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Well, good morning to you. My name is Michael. I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm so grateful you're with us. And if you are new to Copp Hill Bible, this is your first Sunday, it's a good time to be here because we are kicking off a new message series. We're going to be going through the book of Ephesians. We've titled it Life with Christ. Now, I just want to warn you a little bit. Okay, today's gonna be a tad different, just a twinge different than typical. In fact, I don't know if I ever like preach at you, but instead of preaching at you, if you think I do that at times, today is more teaching to you. Because I want us to understand this awesome letter that Paul wrote to Ephesians. So let me just show you for context in case you don't know, and that's fine if you know. Ephesians, in my Bible, it's gonna look the same in yours, okay? Starts here, you just turn a page and it's over. Okay? This is a short letter, right? It's six chapters, it's a hundred and fifty-five verses, and we're gonna take seven months to go through it. Hey, did you know you come to a Bible church? Seven months to get through six chapters and 155 verses, but let me tell you why this actually matters. No book of the Bible is a book you should skim, but Ephesians is definitely a book that we should live in, not just skim it. And it's deep. It's actually been called uh the Great Canyon, uh Grand Canyon, I should say, of scripture. And you don't just look at the Grand Canyon and turn around. You can say one spot and look endless amount of time at the beauty and wonder of it. And so that's what we're gonna do as we get into this um awesome letter. Now, what we're gonna know is not just beliefs. He's gonna that Paul's gonna teach us some beliefs. I got it. But what Paul is trying to get us to understand, and what I hope we all understand over the next seven months, as we're on this journey together, is how to live in Christ while in the culture. I think it's pretty important we learned that. How to live in Christ while in the culture. So this morning, what I'm gonna do, like I'm just gonna warn you, it's gonna be probably 20 minutes before we actually read the only two verses of Ephesians I have this morning, which is the greeting. But it's important because most people throw the greeting out on most of the uh the writings. But what we're gonna see this morning is I think that in the two verses of the greeting, Paul has the DNA that everything that the rest of the book is about flows from. It's unbelievably important. So we're just gonna get to those, but it's gonna be about 20 minutes from now, okay? Because I want to give you the lay of the land. I want to give you some context. I want us to understand how Paul writes Ephesians, because I think that's important to know. But I even want us to understand the town of Ephesus. I even want us to understand how did Ephesians even get a church? Like who are the main players in that church? How did that even get started? Now, to kick things off, it's gonna be really hard, but what I want to do is ask you to use your imagination. You remember when you were a kid? It's real easy. Okay, I'm gonna ask you to imagine this place in your mind, and I know it's gonna be hard, but imagine in your mind, if you will, if you lived in a place where sexual immorality wasn't hidden, instead, it was marketed. And I know we don't live in that type of place, but just imagine with me. What about a place where people are super spiritual? I mean, I'm talking about a place where they're chasing experiences and energy and spiritual things, but none of those spiritual things are holy. What about a place where everyone believes in something, but we can't agree on truth because it's whatever you want it to be? What about living in a place where you're not given an identity? You can create your own. Because again, truth's whatever you want it to be. What about living in a place where following Jesus gets you labeled? It gets you labeled as judgmental, closed-minded, hateful. And not because you're trying to be that way, not because we're trying to be offensive, but because the truth of God's word always draws a line. Now I know if you're thinking, you're talking about America. And I kind of am, but no, I'm not. I'm talking about Ephesus. But that's why it's important we spend seven months in this letter written to Ephesus. Because Paul is writing to believers in Ephesus to try to get them to understand the same thing we're experiencing in our world that we are called to live in Christ while in a crazy culture. So it's important we're gonna spend seven months uh looking like looking at this. Now, this phrase in Christ is important to Paul. It shows up all throughout this letter. Now you saw Ephesians is tiny. Six chapters, 155 verses. It's tiny. It's about 7% of all of Paul's writings, but it contains 20% of Paul's language of in Christ. So you find out that this in Christ idea is the spine, it's the backbone of this little letter of Ephesians. Six chapters, 155 verses, one driving question. What does it look like to live in Christ? And so that's where the structure of this matter, uh, structure of this letter begins to matter. Paul is not random in what he writes, he's he's precise. He he is he is very intentional about his words and how he builds this letter to Ephesians. And um, I'm decided to get a help on kind of helping us understand this. Allie and I have a friend, he actually recently left the Bible project. He was on staff of the Bible project, he was the uh creative director, kind of a cool deal. And he helped create this, and this is a good breakdown to