This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) I want to welcome you back for day five of week two, last day of
the second week of looking at the New Testament. We're to the book of Ephesians.
Ephesians is a book that tells you how to make the most of what God has given
you.

Well, it's a good thing to get training and practical skills to do your very
best in every area of life. You have to begin at a deeper level if you want to see
God make the most of your life. We often see people with the greatest skills
fail because of a weariness that overtakes them or an insecurity that overcomes
them or a sin that overwhelms them.

That reminds us that skills are good, but we need something more. Ephesians is
the message of God's deeper foundation for a meaningful life. It's also the
message that even when we might think it's over, God still has a plan for our
lives.

So let's begin as we have with each of these letters with a brief look at Paul,
the author of Ephesians, and the people of Ephesus, who were the first to
receive this letter. Ephesians one, one to two says, Paul, an apostle of Christ
Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ
Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As
with the letter to the Galatians that we looked at yesterday, Paul begins by
saying he's an apostle of Jesus Christ sent by the will of God.

An apostle is a messenger who sent as an authorized spokesman for Jesus Christ.
And yesterday we talked about it's because they walk with Jesus Christ and they
had the commission of Jesus Christ. We just touched on it yesterday.

Let me go a little bit more deeply into it today. How could Paul, who began his
ministry after Jesus was in heaven, be an apostle? How could Jesus have sent
him?

In the book of Acts is where we read that God arranged a special meeting with
the apostle Paul on the road called Damascus where he personally called him to
serve. And so out of that he is serving as an apostle. And Paul says out of that
commission from Jesus Christ he's now writing to the saints in Ephesus.

The saints, that's interesting. The Bible's definition of saint is different
than the first listing that you'll find in most dictionaries. The American
Heritage Dictionary says a saint is a person officially recognized especially by
canonization as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding
for the people on earth.

End quote. It's interesting that the second definition in that dictionary is
that a saint is a person who has died and gone to heaven. Well neither of those
fit with any of the people of Ephesus.

The idea that we have of a saint being somebody who lived a nearly perfect life
and then is given a special designation in death is not the way that the word is
used in the Bible. A close look at the New Testament shows that every Christian
is called a saint. The word saint means someone who has been set apart.

That's what the word literally means, set apart. Set apart for God's special
purposes. According to the Bible, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you are
a saint.

You may not feel worthy of that designation. The point of the first three
chapters of the book of Ephesus is to show that you're not worthy in yourself of
being called a saint. But God has set you apart in Christ Jesus and made you
worthy.

That's the miracle of knowing Jesus. The saints Paul was writing to were in
Ephesus, one of the larger cities of that day. It was originally built as a
trade city but its harbor was ruined as it had slowly filled with sediment over
the years.

And as a result, the trade suffered. So Ephesus became primarily a temple and
tourist city. There was a temple to a false goddess named Artemis where the
so-called worship had come to involve a culture of prostitution.

The city was thought of as we might think of Las Vegas or Amsterdam today. Paul
was writing to let them know that God has a different identity for them. He
wants the church to know that our calling can be a greater influence than our
culture.

He wants you to know that. God wants you to know that. Your calling can be a
greater influence than your culture.

Paul had been to Ephesus. He'd seen how Christ could work to change even a city
like that. In Acts chapter 19, we learned that Ephesus was the place where Paul
stayed for nearly three years, longer than he stayed at any other church in his
missionary journeys.

About 10 years after his initial ministry in Ephesus, Paul's now a prisoner in
Rome, writing this letter back to these people that he loved. And in his opening
comments, Paul talks about the two worlds that we all live in as Christians. He
says to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Did you see the two worlds? In Ephesus and in Christ Jesus. Well, just like the
Ephesians, we live in the world, but we're not of the world.

We live in the world, but more importantly, we're living in Christ. And that
phrase, in Christ Jesus, is used 15 times in this letter. That's our identity.

You are in Christ. Here's the picture of that. As believers in Christ, we're
like scuba divers.

We live in an alien environment to us. This world, water, we can't breathe it
in, or else it'll hurt us. It's filled with evil.

But it's like we have this little tube sticking out of the environment that
we're in that enables us to breathe. The only source of oxygen for the scuba
diver is through that tube. And the only source of real life for us in this
world is that you are in Christ.

It's through Christ. To try to live in this world without being in Christ is
like a scuba diver trying to breathe with the tube under the water. You're in
Christ, and that's where the air that you get to live in this world comes from.

Now, as you look at the book of Ephesians, a very simple outline of Ephesians
would be chapters one to three, who we are, chapters four to six, what we do.
But we have a few more minutes than that, so I'd like to take a more personal
look at the content of Ephesians, and how it shows, it reveals six specific
choices for making the best of what God has given you. Number one, you want to
make the best of what God's given you?

Number one, become overwhelmed by how much you've been given. Chapter one, verse
three, all praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The way to
make the most of what you've been given is to look at what God has given you.

Whether you feel like you've been given a lot in this world or not, and some
feel like they've been given a lot, some feel like they've been given less than
nothing, you've been given every spiritual blessing in Christ. We all stand
equal as followers of Christ in that. So the way to make the best of what God
has given into your life is to be overwhelmed, not by what you don't have.

