From Paul the Apostle to the Saints

Transcript

GR 2306
02 /28/2021
From Paul the Apostle to the Saints
Ephesians 1:1
Gil Rugh


We're going to go to the book of Ephesians in your Bibles. We spent a couple of weeks looking at the background to Ephesians and some wondered whether we really were going to get to the book, but the time has arrived. Now how far we get today depends on you and me, together we will at least get through some of this. We will see what the Lord has for us. Be encouraged, I'm going to give you a quote from Martin Lloyd-Jones in a little bit, but he did a series of sermons back in the 1950s at Westminster Chapel in London where he pastored for some 30 years, and those are available to you in seven volumes of about 400 pages each. So if you think I am taking time, I encourage you to read Lloyd-Jones, and you would profit. What he has to say is good but he expands it maybe way beyond what we will be doing.

We've looked at the background to Ephesians. Paul spent three years of his life and ministry in the city of Ephesus. He had other contacts there, one contact before the three-year period and then the contact afterwards. Remember he left after three years in Ephesus and went and spent two years in Greece and then on his way back from Greece, on his way back going to Jerusalem really, he met with the Ephesian elders in Acts 19 and gave them a word of encouragement and challenge. He did not soft pedal anything, that there could be difficult days ahead. They had to deal with the fact that from among their own selves there would be those who would rise up to seek to undermine the ministry of God's Word and draw away disciples after them. And to give you an idea of where we are as we come to the letter to the Ephesians, Paul would have spent three years in Ephesus and then two years in Greece, so maybe 53-56 A.D. in Ephesus, then went and spent a couple of years in Greece. So on his way back would be around 58-59 A.D., you read in the different commentaries and you'll see it may vary a year or two along the way, but that's pretty much where we are talking about.

Paul would have been writing the letter to the Ephesians while he is imprisoned in Rome. And that's what happened at the end of that third missionary journey,, after he stopped and visited with the Ephesian elders, journeys back and gets arrested and he has an imprisonment in Caesarea. Then he is carried to Rome because the Jews intend to kill him and he is aware of that and they are maneuvering to use the political system to enable them to carry that out. So he appeals to Caesar and he is a Roman citizen and has that authority, so he will be transported to Rome. And that's where we find him at the end of the book of Acts, and in Acts 28 we find that he is imprisoned there for two years. Now it is not an imprisonment in a prison, would be similar to what we would call house arrest. He is awaiting his appeal to be brought before the Emperor, he is in a home, so it would be like a house arrest. He has a Roman soldier with him all the time, he is not free to travel about the city, but he is free to have people come to visit him. So he has people coming in all the time, he is teaching the Word there. You can imagine what an opportunity for a Roman soldier to sit under the ministry of Paul. We're not told what happened with that Roman soldier or soldiers as perhaps they had changing of the guard, obviously, but God works in His ways.

While Paul is a prisoner there in Rome, he writes four letters. Paul not only is teaching the Word, he is writing to send the Word out. We call them his prison epistles because they were written while he was a prisoner. They are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, so we have those in that order in our New Testament, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and then the little one-chapter letter to Philemon is included in that. So when they talk about Paul's prison epistles that is what we are talking about. We refer to that as Paul's first Roman imprisonment, that would have been around the early 60s—61, 62, 63 probably; we usually date Ephesians about 62 A.D. So half a dozen years after his time in Ephesus he writes this letter, it's a relatively young church, probably in existence before Paul's three-year ministry there because of the prior contacts with Paul, Priscilla and Aquila and so on, but a relatively young church. Keep that in mind as we read through this book. Paul will launch right into the doctrine of God's sovereignty and election. They are supposed to be ready to handle it and deal with it. So see something of how Paul carried out his ministry.

