Meadowbrooke Church

Purposed and Treasured

In light of our journey in Ephesians so far, what does it mean to be a Christian? If you are a genuine and legitimate Christian, then the following is true of you:
God chose you before the foundation of the world for the purpose of becoming holy and blameless (1:4-6).
You have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus who died upon a cross for sins you committed, and through His death, the riches of Gods grace has been, is being, and forever will be lavished upon you (1:7-12).
You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that God will complete the work He started in you and the promise of a power to enable you to complete the work that He has called you into, related to His mission to redeem creation (1:13-14, 19; 2:10).
Because you are a Christian, God treasures you as His inheritance that He will receive out of His great purpose and love for you (1:18-19a).
You are secure as a Christian because the One who redeemed you upon the cross, conquered death by walking out of the tomb, is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, and is the King of kings and Lord of lords who is, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (1:19b-21).
As a Christian, your hope rests in a Jesus under whose feet, all things are in subjection because He is head over all things the Groom of the Church (1:21-22).
You are a Christian because, like the rest of the world, you were once dead in your sins, and thereby a child of Gods wrath! However, that is no longer who you are because God, whose mercy is rich, love is great, and grace is sufficient, made you alive in Christ Jesus (2:1-4)
If you are a Christian, it is not because of anything you have done, but solely by the grace of God through faith exclusively in Christ alone (2:8-9).
You, Christian, were redeemed through faith, by grace, because of Christ for, good works, which God prepared beforehand so that you would walk, not in the course of this world, but in good works God saved you for (2:10).
Because you are now a Christian, you have been brought near to God and belong to another people group, which is the people of God (2:13-22).
Your identity as a Christian is not in how you feel, who you are attracted too, your political affiliation, nationality, or the color of your skin; your identity is now in Jesus as the cornerstone of your life and the Bible as the foundation on which you stand within the community known as the Church (2:19-22).
As a Christian, the multifaceted wisdom of God is being made known through you and the people you now belong to, which is the Church of Jesus Christ. Angels marvel over your redemption and demons are terrified over what God is doing through you (3:1-12).
You belong to Christ as the Bride of Christ dear Christian! When God sees you, you are now the object of His affection; He is working all things out for His glory and for your good, in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus (3:11), which means that He is for you and not against you (3:1, 13).
You, Christian, are being built up into a beautiful templea holy and living temple where the presence of God dwells (2:21-22)!
Paul begins verse 14 with, For this reason. For what reason? For the fourteen reasons I just listed and so much more!
There is something so important the apostle wanted the Ephesians to know and experience, and it is something that we need to know and experience today. Paul touched on it in his prayer in 1:18-19, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe (Eph. 1:1819a). He again informs these Christians how he is praying for them:
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. (Eph. 16-19)
These two prayers serve as bookends for the first half of Ephesians; it is in these remaining verses in chapter 3 that Paul shows us how it is that we can know the love of Christ, but also experience the width, length, height, and depth of that same love of Christ.
Surrender Fully to God (vv. 14-15)
There are only four places in the whole New Testament that I am aware of where the Greek word for bend (kamptō) is used. Is Paul describing his physical posture while praying for the Ephesian Christians, or is he describing his overall posture as a Christian? Scholars are torn over what it is exactly that Paul is describing here, but I think it is both because of the first three words of verse 14: For this reason. For all the reasons mentioned from the beginning of this epistle to 3:13, I bend my knees before the Father.
It makes even more sense to conclude that Paul is speaking for both his posture in prayer and his posture in life before God the Father because of the other ways he used this same Greek word. It will serve us well to see the other ways he used the word bend because it will also help us understand how we can experience the very thing Paul prays for. Here are the first two ways kamptō is used:
For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow (kamptō), of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Phil. 2:910)
For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee will bow (kamptō), and every tongue will give praise to God. (Rom. 14:11)
The fourth place kamptō (bow) is used is in Romans 11:4 when Paul quotes what God said to the prophet Elijah: I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. In the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, Elijah had an encounter with 400 prophets of Baal. The short of it is that the prophets of Baal where utterly humiliated when God miraculously intervened on behalf of Elijah to prove to all who were there that there was only one true God, and it was Yahweh. The king and queen of Israel had made Baal worship the religion of the nation and it had seemed most had turned to Baal (see 1 Kings 18).
It wasnt long after Elijah experienced God do the impossible that Jezebel threatened to murder Elijah. Elijah fled and went into hiding within a cave even though he had experienced God do the impossible. It was in the cave that God assured Elijah that even though many of Israels prophets turned to Baal, there were still 7,000 who had not bowed their knee to Baal. In other words, for the 7,000 prophets of Yahweh, there was only one Lord.
There is another reason why Paul bends his knees before the Father, and we see it in verse 15; it is the reason why God has both the authority and the right to bless whomever He wishes with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (1:3), chooses whomever He wants before the foundation of the world (1:4-6), redeems those He has chosen through His Son (1:7-12), and seals those whom He treasures (1:13-14). That reason is He is God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name (v. 15). He has the right and prerogative to do what He will because He alone is God, He alone is the Creator, and He alone is Father to the redeemed!
In ancient Israel, it was the father who gave the name to a child. The significance of verse 15 is that although it is true that God holds all the rights of Creator, it is those whom He redeems through Christ that He has given a new name. What is this new name? Listen to Revelation 2:17, The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except the one who receives it. I am not entirely sure what the new name means that the Christian will receive, but I believe the point Paul is making is that the posture of the Christian is a bend of ones knees before the Father in recognition that there is no God like Him and a very keen awareness that because of Jesus Christ, the Christian can claim 1 John 3:1 for himself/herself: See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are. For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him (1 John 3:1). You, Christian, share the mystical union with Jesus that every Christian shares who is now in heaven or presently on earth. We now belong to the people of God as members of that family in heaven and on earth.
Depend Deeply Upon the Holy Spirit (v. 16-17a)
So Pauls prayer for the Ephesians continues: that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (vv. 16-17a). Do you see the connection between these verses and Pauls statement about his posture before God the Father? If you are Christian, you already have Christ and the evidence that you have Christ is through the sealing of the Holy Spirit that God did when you became a Christian by faith in Christ alone.
Let me say it another way: When you believed in Jesus as the only way and means for the salvation of your soul, God sealed you with His Holy Spirit as a guarantee that you now belong to Him as His child and at the same time as proof that you are also His inheritance (see Eph. 1:13-14, 19a). Remember what I said when we looked at Ephesians 1:13-14; I said that when you were sealed by the Holy Spirit, you now have all of the Holy Spirit that you will ever need. The question is whether or not the Holy Spirit has all of your heart. Paul is essentially saying the same thing in Ephesians 3:16-17a.
All of the strengthening and power that is available through the Holy Spirit, you already have in you because you, dear Christian, have all of the Holy Spirit that you will ever need. The question is how lined up is your inner self with the Father and the Son? What is the inner self you ask? The inner self is the center of your being, it is the most important part of you spiritually because it affects everything you do outwardly. Let me share with you something from the Bible that may help add clarity to what Paul is talking about here and why what he is saying in these verses is so important from 2 Corinthians 4:16; Paul refers to the inner-self as the inner-person in these verses:
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:1618)
So, here is why what Paul is saying is so important for us to understand: The more you depend upon the Father, the more you seek Him, the more of your joy you find in and through Him, the more of you His Spirit will have. You can only do that by knowing Him more and better! The only way you will know God more and better is if you listen to Him through His Word (the Bible) and communicate to Him (through prayer).
Listen to me very carefully: Christian, you can know and rightly believe that you have available to you the strength and power of the Holy Spirit you are convinced resides in you because you believe Gods Word to be true! However, you will not experience the strength and power available to you through the Holy Spirit if you are not bending your knees before the Father with your mind, heart, and will. This is the point Paul also makes later in Ephesians 5:18, Do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your hearts to the Lord. One person said it this way: A person whom the Spirit is working powerfully in is someone who will be changing deeply. When the Spirit of Christ makes himself at home, he constantly renovates our hearts to make us a more appropriate dwelling for the Lord Jesus, because the Lord Jesus is not merely dropping in briefly.[1]
But that is not all, brothers and sisters, there is more!
Walk in Union Uncompromisingly with Christ (vv. 17-19)
So what do I mean by walking in union uncompromisingly with Christ? There is a simple but very full word that sums up verses 17b-19, and the word is Abide. How does the Holy Spirit get more of you? How will God get more of your heart? The answer is, by abiding in Christ. Paul is not saying to the Christians in Ephesus that they do not have all of the love of Jesus; he cant be saying that because of all that he has already said! He already said that if you are a Christian, it is only because of the truth that, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Eph. 1:7-8a). Regarding this same love, Paul wrote that God, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (2:5b-7).
Christian, you have all of the love of Christ that you will ever need, but are you living in the reality of that love at the very center of your life? How do you do that, you ask? Well I am glad you asked. You do that by, being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. This is what it means to abide (to take up residence in) Christ. Here is what Jesus said about abiding in Him: I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:5). Jesus also said, If anyone loves Me, he will follow My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him (John 14:23). This is what it means to be rooted and grounded in love. What love? The love of God that is ours in Jesus! It is more than just head knowledge that Paul is praying for, he wants these Christians to experience and live in that love in such a way that only the Holy Spirit can make happen.
R.C. Sproul said of these verses: We need divine power to have a deeper understanding of the dimensions of the love of Christ.[2] What are the dimensions of the love of Christ? Paul kind of tells us in verse 18, the width and length and height and depth. A comprehension of these four spheres of the love of Christ is to understand and experience, the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (v. 18). What is the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge? It is more than an understanding that as Christians,
Christ is seated above us as our Lord and Savior (1:20-22)
You, Christian, are seated beside Him (2:6)
We rest upon Him (2:20)
Christ indwells us (3:17)
Jesus fills us (3:19).
What is this profound love that belongs to the Christian? I believe the following story is an appropriate way to drive home Pauls point:
In the last century, when Napoleons armies opened a prison that had been used by the Spanish Inquisition, they found the remains of a prisoner who had been incarcerated for his faith. The dungeon was underground. The body had long since decayed. Only a chain fastened around an anklebone cried out his confinement. But this prisoner, long since dead, had left a witness. On the wall of his small, dismal cell this faithful soldier of Christ had scratched a rough cross with four words surrounding it in Spanish. Above the cross was the Spanish word for height. Below it was the word for depth. To the left the word width. To the right, the word length. Clearly this prisoner wanted to testify to the surpassing greatness of the love of Christ, perceived even in his suffering[3]
[1] Richard Coekin, Ephesians for You (The Good Book Company; 2019), p. 100.
[2] R.C. Sproul, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries; 2023), p. 50.
[3] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 111.

