Untitled Sermon (4)

1) Introduction (1:1-2)

A) Sender (1:1a)

Paul establishes his authority in writing the letter.

Apostle. - his foundational role in the church

Of Jesus Christ. - sent by Jesus. Carries his message. Does his bidding.

Ex: Paul carries this authority only in that he is commissioned by Jesus and carries the message of Jesus. Paul doesn't establish his authority to write this letter based on who he is on his own ideas, but in that he is a carrier of the gospel and commissioned by Jesus. He's not heavy-handed, lording his authority over the Ephesians. This is a claim to authority, but out of humble recognition and submission to Christ.

Ap: Let's learn from his example:

1) Humble authority. Recognizes spiritual authority, but doesn't lord it over people. Uses it for their good.

2) Submission to Jesus who sent us. Especially in faithfulness to the gospel. We preach his words, not ours.

3) Spiritual authority only exists in submission to Jesus. As soon as we reject Jesus' authority, we are no longer qualified to be his messengers.

By the will of God. Paul is an apostle because God willed him to be. Shows up 4 times in this chapter (vv. 1, 5, 9, 11).

Ex: God's will is exorcised in order for him to accomplish his gracious saving plans. Paul emphasizes here that it was not he who called himself to the work of ministry, it was God alone. There are connotations of divine grace here in Paul's calling. God didn't call Paul to be an apostle because of personal qualifications, but through his own divine will.

Ap:

1) Stay amazed at God's grace in your calling.

This pastor doesn't say: "I am your pastor. Listen to me!"

He stays amazed. And this amazement humbles him. He says "I am what I am by the grace of God." And this amazement with grace is what motivates him and undergirds all of his words, acts of love, and sermons.

2) Be encouraged, even in the most difficult of situations.

In prison, but not discouraged. Still convinced that he's been called by the will of God.

When you're convinced that God has called you and God has commissioned you, you will be fortified against even the strongest attacks from Satan.

B) Recipients (1:1b)

Paul locates his recipients within the gracious plan and purposes of God.

God's holy people. ἅγιος.

Ex: Echoes of Israel being called God's holy nation (). Like Israel, these holy ones aren't holy because of their own personal piety, but because God has personally and intentionally rescued them for his own purposes.

Ex: This also introduces the theme of the temple in Ephesians for the first time. In Exodus and Leviticus, ἅγιος is used frequently both to describe the priests, the temple, the priestly garments, the sacrifices, and the nation which was, itself to be a priesthood to the nations. To call these people holy was to place them in this storyline and in this context. And, it is to say that they are the place where heaven and earth intersect, the place where people dwell with and and where God dwells with people. They are a foretastes of the eternal hope or a restored world.

Faithful. πιστοῖς in Christ Jesus.

Ex: A description of their consistent perseverance to the gospel. Faithfulness to the gospel. But even this faithfulness itself is found, not in them, but in Christ Jesus. They have not made themselves faithful, Jesus has made them faithful.

This is another reference to salvation by grace alone. Even our own faithfulness to the gospel comes only because God has made us faithful.

Ap: A wonderful way to encourage people is by pointing out God's faithfulness in their lives. Their own faithfulness to the gospel is evidence that God has not abandoned them. Their faithfulness is a sign of his faithfulness.

C) New Covenant Greeting (1:2)

Grace and Peace.

Ex: Paul is likely invoking the Aaronic blessing from

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Paul is not just choosing two ideas and praying that we would experience them; rather, this prayer informs us of something profound about the Christian life. What the Christian needs, in all stages of his life, is grace and peace. Emphasizing our ongoing need for God to be at work in our lives. To continue to give to us his grace and peace.

A claim to the deity of Jesus -- the giver of grace and peace along with God the Father.

2) A Call To Worship: Praise to The God Who has Blessed Us in Christ (1:3-14)

A) Remembering the Big Picture

This is a difficult section of Scripture as we start out. It's full of theological language and ideas. And it can be difficult to remember the big picture while we're discussing all of these finer points of Paul's theology. And as we approach this section, I'd like for us to keep two things in mind, two things which, if we remember them, will protect us from missing the overall idea Paul is trying to communicate as we parse out the dense theological language.

1) This section is a call to worship, not a theological essay.

This begins a section of praise that extends through chapter 3. It's important to remember that these chapters are primarily worship and prayer to God centered around what he has done for us in Christ. It's not a systematic theology or a theological essay. It's worship. And this praise to God climaxes at the end of chapter 2 with a celebration of God's creation of a New Temple which is made up of all God's people, both Jews and Gentiles, who are in Jesus.

