Chosen Before the World Began — Ephesians 1:1–6 | Season 2, Episode 1

How much of your life is driven by trying to prove yourself? To be good enough, faithful enough, successful enough?

What if God settled your worth before you ever had the chance to earn it?

Welcome to Season 2 of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast. Host Matt Dawson opens the Ephesians Bible study right where Paul begins his letter — not with a challenge or a warning, but with something that reorients everything: your identity was established before the foundation of the world.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, a thriving port city in what is now modern-day Turkey, where he spent two remarkable years planting and growing a community of believers. And from a prison cell in Rome, he opens this letter not with theology to master or rules to follow, but with a declaration that cuts straight against every cultural pressure to perform, achieve, and prove: God chose you. Before you did anything. And it gave him great pleasure to do so.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt unpacks what it means to be adopted into God's family — not as a last resort, not by default, but because of grace so glorious it has nothing to do with what you brought to the table.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone still trying to earn a place they've already been given.

In this episode:

• A brief introduction to the city of Ephesus and Paul's time there
• Why Paul starts his letter with identity, not instruction
• What it means to be chosen in Christ before the world was made
• The adoption language — and why it matters more than we realize
• A closing prayer of gratitude for grace that required nothing from us

📖 Passage: Ephesians 1:1–6 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Set Free Stay Free Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson. So glad you guys are here. This is season two. I'm so excited that we actually had our whole first season with Galatians kind of under our belt. And now we're going into season two, which is Ephesus. And we'll talk about that here in a minute. So here's a question I have for you to start off today. How much of your life is driven by you trying to prove yourself, trying to be good enough, trying to be faithful enough, trying to be smart enough, trying to make sure you have all the answers? And especially when it comes to your identity, the question I have today is what if God established that before you were even born? What if your worth and your value didn't come after you succeeded, didn't come after you sort of proved yourself, but was established before the earth was even created? I know this is a weird concept, but that's what we're going to be talking about as we kick off this news series. We're going to be looking at the Bible using the soap framework, which is scripture, observation, application, prayer. And if you want to know a little bit more about that, maybe this is the first time you've experienced it, I have a free download where you can download the understanding of the soap study and give you some scriptures to do on your own. But that's what we're going to be doing as we look into Ephesians today. I want to give you a little bit of background about Ephesus before we jump in. I had the opportunity to visit it, but just in the last couple of years, it was so amazing. One of the more famous pictures and places you might recognize is the Library of Celsus. This was a monument to one of the senators that lived at that time. It was his burial place, but it was also a place that held about 1,200 scrolls. And it's a really cool monument and something that's left over from this ancient city. It's really cool to see. It's right beside the market where you would have probably seen where Paul, as a tent maker, would have had his shop set up. It was really, really uh interesting. And if you go to Acts 19, Acts 19 actually tells you the story of Paul originally going to the city of Ephesus. He finds a small group of people that said they were believers. Now, he asked them a couple questions and they find out they weren't really, uh they didn't quite know much about Jesus. They were baptized by followers or disciples of John the Baptist. And so Paul sort of clarifies some things for them, baptizes them in the name of Jesus, and actually the Holy Spirit falls, and they become followers of the way. And he has about two years that he actually ministers and is a missionary in actually the city and the port city of Ephesus. Now, there's some great stuff in Acts 19. I can't give you all this stuff. One of the best ones is that uh there's a riot where the people who were making shrines to the little gods of Artem Artemis were really upset. The goddess Artemis was being kind of shunned by all this these new followers of the way. So the people who made these things kind of caught this uproar and they dragged a couple of people, the Paul's uh buddies and Paul's companions, and a couple of the leaders of the church, drag them into the amphitheater. And they're just for hours, just kind of ranting and raving. So much so that the mayor of Ephesus have to like calm everybody down and basically tell them, hey, this is illegal, and Rome is going to come have a problem if if if they hear a word about this riot, and so we need to disperse now. And he actually disperses the crowd. And they kind of the believers keep Paul from coming to the rescue and showing up because they