Ephesians 1:15-23 Jack D. Terry, Jr.

The speaker starts by sharing a personal story about meeting his wife Barbara and their desire to become missionaries in Korea. However, Barbara's health condition prevented them from going, so they decided to contribute to missions through education instead. The speaker then talks about their journey back to Southwestern Seminary and his various roles there. They mention that Barbara is currently facing health issues related to her anemia and they have a doctor's appointment on Monday. They express trust in God and a willingness to accept whatever outcome. The speaker also discusses the possibility of certain passages in the Bible being hymns or creeds. They end by mentioning Paul's time in Ephesus and the opposition he faced. Good morning. How y'all doing? You're looking good. My goodness, some of you look wonderful. And then there's me. So I'm glad to see you all. Brother Jimmy, on several occasions, has given you all a little aside of his life and Carol Ann's life. And I'm going to take a moment of privilege today and give you a little aside of Barbara and my life. When I met Barbara in 1954, she was a surgical nurse in Baylor School of Nursing. She had her LVN license. She had been a surgical nurse since she was 16, working in a hospital in Terrell. And I met her, fell in love with her. We married in 1955 and started seminary. In fact, you'll love this, Carol Ann Jim, Barbara and I did our honeymoon at Southwestern Seminary. We married on Tuesday night. We came to Southwestern to look it over on Wednesday, Thursday, and we saw what Southwestern was like because I was graduating that year and would be coming to Southwestern. I took her home and left her two weeks at her mother's house after I married her on Tuesday because I had Jimmy two revival meetings and I had to go sing in two revival meetings. So she was my wife for two and a half days before I left her for two weeks. Back at her mother's house. Her daddy loved it. Her mother wasn't too happy about it. Anyway, need to tell you something about it. Had this little problem that's raised its head again today, anemia, not been there in 1955-56, which it was, we would not have ever come to Southwestern Seminary to teach. Barbara was a, Carol Ann, you were too, queen with scepter. Now, if you all remember the GAs, the girls in action, after you pass that young age, you went into the older age and the older teenage girls could be queen with scepter and queen with what, there were several other activities, queen regent, something like that. Anyway, I was there, I didn't start ambassadors until the royal ambassadors until I was 16. Most of the time, a nine, 10, 11, 12 year old boy did page, squire, knight, and then ambassador in four years. I did it one year and I became an ambassador at the end of my 16th year and kept on going and ended up at ambassador penitentiary, which was the highest level you could go in the royal ambassadors. So Barbara was at queen scepter. I was at a penitentiary and both of us had surrendered our lives for missions. And I didn't know it, but Barbara had a, has a great heart for Asian people, particularly Koreans, and I do too. And so we had determined when we came to seminary and had married and were getting finished with seminary, that we would volunteer for foreign missions. And it was just before the Vietnam war, right after the Korean war. And so we wanted to go to Korea. We were going to be missionaries to Korea. We filled out all of our papers. We went for our psychological exams to the surprise of most of my friends. I passed the psychological. Barbara didn't have any problem with it. And then we went for our physical exams and Barbara failed. The doctors told us she had a blood anemia that bordered on leukemia and that they could not afford to send us that far away in her health condition. So they refused to let us go to the mission field. So had that not happened, we never would have come to Southwestern to teach unless it had been after at least a missionary stint in Korea, because we love the Korean. I still love the Korean. Most of my graders have been Koreans. In fact, one of my favorite graders is Jonathan Kim, who is professor at Dallas Baptist University right now. Jonathan's a dear, dear friend. I have been many, many Korean friends. And all of the Asians have been my dear friends because we love them. So instead of going to the mission field, Barbara and I began to talk. What can we do? How can we educate missionaries to go? I can go teach at a college. I can go teach at a seminary. Let's pray about it, talk about it. God began to open doors. Believe it or not, in 1963, Carol Ann, we were at First Baptist Church, Lake Jackson, having a wonderful time, 1963. And I got a call from my major professor, Dr. Leon Marsh. And Dr. Marsh said to me three words, where are you? On his letterhead. I took a piece of my letterhead. Now, Leon was my father in the ministry. I took my piece of letterhead, North Lake Jackson, First Baptist Church, and I said, none of your business, Jack. To which he writes back and says, you have been accepted for doctoral study in the School of Education. To which I write back, that's interesting, I haven't applied. To which he writes back, immaterial, get your body back to Fort Worth, you're going to school. Now, that was 1963. So