Apocalypse Now: Part 1- Meet Ephesus: Grace & Peace

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

Good morning everybody. My name is Johnny Griffiths.

If you've not met me before, I am a volunteer member of the

teaching team here at River City and my family and I have been

here since about 3 years ago. And it's a joy this morning to

be the one who gets to kick off our new series in the book of

Ephesians. Pastor Jason mentioned sort of

been passing out in the lobby, I think towards the end of last

year, hey, I'm thinking about teaching Ephesians.

And I had a don't throw me into the briar patch kind of moment.

And he very graciously welcomed me to be a part of the

preparation and the teaching of this book.

Before we dive in, there is something that we do as a

community. It's a marker of who we are that

almost every week we tell the truth about ourselves.

It's our confession. It's a two-part call and

response which encapsulates the story of our life this side of

the age to come. It's a recognition that we are

entirely, completely loved by a good and gracious and holy God

and that we are not yet as we will be.

It's something that we say together.

And if your first time here today, I invite you to read

along with us. I'm going to say the first part

and then we all say the second part together.

OK Church, this is who we are. We are badly broken.

We are deeply loved. Yes, yes, we are.

Ephesians, this is a letter that takes up 6 chapters in your New

Testament. It is a letter that we'll get a

little history on in a moment here.

It is a letter that has transformed people, which we

will hear a little bit about. And it is my hope and our hope

that as we spend 14 weeks Sunday by Sunday, studying through

this, all of us will also have transformation moments in the

way of Jesus. And so talking about Jesus, let

me ask you a question. When did you last behold Jesus?

When did you last have an encounter with His Majesty and

mystery and love that stopped you in your tracks?

Maybe the kind of encounter that caused tears to well up, either

in repentance or in deep joy and gratitude, or in all of those

things together, to behold Jesus is more than merely to see some

information about Him. When did you last behold Him?

Hold that question as we continue into this.

Now, a little bit of background for you.

What Scott read for us is a short section of Acts 19 and a

sort of overview of the birth of the church in Ephesus happens in

Acts 18 through 20. And what we got was a little

snapshot of really the first formation of disciples in the

way of Jesus and Paul's ministry there.

But it wasn't his first visit. Paul had been there almost a

decade earlier on the way through, left a couple of people

there who knew Jesus and went on his journey.

He then came back to find as we heard some people that had heard

some stuff about Jesus and have been baptized into John's

baptism but didn't really fully understand the gospel message.

He then spent years with them forming them in the ways and the

teachings and the person of Jesus.

Now this letter, little pro tip for you, the today's going to be

a bit more kind of teaching and might have some more classroom

style vibe to it. I hope you can roll with me for

that will set us up for things to come.

But what you have is a copy in an English translation of a

letter, for which we have various manuscript copies.

This is the formation of the Bible.

These books that we hold as the word of God aren't magic.

They didn't just mysteriously appear in different languages

around the world in the perfect form of only God has touched

this. Human beings were involved in

the process of writing down the message and the words that God

wanted us, His church, to have, and he guarded that message.

And we can be confident in these texts for many, many reasons,

but they are historical documents first and foremost.

You got to hold that these were written by people that weren't

us, in a place that wasn't here, in a time that wasn't now.

And in the transference of those documents, sometimes things

happen. So we have this letter to the

Ephesians, but if you read more than one commentary, you're

going to run into a bit of a problem.

So if you want to have no problems with your theological

study in life, read 1 commentary and only one and you'll be fine.

But if you mean read more than one, you find that humans have

different perspectives. Some people think that this

letter wasn't written by Paul and wasn't written to the

Ephesians. And I want to tell you that not

to trouble you, but to let you know that there is study you can

do to dig into these things. I've read a lot of commentaries.

I took that for the team. You're welcome.

All right. I am actually convinced from the

arguments and from the text that Paul wrote this, and I think he

wrote it somewhere around 6162 AD.

And from the text we see the Paul was writing it from prison.

He was a prisoner for the Lord as he penned these words.

And some people think that he was possibly in Rome at the time

in prison when he penned this letter.

