Note: We began a new Sunday morning exposition last Lord’s Day at CRBC through the book of Ephesians. Listen to sermon here.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus
Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the
faithful in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:1).
Today, we begin an
exposition of this first of three “churchly” prison epistles (Ephesians,
Philippians, and Colossians), Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. This
letter is filled with some of the most profound and most practical teaching in
all of Holy Scripture.
The great Welsh
minister David Martyn Lloyd-Jones who preached through this book over the
course of eight years from his pulpit in London, from 1954-1962, and whose
sermons were later published in eight volumes, states in the introduction to
the first volume: “The epistle to the Ephesians is the most ‘mystical’ of
Paul’s epistles, and nowhere does his inspired mind soar to greater heights” (Ephesians
Vol. 1:6).
Let me sample a bit of
the content to whet our appetite:
It contains the “magna
charta” of the Biblical doctrines of grace and the Biblical view of good
works in Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace are ye saved through faith….”
It contains the great
household code, including the teaching on the relationship between Christian
wives and husbands in Ephesians 5:21-33 (esp. vv. 22, 25).
It contains a great
metaphor for militancy in the Christian life in Ephesians 6:11-17, exhorting
Christians to “put on the whole armour of God” (v. 11).
There is indeed some
of the most foundational teaching in the whole NT, the whole Bible, in
Ephesians, and we will get to study it together, God willing, in the coming
months.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jeff Riddle
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