Battle Ready: "Set Apart" Eph 1.1-3: Pastor Daniel Reese

This morning we're going to embark on some basic training.

For many of you who have served in the military, this concept is not a new one.

Every branch of our military has some basic form of training that new recruits must complete before they're ready for duty.

It's described like this, officially called initial entry training.

It prepares recruits for all implements of service.

Physical, mental, and emotional.

It gives service people the basic tools necessary to perform the roles that we will be asked of them during the duration of their tour.

Well, today we're going to begin our spiritual boot camp.

We are, and our purpose is much the same as military training.

It will give us the basic tools necessary to perform the roles that has been asked of us to perform during our tour.

Because just like the men and women of our armed forces and how they must be prepared for battle, we too must be prepared for a spiritual battle.

Our training manual for this process is going to be Paul's letter that he wrote to the church in Ephesians nearly 2,000 years ago.

But it's a great training manual because it's still useful today, just as it was when it was first written.

Okay, so Paul wrote this letter from his prison cell to the church in Ephesus in about 62 AD.

As we'll see, he writes primarily there to believers, many of whom had become followers of Jesus Christ as the result of one or more of Paul's missionary trips there.

His first trip to Ephesus was a brief stop on his way to Antioch to Syria.

They arrived in Ephesus where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila.

He himself went into the synagogue and he reasoned with the Jews.

When they asked him to spend more time there, he declined.

He declined, but as he left, he promised, I will come back if it's God's will.

Then he set sail from Ephesus.

After traveling to Antioch, Paul visited some of the churches that had been earlier established in Galatia, in Phrygia, on his way back to Ephesus.

Upon his return, Paul made Ephesus his home base for his missionary activities for two and a half to three years.

Several events from Paul's stay there are recorded in the book of Acts.

Paul's preaching there in Ephesus led to a riot that threatened the local silversmith business

that was dependent on the production of miniature silver replicas for the temple of the Greek goddess Artemis,

one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

Paul fled the city since Paul had stayed in Ephesus longer than any other place during his missionary journeys.

It's not surprising that once he is imprisoned in Rome, once he's thrown in there,

that he is concerned about the believers there, right? And so he's wanting to encourage him.

So he sits down and he writes this letter that can serve as a basic training manual for the followers of Jesus Christ.

Not just in Ephesus, but here as well in the entire region.

And this letter continues to serve that purpose for believers all over the world nearly 2,000 years later.

So the letter itself contains two distinct sections. The first three chapters primarily contain doctrine.

In these chapters, Paul recounts all the spiritual blessings that we have as a result of God in the work in our lives.

The focus of these chapters is what God has done for us.

And then the second section is chapters 4 through 6 primarily contain practical examples,

Isaiah 4 · chapter mention

practical principles about how we are to live out our faith here on this earth, alright?

And so the focus of these chapters is how we are to serve God in our daily lives.

You can think of Paul's letter in the terms of a spiritual checkbook.

Chapters 1 through 3 describe the great riches that God has deposited into our account.

Now those deposits are infinitely large. They're too large to be counted, but they are simple and they're easy to use.

Chapters 4 through 6 describes how we can withdraw from that checkbook, alright?

So as part of our training, I'm encouraging all of us as we go through the book of Ephesians over the next year and a half.

As we go through the book of Ephesians, I want to challenge us and encourage us to memorize the entire book of Ephesians as we work through this training manual together.

I know that many of us, me included at times, don't really like to memorize.

So we've come up with all kinds of excuses why we can't memorize.

For many of us, our excuse is that we're getting older.

And we don't remember things as well as we used to.

But in spite of our excuses, I'm convinced that memorizing scriptures is one of the most and at the same time most ignored spiritual disciplines.

I know that some of us haven't memorized even a few verses of the scripture.

An entire book of the Bible seems a bit overwhelming to us.

But I was looking at the U.S. Marine Corps site this week and I was amazed that all a Marine recruit is required to memorize.

In Marine Boot Camp, you'll start drill almost immediately.

A few hours studying basic drill and ceremony will help immensely.

As the other services, you should memorize the U.S. Marine Corps ranks.

Additionally, you should have told you to memorize the 11 general orders of a century.

While not mandatory, the Marine Rifle Creed is nice to know.

You should also memorize the Marines hymn, all of it, if possible, but at least the first verse.

You'll need to memorize the U.S. Marine Corps' core values, study Marine Corps history,

and commit the characteristics of the M16A4 rifle to memory.

Round all this and then you still have to memorize the code of conduct.

It seems a bit overwhelming, doesn't it?

So how do we memorize a whole book of the Bible?

Well, we find out and the answer is to a well-known joke.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

That's how we'll tackle the book of Ephesians.