A Mystery Celebrated

About one hundred years after the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians another man by the name of Polycarp served as Bishop of the church in Smyrna, located about 35 miles north of Ephesus, was arrested and sentenced to death for his refusal to worship the gods of the Roman empire.
At eighty-six years old, Polycarp was the last surviving person to have known an apostle, for he was discipled by the apostle John. He was greatly revered as a teacher and church leader; he also had suffered the loss of many friends who had gone before him through the death of martyrdom. Although Polycarp heard that the Roman authorities were looking for him so that they could arrest him, he was at peace with whatever was coming. Three days before his arrest, Polycarp had a vision, while praying, of a pillow under his head that was on fire; he understood his vision to be prophetic concerning the way he would die. Polycarp said to his friends, I will be burned alive.
It is said when the authorities finally did find the place Polycarp was staying to arrest him, they came with all of their weapons, and while he could have escaped, Polycarp responded to his friends: Gods will be done. When the Roman authorities stepped into the house where Polycarp was staying, he called for food and drinks for the men and asked if they could give him an hour to pray uninterrupted; to which they agreed. It is said that some of the men who were there to arrest the 86-year-old church leader, regretted it. Polycarp was made to ride a donkey and was ushered into the arena; some witnesses said they heard a voice from heaven say, Be strong, Polycarp and play the man!
When the crowd saw Polycarp enter the arena, witnesses say there was an uproar as people shouted: Down with the Atheists! (this is what Christians were called because they did not worship the gods of the Roman Empire). While the crowd demanded death for the old saint, the Proconsul urged him to, reproach Christ, and I will set you free. To which Polycarp declared: 86 years I have served him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me? The Proconsul continued: Swear by the Fortune of Caesar. To which Polycarp again replied: Since you vainly think that I will swear by the Fortune of Caesar, as you say, and pretend not to know who I am, listen carefully: I am a Christian!
They sentenced Polycarp to death by burning. They were going to nail him to the stake, but Polycarp insisted, Leave me like this. He who gives me to endure the fire will also give me to remain on the pyre without your security from the nails. So, they did not nail him to the stake, but did tie him to it. As they prepared to light the fire, Polycarps prayer could be heard:
O Lord God Almighty, the Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of you, the God of angels, powers and every creature, and of all the righteous who live before you, I give you thanks that you count me worthy to be numbered among your martyrs, sharing the cup of Christ and the resurrection to eternal life, both of soul and body, through the immortality of the Holy Spirit. May I be received this day as an acceptable sacrifice, as you, the true God, have predestined, revealed to me, and now fulfilled. I praise you for all these things, I bless you and glorify you, along with the everlasting Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. To you, with him, through the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and forever. Amen.[1]
Because the fire did not seem to touch his body, an executioner was commanded to stab him. Polycarp died about 100 years after the apostle Paul wrote these words that are before us in 2024:
To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all people as to what the plan of the mystery is which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; so that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. (Eph. 3:812)
There are three truths in the scripture passage before us related to the mystery of God that I want to highlight for your good, and to your encouragement this morning.
Gods Plan is Great (vv. 8-9)
Since the Garden of Eden, and even before time, the plan has always been the redemption of mankind through a second and greater Adam, a more permanent and perfect sacrifice, a greater Moses who mediates a New Covenant. The greater Adam, the more permanent and perfect sacrifice, and the One greater than Moses who mediates a New Covenant is Jesus; however, it was not clear in ages past who or what the mystery was until Jesus was born. This is the mystery Paul is talking about in Ephesians, and this is the point of the opening verses of Hebrews:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:13)
This is the point of what the resurrected Christ said to the apostle John at the beginning of the book of Revelation: When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:17-18). Of this Jesus, Paul wrote: To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all people as to what the plan of the mystery is which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things (Eph. 3:89).
Paul had become the recipient of the unfathomable riches of Christ for the purpose of sharing the news that the very same grace is available to all who would receive it by faith through Christ. This is the mission of the Church! Jesus said of His followers who make up His Church: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-14). For salt to serve its purpose, it must be applied; the greatest need for the light, is where it is dark. Gods plan has always been for His people to serve as the salt of the earth and the light of the world! Adam and Eve were commanded to fill the earth with people like them who worshiped God. Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests to light up the darkness of the nations and people groups who surrounded them. Regardless of the failure of Adam and Eve or the failures of the Hebrew people, God promised: For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name shall be great among the nations, and in every place frankincense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of Armies (Mal. 1:11). Jesus would make Gods plan possible, and He would do it through His Church (Matt. 18:19-20), and Jesus promised, I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it (Matt. 16:18).
The heart of Gods perspective plan for the redemption of the nations is that He will do it through the Church. Polycarp understood this, the apostle Paul was convinced of this, and the Church can stand on this truth! It is for the mission of God that we were made for, and it is for the mission of God that God chose you before the foundation of the world, redeemed you through the blood of the Lamb, and sealed you with the Holy Spirit so that you can live out your purpose with power (see Eph. 2:10)! Now, we who have been redeemed by Christ, can enter into the darkness of a rotten world with the full confidence that we go with the One whom God the Father, put all things in subjection under His feet and made Him head over all things to the church (Eph. 1:20-23).
Gods Motive is Central (v. 10)
What is the motive of God? Why did he redeem a people through His Son? Is it only because we are, His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph. 2:10)? We are given clues as to why He chose, redeemed, and sealed us throughout Ephesians; Paul tells us three times in the first fourteen verses: To the praise of the glory of His grace (v. 6), to the praise of His glory (v. 12), and to the praise of His glory (v. 14). And now, in Ephesians 3:10, we are told again: so that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
So, what is the multifaced wisdom of God that is being made known through the church? It obviously has something to do with the way God redeemed the church: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (1:7-8a). However, note how Gods wisdom is used in 1 Corinthians regarding the way he saved sinners: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). But wait, there is more:
For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God. But it is due to Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. (1 Cor. 1:2631)
Do you see it? Do you see now what Paul is saying in Ephesians 3:10? The thing that God has done in your life Christian, from choosing you before the foundation of the world (1:4), to the redemption of your soul through the blood of the Son (1:7-8), and the sealing of the Holy Spirit by the same power that raised Jesus from the grave (1:13, 19) is on display through you before the holy angels and the evil demons! The rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places is the realm of both the angelic and demonic. The angels see what God has done, is doing, and will do in you and they are blown away over the rich mercy, great love, and all-sufficient grace God has lavished upon you through Jesus the Son. We get a snapshot of the way the angels and all of heaven responds to what the Christian has received: Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing. To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever. Amen (Rev. 5:12-14).
The demons see the same thing the holy angels see, but they tremble as they look upon the power of God at work in you in great and terrifying fear. The cross that made our redemption possible serves as a reminder of Gods redemptive plan while it also serves to remind the demons that all evil has already been defeated at the cross; you Christian remind the demonic world that their final judgment is coming, and you will stand over them as the Bride of Christ in judgment over them (1 Cor. 6:1-3). Their response is certainly terrifying fear, but also violence towards the saints any chance they get. Polycarp experienced their worst, and although his hair was singed with fire, he was received by the Great and Good Shepard of the sheep with these words: Come Polycarp, you are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matt. 25:34).
Gods motive is to display His glory through His people, and that is good news! Think about who God is. He is as good as it gets, there is none higher than Himself and the motive to glorify Himself is the motive to give you the greatest reality that has no equal, namely Himself! This is why when it comes to the salvation, redemption, and rescuing of His people, God is clear: For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And I will not give My glory to another (Isa. 48:11).
What this means is that when angels see you, they see the power of God on full display as He is committed to do the very thing He determined to do before the foundation of the world in and through you: In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory (Eph. 1:1112). The demonic see the same power on display in you, knowing that Gods rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace is something they will never experience as they wait for Gods perfect justice, infinite wrath, and final judgment.
So, when Polycarp and the countless others who suffered for the name of Christ, understood that because of their identity in Christ, the world could do its worst and still not a hair on the head of the one covered under the blood of the Lamb would perish (Luke 21:18).
Gods Purpose is Eternal (vv. 11-13)
As we inch our way closer to the conclusion of Ephesians 3, we come closer to the second half of this magnificent epistle. If there was a transitional statement to mark the shift from Ephesians 1-3 to Ephesians 4-6, it would be this: Now that you know who you are in Christ, let me explain who you are as the Church. In verses 11-12, Paul gives us a peek into what he will unpack in the second half of his epistle: This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.
What is the This Paul is referring to in verse 11? It is the unfathomable riches of Christ Paul received and was commissioned to bring to the Gentiles through the foolishness of the Cross preached. It is the unfathomable riches of Christ that Polycarp was sentenced to death for preaching. It is the unfathomable riches of Christ that the Christian has received and also has been commissioned to bring to all peoples as the Church of Jesus Christ. Listen to me carefully: It is because you, Christian, have received the unfathomable riches of Christ that places you into a third category of a people group that transcends any people group you were physically born into, and that people group is the People of God and tethers you to both Old Testament saints and New Testament saints; it also tethers you to every other person who has received the unfathomable riches of Christ. This is also the mystery Paul is talking about, and this mystery includes the Bride of Jesus Christ, who is the Church! What this means is that the Church has been, is, and will continue to be, the eternal purpose which God carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (v. 11).
Christian, you are the Church and because you are the Church, Jesus is your Groom, and you are His Bride! Christian, you are the apple of the Redeemers eye, and this is why Paul could write that in Christ Jesus our Lord we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him (v. 12). Oh dear Christian, do not think lightly of the people you are now joined to in faith through the Christ who not only suffered and died in your place, but shed His blood to redeem and purchase a Bride for Himself that now includes you! The Church is the Beloved Bride of Christ, which means the local expression of Her such as Meadowbrooke Church and thousands like Her is the way, that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known. In accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him (vv. 10-12).
Warren Wiersbes sage advice is a fitting way to conclude this sermon: This great truth concerning the church is not a divine afterthought. It is a part of Gods eternal purpose in Christ (Eph. 3:11). To ignore this truth is to sin against the Father who planned it, the Son whose death made it possible, and the Spirit who today seeks to work in our lives to accomplish what God has planned.[2] Amen.
[1] John Foxe and The Voice of the Martyrs, Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs (Orlando, FL: The Voice of the Martyrs; 2007), 51-55.
[2] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 30.

