SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/7/2019 10:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Intro
to Eph. 6:18-24)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:18-24
Message of the verses: “18 In all your petitions pray at all times with
every kind of spiritual prayer, keeping alert and persistent as you pray for
all Christ’s men and women.
19 And pray for me,
too, that I may be able to speak the message here boldly, to make known the
secret of that gospel 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I
may speak out about it as is my plain and obvious duty. 21 Tychicus, beloved
brother and faithful Christian minister, will tell you personally about my
affairs and how I am getting on. 22 I am sending him to you bringing this
letter for that purpose, so that you will know exactly how we are and may take
fresh heart. 23 Peace be to all Christian brothers, and love with faith from
God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! 24 Grace be with all those who love
our Lord Jesus Christ with unfailing love” (Philips).
I
want to begin this SD by looking at Luke 18:1 “Now He was telling them a
parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,” When physical battles and also spiritual
battles go on for a long time soldiers in both battles become tired, weak, and
discouraged. MacArthur writes “In the struggle with Satan, it
is either pray or faint. Paul’s closing
admonition for believers to ‘pray at all times’ is not accidental. Not only does it give final instruction about
the believer’s warfare but it is the climactic truth of the entire epistle,
because prayer fills all of Christian life.
Prayer is the crescendo at the end of Paul’s anthem of Ephesians.”
He
goes on to write “No New
Testament book so fully delineates the resources and blessings of the believer
as does Ephesians. Throughout the book
Paul magnifies and expands the truth that he briefly mentioned in Colossians
‘in Him you have been made complete’ (2:10) and that Peter touched on in his
second epistle, ‘His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to
life and godliness’ (1:3). Here is a
monumental catalog of all that is ours in Jesus Christ.”
As
I was going over the commentary from John MacArthur I ran across a chapter that
gives the outline of the book of Ephesians and so I went to gty.org and began
to listen to the sermon because I think it is important that we understand the
entire outline of Ephesians and how these last seven verses fit into the rest
of the book, and so I have copied this section from his sermon given in late
2008. One thing I will say and that is
that during his sermon series in 2008 MacArthur only went over the spiritual
armor and so he felt it was important to give a review of the entire book of
Ephesians, again to show how the last seven verses fell into place with the
rest of the book.
“It’s crucial for us to back up a
little bit and capture the essence of this whole epistle.
“And I know that’s hard, we haven’t
really studied it together, but you might be familiar enough with it to follow,
tracking with me a little bit. Let’s go back to chapter 1 for a moment for this is the
context in which we are to understand prayer. If there is any epistle in
the New Testament that celebrates what we have in Christ, it is this epistle.
It is an accumulation of blessings and benefits and privileges and gifts and
empowerments. In chapter 1, verse 3; we are blessed with all spiritual blessings or every spiritual blessing
in the heavenlies in Christ.
“In verse 4, we are chosen in Him
before the foundation of the world to become holy and blameless. The end of
verse 4 and into verse 5, we are loved so as to be predestined to be adopted as
sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. Verse 7, He has given us redemption,
which includes the forgiveness of our trespasses to the degree that is
commensurate with the richness of His grace.
“We are even given an inheritance,
verse 11 and that inheritance is an inheritance that is described for us
elsewhere in Scripture as undefiled, that fades not away, is incorruptible, and
is lavish. We are made secure, verse 13. We are sealed in Him with the Holy
Spirit of promise, which is the pledge of our inheritance, which guarantees the
redemption of God’s own possession for the ending point of all, and that is the
glory that belongs only to Him.
“In chapter 2, we start out
realizing that we are dead in trespasses and sin, we’re under control of the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that works in the children of
disobedience, which children all of us are. We live in the lusts of the flesh,
desires of the flesh and lusts guide us, guard us, motivate us, drive us, and
compel us. We are by nature headed for divine wrath like everybody else.
“But, verse 4 says, “God who is rich
in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were in
that condition, raised us with Christ, seated us with Him in the heavenlies in
Christ. We are alive and we
shall live forever.” We are objects of grace and will always be. In
verse 7, it says that God is going to show us the riches of His grace in
kindness through Christ Jesus, not just in time, but in the ages to come.
Eternally, we will receive His grace. Verse 10 says we are His masterpiece, His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God designed from
the very, very beginning.
“We are, according to verses 13 and
following, brought near who were formerly far off. Brought near to whom? Brought near to God, brought
near to one another, both Jew and Gentile made one, the barrier between the two
broken down, abolished in His flesh; that is, in His death at the cross.
We are members of His family, verse 19. We are God’s household. We are, in verse
22, a building in which the Holy Spirit lives.