didn't know what was going to uh happen. But I got to picture that amphitheater and actually got to stand there. I don't have the picture for some reason, but I uh um one of my buddies took a picture of me kind of like like pretending to preach to this crowd in the amphitheater, which I'm sure Paul would have had opportunity uh to do there in Ephesus. But you can go back to Acts 19 to catch some of the history and some of the understanding when Paul is in Rome and he's got that couple of years in Rome where he's in prison under house guard, and he's writing these churches that he has worked with in the past. He's writing them these letters of encouragement, letters to challenge them, letters to continue, to give them resources and their understanding of who Christ is and their life. So, again, we're gonna dive in just the first few verses. This episode is gonna be the first few verses of Ephesus chapter one. Here we go. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. I am writing to God's holy people in Ephesus who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what we wanted, this is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. We're just going to stop there. Let's pray. I usually pray before uh reading the passage. God, just open our eyes up to what we just read so that your spirit may reveal to us what we need to know. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. One of the reasons we pray that prayer is because, again, through the soap study, we're actually choosing a passage of scripture. We're looking at what we observe and see in passages, and then we want to figure out well, how does this apply to us? What the, how does this apply to us in our everyday lives? And then we'll pray again at the end because we want to take what we've read, take what the Holy Spirit kind of reveals, and then walk forward and figure out how do we live this out where we live, learn, work, and play. Again, I think the questions I asked you earlier is where I kind of want to sit today, which is Paul kind of starts his letter with just foundational ideas, right? The foundational ideas of, let me go back to this. I'm gonna read it a little bit larger here. What does it look like when our identity has been established before the foundation of the world? This is very, this is very contrary to how most of us are raised and the culture that we live in. And believe it or not, it was contrary to the Greek culture that they were also gonna be in. Like this is this is him writing to a church and to a group of folks. He says that in the first few verses, writing to the church in Ephesus. But I want to remind you, I know this this Greek culture you're in, controlled by the Romans, but this Greek culture, this Greek influence, guys, it is not about you proving yourself, it is not about you rising up and and proving who you are by worth and value as the world sees it. He says, No, Christ has given you his identity before the world, and he blessed us. I love that he starts there, he blessed us with every spiritual blessing. So everything that we're enjoying comes from God. This is also repeated in the book of James, but then he says, even before the world was made, God loved us and chose us in Christ. Now, I don't know about you, I don't tell people this a lot, but you remember when you were a kid and you were playing games out on the playground. There was something special about being picked, right? Because I was always, well, we're gonna pick teams, pick two captains, and people would be like, oh yeah, and I pick you, and I pick you, and I'm gonna do this. And there was something really cool about that. And if you got picked especially early on, man, there's just something that you just felt good because you had value in that moment, like you had something you brought to the table. And I want to say that for the majority of my life, I was never usually picked first. I was uh I was a little bit of a larger kid growing up, uh, a little bit slower, not as athletic as many. And so outside of Tug of War, which I was always chosen first, outside of Tug of War, I was never usually picked first. Now, I don't know that I was always picked last because a lot of people really struggle with that in their life, right? That's a big part of their identity, is that no one ever wanted them for something. No one ever chose them, no one ever picked them. And I'll be honest, that weird little thing that happens to us as children, it plays itself out. I mean, I know that's so small, but it plays itself out our entire lives. There is something about when I talk with men who have incredible wounds, and they're still trying to prove themselves to their father. Their father may not even be alive, but they're still trying to prove, like they're trying to get to this place where they're trying to prove who they are, their worth and their value. And again, this is something, I don't know if it's just our broken human nature, but there's something about it, and then culture stokes that, right? Like you gotta do some stuff to be worthy, you gotta get some successes in order to see things happen. What happens when God says, But I choose you before you ever achieved anything? I choose you to be mine based on nothing you bring to the table. It's because of Christ. He goes on to say, it's because he chose us, and he chose us in Christ, and it was his pleasure to do so. This is where Paul wants to start his letter. This is where Paul wants to start the conversation, as we're