God will always move His plan forward. He will move it forward in our humility or our haughtiness. We all have a choice to make. Are you going to be a sanctified shrewd dude…or a rude dude?

Josh shared his message, In the Dressing Room, with us.

As a martial artist, when I think of submission, I tend to think of techniques, maneuvers, and moves designed to subdue an opponent and bring them under one’s control. In the context of self-defense or sport, it is something that is forced upon another, with the only alternative recourse being personal harm or injury. Much like other concepts in Scripture though, we find submission is not something we are forced to do, but rather we choose to do. Not from a place of fear, but from a place of love for God and others.

On the heels of telling the church at Ephesus that walking in love, light, and wisdom is characterized by submitting to one another (vs. 21), Paul gives the church some real-life relationship examples of what this socio-spiritual submission should look like. Tonight, as we look at these verses at the end of chapter 5 and beginning 6 we will see practically how we can practice spiritual submission in a way that honors God and others.

Big Idea: How can we honor God through spiritually submitting to others? (5:22-6:9)

Guest speaker, KC, shares from the book of Acts.

Just as the man in the Bee Gees song did his talking by walking, as Christians, so do we. What we say and what we do gives others an impression not only of who we are, but also who Christ is. In a world dominated by self-service and sensuality God calls His church to a different standard. He calls them to walk like Him. To imitate Him.

In the last two sections that we looked at in the text, God through Paul has called the church to walk as one, in one body, and to walk in the newness of life that they have in him. We see that we are called to walk a few more ways, all of which lead us to walking as imitators of God.

How can we walk like God’s people as the church? (5:1-21)

If we desire change and growth in our lives and in our church, we cannot continue thinking and acting in the ways that we always have. To get new results, we must try something new…be something new.

Paul wanted the Ephesian church to understand this as well. He called them to recognize their oneness in Christ and to be one body, born again Jew AND Gentile. He wanted them to know, that if they were going to form something new, the church, they had to be something new.

Big Idea: How can we walk in newness as a church? (4:17-32)

Jew and Gentile were brought together through the blood of Christ into one family, tied together through a common relationship. But that did not guarantee peace. Paul understood this and recognized it was time to take all the theology that he had shared with the Ephesian believers about being one in Christ, and then call them to live it out in practical unity.

Big Idea: How can we walk in unity as a church? (4:1-16)

Just like with the song Open the Eyes of my heart that we saw from Ephesians 1 we can home in on the simplicity of a powerful verse and miss the depths of the text and its context. And while God does do abundantly more than we ask or think in the circumstances around us, He truly wants to do so much more even than that within us.

Background: After encouraging the church at Ephesus to “not lose heart” at the end of vs. 2-13, Paul then goes back to finish the prayer he started in verse 1 of the chapter. After sharing with them their spiritual blessings, praying for the eyes of their hearts to be opened, reminding them of being spiritually alive by grace alone, and revealing the mystery of their body being one in Christ, Paul concludes this heavily theological first half of the epistle by praying for them, again. The prayers he prays in this passage, much like the eye-opening ones from chapter 1, can serve as a model for prayer that we can pray for our church. We look at the text we’re going to see: 2 knee-bowing prayers we can pray for our church. (3:14-21)

As a small child there was a certain amount of relief in finding out that the monsters were not real monsters by episodes end of Scooby Doo. In fact, it was notably almost always some greedy middle-aged white man that was revealed to be the villain. Having that knowledge felt good, explained a lot, and brought some closure. It offered hope that Scooby and the Gangs fears and concerns were not in vain, because the mystery was solved.

Similarly, Paul too was facing some threatening circumstances in prison as he wrote this letter. The Ephesian church was discouraged about his imprisonment and what they may face as well for their faith. To encourage these believers, he wanted to share with them a couple of revelations that kept him going when he got he got scared or discouraged in his service to the Lord.

Big Idea: 2 encouraging revelations to keep us going for the gospel.