Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Announcements

Join us on Sunday Mornings at 9:30 am dor Sunday School, Wednesday evenings at 6 pm for our Study on Puritan theology.

Next Week is Lords Supper and we will have a potluck dinner following service.

Prepare for Worship

Call To Worship

Responsive Reading - 28 Psalm 86:1-13

Confession

Prayer of Confession

Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being, whose face is hidden from us by our sins, and whose mercy we forget in the blindness of our hearts: cleanse us from all our offenses, and deliver us from proud thoughts and vain desires, that with reverent and humble hearts we may draw near to you, confessing our faults, confiding in your grace, and finding in you our refuge and strength; through Jesus Christ your Son.

Assurance of Faith

Hear now, O Church, who stand in the gap for the world as representatives of God.

We have been made clean.

As the angel of the Lord touched the unclean lips of Isaiah and made the man whole in word and deed, readying him to do his will, he has done the same for us by the cleansing touch of his Son, Jesus Christ.

In him, the disparity between our word and deed is made right.

In him, our unkindness in action and in word has been forgiven.

Go now in the purity of the King to speak the Gospel through actions of justice, mercy, grace, and love.

Confession of Faith

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;

who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven,

and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost,

the holy catholic Church*,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Worship

159 O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus

353 O Church Arise

356 I Know Whom I Have Believed

Prayers of the People

Prayer Request

Lords Prayer: Found on the back cover of the Westminster handout

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done

in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.

Amen.

The Mystery, the Ministry, and the Mission

I truly enjoyed preparing the past 6 weeks of messages on the Reformation, but I am excited to get back to Ephesians, if only for a few weeks before Advent season begins.

We spent the better part of the summer reading and working through Paul’s letter to the church in Asia Minor.

And in it we have see a number of beautiful truths.

Today we pick up in Chapter 3. we will look at verse 1 thru 13.

Probably the largest section of passages I have covered at one time to date.

In this letter that is thought to be a circular letter, Paul for the first time addresses the reader in a somewhat personal nature.

Not like his other epistles, but he does seek to connect with the reader on a personal level.

Looking back to chapter 2, which we will not go and read, we find that the last section we covered there was talking to the church about how before Christ they as Gentiles were strangers to the covenant, but how in Christ they were made anew and all believers are now one in Christ.

And now here in chapter 3 we see Paul expound upon that principle.

Eph 3:1-13

There is alot to take in here.

Paul talks about being a prisoner, and the nature of his calling to the Gentiles, about the mystery of Christ that is now revealed, and how this revealed mystery through his ministry accomplishes the mission of God in the church.

We all have a great desire to belong.

Being excluded regardless of age, position, or wealth, creates a lump in the pit of our stomach.

We beat ourselves up, thinking there must be something wrong with me, did I say something wrong, am I not attractive enough, am I the wrong economic class?

Or we turn our distress outward, lionizing those who excluded us, they must all be jerks, they don’t know a good thing when they see it, or they are just ignorant and self absorbed.

Regardless of how we react, we know that to be left out, regardless of the situation is something that none of us desire.

But what if you didn’t even know you were being left out?

Or the group that left you out didn’t even realize that you could be included?

Today we all take the multi-ethnic nature of the church for granted.

We cannot even imagine the idea of excluding someone from the grace of God because of where they were born or their ethnic make up.

Notice I did not mention race here, because that was not the nature of the exclusion in the OT, rather it was the lineage of your birth.

In the NT we even find the exclusion of ethnic Jews, the Samaritans.

Paul in chapter 2 quickly mentions the that the Gentiles were once far off, but now were part of the covenant of promise.

Here in today’s Scripture we see him expound on the nature of that new inclusion.

How God’s plan was veiled in mystery, but through the unveiling ministry of Paul, it is revealed the mission of the Church.

And most importantly how when we see this amazing revelation through the eyes of the Ephesians we can see new importance in our calling today.

The Mystery

In many bibles this section of Scripture is titled The Mystery of the Gospel revealed.

And today we might ask ourselves what was so mysterious about the Gospel?

We can look at Scripture and see a clear revelation in the OT about the life and death of Christ.

His work on the cross, His role as the suffering servant, his once for all sacrifice for sins.

1 Cor 13:12

Paul was talking to the Corinthians here and he likened their understanding of God’s plan to that of looking in a poor reflecting mirror, not like ours today.

And he indicates that in the end when we are face to face with God we will know more fully.

But what is amazing for us to look at is that today we have an even greater clarity of the Gospel than these original recipients did.

And because of that we often miss the point of a piece of Scripture such as what we are looking at today.

Neither the Jews nor the Gentiles were able to fully see or understand the outcome of the coming of the Messiah

Jews and Gentiles

Paul speaks to the gentile recipients of this letter in a manner that clearly delineates the fact that he is a jew and they were not.

I Paul, a prisoner of Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.

Today we would speak of ourselves a Christians, followers of Christ regardless of our ethinc make up, as long as we are all followers of Christ.

But that would have made no sense to those people at that time.

Paul was bringing a message of hope from the Jews to the Gentiles.

A message that the Jews had not foreseen as intended for anyone other than the nation of Israel