Well, good morning everyone. It's great to see everyone who's
here with us today to join us in worship and now in our study.
There's quite a few faces in here that I have not yet met and
I'm looking forward to meeting you later.
We want to welcome you to worship with us at any chance
you have the opportunity and it's good to see some familiar
faces as well. Welcome to everyone who's here
today. If you have not been with us,
we've been studying through the book of Ephesians.
At least when I'm giving the study I chose to study through
each each chapter of this book and we've walked through
Hebrews, Galatians and we're working through Ephesians right
now and we're in the 4th chapter.
And just a little insight as to why I I do this and I think
anyone who teaches the Bible wants to do an expository study
is we want to share the knowledge of the word of God.
That's that's the goal of every teacher.
But specifically with expository study, we want everyone to see
and to understand that you could do this too.
You can pick up the Bible. You can read through and and
study through it for yourself, for somebody else maybe.
So in your life, whenever a Bible study is done, we try to
remember, hey, the reason we're doing this so that you can go
and teach other people too. What this this should not end
with your knowledge of the Word. This should only be an
extension, an extension of of the Word through you as you go
forward. So I hope you get the sense and
you might say, you know, sometimes people say things
like, well, I don't have the things to say that so and so
says about a passage, OK, well, I have this.
I I could use that same excuse that I don't have the same
things to say about a passage that Frank says or that another
preacher says. So none of us have an excuse
because there might be some things we say today that you
might think, oh, I never thought about that before, but it
doesn't make me a genius. It just makes it being
perspective and and someone else reading the word and noticing
something different. That's our goal today is that we
will study and learn God's word and that you will see that maybe
you can pick up some studies of your own.
So Ephesians, chapter four, I've titled this a worthy walk.
Just to pick up reminding ourselves in this book there are
two sections. Basically.
The first section is 3 chapters that we just finished and that
was all about what our blessings are in Christ.
It's doctrine. It's teaching about the place
you have. And if you don't understand the
place you have, the writer Paul wants you to be motivated into
action by the place that you hold in the Kingdom of God and
an eternity itself. And so we've already talked
about where we've been raised to, the glorious inheritance
that God has chosen us for. And now the second section that
we're starting is chapters 4 through 6, where he's going to
say, OK, now what do you do with all that information?
What do you do with that? And then it's going to be a call
to walk worthy of this great calling.
And and this section is going to be generally, we're going to
talk about preserving the unity of the Spirit with the proper
attitudes. We're going to talk about
edifying the body of Christ by the grace given to us.
And we may not even make it through that whole section
today. Probably only going to cover
about half of this chapter. But I in the same flow of
thought, he's going to talk about a call to walk in purity.
So to walk in pure life, what does that means for a Christian?
Because we don't just get called to a heavenly calling and then
just say, well, that doesn't mean anything for me personally.
It's just what I get to have. No, it's it's a walk where we
make sacrifice for the glory of God and ultimately for our
benefit as well. And it's a call to walk not as
the other Gentiles. But like I said, I don't think
we'll get through all that today.
So this walk that we're going to talk about was led up to with
Chapter 3. So let's get a just a couple
quick verses to remind ourselves of chapter 3, where Paul was,
where Paul was writing. He says that you, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the
Saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the
height. He wants these, these Ephesian
brethren to know that you have to be grounded in love and the
love of Christ before you can even start to comprehend and to
be grounded enough that you will stay when things get hard.
That you will stay when your own faith is challenged, when people
around you challenge you. That you will grow and be rooted
in love so that you can comprehend the blessings that
are for us. I'll be honest with you, I have
a hard time comprehending the blessings and the the riches
that are promised that we're kind of talked about Ephesian
and Ephesians one through 3. And the solution to that is we
have to be rooted in love, because otherwise we're not
going to have the grounding to really appreciate and and accept
and be motivated by the love and the the goodness that God has
towards us. Verse 19, He said to know the
love of Christ, which passes knowledge, there's part of it
just goes beyond our understanding.
