Ephesians, In Christ - Identification Part 2

Last week Roger did a great job of chapter one of Ephesians and talking about identification. Quite honestly, I really loved the introduction. I thought there was just a lot of good information on the introductory material. So if you don't have last week's handout, there aren't any on the table, but I think there are some copies that can be gotten in the Ask My Mom or Sue, because there was some good material on there.

I've got here on here a note on much more. As we talk about the much more care of God, I wanted to go back and see what did Chafer, who had compiled the list that we have gone over, say about much more. So I've got a paragraph here. I'm just going to read it out loud. Normally I don't like to just read out loud paragraphs but I thought it clarified the much more concept and so I wanted to take a moment to do that and read it for you. I've got it cited there so you can go read it and make sure I type it into the computer correctly.

He says, It will be conceded by all who are awake to the divine revelation that the love of God for the unsaved is immeasurable as infinity. Yet there is a clear revelation that the expression of divine love for those who are saved is even much more.

The argument is that if God loves sinners and enemies enough to give his Son to die for them, his attitude will be much more toward them when they are reconciled and justified. The Apostle states, But God recommendeth his love toward, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more than, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." In Romans 5, 8-10.

This inconceivable devotion on the part of God for those He has saved leads on to various blessings for them. So when we say the much more care of God, That's the context. And I was glad I looked that up because it bothered me that grammatically the much more care of God seemed a little awkward. So now I feel better about it and I hope that you feel better about it and understand the context for that as well.

If you've got your Bibles, go ahead and let's open to Ephesians chapter 2. We're going to read 2.4 through 7 all in one And then we're going to go over those verses individually because they all contain an identification truth concept individually but then collectively as well. Ephesians 2 verses 4-7. I'll go ahead and I'll read that out loud there.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. And just like last week, you know that each one of those verses could be an entire lesson, and each one of those concepts could be an entire lesson, as has been done in other classes. But we're going to try to go through these systematically, just go through the passages verse by verse. And if we don't make it through all of my handout material here, I won't lose any sleep. But hopefully you can look at the with Roger over here on last week. Yeah. And you were saved by grace. And you've been under condemnation. You're already dead. You're just walking around imitating being alive. Yeah.

Well, if death is separation from God, which I think is one of the topics we'll get into in this series, if death is separation from God and not just being out flat without a pulse on a slab, then even though we're walking around it is an imitation of life it is not but it is separation and it's it's being walked out uh... and it just doesn't it just looks like it's alive but it certainly isn't fellowship I find the word in the Greek isoi is so seldom used around uh... this church although it is used but it's a very important word it is and we're actually going to go into it uh... in Ephesians 2.5 which we're going to get to in just a moment because, and it is important, one of the things I want to emphasize, okay, I almost always end up getting to talk about intimacy, it's not my fault, the Apostle Paul goes there.

The other one I've got here, I've got sun, this is the English sun, but the Greek for sun, we'll get into in just a minute, which means together, is a prefix, and in a majority of Well, not the majority. In many of the verses we're going to take a look at. So there's a chance we're going to talk about intimacy together or soon in this class. It's highly likely. But let's take a look at 2.4 and we'll just go through these verses. But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, and then of course it's a run-on sentence as Paul is infamous for in Ephesians.

No, they aren't. They aren't. They're very long and complex. Yes. They do not run on. Well, it's run on. All right. I will stand corrected. I stand corrected. No, it's not. Not at all. No, no, no. It's inspired by him. Absolutely, but the way you would describe the length of the sentence is definitely long. In an action, never mind. Okay, rabbit trail. I'm going to refrain. No, hang on.

The thing is, the way I think of it is that if I were trying to describe this to somebody, it's hard to want to stop and put punctuation. You want to just keep going because it's exciting stuff. When you break it into English, that's where there's complexities.

But God being rich in mercy, and I think mercy is one of those words that we confuse with grace, and so I took a moment to put a definition there. Mercy is the kindness or goodwill towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with the desire to help them. I thought that was an interesting and valuable definition.

When we confuse mercy with grace, that confuses some doctrine. Grace is what? What's our working definition of grace at Holly Hills? The unlimited unmerited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. If that's grace, then mercy is when God is choosing to develop a relationship with us and help us despite our lack of merit.

