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No not distingly come I to thee. No not distrustingly. Bend thy knee.
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Sin hath gone over me. Yet is this still my ble Jesus
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died. Lord I confess to thee sadly my sin. my sin. All I am tell I bee. All I have been
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hurt now my sin away. Wash down shall my soul this day. Lord
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make me clean. Faithful and just art thou forgiving
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Loving and kind are thou when's call. Lord, let the cleansing blood blood of
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the lamb of God pass over my soul. Then all is peace and light. is so
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within. Th shall I walk with thee the love and
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Welcome. It's good to see you all here. Going to continue reading 2 Corinthians the 4th chapter.
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Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God. But by the manifestation of truth,
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commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In whose case the God of this world has
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blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For we do not preach
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ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bondervants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, "Let light shine out of the darkness," is the one who has shown
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in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthn vessels so that the surpassing greatness
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of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not forsaken,
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struck down but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
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For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. But having
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the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke. We also believe, therefore we also speak, knowing that he who raised
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the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. for all things all things are for your sakes. So the grace which
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is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. But though our outer man is
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decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all
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comparison. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Let's continue to
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Let's go before the Lord in corporate prayer as part of our worship service. Some of you who are in Christ would would bring the body before the throne room. I'll close us after some prayers.
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Oh God, we are so grateful that you have called us out of darkness into your marvelous light.
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How do I marvel your Lord? You know us from the very beginning and you know our end so grateful for the love you given us
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and somehow we love you back. Thank you Jesus for what you've done for us to be children.
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How wonderful it is to know That abides in us, helps us through this life that one day is over.
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Dear heavenly father, we thank you that we can say and sing your praises together as one body. We thank you that we've been able to do so all morning. We praise your name for the work, the finished work of Christ Jesus. And we
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thank you for continuing to shape and mold us as as a body as your body. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
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Heavenly Father, what a blessing to gather and say amen to the prayers of your people, those who are in Christ before your throne. As we learn this morning more deeply, we
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are clean through the work of your son and able to approach that throne. And yet, we also recognize that we have need that our feet would be washed by you. We pray for continued washing by
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the spirit that while clean on the inside, we would also be clean on the outside and reflect glory back to you and your work. We now turn our hearts to the preaching
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of the word that we might have our conscience and spirit, washed and strengthened respectively through your word brought by your servant that his
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work would be blessed. In Christ's name we pray all these things. Amen.
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If you'll stand with me once more, we'll sing hymn 186.
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When I surveyed the wonderous cross, one which the prince of glory
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for contempt on all my pride. For me, Lord, that I should bo
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of Christ my God. All the vain things that char me most I sacriice
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I sacriice them to his blood. See from his head, his hands, his feet.
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Turn with me please to Colossians chapter 4.
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We're going to read the last three verses of this chapter. And I'd like to ask Tim Baylor, where is he? Here he is. If you would pray for the ministry of the word this morning. Colossians chapter 4, beginning in verse 16.
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And when this letter is read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laudans. And you for your part, read my letter that is coming from La Odysa and
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say to Archipus, take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord that you may fulfill it. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
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Remember my imprisonment. Grace be with you. Let us pray.
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Dear heavenly father, we thank you for the revelation of your word, the establishment of your kingdom in the
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in the life and death and resurrection of Christ. of Christ. Thank you for the transformational
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ability that your word through the spirit gives us to not be conformed to this world but to be renewed in our minds through the
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work of Christ for the grace of God to do all the training that we need for the gift of thatless
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Over the years, I have often been teased for how long it takes me to get through a book. So, I thought if I'd start at the end, it would go faster.
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What I want to highlight this morning from these last these closing uh words in the letter to the Colossians uh is is twofold. Um first the fact that Paul is
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writing this from prison. Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians and Phileiman are called Paul's prison
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epistles. And I don't really want to talk so much about his imprisonment and when it was. That's something you'll find in the commentaries and you'll also find a great deal of disagreement because Paul was often imprisoned and we don't
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necessarily know where he wrote this or that letter from which prison. But it's imprisonment in general as a as a providential interference in Paul's
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very frenetic and very energetic ministry. We know that Paul put a lot of miles under his sandals and he preached the gospel far and wide through Asia
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Minor and Deaya. We know that he tells the the Romans that he had no further work to be done in these regions and therefore he planned to hoof it all the way to Spain. So he did a lot of
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preaching and we know that much of what he preached, in fact the the the huge majority of what he preached we have no record of.
