"Jumped Out of Their Skin"
EPISODE 182
See the Big Picture
How would your life change if you could — like Elisha’s servant — see into the unseen realm? And what does Ephesians tell us about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? This week we launch our new guided study, Talking Through Ephesians, with an introduction to this “mind-blowing” letter. Somehow, we also talk about Steve Jobs and Jesse Owens, about what it really takes to make a scratch apple pie, and the idea of being watched by loved ones in heaven. Finding Jesus in Ephesians, we discuss why Paul emphasizes the title Christ and what it means to see Jesus as the church’s husband. Then, Flying Through Ephesians, we go from the debate over the recipients, to insights from each section, to the main theme of the book. We’re super excited to get ok into this book and invite you to find a friend or group to talk through the book with as well! Go to biblegeeks.fm/ephesians each week to find the videos and guides.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Your choices are central to God's eternal purpose for everything.
This Week's Challenge: Invite someone to talk through Ephesians with you over the next few months.
Episode Transcription
So as I stepped around them to pass, they practically jumped out of their skin. Well hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 182. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much for tuning in everyone. We are beginning, as we talked about on the last episode, a brand new guided study here. This is our fourth guided study that we've done so far since the beginning of these things and today we are going to kick off a conversation that we're calling "Talking Through Ephesians" and really the title is no surprise about what's going to happen next. We're going to get into a 13-session guided study all about this amazing six-chapter letter that Paul has written. This is one of my favorite letters in the New Testament and I think it does a really great job at summing up the Bible in a really powerful way. Yeah, summing up even beyond the Bible, like more than just the book, it's like summing up everything, summing up what God is wanting to do with everything that He's created and with the universe and with His eternal purpose, His eternal plans, and ultimately in that, quite importantly, we find our own purpose that we can align ourselves with God's purpose in making us and sending Christ and making everything. It's just that, that's all. Just God, the universe, everything, you know. - Well, no pressure. This is definitely a big topic that we're gonna start to chew on here. And so let's get right into our conversation starter for this episode. And we've called that one Zooming Out. (imitates zooming) This is Talking Through Ephesians. Zooming Out. Do you remember the first time you played with Google Earth? You could look at your house, your neighborhood, or across the world at the Eiffel Tower. But when he started clicking that magnifying glass with the minus, he zoomed out. And out, and out, until you saw the whole Earth hanging in space. Zooming out has a way of putting things into perspective. We call it "seeing the big picture, the forest for the trees." Let's start these talking through Ephesians conversations with a look at the book's big picture theme. Ephesians shows us where the little dot of our life maps on to the sweeping story of the universe and beyond. The letter zooms in and out from a believer's everyday walk to God's eternal purpose. So here's the big idea. Your choices are central to God's eternal purpose for everything. It shows us that today's struggle to deal with our anger is part of a cosmic battle in the heavenly places. What seems bigger than life becomes exactly life size. Your life-size, as the sweeping, eye-opening truths of the book's first half become painfully practical in the second half. The apostle Paul writes to saints in Ephesus, charging them to stand firm, holding on to that wide-lens view of our new identity, confident in God's love and power at work in us. God could show his wisdom and goodness in so many ways, but he featured the church as his masterwork. we were, swimming in sin, foolish and confused. But he's taken a dead and divided humanity, made one new, living people, and has come to dwell in us. So here's the big question. What will you do with your life, knowing there's so much more to it than you can see? So follow along with this guided study at BibleGeeks.fm/Ephesians and may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. So the big idea that we tackled there in that conversation starter was your choices are central to God's eternal purpose for everything. I think that's what you were just talking about Ryan about really the story of everything and how do our choices fit into that? As I was considering this big idea actually, it reminded me of a quote that Carl Sagan has said and I don't quote Carl Sagan, you know, the renowned atheist very often or willy nilly here and there, but he once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." That's a great quote. I think it's totally true. I mean, all of these things have to be set in motion for you to do even the simplest task of making an apple pie. Gravity has to be in place, all the molecules and everything has to be set into motion and all of these things. We