INTRODUCTION TO EPHESIANS
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This is the introduction to our study through Ephesians. Gaining a big picture view of the overarching theme of Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus, before diving into the details of this rich epistle.
Pastor Nathan Hargrave
Preached on 1/15/23
#ephesians #reformedbaptist #expositorypreaching #5solas #inchrist
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- Go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word. Wait for it...to
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- Ephesians. Yes, we're finally, finally starting our study of this rich and amazing letter from the
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- Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus. And I have been looking forward to this for quite some time.
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- And today is going to look a little bit different. And I'll explain that here in just a moment. But today is, as you see on the screen, an introduction to this immensely deep epistle.
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- But I would like for us to read first, so we can get our minds into this text, the first 10 verses here in Ephesians chapter 1.
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- Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.
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- Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the
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- God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love
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- He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which
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- He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which
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- He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which
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- He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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- As you can tell, we're getting ready to jump into the deep end. But before we jump in, let's pray.
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- Let's ask God to illuminate our hearts and minds to these great truths. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to You once again.
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- God, I am a fallible, broken man who desperately needs the
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- Holy Spirit to work in and through me. God, I pray that You'd guard my words.
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- I pray that You would help me to speak only truth from Your Word, because Your Word is clear,
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- Your Word is true, Your Word is good, Your Word is perfect. And Your Word is what we,
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- Your children, need to have our minds renewed. It's what we need to be molded into the image of our great and wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ.
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- And so, Father, help us to see it. Illuminate our hearts and minds to this beautiful truth in Your Word.
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- In Christ's name, amen. Well, as I said a moment ago, it's a little different, because it's tempting for us to just jump right into a text like this and start really dissecting these beginning verses.
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- We want to jump in and dissect them. And trust me, if you've been around here long enough, you know we're going to do that, right?
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- That's inevitable. We're getting there. And that's what we're supposed to do. But first, it's important for us,
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- I think, as a people, if we're going to start this study over the next few months, is we need to get a big picture, don't we?
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- We need to get a flyover view of the purpose of this particular letter that the
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- Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. And that way, once we get this big picture, we will find ourselves deep within, let's say, the forest of this immensely deep epistle.
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- And when we do so, when we're right in the thick of it, we don't lose the forest for the trees. You've heard that saying before.
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- You get lost in the forest and you don't know where you're at, but all you see is trees and you lose the big picture.
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- And when studying Scripture, it's easy for people to come to wrong conclusions of a particular phrase or a particular verse because we're so busy dissecting that one verse.
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- It's like being in the forest and we're looking at that one tree. We're evaluating its leaves and we're looking at the bark and we're just really dissecting this one tree.
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- And we lose sight, we lose track of where we are within that forest and it's easy to get lost.
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- So before we jump into an overview of this book, which is what we're going to do, I would like to encourage each one of you.
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- I want to give you a challenge as we start this out. I want to challenge each of you to study this great book on your own, to dive into Ephesians throughout the week.
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- And my advice to you is do not jump into commentaries just yet. It's not time for that.
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- Make a habit of reading through this whole letter as many times as possible. Some of you are like, oh man, that's a lot of reading.
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- How am I going to fit that into my five -minute quiet time in the morning? I'm going to encourage you.
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- It's not long. It's six chapters. It takes just a small amount of time to sit and read the entire letter all the way through.
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- But what happens is once you do that, you begin to see things. You begin to see the overarching purpose of the
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- Apostle Paul writing this letter. Paul's purpose begins to materialize in your own mind.
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- And that way, when we come together and we slow down and start to dissect, we have a much richer perspective and we don't get lost.
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- And so when we're dissecting that little phrase, we can dissect it with the big picture in mind knowing, oh, that must be what the
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- Apostle Paul is meaning. Make sense? Everybody agree? We're going to come together. We're going to study it, right? All right.
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- Well, I'm excited for this. This epistle is one that I have desperately wanted to preach since day one of us planting this church.
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- Back when we planted in September of 2020, that was my plan. I wanted to jump right into Ephesians.
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- I was all excited about it. He asked Pastor Jeremiah. I was always talking to him about it. But yet patiently and providentially waited.
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- And partly because we wanted to make sure we had a church. Back then, it was just a few people in a living room.
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- And we wanted to know that we had people here to actually walk through this book together with. And here you are, providentially perfect timing, right?
