Bible Study Using Logos Bible Software

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So, what I want to do is something a little bit different than we've been doing for a long time.

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So, I sent an email out to all the guys to read the book of Ephesians, chapters one through ten.

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Okay, some of yous are laughing, some of yous are laughing because you know there's not ten chapters in Ephesians.

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Only nine, right? There's only six chapters in Ephesians, okay? So what we typically do, or what

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I typically do I should say, is I do a PowerPoint, I feed you information, you absorb it, hopefully somehow

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God redeems it and you use it for His glory. What I want to start to do is show you how

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I do Bible study, how you can do Bible study, and what the steps are so that when you're home and you want to look into the

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Scriptures that you're not dependent upon a pastor or someone else to do the study.

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Now, of course, God's established pastors and teachers to help teach us the Word, and I glean from my pastors and I glean from other teachers.

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It's important that we understand that there are men who know the languages, who are more studied than us, and we'll be able to receive from them.

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But, as Christians, you guys should be able to get into the Word of God, study it for yourself, and come to some conclusions so that you guys are better equipped to explain it, to internalize it, and use it to glorify

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God. So now, what you see here is I have

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Lagos Bible software. It's a good way to study the Scriptures. So I'm going to go through what my layout is.

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You don't need Lagos Bible software to do this. There's plenty of resources that you could use online that'll show you how to do it.

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Okay, so real quick, top left -hand corner, I open up my Bible. So I use the

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ESV Bible, and that's what I read my Scriptures out of. Then I make a note for that particular book.

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This is a note for the book of Ephesians. If you see the bottom left -hand side, I tagged it Ephesians. And I'm going to go through the preliminaries, what we need to do before we actually get into the text of a book of the

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Bible. And we're going to step through that today. I also open up the Legacy Standard Bible, which is not downloaded on this particular laptop, but it is at home.

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Then I open up, I have two commentaries. One is Teaching Ephesians. The other one is MacArthur.

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And then the last one is Brian Chappell, the

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Reform Expository series. Then over here, in the next tab,

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I have the book of Ephesians open, and I have it, a parallel Bible open next to it.

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On the right -hand side, that's the NASB. So as I scroll up, the NASB scrolls with it.

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So I'm able to look at two different translations at the same time. That's important.

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And right next to it, in the next tab, I have something called the Comparison Tool. So that's actually, let's see, let's do

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EPH1. So at a quick glance, I just hit that tab, and I could see what four of the

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Bibles that I like say about how they translate that particular scripture. So I have the

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ESV, the NASB, Lexham English Bible, and the New King James Bible. I have the Legacy Standard Bible over there.

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So I can look at the four of them at the same time to see if there's any differences. And if there's differences, that's going to precipitate some questions.

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Why is it different? What is this translator saying that the other one isn't? So I want to know that.

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I also have a resource called the Outline Bible, which is terrific. It outlines each chapter, each book for you.

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And this particular one uses alliteration. I love the fact, alliteration, you'll know what

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I'm talking about, right? So salvation planned by the Father, purchased by the Son, preserved by the

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Spirit. All right, that gives you a quick insight into the triune nature of our salvation.

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And Outline Bible highlights that for us. There's also a resource called

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USB. This is done by Bob Utley, and it's a language translation. He goes deep into the

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Greek and the Hebrew when we're in the Old Testament, and he explains it. So I don't read

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Greek or Hebrew, so I'm dependent upon a commentary that does that for me. Then Lagas has something called the

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Factbook. So you plug in a word, like in this case, it's Paul, and this will give me a ton of resources in my library that pertain to Paul, because he's the author of the letter to the

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Ephesians, right? So that's important when you begin to study a Bible. You need to know who the author was.

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It's going to make a difference. I also have a little search option open here. So when I need to search a word,

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I need to search a phrase or something like that, I plug it in, hit enter, and it gives me the information. And then

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I have other notes open as well. So let me go back to this. Okay.

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On the bottom right -hand side, I have a resource called the

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Thompson Chain Marginal Notes. And what this is, it's a note on Ephesians 1 .1,

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and he categorized all the different things that the first verse in Ephesians pertains to.

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You click on that, like we're going to go through, I'll show you, we're going to hit Paul's Apostleship, and that's going to go to the left -hand side, and that'll give you the verses that pertain to Paul's Apostleship.

