Ephesians - Chapter 1 review
Ephesians · Roger Henderson · Mar 18, 2018
Ephesians (2018-19), No. 10
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492619995573

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right. So today is what I dubbed as a chapter review. Chapter one. So I'd like to read the whole like to have us collectively read the whole chapter. So maybe we could take one verse at a time. Well, let's let's make how much. Let's take it. So how about 10, 10, 10 verses. And Tom, you read the first 10 verses. Here we go. OK.

Follow an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the saints which are in Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ. according as He has chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, for the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the blood, and in whom we have a redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself, for the stewardship of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things on or in the heavens, and the things on the earth, in him. Thanks.

OK. So, do you want to read the next ten verses? Also, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will. to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of His glory. For this reason I too, having heard of the faith of the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of Glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might, which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him in His right hand in the heavenly places. far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

So what I decided to do, when we taught the class, You know, I kind of divided up each of the sections and I gave a title to each of the sections that we talked. So I just took that and I come to create some.

I've done this before, create some questions. I was hoping maybe that we'd kind of collectively answer these questions. I mean, I could I can give you my answer. And actually, I have some answers already on. There are two parts. Why put my answers on there? But so, you know, some are just really super. Some are just observing the text. OK, so if you read the first part. those first two verses. So from those two verses, why is Paul an apostle? This is not hard. All right, Tom, you're going to get a star. What does Paul imply when he says to the saints? And notice it's plural, saints plural. What is he implying there?

And I'm hoping this will be a little bit different than if And, you know, there are others. I'm sorry, the believers. OK, that's that's fine. That's that's certainly good. Anything else that you'd say that the idea of saints brings forth? Well, if you finish that verse, it says, and faithful in Christ Jesus, it would say that they've grown some, and they're knowing what they need to know. I'm going to ask about that too. Good. Excellent, Tom.

So, there's saints. Actually, literally, it's the set-apart ones. The derivative word for saints is the word Hagos, which is holy. So, right off the bat, you say, wow, And saints does have that concept, but we're only saints in the sense, right? I mean, we're obviously chosen from the foundation. Well, also in that, but I'm just trying to point out that the saints are not ones that are members of the body of Christ. They still have a sin nature. That doesn't mean they're Seamlessly perfect. Super Christian? Yeah, exactly. They're saints. You come to church and they're saints and they're the aints, right? That's an old joke, but anyway. That's just not true. Every believer is called a saint and that's because he has the undwelling Holy Spirit and he's been set apart for a purpose by God. So that's why I was kind of heading with that. And then the next question is, what does it mean to be faithful in Christ Jesus? So what do you think about faithful? What does that tell you?

They're full of faith. So they're believing, they're trusting, hopefully they're resting in the Lord. So I think he addresses this whole letter to the saints, the ones that have been called out by God, for God has called them out, and he says, who are faithful in Christ Jesus. People have looked at that and taken that a couple of different ways. You can take that in the fact that, just like we said, they're actively trusting in him. The other way to take that is, since they are believers, they should be faithful. That's a conditional thing. They should be faithful as a result of who they are.

I'm going to revert back to Lesson 1, which I taught. What does it mean, and I actually have the answer on the next page. Don't look, you probably already looked. What does in Christ mean? I'm hoping you guys give me maybe, I gave you my answer, which we can look at in a second here. What does it mean to you when you read in Christ? What have you learned about that expression? You've been translated from the world of darkness and the lost and you are actually in and not tentatively but fully in because of the completed work of Christ Jesus.

Okay. Other thoughts? When we were saved we were placed in Christ and he was placed in us. So it's an extremely secure position. Excellent. I like that. Good. Okay. OK. And then the next question is, I'm going to answer both. It's hard to get the charts to do, you know, to jump over there and jump back. OK. So let's just stop. So the next question is, what is Macaulay's definition of positional truth? Just hold that thought for a second. So here's here's my answer. And it just comes from looking at. looking at the language a little bit.

We are in union with him. The idea of in is in union with or better since he is a living saviour. We serve a risen saviour. A song we are going to sing this week or next week. Probably Easter Sunday. We serve a risen saviour. He is in the world today. We know that he is living. We are in a living union. This is not something that is static.