The first two verses which we are going to focus on, and make it through at least a portion of them, is what is called the introduction to the letter. And it's the standard of a letter of the time. What he does is identify the writer, the recipients, and gives them a word of greeting. Just like our letters follow a standard, we usually start out at the beginning addressing those who are going to receive the letter, ‘Dear So-and-So.’ And then at the end we sign our name, and with that often a greeting, sometimes it is best wishes, or may the Lord bless you, and we sign our name. Basically, in the letters of Paul's time, you put that all up front, which makes more sense, that way you don't have to go to the end to see who wrote this. He puts it right up front, that's the first thing he says and here you have, what's the first word you have here? Paul. Who is Paul, which Paul are we talking about? It's a Latin name, Roman name, there would have been a number of people with that name. Well, “Paul, the one who is an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” He is writing “to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.” And he gives them a word of greeting—“grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He is acting and writing on their behalf, and what he is writing as we will see is God's word to them. And he wants God's blessing to continue for them.

“Paul,” so familiar to us. Book of Acts tells us he was known as Saul. He is a Jewish man, he was a Pharisee, he would have been born in a Jewish home, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He would have had the Jewish name Saul, and Saul would have been a prominent name because Saul or Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin. And the first king of Israel was a man named Saul and he was also of the tribe of Benjamin, so an honor for that tribe to have the first king of Israel come from them. So Paul was given the name Saul as a Jewish man. When did he get the name Paul? We don't know. In Acts 13 when Paul begins his missionary journeys, we are told that we're talking about Saul whose name also is Paul. Now we're not told where he got the also name Paul. It may have been from birth since he was a Jew, he was born Jewish, descendant of Abraham and the tribe of Benjamin, but he also tells us that he was born a Roman citizen. So he could have had the Roman name, the Latin name, Paul from birth. Since that was an honor to have and special ways that you could get that, and he would have gotten it as a family. But nonetheless we know it was his name. It could have been given to him later.

One interesting note, Chrysostom, one of the early church writers in the fourth century, so he is about 300 years in here, he comments about Paul. He preached on Ephesians, so you can get that in a volume, I was reading a little bit of that, and he tells us that the average person of his day, average man, was six feet tall, but Paul was only 4½ feet tall. Now take that for what it is worth because 300 years, we think of how things gets adjusted, but nonetheless he is a lot closer to that time period than we. So if you want to give a guess, Paul was about the size of my wife Marilyn's father, maybe he made 5 feet, I don't know, 5'2”, but he was a little man. We know he wasn't very impressive because he had to defend himself, and they say he is not very impressive in person, and he is not that good a speaker, so things haven't changed. They liked Saul when he was appointed king because he looked like a king, head and shoulders above, he's a man you look at and he is kingly. And we do that today, we look and say that is a handsome specimen of a man. You are all looking at me, but I'm just giving a story here. No laughing on that side there where my family sits. But we think of Paul, he is a normal person, he is a man like us. Remember Elijah? He was a man of like passions like us. Sometimes we put (up high) these individuals that God so used, but they were normal humans that by the grace and power of God they were used mightily. So Paul the apostle is the writer of the letter.

And very important, we just don't want to go by this because we say this was the standard way to open the letter, identify yourself, the recipients, and give a greeting. It was but this is the Spirit of God moving Paul to write so these are words from God to the Ephesians and to us, so they are important. And Paul's position as an apostle of Jesus Christ is absolutely foundational. It is a common way for him to introduce his letters because of the unique role he has as an apostle. That's what gives authority to what he writes because he is one who receives direct revelation from God, that makes this more important than other letters, it is unique. It is God speaking through Paul and that continues down to today as God in His grace has preserved it for us, it is God's Word.

When you come over to Ephesians 3, for example, Paul writes and he reminds you he is a prisoner, verse 1, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.” Incidentally, in Ephesians 4 as we have it he'll say, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord.” Paul keeps his perspective. Since this opening is going to be about the sovereignty of God, God's will being done, the first part of this letter is all about God's sovereignty. Paul recognized it. What man is doing to me is not what is of prime importance. It is God's work and I am His prisoner and I am being held prisoner by the Romans, for example, because I belong to the Lord and it is my representing him that results here, but ultimately I am a prisoner of the Lord because that is His will for me today. Amazing Paul can write this letter and he has such confidence, “I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles.”

