01-“From Persecutor to Apostle: Introduction to Ephesians” | Ephesians 1:1-6

Chapter 1: Meet the Man Behind Ephesians

But this morning, we're going to be doing an introduction to the book and also getting a chance to to meet the man behind the book. Even as we jump into the book, we're going to be talking specifically about this man who wrote one of the most beautiful descriptions about the church in all of scripture, but also is the same man that dragged Christians out of their homes and approved their executions. I don't know if you've ever thought about that. I mean if I say something like that especially if you don't know the story of Paul you might be thinking that I'm making that up but I am not. So today we are starting the book of Ephesians but before we open the letter itself I want us to meet the man behind it because his story changes everything about how we read what it is that he wrote.

If God and also if God can use Paul, the question to me is no longer whether or not God can use you or whether or not he can use me. The question is whether or not we will let him use us.

Chapter 2: How to Read the Bible Who What When

All right. So, what we're going to be doing to start with this, I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint. Also, if you've ever struggled with how to read the Bible, believe it or not, something that you likely learned back in elementary school will help you a lot. who, what, where, why, when, and we're not going to talk about how, but that is another one that you can ask also. Okay, so the first thing we're talking about is who. This is the Apostle Paul, right?

Sometimes in in the Bible, we don't necessarily know who writes it. This one's declared right at the beginning. This is the Apostle Paul, who is writing literally from prison. Paul writes this in Ephesians 3:1, which we'll get to um in a few weeks from here. But he says, "For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ, Jesus, for you Gentiles." So Paul tells us right away.

He's like, "Look, I am Paul. I am writing this and I'm in jail." Now, before we get too far, we need to remind ourselves or maybe let us know for the first time who the the Apostle Paul is, right? So, a lot of you are going to know this. You're like, "I already know this, Pastor Chris." But this is another problem that we have as believers. We forget from where we came, right? we we suddenly think we're 40 years into this thing and we think everybody should be 40 years into this thing and not I'm not even 40 years into this thing.

So it we need to remember this and we also need to remind ourselves because again when we look at the Bible and we see these characters in the Bible I know this was my perspective before I really read the Bible. These guys are all perfect. These guys have their stuff together. These are the saints among saints among saints among saints. These are people that we just cannot even begin to live up to.

Now, if you were here for the Mark series, you know, after watching Jesus's disciples, that is absolutely not the case. And as we're going to talk about with the Apostle Paul, that is not the case. The reality is is that even though this is thousands of miles away, thousands of years ago, these guys are very human, not unlike us, right? We may be more sophisticated as far as technology is concerned, but when it comes to base human issues, we know a lot about what's going on with these guys here in the Bible. All right,

Chapter 3: Saul of Tarsus the Pharisee of Pharisees

so this is what I want to give you a picture of. Before Christ, Paul was named Saul. This was his birth name, and he was from a city called Tarsus. He Jesus would later rename him Paul, but he was called what was called a Pharisee of Pharisees. Right?

So Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. We're told that he was uh educated at the feet of Gileiel, which doesn't mean mean much to you, but imagine today if you know the name Billy Graham, and suddenly someone came up into the pulpit was like, "Yep, I sat underneath Billy Graham. He was my mentor." You might take note and go like, "Ooh, this guy's kind of special. This is what this means.

This is why this is being said because Galeio was one of these like high flutin teachers of the day. meant something to these people. So he was zealous for Jewish law. This is something that Paul was. He was zealous for the Jewish law to the point of violence against anyone who challenged it. We ever seen anything like this today

Chapter 4: Zealous for Tradition Not for God

where people get so zealous about their religion that they attack people who do not follow their religion. Something that's still going on even to this day. In fact, we're told that he held the coats of those who were stoning a guy named Steven. Right? So, he's they they lay the feet.

He's standing there watching this happen. And he was consenting to Steven's death. Steven being one of the very first servants, one of the very first deacons of the church, being stoned to death, like with literal stones being thrown at him until he should die. But he also went from house to house dragging men and women out of their homes to prison. Like literally committing them to prison because they believed in the name of Jesus.

