Defined By Relationship

If you take your mind back to the 12th century and the Middle

Ages, they used to categorize all of the knowledges, all the

arts, all of the virtues. They would put these, organize

them into hierarchies. And if you lived in the 12th

century, the scholars would have said that the highest of all the

hierarchies belong to philosophy.

It was the crown of all knowledge, and they believed

that human reason governed and ordered all sciences.

You Fast forward 100 years to the scholar Thomas Aquinas in

the 13th century. He said that theology is a

science defined as a systematic body of knowledge, a complete

body of knowledge. And he said it's a science

that's higher than philosophy because it draws all of its

principles from divine revelation rather than human

reason. And so not only was theology

greater than philosophy, but it united all forms of knowledge

under itself. Astronomy and mathematics and

medicine and metaphysics and physics and philosophy and and

logic. And he says it's because only

theology explains why all of these others exist, and what

they exist for unites everything under itself.

And so for this reason, Aquinas said, theology is the queen of

the sciences. As you begin to go through

history, this moniker queen gets applied to other things.

The the Rose would become the queen of the flowers, and poetry

would become the queen of the arts.

And it's not the king. Kingship's a symbol of power and

dominance and rule, but it's the queen symbolizing beauty and

centrality and majesty and excellence and maybe most of

all, elegance. And so the church began to apply

this to the New Testament. As they read through the

Scriptures, as they read through their own New Testament, they

saw the elegance and the majesty of the book of Ephesians, and

they designated it the Queen of the Epistles or the Queen of the

letters. The king is Romans.

Romans is the king of the letters.

It's the first in prominence. It's the first in order of the

books. It's a systematic presentation

of doctrine, comprehensive in scope, logically rigorous,

complete and orderly. But Ephesians is the queen

because you read Ephesians, you see it's elegant and subtle in

its composition, and it's theologically rich, and it's

exalted in its subject matter. And we confess it's soaring in

its style, meaning it's emotional and awe inspiring.

So there's very little as you draw into this book.

There's very little that's taught in Ephesians that's not

taught somewhere else in the Bible.

And so we confess the glory and the power and the majesty of

Ephesians is not in its unique teaching and insight.

And we say the same is true. Scholars all agree that it's the

most beautiful of all of Paul's letters.

But the power and glory does not come from its rhetorical

flourish or it's exalted style. It's power and it's glory come

from several places and if you want to write these down, the

1st is on its focus. The focus of Ephesians is on

Jesus Christ and his exaltation as Lord.

And so if if theology is the queen of the scientists because

it brings all other science under itself, then we say the

Ephesians is the queen of the epistles because it unites all

things under Jesus Christ. It brings all things in Christ.

That's why it says 35 times. We're going to say it over and

over through the book. Everything is in the Beloved, in

Christ, in Christ Jesus, united in him, in him, in him.

It's subject matter, it's focus is exalted.

It's power and glory come from it's cosmic vision of the

church. It's comprehensive it gives more

of our purpose as a local church than anywhere else in the New

Testament. This is what we are to be and

this is what we are to do. It's it's comprehensive and that

it displays everything from the Holy Spirit and eternity past,

how we became united in him to the Holy Spirit uniting us for

eternity future. It presents a vision of local

communities and believers through which Christ displays

his wisdom and power to the world.

And through it, he he shows us to the rulers and the

authorities in the heavenly places, the the power of our

Lord. And it's powerful because it

transforms all the individual yous or eyes of this room.

And it it bakes all of the wheat into one bread. 1 lump.

And we are truly now we there's no I anymore.

When you read Ephesians, it's you, it's us, you all, it's us.

And you see this we is the fulfillment of the prophets like

Isaiah and like Jeremiah who envisioned a church that would

be from every tribe, tongue and nations and all for them would

not mean everyone but all people indiscriminately.

That to bring God enough glory He wants believers from every

tribe, tongue and nation, from every people group.

The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the

descendants of heritage Church, which we confess as you've seen

today are many power and glory comes from its subject matter.

