All right we're in lesson number five of
the book of Ephesians. Especially the first chapter there's an extremely long
paragraph there you might want to review some of the things that we've talked
about before we get into that. Just some main points that Paul the Apostle has
made in this letter so far. Number one:
Paul has greeted and complimented this church this congregation in Ephesus for
their faithfulness; not all churches were faithful many of them had problems that
he had to address. But Ephesus has been faithful and Paul complements them
on that. He also explains to them that God's purpose before the beginning of
time was to create and bless the church with all the blessings
that exist in heaven. A pretty grand opening statement.
Everything that God has prepared as a blessing from the beginning from before
the beginning of time He wants to lavish it on the church. That was His purpose.
Number three: he says he goes on to name and describe these spiritual gifts and
we've talked about these already, but basically what he said these are the
gifts that are waiting to be given to the church. One: purity and innocence
bestowed on those in the church. When he says purity and innocence in other
words purity and innocence not earned but given as a gift. The adoption as
children of God. Another blessing forgiveness for sin,
insight into God's plan. Insight into God's plan: God's plan was to save them
and to unite them, when I say them I'm talking about the church, and to unite
them to Himself. Man could not figure that out on his own, God had to reveal
that plan. It's one of the blessings, we have insight into if you
wish God's endgame. Another blessing: the ability to give
and to be praised. I mentioned last time that the church not only gives praise to
God but the church also by its very existence is praise to God.
Possession of the Holy Spirit talked about that, why is it
important to possess the Holy Spirit? Well it's through the Holy Spirit that
we're resurrected from the dead, so in that way it is a great spiritual
blessing. And of course the assurance of resurrection, the assurance of
glorification and the assurance of exaltation. Three things
that happen after we die: resurrection, glorification our physical
bodies are transformed into a spiritual body that enables us to exist in the
spiritual dimension. None of us would think of actually going to the moon
without a spacesuit because this physical body is not designed to
exist on the moon or on the sun or on Saturn. Well in the same way this
physical body is not able to exist in the spiritual realm so God says I'll
give you a new body, we call it glorified, I'll give you a new type of
body that will enable you to live and exist in the spiritual dimension where
God exists. And then exaltation not only a new body but a new position we're
exalted to the right hand of God meaning we have an intimate relationship with
God not based on our sinfulness. Right now we have a relationship with God
based on our sinfulness in other words He forgave us for our sins, He sent Jesus
to die but in heaven our relationship is not based on our salvation it's based on
our relationship with Him. Another thing he does he continues his prayer to
include the requests that God enable them to know him more
intimately to see more clear the assurances or the hope that they've
been given to recognize the source from which comes all of these blessings and
also to perceive the glorious end that Christ and His Church were to experience.
In other words, Paul prays that God will enable the Ephesian church to begin to
taste to begin to actually experience the things that are coming in the future.
A lot of people say well I can't wait to get to heaven because you know we'll
have this we'll have that you know I'll experience a different thing and Paul is
saying you can start experiencing that now. Not the complete experience because
we're limited because of our sinful and weak human bodies, but it's not
impossible to begin actually experiencing a taste of heaven you can
start now and one of his prayer is is God please enable them to begin
experiencing what has to come. Now these there were a few
lessons that we could draw from this passage concerning the spiritual
blessings, again a bit of a review, first of all we said that spiritual blessings
are only available if one is united to Christ through faith expressed in
repentance and baptism. That's where the spiritual blessings
are, they're in Christ they're for those who are related to Christ through faith
and that faith we talked about is expressed in repentance and baptism.
Second lesson: spiritual blessings are far more valuable than material
blessings but are given to us freely by God. Here on earth we earn everything we
have we earn it we have to work for it but spiritual blessings which are even
more valuable than the things we have here on earth we don't earn those
they're given to us freely by God. Thirdly: spiritual blessings are received
through faith but they are appreciated and enhanced through prayer. If we have
all the blessings but we're not enjoying them it's usually because our prayer
lives are weak. Spiritual things are tasted
and contemplated and experienced in the dimension of prayer while we are here on
earth. In the future we'll experience them at all times not just while we're
in a state of prayer or in a state of meditation or a state of study
of the Word. So in his prayer in chapter one Paul describes the blessings that
God has prepared for the church through Jesus Christ. In chapters two and three
he's going to describe the universal nature of the church. He's going to
address the past of the church, the present of the church, and the future. And
so we are in chapter two. Now in the last verse of chapter one Paul refers to
Jesus Christ as the head of all things. And it's something that he explains in
more detail in the letter to the Colossians in chapter 1 verse 15, you
know in Colossians he talks about Jesus as head over creation, head over the
spiritual world, head over the church. He goes into a lot more detail about
Jesus's position in the book of Colossians. In the book of Ephesians he
simply summarizes this idea by referring to Christ's rule in heaven, rule over all
things and headship over the church. In chapter 1 verse 22 we
talked about that last time. Very much like Colossians this imagery
of Christ as the head over the body which is the church is used as a kind of
a bridge to transfer from one set of ideas, a prayer for the
blessings, he needs to get to another idea here, so he uses the idea of Christ
as head as like a bridge to go from one set of ideas to another set of ideas.
