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With no real way of knowing how the American civil war would end, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863; the most important part of his proclamation stated the following: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

The war began with shots fired at 4:30 a.m. in South Carolina at Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1881. The war ended 4 years, 1 month, and 2 weeks later on April 9, 1865, at the great cost of at least 620,000 American lives. Five days later, on April 14th, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at Fords Theater; Lincoln was pronounced dead the morning of April 15th. In his eulogy of Lincoln, Senator Charles Sumner said, Mourn not the dead, but rejoice in his life and example. Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed.

Walt Whitman admired Lincoln, and although he never had the opportunity to meet Lincoln, he said of the president: Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else. Whitman shared the same views on slavery that Abraham Lincoln had; after the president was assassinated, Whitman penned what would later be considered a masterpiece of a poem titled: O Captain! My Captain!, which served as a metaphor about the death of the president he dearly admired and loved.Whitmans poem was first published on November 4, 1865; consider Whitmans first verse:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

As great as Abraham Lincoln was, he was only mortal, and a flawed one at that. But dear Christian, we have a Captain who is no mere mortal. A captain of a boat or ship is the person with the highest rank; as the Head of the Church, there is no authority greater than Jesus! Think about it, all things have been placed in subjection under the feet of Jesus; He is head over all things to the to the church (Eph. 1:22-23).

Our Captain, Jesus, is the fully divine Christ who descended in humility by also becoming fully human. Our Captain is the Lord of Life, who is the only begotten Son of God the Father Almighty. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; descended into the grave; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.[1]

When I read Ephesians 4:7-10 and sat at my desk in front of my Bible staring at verses 8-10, I could not help but rejoice over what these verses mean. After reading Walt Whitmans poem, I wrote two verses of my own poem in response:

Our Captain and Great Redeemer,
His divine arms spread great and wide!
Upon the Cross, He bleed for sinners,
For our freedom, the Lamb of God died.

From earthen wood to the stone carved tomb,
Redemptions Prince laid cold and dead!
Three Days Later, Christ had risen,
Death and sin: swallowed up by the Living!

So, I have spent much of our time this morning setting up Ephesians 4:7-10, but I believe it was time well spent for reasons I hope will become clear.

The Church is Equipped by Christ for Her Mission (v. 7)
If I can get you to see how encouraging verse 7 is, I believe you will gain a healthier and deeper understanding of how you can, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (4:1). I also believe you will discover the secret sauce for how you can urgently, keep the

Although the word church is not used in these verses, it is used throughout Ephesians. The Greek word for church is ekklesia and means, assembly, gathering, community, congregation, or as you know it church. That is its meaning on the surface but dive a little deeper into the meaning of ekklesia and you will discover that the word is made up of a prefix and a root. The prefix is ek and means out of, and the root is kaleō, which means, call or summon. All I want you to know and appreciate is that the word for church (ekklesia) literally means, the community of called out ones.

If you are a Christian, then you belong to the ekklesia of Jesus Christ; you have been called out of the world: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for Gods own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). If you are a Christian, your identity is now in Jesus and is the reason why He prayed this for you: I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me (John 17:20-21). If you are a Christian, you belong to Him as His Church.

Nine times the word ekklesia is used in Ephesians, but the Church is also referred to as the body (sōma) in Ephesians 4:4 and six more times throughout the epistle (see 1:23; 2:16; 4:12, 16; 5:23, 30). To be the body of Christ is to belong to Christ and to be in Christ. In and through Jesus we now belong as the ekklesia and our identity will forever be linked to Him as His Bride. So, dear Christian, is it any wonder that it is Jesus who assures His Church who is His Bride, who is His body: Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:17b-18).

We do not have the time to get into the significance of numbers this morning, but I do want to point out three significant numbers in these verses that are easy to miss if someone doesnt point them out to you. First, the number one signifies unity in the Bible. The number seven signifies perfection or completion in the Bible. Finally, the number three, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Paul is emphasizing the need for unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4, and urges the Church to be zealous, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This is why he emphasized that there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God that we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, share. Now, notice how many ones the apostle lists in these verses; he lists seven ones symbolizing that what binds us together as the Bride of Christ is complete and perfectly as God intended it. Finally, and the neatest part of these verses in my opinion is the number three, and you can see it with each of these verses:

We are, one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling this is due to the work of the Holy Spirit, as God the Spirit.