I am in Christ and that is a done deal. Like I'm in the city of Aurora, or I'm in the Elf Lodge. I'm in this living union with Christ, this ongoing relationship. And then tightly connected to that, and actually it's helped me going through it, tightly connected to that is this definition of positional truth. And I have one on the next page, on the next chart. Can you give me a definition for me of positional truth?

Who you are without you having to pass a pre-qualification above and beyond being in Christ. Okay. Okay, Tom. Other thoughts? This is a review, Margaret. We're reviewing what we did for the past three months. I have my answer coming up. I don't want you to look. One of my colleagues, I mentioned in the first class, It's on your notes now.

What's McCulley's definition of positional truth? It involves heavily the idea of our union with Christ, or heavily being in Christ. Something that we can do on our own, something that Christ did for us. Okay. So we're seated with him. Okay, that certainly is a positional truth, right? I mean, that's something that's true. We're at the right moment. And we're going to see that shortly. Here at Holly Hills, we have several classes that talk about positional truth.

And we'll list, there's just a whole mail, 33 riches of God's grace, 33 positional truths, at least. So here's McCauley's definition. So it's a body of truth that tells us of the facts, so there's more of the plural, the facts and significance of our union with Christ. So when you think about what does it mean to be in Him, positional truth is, if you will, a collection of those wonderful truths about this relationship.

It's a collection of those ideas. So I think that's really cool. And going through this time around, it's helped me to kind of put those two together. Before I kind of had Well, I'm in Christ and I've got positional truths. Well, no. Actually, positional truths describe this whole wonderful being in Christ.

It's what we've given, and we talk about positional truth and conditional truth. We talk about that a lot here. And positional truth is true of you, and then I actually didn't put in there, but if you remember from the first class, positional truth, there's about four or five things you can say about positional truth. I don't have it on the charts here.

Basically, positional truth describes our living union with Christ. Positional truth describes our new history in Christ. Mike likes to use that a lot. We have a new history. We no longer have our history from Adam. We have our history from Christ. Positional truth never changes or is ever lost. Once you become a believer, Those truths are true of you from the moment you believe until the moment you go to glory. They will not change because you didn't establish them. You didn't create them. You're not maintaining them. God is maintaining them.

And so all the wonderful things. You've been born again. You're seated at the right hand of God and so on. And as Paul later talked about himself and what's actually true of every believer is to live is Christ and to die is gain and so there's more to come. Lots more.

Also, Roger, one of the things I think about is what is true of me? What does the word say is true of me and who I am? And I think a lot of times when we get anxious or we get upset or we get whatever, we forget what's true of us. And this is what you're talking about. All of these things that are true of us. Right. And that's all and that's all due to this in Christ relationship that that living union we have with him.

It's not true of ours. Inherently it's not true of us. And we know that. And that's why we kind of I think we wander away. We think well boy I really blew that today, or I should be doing this. And we beat ourselves up. We say, well, I should be doing that. I should be doing that.

And well, no, the Lord says, I want you to set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Another in Christ statement. So focusing on who we are in Christ is the way God desires that we live the Christian life.

He doesn't desire that we focus on our shortcomings We're not going to go anywhere with that. We're just going to be miserable. Basically, positional truth is discovered in the Word of God. You're not going to find it meditating. If you meditate on the Word, yes, but if you meditate on whatever, it's only found in God's Word. It's described in God's Word, and it's independent of our feelings.

We may not feel like were seated at the right hand of God. If you walked out this door now, walked down to the 7-Eleven and said, you know, I'm seated at the right hand of God, they probably would say, well, we're going to call somebody, because you've got a problem. You could say, well, that's not my estimation. That's not what I say.

That's what the Word of God says about every person who puts their faith and trust in Christ. They're seated at the right hand of God, in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus. There are things that we can't fathom in our earthly minds. But the word of God tells us that. So that's neat. And that's what we're learning in the Ephesians, all these wonderful positional truths.

So my approach here today is, and the first part here I put in my answers. I thought it was kind of critical. I'm going to go to the next set of verses and we're going to attempt to Ask some more questions here. OK, so the second set is basically, if you remember, we kind of divided up Ephesians into starting in verse 3 through 14.

It's this one long sentence in the Greek. But everybody has tried to put period. There's a period there, you'll see. And there's commas and periods. I'm not a Greek scholar, but there's this one long sentence. So anyway, there's an attempt to cut it into whatever.