God began to work, and in May of 1963, we moved to North Richland Hills Baptist Church as minister of music, education, youth part-time secretary, sometime custodian, and once in a while cut the yard. And the only two people on staff was Hal Brooks and me. And we moved to North Richland Hills, and I started seminary. After seminary, Hardin Seminary University as professor of Bible, English Bible. And they called me professor of English Bible because everybody else taught Greek, Hebrew, Latin, I taught English. Although I could have taught Hebrew and Latin, but I didn't want to. Anyway, after four years, at Hardin Seminary, Dr. Naylor called me, professor, president of Southwestern Seminary, 1969. And said, Jack, Dr. Marsh wants to eliminate some of his courses. He's teaching history of Jewish education, philosophy and history of education, and principles of teaching, and he wants to get rid of those three. And he says, if you're the best one to take them, are you interested in coming back to the seminary? And so in the fall of 1969, Barbara and I came back to Southwestern Seminary. That was 55 years ago, and I'm still there. I can't get away. Every time I get away, they bring me back. I have been interim everything. If there's a job on the campus, I've probably been the interim somewhere along the way, which I love because I love the seminary. So that kind of helps you understand what Barbara's facing right now. So we still have the little demon, anemia, still sticking its ugly head up. And we're going to go see a hematologist over here at the Bedford Oncology on Monday at two o'clock, and we'll just see what he says. And we are trusting God. We are praying. We know who's in control. We're not afraid. We're not scared. Neither of us is afraid to die. In fact, to die is a game. And Barbara and I have talked about it, and we are understanding. She and I have both agreed that if they determine we have cancer, we're not going to do anything about it at our age. Just keep us comfortable. We know our fate. We know where we're going. God's in control. Just leave us alone. Keep us comfortable. Let us go to our Heavenly Father. So thank you all for praying for us on Monday. We would appreciate it. Now, two or three other asides. One is, I told you last week that there are some commentary outstanding biblical scholars who think that these first verses in chapter one through verse 13 could have been used as a first-century hymn, a first-century gospel song. And the reason they say that is because in each of the sections there is a chorus, to the praise of his glory, or to the praise of his glorious grace, or to the praise of his glory. And several biblical scholars think, hymnologists as well, think that this could have been a first-century gospel hymn, which was identifying the omniscience of God in the first verse, the omniscience of the Holy Spirit in the second verse, and the, I mean, the omniscience of Christ Jesus in the second verse, and the omniscience of the Holy Spirit in the third verse, at the end of which they said, to the praise of his glory. A chorus. Just like, there shall be showers of blessings. And we get to there, showers, showers of blessings, you know, comes the chorus. And now that's a gospel song. Well, I told you that there is another gospel hymn in the scripture as well. And it's found, and I'd like you to turn to it, 1 Timothy, the third chapter, and the 16th verse. They think, these same hymnologists, think that this was a hymn. There is no chorus attached to these words, and they think that it was a creed that was put into musical form. And many, many times they sang it when they came together. And in verse 16 of chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. And then here's the creed, or here's the hymn. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by the angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed in the world, received up in the glory. Can't you just hear them singing that? And many, many scholars think that that was a first century hymn. Now, the last aside, where I want to go today, is to remind you again what I said last week, but I'm going to say it again because you need to hear it. Paul had been the pastor of this church in Ephesus for two years and three months. And as I told you last week, he would have stayed longer, but except for Demetrius, the silversmith, who led a revolution against him because he was running his business, making silver idols of Diana, or Artemis, whichever you want to do in Greek or Hebrew, I mean Greek and Latin. And he was making statues to worship, and Paul was winning all of his converts, and they were not buying silver anymore. So he was running his business, and he got the people of Ephesus to raise a ruckus, and they brought all the people to the big amphitheater, a big theater that would seat 125,000 people. And on that day, they wanted Paul down there, and the church, after two years and three months there, would not allow him to go. Go back and read the book of Acts in his time in Ephesus. And the leaders of the church said, no, if you go down there, they'll kill you. In fact, one of their own people from the city of Ephesus, who was at the theater, they caught him and beat him up. Now, if they would beat up one of their own citizens, guess what they would have done to Paul if he had