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Defining Discipleship – Sermon Manuscript

-Humans are hardwired to want to belong to something bigger than ourselves. 

-I’ve been talking to a friend recently about what makes a story “epic.” (stirs the soul, captures the imagination, sense of longing) Think of the appeal of LOTR or Narnia.

-I think all of us long for this. Civilizations since the dawn of time have had stories to help us understand our place in the world. Beowolf, Epic of Gilgamesh. Jews had Noah and his ark, the crossing of the Red Sea. Rome had the raising of the twins by wolves. Americans have the midnight ride of Paul Revere. 

-This past week, I went to a conference in Denver where I ran into a friend from seminary who is planning to pursue PhD work in New Zealand, AKA Middle Earth. As soon as I heard that I said that to him, and he agreed that’s why he wanted to go there! We LONG to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. 

-Yet that’s exactly what God invites us into. But this invitation is to something even more epic than a fantasy story full of talking animals. God’s story is true, and allows us to get caught up in the most epic story that is taking place around us every moment of every day, yet we need to retune our minds so that we can better see and understand what is taking place around us all the time. We need a Gandalf to rouse us from our complacency, and jump off the couch and go on this wonderful adventure!

READ/PRAY (Titus 2:11-14, 579)

  1. God’s Purpose in Human History

-How do you summarize the story of the Bible? Creation, fall, redemption, consummation? The revealing of God’s eternal plan? The establishment of God’s people? 

-Establishment of the kingdom of God: God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing. We studied 1 Peter together, that book was a reminder of how to live as holy exiles, remembering that our kingdom is not of this world. We’re citizens of a new country where Jesus sits on his throne, and the best part is he can’t be outvoted!

-God’s people are those who seek to worship (obey) God in every facet of their lives, imaging Him and obeying His mandates to fill the earth and subdue it.

-God’s place is everything! Since God created everything there is nothing outside His realm. Kuyper: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

-God’s rule and blessing comes about as His people (the church) preach and practically live out the gospel in every area of their lives. God’s purpose, from eternity past, was to have a people who demonstrate Him by what they say and how they live, distinct from the world around them. 

-Let’s look at some passages that talk about what this looks like:

–Titus 2:11-14 (579)

-“Grace of God appeared” that’s talking about Jesus. This brings about salvation, which is available to everyone. Then when we are saved, it leads to godly lives today, as we anxiously wait for God’s return.

-“Purify for himself” holiness/sanctification, means we are “zealous for good works.” Those who are saved are looking for opportunities to do good works. Do you look for those opportunities? Are you “zealous” working your hardest, to do these good works? 

–Col. 1:13-14 (572)

-Delivered from the domain of darkness, in a new kingdom, gives us redemption. We can summarize this idea with a diagram.

-We are called to live out good works, to live out the truths of the gospel, and we are called to do that together, in community during “this present age.” But this isn’t just an NT idea, we see another picture of this in the OT

-Picture of this using an arrow.

-Jer. 29:5-7 life in exile for God’s people (382)

-Notice how normal this is! Live a holy life in the normal everyday life, we’ll look like we’re doing the same things as everyone else, but with a different focus, aim, and goal. We’re supposed to actively look for ways to be a blessing to our communities (don’t have time for this now, but I’ll talk about it some during Scraps tomorrow, how do we pursue the blessing of our community when the culture emphasizes the opposite of what we’ve been called to do/be, and calls our attempts at blessing intolerance. Separate issue than we have time for today, but I think it warrants conversation)

-Before we get to “discipleship” I think we need to understand what a disciple is, so let’s begin defining what a disciple is before we get to the activity of discipleship (or, spoiler alert, “discipling”)

  • What is a disciple?

–Luke 6:40 (503)

-At it’s most basic level, it is a “learner” Saw this in Eph. 4:20 “learned Christ” All of us are supposed to be learning from Christ, remembering that we aren’t above our teacher (Jesus) but the aim, direction, purpose, is to “learn Christ” that is to be like Him, to follow after Him, to represent Him to others, to help teach others what He’s like.

-So we can take our arrow picture and add the idea of them becoming a “learner” by putting an “L” above those who are learning Christ.

-What are some pictures of this? Baptism & yoke

–John 4:1 (518)

-What does baptism signify? Dying to your old ways of living, washing the old self off and putting on the new. We see in other places in the NT that baptism serves as a visible demonstration of our death to ourselves and the new life we’ve been given in Christ. In 1st Cent. Served as a physical, visible identification with a new teacher. John had quite the following, if Jesus comes and baptizes even more, his notoriety would have spread quickly! Therefore, baptism serves as the visible demonstration that you are publicly identifying with Christ and dying to your old ways of living. 

-Have you been baptized?

–Matt 11:27-30 (476)

-This is where it becomes fun! Jesus invites us into the epic story of cosmic, universal renewal. It doesn’t make sense in our minds, because it’s both the easiest and the most difficult thing you’ll ever do.

-Yoke is easy and light (which is only true because Jesus is pulling with you, but it’s still a yoke, which means you need to put in all your effort. Is this God’s doing or ours? Yes! 100% our job, 100% God’s job. Our work is light and easy compared to trying to do it by ourselves, but we need to do the work if we want to join with God in this epic story we’re called into. 

-Another way of summarizing this idea is: “Transformative learning” Doesn’t just stay in the theoretical (it can’t) it must lead to transformation and conformation (conforming into the image of God)

-The last text I want us to look at is Jesus’ last recorded words in Matthew’s Gospel, the great commission 

–Matt. 28:18-20 (487)

-Preached on this text before (when I candidated) but that was over 2 years ago now, and that was meant to serve as the starting point for this series now! What is the significance of this passage to being a disciple? It’s the last recorded words from Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, meant to be the final/lasting thought for us of the story of Jesus, and it’s significant because it’s how Jesus’ ministry is meant to continue. So really briefly, what does this look like: 

-Dependent on Jesus’ authority. If He’s not in control, why would we obey Him?

-“As you’re going,” This is not mean to be a completely different thing, nor is it supposed to be unique. Everyone lives a life somewhere (job, house, hobbies, favorite restaurant – Applebees) 

-Jesus answers HOW we make disciples: BY baptizing & teaching (baptizing is the entry point, teaching is the continual training) another way of saying this is making and maturing

-The way you know this is working is the outworking of this in “observe all that I have commanded you.” So let’s ask: how well are you obeying everything Jesus commanded? Let’s start with a basic one: do you love God completely with everything you have? That’s the first and most important commandment! The second most important is how are you loving your neighbor?

-With this big emphasis we’ve seen on making disciples, you’d think it would be prevalent throughout the rest of the NT, right? The funny this is, the last time the word “disciple” appears in the NT is Acts 21:16 “Some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us…” and then it disappears. So am I just making a mountain out of a molehill, emphasizing something that should be ignored of forgotten? Do you think that maybe the disciples forgot about it, or moved on from making disciples to the REAL work of the ministry?

-Shift from “disciple” to “learner”

Rom. 16:17 “contrary to the doctrine you have been taught” (learned)

1 Cor. 14:31 “So that all may learn and be encouraged”

Phil. 4:9, Phil. 4:11 “what you have learned, practice them” “I have learned to be content.”

Col. 1:5-7 “You heard and understood…just as you learned from…”

Eph. 4:19-24 “learned Christ”

Titus 3:14 “learn to devote themselves to good works.”

-Using the previous diagram, we could summarize these ideas by adding an “L” to the top of those who have moved from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Son.

-How, then do we define what a disciple is? 

            TVP: “A forgiven sinner who is learning Christ in repentance and faith” (74)

GW: “A disciple is someone who learns the way of Jesus, which is both cognitive and behavioral, knowing and doing.” (213)

Mine: A redeemed sinner learning Christ by increasing worship of God through every area of your life. (A good summary/litmus test of this is Gal. 5 the fruit of the Spirit) What’s left out of this? Nothing! Fruit of the Spirit is meant to be demonstrated in every circumstance/area of our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

–The key is someone who is learning. I onetime heard someone say that the road to Christian maturity is paved with Christian books, you can’t grow in learning of Christ unless you’re reading about Him! But it’s also not enough to do this individually, because as we’ll see next, transitioning from disciple to discipleship is a community endeavor. 

“whereas we often think of learning in terms of our own personal growth and advancement—of becoming a better me in some way—to learn Christ is to be increasingly focused on others rather than ourselves.” (TVP)

-James talks about this in James 1:22 the need to be hearers AND doers, not enough to just think right, you also need to live right, which is where this learning must be transformative. 

  • What is discipleship?

-Moving on to the next step of this, to be a disciple is to be a learner, so discipleship is helping people become better learners. Some potential definitions: 

-While listening to Dr Hendricks speak, I sensed that discipleship might be something I could do, unlike more public types of ministry because you didn’t have to preach or do anything public.[Dennis McCallum and Jessica Lowery, Organic Discipleship: Mentoring Others into Spiritual Maturity and Leadership]

-What would happen to the church of Jesus Christ if a majority of those who claim to follow Christ were nurtured to maturity through intimate, accountable relationships centered on the essentials of God’s word? Self-initiating, reproducing disciples of Jesus would be the result.[Greg Ogden, Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ] 

-Discipleship is all about living life together rather than just one structured meeting per week.[Francis Chan with Mark Beuving, Multiply]

-Many churches have used various types of small groups as part of their discipleship strategy (home groups, life groups, fellowship groups, community groups, etc.).[Randy Pope with Kitti Murray, Insourcing: Bringing Discipleship Back to the Local Church]

-Mark calls the Church to abandon its imperialistic dreams on the one hand, and its passive noninvolvement on the other, and to become for the world what Jesus was for the world. That is what discipleship, following Jesus, really means. [NT Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship] 

-We need more of the engine that Jesus used to change the world, the engine he instructs us to use. This engine will not create perfect churches, but it will create effective churches. It’s relational discipleship. [Jim Putman and Bobby Harrington with Robert E Coleman, DiscipleShift]

-Anything that helps someone take 1 step closer to God in their life aka worship 

-This demands both making and maturing, as well as doing and being. I at times worry that we’ve segmented discipleship as a tack on for only the “mature” Christians, when the reality is that discipleship is inherent to the Christian faith! To practice discipleship is to be a Christian, however, there are both good and bad ways to do this, we’ll look more fully at this idea next week, as there’s something that needs to be the foundation of all our discipleship, spoiler alert: it’s God’s Word. This means discipleship can even take place with unbelievers, where we live in a unique way, ask unique questions, and encourage them to bring their lives closer to Christ. 

-Now remember, this cannot be done alone. It takes others to teach and demonstrate to you “a more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31)

-Anyone who is married can testify to this reality! Can’t hide your sin anymore! Don’t realize how selfish you are until someone else sees/calls you on your sinful tendencies. And then when you throw kids in, they both start to imitate and then call you on any negative traits! Our kids have learned about kind/unkindness, great thing to learn, not as great when they start to tell you your discipline is being unkind! That’s ok, it’s an opportunity to disciple them!

-Examples of this abound in the NT, but I want to take some time to look at 1, especially as it was reminded to me a couple months ago by a fellow pastor of mine in how we should engage each other.

1 Thess. 5:13-22 (574)

[13] Be at peace among yourselves. [14] And we urge you (y’all), brothers, admonish the idle,encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. [15] See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. [16] Rejoice always, [17] praywithout ceasing, [18] give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. [19] Do not quench the Spirit. [20] Do not despise prophecies, [21] but test everything; hold fast what is good. [22] Abstain from every form of evil.

-Look at all these various commands: 

-Explain the text. This is all done in the context of community, discipleship cannot happen alone.

-Bonhoeffer in Life Together “The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”

-We need each other, we need God’s Word to be spoken to each other, and we need the church to hold us accountable, which is what we’ll be looking at together over the coming weeks. I love the way The Vine Project summarizes this idea.

TVP: “the persevering proclamation of the word of God by the people of God in prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God, otherwise known as the four Ps: 

  1. Proclamation of the word in multiple ways 
  2. Prayerful dependence on the Spirit 
  3. People are God’s fellow workers 
  4. Perseverance, step by step”

-So what does all this look like? A couple ideas as we wrap up:

  1. Take what you’re already doing, and refocus it toward growth/holiness. Matt 4:19 (472). Jesus took fisherman and refocused them to become fishers of men.
  2. We do this because we are sent & commissioned by God John 20:21 (529). Do you view your life as sent by God, to actively work at moving people 1 step closer to God with your interactions? Because that’s exactly what God has called us to do and be: a disciple who pursue discipleship by our daily interactions with each other. 

-Even this week! Take some time during Thanksgiving to think about how you can intentionally make and mature those you’re interacting with!

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by mikethestrand on November 20, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon, Worship

Posted by mikethestrand on November 20, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/11/20/defining-discipleship-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 6:10-24 Sermon Manuscript

Spiritual Fighting in Christ

Ephesians 6:10-24

We’ve made it! This is the end of our series on Ephesians! 

So: a quick recap: We saw all this rich doctrine, theological truth in 1-3. That God extended his grace to us when we were sinners, that faith allows us to be sealed by the Holy Spirit, the riches we’ve been given in Christ, remember those 2 words: BUT GOD! 

Then there was a shift in chapter 4 that set the tone for the rest of the book. Paul urged us WALK WORTHILY! We do that by seeking unity, continuing to put off our old self and put on Christ, walking in love, have rightly ordered relationships at home and outside of the home. Today we’ll look at the final way we walk worthily, and it picks up a similar theme to the end of chapter 4: we’re called to put something on, instead of putting on the new self, we’re called to put on the whole armor of God, which we’ll see is the same thing as putting on the new self.

READ

PRAY

As a guy growing up, this was one of my favorite Bible passages, because it has that connotation of fighting with it. I even remember wearing those cheap plastic “armor of God” toys when I was in Sunday School. Look, the 90s were a weird time in the evangelical Christian subculture. In fact, that stuck with me so much, that when I got to college and took Greek, I spent 3 months studying this passage, and did a whole presentation using pictures and movie clips from the movie 300. I loved this! Paul’s picking up all these Roman ideas, this elite fighting force who dominated world history for centuries! 

The problem is: that’s not Paul’s intent! While Paul’s imprisonment certainly would have given him many opportunities to see Roman armor up close and personal, his choice of armor would be leaving out some key areas in the Romans armor. Instead, Paul’s picking up on this Messianic prophecy in Isaiah. 

You don’t need to turn there, but listen to some of this wording.

Smack dab in the middle of a Messianic prophecy that gets read most Christmases about someone coming from the stump of Jesse on whom the Spirit of the Lord would rest. Isaiah 11:4-5 “Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.”

On dealing with the Lord’s coming salvation, coming right before one of the Easter passages in Isaiah 53, is Isaiah 52:7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion ‘Your God reigns.’” 

Isaiah 59:17 “He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.” 

In Paul’s mind as he’s writing this is all these things we now get because we’re in Christ! Which leads us in to verse 10. 

  1. Be Strong in the Lord! (10-20)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of HIS might.

Finally – this is the last of how we practically walk worthily, and in many ways this is a summary of everything that’s come before, as we’ll see as we continue walking through it! 

Notice whose might are we to be strong in? Even the command to “be strong” has the connotation of being strengthened, we are the ones being acted upon to be strong. God is the one whose power is at work in us (1:19) when we are brought into right relationship with God. It is GOD who works all these things out in our lives. Remember that quote from Johnathan Edwards: “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.” 

This is circling all the way back to chapter 1, “In him…” we have redemption (7), we have an inheritance (11), we were sealed with the HS (13) 

These things all take place because of Christ’s work in us, not because of anything we can do. And how do we appropriate this strength? By putting on the armor of God. Putting on the armor of God is HOW we remain strong in the Lord. 

  1. Use the full armor of God in your spiritual battles (11-13)

Put on the whole armor of God, 

First thing, we’re called to put on the WHOLE armor of God. We don’t get to pick and choose the pieces we want. 
Generally, that’s the way armor works anyway. EVERY individual piece is necessary for comprehensive coverage. But there’s also nothing that’s redundant or unnecessary. It’s all carefully thought through & planned to be most effective in battle. Similarly here, we need to arm ourselves completely. Why? Look at the rest of vs. 11-12.

That you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The physical world is not all there is. Western world is unique because we have a tendency to ignore the spiritual realities around us that the majority world continues living in. Yet we can’t get completely away from it, even in our “enlightened” minds! There’s still magic 8 balls sold in stores, you can still buy a “lucky” rabbits foot, there’s still “psychics” who will tell you your fortune for the right fee, even Sephora tried getting into the game by selling “witch kits!” We are far more spiritual than we care to admit!