We have to remind ourselves Paul is an apostle. That means he was one specifically and directly chosen by Christ, it's a work of God setting him apart. We are familiar with the original ones, Judas being an unbeliever, but they became known as the Twelve, and Matthias replaced him by the direct appointment of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1. Paul was picked out, plucked out, if you will, in Acts 9, remember, as he was traveling to another city to persecute Christians that he had had beaten and imprisoned. Remember, he stood at the stoning of Stephen earlier in the book of Acts. He gives his testimony in writing to Timothy who is at Ephesus when he writes his letter to Timothy and says what a terrible person he was, I persecuted the church; he wasn't just a passive, indifferent person, yet God selected him as His representative, first bringing him to salvation that Paul found in trusting Christ. But on the Damascus road he was confronted by Christ.

So he has a divine appointment, here in Ephesians 3:1 he is “the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles.” Now note, “If indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace.” And that word ‘grace’ is a key word in Ephesians, it's going to come up in Ephesians 1:2. “Stewardship of God's grace,” something of God's grace was entrusted to me, my gift as an apostle. My being a prisoner is part of carrying out my ministry as an apostle because I am where God has sent me, where God has put me; that sovereignty of God so important that we will say more about. “You have heard of the stewardship of God's grace,” He appointed me an apostle. Ephesians 3:3, “That by revelation,” there's the key, new truth revealed to Paul. “That by revelation there was made known to me the mystery,” another word that is going to be used several times in the book of Ephesians, the word ‘mystery.’ Mystery is something not referring to something confusing, mysterious, hard to understand, it is something that cannot be known unless God reveals it. So you'll see he defines it, “that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief, by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.” This is information about Christ that was not before revealed, “Which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.” It is the Spirit's ministry that is making known this additional truth about Christ that had not before been revealed. We'll talk about that mystery when we come into chapter 3. But you see Paul as an apostle is getting the very Word of God communicated to Him by the Spirit of God. Same as Peter wrote, prophets in the Old Testament, holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit and guided in their writing of that revelation so that it would be passed on and preserved.

That becomes key to the authority of Paul. He has authority from God when he is communicating this letter to the Ephesians, he is writing God's words to them. So it's not because he has such a position, like we would have men in religious positions, a bishop, an archbishop, a pope, they are just authoritative. Paul's authority comes from the fact that he is directly appointed by God and an instrument through whom God will speak. He did that through prophets also in the Old Testament, then New Testament prophets. Apostles are different than prophets in that apostles have a broader authority in the establishing of the church. Prophets could receive direct revelation, apostles had a broader authority in establishing churches and having authority over those churches once they have been established. You remember in the establishing of the church in the early chapters of Acts, after persecution broke out under the leadership of Paul before his conversion, the apostles, the original apostles, remained headquartered in Jerusalem. And that was, so to speak, the mother church and there the authority would be passed down.

So when Paul is selected as a unique apostle, and this is found in 1 Corinthians 9 and 15, maybe you ought to turn back there. For some of you it is very familiar, for others it may not. Come to 1 Corinthians 9:1, Paul says, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” You see, that was a requirement, to be an apostle you had to have seen Jesus Christ after His resurrection from the dead. Peter said in Acts 10 when he was at the house of Cornelius, that was so we could be eye-witness testifiers, we give eye-witness testimony that Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the dead, we saw Him; and they recorded their testimony. “Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you.” He has to defend his apostleship. So an apostle was one directly appointed by God, having seen Christ after His resurrection, and then used of God to bring others to Christ and that would include the doing of miracles. In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 12, he said, am I not an apostle, and he has done the works of an apostle, signs, wonders and miracles. How do you know that this man really has a word from God? He could do the miraculous, miracle gifts, and they are connected to the giving of new revelation. I mean, Paul is having to deal with those who claim to be apostles and are not. How do you know which one is true? Well, Paul did miracles, Paul brought the gospel that brought salvation to these Corinthians, that are validating evidences. So the ministry of an apostle is broader.

