Ephesians 1:1–2

[0:00] Again, the scripture text is Ephesians 1, 1-2. Please stand for the reading of God's word.

[0:11] Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

[0:26] This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Well, good morning and welcome to Christ Church.

[0:38] It's so good to be in your midst today. And if you're not used to going to church, I would imagine highly instructive. One of the beauties of going to a local congregation and finding your way with a group of people who are pursuing Christ is you end up doing the fullness of life together.

[1:03] You end up standing in one another's living rooms in great moments and in difficult moments. And this hour is so unique.

[1:14] I'm sure already you've found it's different than anything else you will attend in the coming six days. People rise to the heights of giving their voices in praise to God.

[1:27] People bow in confession as they consider their own frailties and faults. People sit around the word of God read.

[1:38] They walk with brothers and sisters that are going through a variety of emotions at any given time. And it is the best place in all the world to be.

[1:52] This is real. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is alive and deepening. Just by word of pastoral privilege before the preaching, we are going to plan a service of celebration for the life of Wes Thomason here as well as what will take place for him in the coming days with his family in South Carolina.

[2:20] And also, just by way of privilege, I just want to say and give testimony to the Lord in regard to what he's done over these two years now of COVID.

[2:40] This is a significant moment in the life of Christ Church. And you are sitting here on a day that marks milestones of divine movement.

[2:57] When COVID locked us out of Ray's school on March 13th, two years ago, and we had no idea when we'd be back, who would have guessed that it would be here in facilities that we own?

[3:14] And I remember early on when I realized it was going to be a long knockdown, lockdown and a knockdown. I began to pray, Lord, what do we do then in a season of preparation which appears to be going nowhere?

[3:34] And he gave us a vision. And there were eight or nine things that the Lord laid upon my heart and upon the heart of this church. We were newly established.

[3:46] And we needed to raise up additional elders. And the Lord allowed us to raise up and train an additional two elders, an additional ten deacons, men, and then men and women who are ready to be deployed into the service of the Lord on the backside of this curse that has set upon the world these last months.

[4:08] We knew we needed to initiate a ministry to women, for women, by women. And we set four lay women off to tell us what that should be.

[4:19] And they returned with their recommendations. And from that moment on, we have already begun to implement it. And God has given us Marjorie Meeks and Ayanna Heron and Lydia Herndon and Diane Marino to coordinate a work that's already underway.

[4:36] While the world has stopped, we've been moving. We knew that we wanted to be a church that thought about global missions, not merely anything local or on the scene.

[4:48] We wanted to be cultural in the sense of sending people all over the world. And we only had two individuals that were laboring on that behalf, Randy and Crystal Hendricks.

[4:58] And the Lord allowed us to build a team of additional people, Emily Rojas and Jim White and Trevor Powell. And now there are five people that are prayerfully laboring already on your behalf to see how this church makes an impact around the globe through the sending of people.

[5:16] We knew that we needed a greater understanding and footprint of a local ministry. And so while nothing was happening, we were planning with committee members to form a local neighborhood partnerships and speaking with other ministries in this neighborhood and appointed Kwabene Kalambula to coordinate our work.

[5:36] And we knew that. We knew that we were asking God to give us an associate pastor that was not only in line with our biblically driven ministry, but one that fit ethnically the suitability of this context.

[5:49] And we worked hard and long in that. And three lay people led the charge on that. And today we now vote on that. Today is a significant day. We knew that we needed funding to be able to accomplish the work that is going on in here and above here.

[6:06] It was an insurmountable amount of money given the membership of the church. But we have seen God do that. And it is important for us, before even the preaching, to have the privileged sense in our hearing of the activity of God in the life of this church through so many.

[6:25] In one sense, we have a growing host of troops ready to be deployed for the vision that God has given us. Because all these things took place.

[6:37] The only thing that we didn't get done, we had actually appointed a team to gather the congregation around a growing understanding of our vision. And so I move from a word of pastoral privilege to the preaching.

[6:58] Our Heavenly Father, as we now hear words from your word concerning the very real, raw nature of this church at this moment on this morning, give us understanding, give us vision.

[7:15] In Christ's name, amen. Vision. Having a vision is important. Just this week, I sat down with our elders and deacons in this very room one evening for a time of prayer and planning.

[7:32] And it was during that time together that a good question was raised regarding the vision of Christ's church. More specifically about the importance and need for all of us to have a fresh grasp of our purpose.