A Mystery Known

One of my favorite films is the movie, Signs, which is a film by M. Night Shyamalan released in 2002. In the film, Mel Gibson stars as Graham Hess, a former Episcopalian priest grieving the tragic death of his wife and grappling with the existence of God and His involvement with His creation in the aftermath of his wifes death. In an article published on March 24, 2024 about the film, Niall Gray and Zachary Moser summarize the movies message which is not so much about hostile and invading aliens, but how all of the characters play an important part in the movies overall plot and:
Merrill is a failed minor-league baseball player, Morgan is asthmatic, and Bo leaves half-drunk glasses of water all over the house. These traits, and Graham's crisis of faith, are all significant to the film's story, leaning intoSigns' central themes. In themovie's signature M. Night Shyamalan twist, the aliens are defeated due to their deadly reaction to contact with water, and Graham's faith is ultimately restored by his family's survival of the ordeal. The ending comes together, arranging all the clues Shyamalan laid out for a thrilling and thoughtful ending.
Upon the alien invasion, Graham rediscovers his faith when all the things he perceived as random suddenly become significant. This is evidenced earlier in the movie by Graham's speech about how the world is split into two types of people, those who believe in coincidence and those who believe in miracles. Graham's belief that everything happens for a reason is restored, making faith and predetermination a central element ofSigns' story.[1]
There are many reasons why I loved this movie, but what I love most about this movie is that it is really about the purpose and design behind all that Graham believed to be coincidencehis young brothers failure as a minor-league player who could destroy a ball if he connected with his bat, his sons severe asthma, or his little daughters weird behavior of leaving half-drunk glasses of water all over the housewhen in fact there was purpose and design behind all of it; there was even purpose in the way his wife died.
I think that my oldest son, Nathan, was nine years old when I introduced him to the movie. Nathan was captivated by the movie, but I could tell that he was growing more and more distressed as he watched the story unfold. At some point I got up to check his pulse, which was high because of the scary and hostile aliens. To put his anxious heart at ease, I explained to him the many signs that were in plain sight in the film to show him that the family would be okay in the end.
In Ephesians, Paul shows us that the redemption and salvation of people from all nations was not a coincidence, but Gods plan from the very beginning. The mystery was not developed by the apostle nor was it created out of someones imagination. It is not the kind of mystery we think of based on the way the word mystery is used in English. The way Paul uses mystery in Ephesians is not the way it is used in a Scooby Doo episode. What Paul means by mystery is that although Gods plan was visible, it was beyond the realm of human understand and needed divine revelation for it to be understood. Just as my son needed me to show him the open secret that was always before him since the story began.
The Glory of the Mystery Revealed (vv. 3-7)
So what is the mystery Paul is talking about in Ephesians? Well he tells us in verse 4, it is the mystery of Christ that has been revealed to the apostles and the prophets in the Spirit (v. 5). But what about Christ is it that was so mysterious in ages past? Wasnt Gods plan to redeem and save lost sinners clear enough throughout the ages?
After Adam and Even sinned against God, there was no sugar-coating how God would eventually deal with the great serpent, the devil: And I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel (Gen. 3:15). Wasnt God clear enough when He promised Abraham, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. (Gen. 12:2-3)? Would it not have been obvious that the descendant of King David was the one promised to Eve, when God guaranteed: When your days are finished and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever (2 Sam. 7:1216). The descendant promised to David, who would sit on His throne forever, would be the child promised in Isaiah 9:6-7, of whom, There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.
But what are we to do with Isaiah 53? If Davids descendant will sit on the Davidic throne forever, then who is the One described in verses 5, But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.? If that were not confusing enough, how about the description given of the descendent of David in Jeremiah 23:5-6? How can Davids descendant be described in this way: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will live securely; And this is His name by which He will be called, The Lord Our Righteousness. How can sinful David have a righteous human descendant who will also bear the Divine name of Yahweh?
All of this was always before the people of Israel. The mystery is that Jesus was the Descendant promised to Eve, Jesus was the seed that would come through Abraham who would bless the nations, and Jesus is the descendant of David who will sit on his throne forever. Jesus is the King who will establish lasting peace as the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and Prince of Peace. Jesus is the One who is the rightful heir of the Davidic Crown who would first have to suffer the sinners cross. Through the cursing of the cross, Jesus is the righteous Branch who was more than just a man, but the God-man who bears the title: The Lord Our Righteousness.
The mystery of Christ is that the Law of God points lost humanity to their need for the Son of God (Gal. 3:24). The mystery of Christ is from the Passover to the Feast of Tabernacles, all seven Jewish feasts point to Jesus. The mystery of Christ is that He is Gods Yes to all His promises (2 Cor. 1:20-22). However, this mystery that was always before the people, was not made known to mankind until it was revealed through the Holy Spirit to the apostles and prophets (v. 5). Jesus is the glory of the mystery revealed, and it was the mystery of Christ that Paul was called to preach to the Gentiles, after the gospel of Jesus Christ met him on the Damascus Road where Paul went from death to life in the same way the Christians in Ephesus went from death to life (vv. 2-3). What is the glory of the mystery of Christ? It is what Paul wrote of in Ephesians 1:7-10, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.
The Treasure of the Mystery Revealed (vv. 8-12)
The mystery of Christ for Paul was the treasure Jesus spoke of regarding the kingdom of God: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells everything that he has, and buys that field (Matt. 13:44). While Paul was seeking to bring harm to Christs Church, Christ found him and it was there on that road that he not only experienced the grace of God, but a grace that the One he sought to destroy lavished upon him!
When Paul described himself as, the very least of all saints (v. 8a), he did so because he understood and was mindful of just how far he was from God. In the opening verses of his letter to Timothy, Paul wrote of himself: It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost (1 Tim. 1:15). But, because of Christ, Paul had become both the recipient of the unfathomable riches of Christ and an ambassador for the One who also bears the name, The Lord Our Righteousness (Jer. 23:6) to preach to the Gentiles, the unfathomable riches of Christ (v. 8b).
Paul was responsible for the death and persecution of the Church. He was on his way to continue to persecute the Church with the approval of the same religious Counsel that crucified Jesus, and then the unthinkable happened, this is how Paul described what happened to him:
But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus at about noon, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? And I answered, Who are You, Lord? And He said to me, I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting. And those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me. And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said to me, Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told about everything that has been appointed for you to do. (Acts 22:1-10)
Paul went to Damascus where he called upon Jesus to be both savior and Lord of his life, and he was never again the same as a result. However, he was always mindful that it was only because the rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace of God that Jesus met him where he was. We can hear it in the way Paul responded to Jesus: And I said, Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You. And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing nearby and approving, and watching over the cloaks of those who were killing him. And He said to me, Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles (Acts 22:1921).
For what purpose was Paul saved? Why did Jesus meet him on the Damascus Road? He tells us in Ephesians 3:9-10, to enlighten all people as to what the plan of the mystery is which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; so that the multifaceted wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. It is the same reason why God saved the Ephesian Christians who received this letter! Why did God choose them before the foundation of the world (1:4)? Why did He redeem those who formerly worshiped Artemis (1:7)? Why did he make these people who were once dead in their offenses and sins, alive with Christ (2:1-5)? The reason why God saved Paul, the reason why God saved those in Ephesus, and the reason why God saved you Christian is the same: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (2:10). The mystery is not only Jesus, but the plan of God to redeem people from all people groups through Jesus as the seed through whom all the nations will be blessed.
The Hope of the Mystery Revealed (vv. 1-2, 11-13)
I will speak more on these verses next week, but for now, I want to point a few things out to you. First, notice what Paul says in verse 1, For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus. Paul didnt identify himself as a prisoner of Nero or the Roman Empire, but instead, he understood himself to be, the prisoner of Christ. Do not miss the significance of that statement! For the reason that Jesus was the cornerstone of Pauls life and that the gospel was bringing both Jews and Gentiles together as one temple, being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (2:19-22), Paul was a prisoner not because Nero or the Roman Empire wanted him there, but because of the Lordship of Christ and the eternal purpose of God almighty (3:11).
I will unpack this more next week, but what I want you to hear today is that if you are a Christian, whatever you have suffered, are suffering, or will suffer is not a coincidence. Because you are a Christian, you can be sure that there is a greater design in your suffering because, like Paul, you also are the recipient of, the unfathomable riches of Christ. This is why Paul encouraged his readers with these words: Therefore I ask you not to become discouraged about my tribulations in your behalf, since they are your glory.
Think about all that we have learned of ourselves and what it means to be the Church from this epistle so far. Jesus is the glory of the mystery that was never a secret and always in plain view from the very beginning. Christian, God chose you in Jesus before the foundation of the world, that you would be holy and blameless (1:4). The promise to Eve to crush the head of the serpent is your promise in Christ! Gods promise to bless Abraham is your promise in Christ! Gods promise to King David that his descendant would sit on his throne forever is your promise in Christ! All of the promises of God to His people are now yours in Christ and he intended to make you a recipient of those promises, before the foundation of the world.
If God has taken great care to make sure you heard the Gospel so that you would receive the Gospel, do you really think that every tear and every pain is a coincidence? It is not! If Ephesians 1:3-14 is true, then you can know that there a good and benevolent God working all your past, present, and future sorrows for His glory and your good, the glory of the mystery is Jesus and treasure of the mystery is our union to and with Him. There are bright designs behind your hurts!
God moves in a mysterious wayHis wonders to perform;He plants His footsteps in the seaAnd rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable minesOf never failing skillHe treasures up His bright designsAnd works His sovreign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye so much dreadAre big with mercy and shall breakIn blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,But trust Him for His grace;Behind a frowning providenceHe hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,Unfolding every hour;The bud may have a bitter taste,But sweet will be the flowr.
Blind unbelief is sure to errAnd scan His work in vain;God is His own interpreter,And He will make it plain.
[1] Niall Gray, Zachary Moser, ScreenRant: Signs Ending "Swing Away, Merrill" Scene Explained (In Detail)

