Ephesians: Better Together
Notes
Transcript
Today as we talk about thanksgiving and prayer
We too are going to participate in praying for one another
So first I want to share again with you the words family and adoption
Family
Family
We see Paul here say at the start for this reason so I feel that gives permission to revisit some topics from last week as this is what he is thankful for, the faith in Jesus and love for all God’s people
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Now last year I shared what I felt was a need to shift in my language from calling us a family to friends because not everyone has a good experience of families and sometimes we as a church don’t act like a family especially as the church grows in size.
I also thought this fits well with our strategic plan.
But I have had a change of heart and want to return to referring to the church as a family as I think it is important to call us to this level of relationship with one another. To be brothers and sisters in Christ. just like Paul is calling the church in Ephesus and is the most dominant metaphor of the church in the New Testament as a family.
The reason I feel this way to have a deeper understanding of our relationship as spiritual brothers and sisters in Jesus was from the muster on Monday and Tuesday.
Dr Christa McKirland was the guest speaker at the muster, she is a lecturer on Systematic theology at Carrie Baptist College in New Zealand and she too spoke on the Ephesian church. So now I am convicted to undo all the things I said last week. No, actually it is nice to be affirmed that I was on the right themes. Still, she shared a greater understanding of the family structure in the culture which gives even more significance to being adopted into God’s family.
This slide I have copied from the Muster. We see here in the lineage that the father is on top and you can only be born into the father's family. The whole family and house were under the religion of the father. Your identity and station in life came from your father, we see that with the disciples who some worked their father's business in being fishermen.
Now notice the women on the outside of the circle, wives were only really included in the family once they had produced children.
That is why passages such as Ephesians 5:21-33 would have been so controversial, not wives submitting to their husbands, but husbands loving their wives just as Christ loves the church.
Some would say the notion of romantic love has only really been a thing since the Eleventh century, marriages brought status between fathers and the family line. So it was the brothers and sisters that had the strongest bonds of love for one another and not marriages.
Jesus shakes up this patrilineal kinship order when he called his disciples to leave the safety of their fathers and come follow him.
This shake-up leads to one of the harshest remarks by Jesus.
Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
later in Matthew Jesus would point out that:
For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
When our eyes are on our heavenly father our identity is in him, our station is in him and we are now part of a much larger family.
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
What is missing between what you lay down and what you receive? you will not receive another father.
God is our father, Jesus is Son, We are Family by the Spirit, Adopted into the family of God, not by birth, through the cross.
Jesus is not saying well don’t worry about your family, but the same bond in families is to be the same in the church and we gain so much from that fact.
So in light of the church as a family, how are siblings meant to relate to each other?
8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.
9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.
10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
It would seem the church in Ephesus understood this, they were a spiritual family together and this is what Paul is thankful for in verses 1 & 2. As Baptists, I love that our structure is around having one father, Jesus is the head of the church and we all discern with the Holy Spirit’s help the will of the father. Putting the strategic plan was a great example of this process.
You are not sitting under my teaching, but together we are listening to God’s word and discerning how to implement and live it out in today's context.
We do this by understanding the richness and hope we have in the power of God, which we access in prayer by the name of Jesus.
I have summarised verses 17-20
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength
he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
Spirit of Wisdom and revelation, to know our father better
Our heart's focus be elevated to sharing the hope we have in Jesus and our inheritance as His people
The power of the cross is with you, to overcome any fear and leave no barrier to the gospel.
The power that is over everything, that could raise Christ from the dead and seat him at the fathers right hand in the spiritual realms, above all rule and authority, power and dominion, over every name.
Every name because it was common practice to call out the name of your god when in need of help. Paul is saying no other name can help but the name of Jesus.
Because as it says in verses 21 to 23 all things, the physical and the spiritual, this age and the next, he is appointed head of all.
We have nothing to fear, except for the Fear of the Lord,
The power of the cross,
This is my body given for you, the fullness that we alone need.
The blood that is the cost of atonement for our sins, the blood that we accept through no work of our own. It is a grace offering to us.
So as we engage with this prayer and this time of communion I would like you to:
as brothers and sisters in Christ, I would like you to get into groups of 2-3 and share what are you thankful for and what fear you need to bring and lay down at the cross.
Then I would like you to pray through these points for one another ...
Finally, Thank God for the power of the cross and the death and resurrection of Jesus, with all power and authority that is with you through the holy spirit.
Communion will be served as you discuss these things and if you are still on a journey with Jesus and do not fill ready to participate in this communion together please still share and allow others to pray for you. Receive the bread and the cup, and after praying with one another thank Jesus for His body given, as you eat the bread and then the blood given ...
The band will play the song what a beautiful name to bring us back altogether.
