Fall Theology Series Week 1--Ephesians 1:3-14 Overview

Have you ever lacked desire to be involved in something? Maybe you had a project that you were supposed to be involved in, but you lacked the passion to finish? Maybe you started well on something only to lack the desire and ended up not finishing the project? ‌ I had this scenario growing up. I had this project for science class, it was as science fair project, and I decided for this project I was going to build a Van De Graaff generator. Do you know what they are? They are the types of things you see at science museums, where you put your hand on a bowl shaped piece of metal and your hair stands up from the static electricity. But we were going to build one of these, and my dad brought home a little DC motor from work and we built this thing. But there was one problem, it wouldn’t work. We got all the pieces together and assembled the unit, and the belts would not spin—they would slip on the spindle of the motor. We had to hand craft our own belt and it didn’t work as we thought, so we had to brainstorm. The only problem is that we spent so much time brain storming and putting the project on hold, that we never actually finished it. In fact for years, even after I was married and left the house, I would go visit my parents and find my old high school project still sitting in my parents basement. I lost the drive to actually finish the project, and we learned that it is a lot harder than we thought to create a Van De Graaf generator. Sometimes we lose desire or lack initiative in things, or maybe we have a tendency to start things and then just let them go. We bow out, lose interest, or simple just want to let things how they are. Have you ever had that experience in life? ‌‌ The interesting thing about this, is what I just described is how some people view God. Some people view God as unmotivated or uninterested in the lives of his creation. Some have the idea that maybe he lost interest, or he lost motivation in the world—he set things off to start and then just checked out. Others view God as someone who just sits up in heaven, almost as if he were watching a movie, waiting to see how things are going to turn out. But as we consider this picture of God that some have, and we compare it to scripture, we find this perspective greatly lacking. In fact, God is very interested in the lives of his creatures. He is not unmotivated or uninterested, and in fact he has taken great care to be intimately involved in the lives of his creatures. ‌ Today I would like to take us to a Bible passage that clearly lays out for us God’s involvement in our lives. And we’re going to just brush the surface of our text today, and then dive in deeper over the next 3 weeks, so if you want to hear more you can come back. But our passage shows us God’s involvement in our lives in one specific area. Certainly God is involved in things like creation of the world, but our passage today hones in as it were on one specific aspect of God’s involvement, and that is God’s provision of salvation. And we get to see very clearly from our passage how God, the creator of the universe, in all his glory, specifically planned and provided for the salvation of mankind. If you’ve ever struggled with, or wondered about God’s involvement in the world, this passage is for you today. Because it not only teaches about God’s involvement, it demonstrates how God has taken great care to be involved in the salvation of mankind. So as we examine our passage in Ephesians 1, there’s one big idea I want you to take home with you today. If this is the only thing you take with you today, I want you to remember this: ‌‌ Big Idea: the God of the universe has taken special interest in our salvation‌