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- Ephesians opens with a single sentence, 12 verses long—an epic poem.
- We explore the art, beauty and thoughts that build our joy.
- We see the big picture which builds our interest.
- The hint of mystery motivates us to read on and find out where this is going!
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Sermon Slides - The Epic Poem that Opens Ephesians
Goal: To hear what God is saying to each one of us through these words he wrote to us
The Epic Poem that Opens Ephesians
- The Passage—Understanding and Enjoying it
- The Purpose for this Presentation
- The Practical implications for you and me today
Predestination
- Humans are responsible, accountable, and wrong choices can bring penalties.
- God is sovereign (the highest authority) and does not just predict the future but destines it.
- These seem to be in contradiction, because our minds are finite, and God is outside time
- We need to hold both A and B in tension. If we let go of one, we’ll be in error
Three Positions
- Hyper-Calvinist (no human choice)
- Don’t need to preach the gospel because all the elect will get saved anyway.
- Arminian (no predestination)
- God did his part and hopes the elect will choose him (he peeked into the future and they did)
- You can constantly flip between being Christian and not
- Augustinian (African theologian) also called Calvinism
- You have to hold both truths because the Bible teaches them.
- Our finite minds can’t resolve the tension, we just trust!
Augustinian (balanced Calvinism)
- Preach the Gospel assuming humans can and must make a choice, and we do our best to persuade them
- Rest in the joy and security that you were loved and chosen before the foundation of the world and it does not depend on your constant faithfulness.
- look at the bottom of the handout page
Three blocks
- 1. Past, 2. Present and 3. Future
- Each of them follows the same pattern
- God’s Choice on an Issue
- His Plan for accomplishing this
according to his pleasure/will
to the praise of his glory
- How as a Result, in Christ, this works out in practice
- First let us compare 1 and 3
Purpose
- Blessing and Praise to God
- Art, beauty and thoughts build our joy
- We see the big picture better and so can focus on the in-between
- “Mystery” captures our attention
- Builds interest and focus on the in-between
- We are motivated to read on and find out where this is going
Updated on 2023-03-26 by Andrew Fountain