Illustrations of God’s Sovereignty: Ephesians 4:1-4

What this episode covers

Please enjoy our Guest Speaker, Dr. Hal Walters Ephesians 1:1-4 We are truly loved by God who loves us and that’s going to, I think, come out in this Bible passage that we’re going to be studying together. So, my text for today is Ephesians chapter 1, 1 through 4. And if you would, just keep your Bibles open to that place in your Bible and all the other Bible references will be projected up on the screen so you don’t have to go back and forth in your Bible. But what God’s word says is that Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you. Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless in him. So, just a few introductory remarks about Ephesians. This was written, this letter was written by Paul the apostle around 60 A.D. from prison in Rome. And Ephesians is six chapters and it can roughly be divided into two parts. 1. in Ephesians the first three chapters focus on what Christians should believe and the core message is sinners are saved by grace through faith. The first half, the first three chapters generally talk about what we as Christians should believe about salvation. And the core message of those first three chapters is this, that spiritually dead sinners are made alive and gain eternal salvation by grace through faith. That’s the main message that Paul is putting forward in the first three chapters. 2. in Ephesians the last three chapters focus on how believers should live in response to the gift of salvation. Spiritually dead sinners are made alive and gain eternal salvation by grace through faith. And the last three chapters generally talk about what we as believers, how we should live in light of the fact that we’ve been blessed so much by God for all these spiritual blessings. Now, as we go through this passage, I’d like for you all just to look for one thing to sort of pull it all together and that is God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty in everything in our lives from salvation, we’ll see that in the conversion of Paul, we’ll see that in our own conversion stories. As he calls saints to worship him and to be his children, as he calls apostles, look for his sovereignty as he encourages believers through this passage. Look for his sovereignty as before the foundation of the world he decided to sacrifice his only son on a cross for our sins and look for his sovereignty as he bestows on us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So, let’s just start with the first word in this passage. It is Paul and to understand Paul the apostle who was commissioned by Christ to do amazing things in the New Testament church, but to understand him fully, we need to understand his dark side. We need to understand Saul of Tarsus. 3. Saul of Tarsus, a religious zealot who brutally persecuted Christians, was confronted by Jesus Christ who appeared as a bright light on the road to Damascus. Saul of Tarsus was born in Cilicia, that is a place in southeastern present-day Turkey and he was born a Pharisee and he was born a Jew and not only that, he was a Roman citizen. He had remarkable religious zeal and there’s nothing wrong with having zeal for one’s religion, but this morphed over time into religious extremism and add to that brutal violence, absolutely brutal violence. He soon became a religious terrorist, no different than someone like Osama bin Laden. Saul was a true religious terrorist and to make things even worse, he thought he was doing the will of God in what he was doing. In Acts chapter 8, it says, but Saul was ravaging the church, entering house after house. He dragged off men and women, committed them to prison. He participated in the murder of Chri

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