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- Because I think this particular letter is one that is going to mold and solidify the culture and trajectory of this local representation of Christ's body.
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- This book is critical to understanding the depths of some great truths in Scripture, but then also much of the practicality of how that works out as a people.
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- As a matter of fact, many pastors throughout the centuries have preached through this book. And as they've gone through it, every one of them can point back to that being the very moment that that church really came alive.
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- That's how important this book is. Every one of them. They began to see and go, that was the moment when our people were really solidified in their understanding of this great epistle and began to live with power and resources that were previously never tapped into.
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- And there's a reason for that. There's a reason that's been the consistent theme with people preaching through this book.
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- Because it's precisely why Paul wrote this letter. He's writing here to Christians who live at that particular time in the epicenter of idol worship.
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- This is a Roman Greek culture, and this is kind of the place for all of the
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- Roman and Greek gods. And there's much idol worship that is going on.
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- And many, if not all of these Christians, had at one point themselves partaken in that idol worship.
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- These people that Paul's writing to, they had worshipped false gods their whole life.
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- And here's the thing, what do all idols have in common? What does every idol have in common that is not the
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- God Almighty? It is the fact that an idol takes, takes, takes, but never actually gives.
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- That's what all idols do, they take from us. You give yourself over to anything in life, and you watch.
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- You may think it's giving, but it's not, it's only taking. And that's what these idols have done.
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- And these Christians, like I said, many of them who have grown up devoting their lives to these gods, they've committed themselves to them, they've made sacrifices to these gods, are now worshipping the one true king, as they're reading this letter from the
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- Apostle Paul, however living with the residue of those old expectations. And I think we all struggle with that in a sense.
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- Expectations of a one -sided exchange, of take, take, take, never receiving.
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- And not fully understanding the magnitude of their now newfound position.
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- Because that's what Paul is going to drive home, and we're going to talk about that in a moment. A newfound position that he's writing to these people, hence never actually tapping into the power and resources that come with this new position.
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- And again, this is not unique to the church in Ephesus. All of us struggle with this, right? All of us struggle.
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- Every one of us has spent time in our lives bowing down to idols who take, but never give.
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- And so our experience, our life experience, suddenly molds our view of God.
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- Which is why God gave us his word. Can you imagine, what if God saved us all somehow, miraculously, like we had enough for the gospel, and like we were saved, and then just left us without scripture.
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- Like, we would just have to come up with what we think we're worshipping. We would have to evaluate, but man, he gave us his word.
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- He tells us who he is, and specifically he gave us letters like this to renew our minds.
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- So that that old, that old man who has residue of, yeah, my experience tells me take, take, take, or that a
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- God, an idol, always takes, but never really gives in return. And so that's how we see
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- God through that lens. And here's the thing, many of us live our lives, well, many of us live our
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- Christian lives, like duct tape man. I've got your attention now, don't
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- I? I think my wife, and I talked to Pastor Jeremiah about it, I think my wife and Jeremiah are the only ones that know what
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- I'm talking about here. Alright, so let me give you some background on this. Duct tape man. Me and my wife are from Ormond Beach, Florida.
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- Anybody familiar with that area, Ormond Beach, Florida? It's right near Daytona. Well in Ormond, growing up in Ormond, if you grew up there around our time period, everybody knows duct tape man.
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- This was a gentleman that walked the streets every day. You saw him every day. As a matter of fact, you saw him multiple times a day usually, and you're like, are there more than one of them?
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- Like how's he walking all across town? And he had this massive duct tape hat, and you can imagine
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- Florida heat, like he's just all bundled up in duct tape. I don't know how he did that. He had elbow pads and knee pads, and they're all wrapped in duct tape.
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- His gloves are duct tape. His shoes are duct tape. And he was also called Mr. Smiley because duct tape man was always smiling.
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- So you'd drive by, and you'd yell out the window, hey, duct tape man, and he'd smile and wave at you.
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- He was just the nicest guy in the world if you stopped and talked to him. Super kind man. His actual name,
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- I had to look it up, his actual name is Jerry Collins. And you see the rumors about Jerry Collins, duct tape man, was that he had previously been a professor, a well -known professor at Embry -Riddle
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- Aeronautical University. It's quite a prestigious aeronautical school that he is a professor of apparently.
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- And somewhere, some way along the line, Mr. Duct Tape Man, Mr.
