"With Love, Paul"
EPISODE 194
Abound in Grace and Peace
Peace, Love, Grace, and Faith. As we wrap up this 13-session study of Ephesians, Paul’s closing blessing (6:21-24) points us to these four Heavy Words. We can’t help but wax poetic a little when we reflect on God’s overflowing goodness — talk of waterfalls, oceans, and mountains abound. But we also reflect on the lasting impression and practical takeaways this study has left us with. We hope Talking Through Ephesians has strengthened you as well! The full 13-session study guide and lots of other resources are available for you to put to use now, check it out at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: God wants every Christian's life to overflow with peace, love, faith, and grace.
This Week's Challenge: Pick a favorite verse in Ephesians and memorize it.
Episode Transcription
And so what a fitting place to end this amazing letter with love, Paul. Hello everyone and welcome to Bible Geeks Podcast episode 194. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in. We are wrapping up our conversation in our Talking Through Ephesians Guided Study here with session 13. And this is where we wrap it all up with the conclusion in chapter 6 verses 21 to 24 of Ephesians. And this is a really quick read, some final greetings and things Paul has to say about a guy named Tychicus, which is somebody who we'll talk a little bit about here on the episode. It's definitely true what we said at the end of the last episode, that Paul doesn't waste words. His greetings, how he identifies himself at the beginning of books tells you something about the theme. He brings it home in the conclusion and in his, you know, Hey, I'll see you guys later. It's never just I'll see you guys later. It's let me summarize with a four point benediction that gives you all that you need to remember from this book. And so that's what we're going to get into here. So let's kick this thing off as we like to do with a conversation starter. And that we called Still Science Fiction. This is Talking Through Ephesians. Still science fiction. It's been almost 60 years since Captain Kirk first told Scotty to beam him up. I think the younger me hoped scientists would have made some progress by now, but teleportation technology is still science fiction. So we call long distance friends and tell them to give everyone there our love. Since we can't be there, we want someone to express our friendship and blessings. In Ephesians 6 verses 21 to 24, Paul closes by commending his letter carrying emissary. Tychicus is much more than a mailman. So here's the big idea. God wants every Christian's life to overflow with peace, love, faith, and grace. What's the good news? Why do we rejoice in Christ? In short, because of the peace, the grace, the love all received through faith in the one who died for us, rose again and reigns in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. Jesus preached peace and he himself is our peace. He united Jews and Gentiles reconciling us both to God in one body through the cross. Redemption, adoption, inheritance, and all spiritual blessings come by grace through faith. It's because of the great love with which he loved us that he made us alive together with Christ. These four heavy words have had starring roles in Ephesians, so it's fitting that they're named as the bookends and the credits roll. We pray that they may have a starring role in you. Grace, peace, and love with faith be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. So here's the big question. What has this study taught you about God's love and grace? So follow along with this guided study at biblegeeks.fm/Ephesians and may the Lord bless you and keep you. So the big idea that we talked about there is that God wants every Christian's life to overflow with peace, love, faith, and grace. And I love obviously the reference to Star Trek and the beam me up Scotty. I mean that definitely scratches a nerdy itch there, but this idea of overflowing that we talked about there is really helpful because I think it explains a lot of the things we talked about back in Ephesians 1 verse 8 like around there where God is lavishing upon us his richest blessings. This is not just parched desert peace and grace. This is like Scrooge McDuck diving into the money-filled pool. Like when we see God's willingness to give us everything, it is easy to pray this kind of blessing into people's lives knowing that's what God wants. God wants us to just be lavished and poured out with all of this amazing blessing. Well and what you're saying goes exactly with what I was thinking about that big question we asked. The question we asked was what has this study taught you about God's love and grace? And you summarized so much of what I was thinking about. I think it's good to just reflect on these kinds of things. You get to the end of a study and you think about these big themes that should have a big impact on us and what has changed because we should be changed by study and this study has affected my thinking about God's love and grace. I remember back when I lived in Kauai we used to play under these giant waterfalls and there's this sense of such power standing at the bottom of one of those 40-foot falls just pounding down on you. It's like water pelting you but it's just this huge flow and we've used a lot of words that we've just made up as we've gone through this study of Ephesians like bigness and muchness and things like that. And it is it's this overwhelming sense of God's big love and his enormous outpouring of grace. Like you said about the overflow it gives you