So here's two verses of that. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven and the places in Christ just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. Another thing to look as we go through here and we saw a lot, look at all the personal aspects we have. all these personal pronouns in the us, he chose us, we have this, it's an intimate description of what we have. So my first question here, what is the significance of Paul saying blessed be, and in the context he's saying blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what is Paul saying here when he makes that statement?

What do you think? You don't have to Take a long time. What comes to your mind? Chosen before the foundation of the world by the Father. Okay. But look carefully. Be careful here. He's praising the Father. He's praising the Father where he says, blessed be. He's giving blessing. Paul is giving blessing to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which is an interesting phraseology. He's making note of that. So it's a hardwired connectivity. OK. Other thoughts.

What if you said you know you hear people say it kind of bothers me a little bit. You know it's kind of it's it's a cultural thing. People when people have to sneeze. It drives me up a little bit because I realize the statements like this it says you know they'll say bless you. And I'm thinking OK, well I know I'm already blessed. I don't need to have that person say bless you because they sneeze. But I also realize it's like saying hello and goodbye. How are you? How are you doing? So I'm not going to give them a hard time for saying that. So what do you think blessed be here is? I won't belabor this too long.

In my mind I think it's I thank God. I mean it's a thankfulness. That's what I think of it when I read that. Because we are blessed. It seems to be sourcing blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus. That's where it starts because our ability to bless him hinges on his already having blessed us. So it's like a pivotal relationship. Excellent. You're on a great track right there. Since I've studied this, I have a little additional insight I want to share here.

That phrase, blessed, is a particular Greek word. It's eulogatos. And this particular Greek word, there's another similar word that's used for believers or for other people, but this particular Greek word is only used of God. And it's interesting how, you know, God is so gracious.

In his word, he's given us a phrase that only will apply to him. And there's eight occurrences. We're not going to look at the eight occurrences, but it only speaks of God, the father of God, the son of the Godhead. And it's the idea, the word designates one who alone is worthy of worship and praise. It's giving all thanks and glory to Him. And He deserves it. He deserves every bit of praise and glory in the whole universe because He created it. He maintains it. He sustains it.

So that particular Blessed Be, and it shows up in a bunch of other places. And the cool place is, let's look at Mark. I'm not going to look at a lot of verses today here. Let's look at Mark 14. I'll use this word here. Mark 14. Can someone read verse 61? Mark 1461. Go back to 60. Start with 60. 60 and 61 and 14.

And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answer you nothing? what is it that these witness against thee? But he held his peace, and answered, Nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Are thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

Actually, mine has son of the blessed one. It's the same word. Here is an instance where the high priest, who probably isn't a believer, it's interesting that usage here, but it's used in that sense. Describing, he's saying, are you son of the blessed one? Pretty cool. And if you look at a bunch of other occurrences, so it's pretty unique. In the Sermon on the Mount, when the Lord says, blessed are those who...

That's a different word. There's a word that applies to believers and others. It's a form of this word. But this word, eulogatos, is uniquely used of the Godhead. There's another word that's close relative of that. It's the same root, but it's slightly different. What does it mean? This is interesting. And just so you think, I don't sit a lot of time looking at bodies. You're in there, again, studying. What are you doing? But I got this observation from a colleague.

What does it mean to be the God and Father of Jesus Christ? So that's what it's saying here. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what significance does that have in terms of Jesus Christ? Blessed be the God and Father. So we're giving blessing to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.

So what is that? Any thoughts that come to mind there? At some point in eternity past he had a discussion and you can't name a time about it. It's before any bit of creation began. If you do this I'll do that and they planned it ahead of time. Thank you. All right, so not to belabor this, but let's look at the place where it helps me understand this phraseology. Let's look at John 20. John chapter 20. I'll just go ahead and read that. John chapter 20. And let's look at... I'm going to read 16 and 17 in John 20.

And this is after they came to the tomb. 16 says, Jesus said to her, he's talking to her, Mary, she turned and said to him in Hebrew, which means teacher. And Jesus said to her, stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the father, but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my father and your father and my God and your God. There is a distinction between the Godhead's relationship, the Son and the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is making a distinction there. and he talks about God and Mary. He says, your father and your God.