obviously know that God is our creator and it's amazing to think that he has set in motion, this massive and complex universe that we live in, and he's placed us inside. It just like blows my mind to see how much he loves us and how much he's done for us. And really the question for me in thinking about my part or my role in his great plan for everything is what am I going to do in response? How am I going to respond? Will I choose to glorify him in my life or am I going to live a life selfishly for my own pleasures? And really that's sort of the way we kick this thing off, just thinking about our role in this great story of everything. - I think that captures the appropriate effect of a study of Ephesians, you know, that gesture you do where you put your fingers at your temples and then that mind blown kind of thing where you open your hands and spread out your arms. That's how a true study of Ephesians should be, just as you go chapter through chapter. What? Whoa! And so the big question we talked about there was, what will you do with your life knowing there's so much more to it than you can see? And in addition to this idea of God's eternal purpose, throughout the book, there's this theme of what happens in the heavenly places or the heavenlies in this place, this realm that we can't see. And in that place, of course, is God and Christ sitting at the right hand of God, the Father, and there's the angels and the spiritual forces of darkness and there's this change that's happened to us. So what are you gonna do with all of that? And I think my answer to that is that context changes how we show up. When I recognize the scale and the stakes of my choices, I get my head in the game quicker and I keep my focus better. And this whole discussion this week got me thinking about Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Which by the way, Jesse Owens, famous Buckeye, but of course, famous American. and that was the first ever televised Olympics, and Hitler wanted those games to promote Nazism, and how great the Aryan master race was, and all this stuff that was happening in Germany in the '30s. Here comes this black American, the most successful athlete of the games, taking home four gold medals. He won the 100 meter and the 200 meter. If you had no sense of context, you might think it was just another track meet. It was just, okay, so he ran a race. really fast, but it meant so much more than that because it was a statement. It was about these two different ideologies and the world was watching. And so it just means more. And that's what Paul is telling us about a Christian's life. It means so much more. The choices you're making, the life you're living, everything means more because of what God intends to do with His church in Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 3.10 says, "God is pointing to the church and telling the heavenly powers to watch how His grace has changed us, watch His wisdom be revealed. So I need to remember that big heavenly context as I decide how I'll talk to my kids today, you know, how I'll do my work or manage my emotions or whatever, whatever the struggle appears as in any given moment, I can't miss that that's there is a bigger context to it. It means more. Yeah, context does change everything. And I think that's such a great way to think about this as we start this conversation, maybe sort of let's roll this thing back like we'd like to do so often in the beginning of these conversations and start with an icebreaker, kind of a lighthearted one. Do you ever have a hard time finding where you are on a map? Are you the kind of guy, Ryan, who like just really struggles to know where you are when you start pulling out the Google Maps or whatever it is that you're looking at? Usually not. Usually I have a pretty good sense of direction, but it's funny. Just last week, I did get lost jogging in the woods at night. It's just got dark quicker than I expected. And there's these trails back in the woods by my house. And I think they've changed the paths a little bit since I went there last time. And so I had the toughest time orienting myself to where I was in the dark. And eventually I pulled out my phone and just ignored the trails and walked through the brush toward my street, just like moving through the trees. Yeah, I can evidently have a hard time with that at times. How about you? Well, if you don't ask my wife, no way, Jose. I have no problems finding my own way, directing myself. I was blessed with the gene, I guess, from my father to be able to navigate myself wherever I needed to go. Hardly need a map. But if you ask people close to me, they probably would disagree with that. So yeah, I think it's easy for me to figure out where I am. But then maybe in a more deep and philosophical way, maybe I have some more challenges with that. Let's move into our first actual segment here on the episode. And that is finding Jesus. Maybe as we're sort of doing this zoomed out approach, we're going to find Jesus here in the whole book of Ephesians. How are we going to do that? Well, I went to just the name Jesus and looked at that in the book. And actually the title Christ is used way more than the name Jesus. The title Christ is used 46 times by my count and the name Jesus only 20 times. which all but two of those have Christ with it. Of course, Jesus is his name, our Lord's