Pastor's Ponderings: Ephesians 1:1-4 Bible Study (October 12, 2026)

October 13, 2026: Ephesians 1:1-2

Blessings and peace be with you this partly cloudy morning here in the desert.  Yesterday we celebrated the life of Joyce's son Andrew.  His family, co-workers, and friends gathered to remember Andrew.  It was a very wonderful afternoon with music, video, and service, as well as a reception in the parish hall.   Though we are a small congregation, there is always more to do as we work to proclaim God's grace for all who come into our midst.

Today we begin our study of Paul's letter to the Ephesians.  Normally, we will have Bible Study on this book on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with some changes for vacations, holidays, and other unplanned reasons like illness.  Let's get started with some thinking of scholars which surround the letter to the church in Ephesus.  This letter may indeed be a circular letter, meant to go out to a number of churches in which Paul had begun the new communities and reached out to as a missionary for Christ, itinerant, and preaching the Gospel.  This letter, whether it was meant only for Ephesus or for many new churches in Asia Minor, has a central theme.  Its intent was to proclaim the gathering of all things together in Christ, which included all of creation, and most especially, people.  It is only in Christ in which all things come together.  Christ is the true center of all things.  This letter speaks to the duality of people; we are all simultaneously saints and sinners.  In every one of us there is a kind of battle going on between our two natures.  In our world there is no unity without Christ. When we get back to some Bible study programs which were popular about 50 years ago, like Bethel Bible, we hear the language of the harmony of creation which God always intended, from the garden until today, and beyond.  Christ came and continues to surround us with the restoration of the harmony God created us all to have.  Of course, we need to realize that the letter may have been written to a specific church, and ultimately was shared around, lost its recipient name, and ended up eventually going to Ephesus.  We will probably never know for sure.

I know that this seems like a very small passage to start and finish with today, but in its earliest words and greeting we discover that Paul only carries two claims to fame for himself.  First: he was an apostle of Christ.  Paul admits, and rightly so, that he was not his own person.  His life and work were controlled by the Savior.  Paul, as a former, highly educated Pharisee had plenty of reason to feel pride in his knowledge, but that learning seemed distant and unimportant to the grace and love of Jesus Christ in his life, and compassion to which he had been called.  For Paul the word of God had a brand-new unifying binding presence in his life, not old judgements, but new compassion and the Word's authority and grace in Christ for all things.  Second: He meant that he was commissioned and sent out by Christ himself!  I can certainly identify with that claim of Paul.  My call to serve the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been to two very different settings, and now, there will be something even newer, filled with the hope of Christ-filled possibilities.  I understand at 76 years of age, that Christ's call doesn't quit!  I believe if Paul had lived to my age, he too would still have been proclaiming Christ crucified and raised from the dead.  Little did I know, but I would know, that starting in youth group leadership in church, and as the president of my school's National Honor Society, and using my voice both at school, and in the church, while taking a break from God's call through Christ, and finding my way back as the choir director for 9 years because of a school teacher friend's invitation, and ultimately in that congregation to come to understand the identity in my life of my Lord who had been seeking me out for years, having a wife whose faith was strong and resilient even when we were nearly starving in theological graduate school, from gifts of support to pay bills we could not pay, my internship found me in an Iowa congregation of 3000 members, studying under a wonderful supervisor, finding the grace of church members who assisted our family along the way, receiving a first call interview, and call, in a congregation of 1350 members in a university community filled with auto industry executives, discovering a need for our then youngest, to leave behind everything that was growing and green, interviewing and being called to serve the Gospel at American, where it is obvious that sometimes we are simultaneously saints and sinners who may struggle to live our lives as our Lord's Holy Children, (By the way this is a long Pauline est sentence) but who know the power of the Gospel to move us to Christ and evermore holy living.  Though my ministry calls may come from congregations, they are, and will always be, the beckoning call of Jesus Himself!  There must never be a time when our pride creates what we believe to be the work of the Gospel.  All the credit for the successes of our work for Christ must always be given to God Himself, who fills our lives with the Spirit who is our guide and shepherd in all things.  A good sermon is a reason to thank God for His care in the message, and to thank the Spirit for her constant care, and it is she who surrounds us with Christ's Love and Compassion.  Is it any wonder that from time to time we utter these words, "May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you O Lord." 

Whew, that long sentence and thought are over!  Well maybe.  I want you to know that I believe that each of us has two addresses right now.  One address is our human address, and the other, (can you guess?) is our divine address, where we are when we reside in the fullness of Jesus Christ.  Last Sunday in my message I spoke about Grace.  It is ours in all its fullness through Jesus Christ.   It is a gift which you and I can only receive from God, our Savior.  It is the loveliness and light, the warmth of being held gently in the arms of One who cares, and the certainty that no matter what comes, that grace will always surround us with understanding and compassion.  Of course, you and I need to turn our lives over to Christ in all things for grace to fill us, and flow from us to all people who are around us.  Paul almost always uses the word grace in his greetings for the new churches.  Another of Paul's words in greeting is the word peace.  There is only one place to receive this, and that is from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is in Him where that peace that passes all understanding comes to us all.  I think that every one of us seeks that kind of peace in our lives, often in places where it cannot be found.  Turn to Christ, and there that peace will always be, no matter the circumstances.  It is ONLY in the Will of GOD that PEACE can be found in this life.