He makes a distinction. What you observe from this verse is pointing out that he has this special relationship with the Father. Paul is telling us, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. There's this unique relationship. It's a claim to deity. He's claiming to be deity. We have a relationship with the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, but we don't have the relationship the deity has. The deity has its own unique relationship.

We see in scripture that the Father sent the Son, and the Son sent the Spirit. So there's an order. God is an orderly God. He's established an order. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They're co-equal, but there's an order to how they do their business. OK, we're never going to get through this, but it's OK. I may jump around just because there's some cool parts.

Why are blessings called spiritual? Why are the blessings, plural, called spiritual and in heavenly places? It says, who has blessed us, blessed be the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So why are they called, and this isn't, I didn't look for a real deep thinking. What's the significance of becoming spiritual?

As opposed to the kingdom of darkness, which is Satan's. Okay, that's one. How about, is he probably a new Cadillac in our driveway here? Not even talking about that, right? Yeah, it's not earthly blessing. No, so don't think, you say, well I've got every spiritual blessing. Well, and also, look at the place where these blessings reside in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus. So we begin to see, this picture is being built up, that we have our blessings, we are seated with Him in this place, and we'll see eventually that the Father's right hand, we're in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus, and that's where every blessing that we have exists, if you will. So that blessing, what's cool about that blessing, can't be can't be messed with, it can't be defeated, right? Tamper-proof. Tamper-proof, right? This is kind of a silly question, Roger.

It says down here, verse 4, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless with him in love. holy and blameless before him. And love comes next. Here's our classic situation. Does choosing eliminate the need to believe in Christ? It's all one package, you can't subdivide it. How about this?

God does not choose to He does not choose to. His actions of choosing is out of his love and his choosing it in the context. You can't say I'm chosen until you believe because you can't say the scripture never talks of that way. You have to first become a believer trust in him before you can say you're chosen. So in our mind it seems like that's a conflict but in God's mind you're chosen after you have believed in him. But you know there's no timeline with the Lord.

Exactly. So he's looking at the whole picture. Right. And so you know you have these people who have this predestination thing. Right. They focus on that. Right. The predestination of being chosen. But in which makes us elitist. Right. But in fact the Lord knows with his I don't know what you call it. Foreknowledge. Foreknowledge or whatever, who also is going to believe? It's kind of hard for our brains to get around that. Right.

And the thing is, also the other aspect of that, his knowing that doesn't force that person to do it. He's still got his in the business of drawing people to himself. The Holy Spirit is in the world, convincing the world that they need to believe on him. His knowledge of that doesn't cause it to be. It's hard for us, our brains, to understand that. When we see the Lord face-to-face, we'll have all of his knowledge and we'll understand those things. It'll make sense. Right now, it seems like. Right now, it doesn't make sense.

You have to believe that you believe, and yes, you're chosen. And those seem to be contrary statements, but that's what scripture is. So you need to believe both. I thought Verdon did a great job the other week. He actually made that statement. You have to believe.

And there's other situations in scripture where there's two pieces of information, and they seem to conflict, but both are true. So we're chosen, and we need to believe on him. So you don't have to deep dive down into trying to pretend this is a search commercial. It's God's word. It's really true. You don't have to subdivide it.

To me, it appears that God chose everyone because he's not willing that any should perish. So we're all chosen, but we don't all respond to him. That's the big difference that decides who we are and how we live and die. That line of thinking, I've heard that... I can't find exactly that phraseology, but I see that every believer is chosen.

And he's not willing that any should perish. I see both those statements. And so we're kind of putting those together. I guess I don't object to that. I don't see that exactly. Steve? I've always kind of had a picture in my mind that there's this circumference of what God and Jesus say they are, what they've done. and how they're wanting us to respond by believing them. So you've got this reality of who they are and what they've done. And by the fact that I believe that, I enter into being chosen. Because they've chosen everything within themselves. Obviously, God chooses all kinds of things.

He chose Israel, right? He tells us Israel wasn't, by human standards, very cool people. I didn't choose them because they had any characteristics. I just chose them because I chose them. So God does choosing, but He doesn't do it haphazardly. It's done righteously.

