If you take your mind back to the 12th century and the Middle
Ages, they used to categorize all of the knowledges, all the
arts, all of the virtues. They would put these, organize
them into hierarchies. And if you lived in the 12th
century, the scholars would have said that the highest of all the
hierarchies belong to philosophy.
It was the crown of all knowledge, and they believed
that human reason governed and ordered all sciences.
You Fast forward 100 years to the scholar Thomas Aquinas in
the 13th century. He said that theology is a
science defined as a systematic body of knowledge, a complete
body of knowledge. And he said it's a science
that's higher than philosophy because it draws all of its
principles from divine revelation rather than human
reason. And so not only was theology
greater than philosophy, but it united all forms of knowledge
under itself. Astronomy and mathematics and
medicine and metaphysics and physics and philosophy and and
logic. And he says it's because only
theology explains why all of these others exist, and what
they exist for unites everything under itself.
And so for this reason, Aquinas said, theology is the queen of
the sciences. As you begin to go through
history, this moniker queen gets applied to other things.
The the Rose would become the queen of the flowers, and poetry
would become the queen of the arts.
And it's not the king. Kingship's a symbol of power and
dominance and rule, but it's the queen symbolizing beauty and
centrality and majesty and excellence and maybe most of
all, elegance. And so the church began to apply
this to the New Testament. As they read through the
Scriptures, as they read through their own New Testament, they
saw the elegance and the majesty of the book of Ephesians, and
they designated it the Queen of the Epistles or the Queen of the
letters. The king is Romans.
Romans is the king of the letters.
It's the first in prominence. It's the first in order of the
books. It's a systematic presentation
of doctrine, comprehensive in scope, logically rigorous,
complete and orderly. But Ephesians is the queen
because you read Ephesians, you see it's elegant and subtle in
its composition, and it's theologically rich, and it's
exalted in its subject matter. And we confess it's soaring in
its style, meaning it's emotional and awe inspiring.
So there's very little as you draw into this book.
There's very little that's taught in Ephesians that's not
taught somewhere else in the Bible.
And so we confess the glory and the power and the majesty of
Ephesians is not in its unique teaching and insight.
And we say the same is true. Scholars all agree that it's the
most beautiful of all of Paul's letters.
But the power and glory does not come from its rhetorical
flourish or it's exalted style. It's power and it's glory come
from several places and if you want to write these down, the
1st is on its focus. The focus of Ephesians is on
Jesus Christ and his exaltation as Lord.
And so if if theology is the queen of the scientists because
it brings all other science under itself, then we say the
Ephesians is the queen of the epistles because it unites all
things under Jesus Christ. It brings all things in Christ.
That's why it says 35 times. We're going to say it over and
over through the book. Everything is in the Beloved, in
Christ, in Christ Jesus, united in him, in him, in him.
It's subject matter, it's focus is exalted.
It's power and glory come from it's cosmic vision of the
church. It's comprehensive it gives more
of our purpose as a local church than anywhere else in the New
Testament. This is what we are to be and
this is what we are to do. It's it's comprehensive and that
it displays everything from the Holy Spirit and eternity past,
how we became united in him to the Holy Spirit uniting us for
eternity future. It presents a vision of local
communities and believers through which Christ displays
his wisdom and power to the world.
And through it, he he shows us to the rulers and the
authorities in the heavenly places, the the power of our
Lord. And it's powerful because it
transforms all the individual yous or eyes of this room.
And it it bakes all of the wheat into one bread. 1 lump.
And we are truly now we there's no I anymore.
When you read Ephesians, it's you, it's us, you all, it's us.
And you see this we is the fulfillment of the prophets like
Isaiah and like Jeremiah who envisioned a church that would
be from every tribe, tongue and nations and all for them would
not mean everyone but all people indiscriminately.
That to bring God enough glory He wants believers from every
tribe, tongue and nation, from every people group.
The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the
descendants of heritage Church, which we confess as you've seen
today are many power and glory comes from its subject matter.