understand the book of Ephesians. Now, I have it here, it's gonna be on the screen, and you're still like, I can't read that. I know, I know. I printed this off as we leave. There'll be some high schoolers out there, and you can take it. This is what I would ask you to do. Take it home, fold it up, put it in your Bible, because we'll be looking at this, it'll be helpful information to know as we get to and through the rest of Ephesians. Also, I wrote you a letter. It's real sweet. I'm not gonna tell you the contents of it, but you can pick one up on your own. I'm not gonna be heartbroken if you don't, but you're just missing out, I think. A little encouragement here as we're in this book for seven months. So, what the real reason I want you to see this is because Paul, typical Pauline or Pauline fashion, he breaks up his letter in really two parts. We call it two acts. And this is how he does in all of his letters. And so you have here at the Bible Project, they say Act one is chapters one through three, which is true. They title that God's story. Act two is chapters four through six, and they title that our story. Now, if you're in seminary, they would say chapters one through three are doctrinal, chapters four through six are practical, and it's true. It's doctrine and then duty, it's beliefs and then behavior, it's identity and then action. And he writes this so intentionally because the first move of you isn't about you doing anything in your walk with the Lord, it's about you receiving, you receiving the free gift of everlasting life, understanding your identity now. And then once you understand these things, you have the opportunity to now go live in Christ. So you get to do some of these things. Now, it's gonna be fun for seven months, but we're getting into some touchy-touchy things. I mean, we're gonna talk about wives submitting to husbands. Oh, no, he didn't. Look, I would love for y'all to come back for that one. It's gonna be in about six months, all right. Okay, but you know what it says about the husbands? They're to love their wives like Christ loved the church. And we know he gave everything to her, his own life. And we're gonna get into some things like we're gonna talk about children, obey your parents, where all the kids at. We need Langley down here to go tell the kids upstairs right now. That's a command from the Bible. Children obey your parents. We're gonna talk about the spiritual armor of God. We're gonna get in, we're gonna break down each piece of armor. There, each one is its own service. Okay, so we're gonna get into this. We're spending seven months in this letter. Now, here's what's fun about it. There's six chapters. Every single one of them is uh it does heavy lifting. And I want to just seminary me for a second, okay? I want to just show you just some of the topics we're gonna cover from a seminary standpoint. Go ahead and show them that slide. We're gonna talk about ultimate authority, grace, the sovereignty of God, election, predestination, adoption, redemption, soteriology, trinitarianism, pneumatology, and providence. And you know what's funny about that? That's only the first 14 verses. Okay, so you understand why we're taking seven months to get through. Imagine what the 141 other verses are like if this is in the first 14. All right, so we're gonna take our time. We're gonna be in Ephesians, not to be informed, though we want you to be informed, but to actually be formed. And formation takes time. And we just want you to know how to live in Christ while in this culture. Now, here's what we do: we call these uh epistles or sometimes books, but you know what they were? They were letters, they were just letters. Paul pinned on papyrah a letter, and in order to understand a letter best, you gotta know who the author is, who the writer of it is, and who the recipients of that letter are. So, what I want to do in these next few moments is really give you the backstory of how this letter even came to be. Like what was happening in Ephesus. How did it even start? How did the church begin? How did it grow? And I gotta give you a spoiler alert. It doesn't start with the apostle Paul. It actually starts, if you look at scripture, with a married couple, a married couple named Priscilla and Aquila. In AD 49, Priscilla and Aquila are living in Rome, Italy. Emperor Claudius at that time decides to expel all Jews from Rome. They can't appeal it, they can argue it, off they go. Now, the Bible tells us that Priscilla and Aquila were wise in scripture. They were faithful followers of Jesus. And so they just pack up their stuff and they're like, where are we gonna go? And it just so happens that they make their way to a little town known as Corinth. Now, here's what I love about God. I feel like we could all tell stories, and the common phrase would be something like, Man, it's a coincidence, let me tell you, or it just so happens. Do you know that in God's world there's no coincidences, there's no just so it happens? It's called the providence of God. And what looks like disruption in your life, and all of a sudden becomes something directing you to God. You just may not know it, you may not see it, but he does. He's got you, he knows you, he knows what you're going through. So they have this disruption and off they move. What are we gonna do? But wouldn't you know it? They end up in a place called Corinth, where there was a man who was on his second missionary journey there named the Apostle Paul. And wouldn't you know that Priscilla and Aquila had a side job the way they made money? And wouldn't you know that it's the same exact side job as the Apostle Paul? They were tent makers. And so, as this