Of course we can see in this world things that we don't have. Doesn't matter how
rich you are, doesn't matter how much you have, this world is lacking. So of
course we can be overwhelmed by how much we don't have, but instead of that, be
overwhelmed by how much you have been given in Jesus Christ.

That's how you make the best of what God's given you. Second way to make the
best of what God's given is to live a life of grace. That's in chapter two.

Chapter two, verses eight to 10, famous verses in the Bible. For it is by grace
that you've been saved through faith, and this not from ourselves. It is the
gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which
God prepared in advance for us to do. So we're saved by grace. We are God's
workmanship.

We're created in Christ Jesus to do good works. If you get that out of order,
you're not going to make the best of what God's given you. There are some people
who try to do good works in order to get God's grace.

If I do enough good works, God's grace will come to me when I go to heaven.
That's a recipe for failure. You can't do enough good works because we're not
good enough.

God is perfect, we'll never reach it. So you live a frustrating life. To make
the best of what God's given, you live this life of grace.

You realize that it's not from myself. It's the gift of God. I have God's grace
in my life, and out of the appreciation that I have for God's grace, then I do
good works.

In fact, they're the works that God prepared in advance for me to do. I don't
have to do them. I'm privileged to do them because of what God's done in me.

That's how you make the best of what God's given. Third thing you do is you
center your life on serving through the body of Christ. To make the best of what
God's given, you serve in the body that Jesus left on this earth.

That's the most powerful institution, most powerful organism that there is on
this earth, the body of the church of Jesus Christ. Chapter three, verse 20. Now
to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine,
according to his power that's at work within us, to him be the glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen.

Ephesians three, 20 to 21. Down through Christian history, that phrase in the
church and in Christ Jesus has bothered some people enough that they wanted to
write out the in the church part, but you can't because the church is Jesus's
body in this world. Yes, we are in churches that struggle and yes, the church is
often imperfect, but it's also the body of Christ.

So it's through the church that you're going to make the best of what God has given
into your life. You're going to make the greatest impact of the gifts that God has
given you and the calling that God has put in your life. Fourth thing that you
and I need to do to make the best is to learn to put off the old and put on the
new.

Chapter four, 17 to 520. You were taught, verse 22 of chapter four, you were
taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which
is being corrupted by its deceitful desires and to be made new in the attitude
of your minds and to put on the new self. Created to be like God in true
righteousness and holiness.

So to make the best of what I've been given, it's almost like I picture this,
this taking off of an old tattered dress or coat and putting on the new dress,
the new coat. Put off the old, put on the new. The old ways of doing things are
not going to cause me to make the best of what God's given in my life.

It's only putting on the new life, the new self, created to be like God in true
righteousness and holiness. That is not a one-time decision, I've discovered.
It's a daily decision.

Fifth thing to do to make the best of what God's given is you be unselfish in
your relationships, chapter 521 to 69. 521 says submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ. One of the most powerful ways to impact this world is
through your unselfishness in your closest relationships.

Paul talks in these chapters about parents and about marriage and about people
who work together. Be unselfish there and you will make the greatest impact.
It's not in the great events and moments of our lives that we count in the ones.

I was able to be there when that happened that we make the greatest impact. It's
in the things that we count in the thousands, the thousand conversations that we
have with our husband or wife, the thousand conflicts that we have with our
kids. Be unselfish there.

You will make the greatest impact with your life. And then number six, he
reminds us, the sixth thing you do is you fight spiritual battles expecting to
win. Chapter six, 10 to 24.

These are the chapters that talk about the full armor of God and the picture of
the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of faith. He starts that out in
611 by saying, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand
against the devil's schemes. You realize if you want to make the best of what
God's given into your life, you realize there's somebody fighting against the
best.

But you don't have to lose that battle. You can win that battle by putting on
God's armor. You don't fight it in your armor.

You put on God's armor of faith. You put on God's armor of righteousness. You
put on God's armor of trusting in the good news of Christ.

That's where the power comes from. God wants you to make the best of what he's
given. And Ephesians just lays out, here's how you do it.

Here's how you follow him. So let's ask for God's strength in it. Our father,
sometimes we wear ourselves out trying to make the best of what we've been
given.

Sometimes we want to give up 'cause we're tired of trying to make the best at what
we've been given. I pray that Ephesians will remind us to live in a new way,
that you're working to make the best of what you've given into our lives. So
free us from the burden of trying to live this life for you on our own and give
us the privilege, Jesus Christ, of living in you.

We are in Christ. And out of that, we can do all of these things that Paul
encourages in our lives. We want to be overwhelmed by how much we've been given.

We want to live a life of grace. We want to center on serving through the church and
we want to put off the old, put on the new. We want to be unselfish.

We want to fight spiritual battles knowing that through you we can win. But it all
starts with being in Christ. So right now, as we start this day, as we end this
day, wherever we are in the day, we recognize we are in you, Jesus, and that's
where our strength is.

In your name we pray, amen. Well, join us next week. We're going to keep on looking
at the New Testament and how God teaches us, book by book, how to live the kind
of life that he wants us to live.