The problem for many of us in the Western world is: we don’t pay enough attention to the spiritual state of our souls. We care far more about our physical health than our spiritual health because the spiritual health is a lot harder to measure. I think this is a large part of the reason it’s so hard for many of us to get to church on time! I know, there’s kids, there’s the lame driver, the list is endless, BUT that’s why we need to gather together! We are a visible representation of the world to come, which we’ll see in the next verse. 

Satan, the evil one really exists – AND he’s had millennia to hone his craft. Think about some of your hobbies. How do you get good at them? Practice. Hours and hours and hours. Now take that and expand it by millennia, and that’s what the devil has had to work with. 

Paul also says this is wrestling in the spiritual realm. I remember loving the idea of wrestling when I was growing up, wrestling with my dad, my sisters, my friends. Calvin loves wrestling with me! But this signifies a specific type of fighting. 

This spiritual battle is not something far off, removed from us, it’s close, it’s intimate, it’s something we need to deal with because ignoring it leads to our detriment. We’re in this battle already, the question is what are we going to do with it? Paul answers what we should do with it in verse 13:

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

Again, we see this reminder to take up the whole armor of God. SO THAT we can stand. That idea of standing has come up a few times now already in just a few verses. This seems to go against this idea we’ve been sharing of “WALK worthily” We can’t walk and stand at the same time, well, I guess there are those moving walkways at the airports that make it possible, BUT other than that you can’t walk and stand at the same time! Notice that Paul doesn’t say we need to win the war, he just says stand. The battle’s already been won!

The evil day – Bible talks about 2 periods of history, before Christ, and after Christ, and the after Christ is known as the last days, what we’re living in right now. 

What Paul is communicating is the way we walk worthily, the way we orient and go about our lives, means we must stand strong against the devil and his works. It means not rescinding any areas to him. Think of someone wearing a military uniform, if you notice the flag on their arm, no matter which way they’re going the flag is flying back, so they’re never giving up any ground! Similarly, we cannot give up any ground to the devil. That’s how we stand firm. Now let’s take a look at howwe’re able to do that, as we put on the whole armor of God. What does the armor consist of? 

  • The armor consists of… (14-20)

The armor: subjective AND objective. Every piece.

Many scholars debate whether these things are talking about Christ’s attributes or ours, much ink has been spilled in this debate, but when you get right down to it, both are supposed to be true. Christ personified every piece of this armor perfectly, so should we. 

Having fastened on the belt of truth. 

What is the truth he’s referring to? 

Eph. 1:13 “When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him.” 

The gospel message is associated with the truth. All truth is God’s truth.

Remember, truth both subjectively and objectively, so it begins when we objectively believe the truth of the gospel, believing in Jesus who is THE truth (Eph. 4:21), but then subjectively it means we are truth- tellers (Eph 4:25)

As Christians, we have the only truth. As that truth of that gospel takes root in us we become marked by truthful lives. That leads us to the first question: Are you marked by truth? 

Throughout history, those who have been most used by God have been people who have been those most saturated in God’s truth. Martin Luther had most of the Bible memorized. John Wesley, whose evangelistic zeal was the spark God used to begin a revival, had the NT memorized in Greek. This foundation will come up again. 

And having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

Righteousness is one of those Christian words that gets tossed around a lot but not always defined. So what is Paul talking about? 

Once again, it’s come up before. Eph. 4:24 “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” 

Something God-like in righteousness. It is moral uprightness, which we know is not our own doing, because apart from God we have no right standing. 

So again, subjective and objective. Objectively there is 1 righteous person in all of existence, yet through faith in Christ, his righteousness is given to us. This is what is known as imputed righteousness. Christ takes the penalty for our sin on himself, and we get the righteousness of Christ given to us. One author has called this The Great Exchange. We give sin, we get righteousness. THE BEST!

So: have you made that great exchange? Have you given your sins to God and received his righteousness? 

And as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

All of us wear shoes. There’s various types of shoes for various types of activities. You’ve got your hiking shoes, basketball shoes, tennis shoes, sandals, dress shoes, Crocs. And there’s nothing worse than wearing the wrong shoes for the current activity! I played basketball growing up and had really weak ankles, which meant I had to make sure I had the right kind of shoe for the activity to make sure I didn’t accidentally roll my ankle. Shoes really matter! But spiritually, we need to be ready to manifest the gospel of peace. BUT not just the gospel of peace, but the readinessthat comes from the gospel of peace. So what does that mean? 

We must ALWAYS be ready to share the gospel in any and every opportunity we have. There’s a certain amount of jealousy that I have for those of you who are not in vocational ministry. You get to have those conversations around the coffee machine that I don’t! I miss the days where I was getting to rub shoulders with unbelievers every day in the work place, because those opportunities came up almost weekly where someone would ask something about me that was different. But this isn’t just at work, as we’ve seen over the past couple weeks, parents, YOU have opportunities probably every day to demonstrate the gospel in word and deed with your kids!

But it’s not just the gospel, it’s the gospel of what? Peace! We tend to neglect that aspect to our faith except for Christmas, where we remember Jesus is the prince of peace. And don’t forget, this is peace objectively and subjectively! Objectively, the gospel allows us to have peace with God which leads to the peace of God. Apart from God’s work in the spiritual realm, there is no hope for peace in the physical realm. 

Clinton Arnold, “Spiritual warfare is the solution to human warfare”

BUT, in God, there can be peace. Apart from God, there is no peace. 

So is your life marked by the gospel of peace? 

In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one

I believe, help my unbelief. 

Faith in God is based on a precedent of what God has previously done to/for you. So again, remember objective and subjective. Objectively, we have faith in God, but subjectively, that faith is based on things God is doing and has already done. 
Here I raise my Ebenezer (Come Thou Fount), stone of remembrance 

We NEED those because we’re so quick to forget how God has provided! Think of the space we’re in right now. Do you know what went in to get here, or the fact that we nearly had to sell the building 12 years ago to survive. Think about how God has provided above and beyond what a few people (some of whom are sitting in here) over 40 years ago could have even dreamed of??? And not just us, think about the church in Ephesus 2,000 years ago, under persecution daily, do you think they ever could have thought Christianity would become THE dominate world religion? So have faith!

When we have faith, it allows us to fight against temptation. Think about the way we try to excuse sin…The devil made me do it…I was born this way…it’s not my fault…it was bad parenting…it was the hand I’ve been dealt…You do realize that none of that matters or is an excuse for sin? We all have our pet excuse we go to when we allow those darts from the evil one in, and as we saw earlier, he’s been practicing his archery a lot longer than you and I have been around! So put your faith in God! Trust that He is better than any temptation the devil may throw at you.

And take the helmet of salvation

Just as a helmet protects us, so salvation protects us. For those of us who are “in Christ” we can now wear the helmet of salvation. Once we’re truly saved there’s no going back! This allows us to walk with confidence because we already know our destination. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I hope and pray we start to see more of that in our prayer chain!

Grace Be With You (21-24)

Let’s see how Paul ends this letter. 

Paul is sending “the beloved brother.” A dear friend who’s been through thick and thin for the purpose of encouragement. Paul, the guy who’s under arrest is trying to encourage the church in Ephesus. That’s amazing! That’s the guy who’s learned the secret to being content in all circumstances! That’s the kind of question all of us should be asking: how can we encourage each other no matter what circumstances we’re in? 

Finally, the last things he mentions are: peace, love, faith and grace. That’s a pretty good description of the gospel, and a great way to end our time studying this book. Peace: God has provided a way for people from EVERY walk of life to come together and get along. Peace with God leads to the peace of God. Love: and not just get along, but genuinely LOVE each other! Just as Christ loved us. Faith: the bond that unites us, blood is thicker than water, except in the family of God. Grace: God’s undeserved favor given to us. We need to be reminded of that reality all the time, instead of dismissing or neglecting that truth.

Paul’s told us how to ensure we stand fast against the schemes of the devil, and it begins by praying, so I’m going to give you some time to pray right now. We’ve seen things we can pray for, we’ve seen to pray for the strength to stand firm, we’ve seen to pray for each other, and for boldness to proclaim the gospel. 

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by mikethestrand on November 13, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Theology

Posted by mikethestrand on November 13, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/11/13/ephesians-610-24-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 6:1-9 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-Playing a game, gotta learn the rules! Frustrating playing with someone who keeps changing them or twisting them to their own advantage.

-Game of life is similar! Need to obey the rules to get it right. Who do you think made the rules for our lives? God! 

READ/PRAY

-“Household code” rules that we all obey. Because you are a Strand, you must ___ 

-Remember Paul has been explaining what it means to “walk worthily,” which means your whole life now is meant to look different. 

-We’ve found other “household codes” from the 1st century, Aritstotle: “almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature. But the kind of rule differs; the freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in an of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.”

-Do you see the difference? Where in Eph. 6 do you see “ruling”? Paul is taking a commonly understood idea (house codes) and turning them on their head, and this is significant, because these house codes are what lead to the flourishing of society. Remember throughout the OT God’s people live in a theocracy, under the NT we no longer live that way, instead we attempt to be the best citizens we can possibly be, we do everything in love, we celebrate where our culture believes in (as Francis Schaeffer said) “true truth,” and we order our alien society differently than the country in which we find ourselves. There are some other great resources out there that will help you with ordering your house, but only in so far as they help you live out the biblical principles. 

-Spurgeon: “Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.”

-One of the most unique aspects of Paul’s rules for the household is who gets addressed. Generally limited to those in positions of power, those who weren’t were only mentioned for how the powerful person should engage with them. So kids would be mentioned only in reference to the Father, how he keeps them in line, etc. Paul begins with those why are “the least of these”

-Jesus in Matt. 25:40 “As you did to the one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Jesus takes what we think of as common knowledge and flips it on its’ head! So the fact that we see children, slaves, wives brought up as the focal point would have been radically counter-cultural! Don’t miss that looking at this text through 21st cent. Eyes. 

-We’ll see in this text some explicit commands for the people mentioned, let’s dig in!

  1. Children: Obey (1-3)

-Obedience isn’t limited here. Obey your parents when it makes sense, obey your parents when you want to, obey your parents when you feel like it, no, it’s an explicit command. That being said, we’ll see how parents are to live in a minute!

-So kids, when your parents are talking to you, what does the Bible say to do? Obey! This is meant to come in the context of a relationship, so you can ask clarifying questions, can try to better understand why your parents are telling you to do something, but at the end of the day, what does the Bible command? Obedience. Why do you think that is?

-Parents are meant to serve as a picture/illustration of God, so we demonstrate our obedience to God by obeying our earthly parents. Gen. 1-3 teaches us that God began creation by creating the family. Adam & Eve were commanded to image God to the rest of creation by ordering and bringing structure to what He had created. Part of what that means is creating the various civilizations we see around us! But the basic building block of every civilization is: the family! As the family goes, that’s where the rest of society will go, which is why families matter so greatly to God! 

-That being said, because we’re humans, we have a tendency to ask the next logical question: Is there any room to disobey? Yes, but that shouldn’t be a regular part of your life. If obedience is the expectation, there should only be rare exceptions where you disobey, and the only time & place to disobey is when your parents are telling you something that is contrary to the Bible. One example I’ve seen some parents do is lying about your kids age to get discount food or entrance admissions to parks! There was a video that went viral a few weeks ago about a family sneaking a child into Disney World in a stroller dressed like a baby, and then as soon as they walked in the child came out! God’s rule is even higher than your parents rules, so help your parents obey God’s rules! That’s what Paul says next anyway:

-“In the Lord”

-Isn’t limiting to only believing parents, instead a reminder that children are indwelled by the Holy Spirit too.

-Remember, this letter was meant to be read in the gathering on Sunday morning for the entire church, which means because children are addressed, Paul is assuming they’ll sitting next to their parents! We are meant to be a multi-generational gathering! 

-It’s also important that Paul is rooting this command in previous writings, not something he came up with, it’s in both OT and NT (quoting Ex. 20:12 & Deut. 5:16)

-Proverb, generally true, but unfortunately nothing is guaranteed. Some of this means families are meant to serve as a preserving function in society, if you want your society to function well, families must be given prominence and helped to flourish, how do you do that: connect to a local church.

-But kids: pay attention to what this says about your parents too! Paul isn’t singling you out, your parents also have a job to do, and they’re going to be held responsible by God for how they raised you!

  • Fathers: Teach (4)

-Fathers in the 1st cent. had complete control, could conduct infanticide, sell into slavery, beating was seen as the best form of training. Remember what we saw from Aristotle! There was a literal hierarchy in society, and men, specifically free men, were the pinnacle, everyone else served the men.

-This command is hard! Part of it means in order to discipline your kids correctly, you need to be discipling yourself, not respond in anger because then you’re setting a bad example. When we read of God being described as our Father, it should give us pause, because we need to ask how well we’re doing at representing God to our children. Father’s we serve an incredibly important role in our family, and it begins by not provoking, not belittling, not demeaning them.

-Read a story of an incredibly accomplished theologian who was asked how he was able to write as much as he did, his response was that he sacrificed his kids. Far too many kids bear the brunt of the parents’ insecurities and issues, which perpetuates family wounds and struggles through generations. So dads: be intentional about what kind life you’re building, as well as what example you’re setting.

-Paul uses “bring them up” ektrephete in Eph. 5:29 “nourishes” his wife. Dads, instead of antagonizing your kids, nourish them, feed them, help them understand who God is, what He’s like, and how we should live with Him as our Lord. Paul uses 2 words to describe this:

-Discipline and instruction

-Not just “because I said so” (As often as that turns out to be appropriate I’ve learned, much to the dismay of my 7 year old self!) Instead, this training is supposed to be “Of the Lord” If you limit your correction and training to what God has commanded you’ll be doing well! If you keep your training rooted in God’s Word, not only will you be setting them up for success, but you’ll give them a holistic way of approaching the world and life. Legalism won’t accomplish that, it only leads to either fear of being outside the lines, or rebellion for not being able to measure up.

-“Legalism will prove to be a bankrupt basis for behavior and ethics. Parents need to help their children transition to intrinsic motivations for good behavior.” (Arnold, 430) Another way of thinking about this is teaching them God’s Word, what it means, how to study it, and then taking God’s Word seriously yourself! Share with them how God’s teaching you, share with them about times you mess up, apologize when you’re leaning on legalism instead of God’s Word!

-Obviously this isn’t only for dads, moms play a huge role in raising children, but notice the ultimate responsibility and accountability God has given to Fathers. Take this job seriously! The kids you have are a beautiful gift from God that have been entrusted to you for this season of their lives!

-Practically, what does this look like? (Richard Coekin, pg. 184)

1. It takes a church to raise a kid – so show up! 

2. It takes the gospel to raise kids – so speak up!

3. It takes God to raise kids – so pray up! 

-If your relationship with your parents is strained, if they weren’t believers, thank God that you have a church! Get connected here, we’d love to walk alongside you! Paul in other cases encourages us to treat each other in the church like a family, and all that comes along with that!

  • Slaves: Obey (5-8)

-Need to talk about slavery. Often what comes to mind when we see slavery in the Bible is the chattel slavery that is an abominable reality of our nation’s history. Slavery was different at this time, I found this summary to be helpful:

1) Racial factors played no role. In the US that was the determining factor! How much melatonin in your skin served as the only factor for your role in society. In the 1st century, slaves could be any race, any background, and people even sold themselves into slavery as a payment for debts. 

2) Many slaves could expect emancipation in their lifetime. Slavery was for life here. No hope of freedom, no way to get out, suffer and bear it. Many people in the 1st century were worried about how many people were becoming freed, and started advocating that there should be an age minimum given so there weren’t too many former slaves in the world!

3) Slaves worked in a variety of specialized and responsible positions. Were far more than hired hands to pick the fields. Slaves could be household managers, doctors, and even:

4) Slaves received education and training this was seen as a way to get more value from the slaves. They would become better and better at their craft until they finally were freed.

5) Freed slaves often became Roman citizens and worked with their former masters Eventually given a privileged status and then a job to continue working in! Since they were trained, they became very valuable!

-While you won’t find a verse that says “slavery is sin” you have all the implications that land there. Jesus commands us to love our neighbor not own them, and treat others as we would want to be treated. 

