Ephesians 1

Discussion Questions

1. What does Ephesians 1 teach us about being “in Christ?”
2. What do we learn about God and what do we learn about ourselves from Ephesians 1?
3. What does Paul’s prayer reveal about his concerns and hopes for believers?
4. How might the truths from Ephesians 1 transform us? How might believing these truths change the way we think, the way we behave or, the way we treat others?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and we have extra copies if you did not bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high. Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle. We actually like to open the Bible and study whole portions of it. Generally we’re studying verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. Today, we’ve been thrown a little bit of a curveball. Our plan, our method. This is such a brilliant catechism here because of that. You get thrown a curveball every now and then. The question is how do you respond? How do you react? And so about seven o’clock this morning we discover Mark not feeling well and can’t lead worship. Tommy calls and says, “Hey, we’re going to have to move things around this morning.” 

Oh good. I’m really excited about coming into worship today because I’m just going to be leading the creed and it’s going to be really exciting for me. And so Tommy goes, “Well, here’s the thing. Mark’s sick, so I’m going to have to move over to the worship seat, and Matt’s going to lead the creed.” And I go, “Oh good. You want me to stay home? What do you want me to do? I’m happy to.” And he goes, “No, no, you’re going to preach. So do you think you could do that?” And I go, “Well, let me work on that real quick and I’ll see what I can do.” So we have some been doing Lunchtime Talks and our Lunchtime Talk series currently is in the book of Ephesians. And starting August 7th, I’m actually going to take a walk through Ephesians in my Daily Devotional podcast, which goes Monday through Friday. 

So I’m all Ephesianed up. I’m ready to rock and roll with Ephesians, and I hope you are too. So we’re going to take just a little look at Ephesians chapter one. I hope you’ll turn with me there. On Lunchtime Talks, we call this the Glory of his Grace. This is a phrase that recurs two or three times in this ancient letter of the apostle Paul probably written around, ah, we think 60, 62, right in there maybe to the mid-sixties. We’re not sure. They didn’t date their stuff. And it’s not a document you can open up and look on your computer and see when it was written, but it’s a powerful letter. I’m pretty sure he’s writing from a prison cell in Rome and that he could write this stuff from that kind of a situation is remarkable to me. When we know that he writes books like Philippians talking about joy so much from a prison cell. 

You just have to look and you just have to know that God must have been providentially working in his life because his attitude toward his creature comforts or lack thereof was not negative like mine would be. I mean, most of us, we get so upset when it takes two or three more seconds for our texts to make it up to the satellite and back down than normal. We get so upset over the silliest little things that we’ll look in the rearview mirror in about six months from now and it won’t even have mattered. And yet we in that moment just got so upset by it. So the providence of God and being aware of the providence of God is so amazing, so powerful. And I love Ephesians because I feel like as I’m reading this letter and as I’m studying it, I’m seeing that same kind of disposition of heart. 

Now, here’s where Ephesus was. It’s up on the screen. There’s going to be a map there, the purple pink area there says Asia. That’s actually what we call Turkey today. You might not be able to see it, but there’s a white line that comes in from the left and goes into that area across the Aegean Sea. And it comes into where it says Ionia, right above the word Ionia there, it says Ephesus. It was probably the second-largest city in the Roman Empire during certain seasons of the Roman Empire. In other words, whether it was second or third or fourth at any given point in time, here’s the point, big city, lots of market driven forces at work, lots of cultural forces at work, lots of education, lots of schools and things like that. So Paul on his first visit to Ephesus was on his second missionary journey and then his third missionary journey, he stayed there for three years or so. Today, Ephesus, and we hope to visit this in a year or two. 