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- Smiley, I guess kind of lost his mind, and he took to the streets. He lived in the streets.
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- He walked the streets. He had no home. And during that time, he utilized his one and only asset, duct tape.
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- I don't know what the purpose behind that was. I'm not even going to guess. But here's the thing. Mr. Collins passed away just a few years ago.
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- Everyone in Ormond knew about it. It was a sad day as everyone knew this kind gentleman. And more rumors began to spread.
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- And so the rumors that came out, one of the primary ones, was said that Jerry actually had hundreds of thousands of dollars of investments and capital, lots and lots of money at his disposal that he never tapped into.
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- And he passed away. He lived out the remainder of his life as if he was homeless and broke with only duct tape to his name.
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- Now here's the thing. I have no idea if that rumor is true. I can't confirm that. I don't know. It's probably not.
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- But that's not the point. Here's what I do know is that many of us Christians live out our lives in that same way.
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- What do I mean by that? I mean that many Christians live out their lives spiritually anemic, feeding off of scraps, totally exposed to the elements of this world, and content in doing so.
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- All the while, they have endless resources at their disposal, resources for spiritual shelter and sustenance.
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- More than that, resources to feast, resources in which you can feast upon what is needed.
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- Yet they often have no idea that these resources are accessible to them. And you see, this is the purpose of the letter of Ephesians.
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- It's often referred to by theologians as the bank of the believer. Anybody ever heard that phrase talking about Ephesians?
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- The bank of the believer. This book is untold riches that have been deposited into a bank.
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- And at the moment a person is brought into union with Christ, when they're brought into the household of faith, their name is put on that account.
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- Now it's different than what we're accustomed to. Unlike our accounts, the balance can never be depleted, right?
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- You don't have to swipe the debit card and go, I hope there's resources in there. You're never going to see declined.
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- Now, I have to make it clear. I'm obviously not talking about health, wealth, and prosperity.
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- Do not hear that. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what
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- God's called Christians to, right? I'm not talking about financial resources.
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- The riches that we Christians have at our disposal are worth far more than earthly treasures.
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- As a matter of fact, look at verse 3 there in chapter 1. Paul says, Blessed be the
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- God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us. Here's the key.
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- This is me in Christ. This is us in Christ with every financial blessing.
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- Is that what it says? Making sure you're all looking down, right? It's not what it says. It says with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
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- This is what Paul's starting this letter out. He's saying this is a bank. This is a resource. This is endless.
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- And you now have access to it. Over the next few months,
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- I pray as we look in great detail at these blessings that we see Paul listing out here that are ours in Christ Jesus that we would begin to think in ways that are game changing for us.
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- We begin to think in ways that the Apostle Paul is calling
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- Christians to think. We begin to think the way God has designed us to think as children of him.
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- And I believe it's going to incite in this church a desire to truly live in the riches of his great glory.
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- Because that's the purpose of this great epistle. Because we're going to see the depths of those riches over the next few months.
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- And I think we're going to see them as God wants us to see them. As a matter of fact, whenever you're studying scripture, you're looking for key words, right?
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- Like when you're walking through, do you ever do that? You start highlighting, you're like, I'm seeing that word a lot. There's a reason that Paul's repeating that word or Peter's repeating that word.
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- Like there's a purpose in it. And so we see in this letter, in six short chapters, we see the word grace used 12 times.
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- This beautiful word grace. And what is grace? It just means the undeserved, unmerited kindness in favor of God, right?
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- Well, this is a driving thrust of this letter is this word glory. We see the word inheritance used four times in these six chapters.
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- We see the word riches used five times. We see the word fullness and filled used seven times each.
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- What Paul is doing is he's pointing us to the glory, that beautiful glory, that inheritance, the riches, and this fullness that is only found in Christ.
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- That's what he's pointing us to. He's wanting to drive this home in our minds and we begin to see that theme throughout the letter.
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- We see this beautiful theme of these great riches that we now share because that's the key word in Christ.
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- And as you do your study, I want you to walk through and underline if you highlight or underline in your
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- Bible every time Paul says in Christ. As a matter of fact, it's overwhelming.
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- Let's look at just chapters 1 and 2, right? Verse 1, right? He says, "...to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ."
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- He doesn't even make it to verse 3 when he repeats the phrase. He says, "...who has blessed us in Christ."