Only One Foundation

On October 3, 2004, I preached my first sermon as a candidate for Northwest Baptist Churchs next Senior Pastor. Northwest was considered one of the most dysfunctional churches within the Rocky Mountain district, and although I knew this about the church, there was no way I could fully appreciate just how dysfunctional it really was. So, a very green and 30-year-old version of the pastor that stands before you today preached a sermon on boasting in the Cross of Christ before a congregation with a median age of somewhere in the 60s; my sermon text was from Galatians 6:11-18 and the title of my sermon was, Boasting in the Cross.
On October 17th the congregation of Northwest Baptist Church voted to call me as their Senior Pastor. Because I was unsure about moving our family from Pennsylvania to Colorado, I needed more time to pray about it before agreeing to serve as the Senior Pastor of that little church in Denver. Earlier that day, just after the church service at Calvary Baptist Church where I was presently served on the pastoral staff, Bob and Shirley White had given me a gift for Clergy Appreciation Month. I only opened the wrapping paper so that I could thank Bob and Shirley; the gift was a book, and the title of that book was, God as He Longs for You to See Him, by Chip Ingram. I left the book in my office, which was only across the parking lot from where we lived at the time (a house we affectionately nicknamed: Little House on the Parking Lot).
Because I needed time to pray, I walked across the parking lot and into my office at Calvary Baptist Church to be alone with the Lord. As I sat down, the book that Bob and Shirley White had given was there in front of my face. As I began to pray, I asked God to give me some indication as to what He wanted me to do; as I was praying, I opened Chip Ingrams book and noticed that Bob and Shirley had written a note on the inside cover: To our dear Christian brother, Keith, who has inspired us through his messages to see and know God as He really is. We love you and may God bless you, Roi Maw, and Nathan. Bob and Shirley White; October 16, 2004.
Bob and Shirleys little note also served as Gods way to encourage me to say yes to Northwest Baptist Church; but also served to encourage me to say yes to Meadowbrookes call to become your pastor oddly enough, on the first week of October nearly 14 years to the day that I read Bob and Shirleys note for the first time. I am still convinced as I was twenty years ago, that the best that I can give you is the God of the Bible. I could try to cater to felt needs, but all that really ends up being is a guessing game, and besides, what would that do anyway?
I am not going to look at Ephesians 2:19-22 in sequential order like I normally do with a scripture passage but will look at these verses in the order a builder would build a building.
We are a Jesus Called Community
When it came to the structure of a building, before anything could be built, the cornerstone had to be laid. It was the first stone laid because the dimensions and shape of the rest of the building were dependent upon the shape and size of the cornerstone. If the cornerstone was off, so the rest of the building would be off! If there was anything wrong with the cornerstone such as its dimensions, the way it was cut, or its integrity as the toughest and strongest of the stones used in the building, the structure would be compromised. In the ancient East, the cornerstone was the most expensive of all the stones used in a building because it was the most important part of the building. When it comes to the nature of the Church, Paul says that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone (v. 20b).
Against the backdrop of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, stood another temple. Only the temple Paul referred to was living, organic, and holy. Today, it is still being built and it will continue to be built with Jesus as the cornerstone until He is finished building and beatifying His Church. We, the Church, are the great wonder of all of heaven and it is concerning our salvation that we are told: angels long to look (1 Pet. 1:12). Think about who you are Church! In Jesus, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (1:3). In Jesus, we were chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (v. 4). Through Jesus, we have been adopted as sons and daughters (v. 5). In Jesus, we have redemption through His blood (vv. 7-8). In Jesus, we have obtained an inheritance from God that no one can destroy (v. 11). In Jesus, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit that no one can break (v. 13). We were chosen, redeemed, and sealed all to the praise of the glory of God (vv. 6, 12, 14); which means that the Ephesian Church displayed a glory even greater than the power of 300 billion suns!
The prophets and the apostles, through the Scriptures, pointed to Jesus: The prophets point towards Jesus and the apostles point back to Jesus. Long before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah declared: Therefore this is what the Lord Godsays: Behold, I am laying a stone in Zion, a tested stone, A precious cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. The one who believes in it will not be disturbed (Isa. 28:16). Concerning Jesus, the apostle Peter wrote, And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by people, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2:4-5).
As the cornerstone, Jesus is Gods final and most perfect revelation of Himself: God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world (Heb. 1:1-2). As we have learned in the previous verses, it is because of Christ and through Christ that both Jew and Gentile can become one new people group through faith in Him alone. It is through Jesus that we now have access to God the Father (2:18).
If you are a Christian, then Jesus is your cornerstone! Think for a moment of what that means. Jesus is the cornerstone because He is the Christ (Isa. 9:6-7). Jesus is the Christ because He is the Great I AM who is the Bread of Life (John 6:35-51), the Light of the World (8:12; 9:5), the Door for His Sheep (10:7-9), the Good Shepherd (10:11-14), the Resurrection and the Life (11:25), and the True Vine (15:1). Jesus is the cornerstone because only He could claim to be, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14:6). If you are a Christian, then Jesus is your cornerstone by which the entirety of your life is being shaped by Him, and as He is shaping you, so too He is shaping all who truly belong to Him.
We are a Word Formed Community
The prophets and the apostles represent the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, that we as the temple of God (household) are being built upon. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible claims at least 3,000 times to be The Word of the Lord. And, in all its 66 books and the hundreds of years and many different contributors who were guided by the Holy Spirit, it is without error.
In a very real sense, we are a people of the Book, but not just any old book! Consider some of the things that the Bible claims about itself:
The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward (Ps. 19:7-11).
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
The Old Testament and the New Testament are not two separate books nor are they two separate volumes. The Old Testament and New Testament are one book, one story, with one theme: Jesus! This is why Jesus said of Himself, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17); Jesus is Gods Yes to all Gods promises (2 Cor. 1:20). Jesus commanded His disciples after His resurrection and before His ascension: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matt. 28:19-20). Do not miss that He commanded us to teach all that He has commanded. The foundation on which Gods people must stand has always been on the Word of God.
Our greatest need is to know God and to be known by Him. The way to know God is through His word, for it is the primary means by which He has revealed Himself. Every time you open your Bible and read the words contained in it, you hear the same voice that was powerful enough to create billions of suns like ours or greater; God has given us a book with His words in it to move and shape us as His people. The words of that Book bear the authority of the Living God and have the supernatural ability through the power of Gods Spirit to speak into your real needs, or as Hebrews 4:12 testifies: For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. You, my dear Christian, must allow your heart to be saturated by it, and the only way to do that is to open your Bible and allow God to speak into your life through His Holy Word, for that is the principle means by which He speaks to His people.
Now, permit me to briefly say a word about the preaching of Gods Word as it relates to Gods people: On this side of eternity, God has ordained the preaching of His word as the primary agent for supernatural transformation. This is why we read in the Bible: How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Rom. 10:14, 17). If Romans 10 is not enough for you, consider 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
God has ordained the preaching of His Word to be one of the principle means to equip and strengthen His people for service in His name to the nations. When the proclamation of Gods Word is done responsibly by those who honestly labored over His Word through careful study and prayer then I believe what John Calvin once said is true every time we gather on a Sunday morning: God has so chosen to anoint the lips and tongues of His speakers that when they speak the voice of Jesus comes out (Calvin, Institutes, Book Four). This is why the apostle Paul instructed Timothy who was called to the Ephesian Church as their pastor:
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encouragewith great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Tim. 4:1-4)
When we gather under the preaching of Gods Word, there is a God-ordained and supernatural work that Gods people subject themselves to. There are things that happen under the preaching of Gods word during corporate worship that cannot be explained but it is the work only God is able to perform through the authority of His Word proclaimed by the power of His Holy Spirit performed that will often blow your felt needs to ashes so that Gods word is able to address your real needs.
We are a In-it-together Community
Paul will address what it is that God is doing with His people in the verses and chapters to follow, so I will keep this brief. All I want you to see in verses 19 and 21-22 is this: God has always had a plan for your holiness and blamelessness in Christ, Christian. Through Jesus, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of Gods household (v. 19). God is committed to the very thing He has purposed to do in and through you when He set His affection upon you and chose you before the foundation of the world; His purpose in choosing you is that you would be, holy and blameless before Him (Eph. 1:4). When you were dead in your offenses and sins, God made you alive and every other Christian, alive together with Christ. Why did He do it? Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10, For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
You were dead! You were an enemy of God! Now you are Gods child! Now you are, of Gods household in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (vv. 20-21). What does this mean? It means that because you are in Christ, God is for you and not against you! It means, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6)! It means that no matter how used up you were, no matter how damaged you were, no matter how ugly your sins were He is making you more and more holy and more and more blameless! Listen. And the way that God is doing it is with Jesus as your cornerstone being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
In Ephesus there was a more glorious and more beautiful temple that made the great temple of Artemis look like a dung heap! It is a temple that continues to be built today and it is the place where the demonic fear because it is a living temple where the Spirit of God dwells; those who are far and near make up that temple. Meadowbrooke Church, we are also a part of that temple. It is because the preeminent Jesus is our cornerstone, and the foundation of His Church is the inspired teaching of the apostles and the prophets, the best and lasting gift I can give you is not a feeble attempt to cater to your felt needs, but the God of the Bible through the faithful preaching and teaching of His Word.
So, on that note, I leave you with the words of a beautiful Hymn about a beautifying Bride:
The church's one foundationIs Jesus Christ her Lord;She is his new creationBy water and the Word.From heaven he came and sought herTo be his holy bride;With his own blood he bought her,And for her life he died.
Elect from every nation,Yet one o'er all the earth;Her charter of salvation,One Lord, one faith, one birth;One holy name she blesses,Partakes one holy food,And to one hope she presses,With every grace endued.
The church shall never perish!Her dear Lord to defend,to guide, sustain, and cherish,is with her to the end;though there be those that hate her,and false sons in her pale,against the foe or traitorshe ever shall prevail.
Mid toil and tribulation,And tumult of her war,She waits the consummationOf peace forevermore;Till, with the vision glorious,Her longing eyes are blest,And the great church victoriousShall be the church at rest.
Yet she on earth hath unionWith God the Three in One,And mystic sweet communionWith those whose rest is won.O happy ones and holy!Lord, give us grace that weLike them, the meek and lowly,On high may dwell with thee.

