Dear Village Church, feel I need to lead you into this year, set it up for this year. Give you something of a vision for this year, 2003, help you to continue to live in this city, in this church. And I can think of no better way to do that really than to tell you why I'm here, why I would want to be a pastor, even, and much more your pastor. And why we are going to be going through the book of Ephesians, starting with today, why we're going to take a walk through that. So let me try to tell you that. But once upon a time, there was a finely educated, very earnest young man, and like many earnest young men, this young man set out on a quest for the truth. He wanted to know the truth, he really wanted to get it. So he entered a specific regiment of self-discipline, learning how to fine tune his reactions to all external events, to achieve personal growth and happiness, and he advanced quite far in this regiment, it's really doing well. But one day, he approached one of his professors and he asked, what about God? How can I find God? How can I come to see God? And the young man met with a blanks there, as he found that not only was this teacher unable to tell him how to find God, the teacher didn't even think that it was necessary to bother raising the question. So the young man packed his bags and he left. And then the young man fell in with a group of tutors who were quite versed in how to find God. They had mapped it all out. And the young man was very excited about this. He decided that this was his path, and he was on the way, and he was there, he was with them, he was going to be under there to the village until he found out that they wanted him to pay, pay him money regularly in order to help him find God. He got thoroughly disillusioned and he left. Next, he found a very celebrated professor who offered a program in advanced spirituality. And it was really just what he thought. Now, he thought this was very exciting. He was advanced spirituality. Money wasn't a problem. There were scholarships available. So he was very excited to enter into this tutelage. But what happened was when he went through the application process, he was rejected. Because he found out during the application process that this advanced course of study required previous degrees and of all things, music, geometry, and astronomy. Now the young man had some degrees, but not in these particular disciplines, so he wasn't accepted. He was heartbroken about it. But after all this, the man, not as young as before, but still on his quest, took up the study of really the most common and resilient philosophy, religious system of his time. And this time he thought he had it. His mind sprouted wings, so he felt. It encouraged piety. He found it to be a satisfying and robust worldview, explained a lot, gave him some piece. It also led to the expectation in him of, at the conclusion, at least in the study somewhere along the line, coming as close as someone could come to actually looking upon God, actually finding God. Well, one day, this man went down to the beach to meditate. He found a field right near the beach where he could go and he could be completely obsessed with things. No one was ever there. But this particular day that he went, an old man happened to be walking by, and there was something about him, something about how he carried himself, that drew this man's eyes. So he found himself just staring at this old man. So the old man asked him, why are you staring at me? And our friend answered, he stumbled around for an answer and said, well, I didn't expect anyone to be here. The old man said, well, he was looking for someone from his household, why are you here? And our friend answered, well, this is because, this is just what I do. I think, and I meditate, you know, and I philosophize. The old man said, that's it. Nothing useful. And our friend returned, oh, wait, whoa, this is the most useful thing to do. Because I'm on a track to finding truth. And that's going to benefit everybody. And people think things through. It not only leads to happiness, true happiness, but also it enlightens all. We find truth, we find God. The old man began to question our friend. And he asked him what he meant by God, what was the meaning of happiness. And that began a long conversation in which the old man gently riddled our friend's worldview with holes. And he left him without an answer. That's this old guy on the beach. He became clear through the course of this conversation, this amazing conversation. That was all that he had read and studied, all the places he had been. He had not found what he was looking for. And this old man had it. And he asked the old man where he'd learned these things. And the man said, from the Bible, among Christians, this conversation led to our friend getting a Bible, going to church, and eventually converting to Christianity. The young man's name was Justin Martins. The time was during the reign of Antoninus Pius during the middle of the second century. And I wish on my soul that I could tell you the name of the old man because nobody knows. And this conversation took place at the port city of Ephesus. Well, I can't tell you the old man's name. I can tell you this. Justin Martins went on to become the foremost Christian apologist of the second century. His writings are among the most important we have from that hundred years, from that era. And he put Christianity on the intellectual map of the Roman Empire. He ended up affecting a large number of people, large number of conversions. He really transformed, helped to transform the look of the Roman Empire, just what was going on. And I can't tell you that Justin had gone down to that beach a couple of hours earlier. He would