Unloading the Theological Truck, Part 1

Today, Chuck Swindoll teaches from Ephesians chapter 1. Isn't it impressive that Paul, beginning a letter, doesn't begin with words that would impress you? Paul, the brilliant scholar who studied under Gamaliel. Paul, a leader among the Pharisees in Judaism, a member of the Supreme Court.

No, it's just Paul. Apostle of Christ Jesus. That to him put him on a plane that was blessed of God. Paul's letter to the Ephesians reads like eloquent literature, filled with deep theological terms and masterful references to history and culture. But while the words flow freely from his pen, it requires our undivided attention to catch the important detail and context in order to fully understand his New Testament letter. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll starts our series at the very beginning, Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 1. As we venture into this epistle, we'll take our time to carefully examine each truth presented.

Chuck titled today's message, Unloading the Theological Truck. Paul's reading in the first chapter of Ephesians reveals one of the most significant themes of his letters, and that is grace. Grace. He taught that grace is not only the basis of our salvation, it is also the means by which we live the Christian life. So living by grace means accepting ourselves and others failures and all.

Don't miss that. It means forgiving and going on. It means refusing to incarcerate ourselves in a cage of guilt and shame or to put others there. It's grace, remember, that holds us close to our God. Our passage for today's message is found in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 through 14, and it's in this section we learn how God has lavished his grace upon us. Let me read for you these 14 verses out of Ephesians 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention which he purposed in him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times. That is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In him also we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to his purpose who works all things after the counsel of his will to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory. In him you also after listening to the message of truth the gospel of your salvation having also believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To search the scriptures with Chuck Swindoll be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures Studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message titled Unloading the Theological Truck. I can't speak for other professions or trades or whatever but I can speak for mine. It is not uncommon for me to locate and read about preaching, books on preaching. I don't know if medical doctors do that in the field of medicine or if contractors do that about building.

I wish they would. Or if architecture, read about architecture, but I can tell you personally from experience through the years that I have regularly found my way to books about preaching. And usually they're written by people who do that.

I find it's helpful to stay fresh, to get better at what I do and what I love to do. And when I find a good one, I just devour it. Back in 1982, I came across a fine book by John Stott called Between Two Worlds, which is where a preacher stands. Between the ancient world of the biblical text and the real world of today, there is the need to bridge the gap, to span the time. And it is easy, it is so easy in this world in which I live to grab the fads of the times in which we live, to give people what they want rather than what they need, and to fall into the trap of pleasing people rather than presenting God and His truth.

So you can imagine my delight, and I have come back to this book again and again. When I got to chapter 3 and found his title Theological Foundations for Preaching, this isn't entertaining writing and it probably isn't too easy to listen to, but I'm going to ask you to do that for a few moments. In a world which seems either unwilling or unable to listen, how could we be persuaded to go on preaching and learn to do so effectively? The essential secret is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions. In other words, theology is more important than methodology.

Technique can only make us orators. If we want to be preachers, theology is what we need. If our theology is right, then we have all the basic ingredients, all the basic insights we need into what we ought to be doing, and all the incentives we need to induce us to do it faithfully. Behind the concept and the act of preaching, there lies a doctrine of God, a conviction about His being, His action, and His purpose. The kind of God we believe in determines the kind of sermons we preach. The chief reason why people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him. Every preacher needs the strong encouragement which this assurance brings. Seated before us in church are people in a wide variety of states, some estranged from God, others perplexed, even bewildered by the mysteries of human existence, yet others enveloped in the dark night of doubt and disbelief.

We need to be sure as we speak to them that God is light and that He wants to shine His light into their darkness. I love great writing, and if you're like me, you love great books, and many of the great books are old books. And if you like old books, there are three things that are true about you.

First, you would rather think than be entertained. Old books aren't entertaining. They don't have pictures in them. There's not a lot of humor. There are very few illustrations and anecdotes. They just drill into subjects down nice and deeply.

The second thing I can tell you about yourself, if you like old books, you love tight texts, tight texts, long sentences, sometimes paragraphs that last for pages. You don't come up for air very often in old books. There's not a lot of margin.

There's not a lot of breathing room. You have to think, which brings it to the third. You like going deeper rather than broader. It was Sir Francis Bacon who wrote on one occasion, reading maketh a broad man, speaking a ready man, writing an exact man. In fact, Bacon wrote this about reading. Read not to contradict or confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tested, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Can't you just hear it? When you get to the book of Ephesians, you start chewing and you begin to digest. There are no pictures in the letter to the Ephesians. There's nothing light and easy about Ephesians, though there is everything magnetic in it. You drill into the subject and when you think you've gone as deep as you can go, you realize you've not really gone as far as Paul is going to take you. It is a letter that makes you think.

