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Ephesians 6: 10-24
June 21, 2009
Exordium: Here we are at Conquest Beach. You have been looking forward to this day, and so has God. His timing is always right. As we come to the last section of Ephesians, we find it all about “conquest”.
Ephesians 6:1-9
June 14, 2009
Exordium: Life in the family is a common grace, that is, it belongs to the whole human race. So the Bible affirms, “God has set the solitary in families.” (Psalm 68:6)
Family life is God’s good gift. We all have come from families, even if now we are not in a nuclear family of our own. The family in God’s design is to be the bedrock of society, the foundation from which the state arises, and a building block of the Church Christ is making in the world.
Yet families are also a challenge. We were all made in innocence and perfection, but all of us have been affected by the entrance of sin and we are damaged goods in one way or another. No wonder there are stresses and strains that bump and bruise us. This is not the way it was meant to be, but the family has suffered as the world has from the ravages of human sin.
Ephesians 5: 21-33
June 6, 2009
Exordium: No matter how many books we read, or songs we sing, no matter how many plays or movies we watch, there is still something about marriage and the family that is beyond us. How did it start and what is it really for? How come we have so much trouble making it work?
We scratch our heads and say, “It is all a mystery to me.” That is just what the Bible says about this wonderful and frustrating gift of marriage. Because Paul, after giving this wonderful description of the Christian home, says, “This is a great mystery.”
There is the clue we need to understand this riddle of the home. It is really about something else, something far more grand than we have ever seen. It is a kind of an image, a shadow of something else. When we grasp that we are on our way to understanding this great gift, and making it work!
Ephesians 5: 15-21
May 24, 2009
Exordium: You will remember that the letters of the New Testament are given to us to explain the teachings of our Lord in the gospels. What a great help they are to us, because Jesus’ words are so concise that they require considerable unfolding and explanation.
EPHESIANS 5: 1-14
May 17, 2009
Exordium: This passage takes your breath away-listen to how it starts again. “Become imitators of God.” What an order that is!
He thinks of us as His children (and we are). Every father wants his children to be like him. The best way to honor your parents is to imitate their good qualities. And God wants that too, only He wants us to be that for His glory, not ours. Many folk would like to have God’s praise or power, but our imitation is that He may be exalted not ourselves.
This is the very thing, for which God made us-to be after His likeness. Is it not the reason Christ died for us-that He might have us as members of His family and bring us to glory in His likeness?
Ephesians 4: 25-32
May 10, 2009
Exordium: Another “therefore.” They seem to outline the book, especially the last half where we are learning how our beliefs are to affect our everyday lives.
We saw the connection we did have with Adam and how it has been left behind in our new connection with the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that we are His, the old is done away and all things have become new, and our living is to display this newness of life.
We are students now in Christ’s school where we are learning Christ and leaving behind the lessons which the culture was trying to teach us. We have seen that God wants us to cultivate the contrast between the old and the new connections; between the school of Christ and the training of the world around us.
EPHESIANS 4: 17-24
MAY 3, 2009
Exordium: In the Bible we have a mirror of ourselves. We see who we are, where we came from, and how we need to change and grow; what we ought to be doing and thinking.
Yet, it is like those clothing stores that give you two or three sides of yourself in the mirrors. God, in this passage, also sets the heathen, the pagans, before us as a mirror in which we can observe what our nature is like not governed by the Holy Spirit.
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Ephesians 4: 7-16
April 26, 2009
Exordium: The book of Ephesians is study of the church. A technical name might be it is a lesson in ecclesiology. The church is the centerpiece of God’s plan for the world. For the church the world was made, and for the world the church was made.
The church is the heart of the Kingdom of God. It is not exactly the same as the Kingdom but it is at the heart of what God means when He speaks of His heavenly Kingdom.
How important the church is to God. In His last prayer, Jesus prayed for the Church, that God would keep and unify us. He did not pray in the same way for the world. What happens in God’s church is more significant than what happens in Washington, DC or at the United Nations or on Wall Street.
Ephesians 4:1-6
April 19, 2009
Exordium: I want to back up and get a running start on this fourth chapter of Ephesians, since we have been away from this important letter for three weeks. You will remember that Paul’s prayer for them included the petition that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” He is not there speaking about the initial entrance of Christ into the believing heart. The Ephesians were already believers. Rather he is pointing to that enlarged place which Christ takes in us when we invite Him to dwell as a permanent resident and not as a temporary visitor.
In the fourth chapter he is building on that great teaching. Christ dwelling within will surely have tangible, visible outward effects in the daily life of the Christian.
I think that is what the word “Therefore ” is there for. It is joining the doctrine to the duty, the faith to the practice, the words to the music.
Paul reinforces his emphasis by repeating his prisoner status. You will recall that we saw earlier that the prison perspective is that view of things that comes when we are focused on God alone and the rest of our thoughts are filtered out and the things of eternity- the things of real importance- come into focus for us.
Ephesians 3:14-4:4
March 22, 2009
Exordium: The Christian life is partially hidden, and partially visible. Like a tree which is mainly and primarily underground until it lifts its branches and fruit up to be seen. We have been thinking about the hidden part in recent days, where the roots are. After Easter we will turn, Lord willing, to the part of the Christian life that is seen by others.
So here we are right between the two parts of Ephesians, the “hiddenness” of chapters 1 -3 and the visibility chapters 4-6. Chapters 1-3 are the secret resources of the Christian life and chapter 4-6 are their exercise in the church and in the world. We can pray 1-3 into us in order to prepare our hearts to live out 4-6. Sometimes we try to live out 4-6 without first gaining the secret resources of soul to do so.
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