these people that were obviously pushed out of their land, and now they're trying to figure out what to do, they were disrupted. They're in Corinth, and they meet this guy named Apostle Paul, and they realize wait, you love Jesus? You're telling people about Jesus? We want to do the same. And Priscilla and Aquila and Paul become this sweet ministry partner. They start doing ministry together. By probably the springtime of A.D. 51, they go from Corinth across the Aegean Sea, they go eastward to the port in Ephesus. And what Paul does in Ephesus is what he does every time he gets to a place. He's not like, hey, you know what? It's a long travel. Let's take a nap. Paul goes straight to the synagogue. And he goes to the synagogue and he begins teaching, he begins preaching, and he begins telling people about the scriptures and about Jesus Christ. Now, Paul doesn't stay there long. Bible doesn't tell us how long he's there on this part, but it tells us that the people wanted him to stay. I mean, wouldn't you? If Paul was up here, wouldn't we be like, no, I don't care what's for lunch. I want to stay and hear you. But all of a sudden, Paul's like, no, look, it's better if I go. So Priscilla and Aquila, who hopped on the boat across the Aegean Sea, are like, are we coming with you? And Paul's like, no. See, the church in Ephesus was starting to be founded. That's what the apostle's job was. But he's got more work to go do. So he's leaving faithful stewards over God's church, known as this married couple, Priscilla and Aquila. So they stay, Paul leaves, this wasn't accidental, this was strategic. Now, while they're there and Paul's gone, someone else comes onto the scene. Someone else happens to make it into Ephesus. He goes in the synagogue, he begins teaching and preaching. And the Bible says that he is very eloquent. He's a powerful communicator. He's persuasive. People are listening and intrigued. And in that audience was Priscilla and Aquilla, and they're like, this guy needs to be on our team. Like, what's it? Who is this guy? We're doing this church thing here for Jesus. He needs to be on our team. But here's what the Bible tells us this man didn't understand all the scripture. Which honestly, I kind of love. All he needed was a little bit and he's just going to preach. You got to love it. But Priscilla and Aquila are like, you know what? Let's do the right thing. They don't call him out. They don't go, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. They pull him to the side, put their arm around him, and they say, Let us disciple you. And the man was Apollos, who later on in the scriptures becomes the pastor over the church in Corinth. In fact, you may be like, ah, that name sounds familiar. Let me tell you a verse that y'all all know, and it's about Apollos. Paul's writing it, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. He says this verse, he goes, guys and guys, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Apollos, before he did the watering of Paul's ministry, he's literally just proclaiming whatever truth he knows about Jesus. And people are still being persuaded by it, though it wasn't maybe all the truth about Jesus. And so all of a sudden, Priscilla and Aquiller are like, all right, we need to teach him the totality of Scripture. And so they do. They take him under their wing and they begin teaching him. So he now has a complete view of Scripture. Now, um, at this time, Paul's away, and Paul's like, hey, I'm itching to go on another missionary journey. I'm ready to go. And so he's about to take off on journey number three. Now, during the snow, uh, or I guess we call it snowstorm. It was really ice storm we just had. My daughter Jubilee, she's 11. And I mean, anytime you hang out with your kids, you're not gonna say no. She comes up and she's like, Dad, can we watch Lord of the Rings? And I was like, You don't know what you just got yourself into. I was like, Yes. Okay, I'm in. And so we have in the first one, the Fellowship of the Ring. There's this scene where there's this table, the ring's there, and all these people are around it, and they're all talking about this mission they're about to go on together. And I just imagine that was Paul being like, rally the troops, third missionary journey, here's what we're doing. Who's in? Who's in? I'm going no matter what, who's in? And some of the guys said they were in, and one of them was a pretty special guy. In fact, he's a young guy, a young guy who grew up in the scriptures only because his mother and his grandmother taught them to him. And that young man was Timothy. And Timothy becomes Paul's ministry partner on the third missionary journey, in which case they finally make it to Ephesus. In fact, they're there for nearly three years. They're there almost longer than anywhere else they went on any missionary journey. That's how much Ephesus mattered to them. And while they were there, Paul preaches in the synagogue. He teaches in the synagogue for three months, and people are coming to faith. The church is growing. Then Paul's like, all right, let's move away from the synagogue. And there was a man there named Tyrannus who owned a school. And Paul was able to go use one of his rooms to be able to lead, uh, train leaders to preach and to teach, disciple, evangelize, do all these things, literally grow the church. And can I tell you, God moved. Now let me back up for a second. How? Why? Because there were faithful people who chose to live in Christ while in the culture. They're just Lord, what do you have for us here? And they moved so much, and God worked through them so much that it disrupted the culture. Ephesus was a big town, but let me