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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?
AUTHORSHIP
(SLIDE) There’s two reasons, one is unconvincing and the other has more merit:
- First, scholars sometimes determine authorship by adding up favorite words from Paul’s other letters and compare them. Ephesians doesn’t have some of Paul’s favorite words used in places like Galatians and Romans, words like “Justification”. Ephesians doesn’t mention Jesus’ 2nd coming. It doesn’t use the same passionate and personal vocabulary.
o Well, this is a super subjective critique that I don’t put much stock in.
? One, if any of you do any writing you know that even if you have a discernable style, different works of yours can read VERY differently depending on your mood or purpose. OR stage of life:
• ILLUS: This week, I read a copy of a sermon I wrote in 1993. And I have to tell you that I winced several times at my word choices and turns of phrase. Ugh. It was easy to see how much my style has changed over the years. But I can confirm… same author!
? Two, it was a known practice for writers to use scribes, and sometimes they didn’t just dictate to scribes. They often gave scribes – who were trained in rhetoric – the latitude to use their own vocabulary.
- The second reason to question Paul’s authorship is more serious. Ephesians is impersonal. In other Pauline letters, Paul gets personal, about his situation, and about his audience. He writes to problems he knows about. He offers greetings to people he knows by name.
o This is doubly confusing since we have such a detailed record in Acts of Paul’s dealings in Ephesus where he spent literally 3 years planting and building the Church there. He saw it through a major crisis of persecution, he met the elders there in a tear-filled embrace on his way to Jerusalem. He knew this church very, very well, so why doesn’t the letter show that?
(SLIDE) This problem is solved (ironically) by pointing out another problem with the letter: in the 1st verse, if you follow in modern translations, you see a footnote by the phrase “In Ephesus”. At the bottom, it says, “most ancient manuscripts do not include, “in Ephesus”.
This is true. All the oldest copies of Ephesians don’t address it to the saints “IN EPHESUS”. What makes this doubly interesting is that one early copy has the phrase “IN LAODICEA”.
That’s interesting because Colossians is a letter delivered by the same deacon, a guy named in both letters, Tychicus. And in Colossians Paul tells them,
- 4:16: “After you have read this letter, pass it on to the church at Laodicea so they can read it, too. And you should read the letter I wrote to them.”
- So, is this that letter?
Here’s how we might reconstruct what happened: Paul perhaps wrote Ephesians as a letter to a bunch of churches in Asia Minor, among them Laodicea. So the letter might have been unaddressed or had a blank space for each church to fill in their name as the letter circulated. But since Ephesus was the biggest city in Asia, that’s the name that stuck and eventually got attached to the letter.
This would explain both issues:
- the variant copies in the early church but also
- the absence of any personal notes in the letter or greetings or specifics of their situation.
But note this AC3: we get something wonderful because of this issue. Because this letter isn’t addressed to any specific issues,
- it allowed Paul to write a letter that could simply distill the essence of Christianity from A to Z in a mere 3000 words. (Romans? No, Ephesians)
- No side issues, no rabbit trails, no distractions. Just a magna carta for God’s New Society.
- And because Paul might have given some freedom to a scribe to craft his words, its rhetoric is utterly soaring and musical. You’re going to see, Paul just gets lost at times in the wonder of God’s plan to renew all things.
o ILLUS: There’s a song that went viral recently, Rich Men North of Richmond, where the singer laments he’s “living in a new world with an old soul.” But I tell you friends, if you understand Ephesians the song you start singing will be the very opposite:
? “living in an Old World, with a New Soul!”
This letter is the quintessential message of what God did through his Son in history, what he’s doing through his Spirit today to build a New Society in the midst of the Old.
- New Life
- New Society
- New Standards
- New Relationships
So, let’s begin:
(SLIDE) EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING
- Eph 1:3: All praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing because we are united with Christ.
First notice the Trinitarian language set so early in the Early Church: The Father, the Son our Lord Jesus and “every spiritual blessing”, AKA every blessing of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, the blessings we have in Christ are not spiritual because it has to do with our souls. They are spiritual because they come from the Holy Spirit, who brings his very presence and power.
The rest of Chapter 1 basically will detail the 2 ideas that verse 3 introduces.
- (SLIDE) What do we mean by “united with Christ”?
- What do we mean by “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms?”
These two ideas fill up the next verses. And if you can understand these two ideas you can understand where God starts in making his new society: He starts with a New Person.
- (SLIDE) Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
IN CHRIST
There’s that phrase again, “united with Christ” only this time, it’s closer to the Greek, which is literally just two words, “IN CHRIST.” This may seem so simple to you, but these two words reveal an enormous idea.
To be “in Christ” is to be united with Christ in a special way. And how does one get united with Christ? By faith and repentance. If you skip to the next Chapter Paul explains how one gets in on new life:
- (SLIDE) 2:4: But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. …For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. …God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
So how did we get “UNITED WITH CHRIST”? When you believed. Not if you did enough good works, but if you simply humbled yourself and received him and trusted him, now you are “IN HIM.”