name, but to understand his place in this big picture that we keep talking about in this eternal plan of God, we have to recognize him as Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one. He is that long awaited King who stands as a representative of his people, the one who fulfills all the different prophetic pictures of the Messiah, which is what Christ is, the great prophet that Moses said, "A prophet like me will rise up," the holy priest that's looked forward to, the conquering king, the son of man, the divine presence with us, and the suffering servant. It turns out all are, hey, what do you know, all in one person. And we have to get that the Christ King represents his people. We are in him, which is something we'll talk a lot about over the next few weeks. We are in Him, we're united with Him, we're carried with Him, so that when He conquers, we conquer. What He suffers, He suffers for us. His resurrection brings us life. Our life is hidden with Him in heaven. And on, this idea of being in Him is we're all bound up with Him. And that's all bound up in this word, Christ. And so it's no wonder a book about these big ideas at the heart of God's big story focuses so much on Jesus as Christ. So I stayed pretty broad. How about you? Did you stay broad or did you zero in on something? Oh man, I zeroed in. It is cool though. I think as you sort of view Jesus as this conquering King, which absolutely he is, I went to this picture of Jesus in Ephesians 5 verses 31 to 32 that shows him as an intimate partner in a relationship with us, which is totally a different way of thinking about Jesus. But as we see here, he is explaining this mystery to us Paul is and he says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." And if you're just sitting there thinking, well, what does this have anything to do with Jesus? The mystery is profound, he says, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. And so from end to end, obviously, Jesus is the central and uniting factor of this book. And he's so great and grand and he's the king as you said. He loves us though and he nurtures us and as it talks about here in these verses he cleans us up and he welcomes us into a deep and intimate relationship with him and that is just so cool to think about how this great conquering king views us, looks to us as the church with such longing and devotion and I think that changes how I view my service to him. This isn't about some cold and calculating response to God's instructions, like, "Well, God said this, and now I'm going to do that." You know, it's this closeness and relationship. It's totally made possible by a loving God who wants to be near to me and who's extended a relationship through the intimacy that his son offers, like a husband and a wife uniting together and this bond that's created there. Just so cool. I love to think about how Jesus is in that way so close to us. I love that you took it there. Adrian and I have been talking a lot about marriage again lately and just that I really got something from you talking through that and just thinking about Jesus as the husband to his people and this loving, serving leader that puts his arm around us and wants to be close to us and wants to become completely one with us. And so that's, I think, a great place to start us off. - Yeah, all right, so let's move on to our second segment here on the episode, and that is flying through the book. - I feel the need. - The need for speed. - So we're gonna move through this thing very quickly, and there's a lot of ground to cover. We're gonna basically sum up 13 episodes here in just a few minutes, so let's kick this thing off. Ryan, you've got the introduction here in the first two verses. - Yeah, and right away we find out the writer and the audience and what's going on here. Paul wrote it from prison, chapter three, verse one. talks about himself as a prisoner, brings it up again later. He's emphasizing here in verse one that by God's will, he's one of Christ's apostles. He writes as one sent by Christ bearing the king's authority. And the audience is a question that people keep debating. It's still not settled after all these years. I put a footnote in our conversation starter about this. Some of the oldest manuscripts don't have who are in Ephesus in verse one, those words. And so it's possible it was a circular letter that was just kind of sent around to the different letters. At the end of the sister book of this book, Colossians, which has a lot of similarities, Paul says, "When this letter has been read among you, "have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans, "and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea." That's in chapter four, verse 16 of Colossians. So some of his letters were meant to be circulated, but we can't disregard all of the manuscripts that mention Ephesus, which are the majority, and that even the ones that don't have it in verse one, title the letter to the Ephesians, like up above before the letter starts. And Paul, of course, has a history with the Ephesian Christians. We read about in Acts 18 to 20. So I tend to personally think of it as a letter to the Ephesians. Doesn't matter, it has God's authority. (both laughing) It's for us either way. But the big insight here from these first couple of verses for me is that this big idea we've been talking about