One bite at a time.

Each week, we'll take two to four verses and memorize them,

and we'll keep reviewing the verses that we've already learned.

As a tool, we've got you some scripture...

What are these called? Scripture journals, Scripture notes.

This is the entire book of Ephesians here.

And then as we go, it also provides pages for you to take notes in.

And so you can just carry this around if you don't feel like carrying your Bible around

and go through this, take notes in this, whatever.

So those are on the back table if you'd like to get one, or you can find them on Amazon.

We're asking $6 for them. That's what they cost.

And so if you want to do that with us, please grab one.

If you struggled with what to read...

If you struggle with where to start...

I want to read my Bible. I don't know where to start.

I've just given you the option.

I've just given you this option.

So this week as a church, let's memorize the first three verses of Ephesians.

Now, sometimes it helps to memorize things with a rhythm.

You memorize it in rhythm as you hit your hand.

Paul and Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

Sometimes that helps to trigger our memory.

Sometimes you can do hand motions.

If you're younger, my kids have memorized a whole slew of stuff just by putting it to song.

Sometimes it helps to memorize it just by reading it a bunch of times over and over and over again.

Whatever it takes, I'm asking us to commit the book of Ephesians to memorize.

You can do it. I believe it.

So with that said, let's start reading Ephesians together.

We're going to read the first three verses together of chapter one. You ready?

Here we go.

Paul and Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Jesus Christ,

grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ

with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

All right. Wow. There's a lot in just those three verses.

Now, those tend to be the verses we just like to skip over, right?

Like that's the introduction.

There's not a whole lot in there.

When I first began to look at these verses,

it seemed that I got caught up on all the details that I missed out on the overall message of just these three verses.

But as I looked at this passage over and over and over again this week,

as I meditated on these verses alone this week, as I worked on memorizing them,

the overall theme of these verses became clear.

The clear message of these verses is that as believers in Jesus Christ,

we have been set apart for the purpose of knowing and serving God.

And just as everyone in the country chooses to be set apart to join the military for some basic training,

not everyone heeds the call to join God's kingdom and go through spiritual basic training.

In these three verses, there are three aspects of how we are set apart for God.

The first one, I am set apart for salvation.

You are set apart for salvation.

Today, if we're going to write a letter, we would begin with a greeting, right?

Dear so-and-so, or to whom it may concern.

And then we would end the letter.

We would identify ourselves as the writer, like sincerely or love or whatever, right?

The nature of the greeting and salutation would both reflect the nature and the purpose of the letter.

If I'm writing a personal letter to a friend or a family member,

I would start dear such-and-such, and I would probably end it with love.

If I'm writing a business letter, I would start it off to whom it may concern, and I would end it with sincerely.

During Paul's times, letters were written differently.

The writer would identify him or herself as the writer, as well as the audience in the opening of the letter.

That's what Paul does here, alright?

First, he identifies himself as the writer of the letter.

We're going to come back to that here in just a moment.

And then he identifies the intended audience of his letter in the last part of verses one and two.

To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay, a few of the earliest manuscripts that we have of Ephesus don't have the words in Ephesus,

which has actually led to some Bible scholars to suggest that perhaps this actually was a circular letter.

And it was intended to be read in a number of churches in the area around Ephesus.

That position is also supported by the fact that this letter is much less personal than many of Paul's other letters.

He doesn't include any personal notes to many of the people.

He would have certainly known in Ephesus.

As we've already seen, this letter is a careful blend of both doctrine and practical instruction.

And it seems that it would be appropriate to have been circulated amongst many local churches in the area around Ephesus.

But whether or not the letter was circulated strictly for the Church of Ephesus or for several churches,

it's quite clear from Paul here in writing to his followers of Jesus Christ.

He begins with, to the saints.

Now, in our culture today, particularly in this part of the country, with all the Roman Catholic influence,

we see the word saints and we get a wrong picture of what it actually means.

Currently, the Roman Catholic Church as well as some other Orthodox churches practice canonization,

a process in which martyrs and particularly holy and pious humans are recognized by the Church as saints.

Currently, the Roman Catholic Church has many saints.

They pray to these saints.

However, in the New Testament, the word saints is used 44 times.

And in every single instance, the word is used to designate those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Saints equals Christians.

So if you are a Christian, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you are a saint.

So what exactly does it mean when the Bible calls us saints?

Let's take a moment to look at the word itself.

The Greek word here is the plural form of haegos, which also can be translated as holy.

Holiness describes the fact that God is completely different from all of His creation.

He's set apart.

It describes the fact that He is set apart.

When used to describe His followers, the word has essentially the same meaning.