-Paul in 1 Tim. 1:10 lists “enslavers” as living contrary to how God has commanded. As I’ve said before, remember that this text was read in the church, where both slave and free met in the same congregation, sitting right next to each other. 

–Philemon is another example of this reality, this new way God wants us to live! Paul wrote the entire letter asking Philemon to free his former slave Onesimus, who ran away than was saved under Paul’s ministry! 

-Obey them like you obey Christ. Not as a lap dog, but as the position God had placed them in.

-Paul doesn’t ground slavery in either the OT or in a theological position. We’ll see next week husband & wives is grounded in both a theological truth and the OT, and so is the command for children. The reality that slavery isn’t grounded in God’s design for the world or with theological reason is significant! It’s demonstrating to us that there’s something different about slavery than there is wives and children.

-And this obedience should come about because of the transformed heard. It’s easy to work hard when you want recognition or attention, that’s normal! But what God has called us to is so far beyond our own power that it can only come about because of His Spirit at work in us! 

-Lorence’s berry farm throwing rotten berries.

-What would it mean to do your work in such a way that you behave like your boss is watching over your shoulder? (He is) That’s the point of vs. 8, God sees everything we do (and think) and wants complete obedience. Do you obey? Do you work hard? Do you view your work as an act of worship, obedience, and service to the Lord, or is it just a means to a paycheck? Remember God has wired you in a specific way, so even your vocation can be a ministry.

-Roots and fruit, doing and being, God cares about our internal motivations and wants to sanctify even our desires.

-Once again, unlike other household rules, Paul turns the idea upside down:

  • Masters: Honor (9)

-Same as slaves? This is radically counter-cultural! What is the same? Treat them as fellow image bearers. Don’t just worry about what other people think (people-pleasers) do good to them because God is watching.

-Threatening seen as the primary way to motivate slaves. We have a document from 61 AD (about the same time Ephesians was written) where someone talking about slavery writes “The only way to keep down this scum is by intimidation.” That’s not how Christians should serve as masters! Don’t threaten, we’re now commanded to do everything we do in love, according to how God has loved us. 

-And then to heap on the expectations, there’s an even higher master than the earthly master. Remember back to Aristotle’s idea, the master who is a male is the highest power, but for anyone in Christ that’s no longer true! Our true master is in heaven, and in his eyes we’re all the same. This last part is the final nail in the coffin for slavery.

-No partiality, we are all one in Christ. Col. 3. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, so live like it! Treat other people how you want to be treated, no matter your position, no matter your power, the way the world uses these things is corrupted, we’re to use them for good.

-Takeaways for us today, despite not living in the same culture. We no longer live in a culture where slavery is the norm (which should lead us to praise God for the common grace of that reality! So while we’re not slaves, all of us have some place we work. Some of us even have people who report to us in our jobs. So how should this passage change the way you approach your work?

-Whenever you work, do your best, work hard, and remember who you’re doing it for. I share regularly 1 Cor. 10:30 “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” which means you can add work in there! When you are at your job God is watching your interactions, He’s watching how you’re using your gifts, and He’s seeing if you’re representing Him well. I don’t say that to heap guilt (he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake) but instead to “make the best use of the time,” to live as Christ has called us to live.

-But this also cuts back the other way, if you have people reporting to you at work, are you honoring them as a human being creating in God’s image, or do you belittle, undermine, and use them to advance your own aims? Don’t threaten them (obviously there needs to be accountability), represent Christ to them.

-God has given us a pretty high bar to follow! Children are to obey, Father’s are to teach and train those children, servants are to obey like they obey Christ, and master’s are honor their slaves as fellow human beings. And all this is only possible through the same power at work in us that rose Jesus from the dead. As we pursue Christ-likeness, as we’re conformed into His image, He will give us the strength we need to be this faithful family.

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by mikethestrand on October 30, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on October 30, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/10/30/ephesians-61-9-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 5:1-17 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-Imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, when my sisters would copy my it drove my nuts! Now that I have kids it’s adorable and terrifying! I also see my kids starting to compare themselves to other kids they spend time with (according to my kids, every other person we know has better toys than we do!) In our age, we see imitation taking place all the time! From FOMO to trying to keep up with a family in CA to nervous tics developing in high schoolers because they watch too many TikTok videos. What you take in matters greatly for how you end up living your life!

            -bad company ruins good morals 1 Cor. 15:33

            -who/what are you spending time with?

READ/PRAY

  1. Walk in Love (1-2)

-Once again, Paul builds off what he said in the previous section with “therefore”

-Gave some specific instructions about things to “put off” and other things we’re supposed to “put on.” Not enough to just remove something, has to be replaced with the right thing, otherwise it will remain broken.

-Remember the last verse from Eph 4 last week: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Christ serves as the model for the rest of us as to what putting on forgiveness looks like, but then he takes it a step further at the beginning here: “be imitators of God, as beloved children.”

-Whether they want to admit it or not (depends on their age) children in some form or fashion imitate their parents. There’s good and bad things about that, right? There are some cases where I see my kids doing something I always do and I’m thrilled! There’s other times where I see my kids doing something I do and I worry because I know exactly where it will end up! Another way of thinking about this is asking the question: who do you look like? You can’t help but look, act, think like your parents! So does the way you’re living look like God or not?

-This imitation is bracketed by 2 examples: forgiveness and love. The 2 most difficult traits (I think) for us as believers. Jesus forgave literally everything, yet I struggle forgiving my kids when they break something! And Jesus loved all of us when we were His enemies, I struggle to love people that are annoying!

-But let’s think briefly about what this love looks like. 1 John has a lot to say about love, but 1 passage ties into this verse perfectly 3:18 “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth.” How hard is that? We saw that a couple weeks ago “speak the truth in love” Our love must be visible in our lives, otherwise we’re not being obedient to God’s Word. And Paul goes on:

-This love is meant to be the same way that Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. This fragrant offering is a reference back to the OT as a way of signifying the offering was acceptable. Lev. 1 repeats 3 times “It is a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.” Because of Jesus’ perfect and acceptable sacrifice, we can now offer our lives as a living sacrifice Rom. 12:1 “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Church, this is how we imitate God: by pursuing sacrifice. But Paul doesn’t stop there in Rom 12, but goes on to say:

-Similarly in Ephesians, Paul goes on to describe what this transformation looks like:

  • Walk in Light (3-14)

-“But” Paul begins by noting that this is a contrast to the previous section. Being imitators of God means some things must not be true of us. 3 groups of 3 overview: sexual sin, the way you speak, idolatry.

-First 3: sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness. All referring to some kind of sexual sin. 

-First is the general “porneia” in the Greek refers to any kind of sexual sin outside the bounds of marriage. Must be said, there is a sexual morality, faithfulness to how God designed/ordered human relationships to operate/flourish. Throughout history there has been all sorts of deviation from God’s intended purpose to sex, our culture isn’t even close to as morally depraved as the 1st century!

-Second is impurity. This generally refers to a moral brokenness, and often some kind of sexual sin. 

-Third is covetousness, which connects directly to the 10th Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”

-Paul is saying there shouldn’t be even a hint of sexual immorality among believers. “must not even be named” isn’t referring to talking about these issues, it’s saying that people on the outside looking in at believers shouldn’t have any reason to bring up these charges against a believer. Holiness, Christlikeness, demands that we fight against these sexual sins that have been issues since the fall.

-If you read much in the Christian news sphere, the time period I grew up in has been under intense scrutiny for what is now known as the purity movement. Good desires/motivations, terrible execution! The pinnacle was “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” by Joshua Harris, who went from there to serving as a pastor, and then just a couple years ago he announced that he was divorcing his wife and no longer following Christ. Again, good desires! The free love of the 60s led to a lot of hurt and pain in people, so in a desire to try to protect their children they did the best they thought they could! But when the only message given is: sex is bad, don’t have sex otherwise you’ll get pregnant and have a terrible marriage it leads to a whole host of difficulties! Add to that an unwillingness in the church to actually engage how we think about and pursue healthy sex, and it’s no wonder our world is confused about God’s point and purpose for sex.

-All that background to say, if you have sexual sin in your background, or if you’re currently wrestling through any kind of sexual sin (pornography, same sex attraction, lust) drag it into the light! Share your struggles with someone who loves you and cares about you, and if you don’t have anyone like that get more involved and invested here! This is literally why God has given us the church! We’ll be taking more about this issue when we get to marriage in a couple weeks, but don’t let today pass by without bringing your sin into the light so that we, as Christ’s holy bride, will not even have a hint of sexual sin in our midst.

-Similarly, Paul’s next 3 sins of how you talk: filthiness, foolish talk, and crude joking, some of these words also refer to sexual jokes again. 

-Why does language matter so much? Jesus said that if you want to measure how well you’re growing in your sanctification, look at the words that come out of your mouth (Luke 6:45: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”) 

-You may hear something like this and think “what place does humor have?” I love comedians, I love a good joke, I love funny stories, is that what Paul is talking about here? Thankfully no! Even the Bible has some pretty funny situations and stories (ask me about Ehud sometime, the Southpaw assassin!) Even Jesus told jokes! He called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” and then accuses them of straining out a gnat but then forgetting to filter out the camel, he also said it’s easier for a rich person to get to heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. That’s a funny image! Yet jokes have a time and a place, and making a joke at the expense of another human is belittling and dehumanizing to them. This also tells us that there are some areas about which we shouldn’t joke. One of the ones I’ve been contemplating recently is using sex as a joke. It’s meant to be a beautiful picture of the union of the Godhead, but because we don’t like to talk about it, or it makes us uncomfortable, we turn it into a laugh. It’s easy to use a timely jab to alleviate tension or get a laugh, but it’s not how God has called us to live! Think of one of the verses Micah preached on last week:

–Eph. 4:29 “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Church, even in your joking, you should find ways to use it to give grace! And when, not if, you offend, be quick to apologize and seek reconciliation. 

-How is thanksgiving the antithesis of this? Corrupting talk comes about because we’re not grateful for all the ways God has provided for us. 

-CS. Lewis: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” 

-Instead of using your words to tear other people down or revel in sin, use your words to give praise and thanksgiving to God for the immeasurable ways He’s blessed you! 

-Last set of 3 are a repeat of before, but this time Paul connects these ideas to false worship, that is idolatry. 

-One note that I’ve shared before is Ephesus had many cultic influences, home of one of the ancient wonder of the world, the temple to Artemis, the fertility god. Our culture is not the first to turn sex into a god. People are tempted by the same sins today, it just takes different names!

-What do you think the connection between covetous and idolatry is? We covet when we either don’t like what we have or we want more than what we need. I was having a talk with some guys last week about how much is enough? Just a little more. Did you know that a survey demonstrated that happiness directly correlates to your annual salary, but only up to $75,000, from there on out there’s much less of a correlation. How much is 75K? Solidly middle-class. Enough to provide for your needs, set up an emergency fund, and not be stressed about your next meal. From there on out it’s diminishing returns.

-Those who don’t kill these sins have no inheritance in God’s kingdom.

-Remember the big deal Paul made in Eph. 1 about the fact that we are adopted, and since we’re adopted we have all the rights and privileges of being children of God? Those rights and privileges are dependent on us looking like our dad, representing Him to the rest of his creation. Yet all of us fall short of that standard, don’t we? What hope do we have of actually imitating God like we’re supposed to? Thankfully that’s where along with adoption comes the fact that we are now “In Christ.” So it’s no longer about us perfectly measuring up to God’s standard, because Jesus already did, and when God looks at us He now sees Jesus standing in our place! However, there are going to be people until Christ comes back that will either downplay the severity of what God’s saying here, or will add additional rules and stipulations onto what Christ has already accomplished.

-“Empty words.”

-Quite the phrase, isn’t it? A bag of hot air! In context, this is referring to someone who downplays the severity of sin, or lowers God’s perfect standard. Let’s think back to the first time someone questioned the validity of God’s standard? The serpent in the very beginning: “Did God really say?” That’s the epitome of “empty words.” And even looking at the way Eve was tempted is true of us today: she looks, she notices that it’s delightful, and then she desires it and takes it. That’s a summary of every sin you commit!

-There’s increasing pressure in our culture today to cave into these “empty words” I see people responding with anger, or saying it’s time to move on from a gentle answer, or pastors accused of being woke for tweeting a Bible verse. Or even to downplay the reality and effects of sin (remember what we just saw about how destructive sexual sin is!). If you want to live a life to the fullest, be obedient to God, because otherwise you’ll be under God’s wrath. Sometimes that means there will be ramifications for your sin on this side of heaven, but it is guaranteed to have implications for eternity, which is why God gives us each new day as an opportunity to rededicate our lives to Him, and why we have the reminder in the Bible that His mercies are new every morning! So even if you give into the empty words, don’t run away from God, His grace is still enough.

-“Do not become partners with them.” How do we obey this and still obey the great commission to go into all the world and make disciples?

-We need to remember that we are both in but not of the world. We don’t live the same way, we don’t have the same motivating force, we’re living as citizens of heaven! We live a normal, human life, but we don’t participate in sin the same way the unbelievers we spend time with will. 

-Now, in your evangelism, don’t sin either! If you’re an alcoholic, don’t go to the local brewery as an attempt to witness to others! If you’re materialistic, maybe don’t go to the mall with your unbelieving friends. However, don’t waste the unique ways God has equipped you to evangelize. Your house isn’t yours, God has placed you there to be a light shining in your neighborhood, so don’t hide your light, don’t extinguish your light, shine brightly, and look for opportunities to share the gospel in what you say and in how you live:

-“Were darkness, are light” BIG difference! 

-If we are light, we carry the light with us wherever we go, so go into the darkness and bring the light to it. 

-If we are light, the fruit that comes out of that is the opposite of the 9 descriptions Paul laid out at the beginning. Should make you think of another fruit of 9 Paul lists in Gal. 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These fruit will never fail, never rot, never go out of style, and if put into practice will be radically different than the way the world wants us to operate. As I’ve shared before, I can’t get over the gentleness piece. Where do you see gentleness in our world today? You SHOULD be seeing it in those who claim Christ! If you’re not gentle, are you walking in the light? 

-The fruit of the Spirit is how we can please the Lord. By living a fruit filled life, we will by our conduct expose the unfruitful works.

-One of the pieces we need to be aware of as children of the light is we need to live our lives in the light. That means we need to bring our sins and struggles into the light and share our struggles with other believers. James 5 commands us to confess our sins to each other, to shine the light into the darkness of our sins. One thing this means is that we must be willing to share every area of our lives with someone(s). Doesn’t need to be the same person, but if you have areas of your life that no one else knows about, you’re not truly known, not truly living in the light, and not trusting God’s forgiveness for your sins.

-It’s ok to no be ok, but open yourself up to not just stay there, wallowing in your not ok-ness. Be connected to other believers (the church) who will love you despite your sins! Expose those areas to the light, if you’re in Christ you don’t have anything to fear! What will the judgment of humans do to you? Remember, you’re seated with Christ in heaven!

–Vs. 14 connects to Eph. 2:1 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world.” 

-Now that we’ve been raised with Christ, Christ is shining on us, in us, and through us, therefore we:

  • Walk in Wisdom (15-17)

-God has given us wisdom through the indwelling of His Spirit who illuminates His Word to help us know how to live. That’s how we walk carefully. Word -> wise walking.

-My love for reading came about through paying attention to driving. “No parking” on a street we drove regularly. Need to know the rules in order to drive wisely, similarly we need to know God, who created and ordered everything we see around us, and the rules He has given that will lead to flourishing. This even ties into the next vs:

-How do we make the best use of the time?

-Extremism is workaholism, or guilt for having down times. Doing versus being. God has called us to be so that we can do, not the other way around.

-Jesus, when He was on earth, was limited by time and space. Do you know what He did really well? Sleep. Withdraw from the crowds. Pray. Spend time at the synagogue (church). Spend time with his closest friends. Partied. How do we make the best use of the time? We put God first, use everything we do as a tool to worship Him. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, nothing is off limits to worship Him! 

-This is how we’re not foolish, we’re not idolaters, and Paul lands with understanding the Lord’s will: 

–1 Thess. 4:2 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” Holiness. 

–1 Thess. 5:16-18 “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

-This is difficult for us! To have not even a hint of sin, to rejoice always, to pray for everything, to be legitimately grateful people no matter what our circumstances are telling us. Yet that’s exactly what God allows us to be. It’s not work harder, it’s not clean up your act, it’s give up, die to yourself, and allow God to actually work in you. It’s be a perfectly normal human being, who has rightly ordered your life, who is shining as light (the fruit of the Spirit) and then day by day becoming better imitators of our perfectly heavenly Father.