While you are here come over to 1 Corinthians 15:1, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance,” and he walks through the gospel. Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He was raised the third day, He appeared. This is all consistent with Old Testament Scripture. Then He manifested Himself, verse 5, “to Cephas,” that's Peter, “then to the twelve… then to more than 500 brethren at one time.” Then verse 7, “He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me.” Not everyone to whom He appeared was an apostle, they had to be directly appointed by God to that ministry and so gifted. Paul comes in and he says, “last of all, as one untimely born, He appeared to me.”

Just an aside, we have talked about… we have people today promoting themselves as apostles, there is a resurrection… A professor I studied under in the doctoral program founded the New Apostolic Ministry, supposedly he hadn't done that when I was there but he was tilting toward that in his view of the gifts; ended up now we have apostles and they have a special authority because God speaks to them. So it's not just the Word of God but it's the word of the apostles. But it's just not biblical. We come back to the authority of Scripture.

Come over to Galatians 1, you see Paul's authority again. You see how he starts Galatians 1:1, “Paul, an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead.” You see how it is absolutely important, not because he wants to puff himself up and make himself more important, but he has a specially delegated and appointed ministry and you must understand that. That's what makes his writings authoritative, I am a sent one. The word ‘apostle’ just means someone who is sent on behalf of someone else. It's good to use in a variety of ways: you are sent from someone, on a mission representing that person, acting on their behalf. So that's what he is, he's an apostle. Not from men, I'm not bringing you a message from another man, I'm bringing you a message from God. Now it is consistent with the message God may have on occasion given to other men, like we would have read earlier in the chapters in Corinthians, the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 was according to the Scriptures. But then there is new information given, and how that all is put together and realized is additional information given through Paul.

So here again, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Same greeting we are going to have in Ephesians 1:2. Then Galatians 1:6, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you,” something is going on, they veered away from the gospel that Paul brought to them. And he says this is not a variation of my gospel, there are no variations of the gospel that Paul preached, there is only one gospel. It is another of a totally different kind, it's a different gospel, it's not the gospel of grace, it's not another one like mine. It's not, well, it's not major, look at the things we agree on. The Judaizers trying to mix the Law and grace, they could talk about it, yes, grace, but they added the Law to that, which nullified grace.

So verse 8, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached, he is to be accursed!” Then he emphasizes it again in the next verse, I'm not preaching to please men. And we who preach and teach must keep that in mind, we don't adjust the message so that it's more pleasing to people. Verse 11, “For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ,” God directly communicated this truth to Paul. Why didn't He reveal it to Peter and have Peter teach it to him? Peter is already an established authority. Because God is in charge and He didn't ask for other people to make a contribution to how it ought to be done. Father, Son and Holy Spirit agreed and made their decision and appointment, so to speak. So that's what we're talking about, that's why Paul begins these letters, “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God (the Father).”

Turn back now to Ephesians 1. I am an apostle. More could be said but we'll see this emphasis coming out as we move through the letter. It's of Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus. Christ being His title, He is the anointed One, the ‘Christos,’ carried over from the Old Testament. He is the anointed Messiah of Israel, He is Jesus, Jehovah Savior. The Old Testament Joshua is the name given to Mary, remember, by the angel when he announced that she would give birth. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) So it's not a name like Gil Rugh, Christ Jesus, but Christ is a title connected to His name. He will be called the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord bringing the deity side and the authority that goes with Him as God. So you would have His deity, His humanity and His position as the God/Man, the Messiah of Israel. This is the One whom I represent. I wasn't sent from men, as he told the Galatians, I don't act on their behalf, I act on behalf of Christ and the truth concerning Him. I bring you the gospel, the good news concerning Him that is about Him and comes from Him. And it's by the will of God. This is so important, the sovereignty of God in all of this.