It glorifies not only Jesus is the Son of God, but it exalts
the Father and it exalts the Holy Spirit and includes all
creation for all time. Again, it begins in eternity
past with the election and predestination of God the
Father, redemption in time, the Holy Spirit sealing us for
eternity future guaranteeing us the inheritance until we acquire
possession of it. It says to the praise of his
glory. It's, it's all-encompassing and
it extends not only to this exalted subject matter of the
Holy Spirit for all eternity, but it doesn't neglect the
individual responsibilities of husbands to their wives and
wives to their husbands and, and individuals to their employers
and children to their parents. It gets down and it's
applicable. It's theology and practical
living because theology is practical.
Theology is a way of life. It's not just for study, it's
for living, and it contains deep.
This book contains deep and unsearchable theological truths
and advice for how to live our Christian life.
And you see it in Ephesians one, as we're going to be in a
minute. But you go to Ephesians 2 and it
includes powerful statements such as this one on your
justification by faith alone. It says by grace you've been
saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.
It's the gift of God, not of work, so that no one can boast.
And you move into Ephesians 3. There's this great prayer of
Paul that according to the riches of his glory, he may
grant you to be strengthened with power through his Holy
Spirit and your inner beings, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith. To him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and
ever, Amen. And there's so many named
passages and Ephesians, they get nicknames because they're so
famous and powerful. You come to the the seven ones
of chapter 4, there's one body, there's one spirit just as you
were called to 1 hope that belongs to your call 1 Lord, 1
faith, one baptism, one God over all you.
The core value of this church in Ephesians 412, the purpose of
the pastors to equip the Saints for the work of the ministry so
that it's not the pastors and the elders and the deacons that
do the work, but you were to do the work and we equip you to do
this works. What Paul says, you move to
chapter 5, the household code, the instructions to parents and
children. The most comprehensive
discussion in Scripture on marriage comes in Ephesians 5.
And then what's in Ephesians 6? The armor of God is, is there
another named passage? Our defence against cosmic
powers in the darkness of this world.
So the power and the glory of this book come from its focus on
Jesus Christ, from its exalted subject matter, from its cosmic
vision for the church. But it also comes from its
style, as we've said, it is beautiful, it is elegant, it's
rhetorically powerful, it's poetic, it's beautiful, it's the
queen of the epistles, it's worship and praise.
And if I were to draw a diagram of your inner person, you know
the top of that, your heart, as truth permeates and enters into
your heart, the top of that diagram would be your mind,
because all truth has to enter into your mind.
And Ephesians isn't just about reaching your mind.
It wants to go deeper into your heart, and even below your heart
would be your will, what you want to do in this life and
below that your affections. That's what you love.
And Paul, as he writes Ephesians, says, I want to hit
all of it. I'm going to hit your mind.
I'm going to, I'm going to add this rhetorical flourish and
this authority that I have as an apostle.
And I'm going to drive all of this truth so that it transforms
your life, what you love, what you want to do.
It's aimed at the deepest parts of yourself.
It's devotional, it's convicting, it's encouraging,
and it's inspiring. And we say this is exactly what
you would expect from a letter that was super intended by the
Holy Spirit of God. We expect nothing else.
This is why Samuel Coleridge calls it the divinest
composition of man, the most beautiful book ever written.
So with that, that's what we're looking toward.
This is our book until next April.
And when we want to stop and ask the question, yes, it's
beautiful. Why did Paul write this book?
What was his purpose in writing? Ephesians commentator Nils Das
says that this book bears all the marks of a catechism for new
believers. That's not the only reason he
wrote it. But we confess as pastors,
that's why we picked it, because there's so many new believers,
young and old, in this church. And we want to go back to the
fundamentals of the faith. And we want to be like the
legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.
He used to always hold out a football every season and say,
you know the illustration, gentlemen, this is a football
and we want to come back and say church.
This is the apostle Paul. This is what an apostle is.
This is what the local church is for.