[7:47] A clear corporate understanding of the plans we believe God has for us. For without a vision, the Bible says, and it's proverbial words, the people perish.

[8:03] More literally or woodenly, without a vision, the people go without restraint. More tactically stated, when you don't have a vision, people run off in all directions unto themselves.

[8:17] To put it simply, without a vision, the church is a mess. Clueless about the true nature of their calling.

[8:29] Could it be that the church today, by and large, is in such a mess because such a proper vision is altogether lacking? Which leads me to an important question as we open a new series in our life together.

[8:43] Now that we are in the building, do we know what God's vision for who we are to be and what we are to do as Christ's church Chicago?

[8:57] Put even more importantly, how will we go about securing God's vision for Christ's church? Is it simply the product of representative leaders to sort it out and then figure out how to roll it out?

[9:15] Is it, rather than that, a collaborative discussion that begins with the whole and we all put our own thoughts forward, our own ideas as to what we should be on about?

[9:28] And then do we consolidate those ideas or amalgamate these thoughts around an eventual phrase that can be turned on its head and send us off to a planning committee to execute it?

[9:41] I've been thinking about this for this very moment. The answer is no. That's not how things are done in the family of God.

[9:51] That's certainly not our starting point. We begin by discerning from the Bible what God's vision for Christ's church is.

[10:02] Double meaning intended. What is the vision of God for Christ's church? Chicago. And therefore, what is the vision of God for Christ's church?

[10:16] Chicago. In fact, I've come to think that Ephesians sets forth more clearly than any other book in the Bible, God's vision for Christ's church.

[10:28] And it's for this reason that many, many months ago I chose this book to be the first book that we would look at in full once we were in the building.

[10:40] For here, in this letter, we discover God's vision. God's plans, both for Christ and his church.

[10:52] God's purposes, both for his son and his body. And so today, our journey together really begins in earnest.

[11:03] All the COVID pieces are now in place. I want to know what God's vision for Christ's church universal is.

[11:17] I want to know especially what God's vision for Christ's church Chicago is. And I want to know it from God's word.

[11:30] With this sermon, I aim to do really just two little things in the moments that remain. I want to put your foot in the waters of God's revealed plans for Christ and his church from this letter.

[11:43] And then I want to plant your foot in the first two verses. So let me put your toe in the waters of God's plans for Christ and his church.

[11:55] There are two places in the letter. I hope you have it open in front of you or on your phone. The book of Ephesians, six chapters in length. Two places in the letter at large, beyond the text that was written to or read before us today, that concern God's plans for Christ.

[12:13] What is God doing for his son? Take a look. Just glancing down, we'll be there in a couple of weeks' time. Verses, chapter 1, verses 7 through 9.

[12:24] But I want to make particular mention of 9 and 10. What God is doing is making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.

[12:35] Here it is, as a plan for the fullness of all time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. God's purpose for his own son is that he would function as the plan to unite all things in heaven and on earth.

[12:58] In other words, the first concern for Christ is the work of uniting all things in heaven and on earth. The first implication, just by logic, is that things are not united.

[13:11] There's not a united front between what's going on in the heavens and what's going on here. In fact, there's a ruptured front between the heavens and the earth, the seen world in which you and I live, and the world in which God would create, between his kingdom and the one that we dwell in.

[13:30] And the mission of God for Christ is that he would unite all things. This will require reconciliation. This would require some redemption. This would require some ability for a holy God to walk back into relationship with us.

[13:45] In other words, God's plans for Christ are nothing less than cosmic. They're not merely what he can do for you. It's what he's doing between the heavens and the earth.

[14:00] The second place in the letter that connects God's purposes for his son or his plans and their relationship to us is in chapter 3, verses 8 through 10. Just put it in your mind that way.

[14:11] Chapter 1, verses 9 and 10. Chapter 3, verses 8 and 10. And here you move not only to what God is doing in Christ, a cosmic plan to unite all things, but what is our role in it?

[14:25] Beginning at verse 8, To me, chapter 3, though I am the least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

[14:40] Here we go. So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God may now be known to the rulers and authority in the heavenly places. Just as God has a cosmic plan for Christ to reunite all things that are now disjointed, it is the church that makes that plan known as we give ourselves to him and walk out our life with one another.