tell you, the gospel made an impact. So much so. It was a pagan place, a very demonic place. There were silversmiths everywhere. You can read about this in Acts 18. It's so fun. One of my favorite stories in the Bible. I wish I could see Paul at this moment. Silversmiths decide to, one in particular man named Demetrius decides to riot because they're not making any money. Because all of a sudden, people are coming to faith. They're not buying idols anymore, they're not doing temple worship, they're not in that scam, they're not in that game. And they're like, man, we're out of money. What are we doing here? And they're so mad they cause a massive riot and they're ready to get rid of Paul. Okay, so let me just say the gospel will come into your life and disrupt your idols and your income. But in a good way. It should be in a good way. And that's what's happening in Ephesus. And so after three years, nearly three years, Paul takes off. By the time you get to Acts 20, Paul is saying goodbye to the elders. His work there is done. His mission has been accomplished. There's a lot of things he did, but he poured himself out. He raised leaders, he sent missionaries. I mean, what a church. Why? Because they chose to live in Christ while in their culture. Fast forward nine to ten years later, Paul's arrested. He's under house arrest in Rome, Timothy by his side. And he pins this letter back to Ephesus, back to the church. And he's writing to encourage them. And he writes six chapters and 155 verses. And we're going to take seven months to look at it. And after a couple years after they receive that, he then looks over at Timothy and he says, Now it's your turn. And he sends Timothy to be the pastor in Ephesus, to which Paul then pens 1 and 2 Timothy to send to Timothy to encourage him on how to lead the church in Ephesus. Ephesus is a big deal in the Bible. It is a big deal in the New Testament. And so this is what happens when people decide to live in Christ while in the culture. So in order to understand how remarkable this really was in their culture, I kind of joked at the beginning about, you know, it's a pagan place, sexual immorality, all those things. But let me kind of give you a lay of the land, a little bit more of Ephesus. I think this will matter. Ephesus was a wealthy place, a massive port city, very important in the Roman world, cosmopolitan, educated, spiritually pluralistic, a lot of different beliefs, a lot of different little g gods, okay, a lot of things that you could believe in. And it was the capital of the eastern part of Rome. So it's the seat of government, it's the seat of religion. This is a big deal. This town had everything. But there's some things that were really famous. In fact, one of them is known, it was one of the largest libraries in the ancient world, and it was known as the Library of Celsus. Beautiful double-story edifice. This is just what it looks like now, but you can imagine 2,000 years ago the glory that would have been. One of the largest libraries in the known world. Beautiful. But then there's also another place in Ephesus called the Great or the Grand Theater that set 25,000 people. It was actually in this theater where Demetrius gets the whole town riled up to go kill Paul. This is where the riot started. And it's a crazy scene. You can read about it in Acts. It's awesome. Okay. And then Ephesus had around 50 temples. So you could literally worship whatever you wanted. You could find something in Ephesus. But the main one, which is actually known as one of the ancient wonders, uh one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, is this. This is a rendition of it. This is the temple of Diana or Artemis. This is the same person. One's the Roman name, one's the Greek name. But this is the temple. This is where pagan sexual immorality worship was, where sexual immorality was spiritualized, it was normalized. I mean, this is just the life, this is the culture. I want us to understand this is what it was like. Now, how much different is that than ours? It's not that much different. And now with technology, we see this stuff happening everywhere. It's just different times, same problems. This is what's happening in this culture. Now, I'm just going to throw this out there. This is a little aside, but you can actually see, and I won't even tell you to do it, but it's just interesting. You could see a statue of Diana, and it's real weird. She was the goddess of fertility. Okay, and so she has this statue and multiple breasts on it, and then she has bears and lions, and it's just very demonic, grotesque clothing, very demonic. And honestly, what's weird about that or odd about it is it's actually housed in the Vatican right now. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that's just weird. Don't know why they would do that. I'm just gonna say it. Okay, all that aside, Ephesus was a blind and broken and dark place. Okay. They weren't anti spiritual there, they were over spiritual, but not in holy things. This was Ephesus. There were mystics, there was magic, there was demonic activity, probably more demonic activity in their face. Than what we would even realize, even in our day, though it's obviously apparent all around us in different ways. In this little epistle, this letter was written to people in that type of culture to encourage them on how to live faithfully in Christ while in that culture. So this is so important for us. Written to them, but written for us too. And that's where we're gonna spend seven months looking at it. So here's what can happen. I think we've all kind of been in one of these places in our life spiritually, in the culture. We can either stand