A Church in a Place

For the privilege that we have to gather. to worship you, to learn from you. Um to sit before you. We have lots in our lives. Um We could write our own stories of joys and sorrows and challenges and victories.

Um hills and valleys.

So Lord, we bring those to the table this morning. Asking that as we look at your word, you'll speak to us, you'll minister to us, you'll teach us, you'll guide us, you'll direct us, and you'll be our champion. Lord, I ask that you would Just have your hand on our church. That, as a church, that we'll be the kind of people in this community that will make a mark for you in this valley. That will be the kind of people that will hold high your truth.

That will be the kind of people whose lives match up with what the text says, and that, Lord, you would use in some small way us to draw. those in our community to you. Lord, I ask that you would be with our. Just our world as we look at the global situation. We pray for your grace for what's happening in the Middle East and Russia and Ukraine, and countless scenarios across the globe.

We long for justice and peace. And Lord, we uh Come before you and submit to your wisdom and the complexities of situations, but we ask that you would. pervade each one. And that you would protect life and that you would uh somehow use even the horrors of conflict to draw people to you. And so, Lord, now we get to submit ourselves to you.

We get to ask and invite you to teach us in your word. And so we do so. Um just asking you, Lord, to stir us in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, welcome. For those of you who may not know me, my name is Brian. I'm the lead pastor here. If you're newer, I was in the Middle East for a couple of weeks, and some of you prayed for us. There were a handful of us from Lifeline that were over there in Jordan, and we got back on Wednesday.

And so right now, I still feel a little like my eyes are being held open by toothpicks a little bit. My sleep patterns have not quite returned.

So if I fall off the edge of the stage, just somebody pick me up gently and put me back up, and I'll just keep going. But we had a great trip. Man, it couldn't have been better with our friend Joel Kramer, who's an archaeologist there, seeing a number of sites. It was really excellent. But thank you for those of you.

I know a number of you were concerned as things emerged in the Middle East as we were there, but we were fine and appreciated your prayers. We're going to start a new series, and this series is going to take us a while. We're going to go really, really slow through the book of Ephesians. And so we're going to spend probably about a year or so in the book of Ephesians, it looks like, something like that, when you add in everything else.

So hunker down. Get familiar with it a little bit.

So to help you with that, by the way, we have about 100 of these, and we'll order more if we need them. You can grab one. It's an ESV thing put out by Crossway that's a little scripture journal. It's just the text of Ephesians in the ESV with notes on the side that you can take notes if you want to.

So there are copies out there at the Welcome Center for you just to grab one if you'd like one. And if we run out, we'll order more. But we'd like you to have that if you desire to take notes. If you're not going to take notes, well then leave it for somebody else. But if you're going to take notes, then by all means, we'd love to have you do that and be able to kind of work through the text with us as we kind of work our way through it.

So we're going to be in our Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, or you don't have one with you this morning, make sure in the seats in front of you, on the racks, there's Bibles. You'll want to make sure you grab one because we do want to look at a few different texts as we kind of walk along through this a little bit. I've called this series 1. One.

The little letter to the Ephesians has all kinds of themes that emerge. There's six or seven big themes that show up. But in studying it, the one that sort of sits most predominantly and pervasively through it is a call for the church to in some way unify itself around a core set of doctrine, particularly the doctrine of the gospel, but even some doctrines that flow out of that, and then to have a kind of core unity out of that doctrine of how to function in the world, in life, in relationship. And so you'll see this appeal throughout the text of unity, of oneness, whether it's that we're to have one love for one another, whether it's the idea that we have one doctrine, one baptism, one faith, one God and Father of us all, whether it's calling to Jews and Gentiles at that time to not live ethnically disparate lives under the cross, but instead to realize that the cross brought them across those ethnic boundaries. To come and to be one in him, whether it's that or whether it's that you simply, as a body of people, have common blessing in Christ.

And we'll talk about that.

So, one is our theme: this idea of unity and this idea of a unity that is not the kind of unity where I look at you or I look at you or I look at you and I go, well, we don't always get along, and so I'm gonna work hard to get along with you and get along with you and get along with you. That's not the unity that I mean. What I mean is a unity that actually goes under that. Rests beneath that. And the unity that rests beneath that is not a unity that is fostered by me in my effort, but it's a unity that has been provided by God to me through a set of blessings, through a way of life, through a gospel that now brings me and you all into the same context where one of us doesn't have a leg up in that sense on the other, nor a leg down, and we have to relate to each other in accord with the unity not that we create, but that has been fostered and fueled by Christ.

For us. And so it starts with what God has done, and we work out from that. And so that's going to be kind of our theme as we work through this.