No More Walls

At the end of World War II, at the Potsdam Conference on July 17, 1945, it was decided how Germany would be divided by the American, British, French, and Soviet Allied leaders. Germany was divided into four zones of occupation to be controlled by the United States, Britain, France, and Communist Russia (the Soviet Union). The city of Berlin was split up by the four powers even though it was located within the zone controlled by Russia. Because West Berlin was formed by the American, British, and French sectors, East Berlin would be marked by its stark ideological differences shaped by communism because of its control under the Soviet Union.
In 1949, Germany split into two independent nations known as the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) as a democracy in stark contrast to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) that was marked by the communism of the Soviet Union. In 1952, the East German government closed its border with West Germany; to keep people from escaping East Germany to the West, a wire barrier was constructed around West Berlin on August 12-13, 1961, with the plan to build a permanent wall designed to divide neighborhoods, separate families, and keep any influence of a freedom loving West from a restrictive and oppressive East. The Berlin Wall would eventually grow into two walls measuring 96 miles long and 13 feet tall. Anyone who attempted to gain freedom from East Berlin by entering West Berlin was shot.
By 1989, more than 100 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall and hundreds more who tried to escape from East to West. There were 302 watchtowers along the 96-mile-long wall that separated the free from the burdened. On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Regan delivered a speech in West Berlin, a speech I remember well when I heard as it aired on television when I was only 13 years old. President Regans speech has been nicknamed the Tear Down This Wall speech from a line in his magnificent speech; I want you to hear just a sampling of this marvelous and important speech for a reason that will become clear in this sermon:
Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
On November 9, 1989, Germans from the East and West gathered and began tearing the Berlin Wall down. On October 3, 1990, East Germany and West Germany were no more; Germany was reunited as one free nation.
The Christian Has Been Brought Near to God (vv. 11-13)
There are four things that were true of the Christians in Ephesus; these four things are true of you if you are now a Christian; these same four things are still true of you if you are not a Christian. Because most of you in this room are Christians, I will refer to these four truths as something that once was true of you.
You at one time were Christless (vv. 11-12a). There were two types of people in Ephesus and in the world: the Uncircumcision and the Circumcision. The Uncircumcision were the Gentiles in the world while the Circumcision were the Jews who prided themselves on being the physical descendants of Abraham. The Uncircumcised Gentiles were convinced that they were very different than the Circumcised Jews, and the Jews felt the same way about the Gentiles. However, there were two things that these two groups did share in common: Both groups believed that so long as they were religious enough, they would be prepared for what comes after death, and both groups were dead in their sins because both were Christless.
You were homeless (v. 12b). What I mean by homeless is that the Jews had known about and looked forward to the promises of God made to the descendants of Abraham. For example, when God called Abraham out of the city of Ur, He made the following promise to both him and his wife, Sarah: Go from your country, And from your relatives And from your fathers house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you into a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen. 12:1-3). The Jews had grown to assume that the promise was not for Gentiles and failed to realize that it would be through the Jewish people that the Gentile nations would experience the blessing made to Abraham. It was not that the promises were not for the nations also, but that the Gentiles were not aware of such promises.
You were hopeless (v. 12c). What were the promises given to the Jews really for? They were promises concerning Gods plan to redeem Adams fallen race. Think about the promises made to the Jews for a moment! How would all the families of the earth be blessed? The Child promised in Isaiah 9:6-7 would be Jewish and would come through Israel, and this promise is for the nations:
For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.
So how were the Gentiles in Ephesus without hope? They were without hope because unlike the Jews, they were unaware that unlike emperor Nero of Rome who was reigning at the time Ephesians was written, there was coming a true and better King who would do what Rome could never do: There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace on the throne of David to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. For the Gentiles, Rome was as good as it would get is the same way that many today believe that life before death is as good as it will ever get, which is pretty hopeless!
You were godless (v. 12d). Finally, the gentiles were godless in the sense that they were left to their idols because they did not know God. This does not mean that the Jews were not godless either, for if they were without Christ, then they were also Godless. To be Godless is to be without God. Do you know what happens when you are Godless? You will find a way to place an idol in the place only God was meant to reside in your life. You will find something that promises the sort of things that only a real God can give and provide; such as joy, satisfaction, contentment, meaning, and purpose to your life and you will be robed of the very things that idols promise to give. The God whose image you bear is the only being who can provide lasting joy, satisfaction, contentment, meaning, and purpose to your life.
If you are a Christian, you are no longer Christless. Because you are no longer Christless, you belong to the people of God and are no longer homeless when it comes to the promises of God. Because you are now the recipient of the promises of God through Jesus, you are no longer hopeless. Because your hope rests in Jesus for your salvation, Paul declares: Now in Christ Jesus you who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ (v. 13).
The Christian Has the Peace of God (vv. 14-18)
Gods plan for the salvation of sinners always included Gentiles. Before instructions for the construction of a temple that would serve as the center of worship for Israel where the presence of God would be experienced by His people, God instructed Israel: Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel (Exod. 19:5-6). In other words, Israel was commissioned to be Gods priests before the nations to lead the nations to God. Through the prophet Malachi, as He did throughout Israels history, God reminded His people that the redemption of the nations was always the plan: For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name shall be great among the nations, and in every place frankincense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of armies ( Mal. 1:11).
So, what is this dividing wall the apostle Paul refers to in verse 14? The temple that King Herod built for the Jews included a place known as, The Court of the Gentiles. The Court of the Gentiles was the place within the Temple Walls that allowed Gentiles to gather and worship the God of the Hebrews, but they were forbidden to go any further than the outer court because they were considered too dirty to come any closer to the inner courts, only the true Jew was permitted to into the holier place that was closest to the Holy of Holies where the presence of God was. There was a wall that stood about 4.5 feet high that separated the Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts and signs that were posted that stated in Greek: No foreigner may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue.[1]
The Court of the Gentiles is also the place where Jesus taught while in the Temple (Matt. 21:23; 26:55; Luke 19:47; John 7:14). The Court of the Gentiles is also the place where money was changed because the required coinage for people to use for the Temple tax had to be Tyrian shekels (aka the shekel of the sanctuary) because of the uneven value of other coinages and the idolatrous images on other coins. During Passover, it is estimated that over 200,000 lambs were sacrificed for the sins of the people; the Court of the Gentiles was the place where people could purchase their sacrifice. The Court of the Gentiles was where the money was made and exchanged, and for many, became more important than worship itself. The Court of the Gentiles was not in the original plans God gave His people for the Temple (see Numbers 15:14-15), nor were they ever a part of Gods plans for the place where His people would worship Him. Here is what Isaiah said of the place of Gods worship:
Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to attend to His service and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one who keeps the Sabbath so as not to profane it, And holds firmly to My covenant; Even those I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.
It was the Court of the Gentiles that Jesus entered into during Passover week before He would die on the Cross as the perfect and true Lamb of God, and was enraged over the way Israel had perverted the Temple:
And He entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and buying on the temple grounds, and He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves; and He would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple grounds. And He began to teach and say to them, Is it not written: my house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers. (Mark 11:15-17).
They crucified Jesus because the Jews who were convinced that their religion was enough, but what Israel failed to see was that their problem was the same as the problem of the Gentiles. There exists before all of humanity a far greater wall than the one that separated the Gentiles from the Jews in the Temple! It is a wall that only One Lamb can remedy and of all the peoples of the nations that should have known that such a wall exists, it should have been those who had before them from the commandments, writings, and the prophets, the covenants of the promise (v. 12). The wall is greater than any other wall, for it is the great wall of mankinds sin and guilt before a Holy God and there is nothing that the Jews or the Gentiles could do to tear it down, nor is there anything that you and I can do to remove the wall. For the Jew, the Law simply pointed to the wall of our own sin and that there is only One who is able to tear down the wall (see Gal. 3:23-29). Jesus tore down the wall by going to the Cross, He redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us (Ga. 3:13). It is only through the blood He shed for sins we are guilty of that, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings (Eph. 1:7).
The wall was our sin, the hostility was ours before a Holy God, and our only hope for a peace with Him was and is the Prince of Peace! This is why Paul wrote, For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the hostility, which is the Law composed of commandments expressed in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two one new person, in this way establishing peace (vv. 14-15). How did He do it? Through His cross: and that He might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the hostility (v. 16).
Conclusion
Through Christ, the wall that alienated and separated us from any hope of knowing God or being known by God was blown to ashes through the Cross! The Christian, regardless of culture, skin color, or language, is now reconciled to the One whose image we all bearHe is our peace! Christian, because the wall of your sin was torn down by the Lamb of God, you share the same thing that the Chinese Christian, the Korean Christian, the Indian Christian, the Burmese Christian, the Iranian Christian, the Sudanese Christian, the Canadian Christian, and the Mexican Christian all have that you now have through Jesus Christ: Access in one Spirit to the Father through the Son! What better news could there possibly be than what we read in these verses:
For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the hostility, which is the Law composed of commandments expressed in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two one new person, in this way establishing peace; and that He might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
Regardless of your ethnicity, the thing that you share with every other Christian rescued, ransomed, and redeemed by the blood of Jesus is that we now belong to His Tribe and our colors are the same because we are covered by the blood of the perfect Lamb of God! To be a Christian is to be the Church, and to be the Church is to be the People of God! Your identity is no longer in the nation you live, the color of your skin, the language you speak, or the culture that has shaped and formed you. No! Your identity is now in Christ!
If you are not a Christian, the great wall of your sin still stands, and your greatest need remains! There is only One who is able to remove the wall of your sin, so why wait any longer to be reconciled to God through the blood of the Lamb of God?
[1] One such sign is on display at the Israel Museum and a second in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Far and Away

In a culture that devalued women, Jesus not only valued them as equally created in the image of God in the same way as men, but the value He placed upon them is seen through the New Testament writers as followers of Jesus. For example, the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were all written by men who were sure to point out that it was a man by the name of Judas who betrayed Jesus and it was the male disciples in Jesus life who left Him and fled when He was arrested. However, it was the women in Jesus life, along with John, who were present while Jesus hung on a cross to die. If you were making up a story about a Savior in a male dominated society that viewed women as, in the words of Socrates, Incapable of reason and making rational choices, you would by no means portray them as being brave enough not to flee and hide like the rest of the disciples did. It is also worth noting that if Jesus resurrection was a made-up story told by a group of men, you definitely would not make women the first eyewitnesses to His resurrection! The inclusion of women in Jesus life serves as further proof that not only is the Bible for both men and women, but additional evidence that Jesus did rise from the grave.
However, before Jesus rose from the grave, He was crucified and did indeed die! He was handed over by the religious leaders of His day to be sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate for treason, and although He was innocent of such crimes he was sentenced to death by crucifixion. Before He was forced to carry His cross, He was beaten, flogged, mocked, and beaten again. Jesus stood mangled and hemorrhaging before a jeering crowd who demanded with shouts: Crucify, crucify him! (see Luke 23:18-25). When Pilate told Jesus that he had the power to release him, Jesus replied: You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (John 19:11). Pilate washed his hands in a bowl of water symbolizing his innocence and ordered that Jesus be crucified.
Jesus was forced to carry His cross to the place of his execution known as Golgotha. Once He reached Golgotha, Jesus was stretched out by force upon the cross where His hands and feet were nailed to the wooden beams that made up His cross, where He would hang until His death. For six hours he hung on that cross and while on the cross, three of the seven statements that came out from His mouth that will serve as my main points this resurrection Sunday morning, were as follows:
While the crowd mocked him and the soldiers gambled over his clothes, as Jesus hung on the cross stripped of His cloths and humiliated before the masses, He said: Father, forgiven them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34).
While dying on the Cross under the wrath of God for sins we are guilty of, under the unrestrained justice we all deserved for our sins, Jesus cried: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:27)?
Just before He breathed out what air was left in His lungs, in case there was any confusion as to who was in charge, Jesus declared: It is finished (John 19:30).
Jesus died. To prove that he was dead, one of the soldiers thrust his spear into the side and heart of Jesus, a man by the name of Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, and then His body was prepared for burial, placed in the tomb, and a stone was rolled in front of the entrance of the tomb to seal the grave shut. While in the tomb, Jesus was not unconscious and he didnt have a twin brother who pretended to rise from the grave; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wanted to be impeccably clear that Jesus physically died on the cross and that His death was very important and very significant. Three days later, Jesus rose from the grave! The women in Jesus life were the first to see and witness His resurrected body, while the men in His life refused to believe it until Jesus appeared to them as well. They, and every other person who encountered the risen Christ, would never be the same!
If Jesus remained in the tomb after His death, then all we would have to look to was a dead martyr. Jesus did not stay dead though, and His resurrection is proof that all that He said and did was legitimate and true. Jesus went to the cross to die a death each and every human deserved to die. To the Corinthian Church, Paul wrote to a group of people who had seen how a resurrected Jesus transformed lives:
Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:14)
Jesus lived the life none of us could and died the death that every single one of us deserved, and His resurrection from the tomb validates His death for our sins and triumphant victory over sin and death as true. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16).
Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can be Forgiven by God (Eph. 2:11)
It is the power of the gospel that the Christians in Ephesus experienced! Ephesus was the home of one of the seven wonders of the world: The Temple of Diana (Artemis). Horrible things happened in that temple and people from all over the world came to Ephesus to experience what the goddess Diana offered, and Ephesus economy benefited under the oppressive demonic power of Artemis, until the gospel came to that city.
Those who became Christians were identified by those in the city as belonging to the Way after something Jesus said about Himself: I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6). We are given a small glimpse of the kind of effect the gospel had upon Ephesus and the worship of Diana in Acts 19. Demetrius, a silversmith who made a living off forming silver shrines of Artemis, was particularly angry over the way the gospel impacted his business; listen to his complaint about the apostle Paul:
You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made by hands are not gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours will fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as worthless, and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence. (Acts 19:2627)
To those who heard about Jesus, repented of their sins and idolatry, and surrendered their lives to Him, Paul wrote: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Eph. 1:7-8a). Because of Jesus, these Ephesian Christians had a new identity that was now rooted in Christ instead of Artemis! Against the backdrop of a demonic temple, Paul wrote these words:
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Eph. 1:2023)
To those rescued out of the paganism of Artemis through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:11-12a, Therefore remember that previously you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands were at that time separate from Christ. They were at one time dead in their sins; under the guise of Artemis, they once, walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:1-3). But through the cross of Christ, they have been made alive with Christ because of the rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace of almighty God!
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you have placed your faith and trust in Him as the only means for the forgiveness of your sins, then you who, were at one time separate from Christ (2:11), have been forgiven by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can be Reconciled to God (Eph. 2:12)
On the eve of His execution, Jesus was abandoned and left alone with no one. If that were not enough, there was One more person who abandoned Him to leave him completely and desperately alone. We learn who that person was with Jesus words from the cross: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Mark 15:34). Why would Jesus say such a thing from the cross? Because it was on the cross that Jesus was cursed in our place, which was the plan all along. It is the reason why John the Baptist cried out upon seeing Jesus in the early days of our Saviors earthly ministry: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)! While Jesus endured the humiliation of the cross, He experienced exactly what the prophet Isaiah described in Isaiah 53:5, But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).
When Jesus cried out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He, in that moment, experienced the cursing of His Heavenly Father for sins we are guilty of. From the moment of conception, ours is a nature that gravitates towards opposition against our Creator. Oh, we are fine with a god of our own making, but the God who spoke the galaxies into existence, whose power fashioned more than 300 billion suns with a command, before whom the pure Seraphim shield their faces with one set of wings and cover their feet with another set of wings, while calling out to one another concerning God almighty: Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory (Isa. 6:1-3), we run from that God! Why? Because, as the Bible declares: There is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understand, there is no one who seeks out God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:10-11, 23). That is the problem with humanity and that is why Jesus said, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). For our sin, Jesus was cursed so that you and I would not have to be, this is why the Bible states, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal. 3:13).
Aarons blessing is now for you Christian: The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord cause His face to shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His face to you, And give you peace (Num. 6:2426). Aarons blessing is for you Christian, because Jesus drank every last drop of Gods wrath on your account by becoming a curse in your place. Jesus experienced the antithesis of Aarons blessing, which if the voice of God could be heard on that day Jesus hung from the cross: The Lord curse you, and abandon you; The Lord turn His face from you, and condemn you; may the Lord stand against you, and withhold His peace from you.[1]
Jesus because a curse in our place because we were, strangers to the covenant of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, you have been reconciled to God!
Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can Become the Children of God (Eph. 2:13)
The final statement from the cross came in the form of a final declaration: It is finished! All that was required for our redemption was accomplished on the cross! We who were hostile towards God, stood as an enemy of God, who walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:2-3), we who were once children of Gods wrath have now been reconciled to God and experience only His pleasure. If you are a Christian, then Ephesians 2:13 is for you: But now in Christ Jesus you who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
The cross of Christ was enough to save lost sinners and the resurrection of Jesus is proof that all who are far and away from God can be forgiven by God, reconciled to God, and made a child of God through the Christ of the cross who lived the life we could not live, died a death we all deserved, and conquered sin and death on the third day by rising from the grave! Concerning Jesus: There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). This is the gospel, and it is, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16)!
[1] I heard this for the first time at the 2008 T4G Conference delivered by R.C. Sproul. For more see: https://www.ligonier.org/posts/god-cursed-him.