come? They would have killed him. And they knew that he was, and so because of that, Paul had to cut his ministry short in Ephesus and begin what was the third missionary journey. Now, he came to Ephesus on the second missionary journey, and on the third missionary journey, if you look at it real carefully, the apostle Paul wanted to take a ship to Corinth, but he knew that if he went down to the coast and waited for a ship, some of these people who were in the theater might come down there and get him. So the leaders of the church said to Paul, read the book of Acts, said to Paul, Paul, perhaps you need to leave by land and not by sea. And so what he did was he took a carriage from Ephesus and started a backward journey. He actually did a reversal of the second missionary journey, ending up in also, and I call him Lister Derby, up in Galatia, and then to Corinth and back again, and then went to Jerusalem. And you know, he got back to Jerusalem in time for what they wanted to have. So Paul would have still been there. Now, during the time that he was there, he preached all of these truths to them. He preached them all to them. You can imagine in two years and three months what he would have preached to them. Now, let me share something with you. Brother Jim, you were here for 17 years, had a pastor, 17 years. During the time that Brother Jimmy was here as pastor for 17 years, he preached a wonderful messages to you. And when he sits up here and teaches, he's doing the same thing to you that Paul was doing to the church in Ephesus. He's reminding you, in fact, how many times would he have liked to look at your faces who've been here since he was pastor and say, don't you remember this? Remember when I preached this? Remember what we did? Remember how God blessed you? Wouldn't you want to say that, Jim? Well, you see, Paul's doing the same thing here. Paul is not going to treat this book like he treats the other books. He's not going to tell them some things that they don't know. Paul's telling them things they know. And Paul's asking them if they remember. And he's trying to solidify what he taught for the two years and three months. And when Brother Jimmy gets up here, I watch him. I watch him. And I love it when he goes aside and says, you remember when I was here? I love that because what he's doing, he's doing the same thing Paul did. Paul's saying, do you remember when I was here and I told you about how glorious the Holy Spirit was? And he's trying to get them to remember so that they can enter in. Now, I'm feeling some of the same thing because I've taught this class for 30 years. And in the 30 years that I've taught this class, I can look at a lot of faces and tell a lot of people who have been in here and listened. And I can say to you all, you remember when I taught you that? I went back and looked at my outlines and I went back and looked at my list of books. This is the fourth time we've taught the book of Ephesians in 30 years. I mean, this is not new stuff. We've taught this before. And so I'm saying the same thing to you that Brother Jimmy is saying to you. Do you remember when I was pastor and I taught you these things? Well, are you still hanging on to the same thing that I taught? OK, so with that aside and with the fact that there was a couple of hymns here, I want us to read the scripture and look at it real carefully. Verse 14, 15, we begin with a therefore. Now, what the apostle is saying here is because of the omniscience of God, the omniscience of Christ and the omniscience of the Holy Spirit, because of those three things that we just finished, which ended with to the praise of his glory. Therefore, here's what we need to start doing now. Paul is saying to them, I'm getting ready to again remind you of some things that I reminded you when I was your pastor. The same thing that Brother Jimmy does up here on some Sundays and I do up here. And so it sounds sort of like this. And we read through all of these. Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, God, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all principalities and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this age, but also in that age, which is to come and put all things under his feet and gave him to be head of all head, which is the head of the body, which is back up again, gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Now, Paul is saying to these people, I preach this to you, and I want to know how it's still resonating with you. And are you still resonating with it? And now Paul's not in front of these people personally. He's there by letter. This is a letter that went to the church in Ephesus. As far as we know, when Paul left Ephesus, leaving, starting the third missionary journey by land, he never ever returned to his church. We don't know of any occasion when Paul went back to the city of Ephesus. He sent his young son in the ministry, Timothy, who was pastor of the church in Ephesus for a while. One of his good, beloved, disciple, apostle friends, John, was pastor of the church in Ephesus. But as far as we know scripturally, Paul never went back to this church when he kissed them that night after the riot, and he told them he would come back. As far as we can tell, he never went back. And so he's taking this occasion to go back to them by a letter, an epistle, which, by