We want to go back to the basics to hit the fundamentals of the
faith. Peter O'Brien, another
commentator, says the essence is identity formation.
You have a whole new identity once you are put into the
church, Once you are baptized into this one baptism,
everything changes. And so we want to say that is
not the only thing, but it is a major theme.
There is identity formation that has to come in your new walk,
but we have to as a church agree with Clinton Arnold who says
it's not just one theme. You can't boil it down to 1
theme. There's 4 themes that are kind
of knit together in this book, threads that run throughout the
book. And he puts it together in a in
a wonderful purpose sentence. It says this Paul wrote this
letter to a large network of local churches in Ephesus and
the surrounding cities to affirm them in their new identity in
Christ as a means of strengthening them in their
ongoing struggle with the powers of darkness.
To promote a greater unity between Jews and Gentiles within
them and among the churches of the area, and to stimulate an
ever increasing transformation of their lifestyles into greater
conformity to the purity and holiness that God has called
them to display. So to boil that down and to make
it and state it simply, Ephesians is written to affirm
your identity. Your identity isn't in your
gender or who you're attracted to.
Your identity is being found in Christ.
That's the purpose of Ephesians one, one and two, it's written
to strengthen you in your ongoing battle against the
cosmic powers and authorities that surround us, the powers of
darkness that the third he writes to promote greater unity
between you and all of the other weirdos in this church that are
completely unlike you. There's, there's a very unique
body here and the one thing we have in common is that we are in
Christ. He's promoting unity among our
diverse membership. And finally, it's stimulating an
ever increasing transformation of your lifestyle.
And as you move through the book, we're going to make much
of this in the coming weeks. There's, there's two parts to
this book. There's chapters one to three
and then chapters four to six of the six, chapters one to three,
we confess our doctrinal or theological interpretations.
And four to six are ethical and moral applications or practical
applications. And to say it another way,
chapters one to three are the calling of the church.
Chapters 4 to 6 are the conduct of the church.
Say it another way. Chapters one to three are the
setting apart of the church. Chapters 4 to 6 are the set
apart lifestyle of the church, the application of all the
doctrines that we're going to study in one to three.
And we'll confess they are profound.
And you can't forget Paul's writing a letter to a collection
of churches. And it begins as any other
humble ancient letter would begin, turn to Ephesians one.
This will be the first of many times we say that together.
Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter one, verse one, and
we'll start this together. Read with me.
Paul begins this way. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God to the Saints who are an Ephesus and are
faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and peace from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's as far as we'll make it today.
We're going to introduce the book as stand on the foundation
we're going to lay today about and the foundation is your
relationship is in Christ. Your identity is found in
Christ. And we're going to go next week.
You're going to see how you came to have that lofty identity.
And again, it is incredible. But your your text will say it's
it's written to Ephesus, but for a whole host of reasons.
We know that this was written to a collection of local churches
that were in the region of Ephesus.
This is written to to many churches.
And of all Paul's letters, it's the least situational meaning.
We don't know the background. He doesn't say that he's he's
writing argumentatively like he does in Galatians and Romans and
2nd Corinthians. He's not formulating an
argument. He doesn't have these false
argumentative partners that he often invents and argues
against. And he's not addressing sinful
issues or questions that are asked of him.
That's what he does in First Corinthians.
And he's not addressing addressing questionable theology
like we saw him do in Thessalonians.
And so if he's not writing to help with pastoral concerns,
he's not forming an argument, if there's nothing that is
demanding A pastoral response, then why is he writing?
It's an important question. And we we say he's writing
because he's in prison. And, well, he has time to write
there. He's writing because he's in
prison. And these churches are in his
mind and in his heart. And he's writing because he has
time. And his context is that he's in,
he's under house arrest. And so he's chained to a
rotating prison guard. Or if you know Paul, the prison
guard is chained to him as he's sharing the gospel.
And he writes them because he loves Jesus and he wants to
communicate something about him to them.
And he's writing because he loves these churches and he
feels a sense of responsibility to him because he planted them.
