in verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. in love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his kind intention which he purposed in him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ. Things in the heavens and things on the earth. Among all of the books in the world, Ephesians is a book of the Bible. And that means Its focus is the person and the work of Jesus Christ. But among all the books of the Bible, Ephesians is a New Testament book. And that means it is a backwards focus on the person and the work of Jesus Christ. But among all the New Testament books of the Bible, Ephesians is an epistle, not a gospel. And that means as it looks back on the person and the work of Christ, it asks a question, and the question it asks is, what does that mean? What does it mean? I've said before that the apostles are like the commentators in a football game sitting up in the press box announcing and commenting on what it means. And so the Gospels give you the play-by-play of what happened. Yes, He was born. Yes, He lived. Yes, He died. Yes, He rose from the dead. Yes, He ascended into heaven. Yes, He will return. It is the epistles that tell us what they mean. Not just the facts. So Ephesians is not just about the facts. The epistles are not just about what happened, but what does it mean that Jesus was born? What does his birth mean? What does his life mean? What does his death mean? mean? What does His resurrection mean? What do the appearances mean? What does the ascension mean? What does the reign mean? What does the return mean? What does the judgment mean? What does the final salvation mean? And what does eternity future with Christ mean? Those are the epistles. Those are the questions that they are occupied with, and Ephesians is one of those, and so it asks those questions. However, they're not all the same. They're not all cookie-cut. Each one of these epistles, so we have to go further in our description this morning. Each one of these epistles comes at a backwards look at the person and work of Christ from a particular angle. Ephesians is a book of the letters we said, but of all the letters, all the epistles, Ephesians is, well, Ephesians. It's not Romans. It's not Galatians. It's not 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, or 1st and 2nd Corinthians, or Philippians, or Colossians, or Philemon, or Hebrews, or James, or Jude, or any of them. It is unique. It has a particular angle. And so the question that it asks is not just what does generically the person and work of Christ mean looking back on it, but what particularly does this particular thing that Ephesians is occupied with and preoccupied with, what does that mean about the person and the work? of Christ. And so that's the question I want to answer in this introductory sermon along with eight others. The reason I say eight others is in any standard introduction to a book, you'll find about nine facts are given about that book. If you have those nine facts, then you sort of have your compass, you sort of have your North Star and you can embark on a journey of that book without losing yourself. And so I'm gonna give you all nine. What is the meaning is just one of the nine, that's the theme. So in terms of sermon and sermon points, this is an introduction to Ephesians, and the points are just gonna be those nine facts. Okay, so number one, the first question is what is the theme of Ephesians? And the theme of Ephesians is the reunification of all things in Christ. Get that from chapter one, verse 10. The summing up of all things in Christ. That's the way the NAS has it. The ESV, to unite all things in Him. The NIV, to bring unity. to all things, or the KJV, to gather together in one all things. You see my unity emphasis in all the translations than my own. Mine is summing up. All the others have the word one or unity. in them. You don't see my re-emphasis though, and that's because it's untranslated, but the word for summing up, it has a prefix on it that means again, and it's untranslated, and Martin Lloyd-Jones makes the same point about it in his commentary, so the word anacofaleo, ana means again, and cofaleo means the main point. the main point, or the unifying point, the unifying point. And that unifying point is Christ, the summing up of the bringing together into unity again of all things in Christ. So the word means to bring all things back to their unifying point. The idea is you once had several parts united in a unifying point and then something disrupted all the parts. And you are now bringing all the parts back into unity based on their unifying point. Let me give you some examples. There's only one other place in the New Testament that this particular Greek word translated summing up or unifying or bringing into one is used. It's Romans 13, 9. And there Paul is talking about the law and he lists several of the commandments. And then he says, if there is any other commandment, it is summed up, anikaphileo, it is summed up, it is brought to its unifying point by love. Now what does that mean? The reason adultery is so bad is because it breaks the law of love so much. The reason thievery is so bad is it breaks the law of love so much. The reason that lying is bad is because it's unloving. The reason you don't move and go to all the other commandments. What he's saying is when you look back in the Old Testament and there's moving the boundary mark and doing this and doing that and doing that, these are all concrete examples of what it would look like to love your neighbor in this particular circumstance. In other words, love is the unifier that gives a coherent logic to what otherwise looks like a bunch of commandments that are unrelated. So, that's one usage of it. A second use that you may be familiar with, a text anyway, is Hebrews 