Now, is a map. Just so I just want you guys, we'll talk more about Ephesus as we get down into the sermon a little bit, but I want you just to have a familiarity. If you're looking at a map, modern-day Turkey, a year from now, a number of us, and we have some spots open, are going to Turkey and Greece and Italy on a footsteps of Paul trip. But Ephesus is right now probably one of the three or four greatest ruins in the ancient world. If you were to walk down, it's called Harbor Street, that you walk down, you walk down that in Ephesus, and at the end you have what's left of like the Celsus Library from about the fourth century, I believe, AD.

So it's a little after the Bible times. But then you take a hard right in front of that library, and you go down the other main street there in Ephesus. There's really three, I guess, so kind of the middle street. And as you go down, you would see on your right a huge, huge theater. And it was in that theater.

That the events of Acts 19, where a riot happens and it finally gets quelled, but they're about ready to grab Paul and take him. And that takes place in that theater, the uprising over how the preaching of the gospel was upending the cultus of Artemis, but particularly how it was upending. The profiteering of people selling things, little idols and artifacts to Artemis and how people weren't buying them. And now those individuals, once you hit somebody's pocket, they start to get angry. And now those individuals started getting upset and upsetting at the preaching of the gospel and so forth.

And that happens. They're in Ephesus. And you can see those locations in those ruins today. But Ephesus was an enormous cultural hub, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but I just want you to have kind of a context for that. Let me give you, as we start this series, just a little outline of the book.

If we just looked at it at 100,000 feet, the book would look something like this. Classically, it's divided in half. Half of it sort of focuses on this common doctrine at large, but quite Quite honestly, the doctrine of salvation in particular that you kind of focus on. And then the second half is the outworking of that. What does that mean?

So, for example, you can't get to Ephesians 5, the famous text about marriage, unless you're going to walk through what the content of the gospel is in chapters 1 through 3. You can't get to understand what that parent-child relationship in Ephesians 6 constitutes unless you walk through this earlier portion. The ethical exhortations of Ephesians 4, and there's a whole section about bitterness and anger and a lack of forgiveness and life. They all have to come on the backs of the doctrine that is established in verses 1 through 3. That's not to say that the last few chapters are devoid of doctrine, nor that the first are devoid of duty, but there is kind of a central impetus, central theme that seems to emerge in the first three chapters.

And then in the last. And you can see, though, that first section is sort of divided into one salvation that's purposed in Christ, one that's provided in Christ, and one that is proclaimed and prayed for. And then. The book actually outlines itself in the latter portion. If you were to just give a cursory glance through chapters 4 through 6, you'd see repeated this phrase of walk, walk, walk, walk.

And he talks about walking in unity, walking in holiness, walking in love, walking in light, walking in wisdom. And then finally, he kind of bookends the book. We'll see in the coming weeks about the spiritual blessings we have in Christ, and he bookends it at the end with spiritual warfare. And so this call to stand at the very end is where we'll conclude.

So that's kind of a little bit of a broader outline. This morning. We're going to only cover the first three verses. All right? The first three verses, which are like an introduction.

What are we going to do in this thing? We'll find out. A church. In a place.

Now, you might think that's the dumbest title I've ever heard in my life for a message. A church in a place. Where else would a church be except in a place? I know, it wouldn't be anywhere but somewhere. All right, let's close in prayer.

I want to think about a church in a place with you because we need to always be orienting ourselves. Uh how do I say, maybe out of the ethereal in the abstract. And into the germane, the practical, the everyday. That is that ideas about what the church is. Are never intended to sit abstractly.

They're intended to walk over into the parking lot at Walmart, right here in Jordan Landing. They're intended to walk across the street to your neighbors. They're intended to be embedded into the school system. Here, as you interrelate, they're intended to be always with you in the fabric of all that you are doing on a regular daily and weekly basis in a real place, in a real time, that God in His sovereign care has chosen for you.

Now you have to begin to ask. Questions. About that. I don't think anybody here would show up to their place of work irrespective of the mission of the place, the content of the place, the context of the place, what that boss wanted you to do in that office at that location at that time. It's all saturated not by larger principles, certainly there are those, but it actually drips all the way down into the fabric of where you do your life.

Like it or not. This is where you are. I hope you like it. I think it's a great place. But whether you like it or not, In one sense, it doesn't really matter.

Because this is where you are, and this is where God has placed you.

So I want to think about a church, but I want to think about a church in a place. Because what we're going to read is not, in some ways, until we get to verse 3, is not particularly novel. It's basically a standard introduction that Paul gives, one way or another, in. All of his letters. There's common language here that's common to every one of his letters.

And It actually became kind of a formulaic way of a Christian greeting. But I need you. To be reminded that every word of scripture is inspired to an equal degree. And so, what we want to do is cherish and treasure every piece and think deeply about each piece and what that might have for us. We're going to do that through Ephesians.

Now, I'm going to invite you and your Bibles to turn with me to Acts 18. Yeah. Acts 18. I want you to look with me in Acts 18, verse 18. as we begin.

Just so we can get a context here for this letter a little bit. After this, verse 18 of Acts 18, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria.