For the Love of Christ (Good Friday)

There is no sermon manuscript for this Good Friday Service.

The God Who Works

Have you noticed that the number three seems to be a big deal for the apostle Paul in Ephesians? For example, in the first fourteen verses we read of the three-fold role our Triune God has in our salvation: God the Father chose us before the foundation of the world (1:3-6), Jesus the Son made our redemption possible (vv. 7-12), and the Holy Spirit sealed us for the Day of redemption (vv. 12-13). We see it in the way Paul prays for the Ephesian Church: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe (vv. 18-19a).
I thought one way to help you see this was to reimagine Pauls series of threes as his answer to a series of questions by Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, a character from John Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, a book first published in 1678 and is currently listed as the fifth most translated book in the world. If you are not aware of who John Bunyan was, all you know for now is that he wrote Pilgrims Progress while in prison for twelve years for preaching the gospel, his book is an allegory on the Christian life.
In Bunyans book, the protagonist, Christian Pilgrim leaves his home, The City of Destruction, to embark on a pilgrimage for the salvation of his soul and to find the Celestial City where he can live for all eternity in the company of God. While on his journey he is helped and guided by other characters such as Evangelist, who is known as a preacher of the Holy Word and is eager to help those who are seriously concerned about the state of their souls. Christian also meets Interpreter who shows Christian many wonders and shows Christian many exhortations on the way he should go. There are others who join Christian on his journey such as Pliant who quits the pilgrimage after facing his first obstacle, and Hopeful, a refugee from Vanity Fair, who proves to be a faithful companion to Christian all the way to the Celestial City.
There are others who Christian encounters that try to turn him away from the narrow way to the Celestial City who go by the names of Giant Despair, Apollyon, Flatterer, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Bunyan described Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, in this way: not an ancient relic of the past. He is everywhere today, disguising his heresy and error by proclaiming the gospel of contentment and peace achieved by self-satisfaction and works. If he mentions Christ, it is not as the Savior who took our place, but as a good example of an exemplary life. Do we need a good example to rescue us, or do we need a Savior?
Imagine what a conversation might look like if Mr. Worldly Wiseman visited the Apostle Paul in prison during the same time the epistle to the Ephesians was written:
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Paul, tell me how you can be sure that you are Christian since you are now in prison?
Paul: Regardless of my circumstance, I am a Christian for these three reasons:
I was chosen by God before the foundation of the world (1:4-6),
I am redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ for sins I am guilty of (vv. 7-12), and
I am sealed by the Holy Spirit for a full and future redemption (vv. 13-14).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Why spend your years in prison and suffer when you can be free so long as you dont keep blabbing about Jesus in places people dont want to hear it? You know, you can be a Christian and be compliant too!
Paul: How can I be quiet about something so important? Jesus commands me not to be quite about my relationship with Him and how he saved me even though I was,
Dead to God (2:1),
A slave to sin (vv. 2-3a), and
A child of the wrath of God because of the sins I committed against Him (v. 3).
What this means, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, is that I was once like you:
A friend of the world (2:2a),
A child of the devil (v. 2b), and
A slave to my own flesh (v. 3).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Im not sure if I should feel insulted or pity for you because you believe such rubbish. So, tell me, what is so different between you and me?
Paul: Jesus is the difference between you and me! Jesus lived a perfect sinless life that I could never live; He died a death I deserved on a cross for sins I committed, and He validated all of that by rising from death on the third day. What is true of me is true of every real Christian, and this is why I have chosen to follow Him:
I was dead in my sins, but now I am alive in Christ (1:7; 2:4)
My nature was bound by my sins, but now I have been raised with Christ (v. 6a)
I stood condemned by a holy God, but now I am seated with Christ and am covered by His righteousness (v. 6b).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Come on Paul! I am a religious person and I admire Jesus as a great example to aspire to. We need to do our best and let God do the rest, but you have taken your Christianity too seriously!
Paul: No one can do enough for the kind of salvation you and I need! The only thing God required of me was a faith that was only possible because of His grace. It is a grace that I could not, nor ever will earn, by anything I could ever do! I am the recipient of,
A rich mercy we did deserve (v. 4a).
A great love God was not obligated to give (v. 4b).
An all-sufficient grace no one could earn (v. 5)
All of which is only possible in and through Jesus Christ alone!
So, now we come to Ephesians 2:8-10 and are immediately faced with another set of three words and why it is that God saved us in the first place. If you were asked the same questions or interrogated in the way I had Mr. Worldly-Wiseman interrogate Paul, how would you answer? My two points are in the form of two questions that this passage answers for us in a way that should be deeply discouraging or encouraging to you.
How Does God Save?
Now, considering all that we have studied together, we find ourselves at the threshold of Ephesians 2:8-9. What I want to do with you this morning is to walk you through these verses in light of the context of Ephesians 1:3-2:7. I want us to look at these verses together against the backdrop of my warning at the beginning of this sermon series which was this: Beware of imposing your view and thoughts of what God should be like, upon the text of His holy Word. You must allow the authority of Gods Word to impose its teaching upon your heart for the purpose of shaping it in a way that the eyes of your heart are able to see God more clearly.
Now, before I go any further, let me say first and foremost that I want you to make your own conclusion with these verses based on the evidence of what you see in Ephesians and the rest of the Bible. I am not concerned if you end up seeing things differently than the way I see them so long as you do not impose what you think the Bible should say upon what it actually says. My only concern before you this morning is that I preach and teach the Bible in such a manner that I am faithful to the Word of God so when I stand before Him, I will do so knowing that I was faithful with what He has entrusted to me.
So, here we go! Buckle up because it is going to be a fun ride. Lets start with verses 8-9, For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. The three words I want you to see in this verse are grace, saved (i.e. salvation), and faith. To answer the question, How does God save? we need figure out what is the gift that He gives so that no one may boast. Is grace the gift given by God, or is salvation the gift given by God, or is a persons faith the gift given by God? Whatever the gift is, it eliminates any notion on our part that we did something to get it, otherwise Paul would never have felt the need to include verse 9, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
If I am right about what I see in Ephesians 2:8-9, it will open up verse 10 in a way that will encourage you and blow your mind at the same time. So, what have we seen in Ephesians so far leading up to these verses? Permit me to put what Paul lists concerning our salvation in sequential order from spiritual death to life:
We were spiritually dead in our offenses and sins (2:1)
We know we were spiritually dead because we were slaves to our sin (2:2a)
Because we were slaves to our sin against God, we were by nature children of His wrath (2:3).
But God, whose mercy is rich, love is great, and grace is sufficient, did three things (vv. 2:4-5):
He made us alive with Christ (2:5b).
He raised us up with Christ (2:6a).
He seated us with Christ (2:6b).
As a Christian, you can know that your salvation involved three acts of God
Before the foundation of the earth, God chose to adopt you as His child through Jesus (1:4-6).
In order to adopt you as His child, God redeemed you through the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of all your wrongdoings (1:7-12).
Because God will not lose any who He has redeemed, He has sealed you with His Holy Spirit until your redemption and salvation is complete (1:13-14).
So, in light of all that Paul wrote concerning what God has done for the Christian, what does he mean by Ephesians 2:8-9? Let me offer up some fair and legitimate questions: If I am spiritually dead, how can a spiritually dead person respond to God in faith? If I am able to respond to God in faith in order to receive salvation through Jesus, then is my faith exempt from the kinds of works Paul is talking about in verse 9? If faith is a gift God imparts on me on some level, then how is my trust in Jesus for the salvation of my soul legitimate? Does your brain hurt from trying to process these sorts of questions?
I have wrestled over these verses for nearly 30 years and have understood them in three different ways that I think may help give you some perspective. In my early years, I was convinced that the gift of God was a salvation that could only be received by faith. Sometime after I started reading guys like Jonathan Edwards and St. Augustine, I leaned towards thinking that it was faith that was the gift of God. To be honest, what makes all of this even more confusing is the Greek allows the person interpreting these verses to make either one of these conclusions. Here is where I sit now, and I believe that how I see it fits best with everything Paul has written leading up to these verses, and it fits with the rest of the Bible. So, what is the gift of God? It is His Grace, our faith, and our salvation in that order! The this is Gods grace, our faith, and our salvation.
Think about what grace is for a moment. Biblical grace is Gods unmerited favor; it is favor given to someone who does not deserve it. Do you remember what I said in the second sermon I preached in this series on Ephesians 1:4-6? I told you that at the very least, when it comes to God, what we read in these verses leads to the conclusion that God moved first. We see the very same thing here in Ephesians 2:8! At the very least, it is the sheer grace of almighty God that I had reached a point in my life on July 18, 1991, when all that I heard about Jesus made sense and I surrendered my life to Jesus and was genuinely and categorically saved from the wrath of God and forgiven all my sins! Every step and experience leading up to that moment was also the demonstration of a God who pursued me, found me, and overcame my sin because His mercy was rich, His love was great, and His grace sufficient to do what a 16-year-old teenage boy could not do. God made me alive with Christ, God raised me up with Christ, and God seated me with Christ on that summers day on July 18, 1991, but He did not believe for me; I had to believe to be saved. He did the same thing with you Christian, but He did not believe for you! But my believing in Christ for the salvation of my soul, and your believing in Him for the salvation of your soul is not only a testament of Gods grace, but the proof that miracles happen.
For What Purpose Does God Save?
So, why did He do it? Why did he save you? Why did He choose you, redeem you, seal you, and made you, who were once dead, the recipient of the, boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (2:7)? After all, what Jonathan Edwards said concerning what we bring to our salvation is the resounding testimony of all of Scripture: You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. God didnt have to do it! God was not morally obligated to do it! But God did it; He saved you and redeemed you for the forgiveness of all your sin according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon you (1:7). But why? The answer is found in Ephesians 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
The first word in verse 10 is the word For, which is telling us something. What it is telling us is that considering Ephesians 2:1-9, the following is true! You who were dead in your sins, walked according to the course of this world, lived in the lusts of your flesh, indulged the desires of the flesh and of the mind as a child of the wrath of God (vv. 1-3), God made you alive in Christ, for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that you would walk in those good works. This is exactly why God choose you, Christian, before the foundation of the world; listen to Ephesians 1:4 again: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
What this means, and this is so important to see with the eyes of your heart: We were not saved to coast until we enter into the presence of God in heaven but were saved so that God could reveal His presence through us because of His resurrection power to change us! It is absolute nonsense to think and believe that you can encounter Jesus on the level Paul describes in Ephesians and remain unchanged! It is like saying that you can remain the same after you walk in front of a bus traveling 65 MPH; the force of the bus will change you permanently. Listen carefully, the God who spoke 300 billion suns into existence is the same God who makes alive the spiritually dead through the power of the Gospel of a resurrected Christ! How is it that a person can remain unchanged by a power greater than 300 billion suns? I will tell you; it is because that person has never truly encountered Christ, whose mercy is richer, love is greater, and grace more sufficient than all of our sins and the sins of 8.1 billion people combined!
What we read in Ephesians 2:8-10 is that in light of the resurrection power of God through the redeeming work of Jesus the Son, and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit who seals us, it is the grace of God that leads to faith in God, for our salvation by God, for the purpose of a life of good works that glorifies God. The work that God is doing in your life is ongoing. I feel that it is fitting to close with something Sinclair Ferguson wrote concerning these verses:
Heaven may be the final showroom; but here on earth God is already showing what he can do.. The church triumphant is an art gallery where God displays reflections of his glory. It is a portrait gallery in which the family likeness is seen in countless different individuals who together display his infinite glory.
The church visible, here, and now, is a workshop. The Divine Artist is still painting his likeness on the canvas of our lives, the Divine Potter still has the clay in his hands. The time for final exhibition has not yet come. But one day it will. Then all that God has done in us in secret, invisible to the naked eye, will become visible for all to see. What a day that will be![1]
[1] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Lets Study Ephesians (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust; 2021), p. 53.