It glorifies not only Jesus is the Son of God, but it exalts

the Father and it exalts the Holy Spirit and includes all

creation for all time. Again, it begins in eternity

past with the election and predestination of God the

Father, redemption in time, the Holy Spirit sealing us for

eternity future guaranteeing us the inheritance until we acquire

possession of it. It says to the praise of his

glory. It's, it's all-encompassing and

it extends not only to this exalted subject matter of the

Holy Spirit for all eternity, but it doesn't neglect the

individual responsibilities of husbands to their wives and

wives to their husbands and, and individuals to their employers

and children to their parents. It gets down and it's

applicable. It's theology and practical

living because theology is practical.

Theology is a way of life. It's not just for study, it's

for living, and it contains deep.

This book contains deep and unsearchable theological truths

and advice for how to live our Christian life.

And you see it in Ephesians one, as we're going to be in a

minute. But you go to Ephesians 2 and it

includes powerful statements such as this one on your

justification by faith alone. It says by grace you've been

saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It's the gift of God, not of work, so that no one can boast.

And you move into Ephesians 3. There's this great prayer of

Paul that according to the riches of his glory, he may

grant you to be strengthened with power through his Holy

Spirit and your inner beings, so that Christ may dwell in your

hearts through faith. To him be glory in the church

and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and

ever, Amen. And there's so many named

passages and Ephesians, they get nicknames because they're so

famous and powerful. You come to the the seven ones

of chapter 4, there's one body, there's one spirit just as you

were called to 1 hope that belongs to your call 1 Lord, 1

faith, one baptism, one God over all you.

The core value of this church in Ephesians 412, the purpose of

the pastors to equip the Saints for the work of the ministry so

that it's not the pastors and the elders and the deacons that

do the work, but you were to do the work and we equip you to do

this works. What Paul says, you move to

chapter 5, the household code, the instructions to parents and

children. The most comprehensive

discussion in Scripture on marriage comes in Ephesians 5.

And then what's in Ephesians 6? The armor of God is, is there

another named passage? Our defence against cosmic

powers in the darkness of this world.

So the power and the glory of this book come from its focus on

Jesus Christ, from its exalted subject matter, from its cosmic

vision for the church. But it also comes from its

style, as we've said, it is beautiful, it is elegant, it's

rhetorically powerful, it's poetic, it's beautiful, it's the

queen of the epistles, it's worship and praise.

And if I were to draw a diagram of your inner person, you know

the top of that, your heart, as truth permeates and enters into

your heart, the top of that diagram would be your mind,

because all truth has to enter into your mind.

And Ephesians isn't just about reaching your mind.

It wants to go deeper into your heart, and even below your heart

would be your will, what you want to do in this life and

below that your affections. That's what you love.

And Paul, as he writes Ephesians, says, I want to hit

all of it. I'm going to hit your mind.

I'm going to, I'm going to add this rhetorical flourish and

this authority that I have as an apostle.

And I'm going to drive all of this truth so that it transforms

your life, what you love, what you want to do.

It's aimed at the deepest parts of yourself.

It's devotional, it's convicting, it's encouraging,

and it's inspiring. And we say this is exactly what

you would expect from a letter that was super intended by the

Holy Spirit of God. We expect nothing else.

This is why Samuel Coleridge calls it the divinest

composition of man, the most beautiful book ever written.

So with that, that's what we're looking toward.

This is our book until next April.

And when we want to stop and ask the question, yes, it's

beautiful. Why did Paul write this book?

What was his purpose in writing? Ephesians commentator Nils Das

says that this book bears all the marks of a catechism for new

believers. That's not the only reason he

wrote it. But we confess as pastors,

that's why we picked it, because there's so many new believers,

young and old, in this church. And we want to go back to the

fundamentals of the faith. And we want to be like the

legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.

He used to always hold out a football every season and say,

you know the illustration, gentlemen, this is a football

and we want to come back and say church.

This is the apostle Paul. This is what an apostle is.

This is what the local church is for.