We can't fathom it completely that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. Now to him, he said, a response
to all of that. Now to him who's able to do
exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, that's a
lot of redundancy beyond anything you could ever imagine
according to the power that works in US even still to this
day. To him be glory in the church by
Christ Jesus, to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen. So Paul pronounces this blessing
and this thanks and this glory to God and that's going to lead
us into OK, now what? It doesn't end there.
Verse one of Ephesians chapter 4 says this I therefore a prisoner
for the Lord. Paul's already reminded us that
he's in prison writing these letters, and he's a prisoner
because he's serving the needs of the brethren, preaching the
gospel, and he's a he's serving the needs of the Lord's church.
So he's a prisoner of the Lord. And he urges them to come
alongside him in his service to the Lord by saying, I urge you
to walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which
you have been called. So I'm going to bounce back and
forth between the ESV and the new King James this morning.
I'll try to make it clear when I do that.
But this is our call throughout the Bible when we read the word
walk. It's a manner of life.
Obviously. He's not saying you should have
a certain cadence in your step, a certain swagger or a or a
hitch in your walk. He's saying you should have a
manner of your life that is worthy of this great calling.
Now if this was me writing a book about or a story, you know,
people write all kinds of stories and fantasy about a
great calling and if you have a great mission.
If I were to write something like this, I would think you
know of a of a lauded. Or if I had the, if I had the
lauded audience of going before the throne of a, of a creator
who has called me to an inheritance that is beyond any
riches this world has to offer. That this, that when the Bible
describes the riches of this world, it's like it's it's
trash. It's going to be gone, it's
going to burn up. It's it's worthless.
And instead of that, we're being called to a heavenly calling.
Well, we are not only members of the heavenly Kingdom, but where
we are sons and daughters, direct heirs of the throne.
And I think about man, OK, well, if I'm going to walk in a worthy
manner, I here we go, I'm going to do something awesome.
I'm going to do an incredible feat of physicality.
I'm going to do incredible feat of maybe an intellectual
strength maybe, you know, if you hear of all these stories and
and these great movies where people do it in a fantastic
work, it's always some feat of physicality mentality or all
these all these great things you can do.
The last thing I would expect for him to say is what he's
going to say next. Because the things he's going to
tell us to do to walk worthy are not at all the things that I
just described you, feats of intellectual, emotional or
physical prowess. But we are to walk worthy of
this calling. And it's a dishonor if we don't.
But because of all the factors that led up to this, we should
want to. And the first question is, do
you want to walk worthy of God's calling?
Do you personally, not the person sitting next to you?
Do you want to be walking in a way that's worthy of a heavenly
calling? Doesn't mean you deserve it.
That's not the point. But we have a manner that lives
in a way that honors the call and honors what God has asked of
us. Because if you do, you're going
to be surprised at the answer, he says.
To have a walk that is worthy, he first, The first thing we
have to do to have a walk that is worthy is to walk with all
humility and that goes against everything on the list I just
said, he says. If you want to walk in a worthy
in a manner that would, that would give the honor of a
creator and this and this magnificent story with this
lauded audience of the creator of this universe, he says turn
around. He's going to talk about
qualities and gentleness of patience and bearing with one
another that are among ourselves.
He's he's got this picture of someone coming before a God who
wants to live worthy of a heavenly calling, he says, Turn
around, turn around to the people that are around you.
You know, sometimes we're like, you know, I'm, I'm too busy for
you. I'm trying to be living worthy
of God. God doesn't allow that.
Instead, God wants us to turn around to one another and first
walk in humility. It all starts with humility.
No service we could perform, no word we could say, no task we
would engage in would be worthy of this heavenly calling without
our proper perspective on ourself.
I don't have to explain that to you.
For everyone involved in the situation, it's better if we are
humble and it's bad if we're not.
I don't care what I were to do for you, If I did something for
you that was magnificent and I walked around with the chip on
my shoulder, I'm like, yeah, I did that.
Or after I got done doing interacting with you, you would
feel dirty if I were to be prideful about that.
Nobody wants somebody's prideful helping them.