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This is a very powerful tool if you're starting to go into a book of the

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Bible and you want to know who wrote it, what is an apostle, and we're going to hopefully get into that if we have enough time this morning to show you what that looks like.

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Thompson Chain Reference Bible also has outlines to each of the

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Bible and a summation of what that particular book is about. Then I have two dictionaries that I open.

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One is the DBL Greek. The next one is the Word Study of the

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New Testament Dictionary. I have another single -volume commentary that I call single -volume commentaries.

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It's one book that gives you commentary over the whole Bible, and I have a few of those.

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This one is John Corson, who's a Calvary Chapel guy, but he has some really good insight to some of the scriptures.

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This is the MacArthur Study Bible. I like to listen to what he has to say, a Believer's Study Bible, and then there's

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Lagos' Lexham Study Bible. Okay? Over here, this is part of the

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Thompson Chain Reference series. Then I have the

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Believer's Bible Dictionary, which is a really good resource. Zondervan, New International Version Bible Dictionary, and then there's a couple of devotionals that I have.

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So what I want to do is step us through what the

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Bible study method is. Tomorrow, in Sunday school, I'm going to do something called the perfect Bible study, not that it's actually perfect.

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We're using the letter P as an alliteration to go through all the different things that we do to do

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Bible study. So you're getting a little sneak peek, I screwed up the

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P already. The first thing we do before we go into a Bible study is get the preliminaries down first.

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Okay? So what are the preliminaries? The person. Who wrote it?

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Who heard it? Who wrote the book, and who did he write it to?

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That's important. The place. Where did he write it from? Where is he writing to?

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That's going to give us more the context surrounding the book so that we have insight into what the book is pointing us to.

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The position. When I say position, I want to know where does it fit in in the canon of scripture?

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Where does it fit in chronologically in the whole survey of human history?

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And where does it fit in literally, like for literature -wise?

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What type of literature is the book of Ephesians? All that's going to be important when you're coming to your conclusions.

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Is the book of Ephesians poetry? Wisdom literature? Is it historical narrative?

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All those things play a role in how you understand and determine what the author is actually saying.

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That would be profile as well. Literature. Is it wisdom literature, poetry, historical narrative?

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And then the plot line. What is the point or the plot that is being laid out in this one particular book?

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Okay? So we'll start stepping through this. I don't know how far we're going to get through it. Like I said, this is the first time

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I'm doing it like this. I want your feedback. Tell me, yeah, this is helpful, this is not helpful.

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I figured rather than just putting a PowerPoint up here and feeding you information, you would read the text.

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We would go through it and it would become revelation that leads to transformation. PowerPoints are good and they can help you, but I want everybody, especially for the new year, to start getting into the text.

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That's why I sent the email out. Read the text. Hearing it taught from a

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PowerPoint lesson is one thing. Reading the text and invoking the Holy Spirit to illuminate it to you is a whole different thing, all right?

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That's going to further your understanding of what's being written, God's word, and further your relationship with God, all right?

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All right, so the first thing, a person. Obviously, we see from over here,

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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus. So, who's the person writing?

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Pablo, Paul, right? And it's to the church at Ephesus. Now, here's something we want to take notice of.

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ESV puts to the saints who are in Ephesus, in Ephesus, in the

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NASB, Lexham English Bible, and New Cain James has that little red thing. And there's a reason for that.

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In the earliest manuscripts, at Ephesus is not in there, okay?

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So let me show you how we figure that out. Okay, so where is he writing from?

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Is he writing from prison? Is he writing to the Ephesians? So I did a search in my library, and I highlighted the answer for us.

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So these are the questions, figures, and now I got to download this because it doesn't show up. So now I need some filler time.

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I should have did this ahead of time, right? Mm -hmm.

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How did you do that? It's just a quick button. On the logo? Yeah, on logos.

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It would be on the logo? Sure, it should be. Absolutely. This one.

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Oh, this one? Yeah, this is... Okay, the comparison. Yeah, go into tools, type comparison, and...

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Yeah, just you tell it which ones you want. You could put up, I think, up to five on there. Okay.

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Say again? Okay. All right, so let me show you how this would work if I had it set up correctly, right?

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So the place, where is this being written from? Is it being written from prison? Is it being written from a church?

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And how do we know it's to the Ephesians? So here's my answer. I found the answer in MacArthur's commentary, and it says this is the date and destination of the epistle.

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Again, these are preliminaries. These are things that we want to know before we get into the text to start interpreting it because where he's writing it from and who he's writing it to is important.