[15:04] And it is not only that we make our witness known to the world. Notice the text in verse 10. You make it known in the heavenly places. So God's plan for Christ is to take him from heaven and reunite things on earth and then through his people and the way in which they manifest his glory in their own lives, speak back up into the heavens and all the united hosts.

[15:25] What a glorious calling. Not only are you and I called to live together and move among a people to be of use to the community in which we live, we are called to bear witness to an unseen host.

[15:49] Oh, what is at stake then with the way we live our lives with one another? The reconciling work of Christ is to be on display in our lives together.

[16:01] I can't think of a more elevated vision to put before you today. Now, that's just to put your toe in God's vision for Christ and his church.

[16:15] Let's put our foot into the first two verses. Because according to verse 1 in our letter, God's cosmic vision for Christ and his church is made known to us none other than by Jesus Christ himself.

[16:30] This is the point I'm trying to make. Our vision for Christ's church comes from Jesus himself. That's where we get it. Verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

[16:50] Jesus is the one that we get our vision from. Did you notice the prepositions? If you remember English class, those little words that carry great import. Paul's the apostle, but you're not getting the vision from him.

[17:04] Paul's an apostle of Christ Jesus. The word apostle is a messenger. And in this sense, I think he's using it formally, not just in someone who's carrying a message, but as one of the 12, the apostolic band.

[17:16] That Paul is an apostle in the sense that he is God's ordained messenger, but he is a messenger of Christ Jesus. Everything that he writes is coming to him as a revelation of the word that was given to him by none other than Christ Jesus.

[17:38] I mean, this is stunning to think about, that the words of the letter to the Ephesians, written by the hand of Paul in the context of the first century in which he wrote, are nothing less than the words of Jesus to his church.

[17:54] You know, the word apostle actually, as words find their iteration through the strata of centuries, back in classical Greek, apostle would have actually been used in a militaristic sense of being the admiral.

[18:10] So you can almost envision that Jesus Christ, who's the head of the church, presents a word to the admiral that's to be carried forth to his people so that they would know God's plans for Christ, the hope of his calling, and the nature of their work.

[18:35] You know, these prepositions, just, I mean, look at them, we'll hit them again, verse 1, of Christ, verse 1, in Christ, verse 2, from Christ. I mean, the letter to the Ephesians is surrounding or connecting everything it has to Christ.

[18:51] That's what a preposition does. It connects two words together the way a bridge connects two land masses together. And what this thing comes out of the block is, I've got some word to you that comes to you of Jesus Christ.

[19:10] I'm merely an admiral, I'm merely an ambassador, I'm merely a messenger, so that you would hear from him. Jesus Christ is the one from whom Christ Church Chicago must receive our vision.

[19:26] He's the designer. He's the bridge between the land masses of why we're here and what we do. You know, it was 1940, and there was a bridge built in Tacoma, Washington.

[19:37] I think it was called the Narrows Bridge. It was a wonder. It was a structure that was a suspension bridge. And by design, it was perfectly suited.

[19:49] It opened up in the year 1940. I'll come back to that bridge in a moment. But at this point, you need to know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the designer of our vision.

[20:02] He is the architect. He is the architect. It is not me. It is not the session. It is not the congregation. It is not the culture.

[20:14] It is Jesus Christ as revealed in this letter. Interesting.

[20:26] Christ Jesus. It's funny, isn't it, how often you can miss him there? Like in the reading, you would have thought, well, I know what I'm going to hear today. I'm going to hear a sermon.

[20:36] The outline will go something like this. Well, we have a word about Paul, who's the author. We have a word about the saints, who are the audience. And then we have a little benediction or prayer about how the author longs for something in the audience.

[20:49] And then Jesus, meanwhile, is standing off stage left, waiting for you to bring him into the sermon. And every time he thinks, well, he's in a verse now where I'm standing, certainly I'm coming. All the prepositions are connecting.

[21:01] Everything's said to me. And yet he stands over there. And then we go home. And you spend all this week talking about the author and the audience and his eulogy in regard to what it is. He goes home saying, I thought I was coming to my own church today and the preacher never mentioned me.

[21:15] And yet the actual opening of the verse is unmistakably. Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ. It is of him.

[21:26] It is to those who are in him. And whatever you're going to need comes from him. This is the center, the center beam, as it were, in a suspension bridge that holds everything together.

