Ephesians class lesson number three
we've learned so far about the Ephesian letter some background about the
Ephesian letter. So here's some of the things that we've been talking about,
first of all Paul, on his second missionary journey, is returning from
Athens in Greece. He stops for a short time to teach at Ephesus and he leaves promising to return in the future. That was his strategy: establish a church, work
with it for a while, move on to another place, work his way back to that
congregation to kind of build it up. And so he continues that same process here.
When he returns to Ephesus he rebaptised as some men, twelve men who had been
taught by Apollos. And with these twelve the church in Ephesus is established
and we talked about that we talked about that in our last lesson
why were they rebaptised and all that business here not going to redo that
this morning. Now in today's lesson we're going to look at the city of Ephesus
itself and Paul's early work there and then begin a study of his letter to
these brethren. So the story of the beginning of this church is found in
Acts chapter 19. So we're studying Ephesians but if we want some historical
data on the establishment of this church we have to go to acts 19. We'll be
reading a few passages there so go to Acts 19 for now. Ephesus was a great city
for its time. It was situated/is situated in modern-day Turkey. It was a major port
for Asia Minor. The street, 70 feet wide, ran from the port right through the city and the population was approximately 300,000. So an ancient city like that, 300,000 that's even by today's standards, that's a fair sized city. But in those
days that was a tremendous size for a city. The streets were lined with marble,
they had public baths, they had a theater there that held anywhere between
twenty-five and fifty thousand people. Now the temple to the goddess Diana
ranked as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Was
situated in Ephesus. A hundred pillars held the roof. Diana
was a fertility goddess and drew pilgrims from all over the world and one
of the main reasons for Ephesus you know that there was such trade there, is they had a lot of traffic, a lot of pilgrims would come. We
call them tourists today but a lot of pilgrims would come to that city.
Around the temple was the community that housed artisans who made a very good
living making coins and statues. Today we call them souvenirs. Making various icons of the goddess Diana, of the temple itself, the city, so much so that they had
a union, they called it a gilt, that they even had their own union. So in Ephesus
the culture, the religion, the politics, all of it was mixed together as one
entity and the closest idea of that for my experience was where I grew up in
Catholic Quebec. If you were born in Quebec in the 40s then you were
born into a place a province that had six million people and ninety four or
five percent of those people were Roman Catholic. That meant that every mayor,
every premier, every politician, every police chief, every everybody, every
teacher, every doctor, every lawyer, everyone was Roman Catholic and the
church ran the hospitals they ran the schools and also ran the politicians in those days. So it was a
complete, where I grew up the Catholic Church completely dominated
the culture and the religion and the society of that time. Well in the same
way that the cults to Diana and I'm not being insulting to Roman Catholics I'm
not comparing Roman Catholicism to Diana worship but from a social perspective it
was very much the same way everything revolved around this particular worship
and temple. So let's go to Acts chapter 19 read a couple of verses there. It says,
"And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and
they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. There were in all about
twelve men and he entered the synagogue and continued speaking out boldly for
three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But
when some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way" the
way was the manner that they referred to Christianity at that time. "speaking evil
of the Way before the multitude, he withdrew from them and took away the
disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. This took place for two
years, so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews
and Greeks. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of
Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the
sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out. but also some of
the Jewish exorcists, who went from place to place, attempted to name over those
who had the evil spirits the name of Jesus, saying, 'I adjure you by Jesus whom
Paul preaches.' Seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing
this. And the evil spirit answered and said to them, 'I recognized Jesus, and I
know about Paul, but who are you?' And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on
them and subdued all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house
naked and wounded." And I read that to show you some extraordinary things were
taking place in Ephesus at the time. Note the growth of the
church not only in Ephesus but from Ephesus throughout the
region as Christians went about evangelizing. They were converted they
were sharing the news of their own conversion the news of Christ with their
family members with their friends and so on and so forth so that's what he means
the word of the Lord went out. It doesn't mean that Paul went to every single
village it means as he was preaching there and those who were converted were
hearing the word were being converted they themselves went out and began to
share the gospel so that that whole region was being evangelized.
