year more upon the privileges that I have in
Christ. And I promise if you do and the
Spirit of God illuminates that it will matter so much more than
anything else you've sought to change in your life.
But we have a severe sight problem.
We have a vision issue, and God is so gracious and merciful to
give us a letter like this to help us see.
And when I say we have a sight problem and your mind is
agreeing with me about other people, then to me you are the
other people. I'm talking directly to you.
We all have a sight problem, and it's going to be that way until
Christ returns or calls us home and we behold them face to face.
Then we won't have a sight problem.
But until then, we will, and God is gracious to show it to us and
change it. Michael Allen.
Michael Allen has written a commentary on Ephesians.
He's a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary.
I didn't know him as a professor at Reformed Theological
Seminary. I knew him as a young man
serving in our middle school and high school youth ministry. 1
summer. He's written an amazing
commentary. In his introduction he says this
a key purpose of the letter of Ephesians to Ephesus.
A key purpose of a letter is to reshape the spiritual sense or
sensitivity of the reader or the listener.
In the case of Ephesus, Paul intends to stretch the
dimensional constraints of our sight lest our myopia incline us
to miss the most interesting activity.
In other words, Paul's being carried along by the Spirit to
stretch our ability to see the glory of God.
Two explicit places this happens is in prayers that we're going
to study in the weeks to come. Listen to this Paul says 15
verses into chapter 1. For this reason, because I have
heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all
the Saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering
you in my prayers. And here's the prayer that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of
Him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may
know what is the hope to which He has called you.
That hope is a privilege. What are the riches of His
glorious inheritance? In the Saints?
There's no greater inheritance. It's not one you can earn, and
it's not one you can lose. It's perfect.
And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us
who believe, according to the working of His great might, that
He worked in Christ when He raised him from the dead and
seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above
all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every
name, that His name not only in the sage, but also no one to
come. He's stretching our vision.
He's enlarging our hearts and our minds.
Another place Paul prays in a similar fashion this type time.
It's in chapter 3, verse 14. We'll study this in the weeks to
come as well. Paul says, For this reason I bow
my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and
on earth is named, that according to the riches of His
glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through
His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts amazing through faith, that you being rooted and
grounded in love. Now listen to these dimensions
may have strength to comprehend with all the Saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love
of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be
filled with all the fullness of God.
Those dimensions are perfect dimensions.
How wide, how deep, how long, how high is the love of God?
It doesn't stop. You'll never fully comprehend.
That's amazing. Paul gives us this letter
carried along by the Holy Spirit to stretch the dimensional
constraints of our site. And we have constraints.
You do not see as clearly as you think.
You do not think as truthfully as you should.
You do not feel appropriate things to what God has done for
us. We have a sight problem, and
it's a serious problem. You might notice I'm wearing
glasses. For most of you, you've only
known me as wearing glasses. For many years, I wore contacts.
The problem with the contacts became that I could not see the
word here, though I could perfectly scan those who are in
the balcony. When did I get glasses?
You probably don't really care to know, but I'm going to tell
you anyway. It was in the fall of 1994.
I was sitting in my first seminary spring, fall semester,
and I remember looking at the board.
Now, that already tells you something of my age.
It wasn't a chalkboard. That's the age of other people
around you. It was a white board.
But I looked at it and I realized I can't see it that
clearly. So I did what you would do.
I moved a little bit closer, never once thinking I might
actually have an issue with my eyes.
I began to notice at night driving that it was harder to
see certain signs. But I never really thought I
needed glasses. I'm too young until I was in
Oklahoma City visiting over the holidays.
My brother-in-law, Ron, had set his glasses on the table to get
up and go. I didn't even know where we
went, but the glasses were there.
So I grabbed them and I put them on just for fun, mostly to see
what I might look like. And I could see.
I was like, oh, I have a sight problem.
So I went to the doctor and the doctor prescribed something for
my eyes. Not too severe, but definitely
needed help. And I could see.
It's pretty interesting though. The moment you can see and
you're in an eye doctor's office, an optometrist office,
the first thing you look at is yourself.
You look in a mirror to see what do I look like wearing these
glasses? And that's a bigger problem than
we want to admit. You see, my sight problem in
seminary wasn't just my physical eyes.
My sight problem in seminary was far worse spiritual.
I went into seminary expecting every question I had to be
answered. I left seminary with my favorite
word being mystery in seminary, studying God's Word deeply,
immersing in systematic theology, biblical theology,
pastoral theology. I loved all of it.
But I had a serious sight problem.
Time after time, day after day, I needed the mercy of God to
shift my eyes, to fix them in the right place, and then to
focus them and keep them fixed in the right place.
In seminary, the struggle with envy, the struggle with pride,
the struggle with being thankful for gifts and then wishing you
had another's or worse, and this is envy, wishing they didn't
have those gifts. Seeing things for the first
time, having my mind blown only later in the day to have to
confess along with the psalmist Lord, turn my eyes from looking
at worthless things. We have a sight problem.