Okay. And with him, Priscilla And Aquila, well, to set sail for Syria, he's going back to Antioch. When you think of the great cities of the ancient Roman world, particularly in this Mediterranean area, Antioch is one of them. Ephesus is one of them. Of course, Rome is indeed one of them.

Athens is one of them. But outside of that, maybe Alexandria, a little later, you've got probably those five. Ephesus probably being the third largest. Antioch probably being the fourth largest. Yeah.

So he's heading back to Antioch, and with him are Priscilla and Aquila. It's century. He had his hair uh cut he had it uh cut his hair, for he was under a vow, and they came to Ephesus. Mm-hmm. And he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.

This is what he did when he came to a new place. He starts with the Jew first and then to the Gentile. When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them, he said, I'll return to you if God wills. and he set sail from Ephesus.

When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church. And then he went down to Antioch. After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

Now, in the back of your Bibles, probably, right, they always have these maps, and it's like the first missionary journey of Paul, the second missionary journey of Paul, the third missionary journey of Paul, right? This is the hinge point between the second missionary journey of Paul and the third.

So the end of the second journey is him going back, stopping in Ephesus. Preaching in the synagogue. They say, Will you stay with us? He says, No, not yet. Then he goes and continues on to Antioch, but he says, I'll be back.

Antioch is the end of the second missionary journey, and then his leaving Antioch becomes the beginning of his third and final mission.

Well, sort of potentially final. We don't know for certain. Maybe he had a fourth. But it's certainly his third missionary journey begins. And he heads out and he starts to make his way.

Across that mainland of modern Turkey, Galatia and Phrygia, sort of in the central part, and then to the eastern part, and he's making his way out toward Ephesus. And we pick up here in verse 24. Uh Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures. He'd been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

So he's talking about Jesus, but he doesn't know a ton of doctrine at this point. What he knows is he's got to call people to repentance, and he connects that with the baptism that John the Baptist was rendering leading up to Jesus, which was a baptism of repentance. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue there in Ephesus, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God. More accurately. And when he wished to cross to Achaea, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him.

When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed. For he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. Verse 1 of chapter 19, and it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples.

So stop. Apollos has Paul preached in the synagogue. Priscilla and Aquila were left there as Christians, picking up that, beginning to disciple people. Apollos comes and preaches. He has some doctrinal knowledge.

He's a very eloquent preacher, as the rest of the New Testament teaches us. But some doctrine needed to be taught by Priscilla and Aquila. And so you have this little church that's sort of starting in Ephesus. And then in chapter 19, Paul comes on his third missionary journey. And he, as you'll see, stays there.

He stays there in Ephesus for two to two and a half years.

Now, in the whole ministry of Paul that we have in scripture, it is something like maybe 23, maybe 24 years, something like that.

So he spends 10% of his entire ministry on this one stop. In Ephesus. Prolonged, protracted, engaging, teaching, discipling, encouraging, training. Preaching the gospel. That's important.

Now I want you to turn. to the book of Ephesians. Turn to Ephesians with me. And we're going to begin to think a little bit. About this letter right Out of the gates.

A church. in a place. I'm going to give you three observations about a church in a place. The first one is: a church in a place is fed by people. Again, this isn't rocket science.

But I need you to think. We need to think importantly. We need to think deeply. This church. That you are this building that you're in, where we...

subsist and live as a community and we do church together. will not survive. Will not thrive and certainly will have no impact upon this place. in which we live without you. Without you doing.

Without you serving. without you stepping in On a regular basis and a rhythmic basis to be conduits. Of the gospel of God in Christ, first to the people right here. to the people in our next service. to the kids in both kids ministries.

To people who normally are here and are not here, and then to a host of people. Out and about that have no idea of the true gospel of Christ. But it will not. This thing will be null and void without your investment. of time and resources.

That's what it means to be the church. And that may seem very obvious to you. But you need to understand that this act that we're doing right now is a part of my investment. You listening, hearing, engaging the text as part of your investment. But it's a lot bigger than that.

It's a lot bigger than that. And I don't say this to, and this is a deep theological term, poo-poo. I don't say this to poo-poo any other. External ministries, there are great ministries. We support them as a church.

We get behind them, right? In a couple of weeks, we'll have our friend Eric Darjan. I'll be going to Texas to see him soon, and he'll be here and talking about what they're doing down there in a church plant. We get behind them there at Pillar Church in East Fort Worth in a tough section of town. There are lots of other missionaries.

You heard while I was gone, you heard from Matt and Kylie. Kyle was up here interviewing them and talking with them. We believe in global missions, and we're going to be behind global missions. Guess what? There's no lifeline global missions if you're not pouring out your life in this place.

There's none.

So it is imperative that as we come to this text, that we think about how all of this, this simple stuff about the church, lands in practicality. With us. an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. We're going to get three facets. of the people God uses just from that.