Well then comes the riot, so let's skip down. We don't have time to read all of
these sections but let's skip down to verse 21, again in Acts 19 it says, "Now
after these things were finished, Paul purposed in the Spirit to go to
Jerusalem after he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, 'After I have
been there, I must also see Rome.' And having sent into Macedonia two of those
who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a
while." So Paul feels that the church is well established so he sends two workers
ahead of him to prepare for his next trip to northern Greece and then
hopefully Rome and then return to Jerusalem. Again I want you to notice the
way that he does things: he comes in he preaches some people are converted
they're baptized he works with them helps them to spread the gospel once he
sees a group is firmly established he sends two of his workers on to another
place to prepare the place for his coming perhaps to preach the gospel or
to make contact and so on and so forth. So we see the same process taking place
here. So after sending his men ahead he remains a little while longer to
strengthen the church in Ephesus and that's when the trouble begins to
take place. Again I don't have time to read this long passage here and I'm
convinced that many of you already know what's taken place:
you know the preaching of the gospel had begun to threaten the business
surrounding Diana worship so the local businessmen stirred up a riot
focused on Paul and his companions. So long as it wasn't bothering anybody you
know so long as the gospel is not bothering anybody, so long as
nothing is changing well then you know no one cares do your thing. But now the
preaching of the gospel is affecting the business because a lot of the people
there who worship Diana and who supported that turn away from that type
of thing and that in turn affects the bottom line of these businessmen as we
say, they stir up a riot against Paul and his
companions. Now they mentioned in this passage Artemis and the
goddess Artemis so you're wondering is that Artemis or is it Diana? Well it's
the same. Two names for the same person. Artemis is the Greek form and Diana is
the Latin form of her name. Actually the the history of the worship to Diana
starts with the meteor. It was a meteor that fell from the sky and the Ephesians
considered this a visit from the gods if you wish. The meteor was actually encased
in the entranceway and that became a holy place for them at that time. Artemis,
the goddess Artemis was the sister of Apollo daughter of Jupiter and Letona in
Greek mythology. Now the riot and the threatened execution of a Roman citizen,
that was Paul, was unlawful because Rome and Rome only controlled the courts and
so the riot began the purpose of the riot was to get rid of Paul hopefully to
execute him or perhaps lynch him if you wish through the through the mob.
Eventually one of the city leaders quelled a riot by pointing out that
they were actually breaking the law by rioting and by threatening the lives of
certainly of Paul the Apostle because he was a Roman citizen. Now that was what
was going on the surface, but underneath this something else was
working. The problem in Ephesus with Christianity
and Diana worship is that Christianity refuses syncretism. Syncretism
when it's applied to religion is the mixing together of religions to form one
religion and that's what was taking well that's what the
Christians that Ephesus were refusing to do. You know pagan religions were often a
mixture of several belief systems. You know the Romans just took over the Greek
mythology's the Greek gods and they just gave them Roman names and an added some.
So syncretism I mean it goes on today for example, Hinduism is very much like
this. It's a syncretic religion that's why many Hindus accept Christ and they
simply add Him to their pantheon of gods. Just one, the more the better, the more the merrier. If you've got one god that's great, two gods
better, five gods wow how can you miss? Syncretism was a common feature of pagan
religions at that time. Now a primary feature of biblical Christianity on the
other hand is that it refuses to be mixed with any other religion and that does not include non biblical principles of other religions. If someone says, well you know the Hindus believe in their religion for
example that you have to respect life. Well yeah okay that idea certainly is
transferable to Christianity it's not new to Christianity of course we respect
life because everyone is created in the image of God or all humans are
created in the image of God. So those ideas are fine but anything that's non
biblical you can't mix them together. The beauty of Christianity is
that it refuses syncretism but it adapts itself to culture. You can adapt
Christianity to any culture. The Church of Christ for example exists in China,
much different culture than here. Exists in Ghana, it exists in
Alaska, it exists in Rio de Janeiro, it exists in the Middle East. Very
different cultures all around and yet Christianity has this flexibility, this
malleability that if it can adapt itself to a culture without compromising its
principles and its theology. It's the marvelous thing one of the problems with
Islam for example is that it works well if you have a theocracy. In other
words if the politicians are Muslims and they imposed the
Sharia Law it works well. But it doesn't work that well when you
try to form it to a Western culture. It's one of the big problems
that they're having they, Islam doesn't adapt very well to other cultures. So it was this refusal to allow pagan Dianna worship to influence
it and its demand that idol worshippers abandoned their practices that caused
all the trouble. Had Paul and the Christians there said you know what just
keep on going with your Diana worship that's fine just add Christianity to it,
no, the idea was you had to give up what you had, you had to abandon what you
had because it was false and you had to embrace Christianity all of Christianity
and that caused problems and does it still cause problems today? Absolutely. In
certain Middle Eastern countries you can be executed for abandoning Islam for
Christianity so it's still a problem today. All right let's talk about
the letter itself to Ephesus the time and the author. After Paul leaves Ephesus
he goes back to Greece and ultimately he makes his way back home to Jerusalem
with a final stop not at Ephesus but near Ephesus a place called Meletis an
island near the coast and you read about that in Acts chapter 20.