It isn't entertaining. It isn't bedside reading, as some of you found out this week when you thought, I'll read this before I go to sleep tonight. Before long you're asleep and you haven't even gotten through the second chapter. It isn't easy reading. I didn't promise you easy reading.

I promised you deep thinking. It is a tight text. Do you know that verses 3 through 14 in the Greek text is all one uninterrupted sentence?

There isn't even a period between 3 to 14. You run out of breath before you run out of words if you read Ephesians 1, 3 to 14 orally. And it goes deep.

It runs deep. I love letters like this. I even like the way letters were written in the first century. They start with the name of the one who wrote it, Paul.

Isn't that great? Ever gotten a long letter? I mean, you start to read it, especially if it's typed and you don't know the handwriting, what do you do?

You go all the way to the end to see who wrote it, especially if they don't have a return address on the envelope, which usually means trouble, but that's another subject. Paul, that's the way I answer the phone. Chuck Swindoll, when I answer the phone, I give him my name. I don't go, uh-oh.

You ever call people and you go, uh-oh. You think, is that a man or a woman? Is that a boy or a girl? Who is that?

Is that a human being? Uh-oh. So I just give them my name so they know right away.

My kids think I'm a little weird, but they've been thinking that all their lives, so do I care? Paul, I like the way he starts. Paul takes a man whose life has been changed to write a life-changing letter, and Paul qualifies. His life is transformed.

In midlife, get this, with his career already set, with his name already a household word among the Jews of his time, already known as a member of the Supreme Court of Israel, the Sanhedrin, coming from a family of Pharisees. This man is on his way to persecute Christians, and boom! He is struck blind by a light from heaven. He is turned in his direction.

He is transformed in his soul, and he moves in another direction virtually from that day on. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Jesus introduced himself with those words, and Saul, who are you, Lord?

Who are you? He introduces himself to him. He transforms Paul's life, Saul of Tarsus, he was known then, and the whole direction of his life changed. Now, we know about Paul from that time on, but we don't know about Saul from that time back.

You ever thought about that? He says, Paul, and we suddenly think of the man who was converted on the way to Damascus, who wrote these letters in the New Testament, who ultimately was beheaded, martyred for the cause of Christ, and died a tragic death after living this illustrious end of his life. But what about the first part of his life?

Don't you wonder? John Pollock, in his excellent book, The Man Who Shook the World, introduces us to the previous Paul. Paul was born in a city between the mountains and the sea. The year was probably AD 1, but all early details are shadowy except his clear claim, I am a Jew of Tarsus, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. Tarsus was the principal city of the lush plain of Cilicia in the southwest corner of Asia Minor. Pause.

When you don't have pictures, your mind has to picture it. Picture Turkey, go to the southwest corner, there's Tarsus. Tarsus was a fusion of civilizations at peace under the rule of Rome. Indigenous Cilicians and Hittites, whose ancestors once ruled Asia Minor, light-skinned Greeks, Assyrians and Persians, and Macedonians who had come with Alexander the Great on his march to India. His father was most likely a master tent maker, whose craftsmen worked in leather and in silicium, the cloth woven from the hair of the large long-haired black goats which grazed, as they still do, on the slopes of the Taurus.

The black tents of Tarsus were used by caravans, nomads, and armies all over Asia Minor and Syria. Of the mother, nothing is known. Paul never mentions her, either because she died in his infancy or because of some alienation or because he simply had no particular occasion to do so. He had at least one sister and they were born to wealth. The family held the coveted title citizens of Rome.

At that period, the civis Romanus was seldom granted except for services rendered or for a fat fee. Saul was the name used at home and emphasized that the Jewish inheritance meant the most in early years. Gentiles were all around Paul.

The columns of pagan temples dominated the marketplace. Athens and Rome, Babylon and Nineveh, had combined to create Tarsus and Paul was unconsciously the child of this Hellenic oriental world. Paul's parents were Pharisees, members of the party most fervent in Jewish nationalism, and strict in obedience to the law of Moses.

They sought to guard their offspring against contamination. Friendships with gentile children were discouraged. Greek ideas despised. Though Paul from infancy could speak Greek, the lingua franca, and had a working knowledge of Latin, his family at home spoke Aramaic, the language of Judea a derivative of Hebrew. They looked to Jerusalem as Islam looks to Mecca. The school attached to the Taurus or the Tarsus synagogue taught nothing but the Hebrew text.