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So sometime between 60 and 62, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. See verse 3 -1, all right?

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So right within the letter, chapter 3, verse 1, it says, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you

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Gentiles. So he's writing this from prison, and there's other evidence for that as well, to the believers whom he has pastored.

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Because the phrase, who are at Ephesus, is not in many early manuscripts, and because there is no mention of a local situation or individual believer, many scholars think this letter was an encyclical intended to be circulated among all the churches in Asia Minor, including those in Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, as well as Ephesus.

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It may be that the letter was sent first to Ephesus and therefore became especially associated with that church.

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The first three chapters of Ephesians emphasize doctrine, and the last three emphasize behavior.

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The first half is theological, the second half is practical. So is that important information to know?

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Yes. So it's not specifically written to, it wasn't written specifically to the church at Ephesus, but it was written to the whole area.

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And because it came to Ephesus first, that's how it became known as the letter to the

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Ephesians. But it's that whole area, and that's actually going to come into play and become more important as we continue on, and I'll show you why.

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So the position and the point in time. Where and when was the book of Ephesians written?

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We just read before it was between 60 and 62. Where in the

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Bible does the church in Ephesus, or the Ephesians, start? Where is the start of the

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Ephesian church? Acts. The book of Acts.

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You guys are right. I wasn't trying to trick you, okay? But that's important, because aside from, aside from Rome, the book to the

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Romans, which Paul never visited, he says, I long to visit you, and Philemon, all of Paul's epistles start in the book of Acts.

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So before you start studying the book of Ephesians, you need to go to the book of Acts and see what happened when

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Paul was there. That's really important. That's going to set the context and the direction for why he's writing what he's writing and why he's writing it to them.

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So the epistle to the Ephesians starts in Acts chapter 18, verse 19. And again, I like logos because you can just hover over the verse and it tells you.

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And they came to Ephesus and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the

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Jews. So Paul came there. He left his partners in Ephesus to build the church, right?

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And then we get to 19 .1, and it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.

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There he found some disciples. So this has given us more insight into this letter and why he wrote it.

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Those who had believed and were responding to the teaching moved with Paul to the lecture hall of Tyrannus, where he began a series of daily discussions, which lasted for two years.

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That's pretty important. He's there for two years teaching them. As a result, all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the

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Lord. Again, that's right out of the scriptures. This continued for two years so that all of the residents of Asia heard the word of the

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Lord, both Jews and Greeks. So Paul's teaching was pervasive. He's hitting lots of people.

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All of the people in that area heard it. So the letter to the Ephesians, written perhaps some six to eight years later, in 59 to 61, would have been to all those in the region who responded to the word of God, a group which extended beyond the bounds of the city of Ephesus.

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He'll go on to tell Timothy in 1 Timothy 3, I urged you when

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I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

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Hmm. Gives you a little clue. Are they already starting to pervert the doctrines that he laid the groundwork for for the past two years?

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That gives us a clue. Yeah. He's telling Timothy, stick fast to the doctrine that I told you. In verse 315, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

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God, the pillar and buttress of the truth. Right? Again, he's establishing the fact that the church is one of the institutions, is the institution that God set up for the advancement of the gospel.

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Right? We're going to see in the book of Ephesians how God brings both

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Jews and Gentiles together to make one new man. Okay? And the fact that God set up the church, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, as the foundation for the church.

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Now, the foundation is laid once, not over and over and over again. Okay? And then in 2

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Timothy 4, 16, at my first offense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me, may it not be charged to them.

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Okay? So, while Paul was in Ephesus, the believers at Ephesus deserted him.

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Again, we already see that there's a moving away from what Paul was teaching to them deserting him, leaving him.

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Do you think that's important to know as we go through the book of Ephesians? Yeah, absolutely.

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Absolutely. Okay. So we got the who. Now, here's something. Yes? Yes. Excellent point.

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And for those of you listening online, the point was made that it would be nice to see a map of Ephesus and its proximity to Israel and Jerusalem, because they're not close together.

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Right? This is an area in Turkey. So you see how Paul went all the way around to Ephesus.

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He sailed there establishing churches. I actually contemplated putting up maps and I'm saying maybe it's just going to get too deep.

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But thankfully, we do in Logos have maps and get ahead Pastor Chris. Yeah. Very, very important.

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Thank you for bringing that up. So when you see a map, that kind of puts legs on it.

