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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Randy Roberts

A Worthy Life

It's a delight and a privilege to join you here today at Advent Hope.

I want to say thank you in a special way to Luke, who is leading your ministry at this point in time, and to this whole team, to Victoria, thank you for the kind invitation and introduction.

And just let you know that Advent Hope is a very important ministry of the Loma Linda University Church.

We've never, I think, we've had good relationships for a long time and never better than now.

We're so grateful for what you do, for what you add to our community, for your work on behalf of Jesus' kingdom in the world of Loma Linda University.

Let me make sure now that I have this correct because I don't usually, all right there we go, don't usually use PowerPoint so you'll forgive me if I stumble a bit here.

So I wanna start out with your kind forgiveness and permission, talking about what's happening right now.

I think you probably know some about it, but we've just started a series, about 9 days long, I believe.

It's from 1 Friday night to the next Sabbath evening, and a meeting every single day called Unbelievable.

You might have been there with us last night.

It was a wonderful beginning of our multifaceted and intergenerational community.

Our speaker last night was Ty Gibson, today it's David Asherick across all 4 services, and then this evening again it'll be Ty, and then we move on through the week adding Jeffrey Rosario along the way.

So you probably are well acquainted with their names and their ministry and the work that they're doing.

If you can't come in person, join us online, but hopefully you can come in person.

1 of the things I love about having the opportunity to talk with you here today is the opportunity to talk about something that's very much on my heart.

If I have the privilege of being around you for any length of time and if our conversation turns to the world of Scripture, which I love talking about, it won't take long for you to realize that I have a deep love for Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

It's a letter that I think if we read and understand and live has life-changing, world-changing implications.

So I'm involved in a project right now that I wanted to tell you something about that I'm really eagerly looking forward to.

I'm working with our Director of Music and Worship and Musical Arts Adriana Pereira.

This is her doctoral project and it's also something I've had in my heart for quite some time.

So I've been working for some time now and committing the letter of Ephesians to memory and she is working right now on writing a cantata.

So toward the end of this year on a Sabbath afternoon we're going to have a very special event at the church and I hope you will plan to join us and be a part of that.

But what it has caused me to do has been to delve more deeply into this letter to the Ephesians.

There is nothing like memorizing scripture to cause it to take root and get soil and germinate in your own soul.

And the section I'm on right now is the early part of Ephesians chapter 4, about the first half of Ephesians 4.

So that's what I want to talk to you about today, but before doing that I want to say something about the theme of the letter itself.

Different people state the theme a bit differently.

Stephen Miller says the theme is that God has a plan to return unity and peace to his creation, and the church will play a leading role in that plan.

I really appreciate that particular statement of the message of Ephesians because the truth is if I were invited, I hope not, but if I were invited to pastor a church that was fractured, where people were fighting, I'm so thankful that's not the case here, but if that were the case, I think I would do nothing for the whole first year except preach and teach Ephesians.

Because that's what it is about, exactly what Miller says.

God's ultimate plan is to bring unity to his creation and the church has a specific role to play in that plan.

George Knight, James Edwards, building the body of Christ, the Holman Bible Handbook, unity.

Ephesians focuses on the unity between Christ, the head of the church, and the church as the body of Christ, as well as the unity between Jew and Gentile in God's greatest masterpiece, the church.

So let's talk just a little bit about the structure of Ephesians and why they would say this.

Now the way Ephesians is structured is somewhat a habit.

I don't know if I would say it's in every letter, but it's somewhat habitual of Paul.

But in Ephesians it is especially evident.

It is neatly divided into 2 sections, and I don't know if Paul had this in mind, but they're almost exactly the same length.

These 2 sections have very different emphases that are deeply connected.

And once we get an understanding of how it's structured and how these are connected, the entire letter comes alive and has a chance to live within us exactly what Paul was hoping would happen in the church in Ephesus.

Now we've had the wonderful privilege, and it has been truly a privilege, of being in the excavations of the ancient city of Ephesus on a couple of different occasions.

It's 1 of the best excavated cities of the ancient world.

So to stand in the Agora, the marketplace where ancient Ephesus would have done its merchandising and its business, or in the library that is part of the central road through Ephesus, or especially to walk out maybe a quarter of a mile or so out of the city center and come to the amphitheater, the theater of Ephesus, where you had the people chanting for 2 hours, great as Diana, great as Artemis of the Ephesians, and Paul's companions are saying, don't go in there, and he wanted to, and they held him back, said, you can't go in there.

It sounds suspiciously reminiscent of some things that we observe because the book of Acts tells us they did this for 2 hours and then it says and the greater part of them had no idea why they were there they just showed up and they just started chanting so to stand in those places and to Take in what it must have been like is truly a profound experience.

The great people of the early church passed through and some lived at Ephesus sooner or later.

Part of what we know was that this was a church that was in many ways fractured, divided.

The biggest part of the divide was Jew and Gentile.

That could be not only a deeply contentious divide, but profoundly hostile.

There is evidence, for example, in ancient Judaism that if a family had a child, I'm not saying this happened all the time, but there is evidence of this kind of thing happening just to get a sense of how deep the divide was.

That if a family had a child that married a Gentile, they conducted that child's funeral.

Now that kind of hostility, that kind of divide, changes everything.

So we know that that was happening in the church of Ephesus.

That there were differences and deep divisions.

So when Paul sits down and probably dictates the letter.

When he dictates this letter, what does he say?

How does he speak into a situation like that?

So before I look a little bit at the structure, just a brief story.

An author that I've appreciated over the years tells a story about a gentleman at a church he pastored that he called Herb.

I think he, you know, I don't know what his name actually was, but Herb.

He said Herb had been a church member for decades.

He was part of this local congregation and everybody knew Herb and everybody tolerated Herb because Herb was crotchety, he was upset half the time, mean-spirited at certain times, and 1 of the most common statements that got made between the members about Herb was kind of a shrug of the shoulders and just well that's Herb.

Did you know what the guess, that's Herb.

I mean, that was the reality that happened.

And this author writing about that, pastoring the church says, what struck me When I became a part of this congregation and began to see this, was that there was no expectation of life change.

There was no expectation that Herb would grow, would become more like Jesus.

Now I understand the other members can't make Him grow, I get that, that's something that He's going to have to decide, but it's a reality that we can begin to take on and not realize we're taking it on.

Just say there's not all that much expectation that any of us is going to be transformed by the Spirit of God.

So when Paul puts quill pen to parchment and scratches out this letter we call Ephesians, he's writing into a context though Which if they looked at each other across that aisle and just said, well that's Jews, well that's Gentiles, nothing would ever have changed.

So the structure helps us understand exactly what he drives at.

So Ephesians 1 to 3, first part of this, Ephesians 1 to 3 is largely written in what scholars call the indicative mood of writing.

The indicative mood of writing is the mood of writing that indicates or states what is true.

It's not asking you to do something necessarily, it's just telling you this is the reality.

And in that section Paul says some amazing things.

He tells us we are rich beyond imagination.

He says all the heavenly treasures are yours in Christ.

He says you've been destined for his kingdom.

All of these things are not things he's calling them to do.

He's just saying This is the reality of the gospel.

This is what is true, he writes, in the indicative mood of writing.

Secondly, it's very strongly and even heavily doctrinal.

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A Worthy Life

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