Introduction

It is great to welcome you as you join us for this Collection, on the book of Ephesians. Sometimes I ask people about their favourite book in the Bible. If you were only allowed one book for the rest of your life - and you couldn’t see anything else in the Bible - which book would it be? The sort of answers people give include the Psalms, a gospel, or the book of Acts, but a lot of people choose a letter of Paul’s and if they choose a letter of Paul’s, they will often choose Ephesians because it is such an influential book in the Christian Church. One of the reasons for this is that when Paul wrote this letter, he wasn’t dealing with problems in the church. So often his letters respond to problems in a church. For example, the book of Galatians and the problems of Jewish legalism, or 1 Corinthians and their problems of sexual morality. But in Ephesians, we don’t find Paul talking about problems in the Ephesian church. He is encouraging the church and reminding them of the most fundamental and important truths of the Christian faith and that is why it speaks to us. 2000 years later, those truths really matter to us as much as they did to the Ephesian church.

So, enjoy this Collection. It is in two series and our first series considers the first three chapters and focusses on aspects of the Christian gospel message – the truth that we hold. In the second series Paul gives practical advice to local churches, so that they can be effective in their faith. In Series 1, we are looking at the big picture. Paul starts out by talking about the amazing purposes of God that brought about the Church and brought about salvation.

Paul’s Apostleship

“Paul, and apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 1:1-2, NIV

Paul almost always reminds his readers that he is an apostle, called by God’s particular purpose. Whenever he does that, he has in mind the astonishing and dramatic events on the Damascus road as recorded in Acts 9, where Christ suddenly appeared to him. Even though he was an opponent of the Church, Jesus revealed himself to Paul as the Son of God who had been raised from the dead. Paul was absolutely transformed by this revelation. In that moment, Christ spoke to him, called him to be an apostle – somebody sent with authority with the Christian message - and he called him particularly to go to all the peoples outside of the Jewish nation, the gentiles. Paul always says that he was called an apostle by the will of God. This event happened more than 25 years earlier.

He is writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus which reminds us of the story of how Paul came to Ephesus in the first place. It was 25 years earlier, that Paul with Barnabas started out on an incredible missionary journey. They were in the city of Antioch. We can read about this in the book of Acts chapter 11 and chapter 13. God called them out to start the gentile mission. Paul spent many years travelling around the countries that we now call Turkey and Greece. He went on three special journeys and there were many problems, and many opportunities. He preached and established churches in more than 10 major cities in those countries – quite a remarkable achievement.

Ephesus

Whilst doing this, he came to the city of Ephesus, which you can still find on a map today. It is a ruined city; you can see the remains of the city if you are a tourist; you can see that it was a really big and powerful city on the western coast of what we now call Turkey, which then was called the Roman province of Asia Minor. There were about 250,000 people living there. It was a major city with lots of trade going through; many religious movements, different races and ethnicities; including a Jewish community - a very lively city. It had a big temple to its local goddess who was known as Artemis or Diana, the goddess which was the protector of the city. Right on the edge of the city, you could go up the hill to an enormous, beautiful temple to Artemis of the Ephesians.

Paul arrived there, with some friends, and decided to stay for quite a long time. In fact, he stayed in Ephesus for more than 2 years on his journeys, establishing the church. Many miracles took place as Paul preached.

He spoke to the Jewish people and then he hired a public hall which was used for education and for lectures. As far as we can tell, he hired this hall for the whole of 2 years. Every day he would go there at a certain time, and give a talk, or a lecture, and explain Christianity. Often, he would pray for the sick and many sick people were healed. In Ephesus quite extraordinarily a great move of the Holy Spirit took place and literally thousands of people came to believe in Jesus in the time that Paul was there. The city authorities became concerned about this because people were no longer going up in large numbers to worship Artemis at her temple; they were gathering around Paul and his preaching in the lecture hall that he had hired. They claimed that he performed miracles of healing and cast out evil spirits. So, something incredibly dramatic took place in Ephesus all those years ago. Paul has this in mind as he is writing his opening words.

He is greeting the church that he once knew very well and he spent a lot of time with them. It became one of the biggest churches of the New Testament, perhaps the biggest of all. The other big ones were Antioch and Jerusalem. It was a place where God had really blessed Paul. But when he was being very successful, something dangerous happened. Opponents started raising objections against Paul, and they created a situation where people began to riot and protest, and they gathered in the great amphitheatre right in the middle of the city, where thousands of people could gather for sporting or political events. They started shouting and screaming against the Christians and demanded that Paul should come and speak to them. But his friends advised him not to go as he was in danger of being killed. Paul had to suddenly leave the city of Ephesus after this riot, but he left a large church. As he is writing all these years later, he was remembering the events very well.

