Only in Christ Are Your Spiritual Blessing Received
Tom Shrader closes a multi-week expository series through Ephesians with a flyover of the book's theological and practical sections before focusing on Paul's closing call to spiritual warfare in chapter 6. He emphasizes that every believer faces a real and cunning adversary in Satan, whose attacks intensify as Christians grow in faithfulness, and that believers are never left without divine provision. The full armor of God—truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, and the Word—equips believers to stand firm, and prayer is presented as one of the most powerful weapons available to the church.
“God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ephesians
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 48 min
Themes: spiritual warfare, armor of god, prayer, spiritual blessings, standing firm, satan, protection, faith, feeling spiritually attacked, new believer, struggling with doubt, growing in faith, seeking spiritual protection, mature believer, church member, young adult
Scripture: Ephesians 1:3, Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 1:7, Ephesians 1:9, Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 1:12, Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 2:1-5, Ephesians 2:8, Ephesians 2:10, Ephesians 3:20, Ephesians 4:1, Ephesians 4:4-6, Ephesians 4:23, Ephesians 5:1, Ephesians 5:18, Ephesians 5:21, Ephesians 5:22, Ephesians 6:4, Ephesians 6:9, Ephesians 6:10-13, Ephesians 6:14-17, John 14:1, John 14:16, John 14:18, John 14:27, John 15:18, John 16:1, John 16:4, John 16:7, John 16:33, Romans 8:26-27, Colossians 4:2, Revelation 2:25, 2 Timothy 1:6-7, 2 Timothy 2:1, 1 John 3:2
Theological Themes: ephesians, union with christ, spiritual armor, sanctification, election, spiritual deadness, biblical authority, expository preaching
Full Transcript
A Flyover of Ephesians
Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. Today we are going to complete our 25-week journey through this book. What we are going to do is move quickly, and yet be thorough. When Paul gets to the end of this book, he says "finally," and then gives a kind of send-off instruction that really does pull together the whole book. So let's take the time to do a flyover, and then we'll look at how Paul closes.
Remember the first week we said there are two sections in this book — a simple, basic division. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 provide a section that is theological and doctrinal. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 provide a section that is very practical, filled with application. Let's walk our way through it.
Every Spiritual Blessing Is in Christ
In chapter 1, verse 3, Paul says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places." Everything you need spiritually, He has given to you. It flows from Him. And he closes that verse with the little phrase, "in Christ."
That becomes one of Paul's favorite phrases, not just in the study of Ephesians, but throughout all of Paul's writing. You will see it in verse 3, verse 4, verse 7, verse 9, verse 10 twice, again in verse 12, and verse 13 twice. The idea is that I have moved positionally in my relationship with God — I was that, but now because I am in Christ, He begins to work in me.
In verse 4, still in chapter 1, Paul says He chose us in Christ. He did that before we had ever taken a breath, before the earth was created. He predestined us to adoption as sons, determined that we would be made in the image of God and would start to reflect Christ's likeness — that literally every day we would begin to exhibit Jesus in our lives more and more.
What We Were Spiritually
In chapter 2, Paul uses a picture of what we were spiritually. We spent three or four weeks just on verses 1 through 5. You were dead spiritually — that is what you were when you were in your sins and trespasses. But now you are in Christ. When you were in your sins, you were dead, "in which you formerly walked."
That word "walked" becomes absolutely critical to our understanding of this book. What Paul is talking about is lifestyle, or life thoughts, or the grid by which we look at life. You formerly walked "in the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience."
We have a myth in our culture that we are all children of God. We are all children of God in the sense that He created us all, but we are not all in a right relationship with God. Jesus looks to a group of Pharisees He is speaking with and says, "You are of your father the devil." God looks across this planet of 7 billion people whom He has created, and it is really important to understand that there is a certain group of people that are His.
He loves all people. I have friends who want to argue that, but I think when He says "love your enemies," God loves everybody in that sense. Yet there is a distinction. Think of the volunteers you see on the first Sunday of the month walking around campus in the green shirts. We cannot function — we cannot pull off a Sunday morning without those people. We will have somewhere between 600 and 700 kids, birth through sixth grade, on campus today, and we cannot take care of them without these volunteers.