He obtained letters of authority to extend his persecution to Damascus. Damascus still existing today. We all pretty much know about Jerusalem, right? We hear about Jerusalem all the time. It's over there in Israel.

Damascus is north of Jerusalem. This is in the country of Syria today. And so he goes to those who are ahead of him and said, "Hey, I want permission to go there and I want to do the same thing." Then Saul, he made havoc of the church entering every house we're going to hear. Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the way, just little note, this is what the church was called before we were called Christians or the church called the way, whether men or women, that he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Paul was about stamping out this Christian movement, this early Christian movement, these people who believed in Jesus.

We're told that he was extremely jealous. He persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. This was the heart of Paul at this point. Now, something that's really important for us to understand though was that Paul was really zealous for the traditions of my fathers. This is very important for us to understand.

This is not Paul saying like I was very jealous for my God and making sure that my God was being honored. Are you seeing the difference here? And this is very relevant to us today because guess how many of us tend to be zealous for the traditions of our fathers. Any of you that have ever been at churches that is split in half are likely been part of a church who has been zealous for the traditions of their fathers. Right?

When we find ourselves suddenly taking our eyes off Jesus and onto particular traditions that likely did not exist at the time of Jesus and allowing that to be that which separates us have now taken our eyes off of Jesus and fixed oursel on tradition. Again, not trying to look into any in particular. All right.

Chapter 5: The Damascus Road Encounter

So, when we look at Acts 9:es 1-19, this is what we call the Damascus road experience. So, Paul now is on his way to Damascus. And we're told that he is blinded. We're told that he is humbled. We're told that he is redirected.

Paul in this moment literally has an experience with the crucified and risen savior, the ascended savior who says like Paul or Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He's like, who are you, Lord? And Jesus makes himself just plain to Paul. But in the process, he is now blinded. And the thing that's amazing about this, and this is where it's extremely relevant to us, especially those of you that think, "I've just done too many awful things, Pastor Chris.

God could never use me. It's just enough that I have my fire insurance. Just don't expect anything of me, Pastor Chris. Don't expect me to speak the gospel to anyone or be used for anything or do anything powerful in the kingdom because what I have done in the past has disqualified me from that. And then what did we just describe?

A man who had been there at the murder and imprisonment of believers in Christ. a man who is attempting to destroy the church at every turn. And yet, look at what we read here. God has spoken into the life of man Ananas who receives Paul and he tells God tells him Jesus tells him, "Go for he is a chosen vessel of mine." I want you to sit on that for a second. This guy who is not years from being a persecutor of the church. A guy who is not moments from being or or decades being away from a persecutor of the church is now being chosen by Jesus as a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles to bear my name before kings to bear my name before the children of Israel.

And if he didn't if you weren't able to do the math there that's everybody. Paul is not being held back from anybody. I am sending him as my what? Chosen vessel. This is incredible.

So after he comes to Christ, the chief persecutor becomes the chief apostle to the Gentiles. He plants churches across the Roman Empire. He writes 13 letters that make up nearly half of the entirety of the New Testament. Think about that.

Chapter 6: If God Can Use Paul He Can Use You

The next time you're thinking, "God can't use you." I want you to stop and I want you to say, "My God can. My God is not too small." Because I'm going to tell you right now, this is something that this is going to challenge some of you. If you think God can't use you, your God's too small. Just right now, plain and simple. If you think that God cannot use you, your God is too small.

Now, Paul going through all of this stuff is going to go on to live a life that is utterly transformed. He doesn't allow all of the things that he had done to keep him from moving forward. and his life bears witness to this transformation, this faith in Christ because not only does he write half the New Testament, but he also suffers beatings and shipwrecks and imprisonments. And ultimately, history tells us that he suffers martyrdom, that is being losing his life for his faith in Christ because he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's literally willing to take this to the grave. He will not be stopped.