Paul’s Present Situation

What was Paul’s situation as he wrote this letter? Paul was now an old man, and in prison. This is important for our understanding of this letter. It says in Ephesians 3:1 “I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles.” He was writing this letter in prison. Where was he and why was he in prison? In the later part of Paul’s ministry, he had long periods of being in prison. At the end of his third missionary journey, he decided to go back to the city of Jerusalem, where the Church had started. He was very unpopular in Jerusalem amongst the Jewish people. We can read the story in the book of Acts: Paul and his friends arrived in Jerusalem. They went up to the Temple to worship. Somebody recognized Paul in the Temple and remembered seeing Paul in another country when he was there, and he was preaching against the old Jewish religion; he was preaching that Jesus was the Messiah. He was upsetting the Jewish people. Then the man started telling everybody in the crowd that Paul not was not a true Jew and had turned against the Jewish people. In the middle of the Temple, there was a riot. People gathered around Paul as if they were going to literally beat him to death. Roman soldiers intervened from nearby, rescued him, and brought him into the Roman military encampment, or barracks. Then they transferred him over to another city. They didn’t really know what to do with him. He spent two years in prison in Caesarea and he couldn’t get out of prison. Nothing happened. He was just waiting for things to happen. He was going to be tried, but the Roman authorities were not that keen to do it.

Eventually it was decided, at Paul’s request, that he be transferred from Caesarea in the land of Israel, the province of Judea, to Rome, the capital city. When he tried to get to Rome, under guard with soldiers with him, by ship the ship nearly sank in a storm, and they were shipwrecked on the island of Malta. He nearly died on the voyage. When he got to Rome, he was then put under house arrest for at least another two years. House arrest meant he could rent a place to live, and Roman soldiers would be there with him day and night - 24 hours a day to guard him. He was probably restrained by chains as well. This is the situation from which he writes this letter. He was in prison in Rome and Paul found prison very difficult.

Although Paul’s circumstances were very difficult, he wrote this amazing letter about God’s purposes and power. He was constrained and confined in prison, but he saw God working in the world, and across time, in a wonderful way. He didn’t think that his imprisonment was slowing down God’s purposes. That is amazing. He wrote these astonishing words to the Ephesian Christians, even though he was in prison and suffering at the time, and facing the death sentence. It was possible that he would be executed when he eventually came to trial in Rome. That was what was in his mind. His life may be near its end and yet he wrote these words.

Blessings

“Praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he’s freely given us in the one he loves.”

Ephesians 1:3-6, NIV

These are not the words you would expect to come from someone who has been suffering in prison for 3 to 4 years, and who nearly died in a shipwreck in the intervening period. These are the words of a profound faith. Paul mentions that it was the Father, who initiated salvation. The Father sent the Son, (John 3:16), for the salvation of the world. We believers have been blessed in so many ways by coming into faith. Sometimes we forget these blessings and we don’t live in the reality of them.

The first blessing he mentions here is that the Father has blessed us in the “heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” What does that mean? It means that we have access to God through prayer. We have access to heaven itself because the Holy Spirit enables us to speak directly to God himself. In the spiritual realm, God moves in response to our prayers. He is listening to us. We are engaging with him. We are in the spiritual and eternal world where God is, because of salvation. Before we were cut off, disconnected from God. In Ephesians 2, Paul describes this vividly. He said, “You were dead in your sins, cut off from God”. That is the state of being for people outside of Christ, but those who are in Christ, have access to God. We can get to the spiritual dimension.

The Father predestined us for salvation. Christians have struggled all through the centuries to put together two things that Paul says in this passage, and in many other places. One is God’s plan for our salvation and secondly, that we have to choose it. Both of these things are in this passage. The first one, God’s plan - his predestined plan - is here before us. What does this really mean? First of all, we need to say this: nobody can become a Christian - neither you nor I, nor anyone else - without God’s initiative. He has to reveal himself to us because we don’t have the capability ourselves to understand, engage with, and believe in the gospel, because of the power of sin. Sin holds us back. God needs to take the initiative. This is what Paul is talking about here. God takes an initiative, but we then need to respond to his initiative. It is like, if you approach a door and you need to go through it. On the door it says, ‘Come to Jesus and be saved.’ You think, yes, I will go through that door. You open the door, go through, and as you close the door you find out that on the back of the door there is another message ‘Predestined by God to be adopted as his son.’ I chose to go through the door, but God prepared the door beforehand. Every Christian has these two thoughts in our heads. We could never believe unless God had showed himself to us and yet we also think, that was the moment when I decided, and both are true. Both are important. Here Paul is emphasizing God’s initiative.

