Think for a minute about your favorite novel or your favorite movie. If you wanted to share it with a friend, would you only share the last chapter or the final ten minutes, or would you want your friend to experience the whole thing? Obviously, it’s the whole thing. The ending only really makes sense if we’ve understood how it fits into the whole.
Sometimes when we study the Bible, we want to focus tightly on a single verse or paragraph. There might be other times, however, when it seems wise to work through larger sections of text—whole chapters even. And on rare occasions, we might be brave enough to hear a text the way the early church first heard it: in its entirety. Guess which approach we’re taking today!
In Ephesians 6:10-20, Paul writes a famous passage about being strong in the Lord and putting on God’s armor as we fight against the malicious schemes of the devil. Over the next eight weeks, we’re going to be digging deeply into this text to learn how we can “stand firm” in this spiritual battle that we’re always in, whether we’ve realized it or not. To begin, however, I want us to hear the whole letter and not only its climax. It’s helpful to understand why Paul would exhort the church to “Finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might.” He’s going to talk about a lot of good things throughout this epistle that Satan works hard to corrupt, and these are things we care about. Maybe you’ve never read Ephesians before, but when we’re finished this morning, you will have heard it, and I hope we will all have listened for the things God wants us to hear.
— Patrick Barber
0 Comments