Identity Matters

There is a sticker I have seen on vehicles and on the back of laptops that I have seen just about every day since we moved into Cheyenne. The sticker did not capture my interest enough to google its meaning but every time I was forced to notice it at a stop light because it was affixed to the car in front of me, I would wonder about its meaning for as long as the light would last and then I would forget about it. Would you believe that I encountered this sticker for four years not realizing its significance because I never thought long enough about it to realize what it really meant?
It wasnt until a year ago that while at a red light and another car with the same sticker I had seen dozens of times since moving to Wyoming that I realized that the number 307 stood for something; we even have a day each year in the great state of Wyoming to celebrate the significance of 307 every year on March 7th known as 307 Day to celebrate all things Wyoming.
I am not the most observant person on planet earth when it comes to the most obvious things around me, but I do realize that the 307 stickers were low hanging fruit. Of the fifty-two states that make up our nation, Wyoming is one of eleven states that can boast of a single area code. In case you did not know this, area codes are given based on the population and number of phones in a geographic area and not based on the states land mass.
As I thought about the significance of 307 and how that number was always before me for the first four years since making our home in Cheyenne before I ever realized what it truly meant, I cannot help but reflect upon how it is that so many can claim to be a Christian without fully appreciating what it means to be in Christ.
Saved Through Christ from Death to Life
I shared with you last Sunday that if you are a Christian, there are three reasons why you are, alive together with Christ. We, who were dead in our offenses and sins, walked in step with the prince of the power of the air, were disobedient, lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulged in the desires of our flesh and mind, and at the core of our nature were children of the wrath of Godare now, alive together with Christ (v. 5). The catalyst that moved God to, chose us in Him before the foundation of the world (1:4) was His mercy, love, and grace. The catalyst that made available the redemption through His blood, and the forgiveness of our wrongdoings (1:7) was Gods mercy, love, and grace. The catalyst that resulted in God sealing all who belong to Him by His Holy Spirit was the mercy, love, and grace of almighty God! However, it was not just any old mercy, love, and grace that we received from God, no it was His rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace.
In what way is Gods mercy rich? Last week we went back to Genesis 2-3 to discover what Paul meant by stating we were all, dead in our offenses and sins. Today, to understand what Paul means by mercy, we must go to the place he drew the word from, and that place is found in Exodus 34:6-7,
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. (Exod. 34:6-7)
What you need to know is just before we come to Exodus 34, Moses requested to see God, but was warned, You cannot see My face, for mankind shall not see Me and live (33:20). God did promise that Moses could experience His presence, but Moses would have to remain hidden in a cleft of a rock as a way to protect him from certain death. The reason why Moses could not see the face of God and live was because Moses was sinful while God is holy. God promised Moses that while he was safe in the cleft of the rock, I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion (see Exod. 33:12-23).
There was another man who found himself in the presence of God, but for him it was in the form of a vision. The man I am referring to is the prophet, Isaiah. It happened after Israels king, who had served for over 40 years, died. We are told about the prophets encounter in Isaiah 6, but what we learn in those verses is that even Seraphim had to cover their faces and their feet in the presence of God: In the year of King Uzziahs death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim were standing above Him, each having six wings: with two each covered his face, and with two each covered his feet, and with two each flew. And one called out to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory (vv. 1-3).
It was only a vison that Isaiah had, and yet his response was appropriate: Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies (Isa.6:5). So, of course Moses could not see the face of God and live, but he could experience His presence, and as he did, he heard Yahweh proclaim: The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin... (Exod. 34:6-7a).
Let me give you four reasons why I am certain that the mercy, love, and grace of God that Paul refers to in Ephesians 2:4-5 was shaped by his understanding of Exodus 34. My four reasons are really four words God declared about Himself to Moses: Compassion (rǎḥm), merciful (ḥǎnnn), faithfulness (ḥěʹsěḏ), and truth (ʾěměṯ). The Hebrew word for compassion means mercy; the Hebrew word for mercy can be translated kindness or goodness; the Hebrew word for truth can be translated trustworthy. There is one more word God used to describe Himself, and that word is faithfulness which is the word used to describe Gods faithful and loyal love; listen, ḥěʹsěḏ is Gods covenantal and great love! What was revealed to Moses while he was in the cleft of the rock is the same God that Paul described whose mercy is rich, whose love is great, and whose grace is sufficient!
But wait! God did not end His description of Himself there, of His rich mercy, kindness, goodness, or his covenantal and great love; for His also told Moses: yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations (Exod. 34:7b). God cannot and will not compromise His holiness and justice so that He is able to extend mercy, love, and grace towards guilty sinners. His holiness and His justice will not permit Him to leave the guilty unpunished. This is why, after seeing and experiencing the holiness of God, Isaiah cried out: Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies (Isa. 6:5).
If God is God, then He must be just as merciful as He is just, He must be equally holy as He is a God of love. If God is God, then He is all that He is in equal measure with no character trait of His in conflict with the other. There is nothing about Him that is lacking and there is no room in Him for improvement. So, if God is God, then can He be rich in mercy and absolutely just in dealing with those who are dead in their offenses and sins (Eph. 2:1-3)? The Answer is found in Ephesians 1:7-8, which states: In Him [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. This is why Paul could write: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ. (Eph. 2:4-5). At the cross the rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace of God was reconciled through Jesus who bore Gods perfect justice through the full measure of a wrath we all deserve. First and foremost Jesus died to satisfy legal demands our sin required, and this is why Jesus was, Pierced for our offenses, and was crushed for our wrongdoings (Isa. 53:5); this is also why just five verses later, we read these words: The Lord delighted to crush Him, causing Him grief (v. 10). If you are a Christian, you are the recipient of a mercy that is rich, a love that is great, and a grace that is sufficient to address all your sins because of the Christ who, redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). This is why we can sing:
Who could imagine so great a mercy?What heart could fathom such boundless grace?The God of ages stepped down from gloryTo wear my sin and bear my shameThe cross has spoken, I am forgivenThe King of kings calls me His ownBeautiful savior, I'm yours foreverJesus Christ, my living hope[1]
Raised With Christ to Show Gods Grace
As a result of being made alive with Christ, you, Christian, are raised up with Him, seated with Him, and united with Him. You were dead in our offenses and sins, but now you have been made alive with Christ! You were the spiritually walking dead and bound to a nature united with you, depravity, but now you have been set free by Christ and your life is now rooted in Him! You were once a child of wrath, but now you are a recipient of Gods great lovedeclared by Him to be His child!
We who were dead in our offenses and sins, God made alive by the same power that He was able to give life to Adam from the lifeless dirt of the earth. However, our lifelessness was worse in the sense that Adams lifelessness came from the dirt of the earth while ours came from the soil of our own sin and rebellion, and from that polluted soil, God brought forth life out of death. God did what only God could do, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings through the same boundless power that raised Jesus from the grave, God did three things: 1) He made us alive with Christ, 2) He raised us up with Christ, and 3) He seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. Bryan Chapell, in his commentary on Ephesians said of these verses: These are the words of resurrection. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so also, we are filled with the life that is from God. Our spiritual death has been swallowed up in Christs resurrection victory. The guilt and power of sin have been conquered by the Savior who now resides in us.[2]
Oh, can you see it? Can you see that to be a Christian is not about being a more moral person, or a more religious person, or a nicer person, but about becoming a whole new person just as we are promised in the Bible: Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, the new things have come (2 Cor. 5:17). Not only are we alive in Christ, but we have been raised up and seated with Him.
The Greek word that Paul used for raised is synegeirō, the prefix of this word is syn-, from which we get the word sync and is short for synchronize. God made us alive in Christ, and quite literally has synced us with Him. What this means is that if you are a Christian, your identity is not in an area code, your last name, the person you are married to, your employment, or what you are able to do or unable to do. No! Your identity dear Christian is synced with the living Christ; you are not only alive in Him, but now you are raised up with Him. This is why, in his epistle to the Colossians, Paul wrote, Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). Your identity as a Christian is and always will be where Christ is!
But hold on, it gets even better Christian! Not only have you been raised with Christ, but you are also seated with Christ. What does it mean to be seated with Christ exactly? Remember the way Ephesians 1 concludes, for it is in the final four verses that Paul informs us where it is that Christ is: He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (vv. 20-23).Jesus is above all things and all powers, and one day, at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). It is with that Christ that you are raised with and are seated with!
What this means is that Christs identity is now our identity and now we are seated with Him positionally. What this means is that Jesus victories are now our victories, and because His victories are our victories, death, sin, disease, persecution, hardship, the demonic, and any other front that threatens to undo us does not have the final word or say over all who are raise with Christ and seated with Christ! What this means is that you are the Bride of Christ and regardless of your past, you dear Christian are now the apple of His eye!
Christian, you were once dead in your offenses and sins, and now you are alive with Christ. Christian, you were once among the spiritually walking dead, but now you are raised up with Christ. Christian, you were once synced up with the prince of the power of the air and the spirit of the age, but now you are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.Christian, when you were dead, you lived in the lusts of your flesh and indulged the desires of the flesh, and now you are the recipient of the boundless riches of His grace in kindness in Christ Jesus (v. 7).
Christian, do you know who you are? Because if you do, you will begin to live as though you are alive in Jesus, raised up with Jesus, and seated with Jesus. You will live with the confidence that it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks of you or has said about you because what matters most is what God thinks of you, and to Him, you are His inheritance and His trophy, demonstrating His all sufficient and infinite grace. Christian, you are a testament to the grace of God that is as boundless as is His power that raised Jesus from the grave and brought you from death to life. According to verse 7, for all of eternity you who were once dead will only know the unending benefits of His rich mercy, great love, and all-sufficient grace! For the ages to come we will stand together as Gods trophy of Grace that will forever serve as a reminder that there is no sin so great and no life so messed up that Gods mercy, love, and grace cannot overcome, redeem, resurrect, and put back together through the great serpent crushing, grave robbing, all-sufficient redeemer Himselfnamely Jesus Christ! We sing as the Church not because of how we feel or what style of music we like, we sing because the words we sing are true like the words in the modern hymn, In Christ Alone:
In Christ alone, who took on fleshFullness of God in helpless babeThis gift of love and righteousnessScorned by the ones He came to save'Til on that cross as Jesus diedThe wrath of God was satisfiedFor every sin on Him was laidHere in the death of Christ I live, I live
No guilt in life, no fear in deathThis is the power of Christ in meFrom life's first cry to final breathJesus commands my destinyNo power of , no scheme of manCan ever pluck me from His handTill He returns or calls me homeHere in the power of Christ I'll stand
[1] Phil Wickham and Brian Johnson; Living Hope
[2] Bryan Chapell, Reformed Expository Commentary: Ephesians (Phillipsburg, NJ: PR Publishing; 2009), p. 83.