Most of us are looking at worthless things all the time.
And I'm not just talking about evil vile images on a computer.
I'm talking about staring at ourselves, wondering what other
people think about us, consumed with image and it can find its
way into every crevice of our heart and mind.
We have a sight problem, but we have a God who meets that, who
rescues it from us. So we come to the letter of
Ephesians this morning. I simply want to ask three
questions. Who wrote the letter?
Who was it written to or to whom was it written and why?
Why did God carry Paul along to write this letter?
Well, let's begin by just looking at the passage.
Verse one verse, one word. 1 Paul.
Isn't it amazing that in a letter intended to stretch our
vision, that is written by a man who was made blind by God and
then healed by God? You might not be all familiar
with the story of Saul of Tarsus, or you may be so
familiar of it that it doesn't really astonish you anymore.
This is astonishing. Acts Chapter 9.
Just listen as I read. But Saul, that was his name
before it was Paul, still breathing out threats and murder
against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,
and he asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so
that if he found any belonging to the way, the way this verse
is capitalized, it means the way of Christ, it means
Christianity. If he found any belonging to the
way men are women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Paul had a vision, and that vision was for the glory of who
he thought God was. And what God wanted him to do
was to destroy the way. And the way was the church and
people that belong to the way it heard about this man saw, he
delighted in seeing Christians bound up, put in prison, even
killed. That was his vision and he
wasn't going to stop on his way to Damascus.
Verse 3 says Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus
and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to
the ground he heard a voice saying to him, Now just for a
minute I want you to understand that this really happened.
There was a real man named Saul. There were people travelling
with him. He truly hated Christians.
He wanted to destroy the way, He wanted to destroy the church.
He wanted to destroy people like me and you and your children who
proclaim Christ. On this way he hears a voice.
The voice overwhelms him. He falls to the ground.
The voice speaks, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me and
Paul? Saul said, Who are you, Lord?
And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
This really happened. The risen, resurrected Lord
Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, spoke to him his name
twice, got his attention, brought holy disruption into his
life, and then said these words. But rise and enter the city, and
you will be told what you are to do.
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing
the voice, but seeing no one saw, rose from the ground, and
although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.
That can be true of so many of us.
So often, though his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.
That's not a metaphor. He literally couldn't see.
He could see until that voice spoke, until the one behind that
voice blinded him. So they led him by the hand and
brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was
without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
So this is the one to whom the first word of Ephesians starts
with a name, Paul. It's mind boggling that God by
his will would knit together in the womb of a woman who was
Saul's mother, a child who would become a man who would then kill
Christians, throw them in prison, while the whole time
that individual soul was being knit together.
He is the one that is going to be used by God, carried along by
the Holy Spirit, who is God, to write 13 books of the Bible,
including Ephesus. Paul, we're told, is the one who
wrote this letter. You can read in commentaries
about some more contemporary debates, but the most biblical
anchored in truth commentaries, commentaries do not deny that
it's Paul. Paul goes on there to describe
himself not just by his name, but by who he is essentially his
occupation. Paul, an apostle of Christ
Jesus. The word apostle means a sent
one. It means a messenger in the
Bible. There were the 12 apostles.
Judas falls in the early part. The book Acts he's replaced by
with dyas. But Paul is also called an
apostle. He was not there witnessing
those events first hand the way that the disciples were.
He was against them. He was against the church.
But here and this profound holy disruption, Paul sees the
resurrected Lord, he hears the resurrected Lord and he is
appointed as an apostle. He says he's an apostle and he
aligns it with the person in which he's an apostle.
He is a sent 1A Commission 11 given authority by Christ Jesus.
And then we have this phrase by the will of God.
Now this is a phrase that is going to be saturated in the
book of Ephesians. It's beautiful to think about
the profound reality of God's sovereign will and His sovereign
grace. Four times in chapter 1 alone
you will hear that phrase according to the will of God or
by the will of God. Paul wants everyone listening to
know where is authority lies and why he is what he is.
He is what He is by the will of God and you're going to see in
Ephesians that which is true of him is true of you as well.
Ephesians is a book that only contains 2429 words.
In some bibles it takes up 4 pages and other bibles through
some, like some of you have giant print.
It might be more pages, but it takes between 18 and 22 minutes
to read the whole letter. Yet in this letter, such
beautiful theology and doctrine is presented in a clear,
concise. Now I think some of you are
starting to count words. That's not going to be helpful
to you. Stop, Don't do that, do it
later. These words that are written act
as a manual, a guide for the church.
Who are we? What are we to be?
The church is desperate for guidance and always has been.
Left to ourselves, we will make it things it was never intended
to be. Paul gives us this letter and
this letter tells us so much about who we are and how we are
to behave. James Boyce says if Ephesians is
profound, and it is, it is so not for the mysterious nature of
its unfathomable deep secrets. And they are deep.
They're profound. What I read to you in his
prayers from chapter 1 and chapter 3 are remarkable.
But Ephesians is profound because of the clear way it
presents the most basic Christian truths
comprehensively, clearly, practically, and winsomely.
