The Book of Ephesians

Paul's epistle to the church in Ephesus.

Theme: The theme of the book of Ephesians is The Church Glorified.

At Grace Church of Mentor, you will primarily hear expositional preaching of a whole book in its parts and not many topical series. We preach this way because:

  • It cultivates the discipline of starting and finishing.
  • It helps God’s people sharpen their interpretation skills through learning context and hermeneutics in order to apply truth to the culture.
  • It reveals each person’s spiritual strength and weakness
  • It strengthens spiritual maturity.
  • It protects the flock from wolves within and without.
  • It helps us to systematically focus on truths mentioned in other places in the Bible.

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Theme: Investigating our Eternal Foundation, part 1

Why is the church glorious? Because she has a glorious head, foundation, and shepherd – Jesus Christ. When the church is promoted as a marketing tool of social good and philanthropy, she is robbed of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ and His power to save. God’s grace is what makes the church glorious.

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Theme: Our Eternal Foundation, part 2 – Every Spiritual Blessing is in Christ.

You may not have a million dollars waiting to be claimed by you, but Christ has something of indescribable value with your name on it. Our passage today may be the most exhaustive description of the value of our salvation in Scripture. Though these spiritual blessings are outlined as experienced in the past, present, and future, they all came to us at the moment we believed.

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Theme: Our Eternal Foundation, Part 3 – Every Spiritual Blessing is in Christ

As the introduction to the last section of chapter 1, these verses mentions two practical ways that our riches in Christ are most vividly displayed. This passage is a prayer of praise offered personally by Paul in response to the testimony of the Ephesians.

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Theme: Our Eternal Foundation, Part 4 – Every Spiritual Blessing is In Christ

Paul continues his prayer that we started looking at in verses 15-16. In these verses, his prayer turns from thanksgiving to request for the Ephesian believers, that they would continually understand more of all they were given in Jesus Christ the moment they were saved.

This morning, we looked at 2 of the 3 things that Paul wanted the Ephesian believers to understand:

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Paul continues to pray for believers’ understanding of who they are in Christ to increase. As we pray the same for each other, it will be answered because it is the revealed will of God! God is very proud of His Son. He loves and longs for people to know more about His Son, and to keep learning more of Him forever.

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Living Contrasts: From Death to Life in Christ

Paul often describes our lost state to set up a contrast with our new life in Christ.

The structure of this passage reveals its main points. The Greek only contains 2 sentences (verses 1-7 and verses 8-10) but three sections. This week we will look at the first sentence, which outlines two different states of being: lost and saved, dead and living.

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Living Contrasts: From Death to Life in Christ
The Greek of this passage only contains 2 sentences, divided into three sections. Last week we looked a sober and fair assessment of lost people in verses 1-3 and introduced the jubilant initiative of God in verses 4-7. This week we will continue with the second section and look at the outworking of our response to God’s grace.

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Theme: From Alienation to Restoration

In this passage, Paul applies the truths from verses 1-10 to a specific problem in the church he wrote to: disunity among those who were already made one in Christ.

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Theme: We have adequate, divine resources to fulfill Christ’s mission in a way that honors Him.

Just as a soldier’s backpack contains everything they need for survival and execution of their mission, Christians have been given adequate resources by God Himself. As God’s soldiers, we are properly prepared to survive in the field of Christian service.

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