already peeking through in verse 1, just like starting to just stick his head out as he identifies these Christians as saints or people set apart for God who are faithful in Christ Jesus. Whether they're Jews or Gentiles, whatever lifestyle they used to lead, their identity has shifted. They belong to God. Whatever their geographic location, their spiritual location is now in Christ in full loving union with the King overall, those faithful in Christ Jesus. And so we get in, I guess, after that, in those first two verses to the, really the meat, I think, of this first chapter. And that's how he starts to get into this discussion about spiritual blessings. It's this hugely poetic section of verses that Paul weaves his way through here. And it's almost impossible to sum it up. But I think you can really focus on these first few verses of chapter one as being Jesus bringing together into a new spiritual family those who will honor him. And we honor God because of that. We honor God because of what he's done in Jesus. And so I think this whole first section is really there to pump you up. It's like this whole section has five sentences total. There's a lot of commas, a lot of run on sentences. It's beautiful. It's poetic. It's sweeping. But it really, I think, just points to how excited Paul is, how passionate he is for God's grace and what God has done through Jesus. It's a cool way to start this thing out. Yeah. I think in the Greek, it might actually be one sentence. That's probably true. Maybe this next one, this is how Paul just gets caught up in the praise of God and those first verses. And then here, he gets caught up in this prayer. And he prays that they'll have their spiritual eyes open to see the hope that awaits them, God's power already at work in them. And one of the things I took away from this is how it talks about his power toward us who believe, power toward us. And he says, that's the same power that raised and exalted Jesus. We're connected to Christ as a head is to its body. That's how close we are. As a husband to a wife, there's so many metaphors he uses to try to get us to see how one we are now with Christ. We're his body, he's the head, and our lives have access to his resurrection power to overcome all those everyday things we were talking about. - Yeah, and so the second chapter really kicks off this conversation about grace and this has been a really meaty section for a lot of study over the years but in the first 10 verses here of chapter 2 we just find out how seriously dead we were in our sins and how God gracefully gave us new life. He gave us a new purpose. He gave us a new way to walk. He just redefined everything for us and I took away from this how you know just like when Jesus came out of the tomb on the third day that was more than an event that we read about like like 2000 years ago, it's an event that we get to experience today when we're seated with him in the heavenly places. It's like the description here of how Jesus' resurrection has raised us to live a new life is just, you totally realize like, I'm not worthy. You fall on your face. We're not worthy. Exactly. You fall on your face like Wayne and Garth, like we are not worthy. It is totally true. Absolutely. leads into this one new humanity he's made from these people that he has renewed. The two groups here, the far off and the near, are Gentiles and Jews, and now he has created in himself, it says, one new human in place of the two. He's brought peace and reconciliation and the presence of God in us. This isn't really the point of the passage, but passages like these really highlight for me the preciousness of unity in the church. It's easy to maybe take for granted or even treat it cheaply and let division start to happen whenever it costs so much for our Lord to make one this people, all the people in his church and may we try to protect that oneness. - It's cool that you brought that up because I think that's kind of a theme that's carried on into chapter three in the first 13 verses there, where Paul begins to point to this mysterious plan and this is a mysterious plan that has existed before the beginning of the world that Jesus was going to lead his people into this unity in the church that you're talking about there. And I was just thinking as I was reading this section, like, man, if God has before the beginning and the foundation of the world had this plan in mind to bring people back together, how much confidence "Is that gonna give me to know that God cares about me? "That He loves me? "That He's been thinking about me before He ever said, "Let there be light." I mean, it's just so cool to think about how this plan brings us together and I think gives us confidence. - Well, and it's appropriate that you bring that up because that leads to Christ's love and His prayer about that. You know, it's like Paul actually organized this thing to lead from one thought to another. - You mean there's a structure here in all this? I don't know. - Yeah. - It's such an amazing prayer here. I just preached on this a sermon called Rooted in Love. And it's a prayer that we would have enough strength from God to grasp Christ's love for us. I think that's interesting just by itself. This is one of those truths that you don't just need to be smart enough to understand it, you need to be strong enough to understand it. It's