… Listen

In the epistle to the Ephesians we are still working together today with the great statement in Chapter 1 in which Paul is setting forth for us the great, fundamental facts of our faith in Jesus Christ. This letter to the Ephesians is really nothing more than a description of the riches that we have in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul emphasized these riches a great deal. As he traveled about the Roman empire he came to colonies and to cities where people were spiritually and materially impoverished — they were poverty-stricken people. Many of them were slaves. They had nothing of this world’s goods. They were depressed, discouraged, beset with fears and anxieties, jealousies and hostilities. They were under the grip of superstition and filled with the dread of the future. They had no hope of life beyond death. And it was the apostle’s great joy to unfold to them the riches available to them in Jesus Christ — riches which, if accepted as facts, would free them, would transform them and make them over into wholly different people, would bring them into a sense of joy and love and faith and radiant experience. That happened again and again. So the apostle gloried in these exceeding great riches in Jesus Christ.

The epistle to the Ephesians ought to be a treasure store to which we go repeatedly anytime we get discouraged.

I remember reading years ago about an old Navajo Indian who had become rich because oil had been found on his property. He took all the money and put it in a bank. His banker became familiar with the habits of this old gentleman. Every once in a while the Indian would show up at the bank and say to the banker, “Grass all gone, sheep all sick, water holes dry.” The banker wouldn’t say a word — he knew what needed to be done. He’d bring the old man inside and seat him in the vault. Then he’d bring out several bags of silver dollars and say, “These are yours.” The old man would spend about an hour in there looking at his money, stacking up the dollars and counting them. Then he’d come out and say, “Grass all green, sheep all well, water holes all full.” He was simply reviewing his resources, that’s all. That is where encouragement is found — when you look at the resources which are yours, the riches, the facts which undergird your faith. As we go through this letter to the Ephesians I hope you will read it in that way. Last week we looked at the summary statement with which Paul gathers up the great themes of this letter:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places… (Ephesians 1:3 RSV)

Then we took a quick survey of the list of these great spiritual blessings which follows. We are going to spend more time with that in coming Sundays. If you want to keep the structure of this chapter in mind, remember that we have this summary statement, then the more detailed description of the blessings, Verses 4 through 14, and then, beginning with Verse 15, Paul’s great prayer that his hearers would understand what this is all about.

There is an unusual structure in this passage to which I’d like to call your attention. From Verse 3 through Verse 14 in the Greek text (not in the English) you have one complete, unbroken sentence filled with many adjectival phrases brought in to amplify and enrich it. If you want to get the effect of it, take a deep breath and try to read it through with one breath. You will see how much Paul has crammed into this great sentence. It’s almost as though he is taking a walk through a treasure chamber, like those of the Pharaohs of Egypt, describing what he sees. He starts out with the most immediate and evident fact and tells us what that is. Then something else comes into view and he puts that in. And glory flashes upon glory here until he has this tremendously complicated sentence which includes vast and almost indescribable riches.

That is Paul’s way of showing us how truth is interconnected, how you can never touch upon some of these great themes but that they lead to others, and soon you find yourself caught up with still others. That is how truth is, isn’t it? Truth in nature is like that also. You can’t study one subject in nature without touching upon a great many others. This is the way God builds truth. There is a rather simplifying division of this passage, however, such as is always present whenever the apostle states something like this. That is, these blessings gather about the Persons of the Trinity. There is the work of the Father, the work of the Son, and the work of the Holy Spirit. In Verses 3-6 you have the work of the Father:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6 RSV)

Then, in Verses 7-12, you have that which relates to the Son:

In him [the Beloved] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:7-12 RSV)

How rich that language is concerning the Son, our relationship to him, and our present experience! Finally, in Verses 13 and 14, you have the work of the Holy Spirit:

In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14 RSV)

Remember that these are all available to us in the realm which Paul calls “the heavenlies.” As we saw last week, that is not heaven; it does not mean going to heaven when you die. We get such distorted concepts of heaven! I confess to you that heaven, as most people envision it, is not an attractive place to me — damp, rainy clouds, unstrung harps out of tune, white robes, and all that. A good travel folder could make West Texas look preferable to heaven. And yet most people think that this is what Paul is talking about when he speaks of the heavenlies.

No, “in the heavenlies” is a reference to the invisible realities of our life now. It reaches on into eternity, yes, but it is something to be experienced now, in the inner life. That is what he is talking about — your thought-life, your attitudes, your inner life where you live, where you feel conflict and pressure, struggle and disaster — that is part of the heavenlies. It is where we are exposed to the attack of the principalities and powers which are mentioned in Chapter 6, those dark spirits in high places who get to us, and depress us, and frighten us, and make us anxious or hostile or angry. The heavenlies is the realm of conflict, but also the realm where God can release us and deliver us, where the Spirit of God reaches us at the seat of our intellect and our emotions and our will. It is the realm of those deep, surging urges which rise within us and create either a restlessness or a sense of peace, depending on the source from which they come. So don’t read this as though it were something out in space somewhere. These blessings are yours in your inner experience, now, if you are in Jesus Christ.

Obviously, all of this, as we saw last week, comes to us in one great package “in Christ.” If you are not a Christian you cannot possibly claim these benefits. They are not yours, they don’t belong to you. You cannot buy them, you cannot discover them, you cannot sign up for a course about them in a university. You can’t send away ten dollars in the mail and get a pamphlet that will lead you to them. There is no way you can appropriate them unless you are in Christ. But if you are “in Christ” there is nothing to keep you from having all of them, every moment of every day. That is why it is so important that we discover what they are.

You see, these are much more than mere doctrinal ambiguities, mere theological ideas. They are facts, foundational truths which undergird us in every moment of our life. And, unless you understand those facts, you can’t utilize them, you can’t benefit from them. In that way they are like natural laws. The laws of nature operate regardless of how we feel — they are impersonal in that respect.

I’ve been doing a bit of electrical work in an addition to my home, and I’ve discovered that electricity follows a pattern of its own and takes no notice of how I feel at the moment. That can be a shocking experience! It is not in the slightest degree impressed with my position as a pastor of Peninsula Bible Church. It doesn’t hesitate to retaliate for any violation of its laws that I commit. It is up to me to discover how it works, and then to respect it, if I want to utilize it. The same thing is true of these great facts. They will do you not a particle of good if you don’t discover what they are and believe them enough to operate on the basis of them. That is why we are having this study together. We couldn’t possibly cover in one message all that is wrapped up in these great truths, and I don’t want to attempt it. We want to take our time going through this passage so that we might grasp these fundamental facts. So I would like to center this morning on the two great facts which are mentioned here concerning the work of the Father. Take this first statement:

…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:4 RSV)

Here we are dealing with what theologians call the doctrine of election, i.e., the fact that God chose us to become Christians and to be in Christ before the very foundation of the world. If you begin to try to understand that truth, your mind will boggle. That is a fantastic statement, isn’t it? We struggle with it, we question it, and therefore I submit to you that we really don’t believe it, because oftentimes it doesn’t show up in our actions, which is where the proof of our belief comes. We say, “How could this be? How could God choose us, and yet still offer a choice that we must make?” And thus we sense the struggle between the doctrines of the free will of man and the sovereign election of God. Many have wrestled with this great truth and have tried to explain it with various suggestions:

Some say, “Well, God can foresee the future, so he looks down and sees that we are going to make a choice, and on the basis of seeing what we will determine to do he then says, ‘All right, I’ll elect them to be part of my process.’” That sounds very simplistic, and it is, because it is not what the Scriptures say. Some say, “Well, God sees what we will be when we become Christians. He sees the value that we will have toward him, and so he chooses us on that basis.” Again, nothing could be more unscriptural than that idea! You see, it is true that we are chosen of God. In John 6, Jesus said so himself. He said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,” (John 6:44 RSV). That’s putting it plainly, isn’t it? You can’t come to Christ unless you are drawn by the Father. God has to initiate the activity. Ah, yes, but in Matthew 11 Jesus made his appeal directly to the will of the individual, saying, “Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” (Matthew 11:28 RSV). And that means it’s up to you. You can never become a Christian until you choose to come. So both of these facts are true.

And though we can’t reconcile them in our puny intellects, nevertheless we can accept them as facts and realize that it is true that we must choose. The good news is offered to us, but if we don’t respond we will never obtain the benefit of it. But if we do respond, if we come to Christ, if we believe in him, then we discover a great fact: God began the process, it was he who chose us, and we have been drawn to him by his Spirit at work in our spirit. That is amazing, isn’t it? But it is the first thing that Paul wants us to know.

And then we struggle with the timing of this: “before the foundation of the world.” Before we existed, before we ever took form seminally, let alone actually, we were chosen in him. Before there was an earth, no matter how far back in time you put it — billions of years, squillions of years into the past — yet the statement stands that you and I, as the very persons we are among the billions of people we could have been, were chosen in him. How could that be? Do you see how that boggles the mind? We must realize that we are dealing with an Eternal Being, one with whom there is not past or future, but only an eternal present, only one great now who therefore reads our future as clearly as he does the past, who determines all things by the counsel of his will, as the next verse has it, and brings them to pass so that they all work together to accomplish what he wants done. And we can only sit in amazed wonder and say, “Lord, how great thou art!”

“Chosen in him before the foundation of the world!” Do you see what that does for our sense of identity as Christians? We are not afterthoughts in God’s working. We are not accidental members of his body. There are no second class citizens in the church of Jesus Christ; we are all equal, chosen of the Father, selected to be members of his family, added to the new creation, the new order that God is producing in this world. What a fantastic privilege! It is not because of anything in us, as we’ll see in a moment, but because of everything in him. The purpose of all this is that we are to be holy and blameless. God says that he chose us for that reason, that we might be holy and blameless! Now, I’d like to ask a question: How many of you here are holy? Raise your hands, would you? Yes, we do have a few. Well, what’s the matter with the rest of you?

I submit to you that these great facts are so revolutionary, so radical, that we hesitate to believe them! We hesitate to apply them to ourselves despite the fact that they are true. The reason we hesitate is that we have such distorted ideas of what these words mean. We think that holiness is sanctimoniousness and that it results from a kind of theological de-worming process we must go through, and we don’t want to claim that for ourselves. But it is not that at all. As we have seen in our studies in Leviticus, holiness means “wholeness,” and wholeness means “to be restored to the originally intended functioning,” to be put to the proper use, that’s all. Physical wholeness prevails when the body works the way it was supposed to. And when your whole being functions the way it was intended to do, you are holy.

Now how many of you have had your whole being restored to proper functioning? You may not always function properly, but you have the capacity to do so. Ah, that’s better! There are even more holy people here than I thought! It is when we begin to understand these words that we can apply them and accept them. Now let’s look at the other one, blameless. Most people refuse to think of themselves as blameless because they know that they have done many things for which they ought properly to be blamed. That is, they have made choices, deliberately, against light, against knowledge of the results. They have purposely done that which they knew they ought not to have done. They could have done otherwise but didn’t. And who is not in that boat? Therefore they feel they are to be blamed. But they are confusing this word with another, because it is not sinless. Never having done anything wrong is sinlessness. But you can be sinful and still be blameless. Do you know how? By handling your sin in the right way.

If you did something that injured someone else, and the full result of it was not visible to you when you did it but afterward you saw how much you had hurt the person, and you acknowledged it, apologized to them, did what you could to restore it, then there would be nothing further you could do, would there? And from that point on you would be blameless. You would not be sinless — you still did it — but you also did all you could to handle it rightly.

The idea is the same with our offenses against God. What can you do about your sins, your evil? You can’t go back and straighten it all out, no, but you can accept his forgiveness. You can acknowledge your need. You can put it back into his capable hands to straighten out the results. And when you’ve done that, you’re blameless! How many blameless people are here today? Yes, that’s better. And that is what God has chosen us to do — to learn this wonderful process of being whole and blameless. Notice that these things are to be reckoned true even though we don’t feel that way. That is the way it is in nature also.