So the merit comes in again. We can't merit God's mercy. He chooses to love us while we're miserable and afflicted. And He desires to help us. So due to the mercy of God, the rich mercy of God, I always love that when he uses the word rich there, due to that, because of his love which he loved us. And the word agape there is an abounding, benevolent, unmerited love.

Again, the concept of unmerited being tied in. The more I think about merit and unmerited love and grace and mercy, it just causes me to stop and pause and evaluate all of my working definitions for salvation, for things like being justified, being righteous, and the concepts that constantly infiltrate us from the culture about earning salvation. And I have to evaluate those things and make sure that I'm not taking in those bad definitions and those bad concepts.

And instead, I take a look at this love and this mercy and how does God's doing things in a benevolent and loving way caused me to respond to him. I think this is probably the way that I would ask that. How do I respond to God's benevolent, unmerited mercy and love? Do you respond to it by trying to compensate for it? It's unmerited, but I still need to really try to merit it. Or do I respond to love with love? Do I respond to grace with grace? So within the much more care of God, we have his love and we have his mercy.

If we keep on going in Ephesians 2.5, he says, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. And then in parentheses, or at least in English with our grammar, by grace you've been saved. where we are made children or made alive in him. And this is where the word soon comes in. There's a prefix there.

I've got the Greek. I'm going to try to pronounce this, but it's a pretty awesome word with lots of vowels jammed together. Opoeo. It's pretty awesome. We'll pretend that my Greek is useful there. But it means to make alive together with. The English word that we're probably most familiar with that has this soon prefix is the word symphony. Okay, it's the same prefix. It means together.

Okay, so we have a together and then zoe is part of the the word there in Jack was talking about Zoe being life, we have a together life, or we're made alive together with Christ. And I think that that togetherness, it's easy for us to forget what togetherness, made together alive with Christ means. It's easy for us to ignore that fact that we've been made alive together with Christ. It's easy to say I'm a Christian and kind of have that be its own box and not recognize that it's not just a believing system, it's a togetherness system. That soon or together nature of our relationship with Christ, that's the identification.

When we think identification truths, just get out your Greek prefix soon, because you know you're going to get too soon eventually. And that wasn't an intended play on words there, I'm sorry. But we want to recognize that we're made alive together. Our three English words were one Greek word there. For the sake of time, we're going to keep going because we have a whole lot of verses to haul through and make through this. If you have questions, stop me though. If I say something that's mysterious or sounds heretical or whatever else, stop me and we'll try to delve into things.

Ephesians 2.6 Paul continues on that we've been made alive by grace we're saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. At the top of page two there You will see the Greek word sunego, I'm going to obliterate the Greek, I'm not even going to say it, but you can see it starts with that same prefix again, which is the sun prefix, to cause to be raised together.

So they're raised together and then seated together in that verse. Paul is continuing on with this togetherness concept. We're raised with him. We died, we were made alive with him. We were raised with him and we're seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What do we call it? What's our vernacular, our vocabulary for being seated, dying and being raised and seated with him?

What do we call those? Identification. We call those the positional truths. Our identification leads to the positional truths. Where's our position? in the heavenly places. Every time I get to position, it makes me happy and peaceful inside because identification and position lead us to a comfort and a rest and a security of our salvation. I have written several blog posts, I keep a website And I've written a few blog posts about eternal security, about being seated with Christ and not worrying about losing our salvation.

And the problem with putting those on the internet is that anyone anywhere can access them. And Google does wonderful things like lead people who don't agree with me to the website. And there are an array of comments where people, they just want to come up with ways that they themselves can outdo God's work. Every argument comes to me with, well, yes, it's true that these things are here, but I can still walk away and lose my salvation. I can still sin and do this X, Y, and Z and get there. They never offer scripture to justify that position. It's always, I believe I can do this.

But when you take a look at what the scriptures say, and Paul writes here in Ephesians that we're identified with Christ, you can't undo soon in this case. You can't undo the togetherness. You can't undo your death, or Christ's death, and you being identified with him in that. You can't undo his resurrection. You can't undo his burial, or his ascension and seating, which you were identified with him in. You can't do it. So it's one of those problems where, again, the text speaks against the loss of salvation, and instead leads us to peace knowing that God has done the work.