This encounter with Jesus has utterly transformed his life and the fruit is seen all throughout these letters that we have been given. Now in this very letter, Paul though, this is something that's amazing. He's gone from a man who probably likely struggled with humility just a little bit, sitting at the feet of Giliel, being a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees, right? And yet here in chapter 3:8, he calls himself less the least of all the saints. In fact, what's amazing is he he coins this word right here.

I'm not going to try and say that. I've listened to it pronounced and I still can't do it. But he literally coins this word. And why does he coin this word? because there wasn't a word in Greek at that time that helped him to express what he felt of himself of him literally being the least. He he couldn't describe well enough how undeserving he felt of what it was that God had given to him.

Now, as I just mentioned, Paul suffered many things in his postcon conversion life. Ephesians was written during one of these sufferings. Ephesians is one of what we call prison epistles, one of four of them. So we have Ephesians and we have Philippians, we have Colossians and we have Phileiman. Just for note for those of you that want to go back through, we've done series in Philippians and Colossians.

And so now we're adding in Ephesians to that group of prison epistles. And he's now writing this letter to predominantly Gentile believers. We read this in Ephesians 2:1. Therefore remember that you once Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision. So you see in the Bible they talk about uncircumcision.

That's referring to Gentiles. What is called by what is called the circumcision. These are the Jews made in the flesh by hands. Now Paul's writing to people who literally had no Old Testament background. This is important for us to understand who his audience is.

Because there's many of you in this room who have no Christian background. And this is why this is important. We have people who grew up in the church like literally days after you were born, you were in a church somewhere. And we have other people who have come to Christ recently. We have people who have been maybe in the faith for a few decades, but you spent some decades before that before you ever came to Christ.

Right? And we know that most of our learning occurs early on in our lives. Like most of our worldview is established before the age of 10. So these guys are now suddenly hearing all of this stuff from Paul about this guy named Jesus, about the promised Messiah, about grace and faith and all of these things. They wouldn't had any idea what he's talking about.

Those of you that know the book of Acts know that Paul stood in front of the stoic philosophers and the Epicarians and and they're just like, "Who is this babbling fool?" Like, it was so far outside of what they understood. They had no idea what he was talking about. And so Paul is literally trying to introduce and help these people understand from a very base level what he's talking about. What does the Jewish faith have to do with something? How does Christianity build on it?

How is Jesus the promised messiah? How that relates with them? And he continues to move forward. In fact, most of these guys were likely part of what's called the Aremis cult or the Diana cult.

Chapter 7: The Cult of Diana at Ephesus

Sorry. It literally this is the goddess Diana, right? So this is the goddess of Diana. We're not talking about the rocket ship that just came back to Earth, right? That's not what we're talking about.

But that honestly is what this comes from, what it's named after. We're dealing with that. So she was a fertility goddess centered at her temple in Ephesus involved in ritual prostitution, occult practices, and a massive economic system built built around idol manufacturing. Which is why we end up in Acts 19, we end up getting this. This is what's interesting.

And you guys are going to relate with this because we we have now this is this is what's usually I try not to touch on this but this is very relevant because we can relate with this. Is there anything going on in the world right now that has people up in arms and concerned and frustrated about potentially losing their jobs and their income? Anything? A lot of quiet. It's okay.

You can name it. AI AI. Right? So now think of that when I'm reading you this again. You know how I talk about the Bible may have been written a couple thousand years ago, but it's incredibly relevant even now.

So there was a certain man named Demetrius, a silver smith who had made uh silver shrines to Diana Artemis brought no small profit to the craftsman. He called them together with the workers of similar occupation and said, "Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade. Moreover, you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but through all of Asia, this man Paul is persuading has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands. So, not only is is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed whom all Asia and the world worship. And then it goes on to where they come after Paul and he had the Romans have to get involved and and all this stuff because they want to take his life because he's threatening their way of life.

Right? So this is the kind of thing that Paul's dealing with. This is what the Ephesians have grown up in is all of this stuff that's around them. But in addition to this, there was Greco Roman paganism as a whole that was present. It was a polytheistic system worshiping gods like Zeus and Apollo and Hermes.