going to continue to read in future episodes. He says, I want you to understand your value. Not only do you get to experience all these beautiful blessings because of what Christ has done, but I want you to understand that he chose you. And the choosing of you, as we read in the previous uh season, we read through Galatians, uses again very similar language for them to understand. There's an adoption that happens. There is something where all the rights and the privileges of being a son and daughter of God is given to those who have put their hope and faith in Christ. It goes on to say, He decided in advance to adopt us into his own family. I have a few friends who have adopted children, and there's such a beautiful blessing that comes in those stories. But I don't know that us as followers of Christ really fully grasp it. I don't know if we really understand what it looks like to rest our identity in the fact that God chose us, like he chose you. And we've not just been chosen like uh like the last kid on, you know, that has to be chosen on the game, like I guess I choose you. Technically, they were chosen even though they were last and it was by default. That's not the way it works with God. Like before, before you achieved anything, before you helped win the game, before you did anything in your life to prove yourself, I chose you to be a part of the family of God, because he already knew who was going to surrender their life to him. That's part of who God is. And our foundational maturity really begins here. Paul's going to go into some really incredible things through this book, but it starts, right? It starts with us saying, like, how you start a conversation matters. And this is how Paul wants to, as he looks back on his time ministering with and to the people of Ephesus, as he writes this letter to the church, he wants to start it this way. Guys, I understand the way culture continues to tell you that you have to prove yourself, that you have to achieve things on your pull yourself up by your bootstrap. And just think about the stuff in the Western culture. It's not any really any different. And he says, No, I'm I'm gonna choose you. And it's and it the fact that again, it wasn't like you were chosen, like it gave God incredible pleasure to choose you to be a part of his family. We're gonna talk about the Jews and Gentile stuff here in the coming episodes, but he wants everybody to kind of be on the same page right at the very beginning. Freedom comes when our understanding that we've we haven't just we're not just saved by the by the hair of our chinny chin chin, right? We're not just we're not just his kids because he had no choice, right? You're such a screw up, but you know, he had no choice, he had to take you because you prayed the prayer or whatever the case is. I mean, I'm getting it. I talk to believers who have this weird thoughts in their head, and Paul says, No, I want you to understand, you are so loved by God, he loved you and chose you, and because you are united with Christ. Matter of fact, verse six, I want to read it. So praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his son. That's how I want to end today is just with that strength of that verse. Praise God. It's his glorious grace that any of us get to call ourselves sons and daughters of God. But man, we are sitting in a place where we didn't have to do anything to prove that, to, to, to earn that, to achieve that. He did it all by his grace, and it was his pleasure to do so. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you for your word today, how it encourages us. And God, I do want to just say right out of the gate, the all the blessings of my life I'm so grateful for. We've experienced so many blessings. Even being born and raised here in the in the West, we're already experiencing blessing upon blessing upon blessing. We can complain about our life, but God just, I mean, if you get if we have the bigger picture of understanding this world, we are so incredibly blessed. God, even more so you chose us. And I just pray that people by the Holy Spirit would begin to feel that in their heart and life today. That they have been chosen by God. They didn't have to prove anything, they didn't have to achieve anything or earn anything, they were already chosen. And God, they can walk in that freedom and that grace because of the work of your Son. We pray all of this in your name Jesus. Amen. As we start the second season, I want to encourage you again, and I think so many of you did already, but share these episodes. You know, they're on video, they're on YouTube. Share these, like them. It helps us when you engage. So write some comments, I'll write you back. That's really a big part of helping us spread this message and spread the word to others. If you're listening to this through any one of our podcasts, podcast uh things, I want you to rate and review the podcast. That helps show the podcast runners that this is worthy of maybe sharing uh with others. So again, thank you guys so much for engaging. I hope you're walking in freedom today. Don't forget, this is the new shirt that I'm trying to find a way to get online so folks can order it. Set free, stay free, right? Galatians 5 1. Uh, this is a big, big part of this whole movement, this podcast, this YouTube channel. All of it is driven around this idea of understanding we're set free in Christ. And it's our job to stay free by understanding his word. Love you guys. Have a great rest of your week.