We have one Lord, one faith, and one baptism because of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, as God the Son.



We worship, one Father of all who is over all and through all and in all who is God the Father.


The significance of the number three is that it is symbolic of the God who we worship who is Three-in-One as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There are two ways I can break down these verses in this sermon. I was tempted to create seven points for each of the reasons why we must, urgently keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). I have chosen the second way I can break down these verses and it the outline Paul intentionally provided for us based on God as a Trinity. Notice that in Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul begins with the Father who has chosen us, then the Son who ha

If you are born again, you are alive with Christ! If you are born again, everything listed in Ephesians 1:3-14 is true of you! In those twelve verses the phrase: In Him or in Christ is stated. Before we even touch Ephesians 4:1-3, I want you to marvel over what it means to be in Christ. In Jesus, I can now know the God for whom I was made. In Jesus God no longer sees my sin, but the righteousness of His Son. In Jesus, I am becoming more and more like the person I was born to be. In Jesus, I have redemption and am now a child of God instead of an enemy; here are eighteen other reasons to celebrate what it means to be in Christ.:

In Christ, I am justified freely by His grace (Rom. 3:24)
In Christ, I am now Gods child (1 Peter 1:3)
In Christ, I am forgiven of all my sins (Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:14)
In Christ, I have peace (John 14:27)
In Christ, I am loved by God the Father (John 16:27)
In Christ, I belong to God (John 17:9)
In Christ, I will never be forsaken or abandoned by God (John 10)
In Christ, I am treasured by God (1 Peter 1-2)
In Christ, I am the righteousness of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21)
In Christ, there is for me NO condemnation (Rom. 8:1)
In Christ, God is working all things together for my good (Rom. 8:28)
In Christ, I have obtained an inheritance that only God alone can give (Eph. 1:11)
In Christ, I am a new creation the old is gone and the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17)
In Christ, I am a son/daughter of God (Gal. 4:6)
In Christ, I am no longer a stranger or alien, but a fellow citizen with the saints (Eph. 2:19)
In Christ, I am a member of the body of Christ (Eph. 3:6)
In Christ, I am set apart for the mission of God (Eph. 2:10)
In Christ, I am loved by an everlasting God (1 John 4:19)


Paul begins verse four with the word, Therefore. When you read your Bible, this word serves as a clue that in light of what has been written, what you are about to read next is in response to what proceeded it. Another way to say it is: In light of Ephesians 1-3, this is how you are to behave. How are we to behave? Since we are alive in Christ, we are to walk as the spiritually living. Since we are not the only ones made alive in Christ, we should walk together as the living. I want to look at both of those points Paul makes in the verses that follow.

How to Walk as the Living
Paul begins with these words: Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you (v. 1a). So far in his epistle this is only the second place when Paul tells his readers to do something. The first time Paul told the Ephesians they had to do something, it was in 2:12, remember that you were. Remember what Paul? Remember who you were and who you now are! In Ephesians 4:1, Paul is not telling these Christians to remember their identity in Christ but to walk in step with their identity as those who have been called out of death into life with Christ.

There are two words I want you to notice that I will call, The Two Ws of the Christian life. The first word is walk, and the second word is worthy. The Ws of the Christian life serve as evidence that you are alive in Jesus and no longer dead in your sins. When Paul uses the word walk in his epistle, he is referring metaphorically to the way a person lives out their life ethically. Paul uses the word walk thirty-two times in his epistles, eight of which are used in Ephesians, and every time it is used metaphorically!

In Ephesians 2:1-2, our walk was governed by a Christless life: And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. In Colossians Paul also described the way the Christian used to walk, listen to the way he uses the word, walk in Colossians 3:5-7, Therefore, treat the parts of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath o

Questions from Ephesians 1:1-3:21


If God chose me before the foundation of the world? Do I really have free will?


