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Marked: A Study in Ephesians
Happy Thanksgiving
The story of Geoff (200)
I was marked and there was nothing I could do about it.
My grade six teacher made an off hand comment about how I got the mark a different way and the whole class laughed.
It was at that point that i discovered turtlenecks.
There was going to be known based on what one man said, so I hid.
And sometimes in my life I have tried to hide that I am a follower of God.
I have forgotten that I am a child of the creator of the universe and I hid.
But why? Fear, insecurity, status?
Let me ask you this, “If you knew that the creator of the universe had invited you into a relationship with him.
Invited you to be his child.
Would you hide that?”
If you were marked by the creator of the universe as his special possession.
Would you hide that mark?
Wouldn’t being marked by him be a reason to be thankful today?
There was one fellow named Paul who knew without reservation who he was.
His name was Paul and when he wrote the letter we are looking at today, the letter of Ephesians, he was in prison.
He was waiting to be seen by the emperor and eventually would be executed.
He was writing to a group of believers who were a mishmash of ethnicities, social groups, and backgrounds.
Writing from imprisonment in Rome around 60-61AD Paul wanted to remind followers of Jesus who they were and who they belonged to.
Writtent
And today, it is good for us to be reminded of what and who we are.
How followers of Jesus have been marked.
if you haven’t made a decision to follow Jesus then today will be a window into the core of what a Christian is and as we go through this series how that identity looks being lived out.
Ephesians 1:1-
What we need to know:
In Christ there are things that are true about me
In a world that has been shaped heavily by humanism and the drive to see humans as the pinnacle over all creation.
The idea that God is alive and active is really offensive.
Didn’t everything happen by chance.
Aren’t we all simply a big cosmic accident?
Aren’t we here by chance.
Even if God is real, and did create us, he must have made mistakes along the way and now he is sitting back with a bag of popcorn and watching things unfold.
When man was created, he simply went oops, and slowly backed away.
In a world that has been shaped heavily by humanism and the drive to see humans as the pinnacle over all creation.
The idea that God is alive and active is really offensive.
Didn’t everything happen by chance.
Aren’t we all simply a big cosmic accident?
Aren’t we here by chance.
Even if God is real, and did create us, he must have made mistakes along the way and now he is sitting back with a bag of popcorn and watching things unfold.
When man was created, he simply went oops, and slowly backed away.
Is that idea consistent with what we know and see around us though?
Is there really evidence that God has checked out?
When I look at my own sinfulness I am amazed that he hasn’t checked out.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t always feel very blessed, that somehow I either haven’t seen or I skipped out when the blessings were being passed around.
But in his passage we get a glimpse of the things that are true about us in Christ.
Through the book of Ephesians we’ll see the phrases in Christ, in him, through him, under Christ,
What are the true things about every follower of Jesus?
We are holy and blameless in God’s sight.
Apart from Jesus, we are objects of God’s wrath and because of our sin we are enemies of God.
There is a barrier between God and me called sin.
All of humanity shares in that.
This is a spiritual truth.
But in Christ the thing that is true about me is that I am holy and blameless.
Literally I am set apart for God and I ma declared innocent of my sin.
Because we are declared holy and blameless.
Instead of being objects of God’s wrath.
In Christ I am adopted into a new family.
And this isn’t something amazing I’ve done, it is because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
These are things that in Christ are true about you.
That is powerful and encouraging.
It is a reason to be thankfu today.
Now there are two other words in this section that need a little bit of explaining.
Chosen and Predestination.
Both have the idea that these things were destined by God before the creation of the world.
It points to the fact that God is sovereign.
He is in control.
He see the end from the beginning.
So if that is true, what about my free will.
What is that all about and how do these two seemingly contradictory things harmonize.
Indeed, a significant amount of energy has been put into these two things and caused huge rifts in the church globally.
Some saying that God has planned everything out in minute detail.
Others saying that God doesn’t know what will happen next.
But the solution is not as simple as choosing one or the other.
No one here would say they are as smart or insightful as God.
No one would say that we can see all of thoughts of God and now exactly what he will do in every situation.
It is because God exists on a level that we do not.
He is eternal we are created.
But we are created with free will.
We do have the right to choose.
How can the two come together?
We cannot come up with an answer that does not divide people because we are limited.
The Bible teaches clearly that God is sovereign.
It also teaches clearly that we have a right to choose.
Trying to bring these ideas together with logic distorts the truth of one or the other.
Both of these truths most be held to for us to appreciate what Paul is saying here.
This is where we come up against or finite minds and an infinite God.
And it isn’t intellectual suicide to do this.
We have examples of these seemingly contradictory ideas in nature.
Light acts like energy and matter.
Science can’t explain it.
There are some disagreements about it in the scientific community but there is agreement that light acts as a wave and a particle.
Something that should not happen.
Yet we have light.
But Paul’s thrust is that those who give their lives to Christ and follow him.
God planned in advance that they would be declared holy and blameless and be adopted into his family.
Ephesians 1:7-
What else is true about me in Christ?
Redemption is the idea of buying something back in order to set it free.
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