You get up in the morning and look at the sun and say, “The sun rose this morning.” It looks as though the sun were traveling around the earth. But you know better than that, don’t you? You look out across the landscape and it looks flat, and you say, “The earth must be flat.” No, you know better. Even though you can’t see that the earth is round and revolves around the sun, you have learned to accept these facts despite your feelings. That is exactly what we are called on to do here. Accept the fact that God chose you in Christ to make you holy and blameless. And as you walk before him in his prescribed way, that is what you are. And then rejoice in that great fact. Now look at the second great aspect which is recorded of the work of the Father, and which is related to the first,

He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5-6 RSV)

Here is a partial explanation of how God takes care of all the past failures and the shame of our lives, in order to produce someone who is holy and blameless. It is by means of a change of family relationship. “He destined us to be sons,” or, literally, he “foreordained us to sonship standing,” or, as the Authorized Version puts it, to “adoption” as sons. We are familiar with the process of adoption. Adoption means leaving one family and joining another, leaving behind all that was involved in the first family and assuming the name, the characteristics, the resources, the history of another family. And this is the way Paul describes this relationship. We all belong initially to the family of Adam. We leave it, in Christ, and, thereafter, we belong to a new family, the family of Jesus Christ. We are no longer part of the family of Adam. Now that doesn’t mean that we are not human; it means that we no longer need to be possessed by fallen Adamic characteristics. We are still exposed to temptations to believe in them and to act that way, but we don’t have to — that’s the point. We’ve been transferred into a new family.

And, more than that, the emphasis is upon living as a full-grown, mature, responsible son. We are not put into this family as mere babes; we are put in as mature, grown-up children. As soon as we grasp the truth we can exercise it. In other words, to put it very simply, we are to live exactly as Jesus lived. He was a Son, the Son of the Father, and, as such, a certain way of life was his. And now we have it too, in him, living exactly as he did.

This is how Jesus described his own life: In John 6, he said, “I live by means of the Father,” (John 6:57). That is, “The Father is my resource, my wisdom, my strength, my power. The Father is the secret of how I act, and what I do, and where I go. The Father is living in me, and working in me. And in everything I do, it is not I; it is the Father.” He went on to say, “And as I live by means of the Father; so he who eats me [that is a beautiful figure for partaking of Christ, trusting in Christ] will live by means of me,” (John 6:57 RSV). That is the secret of the Christian life. What a beautiful way to live! By the same method that Jesus lived, in the same way that he arrested the attention of humanity — this is the way that we are called upon to live. We have been made sons in him, like him, so as to share his life. It is this, you see, that pleases the Father. Isn’t that amazing?

The rest of the statement deals with the why and how of this. Why should this be so? Most of us struggle with believing it because we say, “Why me? Why should he see anything in me which would motivate him to do that?” And, of course, that is our problem. It isn’t that he sees anything in us. We make a serious error when we think that there is something in us which God is after. No, it is not anything in us. The ground of his choice is the kind of God he is. There are three elements of it here: “He destined us in love to be his sons…” “According to the purpose of his will…” “To the praise of his glorious grace…” It is entirely God, isn’t it? His love began it, so he purposed it, literally, according to “the good pleasure” of his will, i.e., it gives him pleasure to do so, and all to the final end that it results in joy, in praising him, throughout all creation — “to the praise of the glory of his grace.”

I think I saw a taste of that at Explo ‘72 in Dallas a few weeks ago. The thing above all else that impressed everyone who came to Explo was the fact that all over the city there was an outburst of joy. It was infectious. There was a spirit of cheerful happiness no matter what happened. The young people, particularly, went all over the city and met everything and everyone with a smile or a “Praise the Lord!” Even the gruff old police of Dallas were impressed by this. One policeman said, “I’ve been treated like a human being for the first time in my career,” and he couldn’t get over the fact that it was young people who were treating him this way. Another, a guard at the Cotton Bowl, said, “I’ve been shoved 22,000 times this week, and everyone said ‘Excuse me’ when they did it.” Why? Because the joy was born of God. It was not coming from the circumstances — they were unpleasant, at times. Kids were living in tents, and sleeping on the ground, and often didn’t have enough to eat. I met some who hadn’t eaten for two or three meals, but their joy was undiminished. I watched the rain pour down upon thousands of them in the Cotton Bowl, and not one of them complained; they just enjoyed it thoroughly. That is what God is after — to increase joy.

A few days ago one of the women of this church came to me. It was an ordeal for her to come because she is in pain constantly. She told me of some of the struggle this has meant in her own life, of how she has cried out, “Why?” and has been assaulted with temptations to bitterness and resentment because she can’t do what she’d like to do. She told how this all reached a crisis about a year ago when she finally said, “Lord, I can’t take this! It’s too much for me! But, Lord, you seem to expect me to take it. No matter how much I pray, nothing seems to happen. But I just can’t do it. So I give it back to you, Lord. If I’m even going to be able to exist, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to uphold me, and somehow you’ve got to make me able to obey you and to reflect what you want me to be.” And she said that there was born in her heart a sense of joy she couldn’t explain. But for over a year now (and that is an adequate test, isn’t it?) that joy has remained. And the radiance on her face as she told me about this was sufficient evidence that she was not trying to pull my leg. Joy, unbroken joy — the praise of God’s glorious grace — in the midst of pain and suffering, disappointment and frustration. That is what God is after. That is what he is training us for. He has destined us to be that kind of sons, because that is the kind his Son Jesus Christ is, according to the purpose of his will.

Finally, there is just one word on how, and this introduces the next section which we will take up in our next time together. How did this come to us? It was “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” God “engraced” us, is the word. He came to us in Christ, he poured it all out in Christ. Jesus was sent of the Father. That is the mark of his love. He came to be poor, he came to be misunderstood, to be opposed and hated, to be spat upon, to be cruelly beaten and finally crucified, so that we might be rich. Remember how Paul puts it in Second Corinthians 8:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9 RSV)

Now, my question is: Are you enjoying your inheritance? Do you wake in the morning and remind yourself at the beginning of the day, “I’m a child of the Father.” “I’ve been chosen by him to be a member of his family.” “He imparts to me all the richness of his life.” “His peace, his joy, his love are my legacy, my inheritance from which I can draw every moment of life. And have them no matter what my circumstances may be.”

Do you reckon on these unseen things which are real and true? — because, if you do, when you trust in God’s grace to be your present experience, you can know of yourself what the Father said three times about his Son Jesus. God the Father, looking down at you can say, “This fellow here, this girl there, this man, this woman — this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” That is our inheritance.

Prayer

Our heavenly Father, we thank you for these vast truths. We pray that our understanding may be made equal to them. We can’t grasp them properly apart from the work of your Spirit, and we pray that you will open our eyes and help us to see that these things are true indeed, that they undergird our lives. And as we venture out upon them, as we dare to apply them to ourselves, you will take them and make them lead us into the liberty of the children of God, so that we will be free men and women, free despite the circumstances under which we live, and despite the people with whom we have to work. We are a free people. We thank you in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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. . Listen

In the second chapter of Ephesians, we are examining the great facts the Apostle Paul sets forth for us which explain who we are in Jesus Christ. Any psychologist will tell you that the basic solution to any mental problem is one of identity. The basic crisis of our day is an identity crisis. If we are going to solve the problems of our lives, we must know who we are. So the apostle is very careful to set forth exactly who we are in Christ. One of the worst struggles most of us have with our Christian faith is that we try to work out our problems without beginning at this foundation, without realizing who we are in Jesus Christ.

We have already seen, in previous studies, the depths of depravity and darkness from which the Lord Jesus lifts us — the human dilemma, the condition of fallen man, which would be utterly without any prospect of change for the better were it not for the grace of God operating in our lives. Then we saw, beginning in Verse 4, the fantastic change which was introduced by the words “But God…” And there is where we want to start again:

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7 RSV)

You will notice that, when he is talking about who we are as Christians, the apostle makes it very clear that he is tracing through an exact parallel of the experience of the Lord himself. He identifies us with what Jesus has gone through. We died with him, we learn in Romans 6. Now we are made alive together with him. We are “raised up with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” These are symbols that the apostle is employing. This beautiful hyperbole is designed to teach us something about ourselves and who we are as Christians. It is necessary, therefore, that we understand what these symbols actually mean in terms of our experience. Otherwise we will have no basis from which to handle the problems life can throw at us. In our last study we tried to see what it meant to be alive in Christ, to be made alive together with him:

First of all, it means that we are no longer dead, that the condition into which we were born has been changed: We are no longer alienated and afraid of God. One of the very first marks of the change which occurs when a person comes to Jesus Christ is right at this point. He is no longer afraid of death. He is no longer afraid to confront God, to come before his presence. God is not seen any longer as his enemy, as a terrible judge, an avenger. Rather, he is seen as a friend, as a father, with a father’s love, a father’s arms, and a father’s heart.

Further, we saw that this means we are joined to Christ. Somehow we have been identified with him. His life has become our life, and our new identity is Christ. He is our life. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” (1 Corinthians 6:17). So from then on we must never think of ourselves as what we once were in Adam. No longer are we that. We are in Christ. We belong to him. He has welded himself to us so that an unbreakable union has been established, and we are his and he is ours. “You in me and I in you” (John 14:20b RSV) — these are his own words. Nothing can break this relationship.

This means, of course, that we are changed right to the very depths of our being. Something happened to us when we came to Jesus Christ which alters everything we are from that moment on. We are absolutely different. We are changed at the very root-level of our life. Fundamentally and foundationally, something has come in which has altered what we are, and it will begin to manifest itself from then on, and in many ways — a different outlook, different attitudes, a different approach to situations. It can create rather startling and dramatic changes right away.

Not long ago we received a package in the mail here at the church. We opened it, and to our amazement and bewilderment we found that it was a package of birth control pills. Who would send birth control pills to a church? We opened the card which came with the package and read:

Dear PBC: The prescription for these pills dates to October. They are still good. Use them if you like. I no longer need them, as I am reformed, though not married. Praise the Lord! He is holding me up.

It was signed “The little toe of the Body.” We didn’t ask for that, didn’t know it was coming. But there is a sign of a basic change in a person because she was made alive in Jesus Christ.

Beginning at that point, we want to go on and see what happens as this new life begins to work itself out in terms of our experience. The apostle adds two other factors which are fundamental to this new relationship we have in Christ: We are raised up with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Again, this is following the parallel of what happened to Jesus. What happened to him is what happened to us. What happened to him? He died. And when they took his body down from the cross, it gave every evidence, it had all the marks, of death. Rigor mortis had set in. It was cold and stiff. A painting I once saw of the Descent from the Cross showed in stark and grisly detail the terrible fact of the death of Jesus. The mouth was open, the teeth were protruding, the eyes were glazed. It was obvious that this was a dead body. And that dead body was laid in the tomb. You remember how the utter, stark reality of that death cast a pall of gloom over the apostles. It dashed their hopes and was the end of all their dreams. The Lord was dead. But, on the third morning, God the Father infused into that dead body new life, and Jesus was made alive.

“And that,” says the Apostle Paul, “is an exact parallel to what happened to us when we were made alive in Christ. Into the death of our fallen humanity there came a new life, and new Spirit.” Of course, the body of Jesus was not left alive in the tomb. This is the next point the apostle makes. He didn’t remain there holding counseling sessions with people who came to visit him. No — he was raised up and put back into business. He was put back into life to operate once again, but on a different basis, with a different power. He was thrust back into the experiences of men, but with an entirely different basis upon which to reckon and to live. This is what the apostle says happened to us when we were made alive in Christ. So it is important for us to see this. We are called to go back into the same circumstances, into the same situation, but to reckon on a new power, to demonstrate a new power upon which to draw — resurrection life.

And this means that the Christian then is able to do what he never could do by himself. He is able to act in a way which is impossible to those who are without Jesus Christ. For example, he is able to love the unlovable, to endure the unendurable, to achieve the unachievable, and to forgive the unforgivable.

I don’t need to go outside the PBC congregation to illustrate this. There are those who have given every evidence, after they became Christians, of being able to love those who were absolutely unlovable to them before. Many a husband has told me that he had reached such a state of estrangement in his marriage that he literally hated his wife, couldn’t stand the sight of her, couldn’t abide her presence. But after he became a Christian a new relationship was born. He was able, despite struggles, to begin to look at his wife in a new way, and actually begin to love her. Many wives have said the same thing about their husbands. Young people have told me how they hated their parents, had come to the place where they couldn’t stand them a moment longer — everything their parents did turned them off. They regarded them as nothing but rivals and obstacles to everything they wanted to do. But after coming to Christ, they found it possible to come to a new sense of appreciation and understanding, and love for their parents began to bloom again. With pity and compassion they saw them as people like themselves, struggling with difficult problems they too were unable to handle. All this was possible because they were raised up and set back into life again, to handle the same problems, but with a different outlook.