[21:45] And what does it mean, Christ Jesus? If you're just now new to studying the Bible, get hold of this. Christ is a term directly taken from the Old Testament scriptures, which means Messiah, which translated was their king.

[21:59] So what Paul is referring to is, I've got a word from the king, who is Jesus. Jesus is also an Old Testament word akin to Joshua, which means salvation.

[22:12] So what he is saying, Paul is saying, is I have a letter I want to write for local churches as they assemble. And it comes from the king who is savior.

[22:24] It is the savior king. It is Christ Jesus. It is the one who rules God's people. And he is the one who saves God's people. He's the one that we go to for refuge.

[22:35] And he's the one that we serve with perfect obedience to the best of our ability. Yes, a savior king.

[22:46] That's who we get our vision from. This Christ Church Chicago will not form some man-made vision. And I hope that's of encouragement to you.

[22:59] Notice Paul there as he finishes, and I'll move on. He says, I am this messenger only by the will of God. I didn't do this thing.

[23:12] Even what I'm telling you isn't from my own initiative. Verse 1. A consequential truth for us. The vision that Christ Jesus has will be the vision that we embark on together.

[23:30] Number 2. There's also an empowering truth for us in verse 2. Because he certainly has done something for us. I'm sorry, the latter half of verse 1.

[23:41] To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Notice. It's written to saints.

[23:52] And not merely saints. Saints who are faithful. It's written to the holy ones. He calls us holy ones. Declared holy. And not just faith in the sense of the ones who mentally assent to the gospel.

[24:07] Not faith merely in the sense of someone who's resting on the gospel. But to the faithful. The ones who are actually exercising in their life a willingness to come into greater and greater conformity to all the things they're learning from the gospel.

[24:21] So he's writing to holy ones who are faithfully engaged in living their lives out for him. He has something to say to us.

[24:33] Now, notice it says to the saints who are in Ephesus. Interestingly, from the very earliest manuscripts. Those of you who like manuscript studies or even archaeology where you might find papyri and the rest of it.

[24:45] The earliest, earliest manuscript we have of this letter. P46. Doesn't actually contain the words in Epheso. Neither do the Sinaiticus or the Vaticanus codexes, which give us early, early work on the whole New Testament.

[25:06] Those very early witnesses realized that this letter was sent along with one to Tychicus, which we'll find later, with Colossians, which is why there's so much overlap.

[25:17] And the letter was not only to go to Ephesus because it was the center of the whole area, but it was a circular letter. It was actually to go to church, to church, to church.

[25:28] It was general, which is why there's very little, if any, information about what's the historical setting of the church in Ephesus at this time. Because he doesn't really care. He's got a magnified thing he wants to say.

[25:42] It is timeless. It's for all the saints. It's for all the saints who are working to be faithful. Let me put it another way.

[25:57] This book is for you. Notice, Jesus does not address his vision to the citizenry as a whole.

[26:09] He doesn't say to the citizens who reside in this part of the world. He's not sending his letter to be read before the legislators.

[26:20] He has no interest in writing something that he feels God wants to be known in the halls of those who make the laws.

[26:31] He's not actually writing this letter to the judiciary. He's not writing this letter to the culture makers, to the social influencers. He's writing this letter to a small subset of people who live within legislative, judicial, culture-making worlds who have given themselves to Christ as the church.

[26:55] You know, today there's a sad irony. Today, God's people are more likely to take their cues from the political parties.

[27:06] God's people are more likely to think that what we need to hear from is the ultimate word of the judiciary. God's people are more likely to think we have to actually take our cues from the culture makers of our time instead of Jesus.

[27:22] And they're more likely, the churches in our day, more often thinking that that's how we're going to carry out our vision. But it's actually not written to any of those entities.

[27:33] It's written to a room like this, where people are involved in a host of disciplines outside that have gathered under the name of Christ.

[27:45] Which means then, that in our vision, if it comes from Christ, and it's a word to us, it's going to require those of us who have been declared holy, even though you know you're not.

[27:59] Those of us who are declared faithful, even though you know you are faltering and failing in your desire to live according to them. It's going to require us to be holy. And to be faithful.

[28:10] How are we going to carry out a vision if we're not holy and faithful? Well, it'll be carried out imperfectly, even if we're giving our best efforts to it. But this is a year, this is a moment for us to reconsider our holiness before God.