It included emperor worship which is going to come into play here shortly. Uh there was a temple, there were temple sacrifices, household shrine rituals, public festivals were in were inseparable from civic and social life. So it was very difficult for these people to separate themselves out from the community worship. And the thing is is we have stuff like this going on in in in the world today. When I was in graduate school, I went to school in Dallas and I was in class with a lot of guys who were from the south.

And I remember talking to some of these guys because, you know, churches down there are huge. It's like whole another level huge. I don't know if you've ever been down there, but the church that we visited had multiple services with a sanctuary that sat 7,300 people and the the choir loft was 300 people. Like the choir loft was bigger than this room. I mean, it's like it's something different, right?

But when you talk to these guys who are in these uh in these churches, you know what they told me? I said, "So, what's the biggest problem that you guys have?" They said, "Cultural Christianity." Like, I don't understand. What do you mean? People who say they're Christians, but they're really there just because it gets them benefit. Yeah.

They're falling into line. they're saying the right things just so they can have, you know, the better jobs or make sure that they keep deals with individuals because, you know, people aren't going to work with them if they don't say that they're Christian. So, they show up at this at the churches so that they get that facetime with the people who pull the purse strings and all these other things. And so, you can see the same kind of thing here in Ephesus. If you're not connected to the temple of Diana, oh, there's a problem that's going on. The thing that may be difficult for some some of us as longtime Christians is that everything Paul teaches the Ephesians about their identity in Christ again is brand new information.

They have to literally retrain themselves as to what even certain words mean. Everything about their world, their life, their worth was being shaped in real time as they learned more about this person named Jesus. And so here we have the who. And now we're going to move on to what now the letter that Paul is communicating is he's going to be communicating what it is to be in Christ. What God has done for every believer, our identity, our blessings, our position, all received, nothing earned.

This is incredibly important. This is what we're going to see in the first few chapters, chapters 1 through 3. Right? So we see this in chapter 2:es 4-6. A God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together in Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

But what we're also going to see as we continue on in chapters 4 through 5 is what it is to be like Christ. That is how this identity changes our daily lives. unity, holiness, love, and wisdom in community. We see this in Ephesians 5:1. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children. And then finally, we're going to see in chapters 5 22-6 24 is what it is to be for Christ where you represent him, where we represent him in our home and in our work, in our spiritual battles.

We read this in Ephesians 6:10. Finally, my brother, be strong, brethren. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the ws of the devil. Now, real quick, when was this written? Around AD60 to 62.

So, we're nearly 30 years after Jesus had done his ministry, had been crucified, buried, dead, and raised. This is when this is being written. Now Paul's first uh visited uh Ephesus briefly at the end of his second missionary journey in Acts 18:19 uh and he came to Ephesus left them there but he himself entered the synagogue he reasoned with the Jews for when they asked him to stay a little longer uh with them he did not consent but took leave saying I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem but I will return again to you God willing and he sailed from Ephesus. So he returned on his third missionary journey. Uh and we're told that he stayed approximately three years at that point.

So he spent a a good long time in Ephesus. That three-year ministry was so effective. We're told um by Luke in Acts 19 that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks. So Paul again is just communicating and sharing the gospel anywhere and everywhere. Uh why does Paul write it?

Well, Paul writes, Paul writes to accomplish something that no other letter attempts at the same scale. He wants to show the gentile believers the full scope of what they've been brought into. We've already touched on this earlier that again that they are in Christ. That literally we as believers in Christ, we have relationship with Christ. That we're inside something.

That we're part of something that's bigger and beyond us. And that we can also be like Christ. He wants them to understand, right? So, a lot of a lot of um other religions, their deities are somewhere else. They're somewhere other.

But this is a relationship. This is a family. We're going to see next week that we're literally adopted into the family of God. This is not something separate. It's not something that we're set apart from.

We're set apart with it, but we are inside Christ. And that it is also for Christ. We do the things that we do, not just for ourselves. Again, this is where a lot of believers lose the plot is they think, "Oh, I got my fire insurance. Now I can live my life however I want." But this recognition and this realization that the things we do in life, we do for the family and we do for our king.