So we've been raised and we've been seated and we have a partnership in our position in Ephesians 2.6. Let's keep going in 7.

This is interesting to me and I never thought about this. He raised us up to sit down. That's awesome isn't it? It's what you do when you're done. You can sit down. Our rest is in Him. And that right there brings peace. Every time people, I was telling Wayne and Sue Anderson gave me a ride again this morning. They're gracious in that. Thank you.

He gave me a ride this morning and I was telling him, I have opportunities to counsel with teenagers in Texas. It's odd, but the Lord has, in the last decade, given me relationships with teenagers in Texas. I can't explain it other than it's his work. And every time they come to me with an issue they're wrestling with, at some point in time, it ties in with, what's your position? Are you justified? Are you identified? Are you glorified? Oh, glorification, what's glorification? It's our position in Christ. We've been glorified. We're seated, so why are we not resting?

Bob Eckel, and he's not here this morning, somebody will make a statement that will go along the lines of, this is what we're called to do. And then Bob will say, how are you doing at that? And Bob, if you're listening to this, it always makes me smile. But he'll ask, how are you doing with that? And the answer is, usually, often, not well, right? But the question we need to ask ourselves is, why are we not resting in that seating? What's getting in the way? But we're going to do another set of classes that will go into that a little bit more deeply. But this is an important doctrinal point, that we are called to rest in our position and in that seating that we have.

Alright, let's keep going with 2.7 just for the sake of time. He continues on, he says, "...so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Paul started in 4 talking about mercy and we talked about a definition for that and now in 7 he's going to tell us about grace a little bit. When my dad was teaching this in the main service, I don't know, this had to be three years ago, four years ago now. It's been some time. He taught this in the main service. But the way he taught this verse has stuck with me.

And he described it as constantly in eternity future going, just in amazement because God is going to be revealing himself and the riches of his grace for eternity future. And that for me is really exciting. I remember being a young child and being told, once I became a believer, that I was going to spend eternity in heaven. And since my attention span was probably that of a Sesame Street episode, a little three minute or less bits, the idea of spending eternity doing anything scared the snot out of me. I thought, I'm going to be so bored. I hope that they have coloring books.

The truth of the matter is that as we describe this as adults, when you start to understand the awesomeness of God, doing something forever is really cool. It's much more exciting than I had thought as a little child to be doing the same thing forever.

We're going to be in awe. And of course you're going to worship and praise God for the amazing things that he's infinitely going to be showing us about his character. And that for me is really cool, to take a look at this and say, hey, in the ages to come, He's going to show us these surpassing riches, the abounding riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Again, we have the concept of being in Christ, identified with Him, and in that identification, the consequences are an eternity of being in awe of the riches of God's grace.

Any thoughts or questions on that? I did want to ask, what is the significance of this passage being, and I apologize, I used on my handout the term run-on sentence, being a run-on sentence throwing so many ideas together about the believer's blessings through identification with Christ. What's the significance of that, just on a literary level? Because we need to remember that as students of God's Word, there is literature here and we need to be able to identify that. That doesn't mean we're just technical about things, but that we recognize there's value to that. What does a lengthy, long sentence inspired by God, sometimes described as a run-on sentence, mean?

Well, there's just so much that you don't want to have a period there because it breaks the flow of the It just keeps going. The way that I've looked at this and kind of thought about God's Word is that when Paul starts to describe the results of our being identified with Christ, the results are so many and so deep, but they're so interrelated, kind of entwined together, that you can't stop.

You can't just say we have this, because really It would be the PowerPoint slide from hell. It just keeps going. Have you ever seen a PowerPoint slide? The more bullet points you put on there, the tinier the text gets. It gets tiny. Paul starts to get to going on there, and the text would be really fine print. Because he starts to outline, even in chapter 1 with verse 3, these long sentences where he starts to outline these identification truths, and the text would get tiny. But Paul doesn't stop because the relationship between them is rich. And I think for us, when we start to see these long sentences and we ask why, the answer is that Paul couldn't break them into small points and display the relationship for us as clearly. So I just think that's kind of a cool result of linguistic constructs. Sorry for being geeky, but I like that a lot.