Those people are not staff. They are people like you who understand the importance of children's ministry to a church, and they give of their time and serve. They love children. But here is a little secret — they love children, yet they love their own more than they love yours. I love kids in the broadest sense of the word, but there are two I love more than any others, and that is Sarah and Haley. And then I love Gracie, Reagan, Brooklyn, Brayden, and Yale more than the broader group they are part of. So God has this love for mankind, but He has a certain group of people — those that are in Christ — who are uniquely His.
Dead, Then Made Alive
This may be you. It may not. You were dead. You lived that way, acted that way, walked that way. You lived according to those laws of the world. But verse 4 says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead, He made us alive."
Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8: "For by grace you have been saved." That means delivered, rescued from that condition. You were made alive. You were dead, and now you are alive. You were on your way not only to separation from God here, but to eternal separation from God — and God intervenes. He saves you. He delivers you. He rescues you. You are saved by grace through faith. It is not of yourself.
The Origin of Salvation
This salvation is not a result of works, so that no one should boast. By the time you are in seventh grade, you know something is wrong with the world. It is really interesting for me to watch right now — Brayden and Yale are a little bit older than Reagan, so they are communicating a little more. By and large, they just skip through a day. Brayden does whatever you tell him to do, Yale just hops around and laughs all the time, and if you give them a piece of peppermint, they are basically very happy.
But by the time you are about in seventh grade, you know something is wrong in the world. You pretty quickly sense that something is wrong with you, and what is wrong with you is sin. This is the effect of sin that we see all around us. Our flinch when we come to grips with our sin is to try to fix it — that is called religion, trying to make it right with God, even though we cannot do that.
Paul comes along and takes us behind the scenes of this salvation. Even if your testimony was simply, "I heard the gospel and then I believed," Paul says, "Let me take you behind the scenes." Before you heard the gospel, God softened your heart so that when you heard the gospel, you could believe. Your belief is a result of God's work in your life. You were chosen before the foundations of the earth and predestined into this relationship.
This was all for a reason stated in verse 10: "For we are His workmanship." After Paul contemplates all of this, there is an interesting phrase in chapter 3, verse 20 — a natural, supernatural response. It is doxology: "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or that we even think according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, amen."
The Pivot to Walking Worthy
Many of us might think Paul is going to put the pen down when he finishes that doxology. I love the fact that he gives us chapters 4, 5, and 6. It is so important that we study God's Word, but it is important that we study it so that through the Spirit of God, He begins to change our minds and then our actions. That is what Paul is saying here.
We have said for basically twenty-four or twenty-five weeks that the pivot point is verse 1 of chapter 4: "I therefore the prisoner of the Lord entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called." In other words, if you are a follower of Christ, live like it. That will be marked by humility, patience, love, and forbearance.
Unity, Not Uniformity
The result of that kind of life, as we see in chapter 4, verses 4 through 6, is unity. You see the word "one" used seven times — one body, one spirit, one hope of calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. This is not uniformity. It is going to express itself differently. We can be Christians and disagree about preferential issues, but upon the core beliefs — salvation, the virgin birth, the infallibility of Scripture — there is no room to compromise.
To illustrate: you may love attending East Valley Bible Church, so you reach out to a friend and say, "You ought to come." They come, and halfway through they leave. You call them and ask what happened, and they say, "I didn't like the shirt, I didn't like the lights, I didn't like the video." Or you go to their church and they love it, and you think, "I don't like it." There is nothing wrong with that. It is not uniformity — it is unity. Unity can take place because there is love, humility, and patience.
Walking in Love and in the Spirit
Paul really starts to unpack what this looks like when he gets to chapter 5: "Therefore be imitators of God." What does that begin to look like? You walk in love, as Christ loved you. Love becomes the defining characteristic. That is what Jesus said — the world will know you are His disciples not because you do a bunch of Bible studies, though those are fine, but because you love one another. That is a supernatural thing, and yet it is supposed to be natural to those of us who have been touched by the Spirit of God.
Verse 18 of chapter 5 says, "Don't get drunk with wine" — don't be controlled by wine, and really don't be controlled by anything other than being Spirit-filled. There is joy, power, and strength in the midst of hardship. You understand that this life begins to change. You are putting off the old and putting on the new, as we saw in chapter 4, verse 23: it is done by the renewing of your mind.