have missed him. Had he gone down to the beach a couple of hours later, he wouldn't have seen the old man either. This took place at the port city of Ephesus. I have a deep desire, I have a growl in my guts, to engage our culture with Christianity. Have you noticed? I am a Christian. I'm also an American, I'm a New Yorker, and I'm essentially a villager. Not that I have an apartment in a village, I wouldn't want you to think more of me than you want to, but I'm essentially a villager. And from my core, I desire to translate the ancient scriptures and their message about Jesus Christ into an intelligible language and our post-Christian Manhattan-dominated land. And I have searched for the best way to do that. It won't tell you that even up until two years ago, I was not interested in being a pastor, because I didn't think that was the way to do it. However, began to realize something. I began to realize that the categories in which I was thinking were not biblical categories. I was aspiring to a Christian office, but what I began to see was what Paul tells us here. Is that the Christian offices, the offices in Christ kingdom, were ones that were devoted to the church. And the most powerful way to actually confront a culture was not by writing a book about it, or talking about it, or making even a great movie. These are great things by themselves. But what possessed someone like Justin, as he says in the first quotation in the beginning of your bolt-in, was both understanding the scriptures and falling in love with the community of believers. It was the Bible and the people of God, the church, that did it. What I began to understand is what Paul writes in the last verse of our passage, verse 23. When he says, a fullness of Christ is the church. The fullness of Christ is the church. The way that Christ exhibited its mighty power in the world was the church. The greatness of Christ rule came through the church. So I came to see the most powerful way to engage the culture of New York, really anywhere, is to help build a church of worshiping believers, strong and grace, living out their lives in the peaceful boldness of the Holy Spirit, whatever God gives them a to do, to equip them to give an answer to those around them, to assist them, to live piously and theologically and in community. For such a community will reside a long time, and will have an effect under Jesus Christ's rulership that can change the world. Now who really changed the course of Western civilization back there in the second century? It was that old man on the beach. And it really gets me that we don't know the name of this guy that converted just in March. All we know is from the church of Ephesus. He was a guy on a beach from Ephesus. But what a church it must have done. And I wanted to begin the first part of our year by looking at the teaching that gave Ephesus a foundation that lasted for 100 years. Why do I say that? A foundation that lasted for 100 years, because it was a foundation that made it a kind of place that produced persons like the one that converted with Justin, conversely with Justin. Because by the 90s AD, that's 30 years after Paul's letter, the 90s AD, the scriptures assert that the church at Ephesus had grown to be a stronghold of the Christian faith. Where people were known for great patience, great perseverance, and for standing stowardly in defense of the gospel. They really knew their stuff. And yet they had this piety, this perseverance among the people that they lived in in that city. It was a community that struck people by its piety and philosophy, as Justin put it there in second quotations, piety and philosophy. That's the record of the Ephesian community in the 90s, when the man that converted Justin Mario was probably at least a little boy, probably about the age of J. At least. Because it was 50 years, some 50 years after that, the conversation with Justin Marler and that old man took place on a beach. So the village church would be that kind of community that the church at Ephesus was to do the work that Ephesus did. We would do well to study the kind of teaching that made it that way, and that's why we are beginning today going through the book of Ephesians. Now after saying that, if we start with chapter 1 verse 1, I need to say that from what we can piece together, this epistle of Paul is probably not written to Ephesus. It's best to understood to be what I would call a tractate circular. That's a treatise. It's meant to go around to a number of different places, meant to go to a number of churches, not Ephesus, although it eventually ended up there. Now, those of you who are just waking up and say, hey, Ab, can you say something like that? How can you say that what we call the letter of the Ephesians was not written to the Ephesians? Well, I don't have time right now to lay out the reasoning for that, but that would be a good question for you to raise. Let's come to the question and answer periods that we have after every service here at the village church. If that really bothers you or if something else I say, anything I say really bothers you, we want to provide a forum for you to come and give a report or ask for clarification, and I guess we will be having that downstairs. If you're someone already on the way to getting that, she wants to get a good seat, but we provide that forum for you. So you can respond to the things I'm saying. So it's not just this talking head. Okay, and last week, Vito and I had a great time talking about whether we really do read into the Old Testament things from the New Testament or is that message of grace that we talk about here? Is that really in the things that are said in the Old Testament? Great probing questions