It means that we are set apart too or by God.

Haegos equals holy.

It means set apart.

Paul is going to use that idea and that thought throughout this letter.

He's going to write about the fact that we are strangers and aliens in a foreign land.

We are aliens on this earth.

And he's going to make it clear that we want to live our lives as set apart from those who are not saints.

He's calling us to be different.

But the key here is not the fact that we have been set apart.

The crucial aspect of Paul's greeting is the means by which we have been set apart.

Paul first describes the saints as those who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

This is the first of about 10 times that Paul is going to use the phrase, in Christ or in Him,

here in the first chapter of Ephesians.

Paul wants there to be no doubt that the source of our being set apart for God is Christ alone through Jesus Christ.

That's imperative that we get that.

The means by which God sets us apart, the way we become saints, is not being canonized based on our own good works.

It is totally and completely dependent on Jesus Christ and what He has already done for us.

And we become saints by placing our faith totally and completely in the finished work on the cross.

That is further emphasized by Paul's greeting in verse 2.

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

We're going to talk about that whole concept of grace and peace in much more depth in coming weeks.

But for right now, it's sufficient for us to see that grace and peace are from God the Father and from His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it is God's grace, His unmerited favor towards us that enables us to be at peace with God.

So first of all, I've been set apart for salvation by the grace of God made available through Jesus Christ.

The second thing, I am set apart for service.

You are set apart for service.

Let's go back to the beginning of verse 1 now.

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

Apostle equals one who is sent or commissioned, an ambassador, a witness, a messenger.

Paul, so for Paul in the 12 that had been with Jesus, the term described in an office in the early church.

There have been many that believe that the office of apostles ceased with the death of those specific men.

And that may very well be true.

But the function of an apostle certainly continues to exist in the church today.

All of Jesus' followers are commanded to be His ambassadors, to be His witnesses, to be His messengers in this world.

Now, most of us are familiar with Paul's encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

When Jesus appeared to Paul on the road that day, Paul was certainly set apart for salvation through his faith in Jesus Christ.

But God also had other plans for Paul.

He had other ideas for Paul as Paul himself describes in one of his other letters in Galatians chapter 1.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

He says,

And so it's not surprising that Paul would write that he has been set apart to serve God as an apostle by the will of God.

But it's not just Paul who has been set apart for the purpose of serving God.

God has set apart every believer to serve him.

If you are a believer in Jesus in this room, you have been set apart to serve him.

Right?

God has set apart every single one of us to serve him.

That's really the entire message of the second half of Paul's letter.

But we'll get into that when we hit chapter 4.

But for right now, let's just read this first verse of the chapter which introduces that everything is to follow.

So if you have a chapter 4 verse 1 of Ephesians.

So if you think about it, he's gone through three chapters of doctrine.

We get to chapter 4.

First verse says,

That's going to set up the next few verses.

Well Paul is saying that it's not enough that he just set us apart for salvation.

The very moment that we accept Jesus as our forgiver, as our master, as our savior,

we also have a responsibility to serve God not for the purpose of earning favor from God.

That's not what we're earning.

But we do it out of gratitude for what he has already been doing for us.

What he's already done in the cross.

That's why we serve God.

Unfortunately, there seems to be this misconception within the church that only certain people are called to serve God.

We got this idea that it's only people like Paul who have received a special call, who have an obligation to serve God.

And we figure that it's up to the pastors and the elders to serve God, to do all the ministry in the church.

But Paul would certainly not make that case in this text.

Listen to what he writes to the church of Rome.

In chapter 12,

So just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body.

That's the church.

We are all parts of his body.

And each one of us has different work to do.

And since we are all one body, we belong to each other.

And each of us needs all the others.

So Paul is going to make this point over and over and over again in the book of Ephesians.

Every believer is set apart to serve God.

It's our goal here at Cornerstone.

That every one of our members is involved in ministry in some way.

Some of those ministry opportunities like teaching and preaching may be more visible than others.

You see me up here each week, but they are no more important or more valuable than those who are working in the nursery.

Or those who make coffee on Sunday mornings.

Or those who serve as greeters.

Or those who are otherwise behind the scenes.

The key thing for us to understand is for each of you to find some place that God can use your talents and your gifts and your abilities to serve him here.

And if you need some help figuring out where to be plugged in, talk to Paul.

Right?

Talk to me.

Talk to any of the staff here and we'll find a place for you to serve.

But serving God goes far beyond what we do within the church, within these walls.

God also wants us to serve him in our everyday lives.

That's why I've always enjoyed Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Romans 12 in the message.

Here's what it says.

So here's what I want you to do.

God helping you take your everyday ordinary life.

You're sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering.