I mentioned Martin Lloyd-Jones, in his introduction to the book of Ephesians, book 1 of those seven volumes, he has an interesting statement and very important. It's interesting because, keep in mind, he preached this, it's the record of a sermon he preached in 1954. 1954, that goes back a little ways, some of us were living then, some of you weren't, but 1954. Now keep that in mind when I tell you what he wrote about Ephesians, this is his introduction and his introduction to this letter to the Ephesians. “The Bible is God's book, it is a revelation of God and our thinking must always start with God. Much of the trouble in the church today is due to the fact that we are so subjective, so interested in ourselves, so egocentric. That is the peculiar error of the present century, having forgotten God and having become so interested in ourselves we become miserable and wretched and spend our time in shallows and in miseries. The message of the Bible from beginning to end is designed to bring us back to God, to humble us before God, and to enable us to see our true relationship to Him. And that is the great theme of this epistle.”

Martin Lloyd-Jones died I believe about 1982. What would he think if he wrote that today? The people then were so subjective, so self-absorbed. And the concern comes with believers, our lives come about, what God can do for me and what I expect God could do for me, and He ought to meet my expectations, and when He doesn't I am one unhappy person. I thought that I would have and be and do all of this. Paul's focus from the very beginning, I am “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” Now keep in mind he is a prisoner in Rome, he'll spend two years as a prisoner awaiting his trial to come up, at the end of the book of Acts we are told two years. He spent two years in Caesarea in prison waiting. I mean, your life is going by, we would say, what wasted time. What wasted time? We have four letters preserved in the eternal Word of God, while he was in prison.

Some of us would be sitting there, Lord, if you don't get me out of this prison I'll never be able to do anything for You, I'm getting older, I'm deteriorating. When he writes this letter he has maybe less than six years to live because he is going to get re-imprisoned and executed. Lord, there are things I ought to be doing. And we miss the opportunities. We say, I believe the sovereignty of God, I believe in God's will, I believe… but I am unhappy with it. And do you know what? When we studied Ecclesiastes we learned we can't change yesterday, we can't control tomorrow, we are responsible for what we do today. We miss the opportunities. I believe God is sovereign? So what does Paul talk about? I'm a prisoner of those wretched Jews who have used the Romans, and now they have imprisoned me and we have the unjust government and they shouldn't be treating a Roman citizen like this. And I’m sending out all the letters I can to point out the injustice of a Roman citizen. I mean, they have already testified to him, Herod and the Roman authority both agreed this man hasn't done anything wrong, he doesn't deserve to be in prison, but he appealed to Caesar, he has to go to Caesar. You don't get any of that, in fact a lot of people read Ephesians and don't even know he is literally a prisoner, they think he's just figuratively saying I'm a prisoner of the Lord. They never knew that was where Paul was when he wrote Ephesians.

I think that’s where when we talk about the sovereignty of God, and it's going to get heavier, it's by the will of God. Now if it is the will of God, I am where I am by the will of God. Then what am I to do today as one in the will of God? Well, I'm homesick, I can't be at church. It's not the will of God for you to be homesick? I didn't say that, I'm just saying I can't really do anything worthwhile. God didn't know He put you in a place where you can't be worthwhile? That's where our theology… we begin to drift away. We want to be sure, is God sovereign? Yes. Are you in sin? Now you are here in sin. Well, most of you aren't leaning over and lying in your neighbor's ear. Well, what are your thoughts? Am I in the will of God? It's God's will for me, this is where He has me, I can't change yesterday, maybe I did some bad things that I shouldn't have done, but here I am today.