And then what about the audience?

The, the, the text that we're going to read says to the Saints

who are at Ephesus, but the earliest manuscripts don't have

the words at Ephesus. So is it to them or is it not?

Well, the letter itself, if it was written only to the

Ephesians, would be a bit confusing because it's slightly

impersonal. But we've seen Paul has spent a

significant amount of time with these people.

The best understanding that I found about this letter is it

was a circular. It was written to travel around

multiple churches in Western Asia, one of them being the

churches at Ephesus, and Ephesus was a significant place.

More on a in a moment on that, but most likely because of the

deep personal relationship and because of the commercial status

and cultural status of a city like Ephesus, that the church

made a copy for their own records in Ephesus and just put

in Ephesus so that when they read it, which was the practice

of the churches, they knew. This is addressed to us.

It's also addressed to others. So for the sake of this study,

in these next 14 weeks, we're going to focus on this letter in

the context of Ephesus. Just know it probably went to

other churches in the region as well, and that the manuscript

that we're reading is valid and authoritative and good.

OK, everyone, good. Seven of you are good.

I'm very glad about you. If you could spread the word,

we'll be fine. Ephesus was known as the first

and greatest metropolis of Asia. It was a crossroads of land and

sea routes. It had vast commercial and

cultural, military and economic importance.

It wasn't the capital of the Roman Empire, but it was

extremely significant. We've got one of those handy

dandy artist renditions of the city of Ephesus to go up on the

screen here for you. And you might look at it and

think, well, that doesn't look like very much, but it had some

significant architectural features that have been

discovered, including a large theater and the Temple of

Artemis. It was an established and

beautiful city. And during Paul's lifetime, the

population would have been around 200,000 people.

So bigger than here, right? 200,000 It was only exceeded at

the time by Rome and Alexandria. Ephesus mattered.

And if you start reading your New Testament looking for

Ephesus, Ephesus is going to pop up a whole bunch.

Let me tell you, it's going to be an act.

It's right here in Ephesians. It's in first and second

Timothy. It's in Revelation.

It was an important place. And in this important place,

they've discovered now by archaeology, a massive Ephesian

theater that looks like this next picture up here.

And this was likely the site of the huge commotion and the

protest against Paul by the silversmiths of Ephesus that you

can read about in Acts 19. It's big by ancient standards.

You might look at that and be like, man, ain't no Pro Football

team playing in that thing. And you're right because they've

only got half of a field. But this would have been a place

of of culture and of games and of learning and of debate.

It was a significant place, but more so than that, Ephesus was

the home of the famous temple to Artemis in Roman pantheon Diana.

It was situated on the northeastern edge of the city.

And it was one of the wonders of the ancient world, which

scholars NT Wright and Michael Byrd say was an icon of Ephesus.

In the same way that London is known by the Big by Big Ben and

Sydney is known by the Opera House, right?

Those things that people just know.

Oh, yeah, Ephesus. I know that it's got that big

temple to Artemis, right? That's Ephesus.

But what about this letter? You could read it every single

week before we're done with this study.

Read it 14 times, and it's not going to take you that much time

a week to read it. And yet it has the power to

transform as God's Spirit is at work through His word.

Tom Wright, who's NT right just by a common pseudonym in his

Paul for Everyone, says that the letter to the Ephesians stands

in relation to the rest of Paul's letters, rather like the

London Eye. It isn't the longest or fullest

of his writings, but it offers a breathtaking view of the entire

landscape. To continue on a roll of quoting

British people, John Stott says it was John Calvin's favorite

letter. Armitage Robinson called it the

crown of Saint Paul's writings. William Berkeley quotes Samuel

Taylor Coleridge's assessment of it as the divinest composition

of man, and then adds his own dictum that it is the Queen of

the Epistles. Church history holds up this

small letter of as worthy of our close attention because of who

it tells about, because of who we are in light of the teachings

in here. So this week, I'm trying to

paint kind of a big picture and give some scaffolding for us as

we spend these next 3 1/2 months studying this book and some of

the key themes that are kind of come up, a lot of them next week

and the week after. You're welcome, Pastor Jason,

you can have that rambly long sentence.