Paul An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. I want you to think about this idea first. God uses people apostolically.

Now listen, I'm not suggesting that one of you or myself is an apostle in the same way that Paul, who saw the risen Christ, was an apostle. Paul was uniquely an apostle. In fact, he's unique even among the apostles because of how he experiences the risen Christ in Acts chapter 9 on the road to Damascus. And he sees him, he refers to himself as an apostle, like one who's born out of due time, somebody who kind of missed it, but then Jesus came, appeared to him, and called him into this apostolic ministry. But I want you to be thinking about this idea of apostle for a minute because we have a formal sense of apostle, an office of apostle.

We have a gifting, even an apostolic gifting that's listed in the spiritual gifts, but then we also have just the word apostle and how it's used in the language of the Greek text and what that means at different times, especially when it moves from a noun to a verb and apostello, and it means to be sent. But there's nothing that starts unless somebody is sent. Like this church, this church actually, in God's Economy, this lifeline community didn't start in 2004 when Jennifer and I moved here. It started back probably in 1992, where God placed a call on my life in the Finger Lakes region of New York State and made really clear to me that he wanted me to spend my life in vocational ministry.

Now, I didn't know at that time, if I knew that it involved planting a church in Utah, I probably would have jumped into the lake, but with an anchor. But. No, I'm kidding. Not really. But God, I mean, you think about it: if you know all your future, who here would want to know all their future from this day forward?

Are you kidding me? You'd drive you insane. be tyrannized what God might call you to do, right?

Okay. But God calls us to varied things. It's true of Paul. Paul refers to himself in 1 Corinthians. Nine is an apostle.

And he says that he's an apostle sent. to them. Uh in 1 Corinthians 9, 16. After saying that earlier in verse 2, he says, if to others I'm not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you're the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. You're the ones who are the product of me being sent to you.

He says in 1 Corinthians 9, 16, For if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. To feel the weight of his calling as an apostle was to not feel like. Preaching the gospel was a kind of optional notion. But instead, it was the weight. of something sitting on Him.

He says necessity. With a laid on me. Do you Like do you feel like that? I mean, really? Do you feel that way?

Like necessity. is laid On you. I can honestly say, I can't say all the time, but I can honestly say frequently I do. I feel that with the necessity Laid. On me.

We flew back from Jordan. On Wednesday, sort of Wednesday, it was like your Tuesday, I think. But it was a red-eye flight at 1 a.m., 12 hours into Washington, Dulles. And needless to say, I think all of us were pretty exhausted when we got off the flight. You can sleep because it's a red-eye, but sleeping for 12 hours like this in a seat is not exactly what you're, it's not exactly postupaedic here, okay?

So we get on the next plane and on on that first plane we were all sitting together. We get on the next plane and it's just me and somebody I don't know next to me. And so, young girl, she's 24 years old, and I sit down. And she seems very friendly. And in some ways, I kind of wish she wasn't friendly, because I was really tired.

And I was thinking maybe I can put in my earbuds and just But that would not be the case. And she was friendly, and then as she was friendly, I thought, okay.

Okay. Well, we had a three-hour flight and we talked for a while and by the time we got about an hour into conversation, I began thinking, just asking the Lord, Lord, open a door, open a door, open a door. And the Lord opened a door and we were able to share the gospel with her. I feel that when I sit down in that seat. I honestly, I feel it.

And there are times I kind of almost want to shrug and go, okay. I just fly, I just wanna go. I don't I don't I don't know I just but you feel it. I want to encourage you. A As you go throughout your daily life, It's right for you to feel it.

It's right for necessity to be laid upon ye. All right. Um But just Think with me. Paul Does this with the Ephesians? I mentioned this, but I wanted you to see the text.

Just a little later on in chapter 19, he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. That's another way of saying he's preaching the gospel. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them, took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tiranus. This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. I was in Ephesus ten years ago, and they had not at that point unearthed the school of Tiranus, but they had an idea where it was located.

And I remember looking over just toward that spot and thinking, that is sort of where the first. kind of concept almost of a discipleship school is in your New Testament. Here he is in this hall reasoning. And keep in mind, people, Ephesus is a major hub, so people are coming from various areas.

So that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

Well, they heard it from this hub because people are going out telling what they've heard, and people are coming in to hear. And here he is teaching master classes on the kingdom of God at the school of Tiranas. The Bible says in Romans 10:15, and how are they to preach unless they are sent? You know what that word sent is? Apostello.

It's the Greek. verb connected to the noun apostle. One who is sent. How will people believe unless there is one? Two, three, four, five, ten thousand, ten million who are sent.

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good. News. Those who are sent. You and I are sent. The Apostle Paul was sent, and the church is fed by people who are sent.

And interestingly, I want to highlight just something for you because some of you are in the middle of difficult circumstances in your life. and what happens in difficult circumstances.