He's their church planner and he can't go to them physically.
And so he writes an encouraging pastoral letter to them in his
absence. That's all it is, an encouraging
pastoral letter. And so he teaches them, he
encourages them. He reminds them of their
identity in Christ, maybe most powerfully for us.
He reminds them of their resources in Christ, all of the
things that they can shepherd and Marshall to, to fight
against cosmic powers in this world, to live faithful
marriages. He, he shows them the path
forward toward victory and greater faithfulness.
And he writes this letter, he says, and he gives it to a man
named Taikikus to take to and circulate around these Ephesian
churches. And it's, it's kind of a
sobering thought if you're Taikikus, because it's at the
same time he writes Philemon, he writes Colossians and he writes
Ephesians and he binds them up in a satchel and he gives them
to Taikus to deliver. And so you think three books of
our Bible at one time in the hands of one individual, that's
that's a sobering responsibility.
That's the thing where you're going to you're going to check
both ways before you cross the street when you're carrying
this. This is this is how he's
delivering these letters. And in chapter 1, this is our
context. He's going to instruct the
Ephesians regarding how they came to be in Christ.
And he begins the chapter in the book with this inscription that
describes both the the writer and the reader and you as a
local church from the standpoint of your relationship to God in
Christ. That's what he wants to to
emphasize and highlight here, your relationship to God in
Christ. He he doesn't say, look at verse
1. He doesn't say Paul the Roman
citizen and he doesn't say Paul the Greek educated scholar.
And he doesn't say Paul the Pharisee, the the expert in
Jewish law and tradition and theology.
And he was all of those things. Those were not important here.
The most important thing about Paul, he says, is that he was an
apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.
And we just read Acts 91 to 19 and you see it was by the will
of God. He struck him blind on a road
and he has to open his mouth and confess, who are you, Lord?
And he says, I will show you what you must do.
I will show you how much you are to suffer.
He takes him from this path and he says you're on a new path
now. Your identity is now in me.
You're not a persecutor, you're a worshipper.
And so he he turns his readers and he addresses their
relationship to God in Christ again before he reminds them of
the glories of how they came to be in that relationship.
He turns to the church. He writes in verse one to the
Saints, the the holy ones who are in Ephesus and are faithful
in Christ Jesus. This is the word hagios.
You are a hagios. You're, you're a holy one.
But the emphasis of this word in the New Testament, the beauty of
the word is it's almost never in the singular.
It's always in the plural because the emphasis of
Christians is not on you. The emphasis of the local church
is on us. He gave the authority to us.
We are to encourage and shepherd and counsel one another, a
visible and local body of believers.
We are the faithful ones in Christ.
It's going to be demonstrated powerfully in a minute when we
come together. We've already sang as one man
and we're going to come before the Lord under 1 confession, 1
Lord, 1 faith, 1 baptism and take the Lord's Supper together
as one individual. So you see, the emphasis is on
us, not you. It comes again in chapter 1,
verse 2 where he says grace to you.
It's helpful again as the foundation of our faith to to
remember this you is plural. When we when you read this book
in your bed, it's easy to see grace to you and say Paul's
writing to individual believers, but it's grace to you all.
And so we're studying this book. We're reading this book exactly
as we were intended to as a local body.
Grace to you all and peace from God the Father.
And there's even more emphasis that comes in the New Testament
with its emphasis on the word Christ.
You may have seen in our text 3 times, even going into verse
three he says it again. The emphasis is on Jesus Christ.
The word Christ is the New Testament equivalent of the Old
Testament word. What?
Anybody know Messiah? Christ is the Messiah.
And so the foundation of this expression comes all the way
back in Acts 236 when we were all baptized with the Holy
Spirit and the church was born. We formally became one.
And Peter preached a sermon on that day just over 2000 years
ago, and he said powerfully, let all the House of Israel
therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and
Christ. This Jesus whom you have
crucified. Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the
Christ and this has been the confession of the church from
the very beginning, from its conception.