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by mikethestrand on October 23, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on October 23, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/10/23/ephesians-51-17-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 3:14-21 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-Struggle following along or want to find a quote? Go to my blog, also can get sermon notes at the welcome table when you come in every week

-More content every week on youtube.com/southsuburbanchurch or anchor.fm/south-suburban

-My dad can beat up your dad. If your dad is all powerful, that’s true!

READ/PRAY

  1. To Be Strengthened (14-17a)

-Up until this point, Paul has been expounding on the reality of the 2 distinct people becoming 1 new people in the church, with Jesus as the head. These verses serve as the hinge from theology into practical living, so next week’s text starts with a reminder to “walk in a manner withy of the calling to which you have been called.” That means live a different life. One author stated: “The ethic of chapters 4–6 has its foundation in this prayer” (Snodgrass, NIVAC)

-Many of the NT letters have explicit theology in the first half, leading to explicit commands for new life in the second half. Through chpt. 3 has been this high theology, next week we’ll start seeing what that looks like in practice. This is a reminder for us that we need to begin with good theology, but then make sure we also take the next step of living out that good theology in our day to day lives. 

-“For this reason” repeat of 3:1. Have you ever gotten distracted during a time of prayer? “God I’m so grateful for the sacrifice of your one and only Son. Man I’m hungry, I wonder what food we have in the fridge” You’re in good company – Paul did the same! What is this reason? Because of the nearness of God to us today.

-To be fair to Paul, he didn’t get distracted because he was hungry!

-“Bow my knees”

-Humble posture. Luke 18:9-14.

-“Father”

-God as Father. Starting point matters, don’t start with human and then project onto God, start with God and then start looking for places where He is demonstrated. Theology proper

-Earthly fathers are guaranteed to fail, that’s why we need a perfect heavenly father. Just as I said before, when you hear God described as “Father” don’t just replace that idea with your earthly Father. However, because that’s our tendency, God holds the fathers accountable for their families (we’ll get to that in a couple weeks, but the idea starts here)

-Paul uses it to describe the: source, starting point, provider, nurturer of every family. Play on words (pater, patria) 

-JI Packer “You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.”

-Whether the world realizes this or not, everyone and everything traces their source back to God. First catechism answer we gave: God is the creator. He designed families. We have to demonstrate how God designed families to operate, and be a bigger family that welcomes in anyone who doesn’t have an earthly family. This is also where we see the devil continually attacking the family in our world today! We’ll get to some of that in Eph. 4-5

-“riches of his glory”

-Our Father created everything, why do we worry that God won’t provide what we need? Talking to someone this week about Psalm 23:1 “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” Or reading through some examples in Acts of the early church 4:34 “there was not a needy person among them.”

-God has given us everything we need spiritually, and He’s given us the church to help us with everything we need physically. Do we live that out? Do we thank God for the gifts of each other? Do we ask God for these riches? As we go through here, be thinking through James 4:2 “you do not have because you do not ask” What’s stopping you from asking? But Paul doesn’t stop here! This is to remind us that God owns everything! Yet Paul doesn’t ask for everything, similar to Solomon who was offered anything he wanted, yet asked for wisdom.

-“To be strengthened with power”

-Can’t do it yourself (BE strengthened) Do you ask for this as well? This isn’t just grimace and bear whatever comes, this is intentionally asking God to sustain you through whatever comes.

-Comes only through the Spirit. The Spirit is what strengthens us, equips us, sanctifies us, brings us to life when we were dead. And now that the Spirit is alive in us, what do we have to fear?

-“In your inner being”

-Not Gnosticism (we are embodied beings, can’t separate) So much of what we see taking place in our world today connects back to this issue, we are gendered all the way down, can’t get away from that. We’re trying to train our kids this way, where Calvin is happy to be a boy, Ellie is happy to be a girl. Our world (our flesh & the devil) will try to train them differently.

-Paul is connecting to a similar idea in 2 Cor. 4:16-18 “16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” Where are you focusing your attention?

-You’ve seen this if you’ve watched an older saint who’s faithfully walking with the Lord. Their faith gets sweeter, their temperament kinder. The fact that we’re still here breathing means God’s not done with us! He’s still helping us smooth out our rough edges, doing whatever it takes to make us more like Him.

-Purpose: “so that Christ my dwell in your hearts”

-This is part of where we get the idea to “ask Jesus into our hearts” but in the Bible that’s a whole big life change, not just a 1-time decision (we’re not witches)

-Great illustration of this: 2 of the 3 houses Cara and I have owned has been slightly neglected when we moved in. Seriously, what was the deal with wallpaper and popcorn ceilings? Over time, you pull down wallpaper, replace floors, remodel bathrooms, maybe eventually add some space in to accommodate your growing family. That’s what God does in our lives. He moves in “through faith” at that very moment, but then he gets to work remodeling, and sometimes he’ll need to knock down walls you’ve built, and it’s painful, difficult, and inconvenient. 

-House projects never come about at the right time. Our fence blew over 6 months before Calvin was born, I was in school, Cara was in school, our church was moving to 2 campuses (I was in the build out for the 2nd campus), our dog chewed up our carpet the next month, Cara’s car got totaled in May, yet God worked in that time, church came around us.

-This illustration is where Paul (borrowing from Jesus) talk about building your foundation in the right place, which leads us right into the next section:

  • To Grasp Christ’s Love (17b-19)

-“Rooted and grounded in love”

-Rooted like plants, grounded like a solid foundation.

-Love is the new ethic of all believers, not optional, but also not as the world defines live, go read 1 Cor. 13 to see how God defines love, but also note that this isn’t option for a Christian. (hold on to that idea, because Paul brings it up again later)

-“May have strength” (connected back to 16) “to comprehend” what?

-Options: (1) the incredible power of God (2) multifaceted wisdom of God (3) the love of Christ (4) the mystery of God’s plan of salvation. Literally text: “To grasp what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ.”

-“Perhaps it is best to see all four of these dimensions as summing up this chapter. If this is the case they may be said to refer to a combination of the last three possibilities – the revealing of the mystery as a result of the love and wisdom of God. Paul is then asking for the multidimensional plan of God to work itself out in the church and the world, manifesting God’s wisdom and Christ’s love as one person after another is converted to Christ.” (Osborne, 102)

-“with the saints” You can’t begin to comprehend Christ’s love alone, you need the church, livestream isn’t enough, solo Christianity isn’t enough, your nuclear family isn’t enough (have been told “youth group isn’t biblical”)

-“To know the love of Christ”

-How do you know love? It’s not just a fleeting feeling. Marriage, for many of us, is the proving grounds of where we start to know this (starts with our parents first). You think you love someone the day you get married, but you it hasn’t really been tested yet. Takes time, work, walking through sickness and health, through richer or poorer, then you can start to “know love”

-Story of the twin 18 month old boys. Orphanage in Russia.

-“surpasses knowledge” never be able to understand it, but as time goes on you’ll know it more.

-“filled with the fullness of God” 2 primary aspects:

-become like Christ (the remodeling is toward a specific end)

-fullness of love (John 17:26 “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”)

-As I mentioned earlier, love is the new Christian ethic. However, this love cannot be divorced from truth! “Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.” Tim Keller

  • To Him Who Is Able (20-21)

-These great truths that Paul has been praying lead him to a doxology.

-Think of this reality: since God is all powerful, what can He not do? He can’t lie, betray Himself, can’t change. Because of that, God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. Church, you literally can’t out-ask or out-think God. God has already done it all and thought it all, your thoughts are merely derivative of His.

-But let’s take this in context, because what has Paul been asking for? Strengthening in the inner being (by faith), and growing in understanding of who God is (making and maturing disciples).

-This isn’t “name it a claim it” (explain) This is asking God to work in us and make us more and more of what He has created us to be. I read a really interesting book on this idea this past week titled ‘Plugged In’ where it talks about how we can engage our culture today. One of the pieces that stood out to me is that we don’t have a choice on this, we’re in this culture whether we realize it or not, the question then becomes: what is the best way to be faithful in the place and culture God has called us? We need to start looking at things through a gospel lens. I mentioned this phrase in a sermon a couple weeks ago, but it’s where I got this term “Subversive fulfilment” from. The gospel is subversive fulfilment to all the stories the world tells, because the worlds stories can’t hold up to the reality of the world around us. Another way of thinking about this is we, as Christians, need to get better at telling the better story (abundantly more than all we ask or think)

-(Strange, 102) “The gospel…subverts in that it confronts, unpicks and overthrows the world’s stories and fulfils in that it connects and is shown to be worthy of our hopes and desires encouraging us to exchange our old stories for new ones which turn out to be the originals from which our false stories are smudged and ripped fakes” 

-Look for opportunities/ways to point out where the world is right (common grace) and then think and process through where their thinking falls short and use that as a connection point to the greatest story that is still being written! How often do we view our mighty God as too small to be working in the world around us? Whether we realize it or not, God is working in and through human history with an end, goal, and purpose in mind! That end is something we can only dream about right now. That is: as we grow more like Christ, we’ll be more filled with the fullness of God and be a better witness to the world around us of what we’re supposed to be like. This aim leads us to the last verse:

-Glorifying God, and he answers where, how, and when. Where: “In the church.” How: “in Christ Jesus”, and when: “throughout all generations, forever and ever.” 

-If you want everything Paul promises in this section, you must be a part of the church, which today is made visible in local churches. There’s a reason I keep emphasizing the church as vitally important today! It’s not an option add-on, it’s literally meant to be your lifeblood as a Christian today. If you’re not a part of a local church you won’t be strengthened, you won’t grasp Christ’s love, much less demonstrate Christ’s love to the world (which is how we glorify God today) The church is going to last forever, under the Lordship of Jesus, throughout all generations, and on into eternity.

-Since God is now our perfect heavenly father, we get to ask Him (pray!) to strengthen us and help us understand and then live out His love for us, and by doing that we bring glory to Him in the church and in His Son forever. And this prayer is meant to be a global prayer because there are saints across the world! So pray that God’s glory would be seen in the making and maturing of disciples of Jesus throughout the world, until He finally comes back and makes us completely holy.

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by mikethestrand on October 2, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Theology, Worship

Posted by mikethestrand on October 2, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/10/02/ephesians-314-21-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 3:1-13 Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-magic tricks (penny, card) lose the awe and wonder when you know how they work

READ/PRAY

  1. The Mystery Revealed to Paul (1-5)

-This should start to feel like 1 long, continuous thought to you! Paul just keeps building on his previous sections/arguments here.

-For what reason? Because of the reality that both Jew and Gentile are now one in Christ. This section seems to be essentially a parenthesis, because take a quick peak at vs. 14, notice Paul starts the exact same way! However, something triggered Paul to remember to talk about some of the implications of what he had talked about in chpt. 2, namely that God has brought us from death into life if we put our faith in Him, then that is demonstrated in and through the local church where Jew and Gentile are now 1 body.

-We also learn something new about Paul’s current state of affairs: he’s a prisoner. Sometimes this “prisoner of Christ Jesus” can refer merely to the fact that we have no life on our own, but in this case, Paul is writing while he is imprisoned, and it is quite literally because of his calling to bring the gospel message to the Gentiles.

–Acts 21:27-30 – in Jerusalem, notice the assuming that is going on! Because of God’s call on Paul’s life to preach that Jesus is the Christ, the long promised and awaited Messiah, this lead to Paul’s current imprisonment. The rest of the book of Acts recounts Paul’s various trips from being a prisoner and finally landing in Rome. Even the imprisonment isn’t enough to distract Paul or move him off his primary calling, he continues preaching the gospel everywhere he goes!

-By the time Paul writes this note to the church, it’s been a few years from when he visited, this also is one of the reasons many people believe this letter was meant to be distributed to a variety of churches. 

-But pay careful attention to what Paul is saying here, he’s given a stewardship. Paul didn’t make it up on his own, wasn’t trying to build a platform, he’s just a steward. This is another way Paul is describing God’s plan from eternity past, God knew that He would build His church, and Paul would be the messenger He would use, the steward to share the insights into this plan, which is what Paul says next:

-Mystery is the theme of this section, we’ll get to what he’s talking about in a minute, but first note that the mystery was revealed to Him. 

-When and how? Most likely referring to the Damascus Road encounter! Read a book this summer from a Pauline scholar that has tried to put together a biography about Paul’s life, taking what he’s learned and studied from a 1st century context, the evidence we have from the NT and put them together. His account of the Damascus Road was fascinating to me! 

-One of the common experiences to the Jewish scholars was meditating and asking God to speak again. God wasn’t meant to be silent, all these promises throughout the OT were going to be fulfilled somehow and someway! One of the passages they meditated over was Ezek. 1 where the prophet is given sight into the heavenly temple (which the earthly temple was meant to serve as a model of). Ezekiel’s description starts at the bottom, and slowly works its way up until he lands on someone seated on a throne, was “a likeness with human appearance.” Ezekiel is so overwhelmed by this glimpse that he falls on his face in worship! This passage served as a template for people like Paul to pray to similarly catch a glimpse of God’s throne. Imagine Paul, in his zeal for the one true God, is meditating and praying along the Damascus Road, when suddenly he catches a glimpse of the same things Ezekiel saw, the 4 living creatures, the wings, and as Paul’s eyes continue climbing, sitting in the throne is Jesus, the Nazarene, who asks Paul a simple question: why are you persecuting me? This was enough to change Paul’s zeal against the church to zeal for the church. Every good Jew would have been asking for a revelation to come, but God answered Paul’s prayer, and answered it in a way he hadn’t expected! And then God continues answering it all the way down through today in his Word (we’ll see that in vs. 5)

-I find it funny that Paul describes himself as “writing briefly” Some of his letters are brief, but not all of them! 

-Vs. 4 – these books that we read today were read in the early church gatherings, from front to back. By reading this together, and the Holy Spirit at work in us, Paul knows that is sufficient to understand what he means.

-But this is also gets to some of what we believe about the purpose of the Bible. I spent some time with some other pastors this past week and we spent some time talking about Isa. 55:10-11 “As the rain and snow come down from heaven…so shall my word be, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” 

-The Word of God is living and active, yet so many people I talk to forget that. I forget that! I was sharing this week that I want to get a sign that sits on my desk that says “let the Word do the work.” Friends, it’s so tempting to not look to God’s chosen means of revealing Himself to us, isn’t it?

-Remember, the way God has chosen to reveal Himself to us is through His Word. I’ve read some people say that conservative evangelicals (which is us) worship the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Scriptures, and I take offense at that! We recited it today, we believe in the Father, Son and HS, but what is God’s chosen means of revealing Himself to the world? Through His Word! I didn’t make this book up, no mere mortal could come up with the beauty of this story, or the way the gospel subversively fulfills every other competing way of trying to put the world together. I’ve been told to not limit God to His Word, and I don’t since God did, and He can’t and won’t contradict Himself!

-But this revelation is something that previous generations didn’t get to see. 

-Think of the “hall of faith” in Heb. 11. Noah, Abraham, Moses all these heroes of the faith didn’t get to see the reality of what they hoped for. Sometimes that’s a hard reality for me to believe, think of the things those guys saw. Noah saw humanity wiped out, water covering every mountain, rain coming for 40 days and 40 nights. Abraham saw his wife who was “well advanced in years” become pregnant because God promised it would happen. Moses was spared certain death from the Egyptians and walked across a dry ocean bed, he witnessed plagues strike the greatest nation on earth, and then got to talk to God on a mountain. And we’re in a more privileged position than any of them. Why? Because we live on this side of Jesus’ arrival. 

-I saw a friend recently post on FB that you can prove most of the events of Jesus’ life and the rest of the NT without using the Bible and just using other 1st century documents. Did you know that? There are historical reasons to believe in Jesus outside the NT, but what we have here has been proven time and time again to be true. And again, we’re not the first generation to see these things! Nor is Paul the only one God is revealing these truths to:

-God revealed it to “his holy apostles and prophets”

-Something similar to 2:20 last week, those specific offices in the early church that God used to begin the church. More on Scraps tomorrow

-“by the Spirit”

-The same Spirit alive in us today

  • The Mystery Is… (6-7)

-Paul is explicit! This mystery that he’s been talking about is…(drumroll please) Gentiles are now a part of God’s chosen family. 