From here he gives instructions to the elders of the church there in Ephesus
and surrounding area and then they bid him a tearful farewell as he goes on to
Jerusalem. Once he returns to Jerusalem we learn from the final chapters of the
book of Acts that Paul is in prison for a long period of time and ultimately he
goes to Rome to stand trial before Caesar. Interesting thing, Lise and I were talking about that this morning, just talking about life and how God
works in your life and how sometimes we want something to happen whatever that
is and we give God the thing we want to happen and we give God the plan for it
as well and our prayer is usually God please let this thing happen and let it
work out the way that I've given you the script and I'll know
you're answering my prayer because the script I gave you is going to start
happening. And so Paul, he had a thing like this: I want to go to Rome. Rome
is the center of the universe during his lifetime. I want to
go to Rome and I want to speak to the heavy hitters in Rome boy if the gospel
could be preached to the Emperor if the gospel could be preached to the leaders
in Rome, wow imagine that. And here's the plan: I preach, I established churches
all the way to Rome, then when I get to Rome you know jackpot. So what happens to
Paul, he's arrested, he languishes in prison for years and years, he finally
arrives in Rome, how? In chains and he spends two years in prison
as a prisoner in Rome. Yeah, he got the answer to his prayer, but was it his
script? We need to remember that sometimes you know we need to be careful
the script that we hand God. He might answer our prayer but He'll do it in His
own way and in His own in his own time. And so while Paul is under house arrest
in Rome between 61 and 63 AD he's visited by a succession of
preachers and messengers from different congregations giving him
various reports on the condition and the progress of different congregations that
he has established in the past. People like Epaphroditus and Timothy, Tychacus, these were all sent back with letters that Paul had written to
encourage and teach various churches. We have copies of four of these letters
written by Paul while in Rome. He may have written more letters there is even
evidence that he did write more letters but only four remain: Ephesians
Philippians Colossians and the letter to Philemon. Those were written while he was
in prison awaiting his trial if you wish or his hearing. Now three of these four
were written at the same time and they were sent by one messenger: the book of
Ephesians, the book of Colossians, or the letters if you wish to Ephesians, to
Colossians and the letter to Philemon. We add another character here to the play,
his name is Onesimus. Onesimus was a runaway slave and he was converted in
prison by Paul in Rome and eventually when he was released Paul sent him back
to his master and his master was called Philemon. So he sends Onesimus, that's
the slave, with a letter to his master Philemon. Now Philemon was a member at
Colossae, so the letter for the church was also brought by Onesimus as well.