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record of. And I want to posit a situation wherein this Saul of Tarsus, this former Pharisee converted to the true faith of the Messiah, Jesus,
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goes around preaching the gospel and the gospel spreads through his ministry. Now I'm basically describing most of the
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Where would we be today if God had not interrupted Paul, put him in prison so that he might write
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powerful, but I would submit to you that it is not as abiding as the written word. I do believe that the power of the gospel to salvation is through the preaching of the word. Paul says so in
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one of his letters. We live in a society where the written word is not valued much anymore.
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People do not read anymore. People do not write letters anymore. My father was of another generation. He was a letter writer. Some of them were
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even enjoyable to read. He had an amazing ability. He would cut 8 and 1 half by 11 parchment in half horizontally and he would have about
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three sheets of them and he so he'd have six. They fit better in an envelope that way. And he would begin on the first and he would go on the first the front page of the first three, then flip the third
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one over and go backwards. And he always ended at the bottom of the back of the first page with a perfectly coherent and logical none of this I'm out of room.
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And he would sign it, dad. Okay. He he was a letter writer and his and his penmanship was just absolutely beautiful. But we've lost all of that. And I think
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in losing that, you know, we kind of envision Paul texting the Galatians, "OMG, have I labored in vain?" you know, um,
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no, these are these are these are so important to us. We would not have what we have in terms of the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his finished work if it weren't for men
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writing it down. And I I've often thought that Paul must have written a lot of letters, but then as I read especially Colossians, I think, well, maybe he didn't, you know,
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maybe he was so busy preaching and teaching. We read how he spent over two years with the Ephesians daily teaching them the whole council of God.
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Wish we had that commentary, Paul. And so I I want to focus on not just Colossians as one of the prison epistles, but Ephesians as well. We're
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going to look at um actually two epistles together in this series series. But I also think that that we see in especially in Colossians, but some also
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in Ephesians Paul's missionary method. Paul would not go everywhere. I mentioned just a few minutes ago how he said to the Romans, "I'm done in this
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region." And yet, we're going to realize as we work through these epistles that these were people that he had never personally met.
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personally met. You see, he did not plant the church of Colasse, but it was planted by those whom he either sent or went out from him during
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the time he spent at his command post. Ephesus. And if you look at a map, you'll see that these two towns are actually geographically connected. Ephesus lies
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on the coast of Asia Minor on the west coast, the Aian Sea, and it is at the mouth of the Meander River. Now, you can kind of envision how the Meander River
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flows to the sea. It is actually where we get the word to meander. If you go upstream the meander river, you'll come to another tribut
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tributary called the lacos. And if you go up the lycos, the first city you will hit is Lauda, then hieropouloolis, and then finally
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Colos. Three very important centers of Christianity during the second and third centuries. Three churches that were not personally planted by the Apostle Paul, but three
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that owed their life to those like Epapris and Phileiman and Archipus who had received the gospel from Paul. Paul
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actually reminds Phlean in that short little letter that Phileiman owes him his very life. So we see that Paul's missionary method
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was more like a spo or a hub with spokes and he would spend a fair amount of time in one metropolitus area like Ephesus.
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Now, Ephesus being on the coast to being on a river was a very prosperous city and it remained so until the river moved. And now we don't really know where it's
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somewhere near Ismir, but we don't really know where it is because it failed. It it uh its fate was to basically disappear. But at that time it was a very important port city and all
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of the towns inland up the rivers from it would go to Ephesus for example for market day or to sell their wares or to buy what they needed. And so Paul had
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the wisdom to know that if I plant myself in a place like Corenth or Philippi, they will come to me and from me they
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will go out and his Luke's and his Timothies and his Silas's and his Epiph
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himself having to set foot in every town in Asia Minor, he was still able to say my work here is done. It was still under his apostolic umbrella that these churches were
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founded. And so when he's in prison, he's thinking of them and he knows that they're having troubles. And we can somewhat discern what those troubles were when we look into the letter more
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carefully. And by the way, I am going back to the beginning of it next week. And Paul is there to give his his apostolic and infallible advice.
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And so I think much is to be commended in his methodology. I can assure you, I think that when he did set his tri his travel itinerary,
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you know, when he got on expedia.com, he may have looked at rental chariots. He may have looked at lodgings, but he didn't look up the local prisons.
