A greeting From Paul

INTRO

What have you been called today? What is your identity?

I would beg to say that you have been called something different than the name your parents gave you at your birth.

I would take an educated guess and say that all my band people have been called one of the following:

Band kid. Band-aid. Brass kid. Woodwind kid. Drumline kid.

What about the smart one?

The funny one?

The athlete?

Maybe you've been called:

The responsible one.

The one who always has it together.

The strong one.

Every name you have, you are paying for.

Except one.

SCRIPTURE

Ephesians 1:1–2 ESV

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

MISSION

Before God tells you what to do, He tells you what you are.

The first 3 chapters of Ephesians tells of who we are in Christ and what we have since we are in Christ.

This passage (Ephesians 1:1-2) takes us through:

Who has and gives authority

What our identity is

What blessings we have

GET TO KNOW HUNTER

I struggled with the same tiredness and heaviness:

Not knowing enough.

Not upholding what I should be upholding.

Feeling like I didn't belong.

Faking it till I made it.

At Evergreen yesterday, I had the privilege to speak, and they asked me to make it a lesson.

In that lesson, I read a poem called “Two-Faced” that I wrote back in my early days in high school.

It walks through my struggle with putting on the image of being happy while underneath I was struggling with depression and a broken, fragile family.

I didn't have a sense of identity besides the identity I gave myself as being an actor.

KNOW

AUTHORITY IS DERIVATIVE, NOT PERSONAL

Paul begins:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…”

Paul's authority wasn't something he gave himself.

It came from Christ.

Paul asserts his authority by pointing to the One who gave it to him.

Authority originates somewhere.

The authority a man has is representative of the authority of the one who gave it to him.

God is sovereign over all.

And He is sovereign over those who have power.

Ephesians 6:9 “Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”

GOD'S WILL IS THE MECHANISM

God's will is what comes to fruition.

When you came to the faith, by whose will did you come?

It certainly was not your own.

By whose will did you receive blessings?

By whose will are you being conformed to the image of Christ?

By whose will are you able to take your next breath?

Again, it was not your will.

It is God's will that Paul would become who he was.

And it was God's plan for you to be where you are, and where you'll end up.

BELIEVE

BEING NAMED COMES BEFORE MEASURING

Notice what Paul does first.

Before he tells these Christians what to do, he tells them who they are.

The titles came:

Unmerited.

Undeserved.

Given by grace.

You do not clean your life up before being called a saint.

Only after being called a saint do you start to act like a saint.

The name comes before the measuring.

We still fall.

We still sin.

But now we measure that against being called a saint—

not to keep our standing as a saint.

PEACE IS A STATUS BEFORE A FEELING

You have been made right with God.

You now have peace with Him.

You are no longer under condemnation.

There is now no charge that can be brought against you.

This peace is not merely a calm feeling.

It is the reality that there is no fine left for you to pay.

Christ has paid it on your behalf.

But it is more than a charge being dropped.

You have been brought near.

“He himself is our peace.”

You are not only acquitted.

You are received.

Feel

THE WEIGHT

The weight I am talking about is the weight of having a message you have been given to give—

but the recipient will not turn an ear to it.

You have not been given Paul's office.

The apostles were the foundation of the church, and a foundation is laid once.

Paul was uniquely commissioned by Christ as an apostle.

His authority wasn't self-generated; it came from Christ, who sent him.

But while we don't have Paul's office,

we have been entrusted with Paul's message.

Peter says to the whole church:

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood... that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you.”

We have been given something to proclaim.

And that comes with weight.

The weight isn't that you hold an office like Paul did.

The weight is that you carry His words.

You know the truth about:

God

Sin

Christ

Salvation

Eternity

And you have been called to make that truth known.

Paul didn't choose this for himself.

He says:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.”

Christ called him.

God willed it.

And that's important for you.

You don't carry God's message because you're impressive enough to carry it.

You carry it because God has given it to you.

So when people don't listen...

When they reject you...

When they think you're strange...

When you're afraid to speak...

Remember:

The weight of the message does not rest on the worthiness of the messenger.

You are not responsible for making people listen.

You are responsible for being faithful with what you've been given.

