Welcome And Episode Focus

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Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Well, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Ephesians chapter one. And if I could give this one a title for Ephesians chapter one, it would be The Incredible Greatness of God's Power. The Incredible Greatness of God's Power. We're going to get into that as always. When we do the first chapter of every book, we're going to give you a bit of an overview of Ephesians and then jump into it. So if you want to go and get your Bibles open to Ephesians chapter one, while you're getting there, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. On the YouTube channel, I want to say thank you so much for all of you who do. It really is wonderful to go back and forth with you in the comment sections. Thank you so much for that. The podcast, you will always and remain my favorites. And I want to say thank you so much to Autma 0007, who said that this podcast has made the Bible much more fun to read and engage with. And I love that so much. Thank you so much, Autma007. I love it as well. It really has brought joy to my heart and to our team here that we now have to really bring God's word to you every day. Because I'm going to tell you something, the more we dig, the more we find. And if you want to learn more about what we're doing, you can go to the Bible breakdown discussion where there's a team of people that every day they go and they do devotions on these different chapters. And I can't wait to see what they come up with in Ephesians chapter one. And we want you to engage with us back and forth because man, the more we dig, the more we find. And we love doing this together. And thank you so much for joining us there. So get your Bibles, Ephesians chapter one. We're going to be reading out of the New Living Translation. While you're getting that ready, I want to go ahead and tell you, Ephesians is one of my favorite books in the New Testament. Now, to give you a little bit of a background, you can actually go and find out more about some of the background by looking at the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, there is this very interesting dynamic that occurs because Paul ends up going on three different missionary journeys. And on one of the missionary journeys, he goes to a city called Ephesus. And Ephesus at that time was a very spiritually aware, very spiritually active city. As a matter of fact, it had one of the eight wonders of the ancient world in it, called the Temple of Artemis. Temple of Artemis was huge and it was just amazing and just massive. And people would come from all over the world to worship the goddess, the false god, goddess Artemis. And it was a big business as well. A lot of people would, you know, a lot of merchants and different things and idol makers and all this. Well, Paul goes into the city, starts preaching the gospel, and people start getting saved, giving their life to Christ. Well, it becomes a problem because as they're worshiping Jesus, no longer worshiping Artemis. And so it ends up becoming this massive problem, and they start a riot where the Ephesians start saying, We're going to worship Artemis. Okay, fine. Well, we're not. It becomes this massive thing until they end up going into the temple and just shouting and yelling and screaming. Paul even wants to go into the temple to talk to the mob, and they have to restrain him and say, Paul, we really like you to not die today. And so they don't let him go in there. And just for hours, they're just screaming, Great is the Artemis, the God of the Ephesians, and all this kind of stuff. And they finally disband and do all this, and then Paul has to leave. Well, not long after that, probably 6061 A.D., so uh 20-something years after the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul is traveling through again, he eventually is arrested and he's sent to Rome in prison. And while he is in prison, he is visited by a guy named Epaphras. Epaphras was not from Ephesus, but he was from a little town called Colossae. And while Epaphras is visiting Paul in Rome, he hears about all the things going on, Paul does, and he writes a letter back to the church at Ephesus, the church at Colossae, and to a guy we're going to get to eventually called Philemon. And this letter to Ephesus finally makes it back to the city. And at this time, the pastor of the church in Ephesus is a guy named Timothy, who later Paul will write two letters to. We now have first and second Timothy. So Ephesus is really a major church in the early church, especially in the ministry of Paul. This is a wonderful place for Paul because they've been in some wars together, been in some battles together, and they've really come out on the other side. And Paul is just encouraging them to continue to move forward and to not let anything stop them from becoming all that God has for them to be. And so that's what we're going to see in this. If I were to give this book an overall theme, it would be Paul is encouraging them to grow and become all God has created you to be, to grow and become all that God has created you to be. The first three chapters, Paul's gonna be talking about this idea of how God has made us and created us for great things. And then the second half, he's gonna talk about how we grow to maturity and making that happen. So if I could give this entire book, you know, a kind of a theme verse, there'd be so many I could choose from. Like I love the entire third chapter. I can't wait to get to that. And I love the sixth chapter. Probably one of the most controversial passages in the entire New Testament is gonna be Ephesians chapter five about the God's order in a home. Praise the Lord. Can we get to that in a little while, you know, a few days. But the verse I love that really encapsulates all of this is when Paul's talking to the church, he says in Ephesians 2, chapter, uh, chapter 2, verse 10, he says, For we are God's masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. And so that's what Paul is going to encourage the church at Ephesus to really dig down into and to realize that your job is to grow and become all that God has created you to do. And it's so much more than you can imagine. So let's jump into this together and realize that the incredible greatness of God's power is greater than we can imagine. And let's enjoy this together and stop along the way and just enjoy God's words. Here we go. You ready? Ephesians chapter 1, verse 1 says this. 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. Now pause. Now remember, in most of Paul's letters, that's how he would begin things. That was a typical Roman greeting. It'd be the same thing as if you put an email down and you say, What's up? That's the same thing. It just took him a little longer to get there. That's basically what he's saying. He's like, Sup, guys, it's good to see you. Here we go, verse three. 