strong, like we hope uh what Paul is telling them to do and what I hope we do, or we can kind of drift away and we can kind of become secluded. Like the best way to not be in the culture is just turn my back to it and not live in it. I'd be a monk up on a rock somewhere going, hmm, and I'm away from it all. And God doesn't cost to do that. But you can go to the other side where you actually look so much like the culture you assimilate into it. There's a balance to it, but but how do we live so faithfully in Christ while in this culture? All right, so here's the questions How do we do it? How do we actually do this? How do we live holy in a place like Compel, Great Vine, Flower Mountain, Irving, Louisville, Cauleville, the DFW Metro? How do we stay faithful without drifting away or without assimilating into? Well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the first two verses, and we're going to see four questions that we need to answer. And if we can answer these, we understand them, then we will be really on our way to living in Christ in this culture. That's why these first two verses, they're not throwaway. This is literally the DNA of Paul's desire for all believers. And so this is why we're gonna spend the next 10 minutes looking at it. So, how do you live in Christ? Well, Paul's gonna cover this in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. If you have your Bibles, open up Ephesians 1, 1 and 2. What we're gonna see is you don't live in Christ by willpower. You know, your willpower will fade. You don't live in Christ by your willpower. This is it. Can I just tell you simply? You're gonna live in Christ through union with him, through his power and living in him and for him. That's how you're gonna do it. Okay, this is what he's gonna tell us. Look at Ephesians 1, 1 through 2. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Before Paul gives us any command, he brings such important truths to us here at the beginning. The truths that we're about to see actually shape what it means to live in Christ. And so there's these questions, they're not stated directly, but I think they're unmistakably there. Here are the four questions that really are the backbone of the entire letter that we have to answer if we're gonna live in Christ and our culture. The first, who gets the final word in your life? And that deals with authority. So you can just say, Who has authority in your life? I think so many of us would go, oh, I do. And look, admit it. That's great. I do. And a lot of times I don't want to have authority, and I kind of oversede or supersede the Bible, and I need to repent of that. And it's hard, it's like we're all in this boat, okay? This is what happens. But what we need to try to do is understand that God and God's word should have ultimate authority over our life. Look at what Paul says here in verse one. He says, Paul, an apostle, which by the way, that means he's gonna have authority, but of Jesus Christ by the will of God, authority. He's putting everything back in the Lord and what the Lord has called him to do and what the Lord has directed him to do, and all authority is given to Paul, but because of God. So Paul doesn't warm up here and say, Oh, Ephesian church, it's been a while. Golly, I haven't seen you in nine years, missed y'all, hope you're doing well. No, he gets straight to the point here. He starts with authority. Now notice he says he's an apostle. And here, uh, apostle is a lowercase a, but I think I need to make a distinction for our day and age, because you hear the term apostle thrown around even in our day and age, and you can have modern day apostles, but I would actually say that a modern day apostle is a lowercase a, even though it's written here, lowercase should be capital. Um, because a biblical apostle in the New Testament would be a capital A apostle, because it meant a couple things that nowadays and and and in this age you can't do. The first, it meant that you actually witnessed the resurrected Christ. You saw him. But not only did you see the resurrected Christ, he commanded you, he gave you this calling as you're meeting with the resurrected Christ. And then the third piece is it was about the uh laying the foundation of the church. And you don't lay a layer of foundation, lay another layer of foundation, lay another layer of foundation. So the apostles, biblically speaking, in the Bible are different than apostles now in that way because you're not good to re-foundate uh put another foundation down. So you can have an apostle, someone who's gonna be a speaker of the Lord, who's gonna use their voice for the Lord, who's gonna have a word from the Lord, a call on their life from the Lord. There can be an apostle now. But the difference here is that they're literally no more like what we have in the New Testament. They built the church, that was their main thing. They saw the risen Christ, they were commanded by him to do so. So Paul is giving uh God and God alone all of the authority. So the question is, who are you? See, this letter isn't Paul's opinion. This letter isn't even Paul's take on culture, but this letter isn't something that you can just scroll past. If you want to live in Christ, you've got to let the authority of the Lord and his word be over you. That's how you're gonna have to do it. This is God's word written through Paul by the Holy Spirit. Now let me tell you what I told a friend recently, because I have a friend who I feel like always tries to kind of weasel out of some of these uh conversations, and I just had to ultimately say, and this is where the this is where the big divide um came, that God's word doesn't ask for our feedback. It