If some of you want to go on a footsteps of Paul trip, let us know. But the ruins there are amazing. There’s a library there from the second century, which I’ll put a picture up there, the Library of Celsus had 12,000 scrolls. I mean a pretty serious library in a city like that. The next shot is the ruins of the sixth century Basilica of St. John. So a church named after St. John. John who we have just been studying, First John. And this same John actually ends up living in Ephesus toward the end of his life. And he’s so loved in that area that they remembered him well and somebody built a church in his memory. The earliest known mentions of the Temple of Artemis. And you’ll just see here, a column and a half is left there of the Temple of Artemis. 

Artemis was a Greek goddess and the Roman counterpart was Diana. So sometimes you see in these pantheons, the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon, you see it seems like it’s the same yet it has different names. And that’s just because the Greek empire was around first, the Roman Empire came second and they venerated and worshiped these nature deities. And this temple of Artemis goes all the way back, way predates the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire goes all the way back to the Bronze Age, which in human history and world history, that could be 3,300 BC to 1,200 BC anywhere in there. We’re not really sure. Again, it’s not stamped with we built this on this date, but the ruins of the second century Temple of Hadrian is there too dedicated to the deified Emperor Hadrian. He reigned 117 to 138 AD. 

And a lot of these emperors, Roman emperors, they demanded to be seen as gods. So if you think that you know what a narcissist is in our day and time because of some of the religious leaders that are so narcissistic, you thought I was going to say the politicians didn’t you? Okay, them too. If you think you know what a narcissist is and how many of you live with one? Don’t do that, don’t do that. No. If you think you know what a narcissist is, you have not met a Roman emperor, especially Nero, who’s the emperor while Paul is writing the letter to the Ephesians. Nero reigned I think 54 to 68 AD. And this is early sixties as I said. So this site for Ephesus, and by the way, here’s the amphitheater, this is one of the most well-preserved ruins of biblical history. 

This would be that same place where in Acts chapter 19 on his third missionary journey, the apostle Paul is dragged into the theater and all the people are screaming and yelling because he’s been preaching the gospel. People have been turning to Christ. People have been turning away from the worship of Artemis and Diana and all these businesses, all these businessmen were making lots of money selling little statues, statuettes of Artemis, Diana and of the Temple of Artemis and Diana, once considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world, and they were making all kinds of money. Here comes this guy preaching Jesus, crucified, risen, ascended back into heaven, promised to return and set things right. People are moving away from needing those little statuettes and idle worship falling away as they worship the one true and living God and this theater and the harbor street that leads right up to it, really powerful. 

So here’s the glory of His grace. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to look at Ephesians, like I said, chapter one, and I think what we’ll do today is we’ll just take verses one through 14 if that’s okay. And as I roll into just reading those, this next slide, I want to give you the theme for the book a little bit, too. Chapters one, it divides right very nicely right down the middle. And in chapters one through three, you really see the apostle Paul writing and summarizing the beliefs of the Christian faith. In chapters four through six, he talks about what those beliefs then turn into in terms of behavior. We have the new t-shirt that says faithful to his calling, cheerful in his service, fruitful in his kingdom. That is we’re moving from belief into behavior. It’s affecting us. 

It’s not merely behavior modification. The gospel is not that. It’s heart transformation. And all of a sudden what we say we believe impacts the way we behave. It’s not the requirements for salvation, it’s the results of salvation. And so chapters one through three, doctrine. Chapters four through six, practice. Chapters one through three, indicatives, they indicate what the contents of the Christian faith are. And today, for instance, you’ll see in verses one through 14, you’ll see there’s some indication of who God the Father, the God the Son, and God the Spirit are we’re very Trinitarian even though the word trinity doesn’t show up in our Bibles, we’re Trinitarian because the God of the Bible has revealed himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And so we see that here, these indicatives really important, but they help us learn how to walk out the imperatives. 