Include things like identity and authority, unity not just

amongst the body, but unity between the heavens and the

earth, themes of the ages. When do we live?

Do we live now? Do we live in the age to come?

Do we live in both? Stay tuned.

Themes of faithful living faithful living in the household

of God, Faithful living in our social relationships, in our

family dynamics, in our relation to government and politics and

civic entities in relation to neighboring countries.

Faithful living in light of the powers and principalities.

If you hold what would actually be called a secular humanist

worldview, which I'm sure you would all outright say you

don't. But if you did hold such a

thing, Paul's teachings are going to rub you the wrong way.

Because Paul, along with the majority of the rest of the

world, believes there's more going on than we can touch and

see. More going on than a science lab

alone can prove He's going to talk about these powers and

principalities. But one of the key themes, and

it's a word that only shows up a couple of times in the text, but

is throughout. And it's why our series is

called Apocalypse Now. That fill you with a little bit

of anxiety. Like, oh, boy, are we finally

going off the deep end? Like we navigated a series on

Revelation and we didn't go weird and crazy.

Is this the moment? We're not going weird and crazy?

And here's why, because of what this word actually means in the

original text, apocalypse and mystery seem to go hand in hand

in Paul's thinking and writing. And I want to recommend a

resource to you. bibleproject.com is a great

website for digging into the scriptures and the wholeness of

them. They have a classroom feature,

which I did the class on Ephesians.

It's free. It's wonderful.

If you're like 14 weeks isn't enough, Johnny, I need more.

Go sign up for this class. It's really, really good and

it's going to open up some areas of study and understanding for

you. In their notes on this word, the

Greek word apocalypsis means to uncover or reveal literally and

metaphorically. And they say that Ephesians

summarizes the most important apocalyptic event in history,

Jesus life, death, and resurrection, as well as the

gifts of the Spirit. They break it down at chapters

one through 3 of Ephesians cover how to understand the apocalypse

of Jesus, and chapters 4 through 6 talk about how to respond to

the apocalypse of Jesus, how to understand it, and how to

respond to this apocalypse. And along with apocalypse, we

have this word mystery in the Greek mysterion.

You can see how we jumped real far from the Greek to the

English right mystery, which to you might conjure up ideas of

something which is like hard to know and you can't see it and

it's hidden and veiled and I just don't know what's going on.

But in this context, mystery is specifically more like what

Leslie New Begin calls an open secret.

It's something hidden that has now been made known.

Something hidden that has now been made known.

So I brought a visual aid thanks to Ricky and the team for

helping me out and getting this set up.

You may have been wondering like what is under here?

Why does Johnny have two tables? Who does he think he is?

Is it because he's British and he thinks he can just can't

commandeer more tables? Maybe.

But you don't know what's under here.

I'm assuming I do know. But actually it's covered.

I I mean, like, I could have a trick played on me right now.

The apocalypse is the unveiling. The apocalypse is the moment

that I do that. Yeah.

The mystery is the content of what is in here.

Now, this box says doughnuts all over it.

You might assume that there are doughnuts inside of this box and

you would be accurate. There are doughnuts right here.

And this is a little testing moment of your bravery, I

suppose, or your hunger. But I'm just going to sit that

bad boy right there and you're welcome to a doughnut.

You can have a doughnut for real.

It's like I'm not going to point you out and be like there you

are getting a doughnut. If you want a doughnut, please

have one. They're available.

Here's the thing by sight, you see that there's doughnuts here,

right? I see some people wanting some

doughnuts. I put these in the wrong place.

Excuse me just a second. Maybe an adult would take those

from me and pass them to children that are like, I

really, really want a doughnut. You're welcome, kids.

And here's the thing that those kids know, eating a doughnut is

not the same as looking at a doughnut.

When was the last time that you beheld Jesus?

Not so that you looked at him objectively at a distance, but

that you tasted and saw that He is good, right?

Can't just look at the doughnuts, people.

You've got to eat the doughnuts. Apocalypse has this weird vibe

that goes on in our own lives. It's not just a religious word.