Applying the Spirit-Filled Life
There are interpersonal relationships, which are always difficult under the best of circumstances, and then there is all of life. Paul says to be driven by the Holy Spirit of God. Chapter 5, verse 21 tells us how we will know that is happening: you will be in subjection one to another, you will understand your role, and you will fill that role.
From chapter 5, verse 22, through where we are today in chapter 6, verse 9, Paul applies, applies, applies in the most practical ways. Wives, submit to your...
The Call to Stand Firm
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. If you don't fulfill that role, you're disobedient to God. Children — and this is not age-specific — if you're under the house, you obey your parents. They say do it, you do it. To the fathers, Paul says in chapter 6, verse 4, don't provoke your kids to anger, but give them discipline and instruction. Slaves, workers, employees — you obey your employers.
But Paul doesn't let the employers off the hook. Just as he did with the fathers, he comes back to them and says in verse 9, "Masters, do the same things. Give up threatening, knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven." He's saying: on this org chart, you thought it was you at the top? No, there's one more box above you — it's God.
All of that leads up to chapter 6, verse 10, and the word is "finally." Paul is giving his closing comment. From verse 10 through verse 24, he's done with the book. We are at the close. It's as though he's giving his marching orders.
Here is what Paul knows: because you love Jesus, and Jesus loves you, you have a relentless enemy. You are engaged in lifelong, bitter battles with this enemy — Satan, the devil, his demons. If you remember the opening scene of the old movie *Patton*, where George C. Scott plays Patton — there's that enormous American flag behind him and he comes out and goes after it with full force — in my mind, I see Paul invoking that same kind of response here. These are the final marching orders.
The Armor of God
Paul takes battle imagery all the way through this passage. He talks about the armor of God, using the picture of the armor and weapons a Roman soldier would carry. This is a battle-ready mentality. William Barclay writes: "They believed that the air was filled with these evil spirits, all determined to work men harm. The words which Paul uses — powers, authorities, world rulers — are all names for different classes of these evil spirits and demons. To Paul, the whole universe was a battleground. The Christian had not only to contend with the attacks of men, he had to contend with the attacks — fighting against spiritual forces, fighting against God." That is the imagery Paul is working with.
Here is what he says. We'll read verses 10 through 13: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, having done everything to stand firm."
He begins: be strong. Be strong in Christ. There is that recurring theme. You're getting ready to go out into battle — don't deceive yourself and think you can pull this off on your own. You aren't strong enough for this fight. Your enemy is bigger than you. It's not just David against Goliath; it's you against an enemy you cannot overcome on your own. Let's not exaggerate him — he's not God, he's not omniscient, he's not omnipresent, he's not all-powerful — but he is a formidable foe with an army waged against you.
Jesus Prepares His Disciples
While working through this passage, a similar scene from the life of Christ came to mind. Turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 14. This is Jesus on the night before He is killed. He has His disciples together. In a scene similar to what Paul is doing — sending them off — Jesus understands He is speaking to men who have essentially taken their lives and put everything on hold for three years. They have abandoned everything else and are invested in Christ. He is everything to them. And Jesus knows He will die the next day, and He knows this is going to be deeply challenging for these men. So He gives them encouragement.
Look at chapter 14, verse 1: "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me." Then chapter 14, verse 16: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you." Verse 18: "I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you." What is being promised here is the Holy Spirit — the Helper who will be sent.
Chapter 14, verse 27: "Peace I leave you, My peace I give you, not as the world gives. Let not your heart be troubled. Do not be fearful." As He moves into chapter 15, Jesus tells them He is the vine and they are the branches — they can do nothing apart from Him. He lays it out plainly.
Chapter 15, verse 18: "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." He tells them the only reason the world hates them is because it hated Him first. As said at the beginning, and as we'll say throughout: if you love Jesus, they will attack you. Satan and the demons do not simply step back and say, "Oh well, God won." Chapter 16, verse 1: "These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling." And in verse 4: "These things I have spoken to you, so that when the hour comes, you will remember that I told you of them."
Look at verse 7: "I tell you, it is to your advantage that I go away. If—"
The Reality of Spiritual Opposition
"If I don't go away, the Helper will not come. I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin." You will have Him, but the world cannot have Him. Jesus summarizes all of this, and then moves in chapter 17 to the real Lord's Prayer — Him praying for us. But the end of chapter 16, verse 33, may be the summary of it all: "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."