This worship song is very Jewish in style, bringing to mind many Old Testament songs of praise to God for his works of salvation:

Melchizedek to Abraham. : Blessed be God Most High,

who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

Abraham's Servant. . Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.

Psalm 41:14. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.

. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

By beginning his letter this way, Paul mean to say that the salvation of these Gentiles from sin is another demonstration of God's faithfulness to his promises, and is still working to rescue his people and bring them to himself.

And ultimately, Paul write to say that God is working his plan to bring the unruly, rebellious creation into United subjection to Christ, and he has chosen to begin with us.

Paul calls people to worship God for salvation. This is a worship song.

The Function of Worship in Ancient Israel.

1) Celebrated what God has done to rescue them. This act of worship Paul is engaging in is in response to the climax of this Old Testament story. God has come and has proven his faithfulness to his people in bringing about a redemption, not from physical slavery in Egypt, but from spiritual slavery to sin and Satan.

2) Sustained the Covenant Community While They awaited FInal Rescue. For Israel, worship sustained them as they awaited their promised inheritance from God and the restoration of all things.

2) This section presents itself as a part of the Old Testament's story.

The language Paul uses here places the Ephesian's salvation within the Bible's own storyline. Jesus' work doesn't exist separate from the Bible's story up until this point, but as a fulfillment of it. In the work of Jesus in his death, burial, resurrection, and reign, God has brought about the fulfillment of all of the promises he gave to his people back in the Old Testament.

Paul primarily picks up on Old Testament promises of a New Exodus, a spiritual deliverance from sin. A spiritual rescue from spiritual oppression and slavery. And when this happens, the prophets wrote that God would establish a New Covenant with his people, a covenant in which he would write his law upon their hearts and forgive them of their sins.

And all of this has been done in Jesus, the rescuer and now reigning king.

God had been making promises to restore the world to how life was back in the Garden of Eden ever since . Promises given to Abraham, to Moses, to David, and to Israel in the New Covenant. Paul writes that God has been faithful to these promises in and through Jesus' work.

This is what Paul means in when he says,

 . For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

In Ephesians, Paul says the same thing through Old Testament pictures and by repeating over and over again that God's purposes and plans have all been accomplished "in Christ" "in him" or "in the one he loves."

1:3 -- We are given every spiritual blessing in Christ

1:4 -- We have been chosen in him.

1:5 -- We have been adopted through Jesus Christ.

1:6 -- We have received grace in the beloved one.

1:7 -- Jesus is the one in whom we have redemption and forgiveness.

1:9 -- God accomplished his plan for the fulness of time in him.

1:10 -- God is uniting all things in him.

1:11 -- We have an inheritance in him.

So remember the big picture. God has finally done what he has promised for ages that he would do, and he has done it in and through Jesus. And in response to this, Paul praises God.

God's greatest work of salvation is what he has done to rescue us from sin through Jesus.

B) Praise For Spiritual Blessings (1:3).

This expression of praise introduces the rest of the section. Paul begins a 202 word sentence which begins in verse 3 and extends through verse 14.

1) An Expression of Praise. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

2) The Reason for The Praise. "Who has blessed us."

3) Threefold description of the blessing:

Type: Spiritual

Location: In the heavenly places

Means: In Christ

The rest of the chapter seeks to explain the content of the Spiritual blessings and gives reasons why God is worthy of praise (καθὼς).

This is done in two distinct sections:

1) Praise the God who

2) Because he

The order here is essential. God blesses us, so we praise him. God doesn’t bless us in response to anything in us, or anything that we give to him. All of God's blessing towards us is whole unaffected by us. If we get this backwards, we get the gospel itself backwards.

(ZECNT Eph): The term “spiritual” (πνευματικός) clarifies that the nature of this blessing is associated with the new covenant gift of the Spirit (), which is highlighted at the end of the section (1:13c–14), thus forming an overarching inclusio (also called “bracketing”; this is a literary form in which the beginning and end of the passage contain parallel wording or ideas).

Three prepositional phrases introduced by “in/with” (ἐν).

with every spiritual blessing.

In the heavenly realm. This doesn’t mean that these blessings have no working out in our day to day life, as we will see later, especially in chapter 4 and following. And as we have already seen in verse 3, they result in worship.

In Christ. “God has blessed his people by virtue of their union with Christ. Whereas once they belonged to Adam, participating in his sin and sentence of death, those who have exercised faith in the Redeemer are now joined to Christ and participate in his death, resurrection, and new life. This use of the dative case could additionally have the sense of “sphere,” that is, referring to the new life as lived in the realm of and under the influence and leadership of Christ.”

