In 2023 I had a (possibly) bad idea, but I had a good reason. Not quite two years later, I’m still in the same place.
My questionable idea in 2023 was to preach one sermon on the entire first chapter of Ephesians. How could I do that? There’s so many good things said in Ephesians 1, so many spiritual blessings mentioned. True, there are. But here was/is my good reason for drinking from the firehose that is Ephesians 1: Every year, studies show that Biblical literacy (familiarity with the basic content and storyline of the Bible) is declining. In fact, it’s declining across all categories – Christians and non-Christians, people who go to church and people who don’t, even among incoming seminary students.
In short, we know increasingly less about the Bible. There is a time and a place to study Ephesians 1 deeply and slowly. (In our church, that happened at the Friday Men’s Bible Study. It took them years, and they recently finished. On to Philippians!) But there’s also a time and a place to proclaim the whole counsel of God – to expose as many people to as many of the great truths of the Bible as possible.
So, Ephesians 1, drinking from the firehose, might be a bad idea. But I have a good reason – I want us to know the grand metanarrative of scripture – the height, breadth, and depth. I won’t explain every detail, but I’ll try to highlight the main ones.
My other ideas and goals for doing only one sermon on a densely-packed chapter like Ephesians 1 were the following:
- I really wanted to preach a series on Ephesians 4, but I thought I had to attempt to set the context.
- Ephesians 4 (and part of chapter five) is a great summary of life together as the body of Christ.
- For those reasons and more, I’m going to revisit Ephesians, especially chapter four, in a series of blog posts for as long as it takes me. What does any church need? To know God more, to know His Word more; and walking through Ephesians is a one great way to get a summary of the most important teaching in Scripture.
- Practically speaking, what’s this going to look like? I’m going to blog more often, and I’m hoping to make every other week a post from Ephesians. I hope they will be a manageable size, meaning 500-700 words, so that you can read them in 2-4 minutes. (Fair warning in case I exceed that word count in the future: “All preachers have an uncrucified lust for the sound of their own voice.” So said Steve Fults, a ruling elder in Texas, who was joking. A little. I think. I hope.)
I also hope to make future posts a bit more cohesive in their theme, but this is an introduction, so I guess it brought out my scatterbrained side. With that, here’s one final introductory thought before I dive into Ephesians more next time.
Why did Paul write the letter of Ephesians? Scholars debate different reasons, which may not be mutually exclusive, but we can say something definitive about the circumstances surrounding the writing of this letter. Eph. 6:19-20 says that Paul is in prison, but his biggest prayer in those verses is not to get out of jail. His biggest prayer is to proclaim the gospel clearly and boldly. Isn’t that a great way to describe what Paul does throughout the six chapter of Ephesians? He proclaims the gospel clearly and boldly, despite being in prison as he writes.
We could also say it this way – Paul has an earthly problem, but he’d rather tell other people about spiritual blessings. We all have problems, and I plan to talk specifics once we get to Ephesians 4 and slow down. But first, we need to remember who we are – our identity in Christ, the blessings we have in Christ, and the experience of knowing Christ more closely. I’ll explore those themes more in future posts.