The Ephesians Story (Part 4)

Saints, please hear this. In Christ Jesus is faithfulness. The establishment of the faithfulness is in Christ, not in you. And please understand that you are in Him. Let the eyes of God replace the eyes of men. Walk into God and then get up where His eyes are and let you see Him looking at you. And the first thing He sees is Christ. The second thing He sees is you. But He never sees you apart from being in His Son. And you know why? Do you know why? Because that’s where you started out. We’re going to find this out a little bit later when we find out that we were chosen in Him before creation. That’s where God first saw you, and that’s where God is going to see you at the end of the ages. But in the middle, He never sees you there.

Your God does not ever have a view of you other than the view that He has at the beginning and the end, and that is the view He’s got right now that you are in Christ Jesus, and in Him you are holy, and in Him faithfulness is established. Carisia, that’s not going to change whether you believe it or not. It does not matter whether you believe you’re in Christ or whether you are faithful or whether you are holy. If God says it’s so, you can disbelieve it all day long; it will not change. Your changeability and your feelings and your intellect ain’t going to take you outside of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m going to stop with the next verse. And it says, “Grace to you and peace to you.” And I want to say to you that there is no peace for any of us until there is grace, and when you have grace, you will have peace. And brother, what is your name? Mike, get clear on a subject: that grace covers all things, not most things. If there is one thing left out that grace does not cover in your life, there will never be peace. Think about it. You know when you get down on yourself? Do you know when you get down on yourself? You see, brother, there’s no peace because you believe there’s something about you that’s not covered by grace. You don’t know that the thing you’re down about was covered before creation, cared for utterly. God is not surprised when you mess up. Grace preceded your mess-up. Grace took care of your mess-up, before the foundation of the world, and He didn’t give a grace with two little things sticking out, which grace just couldn’t quite stretch far enough to cover. You know the two things you did wrong; they’re outside of grace. Brother, it is either all grace or there is no grace at all. All of it is grace.

My dear brother, before the foundations of the world, He covered every possible thing you could ever do or think up. And you are in that grace. Be at peace. Brother, be at peace. Sister, be at peace. Grace is yours – utterly. I am always astounded by how we are willing to hold one thing out and really get down. Don’t you understand that God understands that you were once a sinner and that you have been reconciled and that grace has covered all of it and that you are holy?

Wait a minute, Gene. You don’t know what I did. Yeah, but you don’t know what He did either. You see, He saved your soul utterly. He brought to life your spirit. Your spirit’s got no problems, from the day it was resurrected, now and forever, world without end. Go in both directions. Your spirit’s got no problem. It’s impenetrable, and your soul has been saved; it’s cared for. He left no provision of salvation for your body. Your body is outside His grace, outside of His mercy; it will not be saved. Anything it does will not surprise Him one bit. It is under the condemnation of death; it will be destroyed, and He has taken care of that, and He has considered it, and grace is all for the soul and for the spirit, and the body is corrupted, and He is not reckoning it in any way, shape, or form. He knows it is going to end the day you die or the day he comes. And He will give you a new body, and when He sees you, He sees you apart from that body, and He sees a soul washed. He sees a soul in Christ, and He sees a spirit that is part of His very being. Grace has covered it all, and the body is not reckoned with: it is already dead. It doesn’t fall inside His records, brother. There’s no recordkeeping of it. Grace, brother, be at peace. Praise the Lord. Those are the opening two lines, and I’d say they probably contain about as little as you will find in the first 24 lines.

Dear Colossians, I am really sorry that I have taken so long to open Paul’s letter to you here this morning. Come on back tonight, and we will fall into the very inmost being of God and find out what it is that brings forth the church of Jesus Christ. What Gospel could be proclaimed in four months that allows two men to walk out of that city, leaving those people without a Bible or anything else, and knowing they were established.

I asked two questions yesterday, and one of them is, “What could that message be? Well, here are two lines out of it. You are holy. You are in Christ. Here’s the third one. Grace covers everything you can think of, and out of it has come your peace with Him. What time is the meeting tonight?

