Ephesians (Program #47) – Living in the Relationship Between Wife and Husband

If you’ve been to any weddings lately, you very likely may have heard this passage quoted from Ephesians Chapter 5, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord; For a husband is head of the wife as also Christ is Head of the church,… Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

Yes, this is the exaltation that nearly every Christian couple begins their married life with. Yet as good as these verses are, they neglect one important thing.  How can we do it? How can wives submit? How can husbands love to such a degree? If we don’t offer couples these verses in the context of Chapter 5, including verse 18, we may not be serving them faithfully, in fact we may be setting them up for failure.

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Ephesians (Program #39) – Arriving at Three Things

Oneness is a critical matter in the book of Ephesians. This book which has the Church as the Body of Christ as its’ subject stressed oneness in a number of places. In Chapter 4 we’re told in verse 3, to be diligently to keep the oneness of the Spirit then in verse 13, we have a marvelous expression concerning oneness. “Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of  the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Yes, our oneness surely is the oneness of the Spirit but we must not overlook the destination of our oneness, a three fold destination.

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Ephesians (Program #34) – God Glorified in the Church and in Christ

In Ephesians Chapter 3, the apostle Paul offers a marvelous praise to God. Now that in itself may not seems so remarkable. But what is remarkable? Is that this praise is the highest praise in the New Testament.

3: 20-21 “But to Him who is able to do super abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power which operates in us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations forever and ever. Amen.”

The other remarkable feature is that this praise is offered in the midst of Paul’s unveiling of the Church in its’ highest aspect. To Him be glory in the Church and this highest aspect is as the fullness of God.

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Ephesians (Program #33) – To be Filled unto All the Fullness of God

The church means a variety things to different people.  Its’ lowest perception is that of a building on the corner. Higher yet is there is the gathering of the people of God.  Then to more enlightened students of the Bible is the Body of Christ. This is a more abstract term but certainly a higher understanding.

But finally we come to Ephesians especially Chapter 1, 2 and 3 where we see the highest definition of the Church. The Church which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all and to know the knowledge surpassing love of Christ that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God. To see it in this light as the fullness of God requires more than simply Bible study.  As we study today, it requires a vision even revelation.

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Ephesians (Program #30) – The Church for God’s Wisdom According to God’s Purpose

Ephesians reveals more clearly than any other writing in the New Testament, that the Church is the eternal purpose of God. In fact it goes so far as to say that God’s multifarious wisdom is made known to the universe through the Church. But how can that be? Because when we look at the Church, most often all we see are the difficult people, bringing all their difficult problems and failures with them into the Church. Well, problems and failures and how God deals with them is just exactly the environment He needs to fully display His infinite wisdom, His multifarious wisdom.

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Ephesians (Program #26) – Growing into a Holy Temple and Being Built into a Dwelling Place of God

In the well known account in Mathew 16, the Lord Jesus asked His disciples who He was. And the apostle Peter responded with the famous words, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” As marvelous as this account is, it doesn’t end there. For the Lord goes on to tell Peter, that he had been blessed to receive such a revelation from God the Father. And further upon the rock of this revelation, the Church would be built.  This is truly one of the great passages in all of scripture. And the apostle Paul refers back to this monumental revelation in Ephesians 2 where the building of the Church is the focus and the theme.

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Ephesians (Program #20) – Saved by Grace to be the Masterpiece of God (2)

Genesis chapter 1 tells us that God created all things, the heavens, the earth, the universe, man and all the living creatures. And how even a simple gaze at  creation often fills us with awes as we consider His creation.  But not until the New Testament book of Ephesians are we told what is at the very top of all that He has done and even all that He is doing. Or use Paul’s language in Ephesians what is His masterpiece.  Listen to Ephesians chapter 2:10 “For we are His masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand in order that we would walk in them.”  We, are His masterpiece, we, meaning the Church.

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Ephesians (Program #18) – Dead in Offenses and Sins

The first Chapter of Ephesians presents us with one of the highest, most substantial views in the entire Bible. Because it presents us with the heavenly view of God’s eternal purpose in the universe and our place in it. Chapter 1 ends in the most glorious way as well with the Body of Christ been built up and the Church been produced out of the transmission of the ascended Christ from the heavenlies into us, His redeemed. This surely is the view from the top.

But Chapter 2 gives us the view from the bottom up, from the condition of the fallen men. And we will get into this view today.

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Ephesians (Program #17) – The Triune God Dispensed Into Us and Wrought Into Us

Ephesians Chapter 1 is truly a wonderful portion of the scripture. It begins with God’s blessing to us, the believers and concludes with the Church, Body of Christ as the fullness of Christ. The implication is that everything in between, all that God in Christ has passed through and accomplished has an issue or a result and that result is the Church. But what this Chapter also reveals is that it is not just the doctrines or teachings of this marvelous things that has such an issue, it is the transmission of them by the Spirit to the Church. This transmission or dispensing is the focus of our program today.

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Ephesians (Program #16) – The Surpassing Greatness of God’s Power—Christ to be Head Over All Things to the Church

The apostle Paul prayed in Ephesians chapter 1 that the believers would be brought into a condition where they can see and enter into God’s eternal purpose. His prayer primarily touches three great matters: hope, glory and power. For us, hope and glory are both future items that will issue from God’s blessings concerning to us. But it is His power, the divine energy, that carries out and applies what God has promised to us. The surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe is the topic of our program today.

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