1. Receive New Life Series

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BE NEW

1. RECEIVE NEW LIFE

INTRO (TITLE SLIDE)

Today we start a new series on Ephesians. The theme running through this amazing work: NEWNESS.

- For Christians, everything is new.

o Our insides are new

o Our power is new

o Our community is new

o Our ethical standards are new

o Our relationships are new.

A DYING CULTURE

Now contrast that word, NEW, with our culture, which feels OLD. Talk to anyone today, inside the church or outside; anywhere on the political spectrum, and almost to a person they would agree to this:

(SLIDE) Our culture is dying.

No one really likes to admit it, because it used to be only conspiracy buffs who talked this way. But now, everyone does. Political scientist Robert Pape, advisor to President Obama said:

(SLIDE) “America is in unprecedented decline.”

The phrase, “American Decline” has its own wiki article!

- (SLIDE) “American decline is the idea that the US is diminishing in power geopolitically and economically due to shrinking military advantages, civil unrest, overreach and deficit spending.”

Think about overreach involved in our national debt. I brought some pictures to help you visualize the looming debt death spiral:

- (SLIDE) This is a hundred-dollar bill. One Benjamin.

- (SLIDE) This is 100, hundred-dollar bills.

o $10,000.

- (SLIDE) This is $1 Million.

- (SLIDE) This is $100 million. (The couch: $25 mil)

- (SLIDE) This is $1 Billion (It would be physically impossible for you to rob this much money!)

- (SLIDE) This is $1 Trillion. (This is not the size of our national debt BTW. This is less than HALF of the money our country will ADD to the debt this year!)

- (SLIDE) This is 20 Trillion Dollars. (This is less than 2/3 the size of our current debt. The Statue of Liberty is looking a little worried)

(SLIDE) We stand aghast at these unfathomable numbers because it’s like reading a bad EKG. The heart of the Empire does not look healthy. It looks old. This is what aging Empires do after they’ve played out the steam of youthful vigor and idealism and cohesion.

Empires crumble:

- in debt,

- in disunity,

- in endless war, and

- in moral chaos

- in social disintegration.

(SLIDE) I bring up all these sad facts to remind you that there was another time in history when an old Empire was falling apart into social disintegration.

- And into this world Paul wrote Ephesians.

- This letter is God’s blueprint for how to build a New Society in the midst of an old, dying One.

I’m been immersing myself in this letter for 6 months now. Got some of it memorized. And still, I can’t read it without being moved to wonder… Why wonder? Because of the lofty words that invite you to see the work of Jesus as a THUNDERCLAP of NEWNESS in a world gone deaf.

It’s an unveiling of something; something so original, it could not have come from the mind of men. People don’t talk like this, don’t think like this.

(SLIDE) ILLUS: My experience pouring over Ephesians has been like that scene from National Treasure with Nicolas Cage’s character Ben Gates obsessed with the Declaration of Independence. We find Gates standing next to this historic document and the hidden treasure it contains. After he reads its lofty prose, he pauses in wonder and says:

- (SLIDE) “People don’t talk that way anymore.”

As you read Ephesians this month, maybe you’ll commit some of it to memory along with me. And as you do, I think you’ll agree, “people don’t talk this way.” Only God could inspire such a picture of New Life, a New World, a New Way of living, A New Community.

(SLIDE) ILLUS: In fact, this letter has led to the conversion of many a soul in the last 2000 years. Just reading these words. In 1903, John Mackay, the future President of Princeton Theological Seminary was a bratty 14 year old, given a copy of Ephesians to read. And he describes what happened to him:

- (SLIDE) “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 had been ‘quickened’; I was really alive.”

This is a powerful, Word of Newness. So let’s get into it:

AUTHOR AND AUDIENCE

It begins simply enough:

- (SLIDE) Eph 1:1: This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

Now you should know that since the 1800’s some critical scholars have doubted that Paul wrote this. Why would they, especially since the universal assumption of Church fathers going way back into the 2nd century is that Paul wrote this letter?