Sit down. I need chapter one. Okay, now, stay with me, brothers. Alright, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. Give us a one. Okay. There we go. By the will of God. Who’s got the Father? There we go. To the holy ones who are at Ephesus, who are faithful in Christ Jesus. All right. Fine. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4 in one verse. And the point of all this is, where is the mind of Paul of Tarsus? What’s his subject? Okay. Grace to you and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. We are in three verses: count them. Just as He chose, let’s make it the Father. As He chose us in Him in Christ. You got an “in”? Alright. Okay. In Him before the foundation of the world, we should be holy and blameless before Him. You got another. Alright. I think that would be, you think that’s the Father? Okay, before the Father.

He said He did all this so that when we’re before Him, we are holy and blameless. Okay. He predestined us; I think this is Christ. He predestined us to adoption as sons. No, that’s the Father, through Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ, to Himself, the Father, according to the kind intention of…this is the Father…His will. To the praise of the glory of His grace. Who’s that? That’s the Father. Which He freely…the Father…bestowed upon us in the beloved. That’s the Son. Okay, in verse seven, in Him – that’s Christ. Okay, we have redemption through Christ’s blood, another one, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace; whose grace, I don’t really know. Number eight, which He lavished upon us. He – let’s make that the Father – in all wisdom and insight, He made known – that would be the Father – known to us the mystery of His will. The Father, according to His – the Father – kind intention which He, the Father, purposed in Christ. How many Christs? We have 12?

Brothers and sisters, I ask you now: is this not overwhelming? Now, I will ask you before we go any further, how often do you hear a message so centered on the Father, so centered on the Son? And I ask you all, how many times have you ever heard a message on “in Christ” in all your life? And we’re in verse one. Okay, we’re going to verse 10. With a view to the administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is the summing up of all things, in Christ, in the heavenlies, and things upon the earth, in Him – Christ – also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His the Father’s purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will – the Father – to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of – and I don’t know who that is; no, I think I’m going to make that the Lord Jesus. Let’s go on to the next one.

13. In Him – Christ, no doubt – you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, were sealed in Him – the Son – with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, let’s tally it. First 13 verses, brother. 18 Christ, 22 the Father. We got how many verses? 13. and “in”, 12 in King James, 14 in the others. Now, let’s do it again. How many? That’s 40 references to the Father and the Son in 13 lines. Have you ever read literature like that? Have you ever heard messages like that? Now, I would like to remind you that this letter is being written to new Christians. This is the message delivered to new believers. Go check out a book on some books to new Christians and see where it starts off. How many times for the Son? 18. How many times for the Father? 22. And how many “in Christ”? 12. That’s one per verse, just about. Okay. That’s how many per verse, brother? And if we have 40 and 13 verses? Three per verse.

Good day. Good day. Will you do me a favor and clap? I think the Lord is deserving of that. And Ephesians, especially one and three, will hold up that way all the way through. And two, four, five, and six aren’t any slouches either. Now, brothers, that’s incredible, isn’t it? It is. That is absolutely stunning. Is this not astounding? Three per line, per sentence, three references to either the Father or the Son or in Christ. What I want you to remember is that a man actually held a pen in His hand and wrote those words. He wasn’t being religious. He wasn’t trying to impress anybody. This is how He thought. This is how His mind conceived. This is where His heart was. And in His mind and imagination, there was a fellowship of believers out there, and He was writing to them.

And now let me drive this point home before we start any of these lines. Will you please keep in mind, as we talk and see these holy things, that they were not addressed to you as an individual? They were addressed to a body of believers. And if there’s anything I could drive home to any of you, it is this: that not a word in this letter that will work for you outside the body of Christ. At no time did the first-century believers ever understand, conceive of, or think of an individual Christian out here on their own following the Lord. That has reversed itself 100% in our day. Nothing is thought of in the corporate body of Christ, and everything is thought of individually. Even when it is declared from a pulpit inside a church building, it is preached to you as an individual. Let this “you” be plural and let this Christ be to a group of people and let this Gospel be to a fellowship of believers.

Sit down in somebody’s home with me in the city of Colossae and listen to Epaphroditus read a book to believers. I believe we’ve gotten through lines one and two. Is that right? Here we go.