I was reading one of the Puritans, Thomas Goodwin (you think Lloyd-Jones can look windy). I was reading when I was away for the week, Puritan stuff. There is one Puritan, he did a thousand messages on Hebrews, think about that. There is another Puritan, he preached for 38 years on the book of Job. Well, I'm just trying to prepare you to be patient with me. But Thomas Goodwin and his commentating on this opening section of Ephesians says you need to remember God uses the worst of people because He changes them. And he used an example, Paul is the example, and that's what gets him. Paul becomes an apostle, by his own testimony he was a wretched, ungodly man fighting against God and persecuting any believers he could find, and God makes him new and uses him in a great way. David sinned greatly, another example, God is not done with David, He uses him to write more Scripture. And those examples, we realize the power of God's grace and God's redemptive work, it's the will of God.


He's writing back in Ephesians 1, “to the saints who are at Ephesus who are faithful in Christ Jesus.” And I think there are three descriptions here, they come across as two but they are really three. He's writing to saints, those saints are located in Ephesus but obviously it's the eternal Word of God. Those who are faithful, you'll note ‘who are’ is in italics, it's not there. He's writing to the saints and faithful. That word ‘faithful,’ it's the same word we translate ‘believers,’ so I think here it is probably better ‘believers.’ But it's true, true believers are faithful, so in a sense we don't want to give a wrong idea, if you have really believed in Christ the mark of a believer is perseverance. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious, those who practice sin are of the devil, those who practice righteousness are of God. Talking about faithfulness as an evidence of saving faith. Now some of these things they begin at a point and I placed my faith in Christ, but now I live my life by faith, so I think he is talking about believers here.

And then these are those who are in Christ. Saints and believers are in Christ, which refers to being in a relationship with Him. That word ‘saints,’ again, just like the will of God, we sort of blow over that. Do you know what a saint is? It's a holy one, holy people, it's the common way for Paul to identify believers when he writes to a church—the saints, those who are sanctified, those who are holy. Those words, hagios, hagiodzo, they come from the same basic Greek word -- holy, saint, sanctify. The foundation of the word means ‘one who has been set apart.’ God is holy, holy, holy, as the seraphim declared in Isaiah 6; holiness is His character. Why? He is perfectly, completely set apart from all sin, all defilement separated from Him, in Him there is no darkness at all, God is light, in Him is no darkness, none. So that's what holiness is.

So I'm writing to the holy ones; that's a reminder of what we are to be, who we are. Ephesus was not an easy city to be a believer. Think of our city, might be a city a little larger than the city of Ephesus, they estimate it may be as large as 250,000, and it had a central temple. Remember they worshiped Artemis, the Latin Diana, and anyone that disrupted that worship which involved the commercial side of it as well, was unfit to be in the city. That's where Paul got in trouble, remember? He's preaching salvation by faith in Christ, and all this worship of Diana and that, that doesn't bring you forgiveness of sins, that can't make you right with God. We can't have a person doing this in our city, that will undermine our position in the world as Diana… the temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, people come from all over the world to see the temple and to worship Diana. They buy our merchandise, we'll be out of business, no place for that here. The whole city was in an uproar, there is rioting in the streets, they gather in the 25,000-seat arena chanting for hours, ‘great is Diana.’

This is going to be a hard place to be bold with the gospel. These people are still there, it has only been a few years since those riots, maybe as many as six years. But things haven't changed there, the temple is still there, Diana is still worshiped, all this. I'm writing to the saints, those who have been separated out by God for Himself, that has meaning. We even as Christians, we talk about how the Roman Catholics have distorted the whole idea of what a saint is. Of course they have; they distort everything else, why wouldn't they distort that? It's not biblical. But my concern: we as evangelical, Bible-believing Protestants ignore the significance as well. Do you know who he is writing to? Holy ones.