This is fascinating. Taught nothing but the Hebrew text of the sacred law. Each boy repeated its phrases in chorus after the chazan or synagogue keeper until the vowels and accent and rhythm were precisely correct. Paul learned to write the Hebrew characters accurately on papyrus, thus gradually forming his own roles of the scriptures. By his 13th birthday, Paul had mastered Jewish history, the poetry of the Psalms, and the majestic literature of the prophets. His ear had been trained to the very pitch of accuracy and a swift brain like his could retain what he heard as instantly and faithfully as a modern photographic mind retains a printed page. He was ready for higher education. A strict Pharisee would not embroil his son in pagan moral philosophy, so probably in the year Augustus died, AD 14, the adolescent Paul was sent by sea to Palestine and climbed the hills to Jerusalem.

During the next five or six years, he sat at the feet of Gamaliel, grandson of Hillel, the supreme teacher who a few years before had died at the age of more than a hundred under the fragile gentle Gamaliel. A contrast with the leaders of the rival school of Shammai, Paul learned to dissect a text until scores of possible meanings were disclosed according to the considered opinion of generations of rabbis. Paul learned to debate in the question answer style known to the ancient world as the diatribe and to expound for a rabbi was part lawyer who prosecuted or defended those who broke the sacred law and part preacher. Paul outstripped his contemporaries. He had a powerful mind which could lead to a seat on the Sanhedrin in the hall of polished stones and make him a ruler of the Jews.

Stay with me just a little more. Before Paul could hope to be a master in Israel, he had to master a trade for every Jew was bred to a trade and in theory no rabbi took fees but supported himself. Paul therefore left Jerusalem in his early 20s. Had he been there during the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, he would surely mention having argued against him like the other Pharisees. He probably returned to Tarsus to work in the family tenting business and resumed the old routine, winter and spring in Tarsus until the plane grew steamy and malarial.

Then the summer city in the Taurus foothills. Winter or summer he would have taught in the synagogue. Soon after his 30th birthday, Paul returned to Jerusalem with or without a wife. He almost certainly had been married. Jews rarely remained celibate and parenthood was a qualification required of candidates for the Sanhedrin yet his wife never crosses the story. More likely his wife and family returned with him in Jerusalem.

They could discharge the laws more complicated and praiseworthy obligations and display zeal where it would be noticed. Paul could also combat the movement launched by Jesus of Nazareth. Fascinating background, brilliant of mind, strong in character, solid in leadership. This man is moving headlong against the followers of the way until the road to Damascus where he was stopped in his tracks and met face to face the risen Christ who transformed his life. Isn't it impressive that Paul beginning a letter doesn't begin the letter with words that would impress you? Paul, the brilliant scholar who studied under Gamaliel. Paul, a leader among the Pharisees in Judaism, a member of the Supreme Court. Paul, one deserving your attention and esteem. Nope, it's just Paulus Apostolos Christu Iesu. Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus.

That to him put him on a plane that was rare and blessed of God. Apostle. Apostle comes actually from the Greek word apostolos, one sent forth. In fact, apostolo, the verb from which Apollos comes or apostolos comes means to send one off on a commission to do something as one's representative. Kenneth Wiest adds, the word is used in an official capacity to refer to an ambassador or envoy.

Now we're back home. Ambassador we understand. Paul, an ambassador. Paul sent forth by Christ Jesus as an ambassador to you who are in the city of Ephesus and beyond.

Paul, an apostle. This passage is rich with theological teaching and it's becoming clear why Chuck Swindoll gave his creative title to our study in Ephesians chapter 1, unloading the theological truck. There's much more teaching from this passage coming up on Insight for Living and we urge you to listen daily.

To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Then let me remind you that Insight for Living has provided a number of ways to catch Chuck's teaching. Feel free to listen to the Ephesians series at our website or download the convenient mobile app. You can even access Insight for Living through your smart speakers at home or subscribe to the daily podcast so that these programs are automatically downloaded to your mobile device. You'll find all the details at insight.org ways to listen. And then we know that sometimes it helps immensely to see Chuck's study notes while you're following along in your Bible.

It allows you to see how Chuck methodically examines God's word. Plus many of us enjoy jotting down personal notes. Well to dig deeper into the Bible in this manner, we provide the Searching the Scriptures study notes online.

You can either print them out or simply type your notes into the document online. You'll find this free resource at insightworld.org studies. In closing, let me say a word of thanks to our monthly companions and all those who give generously. You're accomplishing far more than you'll ever know because your gift allows us to provide this program and all of the collateral resources to millions around the world.

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I'm Dave Spiker. Chuck Swindoll's message called Unloading the Theological Truck continues tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Unloading the Theological Truck, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.