In other words, when I believe the gospel, I’m not on my own. This is a gospel that God the Father planned. Jesus Christ came and died for my sins. I now can walk in the freedom of His grace and I don’t walk on my own power because the Spirit is at work in me. And all of that can be true for you as well. We have these spiritual riches, this wealth in Christ, and we walk in Christ. And so the first half and the second half go together as well, the first half being about what Christ has done. The second about our responses, the next slide, this is going to be so important as we read these 14 verses, but you’re going to see in the book of Ephesians as you study it, some of you may want to join us on our Lunchtime Talks or perhaps plan to pick up the podcast later on when it starts in August. 

But you’ll see that in Ephesians, just these two words, in Christ, appears 13 times. In him, which is also another way of saying in Christ, eight times. So you got 21 times where the apostle Paul is saying, “You are in Christ, you are in Him.” Indicative. Therefore, this is true. And chapter one, and we won’t read them all and I won’t stop and point them all out as we do, but I just want you to know just in chapter one alone of the 21 times, 10 of them are in chapter one. 

It’s like the apostle Paul says, “At the beginning of this letter, I’m going to set you up for the whole rest of this letter and you will be thinking about your life in Christ.” And it really, really is important, it really matters. It’s, as I say, a strong Trinitarian focus verses three to six about the Father choosing and calling you, me, about the Son saving and redeeming in verses seven through 12 and the Spirit sanctifying and sealing us in verses 13 and 14. All right, without further ado, let’s look then at verses one through 14 of Ephesians chapter one. 

And as we do, Lord, I pray by Your Holy Spirit that You’ve set us up for this morning, this little change in our plans that we had so carefully laid out. So now we’re in the position, Lord, of finding ourselves shifting and changing with expectancy. In other words, because you did this, because we see that You are in charge of every molecule of Your universe, that not one hair on our heads has been somehow or another misplaced by You. You’ve numbered every single one of them according to Jesus. 

Now, we now expect, Lord, that You’ll speak to us in some way because You wanted to steer us in another direction from the one that we thought we were supposed to go in. So we pray, Holy Spirit, that You’ll open our eyes to see what we might not have seen, open our hearts to believe and trust what we might not have come to believe and trust today. Lord, that You would make us what we are not right now, that you will transform us into Your people who would be faithful to Your calling, who would be cheerful in Your service, a people who would be fruitful in Your kingdom. We pray in Jesus name, amen and amen. 

So Ephesians answers some really big questions, big questions we deal with in our own day and time as well. Identity is a massive question right now. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a person? Are we creatures designed and created by a God or are we our own? Do we belong to ourselves? Or do we belong to the culture and the influences of the culture around us? Who are we? And the apostle Paul comes right at the chute answering the question who he is. He knows who he is and it’s refreshingly clear. I got to be honest, to me, to read this guy say “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Now we could stop right there and I could probably go a half an hour just on those two verses. Paul, this is his Latin name. We used to know him in the early chapters of the book of Acts. We knew him as Saul. That’s right. That’s his Hebrew version of his name. And so as he moves westward with the gospel out into the Mediterranean, away from Jewish territory, he’s willing to put on his Latin name and go by Paul. I love that about him. He’s not too good… “No, you call me who I am. You call me my Hebrew.” No, he is so putting the gospel first that he sets aside his own name even and says, “You call me by what can get me to the gospel quicker with you.” Paul, an apostle, that means a sent one, a messenger if you will. 

And you remember a lot of you when we studied the book of Acts, that day on the road to Damascus when Jesus interrupted his trip and literally at the noonday sun, this boom just did a spiritual smack down on Saul as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians. Jesus interrupted him. Jesus literally stopped him in his tracks and Jesus changed him forever in that moment. Who took the initiative there? Jesus took the initiative there. Who was first the initiator?

Jesus was the initiator. Paul or Saul was not looking for Jesus. Saul was not even looking for God. He was looking for God’s people to persecute them. And Jesus intruded, interrupted, maybe Jesus will intrude your life in some way. He does it in large and small ways. He does it in refreshing ways, even as we’ve experienced this morning for some of us. But he’s an apostle of Christ Jesus, he’s not just a messenger of his own story. 