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So you understand where he was going and it's going to come into play. And tomorrow and the following week, we're going to see where Paul sailed.

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And guess who sailed to those places first or a place first?

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Jonah. Jonah was wandering away from God and ended up in Tarsus. Where's Saul from?

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Saul of Tarsus. Oh, wow. That's a connection that we might want to make. Right?

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You start putting all these things together. It's like, oh, my goodness, God is smart. Like he's so it's so multifaceted and so many different pieces of putting are being put together.

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When you start to understand them, it's like, wow, the Bible comes to life. Now, here's something that I actually didn't know but should have.

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But as I'm going through this, I'm learning as well. So this is an important part of the context.

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Acts chapter 20 verses 25 to 35 says this. And now behold,

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I know that none of of you among whom I have gone out proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

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Therefore, I testify you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

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As an elder, we're called to preach the whole counsel of God. That means we talk to you about heaven.

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We also talk to you about hell. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the

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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

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So now Paul is speaking specifically, this is the only time in all of scripture, he's speaking specifically to the elders only, the overseers of the church.

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Why? Because I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

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And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

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That's a heavy charge. Paul is saying that from within the body of Christ, false teachers are going to arise twisting and distorting the scriptures.

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And you men as overseers have to guard the flock. You have to guard those people that God has placed under your shepherdship to make sure they know the truth.

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And guess where that was written? To the church at Ephesus. That's going to give us greater context into what

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Paul is telling us in this book. Do you see how it's like compounding upon each other so that we get the whole context of what's actually happening here?

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So Acts 20 verses 25 to 30 is the only speech in Acts directly to the elders. And overwhelmingly, it concerns the health of the church in the region, which is

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Ephesus. The leaders must watch themselves in the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made them overseers.

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Negatively, they must be on their guard from false teachers who will emerge even from their own number.

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Positively, they must hold on to God and the word of His grace, which can build them up and give them an inheritance among those who are sanctified.

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That particular commentary goes on to say, it has also been said that it, Ephesians, matches

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Romans as a candidate for exercising the most influence on Christian thought and spirituality.

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So most people like, what's your favorite book of the New Testament? The book of Romans. It's like Paul's magnum opus.

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Here's where he lays out from creation, from the beginning of creation, God's invisible attributes of divine nature have been clearly seen.

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And then he talks about the Jews and how they departed, the Gentiles departed, and God gives them over to their own heart.

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And then he talks about being that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and justification by faith.

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Like this is theology 101, right? This is an immense letter. What they're saying is

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Ephesians is just as immense. In fact, it's a candidate because of what Luke wrote about Paul in Acts chapter 20, his last sermon or his last teaching to the elders of the church, to hold fast to the doctrine that he taught them.

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Very important. All right. Profile. So what kind of literature is

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Ephesians? Somebody want to take a guess? Okay.

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Yeah. Teaching. Didactic, right? It's didactic literature. It's teaching. It's a real easy answer.

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What is the blank to the Ephesians? The letter, right? It's a letter.

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So what we have to remember, if somebody wrote me a letter and you were reading the letter written to me, you're not reading your own mail.

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It wasn't written to you, per se. It was written to me. So Paul is writing this letter to the

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Ephesians. Again, that's why we need to know who the Ephesians are, what issues they were having there, so we could put ourselves in their shoes and glean from it.

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It doesn't mean that we can't understand or learn something from it. Obviously, we can.

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It's in the scriptures for a reason. So here, again, I highlighted the answer, and this is going to float us to a resource that is on the

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Bible Dictionary, and it tells you what's an epistle. Epistle is written correspondence, whether personal or official, and has been common to all ages.

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The Old Testament abounds with evidence of widespread written letters, among the best known being

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David's letter to Joab concerning Uriah, Jezebel's letter to Naboth, and Sennacherib's letter to Hezekiah.

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The New Testament also abounds in Acts 9 -2, in Romans. The term is, however, almost a technical one, referring particularly to the 21 epistles of the

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New Testament. The New Testament epistles were written by five, possibly six writers, James, John, Jude, Paul, Peter, and the author of Hebrews.

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Paul wrote 13 or 14, if Hebrews was written by him. John 3, Peter 2,

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James 1, and Jude 1. So as you can see, who wrote the bulk of the letters to the churches?

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Paul, right? Again, that comes into play when we're reading the book of Ephesians.