We don't understand all that. What we find out, once we believe, then we're chosen. Once we have entered into that, then we can call ourselves chosen. That's how I like to look at it. She brought up the fact that maybe you can look at the fact that everyone is chosen. I guess I don't have a real hard time with that. I like to think about that one Aisha Parrish. Once we believe, then we find out as one of our many spiritual blessings, we're chosen.

That seems to contradict, but both are true. Anyway, I just have a question. If a person believes in predestination, how would you ever be absolutely sure that you were one of the predestined? There wouldn't be any indication that you were. You wouldn't know for sure, I'm just saying. So that would not be a good idea.

Focus on the Lord, not on too many facts that don't back up, aren't backed up by the Lord. I think what we all desire to do is to take God at his word. If he says something, we trust in what he says and we believe that. In love, he predestined us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ, to himself according to the kind intention of his will, the praise of his glory, of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us and the beloved.

Okay, all right. So now another word, predestination. I didn't want to spend a long time. What's been observed is, and actually this is where somebody put a period. The translators, I'll call them in quotes, whoever they are, they decided that in love better fit with the first part of this verse.

So it's in love he predestines us the adoption of sons. So let's just stop there. Also, is through Jesus Christ to Himself. So all these blessings we have are all connected totally with our Savior. And that's kind of Steve's point. You enter into this sphere of His love and His care for us and His concern. They're all connected. Any one of these blessings can't be disconnected from our Savior. If you do that, you're in peril.

Like the car repair mechanic tells the customer that this is an expensive part, it all comes as a unit. We get a package deal, right? We get them all. Now we don't know that we have them all. You don't know that you have a super V8 in there until you step on the... Anyway, predestined. So what's kind of cool is love motivated his predestination. It had a focus here to the adoption of sons. And there's no negative predestination in scripture. People aren't predestined to be separated from God or go to hell.

He never says that. He says the opposite of that. He says he's not willing that any should go down that path. And the core word for predestined is to mark out. It's literally to mark out beforehand. So once again, we have another one of these words here that seems like it contradicts how we think, because you think, well, if he marked it out beforehand, I have no choice. And he doesn't say that. No, he says, in love, I planned or I marked out that you would be adopted as sons. And then he's going to tell us right after that the wonderful things about being a son of God.

How is adoption of sons? This is for you. So there's a difference, as we've been taught many times here, about the Roman adoption of sons as adult sons versus the adoption of sons we have today, or children we have today. Today we have a situation where typically children are adopted, not always, but many times as small little children. In that culture, they adopted adults. I don't know all the history, but there were reasons for that. So God adopts us as fully as sons, and we get all the benefits of that. All the benefits of being the son of God, which is pretty amazing. Here's just an observation question.

How did the Father choose to bestow His grace in verse 6? So let's just read verse 6. To the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. It actually echoes back to verse 4, but it also continues in the thought and expands on it. In love he does this, and then it capitalizes it with the rest of the body of that verse 6. Okay, well here's something to observe here too. You notice that Beloved is capitalized, and actually it's focusing back on the Savior.

This is talking about the Father. He the Father, really bestowed on us, speaking of his grace I believe, in the Beloved, or in the Beloved One. So that he chose to show his grace in his son, basically. I'm not going to answer him for you there. But doesn't that also say that unless we're in the Beloved, the grace is not bestowed. That's why the belief is so important. It's not just willy-nilly, I'm giving you this grace.

It's in the beloved. And notice all these blessings that we have, they come back to the Savior, they come back to this relationship, they come back to this being in Him, to this truth about our position in Christ. So you could write, and I've written in my Bible, I like Beloved One, so it's focusing on The grace we have obtained from him is in his son, in the beloved one. So the next set of verses. Notice the we's again. We have him and we, all these verses. So this kind of shifts a little bit. The focus now focuses more on the son. The previous ones were more on the father.

In him, we have redemption through his blood. So speaking of the son. the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention which he purposed in him. Why must redemption be through his blood? Some of these are easy to answer if you remember some parts of the Old Testament. In Hebrews it talks about without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Blood is required in those situations. I like the one in Peter about with the precious blood of a lamb, unblemished, spotless, it had to be to satisfy a righteous and holy God. It had to be a spotless, unblemished sacrifice. And it had to be. It couldn't just be us. We couldn't pay for our sin. Christ had to do that. So actually, here's another observation. I'm not going to finish today, but look through the rest of the questions. And in some cases, I just have observing something.

