EPHESIANS Series

In the calendar of the church year, we are in the season of Epiphany. Epiphany comes from the Greek word, epiphaneia, which literally means, “revelation”, or “manifestation”. Manifestation is a physical indication, a sign, of some plan. Epiphany, therefore, is the season when Christians all over the world celebrate the manifestation—the physical reality—of God’s presence in the world: Jesus Christ.

The event that marks the beginning of Epiphany is the day when the Wise Men arrived in the place where Jesus lived as an infant. (You can read this story in the book of Matthew, chapter 2.)

Up till that moment, they had oriented their lives to what the stars apparently said—they were astrologers. But when they arrived at the place where Jesus was they fell down and worshipped him. They brought gifts for him, they adored him, and he changed them. What the wise men learned is what God has been trying to communicate to humans since the beginning of time:

This is my world, you are my people, and I chose you before there was a world, and I created you to be like me, holy and blameless. In me you live and move and have your being (Acts 17:28 ). Nothing you do is outside of my knowledge or presence. When you live well, I see it and know it. When you sin, I see that to. It is sin, however, that separated us. I’m God and I hate sin, in fact I can’t be in the presence of it. But I love you, so I want to be close to you, you bring me great pleasure.

The baby you see in front of you is my son. He will live among you and show you how I want you to live. But there will come a day when, because of your sin, you will kill my son. But as much as this will cause me pain, it is part of my plan.

For the penalty of your sin is death. It is a penalty you can’t pay, for only one who is perfect and holy is valuable enough to cover that cost. So through the death you will cause my perfect and holy son, I will redeem you and you will once again have a way back to me.

My son will be your King. Everything in heaven and on earth will be brought under His Lordship. He will be the Center of All Life , and everyone will one day bow to him.

The revelation of God’s plan to the wise men symbolizes the revelation of God’s plan to the whole world throughout history. It is the plan he’s revealed to us.

Now, perhaps you’re starting to wonder if I picked the wrong message to preach today. After all, Christmas is past, and aren’t we supposed to begin a study of Ephesians today?

We are, and the reason I drew your attention to the story of the wise men was because in the first part of Ephesians, Paul celebrates Epiphany. He recounts to his readers the glory and fame of God. He describes what God did, who God is and where we are in relation to that.

Unlike other letters Paul wrote, Ephesians wasn’t written to address a problem in the congregation. (You remember in Galatians Paul wrote to combat the false teaching of the Judaizers.) Paul is pleased with the Ephesian Christians. He writes this letter to them to encourage and teach them more about living the Christian life.

Ephesians can be summed up this way: You were chosen by God to live holy lives in the world, for His glory. You need some instruction as to how to do that because living for God in this world means living the whole of life for God. This will affect every aspect of life, not one area can be untouched. Oh, and by the way, Satan hates this plan of God.

He’s going to do whatever it takes to throw you off, so you need to return to God again and again so that his armor will be on you so you can fight off Satan.

Ephesians begins with a prayer called a doxology. A doxology is a prayer of declaration and adoration. Paul declares God’s awesomeness and His reign over all the earth. He adores God for his plan, of redemption through Jesus Christ.

(Now let’s read together Ephesians 1:3-14 as a Paul wrote it: to declare God’s greatness and adore God for his plan…)

Can you imagine picking up a book that describes the dials and buttons in an airplane, and after reading it, you thought you were skilled to fly? With no study of wind currents, or weather, or the physics that describe the nature of flying, you’d never get off the ground. Reading the Bible is the same. If all we do is read the Bible with the mind to know how to live Christianly in the world, we’d never actually live Christianly. If we read the Bible simply to get a list of things to do, we would crumble under the weight of rules and do’s and don’ts!

In order to live Christianly in the world, we first need to know who God is, his nature. Only when we begin to consider God’s nature can we understand that living the Christian life means living honestly before God, so he can shape us to live in the world. In short, it’s all about God. We live before him and live in the world all for His glory and His fame. This is the fundamental truth about church.

In Ephesians, Paul puts life in the right context. For the first half of the letter, he describes how glorious and awesome God is. God created humans for His purpose and good pleasure, to live holy and blameless lives! He tells of God’s desire to redeem his sinful people through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In short, Paul counteracts our self-centeredness in thinking that this life is all about us, and flips that upside-down, and puts it right: Our life is because of God, through God, and entirely for God. It’s out of this realty we live as church.