Let's keep going with Ephesians 2.10 is the next one on our list. We have children of God, a new creation. He says, For we are His workmanship, His being God the Father, His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good work, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

And a long time ago I mistaught this verse and I had to stand up the next week and correct my misteaching. This time I hope to get it right the first time. When you are looking at this verse, what is the consequence of God having planned things for us to be able to do? What are some of the consequences? There's a lot, actually. What are some of the logical consequences? We don't have to figure something out to do it. We can trust that He will provide those for us. We're not making up the list, so to speak. So we don't make the list up.

Have you ever had somebody come up to you and say, I wonder what God's will for my life is? And they start to get worried because they've approached it from a mouse in a maze standpoint. Oh no, I don't know what God's will is and I feel like there's a left and a right and one of them will be the right way and one of them will be the wrong way and I'll go down this whole rabbit trail or mouse maze of wrongness and have to start back over. Instead of trusting that The Lord has a path put for us.

And now what's the one condition for us to fulfill these awesome works? That we're abiding. That we're resting in Him. That we're walking with Him. So that's the only conditional. But the other thing is that it removes merit again. How do you get merited? You know, how do you earn merit badges or points for something he's planned for you to do? Well, you may have been the agent, which he rewards us for, and there's other passages that go into that, but it's not something that we, you know, oh, we get to check off more check boxes. You've got more awesomeness for me. You know, it's just not the way that God has set things in place. I have a list of things here that, as I was meditating on this verse, I thought kind of stood out for me.

This was a required... I'm sorry, that's the next one. Forget that. I jumped ahead of myself. I hate it when I do that. We don't need to have concern over past things. Let's say we blew it. We didn't do that awesome thing that God had planned for us to do. Do we have to worry about that? about when you blow it. Anything? I feel guilt sometimes. Does anybody feel guilt? Okay, some people are nodding. Well, there are missed opportunities that you recognize. There are missed opportunities.

But there's no way to go back, so... No. But what doctrine can we point to that brings us peace? What doctrine that we've been exposed to over time can we point to? Grace is the right answer too. The one I was thinking of is justification. We have been justified in Christ. So when God looks at our record, He sees the righteousness of Christ on that account, so I don't have to beat myself up for it. I used to think that I needed to beat myself up for those kinds of things. If I felt guilty long enough, God would have me back.

That's not the way that this verse should look for us. Instead, it draws our attention forward to the next point where we're abiding and doing God's will. So this draws our eyes forward instead of looking back. This shouldn't cause us to be looking backwards, but instead forwards.

Let's keep going because looking at that clock, there's no way we're going to get through these, but we'll just keep moving forward. Ephesians 2, 11 through 13, I kind of lumped a few together. They weren't on the other handout this way, but I did it that way as an editor.

Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands. Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." This concept of being made near defies merit again.

You're going to see there's a theme. Not only is there togetherness as a body and togetherness with God, but there's a theme of, hey, you can't merit this. If you're a Jew and you've been raised with 613 laws, what are the ways that you see those laws? For me, as a human standpoint, you see them as merit. You see those, hey, I'm a Jew. I'm circumcised. I've got the Sabbath.

You know, I don't do all the extra. See, the Jews didn't leave it at 613 laws. What did they do? They added. I call them buffer laws. If I'm not supposed to work on the Sabbath, then I make tons of laws around that law so that I never even get close to being able to work. In some households, they pre-tear toilet paper. That's work. So you go into the restroom, and hopefully you don't have to work to go to the bathroom. You have the toilet paper pre-torn. It's sitting next to you.

You don't turn on the oven. You just start randomly pushing buttons on the oven. They have Jewish models or Jewish settings on some of these ovens. And you randomly push buttons. And then it randomly comes on after an unknown amount of seconds. And because you're pushing the buttons didn't directly cause it to go on. There's a random timer delay. It's not work. The elevator stops at every floor or goes to random floors.

There are, I mean, there's entire buffer laws that have been adapted for modern living to fit into this don't work on the Sabbath thing. So that you can merit your righteousness. So you work harder in order not to officially work. Yes. They pull the chairs out. Go ahead. Are they buffer laws so that you don't get to the biggie? That's right. Or do they render it, I'm more righteous? Because I never even get to the biggie. It's both. It's a double win. You never get to the biggie and you can feel good about yourself. Because look what I did.