Amen.

Chapter 8: Apostle Means Sent With Authority

Now, with this background in mind, we're going to dive into the first few verses of this magnificent work. And we're going to start with this. Paul's saying, "Hey, look. It's me, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." Now, we often get caught up with something like apostle, like, oh, it's a highfulutin word. It's really a simple word.

It means sent one. It it's it's not this is not a generic sending that's going on. It carries the weight of an authorized representative. This is someone and this is something that these Greeks listening at Ephesus would understand because they would understand that Paul is communicating to them that a king has sent me. I am an authorized representative of a king.

And this is the thing. You have to listen to me. You should listen to me because if you're not listening to me, then you're not listening to the king. The words that he is speaking, Paul is communicating to them are literally the words of God. And again, we saw this that he is this chosen vessel.

So we have the 12. We know of the 12. We know Judas took his own life. We know that he was replaced. But now what we have is this other apostle that God himself selects and sends out to these Gentiles.

Paul affirms to his audience that this is not a self-appointed title or role. Rather, this comes from a much higher power. He says, "By the will of God."

Chapter 9: You Are a Saint Right Now

Now Paul having affirmed his role in authority lets us know how he views the Ephesians. He says to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Now, it's really easy for us to see this word saints and immediately our minds go to the Roman Catholic Church. I don't know if you spent much time trying to understand how a Catholic becomes a saint, but it's a process. Like the number one thing is you have to be dead.

I don't know if you knew that. You can't be alive and be a saint in the Catholic church, but you also have to have attributable miracles to yourself. So every time you hear St. So soandso, they've attributed a certain number of miracles to this individual. But I'm just going to tell you right now, this is not how this would have been understood in the first century by any stretch of the imagination.

This is not what a saint is. A saint is something very different. The word that we translate as saint literally means holy ones, set aart ones. and applied in the New Testament. It's for living, breathing, struggling believers in Christ. If you are in Christ in this place, you are a saint.

So, not deceased heroes of the faith, not a title conferred by some institution. The New Testament knows nothing of saintthood as something that happens after you have died. Every believer is a saint by their position in Christ. But he also says that they are faithful. Paul acknowledges that they are faithful in Christ.

This is likely because Paul has heard about their faith in Christ. Their faith, their their their belief and their follow-through with Christ is something that has spread throughout. Whether that's because just random people on the street or people that Paul has sent to Ephesus and they literally have seen the faith of the people represented in daily life. Paul is seeing that and he's communicating to them that. And then he says, "Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Now, what's interesting about this is this is really Paul taking both his connection with the Greeks and the Hebrews and smashing it together in one.

So the word that he uses there for grace is caris, right? So we had the Caris pregnancy center. Now PRC is now called Caris. So it's this grace. So that's the Greek side of things.

But then he's extending this piece which has echoes of shalom from the Hebrews. So he's combining these things, this Jewish and Gentile faith he's combining here in this welcome to these people at this moment. And then he's giving this greeting that's not just a greeting from himself. It's a greeting from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Literally he is saying I am giving you greetings right now from the creators of the universe.

God the father and God the son. which incidentally next week we're going to add God the Holy Spirit. So you're going to end up with the Trinity just in the first few verses of the book of Ephesians. So continuing, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Chapter 10: Jesus Is Lord Not Caesar

Now this blessed be the God could be could be praise be to the God and father of our lord Jesus Christ. That is this picture that that he is conveying. The father of Jesus Christ the one who willingly gave his son that we who believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And then he uses this word our lord. Not a lord not want someone else's lord. our Lord.

Now, at first, this may seem kind of benign and innocuous, right? You mean like, okay, it's a title. If you've watched any kind of um Middle Ages stuff, you have lords and ladies and those kinds of things. That's not what Paul is communicating here. This word that's being used is more like we would use president, like the president of the United States, like a very very high stately thing.