Jesus is Lord and Messiah. Jesus asked Peter famously, who
do you say that I am? The world says that you're
Elijah. They say that you're a prophet.
They have all of these things, a madman, legend, liar, lunatic,
who do you say that I am? And Peter confesses you are the
Lord and he said you are the Christ, the Son of the living
God. And Jesus response, he blesses
him. Blessed are you, Simon, for
flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who
is in heaven. So church, the most important
thing about the apostle Paul is his relationship to God in
Christ. And the most important thing
about you of all the relationships that you have that
we're going to explore next week, the most important thing
about you is your relationship to God the Father in Jesus
Christ. And look at how he starts his
letter. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
to the Saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and
peace from the Lord Christ Jesus of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 3, he's even going to say, blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the endowment of
spiritual gifting that he was given.
Was that of an apostle and Paul says it wasn't by my will that I
became an apostle. I didn't desire this.
My will was overridden by the will of the Father who said you
will now be an apostle. And I was once discipling a new
believer and we went to probably should have started with the
gospel. We didn't.
We went to one of the letters and I thought we would read
together over an hour, you know, a book or a chapter at least of
the Bible. And we would go through a
chapter together. And we got to the first words,
Paul and the this individual stopped me and he said, hold on,
who's who's Paul? I was like, OK, here we go.
This is Paul. This is the apostle Paul who's
this is who he was. And as we kept reading, this is
Paul an apostle. And he said, wait, hold on,
what's what's an apostle? So we had to stop and, you know,
this is what an apostle is. And before we know that was our
time. That was as far as we made it on
a morning discipleship. And so this this is one of those
opportunities in the book of Ephesians, we can have a Vince
Lombardi moment. And I want you to say, how would
you answer that question if you were stopped and somebody asked
you, what is an apostle? What is apostleship?
How would you respond? And this goes back to the an
absolute elementary principle of our faith and our understanding
of Scripture. An apostle in the broadest sense
is one who is sent. It literally means a sent 1A
messenger. It's a, a, a delegate or a
herald or an ambassador that the emphasis of it comes from you
are sent with the authority of somebody else and you are sent
representing someone else and you are sent accountable to
someone else. If a herald goes with the
message of a king and he gets the message wrong and he comes
back before the king, it's not going to go well for him.
So you're going as a representative accountable to
them. And when Jesus after his
crucifixion, he comes to his disciples.
There were 11 and he said, I'm sending you, you are my
apostles. And the church replaced Judas,
who hung himself with another. And then we've already read
today there was one other, there were 13 apostles because God or
Jesus Christ called the apostle Paul from heaven to be his
apostle to the Gentiles. And so they were chosen and
sent. That's the word that's
emphasized. They were sent by the Lord Jesus
Christ with his message, his authority.
It's often compared to a power of attorney today because they
would go with the power and authority of the one who sent
them. And scripture says to reject the
message of the apostle is to reject the message of the one
who sent that apostle, which has great implications for the book
of Ephesians. Some would say, well, it's not
written by Jesus so it's somehow not as important.
No, Paul was sent by Christ. His words are super intended by
the Holy Spirit. It's he comes with his
authority. So we can't understand Paul's
apostleship and you potentially can't even understand your own
apostleship without understanding first the original
apostle, the apostleship of Jesus Christ, because in Hebrews
chapter 3, verse one, the author of Hebrews commands us to
consider Jesus the apostle and the high priest of our
confession. So when we speak of Jesus, he is
the apostle. He's the sent one of God.
And it's imperative that you understand this.
When Jesus goes through the book of John, there's a couple things
you need to know. He says you have to know that
I'm the Son of God. You have to know this, I come
from God the Father. And he says, second, you have to
know that he sent me. Sometimes we'll include this in
our baptismal formulas because it's, it's so important to
Jesus. And if it's so important to
Jesus, it has to be important to us.
He says in John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent his Son into the world in order that we might be
saved through him. He was sent into the world.
John 536 It's the Father who sent me.