-Those who were far off have been brought near, the promised Messiah came and changed everything.

-What is it Paul means when he talks about mystery? Many of the scholars make note of how frequently “mystery” is used throughout this book because in many of the other religions the “mystery” was some hidden secret that you could only achieve through their religion. 

-This chapter isn’t the first time using mystery in this book, 1:9 “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.”

-Mystery is the revealing of God’s eternal plan that previous generations longed to see, that God gave glimpses of throughout history, and knew just the right time to send His Son to earth. 

–Gal. 4:4-5 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

-This mystery was promised all the way back to Father Abraham in Gen. 12:3 “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

-Paul specifically mentions 3 things that are now true about the Gentiles: fellow heirs, same body, partakers. In the Greek he uses the class preacher move: alliteration to make his point 

-No Jew would have expected this to happen. Fellow heirs? In the same body? Partakers of the same promise? All those things they’d been waiting for are now available to their sworn enemies? Blasphemy!

-Through the gospel. What is the gospel? The good news that Jesus is the second person of the Godhead, who lived the perfect life we couldn’t live, then died in our place and rose on the third day validating everything He said, therefore we should respond in faith and trust in Him and spend the rest of our lives becoming more and more obedient to how He commanded us to live. God, man, Christ, response. 

-Paul then goes on to share one of the ways we should respond to the truths of the gospel. The mystery revealed through the gospel is evidenced by ministry, service. The word translated in your Bibles as “minister” is where we get the word for “deacon” or one translation put “servant” there. There’s a lot of cultural baggage associated with that term today: is it another name for pastor? Don’t have time to dig too far, but let me just note that all of us are called to minister, or serve each other. When Christ saves us, He equips us with a gift for the good of our body, and if you’re not actively using your gift for the good of others, our body will be dysfunctional and unhealthy. But it’s not just for kicks and giggles, not to build yourself up, this is:

-Only because of God’s grace. Anyone who is now “in Christ” has been given grace as a free gift, grace that overwhelms like a flood in our lives, bringing us from death into life, transferring us from being far away from God to near to Him, and co-heirs with Him, seated in the heavenly places! 

-Don’t be afraid to use your gifts! Everyone has one, God wouldn’t call you here if you didn’t! Don’t be afraid to try new things to figure out where and how God has uniquely wired you to steward your gifts for the good of the body, the building up of the church, and the glory of God. One pastor said it this way:

-“The mystery demands ministry.” (Kent Hughes) If God has saved you, you have a job to do! You have a ministry/service to pursue, and none of us are off the hook! This is part of the reason I play music on Sunday mornings, I’m not above using my gifts for our body, and neither are you!

-The power is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (Eph. 1:19-20)

  • The Mystery Made Visible (8-13)

-“very least” he says something similar in 1 Cor. 15:9 “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. and 1 Tim. 1:15 “he saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

-Is Paul just a pessimist? Like Eeyore who sits around moping all day? Unless we understand and meditate on the reality that we are sinners, we’ll never truly understand just how amazing God’s grace is! Unless you wake up everyday marveling and praising God that He could save someone like you, you’ll have a tendency to become self-righteous and look down on other people. God doesn’t let us get away with that kind of thinking! When we know and understand our place in relation to God it frees us to no longer worry about ourselves, but instead this is the starting point of faithful ministry/service to God and others.

-“Unsearchable riches”

-Friends, we’ll never be able to plumb the depths of what God has done for us in Christ. The Marianna trench, the deepest point on Earth can’t contain it, millions of galaxies can’t contain it. “If we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry.” We’ll have eternity to explore this idea, yet even eternity isn’t enough time for us to properly come to understand how God has worked this out! 

-Notice how this mystery is made visible today in vs 10

–“It is through the old creation (the universe) that God reveals his glory to humans; it is through the new creation (the church) that he reveals his wisdom to angels.” (Stott, 124)

-This manifold wisdom is full of connotations. It means “many colored” think of a beautiful rug, flowers, or jewelry. It was also used in Gen. to describe Joseph’s “coat of many colors.” The church is meant to serve as a beautiful tapestry, weaving together people from every race, nation, tribe, and tongue together. What other community can accurately reflect this reality? People from different socio-economic backgrounds, different gifts, different interests, different ages, different vocations, but the same God. The church is God’s chosen means of demonstrating to the world (and the spiritual world) what this gospel message looks like. It means we have a huge burden to bear!

-I onetime heard a pastor/comedian share how he talks about his job on a place. He tells people he works for a global nonprofit that serves billions of people. His boss owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and provides everything he could ever need. The lady was amazed until the punchline: I’m a pastor. Now that we’re saved we need to use a different measuring stick than money and stuff. How effective are we at demonstrating the “manifold (many colored) wisdom of God”? 

-Eternal purpose – God has a plan. History is moving somewhere. Mark Twain “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Those rhymes, allusions point to a Creator with a plan.

-This plan is centered around a person, who created a new group of people that are to be gathered under Him as the head, that he called “the church”

– Stott: The church is central to history (11) The church is central to the gospel, The church is central to Christian living (13) So become a member!

-It is in the church that we have boldness and access with confidence. The church brings us together, affirms our faith, and allows us to serve each other.

-Paul’s call to service means he’s even willing to suffer on their behalf. Similar to today, being imprisoned was a disgrace, people would start to question his call. Yet the reason he’s suffering is for their sake. Do we suffer for our brothers and sisters? That’s what we’re called to! In fact, suffering is the only guarantee we have while we’re on this earth.

-Suffering reveals our hearts (Matt. 13:20-21 “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.”)

-Comes with this side of heaven (John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”)

-The means by which we can comfort others (a ministry/service) (2 Cor. 1:3-6 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.) 

-What looks like magic to the world is common for God. God has shown us His hand, he’s revealed this mystery to us, now it’s up to us to continue sharing the peek behind that curtain to others, and live it out in a way that shows it to be true!

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by mikethestrand on September 25, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on September 25, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/09/25/ephesians-31-13-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 2:1-10 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which one do you prefer to hear first? 78% of people prefer to begin with the bad news. Studies has shown that starting with the bad news leaves people in a more positive mood than the reverse.

READ/PRAY

  1. You Were DEAD (1-3)

-Paul paints a stark picture here of our spiritual state. Our life before Christ was one of death. The problem was we didn’t even know it! We were able to walk, talk, carry on as if everything was completely fine, but spiritually we were dead.

-Scene in The Princess Bride where not as Miracle Max says in The Princess Bride “just mostly dead,” which according to him is “slightly alive. Unlike dear Westley, we were COMPLETELY dead. 

-I’m not sure if you’ve ever thought about that implication, but what can dead people do? Well, they can lay there, decompose, take up space. But can a dead person will themselves to life? No! 

-I know this is a morbid picture, but imagine going to a mortuary, you walk through to the back room where the bodies are. What would your response be to one of those bodies sitting upright and talking to you? I’m pretty sure that’s the plot of some scary movie that I will never see! 

-Before Christ, all of us are like those bodies in the back of the mortuary, we are spiritually dead. There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, there’s nothing we can do to bring ourselves back to life. And not only were we dead, but we were dead in something: trespasses and sins. We are dead in and because of our sins: completely separated from the only one who gives life. 

-I think there’s a tendency to miss this reality. We don’t understand the depths of our sin and separation from God, so we don’t view ourselves as spiritually dead. We’re often too busy comparing ourselves to others (our strengths vs their weaknesses) to contemplate that reality that apart from God we’re dead!

-“In which you once walked”

-Not only did those trespasses and sins keep us dead, but they also were the only way of life we knew how to follow. Before Christ opened our eyes to the reality of our sin “in sin” was the only way we could walk. 

-This word “walked” is a life encompassing word. It’s not just the action of walking, it’s the entire way of being. Before Christ, our only way of living and orientation was toward our trespasses and sins. 

-In other places, Paul describes it as being a slave to our sin. Similar to being spiritually dead, being a slave means you can only do that which your master demands and expects of you. It’s not a very freeing way of living. Paul also goes on to explicitly state who the masters of those who are spiritually dead are, he mentions 3 things: 

-worldly influences, Satan, and our flesh. Let’s look at those one at a time.

“Following the course of this world”

–Paul here is referring to the ungodly trends and directions the world will try to move us. And for those who are dead in their sins, they aren’t even aware of it. 

It becomes as much a part of us as a fish is a part of the water. Just as the fish doesn’t even realize they’re wet, so those who are not in Christ don’t even realize the problems with the world, the culture, around them. And this is not just a modern-day problem, because Paul is writing this 2,000 years ago! But let’s think about the 2 predominant ways cultures can influence and lead people away from where they should be going. 

-During Paul’s time, and in other parts of the world today, the group always trumps the individual. For simplicity sake, let’s call this “The Eastern Way of Thinking.” A person’s sense of identity was completely wrapped up in their genealogy, their family, their history. Think of how Thor describes himself: Son of Odin. That carries weight to it! That also leads to a great sense of responsibility, because your actions reflect not only on you, but on your family. Now: there are some things that are good and can be applauded in this Eastern thought: 

we didn’t just appear out of nowhere, we do have a history, and that does shape and inform us today. 

-The problem with this thinking is dealt with extensively all over the NT – just because of your family history, you are not saved! So when you read in various places about Abraham being someone’s father, this is what they’re referring to. The course of the world for Paul and all those who were alive at this time is one of assurance by family ties. If you have a good family in the right bloodline, then you don’t need to worry.

-We have the opposite extreme in what I’ll call the “Western Way of Thinking.” The individual trumps the communal. Think about the Frank Sinatra song, “I did it MY WAY.” Our culture today places the emphasis pretty much exclusively on individual wants, needs, and desires. The way of thinking becomes “If I want to do it, by golly, I’m going to do it, and no one can stop me or get in my way!” This is also referred to as “expressive individualism.” 

This is where we have very loose abortion laws, no fault divorce, unconcern that anyone around us may be struggling, and only worry about me, myself, and I (Libertarianism isn’t the answer). No one else matters because I am an individual. 

-Just as the Eastern way of thinking has good things, so does the Western way of thinking. Yes, we are individuals. We all have unique gifts, strengths and weaknesses, just because our parents are gifted in an area doesn’t mean we’ll be gifted the same way. Individually, we all need to be saved. I think it’s helpful that many of us don’t look to our family heritage as a reason why I am a Christian. 

-The problem is when we take our individual identities into our community, which for us is the church. 

-A couple implications of this: 

-first, don’t waste your time comparing your gifts or strengths or weaknesses to someone else. News flash, they’re not you and you’re not them. God brought us both of you for a reason, to use your gifts for God’s glory, and strengthening and equipping the body, the church. 

-The second piece is the tendency to view the whole church only through your lens of interests. So if a specific ministry has significance to you, then it must be the most important thing in the whole church, right? Same as the previous idea, we have a wide assortment of ministries that combine together to make up this church. We also need to realize that some of these ministries are seasonal, depending on the people God has brought to our body at that time. “For everything there is a season” Eccles. 3:1. Just be aware of that, don’t be discouraged about it, don’t get too fixated on something that is meant to be a tool, instead fix your attention on the one who never changes!

-Both the Eastern and the Western way of thinking have strengths AND weaknesses. The Bible calls us to not completely follow either way, but follow God’s way, which is contrary “the course of the world.” 

-One author quipped “You can recognize ‘the ways of this world’ wherever sin seems acceptable and righteousness seems strange.” (Fruit of the Spirit) And who is behind this, attempting to orchestrate this negative “course of the world”? The devil. As Paul continues: 

“Following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sonsof disobedience.”

-Throughout the NT, the devil is referred to as: “the ruler of this world” “the ruler of the demons” “god of this world” Ephesians HEAVILY emphasizes the spiritual realm. But anytime we talk about the spiritual realm, we need to be careful because we don’t want to OVER emphasize it, or UNDER emphasize it:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” CS Lewis

-So we don’t overemphasize the devils work, nor do we want to underemphasize it, because there’s other things that are at work to lead us into sin.

-In Jewish thought at this time, the devil and his followers operated in “the air” the sphere between earth and heaven: spiritual realities happening around us all the time! And this influence is “now at work” 

-“Sons of disobedience” a way of referring to one’s character of life. Again, Thor son of Odin. Just do you get this: being called a son of disobedience is NOT a compliment. But think about the opposite as well, for those who are In Christ, we are now sons of God. Not demeaning to women, just talking about the way the world worked at the time, only male children received an inheritance from their fathers. Our primary allegiance and focus has completely changed!

-“Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.”

-This is the third and final way we were dead in our trespasses and sins. 

-For many of us, the devil doesn’t need to waste his time on us, because we’re too influenced by our fleshly passions. Our own wants, desires and needs no matter the cost. “Expressive individualism” found a prayer that would work in our cultural context today! 

-Nothing is left out, flesh, body and mind. Remember how Jesus said we can sin with our thoughts too? It’s not a matter of merely external obedience, it’s radical transformation. Paul has vice lists in a few of his writings, we’ll be looking at one of them in a few weeks in Eph. 5:3-14. But a summary is: the opposite of the fruit of the spirit. Those are the works of the flesh, the sins that we so easily give in to. 

-We’ve seen 3 different ways that influence us to remain dead: as one commentator stated “The world dominates from without, the flesh from within, and the devil from beyond.” (Kent Hughes, 65)

The implication of our being dead:

“Were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

-All of us were sinners by nature, and by choice as we’ve seen in the past couple verses. 

-By nature refers to our state at birth. Paul expounds more fully upon this idea in Romans 5, where he says “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” (12) Our nature, our orientation, from birth is toward spiritual death in sin. 

By choice – we all have sinned (Rom. 3:23)

-We saw earlier “sons of disobedience” similar idea “children of wrath.” 

-An early church heresy that continues until today is this idea that we need to separate the God of love from the God of wrath. A popular pastor a few years ago said we need to “unhitch” the OT from the NT and only teach the New. As we’ll see in a minute, apart from God’s mercy and grace, we only have wrath. We don’t get to pick and choose the characteristics of God we like and throw out the rest. YES, he is love, AND he is holy, AND he is wrathful, AND he is kind and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. His wrath is his just condemnation against sin. This isn’t the way we tend to see wrath today, which is often unbridled and unhinged, no, this is the just consequences for enmity against a holy and righteous judge. 

-This is our original nature, before Christ we were only deserving of condemnation, of his wrath, that’s the bad news. But now we come to the best news ever. 

-Here’s the deal, God’s wrath MUST be dealt with. There MUST be a payment made, there HAS to be restitution. All of us are sinners by nature and by choice, and the penalty for that HAS TO be paid. So for those who are “In Christ,” it has been. The debt we could NEVER pay has been paid in full.

2 of the most important words in the Bible, the best news possible:

  1. BUT God (4-7)

-All of those negative things that make us deserving of God’s wrath find their answer, their resolution, their demise in God’s mercy, love, grace, and kindness. 

-“Mercy” is a term that is used throughout the OT, which is tied to the notion of his covenant faithfulness, or steadfast love (hesed).

-Lamentations 3:22-23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

-Mercy is God’s forgiveness to not hold us accountable for our actions. But it’s not just mercy, God is RICH in mercy! God has more mercy than he knows what to do with! God has enough mercy for every sin all of us have ever committed, or will commit. His mercy is more! PLUS grace!

-Notice as well, that his mercy is tied to his love. Mercy AND love. We get mercy because of God’s love. We saw that a couple weeks ago in Eph 1. In love God predestined us for all these gifts here!

-When did all this take place? When we were dead. So we saw in the first 3 verses the past tense verbs (were), that’s where we used to be. Before Christ we were… and even when we were in that state, God. Because we are now “In Christ” there are now 3 realities about us. Spiritually we have been brought from death to life, and because of that Paul explains it this way: 1 – made alive, 2 – raised up, 3 – seated in the heavenly places. All 3 are “With Christ” 

1 – “Made us alive together with Christ.”

-First things first, we’ve already established that there’s not much someone’s who dead can do. Which means that needs to change! So we’re first brought to life! 