He’s a messenger of Christ Jesus. He is there not for himself. He’s there for Christ by the will of God. Who are you? By the will of God. Who am I? By the will of God. Do I even stop and think about that? Do I even stop and think about my life being found in the will of God for my life? Or am I so busy building my little kingdom, my brand, my wishes, my agenda? Me, my, me, my over and over. And if we all get that way, society crumbles from within because it’s just the cacophony of competing autobiographies and we never will ever be able to get along that way. And we see it in our own day and time, don’t we? He is an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints. The saints? 

We’re all thinking of that they must be really holy people if they’re called saints. No, they’re just believers. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. That’s what the New Testament teaches us. If you were in Christ Jesus here today, you are a saint. A saint means one who has been set apart. It doesn’t mean one who is perfect, it means you’ve been set apart for Him. You’re faithful to His calling, cheerful in His service, fruitful in His kingdom. It’s all about Him, not about you, not about me. And they have two addresses, don’t they? Verse one, “they are at Ephesus and they are in Christ Jesus.” I love this about the Christian faith. You have two addresses. I have two addresses too. They’re at Ephesus, that’s where they happen to live, and they’re in Christ Jesus. 

I heard one preacher say, “I wonder what it meant to Ephesus that these saints are in Christ Jesus.” And then he turned it around and he said, “And I wonder what it means to Christ Jesus that he has saints at Ephesus.” I want to say the same thing for us right here in Nashville, and if you’re watching online, wherever you may be, fill in your city, but what difference does it make to Christ Jesus that he has us here in Nashville and what difference does it make to Nashville that I’m in Christ Jesus, that you’re in Christ Jesus? Very important, I think. And you can see again how these indicatives chapter one through three lead us to these imperatives. The way it looks when we live it out matters because we have two addresses and they’re both important. Verse three, “Blessed be the God and Father over Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” 

There’s another one of those in Christ. “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved.” Now, some of your English translations have a period at the end of verse six, but that’s just not there in the Greek. You know what? Verses three through 14 are one long run-on sentence.

I know a bunch of you’re familiar with C.S. Lewis and sometimes I’ll read through Mere Christianity. I try to read through Mere Christianity every single year. And there are some sentences in there that he’s going for the long throw. I mean, this is like, wow, that’s fly-fishing all the way across this state. You know what I mean? But he got that. The apostle Paul’s pretty good at this long sentence, and partly that’s him, he’s so exuberant. He’s exalting God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are meant to see this as almost a breathless presentation. There’s one theologian that says these verses should have been set to an epic music score and become a part of some giant, massive worldwide known oratory type of an opera or something like that. 

Verse three, again, I’ll try to read it without a breath. Ready? Here we go. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before…” Oh, I breathed. See? See, I’m a loser. I don’t have this. “Just as He shows us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption His sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will.” I’m glad it’s not according to my performance as a Christian or as a pastor. I’m glad He chose me, not because, oh, He looked across, “Oh, oh, I want that one right there. Look at that guy. He can stand up and say a few words every now and then at the last minute.” 

No, that’s not why He chose me. That’s not why He chose you. And in the Old Testament, the same thing is true of Israel. He chose Israel, God’s people, not because of anything that was in them at all, but because of what was in His heart. He set His love. In other words, He took the initiative Himself and set His love on them. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. In other words, before you were even you, He knew you fully and loved you completely. That’s so mind-blowing. In our day and time, we’re also afraid of being known fully because we’re afraid we won’t be loved very well if we’re known fully. And here comes this Bible and here comes Paul and the book of Ephesians saying, no, before you were born, you had that cute little baby kind of thing. 