So it's not something that we necessarily use flippantly like most of you in this room would not claim to be the president of the United States. Am I correct? Okay. Now one thing that we do do sometimes is we'll say something like this is my president. This is not my president.

Right? This is a phrase that we use. Now the reason why I tell you that is we have the freedom in our nation to do that. Now you might get excoriated on Facebook or some other social media platform for different views and what you view about presidents and such but you have the freedom to say what you want generally about the president and whether someone is or isn't or if you like I'd rather this person or not. Paul and the Ephesians did not have the benefit of the first amendment or the constitution of the United States.

And their lord was someone named Caesar. And this is where it ties back into emperor worship that we talked about previously because the Lord was Caesar. Curios was their was their Lord. This was Caesar's title. He was the ultimate authority which Paul here assigns to Jesus without hesitation.

So think about that for a second. Caesar who is being worshiped by people who is being communicated to as being the only Lord. Paul is now openly communicating that there is a different Lord other than Caesar and distributing that letter throughout this city that is at the center of of a Roman stronghold. This changes things. Paul is saying here that this wasn't just a theological discussion.

Paul is saying what you're reading here and what I'm communicating is tantamount to treason. So what you're reading here, this is a big deal. Paul is saying there is a God and there is a Lord that is above Caesar. Now he's also communicating every spiritual blessing. Now notice this is not physical blessings.

Chapter 11: Why the Prosperity Gospel Fails Scripture

This is very relevant to our world today because again we talk about a thing in our country called the prosperity gospel. This idea that you know what if you give a lot God's going to give you a lot. Paul's not communicating anything here about physical blessings whatsoever. In fact, the thing that we need to understand and I love reminding us about this because this is my thing and and I apologize but don't apologize to you if you subscribe to the the prosperity gospel because this is my thing. If you subscribe to the prosperity gospel, I question whether or not you've actually seriously read the Bible.

If you've actually seriously read the New Testament because just Jesus himself says, "These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In me you may have peace. Why? Because in the world you will have trouble. What was that?

In the word you in the world you will have trouble. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Our spiritual blessing comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. Our ultimate end, our eternity with him.

That is where we find ultimate blessing regardless of what it is that we face now. That is what we look to is his future and our hope with our king and our savior. Okay. Verse four. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Notice he chose us. That is he chose his church. God knew obviously how all of history would play out. history was not and will not and has never been a surprise to him. He knew that there would be a need for sacrifice. He knew that he would have his church.

He knew that this church, these people would be holy, that they would be set apart, that they would be without blame. Now, here's the thing. Some of you in this room, and yes, it's been more than one of you will know that I say this on a regular basis. Our goal as believers in Christ before our God as best as we can in him powered by the Holy Spirit is to be blameless. And that's something important for us to understand and realize because I watch a lot of diaper baby Christians that really struggle with this.

Okay, I got to look away again. Like they suddenly it's like it's all right sometimes. Not trying to pick point anybody out, but you know what I'm talking about. So the next time before you just start getting this righteous anger over this thing that God doesn't care about, run it through the lens of scripture, run it through the Lord and ask yourself, hey, am I actually representing God's desire for me to be blameless? All right, continuing on.

Ha. Uh, here we go. Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. Now, we have to address everybody's favorite topic, predestination, a little bit. You know, this word does create a lot of stress and people are like, they were right.

It's right there. His like, no, that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is God knew that he would be adopting people into his family. Amen. Right.

Not necessarily specific names of people that would accept him or not, and he forced it upon them. That's not what we're talking about. Now, I know that doesn't entirely answer the entire question. If you want more on that, go back to my Romans series, find the one in Romans chapter 9. That one talks about that at length.

Um, but just understand what God is saying is like, I know I am creating a a group called the church that will be filled with people that I have adopted into my family. That's what Paul is communicating here at this point, that they are being adopted into the family. that this is um after they have heard the word of truth and they've received the gospel of salvation, right? Because this is something this is a good word that we need to understand, right? Because again, if you go down a very hard-nosed predestination route, you have to accept this idea that God is the reason why people go to hell. I mean, that that just has to be there.

