Ephesians, Doctrine of the Trinity part 1
Ephesians · Bradley W. Maston · Oct 4, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 40
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926144445693

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we're starting our, I don't know if you'd call it a companion study or just a continuation of what we were doing before, but there's special topics in Ephesians. So we've had a good number of exciting topics. If you want to know what they are, then you can see Bob or myself or Roger or Randy and know what we're going to be studying going forward, which is exciting. But today we get the topic of the Trinity, which is really thrilling. Morning, Bob.

The word Trinity, I'm sure this won't come as a surprise to anyone, the word Trinity never once appears in the Bible, right? Not a surprise to any of us. This is the grounds on which if you ever have a Jehovah's Witness come to your door, they'll oftentimes use, well the word Trinity is not in the Bible. Interesting. Neither is the word Jehovah, but that's okay. The word Yahweh is, but Jehovah is a mistranslation. I think the word freedom never appears in the preamble of the Constitution. This guy's good to have him around. I know. Fantastic!

But just because we don't have the word, we've assigned this word to the idea of our triune God, doesn't weaken the argument. In fact, you have to, in order to back up a belief or an anti-Trinitarian belief, you have to set aside all the biblical evidence. Talking about the Trinity from the perspective of the whole Bible is too easy for us here at Holly Hills. We're going to limit just finding the Trinity or just talking about the Trinity in the Book of Ephesians. So that's kind of exciting. Many of us have seen this or a diagram like this in the past.

If you can make it out, great. If not, it's on your paper. It would be easier to read there. Yeah, much easier. But there are contrasts. And I stole this. I didn't, actually. It was taken by permission from Christianityandview.com forward slash trinity. So if you'd like to view, he's got a nice short little one pager on the unity and separation of the peoples. Yes? description was circular and not looked so much like the Colorado School of Mines logo. Brilliant. Well, you know, if God lives anywhere, it's at the School of Mines with all those engineers.

Okay, so, alright, so anyway, today actually, in order to, we've broken up this study into two parts, and we're kind of curious as to how we're going to do it, maybe by halves, and I think each topic is, or most of the topics are broken up into two parts. So they'll probably get a different approach each time.

My first thought was to approach this, or my first thought was to approach this by the Trinity in the first half of Ephesians and the Trinity in the second half of Ephesians. But I actually opted instead, in this case, to look at in two studies, or today's study, which is, if you like, going around the circle, so talking about the distinction between the people in the Book of Ephesians, the persons of the Trinity, and then next week Randy will discuss the unity of them. Now, this is kind of a sticky way to look at it as well, because you can't parse out as easily as you'd like to, or as easily as we'd like to, a lot of the time. One of the tools that I used, and if you'd like to look at this you can, I printed it up and brought it in, is I just went through the book of Ephesians and assigned different bits of revelation about the Father, about the Son, about the Spirit, to these to these three categories, really simplistic, and found that it really wasn't as easy as I thought, because there's certain points in Ephesians where you've got to go to the Greek just to find out whether it's the Father, the Son, or the Spirit.

Other times when you're wondering, is that the whole Godhead? It's not as simple as you want it to be all the time. Nevertheless, if you want to see just the raw data, you're welcome to come up and see this. I doubt it'll be, it's kind of in Brad's shorthand. So you might have trouble coding it, but you're welcome to look at it. Cool.

Well, so that being said, we will start, as seems appropriate, with the first member of the Trinity, who we refer to as God the Father. So, essentially, any of these three members of the Trinity, even alone in the Book of Ephesians, finding the things said about them, finding what additions are made to our theology is far too great a task in one class period. Even if we were just to say, God the Father in Ephesians, or God the Son in Ephesians, we'd still be left with a lot more to say once we're done. So I just grabbed some highlights of each of these and then left there. So, first we have, in the book of Ephesians, there's three ways in which God is called the Father.

Can anyone Imagine what those three relationships are God's father So God is the father of Jesus Christ in a unique sense right this is we we see this in in in the Gospels when Jesus says hey, I'm going to my father and your father and My God and your God in other words claiming that special relationship of pacing again That special relationship between Jesus Christ and and God the Father I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time talking about that We see examples of it in Ephesians 1 3 and 3 14 But I kind of want to pass by that because I think that falls more into Randy's realm next week As far as the unity, so we're gonna leave that one be just a bit And talk more talk more so about his fatherhood over believers, so we have their Ephesians 1 2 2 18 5 20 and 6 23 I So, what is the significance of God's fatherhood over believers?