Some here have learned to endure the unendurable. Not long ago I shared with you the experience of a woman in this congregation who has learned to struggle against unending pain, and yet to find in the midst of it a joy she cannot explain — joy in the midst of increasing pain. Another woman in this congregation has for thirteen years been unable to move about normally. She has gone through terrible struggles with depression, discouragement, and defeat. But the Lord has sustained her and kept her through this time. Gradually she has been able to come to a place of rest and contentment. And, although she has been close to it, she has never taken the way out which her mind suggested to her from time to time — a bottle of pills, or some other method of suicide. She has been able to endure because of the power released in her by a risen Lord.

There are some who have been able to achieve the unachievable. I rejoiced in talking to Paul Winslow not long ago about the Job Therapy program. He was reporting what had been accomplished in California prisons by means of this. In certain prisons, when they first went in, the wardens were very suspicious and didn’t feel it would ever accomplish anything. But as they explained that it was a means by which prisoners could be put in touch with Christian families who would visit them, make friends with them, and be available to meet whatever needs they might have when they got out, the wardens were willing to give it a chance. And Paul was telling me that recently some of these wardens have testified that the program has begun to change the atmosphere in their prisons. Perhaps you do not realize that many of the prisons in this country are in a condition almost as dire as that which produced the Attica revolt in New York state — seething with revolt and discontent, and ready to erupt in violence at any moment. But a new hope has begun to spread. “Salt” has been introduced. And change for the better is beginning. This is the power of a resurrected Lord. This is what “raised up with him” means — to come to life again with a new approach and a new power.

It means the ability to forgive the unforgivable. This weekend John Fischer is in Southern California visiting a Christian college. A few years ago he sang in the chapel of this college. With his guitar he sang some of the songs he has written which we know so well. Afterward, one of the professors of the school wrote a letter to the school paper attacking him very sarcastically, bitterly, and scurrilously — called it “musical garbage,” said it was worthless. When John read the paper he was upset and angry. He was tempted to write this man off as obviously having no musical judgment whatsoever, and to feel resentful toward him for taking such a position. But then the Lord began to speak to him, said, “It isn’t right for you to feel that way. This man shared how he felt in all honesty. You may not agree with him, but nevertheless you have no right to be resentful toward him.” So John determined to take a Christian approach. The next time he was in the area he looked this man up and took him out to dinner. They sat down together in a rather strained atmosphere, at first, as you can imagine. The man didn’t know what John wanted. But John asked him something about his background, and it wasn’t very long before they found a mutual interest and began to explore it. This led to other topics. The upshot was that after two hours they felt as close to one another as though they were brothers. They enjoyed a wonderful time together, and the subject of the letter never once came up. They simply appreciated each other. Later on this man heard that John was giving a concert some distance away. To John’s surprise he showed up and listened to him play. He came to him afterward and told him how much his son appreciated John’s music! The healing had started, you see.

That is the power of resurrection life. It is for situations like that. It is designed to confound the calculations of men, to transform the demoralized, and not to solve, but to dissolve the problems of life. Resurrection power works differently. It means that we come at life with a different attitude which often baffles and bewilders people. They can’t figure it out, but recognize that it does wonderful things. That is what it is for. That is what it means to be raised up together with him. The third factor involved in our basic relationship with Christ — part of our true identity — is not only that we have been made alive and raised up with him, but we have been made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? Well, several places in Scripture, Christ is said to have been raised up and made to sit at the right hand of God. In the first chapter of Hebrews the writer says that no angel can ever compare with Christ because, as he puts it,

But to what angel has he ever said,
“Sit at my right hand,
till I make thy enemies
a stool for thy feet”? (Hebrews 1:13 RSV)

In the tenth chapter of the same book there is another reference:

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. (Hebrews10:12-13 RSV)

Why is Christ said to have “sat down” when he came to the right hand of the Father after his ascension? Well, it doesn’t mean that he sits up there somewhere in a chair, waiting. It is obviously a picture, a symbol of something. Well, of what? What does sitting symbolize? It symbolizes cessation of effort, doesn’t it? Sitting means the end of work and of strain. It is a beautiful picture of what the Scriptures call “rest.” We often sing:

Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
Of Thy loving heart.

It means dependence upon the work of another. If you were working away digging a hole — sweating and straining and tired and exhausted — and I came along and said, “Look, why don’t you rest? I’ll take over,” what would you expect me to do? Would you expect me to exhort you to try harder, get a sharper shovel, dig deeper? No. If I meant what I said, I would want you to get out of the hole and let me take the shovel while you sat down and relaxed. I would do the work. And this is the picture drawn for us of what a Christian is to do. He is to live as seated with Christ in the heavenlies. The heavenlies, of course, is not some far-distant spot in space where heaven is. It is the invisible realm of reality — the inner life, the place where we feel tension and pressure and anxiety and hostility. We are to rest there. Having done what Jesus asks us to do, we are to sit down and rest, relax, and let him bear the pressure and the problems.

It is amazing how difficult this is for Christians to grasp. This past week I have been with a very successful businessman who is a Christian. But he has never been taught very much in this realm. He has naturally applied much of his business practice to his Christian life, and much of it can be applied. He has learned the necessity of planning goals and of moving toward them with smooth organization, thus bringing about the desired results. But he confessed himself to be utterly baffled by the way we operate around here. He said he was fascinated but mystified, because it looks as if we are so loose, and yet it is amazing how everything works out. He said, “I have been counting the mistakes you made. And every one of those mistakes was the turning point to produce the good results which followed. I can’t understand it!” He is learning the great fact that it isn’t up to us to maneuver and manipulate to obtain the proper results. We are dealing with a God who has announced that he has ways of working which go beyond what we are able to do. He has told us that he is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. So it is no good trying to sit down and reason out what he is going to do, because you can’t ask or think what it is. He has announced through Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways…
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9 RSV)

We have to cry out with Paul,

Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Romans 11:33)

Do you see what this does to life? It turns it into an adventure, doesn’t it? You never know what any situation is going to result in. A creative God, beginning to work in the most ordinary circumstances, can suddenly make them break wide open, and you have something on your hands which staggers you, which you never dreamed could happen, and which even alarms you, so vast are its possibilities. This is the kind of God we have, and this is what it means to sit — to expect him to do this, and to rest, and not be anxious and struggling and straining and striving and frantic.

There is one other factor involved in rest. Those verses in Hebrewstell us that, when he sat down at the right hand of the Father, our Lord was waiting for something. What? Well, “till his enemies were made his footstool” — waiting until God the Father, working with the principles involved in the cross and the resurrection, shall produce harmony and peace once again in creation, and every force opposed to the authority of Jesus Christ shall be subdued, and every knee shall bow and confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. In other words, an absolutely certain result.

Now, it won’t come quickly, and that is our problem. But what this figure of sitting involves is the expectation of a certain result, yet one we must wait for, with patience. Here is where we struggle, isn’t it? Perhaps the most difficult struggle in the Christian life is with the slowness of God. Have you found that out? How absolutely incredibly slow he is at times! Do you get as impatient with him as I do? Why, there are times when I can see as clear as daylight how he ought to act! I can outline the steps for him — and I do! I tell him just what to do. And it would all work out if he would just take those steps. But he utterly ignores me and goes on doing nothing until I want to rise up and say, “Look, you’ve got to get off your throne and do something!” I struggle at this point. But God goes ahead, and, before I know it, what I had hoped — and more than I’d ever hoped — has happened. And I don’t even know how it came about, at times. Some things I am still waiting for.

But this is the point. The Lord tells us that his work is like a farmer going out to sow his seed. The farmer scatters his seed, and then what? Jesus says he goes home and goes to bed — rests, just relaxes and lets the seed grow, because that is the nature of seed. The farmer knows that if he sows the seed and lets it rest — it must go through a certain process involving time; no seed merely drops into the ground and springs up suddenly; no, you must allow it to decay, to deteriorate, to fall apart, and then out of that comes a new life — it will grow slowly and steadily into the air until finally the whole plant is before you. God announces that this is his way of working. And he urges us to understand that the result is certain, and that we can rest patiently, knowing that he is working out his purposes. We are seated with him in the heavenly places. I would like to make three concluding observations:

First, this is true Christianity. Anything else is a fraud and a sham. Any effort to try to be “religious” or “Christian” which doesn’t stem from this threefold relationship of being made alive in Christ, raised with new power, and put back into life to rest in his activity and the certainty of his accomplishing his work, is a basic counterfeit of the Christian life. It is “godliness” without God, “Christianity” without Christ, “spirituality” without the Spirit. And it can never accomplish anything except to turn people away. What Paul has outlined for us here, and this alone, is true Christianity. Anything else is wrong.

Second, these three great facts are already true of every regenerated Christian. They aren’t something you try to make true — they are already true. They are not something which is going to happen when you are further advanced and have another great experience with God, when you “speak with tongues” or something like that. They are already true. There is nothing more you can add. They are not something which needs to be augmented. They are the ultimate. There is no further you can go. And they have already happened. Now, they may not be your experience yet, because of two factors: First, ignorance. You might not have begun to experience this because you were unaware of this relationship. Most of us don’t have much understanding of it. We don’t approach our problems this way. So we need to know more about it.

And, second, it may not be true in your experience because you love the pleasures the flesh can give you more than those of the Spirit. We all love the twisted, perverted pleasure of acting in the flesh, in the old way — the self-effort, the self-pleasing, self-indulgent life. We love that. So we choose it at times. But when we do, we ought to remember that we have not lost this threefold relationship. We can always return to it. It is not something temporary. It is a permanent fixture in our lives. And when we acknowledge the evil — the flesh to which we have submitted — we can return to this relationship.

The third observation is: We discover that this relationship becomes observable and actual by faith, i.e., by actually living and acting on this basis, by trusting these facts as true and acting accordingly. That is faith. It means that we must employ them in the actual conditions of life. This is no mere armchair theology. There are no easy choices here. We are called on to obey these facts when the flesh within us is screaming for revenge, or when the heart faints with discouragement and despair and we are ready to give up, or when the temptation to be lustful or bitter or sarcastic sweeps over us in waves and we can only claim this relationship for moments at a time and must renew it again and again until at last we enter into some degree of calm and quiet.

It is a battle, but it is possible to win. Each time, we are to remind ourselves,

“I am alive in Christ. I am not the same person. I am no longer what I once was. I may not be what I ought to be, but thank God I am not what I was! I am alive in Christ and I am raised with him. I have a new power at my disposal — the power of his life in me. Therefore I can rest. I can step out and say and do the right thing, and expect him to accomplish the results. I can relax. I don’t have to strain. I can leave the problem of solving the difficult situations in his hands, and I will wait for the ultimate and certain result.”

When I do this, I have learned to let God be God in me. This is the way God works. This is the way the life of God is released in the human situation. What a tremendous basis for living! This is our identity from now on. It is who you are. Start every day on this basis, and meet every situation on this basis.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 KJV)

Prayer:

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvelous picture which is true of us; just as certainly as you see life as it really is, so this is true of us. We pray that you will enable us to grasp it, to understand it, and to begin to handle the problems now before us in the light of this basis of living. We pray in Christ’s name, Amen.

Used By Permission: Copyright © 2009 by Elaine Stedman — This material is the sole property of Ray Stedman Ministries. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies and/or of this data file must contain this copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays, or other products offered for sale without the written permission of Ray Stedman Ministries. This material is from the Official Ray C. Stedman Library web site at http://www.RayStedman.org. Requests for permission to use this material or excerpts thereof should be directed to webmaster@RayStedman.org. This Copyright notice supercedes all other Copyright notices.

Copies of any message or sermon translations must be furnished to webmaster@RayStedman.org in PDF format, with contact information and qualifications concerning the translator(s) provided separately in English.

– - Listen

We turn now to The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, one of the greatest letters of the New Testament. We will study Chapters 1 through 3, thus completing the exposition of this book begun several years ago with Chapters 4 through 6 — messages which are already available in print (Catalog Numbers 98-116, 119-127, and 130-133).