-So often when we talk about becoming a Christian we approach it as an add-on. “I tried all these other things, and then I tried Christianity and I liked it best.” We’re reminded here that Christianity isn’t something we can add on to our lives, it’s a complete and radical shift FROM death INTO life. That means that EVERYTHING changes from that moment on. One author stated “Christianity is not about becoming a nicer person, nor is it about starting a new religious routine. It is about becoming a new person.” (Tony Merida, 48) 

-At the very center of these things that we are “In Christ” is the reminder that over all of this is God’s grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor, it’s the reminder that we couldn’t accomplish any of the things that God has done. It’s all because of him! Remember: what can a dead person do? Nothing! There’s nothing we can do to earn our salvation. It’s all grace, a free, undeserved gift. We’ll see this pop up again in the next section. God’s rich in mercy, and lavished his grace on us as his children. What else could we ever need?

2-“Raised us up with him.”

-After we’ve been brought to life, we are raised up with him. Because we are now “In Christ” we are with Christ in his resurrection. This term “raised” should remind us of Christ rising out of the grave. He has defeated sin and death so that we no longer need to be slaves to our flesh and passions. 

-Do you understand the implications of this? You don’t need to wallow in self-pity of misery anymore! Since you’re now in Christ, earth is literally the closest to hell you’ll ever be! 

-This idea of being “in him” can be hard to understand. A good way to think of it (albeit, on a MUCH less significant scale) is like the Olympics. 3 out of 4 years I don’t give a rip about swimming (more like 1 week every 4 years). But every time the Olympics come around, I become, or maybe became, obsessed with watching all the swimming events, largely because of a guy named Michael Phelps. Now: I am not a swimmer, I can barely make it from 1 side of the pool to the other, but Michael Phelps represents me and all of us at the Olympics, so we’re ALL pulling for him. We are all “in him.” As I mentioned, this is a far smaller scale because this doesn’t have eternal consequences. But just as we are all pulling for “our” athlete to win at the Olympics because he represents us, so are we brought together “In Christ” to participate in all that he accomplished. He did what we couldn’t so that we could celebrate with him. 

3-“And seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

-This is referring to Christ’s exultation. This is the final “In him” we’re made alive, raised up, and now seated WITH HIM, that is Christ. Spiritually we are seated with Christ in heaven, in our eternal home, where we will spend eternity with God. Just as Christ said on the cross “It is finished.” There’s nothing else we can do or need to do to change our position, spiritually. Christ has already accomplished it! 

-Once again, notice the tense of these verbs: PAST: MADE, RAISED, SEATED. It’s already happened! Yet we don’t experience that reality yet. This is where we have a tension. We live in this period between Christ’s comings, where we don’t yet see everything as it truly is. The war is over, but the battle wages on. This should make us long for the day when our spiritual reality matches our physical reality, but until that time we remain faithful. 

-Even studies/conversations about the end times are supposed to give us hope, not make us despondent. Here’s what EVERY person believes: Jesus is coming back! I once heard a pastor say “we’re not on the planning committee, we’re on the welcoming committee.” God didn’t tell us what would happen so that we would live in fear about whether or not we’re in the end times (spoiler alert, we are, and have been since Jesus ascended!), God told us what all of human history looks like from his perspective. Another spoiler alert, He wins! At the beginning of eternity He’s in the same spot He’s sitting now: on His throne. And guess who’s also sitting there with Him? Anyone in this room who’s “in Christ.” Nothing can change that.

-Now that we’ve seen the 3 spiritual realities because we are “In Christ” Paul continues on to the WHY question:

-“So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

-The reason we are in Christ is so that God’s grace can be made manifest in and through all of us, for eternity. 

-Did any of you ever play show-and-tell growing up? The premise was simple: you bring in something you like to show people, and then tell them about it. The crazy thing is what God does for show & tell is: look at us! WE are God’s demonstration of grace and kindness to the world. This is why God extended his mercy and love to us, so that we could be a witness to the watching world.

That means we actually have a job to do: tell others what God has done! Throughout the Bible, the gospel message is compared to a light. What do you do with a light? You use it to extinguish the darkness! Think of the old song you learned: “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine!” We DON’T hide it under a bushel, we let it shine! SO SHINE! Share with others what God has done in you and through you. Share your story of how God brought you from death into life, how his grace mercy and love transformed you and can transform anyone. On author stated it this way “No one is beyond the reach of God’s regenerating grace, and no one is beyond the need for God’s regenerating grace.” (Merida, 48)

This leads us to the final point:

  1. GRACE Through FAITH (8-10)

-Paul reminds us that all of these things that are true spiritually are true because of God’s grace. As we sing in the hymn Amazing Grace “’Twas grace that brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.” Everything we have is because of God’s riches of grace. 

-God’s grace is what allows us to be saved. Saved from what? Saved from our “death in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked”

-Paul then describes the means by which we are saved, which is a gift of God’s grace: faith. 

Faith is believing in God and trusting in him. Belief + trust. 

-Think of a tightrope walker. Now I am deathly afraid of heights so even saying that phrase makes me queasy. But let’s imagine we see a tightrope walker go back and forth over the Grand Canyon. (I would ask the question: what kind of fool does it multiple times, but anyway…) We’ll say he’s the best tightrope walker in the world. Now one of those times he’s going over the Grand Canyon he brings someone from one side to the other on his back, and then walks up to you and asks if you’d want to go over with him. Would you? My response would be a quick ABSOLUTELY NO! I believe he could bring me with him, but I don’t trust him to actually do it. It only takes one slip, or me messing something up and we’re done. The wonderful thing about faith in God is he CAN’T and WON’T let us go. We have every reason to both believe and trust him. 

-“And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

-And because it’s God doing it, we can trust completely. Once again, what can a dead person do? Nothing! But God can even resurrect the dead! We read of him doing that physically in the Gospels, but he also does it spiritually. We need the reminder that there’s nothing we can do to be saved: it’s all God’s work, it’s all God’s gift to us.

–Ezek. 34 dry bones

-“not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

-Paul doubles down on the idea that we can’t save ourselves. There’s nothing we can do to earn our salvation. Think about that. Nothing. 

-Jonathan Edwards said it this way, “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.” 

-This is freeing! It levels the playing field. If we added something to our salvation that made it possible we’d spend the rest of our lives comparing to those around us. But God doesn’t let us. Everything in salvation is a gift of God so that we can’t boast in anything except the cross: where we are all equal. None of us is any better than the other.

-Therfore, because it’s all a gift of grace, Paul can conclude:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

-This word “workmanship” is one that means a work of art (poema poem). The NLT translates it as “masterpiece.” We’re the pinnacle of everything he’s done. We’re the Sistine Chapel of everything God has made! Just as God, when he created humans said it was VERY good. Now that he has re-created us by grace, it is VERY good! For those “In Christ” there have been 2 creations: physical life, and spiritual life. 

-Remember what we saw earlier about works not adding anything to our salvation? Now we see the purpose of those works. 

-One of the big statements of the Reformation was “faith alone.” But the Reformers refined that and said, “It is faith alone that justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.” So while the works are not the root of salvation, they are the fruit. 

-God has good works that we are to do. We are to live lives that are holy and blameless as Paul says in Eph. 1. Our works cannot add anything to our salvation, but once we are saved, we now demonstrate that new life BY our good works. 

-This often feels like a tension, and is where many of us end up sliding into legalism. We MUST obey and do these good works. The problem is when we correlate these good works as something added to our salvation, that they somehow make us more righteous and holy before God. Don’t forget: spiritually we are ALREADY seated with Christ in the heavenly places. ALREADY. That’s not changing! But that future reality of us being positionally in Christ must also be manifest in our present reality. 

John Newton, author of Amazing Grace who experienced a radical transformation because of Christ: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be, yet by the grace of God I am what I am.” 

-Just to remind us that it is all God’s grace, Paul says the good works we’re called to do were prepared by God beforehand. Before what? As he says in Eph. 1:4, “before the foundation of the world.” God not only sovereignly orchestrates our salvation, but the demonstration of that salvation in our lives today. That demonstration is what Paul says we are to walk in. This brings this whole section to a close, as the bookend to the opening verses: We once walked in death, but God in his mercy saved us and brought us back to life. 

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by mikethestrand on September 11, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon, Theology

Posted by mikethestrand on September 11, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/09/11/ephesians-21-10-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 1:15-23 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-One of the jobs that has fallen to me simply because of my age since I was about 15 is the job of IT support. I’m part of that generation that grew up without a cell phone, so I remember the freedom and joy of not being available 24/7, but once those bad boys came out we were all in on them! I still remember the shift in my parents, we bought a computer in about 2002 and my mom made me wait until my dad was home to set it up. Basically from that point on, my dad wasn’t allowed to try to fix anything on the computer and I was called in as the expert! Because of the ability to work on computer stuff, it led to my first job out of college teaching new hire nurses how to use the charting software. The people coming in were from all sorts of backgrounds, especially in regards to computers. The teachers would swap stories about students, one came in grabbed a mouse and asked “What’s this?” Gonna be a long day! Through these conversations, you also learn to ask the 2 questions that solve approximately 90% of technology issues: did you turn it off and turn it back on? And Is it plugged in? I don’t know if you realize this, but technology requires some kind of power in order to work correctly, either a battery that recharges, or it just needs to stay plugged in 24/7. Doing THIS with a surge protector isn’t going to work! Just as a surge protector needs to be plugged in to an outlet to get power and work, we need to remain connected to God “In Christ” in order for us to work as we’re designed.

-Last week we saw Paul praise God for his sovereignty (power and authority) to bring everything to pass as He saw fit. This week we’ll see that Paul prays for that sovereignty (power and authority) to be made manifest in the lives of the Ephesians.

READ/PRAY

  1. Gratitude (15-16)

-Paul is continuing the idea that we studied last week. 

-Praise to God who, from eternity past, had planned to send Jesus to earth to provide salvation. That salvation is demonstrated by the seal of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, we are now “in Christ” therefore, Paul gives thanks.

-Just as last week was 1 long run-on sentence, so is this week!

-“Faith IN, love TOWARD”

-If we have faith in Jesus, it will manifest itself in love toward other believers. This isn’t optional! Bonhoeffer Life Together “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” (30) In other words, this is already happening, but you get to decide if it is demonstrated in our body.

-This is one of the ways our culture today struggles to understand a common first century idea: none of us can exist in complete isolation, but that is especially true of anyone who is now “in Christ.” We saw this 2 years ago when we studied 1 Peter 2:10 “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” God takes individuals and brings them into a family. Regardless of how healthy your biological family is, God has created and invited you into a new family that you can participate in – through faith.

-We saw this last week too, we are called individually, but we’re called into a new community. That idea will continue to develop further throughout this book, so keep it in mind!

-Jesus said something similar in John 13:35 “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So faith in the Jesus leads to and is evidenced by love toward other disciples of Jesus. You can’t be a disciple of Jesus and not love other believers. This is a good heart check for all of us to consider regularly! Is your faith being evidenced by your love, care, and concern for your brothers and sisters? Because the Ephesian church was demonstrating their love, Paul goes on to give thanks for them. 

-“Give thanks”

-Paul gives thanks in many of his letters, but this is the only one that contains both a note of praise and thanksgiving. I think this may be because of the long period of time Paul spent with them, as well as the close relationship he had. In Acts 20, it recounts the last encounter Paul would have with them, and it says of the elders of Ephesus “There was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.”

-Paul has a lot of things he gives thanks for in his letters! Let’s look through them all and see what kind of themes emerge.

Rom. 1:8 “your faith is proclaimed.” This first assumes you have a faith worth proclaiming, but it also assumes you’re proclaiming your faith! Do you have a faith that is worth sharing with other people, or is it just a tack on?

1 Cor. 1:4 all of us who are now “In Christ” have God’s grace given to us in an overwhelming flood! Grace upon grace has been lavished upon us, as we saw last week! Do you give thanks to God for that grace?

Phil. 1:5 do you gives thanks for the ways we can be a part of a bigger movement in the EFCA, or for the variety of missionaries we support? This is why we’ve been bringing our missional partners in, it gives us specific things to pray for, and reminds us of the partnerships we do have! Go look at the wall!

Col. 1:4-5 almost the same as Eph. But then giving thanks for the gospel message! Do you give thanks for this word of truth that saves and sanctifies you and those around you? The gospel in and of itself is worth giving thanks for every single day you wake up!

2 Thess. 1:3 same as Eph, there is a theme here!

2 Tim. 1:4 this one stood out to me this week! We need each other! Because we’re embodied beings it’s not enough to just do church online, we need to be together to fill each other with joy. I know as people get sick, face surgeries, the isolation that comes from that isn’t healthy!

Philem. 4 same as Eph! Now, looking at that list, how do your prayers match up? Are you regularly giving thanks for these kinds of things that you see going on around you? What about giving thanks for other believers around the world? I think of Rom. 12:15 “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Why is this so hard for us to do? We look at someone’s job promotion and complain that we keep getting passed over, we look at someone’s house and complain that ours is too small, we look at someone else’s kids and wish ours were better behaved. Ephesians is reminding that us that God is behind all of those things! God is going ahead of you, and then walking with you, no matter what else is going on in your life. The question is: is He enough for you, or are you going to continue looking to the world for your satisfaction and worth? Our standard is supposed to be Jesus, and when we look at that standard, all of us are off. Let’s see what specifically Paul goes on to ask in the lives of the Ephesians:

  • Paul’s Prayer (17-19)

-What does Paul pray for? 3 things: growth in knowledge, enlightened eyes of the heart, and understanding God’s great power. 

-First: “Growth in knowledge”

-The same spirit who serves as the seal of our redemption gives us wisdom and revelation. When we are saved, the Spirit begins working in our lives to reveal the truths of the Bible to us, and begin shaping and forming us into the image of Jesus. But this starts by growing in  wisdom and knowledge of Him! We require the Spirit to understand the things of God.

-I remember in college, a professor posed a question: can an unbeliever read and understand the Bible? At first glance it seems like an easy enough answer, right? Obviously, as long as the Bible is in a language you can read, there’s understanding that can come from it. But without your spiritual eyes opened, you’ll miss the way God has created the Bible to connect together and point to Him! We’ll get to that more clearly in the next section too.

-Carson “Do you feel you know God well enough? Surely no thoughtful Christian would want to answer such a question in the affirmative. Indeed, the more we get to know God, the more we want to know him better.” (172)

-Prince Caspian: Lucy is awoken to a someone calling her name As she is looking around for the source of the voice, she finds Aslan, and says to him, “Aslan, you’re bigger.” “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. “Not because you are?” “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

-Are you growing in knowledge? Are you being intentional about continuing to study God through His Word in relationship with other believers who can help you grow in the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him? This growing in knowledge is supposed to be a communal project! This comes after the “love for all the saints.” Even study of the Bible is something that is great to do on your own, but it’s meant to be studied, and more importantly lived out and applied with others.

-“Enlighted eyes of the heart” We today talk of the heart as the center of our emotions. I had to explain to my kids last week how someone could be “in your heart” it’s a weird idea! In 1st century, this was more like the way we talk about our minds today. The heart was viewed as the very center of your being. Everything comes from the heart! 

-This is an implication of growing in the knowledge of Christ. We can’t have the eyes of our heart enlightened unless we’re growing in the knowledge of Him. But this also continues:

-“Know the hope to which he has called you” This idea, I think, runs completely contrary to the way our world is trying to force us to operate. As you look around the world, do any of you get the sense that there is hope? I’ve gotten into debates with a few people just this summer who argued that the world is just getting worse and worse. That’s a pessimistic look at the world, one without hope. Hope is used 4 times in Ephesians: 1:12, 1:18, 2:12, 4:4.

-First we see that being hope filled people comes about only because we’re “in Christ” remember last week! Then we see that hope is connected to our call from God. Finally, we see what it looks like for people who have no hope, it’s descriptive of those who are separated from God. For those of us who are now “in Christ” which one should describe us? Once we’re saved, we suddenly have nothing to fear! And think of the guy who’s writing this letter: threatened to be killed “to live is Christ, to die is gain” shipwrecked, starved beaten “I have learned the secret to being content” This guy is so frustrating to his enemies! And so can we, if we, as we saw last week, keep our eyes on the right place instead of becoming bogged down and losing hope by looking at our immediate context. And the reality is we know the end of history. We should have complete hope in God! We need to have an eternal perspective, not a temporary one. Jesus has told us the purpose and direction everything is headed towards, which is meant to give us hope to persevere today. This means we need to ask the question: are you a hope-filled person? Are your prayers marked by hope, or by complaining about what’s going on in your life? And we realize this hope comes because of:

-“riches of his glorious inheritance” We need to know the hope, and this glorious inheritance. And the glorious inheritance is part of the reason we can have hope! We know what’s waiting for us! This comes about because of a couple things Paul talked about in the previous section. First is the reality of adoption. We were once enemies of God, but He has now brought us in, that leads to blessings being lavished on us, then it leads to an inheritance that is made manifest by the Spirit in us. But there’s another element to this inheritance, while we’ve been given every spiritual blessing from God, we are His glorious inheritance “IN the saints.” That doesn’t seem fair, which is exactly why we need the gospel! God’s plan from eternity past has been to give His people everything, by His losing everything. We’ve been given every blessing, He bore the penalty for our eternal rebellion. We rejoice in this reality because now, today, we have access to this glorious inheritance. It’s not only a future promise, it’s also a present reality. All the blessings Jesus had when He was on earth are available to us today. How often do we not ask? How often do we not trust? How often do we forget that we are now sons and daughters of the Most High God, with all the rights and privileges that come along with that? This is meant to be a reminder to us that all of this is only possible because of God’s supremacy (power and authority)

-God’s great power

-immeasurable greatness, power, great might, all toward those who believe.