But the thing is that the Gentiles didn't have this whole system. So Paul is saying to them, hey, you guys, you've been drawn near and you never had the system. And he's telling the Jews, hey, the system never got you anywhere anyways. So as we take a look at this passage, we can see that the circumcision, which the Jews prided themselves on, didn't get them anywhere. The whole system fell short of making them righteous.

If you want to take a look more in depth, you can put a cross-reference of Romans chapter 4. We've been going over that at Mike Doyle's Bible study on Wednesday nights. If you're able to make that, I strongly recommend it. But Romans chapter 4 would be on there. I've got a list here, which I mentioned earlier because I jumped ahead of myself, that I want to kind of quickly just point out.

It was a required transaction that we could not orchestrate, this blood transaction that Christ performed. It was required for us to have a relationship with God. We couldn't orchestrate it. Who could orchestrate it? Why would he do it? Based on earlier verses. His benevolent, his mercies and his love and his grace. There was a required agent, Christ, whom we could not facilitate.

We couldn't, of our own accord, get a Christ. We couldn't make a Christ. We couldn't reproduce. Being descendants of Adam, the only thing that we can have as offspring are descendants of Adam. We couldn't make a Christ. We couldn't do it of our own accord, despite trying in various ways.

There was a required offering, which we could not afford. Even if we could get a hold of a Christ for such a sum as even Bill Gates might not be able to afford, we still couldn't do that. It required an understanding of mercy that we could not understand or define. When you start to describe mercy and grace on human terms, it comes up short of describing the mercy and grace that God defines in scripture. The only thing that we could even tie into as far as a requirement is it requires us only to believe. It doesn't require us to do any works to earn, receive, orchestrate, or plan, or throw together. We simply believe. And then we're made near.

Then we're under the precious blessing of Christ's blood, and we're identified with God. So, that's 11 through 13. Continuing on with Ephesians, in 2.18, He says, for through Him we both, and by both he's talking about Jews and Gentiles, we both have our access in one spirit to the Father. So in Him being Christ the Son, and I taught on the Trinity a couple weeks ago after Brad, and so this is one of those verses that we pointed to, but we have Him being the Son, we have access in one spirit, the Holy Spirit, to the Father. So we have all three parts of the Trinity in this verse. But we have, again, we have this concept of being able to have relationship and being able to draw near. The fact that the Holy Spirit seals us is an important part of our being able to draw near. Let me ask this.

When we talked about losing our salvation, Would being sealed be a problem? If you talk about losing your salvation, if God does the sealing, can we undo God's sealing? If God did the work, and scripture, especially here in Ephesians, it's really clear, God did the work, can we unseal? Can we be unseated and unascended and unraised from the dead?

These things are constantly, this identification causes us to have to ask, is this even possible? We didn't merit it. We didn't do it in the first place. We can't undo it. I would love to think that I have even a fraction of the power to do that. I don't.

Wouldn't that be awesome to think that you have that kind of a power to be able to undo a fraction of what God could do? That would be an awesome amount of power. God's infinite power goes beyond that, and that's what holds us there, and holds us to Him, and holds us close. But we can have access, and I think access to God as a believer is probably one of the things that guilt draws our attention away from. When the flesh wants to try to fix things, we feel guilt. Oh, I wish I could have gone back and done that thing that God had planned for me to do.

I probably don't have access to God right now. His grace and mercy is infinite and unlimited and unmerited, but... And we start to guilt ourselves into this state of feeling awkward and unable to draw close to the Lord. Paul doesn't paint that picture for us. He says, hey, you're already seated. Why don't you take advantage of that access that you have?

So we have access to God, Ephesians 2.18.

But then he keeps going, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household. And right there Paul demolishes any bloodline problems that the Jews would have with the Gentiles and says you've got a new bloodline and a new household, deal. Get over yourselves. That circumcision is on a piece of your body that is going to be replaced. You're going to have a new body and it's going to be from your new father in heaven that you are intimately related with. It's going to be of the new prototype, if you will, the new type that is Christ. So, we're no longer strangers and aliens, but we're fellow citizens. What are the chances that the word soon shows up here. When he says fellow, it's almost always the English translation of fellow or it goes back to the Greek of the soon prefix. Having a fellow or same citizenship.