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- Verse 9, "...according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ." Verse 12, "...so
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- that we who were the first to hope in Christ." Verse 20, "...that He worked in Christ."
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- We get into chapter 2. We see in verse 6, "...seeded us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ."
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- Right? Chapter 2, verse 7, "...in kindness towards us in Christ." Chapter 2, verse 10, "...for
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- we are His workmanship created in Christ." You get to verse 13, "...but
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- now in Christ." I could go on. Let's stop there, right? You can do that study on your own.
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- I just want you to see the weight of what the Apostle Paul is driving home here. We could go on and on.
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- "...in Christ." If this book is the bank of the believer, as theologians have called it, then
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- Christ is our guarantor. He's the one that opened the account.
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- And He's the one that sealed it and signed it with His own blood. And here's the beautiful part.
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- You and I, if we are in Christ, now we have unfettered access.
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- Look at chapter 3, verses 11 and 12. Paul says, "...this
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- was according to the eternal purpose that He has realized..." Here's that phrase again.
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- "...in Christ Jesus our Lord." Those of us that are in Christ, He is our
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- Lord. And verse 12, "...in whom," speaking of Jesus, "...we
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- have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him."
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- Ah. As he's driving home this idea, hey,
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- Saint, guess what? You're in Christ. Guess what? Christ has resources for His children.
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- And guess what? He's given you access to them. And here they are. Now here's the question, how do we have this position in Christ?
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- We'll look down at verse 17 of chapter 3 there, just a little ahead of what we just read. "...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."
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- And here's the thing, what's the purpose of that faith? Let's keep reading. "...that you."
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- He's speaking to saints, right? It's you. It's me. That's the people reading this letter in Ephesus that are followers of Christ.
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- "...that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints."
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- So we know He's not just talking to the people in Ephesus right now. This is all of us. This is how we tie it in. "...with
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- all the saints. What is the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth?
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- And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
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- Hold on. That you, saint, me, in Christ, we have access to the fullness of God?
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- But, wait a second, it's even deeper than that. We don't have just mere access to the fullness of God. It says that we are filled with the fullness of God.
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- We, once broken vessels, once an enemy of God, once a created being that had committed cosmic treason against the
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- Almighty Creator of the universe, now are brought into union with Christ and we are filled with the fullness of God.
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- But think of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3 .16. He says, "...Do you not know that you are
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- God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" The fullness of God.
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- We don't just get part of God. The Holy Spirit is not just a little portion of God that He places in the saint as a seal.
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- That's not what it is. The Holy Spirit is fully God. And He is within you.
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- And you have access to a bank account that is never ending in resources for the purposes of kingdom mindedness.
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- And Paul is constantly reminding us of who we are in Christ because it's so easy to forget that.
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- You hear that theme around here all the time, don't you? Hey saint, let me remind you who you are.
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- Because I forget. I forget who I am. And I lose sight because I begin to see my own brokenness.
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- And I quit looking at my savior. And we need to be reminded. And Paul is constantly reminding us of this.
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- And he does this in an interesting way. I love how the Apostle Paul thinks. Hopefully I think like him.
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- I don't know. I'm not. But hopefully I reason like he does. I don't think so. But he reasons so well.
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- He has this way of communicating this great truth in all of his epistles. He communicates in a very specific order.
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- And in my opinion, none are more strikingly obvious than here in the letter that he writes to Ephesus.
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- He does it in all of his epistles. But this particular letter is almost intentionally divided right down the middle.
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- He has two parts. Paul starts with one way that he's communicating. And he ends with another way of communicating.
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- It's very interesting. Stick with me here. You see, in chapters 1, 2, and 3 of this letter,
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- Paul writes in the indicative. And then in verses 4, 5, and 6, he writes in the imperative.
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- I know some of you are looking at me like, I don't know what that means. In other words, let me explain this.
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- In the first half of the letter that he writes to the church in Ephesus, he's telling Christians who they are in Christ.
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- We just saw that in chapters 1 and 2 as we walked through. In Christ. In Christ. In Christ. This is who you are.
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- He's telling us who we are. But in the last half, he's telling us believers how we should live in light of that.
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- It's the way Paul does it every time. The big bulk of the book of Romans that he wrote to the church in Rome is that first, this is who you are.
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- This is who God is. This is information. And then this is how it applies. But this book in Ephesus, I mean, it's split right down the middle.