this sense of being swept up in a mighty rushing whitewater flow of love and goodness. You were talking about being in this sea of peace and it makes you think back to that song we sing where it closes when in the ocean of God's love we lose ourselves in heaven above. There's this sense of it's so big that you just find yourself yielding to it and receiving it and just so happy to be swept and carried along by the greatness of God and by how much he has chosen to show his favor to us. So in order to keep us from waxing poetic for too long let's go to our icebreaker question here which seems like it's out of left field a little bit until you realize that this was a letter that Paul was delivering to these people here in Ephesus and the letter was being delivered I think by a guy named Tychicus and so when was the last time you snail mailed someone a letter Ryan? Yeah it was probably when Adrian and I were dating we were as we've talked about long distance the whole time and we sent real letters we didn't have a lot of the we didn't have facetime or things like that or texting even we did a lot of email and a lot of the old paper letters and it was hard for me even then I am just not I don't use my stamps very often I like I barely remember how to like where to find the stamps and how to write everything out I'm not a mailer how about you? No I'm the same way man I don't even remember the last time I snail mailed somebody but I do remember the last time I had to fax somebody and that was today yes I don't even know how people are still using fax machines at this point but I had to send some legal documents out to somebody and yeah I was firing up the fax machine which by the way I don't even know how we fax anymore as a society so I do send care packages I do send fax messages but I definitely have not sent snail mail in a long time so that's our icebreaker question maybe let's roll this thing into our finding Jesus segment you know it's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel the pool of available verses for us to find Jesus in is shrinking significantly it is when you get to only verse 21 through 24 of Ephesians 6 so let's let's find Jesus here and Jesus has mentioned a lot in it so you're bound to strike gold looking in there for the Lord I'm just going to go ahead and read it because it's so short it says so that you may know how I am and what I am doing Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will tell you everything I have sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that we may encourage your hearts peace be to the brothers and love with faith from God the father and the Lord Jesus Christ grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible so as you look at those what four verses where do you find the Lord apparently as we read about here that this letter seems to be hand delivered by Tychicus but although this segment isn't finding Tychicus I think we see for the last time this phrase in the Lord Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord he's Jesus minister he's Jesus servant he is enabled by Christ to be an encouragement to others again only in the Lord can we offer true Christian service only in the Lord can we have these fulfilled and meaningful relationships only in the Lord can we live true Christian lives and Jesus is present in our work he is present in our relationships and he was there with Tychicus he's there with us and as we've been talking about this whole time really in the Lord is such a fundamental piece of our lives and living in the Lord that is exactly what he was doing and I think we should also take encouragement from that as well I'm glad you pointed that out that in the Lord or in Christ has been such an important phrase this idea of being everything we do everything we are comes through our union with Christ and in addition to that in the Lord the last two verses each mention the love of the Lord Jesus Christ but there's a difference between the two the first one is a prayer for peace and love to come from Jesus and the father and the second is about those who have love for Jesus and so I just think that's noteworthy as we started out back in chapter 2 there was this sense that there's a one-way love from God to deaden sinners that started this whole thing out or started our relationship out it was initiated by God's love and God's grace we didn't have the ability much less the will to do it whenever Jesus comes and saves us and he comes and dies for us and the gospel is announced and then we're changed then we choose to believe and to give our loyalty and our obedience to him and our love to him and so there's this flow of grace and peace and a love upon us that have this love that won't fade away or die and I think at the very beginning of the study we talked about that phrase grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus with love incorruptible like that old testament word we sometimes talk about has said yeah a steadfast covenant love of God we reflect back a steady love to Jesus this love for Jesus that's never gonna die because he's done so much for us his love compels us and sustains us I don't want to talk too much about what you just said because I know we're gonna talk about that word love here in just a second so I'll just say I love that I think that's a really great way of seeing Jesus here not only do we live in the Lord but we also have a love for the Lord and a love as you said from the Lord so let's get into our next segment here on the episode and that is heavy words whoa this is heavy there's that word again heavy why are things so heavy