Well what happens is you you you sort of focus on staying afloat. Right. When the boat's sinking, you don't think about mission, you think about survival. Um Where is Paul writing? Yeah.

It's probably important for you to know that around somewhere between 60, 80, 60, 80, 62, he's writing from prison in Rome. He says in Ephesians 3, 1, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, at the end of the letter in chapter 6, verse 20, he refers to himself as an ambassador in chains, and I glean something from this. And that is that Paul writes this, still fulfilling an apostolic sent function in the midst of a time where his boat is sinking and he could just be thinking about himself. If you'd like, by the way, for your boat to probably sink an awful lot slower. Think a little less about how your boat is sinking and a little more about how God might want to use you.

In life, right? It's apostolic. Secondly. Paul, an apostle, and you see this phrase? Who's the an apostle of he sent?

Of Christ Jesus of Christ, the Anointed One. Jesus, meaning Savior. The Anointed One who saves is the one that He represents, who He just referred to Himself at the end of Ephesians. As an ambassador. In Chains.

Stephen. Uh last week. preached a great message. 2 Corinthians 5. I watched it while I was in Jordan.

I was sitting outside my hotel. and my friend Dan here in the third row. I was outside my hotel. And as I sat there, I was watching through the miracle of technology. I live streamed the service.

So it was evening there, morning for you guys, and I'm live streaming the service. And as I'm live streaming the service, from me to Dan is a shopkeeper who steps out and for 20 minutes is angled just this way, bowing and praying to Mecca for 15 to 20 minutes while I'm watching Stephen preach about being an ambassador. For Christ. Mm. It's a great message.

I'd encourage you to go back and listen to that. This necessity laid on us to be ambassadorial. What I want you to keep in mind is don't lose. Who? You're representing.

Okay. Because you can say the right things, but if your life doesn't match up, you're going to be a hypocrite and you're going to turn people away rather than turn people towards. Stephen mentioned 1 Corinthians 5.20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, he's an apostle of Christ Jesus, be reconciled. To God. As you go throughout your life, Yeah. You can't preach the gospel. That whole saying by Francis of Assisi, preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.

I wish I could go back in time and just, I don't even know if he really said it. Probably didn't. But the reality is, is it necessary to preach words, use words? And the answer is yes, it is. It is.

So if you're only preaching with your life, people will not look at you and go, well, that, he is such a nice man. She is such a nice woman. I think I'll give my life to Jesus who died 2,000 years ago as a Palestinian Jew, sent from God on my behalf to endure my punishment and completely alleviate me from eternal guilt. They're not going to get all that because you're a nice person because you mow their yard. Mow their yard even if you do it in the shape of a cross they're still not gonna get that Okay.

All the Jesus fish on the back of your car. all the bumper stickers you want. are not going to get you there. The Bible bars and testaments won't get it, and your K-Love cruise with third day isn't going to get it. What will get it?

is not merely speaking it. But when they look at you And they hear what you say. And there's a correspondence between the two. And they go, wait a minute, that's what a life looks like. That's what a life looks like.

A life of Christ Jesus. Jesus said, and kind of strikes a similar chord in John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you. He says to the disciples, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask in my name, he may give it to you. He appointed you. He rescued you.

He saved you. He brought you into his family for what?

So that you could bear fruit in a life that you live on a daily basis in a community, in a place, so that people would look and go, that's what Jesus. Looks like you're to be identified with Jesus and you're always to be Uh emittable. Meaning people are supposed to be able to look at you. And say, if I imitated you, that would be what it would look like. to look like Jesus.

himself. You are sent You are an ambassador. In that way. And finally, he says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will. of God authorized.

Authorized. He's sent, but who's he sent by? He's sent by God. Yeah. The will of God is to speak not just in terms, and not even primarily, to be honest with you in the Bible, in terms of direction, but it usually is moral in its intention.

That is, that this Fits. What God would desire. You don't, I didn't have to sit in that seat. And say, now, Lord, would you really... Just move in my heart if you'd like me to share the gospel with the girl next to me.

Would you like me to do that, Lord? 'Cause I need to be moved by you. to do that. Don't be s over spiritual like that. There's a kind of carnality.

Like You don't need to be moved by God to open your mouth and share the gospel. You're just supposed to do it. You don't have to be moved by God to serve. Like, I understand. Yeah, you might want to be moved to give yourself in a long period of time to a specific ministry.

But I mean if the church has a work day and you go, I don't know, I've got to pray about it. We already prayed for you. Just come up and show up.

Okay? Like, it's not, you don't have to, don't, don't over-spiritualize it. Right. Because it's within God's moral will that the gospel goes forward from your lips. He wants that.

And you get to do that, and you don't get to do that in San Francisco, St. Louis, Miami, or New York. You get to do it right here. In this place. In this place.

Which takes us to our next point. A church in a place. It's set apart. There For a reason. This church.

And the way it functions. And the things we do. Here In this place. for a very specific Reason. An occasion.