Whether you're a school teacher or a stay at home mom, an engineer or a secretary, a missionary or a tax preparer, a pastor or a retiree, you can serve God right where you are each and every day.

So I've been set apart for salvation through the grace of God and I've been set apart out of service because of the gratitude that I have for him.

The third thing, I am set apart for spiritual blessings.

In verse 3, God makes an unbelievable promise to the followers of Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

Verse 3 is actually the beginning of a long run on sentence for you grammar nerds that continues all the way through verse 14.

And for the next several weeks we will dive into those things and we'll examine those verses in detail and explore the spiritual blessings that God has given us.

But let's take a few minutes just to explore this one verse which sets the stage for what is to follow.

The source of spiritual blessings is Jesus Christ.

The source of spiritual blessings is Jesus Christ.

Notice that it is God who sets us apart for the blessings and those blessings flow through his son Jesus.

You tracking that? You following me there?

We live in a culture, we live in a day and age that tries to tell us that we just need to be spiritual.

And that it doesn't really matter how we express that spirituality.

That was certainly true in Ephesus.

The main object of worship was the Greek goddess Artemis.

But the Greek culture of that time was characterized by syncretism.

It was an attempt to weave into their culture.

We've all together these various gods and these various religions into one.

Just a very spiritual people.

But Paul makes it really, really clear that we don't get to pick and choose our gods.

We don't get to pick and choose our path to God.

That Jesus Christ that we receive our spiritual blessings through him and him alone.

Those blessings come not from an earthly source.

But from Jesus who is now risen from the dead and is seated at the right hand of his father in the heavenly realms.

The nature of the blessings is spiritual.

These are spiritual blessings.

Now while it is true that God often bestows material blessings on his children.

Paul is much more focused here on spiritual blessings.

That result from being set apart by God.

The number of the blessings that we receive is every one of them.

Every one of them.

So how many spiritual blessings do we get? All of them.

As Paul goes on to describe these blessings, we're going to see that every believer gets every single one of these blessings.

We're not talking about gifts. We're talking about blessing.

And that's amazing.

So we have been set apart for salvation, for service, and for spiritual blessings.

Most of you are probably familiar with the motto of the United States Marine Corps.

I don't know if we have any ex-marines in here.

But the motto is the few, the proud.

The marine. Oh yeah. Y'all are enthusiastic about that one.

The motto reflects that not everyone is set apart to be a marine.

Not everyone is willing to make the sacrifice and invest the time it takes to complete basic training to become a marine.

The same is true for each and every one of us spiritually.

Although God has made it possible for each and every one of us to be set apart and go through basic training

in order to be able to serve God, not everyone chooses to accept the call.

Alone, complete the training.

My prayer for you this morning, my prayer for our church this morning, is that we will join that process today.

That you will heed the call today.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, today is the opportunity, right?

The invitation is accepted.

If you're living a life where you're walking without peace, today is the invitation.

Jesus offers the peace.

That's the first step you need to take this morning in order to get into boot camp.

And if you've already done that, if you've already accepted Christ as your savior,

I hope that you're ready to report for duty and join me as we complete our basic training so that we are ready for battle.

If you're not aware that we are in a battle each and every day, then we need to have a lot of serious discussions

because you and I are in a battle every single day.

It's in our minds, it's around us, it's in our marriages, it's in how we raise our children.

And this book of Ephesians is going to help us be more prepared to be ready for that battle.

It's going to make us aware of it.

And so you in this room have been set apart to serve.

You in this room have been set apart for salvation.

You in this room have been set apart for the spiritual blessings offered us in Jesus.

Will you report for duty?

Will you take this?

I love what Paul is saying about YouTube. I should have a PhD in the things I've learned on YouTube.

Last night we went to not really a Chinese restaurant, but they gave us chopsticks.

None of us know how to use chopsticks.

So what do we do? What do I do?

Go on to YouTube, how do you use chopsticks?

That's a perfect example, but are we putting it into practice?

Many of you all have come to church for decades and haven't taken the step.

Let's join the training today. Make the commitment today that I'm going to grow in my faith

and I'm going to take this thing seriously. Can we do that? Let me pray for us.

Father, I thank you for this time and I thank you for your word.

I pray God that as we respond to you, that your voice will be heard.

God, above all things, help us understand that you have blessed us abundantly,

that you have set us apart, that you have rescued us and redeemed us.

So God, I pray that you speak.

Convict us where we've been lazy. Convict us where we've put this off till tomorrow.

I pray that you speak to us and encourage us as we make this decision, this dedication today

to dive into your word, to learn more about you, to learn about everything you've offered us in Jesus.

So God, I pray that you speak. We ask all these things in Jesus' name.