Well, it makes us sons and heirs. Pretty big deal. We're not in charge. I like that. He is just as much the father of us in the New Testament times as he was of the Jews in the Old Testament times, no less. And I think you'd make an argument that's more. Which is fantastic, right? Yeah, I mean, it's closer.

Yeah, Romans 8.15 says that we can actually address God individually as Abba or Papa. It's pretty impressive. That's an impressive amount of intimacy that God's drawn us in. Yeah, Randy's intimacy talk has rubbed off on me, and now you're getting it from me as well.

But yeah, Romans 8.15 tells us we can call him Papa. That's something else. That's really cool to me. That this is the relationship of fatherhood that is not just a corporate fatherhood, he's not just the father of us as believers as a group, which he is, but he's also the father of us individually.

In other words, we can address Him individually as Father, because the Jews would happily allow Jesus to say, Our Father, and Our Father, and Our Father, but they got really mad when He said, My Father in Heaven. And it's so funny when you hear people say that Jesus never claimed to be God, and it's like, yeah, but the Jews were picking up rocks to stone him consistently because of the claims that he made. So whether or not you understand, they understood. And if you study, you'll go too. Cool, so we've got this intimacy. We talked about God being in charge. The fatherhood talks about authority. We talked about air and our sonship. And what I love about it is that it's an irreversible bond that's put in as well.

I mean, you have a child. We've had two, and April's pregnant with our third now. And the first thing that becomes clear, if you are thinking about it, usually you're focused on the baby, right, is once that kid comes out, they're not going back in. It's done. It's an irreversible process.

And the question would be that we'll talk about in the next sense of fatherhood is, what's the metaphor here? Is God using the term Father as a metaphor so that we can better understand Him? Or did He make earthly fatherhood as the real metaphor so we can understand the reality that he's our father, of what his fatherhood's about. But that has the possibility of giving it a bit circular, so we'll move forward. The third sense in which God is the Father is that he's the image and prototype of all fatherhood.

So, the Universalists, this is talking about Ephesians 3, 14 through 15, if someone wants to grab that and read it. 14 and 15. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Cool. This is a verse that's abused a lot of the time to say that God's the Father of everybody. He's a universal Father and therefore we can all safely be universalists, right?

Probably not a great interpretation. Yeah, but when you think about who's the whole family, the family are believers. I mean, the family are the sons, the heirs. And that would be an orthodox interpretation, right? That would suit in with everything. But the sense that the Greek gives is the fact that the family is actually father. So in essence, he's the father of fatherhood, is what we talked about. So, in other words, and this is where we get back into that whole, where's the metaphor, which one's the metaphor, but the reality is, that's my son. Okay. You know, you can just tell when it's yours. It's kind of weird. It's really comforting, because God can probably tell when it's me, because it's always me. Anyway, so, never mind that.

But he is actually, the way that the Greek plays out, and it's not a really simple first-year Greek, like, oh, this is really easy, I'll stress this out. So I had to go to deeper sources to even figure out what was going on there. But the idea is that he's the father of all fatherhood. In other words, he's the prototype.

It's not shocking that psychologists tell us that most of our image of God, our presuppositions about God, comes from our father. So people, and I definitely see this as true with my Korean students, people who have a distant father or a harsh and abusive father, they're like, God must be distant or harsh and abusive. People who have a really loving and gentle father feel like, God, the father must be loving and gentle, must be near. These are just natural parallels that we draw, and we can blame it all on psychology.

But I think the reality is that God set that precedent in us. God, whether, and the reality is as we judge a father, any father, we are judging him as compared to the father, God. In other words, he is the measure of what a good father is and what a, you know, anything that falls short of that measure is. a poor father, right? As fathers, we succeed as we are like Him, as we abide in Christ, and we fail as we are not. And truth be told, I fail more than I succeed.

But, nevertheless, that's the third respect in which God's fatherhood comes forth in the book of Ephesians, which is pretty cool, pretty interesting. God the Father has a special place as the originator. Which, now that I read it, kind of sounds like a movie.