And a time. You are here. You live in your neighborhood by God's sovereign appointment. That's always the case. Let's think about three aspects of a church and its locale.

Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints. Who are in Ephesus? and are faithful in Christ Jesus. The first is The church. is set Apart.

Apart from what? Apart from the trappings of culture at large, but set apart from very specifically the trappings of its local. culture in unique specificity. That is to say that when we have the fall festival, it's actually supposed to be more than Police and firemen, and mayor, and other people coming by, and community people coming by, and saying, It's so nice that you do this for the community. You're such nice people.

That's what ultimately is to pour out of that is they're supposed to see that this church. is radically distinct. in this community. That there's something that is textured in the ethic. In the pathos, the passion, in the logos, the words of what we say.

That doesn't look like everybody else. That's utterly unique. that provides and affords something that is sub Textual. That goes and sub cis underneath the surface and buttresses and strengthens any fruit that emerges from this place. But there's a message that sits down below.

Uh and forms the basis of that. We are both set apart. From And we are set apart. Two.

So we're set apart from culture, but we're set apart to God.

So that means that who defines The ethic. The passion. The words. of this place. What's this here?

It's here. This is the place we go get it. We we aren't we are interested. in other things, in other sources. We see them as not not merely even secondary, but we see them as all underneath the banner of this truth.

They all fall underneath this. Right. This is the ultimate standard. And so we come as being set apart. He calls them Saints.

See that? Holy Ones Those literally who are set apart.

So at one level, The basic identification of the corporate Body of believers are those people who are set apart. There are people who are saints. That doesn't mean, by the way, that you're not sinners. You are sinners and saints at the same time. This is the famous Reformation Latin statement, justice et pecatur.

You're at the same time, sinner and justified.

Okay. But your core identity is that you are set apart from the world and you are set apart. God and that core identity has to be the starting place for us as people in this place because the very next phrase, right? To the saints. Who are in?

To the saints who are in Ephesus. You are set within.

Okay. You are here. This church is in West Jordan. You may live in the Salt Lake Valley. Maybe you live in North Utah County.

We have people who come. There's some people who come from out at a, there's a foreign land called Grantsville out west. It's out, it's sort of just this side of San Francisco, and they come.

Sometimes we have Brother Pierre comes from up north, up in that, is it Davis or Weber County, one of those two. Davis County up there, just south of Calgary, Canada, and he comes down. And so we have people that come from all these different places, right? God has you in a place.

So Paul's in Ephesus. Ephesus, 200 to 250,000 people in the ancient world is a large, large city. Strabo was an ancient geographer. He wrote a book on geography. And in AD 20, he described Ephesus this way.

The city, because of its advantageous situation, and the advantageous situation, if we went back to the map that I had up there earlier, is it was coastal.

Now, it retreated from the coast, by the way.

Now, if you go, it's actually a few miles inland, and that has to do with silt that was built up in the Castor River that emptied out into the ocean. By the time of Paul, it had a small port, but big ships couldn't get in. That's actually probably one of the reasons why he meets the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20 someplace else at Miletus and doesn't go to Ephesus because the ship he was on couldn't get into the port. But small boats could get in. But it's continued over the years to recede.

But it had a coastal context. It was at the... One of the ends of, and kind of on the way, of the royal road that made its way out, went through Sardis, and then there was a road that went from Sardis down to Ephesus.

So major trade routes went through Ephesus. It was a place that could be an epicenter of both culture and. Economics. He says the city, because of its advantageous situation, grows daily and is the largest emporium in Asia, this side of the Taurus. And he's talking about the Taurus mountains that sit at the south in Turkey, kind of the south-central portion of Turkey.

Additionally, in Ephesus, there was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which was the Temple of Artemis. This building that we are in is just a little bit under 29,000 square feet, and that would include our office space up there.

So the footprint on this building, probably something in the range of 25,000 square feet or something like that. That means, and I give you this as a reference point, because you have to go into the ancient world and realize, while we may have a building the size of the Boeing warehouse out here or that Amazon monstrosity that's out there and that kind of stuff, the ancient world was not filled with buildings like that. They didn't have construction tools to build buildings like we do. And yet. Yet.

The temple to Artemis in Ephesus was four times the size of the footprint of this building, 100,000 square feet. Pillars that would be six feet, a little over six feet in diameter. Think about that. Enormous pillars. And this huge temple wasn't the only Religion.

In Ephesus. What? The just huge, right? Huge artifice that dominated the landscape.

Now, I want you to. Imagine something with me. I know as I say this, I say it a little tongue-in-cheek, but I want you to think of where we live. Could you imagine? Living.

in a community. In the shadow of a large, enormous temple or series of temples. that so dominate the economic, political, and infrastructural components of the community that the people that you're trying to reach have a very difficult time upending their life from all that that religious system affords. Can anybody imagine a world like that? Of course you can.