It happens in our life. I want to tell you a couple of

quick stories here. The start of 2025 was brutal for

me. I got I heard on January 16th

from my sister that my my mom in England, who I'd not long before

moved into a care home, was very, very unwell.

And so on the same day I packed a bag, got on a plane and flew

to England. I got two days with my mom

before she passed. I'm so thankful for those days.

Hold your loved ones close, OK? Just hold them close.

I went through the process of all of the preparations for the

funeral and gathering family together.

And my, my father has Alzheimer's.

So you can only imagine, I'm sure, what that process is like

to walk your father who has Alzheimer's through the, the

funeral of his beloved. We got through it because God is

kind and gracious and there's a lot of humans in the world that

we're close with that helped us through that season.

And I was stood after the service.

We gathered a few people at the care home to have some some

sandwiches and snacks and bits of British food scattered

around. Picture what you want.

If it's scones and cream, go for it.

They sadly weren't there, but they should have been there,

right? My cousin Nick came up to me and

when he came up to me, he, he just, we were just talking,

reminiscing, telling stories. And he said, Johnny, I really

love that season where you lived with us.

Like the whole room just sort of faded.

I just said, Nick, you're going to have to tell me.

What do you mean? Oh, after you were born, your

mom wasn't well, I knew that Cesarean section in 1981 is not

the same as AC section today. Recovery time is longer.

I also had recently, in the last year or two, found out that my

mom struggled with postpartum depression again 1981.

It's not the same thing as it is now.

And so she was carrying a lot of shame and struggle.

My dad had to go back to work and it turns out I spent some of

my first months living at my aunt's house with my cousin

Nick, delighted to have a baby brother essentially in the

house. I did not know this.

I had an apocalypse over a ham sandwich.

Looking at my cousin. Right.

Sometimes apocalypse is a big. Sometimes they're a little

smaller. Like the time I recently had a

family member with me and her kids and we'd gone to the

library that just moved here. Gone to the library, hit HEB on

the way back, did some shopping. I'm loading my groceries into

the trunk of my car. My sister-in-law is loading her

groceries in, and she hangs them onto hooks that I swear didn't

exist previously. Somehow, between entering HEB

and coming out of HEB, they've been communication with Honda,

who had quickly engineered these handy little hooks.

I didn't know they were there, let alone what they were for,

but once I'd seen it, I couldn't Unsee it.

You better believe my eggs. Hang on, those bad boys.

Now, with an apocalypse, once you've seen it, once you've

heard it, you can't go back. It changes your understanding of

the past. You, it changes your experience

of the present and it changes your actions moving forwards.

And it requires a deep humility, A teachability that says, I

don't have it all figured out and I'm willing to change.

It's the feeling of the plot twist, but it's your life.

Quoting John, start again. He says many readers have been

brought to faith and stirred to good works by the message of

Ephesians. One search was John McKay,

former president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

To this book I owe my life, he wrote.

He went on to explain how in July 19 O3.

As a lad of 14, he experienced through reading Ephesians A

boyish rapture in the highland hills and made a passionate

protestation to Jesus Christ among the rocks in the

Starlight. Here is his own account of what

happened to him. I saw a new world.

Everything was new. I had a new outlook, new

experiences, new attitudes to other people.

I loved God. Jesus Christ became the center

of everything. I'd been quickened.

I was really alive. When was the last time you

beheld Jesus? See Jesus, people are post

apocalyptic. So actually another question to

consider that's like the first I asked, is this, when did you

first see Jesus? Do you remember the moment when

sight gave way to faith and you knew that he was the Lord?

See, both Paul and the Ephesian church are post apocalyptic, and

we tend to import our ideas of the apocalypse from contemporary

movies, right? And if it's post apocalyptic,

we're dealing with Terminated Judgement Day and we're dealing

with the Book of Eli, and we're dealing with Hunger Games, and

we're dealing with all these narratives.

And there might be a few zombies running around in there as well,

right? We're dealing with all these

narratives that depict a world that has completely fallen apart

and the few shraggly survivors who are left trying to eke out

an existence in the barren wasteland of life.