John 629. This is the work of God, that
you believe in him whom He has sent, John 657.
As the living Father has sent me, John 716 I have not come of
myself, but of him who sent me. John 816 The Father sent me.
John 1142 That they may believe that you sent me in the high
priest. A high priestly prayer, that
great prayer before Jesus goes to the cross.
This was His emphasis. Verse 3, verse 18, verse 21,
verse 23, verse 25. God, God sent me.
Jesus is the apostle, the great apostle, the sent one.
And as you get to the end of the book after the resurrection,
something interesting happens in John 20 verse 21, where Jesus
says, as the Father has sent me, Even so I am sending you.
And there's that transfer of authority even as the Father has
sent me, so I am sending you. That send is the verbal form of
the noun word that's showing up in your Ephesians 11 apostle.
He he's sent your apostling. And so Ephesians is going to say
in chapter 2, the foundation of our faith was laid by the
apostles and the prophets, but Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.
Another way to say that is he is the the capital capital, a
apostle, the first apostle. And then he sends these sent
ones with his authority as the capital, A apostles.
He says it again in John 1718. As you sent me into the world,
so I have sent them into the world.
And a beautiful thought comes again when you come into the
book of first and second Timothy.
By the way, where was Timothy pastor in Ephesus?
Paul commissions and sends Timothy by the laying on of
hands, he solemnly charges him, right, I solemnly charge you in
the presence of God and Christ Jesus.
He was judged of the living and the dead.
And by his appearing in his Kingdom, it's, it's formal.
He tells him, I give you the authority to preach the word,
reprove, rebuke and exhort with great patience and instruction.
So he, he takes this authority that God gave to the Son and
that the Son gave to the apostles.
And now you see the apostles like Paul are putting that
authority squarely in the local church.
This is a theology of apostleship.
And he's going to tell Timothy and instruct him to appoint
other faithful men. And so we recognize that Timothy
is formally passing authoritative Apostolic
preaching into authoritative non Apostolic preaching.
And from this moment you're going to have the capital a
apostles. They don't start another's
second generation of apostles, capital a apostles.
It's not what you see the apostles doing.
What they do is they start a second generation of little a
apostles and you start to see that churches begin under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit to send out missionaries.
And it says in Scripture that they are little a apostles.
And he even says as a matter of emphasis, Paul passed this
authority and this responsibility on first Timothy
1/3 in Ephesus. He says in that verse, remain at
at Ephesus. So you have Jesus the great
apostle. He commissions 12 capital a
apostles who then commissioned the local church with the
authority to preach God's word to send out disciples.
And we say they are little a apostles.
This is this is displayed beautifully in Acts 13.
If you want to see a living illustration of how this works
out in a local church in Acts 13, it tells you kind of a
little bit behind the scenes. It says that the Holy Spirit set
aside or set apart consecrated 2 individuals to go out and be
missionaries. And so the church then
recognizes those two individuals.
That church lays their hands on those two individuals and sends
them out, which by the way, that's why we do that.
Any time that we send out missionaries or we send out
church planners or we, we bring pastors into this church, what
do we do? We lay hands on them because we
recognize the Holy Spirit has set them apart.
Now we set them apart. And when we send them, look at
this in Acts 13, it says afterwards, so being sent out by
the Holy Spirit, they went. So the Holy Spirit sets them
apart. The church recognizes it, the
church sends them. And then when they are leaving
the church, it says, and now the Holy Spirit sent them.
Do you see how it works? There's this two fold sending.
They are now little apostles. In that context, they are called
the the apostles, Paul and Barnabas, Little A.
Now Barnabas is an apostle in the same sense as Paul is as
missionaries of a local church. Do you see how it works?
This is a theology of apostleship.
And so by the way, when we if somebody asks you what is an
apostle, do you now have an answer?
So when he comes to you and says what is apostleship, what is an
apostle? I hope that you'll have an
answer. That is Paul and his
relationship to God in Christ. He's already introduced the
recipients and their relationship to God in Christ.
