Tuesday Teaching: Ephesians

Series: The Art of Being Unordinary
Sermon: Ephesians (7/21/24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

What are we doing here? What is the Jesus-filled life all about? What is church for?

Those are the questions Paul addresses in his letter to the Ephesians.

Ephesians stands out because it’s the one letter Paul wrote that doesn’t seem to be addressing a specific situation in a specific church.

There were several churches in the area known as Asia Minor (modern western Turkey). Paul’s normal habit, like in Corinthians or Romans, was to write his letters to a certain group of people about specific matters pertaining to their church. But here in Ephesians Paul seems to have written this letter to be distributed throughout a number of churches, including Colossae, Laodicea, and Ephesus, where he had planted the church and served as its pastor for about two-and-a-half years.  

Ephesians is broad; it’s sweeping in its theology and grand in its language, and it’s universal in its application for Christians and the church. This makes it a great book for us to study because so much of its truth and its instruction are applicable across time and place and can be considered useful for our own church context even here today at MCC.

There’s a lot going on in this Ephesians letter but I think its theme can be boiled down to this: Paul is telling his readers the story of God.

The story of God, and how that story includes the human story; our purpose, our condition, our path to life, our response, our future.

God’s story offers us salvation and transformation on a personal level, but in Ephesians the point goes beyond individual redemption…this is God’s story of gathering a people for himself and his purpose.

He’s building the church as the body of Christ and through his church community God is at work, doing more than we can see or imagine, even as the Spirit moves through us and brings us together under the unity of the gospel.

The story of God in the six chapters of Ephesians is God uniting all things in heaven and on earth in Christ, restoring and renewing the whole of creation.

The first three chapters of Ephesians focus on God’s activity, his ownership of all creation and his gift of Jesus Christ to proffer his grace and reconciliation, to redeem our fallenness and use our lives for his witness and his glory.

The final three chapters outline the human response, the nature of our participation in this plan and process.

And God accomplishes all of this in two primary ways: God moves us toward Jesus, and God moves through his church.  

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:1-9)

God has drawn us into his work of uniting all things in Christ. The good works he has prepared for us include nurturing the unity of God’s people and participating in the growth of Christ’s body.

As we live out and proclaim the good news of God’s work in Christ, we are telling the world that we have been changed from darkness to light.

We are not just passive observers of what God is doing here. The story of God is his work for us in Jesus Christ and his work in us through the Holy Spirit AND our work for him in response to his grace and love.

We are active participants in God’s story; we share together in his work of redemption in Christ.

We share together…together with him, and together with each other.

God moves us toward Jesus! And God moves through his church.

How do you feel God moving in your life? In what ways are you participating in his good works through his church? You may find that more of one often leads to more of the other, and not necessarily always in the same order!

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Read for this coming Sunday: Hebrews

Have a prayer request? Submit HERE, and our prayer team will include it in our talks with God.