He's the originator. He's the terminator. But anyway, he's the one who had the genesis of all of these ideas, all of the salvation that's ours in Christ. It was all his. I think we oftentimes get caught up in the idea that Maybe we don't get caught up, but the church in general, Christendom in general, gets caught up in the idea that Jesus saved us and the mean, stodgy old father was like, alright, if you gotta go, go. Just be back before midnight. And the reality is that that's not the idea at all. It wasn't that a sweet, kind Jesus rescued us from the wrathful, evil, angry father, but rather that the father was as much in on it from day one as the son was.

So as they distinguish themselves from each other, which is true, I mean, they are three separate persons. There's no question. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they were ever at odds or, you know, God's like, I'm going to blow him up. And Jesus says, no, wait, give me a minute. No. Not the case. Not the case at all.

So we see that our salvation is no less, and this is obviously incredibly clear in Ephesians 1 through 14. As you read through that, and like I said, it would be a great exercise actually rather than read my obnoxious little graph here. I would encourage you to make your own. It is exciting. It wasn't like a task or an academic task.

It's just really fun to look at our Lord and look at our God and see how he works in community, in perfect community, to save us and find out, yeah, we'll go forward, but find out how each member of the Trinity is involved in our life and our salvation, how we've been invited into that. In chapter 2, we see God the Father as one who is raising, ascending, and seeding us together with Christ. So the continued theme that our salvation, our identification, are God's work. And the first person of the Trinity doesn't stand idly by while Jesus does all the work of identification. Rather, it is God the Father who accounts who and what we are being identified with, who Christ is, and what He has done.

That wasn't a great sentence. Add punctuation as is needed. Nevertheless. Omnipotent. One thing that, although it is true of every member of the Trinity, gets a special assignment to the Father in the Book of Ephesians. The weight of it seems to fall on the Father. And I really want to pound that home. It doesn't mean that the sun's not omniscient or omnipotent. And it doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit's not also omnipotent.

But for some reason, Paul in the book of Ephesians sees fit to place the weight of that mostly on the Father. And I think there's actually a lot of good reason for that, given the offices that they hold in this book. So another tribute of the Father is seen clearly in the book of Ephesians is ability, power, and strength. Does someone want to grab Ephesians 119? And what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe? These are in accordance with the working of his strength. Can you read 22? No, no, it's my fault. And through 22, right? Yeah, that'd be great. Okay.

Which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at the right hand in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name but his name, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church." Fantastic. So, the power that God used in raising someone from the dead, which We don't have any power among us that would claim to be able to go that far, right?

God uses all that power, or sorry, directs that power uswards. That's pretty impressive. That not only is God omnipotent, in fact, there's been a recent poll, and I won't say the figures, but the larger percent of teens today do believe in God. in America. But the larger percent of that percentage think that even though they're pretty sure God exists, are really sure he doesn't care enough to actually interview him.

To actually be involved in their life. What do you mean by intervene? Yeah, to have a relationship with them. Doesn't care if they live or die. Doesn't care if they maybe change their circumstances to make them work at it. Sorry, no, no, no, no, no. Purely relational. He's passive and boy, as we get back to that whole fatherhood example. Yeah.

Too many people have read the book, When Bad Things Happen, which I don't know if any of you have read that book. It drove me crazy. was written by a Jewish rabbi who said, yeah, God really cares, but he just can't do anything about it. As if God has no power. At least that was a Jewish rabbi.

If you want to get the same thing from a Christian perspective, you can read the shack. But never mind that. I'm sure someone here has read it and adored it. But you get the same. I'm just kidding. You get the same exact perspective that God is really sorry. He feels really bad, but you know what? This is the way it has to be, because the only other way is to... He's just not quite powerful enough to... He's just not... God's kind of a wimp, right? He's not God. He's not God. Not in any sense that... So anyway...

I'm not going to continue down this path because it'll make me angry. No, no. I just, actually, I'm involved with a couple different groups of people and the shack kind of blew through a couple of them and left people with a really sad view of God. You wouldn't believe the Bible studies that are out there in Christian environments that are all reading the shack. Instead of scripture. Yeah, right. The shack. I understand why I was so adamantly opposed to having it in some of these studies. I've never heard of it. It's a book. It's going through the Christian, it's going through the Christian, the Christian churches now. It's sold in Christian bookstores now? It absolutely is. It's actually one of the number 10 bestsellers. Who wrote it? Who's it by?