How did Paul use, on an earthly conditional sense, use same citizenship to his advantage? Anyone have any recollection of that? He went on a journey because of it. He was a Roman citizen. He said, hey, I'm a fellow citizen. I demand to go see Caesar, as is my right, as a fellow citizen. He knew what it meant. I mean, when Paul writes the Ephesians about being a fellow citizen, he knows that they know, and he certainly knew firsthand, that being a fellow citizen means something. your fellow citizens.

The Ephesians, maybe some of you will know this, the Ephesians had a group of Jews that had been transplanted to Ephesus. by a move of the Roman Empire, they offered them I think it was tax-free status, if I recall correctly, and Roman citizenship if they relocated into Ephesus. They wanted to populate this area with Roman citizens, so they gave them a bunch of benefits. It's kind of like being a member of Congress. You suddenly get all these benefits and all these other things. No, it wasn't that extreme. See, I should watch out. That's politics. I'm just going to grab a trail. But you have, for these Ephesian citizens, they understand fellow citizenship. So, that's an important thing there. We have managed, if you can believe it, to almost be done with Ephesians chapter 2 for this series, but we are not done yet. 2.20, he keeps going because because there's a lot of things for Paul to talk about.

He says, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. The word that we have translated as cornerstone would possibly be able to be translated to the extreme cornerstone, denoting an ultimate height. a uniqueness that would establish it different from any other stone that could be put into a building. I like that it had the word extreme there because it reminded me of all the marketing that the world does to sell us extreme products. I don't think we want to market Christ, but the idea of having an extreme Seder just kind of made me smile.

But we have this cornerstone. Now, what's the importance of a cornerstone? Everybody might know this. At our house, we have some interesting foundational issues that have shown up over time as the ground around our house moves. And so I can tell you that having solid cornerstones is an important element in building. You want to have a foundation. You want to have something that is perfectly placed and perfectly square and able to make measuring everything else accurate and a direct thing that you can do.

If everything is just juxtaposed in a random order, you're going to have problems because your cornerstone is critical. Fortunately, we have an extreme or highest and perfect cornerstone that we can measure or can be measured along and next to. Alright, we made it to chapter 3.

I don't know how far we'll get into chapter 3, but there's only one verse in chapter 3, so let's take a look at Ephesians 3.6. Can I add something about your cornerstone? You absolutely can.

Go for it. When we were in Israel, we were told another place where the cornerstone is very significant, that is your archway. The doors that have an arch, they put the middle one in, That is the cornerstone. It holds everything together. Yeah. That's a good one too.

Have you ever seen the kids building block sets for that to build an arch? They make them. They're probably expensive. I've only seen them at children's museums. Well, yes. That would be probably what that would be. The one that's high. Yeah, in the middle, I think.

But building those is unique. And if you don't have all the pieces in all the right places, it falls down. If they're all in the right place and everything's measured correctly, you've got something. But if there's errors in your measurement, it can be very exciting or deadly, depending on what you're doing. But for kids, watching it fall is exciting.

So Ephesians 3.6. To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. And that is definitely a soon-laden sentence. They're fellow heirs, all right, so receiving the blessings of God, the Jews and the Gentiles, again, tied together.

Now, Paul, when he is building in chapter three, is making sure that he has driven the largest cat tractor bulldozer you have ever seen through the Jew versus Gentile mindset that the people in Ephesus might have had. He's wiping away every argument that they might possibly have to let the Jews feel superior. Paul was a Jew. He knew how exciting it could be to be an arrogant Jew who thought he had everything. but he's wiping that away.

He's instead leading them to verse 14 where he's going to talk about the fatherhood of God and how the Father is going to bring the Jews and the Gentiles together under a new family name or a universal family name. But in 3.6 he says that they have a togetherness as fellow heirs. Oh, you've got togetherness. Gentile. And what are the heirs to? Any guesses? The Jews? No, no. All the blessings. They're going to receive these blessings that we see in Ephesians 1. So we are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body. So if you're going to talk about fellow heirs, that's That's co-heirs we're going to receive together. But then he says of the body, and it's of the body as a single body, describing one man.

So even that has been eroded away in this new work of Christ and the Church. So all the things that they'd held onto for separation could be potential problems. Paul is taking them apart. And then he says, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Again, a fellow or a together or a soon concept.

