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It Is Written

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter: Ephesians

Eric Flickinger

John McVay

09 Living Wisely

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We're glad that you could join us again this week as we continue our journey through the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.

This week we are looking at Lesson number 9, which is living wisely.

How can we live wisely in this present day?

We want to see what we can learn about that.

And before we delve into this lesson, let's do what we always do, and that's spend a moment in prayer to ask the Lord to bless us.

Father, we ask that you will bless us as we are digging into the book of Ephesians.

Help us to understand the significance of the themes that are found there, and how these themes and teachings apply to us today so that our lives can be improved as a result.

We ask that you'll bless our time together again this week, and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Well, we're happy to have back with us again the author of this quarter's Sabbath School lesson, Dr.

He's the president of Walla Walla University.

Thank you, Eric, for sharing this journey through Ephesians with me.

It's really exciting and we've learned a lot.

We've got 14 total this quarter, which is interesting for a quarter.

Usually we think of a quarter with 13, but we're blessed with an extra lesson this go-round.

But this week we're looking at lesson 9, living wisely.

And we're going to be spending some time in Ephesians chapter 5 this week.

And Ephesians chapter 5 is a rather interesting chapter.

But Ephesians 5, sometimes people read it and they go, what's the point?

This doesn't seem to kind of fit together.

You know, the first part of Ephesians chapter 5 could seem like just a set of jumbled, miscellaneous ideas or commands.

Paul sometimes thinks on a little higher level than we give him credit for.

And some things that I think Peter said, some things he says are a little confusing.

What do we make sense, how do we make sense of this apparently jumbled list of commands?

Now we're in the second half of the letter, right?

And we know now that we're expecting Paul to give us nitty-gritty advice on the Christian life because that's what he tends to do in the second half of his letter.

And this gets pretty nitty-gritty here, doesn't it?

I think maybe what helps us would be 2 things.

We want to know, first of all, what is his perspective?

So what helps me here is verses 15 and 16, to jump down there.

Look carefully then how you walk not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

So his perspective here, it seems to me, is of the end time.

That is, he believes Christ is coming very soon, he's encouraging Christian believers to live in the light of Christ's soon return.

He uses a very, very interesting word here, a Greek word that means to snap up the bargains.

So I was once at 1 of these big conventions in the convention hall shopping for books about the Bible.

And I'm poking around the books and I hear the 2 clerks talking to each other.

And 1 says, shall we do it for 1 dollar or 2?

And I knew we were getting to the end of the convention, they didn't want to take those books home, they were going to sell all the books off.

So I chose the books I wanted and when they announced all the books were 1 dollar, I stepped up to the cash register with my big stack of books.

You're probably a book lover too and you can understand.

My wife doesn't appreciate it, but yes I am.

So Paul is saying, as Christians, The perspective of this passage that he's taking is that we're living in the end time and we're using that time to snap up the bargains that are on offer as we look toward Christ's return.

So there's something of value here that Paul is referring to then.

And then there's the tone that I point out.

Paul here is reusing some well-worn themes that I would call battlefield themes.

Stay awake, don't be involved in darkness, and all these kinds of things are things that he's used earlier in his epistles to talk about Christian discipleship under the imagery of battle and being a good soldier.

He's going to come to that in chapter 6 verses 10 through 20, but he's already preparing the way.

His tone is the urgent 1 of the battlefield.

So rather than seeing chapter 5 verses 1 through 20 as just a jumbled set of commands, it's not a random list of exhortations, but it's Paul's end-time, urgent instructions to combatants in the great controversy.

So if I come to this list of commands from that perspective, I'm able to appreciate what Paul is doing here.

So all of those commands then become important, they become practical, they become marching or preparatory commands, as it were, to go into this battle that we're in right now.

He's trying to prepare us with some concrete exhortations, commands, do this, don't do this, do this, and we should accept them as combatants in the cosmic conflict.

These are instructions for us, urgent, end time, battlefield instructions.

So that makes these 20 verses make a whole lot more sense.

Let's kind of go through these 20 verses, maybe not individually each 1, we'll see how it goes.

But what are some of the major themes that we find outlined in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 1 through 20?

Well there is this battlefield motif in Revelation and here.

He starts off in chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 with what might be called an overarching call.

He invites the believers in Ephesus and invites us today to imitate God.

It seems like a rather high bar for us to aspire to.

But then he gives the phrase, as beloved children.

So as children would admire a parent and try to behave like that parent, this is a relational image then.

We're not trying to match God's resources or the scope of the salvation he offers the world or any of that, but we're admiring his character.

In our own sphere, we're wishing to imitate the wondrous grace that we see God granting humankind and to do that in our relationships with others.

Then he says in verse 2, and walk in love.

Walk, of course, is a good Hebrew metaphor for live, so live, but live as a journey.

Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

So in our relationships with others, We are not to be egotists, we are not to say, it's me, me, me.

We are to be self-sacrificing as Christ was.

Imitate God, follow on, track on, live into the self-sacrifice of Jesus himself.

Before we move on to the 3 major segments of our passage, it's probably good to pause there, Eric, and remember we've been talking about the great theme of Ephesians, right?