Felon and Young. Young and Thought. Young and dumb. Anyway, yeah, it shouldn't surprise us, right, that the world creeps into popular Christianity. It shouldn't shock us. We should be on our guard. I do believe we should be wary of anything that's in the top ten at the Christian bookstore. Yeah, exactly. Look at all the pompous driven books. I mean, those have gone through all the Christian world as well. they're just as bad. You know, it's a... claims to be fictional. Yeah, that's true. Kind of. So in any event...

That's the really good part. To bring us back to kind of a point is these are really good indicators of why we need to exercise discernment. It's why scripture encourages us to be discerned. It's why scripture encourages us to know scripture to know God because as you said you know we do need to be suspect of those things and there's a reason there's a reason because those are human humanly written books they are not the inspired word of God and we need to know the inspired word of God because that's knowing Him there's no replacement and that's why when you made that chart it was so exciting to you because you got to know Him Amen and Amen?

That's it. So, just briefly, God's omnipotence, I know it's not up for grabs in this group, but at the same time, what are some applications that we draw from that? Why is that important that we know, accept, and realize that God is omnipotent? Otherwise, you go through life being upset about and anxious about You know, what's going on in the world? Yeah, all that. When you realize, you know, that it's all about God's purpose and He's going to use all these things for good.

I mean, in His way. We may not agree all the time and understand it when we first see it, but how many times can you look back in your life? You're not old enough yet. Maybe you are. But when you get to be, you know, older, the older you get, you look back and you go, wow, Of course. But you didn't see it back then, what all those trials were for.

It's phenomenal, isn't it? It's a forethought plan. God had, he sort of nipped it from the very beginning. He knew what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, where it was going to happen, and the weather above us. And it's really something that we can't quite comprehend that. That's exactly what it means. He knew from the very beginning and has planned it as well. as it goes, and if nothing happens, surprises. And isn't that the phenomenal ability, right?

I don't want to use that word too loudly, but right that we have as his sheep to realize, I'm a sheep. I'm going to eat this grass now, and I'll let him worry about what grass I'm going to eat tomorrow. I'm going to, you know, I mean, it's just, we tend to get too smart on ourselves and try to figure everything out and figure out what he's doing and figure out he's going, no, I'm not. Not really about that. I just want you to trust who I am, the shepherd.

That's good news, right? That's really exciting. Well, it is an omnipotence that's wrapped up in eternity, right? Talk about that a little bit. Well, just in terms of, it creates a sense of rest, security, and dependency. Certainly. So finally, I said the final aspect of the first person. Oh no, I balanced myself. That we'll cover in this study.

Prayer, thankfulness, and glory is a couple words that we see. Glorification, glorify, glorify. We keep seeing these words. Prayer and thankfulness and you know what I noticed as I kid went through this a lot of that's directed at the father God the father for his own glory of Prayer in the two major prayers of Ephesians.

That's it is 115 through 23 and 314 through 21 both directed at the father If you pray to Jesus, we're not going to have a fight, but I think the consistent teaching of scripture is that we pray to the Father by the Son through the Spirit. Yeah, perfect. apply. It really is. And all that's simultaneous, I mean, and that's a great example, not to cut into Randy's lesson last week, but it's a perfect example of how each of them act separately, but also as one. I mean, how phenomenal that is.

So before we move on to the Son, does anyone have any more comments on either prayer and its relationship to the Father, or the Father in general? in the book of Ephesians? You know, I'll never forget about 20 years ago or something, before Myles went up to be with the Lord, I was starting to get into the growth through some and into the principles of spiritual growth and all that stuff. And I wrote him a little note. I said, Myles, what's prayer? He said, good question. And that was his answer.

Thinking about prayer as, again, the perfect example of the Trinity play down is really profound. It really is. Wow. It requires a perfect, really, identification with the Triune God. I mean, you pray to the Father and the power of the Spirit through the new man, right? And you can't leave any one of those three out. It's amazing. And, you know, I mean, it definitely brings the light. I was going to say, why did Miles tell me that?

Find out for yourself. But yeah, it's, like I say, psychologists have made the observation that, and just normal parents have made the observation that children care far more that their parents love each other than that they love them. It's kind of a big statement. Children seem to be way more disconcerted by the fact that mommy and daddy might not love each other than they are with mommy and daddy or mommy or daddy don't love me.

Yes, it's a source of security. Right. And here we are being invited into perfect community. Isn't that cool? That's what prayer is, being a part of that perfect community, that doesn't depend on us at all. That's pretty phenomenal. Yeah, in the interest of time, we'll move forward. Five pages. The sun.