We want to go back to the basics to hit the fundamentals of the

faith. Peter O'Brien, another

commentator, says the essence is identity formation.

You have a whole new identity once you are put into the

church, Once you are baptized into this one baptism,

everything changes. And so we want to say that is

not the only thing, but it is a major theme.

There is identity formation that has to come in your new walk,

but we have to as a church agree with Clinton Arnold who says

it's not just one theme. You can't boil it down to 1

theme. There's 4 themes that are kind

of knit together in this book, threads that run throughout the

book. And he puts it together in a in

a wonderful purpose sentence. It says this Paul wrote this

letter to a large network of local churches in Ephesus and

the surrounding cities to affirm them in their new identity in

Christ as a means of strengthening them in their

ongoing struggle with the powers of darkness.

To promote a greater unity between Jews and Gentiles within

them and among the churches of the area, and to stimulate an

ever increasing transformation of their lifestyles into greater

conformity to the purity and holiness that God has called

them to display. So to boil that down and to make

it and state it simply, Ephesians is written to affirm

your identity. Your identity isn't in your

gender or who you're attracted to.

Your identity is being found in Christ.

That's the purpose of Ephesians one, one and two, it's written

to strengthen you in your ongoing battle against the

cosmic powers and authorities that surround us, the powers of

darkness that the third he writes to promote greater unity

between you and all of the other weirdos in this church that are

completely unlike you. There's, there's a very unique

body here and the one thing we have in common is that we are in

Christ. He's promoting unity among our

diverse membership. And finally, it's stimulating an

ever increasing transformation of your lifestyle.

And as you move through the book, we're going to make much

of this in the coming weeks. There's, there's two parts to

this book. There's chapters one to three

and then chapters four to six of the six, chapters one to three,

we confess our doctrinal or theological interpretations.

And four to six are ethical and moral applications or practical

applications. And to say it another way,

chapters one to three are the calling of the church.

Chapters 4 to 6 are the conduct of the church.

Say it another way. Chapters one to three are the

setting apart of the church. Chapters 4 to 6 are the set

apart lifestyle of the church, the application of all the

doctrines that we're going to study in one to three.

And we'll confess they are profound.

And you can't forget Paul's writing a letter to a collection

of churches. And it begins as any other

humble ancient letter would begin, turn to Ephesians one.

This will be the first of many times we say that together.

Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter one, verse one, and

we'll start this together. Read with me.

Paul begins this way. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus

by the will of God to the Saints who are an Ephesus and are

faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's as far as we'll make it today.

We're going to introduce the book as stand on the foundation

we're going to lay today about and the foundation is your

relationship is in Christ. Your identity is found in

Christ. And we're going to go next week.

You're going to see how you came to have that lofty identity.

And again, it is incredible. But your your text will say it's

it's written to Ephesus, but for a whole host of reasons.

We know that this was written to a collection of local churches

that were in the region of Ephesus.

This is written to to many churches.

And of all Paul's letters, it's the least situational meaning.

We don't know the background. He doesn't say that he's he's

writing argumentatively like he does in Galatians and Romans and

2nd Corinthians. He's not formulating an

argument. He doesn't have these false

argumentative partners that he often invents and argues

against. And he's not addressing sinful

issues or questions that are asked of him.

That's what he does in First Corinthians.

And he's not addressing addressing questionable theology

like we saw him do in Thessalonians.

And so if he's not writing to help with pastoral concerns,

he's not forming an argument, if there's nothing that is

demanding A pastoral response, then why is he writing?

It's an important question. And we we say he's writing

because he's in prison. And, well, he has time to write

there. He's writing because he's in

prison. And these churches are in his

mind and in his heart. And he's writing because he has

time. And his context is that he's in,

he's under house arrest. And so he's chained to a

rotating prison guard. Or if you know Paul, the prison

guard is chained to him as he's sharing the gospel.

And he writes them because he loves Jesus and he wants to

communicate something about him to them.