God's plan for the fullness of time to unite everything in Christ, to unite everything.

So now he's talking here about the kind of behaviors that will foster disunity, don't do those, and the kind of behaviors that will foster unity, do these instead.

10 Husbands and Wives: Together at the Cross

We're glad that you could join us again this week as we are continuing our study of the book of Ephesians.

This week we are on lesson number 10, Husbands and Wives Together at the Cross.

A very interesting subject that we're going to be looking at this week and we're glad that you could journey through it with us.

Father, we thank you for being with us along our study of the book of Ephesians.

And as we are looking at a very interesting subject today, we ask that you'll bless us with a greater and deeper understanding of it and an understanding of you and your plan for our lives.

We ask that you'll bless our time together this week.

We're grateful to be back again this week with the author of the Sabbath School lesson, Dr.

So this has been a bit of a journey and it's almost over.

Lesson number 10, and this 1 is Husbands and Wives Together at the Cross.

So Paul's going to get into some interesting things here this week, some things that are misunderstood, and we're going to try to un-misunderstand them, as it were.

But what is Paul talking about here this week in Ephesians chapter 5?

There's a section, verses 21 through 33, that Paul delves into something, some interesting subjects here.

Chapter 5, verses 21 through 33, is Paul's counsel to Christian wives first, and then he spills most of his ink on counsel, Eric, to Christian husbands.

So he's talking about wives and then husbands.

This is part of a bit broader passage that we'll study the 2 additional sets of relationships next week.

But the first set of relationships that he deals with in what we could call rules for the Christian household, wives, husbands, then he moves to children, parents, and then finally he moves, And this is the most challenging 1 of all, isn't it?

And that's where we really get a kind of catch in our throat here to realize that if you and I were sitting in a Christian house church someplace in greater Ephesus and we were looking around the circle and we understood the customs and morals of the time, we would be able to look around and based upon how people were dressed, we'd be able to say, she's a slave, he's a slave, oh, that's the slave master, and so on.

And it's a little daunting, isn't it, to think about sitting in that circle and looking out and participating in a Christian worship service and realizing that there in that circle of wonderful people at that house church are both slaves and slave masters.

So with that context in mind, help us understand this household code that Paul is introducing us to it.

It would have been a little more familiar back then to his readers, but we're very much strangers to what's going on here.

It's actually Martin Luther that put the German term to this, haustafel, or household code, house code.

And so it's rules for the Christian household or a little more technically a household code.

And it harks back, clear back to the fourth century before Christ to a guy that you've met before, Aristotle.

And Aristotle argues that 3 sets of relationships are at the very foundation of human society.

Probably the marriage Paul's talking about here.

Marriage, parents, children, and slave masters, slaves.

And this kind of caught on as a way of talking about households.

And we also have to think about the first century and what household meant.

Because you and I, when we think household, we think Western nuclear family.

But in the first century context, household was broader than that.

It included the master and his wife and his children, but it also included slaves and it included clients and patrons and even customers.

So it's a broader understanding of what household meant in the first century rather than necessarily our nuclear family today.

And so Paul is trying to reflect with those early believers on the relationships as they were structured in the Greco-Roman society of the first century.

And he's trying to fill those husks of relationships, thinking particularly of slavery, fill those husks with the values of the gospel somehow, and to see a transformation happening because they are modeling their behavior on Jesus.

And if Paul is talking about this household code, if he's bringing it up, if he's spending this much room in his letter talking about the household code, it would stand to reason that there were some differing views of what a household code would look like back in those days.

How is his view very different from others?

There's lots of ancient authors deal with this topic of household relationships.

And so with a little bit of work, we can set Paul's counsel here and then set alongside it some of these other documents.

And we tend to read Paul's counsel as kind of archaic and out of step with our times and it feels really old-fashioned.

Does it feel the same when you set it alongside Council from back then is a good and active question, isn't it?

There's 1 document that I like to go to because the difference is pretty stark.

It's actually a Jewish document called Sirach.

Sirach dates to about the early second century before Christ.

So here's a sample of the kind of counsel that was more or less common in the time of Paul still.

This document and others were well known and other writers contemporary with Paul were treating this in similar ways.

The others who write on this are basically interested in 1 thing, and that is the husband, father, slave masters, honor, and reputation.

And he needs to structure his relationships so that his ego gets stroked, his reputation is built.

Do not divorce her, but do not trust yourself to 1 whom you detest." That's cheerful marriage counsel, right?

That's probably not what you're going to hear in many counseling sessions today.

It advises fathers concerning the treatment of a son this way.

He who loves his son will whip him often.

Pamper a child and he will terrorize you.

Discipline your son and make his yoke heavy so that you may not be offended by his shamelessness.

Spare the rod and spoil the child to an extreme.

And what about that slavery relationship?

Fodder and a stick and burdens for a donkey.

Bread and discipline and work for a slave.

Yoke and thong will bow the neck of an ox, and for a wicked slave there are racks and tortures." So now set that kind of counsel, which is more or less characteristic of the time, against Paul's, and Paul starts to sing and shine, doesn't it?