And one set of ideas are a prayer of blessing the next set of ideas are the
nature of the church. So we leave chapter ones discussion of the
blessings and we move on to a broad teaching about the church which is
actually theme of this letter. The first element that Paul
will discuss is the church in time, human time. The past of the
church, the present of the church, the future of the church. And he begins by
describing the past condition of every member of the church before they became
part of the body of Christ. So chapter 2 verse 1 he says, "And you were dead in
your trespasses and sins" well that starts it off well doesn't it? "And you were
dead in your trespasses and sins" the word dead here
means to be separated. The Greek word translated into English for dead means
to be separated, in this case separated from God. You need to understand the
idea of separation; imagine a nice tree healthy tree full of leaves and so on
and so forth and imagine if you went to that tree and you cut a branch off a
nice big fat branch and you just cut it off and laid it to the side of the tree.
And then you examine the tree and the cut off branch you would notice that
both are probably exactly the same the leaves on the tree are green the leaves
on the cut off branch or green the bark on the tree is healthy and thick the
bark on the cut off branch is healthy and well colored the buds on the tree are budding there
are some buds there you look at the branch that's been cut off it also has
some buds. So just to look at it they both look the same but we know what's
going to happen right? That tree is going to continue to flower and bloom and
produce fruit and produce leaves and so on and so forth, but what's going to
happen to that branch? With time the leaves that we're green are going to
start to turn brown and brittle and dry and if we wait long enough there won't
be anything left on that branch it'll crack up
it'll just completely decay. Why? Because it's cut off from the tree which gives
it life. The idea of spiritual death is like that. People are cut off from God
and for a time they look like they're completely alive, they're walking
around, they are producing children, they're building buildings, they're
saving up money, they're laughing, they're enjoying themselves. You can't
tell the difference, except at one point those who are in the tree those branches
that are in the tree continue to live and those who are cut off eventually
they begin to die away. And that's what Paul is explaining here: everyone he says
who has come into the church at one time in the past were a cut off branch, were
dead, were walking around, but they were really dead. And so he
continues in verse two and he says, "in which you formerly walked according to
the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of
the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience."
So in verse two he explains why they were dead: they were dead, they were
separated because their lives were governed (in the past) by three principles,
three main principles: one, the course of this world. So Paul is saying that men
who are separated from God live according to the principles of this
world whether they be good principals or bad. Not all principals are bad but they
are principals of this world. The problem with this is that the world and its
systems, its philosophies whatever philosophy you want: humanism,
existentialism, pragmatism, whatever -ISM that you want that system does not have
the power to regenerate your soul. Systems, human systems have the power to
give you some guidance in life, this life. But none of them have the power to
regenerate, to give life to that cut off branch
if you wish. So he says men are cut off from God because they're following the
course of this world. Secondly: they're cut off because of the prince of power
of the air. Men served one of two authorities: those separated from God's
serve Satan whether they realize it or not. There was a singer who wrote this song
called, Everybody Served Somebody. Everybody Served Somebody, and it was a
very clever song because in the song the writer says you're either serving God or
you're serving Satan. And the goal of Satan is to keep us away from
Jesus Christ in any way he can. And then thirdly he says people are cut
off because of the spirit of the sons of disobedience, in other words men
separated from God follow the spirit that is within them. You hear that all
the time right follow your heart. If you watch any of those reality
shows there's contests whatever and they always have those heartwarming
backstories about they were poor or you
know I'm singing this song for my grandma you know something like that and
then the most profound wisdom that ever comes out of this and said well I'm just
going to follow my heart and I cringe when they say that.
This is the deepest wisdom of this world: I'm just going to follow
my heart. But man is doomed without God's leadership, in Proverbs 14:12 the writer
says, "There is a way which seems right to a man, but it's end is the way of death."