the way, is not the wife of an apostle, okay? Don't get that mixed up. An epistle is a letter. You've written epistles a lot. And he's trying to tell them what I taught you for two years and three months is still vitally important, and I need to know if you are still relationally active to this. Now, the interesting thing about this particular scripture is it is a prayer, which the apostle Paul does what Jack Terry has done, and what Jimmy Draper has done, and what Jack Graham has done, and what John Benner has done, and every other preacher has done. They bowed their heads, started to pray, got so excited in the prayer they started preaching again, and forgot that they were praying. May I share with you? Paul does that here. He starts a prayer here. He says, therefore also I heard of your faith in the Lord, the love of Yahweh for the saints. Do not cease to give thanks for you. He's getting ready to start praying. Now, the interesting thing is he starts praying, and when he hits chapter two, that brother Jimmy will start next week, he starts preaching again. He hasn't said amen. He hasn't closed the prayer. He does, if you will turn with me over to the third chapter, and go to the 20th verse. Watch what Paul says in the third chapter, 20, 21. Now, to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all the ages world without end. Amen. He finally finishes the prayer. So, he gets to praying in his letter, and he gets so excited in rehearsing again the omniscience of God, and how it has worked in the church, in the life of the church of the Ephesians. He just stops, and in verse one of chapter two, and says, and he made you alive. I mean, after he said here, which is his body, the church which is his body, Paul's praying this, the church which is his body, wow, you are in his body. Guess what? He made you alive. He made you alive in Christ Jesus, free from your sins and trespasses, which you once, I mean, Paul gets so excited, I forgot I'm praying. Now, you who have been here with Brother Jimmy for 17 years, have you seen him do that? Jim, they're shaking their heads, by the way. Have you seen me do that? Yes. We all do it. We start praying, and we think about something, and the prayer has enjoined us to such an extent that all of a sudden we just start preaching again. It's okay. It's a preacher thing, all right? So, I want you to know, from verse 14 to chapter three, verse 21, is a prayer, but in the midst of that prayer, there is wonderful spiritual content, which the Apostle Paul, and which Brother Jim will help us in the next couple of weeks in chapter two, and then I will pick up in chapter three, a wonderful spiritual context which is in the body of the prayer, and since Paul is writing it, he can stop and have the writer, his lethucist, to rehearse to him what he has said, and he can change it and adjust it. He doesn't have a cute computer where he can do a backspace, but he does have a writer that he can say, oh, by the way, I'd rather say this than that. Oh, by the way, I love that by the way, Jim, my grandson Garrett, who's 30 years of age, okay, came to my office when he was in his second year in college, all right? He was in SMU. He was a sophomore. I have a little portable typewriter that was given to me by our dear friend Carlos Phillips, a little bitty portable rollout, a little bitty typewriter, you know, everything typewriter. Garrett walks in there, and he looks at that, and he says, Papas, what is this? I said, Garrett, that's a typewriter. Where's the screen? I said, it's not a computer. It doesn't have a screen. Well, if it doesn't have a screen, how can you print on it? I said, I'll show you. Got a piece of paper. Put it in the rotary. I said, now, hit the keys and watch what happens. He, Papa, whoa, he said, that's neat. It printed on the paper. I said, yeah, that's the screen. So, I joked it up for him. I said, now, write your name, Garrett. So, he went G-A-R-R-E-T-T-S-P-R-I-G-G-E. I said, he said, I made a mistake. Where's the backspace? Where's the eraser space? I said, Garrett, with a typewriter, you don't have a backspace. If you make a mistake, you either have to type it over or use what's called whiteout. What is whiteout? I said, I'll tell you what, folks, there's an experience with him. And then he asked me after we got through playing with it, and he said, wow, I'd rather have a computer. I said, I had two, Garrett. He said, how do you turn it off? I said, get your fingers off the keys and you turn it off. All right, you understand? What I'm trying to say to you all is, what happens is, we tell you something, we tell you something, and then we come back again and have to tell you again. So, let me tell you what Paul is telling them here, and I use the rest of my time here. In verse 17, after he tells them that he's going to be praying for them, 14, 15, 16 is his introduction to prayer. In 17, he says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. That's very interesting verses. In the knowledge of him. Because what he's talking about here is something that you and I saw, but it didn't relate. That he will give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of your understanding be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Now, the Apostle Paul has three wonderful words that he used in several of his letters. Some of