gonna take strength to grasp how much Jesus loves you. don't deflect it, don't push it away. And sometimes I sense that Christ's love can get the yeah, we get it treatment, like dwelling on it is only for some watered down version of the gospel. But what Paul says here is that Christ's love needs to be our root and our ground. It's the soil we're planted in that can grow our own love, love from God grows love for neighbor. And it's the foundational reality upon which everything else in our lives are built. We start with this. This is ground zero for you rethinking who you are and starting to build a new life is you're the one Jesus loves. Christ loves you so much. This is what he did for you. Let that start to work on you. Let that become the controlling reality as Paul says in second Corinthians 514. Let that love of Christ constrain you. So that's his prayer here, but then we transition from all these big ideas and those two prayers into some practical stuff. - Yeah, this is really in chapter four where the book starts to get practical and the first three chapters really focused on some very grand ideas. And so chapter four really kicks off this idea where Paul is explaining that we have to be one. We have to walk in love and in unity and that we also need to see our diversity as strength. It's so cool to see how he transitions to telling us how to walk, like how to live your day-to-day life. And man, it's easy to think that unity should mean that we're all the same. Like we all wear the same clothes, we all use the same words because we're united, because there's one Lord above and all these things, like we're all just exactly like each other. But Paul in this section basically couples this conversation about unity with a conversation about diversity. Like we all have our different gifts, we all bring different things to the table. Yes, we follow one Lord and he has created us in different ways to do different things so that we could serve him and walk together. in unity. It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around, I think, but definitely practical as we kick off this transition in the book. Yeah, and where those first 16 verses of chapter four, I think, are a practical picture of the church working as a group. I feel like the last half of chapter four is more zeroed in on the individual walking in a way that's going to create that unity also. So you have This person that used to be the walking dead, zombie, dead person, dead in our sins, dead in our futility of thinking. And now we've put on Christ and we're alive. And it's like this holy new radiant suit of clothes that we use as clothing language. You've put on Jesus. And we talked about that zoom in on our conversation starter, but you can get whiplash from this sudden move from these big ideas to these super practical instructions here. I mean, he talks about what to do when you're mad at somebody and what to do whenever you're not sure what to say and you can't find the words and what to do whenever you just like all of these specific, you used to do this, but not only stop doing that, but start doing this as well. And, but of course, all of these things belong together. They belong in the same book because who you are now, this new identity that he's just spent all these chapters explaining and fleshing out who you are now, has to show up in what you do now. And so we have to start just making different choices because you're a different person. Christ is in you. - And absolutely, you make different choices. And who is the standard for the choices that we make? Well, chapter five in the beginning 21 verses really talks about, "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children." We're the children of God. And so we're following in his steps. We're watching where God walks and we're basically putting our feet exactly where he has put his feet. And so since we're part of this new family, we watch carefully how we walk and we follow after what God wants us to do. It's not about just being different for the sake of being different, obviously, and it's not even to say that this walk is easy, but man, it is a complex thing to practice, to be able to walk like God, to live with discernment, to live with wisdom. We've gotta wake up, we've gotta be careful, and we have to use God our Father as the perfect standard for how we make choices in this world. And then he goes into this household table, which is a way that he often works through things, as does Peter in his letter, going through different people, different roles in the household. But the focus of this thing that you've already drawn our attention to, verses 22 to the end of chapter five, is the relationship between a husband and wife, and how that's meant to be this living parable of Christ and the church. This mystery is profound, as you say, but it's about Christ and the church. And the two defining statements, the two defining ideas, I guess here that should be central to the Christian marriage and to our relationship with Christ as the church, our sacrifice and submission, it's really, it's love and respect, but it shows up in this way where we are trying to imitate Christ's sacrifice. We are trying to have the same kind of honor and submission that the church has where husbands can look to Christ as an example of loving sacrifice and leadership and the wife can