doesn't ask for our opinion. Sure, we need to know what it says, and there's some things we gotta interpret and figure some things out, but ultimately it's God's word, not our word. It doesn't ask for your feedback, it asks for one thing, and that's your obedience. That's what God's word asks for. Your obedience. And so I had to tell my friend that, and that kind of shut the door on the conversation for now, for now. So if you're gonna live in Christ, you've got to understand that he has to have ultimate authority in you. This is how you're gonna live faithful, uh faithfully for him in this culture. He has to have authority. You can't. If you do, you're probably either gonna go this way, drifting away from everything, or assimilating the culture. We've all been there, we know that. That happens, we've experienced that. Some of us even today, we're like, yeah, that's been me. So you've got to have authority, okay? That's the first question you got to answer. Paul shows the answer to. The second question: who am I now that I'm in Christ? And this deals with your identity. Paul here in the middle or the second um part of verse one says, to the saints who are in Ephesus and the faithful in Jesus Christ. Okay, so a saint is someone who you didn't you didn't work for it. You're not on probation right now, one day you'll get it. You're not halfway there to get it. A saint is someone who has placed their faith in Jesus. You have uh you are a saint. Spiritually speaking, you are a saint. Okay, so now you have a new identity and it's found in him, and it's not found in you or your past. You are set apart. That's what the word saint means. You are now set apart for God and for his purposes in your life, through your life, to live in him in the culture. You're now set apart. The opportunity is before you. You are a saint. The opportunity is here. Are you gonna do it? But Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on to say uh he also writes to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Now, these are two descriptors, not one. Here's how I would say this um the saint is your status. You place your faith in Jesus, you trust in him and him alone. Paul's gonna talk about this in Ephesians 2. Grace alone, Christ alone. That's it. Faith in you is the only thing that can save me eternally. I can't do anything, I don't bring anything to the table. And so thank you for the great grace and the ability to trust in you for it. When you do that, you are now a saint, you're set apart. And that's your status. But he goes on to say, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. And I think faithful should be our lived response. See, you're a saint in Ephesus. You're set apart, and you have the ability to now live this new life out, the ability to now live in Christ, in the culture. Are you gonna do it? The opportunity is there. You're set apart for the work of God. Doesn't mean you're doing it. But notice what he says about the faithful people. And this is the answer to the third question. Where am I really living? The saint actually lives in Ephesus, in Coppel, in DFW. I'm a believer in Jesus and I'm here, and I'm in because I've trusted in him and him alone. But notice where he says the location of the person who's gonna be faithful is in Christ, Jesus. So you have two locations your geographic location, your spiritual location. If you have placed your faith in Jesus, you're a saint, and the opportunity is here before you to live in Christ. And the only way you're gonna do that is if now you literally live in him. You grow in your relationship with him. You trust in him more, you put the authority of God's word over your life, you understand your new identity and live from that. You understand your new location, this ability to be used by him through the power of the Holy Spirit in this culture. So we have people here who are saints, no doubt, but here's my question: are you gonna be a faithful one? The only way to do that is to live in Christ. And this is why Paul is writing to them in this culture, which is just like our culture. So the questions are who gets the final word in my life? Who am I now that I'm in Christ? Where am I really living? And the last one, which is really important, is how am I even going to do this? What do I need to live in Christ? And this one deals with the power. Look at what Paul says, verse 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul always gets the order right. I mean, this is why I even wanted to show you the structure of Ephesians that it is the doctrine first, and then it is the practicality aspect of it, the lived out experience of it. It's beliefs and then behavior. And here, what Paul is wanting us to know is grace comes first. The power you need to live in Christ in the culture will come first from God's great grace given to you. He makes the first move, he always does. And now you have this great grace, but and to experience peace in the culture, because don't you know if you're gonna be in Christ, you're gonna be labeled, and it's maybe not going to be peaceful at all times. But in order to experience peace, you have to first experience grace. The grace of the Lord comes first, and you'll never find peace by trying harder. So you receive the grace, you let the power of God live in you and through you, you have his authority over you, you have a new identity, you're in whatever town he has located you, but now you have the opportunity to live there in Christ and be faithful to him in it. And so you don't find peace by trying harder, you find peace by just trusting the Lord deeper. I don't know what else to say. To trust him more. No, no, no. Figure out a way, get some