in the future is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull and here in this section we do find four words that are so powerful yet he just packs them in and touches on them briefly and we can choose to dive in deeper which we're going to do here in this segment heavy words the words are peace love faith and grace these are all blessings that he is praying for these ephesian christians for and so as we think about peace as we start off with this one this word peace in the greek is really just a word that I think is pretty on the surface easy to understand harmony tranquility freedom from worry is really the common definitions of this word and this is a common blessing to pray for someone to have peace but isn't it funny that it's an uncommon thing to actually have in the world because we see peace being prayed for and this blessing of peace being pronounced all throughout the bible but how often is there really peace and this is about peace with god as we've been talking about here in ephesians this is about peace with each other and of course doesn't the previous six chapters really give life to this whole idea that we can find this kind of peace this kind of harmony in every aspect of our life that is what we've been talking about this whole time that god brought us peace through christ's blood we looked at that in ephesians chapter 2 that god gives us peace that we're forgiven of our trespasses we can have an inner sense of peace knowing that he's lavished on us his richness and his forgiveness and that god brings unity with all believers and again if that's not been a common theme throughout ephesians i don't know what is this is more than a platitude i really appreciate that we spend time thinking about what he means here when he's calling for us to have peace this is a reality that we should all experience together and internally knowing that god wants us to be at peace he doesn't want us to be discombobulated and disconnected and broken people no he wants us to have peace and obviously peace in the future someday but i think even peace right now with him and with each other so cool way to start this out peace is is such a big deal oh for sure peace right now yes peace peace forever but there is this peace with god like you said and the inner peace we have and then the peace within the family and then we try so much as it's within us to have peace with everyone and to create these sanctuaries of peace around us and all the lives we touch i like that you said it's not just a platitude and that goes for love also which is our next word agape i think people usually a lot of people end their letters to people to friends and family with love or something like that that is not what is happening here paul this isn't to the ephesians love paul you know in christian love in christian love paul this word agape is doing so much more than that in this closing greeting it's not just a sweet you know goodbye this was originally a pretty vanilla word for love not even that that popular not the favorite word of the greeks for love but the new testament takes a basic word and gives it superpowers because this is the word that the inspired writers choose to describe divine love to describe the self-giving love of christ the love that looks out for someone else's best interest and this book has talked a lot about agape love i went through and counted 20 uses of the word alternating between god and christ's love for us and our love for others and i think we've talked a lot about it in this study as we should and i've some of my favorite moments of this study have come in our conversations about the great love with which he loved us the width and height and length prayer and chapter three where we need to have the strength to understand his love and become rooted and grounded in love i think that's a really powerful truth a powerful meditation for us to reflect on but then we find unity as we speak truth in love as we bear with one another in love as we walk in love like god and husbands love like christ and the body builds itself up in love and so there's this element where we are carrying god's love that he's pouring into us into the world into all those around us and especially in the family of god and elsewhere in scripture we see that agape is the pinnacle of christian virtue this is the top of the pyramid when it comes to there's all these good things but you could summarize it all in love it's the fulfillment of the law it's the essence of god's character right first john four god is love and so what a fitting place to end this amazing letter with love with love paul oh man but with love carrying all the meaning that this has been building to throughout i love how you said that the new testament gives words superpowers and no doubt yes that is true with love this is not just a vanilla love this is a powerful deep poetic practical kind of love that we've been talking this whole time about really and so as we talk about our third word here that word is faith again this idea of being confident or having our confidence placed in someone this word is also often used to talk about faithfulness and reliability and commitment and fidelity this idea of faith is really deep and while the belief aspect of faith is important to grasp i think ephesians one through three these first three chapters the first half of the book is really all about shoring up our belief and as we've talked so often about the action part of this in chapter four through six that's where faithfulness puts its roots down it springs out of our love for the lord as we just talked about our