look to the church as it is meant to be and, and see the kind of relationship of submission and respect that she should have. And again, he's giving like gold here about marriage and how to have a great marriage while not even really trying to give instruction about marriage. Ultimately trying to bring it home to this bigger idea and then he goes on to talk about Children and servants and others in the household. Yeah, so if you talk about whiplash I mean by the time we get to chapter 6 into verses like 10 to 20 Yeah Now we're zooming way back out to the cosmic powers like we we hyper focused into marriage and now man We're talking about things we can't even see or know and by the way, we are at war He is talking about spiritual warfare here and how God has equipped us with all the tools we need to stand strong in times of temptation and spiritual attack and as we're basically going through the onslaught daily of Having to live our faith and walk in this world God has provided us everything we need to be strong and courageous So powerful and he closes the last few verses of chapter 6 with these personal notes So it's just a couple, as he likes to put in. He sent Ticicus with the letter to catch them up on everything happening with him. He closes with the version of the Christian blessing, wishing them peace and love and grace through Christ. And to me, the most striking thing about those closing words is the last phrase of the book. He says, "Grace be with you all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible." And that word incorruptible has to do with like indestructible. It doesn't perish, it doesn't corrupt, like the body dies and corrupts. The letter has rejoiced in Christ's love for us throughout, but he closes by reveling in the idea that our love for Jesus will outlast death itself as we praise him forever. I think that's a beautiful ending point. - Yeah, and I totally agree. I think from end to end, really, this is just such a special letter. And so if we really start to zoom out as we've been talking about what is this book all about, I mean, we've kind of gotten into the details, maybe even gotten into the weeds a little bit, but what do you think this book is all about? - Well, I think it's fitting that the book ends with that picture of spiritual warfare, because I think we're meant to get, as he's been building to this crescendo in that picture of the armor of God and the struggle there, that everything is spiritual warfare. And so I think the way the book flows from those big ideas we talked about to our everyday lives and then closes with that war picture, gets us to kind of see every realm of our life is a realm where Christ needs to reign. It's an area where evil wants to prove God wrong, wants to win the struggle in our lives. Whether I'm driving in traffic, I'm sitting on the couch, wherever I am, there's no demilitarized zone. There's no place where I'm far away from the enemy, safely at home, not on enemy lines. I'm on the enemy lines everywhere I go. But there's also no place that I'm too far for Jesus in His Spirit and our Father to reach me and to empower me with His love and grace and to arm us for the fight with their own power. And it's just that we started talking about spiritual perspective and I think then kind of reorienting myself to what the goal is, what we're trying to do in every moment of our lives. I've tried to get my kids to see this. Every choice is ultimately a moral choice, is spiritual. you do needs to come from the character that God wants you to have. - Yeah, it's such a cool way to think about it that we are at war. And it doesn't feel like we're at war sometimes. Like you said, when you're sitting on the couch, it doesn't feel like that's a battleground, but it definitely is. And I was thinking about, you know, this whole book and really trying to sum it up in my mind and I was just struck by our response to the great gifts that have been provided to us. And how much do I appreciate God's gifts? And what is that going to cause me to do? I was recently looking online and somebody had posted one of the emails that Steve Jobs had sent to himself Apparently he was really famous for like sending himself emails and just little like notes about things He was thinking about and he said this in one of his emails He said I grow little of the food I eat and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I am moved by music I did not create. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I love and admire my species living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and wellbeing. It was just cool to think about how somebody is seeing how powerless they are to do all the things that people have done for them and just to appreciate how much really he is dependent on other people. And I feel like that's how Paul is trying to get us to see as a response to this amazing book is that God has done things for us that we never could have done for ourselves. I mean all the grace, all the mercy, all the blessings that he's talking about in these chapters, trying to get us to see that God has taken so many steps for us that we now need to respond. How are we gonna respond? Are we going to appreciate what God has done for us? And I think Ephesians is a book that's begging us all to observe all the things that we had no part in and to respond