So go back to the book of Ephesians. Paul is saying be strong in the Lord. Why? He has overcome. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. Even consider the life of Christ. The public ministry begins, and virtually at the outset He goes and fasts, and there is a one-on-one confrontational attack from Satan. And the night before He is crucified, there is this excruciating attack in the Garden of Gethsemane.
One author writes of this: "Among many other instructive truths, these two accounts teach us that the battle may not become easier as we grow in obedience to God. If anything, Satan will intensify his efforts against those who continually and effectively serve the Lord. As believers grow stronger, so will Satan's attacks." So as you grow closer to Him, you may think it must get easier — it does not. Count it all joy when you encounter various trials.
Satan will come, not because he can break you away from God and dissolve the union between you and God — that is unbreakable. If you are His, you are a servant of heaven. But that does not mean he gives up.
What Satan Can and Cannot Do
Ray Stedman writes these words: "Those who are genuinely the Lord's, those who are born again and who have come into a saving relationship with Christ, are delivered from total defeat. We do not hesitate to emphasize that. The devil can never get us back into the position of unconscious control that he wants to exercise over us, as he does the rest of the world." Now the next words are meant to be encouraging, but when you read them aloud they do not sound that way. "But he can demoralize the Christian. He can frighten us. He can make us miserable. He can even defeat us in some ways. He can make us weak and therefore barren and unfruitful at times. It's quite possible to be more unhappy and miserable as a Christian than you ever were before you became a Christian, at least for some period of time."
The very last book that Paul authors, he writes to his favorite person in the world, Timothy, and says to him: "I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord." And in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 1: "You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus."
These are realistic expectations for followers of Christ. Because you are a follower of Christ, that does not mean life is going to be easy and smooth and without problems. As stated at the beginning, you have a relentless adversary. He comes at you, and his demons come at you. They are real. It is not imaginary.
Knowing Your Enemy
He is very clever and cunning. He will come in so many different ways — as an angel of light, as a subtle serpent, as a roaring lion. Scripture calls him Satan 52 or 53 times; the name means adversary. He is called the devil 35 times. He comes to lie and deceive. He is your adversary. Do not think that because you are genuinely His, life will suddenly be easy and smooth.
Most of us intellectually understand this, yet I have watched over and over again — when difficulties come, they seem to catch us off guard. Even though we say we know it will not be easy, along comes the challenge and we seem surprised. In our minds, and sometimes out loud, we will say, "I have done this and this and this — how can this be?" Because you have an enemy. God allows you to be tried and tested, to be put in the fire so that you are purified, to have your heart and mind and body assailed by Satan and his demons and the world and the flesh and sin, again and again. But He does not leave you alone. He does not leave you unprotected. Vulnerable, yes — but He provides. There is provision.
The Full Armor of God
Do you see it? Verse 11: "Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil." He warns us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood — it is not against the things we can see. Those who have been around will know that the first two words in verse 11, "put on," are truly key. If you get nothing else out of today, this little segment opens up everything.
In the Greek, the words translated "put on" are in a tense that indicates an action done once and for all. So: put on the armor of God once and for all. Think about when you put on armor. You do not put it on to go to bed. You do not put it on to eat. You do not put it on to go to the gym. You put on armor when you are going into battle. If Paul is saying to us, put on and leave on the full armor of God, what is he telling us about the battle? Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year — and 366 every fourth year. He never backs off. He never relents.
You may feel this enormous struggle, come out the other end, and think you are done. No — you are done with that episode. You are not done. He is not done. Stand firm. In the military sense, this is the idea of holding a critical position that is under attack. Jesus says in Revelation 2:25, "Hold fast until I come."
The Schemes of the Devil
Now let us finish unpacking this. The word "schemes" comes from the Greek word *methodeia*, from which we get the English word "method." It speaks of his craftiness, his cunning, his deception. It is like the picture of a wild animal cunningly stalking his prey, waiting for just the right moment.
Standing Firm Against a Real Enemy
You have an enemy. It is a real enemy. You stand firm. You hold this position — your heart, your mind — against the attack of Satan, against his schemes, against what the Bible calls the anointed cherub, the ruler of demons, the ruler of this world, the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the one who comes and tempts and accuses you, who tries you, the adversary, the slanderer, the one Jesus calls the father of all lies. That is the source of our struggle.