Nobody wants who's prideful working alongside them.
It's not good for anyone. If we have pride in our hearts,
we know what it feels like when people have pride a week when we
ourselves have pride in our work.
It won't be good for ourselves in reality, because pride is a
weak way to live. If I live with a walk in pride,
I don't have God's strength in me.
I'm walking by my own strength, and it's only with humility and
putting myself aside and elevating God.
When I decrease, then God can increase.
Then my work can be good for myself.
That's not the point. But it can be good.
It can be a benefit to my own life.
It could be a benefit to the life of others.
And it becomes a worthwhile use of our time and our energy when
we decrease and give God the rightful place on His throne.
And we serve others more than we look to serve ourselves.
So why don't we? Why don't we walk with humility
naturally? And I think personally, I think
it's because we have a desire for significance.
We want to be significant, We want to matter.
And when we try to take that, it's because we don't feel like
we do. The reality is our significance
that we crave does not come from ourselves.
We can't get it through ourselves and it can't come
through ourselves. It can only come through God.
Our sacrifice or our service to God is only worthwhile and we
will only receive significance if it's through him and for Him
in our work. Significance does not come
through US. He says next gentleness to walk
in a worthy that in a manner that is worthy of a heavenly
calling. He says to be gentle and I I say
this all almost all the time and I think people reiterate this
all the time. Gentleness is not weakness.
Charlie, I would say is weak.
Everyone would say a baby is weak by all standards.
Even if he's strong for a baby, he does things that I don't
think a baby should be able to do.
He is weak by all intents and purposes.
But I would never describe him as gentle.
And if you've held him for very long, you know that's true.
He'll claw your eyes, but he's not gentle.
So when we see gentleness, we don't think weakness, because
that's not how you describe somebody who is weak.
You're not describe them as gentle.
We think of an adult. Well, what's what's unique about
an adult that a kid is not, they're old enough to have the
capacity and strength to harm someone.
If you have the capacity and strength to do harm but you
control it, that's strength. And that's the definition of
gentleness. Gentleness is strength
controlled. OK, why don't we have have
gentleness? And I think it's probably
because in different places in the Bible it gives hint that we
try to take control for ourselves of the situation.
We don't think that God is in control either in the short term
or the long term. And so we feel like we have to
lash out. You know so and so will not
unless I or I just get fed up with someone else's actions to
the point that I have to be the one who handles them, when in
reality they're the only person that control themselves and I'm
not going to be able to fix them with my lashing out at someone.
We're not gentle when our perspective is not where it
should be. When we are of the right
mindset, we will know that the only way to change somebody is
to show love. Sure, we have to set boundaries,
but we must show love in gentleness to walk a manner that
is worthy of the calling. Jesus was gentle.
Jesus was one who children felt safe enough to go around and to
come and sit on his lap. That was a gentleman.
And yet when he stood in front of a crowd that's coming to get
him, he said his name and they fell on the ground.
He was the commander of Angel armies that can wipe out the
world with just a couple of them, and yet he is described as
gentle. We ought to be gentle, to walk
worthy of the calling, he says with patience.
Patience, and this, and this whole train of thought is the
last thing I would think to live up to a heavenly calling, you
might say. I would not think patience would
be at the front. And yet it is, he says, bearing
with one another in love. In order to live in a worthy
manner, we have to turn around to others.
We have to show humility, gentleness and patience, and we
have to be there for one another and bear with one another.
Now if this is people you love to be around and you love to
interact with, and you just enjoy that with, that's good.
But it wouldn't be a command probably if it was easy.
And we know this cannot be easy all the time.
That's why it's a command we are to bear with one another, even
when it is not natural to do so, when it doesn't feel like we
should. Even when people are difficult
through conflicts and disagreements, we stay there.
This is basically a call to stay.
He's going to get into unity and the bond we have and the oneness
we have and all that is broken up.
If people don't just learn to stay, don't get out of the
situation you're in because you don't like where you're at,
because you don't like the the person next to you or you don't
like this, he says Stay, stay with them and be with them.