That's what we think it means. Jesus people are truly post

apocalyptic. Everything is different because

of an encounter, a first encounter with Jesus.

Paul. He wasn't known as Paul at

first. He was known as Saul and he was

one of the Super elite up and coming loud voices.

Get it done. Keep the purity of Israel,

Jewish people. And if you read about him in

Acts and especially historian Acts 9, you see this remarkable

transformation. Saul is on his way to Damascus

to persecute the church. That's his job that day woke up,

got got washed and dressed, but on my robes said my Shema, and

I'm going to go kill me. Some Christians, right?

That's the job for the day. And on the road on the way down

there, the risen Jesus encounters him, and Saul is

knocked from his horse and knocked from his arguments and

knocked from his way of seeing so that he cannot see the world

actually at all to begin with. He's blind.

He's LED into the city, and he's there for a few days until some

guy who was like Jesus, I don't want to go to him because he's

here to kill Christians. And if you notice, I am one of

your people. And I don't think that's a hot

mix. OK, let's not do it.

And God was like, no match. Let's do it.

Go. I want you to go and talk to him

and tell him the truth. And when Ananias goes and speaks

the truth and prays for him, scales literally fall from Pauls

eyes and he sees Paul is post apocalyptic.

The Ephesian church is post apocalyptic.

They have this moment initially in Acts 18 where they sort of

hear some of the message, but it's not quite all clear.

And then Paul comes and explains the way more clearly and they

are baptized. And not only are they baptized,

if you keep reading, they do some weird stuff like they take

magic books, right? Because we've all got a stack of

those hiding around somewhere, right?

There was a really famous one, the Ephesus grammator.

It's like a historically famous form of magic.

They took their books and they he burned them because they were

post apocalyptic. They couldn't go back to seeing

how they'd seen Wright and Bird again.

Say. Paul's powerful ministry in

Ephesus had three immediate results.

A split in the synagogue community leading to continuing

opposition. The burning of magical scrolls

by many who in a strong local tradition had practiced various

kinds of sorcery. A decline in the worship of the

goddess Artemis. This last caused trouble with

the local silbersmiths whose livelihood focused on making and

selling Artemis related idols. Do you think you just walked

into like the MCU or something? You're like, what is going on?

There's sorcery and there's gods and idols and things happening.

Maybe there's more going on in the world than comfortable

western worldview things. Maybe there's more going on in

your life behind the scenes than you've realized, but the

Ephesian citizens were radically changed by Jesus.

And however, if we jumped forward to the revelation as

given to John, Revelation 2, one through 7 to the Angel of the

church in Ephesus, right? The one who holds the seven

stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden

lampstands, say this. I know your deeds and your labor

and perseverance and that you cannot tolerate evil people.

And you have put those who call themselves apostles to the test,

and they are not. And you found them to be false.

And you have perseverance and have endured on account of my

name and have not become weary. And we're like, yeah, love this

report on me. It's great.

But I have this against you. You've left your first love,

therefore remember from where you've fallen and repent and do

the deeds. You did it first or else I'm

coming to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place

unless you repent. And he goes on to a few more

details. But what happened between Acts

20 and this radical saw Jesus changed my whole life.

And some 30 years later Jesus is like hey I see the things you're

doing but where's your heart? Where's your heart?

You don't love like you used to love.

Repent Jesus. People must be apocalyptical.

I don't think I made that word up but I am stretching its

meaning. OK.

Because what I mean is 2 things. Firstly, you must be a people.

We must be a people who have an ongoing real encounter with

Jesus that we see and keep on seeing.

Why? So that you can be

apocalyptical, meaning that you can be a revelation to the

culture around you of the love and the goodness of Jesus.

So when did you last see him and we need an apocalypse.

We need fresh eyes to see the beauty and the majesty of Jesus

and the love of God from which we can truly live.

We need an apocalypse and we need it now.

So every week I invitation for you and it's on the notes as

well is to look for and capture and insight a fresh bread.