And he's writing because he loves these churches and he

feels a sense of responsibility to him because he planted them.

He's their church planner and he can't go to them physically.

And so he writes an encouraging pastoral letter to them in his

absence. That's all it is, an encouraging

pastoral letter. And so he teaches them, he

encourages them. He reminds them of their

identity in Christ, maybe most powerfully for us.

He reminds them of their resources in Christ, all of the

things that they can shepherd and Marshall to, to fight

against cosmic powers in this world, to live faithful

marriages. He, he shows them the path

forward toward victory and greater faithfulness.

And he writes this letter, he says, and he gives it to a man

named Taikikus to take to and circulate around these Ephesian

churches. And it's, it's kind of a

sobering thought if you're Taikikus, because it's at the

same time he writes Philemon, he writes Colossians and he writes

Ephesians and he binds them up in a satchel and he gives them

to Taikus to deliver. And so you think three books of

our Bible at one time in the hands of one individual, that's

that's a sobering responsibility.

That's the thing where you're going to you're going to check

both ways before you cross the street when you're carrying

this. This is this is how he's

delivering these letters. And in chapter 1, this is our

context. He's going to instruct the

Ephesians regarding how they came to be in Christ.

And he begins the chapter in the book with this inscription that

describes both the the writer and the reader and you as a

local church from the standpoint of your relationship to God in

Christ. That's what he wants to to

emphasize and highlight here, your relationship to God in

Christ. He he doesn't say, look at verse

1. He doesn't say Paul the Roman

citizen and he doesn't say Paul the Greek educated scholar.

And he doesn't say Paul the Pharisee, the the expert in

Jewish law and tradition and theology.

And he was all of those things. Those were not important here.

The most important thing about Paul, he says, is that he was an

apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

And we just read Acts 91 to 19 and you see it was by the will

of God. He struck him blind on a road

and he has to open his mouth and confess, who are you, Lord?

And he says, I will show you what you must do.

I will show you how much you are to suffer.

He takes him from this path and he says you're on a new path

now. Your identity is now in me.

You're not a persecutor, you're a worshipper.

And so he he turns his readers and he addresses their

relationship to God in Christ again before he reminds them of

the glories of how they came to be in that relationship.

He turns to the church. He writes in verse one to the

Saints, the the holy ones who are in Ephesus and are faithful

in Christ Jesus. This is the word hagios.

You are a hagios. You're, you're a holy one.

But the emphasis of this word in the New Testament, the beauty of

the word is it's almost never in the singular.

It's always in the plural because the emphasis of

Christians is not on you. The emphasis of the local church

is on us. He gave the authority to us.

We are to encourage and shepherd and counsel one another, a

visible and local body of believers.

We are the faithful ones in Christ.

It's going to be demonstrated powerfully in a minute when we

come together. We've already sang as one man

and we're going to come before the Lord under 1 confession, 1

Lord, 1 faith, 1 baptism and take the Lord's Supper together

as one individual. So you see, the emphasis is on

us, not you. It comes again in chapter 1,

verse 2 where he says grace to you.

It's helpful again as the foundation of our faith to to

remember this you is plural. When we when you read this book

in your bed, it's easy to see grace to you and say Paul's

writing to individual believers, but it's grace to you all.

And so we're studying this book. We're reading this book exactly

as we were intended to as a local body.

Grace to you all and peace from God the Father.

And there's even more emphasis that comes in the New Testament

with its emphasis on the word Christ.

You may have seen in our text 3 times, even going into verse

three he says it again. The emphasis is on Jesus Christ.

The word Christ is the New Testament equivalent of the Old

Testament word. What?

Anybody know Messiah? Christ is the Messiah.

And so the foundation of this expression comes all the way

back in Acts 236 when we were all baptized with the Holy

Spirit and the church was born. We formally became one.

And Peter preached a sermon on that day just over 2000 years

ago, and he said powerfully, let all the House of Israel

therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and

Christ. This Jesus whom you have

crucified. Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the

Christ and this has been the confession of the church from

the very beginning, from its conception.