“In chapter 3, there are many more
elements to the blessedness that has been given to us - fellow heirs,
fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel. We are part of the manifold wisdom of God, manifest through
the church to the heavenly authorities; that is, to the angels, both holy and
unholy. Chapter 3 ends with a prayer that we would understand the riches, verse
16, of His glory. That we would be strengthened with the available power
through the Holy Spirit in our inner man, that we would experience Christ
settling down in our hearts, being rooted and grounded in love which is shed
abroad in us.
“He prays that we would be able to grasp with all saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of
Christ, which surpasses knowledge. To be able to get a comprehension of the
vastness of this saving love, that we would experience the fullness of God,
that we would know what it means to do exceeding abundantly beyond all we can
ask or think according to the power that works not outside of us but inside of
us so that God can be glorified through His church.
“Those are just some of the statements in the opening
three chapters that tell us who we are in Christ, what it means to be a
Christian. It is lavish, it is massive, it is high and low and wide. And that
is how it’s described.
“Starting in chapter 4, we are called on to act like
this. Since we possess the Son of God and the Spirit of God and have a
relationship with God the Father, since we are members of the body of Christ,
since we are in the church and come under the direction and leadership of the
apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the teaching pastors who are given
to the church for the perfecting of the saints, since all these things work for
us and in us, since we are growing together into Christlikeness, we need to
make sure, verse 17 says, that we don’t live the way we used to live, we don’t
walk the way we used to walk, since, verse 20 says, we have learned Christ,
we’ve been taught the truth, our old self laid aside with all its lusts and
corruption.
“We need to be continually being
renewed in the spirit of our minds, put on fully the new self in the likeness
of God, that new self having been created in righteousness and holiness of the
truth.
“Then he talks about some very
practical things that we are to do. We are, in chapter 5, to be imitators of
God, as beloved children. We are to walk in love as Christ loved us. Verse 8 of
chapter 5 says since we dwell in light, we are to walk in light. Chapter 5,
verses 15 and following, says be careful how you walk, not as unwise but as
wise. We’re to talk in love, we’re to walk in light, and we’re to walk in wisdom.
We’re to walk in the fullness of the Spirit, verse 18, and be being kept filled
with the Holy Spirit. We have the power of the Spirit for every relationship
and marriage, family, work, every relationship.
“And finally he comes down to
chapter 6 and verse 10 and says we have received armor.
Though we have all these things, we have a formidable foe, and we need to be
armed to have victory over him, and we’re given the armor. On top of all the
things we’re given through the five chapters, we’re also given this added armor
to defend ourselves against the onslaught of Satan as he works the world system
against our sinful flesh.
“Bottom line, we have all things
that pertain to life and godliness, we lack nothing. But it is precisely at
this point that there is a potentially destructive problem. You might call it
spiritual overconfidence. “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he
fall.” By the time you got to verse 17 of Ephesians 6, if you just swept
through it with me, there might be a sort of a sense of invincibility. Since
you have all blessings, all power, all resources, all grace, and since victory
is guaranteed, triumph is settled.
“And you have the Spirit as a seal
of that final triumph and a full inheritance. Since you are secure forever,
since you have all of these things, you might think that that is, in itself,
enough. But I remind you, we are still human, we still have remaining sin. We
still operate with the principles of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, in their death throes. Though we are a new creation, we are incarcerated
in that flesh. And we cannot become smug and feeling adequate, think we can
just march on in the understanding of these theological truths with no need of
God.
“When all is said and done, when all is in place, verse 18
brings us to the culmination. “Take all this armor, put it on. With all prayer and
petition, pray at all times in the Spirit.” You might think that there’s
nothing you lack, but that would be wrong. We are all vulnerable. We can all stumble. We can
all fall into sin. We can all be defeated along the way. We can bring dishonor
on the Lord and shame on His church. We can wound ourselves in the matter of
sin and disobedience to the degree that we destroy our personal testimony and
our opportunity for service and usefulness to the Lord. We can forfeit our joy.”
It is my hope to finish this
introduction in our next SD, Lord willing.
We continue to look at verses from
Job, Job 2:11-13, from our quotation from “Love in Action.”
Now when Job’s three friends
heard of all this adversity that had
come
upon him, they came each one from his own
place,
Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and
Zophar
the Naamathite; and they made an appointment
together
to come to sympathize with him and comfort
him.
When they lifted up their eyes at a distance
and did not recognize him,
they raised their voices and wept. And each of
them tore his robe and
they threw dust over their heads toward the
sky. Then they
sat down on the ground with him for seven days
and seven nights with no one speaking a
word to him, for they saw that
his pain was very great.
11/7/2019 11:36 AM
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