Today's stuff about Jesus, His church, the Kingdom, this age,

and the age to come. Make those notes and share them.

Talk with each other about these apocalypses.

Now we're going to go to the text of Ephesians and you'll be

very glad to know, based probably on the time here, that

we're only doing 2 verses. You'd be amazed how long I can

take on 2 verses, but I'm going to be quick.

So let's hear the opening of the letter that we have known as the

Letter to the Ephesians. I'm reading from the NASB.

Couple of points for you. We're going to have our public

readings from a version like the New Living Translation or the

Message, because those are good to hear.

But we're teaching from the NASB so that we actually capture some

of the Pew peculiarity of the language.

Specifically, this is the 2020 setting of the NASB.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. 2 the Saints

who are at Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus

Christ. That's our text.

You might think, well, that's just like dear Ephesus, Why are

we going to spend the rest of our time there?

Well, it's like dear Ephesus, but Paul's actually a master

writer, and he packs so much of what he's going to explode out

in the rest of this letter into these two verses.

His dear Ephesus is not like ours.

So what's in here? Well, he starts with this.

He says Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus.

Now again, some of you in the room might be starting to feel

nervous like apostle, are we going to get weird?

We're not going to get weird in that way.

I hope we're weird in the right ways.

I hope we're weird in the ways of the Kingdom that don't live

according to the ways of the earth.

But an apostle Paul wrote in common language, just like

Apocalypse had an A meaning and an understanding apostle did

too. And I do believe that God gave

some specific people to the early leadership of the church.

But there are lots of apostles mentioned in the New Testament

who aren't part of the 12 that might ruffle your feathers.

But just read the Bible and let's talk about it.

This word apostle is the Greek apostolos.

Again, we didn't reach far, did we?

To get from the Greek to the English.

And it means ascent one. The term is used of one who is

sent under authority under another's authority, with the

stress resting on the sending authority.

It's not really about the vessel that's carrying the message,

it's about the one who gave the message and the content of that

message. Apostles, according to Mark

Roberts and his commentary, were authorized by someone and give

an authority to carry messages on the senders behalf.

So in many ways we can look at Jesus as the apostle of the

Father. He was sent as actually says I

only do what I see the Father doing.

Those are his words. He looks to the Father and he

does what the Father leads him to do.

Paul is now sent of Jesus. Paul now envisages his self, his

life, his identity, his purpose, his significance in the world as

a representative agent of Christ Jesus.

The diplomatic ambassadors are a great picture of apostles.

They're not the sum total of it, but a diplomatic ambassador is

sent with authority to represent a nation to other nations.

And they typically live outside of their home country where

they're sent from, right? They have authority to

represent. They have been called to it,

appointed to it, and they carry this message so much so that

they embody the rulership of the one who sent them.

Paul says I'm an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

Paul is not working from his own power.

He is not working from his own position or privilege.

Paul is not doing this by his self will or setting his own

course. If you were setting your own

course, I don't think shipwreck, beatings, imprisonment,

execution would be like your top methods of getting the job done.

You'd probably be like, hey Gemini, hey ChatGPT, could we

come up with an alternative plan here?

This one is death and I'd like a life one, but because he is

yielded to the way of God, It's not his self will.

He's not his own course and he is not the platform.

He's not trying to build himself up.

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

This is who it's from A to the core Jewish man in other

writings where he'd be like, I am the most Jewish Jewish person

you've ever met. Look at my credentials and who

is he writing to? He calls them the Saints who are

at Ephesus. Or if if it was a broader

letter, the Saints. And we picture people with Halo

trapped in stained glass who we've just forgotten all of

their foibles and faults and problems, and they're just like

these perfect people. That is not what this word means

to Paul. He's writing to the church,

including Gentiles, predominantly Gentiles in these

regions, and he calls them Saints.

Everyone's a St. Everyone is a St.

The English phrase Mark Roberts, again, it's translated, I think

in the NIV as God's holy people, translates a plural form of the

Greek word hagios. And typically Haggio is rendered

as Saints, but God's holy people faithfully captures the meaning

of the original. He goes on to say that it's

important to remember that all believers, not just special

Christians, are Saints. Did you wake up this morning, go

and brush your teeth and look in the mirror and be like, hey, I'm

a St. I'm a part of God's holy people.