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They were not on his itinerary. They were on God's. And so, he's imprisoned in Philippi. Well, what does that lead to? Well, the salvation of the Philippian jailer. It
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also leads to the humiliation of the Philippian civil magistrates and the glory of God. And so I would I would submit to you that these imprisonments are are not something to just simply
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say, "Oh, you know, that that was unfortunate. That was a bummer." I think that Paul made use of his time. If he was free to get about, he got about and
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he preached and he taught. And when he was in bondage and not free, he taught those who came to him and he wrote and he wrote. And because he wrote, we have
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the richest deposit of Christian theology of anywhere in scripture. And I just wonder what we would be like if we did not have those. Now, obviously, the
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whole thing is orchestrated by a sovereign God. sovereign God. When we look at these prison epistles, as I said, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Phileiman,
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Phileiman and Colossians are often associated, for example, in commentaries, primarily because Phileiman was from Colise. And so they would put those two together. But have
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you ever wondered why we have our Pauline epistles in the order that we do? They were not chronological. Romans was written fairly late. In fact,
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may have been one of the last of the g of the epistles. Uh second Timothy is probably the last that he wrote, but Romans was by no means the first. 1 and
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2 Corinthians, we don't really know when they were written, and there may have been two others because each one refers to a letter that does not seem to be the other one. So we might actually have
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second and fourth Corinthians, but we call them first and second. But what about the order of these epistles, especially after Corinthians? Well, it
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may be, although I am being very tongue-in-cheek, that the Holy Spirit, knowing of the eventual advent of Thomas Edison and the establishment of the General
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Electric Power Company, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, gave them this order so that we would easily remember where they are in our
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Bibles. I don't think so. They're actually arranged in order of descending length. Uh heavily theological reason if ever I heard one. Romans is the longest.
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Phileiman is the shortest. And that's how we have it. I would actually put Ephesians and Colossians together
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Colossians together because they are in fact twins. And unlike the sheep detectives, we have no problem knowing that they have the same parent.
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same parent. They they are written as sister letters and I believe they were written to be circular. In other words, they were written to a recipient church with the
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intention that they would then be sent to a nearby sister church and they also within their content show incredible similarities in a mirror
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image. So these twin epistles, one written to Paul's church in Ephesus, or at least so it appears, and one written to a daughter church.
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But were they in fact in the first one of those, Ephesians, was it in fact written to the church at Ephesus? Well, as I mentioned, Ephesians is the big city, lies near the Aian Sea, and
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it's where Paul made his headquarters in Ephesus. The Ephesian church was of course planted by Paul and unusually for him, he spent two years there. He tells us
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that when he calls for the Ephesian elders, when he uh sets foot at Mitus on his way to Jerusalem, knowing that he will not see them again, he reminisces about the time that he spent with the
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Ephesian believers and the church there. In uh Acts chapter 19 we read and this took place for two years.
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So that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord both Jews and Gentiles. Well that confirms that methodology that I mentioned. He stayed in Ephesus for
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two years and yet all who lived in Asia heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So when we look at these two letters that is the context. It's years
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later. He is now in prison perhaps in Rome and he's writing to these churches that were so closely tied to him. But we know from this letter that we're about
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to get into Colossians, this was not a direct church plant by Paul. Phileiman, Archipus, and Epapus were all involved.
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As I said, they probably heard Paul when they were in Ephesus. Perhaps they were there on business. They heard this uh this Jewish rabbi preaching about the Messiah. They were converted. They were
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discipled. They were taught. They probably made several trips. We know Apapris did because Paul refers to him as a messenger as well as a fellow
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servant. And so there's a a network of Pauline churches, not necessarily planted by him and in some of them Christians who had
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never seen the apostle face to face. That is the situation of these two letters. Only one of the commentaries that I have
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on the Pauline letters, one by BH Carroll, a 19th century Southern Baptist, a reformed Baptist who had a
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beard that went down to his toes and was split into two. So you if you ever see a picture of BH Carol, you will never forget it. He would make Josh jealous.
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B.H. Carroll is the only one that I know who in his commentary puts Colossians and Ephesians side by side and in that order, not the other way around. Now, commentators are beginning to
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realize the association of these two epistles in spite of the fact that they are at the ends of the General Electric Power Company or nearly the ends. Philippians
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being in between them. Philippians is a long way off. It it is a Roman settlement. It's in Macedonia. It is not anywhere close to E Ephesus and
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Colossians. And so I I've often wondered why we put these two so so far apart. Also, as I I'll mention briefly,
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liberal scholars are convinced that Paul didn't write either of these. And their argument is basically that the doctrine of the church is too advanced for the first century.