That is Ephesus. That's the place. That Paul Mm-hmm. is spending two and a half years in ministry. You have to think about where we are.

And then you have to begin to think about what it would mean. to appropriate yourself for the sake of the gospel, Where we? R. A couple images of Ephesus, and you can see that's the Grand Theater. Over here.

Then that's the remains of it still. This is that main street that makes its way down in the Library of Celsus there, and that's a closer-up view of the Library of Celsus. I want to give you a quote from Wendell Berry, the great farmer, poet, and author. I love this quote. He says, Action can only be understood in relation to.

Place. That is, I don't just do my actions anywhere, I do them somewhere. Only by staying in place can the imagination conceive or understand action in terms of consequence, of cause and effect. The meaning of action in time is inseparable from its meaning in place. That means that every action you have as a neighbor in your community has consequence.

For your life in that community, and it has consequences for your representation of Jesus Christ in that community, every action that you have.

So if you don't like your neighbor and they hate you. Um you have a problem. You have a problem. And you need to figure out what it would be like to rectify that issue. Um if you're at odds with people around you.

If you live here by hook or by crook, and yet you live angsty in regard to where God has you. You have an issue and you have a problem because he doesn't have you over here over against his will. But he has you here in concert with his will. You are in that way God's man. You are in that way God's woman.

for this time, for this place, for this season, in this location. And he has you here for that. And until you understand that, you won't feel the weight of all your actions. See, it's easy. To come into a place and out of a place.

I speak in different places around the country, and I can go speak a place. You to be honest with you, I can kinda say whatever I want and leave. Let them all figure out how to clean it up. I don't do that, but I could. Right.

But here, it's different. Here, it's constant. Here, there are things that I'm happy for some people to do in culture and community that I won't do. That's okay. But my long-term presence, your long-term presence, demands a kind of way of being.

So that when you speak, that life matches, and that life is a safe place for them to come and engage, and for you to walk down with them the kingdom of God and the gospel of Christ. You are authentically in a place. Acts 17:26 through 27. And he made from one man every nation of mankind. God made.

One man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us. That means And that's true for when Paul speaks this in Acts 17. But it's true today. that you're here in this allotted time. Right?

So the world's going to hell in a handbasket and you're figuring out how you're going to pull in all your prophecy books now that the Hamas Israel things happened and the economy is causing us to second guess all kinds of things and you're concerned about the next election cycle and it's this time of high anxiety, high pressure. That's where he sovereignly has Yeah. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want you to want to pull the ripcord and get out of it. I'm pretty sure he would not like you to somehow only live angry all the time. Because things aren't the way you'd like them to be.

I'm pretty sure that he would not actually want you, and I say this quite candidly, I'm pretty sure he would not want you to spend your time as a prophetic pundit trying to figure out all the end-time solutions to life because of what's happened in Israel. I actually think what he'd like you to do is figure out how you could be productive in the place. Where he's put you. The place It's here. And he wants you.

to be his emissaries. and his witnesses in this context. To saints who are in Ephesus and are, and you see your English text as faithful, you may even have a little note. Um But f Faithful's not I don't know that that's the best rendition. Here, I think probably it would be better rendered and are believers in Christ Jesus.

It's not so much about their faithful conduct, although that's part of being a believer, but that's not the point of emphasis of the term that's used here. The point of emphasis is the ones who believe. That is that the church is composed of Real believers. What that means. is that if you really believe something, you actually do act.

in accord with it. That's the nature. of real belief. Real belief is a posture of readiness to act in correspondence to whatever that concept is that you believe.

So that means that if you're a real believer, you run on different stuff than the people around you. You don't run on the same fuel. You don't run on the same stuff. You don't sip from all of the nectar of the local culture. Instead, you're getting it from someplace else.

Not only do you not run on different stuff, which you do, but you run toward different stuff. That is, something else is driving you.

Something else is calling you forward in life. And it's more than the applause of men. It's more than the approval of people. It's more than people thinking you're all that in a bag of chips. It's more than the next step in your business.

It's more than having the ideal family. You're running for something else. And you're running in a place. for something else so that people can see what it looks like to run for something else Right. That so that people can see that there's more than this.

So that God places you in a place so you can teach them that there's more than this place. And give them a vision. in a window. Into something greater. Finally, number three, blessed be.

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, verse 2. Skip verse 2. Grace to you. And peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. In the heavenly Places. A church in a place is resourced by God Himself. And since we had three. Aspects on the first three on the second, wouldn't it be great if we had three?

Isn't that how they teach you? Three, three subpoint, three, all this stuff.

So we got them. All right. But I'm going to zip through these fairly quick because so much of this is going to be talked about more as we work our way through the letter. But there's three, and these aren't the only three resources, but they're the three resources mentioned here. And the first one is relationship, grace and peace to you.