That is the weight.

THE SECURITY

Though we feel the weight with which we have been commissioned,

we have security.

Security in the God who:

Chose us.

Holds onto us.

Bears with us.

Goes before us.

This security triumphs over all fear and all anxiety.

For we who are:

“faithful in Christ Jesus”

will persevere.

Because:

“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.”

Paul understood this immeasurably.

He labored mightily so that the saints would have sound doctrine and live lives pleasing to the Lord.

But as he labored,

he rested in the security of the God who called him,

the God who saved him,

and the God who upholds him.

DO

Believe What God Says About You

Stop the laborious task of auditing your life to see if you have reached the point to have the title of:

Saint.

Faithful in Christ.

If you are in Him—

that is, Christ—

then you have already received this title that cannot be taken away.

Look at verse 1:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.”

Paul isn't giving them a title they earned.

He's identifying a reality God created by grace.

You who are in Christ are:

Saints.

Set apart.

Holy ones.

Do not read the identity words of Scripture as things we work up into.

Read them as things that have been pronounced over you.

And notice:

Paul does not write to a saint.

He writes to saints.

You were not named alone.

You were named into a people.

PRAY ABOUT IDENTITY BEFORE DIRECTION

God has a secret will that belongs to Him.

But He has also given us a revealed will in His Word.

You don't have to discover God's secret plan before you obey what He's already told you.

What is His revealed will?

That we:

Believe in Christ

Are saved

Are sanctified

Give thanks

Do good

Suffer faithfully

Submit to Him

Love one another

Make disciples

Live according to His Word

So if we know His will,

we need to know our identity.

Because those two things together form our decisions.

If I am a saint, and my two options are:

Trust the Lord and do something pleasing to Him

or

Do something shady where I am not trusting the Lord...

The option is clear.

If the options differ in whether they draw you toward sanctification,

the answer is clear.

Pray that the Lord reminds you of your identity and His will before you ask which choice is correct.

LIVE VISIBLY DIFFERENT

We live in the world,

but we are not of the world.

Our citizenship is in heaven.

We are ambassadors in a foreign land.

We stick out because of our love for God and how that love is shown through our lives.

Just as Pastor Cody spoke on Sunday:

We live a life that is a testimony to a broken world.

They see:

How a wife submits to her husband.

How a husband loves his wife.

How their kids respect them.

And they wonder why we have a life of blessings while they live lives of hardship.

We have received grace from God.

And that grace gives us peace with Him.

These things are not so with the fallen world.

And our lives in Christ are seen visibly by others through our actions and deeds.

CONCLUSION

I leave you with this.

You walked in here already carrying names.

Band kid.

Drumline.

Third baseman.

The one who always has it together.

You earned every one of those.

And every one of them is only as good as your last performance.

But Paul opens this letter and gives you a name before he gives you an assignment.

Saints.

Faithful in Christ Jesus.

Not become.

Not strive to be.

Just—are.

Think about a passport.

You didn't print it.

Your name is inside it, but you didn't put it there.

And when you hand it across a counter in a country where you don't speak the language, don't know a soul, and don't understand the money—

it works.

Not because the officer is impressed with you.

He isn't looking at you.

He's looking at what stands behind you.

That is what Paul is doing in verse one.

He hands you the passport before he says one word about how to travel.

So go out.

Go out knowing the One who sent you did not consult you about it.

He chose you by His own will, before you were born, and that will has never once failed.

Go out knowing there is no charge left against you.

The verdict was settled before you ever stood in the courtroom.

Go out knowing you carry a name that was pronounced over you

and cannot be audited away.

You are a citizen of somewhere else,

walking around here as its representative.

You will not be able to hear your own accent.

They will.

Go out.

Breakout Group Questions:

What does Paul call himself in verse 1, and where does he say his authority came from?

What does Paul call the people he is writing to? What does that tell us about their identity?

Where are you most tempted to perform for other people so that they will see you a certain way? What do you want your identity to say?

What is one decision you are facing where you need to remember your identity in Christ before deciding what to do?

If you truly believed, “Before God tells me what to do, He tells me what I am,” what would change about the way you live this week?