Paul will spend through the end of verse 14 further unpacking and explaining these spiritual blessings.

C) Praise God: He Chose Us and Predestined Us (1:4-6).

This section begins to give the basis for the praise by further elaborating on the spiritual blessings Paul has hinted at earlier.

This is a choosing of the individual so that they become a aprt of the group.

God does this blessing by choosing these people to be his own, and he makes this possible by forgiving them of their sins. The only thing that we bring to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.

. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery.

. Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, Let my son go, so he may worship me.”

“We also find out that he made this decision out of a heart of love (ἐν ἀγάπῃ). Some have taken the prepositional phrase with what precedes (e.g., “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love”; KJV; NRSV), but it is more naturally taken with the participle that follows (NIV; ESV; NASB). It precedes the participle in , where there is no dispute over its placement. This statement then gives an endearing picture of God as one who has chosen people to be in a relationship with himself, contemplating this out of a heart of love. This runs counter to any picture of God where he appears as cold, calculating, or austere in election.”

It's the same with us. We are adopted as God's sons and daughters that we might be to the praise of his glory.

“Nevertheless, given the pervasive influence of OT thought on this passage (and the letter as a whole), Paul also has in mind the concept of adoption that characterized David’s relationship to God. Through Nathan the prophet, God promised to be a father to David and said, “He will be my son” (). Second Temple Judaism looked to this passage as a promise that would also be fulfilled in the future at the time of the restoration, but with an extended application to all God’s people: “And I shall be a father to them, and they will be sons to me. And they will all be called ‘sons of the living God’ ” (Jub 1:24–25; see also 4QFlor 1:10–12). One author accurately notes, “If adoption is about anything it is about belonging, a belonging where God as ‘Father’ occupies centre stage in his ‘family.’ ”

“The fact that God did his choosing in this pretemporal period strongly underlines his initiative and grace in salvation.”

(ZECNT Eph): It is also suggested by Paul’s statement of Christ’s goal of presenting the church to himself without spot or wrinkle and that she should be “holy and blameless” ().

(ZECNT Eph): The infinitive phrase here expresses the purpose or goal of the election. Under the old covenant, God summoned his chosen people to a life of holiness and purity (). This has not changed under the new covenant (see ). Thus, Paul begins the second half of the letter with the admonition to “walk worthily of the calling to which you were called” ().

The root of this election is love, later in verse 7, his grace. This is all language used of Israel in the Exodus and in her covenant with God.

“The final purpose of election is then relational. God is bringing together a people whom he can delight in and enjoy.“

“Why does Paul choose to elaborate on election and commend this truth to the readers? It could be, as some have suggested, that he is in a more pensive mood with extra time on his hands as he faces the constraints of Roman custody. More likely, he stresses election because it is an important truth that his readers need to hear and reflect on. Paul’s teaching on election will provide comforting and instructive counter-teaching to the fears of readers who formerly embraced astrology, magical practices, and even the worship of the renowned goddess Artemis. Although cultic images of the Ephesian Artemis depict the signs of the zodiac prominently on her chest as a necklace, she provided false hope to those who looked to her to break the inexorable chains of cosmic fate.

Similarly, those who were accustomed to paying a great deal of money to a local magician for a spell to break a bad horoscope or to thwart the impact of astral spirits on their lives would find Paul’s teaching remarkable and moving. Their fate does not rest with capricious and hostile spirit powers populating the heavenly realms. Their fate and their eternity rest in the hands of the one true God, who has chosen them to be in a relationship with him before the hostile spirit beings even came into existence. Their future is secure and blessed because of their election in Christ and their present dynamic relationship to him.“

“ (ZECNT Eph): God took great delight in thinking of his future people and being kindly disposed toward them.”

(ZECNT Eph): Dead Sea Scrolls: “God established his covenant with Israel for ever, revealing to them … the wishes of his will which man must do in order to live by them” (CD 3.13–16; emphasis mine). By contrast, good works and ritual observances have nothing to do with what God reveals about his electing purposes in .

(ZECNT Eph): God’s ultimate purpose in selecting and predestining a people for himself is that it would lead to his own glory.

(ZECNT Eph): the first refrain functions as an exclamation of praise to the marvels of God’s grace bestowed on his people.

(ZECNT Eph): He describes Christ with an endearing title of affection that was applied to Israel in the Old Testament: “the beloved one” (ὁ ἠγαπημένος; see the LXX of ; , ; ). Although this is the only place in the NT where the perfect tense of this participle is applied to Jesus, Paul speaks of Jesus as (lit.) “the Son of his love” in . The gospel writers also use the expression (lit.) “my beloved Son” (; ; ; ; ; ; see also ).