Why does that matter? Because we know people don't
really behave in a difficult way most of the time because of the
situation with you. It's a lot of times because of
the difficulties in their own life.
They're dealing with something on their own end, their own
life's turmoil, their own life's stresses.
And sometimes they're difficult with you because it's just
coming out at that moment. And it takes a a reminder to
stay to bear with one another, whether they're easy or
difficult. And he says to do it in love.
I think level one is just being there for people.
Level 2 is being there for people even when they're
difficult. But I think Level 3 is the
that's where it gets really hard, is being there for one
another, even when it's difficult in love.
I need to work on that because I can be there for someone and
have kind of a tight lip about it, but it takes strength, it
takes self-control. It takes practice to do this
with love for someone bearing with one another in love.
If we really want to live up to the call that we've read about
in the first three chapters, that is beyond what we could
ever deserve. He says look around to one
another and be there for each other.
In verse three he says to be eager to maintain the unity of
the Spirit and the bond of peace.
How do we do this? How do we maintain the unity of
the spirit and the bond of peace with eagerness?
The point here is we cannot passively maintain unity in the
body of Christ or with one another.
It has to be with eagerness. It has to be with an intense and
with a focused effort to do so, because the natural state will
be disbanding. Maybe we'll come together for a
while and then disband once things get difficult.
And you notice he doesn't say create unity necessarily.
I mean, not, not that would be bad if he did, but he said
maintain the unity. It's a unity of the Spirit.
I think that's important because the unity that is in the body of
Christ is not ours to begin with.
We did not create it, and therefore we should be ashamed
if we do anything to disband it. God has intended for us to be
unified. It is the unity of the Spirit.
It is a unity setting forth by God himself, and if we are
eager, we should do our best to maintain that shame on us.
If we break up something that he's going to talk about a
minute is 1. It's powerful when we are
together and unified and collectively on the same page
and with the same goals. He has designed a beautiful
unity to exist in the faith for the enjoyment of his people.
Scripture says how blessed it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity. It's for our enjoyment and for
his glory. He set this in motion.
Shame on me if I let God down by not maintaining that.
You might say God lit the fire of unity and is our God to do
our part in preserving that fire of unity.
The Spirit here is important because it is only by the spirit
and the spirits work in this world by giving us the word of
God that we have unity. Because in reality we would have
no common ground, and we would very likely have every reason to
not be unified unless we all had one common source of our hope,
source of our knowledge and our guidance the Spirit gave us The
Word of God is inspired by the Spirit.
We cannot, we cannot have unity without God's Word.
How else can we procure such an uncommon peace?
Surely not from our own ways. Only through unity around God's
Word. And through God's word may we
have peace in the bond of peace may people have said.
That Jesus did not say Blessed are the peace and joyers, but
the peacemakers, and here the peace maintainers, those who
endeavor or are eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace. Verse four there is one body and
one spirit. Just as you are called in one
hope of your calling back in the new king, new King James, here
he's going to give us a list of seven core principles of unity.
I think 7. You know, you hear that #7.
That's the number of completeness.
That's the the number that God uses often in the Bible.
And there's seven of them. The first one is that there is
one body. It is us as the church who are
to be the one body. If we break that up, we are
disbanding a beautiful picture. When we commune, we are one body
and we share in Christ's sacrifice together.
That also means that we are to work things out.
We are one body. There's not another option like,
oh, just go pick somewhere else where you'd rather be.
There's one body, and if we don't want to be a part of that,
how is heaven going to be like if we don't want to be with all
the people who are there in heaven with us, work things out.
We are the one body of Christ. May we not split that up?
He says 1. Spirit.
Like we just said, the spirit gave us the word of God.
It is our one source of guidance, unity and common
support. Without it, we have no ground
for unity. He says 1 Hope of your calling.
You know, we really only have one hope.
You could get a sample from people of all walks of life and
even this room. You know, what do you hope in?
What do you find hope in for your life?
And people might say all kinds of things.
They might see maybe their football team is is going to do
it all this year. They're going to win it all.