-Remember, Ephesus was a center of magical/cultic religions. Had a giant temple to Artemis, as well as various inscriptions and incantations to other various gods. In Acts 19:19 “And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.” AKA 50,000 days of work. Today’s average worker in the US earns $216/day, meaning this would be $10.8 million. What’s fascinating to me is that people today are just as obsessed with other religious options. 

-A fascinating look at some of these changes is documented in a book called Strang Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. Not saying it’s something everyone should read, but it gives a fascinating look at what “religions” our world is following today, because whether people like to admit it or not, everyone believes in something. In this book, she traces what she dubs “remixed religion” where many people today will take bits and pieces from all sorts of places, throw them in a pot and claim that’s what they follow. “One of the biggest problems for secular culture [is that] you have to cobble together and make it yourself.” (31) Essentially, each person has become their own pastor/priest/god.

“These new institutional religions – each one, at its core, a religion of the self – risk creating an increasingly balkanized (divided) American culture: one in which our desire for personal authenticity and experiential fulfillment takes precedent over our willingness to build coherent ideological systems and functional, sustainable institutions. When we are all our own high priests, who is willing to kneel?” (34)

-Did you know that “there are more witches in the United States than Jehovah’s Witnesses” (117)? There are monthly witch subscription boxes you can buy, witch blogs and newsletters have continued to grow over the past decade, even Sephora, the makeup chain, in 2018 sold a “Starter Witch Kit” for only $42, then pulled it after a few weeks because they were accused of “cultural appropriation.”

-Church, this shouldn’t surprise us! There’s nothing new, the devil’s bag of tricks isn’t limitless, he’s just really good at repackaging and repurposing things. And when you have the hyper-individualism that is our cultural context, there’s no one to push for logical consistency or the ways these various beliefs compete with each other. We’ll see some more ways to pray for/about these ideas when we get to Eph. 6. But for now, Paul goes on to expound on the ways God’s power is made manifest through Christ. 

  • Power in Christ (20-23)

-This power was made manifest in 3 areas: resurrection, ascension, authority.

-First in the resurrection. Jesus’ death looked like the defeat of God’s plan, but then He didn’t stay dead, but rose from the grave 3 days later. Then he ascended into heaven to sit at God’s right hand, the most privileged place that is far above any other: power, dominion, rule, authority, or name. Essentially, anything that could be used to invoke good luck or charm. One 3rd century document listed the need to know a deities name to properly get your needs met.

-Next, Jesus ascended into heaven, signified by the reality that He now sits at God’s right hand. 

-Finally, this ascension means He has complete authority “ALL things are under his feet” so why should we be afraid? There is nothing that has been, is, or will be that could ever defeat Him. But notice how this authority is demonstrated today: the church.

-Brothers and sisters, we don’t need tarot cards, incantations, spells, or a starter witch kit, because we have each other, and together we demonstrate Jesus’ rule and reign over the whole world. We together contain the fullness of Jesus, we need the church to be the church. 

-You may have heard: I love Jesus but not the church. This isn’t to marginalize or minimize hurt by those who claim the name of Christ, the church is full of sinners, sinners are guaranteed to hurt you, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Until Christ returns, the church will continue to hurt people, fall short of what God has called us to be, yet by God’s grace still be used to demonstrate God’s rule and reign to the world. We need to live like we believe the hope of the gospel and the call God has placed in our lives. We need to daily be conformed into what God has called us to do and be, use these verses as a template for how to pray in light of God’s sovereignty. Church, we all the power we need to fight against the spiritual forces of darkness, and even to fight against the sin inside of us that would prevent us from loving our fellow believers. We can ask God to continue filling us, and letting his power be at work in us to be all that He has called us to be. 

-And do you know one of the ways we fight against the forces of darkness? We commit ourselves to the church. We unite ourselves to others who aren’t exactly like us, but are all striving to become more and more like Jesus. As I quoted from Bonhoeffer earlier, it’s already taking place around us, but you can now participate in that brotherhood. One of the ways Jesus told us to participate is through the act of communion. Just as the cross doesn’t make sense as the source of redemption, communion doesn’t make sense to the world! Early Christians were accused of being cannibals! Yet what we’ll ingest into our bodies is a visible reminder of the power available to us because of the broken body and shed blood of the Messiah. As Paul encourages in 1 Cor. 11 please examine yourselves before you take, think through the things Paul prayed for today and pray them to God in preparation for us celebrating together, and uniting ourselves together. If you are not yet a believer, please don’t take the elements, but instead let me encourage you to take up the cause of Christ, put your faith in Him so that you can have a new sense of hope in the gospel message.

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by mikethestrand on September 4, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon

Posted by mikethestrand on September 4, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/09/04/ephesians-115-23-sermon-manuscript/

Ephesians 1:1-15 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

-If you didn’t know, I love to read, I have for years! I used to sneak books into my bed and stay up late just trying to get through as many books as I could. My favorite books when I was in elementary school were mysteries. Read every Hardy Boys, The Happy Hollisters, slowly moved my way up to reading all of the Sherlock Holmes books, and Father Brown by GK Chesterton (also a BBC series that was wonderful). I think part of the reason mysteries are always an enjoyable read is they provide clear explanations for events, and we like certainty! 

-Think about being a kid, the most frustrating thing to be told is “because I said so!” and we all swear we won’t say it to our kids, and then we have kids! We all want to know with certainty how things work. We invest in the stock market because we know it’s going to work. We go to our jobs because we know we’re going to be paid. But what about things you don’t completely understand? 

-Did you know we understand and have studied more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean? We have found creatures thought to be extinct for millions of years in fishing expeditions. Even the new James Webb space telescope is revealing things that scientists are now being forced to change their thoughts about how the known world came into existence.

-We love certainty about things, but we worship a God that we can’t fully understand. Since we’ve been taught to figure out how everything works (including unsolvable mysteries) we tend to approach God the same way. We’re going to spend some time today plumbing the depths of God’s mysterious plan from all eternity past. And we’ll walk out of here reminded that when we come to something we can’t understand, it’s our cue to fall on our face and worship.

READ/PRAY

  1. Introduction (1-2)

-Start right out of the gate listing who wrote this letter.  Now there has been some debate in the past 2 centuries about whether or not Paul actually wrote it (some unique words compared to his other letters, and a quarter of it is nearly verbatim re-recorded in Colossians). I don’t find those arguments convincing (and neither should you!), because wouldn’t you use similar language on a regular basis, and at the same time, don’t you try to accommodate your message to the people you’re talking to? Not saying you change the truth, but you do use different language based on the group.

-Apostle. 1st century, limited to those who had seen the risen Christ. Literally refers to a messenger, in the NT generally refers to someone sent by God to spread the gospel message. Who is he an apostle/messenger of?

-Jesus Christ. The whole Bible is about God’s revelation through Christ Jesus, Paul in this letter explains the reality of Christ Jesus being the focus of our entire lives. Keep that theme in mind throughout the next 3 months through this book!

-“Will of God.” Paul didn’t come up with this call or commission from his own desire or gifting, this comes straight from God. This theme will also carry throughout the book, God’s will from eternity past has been to unity a people to Himself for His glory. God’s sovereignty (power and authority) over everything in creation is where Paul begins this letter and sets the stage for the implications of that in the rest of the letter.

-“Saints” or lit. “holy ones” Often when we read something like this we think of those who have been “sainted” by RCC, but throughout the NT anyone who is “In Christ” are saints! 

-“in Ephesus” At the time, 3rd biggest city in the Roman Empire, strategically placed as the intersection of 4 main roads, and a port city. This means it was incredibly wealthy and a center of commerce and influence in the rest of the world. A couple notes about it.

-Had a huge temple, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, to Artemis/Diana, was 4 times the size of the Parthenon! While Diana was the most prevalent, she wasn’t the only god worshipped. Lots of magic and cultic ideas pervaded Ephesus. Not dissimilar to a major city today! Think of a New York or Hong Kong.

-Also knows as the “mother of Asia” as Ephesus served as the entry point to the rest of the continent. Most scholars believe this was meant to serve as a circular letter, since Ephesus was the entry point, word would travel from there to the rest of Asia. 

-Typical Pauline greeting: grace (Greek) peace (Jewish).

  • Chosen by the Father (3-6)

-These verses (3-14) are the longest run-on sentence we’ve found in any ancient Greek literature. This means all these verses are connected together, for Paul there’s no distinction in how all 3 persons of the Godhead are involved in salvation. 

-“Blessed be.” This is a Jewish custom called berekah, Hebrew word for blessed be. In the first century, Jews had 18 different “blessed be’s” they would recite throughout the day.

-Notice the repetition here: blessed be God, blessed us, with spiritual blessings. We bless God, because He first blessed us with specific blessings. Even the worship and praise of God originates with Him. We can’t bless God unless He first blesses us, which has happened through Jesus. 

-And how many spiritual blessings? Every single one. I think we are at times tempted to view God like Scrooge from “A Christmas Story,” counting every penny and ensuring no one gets too much. Instead, the picture we’re seeing here is of a God who’s throwing out blessing like it’s running out of style! Or like Oprah, you get a blessing, you get a blessing, blessings for everyone! There is nothing held back, nothing kept in reserves, God is all in on his blessings. But where are these blessings? I look at my life and I don’t always feel like it’s overflowing with blessings, still sickness, people dying, wars.

-“Heavenly places” The first century readers would have understood there’s more to the world than we can see with our 2 eyes. There’s a greater reality taking place around us all the time that we are often oblivious to.

-Think of it like the radio waves. Everywhere we walk there are radio waves that are passing through us, but we can’t hear them. But if we got a radio and turned it on, then tuned it to a specific frequency we would be able to listen to music, talk radio, etc. Is that too dated of a reference now? Cell phones! 

-How do we tune to the right station, or make sure our cell phone is connected to the right network? Spiritually, we need to be “in Christ.” That theme is the connective tissue throughout this section. Paul repeats “In him/Christ” 11 times in these first 14 verses! “The ley for understanding this letter is recognizing that all believers have a new identity in Christ.” (ECNT, 79)

-When did this being “In Christ” begin? When God chose us “before the foundation of the world.”

-From eternity past, God had a perfect plan that included the salvation of His people. But notice as well that there is a point to this choosing: to be holy and blameless before Him. Do not get that order reversed! God didn’t choose us because we were holy and blameless, or because of anything we’d done that merited His favor, we were chosen only because of His grace. Then because of that grace we can now be holy and blameless before Him.

-This isn’t a new reality, this has been God’s plan literally forever. That’s why we seen glimpses of this even in the OT. Abraham wasn’t chosen because he was richer, smarter or better, the nation of Israel wasn’t chosen because of anything they did (in fact God said they were the smallest and weakest nation!) it’s only because of God’s love and mercy that anyone is chosen.

-Next, we see a word that has caused all sorts of discussions over the past 2 millennia: predestination! I’ve even been told from some people that predestination is unbiblical! Not sure what Bible they were reading, but it wasn’t this one! Predestination is a wonderfully biblical and comforting doctrine! But before you jump to any conclusions on this, let’s look at the what the Bible actually says about it. 

-First, what are last 2 words of vs. 4? “In love.” This predestination isn’t (as I’ve heard some people describe) God playing a cosmic game of duck, duck, grey duck where people are randomly condemned to hell for eternity. Instead, since God is love (1 John 4:8) everything He does is an act of love. We need to tremble with fear as we come into discissions about God because we need to admit we’ll never fully comprehend Him (if we could, He wouldn’t be a God worth worshipping). 

-AW Tozer Knowledge of the Holy If we get God wrong, we’ll be conforming our lives to the wrong standard and aiming in the completely wrong direction. 

-Additionally, because we’re not God, we have a “mystery” card to play! But don’t play it too soon, wrestle with everything God has said and revealed, but then when you come the point of mystery, fall on your face and worship Him because “his ways are not your ways, and His thoughts are not your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:8-9)

-Predestination (προορίζω) lit. translated “to foreordain or predestine.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theologydefines it as ““God’s predetermination of persons to a specific end…an aspect of God’s rule over all that he created and sustains.” (693) It’s only used 6 times in the NT, let’s look at all of them to see what it means.

Acts 4:27-28

Prayer of the believers asking for boldness to continue preaching. Begins “Sovereign Lord…” quotes Psalm 2, then goes here. This tells us that even worldly events happen according to God’s predetermination.

Romans 8:28-30 The Golden Chain of salvation!

-In salvation, we are predestined individually, notice the purpose to which we are predestined (to be conformed, aka “In Christ”). Predestination is just 1 part of the chain that culminates in glorification. This passage tells us that salvation comes about because of God’s predetermination.

1 Cor 2:7

-Paul here is talking about Christ being the power and wisdom of God, which according to worldly standards is foolish. Here we see that salvation through the cross was God’s plan before history was written. The only other passage is Eph. 1 where it occurs twice.

What we see throughout Scripture is 2 things: 1 – God is completely sovereign, in control of everything that happens. 2 – humans are completely responsible for their actions. How does this work in God’s economy? Mystery! We must only go as far as the Bible explicitly speaks, and no further! 

-I think this is most evidenced in: Acts 13:48. Somehow and some way humans are responsible for their belief, and God is sovereignly orchestrating all things. Think of the end of Joseph’s story: Genesis 50 – You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

-All that to say, when we read “predestined” in our Bibles, it’s meant to comfort us. It’s supposed to be a pillow, not a sledge hammer. Since God is in control we can actually sleep at night! Not worry and fret about whether or not we’re “predestined.”

-Charles Spurgeon was asked how to reconcile God’s sovereignty and human’s responsibility, and he replied, “I never reconcile two friends.” Another pastor was asked about this “problem” and he replied, “That’s not my problem. That’s God’s problem. And for God, it’s not a problem.”

-Where does predestination lead? “To adoption as sons”

-Adoption is a beautiful reality throughout the Bible. It means we have all the rights and privileges of being in God’s family. Maybe you have friends who have adopted, they see a cute little baby who needs a home and brings them in. However, spiritual adoption isn’t quite like that, because God adopts us when we’re enemies who are opposed to Him. There’s nothing cute or lovely about us, we’re literally at war with Him, but in spite of that God still chooses us.

-Sons doesn’t mean women are left out. But we need to understand the context this is written in. In the 1st century women weren’t included in a family inheritance. I’m not saying that’s right, that was just what happened! Throughout the NT, when adoption or an inheritance comes up it will say something like this “as sons” which would have been revolutionary, since it included men and women! In God’s family, we’re all considered “sons” or worthy or receiving the family inheritance.

-And all of this is done according to “His will” and leads to his glory. Certainly more that could be said, but we’ve got more to cover! In the next section Paul shows us how we saved.

  • Redeemed by the Son (7-12)

-“In Him” again, we have redemption. 

-Comes “through His blood”, leads to “forgiveness,” comes about because of “the riches of his grace.” 

-This redemption is meant to remind the readers of the redemption that God had done for his people historically. Just as God had redeemed his people from slavery in Egypt, today God has redeemed his people from the slavery to sin. But redemption only comes about if we are “In Christ” if his blood has covered us and paid the penalty for our sin. This is known as grace, which has been:

-“lavished upon us.” (8) Once again, God isn’t stingy! We see this in John 1 through God we receive “grace upon grace” God starts with grace and ends with grace, everything we have is a gift of God’s grace to us.

-This grace is how God has revealed to us the “mystery of his will.” 