Is that how you view yourself? Because Paul addresses this,

This way, you are holy ones. And whilst everyone's a St. it's

also worth noting that Saints are special.

That word hagio is used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek

translation of the Old Testament to refer to created spiritual

beings like angels and stuff. Paul equates God's people with

the angels as well. There's something wonderful

going on here which will unpack further in the teaching.

It's worth knowing everyone's a St.

Saints are special and Saints are locals.

The Saints who are at Ephesus, if I was to say the Saints who

are at River City, I can name a good amount of them.

I can recognize them when I find them shopping in HEB, which is

apparently the place that River City people connect is.

Like in the grocery store, right?

That's where we see each other. Quick check in, how's it going?

Or in the school line or wherever it is, you can know

Saints, you can know their lives, you can know what they

are about. And he says that they are

faithful in Christ Jesus. If you think of something like

James's writing in chapter 2 when he talks about faith and

deeds, the the faith and action go together and he's

acknowledging the partnership is the life of an apprentice.

We join in by faith and do the things of faith.

We are called holy and we live out of our identity.

So one apocalypse that you could have in this, an apocalypse now

would be Jesus is the Lord who makes our lives significant.

Jesus is the Lord who makes our lives significant.

So you don't have to go scratching after significance

somewhere else. Verse 2 grace to you and peace

from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

An important point that that third word, that grace to you.

Our English doesn't hold it, but Texan does and as a Brit I'm

going to attempt it. This is the y'all of Paul.

Grace to y'all, you together, a people together.

Not a collection of individuals who are going to remain

individuals, but a people. Grace to you and peace.

And he's saying this to Gentiles.

And throughout this letter, when he's saying you, he's talking to

the y'all, the Gentile community who are now part of the church.

And then he'll say we. And he's talking about the

joining together of the Jew and the Gentile into one people,

grace and peace, that which is freely given to bring about a

wholeness of life. It's a really clever thing that

Paul does. I mean, we can get geeky for

just a minute more. Yeah.

Typically, I didn't wait for an answer.

I'm just going ahead. So typically, letters would

begin with this word Chiron. And some of the New Testament

lets us have it. It's like greetings.

And it comes from this word for Joyce and more like greetings.

It's like a peppy sort of like, hey, how's it going?

Paul kind of explodes that word from Chiron to Karis and Irene,

Grace and peace. It is a beautiful way of

acknowledging and being together and saying this is what we live

by. Grace and peace.

I'm badly broken and deeply loved.

Why would the Ephesians need this?

They're living in like the hotbed of life, like all of the

culture and money and everything flowing through Ephesus.

Why do they need grace and peace?

You see, the Ephesian church had dis empowered itself to hold to

Christ. They had put themselves in a

vulnerable position to say yes to Jesus and Paul had done the

same. He had disempowered himself from

the religious elite and he's writing from prison with the

loss of power and privilege. It was a precarious looking

existence that faced those who confessed Christ alone.

The cost of apprenticeship was high.

Human experience needed. Comfort, right to be comforted,

the provision and blessing and a wholeness that incorporates

health to all of your life was available was a vital reminder.

This wasn't just dear Ephesus, this was coming out the gates

with everything that would cause people to lean in.

I need to hear this. Do you need grace and peace?

Is there anything in your life that comes to mind right now

where you're like, well, that's just chaos and a heart mess and

I'm working so hard and getting nowhere over here, and it just

feels like the walls are pressing in.

Do you need grace and peace? We live in New Braunfels.

They lived in Ephesus. But it's not that different,

right? It's not that different.

Where could such promises come from?

Applause as they come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus

Christ. God our Father due to Gentile

slave to master across all the borders that you can think of.

Paul is saying we're family. I'm not alone.

If you look around this room, you are not alone.