Jesus is Lord and Messiah. Jesus asked Peter famously, who

do you say that I am? The world says that you're

Elijah. They say that you're a prophet.

They have all of these things, a madman, legend, liar, lunatic,

who do you say that I am? And Peter confesses you are the

Lord and he said you are the Christ, the Son of the living

God. And Jesus response, he blesses

him. Blessed are you, Simon, for

flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who

is in heaven. So church, the most important

thing about the apostle Paul is his relationship to God in

Christ. And the most important thing

about you of all the relationships that you have that

we're going to explore next week, the most important thing

about you is your relationship to God the Father in Jesus

Christ. And look at how he starts his

letter. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus

to the Saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and

peace from the Lord Christ Jesus of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 3, he's even going to say, blessed be the God and Father of

our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the endowment of

spiritual gifting that he was given.

Was that of an apostle and Paul says it wasn't by my will that I

became an apostle. I didn't desire this.

My will was overridden by the will of the Father who said you

will now be an apostle. And I was once discipling a new

believer and we went to probably should have started with the

gospel. We didn't.

We went to one of the letters and I thought we would read

together over an hour, you know, a book or a chapter at least of

the Bible. And we would go through a

chapter together. And we got to the first words,

Paul and the this individual stopped me and he said, hold on,

who's who's Paul? I was like, OK, here we go.

This is Paul. This is the apostle Paul who's

this is who he was. And as we kept reading, this is

Paul an apostle. And he said, wait, hold on,

what's what's an apostle? So we had to stop and, you know,

this is what an apostle is. And before we know that was our

time. That was as far as we made it on

a morning discipleship. And so this this is one of those

opportunities in the book of Ephesians, we can have a Vince

Lombardi moment. And I want you to say, how would

you answer that question if you were stopped and somebody asked

you, what is an apostle? What is apostleship?

How would you respond? And this goes back to the an

absolute elementary principle of our faith and our understanding

of Scripture. An apostle in the broadest sense

is one who is sent. It literally means a sent 1A

messenger. It's a, a, a delegate or a

herald or an ambassador that the emphasis of it comes from you

are sent with the authority of somebody else and you are sent

representing someone else and you are sent accountable to

someone else. If a herald goes with the

message of a king and he gets the message wrong and he comes

back before the king, it's not going to go well for him.

So you're going as a representative accountable to

them. And when Jesus after his

crucifixion, he comes to his disciples.

There were 11 and he said, I'm sending you, you are my

apostles. And the church replaced Judas,

who hung himself with another. And then we've already read

today there was one other, there were 13 apostles because God or

Jesus Christ called the apostle Paul from heaven to be his

apostle to the Gentiles. And so they were chosen and

sent. That's the word that's

emphasized. They were sent by the Lord Jesus

Christ with his message, his authority.

It's often compared to a power of attorney today because they

would go with the power and authority of the one who sent

them. And scripture says to reject the

message of the apostle is to reject the message of the one

who sent that apostle, which has great implications for the book

of Ephesians. Some would say, well, it's not

written by Jesus so it's somehow not as important.

No, Paul was sent by Christ. His words are super intended by

the Holy Spirit. It's he comes with his

authority. So we can't understand Paul's

apostleship and you potentially can't even understand your own

apostleship without understanding first the original

apostle, the apostleship of Jesus Christ, because in Hebrews

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3, verse one, the author of Hebrews commands us to

consider Jesus the apostle and the high priest of our

confession. So when we speak of Jesus, he is

the apostle. He's the sent one of God.

And it's imperative that you understand this.

When Jesus goes through the book of John, there's a couple things

you need to know. He says you have to know that

I'm the Son of God. You have to know this, I come

from God the Father. And he says, second, you have to

know that he sent me. Sometimes we'll include this in

our baptismal formulas because it's, it's so important to

Jesus. And if it's so important to

Jesus, it has to be important to us.

He says in John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his

only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not

perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent his Son into the world in order that we might be

saved through him. He was sent into the world.