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And these people are called scholars. They are convinced that the church that he writes of in these letters, whoever the author is, could not have come about until at least the middle of the second
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century. Now, they're it's total baloney. These are Pauline. They just breathe Paul. They they are per perhaps other than Romans the most Pauline of all of the
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letters but they were written while he was in prison and and therefore they were written for a purpose.
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Now he says here in verse 16, "Now when this letter is read among you, have it also read to the church of the Laodans and you for your part read my letter that is coming from La Osia."
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Whatever happened to the epistle to the Laodans? Have you ever wondered that? that this this letter was so important that it was side by side with the letter to the church in Colasse and the one was
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to be read by the other and the other was to read the one. These are circular letters. Now the similarities the internal similarities between Ephesians and
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Colossians which is what I hope to preach through in this session and perhaps longer. The similarities that are within these two letters indicate to me that these two
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Ephesians and Colossians were also circular letters.
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Is it possible? I know this may rattle some cages and I hope it does not, but is it possible that we have actually misnamed our epistle to the Ephesians?
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I think so. And I am by no means alone. And I want to try to provide some of the evidence. And I I hope you will see that this is not merely just trying to stir
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up controversy. I'm I'm trying to show just how incredibly close these two letters actually are. We we know from
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this verse in Colossians 4 that there were at least two letters that we could call twin letters. One sent to one church, the other sent to the other
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church with instructions to flip them. Now those instructions may have been verbal. In this case, they were in writing. Circular letters were
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very common in that period of time. And I I want to show as we move into this study that these two letters are
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actually about the same theme, but from two different perspectives. If in fact there is a missing letter to the Laudans,
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the Laudans, then I would maintain that there were triplets that Paul wrote three letters. But I want to try to point out that there is sufficient reason from the
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letter that we call Ephesians to conclude as others have done that this is in fact the letter to the
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Laodans. BH Carol writes, "There is a reference in Colossians to a letter which they would receive from Lauda, which doubtless is the circular letter
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which we call the letter to the Ephesians." I would agree with Carol, but I would take out the word doubtless.
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Now we read in Ephesians chapter 1 the phrase the phrase to the church in Ephesus.
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Well, we can begin by saying that many of the ancient manuscripts do not have the phrase in Ephesus. You may have that note. It may be in italics in your
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English Bible. There may be a footnote that says many manuscripts don't have this phrase. this phrase. If it was added, it was clearly added
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early. And so I am very loathed to take textual issues as definitive. But there is something that about Ephesians that have has always troubled
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me. And that is in several places in the letter to the Ephesians, he writes as if the people had never met him.
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Listen to this in verse 15 of Ephesians chapter 1. Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus,
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and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.
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That is almost verbatim with Colossians 1 verse four and following. After I heard of your faith,
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Colossians or Ephesians 3 verse 2 is very similar. Chapter 4 verse 21. Let me read chapter 3 verse 2 as just another example. He says
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He says starting in verse one, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ, there we know he's in prison actually of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of
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the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you. Again, these just don't sound like the kind of things you would write to a church that you spent two years with
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if you have heard of the ministry that was given to me for you. Of course, you've heard of it. And and so there isn't the same degree
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of personal intimacy that you would read, for example, in Thessalonians where Paul talks about what he taught them when he was with them. Now, it's
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certainly not the the the clear I've never seen you before that you find in Romans, but it's somewhere in between. There's an association be between Paul and these
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churches, but it's not an intimate one whereby these people would know Paul personally, but rather he knows of them
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through the testimony of others. And of course they know of him because those others went out from him. And I so I think that it is quite
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possible that the book or the letter to the Ephesians may as BH Carroll concludes may be actually the letter to the Laosans. Now why is this important?
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Well actually it certainly doesn't cast any doubt that the letter to the Ephesians is canonical. It is inspired. It has full authority.
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That is that is not in question. Regardless of what we may think of the inscription at the beginning, it is still written by the Holy Spirit through Paul and is God breathed. But if in fact
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the letter that we call the Ephesians is the Laudans, then we're not missing anything. And as Paul instructs the Colossians to read the letter to the Laudans and vice versa, he's he's
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telling us that there are two letters that I've written that are basically the front and the back of my teaching. And when you've read the front, turn it over and read the back. And that's the
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approach that I have been taking for many years. When I read Ephesians, I read Ephesians and then I read Colossians. If I read Colossians, I read Ephesians. Because regardless of whether
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the inscription in Ephesus is original, the content of the two are too closely related for those two letters not to be
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twins. So it really doesn't matter. It is pure academics whether the letter to the Ephesians is misnamed. As long as we recognize that the content of Ephesians
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and the content of Colossians fully justify their nature as circular epistles and that we cannot really read the one
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without the other and we cannot preach the one without the other. And so I'm going to embark on something that I've never done before.