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According to the custom of the time, they usually began with the name or title of the writer, and that of the addressee or addressees, then followed words of greeting, the message of the epistle, and at the end, the author usually gave his name.

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Typically in Paul's letters, he starts off with theology, what does he want them to know, and then he brings in practical application.

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What does he want them to do? In fact, it's a model that I use, and I know the other guys do, when we're preaching.

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What does the scripture tell us? What is it telling you to do? What does it want you to know?

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What is it telling you to do? There's a big difference between knowing, and then knowing and doing.

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In fact, the word hear in Hebrew has that connotation.

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So if my son does something, and I tell him, do this, and he doesn't do it, what do

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I say? You're not listening to me. Well, he did hear the words, he just didn't do what

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I said. So the word hear in Hebrew means to listen to the words and put them into action.

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So that's what most of Paul's epistles, not all of Paul's epistles, what do you want to know, what do you want them to do?

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Okay, so where was I here? Followed by the words of greeting. It was Paul's usual practice to employ a secretary to write from dictation.

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The epistles were written to individual churches or groups of churches, almost always given by name, or to individuals.

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Seven are called general epistles, because they were written to the church at large. Then you have the pastoral epistles, which is 1 and 2

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Timothy and Titus. He's given them words of how to set up the church, what the requirements for elders and deacons are.

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So far we have, let's go back, we have the person who wrote it, the place, he's writing it from prison to the area where Ephesus is,

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Asia Minor. We know the point in time when he wrote it, we know the type of literature that it is, it's a letter.

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Now we're going to look at the plot line. So again, this is from a resource that I had.

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It says, it seems rather presumptuous to assume we can encapsulate the entire message of Ephesians in one sentence.

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At the same time, it is quite possible to trace themes in this letter, all of which ultimately relate to who we are in Christ.

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It is in him that we have every spiritual blessing. In him we have been chosen and raised, and through him we have been made into that one new identity, the church.

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There is all too often a large gulf between what we are in Christ and what we are in reality.

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So do the words that he's writing to the church in Ephesus match the way you're living? What we do has to look like what we believe, because what comes in here through your head should come out through your hands.

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If it's not coming out through your hands, maybe you took the words in but you didn't hear them, because hear in Hebrew means to take it in and to do it.

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So if you find yourself reading the words of Paul and saying, hmm, he's telling me what to do but I'm not doing it, ask

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God for help. Ask God to change your mind and heart so that you can put these things into action.

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The result of this is that as the main distinguishing mark of being a disciple is destroyed, love for one another, so the main responsibilities of the church are diminished, evangelism, prayer, and nurture, it can be very difficult for us to be what we know we are in Christ.

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So if you don't know who you are in Christ, you're not going to act that way on the outside. Once you understand who you are in Christ and what you've been given and your heart's changed and you have this level of gratitude that you want to be loyal to your king, you're going to do what he says.

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Ephesians is a letter for the church, a timeless exposition about becoming what we are in Christ. It sets forth the objective reality for all who are recipients of God's unmerited love and who have been made alive in Christ.

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And then it tells us how we might become what we are. Reading and understanding Ephesians is like being taken through the theological equivalent –

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I love this illustration – of a photographer's darkroom. In the days before digital photography, the picture was captured at the moment the camera's shutter opened, permanently set into the film, yet still had to be developed.

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There in the darkroom, the picture slowly emerged. That which has been taken became permanent reality for all to see.

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It's the same thing with us. We've been exposed to God's Word. God changed us.

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He placed His Holy Spirit in us as a seal guaranteeing our inheritance, our redemption, and our resurrection.

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Now, like we're in the darkroom, and as we continue to grow, the picture becomes more clearer and clearer and clearer.

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Or at least it should. As we meditate on God's Word, we plug into the means of grace, we become part of the body, and we don't just come to church as consumers, we come to give.

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We come to give worship. So many people come to church saying, what am

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I going to get? I want a word from God. I want to worship God. And they think it's something that you get, a feeling.

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We come to church to give worship to God. We come to give of our talents, gifts, and abilities.

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We come to give of our finances. For God so loved the world, He took everything in the world and hoarded it for Himself.

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No, God's a giver. And when we look like our God, we are givers as well.

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We don't come to church to get things, we come to church to give things. And I'm not making a plea for your money, trust me.

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God doesn't need your money. It's a reflection of what's going on in your heart.

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You recognize God's blessed me, I'm just going to give and trust Him. Somehow, someway, God always provides, right?