love for god is what helps us to respond in faithfulness to do the kinds of things that of course show our trust in him and this idea is that paul is ultimately hoping that his audience is going to increase in their devotion and in their obedience this isn't like some superficial kind of encouragement again but this is deep it's emotional and it is a response to their adoration of the lord they love god so much that he wants them to just stand strong don't be afraid as we talked about on the last episode stand behind your shield of faith and get there with all of your brothers interlocked together and wouldn't we be doing well to have the same kind of reaction to have that kind of confidence and trust and stability but also to have that response to know that everything we do for the lord if we do it in faith is productive is useful it's not a throwaway thing that we do when we listen to the lord and show our faith in him yeah and it's neat how it shows up in the blessing here peace be to the brothers and love with faith with so it's good that we put those two together love with faith from god the father and the lord Jesus christ so those two go together as you were describing that faithfulness that love that connection that trust and belief and confidence all of it brings a solidness to our relationship with we've talked about before all relationships a good relationship is built on faith and faithfulness on trust and trustworthiness there's this sense of confidence and connection and reliability and that's all built in here as we put our love and our loyalty behind our king so you just hit them love faith peace and now grace this word this greek word karis this the book's open is grace to you the book's close grace to you this is an idea that's featured throughout the whole book really one of the main messages again like all of these words and sometimes we talk about somebody doing something gracefully we talk about someone moving with grace you know a football player or a dancer or someone having grace in the way they handle a difficult situation and that meaning is in the greek for this word but the way the new testament more often of course uses it this greater meaning has to do with favor and goodwill and usually it was from someone in power showing grace a king could show grace or favor to a particular servant where he looks on them kindly he bestows gifts or privileges and god is the ultimate power the ultimate king and he has shown grace and mercy we could never deserve thinking back to some of the passages where we've seen this in the book Ephesians 1 7 it's according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us that we're forgiven and blessed yeah waxing poetic it's hard not to when we're talking about grace and love paul is a steward of grace Jesus gives grace in the functionaries of the church you know he gives grace to each one of us in our gifts but he also gives grace by providing shepherds and evangelists and apostles and prophets and all these things and one of the greatest texts of the new testament about grace is in chapter 2 verses 4 to 10 where we read that god being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us in fact a lot of the words are in this even when we were dead in our trespasses he made us alive together with christ by grace you have been saved skipping ahead here for a minute he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it's the gift of god not a result of work so that no one could boast and he goes on to say we've been made his workmanship for good works and so this powerful sense of the word most fundamentally the wellspring of the grace that we show is the grace that's been lavished upon us in the salvation that Jesus brings for us but because of that then he says show grace to others give grace with our words to those who hear he says and be a steward be those who bring grace in in all the different aspects of our lives and how we look at each other so that is our last word here what do you think of grace ideas in this book what jumped out at you oh well i for sure go back to the big idea that we talked about i mean i'm just thinking about the word overflowing again god wants every christian's life to overflow with peace love faith and grace and every single one of these words do you meter out these things into people's lives or are these things metered out into your lives or you know you just sort of like get a little bit of peace or have a little bit of love no it's like these things are overflowing god wants us to just experience the richness and the fullness of these things and especially when i think about grace i need grace and i need a lot of forgiveness i need a lot of this sort of thoughtfulness that you talked about there the blessing that someone bestows who is in power i need a lot of that and so when we think about these things i'm just thinking about the amount of them that's such a helpful reminder that as i pray that somebody might have these qualities and that these blessings in their life that i'm praying really in a way that reflects god's willingness to pour these things into their lives and i don't know for me the amount is a big deal how about you i that when you're talking about that that just jumped out at me with this picture of that waterfall but trying to hold a cup or a bowl underneath it right you got to hold on to it with two hands because the stream of grace is so powerful and so it fills up but then it's just flowing out and it's never ending and so every day we need new mercy and new grace not just not just for forgiveness but every gift we have in our lives