I hope that, as we begin this doctrinal portion of Ephesians, your heart will be anticipating tremendous truth. I would like to urge you to read this letter through once a week during the time that we are engaged in studying these first three chapters. Read it through in various versions, and in different ways. Read it through at one sitting the first week, and then the next week take a chapter a day. Other weeks read it in some of the paraphrases. Let this truth come to you afresh in new and different language. I can guarantee that if you will do this faithfully until we finish our study you will never be the same person again. This truth has the power to change you, and it will!

I think that, of all Paul’s letters, the letter to the Romans and this one to Ephesians have affected me most profoundly. Both are attempts at a systematic and rather exhaustive setting forth of the whole Christian view of life and of the world. Others of Paul’s letters deal with specific problems, and they are very helpful when we are involved with those same problems. But these two deal with the whole sweep of truth, the great canvas of God’s painting of reality. Ephesians has changed my life again and again:

It was from this book that I learned how the body of Christ functions. The truth of the fourth chapter was strongly in my heart when I came to Palo Alto, as a young man fresh from seminary, and began to pastor a small group of people meeting here. It was the conviction that the ministry belongs to the saints, and that the business of a pastor is to help the people find their ministries and to prepare them to function in them, and to discover the excitement of living as Christians where they are, which was formative in the early years of Peninsula Bible Church and is still so strongly emphasized here. It was from this letter that I learned, as a young man, how to handle the sex drive which God had given me, as he has given it to all of us, and how to live properly in a sex-saturated society. This letter is most practical in that way. It teaches us how to come to grips with life as it is.

This letter taught me profound truths about marriage and about family life. I’m still learning in this area, and have a lot more to learn, but I’ve already learned a great deal about this subject from the letter to the Ephesians. It was this letter which taught me better than any other passage of Scripture how to understand the strange turbulence I often found in my own heart, the spiritual attacks to which I was subject, and how to deal with my fears and anxieties and my depressions — where these were coming from, and what to do about them. So this is a great and practical letter, and I urge you to become familiar with it and to make it second nature to know the truth of Ephesians. Let me share with you the experience of another person in this respect. This is from the introduction to a book by Dr. John McKay, for many years the president of Princeton University:

I can never forget that the reading of this Pauline letter when I was a boy in my teens exercised a more decisive influence upon my thought and imagination than was ever wrought upon me before or since by the perusal of any piece of literature. The romance of the part played by Jesus Christ in making my personal salvation possible, and in mediating God’s cosmic plan, so set my spirit aflame that I laid aside, in all ecstasy of delight, Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo which I happened to be reading at the time. That was my encounter with the Cosmic Christ. The Christ who was, and is, became the passion of my life. I have to admit without shame or reserve that as a result of that encounter I have been unable to think of my own life or the life of mankind or the life of the cosmos apart from Jesus Christ. He came to me and challenged me in the writings of St. Paul. I responded. The years that have followed have been but a footnote to that encounter.

So I would suggest that, if you feel the need for change in your own life and for deepening your relationship with our Lord, you would do well to expose yourself in a very personal way to these teachings from the letter to the Ephesians.

This letter was written about A. D. 61 from Rome during Paul’s first imprisonment there. It was written to the Christians in the Roman province of Asia. These were ordinary people — tradesmen, craftsmen, a few doctors and lawyers, some politicians — the general run of people. Many of them were slaves. The letter is commonly called “The Epistle to the Ephesians,” but, as a footnote in the Revised Standard Version points out, this is not found in many of the ancient manuscripts. Most have just a blank for the address of these saints. Many scholars, therefore, feel that this is a circular letter which was written to many churches, probably those in the region of Ephesus. Some think it may have been addressed to the very churches to which Jesus had John address the letters in the book of Revelation, beginning with Ephesus and ending with Laodicea. It may be of interest to you to notice that, in his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to a letter from Laodicea. Many feel that this is that letter. It was brought from Rome by the hand of Tychicus, to whom the apostle dictated this great treatise. Circulated from church to church, and read in each one, it finally ended up in Ephesus where it was labeled, The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians. At any rate, as we gather from Paul’s footnote at the end, it is really a letter addressed to all Christians everywhere. You can read it, therefore, as “the letter of Paul the Apostle to the church at Palo Alto, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.”

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-2 RSV)

That is the briefest salutation in any of Paul’s letters. There are just three simple things to which I will call your attention in passing: First, Paul’s credentials: notice how he describes himself, “an apostle … by the will of God.” An apostle was one sent with a message, a messenger. Paul gloried in the fact that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And, as he tells us in his letter to the Galatians, the Lord Jesus appeared to him directly. Paul did not learn what he knew about the gospel by discussing it with the other apostles. Peter and James and John and others of the twelve were never teachers of the Apostle Paul. The truth which he imparts to us here he learned directly from Jesus Christ. And that is his authority. Therefore, when you read Paul you are reading an authorized spokesman for the Lord Jesus. He speaks by the authority of Christ. He makes this clear in all his letters.

I am sometimes amazed at the brazen temerity of people today who will read a section from one of his letters and say, “I don’t agree with Paul.” Well, that makes me tremble. Paul is speaking as an apostle. An apostle is an authorized spokesman. What he says is what he has heard. So, if you don’t agree with Paul, you don’t agree with the Lord either! We need to remember that as we come to this letter.

Paul was always amazed by the fact that it was “by the will of God” that he was an apostle. He had no other glory in his life than that God, in the amazing wonder of his grace, had called this man who was such a bitter, intense, nationalistic persecutor of the church, had arrested him and changed him, and had sent him out to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul could never get over that: “Called by the will of God” — what a mighty influence this was in his life! Now notice that he gives no other credentials. He doesn’t refer to his training at the feet of Gamaliel, nor his Hebrew background and pedigree, nor the brilliance of his intellect, nor any thing else. He simply says, “I’m an apostle by the will of God. That is the ground upon which I write.”

Then notice how these Christians are described: “saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Saints is a word at which we all shudder a little. We don’t like to be called saints because we have such a plaster idea of what a saint is. We think of them as being unreal — so beatific, so holier-than-we, so unlike ordinary human beings. But the saints of the New Testament are not that way; they are people like us. Saints are people who are beset with struggles and difficulties, who have disturbances at home, and problems at work, and troubles everywhere else. They’re normal people, in other words!

But one thing is remarkable about them: They are different. That is really the basic meaning of this word saint. In the Greek it is a word derived from the word for holy. And holy means distinct, different, whole, belonging to God and, therefore, living differently. That is the mark of the saint. It isn’t that he doesn’t have problems, only that he approaches them differently. He handles them in a different way. He has a different lifestyle. That is what Paul is talking about here. Their characteristic is that they are faithful, which means, of course, that they can’t quit. That’s what a Christian is — a person who can’t quit being a Christian. A true Christian just can’t stop!

A young man called me this past week to tell me how discouraged he was, how he’d lost his confidence in prayer because he felt that no answer was coming, and how ready he was to quit. So I said to him, “Well, why don’t you just quit, then? Give up. Stop being a Christian. Try it.” — because I knew that if he did, the first thing he would have discovered is that he couldn’t quit. And he knew it, too. The minute I said that, he acknowledged it: “You’re right. I can’t quit.” That is because, as Paul will describe in this letter, there is imparted to us the Holy Spirit of God, and we are sealed by the Holy Spirit so that we can’t quit! That is a mark of a believer in Christ.

Then comes the invariable greeting of Paul to these groups of believers: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The two great heritages of the Christian are grace and peace. These are two things you can always have, no matter what your circumstances. Grace is all God’s power, all his love, all his beauty available to you. It is a marvelous term which wraps up all that God is and offers to us. It comes from the same Greek word from which we get our English word charm. Grace is charming, lovely, pleasant. It is something which pleases, which imparts charm and loveliness to a life. Peace is freedom from anxiety, fear, and worry. These are the two characteristics which ought to mark Christians all the time: Grace — God at work in their life; and peace — a sense of security, of trust. A man said to me this morning, “You know, I’ve learned something new about trust. Trust is not knowing, and yet still being at peace, at rest.” You see, if you know something, you don’t have to trust. But trust is not knowing, and still being at peace. From here the letter follows the usual structure of Paul’s letters. First comes the doctrine, the teaching, the great, revolutionary, radical facts that God is setting before us. And then comes the practice, the application, the working out of these in terms of the normal situations of life.

Now, don’t read these first three chapters of this letter as though they were mere theological gas. They are not! They are facts! They are what God says is real. They are what is actually happening in the world, and what is available to you. And if you once read them that way you won’t treat them as merely academic. You’ll begin to found your life upon these facts and act upon them. That is why Paul always begins his letters by setting forth the radical facts of life as God teaches them.

Also characteristic of Paul is to gather everything up in one great prefatory statement, and then break it down into its detail. So I’m going to conclude this introductory message by examining the great statement which Paul makes at the beginning of this letter and which gathers up the great themes of Ephesians to which he will return again and again. And then we’ll look briefly at these themes. In Verse 3 we have a tremendous summary of the teachings of this letter:

Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places [or, more literally, "in the heavenlies"]… (Ephesians 1:3-4 RSV)

There are four elements in this summary that I want you to note. Paul begins, first, with the One who is behind all these blessings, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is his starting point. And when a man begins with God you know that what he is going to say is in line with reality. Our problem is we don’t start our thinking with God; we tend to start it with ourselves, with our experience, which is only a partial view of truth. Thereby we immediately narrow the range of our vision to what we are going through and what is happening to us, and we don’t see this in relationship to the whole reality of life around us. Consequently we get twisted and deformed ideas of what is happening. The only proper way to view truth is to see it in relationship to all truth everywhere. And there is only one way to do that, and that is to start with God. Only God is great enough to encompass all truth.

This is the difference between what the Bible calls “natural” thinking, as done by “the natural man,” and the “spiritual” thinking of “the spiritual man.” Natural thinking is always limited, always wrong to some degree, because it isn’t large enough and broad enough to handle all the facts. But spiritual thinking is always God-centered, and, therefore, true, and to the extent that it is spiritual, it is true in every way. We need to learn to be spiritual thinkers about ourselves. This is where Paul begins.

The second element is the aim of the work of God. He sums it up in the twice-repeated word blessed: Blessed be God, and blessed are we with every spiritual blessing. That is what God is aiming to do. His goal is to bring about a world, a universe, filled with blessing. Frequently throughout this letter you find the repeated phrase that everything occurs “to the praise of God’s glory,” i.e., in order that God should be praised, in order that his people should be so struck by the wonder of what has happened to them that their hearts reflect without limit and without their being able to prevent it — the praise and the glory and the blessing of God. Now, you know that is not new. We all have learned that God is to be praised. We are to give thanks in all circumstances, etc. But most of us think of that as something we must make ourselves do. We have to do this because God needs it, his ego needs to be massaged every now and then by our praise, and unless we praise him he won’t operate. He gets upset and mad at us and doesn’t run things right, and we have to butter him up a little bit to get him to work. That is really the basis upon which most of us act, at least much of the time, isn’t it?

But that isn’t what this is talking about at all! It is saying that God has done such remarkable deeds that, if we once understand them, if it once breaks upon our dull intellects what it is that God has already done for us, what is already true of us right now, there will be nothing that we can do but stand in absolute awe and amazement, and say, “You mean that is true of me, Lord? I am overwhelmed! My God, how great thou art!” That is what God is after. That is what he wants to produce — that sense of awe and amazement which causes us to stop and give thanks to a great and glorious God who has given us every spiritual blessing.

In the verses that follow, those blessings are listed for you. We are going to look at them in more detail in subsequent messages, but for now let me just gather them up for you. Notice that:

…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:4 RSV)

That is Number 1: It goes back before the beginning of time, before the foundation of the universe. The second:

He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5-6 RSV)

What a fantastic thing that is! We are members of the family of God, made to be partakers of the divine nature. Third:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavishes upon us. (Ephesians 1:7-8 RSV)

Think of that! Our guilt is removed, utterly gone. Four:

For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Ephesians 1:9-10 RSV)

We have been taken into the secret councils of the Almighty. He has unfolded to us what he plans to do, what he is going to accomplish in the future. We have been told something of the details of this plan. Then look at Number 5:

In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:11-12 RSV)

That is why we are gathered here this morning. God has appointed us to be a demonstration of all these great truths, to live for the praise of his glory. Look at the sixth:

In him you also, who have heard the word of truth [Think of that! In this election year when all the politicians are trying to confound and confuse us with words of promise there is a place where you can get the truth, the straight goods, the facts as they are], the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, (Ephesians 1:13a RSV)

All that, you see, comes as a part of the work of the word of truth. And then the last:

…were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13b-14 RSV)

Those are the things that make life worthwhile. Without these great facts, life is unbearable to man, desolate, dull, boring, and we can hardly stand ourselves or each other. This is a list, if you like, of the incompetencies of man. Man cannot provide these. No political party can introduce them. They come from God, and God alone — God at work. No one else can give them to us. It is absolutely impossible that we ever should achieve them by ourselves. They are the gifts of God.