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Amazing. Okay, let's go. So, there's an illustration

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I came across. And again, as I'm going through the resources in my library,

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I'm getting these pictures. Now, illustrations are really cool. Some help you see into a situation, some help you see out of a situation.

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So, a good illustration is going to take the context of what you're reading and put it in a way you can see better.

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So, I like this one. It says, for many years, Hetty Green was called America's greatest miser.

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When she died in 1916, she left an estate valued at $100 million, an especially vast fortune for that day.

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That's in 1916, $100 million, right? But she was so miserly that she ate cold oatmeal in order to save the expense of heating the water.

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When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection.

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It has been said that she hastened her own death by bringing on a fit of apocalypse while arguing the merits of skim milk because it was cheaper than whole milk.

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Miserly, right? The book of Ephesians is written to Christians who might be prone to treat their spiritual resources much like the miserly couple and Hetty Green treated their financial resources.

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Such believers are in danger of suffering from spiritual malnutrition because they do not take advantage of the great storehouse of spiritual nourishment and resources that are at our disposal.

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The book of Ephesians is all about how you are rich in Christ Jesus, how you have an inheritance, who your father is.

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Ephesians has been given such titles as the believer's bank, the Christian's checkbook, and the treasure house of the

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Bible. This beautiful letter tells Christians of their great riches, inheritances, adoption, and fullness in Jesus Christ and his church.

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It tells them what they possess and how they can claim and enjoy their possessions. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many banks would allow their customers to withdraw no more than 10 % of their accounts during a given period of time because the banks did not have enough reserves to cover all the deposits.

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But God's heavenly bank has no such limitations nor any of those restrictions.

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No Christian, therefore, has reason to be spiritually deprived, undernourished, or impoverished.

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In fact, the Christian has no reason not to be completely healthy and immeasurably rich in the things of God.

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The Lord's heavenly resources are more than adequate to cover all our past debts, all our present liabilities, and all of our future needs, and still not reduce the heavenly assets.

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This is the marvel of God's gracious provision for his children. It's MacArthur. So, do you see how understanding this, before we actually get into the text and begin reading the first verse, is going to shape our minds of what we're reading, who wrote it, who he wrote it to, what the essential theme of the whole epistle was?

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Okay. So, one of the interpretive challenges, and you'll discover this if you do a study on the

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Book of Ephesians or consultant commentaries, is the pronouns that Paul uses. Now, to interpret the pronouns in the

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Epistle of Ephesians, it's crucial to understand their contextual usage and theological implications.

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The epistle employs pronouns strategically to cover important theological concepts. In the opening chapter, the pronouns we and us are used to describe

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God's blessings and redemptive work for believers. Notably, in some passages, we and you are used as shorthand for we

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Jews and you Gentiles, respectively, reflecting the historical context of the early

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Christian community. This usage highlights the epistle's emphasis on the unity of Jews and Gentiles in Christ, a key theme throughout the letter.

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The pronoun he often refers to God or Christ, underscoring their roles in the divine plan of salvation. Now, when this letter was written back then, around A .D.

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60, the Jews were the chosen people of God. The Gentiles were dogs.

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They didn't have an inheritance in Christ. They were cut off from God. This letter is telling the church at Ephesus that the mystery of God's church was always that there would be

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Jews and Gentiles in the same body. Ephesians is going to tell us he took away the dividing wall of hostility and made the two persons into one.

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That's revolutionary for the people at that time. Jews thought we got the exclusive on God.

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Nobody has God but us. Gentiles, you're dogs. We don't even eat at the same table with you. That's how bad you are.

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Now, Paul is telling. Paul, and we're probably going to get into this today, but who was

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Paul? He was a Jew. What kind of Jew? A Pharisee, a Hebrew of Hebrews.

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He was a teacher of the law. He studied under Gamaliel. He was persecuting the church.

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For him to make a complete turnaround to not persecuting the church, but to advancing the church and building the church, this is huge.

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This is huge. This is a whole revolutionary thought, a new paradigm for the people he's writing to.

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You mean, as a Gentile, I have the same things that you guys have because I believe in Christ?

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Yes. You have an inheritance, a spiritual inheritance, in heaven waiting for you.

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And you can live like you have that inheritance right now. In fact, you should. When we understand that the payment for our sins is made, there's no longer left any payment.