That’s why in the first half of the book of Ephesians Paul describes the nature of God.

That is not to say that this text doesn’t apply to our lives practically today. It does, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But first we need to know why applying this text is important in the first place. Let’s unpack this a little…

Learning about the nature of God is called “theology”. Good theology leads to good living. In other words, what we believe and know about God is reflected in how we live our lives. Good theology will lead us to right living. Bad theology—a bad understanding of God—will result in bad living.

Paul was a good pastor. He wanted his hearers to know God—truly—so that they could continue being church well. So he taught them well. (Remember Ephesians was written to be an encouragement and teaching.) I want to use Paul’s teaching to teach some important truths about God from the first 14 verses of Ephesians:

Three times in our text Paul refers to God’s initiative where we’re concerned: “For He chose us in him before the creation of the world…”(v. 4), “In love He predestined us to be his adopted kids”(v. 5), and then in verse 11, “In Him we were chosen.”

This section emphasizes God’s activity in planning and choosing people. This is called the doctrine of ‘Election’. Election means that the existence of the people of God can be explained only on the basis of God’s character, God’s plan and God’s action, not on some quality in the people who are chosen. The initiative is always God’s based on his “grace”.

It’s been God’s plan since before the creation of the world—a poetic way of describing the infinite design of God—to create humanity and bring them to himself. It has always been God’s plan to draw us to him. This tells us something very important about God’s character: He loves and seeks his people. God is highly relational. The purpose of election, as verse 5 says, is to adopt people into his family through Jesus Christ.

If you’ve been in the church for any length of time, you’ve likely heard the arguments for and against the theology of election, also called predestination. It is one of the hottest, and, frankly most divisive debates the church has indulged in. Usually when people talk about election or predestination, they think of the election of individuals and the benefit to them. But biblical texts have a much different emphasis. Rather than focusing on the individual, biblical texts, especially the one we’re looking at today, have a corporate focus.

Nothing in Ephesians 1 focuses on individuals; rather the text focuses collectively on those who are in Christ. This changes things. People become elect only in the Elect One—Jesus Christ. In the Bible, it used to be that the message of God was communicated through the people of

Israel

; now Jesus Christ has taken on that task. Election takes place in Him (v. 4) and through Him (v. 5). Individuals are not elected and then put in Christ. They are in Christ and therefore elect.

Election is all about God’s grace and his plan to draw all to himself. Election does bring privilege, but not so people can bask in privilege or disdain others. Election also brings responsibility. Turn to verse 4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight…”

The responsibility of all God has chosen, is to live holy and blameless lives in the world.

In other words, the crux of election is that we were chosen by God to live in the world and, by our actions, point to Him. Therefore, we live to bring God glory in the world.

You’ve heard it said that when a child grows up and is well behaved and good mannered, it reflects well on their upbringing. Now, I understand that this is an imperfect illustration, and a huge generalization, but kids, by their behavior describe their parents.

We’ve heard people say things like, “oh you’re just like your mom”, “you’re so much like you’re dad”. Well, that sort of sums up the purpose of divine election.

God gave us life so that we can live in the world and point to Him by our lives. Another way to say it is as Rick Warren says it: “You were made by God and for God—and until you understand that, life will never make sense.”[i] What’s our purpose then? To bring glory to God. The purpose of God’s electing activity is to reveal his own character as a loving, saving God. When God’s character is revealed in the world, praise is the result. Which takes us to our application…

Now how does this teaching help us to be church? This text doesn’t ask anything of the readers. There is no instruction as to what needs to happen now. Though there are no explicit instructions, all you doers are frustrated by this I’m sure, there is a rich application implied. I want to suggest to you that these first 14 verses of Ephesians describe the nature and purpose of worship.

This letter was an open letter to be read by all Ephesian Christians. Paul knew that such letters would be recited in the corporate worship gatherings that the Ephesian congregations met in.

Paul, then, wrote this letter with the understanding that this would be part of corporate worship. People would gather together and the leaders would read this letter to the congregation. So Paul acted as something of a worship leader when he wrote this letter.

