Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Today we welcome back to the microphone Dr. Jeff Arthurs, who lays out a great foundation as we start the book of Ephesians, outlining the importance and the richness of its theological writings, and not only brings out the big idea of being in Christ, but many other aspects you’ll find fascinating. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Jeff Arthurs, and I’m delighted to be with you. Paul Nitz and I are friends from way back, and we have a lot of history together, and I’m happy to share in this podcast.

I’ve actually recorded a few sessions previously. I’m not sure if you remember that or if you were listening at that time, but it’s good to be back with you as we begin the book of Ephesians. Ephesians is a very important book in the New Testament. It’s not a long book, six chapters, but it is loaded with important theology. It tells us about God. It tells us about ourselves.

It tells us about the nature of the church, you know, the collected body of Christians, and it is a loaded, important book. You can read about the background to the founding of the church in Ephesus in Acts chapter 19. Ephesus was a big, important city in the Roman world. It was a Gentile city, although like all of the cities back then, there was a contingent of Jewish people that lived there, and there was the synagogue and so forth. But because it was a Gentile city, the people worshipped the gods, you know, the Roman gods, the Greek gods, other gods, polytheism, and there was a great temple there, one of the wonders of the ancient world, dedicated to the goddess Artemis or Diana. I’ve actually been to the ruins of Ephesus and seen the ruins of that great temple.

There’s hardly anything left. But we have accounts of how big it was and ornate it was and how important it was. Well, in Acts chapter 19, the apostle Paul is preaching about the one true God, and the people of the city recognize that his message is a threat to their polytheism, especially the worship of Artemis, and they start a riot. They gather in the amphitheater of the city. The amphitheater is still there. It’s very well preserved, and they’re chanting and they’re shouting, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and they want to drag Paul before them and try him.

And I don’t know what would have happened to him, tear him limb from limb or something. But eventually the riot kind of calms down, and the disciples there in Ephesus send Paul away safely to continue his missionary journeys. It’s a very great story there in Acts 19. That’s a little bit of the background of the city and the church and the writing of this letter. And then in terms of a theological background for the book, that is to say what the book tells us about God, you know, theology, it is a rich depiction of who we are, who believers are in Christ. That’s a key phrase: you are in Christ.

You belong to Christ. You draw your life from him. You identify with him. You are in Christ. In Christ, chapter 1 tells us we are chosen, we are blessed, we are redeemed, we are forgiven, we are sealed. With the Holy Spirit, that means his mark of authority, his guarantee of authenticity is on us because we are in Christ.

So God saves us with grace, with wisdom, with love. He blesses those who are in Christ. For example, he gives us eternal life. Christ has eternal life, right? He died and rose again, correct? And he lives forever.

And so those who are in Christ, who belong to him, who draw their life from him, will live forever also. The British author C. S. Lewis said, If you want to get wet, stand in the spray. If you want to get warm, come near the fire. What does that mean?

It means if you want eternal life, come to the source of eternal life. Put your faith in him. Follow him. He will share that blessing, that eternal life with you. Well, this theme of being in Christ has horizontal implications also. That is to say, it makes a difference in our day-to-day lives.

It makes a difference in how we interact with each other. For those who are in Christ, he has, according to Ephesians, he has broken down the wall that separates us from each other. You know, the things that separate us, things like race and our age, old people, young people, the different cultures we come from. In Christ, all of those differences, they are of secondary importance. In Christ, we are one. At the cross of Christ, the ground is level.

No one is better than someone else. No one’s superior to someone else. In Christ, he has broken down the wall that separates us. And of course, there are practical, you know, implications for being in Christ. When we draw our life from him, then we should obey him and follow him and love him and serve him. This has an impact on our speech, the way we talk, the way we talk to each other.

It impacts our sexuality, our interactions with each other. He has made us righteous like his Son is righteous, so we live righteously. All of this is to say that for those who are in Christ, God blesses those people. Can we take that as our big idea for this book, and maybe especially chapter one? God blesses those who are in Christ. Well, there’s a lot in chapter one.

Let me see if I can narrow our focus to talk about that theme by looking at verses 15 through 18. For this reason, the apostle Paul says, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, verse 16, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. And here’s what he prays: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Verse 18, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. So he is praying for the Ephesians that they would gain knowledge, enlightenment, wisdom. He says that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Then the rest of our passage here, which is verses 18, yeah, all the way through 23, he specifies, he gives a few details on what this enlightenment would look like. Specifically, he prays, number one, that they would understand something that happened in the past. And what is that? He prays that they would understand the hope of their calling. This is still verse 18. I pray that the eyes of your hearts would be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.

Now that happened in the past, right? Paul planted the church there in Ephesus and he preached the gospel, and some people responded to the gospel and God called them. And in that calling, there is hope. God had selected them. He leaned out over the balcony of heaven. His eye went here and there over the face of the earth, and it fell on Ephesus, and he said, I choose you, and I choose you.

I call you. I select you. Come to me. I will oversee the events of your life. So that at the right time, I will call you and you will respond to my calling. There is hope when we think of what God did.

He chose us. He selected us. When my son was a little boy, I used to have a going-to-bed ceremony, a little ritual that I did with him each night. I would have him put up his hands, both hands up, fingers spread apart, and I would say, as I sort of walked down his fingers, I would say, If God let me choose any little boy in the whole world to choose to be my own little boy, I would go walking, one finger, and walking, and the next finger, and walking, and the next finger, and I’d go down the row until I came to you, and I would stop. And if God let me choose any boy to be my own boy, I would choose you. And that is what God did for those who are in Christ.

