Sermon Tone Analysis

| Our Father, who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy Name.Thy kingdom come.Thy will be done,On earth as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our debts,As we forgive our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,But deliver us from evil.[For thine is the kingdom,and the power, and the glory,for ever and ever.]Amen.

| PSALM 40*1*     I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry.

2     He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.

3     He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the Lord.

*1*  |

 

My translation

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus.

Thus ends the reading of God’s word, let us pray.

I want to look at four things contained in this verse, we will consider Paul, what the word apostle means, what the word saint means, and finally what it means to be faithful in Christ Jesus.

Paul opens this letter with a greeting to the church at Ephesus.

This is the word of God so this is a greeting from God himself.

Certainly Paul wrote this letter but it was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

*Paul* in person, pouring out his heart in praise and thanksgiving.

What he writes is in very fact the product of his own meditation and reflection.

It is both a spontaneous utterance of /his/ heart and a careful composition of /his/ mind.

But this heart and this mind are so thoroughly *Spirit-controlled* that the /ideas/ expressed and the very /words/ by means of which they are conveyed are also the ideas and the words of the Holy Spirit.

Hence, the word of Paul is the Word of God.

Who is Paul?

Paul’s exact date of birth is unknown.

It is reasonable to surmise that he was born within a decade of Jesus’ birth.

He died, probably as a martyr in Rome, in the mid- to late a.d.

60s.

Paul’s birthplace was not the land Christ walked but the Hellenistic city of Tarsus, chief city of the Roman province of Cilicia.

Tarsus, modern-day Turkey.

Some insist that Paul had personal knowledge of Jesus during his earthly ministry.

Hengel goes so far as to assert that it is almost probable that the young Saul even witnessed Jesus’ death.

In any case, only a couple of years after Jesus’ *crucifixion* (ca.

a.d.

30), Paul’s hostile attitude toward the latest and most virulent messianic movement of the time underwent radical change.

He traveled the 150 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus armed with legal authority to hunt down Jewish Christians (Acts 9:1–2),

*1*     Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,

2     and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way*(Christians in the years immediately following Christ’s death were referred to as followers of the way)*, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

As he traveled a bright light and a heavenly voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

It was Jesus—to Paul’s chagrin not a dead troublemaker but *the* risen Lord.

His Hebrew name was Saul.

Saul was a Pharisee.

Saul persecuted the Christians.

After encountering the risen Christ on the road to *Damascus* he began identifying himself by his Roman name Paul.

The name Paul means “small,” and while that may have matched his physical stature, spiritually he was anything but small.

He wrote almost half of the books we have in the New Testament.

He was truly an apostle of Christ Jesus and as so his authority was almost matchless among men.

We know of Paul’s former life persecuting the Christians from his other writings, in Galatians chapter 1.

In writing the Galatians Paul is combating heresy put on them by the Judaizers so Paul goes to great lengths to show he understands Judaism.

In vs. 13 he says:

*For you have heard of ****my former manner of life in Judaism, how I ****used to persecute ****the church of God beyond measure and ****tried to destroy it; *

*14     and I ****was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my ****countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ****ancestral traditions.*

Paul knew the religion of the Jews as well as anyone.

That is a very brief biography of  Paul.

Next Paul says he is an apostle.

What does he mean by this?

The Greek word ἀπόστολος has a rich heritage of meaning.

In classic, pre NT times it carried the meaning of a naval expedition and more probably of the commander of the ship.

In isolated cases it refers to persons who are dispatched for a specific purpose.

Sometimes it performed functions expressed in such Eng.

terms as ‘ambassador, delegate, messenger.’

This last word is the basic meaning of the word in the NT messenger, or sent one.

There are three ways the new testament uses the word apostle.

1.

In Hebrews 3:1 Jesus himself is called an apostle

2.   James, Barnabas, Junias and Andronicus as well as many others are called apostles.

3.   Finally the twelve called by Jesus are called apostles.

It is in this last category that Paul is placing himself.

Paul opens his address to the Galatians writing, “Paul, apostle not by men and not through the agency of man, but rather through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead” (Gal.

1:1).

The first words, */Paulos apostolos/*/ /(Παῦλος ἀπόστολος) by which Paul */>/*identifies his authorship and his authority are overlooked, and taken for granted by modern*/</* readers.

Paul regularly, though not always, states his apostolic position at the beginning of his letters to punctuate the authority *by which* he writes.

His Galatian readers understood the significance of his office even though we have lost perspective on apostolic authority.

Whereas, a simple messenger (/angelos/) delivers the specific words given him by another of higher rank, an apostle served as an actual representative of the higher authority, given the trust both to proclaim a message *and to interpret* and apply it as well.

He basically represented the interests of the one commissioning him.

Lightfoot writes, “The ‘Apostle’ is not only the messenger, but the delegate of the person who sends him.”

The apostle is one given the right to speak on behalf of the one appointing.

Although we see instances in the New Testament where men are commissioned by other men or by churches, Paul was appointed by God through Christ.

Therefore, when Paul is speaking from the authority of his apostolic office, he is speaking on behalf of God, and his words are God’s words spoken by God’s authority.

As one who was witness to the risen Christ.

Paul, on the road to Damascus, going to murder more followers of the way, encountered Christ in his glory and was immediately converted.

When Paul says “an apostle of *Christ Jesus* through the will of God” he is putting himself in a category with the twelve.

This is a commission by God for the purpose of delivering the message of salvation.

But this not only indicates a commission, but it indicates possession as well.

Paul was sent forth by Christ and belongs to him also.

So we learn two things from looking at this word apostle, First, Paul claimed to be an apostle given divine authority and sent on a divine mission.

Second, the office of apostle was created with a practical purpose in mind, *not for self-exaltation* or ceremony.

Apostles were not high churchmen, but lowly instruments chosen to carry a message.

K. H. Rengstorf writes:

An objective element, the message, thus becomes the content of the apostolate.

Full and obedient dedication to the task is demanded.

Action accompanies speech in demonstration of authentic commissioning.

*The works are* not a subject of boasting or evaluation but of a joy that expresses a complete ignoring of the person and absorption in the task.

The office of apostle was never intended to be perpetual in the Church.

It was a unique position, in a unique time, serving a unique purpose.

Apostles were not to be living icons afforded our worship and veneration, *but were to be slaves* of Christ (Rom.

1:1), slaves of God (Titus 1:1), and men obedient to the will of God (Eph.

1:1), chosen to bring about the faith of the elect (Titus 1:1).

As bondservants to Christ, they were to be bondservants as well to Christ’s body—the Church.

Now that we have an understanding of  Paul and what an apostle is, let’s look at this word “saint.”

The Israelites, under the old dispensation, were called *saints*, because they were separated from other nations and consecrated to God.

No word in the New Testament has suffered more than this word /saint./

Even the dictionary defines a /saint/ as a “person officially recognized for holiness of life.”

When popular culture refers to saints they usually mean in the Roman Catholic sense of the term, meaning those who in death and upon confirmation of a miracle are then sainted by the Pope.

The inclusion of saints in the church calendar began in the 2nd century.

Originally these were local observances of the death-days of martyrs.

The dedication of churches to saints began in the same way, with churches built over the tombs of martyrs.

As the fame of martyrs and saints spread, observance of their festivals became more widespread, and universal calendars of saints for the Western and Eastern churches eventually resulted.

Biblical saints who were not already commemorated as martyrs were inserted, and in the East this included OT saints.