“This text is both a call to worship and a classic example of what worship should be.”[ii]

We live in a world that tells us to focus on ourselves. That idea has become acceptable in the church. But, as Paul points out in Ephesians 1, this life we live is all about God, he then proceeds to point us Heavenward with phrases like, “Praise be to God”, “to the praise of His glorious grace”, “to the praise of His glory”. God is the subject and object of Paul’s writing. So must be our worship. God must be the subject and object of our worship. If God is not, then our worship is false.

Why do people fail to live in relation to God and to serve Him? Is it not partly because we view God as a remote being, cut off from us and not involved with us—a being whose expectations are not important, at least in this self-centered reality we know? More than any other book in the Bible, Ephesians seeks to show that God is not remote, that he has been active for us, and that he will change both individuals and the church by what he does.

Now if all of life is to be lived in full view of God, for His purposes, we must learn what it means to live for him and his purposes. The most crucial and fundamental way that is done, is through corporate worship. To worship is to remember our purpose. To worship is to be reminded of who’s in charge.

Worship, like life, must be real as God describes reality, not as our world describes it. If we have some perspective that the “real reality” in which we live has to do with a God who values us and has been active for us, our lives by necessity change. Suddenly, what God expects becomes important.

This is why worship and praise are so important. They give opportunity for us to tell and hear truths about God and who we are in relation to Him. In worship we reject our world’s idea of reality, which is inadequate to shape us, and focus on God’s reality, which is perfect to shape us.

What does this look like in practical terms? Well let’s look at what we do here in our corporate worship. It’s essential that everything we do, from the time we walk in here to the time we leave, points to God as the subject and object of our worship.

The announcements tell the story of God’s activity in the lives of his people in this congregation. We light a candle as an active prayer, drawing our attention from ourselves, to God. Confession reminds us that we are to live holy lives, but can’t apart from God’s Holy Spirit, so we confess our sin and our need for the Holy Spirit. The declaration of forgiveness is to point us to the truth that God is a merciful God and wants to forgive us. Our community prayer points us to the fact that God is the center of our lives. Our hopes, fears, struggles and victories all connect to Him. The offering reminds us that God wants our whole life. This is represented by the letting go of the most difficult of our lives to part with—our money. The music we sing—regardless of style—must point to God as subject and object. Our personal preferences take a back seat to God’s praise and glory. The Sermon teaches us from God’s Word, and God’s Word changes us. And the silence and quiet during and following our corporate worship is so that we might reflect on what God has taught us about him.

You’ve heard me say that what we believe about God is how we’ll live. I would like to amend that and say that how we worship together is how we’ll live. Worship is that important.

What can you do to help worship be right & true? As part of this community of faith, you have a responsibility to contribute to the quality of corporate worship. So, here are some things to consider…(not a comprehensive list)

One thing is you can pray for our and encourage worship leaders. Their job is sacred, for they are charged with planning worship to point to God at every turn.

You can be here. When you miss, you not only hurt yourself, but you also hurt us as a people. Remember worship is not primarily an individual pursuit. Ephesians was written to a community of Christians. God forms his people through corporate worship. When we’re all together, we’re all changed.

You can be on time for worship. I’m not trying to scold latecomers; there are legitimate reasons why people arrive late. But we start our corporate worship at 10:00 , so try not to miss anything. When you’re late, you miss out on something that has pointed to God, and that’s not worth missing!

You can participate! When we’re all singing, and praying and learning, we’re all growing in our knowledge of God. Worship isn’t a spectator sport. We are not performers, those of us who stand up here on Sundays. We are facilitators, leaders, yes, but not the show. For worship to be good and right, all of God’s people in a particular community need to participate.

As I said last week, God is pleased with us, but there are things he wants to change in us. The primary way he will change us as a community of faith is through our corporate worship.

Our lives, brothers and sisters, are lived at the mercy and grace of God. Our lives are not our own. We exist to bring him glory by living lives that are holy.

We learn to live holy as we learn about who God is—through our worship of Him. The number of people who call themselves Christians does not impress Jesus. What brings delight to Him instead is the number of people who bow and worship Him as King, and who’s lives are lived for His Glory and Fame.

[i] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life ( Michigan : Zondervan, 2002), p. 19.

[ii] Klyne Snodgrass, “Ephesians”, The NIV Application Commentary, Terry Muck, gen. Ed.,

(Michigan: Zondervan, 1996), p. 67.

EPHESIANS Series:

For His Glory and Fame—Life As Church

For His Glory and Fame

Ephesians 1:1-14