It is not some outward enemy. It is not the ACLU or the Tea Party. It is not the Republicans or the Democrats. It is not any individual. God indeed allows this to play itself out, and Satan may use individuals in this process, but behind it all, it is him. He is our adversary.
You see it in the text — not flesh and blood, but rulers, powers, forces of darkness, forces of wickedness. There are different strata there. It is demons at all levels coming at us. It is a powerful enemy.
God's Provision: The Full Armor
But remember what we read — you are not left as an orphan. God has made provision for you. He says, "Put on the full armor of God," and he tells us what it is. It is found in verses 14 through 17: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith to extinguish the flaming missiles, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit — which can also be translated the sword by the Spirit, or the spiritual sword — which is in fact the Word of God.
To illustrate the first piece of armor, consider how soldiers dressed for battle in that day. They would typically wear an outer garment, something like a robe, with a heavy leather belt around it. That garment did not allow for mobility, so when preparing for battle, a soldier would grab the back of the robe, pull it up and through, and tuck it into the belt. Paul calls this girding yourself — and he says he wants you to gird yourself in truth.
The Belt of Truth
Truthfulness is the first piece of the armor, and it matters because Satan is a deceiver. He began in the garden: "Did God really say that? Is that what He meant? Come on, Eve — if God really loved you, why would He not let you have that?" He comes into your life the same way today. He says, "Wait a minute — if God loves you, why are you having problems paying your bills? How come you don't have a job?"
The deceiver also comes and wedges himself in as an adversary within the body of Christ, setting one believer against another. Or perhaps he comes the other way entirely and says, "You don't need that church. You don't need a small group. Look at how much Bible you know. Look at how long you've walked — you've outgrown those things." So you gird yourself with truth. You learn to think in a new way.
The Breastplate of Righteousness
The breastplate was a sleeveless garment that fit over the torso, made of leather or often thick linen filled with metal or even rock, designed to protect. Just as girding your loins allowed for movement, the breastplate guards your heart and your emotions — and it does so with righteousness.
Righteousness simply means right living. It is because Christ was the perfect sacrifice that the fruit of the Spirit can now be present in my life. The breastplate of righteousness guards the heart and the emotions through that reality.
Feet Shod with the Gospel of Peace
Then in verse 15, Paul says to shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. This refers to the covering soldiers would wear on their feet — and it is that image which frames what comes next.
The Roman Soldier's Footwear and the Gospel Feet
The Roman soldiers depended critically on their feet. Blisters or any sort of injury to their feet would impede their ability to fight. The instruction was simple: take care of your feet because you go. "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings." As you go, you become an instrument for God wherever He takes you. He uses you, and He has prepared not just you as the speaker, but He has prepared the heart of the listeners.
The Shield of Faith
If you think through the movies you've seen that depict the old Romans — something like Spartacus — you might picture a round shield. But the shield being described here is different. In that day and age, soldiers were even shorter than most of us, and the shield they carried was two and a half feet wide and four feet high. You are holding something that protects almost all of you. You have probably seen it in some movies where a massive army is lined up with shields in front of them, and it just looks like a wall coming at you.
That shield was used against fiery missiles — arrows wrapped in rags or cloth, set on fire, launched to inflict special damage on men or buildings. The antidote to those fiery darts is faith. But he is talking about a different kind of faith here.
We live by faith all day, every day, whether we realize it or not. Where you are right now is an act of faith. When you sat in that chair, you displayed a great deal of faith — you put your trust in that chair's ability to hold you up. When you drive home, that is a great act of faith: you come to green lights and go through them, trusting that those with the red light will stop. When you get on a plane, you are trusting the pilot, the crew, and the aircraft itself to perform the task you are putting your faith and trust in — you are literally putting your life in their hands.
That everyday kind of faith, however, is not the faith he is talking about. He is talking about, to put it in a kind of paraphrase, resting our whole weight on God, leaning on Him, trusting Him, as all sorts of tests and challenges come.
The Helmet of Salvation
There is also the helmet of salvation. This is not salvation simply in the sense of believing for a moment. It is deeper than that. That past dimension is already settled. It is salvation present, which carries us through this life, and it is salvation future. John writes, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He appears, we shall all be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is."
When you take all five of those pieces of armor together, you can say: here come the challenges and difficulties into our life, into our mind, our heart, our emotions. The deceiver comes, the world comes, and sin comes. That brings us back to what we say all the time: what you know trumps what you feel.