They might say. I've had an injury for a long
time. I'm really hoping.
I'm really hopeful that I can live a life free of pain, that
maybe I can have a procedure that I can recover from and get
well. I'm hopeful maybe for my career
plans I'm looking forward to where my career might take me.
You get 100 different answers if you ask 100 different people
what they're hoping in, and that's that's true.
And and we do sometimes lose sight of what really matters.
And I and it's definitely not wrong to have things you're
looking forward to in life. But we can all agree in this
room there is only one hope that matters.
As we were around my grandma's bedside last weekend, she was
just constantly repeating none of this matters.
And she, you know, there's regrets there that things that
she spent too much time on spend too much money on that she just
wished it didn't matter. I wasted all that on on things
that didn't matter. No, I'm not going to say she
wasted it. But when people are on their
deathbed, there's a clarity that comes over them of what really
matters. We all in this room know what
really matters. She said that she's been
preparing for a trip her whole life and she wanted us to meet
her there. We only have one hope.
If we all in this room, we're collectively on our deathbed
right now, there'd be no question.
There'd be no. You know, I got to sort out that
first and then this. No, it would be.
There's only one thing that matters, she said.
All is vanity and vexation, like the like.
The The Book of Ecclesiastes says all of it is meaningless.
There is only one hope. There's only one thing we can
look forward to truly in this life.
Because when it's all said and done, we can't take anything
with us. It's not going to matter how
much we accomplished our own accolades, any of that.
May we live, do our best to live in that headspace.
Could we get distracted? But may we remember that we have
one hope, and thus we should be more unified in our intentions.
That we are one body and there's one spirit and we have one hope
in Our Calling. There is one Lord.
We only have one leader. You know when?
When countries and groups go through cycles where they're
unsuccessful, whether it's a country collapses, a lot of
times it's the leadership. Either people question the
leadership, maybe the leadership is weak, or, you know, there's
an insurrection rebellion. We don't have to worry about
that, and I'm so glad we don't, because there doesn't need to be
a big, big issue about who we turn to, about who we are led
by. We are led by one good and great
leader who sacrificed for us, who is complete in every way,
who didn't even sin. There's no criticism of him.
Teams crumble when they fight about their leader, and we have
a leader that can be trusted with everything we have,
including our eternity. We have one Lord, one leader.
There's one faith and God's plan and God's guidance and God's
saving. There is only one faith.
Jesus says I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father but by me, He says.
There's one baptism. You know, whenever I heard this
either reference or taught from, it seemed like every time I
heard this or I'm sure there's people who taught who went more
in depth, but it was often in reference to you should baptize
by immersion. And that's the only way.
Look, it says here 1 baptism. And that's all they said moved
on. But I think this, that's just to
take such a a thin layer that's like picking the pepperonis off
of a piece of pizza and just eating the pepperonis.
This is so much deeper. He's he's providing core
principles of Christian unity. There is only one baptism.
Yes. That means immersion.
And because there's meaning behind that, what we should
think about when we read this is beyond just that.
We should think there is only one obeying of the gospel.
There's only one contacting of the blood of Jesus in immersion.
There's only one way that we are to die and be risen from the
dead spiritually. It's you can't go to the the
Enlightenment discount store and pick up another version of that.
There's only one way. There's only one way to be fully
submitted to God's way to submit yourself and be buried and die
to our old life and give up everything into the hands of a
loving and faithful God who raised Jesus from the dead and
so will raise us from the dead too, spiritually and an
eternity. There's only one of those.
There's only one submission and saving act of being plunged and
brought back into life. There's only one of those, and
there is only one God and Father of all who is over all and
through all and in all. The 7th of the Principles of
Unity says there is one God and Father of all.
There is no question, and really we don't disagree on that.
Sometimes we need to dwell more on that.
Sometimes we need to remember because it says he is overall
overall is a sign of dominance, but also says he is, through all
that's a sign of empowerment. He's empowering everything to
exist the way it does. He's dominant over it.
He empowers everything that we see around us and makes
everything work. And he is also in all he's not
just a domineering father, he's an involved father.