8.1. It says that all the different things said in the book of Hebrews find their unifying point here. Look at Hebrews 8.1. It says, now the main point, that is, Anacaphaleo, the unifying, the summed up point. This is no different than we do after you've been talking for a long time, like I'm embarking on right now. You may say at some point, Now the main point of all that you've heard this morning. It may seem like a chaos and words going everywhere and here and yonder. What exactly was the point of the sermon? What's the logical coherence of it? What's its theme that everything is related to? The author of Hebrews says, the main point in what has been said is this, and then he says it. In other words, Joshua is not the same as angels, but he talked about Joshua and he talked about angels. What's the relationship? He's making the point that Christ is greater than Joshua. Christ is greater than the angels. Christ is greater than Moses. Christ is greater than the Levitical priesthood. That's the unifying point that makes sense with all these desperate, decomposed parts. Some common examples in everyday life, you think of a thesis in a paper. It is an anacofaleo. It is a unifying point. Chapter one is somehow about that thesis. Chapter two is somehow about that thesis, maybe given the background of this thesis, or their interpretations in chapter two of this thesis, or argument one in chapter three for this thesis, argument two, conclusion about this thesis, applications about this thesis, but it is constantly the unifying principle to all the desperate parts or you think of a song in an orchestra, what does a woodwind instrument have in common with a brass instrument or percussion instrument? Well, they look real different. I mean, the flute and the trombone do not look like cousins, but they are brought together in that they're playing the same notes. and the notes become the unifier of what would otherwise be completely chaotic looking parts. You think of math, what does a four and a six have in common? The 10, they make 10. And so if you put them, the four does not look like the six, the six does not look like the four, but if they have the same purpose in mind to make ten, now they're unified and brought together. You call that composition, as opposed to decomposition. And so it is the unifying thing that brings parts together in whole, or think of a circle. I'm giving you several of these so some of these others will appreciate more than others. Think of the point in a circle. What's a circle? It's this curved line that is enclosed and all the points on that line are related to the central point. It's the fact that they're all focused there, that the other end over there is not there, not there, but what brings the unity is the focal point, the unifying point. What Paul is saying is that before the fall, all things were unified with the Creator. The crickets, the marriage, The stars, the colors, the grass, all of it was in reference to its reference point and in a state of harmony and order. But when Adam sinned, division occurred. The splintering apart of all things. The decomposition, if you will, even of the human body. It decomposed into its parts. And marriage decomposed into parts. It was no longer pretty. And brothers decomposed, and nations decomposed, and friendships decomposed, and has still been decomposing since then. Nature decomposed. But if Christ is the second Adam, and His actions, as we learned from the study of Romans 5, are to reverse the actions of Adam, then Christ is the great unifier of all things. Adam is the great divider of all things, and busting of all things, and shattering of all things. And if Christ reverses His act, the peculiar angle Paul has in Ephesians is not just that Christ's actions count for all men, but Christ's actions count for all creation. Christ's actions have cosmic repercussions. Everything that is blown apart comes back together in him. It is literally, if you like, the Marvel series, when the glove was on Thanos's hand, it was the finger snapped and there was the division of all things. But then when the same glove was on Iron Man's hand and it was snapped, all things came back together. Adam is the great divider of all things. Christ is the great cosmic uniter of all things. That's the theme of Ephesians. And that's what I have in mind when I answer, what is the theme of Ephesians? The reunification of all things in Christ. So that's number one. And it leads very easily to number two. Number two fact I want to give you is the key verse. Many New Testament introductions will give you a key verse for the letter, and they all typically have one. Matter of fact, in Hebrews, I think in Summers, Hebrews 8.1, that's the key verse. But for Ephesians, the key verse to keep in mind is 1.10, the summing up of all things in Christ, the reunification, that's it, the unifying, and it's got re at the beginning of it. So unifying again. of all things in Christ. Now, moving to number three, here's how it works in an outline. Let me give you an outline overview of the book. So you would say, main point, the reunification of all things in Christ. You have a basic three-part structure to the book. You have an introduction, in chapter 1, verses 1 to 2. You have a conclusion in chapter 6, verses 21 to 24. And also, let me tell you, I have some outlines if somebody would want one. Actually, I have sheets that have all nine of these facts on it with a total and complete outline if you want one, so don't bother yourself trying to jot it down. and maybe just follow along at the text. So if you look, that's the intro and that's the conclusion. In the middle, you have the body. And the body goes from 1.3 to 6.20. It has two parts. The first part, chapter 1 verse 3 to 3 verse 21, is the reunification of all things