D) Praise God: He Forgave Our Sins and Revealed His Plan (1:7-10).

(ZECNT Eph): The central section (1:7–10) of this text emphasizes incorporation into Christ by beginning and ending with “in him” (ἐν ᾧ … ἐν αὐτῷ), which thus forms an inclusio.

Redemption is language which describes purchasing a salve and giving that slave their freedom. And this reminds us once again of the Exodus where God rescued Israel from slavery, freed them, and gave them an inheritance.

But why the mentioning of the forgiveness of sins here? The original Exodus wasn't about forgiving Israel's sins. They weren't enslaved because they were sinners.

Forgiveness of sins was tied to the restoration of Israel back into the promised land and the giving of the New Covenant ().

Exile was tied to Israel's sins, so the forgiveness of sins was associated with a return from exile, a return to the promised land, and a receiving of all of God's promises and blessings.

.

Comfort, comfort my people,

says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,

that her sin has been paid for,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

And it was also tied to the original exile from the Garden of Eden, where Adam, like Israel, was kicked out of the land because of his sin. And only the forgiveness of sins was powerful enough to restore the land to Israel, to Adam, to us.

So then, in the lives of Paul's readers, God has accomplished his plan to unite heaven and earth, and it will be through them that he will finish his plan of uniting heaven and earth completely and finally.

And that's exactly where Paul goes next.

We find that our hope is not found in escaping earth, but in heaven and earth uniting together again just as it was in the Garden of Eden.

The main informing background to Paul’s usage of the term comes from the OT and, particularly, the exodus event. When God raised up a redeemer in Moses, he told him, “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem (λυτρώσομαι) you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (). This was a defining event for Israel, and they were called to remember their redemption from slavery on a continual basis (see ; ; ).

The new covenant people of God have also experienced redemption—a second exodus. Christ has purchased them from the curse of the law (), and they have been bought with a price (). That price was his blood (διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ) that he gave on the cross as the means of securing the redemption (). He did this by taking their place in receiving the condemnation and punishment due to them because of their transgressions (; see also ). Paul elsewhere expresses this idea of substitution through the use of a preposition meaning “in place of” in connection with the word for the price of redemption: he “gave himself as a ransom (ἀντίλυτρον) for all” ().

The slavery from which God freed his people was the bondage to sin. Thus, this redemption implies “the forgiveness of our offenses” (τὴν ἄφεσιν τῶν παραπτωμάτων), which is an accusative expression linked to “redemption” in simple apposition (note that it is not connected with “and” [καί]). It is not entirely surprising that Paul uses “offenses” (παραπτώματα) here instead of “sins” (ἁμαρτίαι) although the parallel passage in actually uses the word “sins” (ἁμαρτίαι). Paul frequently uses both terms (see, e.g., ; ), and both can be found in the OT (see, e.g., [18:13]; ; ) to refer to sinful actions, whereas he can also use the term “sin” (ἁμαρτία) to refer to the condition afflicting all of humanity that bends it toward evil.

In the larger context of Ephesians, redemption is not only to be defined in terms of forgiveness. makºes it clear that believers now have freedom from the three forces that once held them in bondage and destined them to death, that is, the power of “the age of this world,” “the ruler of the realm of the air,” and the “flesh.” Believers have also been redeemed from “darkness” and the resultant alienation from God (4:18). Ultimately, their experience of redemption exempts them from condemnation on the future day of judgment (4:30).

E) Praise God: He Chose us and Predestined Us (1:11-12).

F) Praise God: He Sealed us with His Holy Spirit (1:13-14).

Inheritance -- Promised land language. Turn into the entire new creation, the united heaven and earth in Christ.

. All this I have spoken before you, O Lord, because you have said that it was for us that you created this world. As for the other nations that have descended from Adam, you have said that they are nothing, and that they are like spittle, and you have compared their abundance to a drop from a bucket. And now, O Lord, these nations, which are reputed to be as nothing, domineer over us and devour us. But we your people, whom you have called your firstborn, only-begotten, zealous for you, and most dear, have been given into their hands. If the world has indeed been created for us, why do we not possess our world as an inheritance? How long will this be so?

Or, is it God's inheritance in the church, the new Israel? .

The Holy Spirit -- the down payment of that inheritance. He is the one who, already, here and now, has joined heaven and earth together. His role is that of a guarantee. The word that's used here is τῆς κληρονομίας, in modern Greek, it's used to mean "engagement ring." It's that think which signifies to us now, that the union will one day certainly take place.