I love it when we dedicate babies. I love this, and they’re all pulling at the mic and they’re all… And every now and then one of them will say something at the wrong time or say something awkward or whatever at the wrong time. I love all of that. But before any of the cuteness and before any of the rebellion for that matter, He had set His love on you. And this is amazing. “According to the kind intention, to praise of His glory, of His grace,” there’s our theme, “which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved.” How much did it cost for you? Freely bestowed on us in the beloved. Whose cost was it? The cost was to Christ, but Jesus paid it all. And now I can say you can rest in His love because of that, okay? Verse seven, “In Him,” another one of those, “We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses according to the riches of His grace.” According to what again? 

According to the riches of His grace, not according to my performance. Again, see how this is just He keeps knocking down the whole performance mindset. And so many of us, we say we believe in grace, but we live out even emotionally and spiritually sometimes. We live out as if

God’s really mad at me today. Why? Because I blew it and He’ll never love me again because I blew it again in that same area. It’s not true. His love for you, His grace for you is according to His own heart and His own capacity. 

And here in verse seven, “He has forgiven you and redeemed you according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom. And inside, He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His kind intention, there it is again, which He purposed in Him with a view to it administration suitable to the fullness of time. That is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens, things upon the earth. In Him also, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory in Him. You also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” 

So now we’ve got the Father blessing us. We’ve got the Father choosing us. We’ve got the Son saving and redeeming us. Now we’ve got the Holy Spirit sealing us with this promise, and He’s given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of His glory. Take a breath. That’s just beautiful. Now, the rest of the chapter is a prayer and we won’t have time to look at all of that, but I know some of you have questions about election and predestination, so I’m going to go ahead and answer all of those questions right now. 

Yeah, sorry, overpromising, underperforming here. Here’s three things about it though. I’ll say this. First of all, predestination and election. These are not human speculation. These are divine revelation. These are not matters of… This didn’t all begin. The idea of predestination and election did not begin with John Calvin. Why? How do I know that? Ephesians, Romans nine. It predates John Calvin. It didn’t begin with Augustine either. I know a lot of fans of Augustine here too. It didn’t begin with him either. It goes back to the New Testament, New Testament, namely right here in the apostle Paul’s writing Ephesians chapter one in verse nine as well. So if I’ve got to start with that as divine revelation, not human speculation, now what do I do with it? That’s a really good question to ask. And so that leads me to my second thing. I know a lot of people when they think about that what they’re dealing with or wrestling with is justice. 

How’s God being just and equitable with everybody? And I just want to say to you as your pastor, I don’t think you want justice in this matter because if I get what I deserve, if that’s what justice is, I get death in hell because the Bible very clearly teaches that I’m a sinner. So I’m not really interested myself in justice in that category. I like justice in a lot of categories. But in this category, soteriology it’s called, the matters of salvation, I don’t want justice. I want grace. And grace is for the guilty and undeserving. And brothers and sisters, that is me and that is you. Now that God would show favor, that He would be merciful and gracious to anyone at all is just mind-blowing. He doesn’t owe it to us. We don’t deserve it. We don’t have a claim on Him. We can’t demand it from Him because we’re guilty and undeserving.

So you got to start with this idea that it’s God’s divine revelation here that He’s chosen and called some. And then you have to understand that He’s done that not because of anything that is worthy in them themselves. It’s not because you go to the Village Chapel. It’s not because some of you have upped your tithe to like 6%, okay? It’s not because any of you are doing really wonderful things like going out into the world and serving the poor or fighting for just causes as you might be. That’s not what gets us approval from God. Is He pleased with some of that work? Sure He is, but that’s not what makes me righteous in His sight. That’s not how I come to the place of having my sins forgiven. I receive that by grace. I cannot achieve that myself. And so that’s really important. 

And then thirdly, some would argue, well, if you believe in that and you believe therefore that you can just live however you want because you’re predetermined that you are going to go to heaven and all that sort of thing. In other words, as if it were an incentive to riotous living to know that God has set His love on me, not because of anything in me. And I would say no, I don’t think that’s the case. I know that we have all seen that in some human beings from time to time that their parents love them and love them and love them and love them, and yet they turn into the worst, darkest reckless most kind of lifestyle or whatever that a prodigal could ever do. I understand that, but that’s not what’s happening here. God has lavished me with His love. 