And so as you move into verse 2, Paul greets them with his
standard greeting, a beautiful greeting, rich in theology.
He says grace to you and peace. I love this grace to you and
Shalom, peace. This is the highest focal point
of salvation. This is what salvation is about,
is peace with God. And this is what we lost in the
garden when we were sent out. We were separated from God.
We became his enemies. We were no longer his sons.
And this is what salvation's about.
You can think of any metaphor for salvation that that you can
think of justification being declared righteous, adoption
being a son of God, propitiation, his wrath being
turned away, redemption being bought with as a as a slaver, a
prisoner of war with the precious blood of Christ.
All of these metaphors are pointing toward one thing, peace
with God, that that's what it's about.
This is what your salvation is. You were once an enemy and now
you're his friend. We confessed it and we sang it
earlier. You were once a foreigner or you
are far from him, and now you are his Son.
It's relational harmony with God the Father.
And peace was obtained, Paul reminds us, because of the grace
or the unmerited favour of God. And so Paul's purpose as an
apostle, if you could sum up his whole purpose of apostleship and
coming to the local churches, he tells you what it is.
In Acts 2024, he says I'm called to testify of God's grace.
And in that context, in Acts 2024, he calls all the Ephesian
elders to himself, and speaking to those pastors, he says to
them, I do not account my life of any value or as precious to
myself, if only I may finish my course in the ministry that I
received from the Lord Jesus. What was it to testify to the
gospel of the grace of God? So he's commissioned by God to
teach grace and he comes to them in the grace.
He comes to these Ephesians in that same grace.
And that's why we humbly confess as a church that we are saved
sola gratia meaning by grace alone, through faith alone, by
Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.
And the Puritan Thomas Goodwin defines this grace.
He says grace is more than mercy and love.
It's super adds to them. It denotes not simply love, but
the love of a sovereign, transcendent superior, one that
may do what he will, that he, he may wholly choose whether he
will love or not. Now God, who is an infinite
sovereign, who might have chosen whether he would ever love us,
for him to love us. This is grace.
End Quote. Grace and peace from God the
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our source of new covenant blessings is from God the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Or we might even confess from
the Lord God through Jesus Christ, we experience his peace
being the recipient of His grace.
And now he begins to unpack this wonderful message to us.
Ephesians 3/4. He says when you read this, you
can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.
From this point on, we will received the mysteries that were
hidden in previous ages but now are revealed to us in Christ
Colossians 1/26. It was hidden for ages and
generations, but now is revealed to us his Saints.
And so I hope that you understand that as we stand here
at the end of verse 2, you stand at the threshold of something
very deep and very profound. It's vast.
And you see here that the most important part about you is your
relationship to God and Christ. And as we come for the next
three weeks together, God's going to reveal to you how you
came to be in that relationship. And it's sobering.
And you're going to realize that the story is much bigger than
you. And this is a story that's much
bigger than us. We are part of a cosmic
reconciliation that's happening between God and this world.
The cosmic significance of Jesus Christ and his grand vision for
us in the world. And as we get ready for that,
let's pray that God would bless our time together.
God, Lord, help us understand this, this queen of the
epistles, this divinest composition of man.
What a what a privilege to get to look into things that angels
long to look in and we need your Holy Spirit to to reveal this to
us. And we're, we're excited, Lord,
that we can come together as you intended it in a, in a gathering
of a local body to hear the word as Paul wrote it, to be
encouraged by it, to see exactly how we came to be in you and,
and the cosmic significance of that God, we're humbled.
And again, we thank you for our salvation.
We thank you for your, for your grace, for the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding that we have No
Fear of judgement, No Fear of wrath.
The cup has already been poured out.
And Lord, we take up our cup of joy even now as we look toward
communion, remembering all that you did from us to put us in
this state. We remember what was required,
and we thank you. And we do this in Jesus name,
Amen. Thanks for listening.
To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to
respond to this sermon, visit our website at
www.heritageshawnee.org.