Paul says give this letter to Philemon he is your master and give this
letter to the church at Colossae. Now Ephesus was only a hundred miles west of
Colossae and so on his way back Onesimus also dropped off the letter to the
Ephesians. The fourth letter that he wrote, the letter to the Philippians, was
delivered by Epaphroditus. (And I want you to note the correct spelling, there's
a misprint in your notes there, that's not how you spell Epaphroditus.) There's little doubt that Paul is the author of the
letter to the Philippians and that he names himself in the very
first verse and many historical writings show that Paul was universally credited
with the writing of these four epistles by the early church and that was one of
the criteria to establish inspiration. Did an Apostle write the letter and so
there's early confirmation that Paul was the author of this letter. In other words
this is an authentic letter from Paul the Apostle and was recognized as such
from the very beginning by the early church. All right a couple of reasons for
the letter a lot of problems being faced by the first century church as it sought
to be established and grow in a pagan society. One problem there was immoral
influence of the pagan society within the Roman Empire of that period. Now you
have to understand Jews had a lot of moral training: the Ten Commandments, the
Law. The Jews were well trained in moral moral living, about
sexual purity, about honesty and all these other things. The
Greeks however that came into the church they didn't have the same kind of moral
upbringing if you wish. For them much of their worship involves sexual activity,
there was tremendous dishonesty in business affairs, they did not have the
moral upbringing if you wish like the Jews. So when you put these two groups
together in the same group there were problems. And so one of the problems was
the level of morality to maintain as Christians and teaching that was
necessary to do that. Another problem was the open and active persecution of the
church. The Jews were persecuted by number one their own people. If you were
a Jew and abandoned Judaism to go into Christianity you were cut off from your
family. You were cut off from your culture in addition to that there
was persecution by the state. So they were a minority group and they
were cut off from their own minority so they were like a minority within a
minority. The Gentiles on the other hand didn't have that problem but they did
have the problem of the persecution that was taking place of religious groups
other than those who worshipped the emperor. And then the third reason for
some of these letters there were there were the dangers of false teachers
creeping into the church with uninspired teachings. One example was the mixing
of Greek philosophical thought with Christianity, syncretism. Or mixing Jewish
law keeping and ceremonial law with the gospel of grace. I was talking to someone
the other day about baptism and how there's always this debate: should
you be baptized, should you be baptized, is it necessary, is it not necessary? And I pointed out to them that in the New Testament when the church was
established you will never find anywhere in the New Testament where there was a
debate about baptism. Nobody, that was a non-issue, nobody argued about should I
or shouldn't I be baptized every person who believed was baptized. The argument
at the beginning was not between should I be baptized or not, the argument at the
beginning was are we saved according to a process of grace through faith or are
we saved through a process of law and perfectionism? That was the debate that
was taking place in the book of Romans, in the book of Colossians. Not whether
you should be baptized or not that was a non-issue. And so
there was the mixing of different religions, the debate over
syncretism should we allow other ideas to come into the religion. And then of
course there was the problem of getting converts from Judaism and converts from
Gentiles to live together in harmony as brothers and sisters in
Christ. In other words, there was a culture clash. To get these people
together and the culture clash was based on skin color it was based on
background. But such a different background.
So most of Paul's letters deal with these different issues; for example I
Corinthians deals very much so with the problem of immorality and proper conduct,
personal conduct, conduct in the church and division. The book of Colossians
deals with the mixing of Greek and Jewish ideas with the gospel of Christ.
The book of Galatians is an appeal to Jewish Christians to accept their
Gentile brethren and Ephesians was an appeal to Gentile Christians not to
exclude Jewish Christians or anyone else for that matter from inclusion in the
church. So where the Gentiles were in the majority they didn't want to put up with
the Jewish sensibilities. Get with the program or get out. That was their attitude. So it was an appeal to those who had no
sentimental or cultural or historical ties to the Jewish religion, the Gentiles
they had no ties whatsoever. His appeal to them to be tolerant and accepting of
those whose history and relationship to a Jewish Messiah was still important. For
the Gentiles Jesus was not the Messiah, you see what I'm saying. But to the Jews
He was the Messiah connected to all the prophecies. For the
Gentiles He was the Lord. Notice the Apostles when they were
preaching to the Gentiles performed miracles; less so when they were
preaching to the Jews. When they were preaching to the Jews they were
appealing to Scripture, this is what the prophets said, this is what Jesus did,
this is what the prophets said, this is what Jesus did, this is what the
prophets said, this is what Jesus. He had to convince them, they had to convince them
from the Scripture because that was the the acid test. The
Gentiles they had no investment in the Old Testament so
to them miracles were performed. To say you can believe what I'm saying
because of what I'm doing. So it was to merge these two groups together as one.
Now Paul did not want to see two churches: one Jewish and one Gentile. He
wanted both of these to be accommodated in one single body, one body only. So his
defense of the Gentiles was seen in his teaching and associating with them while
calling out to his Jewish brethren to accept them as full partners in Christ.