He’s lavished you with His love. And along the way, the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts to reveal to us that it’s in spite of my rebellion, in spite of my sinfulness, that He has loved me and that causes me to crumble, to tremble, to fall to my knees, to lift up the empty hands of faith as Francis Schaeffer would say and receive what I cannot achieve or purchase on my own. And then the proper response is what we read about in verse chapters four, five, and six. I want to rise now and live for my Lord in such a way that I’m cheerful in His service and fruitful in His kingdom. There’s so much here. Look at what God in Christ has done. I think it’s going to be, oh, well, all right, roll these slides for me up there, will you? Because there’s a bunch of these things I want to say. 

He’s blessed us. Is that there? Okay. He’s blessed us, He’s chosen us, He’s predestined us, He’s adopted us. In other words, you’re no longer just property. He owns the whole universe. Why? Because He’s the creator of everything in it. But He wants you specifically you collectively, but you specifically to be His son or daughter. Would you like that? Would you like to know God like that? He’s graced us. We just saw that in verse six. Verse seven, He’s redeemed us, revealed His will to us. Verse nine, He’s granted us in eternal inheritance. Verse 11, He sealed us in Christ with the Holy Spirit. Now, these notes are not up on the thing that we loaded up early this morning because we had to change things at the last minute, but they will be available to you in the pretty near future. 

I love the way Dr. Klyne Snodgrass says this.

“Ephesians presents a gospel of union with Christ more powerfully than any other New Testament letter. Nothing short of attachment to Him will rescue us from the human plight. Nothing can define us as human beings more than attachment to Him. From living with Him, we learn how to live for Him.”
Dr. Klyne Snodgrass

That’s just awesome. See, all of this is about in what God has done in Christ. And again, 10 times in chapter one, in Him, in Christ.

So the challenge to all of us, the charge to all us now is here’s the indicative of chapter one. Now live in Christ. And again, he’ll tell us more about how that looks in the actual goings-on of our lives as we get to chapters four, five, and six, which we won’t be doing here. We’re going back to second John, by the way. 

So next week. So when we say read ahead at the end of today, we just want you to go back to second John and then we’ll pick up third John as well after that. But what a rich opening for Ephesians this is and to have us focus our attention back on our lives in Christ. So important, I think, for us. I love the way that John Stott says this in the message to the Ephesians. He says,

“Divine illumination and human thought belong together. All our thinking is unproductive without the spirit of truth; yet his enlightenment is not intended to save us the trouble of using our minds. It is precisely as we ponder what God has done in Christ that the Spirit will open our eyes to grasp its implications.”
John Stott

Oh Lord, move on us today. Spirit, open our eyes. Some of us got stuck spiritually. Some of us are stale spiritually. Holy Spirit, move in our lives, stir us up by way of reminder, awaken us that we might learn to walk in the spiritual riches we have in Christ. I’ll close with this Sinclair Ferguson quote,

“The grace of God in Christ provides us with a new identity, a heavenly one; It follows that this – and not our natural identity – determines everything we do. Our identity, our citizenship is heavenly.”
Sinclair Ferguson

What difference does it make to Nashville that Christ has The Village Chapel here? And what difference does it make to The Village Chapel that Christ has us in Nashville and online as well? What difference will it make? Let’s pray. 

Lord, thank you for this aspiring letter, could tell how exalted this language is and how caught up in Your glory the apostle Paul was from that prison cell. And when he talked about You, Father, when he talked about you, Son, when he talked about You, Spirit, when he talked about all three of You and the work that You are doing in our lives, Lord, have Your way with your people. Christ, be in every bit of our lives, we pray, and may we live in union with You. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen and amen.