John 536 It's the Father who sent me.

John 629. This is the work of God, that

you believe in him whom He has sent, John 657.

As the living Father has sent me, John 716 I have not come of

myself, but of him who sent me. John 816 The Father sent me.

John 1142 That they may believe that you sent me in the high

priest. A high priestly prayer, that

great prayer before Jesus goes to the cross.

This was His emphasis. Verse 3, verse 18, verse 21,

verse 23, verse 25. God, God sent me.

Jesus is the apostle, the great apostle, the sent one.

And as you get to the end of the book after the resurrection,

something interesting happens in John 20 verse 21, where Jesus

John 20:21

says, as the Father has sent me, Even so I am sending you.

And there's that transfer of authority even as the Father has

sent me, so I am sending you. That send is the verbal form of

the noun word that's showing up in your Ephesians 11 apostle.

He he's sent your apostling. And so Ephesians is going to say

in chapter 2, the foundation of our faith was laid by the

apostles and the prophets, but Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.

Another way to say that is he is the the capital capital, a

apostle, the first apostle. And then he sends these sent

ones with his authority as the capital, A apostles.

He says it again in John 1718. As you sent me into the world,

so I have sent them into the world.

And a beautiful thought comes again when you come into the

book of first and second Timothy.

By the way, where was Timothy pastor in Ephesus?

Paul commissions and sends Timothy by the laying on of

hands, he solemnly charges him, right, I solemnly charge you in

the presence of God and Christ Jesus.

He was judged of the living and the dead.

And by his appearing in his Kingdom, it's, it's formal.

He tells him, I give you the authority to preach the word,

reprove, rebuke and exhort with great patience and instruction.

So he, he takes this authority that God gave to the Son and

that the Son gave to the apostles.

And now you see the apostles like Paul are putting that

authority squarely in the local church.

This is a theology of apostleship.

And he's going to tell Timothy and instruct him to appoint

other faithful men. And so we recognize that Timothy

is formally passing authoritative Apostolic

preaching into authoritative non Apostolic preaching.

And from this moment you're going to have the capital a

apostles. They don't start another's

second generation of apostles, capital a apostles.

It's not what you see the apostles doing.

What they do is they start a second generation of little a

apostles and you start to see that churches begin under the

inspiration of the Holy Spirit to send out missionaries.

And it says in Scripture that they are little a apostles.

And he even says as a matter of emphasis, Paul passed this

authority and this responsibility on first Timothy

1/3 in Ephesus. He says in that verse, remain at

at Ephesus. So you have Jesus the great

apostle. He commissions 12 capital a

apostles who then commissioned the local church with the

authority to preach God's word to send out disciples.

And we say they are little a apostles.

This is this is displayed beautifully in Acts 13.

If you want to see a living illustration of how this works

out in a local church in Acts 13, it tells you kind of a

little bit behind the scenes. It says that the Holy Spirit set

aside or set apart consecrated 2 individuals to go out and be

missionaries. And so the church then

recognizes those two individuals.

That church lays their hands on those two individuals and sends

them out, which by the way, that's why we do that.

Any time that we send out missionaries or we send out

church planners or we, we bring pastors into this church, what

do we do? We lay hands on them because we

recognize the Holy Spirit has set them apart.

Now we set them apart. And when we send them, look at

this in Acts 13, it says afterwards, so being sent out by

the Holy Spirit, they went. So the Holy Spirit sets them

apart. The church recognizes it, the

church sends them. And then when they are leaving

the church, it says, and now the Holy Spirit sent them.

Do you see how it works? There's this two fold sending.

They are now little apostles. In that context, they are called

the the apostles, Paul and Barnabas, Little A.

Now Barnabas is an apostle in the same sense as Paul is as

missionaries of a local church. Do you see how it works?

This is a theology of apostleship.

And so by the way, when we if somebody asks you what is an

apostle, do you now have an answer?