accordingly. God has it done and everything for our good. And really, I guess the question for me is, am I gonna follow him? Am I gonna live in holiness, in devotion, and in praise to his glorious name? - It's cool how that quote from Steve Jobs builds back to the quote you had from Carl Sagan. If you wanna grow the food that you eat, first you need to-- - Create the universe. - Create the universe. You have to have apples that come from seeds, that come from, you need every, but first you're gonna need matter. - And you know what else you'll need in order to make matter? You'll need to exist. (laughing) And so it's like that you just keep zooming out, like you said, until you see, no, God is the one place that you can't zoom out any further. God is there. That's the place that is the ground of our being and every blessing. - So let's zoom out, I suppose, to our final segment here on the episode, and that is our reach out question. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ So this week's Reach Out question looks back to a story that I think everybody loves, if you know the Old Testament, from 2 Kings 6 verses 15 to 16, where the servant of one of the prophets is looking out and he's overwhelmed by the armies that surround the walls and was it Elisha or Elijah? I think it was Elisha that prayed for God to open his eyes and this servant named Gehazi is able to in an instant see the flaming chariots of fire and all of the host of the Lord's army ready to protect God's people. And so the idea is in this question, what if you could see like Gehazi did? How would your day to day life change if you had a Gehazi moment to see the unseen? Again, we're keeping it simple here. - Oh yeah, yeah. - It's just very grand. - How we do entire life change. - Yeah. - You can see. You know, it is funny because obviously in this book, this particular letter, there are so many instances of the unseen and things happening behind the curtain. And you know, it is just so cool, this mysterious future or existence that we don't see or know. How would that change you? And as I was thinking about this question, I was thinking about how there was a time after dad died last year, where just in like quiet moments, I would kind of imagine him just sitting up sitting up, you know, maybe on a park bench in heaven, like watching what I was doing. And it was kind of a weird thought. Like I'd never had anybody in mind when I was thinking that way previously. But to think about like dad, just watching me from above, it's kind of that same idea. In those little moments where I was having those thoughts, like it changed how careful I was, how thoughtful I was for my actions and the things that I was thinking and my attitudes. You know, to think that if I could see beyond this world, I'd be more aware of my impact and more aware of my decisions that I was making. But really, I almost sort of wonder if it's not actually what Jesus was talking about in the Lazarus and rich man story, how the rich man wanted to send someone back to convince his brothers not to come there, and Abraham had to say basically, "Look, if he hasn't listened to the prophets, "he's not gonna listen "to somebody coming back from the dead." And I almost wonder if seeing beyond where I'm actually looking into the unseen, if that actually would change me, because that's kind of the point of what Jesus was saying there. I hope it would, I think it would maybe, but I would like to think that I would behave differently or that I would be more careful, but I don't know. I feel like maybe there's a chance that I would just kind of continue doing the things that I would always do. It's a weird question, I guess. - Yeah, that was quite an answer. Yeah, it may not change anything. (both laughing) Yeah, I think it's interesting you brought up the idea of somebody watching, of your dad watching. I was thinking about the other day I was hiking way out in the middle of nowhere and I saw these two ladies hiking up ahead of me. And as I'm coming up behind, I'm trying to stomp. I'm trying to be as loud as I can, as I approached them because they were so deep in their conversation, just wrapped up and I don't know what was going on, but they had so much to say about it. And they obviously didn't think anyone else was around. So as I stepped around them to pass, they practically jumped out of their skin. And they're just, "Ahh!" And I apologized and I told them, "Hey, you're doing great, keep going. Sorry, I was trying to be loud, I'm sorry." - That's how you're supposed to deal with bears in the woods, right? You just be like super loud so you don't scare them. - Yeah, I think so. That was also my approach here, but it didn't work. And, but I've had moments like that where someone was there and I thought I was alone and you realize, "Oh, what was I doing even?" When they were sitting there watching And I had no idea what was going on. And I think it's like that spiritually. Sometimes I drop my guard thinking I'm alone, but I'm not. The Lord's always there. The angels are in the struggle. There always be those evil beings trying to take me down. And so just like that servant of Elisha saw the invisible army of God, I can through faith look and see all of these things that are going on around me. I can't help but think about Job and fold him into this conversation too, because he's like the