Let's face it, he was a Pharisee, he was part of the strictest sect of the Jewish
religion, who had never had even come close to a Gentile, and now as a
Christian as a preacher he eats with them, he associates with them, he works
with them and this was an encouragement to Gentiles who understood that you know
the way he had to travel and it was also a sign to the Jews. Wow if this
former Pharisee who was converted to Christianity if he can embrace these
Gentiles through Christianity certainly we can do it too. That was his
appeal to the Jews. Now his appeal from Gentiles to the Jews was seen in his
effort to collect money from Gentile churches in order to help the Jews in
Jerusalem suffering from a crippling famine, we read about that in I
Corinthians. And the idea there was if Christian Jews had problems accepting
Gentile Christians this gift was meant to break down their resistance and their
suspicion. We're starving to death, we're having trouble financially, and who
helps us, who's sending us money? Gentile Christians. It went a long way to smooth
out the wrinkles in their relationship. And it still does today
right? A kind act you do a kind act for someone that you don't
have a lot in common with. Doesn't that smooth out the way to build a
relationship. So in his letter to the Ephesians who were experiencing the divisiveness between Jew and Gentile, Paul describes a church that is big enough
and loving enough to include Jewish and Gentile Christians as well as people
of different genders, viewpoints and experiences. And isn't that a lesson that
we continually learn even today. Perhaps less culturally because this country is
so mixed and diverse culturally, but the idea of having a viewpoint, of having an
opinion, don't we always have to work to make room to allow people to have their
opinion and to have their viewpoint without dividing, creating new
groups, just because we don't agree on some point. Now in addition to this Paul
demonstrates in this epistle how unity and order in the church, in the family, in
society and in the spiritual world can be achieved through Jesus Christ who is
the head of the body of believers. It's interesting to note that Ephesians
is the only letter where Paul uses the word "church" in the universal and not in
the local congregational sense. The only place where he talks about the church
meaning the entire body of Christ wherever it meets. Every other time when
he uses the church, ecclesia, when he uses that word he's
talking to the local congregation. Ephesians has a kind of a wide view. It's a macro- view if you wish of the church. One
commentator has called Ephesians the epistle of the church. So we can say the
book of Acts describes the physical history of the church and the book of
Ephesians describes its character. Big difference. Okay so the theme of course
is the centrality of the church let's take a look at the outline this is how
we're going to study it. First of all the first section the blessings of the
church Ephesians 1:1-23. Probably the most beautiful
if you wish the most exalted section of Paul's epistles. People say well
we're going to look at the plan of salvation and they go to bed the book of
Acts but really the plan of salvation is right here in Ephesians. If I want to see
the plan of salvation I'm going to look at Ephesians chapter 1 as you know
one place where they describe it. The second section will be the
universality of the church chapter 2:1- 3:21. This is
where Paul is talking about the body as it meets everywhere.
The third section: the obligations of the church. So the blessings of the church,
the universality of the church, the obligations of the church. And the
obligations of the church are threefold: one, unity because if you don't have
unity you can't have anything else. Righteousness, how we are to live as
Christians 4:17-6:9. And then faithfulness, 6:10-24. Unity, righteousness, faithfulness. Those
are the obligations of the members of the church. So Ephesians more than any
other epistle demonstrates how important and how central the church is to God's
plan and purpose for mankind. If someone were to say, I don't need
the church because God and I are friends and you know I'm with God when I'm out in the out in the forest when I'm out walking in the forest
I'm with God why do I need to come to like a man-made church building
I'm with God when I'm not want when I'm in my boat out on Lake Hefner,
I'm with God and at night when I go to bed and I pray I'm with God I don't need
the church. When somebody says that to me the first thing that comes to my mind is
first of all this person does not know the Bible.
This person has not read very carefully the scriptures and the second thing that
comes to mind is this person certainly has not read Ephesians because in
Ephesians Paul through the inspiration of God talks about the universality and
the importance of the body in Christ a body of Christ and he exalts the church
to such a high level such a necessary level there is no Christianity without
the church that's why Jesus came to earth to establish the church. So we're
going to be talking a lot about the church. Less about its history,
that would be the book of Acts, more about its character and also how God
sees the church. A terrific study here in the book of Ephesians. Alright
well that's our class this morning, any questions, are we good? That's what I
like, thank you for your attention.