The third element of this great verse is that the apostle points out that all this blessing is “in Christ.” All this comes to us in Christ, in the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus himself. This fact is going to be stressed again and again in this letter. No two words appear in it more frequently than “in Christ,” or “in him.” Over and over it is emphasized that everything comes to us through him.

We must learn not to listen to those who claim to have God’s blessing in their lives, and yet to whose thinking Christ is not central. They are deceived, and they are deceiving us if we accept what they say. The only spiritual blessing that can ever come to you from God must always come in Christ. There is no other way that it can come. So if you are involved with some group which sets aside the Lord Jesus Christ and tries to go “directly to God,” and thus claim some of the great spiritual promises of the New Testament, you are involved in a group which is leading you into fakery and fraud. It is completely spurious! For God accomplishes spiritual blessing only in Christ. Physical blessings are available “to the just and the unjust alike,” but the inner spirit of man can be healed and cured only in Christ, and there is no other way.

Finally, notice the locale where all this occurs — “in the heavenlies.” Now, that doesn’t mean heaven, as we usually conceive it. Paul is talking here about the present experience of these blessings. We are involved with the “heavenlies” right now. These heavenlies, which occur throughout this letter and in other parts of Scripture, are really the realm of invisible reality, of things which are true about life in the world, in the cosmos, but which we can’t see or touch right now. And yet they are very real, and they play an important part in our lives now. This is what Paul refers to in Second Corinthians 4: “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen;” (2 Corinthians 4:18 RSV) — unseen, invisible reality.

Do you remember the story in the Old Testament about Elisha and his servant? They were in a small city one day when they were surrounded by the armies of Syria. The servant looked out upon this vast enemy army and he saw the cavalry and the armed chariots. Fearfully he turned to Elisha and said, “Everything’s hopeless! Look! We’re surrounded, what shall we do?” Elisha said, “Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And he prayed, “Lord, open his eyes,” (2  Kings 6:15-17). And the Lord opened the young man’s eyes and he saw ringing the horizon all the fiery chariots of God, manned by hundreds and thousands of angels, and he realized the true situation.

We live in a world where most of the important things of our lives are not visible. They can’t be touched or seen or tasted or weighed or otherwise measured. They are not subject to the scrutiny of science, nor are they available to the philosophies of men, but they are there. We must recognize that fact. And it is in this realm that these great spiritual blessings are to be found. It is here that our life can be changed and we can become different people, by God’s grace. All this will be developed in fuller detail as we go on into the letter.

I want to close by returning to that great initial thought of the Apostle Paul and pointing out to you how he underlines the fact that it is God who does all this. This is not the activity of men that we are talking about. In this first chapter there is no demand for us to do anything. Later on, the question of human activity will come in, but not here. He is talking about what only God can do and what God alone has already done. All progress in the spiritual life comes by understanding a truth which is already true. It is not something that God is going to do, but something he has already done. Therefore it is available to you the minute you understand it and grasp it. It would be useful for you to take a pencil and underline the finite verbs of this passage. You will notice that they all refer to God. He chose, …he destined us…in him, we have redemption…has made known to us his will. Go through the passage and what you will see highlighted is God at work.

All around us in the world today men are doing things, and it is right and proper that they should. Men are to work and to plan, they are to dream and to hope, and they are to try to accomplish things. It is right for the government to try to govern and for statesmen to try to accomplish their goals. All of us have something to do. But what our age has tragically forgotten is that the only activity which will change anyone ultimately is what God does, not what man does. That is where we need to focus our thoughts. And we need to see what it is that God is doing.

One of these days, we all recognize and know, even though we hate to admit it, all the vaunted, proud, symbols of our civilization as we know it today are going to be brought low, to crumble into dust, to be lost in the debris of the ages. All the knowledge on which we pride ourselves today will be lost in some forgotten tomb. Man’s glory shall fade. All the accomplishments of our present day which give us such self-satisfaction will become nothing but obscure references in some future history, if anything at all. And what will endure in that day is the work of God. These great facts, revealed in this letter, will still be as brilliant and untarnished in their reality as they are today. Rudyard Kipling once wrote about the British Empire,

Far flung, our navies melt away, on dune and headland sinks the fire.
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre.

America’s greatness is going to fade, as is Russia’s, and as is that of all the nations of the earth. But one day, when that day comes, the things which will be true are these great facts. Therefore, if we want to endure, if we want to lift our eyes above the plodding, puny circumstances of our own present experience to the greatness of what God is doing, we must give our attention to these great thoughts — planned before the foundation of the world, begun even before there was an earth, designed to reveal the greatness of God’s grace, his compassion, his tenderhearted love, his forgiving ability, his power restore, available through the one Person who in all the scope of history is able to accomplish what no other man could do, Jesus Christ himself, and resulting at last in the healing of all division and the breaking down of every barrier. That is what Ephesians is all about. It is a story of how God is breaking down division.

We are so aware of division, aren’t we? We are divided within our homes, divided in our work, divided into cliques and camps and nations, all against one another, with all the consequent hurt and injury and malice and hate and prejudice. God is at work to remedy that. He is healing it. He has already begun. He is breaking down the barriers, removing the hate and enmity, restoring and bringing together.

Remember what Jesus said: “All those who are with me gather, and all those who are against me scatter,” (Matthew 12:30, Luke 11:23). You can tell whose side you are on by the effect of your life. Are you gathering, or scattering? Are you healing, or hurting? Are you bringing together, or breaking up? Which is the direction of your life? Well, God’s great movement in our lives, as individuals, and in history at large, is to heal and make whole, to bring together all things in Christ, to restore harmony once again in his universe.

The exciting thing about that, according to this letter to the Ephesians, is that it has begun already. It has begun in us. We are the first ones to set it forth. We, the church, have felt the force of this great movement of God. We have found it in our homes — the barriers are beginning to break down there, the divisions are beginning to be healed. The harmony is beginning to emerge in our church life. And the more visibly it is evident, the more the world will see God at work. That is what this letter is all about — how to allow this healing flow from the great God behind all things, through his Son Jesus Christ, to touch our individual lives and heal us of all our illness and injury. No wonder this great apostle cries out, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.”

Are you a part of this scheme? Are you part of this family? Have you joined the family of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? If not, you can become a part of it right now. You can say, “Lord Jesus, here I am. I respond to your appeal. Enter my life and make me part of your family.” And if you are already part of it you can give thanks to God.

Prayer:

Once again, our Father, we pray that you will take away the dimness from our vision, the dullness from our understanding, and help us to comprehend these great themes which have changed the history of the world again and again as men have grasped them. Save us from the folly of taking them for granted or of giving them no attention. But help us, Lord, young and old alike, to think deeply and seriously about these great statements, to understand that this is the way that you are acting, this is the course of your movement through history. Lord, help us by thy grace to rejoice, to lay hold of your provision, and to be responsive instruments in your hand; in Jesus’ name we ask, Amen.

Used by Permission –

Copyright © 2009 by Elaine Stedman — This material is the sole property of Ray Stedman Ministries. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies and/or of this data file must contain this copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays, or other products offered for sale without the written permission of Ray Stedman Ministries. This material is from the Official Ray C. Stedman Library web site at http://www.RayStedman.org. Requests for permission to use this material or excerpts thereof should be directed to webmaster@RayStedman.org. This Copyright notice supercedes all other Copyright notices.

Copies of any message or sermon translations must be furnished to webmaster@RayStedman.org in PDF format, with contact information and qualifications concerning the translator(s) provided separately in English.

Moving Beyond the Irreducible Minimum
Ephesians 1:1-2
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Study Questions

Perspective is Everything!
Ephesians 1:3-10
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Study Questions

An Adoption Story
Ephesians 1:4
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Study Questions

Present Presents
Ephesians 1:7-10
Sunday, February 08, 2009

“…our most miraculous moment. . .”
Ephesians 1:11
Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Prayer We Never Stop Praying. . .
Ephesians 1:15
Sunday, February 22, 2009

Power
Ephesians 1:15
Sunday, March 01, 2009

The Brutal Facts
Ephesians 2:1
Sunday, March 08, 2009

But God …
(Steve Pruitt preaching for Pete Briscoe)
Ephesians 2:4-5)
Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Seated Life
(JoAnn Hummel speaking for Pete Briscoe)
Ephesians 2:6-7
Sunday, March 22, 2009

Mess to Masterpiece
Ephesians 2:10
Sunday, March 29, 2009

Then and Now
Ephesians 2:11
April 19, 2009

The Wall
Ephesians 2:13
April 26, 2009

The New Humanity
Ephesians 2:19
May 03, 2009

A Mystery Revealed
Ephesians 3:1
May 10, 2009

The Meaning and End of History
Ephesians 3:7
May 17, 2009

Praying That Possibility Becomes Reality. . .
Ephesians 3:14
May 24, 2009

The Mountain Top
Ephesians 3:14
May 31, 2009

Matching
Ephesians 4:1
September 13, 2009

Unity Unity
Ephesians 4; John 9:1
September 20, 2009

Christ’s Gifts to His Church
Ephesians 4:7; Psalm 68; Rev. 5
September 27, 2009

Who Needs Church?
Ephesians 4:11
October 04, 2009

Spiritual Adults
Ephesians 4:14
October 25, 2009

Gifts of the Spirit
Text: Ephesians 4:8-14
Date Preached: 11/18/56

Dangers of Idleness and Busyness
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/1/55

Dangers of Bondage and Libert
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/15/55

Resisting the Worlds Propaganda
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/22/55

__________

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In Paul’s letter to the Colossians there is a reference to a letter he wrote to the Laodiceans. Our Bible does not include an epistle called “A Letter to the Laodiceans,” but many have felt that it is the same one we call “The Letter to the Ephesians.” The reason is that the Revelation of John (the last book in the Bible) begins with letters to the seven churches of Asia, the first being to Ephesus and the last to Laodicea.

These cities were grouped in a rather rough circle in Asia Minor, and it evidently was customary for anyone who wrote to one of the churches to have the letter sent along to each of the others in turn, continuing around the circle until it came at last to the church at Laodicea. This may account for what would otherwise seem to be a lost letter from the Apostle Paul to the Laodiceans. At any rate, this letter sets forth, in a marvelous way, what no other book of the New Testament describes so completely — the nature of the body of Christ, the true Church.

The first four letters of the New Testament — Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians — are the development of the phrase, “Christ in you,” teaching us what the indwelling life of Christ is intended to do. But beginning with the letter to the church at Ephesus, we are to learn and understand what it means for us to be “in Christ” and to share the body life of the Lord Jesus Christ — “you in Christ.” Here is the great theme of this letter — the believer in Christ, or the nature of the Church.

Verse three of the first chapter is in many ways the theme of the letter — in Christ — is the key:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, … {Eph 1:3 RSV}

There are many who take the phrase, “the heavenly places,” which appears several times in this letter, as a reference to heaven after we die, but if you do this, you will miss the whole import of Paul’s letter. While it does talk about going to heaven some day, it is talking primarily about the life you live right now. The heavenly places are not off in some distant reach of space or on some planet or star; they are simply the realm of invisible reality in which the Christian lives now, in contact with God, and in the conflict with the devil in which we are all daily engaged.

The heavenly places are the seat of Christ’s power and glory. In chapter two, verse six we are told,

[God] raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, {Eph 2:6 RSV}

But in chapter three we learn that here also are the headquarters of the principalities and powers of evil:

… that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. {Eph 3:10 RSV}

The conflict that occurs is set forth in chapter six:

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. {Eph 6:10-12 RSV}

So you can see that this is not a reference to heaven at all, but to earth. It is to the invisible realm of earth — not to that which you can see, hear, taste, or feel — but to that spiritual kingdom which surrounds us on all sides and which constantly influences and affects us, whether for good or evil, depending upon our willful choice and our relationship to these invisible powers. Those are the heavenly places. In this realm, in which everyone of us lives, the apostle declares that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing. That is, he has given us all that it takes to live in our present circumstances and relationships. Peter says the same thing in his second letter: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,” {2 Pet 1:3a RSV}.