If you follow your heart only, the Bible says you'll miss the target, if you
follow your heart you won't find the narrow way, you'll find the Broadway but you won't find the narrow way. And
so in verse 3 Paul continues he says, "Among them we too
all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh
and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." so Paul
was speaking of Gentiles but now he includes himself in the Jewish brethren
at Ephesus when he describes the outcome of this style of serving the world or
serving Satan or serving self. The outcome Paul says was that they searched
only to satisfy their earthly desires without regard for God. When he says
slaves of the flesh he's not talking about people just involved in
sexual immorality he's the flesh means you're only following what's in your
mind and in your heart. And because of this type of idolatry
because if you're not worshiping God if you're following your own flesh, it's
a kind of idolatry, because of this and sinfulness and ungodliness they're all
subject to the wrath of God's judgment. So Paul summarizes what the human
condition of those who were not members of the church was before they entered
the body, in other words everybody in the church shares the same past including us
we all share that it's one of the it's one of the things that binds us together
because no matter if somebody comes from another state or another country has a
different language has a different experience completely we all share the
same past. We all did what Paul is talking about here until we heard the
gospel and responded to it. So now in verses 4 to 7 he's going to talk about
the present and the future. In verse 4 he says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because
of His great love with which he loved us," I'm going to stop there, he says but here,
but. He has described man's hopeless situation and now he goes on to say
what God has done about this situation. I'm going to skip over verse four for just a minute and we're going to read verses five and six where Paul explains
what God did in the face of man's sins and then we'll come back to verse four.
So go to verse five he says, "even when we were dead in our transgressions," you know
there's that dead branch there's that cut off branch "even when we were dead in
our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have
been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus," so what did He do, God, what did He do? Well, He
made us alive again with Christ. That dead branch, He grafted us back into the
tree if you wish if you want to use that analogy or that imagery. How did He do
this? Well those of you who were in the great doctrines class, you know how He
did it, through redemption. That grafting back into the tree there's a price for
that and Jesus paid that price on the cross. He paid the price for our sins. Now
God did not only make us alive again with Christ, He raised us up from the
dead, how? Through resurrection. How? By giving us the Holy Spirit who will power
that resurrection. What else did He do? Well He set us with Christ in heaven. How?
Well He has given us a glorified body and He's going to exalt us to the right hand
of God. That's how He's going to do it. Okay now let's read verse 7, keep all
these ideas together now. He says, "In order that in the ages to come He might
show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."
So now Paul looks at what God has done from God's perspective. What has God done
from His perspective in timelessness and eternity. We have to understand that in
God's eyes all of this business here: the redemption, paying off of our
sins, and the resurrection, and the giving of the glorious body, and the exaltation
to the right hand of God; from God's perspective
this is already finished. It's already complete.
The faithful in Christ have already received all of the blessings and they
are already in heaven. That's hard for us to understand because
we live with the restrictions of time and we perceive the process as it is
being carried out step by step. We're creatures of time, for us
there's past we remember that there's present now, and then
there's the future that we kind of look for and try to guess what's going to
happen but God is not restricted by time. He's outside of
time and so Paul here is describing what's going to happen to us from God's
perspective and he's saying it's already done the game is over. God sees
everything is already complete and Paul is trying to get his readers to see it
from God's view in order to encourage them, don't be discouraged he says look
at this whole process from God's perspective: it's already finished, you've
already won, you're already there. You know we watch those movies time
machine, somebody gets into a time-travel machine, goes to the past, goes to the
future. This is kind of what Paul is saying let's get into the time machine
let's go to the future look we're all there we're all sitting at the right
hand of God we all have these glorified bodies all right we're going to get back
into time machine and go back to the present so don't keep that image in mind
don't be discouraged don't quit. Let's go back to verse 4
where Paul will explain why God did this so let's go back to chapter 2 verse 4
read it again it says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with
which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive
together with Christ Jesus (by grace you have been saved)," how many times has he
mentioned the word love and grace and mercy? So why did God do this? Well He
blessed us with every spiritual blessing that includes redemption, resurrection, glorification, exaltation, He did it because He is rich in mercy. Because He is capable
of great sympathy and empathy and tenderness and the willingness to
forgive. He is the epitome of love, that's the thing that motivates Him to do what
He does on our behalf. So God's mercy, this motivation, and God's love, that's the
expression of His mercy, is free towards us. He is and does this because of who He
is not because of what we do. We keep trying to earn that, no, He does it
because He loves us. That God freely chooses to have mercy on us and arrange
for our salvation: this is what grace is all about. All right, so we keep going and
the last couple of verses here that we have time for this morning verses 8 to
10 Paul makes a comment on what he's just explained. So he teaches and he explained so on and so forth he kind of
deconstructs the whole idea of salvation and why it happened and what's going to
happen all that. And once he's finished doing that he kind of steps aside and he
comments on what he's just said. So in verse 8 and 9 keep that context in mind
he's making a comment now verse 8 and 9 he says, "For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of
works, that no one should boast." So let's stop there. First thing he says, he says
we have been saved by grace through faith and explains that this is a gift
of God it cannot be earned with good deeds. Now many people have misunderstood
and misused this verse of scripture so let's look at the
features. First of all he talks about saved, you have been saved.