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- When we get to the second half, we see things like what we see in chapter 4, verse 32. Very practical, right?
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- It says, be kind to one another. Tenderhearted, forgiving one another. As God, here's that phrase again, in Christ, forgave you.
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- It's very practical. He gives him a directive as a saint.
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- He's like, hey, I've already told you who you are. I've told you how you should see yourself in light of God.
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- Now this is how to carry it out. This is how to live. Let's stick with our bank analogy, right?
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- The first half of the letter tells us what's in the account. And the last half of the letter tells us how to use it.
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- It's that simple, right? And I think that one of the reasons that us today,
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- Christians today, I think one of the reasons we live like duct tape man that we spoke about a moment ago, which, by the way,
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- I think more Christians live like that than we'd like to admit. But I think one of the reasons that we live like this is because churches are so fixated on that second half.
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- And bear with me for a moment. You see,
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- Paul has a specific order. But yet churches today want to get that order backwards.
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- Churches today are so busy telling us how to use our resources and how to practically live for the
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- Lord with little to no knowledge of the endless, gracious, merciful treasure that is the fullness of God in Christ Jesus, one that we have unfettered access to.
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- What I mean by all of this is I think you see it. It's you go to church and you hear a sermon of, well, do this.
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- Live like this. Do better. Be better. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
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- Live for the Lord. Don't live like the world. Live like this. And it's this list of do, do, do, without any substance behind it or any reason behind it or any purpose behind it.
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- And it leaves you, let's be honest, when you leave church, you're discouraged. I can't live up to that.
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- How do I do those things? All I have is this spiritual roll of duct tape. How am I going to carry, how am
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- I going to go to war with a roll of duct tape? I don't have resources. How do
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- I live like this? And it becomes discouraging, and we end up just living our lives like that.
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- It leaves us to do our best in that spiritual sense with what little resources we believe we have.
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- And all the while, we're ourselves, we're trying to live the Christian life. We're trying to defeat sin. We're trying to live for the
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- Lord while being exposed to the elements of the world. We're out in the cold. We're out in the heat.
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- We're out in the rain. We're out in the storm. We have no shelter. We don't know where to go. We're seeking shelter under bridges when we have a reserved seat at the king's table.
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- That's the way many Christians are living today. All they have to do is go tap into that bank account with the resources and have everything they could possibly need as a follower of Christ.
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- But yet we're trying to clothe ourselves with these ripped up pieces of spiritual duct tape, trying to cover our nakedness when we are already clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
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- We just don't realize it. We're struggling like spiritual paupers, never realizing that we actually are heirs to the king.
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- We have keys to the kingdom and we're roaming the streets. We seem to think that Paul was wrong in his order of this.
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- Let's skim over that first half. I mean, that's all boring doctrinal stuff, guys. I know. We've got to get through it.
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- We're going to pick a book. We're going to get through this first half of the epistle of Ephesians. We're going to spend about four weeks on the first three chapters.
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- And then we'll get to the good stuff, the practical things, and really get to work as a Christian.
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- Love your neighbor. Do better. Do this. Do that. That's what churches want to do, right?
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- Let's skip through the doctrinal part. But Paul stops. He goes, no, it has to start with the doctrine. It must start with God.
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- It must start with who you are in Christ. It has to start there because you can't accomplish it until you know what's in the bank account.
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- Paul understood this. We must know who God is. We must know what
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- Christ has done for us. We must know the work of the Holy Spirit that is going on within us. We must know who we are in Christ so that we might have the power to live the
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- Christian life. To live in light of the fact that we are holy and blameless before Him.
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- I was speaking to a friend last night on the phone. And he's at that stage now where he's just now kind of being introduced to this idea of who
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- God really is. I'm loving it. He's reading it. He's calling me. I'm on the phone with him for an hour, hour and a half. And he's talking to me about all this stuff.
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- And he goes, man, when I get to portions of Scripture where it talks about us people like we're worms, like we're so small and God's so big.
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- He goes, I just get so excited. I was like, praise God. You're at that stage. And you need to get to that stage.
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- You need to realize how small you are. And you need to realize how big God is. But let me tell you what, you can't stay there. You can't stay in the worm.
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- We call it in theological circles, we call it the worm theology, right? Oh, we are but worms and we're small and we're little.