That means that when you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord, you have already received all that God ever intends to give you. Is that not remarkable? The weakest believer holds in his hands all that is ever possessed by the mightiest saint of God. We already have everything, because we have Christ, and in him is every spiritual blessing and all that pertains to life and godliness. Thus we have what it takes to live life as God intended. Any failure, therefore, is not because we are lacking anything, but because we have not appropriated what is already ours.

This, of course, eliminates any foundation for the notion of a “second blessing,” or a third, or a fourth. It is all here, now. There will be blessing after blessing as you take them, one by one, moment by moment. That is the import of the hymn, “Jesus, I am resting, resting” — every moment receiving from him all that he is — resting in his power, resting in his life.

The apostle develops the theme of this epistle for us with six wonderful figures of speech, by which we learn that the Church is the whole body of Christ. But I find that when you approach the subject from that angle, it is difficult for people to grasp the significance of the truth in this letter. We all have the tendency to think of ourselves as somewhat remote from the Church. Every now and then someone comes to me and says, “The Church ought to do so-and-so.” I reply, “Well, you are the Church; go to it.” The fact that they are the Church seems to strike them with a degree of amazement. Someone said to me not long ago, “The Church ought to be more friendly.” I said, “All right, you and I are the Church, let’s be more friendly.”

The Church is people. Every believer is a member of the body of Christ — the Church — so I would prefer to go through this letter using not the word “church,” but “Christian,” because every believer is a small replica of the whole Church. If we understand that God lives within the Church we see that he also lives within each believer. Each one of us, as a believer in Jesus Christ, is a microcosm of the whole body. We can, therefore, go through this whole epistle relating what Paul says not to the Church, but to each one of us, as individual believers.

In the first figure, the apostle refers to the Church as a body:

… and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all. {Eph 1:22-23 RSV}

The first chapter is entirely devoted to the wonder and amazement that we normal, ordinary, sin-possessed human beings should be called by God in a most amazing way — reaching back even to before the foundation of the earth — to become members of that body. It is a tremendous declaration. The Apostle Paul never got over his amazement that he — bowlegged, baldheaded, despised by many, regarded with contempt in many circles — was nevertheless a member of the Body of Jesus Christ, and was called of God before the foundation of the earth and given such tremendous blessings that he was equipped for everything that life could demand of him. That is what it means to belong to the Body of Christ.

Now what is the purpose of the Body? It is to be “the fulness of him who fills all in all” {Eph 1:23b RSV}. In other words, it is the expression of the head. That is what your body is for. It is intended to express and perform the desires of the head. The only time that a healthy human body does not do that is when some secondary nervous center is artificially stimulated.

You know, for instance, that if you hit your knee in the right place with a hammer, your leg will kick up in the air without your even willing it. Even if you choose not to kick, it will still react. I sometimes wonder if some of the activity of the Church can be ascribed to a sort of reflex movement — the body acting on its own without direction from the head. At any rate, the function of the body is to express “the fulness of him who fills all in all.” What a mighty phrase that is! Do you ever think of yourself that way? Do you ever dare think of yourself the way God thinks of you — as a body to be wholly filled and flooded with God himself?

Next, Paul refers to the Church as a temple:

… in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. {Eph 2:21-22 RSV}

Here is a holy temple. One of the greatest things taking place in the world today is the growth of this building that God has been erecting through the ages. When all the worthless products of human endeavor have crumbled into dust; when all the institutions and organizations that we have built have long been forgotten, the temple which God is erecting will be the central focus of attention through all eternity. That is what the passage implies. Furthermore, he is building it now, using human building-blocks; shaping them, edging them, sandpapering them, preparing them just as he desires, putting human beings into this temple where he wants them.

Why? What is his purpose for you, and his purpose for the whole temple? It is as Paul says — to be the home of God, the dwelling place of God. That envisions and includes everything which we understand by the word “home.” When my family and I come back from a long trip, as soon as we get home, we take off our coats, stretch out, and make ourselves at home. We all say how great it is to be home.

But what is it about our home that makes us feel that way? Isn’t it than at home we can relax and be ourselves? That does not mean that when we are away from home we are something other than ourselves, but we are always somewhat restrained. While at home, we can be all that we want to be — just relaxed and ourselves. That is what God is building the Church for — to be the place where he can be what he wants to be in you, fully relaxed and all that he is, in you. That is why he is calling you and building you.

The third chapter introduces the third figure. Here we learn that the Church is a mystery, a sacred secret:

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; [Here is the mystery] that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. {Eph 3:8-10 RSV}

There are wonderful intimations here — that God has had some secret plans at work through the centuries which he has never unfolded to anybody. But he has had a goal and a purpose in mind that he intends to fulfill, and the instrument by which he is doing it is the Church. This is something we can never fully grasp, but it involves the education of the whole universe. Paul is saying that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God — the multitudinous aspects and facets of God’s wisdom — will now be made known to all the principalities and powers that inhabit the heavenly places, the invisible realm of reality anywhere and everywhere, in all ages. The education of the universe is the purpose of the mystery.

In chapter four, now, the apostle uses still another figure:

… and put on the new nature [the King James Version says, "the new man"] created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. {Eph 4:24 RSV}

The Church is a new man because every Christian in it is a new man. This is linked with Paul’s word in 2 Corinthians:

Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old had passed away, behold, the new has come. {2 Cor 5:17 RSV}

The present creation, which began at the beginning of the heavens and the earth, has long since grown old and is passing away. The world with all its wealth and its wisdom belongs to that which is passing. But gradually through the centuries God has been building up a new generation, a new race of beings, a new kind of man which the world has never seen before — better even than Adam. In Romans we learn that all we lost in Adam we have gained back in Christ and more, much more! {See Rom. 5:15-17 RSV}. Here is revealed a race of beings of which the world has never before dreamed.

Also in Romans the Apostle Paul says that the whole creation is standing on tiptoe (that is the literal meaning), craning its neck to see the manifestation of the sons of God, the day of the unveiling of this new creation {See Rom. 8:18-21, esp. Rom 8:19}. But remember, this new creation is being made right now, and you are invited to put on this new man, moment by moment, day by day, in order that you might meet the pressures and problems of life in the world today.

That is why the Church is here. The Church is a new man, and the purpose of the new man is to exercise a new ministry. In this same chapter of Ephesians, we read,

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. {Eph 4:7 RSV}

This new man in each of us has been given a gift that we never had before we became a Christian. Our job, our reason for existence — the reason Jesus Christ put us here on earth and leaves us here — is that we might discover and exercise that gift. I do not know of anything more important than this. The reason why the Church has flagged and faltered, failed and lost, is that Christians have lost this great truth which each one receives directly from the Lord. That includes us all, from the youngest to oldest, who know Jesus Christ. The risen Lord has given a gift to you, just as the man in the parable gave the talents to each of his servants, entrusting them with his property until his return. And when he comes back, his judgment will be based on what you did with the gift he gave to you. That is the exercise of the new man.

Chapter five introduces still a different figure for the Church; we learn here that the Church is a bride:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. {Eph 5:25-27 RSV}

And then quotes the words of God in Genesis:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.” This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church. {Eph 5:31-32 RSV}

The Church is a bride. And it is to be a bride for the enjoyment of the bridegroom. Paul says Christ’s intention in preparing the Church as a bride is that he might present it to himself. Isn’t that what every bridegroom desires — that his bride shall be his? During their early days of courtship she may go out with some other fellows, but when they are engaged she is promised to be his and they are both waiting for the day when that can be realized. Then at last the day comes when they stand before the marriage altar and promise to love and honor and cherish one another until death shall part them. They then become each other’s — she his and he hers — for the enjoyment of each other throughout their lifetime together. Now that is a picture both of the Church and the Christian.

The Christian is to be the bride of Christ, for the Lord’s enjoyment. Do you ever think of yourself that way? That concept helped revolutionize my own devotional life when it dawned upon me that the Lord Jesus was looking forward to our time together, and that if I missed it, he was disappointed. I realized that not only was I receiving from him, but that he was receiving from me, and that he longed and yearned for me. When I met with the Lord after that it was with a new sense that he loved me and delighted in our time of fellowship.

The last picture of the Church in this epistle is as a soldier:

Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. {Eph 6:13 RSV}

What is the purpose of a soldier? It is to fight battles, and that is what God is doing in us now. He has given us the great privilege of being the battlefield upon which his great victories are won.

That is the essence of the story of Job. This dear man was struck without warning by a series of tragedies. All in one day he lost his possessions one by one. Finally he lost his entire family, except his wife. He didn’t understand what was happening, but God had chosen Job to be the battlefield of a conflict with Satan.

God allowed Satan to go to the utmost limit in afflicting Job’s physical body. In addition, his mind was troubled; he could not understand what was happening. But when the battle was over God greatly blessed Job, and has used him mightily to teach the people of God in all ages that trials and difficulties are not always for the sufferer alone, but are a means by which God wins mighty victories against the unseen powers. We are called to be soldiers who have learned how to fight.

In his first letter John writes to his young Christian friends,

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. {1 Jn 2:14 RSV})

That is, you have learned how to fight — how to move out, how to throw off the confusing restraints of the world, how not to be conformed to the age in which you live — and to move against the tide, against the current, thus greatly glorifying God.

I love the story of Daniel who, as a teenager, was a prisoner in a foreign land. He was exposed to a pagan environment and had to fight the battle day by day, counting time after time upon God’s faithfulness to keep him when everything was against him. The pressures brought to bear upon him were almost incredible. But again and again Daniel and his friends met the tests and won the battles and carried on.

Toward the close of the book Daniel was sent a visitor, the angel Michael, who told him some tremendous things. Daniel was allowed to see down the stream of time well beyond our own day. Yet when the angel first appeared to him, Daniel was greatly troubled. He fell upon his face, his knees shook, and he was fearful and afraid of his holy visitor. But the angel said to him, “O Daniel, man greatly beloved …” {Dan 10:11b RSV}, “Fear not,” {Dan. 10:12b RSV}. Why was he beloved? Because he was a faithful soldier.

This is the privilege to which God is calling us in this day of world unrest and distress. God is calling us to be soldiers, to walk in the steps of those who have won the battle before us, having been faithful unto death if necessary. This is the privilege of those who are called and equipped with every spiritual blessing, so that there might be a body, a temple, a mystery, a new man, a bride, and a soldier for Jesus Christ. That is quite a calling.

The exhortation, then, of this letter is contained in just one verse, in which Paul says,

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, [writing this letter from prison] beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, … {Eph 4:1 RSV}

Do not lose sight of what God is doing. The world cannot see it. It has no idea what is taking place. But you know, and you can see it, so do not lose heart.

Prayer:

Thank you, our Father, for this reminder, from the pen of your faithful apostle, of the character of the world in which we live, and the nature of the battle which we fight, and the glory of the calling which we have. We ask that you will make us faithful — faithful to the end, faithful unto death if need be. And may all the pressures be met by the answering power of the Lord Jesus himself, the Son of God who dwells within us and makes his home in our hearts. What a precious fellowship this is. In Christ’s name, Amen.

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Copyright © 1967 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church. Used by permission.