opposite in a way of Elisha's servant. He's the other side of the story, the guy who never got to fully see what was happening with all of his trials. And it's weird because we see it, we get to read about it, but he doesn't know what's going on as we go through it. And when I think of Paul talking about the heavenly places and all these good and bad characters playing out this story beyond our sight. I think about Satan coming before God and God saying, have you considered my servant Job? And isn't that really another way of saying what Ephesians is saying? What Paul is saying here is that God is holding up the church and saying, have you considered my servants? Have you noticed this should show you my manifold wisdom? And what a thing. humbling to be part of the story, to have God consider you and want you to be a part of His plan. And to have a place in that plan is focusing. It gives you, I think, a sense of direction. It's like we talked about at the beginning, the stakes, the scale, the purpose, the reason for being starts to show up and define you and to remember there's so what is the thing that people are living for sometimes it seems like they don't have anything they're living for or it's like we've talked about before just collecting stuff trying to have fun trying to experience good things maybe they're just trying to fill the needs that they have within them but we will have all all of our needs fulfilled if we align ourselves with God's purpose and live as this new person that Jesus has made us into. That's so cool. I mean, you really see the scope of this book. I mean, it's hard in this first conversation, in this first session, just not to be struck by how large the subject is that we're talking about, but then how practical it can be. And so maybe that leads us into our closing challenge for this episode. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. So the challenge for this week is to invite somebody to talk through Ephesians with you over the next few months. And as we go through these conversations, we would encourage you if you have the inclination to reach out to somebody and have a conversation about Ephesians because it's broad, it's sweeping. But then yeah, it zooms right down into your day to day life as we've been talking about. Yeah, and it's fun. Some people I think don't think that's an appropriate idea, but I just think there's a joy to talking about these truly wonderful ideas. And it's fun to share it with somebody that you like to be with and to think through things with them. And you could use the study guide that we're putting out each week with a friend, or you could sit down with your kids to just watch those two minute videos that we put out and then read a few verses and talk about it. You could even just listen to the podcast on your own time and then once a week get together with someone and discuss the readings Over lunch or something. There's a lot of ways to engage it But I think that you will not regret sitting down and diving in to an extended conversation About this book of Ephesians. I wholeheartedly agree and I don't think I could have said it any better myself So let's close this thing out as we like to do With a closing prayer in the study guide this week our suggested closing prayer is Lord Help us see your eternal purpose and align our lives with it and that comes from Ephesians 3 verse 11 I think that's a great way of summing up what we've been talking about so far. So let's go to God in prayer Holy God, what a privilege it is to come before your throne and realizing that you love us more than we'll ever know while we spend our time in these conversations studying from the book of Ephesians lead us to walk in holiness and wisdom as we come to appreciate your lavish blessings in our lives. We honor you as our Father and thank you so much for your son Jesus whose obedience and perfect sacrifice makes our new life possible. Show us how we can align our lives with your eternal purpose. Defeat us when we don't live in reverence and lead us gracefully back to a relationship with you. We can't thank you enough for who you are and what you've done and please open our eyes today to see your wondrous mercy and love. Lead us through our temptations to find strength and victory like Christ found in his victory over sin. All this we pray in his name, amen. - Amen. Well, next week we'll get into our second guided study session in this Talking Through Ephesians series. So we'll focus on the spiritual blessings found there in chapter one, verses three through 14. So if you get a chance, read that little section of scripture Ephesians chapter one verses three through 14, and we'll dive into it. - Yeah, sounds good. That's definitely gonna be a poetic one. As we said, it's basically just one long sentence. So if we do get into that, hopefully we can catch our breath a little bit and make it through together. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in for the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at BibleGeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at BibleGeeks.fm/182. You can also find this series over at BibleKeeks.fm/ephesians. Find all the guided studies there and find all the conversation starters to follow along in your own conversations. And until next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. (upbeat music)