It actually is not a difficult book to understand what God is
giving us. It's hard to understand some of
the mysteries of his sovereignty, but it's not
difficult to see what he's calling us to.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, by
the will of God. He wrote this book by the will
of God. I'm preaching this book by the
will of God. You're reading and studying this
book if you're in Christ, which leads to the second question, to
whom did Paul write the letter? Look at the text with me.
Second part of verse one to the Saints who who are in Ephesus
and are faithful in Christ Jesus.
Let's take the first word to the Saints.
This is a place where most of you have smudges on your
glasses. You don't see this word St.
correctly. And you think you do.
You think you do. Because if you're in Christ, and
I heard that, and I said to you, oh, you're a St. you would say
no, no, no, no, no. Out of a sense of humility.
I hope you would say no, no, no, no, no.
But you're wrong and bad. Theology's always dangerous and
bad. Theology finds its way sometimes
in clever statements, that we actually begin to embrace this
truth. For example, God's not
interested in your holiness, He's interested in your
happiness. Nope, people say it the other
way. No, he's not interested in your
happiness, He's interested in your holiness.
Nowhere in the Bible to be found.
Not a Bible verse. And it's not true.
God is so concerned about your happiness in Him that he sent
his Son to die. And by making that statement,
and I've heard so many people say it, he's not interested in
your happiness, He's interested in your holiness.
It puts those two things in opposition.
It creates a false dichotomy. The more you live for the
holiness of God and according to God's Word, walking in a manner
that is worthy of Him, as Ephesians will say, you will be
happy. Not a shallow happiness, but a
deep rooted joy. God's deeply interested in that.
Here's another one to the Saints who are in Ephesus.
To the Saints, the word St. is the most frequent word in
Scripture for Christian. The word Christians only used
three times. So if you are a Christian, you
are a St. I'm not talking about your
behavior, I'm talking about you being set apart by Christ, which
is what a St. is. You being set apart by Christ by
his will to experience the privileges of that union.
Let me give you an example of how bad theology finds its way
into some of our common language and even books that we read.
There is a wonderful book on marriage and I'm going to say
it. It's got a terrible title, but
the title sounds good and some of you have read the book and I
bet you've given it as a gift. You may have even taught small
groups, but the title is not helpful.
The title of the book is When Sinners Say I Do.
But every time a man and a woman comes for marriage, they are
sinners and they're going to sin against each other.
But if they are in Christ, Sinner is not their primary
identity nor their permanent identity.
Their permanent identity and primary identity is the same.
They're Saints, standing in this place many times with husband
and wife. There's not many weddings that
would go by where I won't say something like this to the man.
The woman you are about to marry is a beloved daughter of the
living God. He created her, He died for her,
He saved her, and He's sanctifying her.
He's going to use you to help. And to the man, as I look at the
man, I speak to the woman and say the man that you're about to
marry is the beloved son of the living God.
He died for him. He knit him together.
He rescued him. He saved him.
He's sanctifying him. He's going to use you to help.
So many weddings I go to, it's almost as if the minister saying
good luck, this is going to be hard.
And it is. There's not a day I don't sin in
one way or another against my wife, and there's not a day that
she doesn't sin against me. But if I want to change my
behavior, and I do, it's far more powerful for me to remember
who it is he called me to marry, who she is, who he called me to
marry, and who she is as a St. as who she will always be and
who I am in Christ is who I will always be.
A St. this side of heaven, a St. that struggles with sin.
This is a big deal. Now don't go home and trash the
book, but I would encourage you to take a sharpie and change the
title. If you're in Christ, you're a
St. and all the privileges that Paul is going to talk about in
this letter, in these 2429 words are going to expand your vision.
It's going to cause your vision to stretch.
He's going to elaborate and expand in a most wonderful way.
The God-given Christ secured Holy Spirit of pied privileges
of the Christian life. I got to stop.
If you want to hear more, you can listen to the 8:00 service,
but I'm going to stop here next week.
Paul's preaching, not the apostle, but our pastor Paul.
That would be amazing. And he will pick up with these
two profound words in Ephesus and in Christ Jesus.
In Christ Jesus. 9 times in the 1st 14 verses that phrase is
used. One of Paul's favourites.
It means everything. And Grace to You in Peace is not
just a clever introduction, it's actually the table of contents
for the whole book. At the very end of the book,
Paul's going to give those words to us again, but in reverse
order. Let me pray, Lord, I'm excited
for us to walk through this together.
I'm excited that when we say that, we know that we're walking
together in You. We all have a need for help with
our vision. We need You to fix our eyes upon
Jesus. We need You to focus our eyes.
When even we're looking at Your word, we're still not seeing
clearly. You do that all the time, make
us cry out like the blind man when you asked him, what do you
want me to do for you? Give me sight, maybe pray the
same and may you truly stretch our vision to see that the grace
and peace we need is given by you and in you alone.
We pray this in Jesus name and all of God's Saints said Amen,
please stand.