He's over it all. He's making it all work and he's
involved in it all. Those are the seven kind of core
principles of unity he gives here, verse 7.
But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure
of Christ's gift. This is kind of a My mind didn't
really understand what this was saying at first.
It was kind of hard to to to get what this principle in orange
was saying, but it's according to the measure of Christ's gift.
And the best I could way I could understand it in the way that
made sense was grace was given to us according to a certain
measure and for all of us I can assume for you, for me, this
grace was immeasurable. I had so much sin in my life and
sin that would that would have sent me to eternal hell.
So to save me from that, it took an immeasurable measure of
grace, and to each one of us that measure, the same measure
in an immeasurable grace was given to us in the form of a
gift that we can thank God for verse 8.
Therefore it says when he ascended on high, he led
captivity captive and gave gifts to men.
That's the way the new King James words.
We're going to look at the ESV in just a minute.
But I guess the the way we could simply read this is he led
captivity captive. He took the thing captivity
itself. He took the bondage, he took
entanglement and and imprisonment itself.
And he turned that captive. He captured the trap basically
and gave gifts to men. Now that's that's completely
true. We know that Jesus crushed death
in the grave. There is no nothing that can
hold us but the ESV from what I understand is probably a better,
better, like literal the way it was translated, a better
translation of the phrase. It says he led a host of
captives and gave gifts to men. So this phrase, a host of
captives was like someone who came back from war.
They had won and they would have like a train of of captives
behind them. They he led a bunch of captives
back to his own country. Well, with Jesus, it's not that
He led prisoners. He led us who were prisoners
free. And so both principles are true
that He took imprisonment and captivity, and He trapped that,
and He took that away. He took its power away.
But it's also true that He took you and I who were prisoners,
and He led us out of that darkness and out of that.
Entanglement in the prisons of sin really carries the same
meaning overall. And he gave gifts to men.
When I think about captivity, though I there's a lot of
different things that that means.
And as some of us were talking the other day, what does that
mean? That captivity.
And there's a lot of layers to that.
The first one I think of as freedom from the captivity of
the Old Testament law and it was captivity as we studied in
Hebrews because and and in Galatians because it was
conviction of your sin without a savior.
Yet there was no new law and savior yet to to free us from
that captivity to Sin City. We're free from the Old
Testament law and as part of that we're free from the need
for self righteousness. It proved that we cannot be
righteous on our own and we're free from the need for that to
be the case. As I thought about captivity
though, I thought about we're free from the captivity of
life's limitations. I've got my career set.
I've got pretty much as far as I think I'm going to go in my
career now. I'm just going to stay in it,
and that's OK. Life's limitations can make some
people feel like I got to do something more.
I got to do something next, I got to do this, I got to do
that. But you're limited with time and
money and and energy and age. Life's limitations can can be a
problem for people, but we are free from captivity.
To that it doesn't matter because my significance is not
in myself. I'm I'm free from the captivity
to my own sin, and as an extension of that, from my own
mind. When we get our own head and we
get stuck in cycles of sin, that's captivity.
That's bondage to sin, that's entrapment, and my own cycles
that make my life miserable because of sin.
I'm free from that. And praise God that he led me
free and he took that captivity away and the power that it had
over my life. We're almost done here.
Verse 9. Now this He ascended.
When I said he ascended on high and LED captivity captive.
Now this he ascended. What does it mean?
But that he has also first descended into the lower parts
of the earth. And that's just basic logic that
for him to have ascended into heaven after it's all done, he
had to 1st come down here. And there's several things that
this phrase means. I think the primary meaning of
this phrase, that he went to the lower parts, is reference to
Hades. So we know that when we die, we
either go to one of two places. We go to paradise, which is part
of Hades, or Tartarus, which is the torments that we read about
from the rich man where Lazarus was in Paradise and comforted,
but the rich man Lazarus or the rich man was sent to Tartarus
and there was a great gulf put between them.
We learn about Jesus who said this day you will be with me in
paradise and he was talking to the thief on the cross.