in Christ that has already been done. The reunification of all things in Christ that's already been done. That's chapter 1, verse 3 to 321. And then in the second part, in chapter 4, verse 1 to 620, is the reunification of all things in Christ that is left to do. So coming back, so those are the two points. You got doctrine in life. But the particular doctrine of Ephesians, remember, is not just generic, the person and work of Christ, but this particular work, the reunification of all things in Him. So if you go back to that initial point, the reunification, the first half of the book, of all things in Christ that's already been done, chapter 1, verse 3 to 321, it has five parts. And it's arranged as a chiasm. A chiasm, the first and last match, and then the next two match, and then the main points in the middle. It's like a literature sandwich is what it is. And so the first one under that heading is praise for the reunification of all things in Christ. That's 1 verse 3 to 14. Second, prayer for the reunification of all things in Christ that's already been done. That's chapter 1 verse 15 to 23. Third, preaching about the reunification of all things in Christ that's already been done. 2 verse 1 to 3.13, and then that subdivides into three parts. Number one, preaching about how this reunification happened as we went from death to life. That's chapter 2 verses 1 to 10. Secondly, how we went from strangers to members. That's chapter 2, verses 11 and 22. Third, how all of this has to do with how we went from mystery to ministry. The mystery of this truth was made known to Paul. And then he comes back out of the center, with prayer for it in 3.14-19 and praise for it in 3.20-21. And then with the therefore of 4.1, Paul says, what does this mean? What does it mean for your church life? What does it mean for your personal life? What does it mean for your marriage? What does it mean for your relationship with your children? What does it mean at work? What does it mean in prayer that God has begun reuniting all things in Christ? It has implications for all of it. If He's reuniting all things, it's like you imagine there's a puzzle board, and it's corner to corner, side to side, and you've got all these parts, and they've begun the process of being put back together, and edge to edge covers all that exists. then this has implications for your life, because your life is part of the all things that God is bringing back together in Him. Your marriage is part of it, your children are part of it, your work is part of it. There is no secular, according to Ephesians 1.10. God is not summing back up some things in Christ. Most things in Christ, but all things in Christ. And that is why Abraham Kuyper in his lecture said, there is not one square inch on planet earth that the risen Christ does not cry out, mine, mine. So Paul asks, what does it mean? How then shall we live? And I'll give you something here. There's a grammar to the gospel. You've seen it all the time. You've seen it in Romans, in the division of 1 to 11 and 12 to 16. And now we see it here. After this, therefore, in chapter 4, Paul unleashes imperative verbs. There are 39, 40, there are 40 total imperative verbs in this letter. 39 of them are in chapters 4 to 6. And I have a prize for whoever can find the one imperative in chapters 1 to 3. There's one imperative command in chapters 1 to 3. 39 in one to four. And that's going to be significant because it'll probably take us about one year on each side. And what you don't need to do while we're on the second side and constantly preaching about living is have this thing where you come in the church and all you hear is, well, this is what I need to do. This is what I no longer need to do. This is what I'm not doing, what I need to start doing. This is what I am doing and I need to stop doing. And you just come for a morality lesson every Sunday. You have to constantly keep remembering that Paul did not just begin at chapter 4. Paul did not believe in just exhorting Christians to do things. He started with all that's already been done. So, the second part, how do you react to the fact that God is reuniting all things in Christ? Let me walk you through the outline here. There are eight, we're going to see eight ways that there is unification left to do that we participate in. We join and have our purpose as God's purpose. Number one, in chapter 4 verses 1 to 6, we do this by walking in unity. Makes sense, right? You can never think of unity different anymore. How could unity just be something you decide to be concerned about or not if God is concerned to bring unity to the entire things in heaven and earth? Everything in the created realm is being unified. So by walking in unity, Verses 1 to 6, by walking in diversity, chapter 4, 7 to 16. By walking in holiness, chapter 4, 17 to 32. By walking in love, chapter 5, verses 1 to 6. By walking in light, chapter 5, verses 7 to 14. By walking in wisdom, chapter 5, 15 to 6, 9. By standing in God's strength, chapter 6, 10 to 17. And by praying at all times, chapter 6, 18 to 20. So, main point, the reunification of all things in Christ. Two sub points. The reunification, the things that have already been done, the first half. The things that are left to do, the second half. That's number three. Number four this morning, the author is, of course, Paul. These others go quicker. The author is Paul. The letter claims this in chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. It claims it again in chapter 3, verse 1, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, The second line of evidence is external to the letter. Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, church fathers all quote from the book of Ephesians. Irenaeus quotes it. He's in the second century as written by Paul. I bring this up just so you know there are modern scholars who try to deny the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. And I don't want to cumber you down with all of that information, because you're not unbelieving people who don't believe in the Bible. But just so you know, just for example, how it can appear to be logical, but it's not, I'll give you one. So one objection to the Pauline authorship of Ephesians is that there are 41 words in Ephesians that do not appear anywhere else in all the New Testament. 41 of them. And number two, there are 84 words in Ephesians that do not appear in any of Paul's other letters. And you think, But wait on this. All liberal scholars believe Paul wrote Galatians. Here are the stats on Galatians. There are 35 words in Galatians not used anywhere else in the New Testament. And there are 90 words in Galatians not used anywhere else in any of Paul's writings. Galatians is 10% shorter than Ephesians. So if those are reasons for rejecting Ephesians, then they should also reject Galatians, but they don't. And so who is it that is on the grind of the law of non-contradiction? Them. Them. So, the author, there's no reason, the letter claims it, the church fathers claimed it, these are bogus things from unbelieving scholars, and so the author is Paul. Number five, the date. The date is about 62 A.D. towards the end of his first Roman imprisonment, so we're not scooting a whole lot now moving from Philippians to Ephesians because they were written around the same date. Philippians was written around 60 A.D. It was written first. There are four letters of Paul that he wrote in prison. His letters are typically divided into the early, the prison, and then pastoral epistles. The prison are Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians. Now of those four, Philippians was written first, and then Colossians and Philemon, and then Ephesians last. That's the order you typically see them in. So Ephesians written last, you put Philippians, we know from Acts 28 he was in this first Roman imprisonment for two years. He writes Philippians at the beginning. You remember he wasn't sure if he was gonna live or die. And then he writes Colossians and Philemon, they go together with this brother called Tychicus, we see at the end of the letter, and probably he also brought Ephesians at the same time. So the letter was written, which incidentally is why one of the other arguments they'll raise, well, Ephesians and Colossians look so, they got so many similarities, you know, so somebody must have plagiarized or whatever. And you're like, or the same guy wrote both letters around the same time and had his mind on the same things. And so he wrote one to a particular, remember Colossians, there was a particular heresy he was going after of Gnosticism. Ephesians is more general and is applied to a lot of different churches in Ephesus. So the date is AD 62. The provenance, that's not providence, provenance is the place of writing, was obviously Rome and Italy. Same as it was for Philippians. The recipients, number seven, the recipients are, you remember the geography we had for Philippians was Paul's in Italy, in the city of Rome, and remember Epaphroditus had to go across Greece, across the Ionian Sea, into Italy, then to Rome. So you got one strip of land, a sea, and then Greece. Well, this is the other piece of land on the other side. So this letter has to go across to the first piece of land, which is Greece, and then across the Aegean Sea to Asia, what they call Asia Minor. Asia Minor. So of the whole continent of Asia, this part in between the Middle East that goes toward Greece is called Asia Minor. It's where the seven churches were at that Revelation is written to, and the church of Ephesus was one of them. And so Ephesus was on the coast of Asia Minor. Paul's interaction with them, if you read Acts, he had at least four touches with them. The first one on his first missionary journey, he was just there briefly and had to go, and he tells them he will see them again if God wills, and God did will, because on his second missionary journey, remember he came there, and that's where Artemis of the Ephesians happened and all of that. and the big ruckus occurred, and so he had to go to this other place, the school of Tyrannus, and he taught there for two years. Remember that. Well, then he leaves, and the third contact he had with him on his third missionary journey, he was having to hurry to Jerusalem, remember, to get the money there, and then he wanted to go to Rome, and so Miletus, the city of Miletus is just south, you can probably see it in your map if you have one in your Bible, under Ephesus, and remember it says in Acts that he called for the elders of Ephesus to come to Miletus so he could hurry up. and you didn't have to backtrack and go, so he exhorted them there. And then when he ended that third missionary journey, he was arrested in Caesarea, had to appeal to Caesar, now he's all the way in Rome. Fourth contact is this letter, okay, this letter. So he was there first, really quick, second time for two years teaching, third time called him to come to him, and now he's in Rome and he writes to all the churches in Ephesus. It's not as though there was one mega church in Ephesus. It was all the various house churches that were around there, similar to Romans 16. Now, those are seven facts. We've only got nine, so two left. Number eight, what was it that occasioned this letter? In a typical introduction to a letter, you'll have a fact called the occasion. What called it forth? What incited it? What happened? And you know from Philippians that Paul was starting to see the sunset of his life. He had been serving Christ for right at 30 years now. The Damascus Road took place about 34 AD. This is 62. It's right bumping 30 years. And