Grace and peace to you. From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, one who is related to you as a Father, Christ, who is you're in relationship to as your Lord. You're king. And he says, Grace and Harold Honer, who was a former Greek professor of mine, gone to be with the Lord. But Harold was a really, really precious, wonderful man.

We were from the same area in upstate New York and actually knew some common people. And he was the head of the New Testament department for a while at Dallas Seminary. And he wrote a couple of books, but he spent 14 years writing one book. 14 years. And he wrote the single, and this is not bias, anybody who knows anything about New Testament exegetical studies will tell you this.

He wrote the single greatest commentary, at least in the last 150 years, that's been written on the book of Ephesians. And it took him 14 years to write it. The thing is mammoth. And he interacts with everyone. It's an incredible commentary.

And Honer, thinking about this word grace, just said this, and I thought, this is really just a neat, pithy statement. As he sees this as a standard introduction for Paul, grace to you and peace, he's keen to emphasize that don't miss that while this is this standard greeting, that this isn't powerful, that this isn't, there isn't something here. When he uses the word grace in all of his letters, Hohner says, it is no mere introductory cliché. It's the gospel in one word. Think about our culture that we live in.

The gospel, in a word, to this culture is. Grace. Grace. Something you did nothing to deserve. Grace.

A favor bestowed upon you from another. Grace, power from God at work in your life to forgive and to fuel. Your life. That is as tr that is as Contrasting Two The busy busy Bead. Diligent Beehive State Culture.

As you're gonna get. that it would come from God and God alone. Grace, Honer points out, is the cause. Peace is the effect. Because of his grace, we now have peace with God.

Because of his grace, we can have peace with one another. Because of his grace, we can have peace at large in our own lives. Grace and peace in this relational context, because God has reached to us, blessed, verse 3. Be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. It's the word that we get our English word eulogy from.

The word means to at bottom, the word means to speak.

Well of The Lord Even though I am lost in sin. Has spoken well of me. That's what the gospel says. The Gospel says that you Are actually not. The dictates of your life are not spoken by the culture.

The dictates of your life are not spoken by your bad self-perception. Dictates are not spoken by your past offenses. The dictates of your life. Spoken over you. By God, who speaks well of you.

because of Christ. He speaks well of you because of Christ. Blessed. Us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. What are those?

Well, that's what we're going to study. Because verse 4. Through verse 14. Are those?

So you can think of them as spiritual benefits. He's going to talk about election. Right, so you can all next week, you can all bring your biggest stones to throw as we talk about the doctrine of election and have a bunch of fun and get everybody really mad. It's going to be great. Adoption.

Redemption, forgiveness of sins. The inheritance that you have in your salvation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, verses 4 through 14 are these spiritual benefits that are described and laid out for you. You're resourced with those spiritual blessings. In Christ, it says he's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, in the heavenly. Places.

That phrase heavenly places is used five times in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 20. It'll be used again: 2.6, 310, 612. Yeah. Here's what I want you to understand when you see in the heavenly places. I want you to think of this phrase, in the spiritual realm.

Would be the way you should think of that. In the spiritual realm, in the spiritual dimension of existence. In that spiritual dimension, you have been blessed with all of those things that chapter 1, verse 4 through 14 will talk about. But how have you been blessed? The last line here.

You've been blessed not because you've accomplished anything in and of yourself, but because when he looks at you, why does he speak well of you? Because you are incorporated into Christ. That's what the phrase in Christ means. It means that because Christ is lovely, now. You're lovely.

Because Christ was pure. You were made pure. That because Christ Is the Son of God you are a son or a daughter? Because Christ Having been one chosen of God, you. chosen of God because Christ has an inheritance You have an inheritance because Christ.

Lives in eternity. You'll live in eternity. Everything you have is incorporated in union with Jesus, meaning the only reason you've got it is because of Him. Nothing to do with you and nothing to do with me. What does that mean?

That means two things: there's no boasting about it. We did nothing to get it. No boasting about it. You are not better than your neighbor. You're not.

Don't look condescendingly because they're involved in a religious system where they're working their tail off to be made righteous. The only reason you're not is because of the sweet liberation of God in Christ. who gave you his grace. He did nothing to get it.

So no boasting is allowed. The second is this. Because it's in Christ, that means that it's utterly secure because it doesn't depend on me at all. And that means the pressure's off. That means you can live your life.

And you can be in a place, and you can be set free to not be identified by anybody else because you're identified by him, and he will speak well of you. God will speak well of you. Because you are in Christ. We're ambassadors to this place. We're saints in this place.

That means that our job is to give ourselves to the Lord in this place.

So as we study this little letter over the next year and sit in it for a while, I hope that you'll think about how God might want you to live in this place. Father, we love you and thank you for your goodness to us. Your grace for us. Uh you are uh you are kind, Lord. You are merciful.

And we thank you, Lord, for your kindness and for your mercy. We thank you for ransoming us from the grave and for saving us, and we thank you for