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- And that's true. But you can't stay there because Scripture speaks of us now as new creations as something completely different.
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- We're no longer worms. We're a new creation in Christ Jesus. Therefore, there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.
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- Amen? And so we can't stay there. We have to understand it first though. And I love that he's getting to that stage because now he's seeing
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- God for who he is. Now he's seeing that when somebody holds their hand up with the Ark of the Covenant and tries to keep it from hitting the dirt,
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- God kills them. Y 'all remember that Old Testament account, right? What was his name? Uzzah, that was it.
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- Uzzah thinks, well, I'm going to stop the Ark of the Covenant from hitting the ground. Man, I've got to stop it. God will understand. And he holds his hand up and he tries to stop it and God kills him on the spot.
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- And it's like God's saying, hey, Uzzah, guess what? How dare you think your hands are cleaner than the dirt?
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- When Uzzah's just trying to do what he thought the right thing. That's the God we need to understand who he is, right?
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- We've got to know that God. We've got to know how holy he is and what he expects from us.
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- And we've got to know who we are in light of that. But then, when we are in Christ, now all of a sudden, now in Christ, oh,
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- God is our Father. He is one to be feared, but he's one to be feared in reverence and love because there is no condemnation.
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- He's already poured that condemnation out on his own son. That's why we're in Christ. Because he already poured it out on his own son at the cross and now there's no more condemnation to go towards Nathan.
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- Praise God, I stand in light of that. I'm no longer a worm. I'm a child of God. But we must start somewhere.
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- And this is how Paul thinks. This is the letter. As you read through these next couple of weeks and you're reading through the letter, you're going to see, oh, man, this is who
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- God is. This is who I am. And this is how I should live. Now, I know today,
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- I know we didn't really get a chance to break down any text like we usually do, but I thought it was important to lay down this foundation to prepare us as we start to study this book and as we start this journey through this beautiful, immensely deep letter.
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- I think you're going to love it. We're going to grow as a people because the Word of God never returns void.
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- And next week, we're going to look in a little more context of the culture of the people of Ephesus and Paul's relationship to the church there.
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- It's going to be another introduction. We might have three introductions to this letter laying groundwork in preparation before we jump into verse 1 specifically.
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- So bear with us. Come back. I think this is going to be a beautiful time for our church.
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- And be in prayer. Be in prayer for yourself and your family that God will work through this book, that God would mold you in the image of His Son, that God would use it to mold this church into the bride of Christ that we're called to be.
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- Now, if what I talked about today, if all of this talk of in Christ kind of doesn't really set with you, you don't quite comprehend what we mean by that,
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- I encourage you during this next time, please come talk to either myself or Pastor Jeremiah. Let us talk you through that.
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- We'd love to talk to you. What does it mean to be in Christ? And that's the first and foremost thing that we must do or you're not even going to begin to understand this letter.
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- You can't understand spiritual things because you are spiritually discerned. So come speak with us.
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- But let's prepare now as we do every week to go to the table. As I say it every week, we've got some guests this morning.
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- I want to let you know that this table, if you are a follower of Christ that is in good standing with an evangelical church where you're coming from, trying to look for a church, but you're not under church discipline, right?
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- But if you're in good standing, if you are an obedient, baptized believer, you are welcome to this table.
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- This table is for you if you are in Christ. I would discourage any of you if you do not know that you are in Christ, do not come.
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- Paul warns of coming to the table in an unworthy manner. Some are sick and some have even died,
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- Paul said. So please tread with caution if you are not in Christ. But if you are, come with boldness.
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- Come with boldness to this table. You don't have to be perfect. This is not a time for penance or perfection.
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- This is a time of acknowledging our imperfection and the perfection of our
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- Savior that we rest in. There's wine and juice.
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- Juice is there for conscience sake. And bread here. I will be over here.
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- Pastor Jeremiah will be at this side. If you need intercessory prayer, if you just want to speak to one of us, please.
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- You are not interrupting what's going on. We want to pray with you. But the way we want to work this is
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- I want everyone to go to the back and come around the outside. So as you kind of split, go to the outside and make a line and come around and take the elements.
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- And let's return our seats in these middle aisles. Does that make sense to everybody? Last week was a little chaotic. So let's come back around and we'll go back to our seats this a way.
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- And you can go back. Those of you that aren't familiar with how we do this, we don't.