All the way through this passage, there is an interesting expression ‘in Christ’, in Jesus Christ. We receive the blessings by participating in everything that Christ has done. The Father adopts us as his children. I wonder whether you have that sense in your own life of being adopted as a child of God. This is one of the most profound and important aspects of the experience of being a Christian. It is in a simple way to sense God is my Father. John 1: 12. “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of a human decision, nor a husband’s will, but born of God’s.”

Salvation Now and in the Future

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”

Ephesians 1:7-10, NIV

Here Paul speaks of salvation now, but also salvation in the future. What happens to you and to me now, when we as individuals become Christians? We join the church; we are born again. Our sins are forgiven which is part of a much bigger picture of what God is doing. Paul, even though he was in prison, restrained there in Rome, could see the big picture. He could see ahead in time, and he could see what God was planning. He could see that the Kingdom is growing one by one, as more people become believers. It is growing in time as more people are saved. Paul also knew that Jesus was coming back again. He doesn’t say that specifically here, but he teaches that in a number of other places, for example, in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. Then the Church is going to reach its fulfillment, and all evil things are going to be taken out of the world, out of creation, and everything is going to be united under God.

Your life is much more significant than you realise. Your salvation is more significant. It is not just about you. It is not just about now. It is not just about your church or your family, or your country or your town or your job. You are part of the much bigger plan of God, says Paul to the Ephesian church. Through the Holy Spirit, he is saying the same thing to us, 2000 years later. Paul would be thrilled to know how many millions of people have believed the gospel since his time. He would be thrilled to know that in the 21st century, in many parts of the world, the church is growing dynamically and fast - in some places faster than ever before. God’s purposes are continuing from generation to generation. What Paul writes here is still relevant to us.

Sealed by the Holy Spirit

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory.”

Ephesians 1:11-14, NIV

In this part of the passage, Paul emphasises our choice. We spoke earlier about God’s initiative. God’s initiative comes first. Our choice comes later. We entered into God’s purposes, Paul says, when we believed, when we made the decision. Decisions are important, but every decision you make is because God has opened up the way and made it possible. You still have to make the decision to believe.

Paul reveals here something that he speaks of in other places – in Romans and Galatians. The work of the Holy Spirit in the believer is one of his favorite themes. Verse 13, “when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” This is very important for us. God has sealed your life. He has put a mark within you. He has put his presence within your physical and spiritual being. God’s Holy Spirit actually lives within you. That is the extraordinary mystery of Christianity. What is a seal? In the ancient world, legal documents, wills and other agreements were written down on scrolls which were then rolled up. When the scroll was rolled up, a hot clay seal was put on the top to close it up and to mark it. This was the seal to protect the promises and the commitments in the document.

The nearest thing we have to that in the modern world is for those who can write a signature, and if not a signature, may be a fingerprint. Our signature is like a seal. It is like a commitment to the promise we made. Some years ago, I sat down with a lawyer to draw up my will. We had been talking about it and she had written out the documents. She looked over the desk at me and said, ‘Now is the time to sign.’ She gave me a pen and I had to make a decision. Am I going to seal this promise about what happens when I die, or am I not going to? Suddenly I had a moment of hesitation, but I thought, no, I have got to do it. I took the pen, and I signed it. That is a seal. That is a commitment that this is true and authentic. It is also a promise of things to come. Things will happen when I die to my belongings. There will be a blessing to other people in my family and others as well. The Holy Spirit in your life is God’s seal. He is saying, ‘You belong to me’. He is giving you a deposit of his purposes and power and saying, ‘You have got a little part of it now. You are going to have it all at the end of time, when you come to me in glory and your body is raised from the dead, and Christ comes again, and the world is transformed’. We will see the full glory of it then. Paul believed this passionately, even though he was an old man facing a death sentence in a prison in Rome.

His faith was absolutely unchanged.

Reflections

The importance of thankfulness for our salvation comes through this passage powerfully. Let us be thankful people. Thanksgiving for what God has done transforms our lives when they become ordinary, or when we are suffering, or troubled. Let us still give thanks to God for his grace and wonderful purposes, which can’t be changed by the suffering or difficulties we go through. They will still be fulfilled. They are still going to be fulfilled for Paul. He might be executed by the Roman Empire, but he was still going to end up in glory. He was still going to inherit full salvation. He was still going to see Christ coming again. He was still going to be raised again from the dead, and going to see the world transformed. And so it is for you.

My second reflection would be that this passage is the beginning of Paul giving us a big vision for the church. Paul loved the church, even though it had problems; there was often sin and difficulties in the church with divisions and false teaching. Paul loved the church, and he believed that God was working through the church, and the church was going to be filled with glory at the end of time. Through Paul, this lesson is encouraging us to also love the church, and see the purposes of God for the church, even though we may find some situations within it frustrating or very difficult.

Thank you for listening. We are on a fantastic journey in Ephesians. I am really looking forward to sharing the rest of this book with you in the different episodes that follow.