Another word, I like the word rescue a little bit better because saved
has such so much religious connotations. But when we say, oh I was rescued, we were up on the third floor and the fire was burning out of
control on the first floor in the second floor we couldn't go down if we jumped
out we would be killed instantly and they sent a ladder or a helicopter and
we were rescued. We kind of connect emotionally with the word rescued. So
Paul uses that same word saved / rescued. In one word Paul compresses all of the
blessings that he has described so far. To be saved or to be rescued or to
receive redemption the resurrection the glorification the exaltation all that is
squeezed into one single word and I've told you this before this is how Paul
writes he explains something gives a lot of detail and then he takes all of it and he
compresses it down to one single word that has a lot of power and a lot of
meaning to the readers. So to be saved or to receive a rescue means all
the rest. So salvation is what we have, we've been rescued. And then he talks
about grace. Grace is the reason that we have this salvation. We have it because
God is gracious. Man cannot redeem his own sins, he can't regenerate himself, he
can't resurrect his own body, he cannot transform himself gloriously, he cannot
put himself at the right hand of God. He has no power over these things. God is
the one that does this. He does this with His power because why? Because He's
powerful, no. Because He's merciful. He does it as a favor, I'm going to do you a
favor. Man cannot earn it, he can't pay for it, he can't produce these things in
any way, he cannot produce it but he can receive it. And then the third comment
that he talks about here is faith. Salvation that's what happens to us.
Mercy that's why it happens to us. Faith faith is the condition. Man can receive
the gift and the condition that God places on the free gift is that man
receives it by faith not by works. You know there are a lot of debates all the
time especially you know here people always debating like baptism shouldn't
you be baptized shouldn't you be baptized you know if I I talked to some
of our friends that that go to church across the street they're at the Baptist
Church we'll eventually get to that and we'll debate you know baptism do you
know that in the New Testament they never debated the necessity of baptism it's never an issue ever. No apostle no teacher even
in the church history you're looking at church history early
church history there was never a debate about the need to be baptized in order
to become a Christian. The debate was always about are we saved based on a
system of faith or are we saved by a system of works. That was the debate
that was the thing that was debated by Paul and Peter and other Apostles.
How do we what's the condition that we receive these gifts by faith or by
some sort of ceremony by some sort of perfectionism by some sort of outward
religious work? That was the debate that they had over and over again. So faith is
the condition and a lot of people say oh if there's a condition it's a work it's
not good. But that's not a biblical idea. Let me give you an example: if you win a
free car, you put your business card in the fishbowl at Hudiburg and they say hey we got a promotion we're giving away a free
Impala just put your business card in there and lo and behold you get a call
hey you won the free car the condition is that you have to come to the
dealer in order to claim it sign the papers claim the
car. Is it still free? Well yeah it's still free even if
there's a condition for you to take possession of it it's still free. Man
cannot produce his own salvation but he is able to believe and so God makes
belief the condition upon which the gift is received. And so the Bible explains
how that belief or how that faith is to be expressed properly. In Mark 16:16 of
course he says those who believe in are baptized they're the ones that are
rescued or saved. In Acts chapter 2 verse 38 Peter says those who repent of their
sins and are baptized in the name of Jesus they're the ones whose sins are
forgiven they're the ones who receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so to
believe and to acknowledge our faith in Jesus, to repent to be baptized in His
name, those are the conditions. So the big argument at this point is this some say
so long as you believe in God's grace and plan to save you through Christ, you
receive salvation. You don't have to be baptized that's just an afterthought
that's just you do that simply as a kind of a ritual. We and the Churches of
Christ say that you must not only believe but you have to express that
belief in the way that God has commanded us to do so in His word.