The Sword of the Spirit
The only offensive weapon given to us is found right there in verse 17 — it is the sword of the Spirit. It is the spiritual sword. It is the Word of God.
There is a new Kindle coming out, and last month Amazon sold more e-books than hardbacks or paperbacks. There are now 640,000 titles available on a Kindle, and obviously more through Amazon. But there is something about this book that is different from all of them. This one is written by God. The others all have errors in them. This one is infallible. All the others, if anyone takes the time, are always being updated. This one is not. It is complete. It is authoritative. It is the owner's manual on how we are to live.
Our understanding of it, I believe, is sometimes the very first fruit of salvation. That is what I will hear in places where people have never been exposed to this — all of a sudden they will say, "I came to Christ, and the Word made sense."
Closing with Prayer
Look at how Paul closes this passage. He calls for all prayer — that word refers to general requests — and all petition, which refers to specific requests. In the Spirit, Paul tells us in Romans 8:26–27, sometimes we do not even know how to pray, and the Spirit of God intercedes for us. Paul tells us in Colossians 4:2 to devote ourselves to prayer. The word devote carries this picture of steadfastness, of being constant and persevering.
Paul is saying: you have all these weapons, but one of the most powerful things you have is prayer.
The Power of Prayer at the Altar
Here in the chapel, you will see people up front, and they are here to pray with you. For that segment of time in their life — five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, whatever it is — they exist for one reason, and that is to join with you and go to God with your general requests and your specific requests. You go blowing out of here, and I get it: you are in a hurry, you want to get home, you certainly have a lot to do. But when you walk out of here without stopping, it is amazing — you are walking right by one of the most powerful tools you can have.
Let me get in your grill just a little bit here. In the six services, the two that respond the least to this are the ones here in the chapel. I do not know why. I do not know if it is cultural, generational, or whether you walk by and think, "If they see me up there praying, they are going to know I am screwed up." Here is the thing: you are screwed up. Let us take all the pressure off. There is nobody sitting back wondering if you are screwed up — we know that we are all screwed up. What is screwed up is walking past these people and saying, "I guess I am strong enough to take this on on my own."
Paul's Confidence in Chains
This is the power of prayer, and it is what Paul tells us everywhere he goes. Paul says, "Listen, I want you to pray for me." He is in chains — we think he was literally chained to Roman guards as he wrote — and he is not concerned. In fact, he says he is sending with this letter a man who can give the Ephesians an update and a report. He sends this so that they will be encouraged, as he writes in verse 22: "so that you may know about us and that you may feel a comfort in your heart."
Think about it. The word coming to these believers is that their leaders are in jail. And Paul says, "I hope that is comforting to you." The comfort is this: even if he is incarcerated, even if they kill him, they cannot stop the gospel. I never know exactly how they measure these things, but it is said that in China there were somewhere between five and ten million Christians when the communists shut the church down — and now there may be as many as one hundred million, even one hundred and twenty-five million Christians. Isn't that remarkable? While we pray, "God, relieve the persecution there," they are saying, "God, thank You for the persecution, because the church is growing." There is real comfort in this.
You do not need to be a sadist or a masochist. You do not need to create moments of tension — they come on their own. And then Paul closes out the letter by saying, "Peace be to the brethren in love with faith from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible." It is essentially the way he began the book: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Amazing Love
I wish we were more elaborate in how we close these services. I have friends who spend hours preparing for Sunday — and I do not mean the lesson; I mean all of the videos, the music, and everything tied together. That sounds like a great deal of work, and I am not sure it is always the best investment of time. What we do instead is simply say, "God, will You take charge of this?"
Here is what is amazing about this letter when you take it in its full scope: it is a testimony to His amazing love for us. How amazing is His love for us as sinners. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Amazing love — how can it be that You, my King, would die for me, Your subject? This makes no sense by any worldly standard. This is not the way the world works. And yet He does, doesn't He?
Closing Prayer
Let us pray that God touches our hearts and uses this time of worship and communion.
Father, thank You for these amazing truths. Take them and apply them to our hearts and lives. Let them be a source of encouragement to us. Father, that You love us is beyond any comprehension. We too would break out in doxology. Father, here is how we end today: God, to You be the honor and the glory forever and ever. Amen.