So the definition of redemption It's in the verse. It says, in him we have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of our trespasses is the definition of redemption. That's in this context. The forgiveness of our trespasses. So we have something. We have this forgiveness of our trespasses and that's a truth, a positional truth that we have regardless of how we feel about it.

What is the mystery of his will? There's a bunch of, you know, you'll see mystery. You guys know the, you know, you guys know the definition of a mystery, right? You know, it's, remember Vernon is his, his Moose? Mysterion? You'd have it going across the screen. Well, you know, it's the idea of something.

It's not a mystery, mystery, something that God hasn't revealed in the past. He's now revealing. And it seems like in this context, if you keep reading through here, The mystery that's being revealed here is that everything is going to be summed up in Christ. Everything in the present age and the age to come will all be summed up in Christ. That's something that was not revealed previously. I'm not real clear on that. I'm not sure the teaching about the Messiah showed that everything would be summed up in Him. I don't think that was taught. Let's see here. So what do I want to do here? Any particular verses you'd like to... If you guys have any questions, maybe we should just do that way. Let's just, of course, last week we covered the exaltation of Christ.

That's just a cool section. The last 20 through 23 are just incredibly cool. They're just really great. Let me see. So any questions that you have about chapter 1, or just in general, so far? I'll just keep on, we have another five minutes, so I'll keep on going, but just wanted to give you a chance if you did. OK, well, let's just keep going.

So we see here the second part of this Praise to the Sun. With a view to the administration suitable for the fullness of time, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens, things on earth, In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.

So this is not exactly in the questions, but just notice here, Paul talks about, in 12 here, he talks about to the end. Who do you think this, he says, We who were the first to hope in Christ. Who do you think he's talking about there? Who were the first to hope? I don't think this is hard. Who were the first to hope in Christ as we read through scripture? Was it Gentiles? The Apostles. The Apostles were probably the first. And they were from the nation of Israel.

I think it seems like he's referring here to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ, who would be the praise of his glory. Then, as you go into 13, in 13 he says, in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, have him believe.

So it looks like he's talking about the Jewish believers, and then he goes on and he says you, you Gentiles, So he's covering both. And I'm not sure we really pointed that out as we went through the problems. We had multiple teachers and a lot of different points. So that's just kind of a FYI kind of thing. He talks about the Jewish believers, which he obviously includes himself as part of that. And then he says, in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and so on. So that's kind of an observation.

Let's see, anything last little thoughts here? It's entirely possible that a certain percentage of Gentiles who happened to be there on Pentecost, not as believers initially, but suddenly a certain amount of them that were there listening to what was being preached that day after the Holy Spirit was given to the Apostles that very same day. Boom, they decided we don't need to deal with this Judaism thing because we're looking to the Savior ourselves. I want to leave you with this last little part here.

This is part of Paul's prayer. First part of Paul's prayer. For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which exists among you all, and your love for all the saints, I pray that the eyes of your hearts may be enlightened. so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ."

So I think the eyes of your heart, I think it's just referring to the fact that you're It's your inner awareness speaking about you internally. But what's cool is he makes three statements here, and they're all marked off by what. So there's a what there, there's a what there, and there's a what. Actually, I missed the first one.

OK, so the first what, I ask, what are the three things Paul prays for in these verses? The first what? so that you will know what is the hope of his calling. So that's the first one he's praying about in terms of these believers. So you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance, number two, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe.

So just really cool Those are the kinds I like to mark off. Here's three things. I have a list and it's in scripture. I can think about it and ponder it. There's a lot of amazing things about what we have in our Savior in this first chapter. Now we're going to go on and talk about chapter 2. Where we came from. You were dead in trespasses and sins. We're going to talk about our former life initially.

Just some really marvelous verses there. Any last comments or thoughts? So if there are some questions in here that you'd like me to to address, I'd be happy to do that individually. Or if you want to ask it next time or other times. So hopefully the idea of the questions are just to raise your awareness of passages here.

And thanks for participation. It's great. Okay, let's close. Thank you, Father. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. Thank you for just these marvelous truths about us, Lord. There are just so many that are there before us, Lord, and we're so prone to forget them and to focus on our worldly situation in our lives, Father. We pray that you would help us to keep our eyes on you, focused upon what we have in our Savior. We ask in His name. Amen.