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 he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Pause. Notice what he just said. Even before you wanted to know him, he wanted to know you. And it brings him great pleasure. Can I tell you real quickly that it doesn't matter what anybody else says about you? In Christ, you are significant, you are accepted, and you are secure. And because you are his, not always because of what we do, because we make mistakes all the time, but just simply the fact that he created you, God has great pleasure in you. Verse 6 says this. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ, which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan, that at the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, we are united with Christ. We have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance and to make everything work out according to his plan. God's purpose was that the Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you, Gentiles, have also heard the truth, the good news that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised, and that he purchased us to be his own people. He did this so that we would praise and glorify him. So what he said was, we're so excited that now Jesus has revealed to us the plan of God. And the plan was this that at the right time, God Himself, Jesus, a second member of the Trinity, would rip into space and time, go out of eternity and into finite time, born into this earth, born of a virgin, grow, live, then die on a cross, sinless, rise again on the third day, so that that act of grace could provide us a way back to the Father. Because remember, when sin came into the world, we were born into sin. And then we sinned on our own. And therefore we couldn't pay the price for our own sins. We needed a savior. That's why Jesus came on a rescue mission to save all of us from our sin. And then what was even more amazing, not only does he forgive us of our sin, but then he comes to live on the inside of us. The Holy Spirit is the third part of the Trinity that comes to live on the inside of us. And he says that infilling of the Holy Spirit is that guarantee that God will never forsake us. He'll never leave us or never walk away from us. And so what happens is as we walk through the rest of our life, we walk in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. And as we walk with the Holy Spirit, we grow into the freedom that he has for us. He tells us who we are, and then he grows us in that direction. And then when we leave this life, we are united back again with Christ. And that guarantee is then fulfilled. So that's when Paul is saying, guys, you don't realize eternity doesn't start when you die. Eternity starts now. You're already living in the precursor, the beginning moments of eternity. And the guarantee is that the Holy Spirit comes to live with inside all of us. What an amazing mystery, what an amazing gift He's given us. Here we go, verse 15. He says, Ever since I heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope that He has given to those He called, His holy people who are rich and glorious, who are His rich and glorious inheritance. And I love this, he says, and I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now, he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else, not only in this world, but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and he has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. The church is his body. It is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself. Wow. You know, one of the things that really strikes me about this book, and I can't wait for us to get further into the book of Ephesians, is it really helps us remember who we are as a church. The Greek word for church is ekklesia. And that word ecclesia means assembly, the assembly of the saints. You know that the church is not the building we go to on Sunday. It's it it is a place where the church gathers. The church is me and you together. Me by myself, I'm not the church. You by yourself is not the church. But when the assembly of the saints, when we come together, that is the church. And then over all of us, our leader is God Himself, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. And what I love about what Paul is saying, and I think this is gonna be my prayer for us as we go into the book of Ephesians together, and I'm gonna read it again, verse 19. It says, I pray that you would understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe him. I'm gonna ask you a question. Do you believe Jesus? Do you have a relationship with Jesus? Is he your Savior and your Lord? In other words, you let him wash away your sin and now you follow him. If that's true, you have access to the incredible greatness of God's power. Do you know how powerful that power is? It is the power to do the greatest miracle ever, and that is raise the dead. Not just raise the dead physically, but even more powerful, raise the dead spiritually. The greatest miracle we could hope for is to have our sins washed away. And Jesus has already done that. And so I want to tell you that if you have received Christ as your Savior and Lord, you've already received the greatest miracle we could ever hope for. And then what I love about God so much is he doesn't just save us and then go on to the next one. He saves us and then he turns around and he starts healing us of every broken place in our life. And so if he can save you, he can do everything else you need him to do. And so as we end our time together today, I want to remind you you're part of something so much bigger than you can imagine, and that's God's church. And when God's church come together and we worship God together, nothing is impossible. Whatever it is you need from God, God is able to do above and beyond everything you could ask or think, according to the power that He works within all of us. So let's remember when God's Word says that He is with us and He is for us. And God's plan for us as we look through the book of Ephesians is that we would grow and become all that God has created for you to be, and to realize that God has so much more for you than you can imagine. Let's pray together right now. Father, thank you for the journey you're gonna take us on through the book of Ephesians. I'm thankful, Lord, that you're gonna restore to us the joy and the wonder and the awe of your church, and to realize that you have great and miraculous power, and that you are making us and shaping us and forming us into something amazing. And that when we as your body come together, Lord, great things happen. And we celebrate you now in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And don't forget, Ephesians 2, verse 10 says this for we are God, say it with me, masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do good things that he planned for us long ago. I can't wait to get into the rest of this as we go back tomorrow to Ephesians chapter two.