Now, I'm going to tell you how I read and understand scripture. God doesn't want anyone to go to hell. He desires that none should perish, that all should come to repentance to come to him. But here's the thing. He loves you enough.

He loves everyone enough to allow us to reject him. Yes. That's the thing. What's amazing to me is how many people want to hold on to their free will until it involves this topic. Then they want him to force them.

But he doesn't do that. How many of you want someone to force you to love them? I don't want to be forced to love anybody. He doesn't want you to be forced to love him. He wants you just as we do.

He wants you to choose him. And so what we end up having here, and this is going to be the for those of you that have been in the faith for a long time, this is going to be a thing that'll bend your brains a little bit. First of all, God doesn't always get what he wants, but he always gets what he wants. And this is what I mean. There's two conflicting things in his will going on here right now. is he he is desires that none should perish but at the same time he desires that you choose him.

So in order for you to choose him you also have to be allowed to reject him which immediately violates his desire that none should perish but that supersedes that overwhelms that desire because he wants you to choose him. All right. To the praise and the glory of his grace by which he made us accept accepted in the beloved. His grace that is him giving us something that we do not deserve. None of us deserve salvation.

No matter how good you think you are, you're not that good. And if it wasn't for the beloved, you would have no shot. I would have no shot. By the way, that beloved is Jesus. Right?

The only reason why we have opportunity to be accepted into the family of God, to be adopted into the family of God, is because Jesus took our sin and he paid for it on that cross. Amen. Amen. And through him, through Jesus, we then are accepted. God's again desire is that none should perish.

But his will, his requirement is that to not perish, you must accept Jesus. Amen. Whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Amen. Amen.

Now, we've covered a lot today.

Chapter 12: Your Past Is Not the Final Word

We met a man whose past should have disqualified him from everything God had planned. We watched grace rewrite his history from persecutor to apostle to writer of half of the New Testament. We met a church that came out of paganism with zero biblical foundation. We saw God begin rebuilding his identity um rebuilding their identity from scratch. We open six verses that carry the weight of eternity, chosen from the foundation of the world, adopted as God's children, accepted by the beloved by the Lord Jesus.

And so this is what I want us to take away today. Believe your past is not the final word. If God made Paul into a chosen vessel, he's not done with you. So, if that's something that you're struggling with even now, let that go. Drop that on the ground and ask God to give you the inability to ever pick that up again.

But instead, to live a life as a chosen of the beloved and adopted into the family of God. But the next thing I want you to do is name your Aremis. Right? Identify one thing in your life that functions as a competing lord. And we all have them.

I'm going to be honest. I'm not going to look at anybody again. We all have them. We all have these Artemises, these things that compete in our lives. It can be television.

It can be money. It can be your cell phone. It could be all of these different things, right? We all have these Artemises. And today, this week, take the first step to put Jesus back into his place at the center of your life.

And the next thing I want you to do is I want you to start reading Ephesians. We're going to be here for a while. So I want to encourage you this week to read the first chapter in Ephesians. This is one thing that my sweet wife has let me know. She's like she and she got this from from my predecessor.

She reads through where we're going, where we're at that week. And if you begin to add that kind of context, this is going to be so much more rich for you. Amen. Amen. Well, let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father God, thank you so much for the blessing of the beginning of this book. I thank you so much for this example of Paul where you just took this man who, you know, in this world of cancel culture that we have, there's no way he would have been able to do what what he did short of the miracle of you. And I thank you so much that you did indeed do a miracle in his life. That you bridged unbelievable gaps, that you accomplished unbelievable ministry, and that you have taken these words and used them to transfer the lives of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people over the the past two millennia. And so Lord, I pray that we would take these words and we wouldn't just let them be these idle things that sit somewhere off other way somewhere else on a shelf, but instead that we would take these words that we take this example of Paul and that we would see ourselves differently.

That we would see ourselves as not people that are unusable, but something quite different. That we are people who can be used to do amazing things, not for our glory, but for yours. in whose name we pray.