What Can be Worse Than Death?

Well, we have arrived at Ephesians 2, and the very first thing we are told is that the Christian was once dead. I love the irony in the fact that we are entering Ephesians 2 on the day where all of us are suffering from one less hour of sleep this morning (Daylight Savings Time). So, what I thought I would do before we plunge ourselves into our passage this morning is to first reflect on four of the weirdest ways people have died.
For those of you who are still angry that you lost an hour of your sleep, just know that it is a miracle you made it this morning. It is estimated that 450 people die falling out of bed every year.
According to statistics, you are twice as likely to die from an angry vending machine than a hungry shark.
It is reported that about 24 people die annually from being hit by champagne corks in the face, mostly at weddings. Less people die from poisonous spiders than flying corks from champagne bottles!
The weirdest death I learned about was that of Joao Maria de Souza of Brazil, who was killed in 2013 when a cow fell through his roof and crushed him while he slept.
Whether it is by falling out of a bed, a falling cow through your roof, or the inevitable and eventual failing of your health, all of us are going to die one day.
What does Dead Mean?
I do not need to spend a whole lot of time explaining what dead means. The word the apostle Paul used from the original language means exactly what the word dead means. If you are confused as to what the word for dead (nekros) means, it means this: no longer having life. However, why does the apostle Paul use the word dead to describe who or what the Christian used to be? Paul could have said, you were sick in your offenses and sins. He could have chosen the words, handicap, wounded, or he even could have used the same line from The Princess Bride, which was: mostly dead. The difference between dead and mostly dead is that when you are mostly dead, you are slightly alive. Of all the words the apostle could have used, he chose the word, dead. What if Ephesians 2:1-4, stated this instead? And you were mostly dead in your offenses and sins. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were barely alive in our wrongdoings, made us completely alive together with Christ. But that is not how Ephesians 2 begins is it?
To understand what Paul means by the word dead we need to go to the place the apostle pulled the word from in the Bible, and that place is found in Genesis. You remember the story; in the beginning, even when, the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1-2). Then, after all but mankind was created, on the sixth day God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness (1:26). God created mankind above and separate from the rest of creation, for unlike the rest of creation, mankind was created in His image: So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth (vv. 27-28).
It is from Genesis 2:15-17 that Paul pulls the word dead from to explain what the Christian once was: Then the LordGod took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die. The Hebrew word used for die (מות) in Genesis 2:17 means death, and every other time the word is used, it is used for death.
When we come to Genesis 3 and Adam and Even ate the fruit God told them not to eat, they did not physically die in that moment, but what happened next gives us a sense for what it means to be dead in the way Paul describes the Christian used to be. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were tempted by the words of the serpent who said: You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The physical death Adam, Eve, and the rest of creation would eventually experience is that which all living things would now succumb to, but it also included a type of death that was beyond physical. They experienced a death of innocence through shame (v.7), they experienced a death of an intimacy and peace within the relationship their marriage was designed to produce (vv. 16-17), and they experienced a death of the kind of peace (shalom) they were created to experience with God and His creation (vv. 8-15; 4:1-8).
The death God warned Adam and Eve about was a spiritual death and it was their sin that vandalized the shalom they enjoyed before their rebellion towards God through their sin against God out of a desire to be like God. This is the kind of death Paul was referring to in Ephesians 2:1 and is the kind of death (nekros) Jesus had in mind when one of His disciples asked to bury his father; Jesus said to his disciple: Follow Me, and let the dead [nekros] bury their own dead [nekros] (Matt. 8:22). What Jesus said to His disciple is to leave the corpse of his father to those who are still dead in their offenses and sinsthis is the kind of death all people are born into before they ever experience a physical death.
How Guilty Where You?
So, what does it mean to be dead? Paul tells us in the first verse: And you were dead in your offenses and sins. Just so that you are clear, if you are a Christian, you were dead, and your deadness was twofold: in your offenses and sins. Again, Paul is intentional with his word choice here, and instead of using only one word, he uses two. We are dead in our offenses in that we were guilty of overstepping Gods moral boundary. The Greek word Paul used for offense (paraptōmo) can also be translated: offense, wrongdoing, sin, transgress, or to trespass.
When I was fourteen years old, my friends and I decided to break into a house we believed was abandoned, to steal copper, and we did it in broad daylight. We thought we were cunning enough to get into the house without being noticed, in spite of the fact that the street the house was on was a very busy road and on the other side of the road, directly across from the house we decided to break into, was a popular Harley Davidson Shop. Well, you probably are not surprised that we did get caught. Within minutes of my one friend finding his way into the house through a window, a big scary man on a Harley demanded that we stand face forward toward the house while 3-4 police cars arrived. The three of us were put in separate police cars after we were interrogated by one of the officers. We knew that we were in big trouble because we trespassed and broke the law. I was also convinced that I was going to be a dead teenager once my father found out what I had done.
When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit, what you need to understand and what you must understand is that it was not just a misstep taken, but a deliberate act of cosmic treason to not only be like God, but to dethrone God! What else could have been the motive for Eve and Adam, who was right next to his wife when she bit into the fruit and gave it to him, to take and eat the very thing that God said would bring pervasive death? The temptation was to doubt the goodness of God because of the fruit He forbade them to eat: You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The temptation was to believe what Adam and Eve needed was not God but what was forbidden by God!
Since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, sin, like a terminal disease has found its way into the womb of every woman just as the Psalmist lamented: Behold, I was brought forth in guilt, and in sin my mother conceived me (Ps. 51:5). What does this mean? you ask. It means this: just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned (Rom. 5:12). Or in the words of Cornelius Plantinga: Sin is a plague that spreads by contagion or even by quasimetric reproduction. Its a polluted river that keeps branching and rebranching into tributaries. Its a whole family of fertile and contentious parents, children, and grandchildren.[1]
Your deadness in the form of your offenses and sins was not the kind of deadness that leaves what was once alive stiff and inanimate; no, your deadness expressed itself because, you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (vv. 2-3). You were a dead person walking! You were the spiritual and moral equivalent of George Romeros Night of the Living Dead! Notice how our offenses and sins were manifested:
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil).
We were disobedient.
We lived in the lusts of our flesh.
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind.
We were children of wrath.
According to verse 2, this is the course of this world. The word for course can also be translated age; the point is that we walked according to the spirit of the age because it was our nature to do so. We were spiritually dead and stood before a Holy God as a walking corpse who, according to Romans 3, not only did not seek God (vv. 10-11) but had no fear of Him (v. 18). As the walking dead, we were enemies of the God of the living (see Rom. 5:10). As children of wrath, we stood before God as objects of His just wrath because of our offenses and sins. If you are not a Christian than Ephesians 2:1-3 is still true of you. You are still spiritually dead, and you are still a child of the wrath of an infinitely holy and just God and the place reserved for you, if nothing changes, is a condemnation you will never recover from; the kind of condemnation we are warned about in Revelation 20:11-15,
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyones name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
People are generally okay when it comes to topics such as the love of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, and even the justice of God. What many struggle with most is the wrath of God. Dr. James Boice said of these verses in Ephesians, The worldly mind does not take Gods wrath seriously because it does not take sin seriously. Yet if sin is as bad as the Bible declares it to be, nothing is more just or reasonable than that the wrath of a holy God should rise against it.[2] If you struggle with just how serious God takes your sin, you need not look any further than the cross of Christ.
What is the Remedy for All Your Sin?
I will spend an entire sermon unpacking what we see in verses 4-7 next week, but for now, let me show you Ephesians 2:4-5 against the backdrop of verses 1-3. We were dead in our offenses and sins, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil), but God
We were disobedient, but God
We lived in the lusts of our flesh, but God
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind, but God
We were children of wrath, but God made us alive with Christ.
How did God do it? Obviously, He did it through Jesus, but the reason He did it was threefold: 1) He is rich in mercy, 2) His love is great, and 3) His grace is sufficient. Mercy happens when you do not get the punishment you deserve, and grace is when you get something you did not earn or deserve. If you are Christian, the reason you received Gods mercy and grace is because His love for you was greater than your offenses and sins against Him.
Permit me to show you something that I hope will bless you as much as it has blessed me this week. Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:18-19; he was praying that the eyes of the hearts of those reading his letter would see and know three things: that you would know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe. The word Paul used for boundless means, to surpass, to go beyond, to exceed. As you remember from last week, that word is used to stress the kind of power that raised Jesus from the grave and made your salvation possible. That power in conjunction with the richness of Gods mercy, the greatness of God love, and the sufficiency of Gods grace is infinitely greater than all your transgressions and sins.
Christian, although you were once a child of Gods just wrath, He has made you a son/daughter because He has done the thing that only He could do, He made you alive with Christ. Romans 5:10-11 is for you Christian: For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, he shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
If you are not a Christian, then you need to hear this: the same mercy, love, and grace that has made the Christian alive in Christ is available to you if you would just receive by faith the Jesus who makes Gods mercy, love, and grace possible; there is no sin that is too great for Gods mercy, love, and grace to overcomeand it is still held out to you by a holy God who has every right to consume you by His wrath.
[1] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way its Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995) p. 53.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 49.