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There's nothing else that we owe God as far as our sins go. Boy, that's going to breed a lot of gratitude and a lot of love towards the

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Savior who put himself on a cross in our place. So to understand that Jews and Gentiles are now brought into one body, we're going to strive for the spirit of unity and the bond of peace, this is revolutionary to them.

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Okay. Keep going. Plot line and overview. In this epistle, Paul speaks of the riches of God's grace.

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Okay, we see in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to riches of his grace.

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What is grace? Unmerited favor. Actually, Michael Kruger says it's demerited favor.

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We've ruined it already. We've disobeyed

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God. So it's demerited favor. The unfathomable riches of Christ. To me, though I'm the very least of all the saints, the grace was given to preach to Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and the riches of his glory, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being.

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He calls the believers to attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, to be filled with the spirit.

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Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, to be filled up with all the fullness of God.

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In Ephesians, the word riches is used five times. The word grace is used 12 times.

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The word glory, eight times. Fullness, filled up or fills, six times. The key phrase in the book of Ephesians is in Christ, 15 times.

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Anybody want to take a stab at what in Christ means? What does in Christ mean?

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Through his power and authority, sure. What else? Certainly, it's definitely in his power and authority.

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Reformed theology is also known as covenant theology. Thank you.

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When you're in union, when you're in covenant with Christ, you are now in Christ, right?

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You are his bride. What is marriage? A covenant, we're the bride of Christ.

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So in those times, whatever the husband owned, the woman also owned.

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She's now part of him. The two became one flesh. The same thing is true with Christ.

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Everything that he has won, he has won for us as well. So everything we have in Christ when we're in covenant with Christ is ours.

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So that term in Christ being used 15 times is a big deal. You understand when you're in union with Christ, you have access to things you never thought you had access to before.

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You have access to the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. The same spirit that rose

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Jesus from the dead dwells inside of us. Like if that's all we learn today, that's enormous.

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Enormous. All right, so Christ is the source, the sphere, and the guarantee of every spiritual blessing and of all spiritual riches and those who are in him, they have access to all that he has.

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Our riches are based on Christ's grace. I'm not gonna hover over each one of these because we're running out of time. Our riches are based on Christ's grace, his peace, his will, his kind intention, his purpose, his glory, his calling, his inheritance, his power, his love, his workmanship, his spirit, his gifts, his sacrifice, his strength, and his armor.

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Who's this about? Him. It's about him, right?

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And when you're in union with him, it's even more about him. Okay, let's just get,

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I'm gonna finish this and then we're gonna stop because I don't wanna go too, too long. So Paul also discusses the concept of the church as a mystery revealed by God in Ephesians.

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He emphasizes that believers, both Jew and Gentile, are united in Christ's body, okay? Again, through union, through the covenant, that both

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Jew and Gentile are united in Christ's body, the church, which was previously hidden from Israel and is now disclosed through the gospel.

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The revelation of God's truth is categorized in three types. Secret truths known only to God, truths revealed to select individuals throughout history, and truths that were kept hidden until the

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New Testament. So you guys, most of you know Deuteronomy 20, 29, 29, the secret things belong to the

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Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of his law, right?

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There's always that action part. It's not just something that you should know, it's something that you need to put into action.

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So there's secret truths that we don't know. Then there's truths that are revealed to us.

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Psalm 25, the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant, right?

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So those who belong to God are gonna get revelation of the covenant, and that they belong to him, like we're reading about in Ephesians.

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And in Amos 3, 7, this is a very famous passage. For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets.

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The prophets were the ones in the old covenant who would relay God's word to them, basically prosecuting attorneys, telling his people, listen,

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I made a covenant with you, I've guarded you, I've delivered you out of Egypt, okay? You're no longer slaves, but this is the covenant, and you're violating it.

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If you continue to violate it, this is what's gonna happen. And then truths that were kept hidden until the

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New Testament, Ephesians 1, 9 through 10, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which 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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Again, this is gonna come into play when God is uniting Jews and Gentiles together as his body.

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We see this in Colossians, that in their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of the full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Romans 11, lest you be wise in your own sight,

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I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the

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Gentiles has come in. And then 2 Thessalonians, for the mystery of the lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.

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So there are things that were unknown to the Old Testament saints that now once Jesus is on the scene and the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the coming

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Messiah are manifested, now the unfolding mystery becomes clearer to the apostles.

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Okay, and now these are the mysteries that are being shared with us in the epistles and in the

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New Testament. Okay, I'm gonna stop there because we're about 45 minutes in.