Paul didn't exactly take a vacation every half a year. And so you're talking 30 years of burning the candle at both ends and all around. And so he sees the sunset of his life. He dies in the 60s, not long after this, according to some estimates. And so seeing his life come to the sunset, seeing what's still going on here in Ephesus, seeing the apostolic period is about to fade away, and that the purpose of God needs to continue, he writes this letter to them to remind them of what matters, to remind them of what God's purpose is so that this work can carry on after he's gone. So number nine, what is its purpose that Paul had in mind when he wrote the letter? Well, this is similar to its theme. When you read it, it's clear to remind them that God is reuniting all things in Christ. And therefore, what future generations need to do is engage in that same work. of participating with God's providential purpose, of continuing the work of reuniting all things in Him. So, you would say the purpose then is to promote the reunification of all things in Christ that are left to do. Now that is an amazing purpose. As I thought about it, I thought, you may not get it at first, but I thought of, as I look at people, I pay attention sometimes to the things that people seem to really be attracted to. And I was thinking that one of the, as I was thinking the reunification of all things, one of, if not the, but definitely one of the top five most famous songs of all time is Imagine by John Lennon. And I want you to maybe, hopefully, you haven't heard these lyrics in a while, but let me give you a reminder of this and see if you notice something. Starts off very neutral, very neutral, imagine there's no heavens, not a threatening statement at all. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. He goes on, imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as what? One. One. What did John Lennon have in his mind when he had the one in his mind and all these chaotic, disparate elements. The unification of all things. Peace. The unification of all these hostile things. Imagine all the people. sharing all the world. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one. People go to that song when bad things are happening. When fights are happening, when wars are happening, when economies are crashing, when marriages are crashing, friendships are crashing, imagine there's no chaos and everything is one. Surely the fact, my conclusion, that that song might be in some estimates the most famous song of all time. There must be in every human heart in this fallen world a craving for the unification of all chaos. There must be. That's what's in the listener that draws them to it. And the message of Ephesians is not that John Lennon's goal was wrong. just simply as unity and peace, but the means to it, the means to it and the unifying principle of it. His unifying principle is basically we all be gods, we agree on that, we just agree on paganism, you do you, I do me, I define myself, my morality, my purpose, my everything. You define yourself, your morality, your purpose, your everything. So that's the common reference point that is supposed to bring the unity. But it's not the goal of unity that's the problem. Paul says in his message to the Ephesians that there is only one who can reunify this shattered cosmos. And the reason He knows there's only one is because God has already started doing it through the one Jesus Christ. So, what a beautiful message here at the very beginning. And it must be relevant to me. With whatever is shattered in my life, it must be relevant to you. If you've been awake at all in this fallen world, You've seen decomposition, decomposition, whether it's death and bodies decomposing, or marriages decomposing, friendships decomposing, physical disease and parts of the human body decomposing, all because of what Adam did. And we crave for a unifier, a redemption of that all. And Paul's insight to us is to realize what you're really craving for, even if you don't realize it, is Christ. Because he is the unifying point. And what we're really craving for is Ephesians, because that's the doctrine in this book. He brings it back together into harmony and beauty and unity. So to anyone listening, to come to him as the unifying principle. What a joy it is to realize sometimes you hear people say, well, this is ruined and this is ruined. In the light of this book, there's nothing ruined permanently. There's no marriage. There's no friendship. There's no church. There's no emotion. There's no human body. at death that can be broken up into parts that it cannot be reunited again. Because, chapter 1, verse 10, God is summing up all things in Christ. This is a beautiful, beautiful book. So I look forward to studying with you. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we get to learn more and more about it as we embark upon, Lord, a new view of Christ that you seem to be giving us the privilege to see. Lord, I'm mindful of how little I knew when I thought I knew a lot, even how little I knew before coming to Ephesians. And mindful of chapter 2, verse 7 in this book, that ultimately this journey of knowing you and having a jolt of joy at discovering something new about you will never end. that in the ages to come you will show again and again the surpassing riches of your grace and kindness to us in Christ Jesus. So pray Lord that wherever our hearts are broken, our bodies are broken, our relationships are broken, disease has broken things, whatever is broken, that we may find such a hope, such a hopeful truth, that you have begun and are concerned to bring all of those things back into unity through Christ. What a worldview, what a hope-giving view, and I pray that you would help us as we press into it in these days. In Jesus' name, amen.