So I think primarily or maybe First off he's talking about
Hades and how he was in the lower parts of the earth.
And from what I understand that's what the Jews really
thought of Hades as is the lower part.
But secondarily, I think it could also mean the womb.
And there's language throughout the Bible, like Psalm 139, where
the psalmist says, I praise you for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works.
My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you
when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths
of the earth, so that lower parts at depths of the earth,
that could also be where Jesus was, was ascended from.
Because all this is true, it could also be the heart of the
earth. Matthew 12, verse 40 refers to
the grave as the heart of the earth, but it could also mean
the earthly realm. Jesus being incarnated, he came
down to earth itself. So all these things are true.
It's all part of what Jesus descended to.
He became a fetus and humbled himself in the form of a man on
earth as an incarnated man, and he ended up going to the grave.
He wanted to even it down as far as Hades, the realm of the dead.
But the psalmist says you will not leave my soul in Hades or
she'll. And he didn't stay there.
But then he ascended. He who descended is also the one
who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all
things. And part of the reason I think
it's OK to interpret all that way, it's because he said parts
of the earth. There's many ways in which Jesus
went from the lower parts of the earth and it says that he and I
think that's OK because it magnifies the next party says
far above all the heavens. What does it mean, all the
heavens? There is 3 different heavens in
the Bible. There's the atmosphere, there's
space and there's the the place of God where he dwells.
In Genesis one, verse 20, we learn the atmosphere, space is
where the stars are and Genesis 22 verse 17 is where we find
that. But then we also read of another
heaven, the highest heaven as First Kings 8 verse 27 puts it.
And that's where Jesus went. Hebrews 9 verse 24 says, For
Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere
copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in
the presence of God for us. And that's from the NASB.
And he didn't just come back into heaven and you know, he
came back to his old company and he had to start from the bottom
again. No, he came back into heaven and
he was set at the right hand of God first.
Peter 3 verse 22 says having gone into heaven after angels
and authorities and powers have been subjected to him, he had
all authority. When he came back to be the
right hand of the Father, that's the emphasis.
He was above all the heavens and he bought, He went back to his
rightful place on the throne. Why did he do this?
So he could come back into power and get back at everybody.
No, he did it because he had to go back to his power so that he
could continue to fill all things.
In Hebrews one verse three, we read that he upholds all things
and Colossians. One verse 17 In him all things
are held together. The ESV says Jesus came back and
rose from the dead and ascended to his place in authority
because he has to hold all the things together.
He has all power and might. I don't think Jesus ever had a
lapse in power, but I don't think it was an accident that
the heavens or that the earth shook and the sun was darkened
when Jesus was dying as a message that you're killing the
person who's holding all this together.
He never lost power, even through the grave.
He never lost power, but he upholds all things and he
himself gave Well, we're going to hold off there.
We're going to pause there and we're going to pick that up next
time. We're going to cover the
second-half of the chapter, but there's going to be things.
He holds all things together on earth, but he also holds all
things together in the body of Christ and in the church that is
built. And we're going to talk about
that next time, learning about what Jesus gave him, gave to our
to the body and what he put in order for our betterment.
Thank you for your attention today.
I hope this has been beneficial for you as we consider How am I
going to go forward? How am I going to read about the
promises of a heavenly calling and just sit here in my
comfortable chair and do nothing about it?
We don't have to. We can live in a way that is
worthy. And it doesn't have to be some
amazing feat that you can't do starting today.
You can start today if you've been added to the body of
Christ. Go on your way if you're not,
you can hear the word. Believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God. Repent of your past life and say
I'm going to turn to do God's way.
Just like we've talked today, confessing that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God, there's no other way to be saved and being
baptized, that one baptism into Jesus for the remission of our
sins. And if you would need some
prayers of the Brethren to make something right that you feel
like has been public, or if you need the prayers of the church,
please come forward while we stand and sing.
We thank you for listening to our podcast put on by the Church
of Christ at 2215 Plans Rd. in Bakersfield.
If you would like any additional information or you would like to
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