Come over to 1 Peter 1, look what happened. In verse 3 he says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again.” And incidentally he is speaking here just after he talked about the doctrine of election, we'll be talking about that as we move into Ephesians 1. But He has caused us to be born again by His mercy. What happened when we were born again? We were removed from the realm of sin and the domination of sin and the slavery of sin and separated out for God Himself. He made us new on the inside, what does that mean? That has practical application for our life. Look at verse 13, “Therefore, prepare your minds for action,” no room for true believers, sat up, propped up, I'm out of it. You might be at home unable to leave, still applies to you. Some of our greatest prayer warriors are those who can't leave their chair but they can pray for the ministry. Well, you don't have because you don't ask. I hope many of them, wherever they are, are praying for us, praying for the ministry, praying for the Word of God to impact lives. God doesn't put us in a nothing place, Paul wasn't in a nothing place, and he had to be a saint, writing to saints. “Prepare your minds for action, keep sober,” command, “fix your hope.” (We'll talk about this tonight in Romans) “Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you.”

Who is the Holy One who calls us? God. You must, command, “be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written…” and he takes you back to the Old Testament because it was true for Israel, the people that God called for Himself. And we look at it and say, why would they live like they did, why would they drift like they did, why would they do that? Why does the church do what it does? Because it doesn't believe the Word of God, it drifts away from that. I still believe it, yes, I believe God is sovereign, I believe it is His will that is being done. Is my life conformed to that? Be holy, you must “be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.” Why? Because that is what God commands us to do, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” Now you belong to Me, you are Mine. He just didn't separate us from sin out here and put us over here in no-man's land. We sing the song, “Now I belong to Jesus, Jesus belongs to me, not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.” That's what he is talking about, that's where we are going in Ephesians 1, we are in Christ, that relationship, He has caused us to be born again.

Over in 2 Peter 1 he'll say we have become partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? A partaker of the divine nature, the very character of God. I haven't become God but His character is to be produced in me, holiness, one living set apart. The church spends too much time trying to fit in and be accepted in the world. We are not here to fit in and be accepted, we've been separated and called out of it, set apart for God. Aren't Christians going to stand out in Ephesus? Holy ones, separated from sin and all that's involved in a sinful life, to God. They stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Didn't say go hide, go underground, be as inconspicuous as you can. That's not how Paul will end up in Rome in prison writing this letter. We are saints. It has become a meaningless word. We are good at pointing out how the Roman Catholics abuse it but the real concern ought to be how we as a church ignore it. Are we the separated ones, the ones that live apart?

That doesn't mean… When we would go back east, when we were growing up there we would go up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Amish country, the people there were different, the Amish. I'm not ragging on them but the reality of it is they have reduced their Christianity to all works. And you could identify them. And that's why people like that area. We'd go up, great restaurants, markets, and things to do, it's an enjoyable place. Marilyn's aunt lived in a retirement home there for a number of years, we would stop and visit her and take her to lunch when we did. But the Amish, they have their unique clothes because dress stopped in the 1800s. You dress like that, you look like that, you ride in buggies and not in cars, and that's what their Christianity is. Not to make ourselves strange or bizarre, but our lifestyle is different. I don't have to do what they do, go where they go, be what they are because I am not, and I deny what I am if I try to.

That's what a saint is. Paul starts 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, Colossians, call them all saints. Every time he starts, he writes saints, saints, saints, holy ones. Holy ones might have been more helpful for us because that word ‘saints’ has deteriorated and been misused and abused. You are the holy ones, those who belong to God, you are no longer your own, you have been bought with a price, He purchased you out of the slave market of sin, thus separated you for Himself. That doesn't mean we are sinless, but our desire is to be perfect. Paul said I haven't arrived but I continue to strive, in his testimony to the Philippians.