So there is nothing that they can have that they can see separately. Now, we don't have the problem of Jew versus Gentile. at Holly Hills if I'm not mistaken. Anybody see that as a problem? And I don't know about it. Awesome. Cool. So what we have instead, and I'm going to draw a modern application that principle still carries on.

Does it matter how long somebody has been a believer that you might still be able to learn from them? Not really. Does it matter how old somebody is? Do you ever find yourself thinking, well, Randy's too young or too old. Maybe you do. Maybe you think, Randy, this Randy guy, he's a young punk. He thinks too much of himself. Or maybe you don't think that. Maybe that's fine. But the problem that can happen, because I'm going to tell you a little self-testimony story of God's growing me.

And my parents moved here, let's see, that was in 2001, I think. It was right before 9-11. And they moved here. we we came and I'll be honest I'm gonna say some things that sound age discriminatory okay because I was a young punk alright so we came and there was a lot of people that were not my age okay and and and they were older than me okay so so I was I was young I was twenty oh shoot I can't do the math anyways it was a long time ago so I was in my twenties and uh Hal Malloy came up to me and Hal said, So Randy, nice to meet you and nice to meet you Hal, another elder with my dad. When are you going to move here? Come to Holly Hills.

And in my mind I did some really fast thinking because I had to come up with an excuse to make sure that I was around a church with young people because that was in my mind foremost the biggest priority. So I said, I've got this new job and I was just about to come around to the one year anniversary. 9-11 is actually the anniversary of my working at Alt-N.

So I had this new job and I got it. It's really good. And it's providing for my family and we're going to stick with that. See, I worked it out. I was fast thinking. I had an answer for how. I could say I don't need to move here where there's these people who are not my age group. And then I went home. And guess what?

We went to a church where, for several months, we were looking for a church. We went to a church where, not surprisingly, we were the youngest people. And the pastor said something that really landed and planted a seed in my heart. He said, if you go into a church and there are not people with gray hair. He said, gray hair. I'm not trying to sing. He said, if you go into a church and there are not people with gray hair, turn around and walk right back out.

He said, because who are you going to learn from? The people who have gone before you. Why does scripture call for there to be elders? Because the older people have learned and God has grown them and you need to be discipled and trained up from them and grown up. I am so honored to be at Holly Hills, despite my discrimination and my ignorance when I was younger, because the older people have taught me so much. And you know what? I'm discovering that even though I wasn't older then, I'm getting there. Yesterday was my daughter's fourth birthday. I don't know how she turned four, what happened to the last four years.

And so I humbly take it as an opportunity to be able to teach those who come after me because I'm being taught by those who've gone before me. So the discrimination that may have been through Jew versus Gentile doesn't matter. We can still see that same kind of mindset where, hey, there's separation.

I'm different. Especially the world likes to tell us we're different. You know, Apple sells products that think different. Okay? I own Apple products, so I have that problem. But the thing is that as we're told to be different and to emphasize those differences, what does scripture tell us? That we have a difference and a distinction. We're different from the world.

Have more genius in playing together and do your part, but do it with you know, appropriately with the others. Yeah. We have an agency that we've been given in the body. These works have been planned for us to do. If we're abiding, we'll do them. But we're going to do them together. We're going to serve together. We're going to love together.

I was really jealous. I mean that in a godly way. I was really jealous because I heard a couple months ago that folks went over to the Matthews house and helped in their basement and I wasn't invited. I wanted to be over there hauling concrete out of the basement or whatever it was that happened that weekend because serving was an awesome opportunity. But you know what? I don't think God planned for me to be able to do it that weekend because I wasn't invited and I'm okay with that. I'm still a little jealous, but it's okay.

But as we look at the text, and we didn't get to finish through everything, there's only a few more verses if you want to at home do some study, take a look at Ephesians 4.6, 4.30, 4.32, 5.2, and 5.8.

As we look at this, we're identified with Christ and we're identified together. There's a togetherness with Christ and a togetherness with one another in the body. Alright, let's close in prayer. Hopefully we covered enough material that you feel confident in your understanding of identification. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we can study together and share together and talk together and fellowship together and understand more deeply that we are together. Thank you for your love and your mercy. Thank you for your grace and thank you for bringing each one of these beautiful and wonderful people into my life and into our lives together. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.