is god's grace pouring into us and so as we receive then i like what you said just it's overflowing into others the waterfall keeps flowing so we can just give love and give grace because the source that we have is so powerful and mighty and unending well here we are waxing poetic again waxing poetic grace and love man come on what do you want me to do it just seems i only have so many star trek references to throw at you all right so let's move on here i think to our last segment on the episode and that is our reach out question reach out reach out and okay so the reach out question is what is one way that this study of Ephesians will have a lasting impact on you and that's been the theme of this episode but as you look at everything we've talked about what are you going to take with you i don't know if we've talked about this offline but i was recently talking to a friend who has been spending a good bit of time at an elderly brother's home with him helping him out this is a brother who's really active in the church here at montevista for a really long time and this friend of mine who's been spending time with him noticed and came across a diary that he had been writing and he's sort of on the edge of the end of his life and it's you could see he's thinking about trying to communicate to his loved ones what's really important to him and he wrote in this journal to his family members how he is trying to answer the questions for them about why they need to obey the lord why they need to turn from their lives of sinfulness and to come to the lord and so much of what he's writing was focused on the book of Ephesians and it was just almost end to end like talking about what god's plan was all about and referencing how the book of Ephesians really explains all of these things and can answer our questions and can lead us to know why you know we were once dead in our trespasses and sins and how god has made us alive together and how he's lavished on us his grace and how he loves us and all the things that we've been reading and it was just amazing to me to think about somebody who at the end of their lives would want to help share and to help lead his family to know the lord how he would go to the book of Ephesians and throughout this whole time together i've just been thinking about in these studies how much this book is like a cliff's notes to god's incredible plan for us how we can read this letter and just see that i mean so much of god's amazing plan is here right there for us not only in the first half of the letter but also in the second half of the letter as we go from these poetic and sweeping explanations of why we believe and why we love the lord and why we should develop this trust and confidence and faith but then also how we live our lives how we have these practical life lessons as we talk about in the last half of the book so i don't know i think for me how has this had a lasting impact on me it's just really helped me to see that this is a great resource if you want to help somebody not only yourself obviously but if you want to help explain what is it that god's doing what did he do for you and what does he expect from you Ephesians is a really helpful place to go to have a substantive conversation about the gospel that's a really neat example just hearing from a servant that has been walking with the lord for a long time and how he might explain what the lord has for someone he loves that's really cool i i went to a similar place here i i'll use an analogy i've been hiking a lot this past summer and sometimes you're hiking a really cool trail but you're just looking at where your feet are so that you don't misstep you don't step on a rock or something and then all of a sudden you look up and you notice the grand view yep and wow i was not paying attention but now my eyes are open and i see something bigger than just the step right in front of me and i think that's what Ephesians did for me again through this but in in some new ways our place in god's plan especially his presence with us it's like a rewrite on your worldview that you really are meant to orient yourself who you are what's happening in life in a completely new way around christ and what god is doing that he is dwelling in his church that you are one with christ and with his body in a totally profound way the spirit passages the role of the holy spirit in our lives and the christ love passages and the temple passages and the the ideas all seem to give this sense of god drawing near like these words grow my faith in his power and presence with me as i look up and open my eyes wider and i'm like okay okay whoa man like you're talking before but no there's this sense of like um okay okay i remember again what this is yeah and may i settle into that more may i receive that fully in faith and live from it not just as a as an idea or as a set of teachings but as the thing that colors everything else that i'm doing especially when you get into some of the passages like at the end of the letter as they're really practical like if you miss that first part like you're talking about all the temple passages and the spirit passages and christ love passages i mean it feels so hollow if you just jumped to ephesians chapter six you know telling your kids to obey their parents right like but why and it's all there too like if you just back up and read it like oh yeah oh yeah that's why that is that's the substance in the lord in the lord right all of these things that we've been talking about i think that's really powerful just to see these surface level things that have so much more depth and