Come back to Ephesians 1. There are many passages we could go to, but this is just the introduction, Paul will flesh it out. I'm writing to the holy ones who are at Ephesus, a reminder to them. The character of the city hasn't changed, look around us. Well, you say the country may become less and less tolerant. We begin to say you can't publish books. What did they say in the city of Ephesus? That's contrary to the health and well-being of our city. What are they using now? That's contrary to the health and well-being of our country. And if you are going to have a job here you can't say that sex outside of marriage of a man and woman is sin. We don't have any place for a person like you. Where are you going to work? Things grow that way. What are we going to do? Well, maybe we could stop being holy. Wait a minute, do I belong to Him or don't I? We sing the song, no going back, no going back, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” We want to be careful we don't start to make a turn. Well, I won't stay on the road but I'll ride on the shoulder. Pretty soon we are in the weeds and then pretty soon we are in the mud.

“To the saints who are at Ephesus,” they are still there. Paul hasn't improved his lot because he is in Rome but he is in prison. Well, that's where God wants him. They are believers, faithful… that word ‘pistois’ here I think is better ‘believers’ because the prepositional phrase. That little preposition ‘in,’ “in Christ Jesus,” that phrase, that is used numerous, numerous times in Ephesians. It denotes a relationship.

Jump back to John 15. (This is as far as we are going to get.) Jesus said “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me…” So here is the connection, now don't get confused, this is the branch that all appearances connected to Christ, but it doesn't bear fruit, so it's a professing connection but it is a dead branch. “He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” So there are only three branches here; one produces no fruit, one produces fruit and one produces much fruit. So it's the pruning process, what God is doing with us so we are more fruitful, produce more of His character, accomplish more of His purposes. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.”

Now note this, verse 4, and it is given as a command, you “abide in Me and I in you.” Now note there is a mutual abiding here, you don't have one and not the other, you “abide in Me, I abide in you.” Why? Because “as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine,” you can't bear fruit unless you abide in Me. The evidence that you abide in Christ, have that living relationship with Him, is you bear fruit and manifest His character, holiness. “I am the vine, you are the branches… apart from Me you can do nothing,” if you don't abide in Me, you are worthless. Verse 6, you will be cut off and thrown in. You had the Judaizers, these professors, but they didn't bear the fruit.

So often in conversations over so many years, conversation comes down and a person says I know I'm a Christian. Something is wrong, there is no fruit, you are in rebellion against God, you refuse to bow before Him and yet you claim you are… Well, I know I have trusted Him. Well, something is wrong. That's why Lloyd-Jones said that this opening verse in Ephesians 1 is the irreducible evidence of a true believer. Too many games played. You can't be that way, you have to be part of the vine. “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away,” verse 6. Verse 7, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you,” that's the key, it's a mutual abiding, that's why we know the first branch was just a professor.

And consistently the abiding is mutual. That's true in 1 John as well, in the epistle. And we know in Romans 8, if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ abiding in him, he doesn't belong to Him. So you can't abide in Christ and Him not abide in you, and it's a relationship. And that's where the fruit comes out, that's where the holiness comes from.

It's a terrible thing to live with a believer or live among believers trying to conform yourself to look like a believer. It can be a miserable life because you are fighting against the sovereignty of God and His will, and you are irritated by those who seem to be living it and you are not, and it must be their fault. And we want to be careful, not make everybody doubt, but if there is doubt don't ignore it. What is my life? David sinned but he dealt with it; Paul was a sinner and it was dealt with. Only God can deal with the sin of the heart, and when He deals with it He makes us new on the inside. Sadly we still do sin, but we can't live like we lived before because we are holy ones, by God's grace set apart for Him for time and eternity.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for Your Word, for its riches, for all You have done for us, all You have provided for us in Christ. Lord, we need to be reminded of the work of Your grace. Even as Paul could declare that he was set apart by Your grace and his realm of service was an apostle, each of us has been set apart by Your grace to serve You, to honor You, to live for You. Pray these truths will impact our hearts and minds. And as we move into this great letter that it will help us, cause us to evaluate our lives, the Spirit will use it to bring us into greater conformity with Christ, His character, so that we might honor You. We pray in Christ's name, amen.