the letters that he wrote before prison, he used them. Many of the letters he wrote after prison, he used them. And they're words that you know very carefully because they appear for the first time in the book of Corinthians in chapter 13. In fact, in chapter 13, 13 is where they appear. And there abideth these three faith, hope, love. Now you have to watch the Apostle Paul because he's going to include those in the book of Philippians. He's going to include those in the book of Colossians. He included them in the book of Corinthians and he included them here in the book of Ephesians. Now, they're not in that order here, but they're here. Let me show you. He says in verse 15 that the Lord Jesus, therefore also I have to heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love. There's the first two. Faith and love are coming. Faith and love are in 13, 13. Faith and love are in all the other verses as well. Then he comes down here all the way down to verse 18 before he adds the third of his words. But he's putting all three of them here for these Ephesian Christians. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling. Not only his love, not only faith in him, but also the hope. Now, ladies and gentlemen, what is our glorious hope? Somebody yelled the word. It's one word. Resurrection. That's the hope of our glory. Is it not? Is that not what all of us are waiting for, hoping for, knowing that it's true, simply waiting for the time when it happens, knowing that we know what the hope of his calling is. The hope of his calling is resurrection. If the hope of his calling is resurrection, then he's going to give us his glory. Now, when Moses went up on the Mount Sinai and he was up there for a little bit, he came down and his face was shining. In fact, they had to put a little mask over him because his face, he had on his face what Jesus Christ had on his entire body when he met Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. He had what was in the tabernacle the first night that they had it set up and the first night that they had the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies and the first night that the people of Israel could look at the tabernacle. And all of a sudden, as the sun began to set and the sky began to darken the wilderness of sin in Sinai, all of a sudden, the back end of that tabernacle began to grow, glow, glow, glow with a holy light. And it was there every night. And then when they got ready to move the tabernacle, put it all on its wagons to move it, and they began moving it, that particular cloud that was over the tabernacle by day went over those wagons and that particular light, which was over the tabernacle at night, went over those wagons. The Shekinah glory of God never left the children of Israel, ladies and gentlemen, until 586 BC, 70 AD, and the place of the Shekinah glory was gone. Now, the interesting thing is, we, those of us who are in Christ, have just been told here that one of the riches that you have and I have in Jesus Christ is that in us we have the Shekinah glory of God. Now, watch what Paul says in a different verse. Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost who dwells in you? Now, if you think I'm lying, you better back up on that passage. Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? Know you not that the tabernacle was the temple of the Holy God? Know you not that the temple, the holy place, the holy of holies was the tabernacle and the temple and the place of the holiness of God and the glory of His Shekinah? Know you not that it's there? John 1, 4. John writes it this way, and we beheld His Shekinah. Have you ever forgotten what John was saying? He said, John, we looked at this man. He was different. He had something about him. He had the Shekinah glory of God. We beheld His glory, John says, even as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Do you realize what I just said is in you? You see, we never stop to think about that. John 1, 4 relates to us as well, because people can behold our glory, even, not ours, even as the glory of the only begotten of the Father who dwells in you. Ladies and gentlemen, our face ought to always be the Shekinah of God. We should always demonstrate that because of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, did you get it? Now, who did I just say it's in, folks? Us. Come on, get into the word. The glory, the inheritance of God's glory is going to be in the saints. Hello, saints. Hi, Saint Barbara. Hi, Saint Carol. Hey, Saint Ed, wake up. No, he's awake. Okay, now you see what I'm talking about? The Shekinah glory is there, and it's there because it was in Jesus' hands, ladies and gentlemen. May I take you back to the book of Romans for a moment? If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5, 17. All things are passed away. The old ugliness is gone, and the glory of God surrounds your being. All things are passed away, and behold, all things are new. Okay, Paul is reminding these Christians at Ephesus, how many times have I preached that to you? Jimmy, how many times did you preach that at First Baptist Church, Ulysses? How many times have we studied it? At least four. You see, it's nothing new, folks. That's why Paul is saying, I'm not going to teach you anything new. I'm just going to bring to your remembrance. Okay, that's