For 1 thing, they never address the subjugated partner, and yet Paul addresses that individual first.

The wife first, the children first, the slave first.

And if you watch what he does here, just as we saw in his counsel to wives and husbands, he's spilling most of his ink and most of his attention on limiting the power of the husband, the father, and the slave master by asking that person to model his behavior on the behavior of Christ.

All right, so we've got a very different viewpoint than the rest of the world.

What is a common view of some of these passages that we're looking at right now compared to maybe what we're seeing in it is perhaps a little different than what you'll typically hear Christian commentators or others saying about these passages.

Well, sometimes particularly in an academic context, this passage, speaking of chapter 5, 21 through 33, but also the household code as a whole, gets dismissed as a child of its time, as holding no real value or truth for us to think about today because it's simply Paul trying to conform Christian behavior to what is expected in the wider world.

Now there's others, though, who take the perspective I'm advocating here, that in fact, if you study this passage carefully, the Household Code carefully, Paul is actually going out of his way to critique the patterns of patriarchal authority and behavior that were expected in the time, and he's bounding them and constraining them by the example of Jesus.

Now, this metaphor, Paul develops a marriage metaphor for the relationship between Christ and his church.

What are some of the elements of this metaphor?

11 Practicing Supreme Loyalty to Christ

We're glad that you could join us again this week as we continue our journey through the book of Ephesians.

This week we are on lesson number 11, getting close to the end, practicing supreme loyalty to Christ.

We're going to delve into some interesting verses today, not a long passage, but a very important 1.

Father, we ask that you'll be with us and guide our study in this chapter of the book of Ephesians today.

We ask that you'll bless us and help us to understand some significant relationships better than we did before.

We ask that you'll bless our time and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, we're happy to be back again with the author of this quarter's Sabbath School Lesson, Dr.

The last part of this has to do with the relationships between slave masters and slaves or slaves and slave masters.

And that's a challenging issue to think through.

So this has the potential to be very, very interesting.

Well, why don't we begin by reading just a few of the verses here and then starting to unpack and see what some of these themes are.

We're looking at Ephesians chapter 6 and we're looking together at verses 1 through 9.

He says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.

Then he quotes 1 of the commandments, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.

So if we wanted to summarize this week's lesson, these 9 whole verses, how might we summarize it?

And then I want to start digging into this relationship or this element, this aspect that Paul talks about here with children.

What was it like to be a child in the first century and what would Paul have expected his readers to understand living in that day that maybe we're not getting today?

So what's the general thrust of this section?

The general thrust in the case of children is what you would expect.

Paul's advice to children is obey your parents.

And there's a biblical mandate to do so, and God will bless you through your obedience to your parents.

In the case of slaves, of course, it gets nuanced toward that relationship.

Slaves, as you can see in verse 5, are to obey.

Slaves are to obey their earthly masters.

But throughout the few verses there on slavery, starting with slaves themselves and moving briefly to the slave owners, Paul has some advanced ideas that he's wishing to share with them, and he's trying to, as we suggested in an earlier segment, fill in, infill the husks of the first century relationships including the 1 between slaves and slave masters with the values of the gospel.

And so he sows the seed of real transformation here in pondering how the values of the gospel actually inform these relationships.

All right, so that gives us an overview of this section.

What would that have been like back in Bill's day?

Well, with a little bit of reading and study, we can begin to figure out the contours of what it meant to be a child back in that time.

And part of it is that it's a very different society than some of the societies that people live in today.

And yet, it has a kind of 97% to 3% split judging from the remains and documents that are left behind.

When you go to Ephesus, Eric, I don't think you've been there yet.

At least it needs to be on your bucket list for the time being.

But when you go there, In recent years, they're excavating something called the terrace houses.

And these are homes that are on a hillside there.

At least last time I was there, we're covered with some protection.

And you go in under the cover, and you look at these places.

And these are quite large, very beautiful, well-decorated homes with all of the aura of wealth about them.

But that kind of thing is 3% of the population.

97% of the population live just at or mostly below the level of sustenance, what we might call the poverty line.

And so those, that 97%, those people in the 97% live very different lives.

And some of the features about the first century that are traumatic from a child's point of view is that infant mortality was very high.

And then child death rates were extreme, too.

It was somewhat unusual to live beyond 5 years of age and so on.

And when you add that, when you add some of the customs of the age to that, it becomes really challenging.

A father had the legal right to expose a newborn.

And children are expensive, and they often exercise that right, especially if it was a female child.

And they would expose them to the elements, and the infant would either die out in the open or be adopted by someone, usually a slave trader, who would raise that child until a point when they could be sold.

So that's a fairly grim context for being a child, and it was a daunting assignment to be a child in ancient Ephesus, in any ancient city.

So not exactly something that you would desire for yourself.

I mean, everybody gets to be a child at some point.

But if we could choose a time period in which to be a child and a place in which to be a child, It doesn't sound like this would be a preferred time or place.

No, and of course, a significant portion of the population would be slaves.

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Sabbath School 3rd Quarter: Ephesians

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