Yes. But the real question is this: Is your free will limited to your spiritual condition? In the second sermon of our Ephesian series, I preached an entire sermon on the infamous Ephesians 1:4-6, and in that sermon, I answered what it meant to be chosen by God, here is what I said: To be chosen means that God predestined you to something. Predestination means, to determine something ahead of time before its occurrence.[1] So, according to these verses, before God invented dirt, He planned for your adoption as a son or daughter through all that Jesus would do on your account for your sin on a cross that we all deserved.

It is very difficult, within the context of Ephesians to explain Ephesians 1:4-6 any other way than to take at face value the clear and direct language he used in these verses; Paul could not have been any clearer: He chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. So, where is our free will in these verses? I will tell you where it is; your free will is somewhere between Ephesians 1:4 and 2:10.

We are chosen before the foundation of the world according to Ephesians 1:4, we were dead in our offenses and sins according to Ephesians 2:1, and it is, by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God according to Ephesians 2:8. The in-between in these verses is that you were born and lived before Jesus in your spiritual deadness, and your will was only free to operate within the nature of your spiritual deadness, until Ephesians 2:4-5 happened to you, which was this: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.

So, here is how your free will expressed itself while you were dead in your offenses and sins: you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (vv. 2-3). In Ephesians 2:2-3 we are given a list of how our free will expressed itself:

We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil).
We were disobedient.
We lived in the lusts of our flesh.
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind.
We were children of wrath.


I dont know any other way to understand Ephesians 1:4-6 and 2:1-3 than to read 1:4 at face value: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. There was no other way for God to save us than to do what we are told that He did in Ephesians 2:4-5, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.

Now listen to me: God made us alive, but He did not believe for us! What this means is that your will was once limited to your spiritual deadness until God made you alive in Christ. The thing that God did for you in Ephesians 2:5-6, enabled you to experience and participate in what Paul describes in 2:8, which states: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.



If God chooses who will be saved before the foundation of the world, why did He command His disciples: Go and make disciples of all nations and to, teach them to follow all that I commanded (Matt. 28:19-20)?


The reason why Jesus has commanded His disciples to make disciples of all nations and the reason that it is a sin not to do so, is because the way He has chosen to make the spiritually dead, alive in Christ is through His Word proclaimed through y

Susanna Annesley was born on January 20, 1669 and was the youngest of her 25 siblings! Her father was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Annesley and was later referred to as the St. Paul of the Nonconformists who stood against the unbiblical practices of slumbering national church.[1] To give you some sense of the kind of Christian home Susanna was born into, the Annesley home was visited by some of the spiritual giants of their day, such as Richard Baxter, John Owen, and Thomas Manton. Susanna said of her childhood: I will tell you what rule I observed when I was young and too much addicted to childish diversions, which was this never to spend more time in mere recreation in one day than I spent in private religious devotions.[2]

It has been said of Susanna that her knowledge of the Bible was superior to that of many of the pastors of her day and her love for and devotion to God was reflected in her time in the Bible and prayer. On November 12, 1688, Susanna married Samuel Wesley who had become an Anglican priest. Together the Wesleys had at least 17 children (some believe they had 19 children), and of those children, only 10 survived infancy; one child was crippled, and another did not learn to speak until he was six years old.

If 10 mouths to feed and children to clothe was not enough for both parents, Samuel Wesley was a poor steward and manager of money, not a very good husband to Susanna, and was frequently away from home for long periods. I read that during her lifetime as both a mother and a wife, Susanna was sick often, there was little money for food, and debt plagued their family and household because of Samuels poor management of money. Samuel was once thrown into debtors prison because their debt was so high. Twice the homes they lived in throughout their marriage were destroyed by fire along with much of what they owned. Someone slit their cows udders so they wouldnt have milk, killed their dog, and burned their flax field.[3]

Susanna had little time between her duties as a mother, the need to work their gardens, milk their cows, educate their children, and manage their home, all with little help. However, she managed to spend about two hours a day praying because she believed in the God of Ephesians 3:20-21. Because it was nearly impossible to find a quiet place to pray, she used her apron and told her children that when they saw her head covered with her apron, they were not permitted to disturb her because she was praying.