He chose us. Maybe he placed you in a Christian home. That’s a good place to be called, right? You heard the gospel. You saw the example of your parents. Maybe you went to church.

He called you through the means of your Christian home. Or maybe he gave you a friend in high school or maybe college. Who was God’s instrument of calling you? Your friend was good to you, and you enjoyed being together, and he spoke the truth to you. Or she preached the gospel to you from the Word of God, and he called you. Or maybe God allowed a crisis to come into your life, a hard circumstance, and maybe God used that to call you and show you your need and show you the spiritual life that he wants to extend to those who are in Christ.

My point is, this thing that happened in the past, the calling, the choosing, the selecting of God fills us with hope. Many of us slog along under a burden of anxiety. We feel like, I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. I’m not attractive enough. I’m not winsome enough.

I’m not athletic enough. I’m not gifted enough. And especially, we often feel, I’m not good enough. And so we don’t feel this hope of his calling because our faith is in the wrong place. We’re trusting in ourselves. We’re looking at our own accomplishments, our own goodness, our own, you know, whatever you bring to the table.

And if we place our faith in self, oh my, well, that’s a recipe for either pride if you’re doing well, or despair if you’re doing poorly. And many of us feel we’re doing poorly, and we slog along under this burden of anxiety. We will experience a persistent sense of needing to measure up, and often a vague, persistent sense of failure if we’re not focused on him. There’s no hope there. But when we focus on his calling, his initiative, his grace, his love, wow. There’s hope.

He called us. Put your faith in Him, His sovereign calling, and discover the hope that we can have in Christ. So Paul is praying for the Ephesians that they would be enlightened, that they will have knowledge, they will understand the depth and the magnitude of being in Christ, specifically that they would know the hope of His calling. Then he prays for something in the future. He prays for enlightenment, the knowledge of something that is yet to take place, and that is to understand the inheritance we will receive when He, when we face Him face to face and we receive our reward. That happens in the future, and here’s what he prays in verse 18.

He says, I pray that you would know the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. The riches of this glorious inheritance. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that something is coming to us, an inheritance. It will become ours after we die. He’s talking about heaven, the rewards of faithfulness.

He’s talking about joy replacing sorrow, health replacing sickness, unity replacing division. He is talking about peace that replaces war. He’s talking about the shalom, the blessing of God, the inheritance that God will give us. In place of the brokenness that we experience now. Now that full inheritance is, in a sense, it’s ours right now, but in another sense, it’s future, isn’t it? We will experience the fullness after death, and Paul prays that we will understand the riches of this inheritance.

So that’s the second thing he prays for for those who are in Christ. Once again, the big idea we’re thinking about is that God blesses those who are in Christ, and Paul prays that we would understand, well, you know, what does that mean? It means we would know the hope of our calling. That’s the past. And in the future, we would pray that we would understand the riches of the inheritance that waits for us. Then finally, third element of his prayer is something in the present, and we see this in verses 19 and 20.

He prays that we would understand the power of Jesus’s resurrection in our present daily lives. Listen to verses 19 and 20. I pray that you would understand what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, and this power is according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. So Jesus rose from the dead, yes. They took his body down from the cross. They arranged his hands and smoothed his hair and wiped away the matted blood.

They wrapped him up in yards of cloth. They backed out of the tomb. They rolled a stone into a trough, boom, in front of the opening of the grave. And then the sun was setting and Sabbath was beginning. But what was happening in the tomb? Well, there was no sound, no heartbeat, no breath, no brain activity, no warmth in the flesh.

The body cooled and took on the temperature of the air and the rock, and night fell. It was a long night. But then the sun rose, started to heat the day, but it was still cool in the tomb, and it was a long day. That was the Sabbath day. The disciples were scared. They were huddled.

And finally, the sun set on that long day, and there was another long night. But then, early in the morning of the third day, life returned. His body gave a first stressful push, and then the blood began to circulate. The chest began to rise and fall. His eyes opened, and Jesus rose again from the dead. There’s light in his eyes.

There’s strength in his hand. God rolled back the stone, and the air entered the tomb, and the first traces of dawn appeared on the horizon. Soon the ladies will come to anoint the body with spices, but they will find an empty tomb because Jesus has apparently gone for a walk, and the angels will say, He is not here. He is risen. So Paul prays that we would grasp this magnificent fact that Jesus rose. And then he says it’s a practical truth.

It’s not just about Jesus, because those who are in Christ walk in the present, right now, in that same power. He helps us, in other words, with our day-to-day living. He helps us defeat Satan. He helps us put to death the deeds of the flesh. He gives us hope for today and strength to live for him. So it’s a practical truth for our present lives.

So that’s what Paul prays for those who are in Christ. They are blessed. He prays that they would grasp this past fact that they were called. He prays that they would grasp this future fact that they have an inheritance that’s waiting for them. And he prays for the present truth that they would walk in this resurrection power to live for him. So God blesses those who are in Christ with the hope of our calling.

The inheritance, the riches of His inheritance in the future, and the power of the resurrection, it helps us in the present. So much wonderful insight, not only on the subject of being in Christ, but also the practical matter of our lives as followers of Christ, and embracing the fact that we have an inheritance waiting for us. I especially love the vibrant pictures that are painted throughout the podcast, from the touching depiction of choosing the child to the resurrection and the tomb. If you have any questions regarding this or any other podcast, please email us at info at sharetheword.org. From all of us, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.