Sermon Tone Analysis

What’s the Big Idea?

Ephesians – Whole Book

Introduction

Several years ago the Los Angeles Times reported the story of an elderly man and wife who were found dead in their apartment.

Autopsies revealed that both had died of severe malnutrition, although investigators found a total of $40,000 stored in paper bags in a closet.

Of course, we all say – what a tragedy.

I ask – is it possible that this describes our spiritual existence?

For many years Hetty Green was called America’s greatest miser.

When she died in 1916, she left an estate valued at $100 million, an especially vast fortune for that day.

But she was so miserly that she ate cold oatmeal in order to save the expense of heating the water.

When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection.

It has been said that she hastened her own death by bringing on a fit of apoplexy while arguing the merits of skim milk because it was cheaper than whole milk.

The book of Ephesians is written to Christians who might be prone to treat their spiritual resources much like that miserly couple and Hetty Green treated their financial resources.

Such believers are in danger of suffering from spiritual malnutrition, because they do not take advantage of the great storehouse of spiritual nourishment and resources that is at their disposal.

Ephesians has been called the “Queen of the Epistles.”

No less a literary authority than Samuel Coleridge said it was the “divinest composition of man.”

Ephesians has been given such titles as the believer’s bank, the Christian’s checkbook, and the treasure house of the Bible.

This beautiful letter tells Christians of their great riches, inheritances, and fullness in Jesus Christ and in His church.

It tells them what they possess and how they can claim and enjoy their possessions.

During the great depression of the 1930s, many banks would allow their customers to withdraw no more than 10 percent of their accounts during a given period of time, because the banks did not have enough reserves to cover all deposits.

We must not treat our spiritual resources in such a fashion.

To be at our best we must realize fully two things – 1) who we are and 2) what resources are available to us.

Suppose someone just got promoted to a VP position.

He now has a new identity and new resources.

But suppose that he continues to work as before, spending time only in one part of the job with which he is familiar, failing to spend added budget for fear of failure.

He will guarantee his failure, won’t he?

He has not lived in accordance with his new identity.

That is exactly what Ephesians can help us avoid.

Most of Paul’s epistles were written to address some particular problem.

Ephesians was written while Paul was in jail in Rome in the early 60’s.

He had time to reflect and to take us above the fray of everyday life – above the worm’s eye view offered by our daily existence – to see the possibilities from the sky.

What he wrote will change our lives if we will let him help us see who we really are in Christ and what we have in Christ.

Look with me at Ephesians 1:9 9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.

Paul has written Ephesians to acquaint us with this ultimate purpose of God – to give us the Big Idea – which should frame our Christian experience.

Most of us see ourselves as having been saved to escape hell.

But it is so much more.

God has an ultimate purpose in mind -- and He wants us to be part of that purpose.

Thus, to get an overview of Ephesians, we will look at four questions in the next couple of weeks before delving into the book in detail.

I. What is the Purpose of God?

A. To Reconcile All of Creation

Look with me at Ephesians 1:9-10 where the theme of the book is revealed: 9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10) as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

What is God’s Big Idea – His ultimate purpose?

Well, it says here that in the fullness of time (sometime yet future) He will unite all things in Christ Jesus – both things on earth as well as in heaven.

Man, that is mind-boggling, isn’t it?

Why is there a need to sum up or unite things?

Well, it doesn’t take a genius to identify that we live in a world where alienation is rampant, does it?

We see it in nature.

Ever try to raise beautiful flowers or a garden for food?

If so you know that as fast as you are trying to grow something, the weeds are trying just as hard to choke it out.

Alienation!

And much as we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated 21st century individuals, it permeates the world of humans.

It’s nation against nation, man against man, Muslims against Christians, and ideology against ideology.

We search a lifetime for harmony and experience it only in brief snatches.

Closer to home it’s man against wife and parents against children.

It’s a fragmented world.

And even within us there is tension.

One commentator has said that every person is literally a walking civil war.

Ours is not a harmonious existence.

Forget the world at large; alienation is our every day personal experience, is it not?

One young husband arrived home from work at his usual hour of 5 pm, only to discover that it had not been one of his wife’s better days.

The result was a short fuse and an unpleasant attitude.

Nothing he said or did was right.

By 7 pm things had not changed, so he suggested he go outside, pretend he had just gotten home, and start all over again.

His wife agreed, so he went outside according to plan, came back in and announced, “Honey, I’m home!” “And just where have you been?” she replied sharply.

“It’s seven o’clock!”

The fact is, the harder we try to correct and avoid alienation the more persistently it plagues us.

Now, we might ask, why all this alienation?

And, of course, the biblical answer is sin.

It is sin that brings alienation.

It began the moment Satan rebelled against God.

We are told that he was at that point banned from heaven and took 1/3 of the angels with him.

In that moment God’s creation went from a paradise of perfection to a wasteland of horror.

When Adam sinned, what was his very first action?

He clothed himself.

Why?

He had not minded or even noticed his nakedness until suddenly he was alienated and his first recourse was to cover up.

Even those weeds in nature are a result of the curse God put on nature in response to that first sin – to be a constant reminder of the alienation sin brings.

And here’s the thing.

Much as we would like to beg to differ, the truth is, we can’t do a single thing about it.

In fact, it is almost like the harder we try, the worse it gets.

The moment I determine never to get mad or be ugly with my wife again, she tosses my favorite old tennis shoes or objects to my leaving a dirty bathroom; I’m forced to respond and BAM! Alienation!

It seems like it’s been going on forever and it seems like it will continue forever.

But guess what?

NO IT WILL NOT!

It will not.

And this wonderful book of Ephesians that we are going to study will help explain how it will eventually end.

The primary purpose of this book is to address this ugly problem of alienation.

Look again at 1:9 9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10) as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite (head up, sum up, bring together) all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God has a plan and a purpose for his creation.

It hadn’t been much understood up to the time of Paul, but here is revealed the mystery of his will and his ultimate purpose – to unite everything – everything on earth and even everything in heaven, in the spiritual realm – to unite them all in Christ.

Get rid of the wasteland and get everything turned right side up again.

What is the mystery of God’s will set forth in Christ?

It is to harmonize everything on earth and in heaven in Him – to bring it back into conformity with His will – to reconcile, to correct, to fix and to re-orchestrate.

And here’s the really great thing.

We – you and I, anyone who is a believer – are part of the plan!

You see, we are very prone to see our salvation in very personal terms.

God has saved me so that I can go to heaven.

I can tell you, when I first accepted the Lord, that was the goal.

But this book puts our lives in a much larger context.

It shows how our salvation isn’t so much about us as it is about Him.