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Predestined for Adoption to the Praise of His Glory
- – Reflections on Being Adopted by God and Adopting Children
Ephesians 1:1-6

God Predestined Us unto Sonship Through Jesus Christ
Ephesians 1:3-6

God Has Chosen Us in Him Before the Foundation of the Earth
Ephesians 1:4

Sealed by the Spirit to the Day of Redemption
Ephesians 1:11-14

His Body: The Fullness of Him Who Fills All in All
Ephesians 1:15-23

Chapter Two

But God…
Ephesians 2:1-9

Why Do We Need to Be Born Again?
Ephesians 2:1-10

Why We Need a Savior: Captive to an Alien Power, by Nature Children of Wrath
Ephesians 2:1-3

Why We Need a Savior: Dead in Sins
Ephesians 2:1

Israel and Us Reconciled in One Body
Ephesians 2:11-22

Race and Cross
- – Racial Harmony Sunday
Ephesians 2:11-22

Remember That You Were Hopeless
Ephesians 2:11-12

Chapter Three

The Unfathomable Riches of Christ, for All Peoples, Above All Powers, through the Church
- – Missions Week
Ephesians 3:1-13

The Cosmic Church
Ephesians 3:10

Far More Than You Think
Ephesians 3:14-21

How Can We Be Clothed with Power?
- – Missions Week
Ephesians 3:14-21

Chapter Four

Maintain the Unity of the Spirit
Ephesians 4:1-6

One Lord, One Spirit, One Body for All Time and All Peoples
Ephesians 4:1-6

How Christ Enables the Church to Upbuild Itself in Love
Ephesians 4:4-16

How the Saints Minister to the Body
Ephesians 4:7-16

Why the Saints Minister to the Body
Ephesians 4:7-16

Alone in a Big Church
- – A Call to Small Togetherness
Ephesians 4:11-12

Escape from Futility
Ephesians 4:17-21

Put on the New Person
Ephesians 4:22-24

Satan Seeks a Gap Called Grudge
Ephesians 4:22-27

Speak Truth with Your Neighbor
Ephesians 4:25

Don’t Steal, Work and Give!
Ephesians 4:28

Make Your Mouth a Means of Grace
Ephesians 4:29-30

Be Kind to One Another
Ephesians 4:31-5:2

Forgive Just as God in Christ Also Has Forgiven You
- – Palm Sunday
Ephesians 4:32-5:2

The Depth of Christ’s Love: Its Cost
Ephesians 4:32-5:2

Chapter Five

The Darkness of Abortion and the Light of Truth
- – Sanctity of Life Sunday
Ephesians 5:1-16

The Enthronement of Desire
Ephesians 5:3-6

Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion
- – Sanctity of Life Sunday
Ephesians 5:11

Urgency and Gratitude
Ephesians 5:15-20

When Is Abortion Racism?
Ephesians 5:16-17

Singing And Making Melody To The Lord
Ephesians 5:17-20

Be Filled with the Spirit
Ephesians 5:18

Adam, Where Are You?
- – Father’s Day
Ephesians 5:21-28

Husbands Who Love Like Christ and the Wives Who Submit to Them
Ephesians 5:21-23; 1 Peter 3:1-7

Jesus Is Precious as the Foundation of the Family
Ephesians 5:21-6:9

Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 1
Ephesians 5:21-33

Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 2
- – What Does It Mean to Lead
Ephesians 5:21-33

Marriage: A Matrix of Christian Hedonism
Ephesians 5:21-33

Marriage: Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant
Ephesians 5:21-33

Beautifying the Body of Christ
Ephesians 5:22-32

Chapter 6

Fathers, Bring Them Up in the Discipline & Instruction of the Lord
- – A Tribute to My Father, William Solomon Hottle Piper
Ephesians 6:1-4

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 1
Ephesians 6:1-4

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 2
- – A Father’s Conquest of Anger in Himself and in His Children
Ephesians 6:1-4

Raising Children Who Hope in the Triumph of God
Ephesians 6:4

Ready to Move with the Gospel of Peace
Ephesians 6:10-20

Spiritual Warfare and Prayer
Ephesians 6:10-20

The Weapon Serves the Wielding Power
Ephesians 6:17-20

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Ephesians 6:17-20

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

Prayer is a Wartime Walkie-Talkie

As I have done my yearly survey of the Biblical teaching on prayer in preparation for prayer week, I have been impressed more than ever before that God has given us prayer not as an intercom for increased convenience in our secluded cottages, but as a walkie-talkie connecting the general’s headquarters with the transportation line and the field hospital and the front line artillery. Prayer is not a bell to call the servants to satisfy some desire we happen to feel, it is a battlefield transmitter for staying in touch with the general.

I think that is obvious in the text. Paul says (in verse 12) that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces. Then he calls us to take up arms (in verses 13-17). Then he says, “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance….” That is clearly combat talk. Keep alert! Persevere!

But then I started seeing evidence for this everywhere I looked. For example, in John 15:16 Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

Notice: Why is the Father going to give the disciples what they ask in Jesus’ name? Answer: Because they have been sent to bear fruit. The reason the Father gives the disciples the gift of prayer is because Jesus has given them a mission. In fact the grammar of John 15:16 implies that the reason Jesus gives them their mission is so that they will be able to enjoy the power of prayer. “I send you to bear fruit…so that whatever you ask the Father…he may give it.”

Is it not plain then that the purpose of prayer is to accomplish a mission? It is as though the field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (go bear fruit), handed each one of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the general’s headquarters, and said, “Comrades, the general has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished. And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to him through these transmitters. If you stay true to his mission and seek his victory first, he will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send in air cover when you need it.”

What has become clearer to me in recent days is that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer comes from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to use the transmitter. We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom.

Take another example from Scripture. In Luke 21:34-36 Jesus warns his disciples that times of great distress and opposition were coming. Then he said, “But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man.” In other words, following Jesus will inevitably lead us into severe conflict with evil. It will surround us and attack us and threaten to destroy our faith. But God has given us a transmitter. If we go to sleep it will do us no good. But if we are alert and call for help in the conflict, the reinforcements will come and the general will not let his faithful soldiers be denied their crown of victory before the Son of man.

What About Praying for Peace?

1 Timothy 2:1-4 looks like it might be an exception to this battlefield image of prayer. Paul says that he wants us to pray for kings and for all who are in high positions “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.” Now that sounds very domestic and civilian and peaceful.

But read on. The reason for praying this way is highly strategic. Verses 3-4 say, “This [praying for peace] is good, and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” God aims to save people from every tribe and people and tongue and nation. But one of the great obstacles to victory is when people are swept up into political and militaristic conflicts that draw away their attention and their creativity and their strength from the real battle of the universe.

Satan’s aim is that nobody be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. And one of his key strategies is to start battles in the world which draw our attention away from the real battle for the salvation of the lost and the perseverance of the saints. He knows that the real battle, as Paul says, “is not against flesh and blood.” So the more wars and conflicts and revolutions of flesh and blood he can start the better, as far as he is concerned.

So when Paul tells us to pray for peace because God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, he is not picturing prayer as a kind of harmless domestic intercom for increasing our civilian conveniences. He is picturing it as an urgent message to headquarters asking that the enemy not be allowed to draw away any fire power onto decoy conflicts of flesh and blood.

So I am more convinced than ever as we begin 1985 that God has given us prayer because Jesus has given us a mission. We are on this earth to press back the forces of darkness, and we are given access to headquarters by prayer to advance this cause–that’s all. When we try to turn it into a civilian intercom to increase our conveniences, it stops working, and our faith begins to falter.

Prayer is for the Kingdom

In a recent issue of World Christian magazine David Bryant tells about a young Hindu social worker who came to America and stayed at his house. He and his wife took her one evening to dinner at a friend’s home. On they way the Hindu woman “witnessed” to David Bryant and his wife Robyne. She showed them a picture of a guru who had died 45 years ago. She and her family now worship him and pray to him.

When Bryant blurted out, “But he’s dead!” she disagreed and said that in response to her prayers he has given her a very good life and surrounded her with many blessings.

When they got to the home where they would eat dinner David Bryant hoped that his Christian friend would help bear a credible witness to this Hindu woman. But he was dismayed when at the dinner table his host said, “Great house, isn’t it? I know I put a lot more into it than I can ever hope to get out of it. But I don’t mind. We plan to be here the next 45 years anyway, God willing. We’re so thankful. The Lord has blessed us in so many ways. I don’t know what we’d do without him.”

Bryant sat in his back yard the next morning asking himself: Is that the point of prayer–to treat God like Coke? Some say things go better with Coke. Some say things go better with Christ. Some say things go better with a guru. A bird splashed into a nearby birdbath and sent Bryant’s mind to Matthew 6. Yes we are supposed to be as free and peaceful as the birds. But why? To seek first the Kingdom!

The power of prayer was not given to the church to win comforts but to wield a weapon.

The theme of our Prayer Advance 1985 is “The Weapon and the Wielding Power.” The weapon we have in mind is the one in Ephesians 6:17–the sword of the Spirit, namely, the word of God. And the power we have in mind–the power that wields the weapon–is prayer. In the original Greek Ephesians 6:18 does not begin a new sentence. It connects with verse 17 like this: “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying through all prayer and supplication on every occasion…” Take the sword…praying. Prayer is the power that wields the weapon of the word. And by the word of God we do battle against sin and unbelief in our own lives and in the world.

That is the truth that has gripped me most firmly over the past weeks of reflection about prayer. We will talk about how prayer empowers the word next week under the title “The Power That Wields the Weapon.”

But here at the beginning of prayer week we need to focus on a more basic truth about the relationship between prayer and the weapon of the word. Not only does prayer wield the weapon of the word, but the weapon serves the wielding power. That is the title of today’s message. Today I want us to focus our attention on the several ways that the word helps us pray.

The word of God is a living and active weapon. When the hand of prayer reaches out to pick it up, it is not dead weight in the hand. It sends its own impulses up the arm of prayer. That’s what we want to think about in the time we have left this morning. How does the weapon serve the wielding power? How does the word serve prayer?

I’ll mention five ways.

Five Ways That the Word of God Serves Our Prayers

1. The word reveals a God who delights in the prayers of his people.

The most basic encouragement for our praying this week is the truth that our God delights in our prayer. Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight.” In the book of Revelation John describes golden bowls full of incense filling the throne room of God with pleasing aroma. And the bowls of incense are the prayers of the saints.

Wouldn’t it encourage you to spend time in prayer this week if you really believed that every time you bowed your head in prayer the Master of the universe enjoyed it? It’s as though he has a favorite food. And when you pray he can smell the aroma from the kitchen as you prepare his favorite dish.

The best thing of all is that the food God loves most is to answer prayer. When God gets hungry for some special satisfaction, he seeks out a prayer to answer. Our prayer is the sweet aroma from the kitchen ascending up into the King’s chambers making him hungry for the meal. But the actual enjoyment of the meal is his own work to answer our prayer. The food of God is to answer our prayers.

The most wonderful thing about the Bible is that it reveals a God who can only satisfy his appetite for joy by answering prayers. He has not deficiency in himself that he needs to fill up, so he gets all his satisfaction by filling up the deficiencies of people who pray.

“Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” says the Lord. No. Therefore “offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving…and call upon him in the day of trouble, and he will deliver you.” (Psalm 50:13-15). An answered prayer is the meal of God. So if you want to feed him with the only kind of joy he is capable of, hold up the cup of prayer and let him fill it.

So the first way that the word of God serves the weapon of prayer is by revealing a God who delights in the prayers of his people. (See also Romans 8:26 where God loves our prayers so much that he commissions his Spirit to pray through us when we are hindered in our praying.)

2. The word serves prayer by commanding it.

The most basic command of the Bible is that we be people of prayer–that we be people who look away from ourselves and our own resources to God. God wants to be God for us. He wants to be our treasure and reward and defense and hope and peace and joy. And when he commands prayer he simply is saying, “be the kind of people who want me to be all of that for you, instead of looking to the world for your treasure and reward and hope and defense and joy.”

“Pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

“Continue steadfastly in prayer.” (Colossians 4:2)

“In everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55:6)

The commandments to pray abound throughout Scripture. God has strewn the pages of the Bible with invitations to share in his favorite meal–answered prayer. Let the commandments to pray move you this week to devote new time to mixing your golden bowl of prayer with God’s favorite dish.

3. The word serves the wielding power of prayer by offering promises to make us hopeful in our praying.

Just take a sampling for your encouragement during prayer week.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

“The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. 19 He fulfils the desire of all who fear him, he also hears their cry, and saves them.” (Psalm 145:18-19)

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14)

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7)

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened…” (Matthew 7:7-8)

In other words, since God is the kind of God who delights in prayer and who feeds himself by answering prayer, he gives it not only the force of commandment but also the incentive of promise. Amazing promises–to stir us up to pray this week with all our heart.

But that’s not all. He also gives us a history book of answered prayer.

4. The weapon of the word serves the wielding power of prayer by encouraging it with stories of tremendous successes in prayer.

It tells of Jesus praying all night before he made the decision about who would serve as the twelve apostles of his church (Luke 6:12). Then he chose them and they changed the course of world history beyond imagination.