So, verse for verse, like I say in my imperfect accounting, There's verse-for-verse more information about Jesus in this epistle than the other two combined. In other words, Christ comes up more than the Father and the Son put together. And it's clearly evident, I actually did this on notebook paper, which in retrospect was not an efficient way to do it, but it had this huge line of verses and information about Christ going down the middle, and I had to turn pages because there was like two on the Holy Spirit and seven on the Father. So it's a significant change of pace, or change, not change, it's a significant dearth of information on behalf of the Son, more so than the Father or the Spirit.

Should this surprise us? Probably not. So, I chose to talk about this, even though it kind of breaks the mold from the last one, so I apologize for my inconsistency. I kind of chose to think about the information given about the sun in terms of our position and our condition.

It seemed specifically appropriate because our position is found in Christ. And that position is given, sorry, is talked about here, I think, more clearly than anywhere else in the Bible. I might have missed a chapter here or there, and obviously it's throughout every book of the New Testament, but I feel like... Yeah, I've never seen it so clearly as when I studied Ephesians, so feel free to disagree with me, I won't mind. So, our position's quite clearly found in Christ. Where do we see, what information do we get about our, or where do we get information about our position from the book of Ephesians? It doesn't take you very long, does it? Basically, chapters 1 and 2 have strongly our positional...

If you look through there on your map, in fact, actually when we get to the identification part here, this kind of review, you'll see that you can overlay the riches of God's grace with Schaeffer did. You can map them back into those chapters. And it's chapters 1 and 2 have a majority of over half the Riches of God's Grace in those first two chapters. Yeah, it was the Korean Church I'm teaching through Schaeffer's Riches of God's Grace, and boy, we spend a lot of time here. Which is kind of redundant, because I just taught them Ephesians a while ago, but I think they're good to hear it again.

But in any event, yeah, I... I... I'm sorry? We don't even get out of the gates. So I just grabbed this quick list and I don't know if this will get us all too emotional but I just went through as I was writing this and went okay that one and that one and that one and that one and I know I missed some but still it says in Christ we are blessed with every spiritual blessing placed in the heavenly places for known chosen, adopted, accepted, redeemed, forgiven, pleasing to God, having both been made an inheritance and being an inheritance, quickened, raised, ascended, seated, made near, reconciled, having access to the Father, and loved. And I didn't get them all.

You know, thematically, if you look at the preposition in verses 4, I mean, you know, in occurs like 50 times more commonly 50 times more. And where is organized Christianity today? Where is the neo-evangelical church? It's all in four, isn't it? Not in. And until you're in, how can you be four?

It's so incredibly important, Brad. It's so incredibly important. It's beyond reason. And at the risk of cutting in on the position, the positional truth is quite important. But yeah, this is, I just can't get over this. This is when we were talking about I think it was, Bob, when you were finishing the last few verses of Ephesians, asking, what do we get? I don't know that I didn't know this before we studied this again. I don't know that I didn't know this before I wrote this study.

But every time I see it, every time I read it, every time I go, wow, that's not just true. It's true, true. It's really true. It's not true like what I read in the paper, where there's always a list of corrections from yesterday. It's like, well, so everything I read in here is probably up for grabs. None of this is up for grabs. our position, and I just gotta tell you this story, and I do apologize, but I had one of my Korean students call me yesterday and finally figure it out. He was just sitting in the park and finally came to him all this stuff that we're talking about with position and condition and salvation and all this stuff just hit him like a ton of bricks and he calls me practically in tears going, is this what you've been talking about? Is this what? Now all of a sudden I get it and absolutely blew his mind. I was on the phone for two hours yesterday between weeping and laughing with this kid who finally let this stuff come through, let this stuff get through. I don't know how it works, Lord, that's you, but still. finally getting through, it's really exciting.

And to get to see it again, I mean, if you're not discipling someone younger than yourself, or you're not being discipled by someone older than yourself, which for some of us, that might be impossible. But if you're not discipling someone, I'm sorry!

You know, you were doing well for a while. I got ejected. Grace! Okay, I'm so sorry. Anyway, the point is, if you're not discipling someone younger, if you're not involved with someone younger than yourself, you're missing something. You're missing the joy of getting to see them see this. It's big. If you don't know someone, talk to me. I'll give you a young person. I'm giving them away. I've got way too many to handle.