Of Samuel and Susannas ten surviving children, God would use John and Charles profoundly to reach the lost and impact the world they lived inmostly due to the foundation of the Word of God laid by their mother and the prayers prayed on their behalf. John Wesley would grow to become a great evangelist whom God used to preach to nearly one million people in his lifetime. Charles would be used by God to write over 9,000 hymns, of which many are still sung in our churches today.[4] One of those hymns is a favorite of mine: And Can It Be, That I Should Gain. Consider three of its five verses:
And can it be that I should gainAn interest in the Savior's bloodDied He for me, who caused His painFor me, who Him to death pursued?Amazing love! How can it beThat Thou, my God, should die for me?

He left His Father's throne aboveSo free, so infinite His graceEmptied Himself of all but loveAnd bled for Adam's helpless raceTic mercy all, immense and freeFor O my God, it found out me!Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, should die for me?

No condemnation now I dreadJesus, and all in Him, is mineAlive in Him, my living HeadAnd clothed in righteousness divineBold I approach the eternal throneAnd claim the crown, through Christ my ownAmazing love! How can it beThat Thou my God, should die for me?

Now, like a well-aged, perfectly seasoned steak cooked by a master chef, Ephesians 3:20-21 is before us, and every bit of these two verses is meant to be savored. So, lets savor one of the great doxological s

In light of our journey in Ephesians so far, what does it mean to be a Christian? If you are a genuine and legitimate Christian, then the following is true of you:

God chose you before the foundation of the world for the purpose of becoming holy and blameless (1:4-6).



You have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus who died upon a cross for sins you committed, and through His death, the riches of Gods grace has been, is being, and forever will be lavished upon you (1:7-12).



You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that God will complete the work He started in you and the promise of a power to enable you to complete the work that He has called you into, related to His mission to redeem creation (1:13-14, 19; 2:10).



Because you are a Christian, God treasures you as His inheritance that He will receive out of His great purpose and love for you (1:18-19a).



You are secure as a Christian because the One who redeemed you upon the cross, conquered death by walking out of the tomb, is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, and is the King of kings and Lord of lords who is, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (1:19b-21).



As a Christian, your hope rests in a Jesus under whose feet, all things are in subjection because He is head over all things the Groom of the Church (1:21-22).



You are a Christian because, like the rest of the world, you were once dead in your sins, and thereby a child of Gods wrath! However, that is no longer who you are because God, whose mercy is rich, love is great, and grace is sufficient, made you alive in Christ Jesus (2:1-4)



If you are a Christian, it is not because of anything you have done, but solely by the grace of God through faith exclusively in Christ alone (2:8-9).



You, Christian, were redeemed through faith, by grace, because of Christ for, good works, which God prepared beforehand so that you would walk, not in the course of this world, but in good works God saved you for (2:10).



Because you are now a Christian, you have been brought near to God and belong to another people group, which is the people of God (2:13-22).



Your identity as a Christian is not in how you feel, who you are attracted too, your political affiliation, nationality, or the color of your skin; your identity is now in Jesus as the cornerstone of your life and the Bible as the foundation on which you stand within the community known as the Church (2:19-22).



As a Christian, the multifaceted wisdom of God is being made known through you and the people you now belong to, which is the Church of Jesus Christ. Angels marvel over your redemption and demons are terrified over what God is doing through you (3:1-12).



You belong to Christ as the Bride of Christ dear Christian! When God sees you, you are now the object of His affection; He is working all things out for His glory and for your good, in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus (3:11), which means that He is for you and not against you (3:1, 13).



You, Christian, are being built up into a beautiful templea holy and living temple where the presence of God dwells (2:21-22)!


Paul begins verse 14 with, For this reason. For what reason? For the fourteen reasons I just listed and so much more!

There is something so important the apostle wanted the Ephesians to know and experience, and it is something that we need to know and experience today. Paul touched on it in his prayer in 1:18-19, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe (Eph. 1:1819a). He again informs these Christians how he is praying for them:
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with po