Join us online! - Next online service starts Sunday at 9 AM • Watch Live →
Jan 09, 2020
Ephesians: Jesus is our Unity
Andrew Allison · Listen
Sermon Questions Ephesians 1:1-10
1. How good are you at receiving gifts?
2. “Christianity is more about what God does (& has done) than what we do.” True or false? Explain.
3. “Blessed us”, “chose us”, “predestined us”, “forgave us”, “lavished grace on us”, “made known His mystery to us”. Choose one of these gifts and explain what it means in your life.
4. V. 10 The point of ALL the gifts is – “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” What does that mean?
5. What would more unity look like in your family and community?
Share with a friend
Recent Sermons
Paul never recovered from God including the Gentiles in the salvation invitation.
Like some of us, perhaps, he felt like some people should be excluded by virtue of where they were born or how badly they have behaved.
More than included, Paul instructs that former ‘outsiders’ should be treated as precious insiders, treated even better than we would treat ourselves. What would it look like if love came to town?
Human beings need reminders about how to get along, and Christians are no exception. We especially need reminders about how to love each other while we disagree. Paul draws the believers' hearts and minds back to what Jesus has done, and that paves the way for loving each other well through conflict.
How do we live with Jesus in a society that opposes him? Paul tells us to wake up to our resurrection hope. When we do that, loving others and rejecting sin in our own lives makes sense.
Romans 12 is the description of what happens when God’s mercy overflows in a church’s life. Lifelong attitudes change, love becomes genuine, mocking enemies are not met with equal and opposite force but, quite the opposite, with peace and gentleness. Be praying even now for how God will speak uniquely to your small group.
All along, we’ve been saying that God’s heart is to see us INCLUDED. That’s why Jesus came, and that’s the subject of Paul’s letter to the Romans. At times, Christians forget God’s radical inclusion of them and go back to the old patterns of competing and comparing. Sadly, that was happening in the Roman Church. Paul has one powerful dose for that sickness.
The resurrection changed everything! The story includes an invitation, a blessing, and a commission for the first witnesses … and for us today.