If you want to disciple someone, the Lord will bring that person there to you, and you will get to see them letting that pass. The privilege of seeing them behold this for the first time, as they finally get it, as they finally connect with it, Wow. After the joy of seeing it for yourself, there's few things greater. So please, I know obviously a ton of this happens in our body as well. Horrible tangent. I apologize. Condition.

So as we move towards the study of our condition, Ephesians is incredibly clear in the fact that our condition needs to flow out of our understanding of position in Christ, right? So if you imagine, if you have a pool, a large pool on top of a hill, everything that flows out of that pool is going to consist of what's in the pool. So if it's a pool of oil, or rather if you dig a, what would you call that? A well? Thank you. And out from the well comes oil, what are the chances one day that water is going to come out of that well? with the oil. Slim to none. Slim to none, indeed. Sorry, I just said actually not. Most oil wells have water. Great. It's a bad example. That's a bad example.

Let's go back to my example because I have been on rivers. Good to know. Alright. So, if you're downstream from the Coors plant, and I love Coors, I've got no problem with the Coors brewery, but if you're downstream from them, what's that? I thought they used all of it, that it ended there. I'm sure it does. It flows into Coors. It flows into Coors, and flows out as sweet, refreshing beer.

But the reality is that, well, I'm getting in all sorts of trouble today. Anyway, the point is... Blame it on that. Yeah, exactly. Gotta blame it on something, right? Can't be my flesh. Oh, wait. So yeah, the point is that if the source is contaminated, then the stream will be contaminated. If the source is fresh, the stream will be fresh. If the source is sludge, the stream will be sludge. Our source, if we're resting in Him, is what?

Him. Him. So, what flows out of it will be Christ. His character. I mean, really. How cool is that? Pretty cool. It's phenomenal. So, this is especially seen in terms of the specific relationships. When Paul talks about husband and wife, when he says, hey, how are you going to behave as a husband? Well, Christ. Look at Jesus.

That's how you're going to behave as a husband. Wives, how are you going to behave as a husband? Look at the church, look at the relationship. Slaves, how are you going to behave as slaves? Look at Jesus. How are you going to behave? I mean, it sets up a really nice precedent. How are you going to behave in any given situation?

You need to look at Jesus and let his life flow through you. This is not what would Jesus do, but what is Jesus doing in you? going to do through you, if you like. Children are admonished to obey their parents in the Lord, because that's part of the Christ life and His behavior. Fathers are supposed to parent their children and bring them up in the admonishment of the Lord. Good stuff.

Alright, now this is something of an extension of the whole position and condition talk, which Somehow everything is, so you can't escape that. But some of the actions of Christ is a special list of things that Christ is daily involved in regarding our experience. A lot of times modern popular Christianity portrays Jesus as what? How do they portray Christ in modern popular Christianity?

Buddy, buddy. That's what I was thinking. Did anybody see the movie Dogma? Don't, if you didn't. It's really not worth it. But the Catholic Church is trying to gain kind of a bigger following or get more money or something. And so they invent Buddy Christ, and it's this picture of Jesus holding his thumb up and smiling at everybody. That's the kind of Jesus that the world wants to present, the world of Christianity wants to present to us. Didn't want to come back here, but we must.

In the book The Shack, the fellow is talking to Jesus, and it's this buddy-buddy air where, you know, the guy, the main character, is just shoving Jesus playfully, and Jesus is shoving him back. Like, if Jesus shoved you, you wouldn't get up. But in any event, that doesn't happen.

And it just makes me think of, I mean, the thing that I think of whenever I see that kind of portrayal of Christ in the popular viewpoint is the first chapter of Revelation. I just can't get over it. Here's John, who, if anyone was buddy-buddy with Jesus, It's John, right? They're eating dinner. He's leaning back on Jesus. I mean, they're close. And yet, at the same time, he sees Christ as he is now, and what happens to him? Down. This is the Jesus that he walked with and ate with and, once again, reclined upon. And yet, when he sees Jesus as he is now, he goes, whoa.

This isn't someone I'm shoving playfully as we walk along the mountain path. Yeah, so for some reason, and I would love to know the deeper reasons why this is so appealing to our culture, but I guess I just didn't get it. Don't you think it's also a weakness? They show Jesus as being this weak kind of figure, as opposed to the omnipotent power. I mean, and I think that's part of the watering down of Christianity. They don't want Christ to appear weak.