[28:27] And our fidelity to his cause. I've thought about this myself. I was with some dear friends just a couple of weeks ago. And we were talking about what books we might want to get a hold of in our own devotions this year.

[28:39] And for me, it became clearly the book of Leviticus. Leviticus, you might say, crazy, I'm not following the pastor's lead this week or this year.

[28:50] But Leviticus is an interesting book. The opening chapter gives a temporal marker. The last chapter gives a temporal marker. The whole book actually comes within one month time period.

[29:01] The middle of the book is actually the day of atonement, where atonement is made to make God's people holy. But the fullness of the book over the course of a month is that God's people are to be holy.

[29:13] Having been declared holy, they are to work out their holiness. I hope this year to read Leviticus once a month to learn what I can learn about being holy as he is holy.

[29:27] We will not be able to accomplish the vision Christ has for the world or for us or the unseen world.

[29:40] Unless we are holy, consecrated, set apart. And if we're not, the bridge comes crashing down.

[29:53] I was telling you about the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma. The design was great. But then the people who were building it decided to do what they wanted. And some thought, well, we can just make the cables out of this and that and the other.

[30:07] The whole bridge actually, and it's all of its beauty, within a four-month period, the day was over for the Narrows Bridge. It began to twist with torsional vibration.

[30:18] It began to crack. And all of a sudden they realized that the cables that were connected to the center were inferior of quality. Because the people wanted to skip the corners and, you know, perish.

[30:35] They wanted to do what they wanted to do. And the whole bridge on November, I think it was 7th of 1943, four months after going up, collapsed. Why?

[30:45] Not because of the design, but because of the people who decided to do whatever they wanted on it. May that not be so for us.

[30:58] May we be those who are in Christ. May we be those who know Christ. May we be those who are known by Christ. And if you're not known by Christ this morning, if you don't know Christ, then you need to understand briefly that he's going to have to make you holy in ways that you know you can't.

[31:18] He's going to have to declare you holy and give you faith because you're not getting home any other way. Which is a beautiful transition then to the third and final thing I want to say.

[31:30] There it is in verse 2 that you're going to get all you need to accomplish the vision of Christ as the people of Christ, as things are given to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

[31:44] Notice what comes to us. Grace to you and peace. Grace to you and peace. The source of grace and peace needed for the work that God is calling us to accomplish in the next 50 years together comes from the Father and the Son, and it will be his attending grace and peace.

[32:07] If you don't know the grace of God, chapter 2, 5, by the time we get there, you might actually become a Christian because you're going to learn that it's by grace you're saved, not by all the things you are going to be doing.

[32:18] Or, in chapter 3, you'll see the peace of God, which actually comes to us. Christ becomes your peace. Christ becomes the one who gives you a relationship with God.

[32:32] But these words, which you and I take vertically, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, are more in this letter than simply vertical. It's just a hint at what's to come, but there's a horizontal plane on which these things play out.

[32:46] The grace that Paul knows they need is grace with one another indeed. The peace that God gives to you to enter into a beginning relationship with Christ is the peace that you're going to need to live with one another, brothers and sisters, in Christ.

[33:04] And so the horizontal playing field, here it is. The vision for the future of Christ Church Chicago is nothing less than the cosmic exalted vision of God for Christ and the church.

[33:19] It will come from him. It involves those who find themselves to be in him. And they will have all the graces and pieces given to them from God, from all his things, so that you can accomplish the work.

[33:38] Let me close. Well then, if vision is important for us at this point in our history, I believe it is. We stand in a momentous day.

[33:50] If vision is important for us, then Ephesians is essential to get it right. May we spend our winter months coming to know God's cosmic plans and his contemporary purposes.

[34:10] And may we really get hold of it. Otherwise, all the preparation ground that's been laid, all the money that's been raised, all the men and women that are becoming members, all the brothers and sisters that we're bearing in the hope of the Lord, all the meetings of training, all the equipment, all the troops that now stand ready to be deployed.

[34:47] Well, without this, we would simply run off in all manner of unhelpful directions.

[35:00] Our Heavenly Father, we don't want to be a people who just get on about building the Tower of Babel and not understanding what we're to do.

[35:17] So may Christ and your plans for Christ to unite all things that are disjointed, may He be the one who tells us what to do.

[35:35] And may we give our lives to you and may we give our lives continually to one another. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

[35:45] Amen. Amen.