Thanks for letting me share with you today.  Tomorrow we will move into chapter 1:3,4. May the Lord's grace surround you throughout this day.  

In Christ's love Pastor Kim

=============================================================

October 14, 2026: Ephesians 1:3-4

It is a beautiful morning.  May our Lord in Heaven fill your life with His Light, and Truth, and Love.  Yesterday we prayed on the Prayer Chain for a family whose son-in-law, husband, son, and father, was wounded in the head by a gun shot.  Yesterday Gordo was removed from life support.  Please pray for his family.  We also need to remember the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Leo, who has now had surgery to remove a portion of his cancerous lung.  Pray for healing, and with comfort, in this time of uncertainty in their churches. 

Today we have a short two verses in the English translation from the Greek, but in the original Greek this reading is a long Pauline sentence running from verse 3 through verse 14.  I can understand this completely.  Paul would be caught up in the wonder of God's Grace in Jesus Christ, in the power and promise of God's Word, finding at every turn another thought to continue to unpack the glory and power of Christ's election of humans to save us from our sin, even as difficult as that would all be for Him, because we are His loved beyond measure treasure in all of His creation.  However, in the English translation this section of the first chapter is divided into much smaller sections, hence we have only verses 3 and 4 for today's study. 

In our passage for today we find Paul thinking, as we might expect, in somewhat Jewish thought, about Christians being God's elect, and of course, Paul, understanding the sinful nature of people, is in awe that the LORD of all things has chosen people!  But for Paul it is even more than that.  We are only a little bit lower than the angels of heaven in the order of God's choosing, and that includes all of the beauty and life of all of God's amazing creation, because we know that in all of the creative power that God wielded, He saw that everything was just as He had intended it to be, so here we are, perhaps the most difficult part of His creation due to our sinful nature, but certainly blessed again and again by the Lord's unsurpassed love for us above nearly everything else on earth and in heaven.  So, in his own thinking, Paul sees himself, and all humankind as God's choice, and that in itself is a wonder beyond belief.  Of course, people might choose God for His goodness and mercy, though there seems in our world today, or even in our own nation, many who do not choose His Light and Truth and Love by seeking the One who offers it, so perhaps it becomes even more extraordinary that God chooses you and me.  Paul finds in God's choice a bounty that is beyond measure, only to be found in heaven!  People are certainly able to attain a certain high level of knowledge and wealth, but there is nothing that a person can do to even begin to approach the bounty of God's blessings which are showered upon us as if we deserve to receive them and will come to acknowledge the One who has given them, but that only happens when we receive the Christ through its being given to us in the Spirit's gift of faith.  So here you and I are.  God does it all!  Martin Luther had it right, the only way we can come to receive such amazing blessings is by Word Alone, Faith Alone, and perhaps the greatest, Grace Alone.  These are the blessings that can only come from Heaven, and our Father.  However, that is not the fullness of Paul's thinking about these things Paul is also pondering.  He is thinking about the purpose of God's choosing.   As Christians, in Paul's time, and in ours, the Living Word, Jesus Christ, comes to us, in, with, and around us, that God's elect will be holy!  Paul understands that Christian people are meant to be a part of this world but separate from it in so many other ways.  Christian lives are meant to be the graceful presence of God so that all people can see His nature and understand that He chooses to make all people His own through faith.  In Paul's time, Christians knew that they were very different from the Roman world, though they lived in it, they were God’s presence.  Today, that difference has been blurred.  Our faith life, and being a part of the body of Christ, the Church, have become less significant.  The place where reception and growing faith have happened for two thousand years, is, and will always be, the heart of growing faith, and the home for moving one's life into the living presence of the Savior.  Today, many other things draw people away from their faith life to live in and of the world.  That is not who we are meant to be.  We have been chosen by God to be immersed in His bounty of Grace through Jesus Christ.  Today we cower to think that we might be persecuted for this difference, but that evil, which often calls itself a part of the Church is out there trying to take power and wealth, and to then judge those of us who continue to walk in Christ's way, to task, or even worse, to seek to punish the True Church who does not live in the world like that.  There is, today, a powerful religious group who advertise in the political arena with proven lies, to continue to seek their accumulation of worldly power and wealth.  That is not the True Church!

Our lives are meant to be an offering to God, and that means that as we live in this world, others will know that we, indeed, are the children of the living Christ.

Thanks for being with me today for this study.  Next week, we will have four days of this study, Monday through Thursday, but tomorrow I am on vacation with my family, this week is Fall break from school.  Reminder, Saturday, 1PM, is our free movie.  It is a great movie, recommended by everyone who I know who has seen it.  I thought it was a really good view.    With love in Christ, Pastor Kim