number one. You are full of the glory. Now, we go to verse 19. And what is the exceeding greatness of his powers to us who believe? And not only that, according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Now, I'm going to spend a little bit of time here, because it's very, and I have it in the paper. You can read the paper. Please read the paper sometime, because there are some things I don't say here that I say here better. And I'm like Paul, I put it better on paper than I say it in my mouth, because sometimes I get excited and don't say what I want to say. In fact, I told Barbara, I said, sometimes my tongue gets wrapped around my eye tooth, and I can't see what I'm saying. So anyway, that's what happens once in a while. So what I want to spend some time here, because I want to show you not only that you and I are full of the Holy Spirit, not only that we are living in a world as Shekinah glory objects of eternal God in everybody's midst, not only have we been redeemed of all of our sin, and we are completely free, and we are totally righteous in the sight of eternal God, not only do we have an inheritance in the heavens, not only are we inherited, are we His inheritance, not only are we His adopted, not only, as I put in the title here, have we been chosen, adopted, redeemed, and sealed, not only all of that, right now, this very moment, you and I, in spiritual life, are sitting together with Christ, with the Father, in heavenly places. Let that one sink in for a little bit. Remember I said you can never get away from Christ? Because the scripture says, if two or three are gathered in my name, who's there? I. Jesus didn't say He. Jesus said if two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst. Ladies and gentlemen, I have said it before, I'll say it again, every time we come together in the Spirit of God sitting here, Jesus Christ is right here with us. Either that's true, or the Bible is a lie. Even the Bible that says, if two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them, is a lie, or it is the truth. And when we gather here this morning, guess who became our wonderful attendee? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All I can say, Lulu, is wow. Wow. You see, people say, well, you know, I can sit a little bit, God will never see it. Oh, really? Or, you know, I can be a little crooked, God will never check it. Oh, really? I keep running into something in this book that really gives you a lot of consternation. I keep running into the fact that He is in me, and that can give you a lot of consternation. When you come to the point where He's in you, and all of a sudden you get ready to really get mad at that guy that cut you off at that highway, and you want to blow your horn, go blow your horn. What good does that do? Oh, I've got to tell you a quick story about Barbara. Barbara was in a traffic jam one time. They were working on the road, and she had to stop, and this guy was sitting behind her, and she couldn't move because there were all kinds of road equipment in front of her, and she was sitting there patiently waiting for it to get out of the way. This guy, bap, bap, bap, bap, blowing on his horn behind her. She just very softly opened the door, stepped out of her car, walked back to the gentleman in the truck, and said, Sir, I cannot move because of the construction in front of me, but if it will make you feel better, if you come and sit in my car, I'll be happy to sit back here and blow your horn. To which they both laughed, and she went back to the car, and he stopped blowing his horn. I mean, Christ in you, God's glorious hope, God's Shekinah hope, and we beheld his glory, and we behold your glory, and he is seated at his right hand in the heavenlies, and with him, the church, which we will talk about in the last few verses, the church is seated with him right now. We are there in our spiritual resurrection. Eventually, I wrote it in here, eventually, we will be there in our physical resurrection, and what is our hope? Paul said in Thessalonians, I want to share this with you, my brothers, because of those who have no hope. We have hope, and the hope is resurrection, and the hope is that this isn't the end of the tube. This is just the beginning of the end. We're just now getting ready to move into glory, and so he says here in verse 21, where you will be seated, all of his enemies are still under his feet. Watch this, every enemy in chapter 6 of Ephesians, that is mentioned, are in this group, and every one of those enemies has already been defeated by whom? Jesus Christ. If all of those enemies have been defeated by Jesus Christ, and if we, the church, are sitting together with him in heavenly places in our spiritual resurrection, are not all of the enemies under our feet? Either that's true, or what I just read is a lie. If we are in him, and you cannot be otherwise, either you're in him or you're still in Adam, you can't be in both. You can't be a mugwump. A mugwump is a bird that sits on a fence with a mug on one side and a wump on the other. You can't be a mugwump. You've either got to be one of these. You've either got to be in Christ or in Adam. If you are in Christ, then you are sitting with him in heavenly places, and I conclude. Here's the powers and principalities over which he has power. Above all principality, all