Every time the NLT says, “united with Christ,” that’s just two words in the Greek: “en Christos” – IN CHRIST. So why are we blessed in the Heavenly realms? Because that’s where Christ is. He has been exalted from his lowly incarnation to the right hand of the Father.
- And YOU are where HE is by the Spirit of God: seated in the heavenly place.
- Your citizenship is there, not here.
- You belong there, not here.
- You are made new by the Spirit, who brought you into spiritual UNION with Christ.
o Now, you are IN HIM.
o And he is One with the Father in Heaven. So that’s where you are.
ILLUS: I’d like you to imagine it like this. There is only one that God ultimately ever chooses from before all time. That One is the Son whom he loves, the very Word of God. This ONE the Father sent into the world and there he fulfilled all the holiness of God, and he was blameless and perfect.
That is why there is only ONE about whom the Father ever said, “this is my Son, with him I am well pleased.” That one isn’t you. That one is Jesus. And before the foundation of the World, the Father sent the Son and the Father chooses the Son, and – and this is the critical to the meaning of this Passage – ANYONE IN HIM by faith.
Have you hidden yourself “in Him”? Then you have been chosen, along with him, to be holy and blameless in his Sight. The Father reached down and selected his beloved Son… AND anyone caught up in his train, anyone hiding in him; anyone protected in Him, anyone UNITED with Him by Faith.
Is this you? Then you are NEW. And this is your staggering NEW IDENTITY. You are the new citizen of the New Society because you are “IN Christ.”
(SLIDE) SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
So what about the spiritual blessings for those IN CHRIST? What are those? Keeping reading back to Chapter 1:
- Eph 1:5: God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
We don’t have to get our minds all bent around that idea that God decided something in advance – predestined is the word. What did God predestine exactly? That those IN CHRIST would be adopted into this own family. And that is what you are… adopted, accepted, adored, BECAUSE you are IN HIM.
And friends, if you ever get the idea that the Father somehow adopted us begrudgingly, that Jesus sort of twists the Father’s arm, nags him into accepting us – that is FALSE! Note what Paul reveals:
- (SLIDE) This adoption was what God WANTED TO DO and
- It gave him great pleasure.
Ah, AC3!! Such words! What are you supposed to do with knowledge this wonderful? What are you supposed to do with the fact that God did this because “God was so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much….”?? Well, Paul says:
- (SLIDE) Eph 1:6: So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.
Look at this verse and hopefully you now know the answer to this question: When the NLT says “us who belong to his dear Son” what do you suppose the Greek simply says? Us in Christ? Actually you’re close: it’s
- (SLIDE) “us who are in the Beloved.”
Here Paul substitutes a name for Jesus – simply “the Beloved.” I love that! We are beloved of the Father on account of HIM being the beloved of the Father. He is beloved… and therefore also ALL who are… IN HIM!
What other spiritual blessings for us who are united with Christ?”
- (SLIDE) Eph 1:7: He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.
- 1:8: He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
Freedom
Forgiveness
Wisdom
Understanding.
AC3, do you see what I mean? No one talks like this!! This is so epic, so other worldly! No one ever talked like this, not until Jesus came to call a people of his very own. And what kind of people?
People who are NEW, having run to Christ by faith, and now being IN HIM, are chosen along with him. And therefore, showered with EVERY spiritual blessing in the Heavenly Realms – because that’s where Christ is, and you are IN HIM.
Not SOME blessings mind you, EVERY blessing:
- Adoption into a New Family – AC3 you belong! You are not alone! God brought you to himself - this is what he WANTED to do!
- Freedom! – no longer burdened by guilt and not measuring up!
- Forgiveness of sin – AC3 you are blameless and holy before God!! Now, today, accepted, free – by his strong arms of love, not your good work. Him, his work, his blood, not yours.
- WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING – enlightened as to the true purpose for living, UNION with God. To be loved by God. Later he will pray they grab hold of this more and more:
o 1:16: I pray for you constantly, 17 asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you [the Spirit of] wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. 18 I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.
The final blessing from Heaven to those IN Christ?
- (SLIDE) New power inside:
o (SLIDE) Eph 1:13-14 And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago.
? The Spirit’s presence and power right now, in your life, today, are the guarantees that the best blessings yet to come, are sure.
? Do you know this peace, this inheritance for those “in Christ”? Ask and it will be given.
? Do you know power for newness of life? In marriage, power to forgive, power to heal, power to love the unlovely, power to grow, power to see God move? Ask and it will be given.
• “I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.”
Why did God do this? Why did he love us so? Why did He make such an awesome plan to renew the world, starting with renewing us? Giving us a new name, a new power, a new freedom? Why did he lavish his kindness on us? Why?
- (SLIDE) 1:14 – he did this so we would praise and glorify him.
So let’s do that now together.