accountability, go to the Lord in prayer, bring it back, live under the authority of scripture, trust him more. And I know it's hard. I mean, I think Priscilla and Aquila were like, Well, you're expelling us all from Rome. What are we supposed to do? But the Lord had a plan. An unbelievable one. And he has one for your life too. Trust him more. Grace first, and then the peace will follow. So, what's Paul saying here? His power will supply every need you have. The only way to get it is to live in him, though. In fact, what we're gonna hear next week is he's given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places for all the saints to experience. But the way to do that is to be in Christ, faithfully pursuing him. Everything you need to live this spiritual life out is found in the heavenly places in Christ, through Christ. Are you gonna be faithful and following him and trusting him? Even in this crazy culture. So I kind of sum it up here. Um authority is gonna tell you who you listen to, and then identity is gonna tell you who you are, location is gonna tell you where you live, and power is gonna tell you how you keep going. And here's what I want you to memorize. Like you don't have to memorize the whole thing. The first four words of each line. Okay, because here's what I know. Hebrews says there's a sin that so easily entangles. Here's what else I know life's crazy and chaotic and hard. And there's a lot of us that are dealing with a situation right now that we don't want to trust God in for whatever reason. We want control. That's a natural thing. If you could understand authority, identity, location, and power, you'll be on the right track and living in Christ. Because when those moments come, whether it's the sin that so easily entangles or the situation you have going on at work or financial situation, I'm still gonna live under God's authority. So the authority, where's my authority? I'm wanting to get out. No, I gotta get back. Step one. Step two, my identity. Look, I am a saint. And I have the opportunity to be faithful right now or not. Let's be faithful. Third thing, okay, my location. Look, it I'm still a saint even if I don't follow the Lord right now. But man, I'd rather be a saint living in Coppel in Christ. I'd rather be one of these people who is living in the culture, but doing it in Christ. And I know that he's gonna give me the power I need to do that. Man, and we miss out. Golly, we want to, we just want to own it. We want to work hard. I love working hard for stuff. I love it. We we want to own it, but I'm telling you, when it comes to your walk with the Lord, you've got to release control sometimes, and that's hard to do. Nobody wants to release control, that's scary. But do you see the reason we even have a letter is because people release control and trust of the Lord, and unbelievable things happen through them, and the same could be true of us. Now, I want to end by giving a little warning because you can still know all of these beliefs and truths and all these beautiful things we're gonna read over the next seven months, and you can still drift away from Jesus. And I know that's true because the Bible tells us that's true, because the last thing written about Ephesus isn't in the letter to Ephesus, and it isn't written by Paul and it's not written by Peter, it's actually spoken by Jesus, and it's found in the book of Revelation. In Revelation chapter 2, Jesus is speaking to the church in Ephesus. This is about 30, 40 years after they get uh this letter, and he's speaking to them, and it sounds good at first. Some of the stuff Jesus is saying is unbelievable. He goes in and he starts saying these things like you have, he's commending them. I know your works, I know your labor, I know your patience, I know that you can't bear with those who are evil. I know you've tested those who said they are apostles and are not, and you found them liars. I know you've persevered, I know you have patience, I know you've labored in my name for my name's sake, and have become weary because of this. Here it is, though. Nevertheless, I have this against you. You're like, wait, what? Whoa, whoa. That took a 180. This was going really good for us. What do you mean you have something against us? And this is Jesus' own words. I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Man, how many of us have done that? Here's what's crazy about this. They believed the right things, they did the right things, they were commended by Jesus for doing these works that Ephesians is gonna tell us that he planned for us to do before eternity passed. But there's something more important, it seems, than all of that. And they ended up losing their love for Christ. So here's the warning: you can do the work of Christ and drift from the heart of Christ. I mean, how sad would that be? But how many of us have experienced that? I assume all of us at times. You know, this didn't happen all at once. They weren't like, woke up one day and was like, oh man, I think today's a good day to fall away from my first love. Feels like a good day to do it. It's a drift. It's a drift. Somewhere in living in the culture, they quit living in Christ. And they doing things for them, talking about them, praying for people. I mean, great things are happening, but their heart now wasn't focused on Christ. This is the wildest thing. I mean, this is like a shock to my system as a pastor, and I'm going, oh my gosh, I do this. I work at a church, I get paid to do this. Like, it's easy for me to get up and all these things I get to do. But can I tell you, even gosh, even this week, I'm trying to prepare for this message, and it's been a wild week as everyone