So when he comes to you and says what is apostleship, what is an

apostle? I hope that you'll have an

answer. That is Paul and his

relationship to God in Christ. He's already introduced the

recipients and their relationship to God in Christ.

And so as you move into verse 2, Paul greets them with his

standard greeting, a beautiful greeting, rich in theology.

He says grace to you and peace. I love this grace to you and

Shalom, peace. This is the highest focal point

of salvation. This is what salvation is about,

is peace with God. And this is what we lost in the

garden when we were sent out. We were separated from God.

We became his enemies. We were no longer his sons.

And this is what salvation's about.

You can think of any metaphor for salvation that that you can

think of justification being declared righteous, adoption

being a son of God, propitiation, his wrath being

turned away, redemption being bought with as a as a slaver, a

prisoner of war with the precious blood of Christ.

All of these metaphors are pointing toward one thing, peace

with God, that that's what it's about.

This is what your salvation is. You were once an enemy and now

you're his friend. We confessed it and we sang it

earlier. You were once a foreigner or you

are far from him, and now you are his Son.

It's relational harmony with God the Father.

And peace was obtained, Paul reminds us, because of the grace

or the unmerited favour of God. And so Paul's purpose as an

apostle, if you could sum up his whole purpose of apostleship and

coming to the local churches, he tells you what it is.

In Acts 2024, he says I'm called to testify of God's grace.

And in that context, in Acts 2024, he calls all the Ephesian

elders to himself, and speaking to those pastors, he says to

them, I do not account my life of any value or as precious to

myself, if only I may finish my course in the ministry that I

received from the Lord Jesus. What was it to testify to the

gospel of the grace of God? So he's commissioned by God to

teach grace and he comes to them in the grace.

He comes to these Ephesians in that same grace.

And that's why we humbly confess as a church that we are saved

sola gratia meaning by grace alone, through faith alone, by

Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

And the Puritan Thomas Goodwin defines this grace.

He says grace is more than mercy and love.

It's super adds to them. It denotes not simply love, but

the love of a sovereign, transcendent superior, one that

may do what he will, that he, he may wholly choose whether he

will love or not. Now God, who is an infinite

sovereign, who might have chosen whether he would ever love us,

for him to love us. This is grace.

End Quote. Grace and peace from God the

Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our source of new covenant blessings is from God the Father

and the Lord Jesus Christ. Or we might even confess from

the Lord God through Jesus Christ, we experience his peace

being the recipient of His grace.

And now he begins to unpack this wonderful message to us.

Ephesians 3/4. He says when you read this, you

can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.

From this point on, we will received the mysteries that were

hidden in previous ages but now are revealed to us in Christ

Colossians 1/26. It was hidden for ages and

generations, but now is revealed to us his Saints.

And so I hope that you understand that as we stand here

at the end of verse 2, you stand at the threshold of something

very deep and very profound. It's vast.

And you see here that the most important part about you is your

relationship to God and Christ. And as we come for the next

three weeks together, God's going to reveal to you how you

came to be in that relationship. And it's sobering.

And you're going to realize that the story is much bigger than

you. And this is a story that's much

bigger than us. We are part of a cosmic

reconciliation that's happening between God and this world.

The cosmic significance of Jesus Christ and his grand vision for

us in the world. And as we get ready for that,

let's pray that God would bless our time together.

God, Lord, help us understand this, this queen of the

epistles, this divinest composition of man.

What a what a privilege to get to look into things that angels

long to look in and we need your Holy Spirit to to reveal this to

us. And we're, we're excited, Lord,

that we can come together as you intended it in a, in a gathering

of a local body to hear the word as Paul wrote it, to be

encouraged by it, to see exactly how we came to be in you and,

and the cosmic significance of that God, we're humbled.

And again, we thank you for our salvation.

We thank you for your, for your grace, for the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding that we have No

Fear of judgement, No Fear of wrath.

The cup has already been poured out.

And Lord, we take up our cup of joy even now as we look toward

communion, remembering all that you did from us to put us in

this state. We remember what was required,

and we thank you. And we do this in Jesus name,

Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.