made us all think. But the reason I bring that up, that Ephesians is a tractate letter, this is circular, rather than being strictly an ad hoc pastoral response like many of other Paul's letters are. It's because, we don't bring that up to this, because it was meant to go around to a number of churches, it had to be more general, this letter. And because it was necessarily more general, it's more systematic in its presentation. And that's helpful to us. His Paul is not trying to put out a fire here. He's not needing to address a specific problem or situation. He is simply trying to establish these churches that have sprung up, apparently not from his hand as he indicates in verse 15, and he says, you know, when I heard of your faith. He wants to tell these churches of the piety and the philosophy that are necessary to found them on the truth, like Ephesus, was founded during his three years, so during their earlier. To these Gentile churches, located in the geographical area of Ephesus, in the area around, you know, on the modern city of Izir, you would look on a map. But in a Roman world, mixed with Gentiles and Jews and a pluralistic culture and an international culture and an immoral culture, the apostle delivers here the most basic orientation. So in a word, it's about how to do church. Now why is Paul so interested in showing them the church, talking about the church? Because he says he's come to recognize that the power of Christ, the reign of Christ, the two themes of his prayer, if we look for themes in this prayer, and the ways to change the world, about which we'll speak of next week, are for the church. That's what Paul says in verse 19, he says the power of Christ is for us, the church. In verse 22, he says the reign of Christ, the authority and rulership of Christ, is for the church. So that's what Paul is interested in. And he uses a preposition there when he says for the church in verse 22, it's not overly common preposition and great. It's one of these prepositions you really have to think about using, if you want to use it. And he really wants to say it really needs to denote that something is being on behalf of or for the sake of. Paul is really trying to say that the ruling power and rulership of Christ is for the benefit of the communities that found themselves on Christ, the communities we call the church. The church is his concern, it's his instrument. And so, as we see in verse 15, that's what inspires Paul in his own mission. You've got to understand Paul was driven, a man driven, to get this message out and around to the Roman Empire, all over the Roman Empire as far as he could. That's what he was driven. That was his mission. And yet what inspires him and what's going on here in these clusters of community is, as he says in verse 15, is their love for all the saints and their faith, their piety and their philosophy. He says that ever since he heard of their faith and their love, he hasn't stopped giving thanks. He's delighting in their community because Paul must have come to see to believe that this is the way Christ rules extended. This is how to accomplish his mission through communities of people successfully holding the faith and loving each other, forgiving each other, demonstrating unity, as we talked about this morning. And that will produce amazing old men on the beach in 100 years. We don't seem to know how amazing they are because that's what affected Justin. That's what struck him. And that's, it is through that community, that piety and philosophy that Justin came to experience just what you heard sung about during the offatory. It's sung so beautifully, that experience. That's what led Justin to that experience. So he praised for them, Paul does in verse 17, for their piety and their philosophy. He asked that they be given spiritual wisdom and revelation. Revelation is something that's necessary to our philosophy, which we have now contained in the scriptures. And wisdom, which in the scriptures means the practical outworking of our philosophy, the know-how of community living. And this is all, says Paul, to know him. It's not only in order to know him, but it's because of knowing him that this comes about. Now he got not to just look on him as Justin dared to hope to do, but to actually know God. You know God through this piety, this philosophy. And that's the truth. Through the revelation of the wisdom of Christ in community, we come to know him. Who is, if you can receive it, in himself communal in his very nature. So Paul brings out the Trinity here into view in verse 17, calling on the Father, the Christ, and the Spirit. Because this emphasis on a community is something that's contained in God himself. Well, Justin was eventually martyred for his faith, hence the name. Giving up his life under a man who, in opposition to Christianity, was opposing ironically the first system that Justin studies. Paul the Apostle poured out his life for these communities of faith that sprung up around Ephesus. This vicinity is where he was probably arrested the second time that led to his martyrdom. I know Justin, and I am certainly no Paul, that I am their follower in now recognizing the way to see the power of the resurrection unleashed in our city is by assisting the formation of a worshiping community of Jesus Christ. And they are my ancestors in loving the community that changes the world.
And so, dear villager church, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not seek to give thanks for you remembering you in my prayers. At the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, you, the fullness of God. If that's what Christ is about, and that's how we know God, then I want to give my life for that too. How about you?