knows, and there's no school because there's one flake of snow on the ground. And um, and kids are home. My kids are homeschooled anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. But kids are home anyway, and it was a little wild time. And also, I'm like, I've got to prepare this message. And I get here on Friday, which is like a day I like to get up on stage and go over it and prepare and get some time with the Lord. It's like holy time for me. I love it. And also I get a call from someone, an elder who's on the Belize mission trip right now, and was like, hey, I can't help you. But I guess the sprinklers were on during the freeze, and that entire area is iced up, and it's not gonna warm up. Uh or today's the warmest day, it's gonna be in the next three days, so before church got figured out. And I was like, but I gotta do this. I was like, okay, I'll do it. And like I literally don't don't, I'm not saying I'm bragging about this, but I I scraped it all. And I was trying to, I did it four hours on Friday, and I'm like, trying to trust the Lord. Like, I got work to do for you, Lord. I got these things I gotta go do, Lord. This is interrupting what I want to do for you. What are you? I didn't understand that. And literally, even last night I was up here and I was just my mind was like, well, I didn't get it to spend as much time on this. Lord's just teaching me like he's teaching y'all. Man, my my heart wasn't there in the Lord, and and but my pride was. Um, we just got back from staff retreat. Pastor Keith came with us, and he's driving, he's with me. I'm driving. And we're you remember those old church signs back in the day? Man, they're good. We should bring them back. Real witty, funny things. There's this one church sign, we're driving down the road, and uh Nicole's in the car too. Remember what it said? We drive up, and it says, uh, I'm humble and proud of it. I thought, man, that's me. I literally was like, that's me. That's all of us. We would just want to own it. We just want to do these things. And the Lord's like, yeah, you can. You can be a saint copel. You can do things for me. But someone's gonna be faithful in that culture, they're gonna be faithful because they're living in Christ and doing it. Their heart's with me. They're in tune with me, they're hearing me, they're being led by me. It's a different experience for that person and for the work that they do. We can still do all these things, but this one matters more. And so, what does Jesus say about this church in Ephesus? Well, he ends up saying this. Remember from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. Get back to the basics. Like, do you remember when you were first saved? Or do you remember the first mission trip you went on, or do you remember the first time there's a divine appointment where God just showed up and there was something that he called you to act on, and you were like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I don't even have a voice. And then all of a sudden there's money there, some words come out of your mouth that you didn't know, and you're like, this is the craziest thing, and then you want to call people and tell them about it. Love for Christ. Love for Christ. As we close out this message this morning, I want to give an invitation because we're beginning this journey together. This is seven months. I hope you're locked in, I hope you're caffeinated because you're gonna need it. But we're doing this together. And what I want us to start with this morning is to understand we don't come back to Jesus by trying harder because that's not ever gonna work. But we first come back to him by being honest. And if you've drifted, tell him. Because that's all he wants, is you to be open and honest with him and to go to him. If your heart's grown cold, admit it. I mean, gosh, I play church sometimes and I'm a pastor, okay? The heart can grow cold. We all need to spend more time with the Lord. Admit it. If you've been busy but distant, like the prodigal son, come on home. Start this journey with us again. Remember from where you have fallen, repent and do the deeds you did at first. And there's one simple way I'm gonna try to challenge our church to do this together in the seven month journey. Get back in God's word. You can have a pen and paper, but don't pull out the study Bibles and all the things, you just pull out God's word. And over the next 30 weeks that we're in Ephesians, read a chapter a day. It'll take just a couple minutes. A chapter a day, Monday through Saturday, and then on Sunday, you can take that. Day off because we're going to get together in this room, open up Ephesians and read a part of it. Imagine what your life would be like. Imagine, thank you, Lord, what your heart would be like if in those moments, after 30 weeks of reading through Ephesians, just imagine how much love you're going to have for them. Nothing else matters. We think it does, and there are important things in life, but you can't lose your first love. So, anyway, let's do this together, starting tomorrow, Ephesians 1. We'll remind you here and there, but we're, if you want to be in, be in. I love you guys. I'm excited for this journey. And I really do think if we can answer those questions, because they're going to hit us in the face tomorrow, whether it's at work or tonight when we're trying to get kids ready for a week of school. Who's the authority and all these, our identity, all these things, man? If we can understand that He has placed us here in this culture and given us the opportunity to live in Christ in this culture, unbelievable things are going to happen. And I want to be a part of them. Let me pray for us.