meaning when you can connect all of the bigness as we've talked about this made-up word behind it all yeah i think that i think this sense of we started with the zooming out and i got it conceptually i think i like i don't know that i learned a ton of new ideas it's just these conversations are a deepening and an applying that have really made a big difference sure yeah i can appreciate that all right so let's get into our last segment here on the episode and that is our challenge for the week i am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me all right so this is again i think going to be super practical this may be equivalent to writing a passage down on the sticky note but uh pick a favorite verse in Ephesians and memorize it if you're going to take away something from this book you might as well just take it away and memorize it i know all of us memorize the obey your parents in the lord passage in chapter six but i think we could all find a different one and maybe memorize it together do you like to do memory work or have you found this helpful is that something that you've you've worked with through the years i find myself loving memory work but not really committing myself to it as much and i'll find myself like song lyrics or whatever like all of a sudden just being able to quote along while someone is reading a passage but i mean i have known people who could literally go through and recite the entire letter or recite large sections of the bible and i'm probably not that guy but i do like this challenge i i appreciate the the need to memorize scripture for sure yeah the way that i have done it in the past i like to write the first letter of each word of a verse and put it out somewhere and then just keep reading it until i can not need that cue and and move on from it i've been working on the sermon on the mount for a while and i keep coming back to it and leaving it but i've been thinking about what would i want to memorize here in this book and there's so many gems it's really it is one of those yeah just memorize the whole book but i think that prayer in Ephesians 3 might be my my pick or some section of it i want to look at it again the prayer about christ's love what about you what would be your pick here i was thinking about at the at the beginning of chapter four where he talks about all of those qualities that we should all have humility gentleness patience bearing with one another in love just that idea sort of as the transition from the first half to the second half that passage there in the beginning could be really helpful just as a as a way of reminding myself that these things are worth investing my time in these qualities i love it yeah yeah that's good we've got our homework all right challenge accepted and let us close this conversation really this whole study with a closing prayer and the suggested prayer and the study guide is may all who love you enjoy peace grace and love with faith and that obviously comes here from the end of this letter and so let's go to god in prayer our holy god our father above holy and matchless is your name on all the earth and beyond we're in awe of your power as we zoom out to see even a glimpse of your work around us but as we zoom in to see your love for us we can't help but lay our lives at your feet for saving us when we were your enemies bless us today father to love you more bless us with the peace that passes all understanding shower down upon us the lavish riches of your grace and increase our faith in you and our willingness to follow the footsteps of Jesus in everything please bless all those who've joined us in this study of Ephesians we thank you so much for them thank you so much for their willingness to think through your word together with us we thank you for Paul and we thank you for his boldness to share with us such poetic and powerful words in this practical letter may all who love you enjoy the kind of peace grace and love with faith that he describes may we devote ourselves wholly to you each day every step we take in our walk towards heaven in christ who powers our lives and all of our relationships we offer this prayer amen amen well we've concluded our study here and the study guide is available now for anybody to download as a pdf and use but next week is that our week off next week uh yeah we are gonna go back to some of those interregnum kind of episodes that we did for a while um you know in between studies interreganum another good word there have been a lot of conversations we've heard a lot of people wondering when are you gonna get back to the chosen episodes and we're gonna do that also we have gotten some really solid questions from people that they'd like us to answer and there was even somebody who sent us a really thoughtful email that i want to spend an entire episode on so there's gonna be some conversations that we're gonna have in the upcoming weeks hopefully they'll be helpful as we prepare for another guided study later on but the next few weeks are gonna be exciting so if you want to hear something on the episodes you want us to talk through something answer some questions please reach out to us on our website we'd appreciate that we've got a contact form there you can fill out and just let us know what you'd like to hear us talk about on upcoming episodes so thanks so much everyone for tuning in and again as ryan said you can go to biblegeeks.fm/Ephesians to find this study guide you can also find that information in the show notes for this episode at biblegeeks.fm/194 and until next episode everyone may the lord bless you and keep you Shalom!