He really is. I think they're afraid of what they want not being accepted because they don't want to admit the vast difference between God and man and our desperate need, our total insufficiency and helplessness. And that He is the One and He is different. and that's good. We should be very thankful. But they're thinking the reverse is the way. Yeah. Jeremy? A lot of Christians, I think, have a legalistic mindset. They don't understand grace. They don't understand what we've been given.

So, for them, it's, what can I do to be like Christ? And to try and follow Him. That's really hard to do. It's a lot easier if you make Christ more like us. If Jesus is just about loving your neighbor and having fun. These very basic things from a human standpoint is a lot easier to follow. It's easier to live up to that code. And that may be a big part of it, I don't know. I think it's a huge part of it. But easier to...

Well, and I think also, right, the world is still, and many Christians, I'd say Christendom as a whole has no real concept of grace. So the closest thing that we can come to is that watered-down version of grace that we might offer, which is like forgetfulness, short-sightedness, you know, not seeing it. And it's not as not as if God doesn't see our sinfulness. It's not as if the disparity between our holiness, like you're saying, Carol, his holiness and our sinfulness is any less wide because he just goes, eh, whatever. But that's what, because that's all that the world can imagine is, oh I guess if God was just kind of a, God was kind of more of a hippie and less of a warlord. Well it's more like the mythology of gods, you know.

They had shortcomings and they had some power but they were fools, you know. And it appealed, and that's why it was so big with the Romans, right, and the Greeks, and everyone after them, because it appealed to humanity. They were just super-humans, right? Okay. Cool, cool, cool.

So, Holy Spirit is mentioned, at the very least, by quite a sight of the three persons. And I actually thought that made a great deal of sense, too. Does anyone have any ideas why the Holy Spirit might come up significantly less in this epistle just count for count than the other two? Well, what's the job of the Holy Spirit? Great question. What is the job of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, I mean, it's to reveal Christ to us. It's not like Christ. Yeah, that's all. That's what the job is. And so the Holy Spirit doesn't have any other job. Isn't that fantastic?

Knowledge of the fact is a very important part. Well, and also... Yeah, I think it's important in our understanding of God. You know, understanding the Bible, all that. That's the thing I mainly see my need for. Because if I don't have the Holy Spirit, if I'm not a believer, I'm not going to understand the Bible the same way As if I do. He makes it make sense. And to me that's ultra important.

Couldn't overstate it, right? It's not a just job. It's a big job. How did these words hit the page? Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit through Paul, right? And that's the way it hits your brain and heart. And how did this whole book, but specifically the book of Ephesians, get conducted down through a really turbulent history to us? Probably be the Holy Spirit too. And then as Carol pointed out, how are we able to read this and understand the thoughts of God? The Holy Spirit again. He's not absent from this epistle for the fact that he's not mentioned every other verse. Because once again, that's not his goal. That's not his purpose. That's not his function, his office. No less God than the other two.

No less important. And in fact, we can almost overstate his importance by saying, if we're not illumined by the Holy Spirit, this stuff is all backwards and confusing to us. Well, actually, this stuff is. My teaching could be backwards and confusing anyway. But leave that aside. You're not going to understand the Word apart from Him. So all this is, I just wanted to use it as a preamble to our study of the verses that the Spirit is mentioned.

Because He is. But the reality that we can't overstate, even though even though the verses are less, or fewer, I should say, than those of the Son, or regarding the Son, we can't overstate the importance of this person, of the Holy Spirit. So, firstly, the first thing that I saw as being kind of the bulk of the Holy Spirit information we get in here is the ministry of assurance. What verses tell us about our assurance and its relationship, and the Holy Spirit's relationship to our assurance?

Well, one verse I was just glancing here, Ephesians 2.18 brings all three of them in there for assurance, really.

For through him we both have access by one spirit into the Father. Yep. A lot of... I don't want to go too far into that, because that's Randy's next week. In Ephesians 1, it says we're sealed by the Spirit. Oh my! That's kind of what I was thinking. So, as we think back, that's some months ago. So, as we think back, what was the purpose, function of sealing in the New Testament culture at the time, or even Old Testament? What did sealing mean, or do?

You couldn't lose your salvation. You couldn't lose the gifts the Father gave you, and the Son provided. So the ceiling has that security. Permanent. Permanent. Good. What else? There's authority behind the seal. And the seal is as good as the authority that's behind it. You better not be trying to break that seal because it's the death penalty.