It tells of Solomon praying for understanding so that he could rule well (1 Kings 3:9). Then God answers and gives him so much insight that people came from around the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

It tells of Elijah praying that no rain fall for three years. And no rain fell. And then the prayer for fire on Mt. Carmel to defeat the priests of Baal. And finally the prayer for rain as he bowed before the Lord alone on the mountain. And there was a great rain. (1 Kings 17:1; 18:1, 42-45)

The word is a history of God working in answer to prayer. And the stories are written to make us hopeful in our praying (Romans 15:4).

5. Finally, the word helps us in our praying by giving us the content of our prayers.

1 John 5:14 says, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” We must pray according to his will. And what better way to pray according to his will than to pray his very words?

The weapon of the word of God serves the wielding power of prayer by giving words to prayer. And now you can see, as we draw things to a close, that the power that wields the sword of the Spirit is not really our power. Prayer, when it is full of power is full of the word of God. The sword of the Spirit is wielded by the power of the Spirit. The sword is full of the electricity of God. When we touch it with prayer the current of divine power runs up our arm. And the wielding power becomes the very power of God.

Make this first full week of 1985 a week of prayer.

Let the word reveal a God who loves the aroma of prayer and satisfies his longings by answering prayer.

Open yourself to the commandments of the word to pray without ceasing.

Be encouraged to pray by the amazing promises made to those who call on God with all their heart.

Imagine yourself in one of the great Bible stories of answered prayer.

And then fill your prayer with the very words of Scripture.

I believe with all my heart that if we devote ourselves to the word and prayer like this through the week, it will be a week that changes the world.

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Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Ephesians 6:10-20

Beginning a Series on Evangelism

This morning we begin a four week series on evangelism. My decision to focus our attention on evangelism comes from a growing and deepening desire to see God convert more unbelievers through our ministry.

Virtually Everyone Is Burdened in This Area

Virtually every earnest Christian is grieved by his weakness in this area. Did you know that? There is not a zealous Christian in this room who feels content with his effectiveness in personal evangelism. We feel guilt for our timidity and regret for missed opportunities, phony because of our lack of compassion for the lost and fear that some program of evangelism is going to be pushed on us against our wills.

One of the most freeing things is to simply get this out on the table and admit it. And then to notice that it is the universal experience even of the most devoted servants of Christ.

For example, James Ussher was an evangelical teacher and preacher in the early 1600s. Horatius Bonar says that he was busy continually redeeming the time for Christ. He was a painstaking, laborious preacher of the Word for 55 years. The very day that he took ill with his last sickness he got up from his writing and went out to visit a sick woman and spoke to her with great earnestness about heaven. But when Ussher came to his deathbed, the last words he was heard to utter at one o’clock in the afternoon, March 21, 1656, were these, “But, Lord, in special forgive me my sins of omission.”

Here is a man that to everyone else was eminently useful in the ministry and blessed by God, and in his dying moment he was oppressed with a sense of his omissions! When I read stories like that, and when I look into my own heart, and when I talk to people like you, I conclude that virtually every earnest Christian is burdened by a sense of weakness or neglect or failure in this area of evangelism. We want to be used by God to win others from unbelief to belief, but have little success, and the result is often an oppressive feeling that seeks to avoid the issue and recoils in self-defense from sermons on evangelism.

Not a Rod but a Dream

Well if it helps any, I feel that way too. These messages are not easy for me to preach. I don’t come with a rod. I come with a longing and with a dream. The longing is that I would be changed by these messages and become more fruitful in God’s hands, and that whatever in my life may hinder the saving work of God would be removed. I want there to be a new touch of power not only on my preaching but also on my personal contact with unbelievers. I want fresh guidance from the Lord concerning the scope and focus of my pastoral labor to know if I am spending my time in a way that would maximize my life for Christ’s glory. That’s my longing.

My dream is that we as a church would be freed from the paralyzing effects of guilt in regard to personal evangelism. That all of us would find some natural outlet for love toward the lost people in this city. That there would develop an array of bridges into Bethlehem from many pockets of unbelief. That our personal sense of the reality of Christ would be so deep and confident and satisfying that we could scarcely keep from commending him to others. And that the power of Christ would rest upon us with unusual effectiveness.

So I don’t come with a rod this morning; I come with a deep longing for myself and with a happy dream of what it might be like if God would make us a healthy, happy, free, authentic, loving, powerful, evangelistic, outreaching, soul-saving church. If you share this longing for me and perhaps for yourself, and if you have a similar dream for Bethlehem, would you devote regular, earnest time to prayer over the next four weeks that God would make this longing and this dream a reality? I believe he will do it if we seek it with all our hearts.

To begin our series I want us to focus on Ephesians 6:15. “Having shod your feet with the READINESS OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.”

“The Gospel of Peace”

Before we focus on the word “readiness” and its place in the armor of God, I want to say just a word about the gospel of peace. The gospel that we have for the world—for our lost dad or sister or neighbor or classmate of colleague or unreached people group—the gospel that we have is the good news that God purchased peace by the death of his Son and offers it to sinners who believe in Jesus.

We have the good news that God’s omnipotent wrath against sinners has been taken away through the death of Jesus for sin. And everyone who believes is reconciled to him freely by grace. And in the place of enmity comes peace. And there is nothing sweeter in all the world than to be at peace with God.

Strange to Find “Peace” in Ephesians 6?

Sometimes commentators point out how strange it is that Paul should mention a gospel of peace right in the middle of a passage dealing with spiritual warfare and conflict and armor. But it isn’t strange is it? The aim of our warfare is that people would accept the terms of peace that God holds out, namely, faith in Jesus. And the only reason there is any conflict at all is because the power of sin and the powers of Satan are dead set against making peace with God.

Look at Ephesians 2:13 to see Paul develop the gospel of peace for us.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. 14) For he is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility . . . 16) and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. 17) And he came and preached peace to you who were far off [Gentiles!] and peace to those who were near [Jews!]; 18) for through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.

The good news of peace is that when Christ died and shed his blood for sin, two kinds of enmity were overcome. The enmity between God and repentant sinners was brought to an end. And the enmity between races and factions in Christ was brought to an end. So Christ became our peace. That is the gospel of peace.

Putting on the Whole Armor of God

We have heard it by the grace of God. We have believed it by the grace of God. And we have been saved through it by the grace of God. And now Paul says in Ephesians 6:15 that the readiness of this gospel of peace is to be put on like shoes as part of our spiritual armor. ” . . . and having shod your feet with the readiness of the gospel of peace.”

So let’s think for a few minutes about this readiness as part of the whole armor of God. Verses 11–12 say, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The Context of Having Our Feet Shod

Four things that we learn from those two verses:

1. All Life Is War

From the cradle to the grave, life is war. Your soul, your mind, your body, your family, your career are fields of conflict. Until Satan is finally thrown into the lake of fire, our peace with God will have to be a vigilant peace. Because Satan will certainly give us no peace if we are at peace with God.

2. The War Is Against Supernatural Evil Powers

The war we are in is not a war with flesh and blood but with supernatural evil powers. What amazes me about Paul’s words here is not what he affirms but what he denies. I’m not surprised to hear him say that we wrestle with evil angelic, demonic, supernatural powers. What surprises me is that he says (in v. 12) we do NOT wrestle with flesh and blood.

I want to say to Paul, “You’ve been stoned and beaten and imprisoned and run out of town and shipwrecked. Your flesh has been torn and your blood has been spilt and that has hindered your ministry again and again. The flesh of others has torn your flesh and the blood of others has boiled against your blood. What do you mean you don’t wrestle against flesh and blood? It’s people with their hands and their stones and rods and chains that have cost you dearly and tested your faith almost to the limit.”

I think Paul would answer. “You’re right. Flesh and blood is real and it can be very evil. But what I mean is this. Whenever someone’s flesh attacks me, or someone’s blood boils against me, or my way is hindered by man, something else is also going on, something deeper, bigger, more terrible, more sinister, more destructive than meets the eye. I don’t mean that flesh and blood can’t hurt or hinder the cause of Christ. I mean that the prince of the power of the air is more dangerous than any of his subjects and that he must be overcome in every instance of conflict, or the battle is lost.”

Consider Ephesians 2:1–2. “And you he made alive when you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

Sure, the sons of disobedience (in their flesh and blood reality) can oppose us in our spiritual warfare; but it’s more decisive to defeat the spirit that works in them and the prince of the power of the air that they follow, than simply to wrestle as though all you are dealing with is human nature.

So the first thing we see in verses 11–12 is that life is war, and the second thing we see is that the conflict, if it is going to be successful, will be fought with supernatural, demonic forces. If they are not engaged, the victory is superficial.

3. There Is Danger of Falling in This Battle

The third thing we see is that there is danger of falling in this battle. Three times Paul tells us to take pains to stand, that is, not to fall. We’ve just spent several weeks on this issue of perseverance in the book of Hebrews so we need not dwell on it here.

4. God Has Made Provision for Us to Stand

The fourth thing we see in these verses is that God has made provision for us so that we can stand and not fall. And that provision is armor. God is able to keep us from falling, Jude says, and the way he keeps us from falling is by fitting us for successful spiritual combat. So if your aim is to persevere in the Christian life and not be defeated by the wiles of the devil, then you must put on the armor described in these verses. This is how God means to keep us safe unto the day of salvation.

Having Our Feet Shod with “Readiness”

That’s the context in which we read about having our feet shod with the readiness of the gospel of peace (verse 15). Notice that we are not shod with the gospel. The gospel is the word of God and the word of God is our sword according to verse 17. We are not shod with the gospel. What we are shod with is the READINESS of the gospel. Now what does that mean?

Ready to Move with the Gospel

I think it means, “Let your feet be ready to move with the gospel.” Feet are for moving from one place to another. If you put on shoes of readiness, then the idea would seem to be readiness to do what feet are for, namely, moving. And if the readiness is readiness of the gospel it probably means ready to move with the gospel—move with gospel power and for gospel purposes.

Let me show you two or three reasons why I think this is the right interpretation.

The Background of Isaiah 52:7

It’s almost certain that Paul has in mind here the words of Isaiah 52:7,

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Here we have a picture of the feet of people who are running to bring good news, and the good news is good news of peace. Surely this is where Paul got his imagery. And if so, then the “readiness of the gospel of peace” is surely a readiness to move with the gospel, a readiness to tell the good news, and publish peace and say “God reigns!”

The Structure of Colossians 3–4

Here’s another reason I think this is what Paul has in mind, and this is really interesting. Notice in Ephesians 6 that the passage on spiritual warfare comes right after the passage on husbands and wives, children and parents, and masters and slaves. Well, if you turn to Colossians 3, near the end you see that the same three pairs are dealt with—wives and husbands (3:18–19), children and parents (3:20–21), and masters and slaves (3:22–4:1). But then instead of a paragraph on spiritual armor Paul calls for vigilant prayer (4:2–4), and look what he says in verses 5–6,

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.

Here in a context much like the one in Ephesians is an exhortation to be alert to how you can be the salt of the earth, to answer unbelievers’ questions, and to make the most of the time for the sake of Christ. This is what I think Paul means by the readiness of the gospel of peace. Being prepared and being alert and ready to talk about the gospel.

A Parallel in 1 Peter 3:15

One last confirmation: In 1 Peter 3:15 the very word “ready” is used in the same kind of exhortation. “Always be ready to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

Experiencing the Power of the Gospel

So, coming back to Ephesians 6:15 I have one last observation. The armor of God is given to us believers to help us stand against the devil. It is introduced as defensive armor. Verse 13: “Take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” How to stay standing is the issue.

So what can we conclude from the fact that the shoes of verse 15 are the readiness to move with the gospel of peace? I conclude this. A ready offense is an essential part of a successful defense. And O how true this is!

Giving the gospel away is one of the best ways of experiencing its power in your own life. The best way to taste the power of God for your own soul is to venture something on it. It’s the great old truth of the Lord himself when he said, “He who loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” The more ready we are to move with the gospel, the more life and power and joy and security we will know in the gospel.

In giving we will receive. In dying we will live. And in telling the gospel we will hear it again with O so much more depth and power and joy.

How lovely on the mountains
are the feet of him
who brings good news, good news,
proclaiming peace,
announcing news of happiness:
Our God reigns! Our God reigns!

__________

Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org