I tell people outside the church baptism in water by immersion is not a Church of
Christ thing. It's a Bible thing. We are simply respecting and submitting to what
the Bible says. Your beef if you don't want to be about that your beef is not
with us your beef is with God's word and we're not saying that smugly or in any
prideful way. I mean it's... listen, when God put something down at least 10 times in
a single book you ought to be paying attention. And so Matthew and Mark in the book of
Acts and Galatians and Ephesians God repeatedly sets forth the conditions. So
let's go back to our example shall we, let's say you got the call you've got
the free car but you go over to the Chrysler dealership and sit in the
Chrysler dealership instead of the Chevy dealership at Hudiburg you go over a you
know to the Chrysler dealership and you sit and you wait for your car to be
delivered are you going to get the free car? No, why?
Because you yourself have changed the conditions and you've gone over here. You
won the prize but you won't possess it because you haven't fulfilled the
condition. And so Paul says that we obtain what would have been impossible
for us to receive, the rescue the salvation and all the stuff that comes
with it, it would have been impossible for us to receive this because God chose
to be merciful towards us and offer it to us on the basis of faith. Otherwise
there's no way we could have accessed it. And this faith is expressed in a way
that everyone could do, it was fair. Repentance, everybody in the world can
repent. Believe, everybody in the world can believe it's not something that's
beyond the human condition. Be baptized in water, well is 80% of the world
covered in water do we have a problem finding water? So the conditions that God
places on the expression of our faith are universal everyone has access to
them. And so in verse 10 Paul concludes and he says, "For we are his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we
should walk in them." And so Paul looks at the situation from God's perspective and
he says that in addition to creating the church, for the purpose of lavishing all
these blessings on them, in addition to that
He also created good works for the church to perform while it is here on
earth. Not good works to earn heaven, we already have that, remember what he said:
he took us into the time machine and he brought us to the future and he says
look at you you're right there you're sitting right next to the throne of God
that's you that's your future and then we got back in the time machine we came
back to today and Paul is saying don't forget that image don't forget that.
Now while we're here he says God has prepared good works for us to do. Not
good works that will earn heaven, we have that but good works so that God
will be witnessed and glorified and visible to non-believers. I do what I do
you know when I first became a Christian many many years ago I
used to smoke cigarettes. Most of you know that, you know I was a smoker
I loved to smoke. I used to eat in order to smoke. Anybody have a smoking
habit you understand exactly what I'm saying. I used to eat hurry up and eat
because I wanted to get to the cigarette that came after the meal. Finish a job in
the garage, let's light up, finish mowing the lawn, light up,
be at work doing something (this is before I became Christian) working in
a company finished the reports all the reports are done for the day, light up.
And then I became a Christian and nobody preached on that I just I remember
once I was smoking in and we were just at the office you know where I was
at and the person said oh you're a Christian I would have never known. Wow
that was an eye-opener. So I realized that I was not giving a good witness for
something that I deeply believed. So something had to go did I
get rid of my witness or did I get rid of my cigarettes? Well
the cigarettes went, it wasn't a huge sacrifice. It was a tough couple of
months. But I realized I cannot continue to witness that I'm a believer
that I have this great gift unless I give this thing up, and giving this thing
up has nothing to do with me going to heaven giving this thing up has a lot
to do with me saying to God I really believe God, I really want
to make a good witness. I don't want anybody not to believe
because of me. Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5 verse 16, "Let your light shine
before men in such a way" there's that such a way, everybody gives off some sort
of light, but let your light shine in such a way "that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." So if I would meet some of my old
friends who are not Christians but who knew me back in the day and they'd say, here I have one where they're lighting up said no thanks you know I
quit. Really, why, was a health thing? And you say, oh you got to die from something
this or something else who cares you know? And that would be my opportunity to
say no I've become a Christian and I thought you know that this was not
consistent with what I believed. And usually they went, oh. That conversation
didn't go anywhere else but sometimes they say, oh yeah you became a Christian
what's that all about? Let your light shine in such a way, that you are
glorified? Absolutely not. That your Father in heaven is glorified. So in the
end the church is a source of praise for God and Paul is saying this is its
present and future function it is also the state and activity that gives
each member its greatest joy. And so he summarizes here by saying hey
God loves the church and the church loves others in order to witness for
what God has done for all of us. Alright well before we get into the next
chapter I don't think we have time we're going to stop right there.