power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age that is to come. He, Christ, God the Father, Holy Spirit, Redeemer, he has put all things under his feet. Now you've got to run back to the book of Psalms, and you get the book of Psalms 2. It says, I will make all of your enemies your footstool. Go read Psalm 2. I'll make all of your enemies your footstool. That's when he'll have all of his enemies under his feet. He already has. He's sitting in glory with all of his enemies under his feet. And every one of them is dead except one. And the last enemy, 15 Corinthians says to die, is death. And that's the only one that hasn't totally died yet. And so he says, and he put all things under his feet, and he gave him to be the head over all things to the church. Now, he is the bridegroom. The church is the bride. We are his beloved. We are the body of the church. Christ is the bridegroom. We are the bride. And Revelation 21 begins by saying, and I saw a new heaven and a new earth coming down from God out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard the voice of God say, behold, the worship of God is with humankind. Have you ever stopped to think of something? Barbara says, Jack, you think of stuff other people don't even think about. Well, maybe that's why Jimmy and I had to preach every now and then. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that he loves us, even to die for us, but more than that, he loves us to be able to bring us to him as his bridegroom. We are his beloved. Now, someone said to me one time at the end of this verse, I'll tell you why I'm saying this. Why, Ed, should we be out sharing Christ with the world? Why should we be out doing evangelism and witnessing? Why should we be telling the world that Jesus Christ is Lord? Why, why, why? The answer is right here, which is his body, the fullness of him who is filling it up. Ladies and gentlemen, this verse says that Jesus Christ is filling his body, the church. Every day somebody gets into the church by faith. Every day somebody becomes a part of the bride of Christ. Every day somebody is filling up. And one of these days, when it's full, God's going to say to his son, son, go get her. Ladies and gentlemen, may I make a specific point as I close? The reason we share Christ with the world is we want to help him fill the body so we can get home. Okay. And the more we help him fill the body, the quicker we go get home. That's good old East Texas and Southern Louisiana. The sooner you fill something, the sooner you'll have it full, right? And so it says, which is his body, all in all fullness of him. Now, I've read this in Greek. I've read it in Latin. I've read it in English. And all of the three agree the same thing. This verse does not say the body is filled. It is not a past tense. So evidently it's still going on. Nor does it say that he is filling to fill it and that he's trying to fill it. No, he's not trying to fill it. It says he is filling it. Present active participle. Filling it. F-L-I-N-G-I-N-G filling. Present active participle. He is filling the body. Filling, you know, in English it says what the body's doing. He is filling the body. And he is filling it daily. And he is asking us to help him fill it. You ready to go to heaven? Become an evangelist. Become a personal evangelist. You'll get there sooner, as will I. Now, next week, Brother Jimmy's going to pick up chapter two. And he'll probably take a couple of weeks to do chapter two. And then when I get chapter three, I'll pick up the end of a prayer and finally get to the amen, somewhere down the way. Now, I like to ask my class, you learn anything today? Anything sit in your cloth that you didn't like? Or did it all sit pretty well? And so we say, even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. May the body be so close that God the Father could say to his son today, son, I love the way you did the house. I love the colors you used in their new homes. I love the fact that they are having a real house, a topaz in the heavens. I love it the way you use the brick and the rock. I love the carpet you put in there. I love the colors of the paint in all of the rooms. I love the way you made it, especially for each of them. God's son, I'm so pleased with the way you built it. Go get your bride. When it is filled, full. Maybe today. Heavenly Father, your word is so powerfully pertinent to all of our lives, even the parts of our lives that we would like to keep away from it, you still invade it. And you remind us so many times how often we fail you, yet you love us still. God, you didn't save us to be perfect. You saved us to come into us and make us perfect. You're going to make us perfection, Father. The only problem is we just have to be willing to allow it to happen always. We need to be open to the movement of the power of your Spirit through the Holy One and available for God the Father to use us in his great kingdom, filling the church to the full. And we thank you for that. We thank you for loving us, terrible sinners that we are, forgiving us, making us righteous in your Son, and giving us eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord and a home in heaven eternal forever. We just can't do anything but praise the Lord. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Brother Jimmy will see you next Sunday.