You are a part of a people that belongs together under the same

God, God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not the Emperor, not Artemis, not the powers and

principalities. Jesus is Lord, and this is what

got Christians killed. It was not a good time to be a

Christian under Roman rule. They got blamed for all kinds of

stuff. They were used as puppets in

political games. They were thrown to lines.

It was bad. But primarily, they suffered

because of their fidelity to the Lordship of Jesus alone.

And so another apocalypse just from this verse would be we are

joined together as family under the lordship of Jesus.

And this is Abraham Kuiper quote that some of you may know, but

if you don't, it's worth hearing where he said that there there

is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human

existence over which Christ who is sovereign over all does not

cry mine. There is not a part of your life

that Jesus isn't seeking to be the good Lord over for your

welfare. There's not a part of your

existence that he desires for you to keep separated from the

family that we are in, God the Father.

And so here are the implications for you.

Firstly, we belong to God and one another.

Therefore, we do not need to fight to belong.

Instead River City and every local church that belongs to

Jesus. It can be a community that

welcomes others into the family of God.

A community that breaks down socio economic barriers, a

community that reaches across the divide for the sake of

togetherness. In love.

We already belong. It's what he's saying to them.

Hey, you arrived, you're here. We're part of the family

together now. We got to live this out, and

where do we live it? We live in the Kingdom now.

This is your second implication. We live in the Kingdom now, so

we don't need to fear the culture.

So much of what goes wrong in our witness to the world of the

goodness of Jesus and his Kingdom is that we're just

afraid. We're afraid we're going to have

what's as taken from us. We're afraid that we're going to

get contaminated. We don't need to fear it.

The kingdom's already here. It's already here.

The age to come has broken into this one, and nothing can be

taken from us that would be kept anyway.

Nothing can be taken from us that would be kept anyway.

Instead of living in fear, we can live right here, right now,

as people of another Kingdom. We can be rooted in the love of

God in order to offer a taste of the Kingdom in the fruit of our

lives. You are to be an apocalypse to

people around you. And thirdly, we serve the true

Lord and He gives all we need. We don't need to fight for

power, position or privilege. Instead, we get to be a people

who give their power, their treasures, their talent, their

time, their influence for the good of others.

We are a people who get to rely on the authority of God.

We are a people who serve God and those around us for His

glory and for our joy. These are the implications out

of just the dear Ephesus. I hope you're prepared for more.

We're going to go deep. We're going to go broad.

It's going to mess with things in our lives.

My life is transformed through the study of and the reading of

and the living of this book. And my prayer is that it would

be the same for you. So you're going to see next week

that Paul writes in really long sentences.

So I made one of my own. I think it's going up on the

screen in the spirit of Paul, our hope that y'all will see and

encounter the Lord Jesus more clearly so that each of you

individually and all y'all as a community, see, I know how to

use this. We'll grow in unity and maturity

in Christ, living freely, courageously, and counter

culturally in and from your true identity.

That's a big long sentence, but that's our heart for you, for

us. Together though, we would see

and encounter the Lord Jesus more clearly and be transformed.

When did you last Behold Jesus? Ask that question every day and

try to answer it today. This is how I saw Jesus today.

Let's pray, church. Father, we're so thankful that

you have done all that is needed to make US1.

We're so thankful for you, Lord Jesus, who through your blood,

through your death and resurrection have given us life

together that we might abide in you and therefore in the Father.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are one who comes to open

our eyes to see the goodness, the truth, the power, the wonder

of Jesus. Would you do that?

I pray these next 3 1/2 months would be deeply transformative,

not just for us, but for all the communities that we walk in.

And would you be glorified in US and pleased in US?

Thank you, Lord, for your goodness.

In Jesus name, Amen. Thank you for joining us today.

River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing

God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that

you've been able to experience that today.

As grateful as I am that you've spent this time listening in

this morning, this podcast is no substitute for full

participation in a local church. I love it when River City people

listen to other pastors, but it is those who show up week after

week faithfully giving their support and time and resources

that make all of this possible. If we can help you get connected

to a local church, pray for you, or support you in any way, click

the link in the description and let us know.

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Don't forget to subscribe and don't forget to share this with

your friends. Thanks so much for listening.

May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.