So the three that I got was Anyway, the protection, identification, and authenticity. It's offered the protection of, once again, the authority of the giver of the seal. So we're protected by the Holy Spirit. Identification, we're identified by Him. If we think of a sealing, if we think of that signet ring, the signet ring that's been pounded into the wax doesn't just mean that the wax will stay put, it also has the name of the person who's sealing it, right? So there's this identification, it's mine, we are gods. And then additionally, authenticity.

We have other sealings around, I believe Fern has a really nice picture of a, container of eye cell from Laodicea, I believe is where it's from. But essentially what they do is they put a wax seal around that, basically like we put a plastic seal over the bottle of aspirin. This is really the stuff. If the seal's missing, you might not be getting genuine Laodicean eyeball.

But the point being that that's Those are the three offices of the Holy Spirit moving forward. There's also the earnest and the guarantee which I think is another form of or another way actually in the next verse or the same verses as The the ceiling what's the purpose of a down payment? That earnest it holds it for you holds it for you.

Yep Why did I? Worked in a number of different fields and anytime you're dealing with big pit big ticket items unless you're gonna get it all up front You've demanded a down payment. Why? Yeah. It's a guarantee. It's saying, yep, this is all I have right now. I will give you the rest later. You can tell because I'm giving you a big chunk. Not one dollar down for your car. It's a lot more.

So the Holy Spirit is, in that sense, a deposit guaranteeing that God will do what he has begun in us. I love, I love, I love, I love the fact that the Holy Spirit is viewed as a deposit. We're told that the Holy Spirit within us is a deposit for what's to come. The Holy Spirit in our lives is a really great thing to me. It's really phenomenal to think that we can walk in the Spirit and live in His power because of what He's done.

And that's just the deposit? That's just the down payment? What's coming? that's kind of exciting, that God's going, yeah, I'm just going to give you this deposit of my spirit within you, because if I gave you all of what I plan to give you, you would blow up. But I don't want you to blow up. I've got a reason to have you down here. So here's the deposit. Know that the rest is coming. This is really good. Good news for us. So anyway, we're running massively short on time. So if it's all right, We'll blow through these really quickly.

Our daily walk. What's the relationship of our daily walk to the Holy Spirit? If we can remember back to the Galatians in the main service. If that's the empowerment for the daily walk. Yeah. Walking. We're exhorted to walk in the Spirit. And I forget where this is, but it says that that power that raised Christ from the dead that we have in us. So, you know, somehow this is related to the Godhead, to the Spirit and the Father as well, and it's just incredible. There are certain groups that are looking for power, whether they be Christian groups or other unbelieving groups, and to think that we have that power within us, it's not for us to exercise but to just rest in it, that's incredible. That verse is in 8.11 Roman. 8.11? Yeah. There you go. Cool.

So, moving forward, and Wayne actually talked about this a little bit, our unity is based, we're fully out of time, so I'm just going to say a few more sentences and we'll be done. Unity, our unity is related to the Holy Spirit. In other words, we can only be united as the body of Christ as we're walking in the Spirit. imagine that. And then another contribution to our understanding of the Holy Spirit that Ephesians makes is his personality. It talks about how he is a personality. He's not just a static alpha wave. In other words, he's a he, not an it. So that being said, We couldn't even do it in 50 minutes. And I don't think we could do it in 500 minutes or even 500 days.

But this study of the whole Trinity is pretty fantastic, each of the individual members. And realize that each of the individual members are working in and through each of us for this end goal of salvation, prayer being a great example of all three, as Bob was saying, of all three members of the Gaudete being involved in our lives. And if all three members of the Trinity, separately and together, are working towards our individual sanctification and ultimately glorification, what's the percentage, what are the odds on success?

Pretty nearly, no. As long as we stay out of the way, pretty good. Excellent. And Christ said he lost none, right? lost none. Christ justifies the fact that he doesn't lose any. Amen. Yeah, so finally we find that we exist within this perfect community of God head by his grace. As we move on next week to study the unity of the Trinity can be comforted, thrilled, and encouraged by understanding our infallible God just a little bit. Let's pray if you don't mind. Roger, would you close us please? Thanks. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time this day. Lord, thank you for the We thank you for your word, we thank you for the spirit that shows us Christ, that shows us all that he's accomplished on our behalf.