-Magic and the occult was a big part of the Ephesian culture. Trying to understand the mysteries of the gods, how to appease them, how to use them to get what you wanted and need from them when you needed it, never quite knowing if you were in the right place or doing the right thing. Yet when you’re “in Christ” you’re now a part of that mystery, which is no longer a mystery! God’s mysterious plan has already taken place! That’s part of the joy of living on this side of the cross! We can look back and see how it is that God accomplished his eternal plan by sending His one and only Son to bear the penalty for the sins of the world, and “unite all things in Him.” That is to have Jesus be the ultimate King over any other supposed ruler or king that people were tempted to worship.

-Notice that there is nothing left out from His rule: heaven and earth. Another reminder that what we taste, see, smell isn’t all there is.

-“In Him” we also have an inheritance! All of us, sons and daughters, because we’re in Christ no one is left out of this blessing, this grace upon grace where God gives us everything He has created.

-Again, there’s the predestination that serves to remind us that God is in control, so we don’t need to be afraid. To God, nothing is a mystery! And finally, we see the aim of Jesus’ redemption: “to the praise of His glory.” We are saved to bring honor and glory to God. Everything in salvation is meant to lead us to respond to God with praise, or blessing. We see this throughout the Psalms (including the one we read as the call to worship), “Bless the Lord”

-I titled this message “Trinitarian worship” We’ve seen that we should bless God the Father because He chose us before anything was created, He accomplished this choosing through the Son’s redemption, and we know this is guaranteed to happen because we have been sealed by the Spirit.

  • Sealed by the Sprit (13-14)

-Are you starting to see the theme I mentioned earlier? “In him.” WHEN you heard…and believed. The exact moment when you respond to the truth of the gospel message and believe “in him,” you are given the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead living in you.

-Because God now lives within us “in Christ,” Jesus even said during His earthly ministry that it was better for Him to leave so that we could have the Spirit in us. In salvation, the Spirit serves as the “seal” or “guarantee” During the NT, a seal was used to make ownership. Animals would be “sealed” (think of brand on some cattle you may have seen today) It served as an identification, so if someone else tried to come take it they wouldn’t be able to! The Holy Spirit in us identifies us as God’s chosen ones.

-This seal serves as the starting point, the taste, of everything that will be fully realized when Jesus finally comes back. We haven’t yet completely acquired everything God has promised, we see glimpses of it, but it’s not quite there yet. John Stott compares this to a down payment on a house. You scrimp and save for years to get that down payment, which then serves as the guarantee that you’re invested, but it’s also the first payment of the loan. Similarly, the Holy Spirit serves as the down payment of our future inheritance.

-“to the praise of His glory.” All of life is meant to be lived as worship to God. Plumbing the depths of God’s eternal plan is worthless unless it leads to greater appreciation and worship of God, who predetermined from eternity past to choose in, redeem us, and seal us by His Spirit. Yet that doesn’t leave us off the hook for the choices we make. Every person has a choice to make: when will you bow the knee to Christ as the Savior and King of the universe? Will it be before you die, when that means you’ll be sealed by the Spirit and be adopted into God’s family, or will it be after you die when it will be too late, and you’ll be separated from God forever? 

-In Christ:

-Each of us must make the decision about whether or not we will be in Christ. Don’t let this opportunity pass by you! Realize that God’s mysterious plan has been revealed, and you can be a part of it! You don’t have to know the mystery, you have the trust in the God to whom nothing is a mystery.

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by mikethestrand on August 28, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Life, Sermon, Worship

Posted by mikethestrand on August 28, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/08/28/ephesians-11-15-sermon-manuscript/

Psalm 18 – Sermon Manuscript

-I think a fascinating thing to study is music, especially church music. Why were songs written the way they were, what was the inspiration for the words, who wrote them? One theme in songs (and you can trace it in the Bible as well) is God being our rock! We sang the refrain from one song about that this morning “On Christ the solid rock I stand” but that’s not the one! One of the most well-known songs in church history is “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” Written by Augustus Toplady in 1776, the song was inspired by one of his travels. He got caught in a heavy storm and found shelter in the cleft of a rock, inspiring Him to pen the now well-known words to the hymn: “rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.” This song deals with the exact same themes we’ll be looking at in Psalm 18 today.

-The 4th longest Psalm in the book, if you need to sit down at some point, please do.

READ/PRAY

  1. I Love You Lord (1-3)

-Repeated almost word for word in 2 Samuel 22, which comes right before “the last words of David” in 2 Sam. 23. This tells us it was toward the end of David’s life as he looks back and reflects on God’s protection and preservation throughout his life.

-I have noticed that as people get older there tends to be some sentimentality and almost looking back over life with rose tinted glasses. As we read through this Psalm there will be some of those moments! But there’s also ways in which the Holy Spirit used these words to point to great David’s greater Son!

-David doesn’t begin where I would think he should begin, with thanksgiving. If the point is to be grateful to God for his protection, wouldn’t the right instinct be to give thanks? Instead, he says “I love you, O Lord.”

-I think this tells us just how much we need to be reminded of the gospel message: that Jesus lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we deserved to die so that we could not be declared righteous instead of sinful. And how often do we then stop in response at thanks, instead of moving to the next step of love? Giving thanks is right, and we should, but we can’t just stay there, because it’s meant to lead us to that next step of being in a close relationship with God.

-Think of how you receive a compliment, don’t you at first just feel awkward? I feel awkward when people say “great sermon pastor” “thanks?” We often don’t know how to respond. When we read that God saved us, that He loves us, that He wants to spend time with you, do you actually believe that, and respond by engaging with Him as He has called us to do, or do you just feel awkward? This first phrase, I think, should be a bigger focus in our lives than we tend to make it! You can love and enjoy a relationship with God, He invites you to!

-We have seen throughout these 10 Psalms this summer a lot of rocky themes. God is a rock, a fortress, a protection. All of these are meant to serve as a reminder that God will protect and preserve His people. Don’t be afraid, don’t be alarmed, entrust yourself to our good God. Therefore, we call on Him and He will save us, which is what David elaborates on in this next section:

  • God’s Power in Salvation (4-19)

-There were numerous occasions where David was on the verge of death! Saul wanted him dead, the Philistines wanted him dead, his son tried to usurp his throne, even God one time threatened him because of a sin he committed! It’s a tough job to be the king! I highly doubt any of us have ever faced the same kinds of imminent threat David faced on a daily basis! 

-The chapter after this song in 2 Sam recounts “David’s mighty men” All these crazy guys who fought for/with David, basically the Navy Seals of Israel. I remember reading that chapter in high school after the movie 300 came out, and I thought “When is someone going to make a movie like that on the life of David?” He was crazy! Yet even all these mighty men aren’t enough to save David from death. Whether we realize it or not, all of us are 1 step, 1 phone call, one missed heartbeat away from your life completely changing. Nothing is guaranteed! But look at vs. 6: the thing that is guaranteed is God will respond when we cry out to Him! We’ve seen this idea repeatedly over the summer too, He will hear us! And look how God responds here:

-This language is what is called a “theophany” a visible manifestation of God. A couple notes on these:

-First, I think we tend to forget about God in the midst of the world continuing to move. We have a tendency to act (as we saw in Psalm 14) as atheists, that God isn’t still actively involved in our day to day lives, even in the weather! We see earthquakes as merely tectonic plates shifting, we see rain as the descent of evaporated water, wind as the effect of high and low pressure systems. Yet who is the one who created and continues to sustain them? God!

-Second, and more immediate to this text, but we don’t have any examples of David seeing any of these things take place! As far as we know from David’s life in the Bible, he never saw God shake a mountain, or hailstorms and coals of fire come from him, or turning over the seas in his pursuit of His enemies. But there are places in Scripture where these events do happen!

-Think of when Moses recorded the 10 commandments, after 40 days on the mountain with God. The people were told to stay away from the mountain, to not touch it because if they did they would die! There was a cloud, they saw fire. The earth would have reeled and rocked! Or when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by hail and coals of fire. Or when God’s people walked across the dry ground to escape from the pursuing Egyptians as they walked across the Red Sea.

-David wasn’t alive in any of these stories, but He knew them! His job as the King was to be so immersed in God’s Word that it felt like His story. In Deut. 17 we see the king’s primary job to be knowing, reading, and studying God’s Word, because the king is meant to serve as the example to the rest of kingdom of what a faithful follower of God looks like. He is to submit his whole life to God’s Word.

-This also shows that David is aligning himself with God’s people throughout history. Just as God protected and provided for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, just as God protected and provided for Moses, God protected and provided for David! And that is also true for us today! We read, study and immerse ourselves in God’s Word so that we can readily call to mind these stories of how God has protected and provided for His people throughout history, and will continue to do the same thing into the future.

-The last thing David mentions is the individual preservation the Lord provided Him (19). David was nothing by Himself, but God supported Him. David was in a tight spot, surrounded by many enemies and certain death, but God brought him to “a broad place” because God delighted in David. There’s that same idea! We have meant to have a delightful relationship with God, He loves you, that’s why He saved you!

  • How We Can Be Saved (20-29)

-Then David turns to another section that feels off with both this Psalm and the rest of the Bible! Notice all the personal pronouns in vss. 20-24: my righteousness, my hands, I have kept, all his rules before me, I did not put away, I was blameless, I kept myself, my righteousness, cleanness of my hands. Is David suddenly slipping into his latent narcissistic tendencies?

-This is where we need to keep this Psalm in the context of the whole book! If you flip over to Psalm 51it feels like a completely different person: “have mercy on me! Wash me from my iniquity, my sin is ever before me.” It’s almost like David was a real person experiencing real, human emotions through every stage of his life, and then recorded them (with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) for followers of God throughout the rest of human history. 

-We also need to read this in context with the next section, don’t just lift up 1 verse here, then run to a conclusion based on that 1 verse.

-David is demonstrating how God (generally) deals with people.

-One of the things I’ve started sharing with people who want to talk about exceptions to rules is: there are always exceptions to the rule, but the exceptions don’t make good rules! So you start talking about how smoking kills, and then someone says “I know someone who smoked a pack a day until they died of old age at 88.” Good for them! I still wouldn’t recommend anyone pick up smoking! As a general rule of life: if you are obedient to how God commands us to live and operate, you are more likely to live a long life. That’s true throughout all of human history! Always exceptions to the rule (Job specifically comes to mind, as does Jesus, but that’s again a later conversation!)

-There was even a Jewish tradition that said this was true even as Israel wandered the wilderness for 40 years. Remember how God miraculously provided manna and quail for them? “The Jewish tradition was that the manna tasted according to each man’s mouth; certainly God shows himself to each individual according to his character.” (Spurgeon, Treasury of David) AKA you reap what you sow! Do you want God to be merciful to you? Live a merciful life! Do you want God to be loving to you? Live a loving life! 

-One last note about this section that I don’t want you to miss: you can never out-sin the grace of God. As David is looking back over his life, he can say he has been righteous and obedient to God’s rules and statutes, but we know he wasn’t always faithful! God has cast our sin as far as the east it from the west (eternal) but that doesn’t mean we just continue in sin. That means in our fight against sin, we don’t give up, we keep going, and we keep trusting ourselves to our merciful God. There is nothing you can do that will separate you from God’s love, for those of you who have been saved! (we’ll get to that in Ephesians this Fall!)

-David begins applying these truths to his life, then applies them more broadly in vs. 25-29 before going back to recount the ways God provides for His people in their salvation.

  • God’s Provision in Salvation (30-45)

-Start to see some repetition here, but please note that repetition isn’t always bad! In the 2nd section David recounted God’s marvelous power in salvation, which leads to the means by which God has provided for His people through salvation.

-Remember, this is what David was pointing to in the previous section! Where does our righteousness come from? It’s not inherent in us! Where does the strength to endure under suffering come from? Not from us! Our righteousness is an alien righteousness, foreign to us coming only from God, made possible by and through Him.

-This section begins with David reminding us that there is no one like God. His way is the only way, thus it is perfect. His word always is proven true, as David just demonstrated by recounting how God worked in human history, and finally he reminds everyone that God is a shield (35), protecting His people if they “take refuge” (30) or place their faith in Him. You may then ask, what does that look like?

-A long list of things here! I think it can be broken up into 2 areas: God sustains David with everything he needs, and then through God, David’s enemies are defeated. First the provision: Notice that God’s equipping with strength is what leads to a blameless way. Brother or sister, now that we have died, and are raised in a new life with Christ we have the strength to say no to sin! We have the God-given ability to put to death the sinful tendencies we have in our lives. He will make us as fast as a deer, and give us the insight to see the world for what it really is. He gives us the tools and weapons we need to fight spiritually (again, we’ll look at that in more detail this Fall!). 

-We also have “a wide place for my steps.” (36) Think of how tricky it is to walk on a balance beam. We took our kids to an open gym this past Spring, and Ellie tried her hand at walking all the way across the balance beam. Look at the focus and determination to get across! If it were 4’ wide, how much easier would it be? By obeying God, fighting with His strength in us, walking through life is like walking through a wide-open field, no tripping or stumbling through it, it becomes easy.

-The second focus is the defeat of David’s enemies. God went before David even in the defeat of His enemies (ties into the wide place for his steps). As David was writing this his livelihood literally depended on his defeating his enemies! If his enemies won, he was out of a job (and most likely out of a life!). Yet as he looks back over his life, he’s seen God’s provision to never let him be completely defeated.  

-That gets us back to where David begins, and an appropriate ending place after recounting all the ways God has provided for David in his salvation:

  • Praise to God (46-50)

-The right and proper response to God working in your life is to praise and worship Him. Which means our whole lives should be responding to the reality that God has saved us! This is why it’s so important to me that we have a call to worship every time we gather, it helps us to remember and reorient our thinking to what God has done, and then our proper response is to join together in praising Him!

-“The Lord lives” He will never die, He will never get tired, He will never stop loving and being a kind and caring Father. Therefore we will bless and exalt Him. Just as David said at the beginning, he says at the end that God is our rock. 

-Anytime you see God described as a rock, think of one of the parables Jesus told: of the man who built his house on the rock. If God is our rock, the place we’re building the foundation of our life upon, then nothing will shake us. The storms can come, the creek can rise, the wind can blow, but the house of our life will stand firm. 

-Then we’re finally at the last verse! Whew! Lots to cover in this Psalm! This last verse confirms for us something that I’ve been alluding to throughout this whole message: this Psalm points us ultimately to great David’s greater son: Jesus.

-In order to understand how we see Jesus throughout a section like this, we need to understand a theological concept known as typology. Since all of history is a story of God working, He sovereignly ordained from the dawn of creation how the story would be written. Therefore, He used people in history to point to the greatest reality ever: that God would dwell with His people forever. We see throughout the Gospels how Jesus fulfilled the promises to his people. We see in Rom. 5 that where Adam failed, Jesus was victorious. We see in Moses a glimpse of the perfect prophet to come who would speak perfectly on behalf of his people. We see in David the glimpse of the perfect king who would come to rule forever. This is where I’ve repeatedly said we need to read the entire Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. The whole thing is about Him! 

-It is because of Jesus that David can say “the Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness.” Look back at vs. 20-24. Who is the only person to live who fulfilled this description? And then look at vs. 25-29, and to whom was this rule not true? Jesus! Despite being merciful was given wrath, despite being blameless was blamed, despite being pure was made sin, despite being perfectly straight was given torture.

-And now, because of Christ, these descriptions can be true of us today! Jesus has saved us from our enemies! Sin, Satan, and death no longer have any power over us. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we have the weapons and strength we need to fight against any temptation we would face to deny or give up on faithfully following God with our whole lives. None of this is because of anything we’ve done or can do, but because of what God has done in us.

-Therefore, we can join together in remembering and celebrating this reality in the Lord’s Supper. Each time we celebrate this, we are commanded to remember our salvation. The body that was broken for us, the blood that was shed for us, the connection back to the Passover where God has worked in human history to bring about His perfect plan. Each time we take and eat we are joining with God’s people starting all the way back in Eden to say “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” We are joining with God’s people to say no to sin, and yes to Christ, to praise God for the salvation freely given to all who receive Him. 

-I was reminded recently of Psalm 116:13 in connection to communion where the author states “I will life up the cup of my salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” Just as we saw in Psalm 18 that David praises God for his salvation, we too need to praise God for our salvation. 

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by mikethestrand on August 14, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship

Posted by mikethestrand on August 14, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/08/14/psalm-18-sermon-manuscript/

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