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E-MAIL TO EPHESUS #1

GOOD SPAM

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe observes that the parents of John Walker Lindh just never said no to their kid. They tolerated and overlooked everything - until he joined enemy Taliban forces. Ephesians helps fix today's postmodern dilemma, the disconnect, of ‘no moral absolutes.'

I'm going to offer you today perhaps the king of all Bible oxymorons. Are you ready? We're going to spend some time here on the radio studying maybe the best "spammed" letter to ever come along.

I don't know if your Internet mailbox gets as clogged up as mine does with letters that Party A sent to Party B, who forwarded it on to Party C, who decided to hit "Select All" in their CompuServe menu and forward it on to Parties D through Quadruple Z . . . and somewhere in there Lonnie Melashenko found himself getting a letter that was 14 generations removed. I've never heard of these people. But — I blush to say it — there have been times when I actually chuckled at the Urban Legend anecdote about a guy who bought Elvis Presley's Harley-Davidson for fifty bucks and I forwarded it on too. And the story just keeps growing in the telling . . .

Well, friend, the New Testament epistle written to the Christian church at Ephesus — we call this Bible book "Ephesians," of course — might just be the best "circular" or "round robin" or "pass the spam, please" letter ever composed, on parchment OR in cyberspace. We know that Paul wrote an epistle to the Galatians, INTENDING to write to the people in Galatia. He says so in verse two. Ditto for Philippi and Colosse. And, by the way, Rome. When Paul went down to the post office there in Corinth — or maybe Cenchrea, a branch office about six miles away — and bought stamps to send off his 16-chapter mini-book to the Romans, he addressed it to the Romans. Here's verse seven:

"To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints."

Of course, here in the 21st century, anytime we read these New Testament epistles, we're opening someone else's mail, so to speak, because Paul didn't write any letters to the saints in L.A. This great apostle of Jesus Christ was specifically writing to somebody else, and we've just steamed open the envelope and helped ourselves to the message. Which, of course, is exactly what our Lord intended.

Now, why do we suggest that this one letter we call "Ephesians" was a round-robin spam letter instead? After all, right there in verse one, Paul types in "To the saints in Ephesus @ aol.com" before hitting the "Send" button.

Well, two things make us wonder. First of all, according to the text notes provided by the New International Version, some of the early manuscripts like the Chester Beatty papyrus of 200 A.D., and the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus documents from the fourth century, don't have the words "in Ephesus." They just say: "To the saints, the faithful in Christ Jesus."

But the second bit of Sherlock Holmes evidence is this: in all of Paul's other epistles, he goes into specific details about people and problems and challenges and opportunities in that exact location. Here's a comment from the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries for Ephesians, which was written by Francis Foulkes who, interestingly, was a principal at the Vining Christian Leadership Center in Akure, Nigeria. And he observes:

"The lack of more specific and detailed thanksgivings here, even such as Paul wrote to churches that he had never visited, argues strongly against Ephesus (or Ephesus alone) being the original destination planned for this Epistle."

This same scholar, Francis Foulkes, points out that Paul had lived in the city of Ephesus for three solid years. Acts chapter 19 describes his time there in the beautiful harbor city on the Cayster River, which fed the Aegean Sea some three miles away. So he knew people there; he had a long list of friends on his Christmas list. Maybe you remember reading in Acts how Paul barely escaped from a mob in the huge stadium-seating downtown theater after a riot broke out because he was undermining the Ephesians' worship of Diana, or Artemis. By the way, even though Paul made some progress working with the saints in that town, by the time the book of Revelation was written by John, perhaps some 35 years later, the Church of Ephesus came in for some warnings and reproofs in chapter two. In any case, this Dr. Foulkes wonders in his commentary:

"When in particular we consider the very moving ways in which Paul addressed the elders of the church of Ephesus in Acts 20:18-35, we may well ask whether he could have written a letter to this church without reference to the time he spent there, without mention of individuals whom he knew so well in the church, and with no personal news of any kind."

It's even suggested that this "Epistle to the Ephesians" might have been drafted by Paul as a kind of form letter, almost, starting out: "To the saints in BLANK," and as Ephesus was the most well-known place the epistle traveled to in its roundabout journey, that's the moniker which stuck. Be that as it may, friend, the point is this: here is an incredible treasure, timeless in its appeal and power, clearly global in its influence, intended for sincere Christians and seekers in all places and stations of life, and wonderfully applicable to you and me, here in the year 2002.

So what is this six-page letter really about? Dr. Foulkes gets right into it. First of all, he describes this letter, not really AS a letter, but as a deliberately crafted sermon. Notice:

"It is like a sermon on the greatest and widest theme possible for a Christian sermon — the eternal purpose of God, which He is fulfilling through His Son Jesus Christ, and working out in and through the Church."

Isn't that a marvelous one-two-three? God's purpose . . . fulfulling through Jesus . . . and working out through the Church. No wonder eavesdropping is not only permitted but encouraged here some 2000 years later! The message of Ephesians is one God intends to make happen, friend, through you and through me. Some things that are broken He intends to fix, through the power of His resurrected Son, and with you and me as His agents of change. That's an exciting challenge.

The idea of brokenness is found in a wonderful preface to the book of Ephesians which you'll find in the paraphrase project, The Message, by Dr. Eugene Peterson.

"What we know about God and what we DO for God," he writes, "have a way of getting broken apart in our lives." And don't we all know it? "The moment the organic unity of BELIEF and BEHAVIOR," he continues, "is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created."

Would you agree with that? What are the problems we face here in the 21st century? First of all, people don't know what to believe. In these confusing, relativistic, post-modern times, people are honestly clueless about truth, about moral absolutes, about right and wrong. The numbers of people who believe in those absolutes just keeps sliding down, down, down. Ironically, shortly after the World Trade Center bombings, and everyone was running to the nearest church or synagogue, polls were taken, only to reveal that the number of people who did believe in bedrock moral truths had just gotten sliced in half! The numbers went down instead of up. People packed into churches but really had no idea why.

Secondly, as Eugene Peterson has mentioned, even when we think we know what we believe, we don't know how to put it into practice. There's a disconnect between what we know and what we do, between the preaching and the practicing, between the belief and the behavior. But now notice this optimistic conclusion by Peterson just before we begin to read Ephesians itself.
"Paul's letter to the Ephesians," he writes, "joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world. He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skillfully setting a compound fracture, ‘sets' this belief in God into our behavior BEFORE God so that the bones — belief and behavior — knit together and heal. Once this attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place. There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn't out of joint or limping in pain. There is much work to be done."

Friend, does that describe you? "Out of joint and limping in pain"? Some people look around at their workplace, and all they see is broken bones. Or hearts. Mistrust is everywhere. Jealousy is rampant. Dreams are going unfulfilled. And you say, in both a sigh and a prayer, "Dear God, how much longer can I stand it here?" Maybe it's your marriage that seems completely ruined. The love is gone; the tenderness is gone; the magic is LONG gone. You think that, somewhere in the Bible, there must be answers . . . but you have no idea how to apply them.

Well, you get the idea. And time is up, but friend, we're going to find, just even in chapter one of Ephesians, that Jesus Christ, as Paul puts it, "rules in the heavenly realms." He's over everything! He's conquered everything! He has dominion and a loving interest and power to affect . . . everything! There doesn't need to be this broken-bones "disconnect," if we'll simply bow down at His throne and let Him truly be the Orthopedist – and the Lord — of our lives.