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And that is to preach a harmony, which does not mean I'm going to sing the sermon. It's a two-part harmony in which we will be looking at
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Colossians and we will be looking at Ephesians as two letters written on the same topic from different perspectives. Now if you've read these two letters you
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will see that there are many passages that are very very similar but they are similar from a different angle because in Ephes in Ephesians we are
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reading almost entirely about the church of Christ. of Christ. This is Paul's ecclesiology his doctrine of the church.
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When we look at the book or the letter to the Colossians, we are reading about Christ of the church. This is Paul's christologology.
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Can you have one without the other? Can you have the church without Christ? Can you have Christ without his body?
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I would submit that you cannot. And so as we work through this session and perhaps more, perhaps more, we'll be looking at these two letters,
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Ephesians and Colossians. And by the way, I'm not going to change the name of the Ephesians and start calling it Laosans. There's no need to muddy the waters. Okay? If I get up here and say, "Please
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turn in your Bibles to Laosans chapter 4." No, there's no purpose in that. It's Ephesians. It's Colossians. And we will
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leave it at that because what is important is what is in them. As I said, Ephesians and Colossians were very much considered is today by liberal scholars as second century letters, not first
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century and therefore of course not authored by the Apostle Paul. The reason being the doctrine of the church. The doctrine of the church in Ephesians especially is considered far too
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advanced for a first century apostle. There is no justification for that conclusion for anyone who
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believes in inspiration. The church is not a work in progress. It is a work of God in Jesus Christ.
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And the moment of his resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we have the full advanced church. Paul of course is given the task
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of explaining what and who the church is. But it's in the letter to the Ephesians that we read about for example
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in chapter 1 22 and 23 Paul writes and he put all things under his feet. So oh talking about Christ yes and gave him as
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head over all things to the church. And then he says something that I've often pointed out is one of the most
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phrases ever written. ever written. He gave him as head over all things to the church the church which is the fullness of him who fills all and all.
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Let that sink in over the coming months. Let that sink in. That to Paul, the church is the pleoma, the fullness
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of him who fills all in all. That is an unbelievable statement. As you parse the words, as you dissect it,
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as you look at what Paul is saying, it is truly an unbelievable situation. And yet, we must believe it. And the rest of the letter of Ephesians is unpacking that verse.
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Unpacking what is the playoma of the one who fills all in all. How can the church be the fullness of the fullness of the eternal God?
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How can the church be the body of Christ? How can the church be the bride of Christ? of Christ? Ephesians will tell us. And so Ephesians is about the church of
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Christ. And what the church is and who the church is has been something that the church herself has struggled with for 2,000 years and still does today.
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Ephesians is a place we can go. If we go to Romans for justification or Galatians for justification, we go to Ephesians for our ecclesiology.
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We go to Ephesians for our polity. We go to Ephesians for our relationship to one another that there is one Lord, one baptism, one spirit.
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Ephesians with a little help from Philippians gives us a biblical doctrine of the church. But a church without Christ is not a church at all. Paul
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writes in Ephesians chapter 2, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
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Now, this verse, as so many verses, has been individualized in our current culture. And we look at this as I have
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been created in Christ Jesus for good works. Well, Paul is clearly using the plural here, plural here, not the singular, because he's going to go on later in
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Ephesians chapter 4 and teach us how this is actually done. And that is when every joint and ligament, in other every believer provides that which is needed
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for the building up of the body in love. That's the good works prepared beforehand by God that we should walk in them. It's about the church.
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But Paul was probably writing one or the other of these two circulars. He's writing one or the other. You know, the Holy Spirit is guiding his mind as he thinks through the scriptures, and he's
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thinking, "This is good stuff, but it's only half of it." He's writing about the church as the bride of Christ, and he said, "This is this is beautiful what God has done, but
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it's only half of it." He's writing, as I've already said, he's writing that he has given as head over all things Christ to the church. But how can we focus on the church
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and not focus also on her head? How can we focus on the body and not also focus on the head? And many people over the years have in fact decapitated the
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church. And the church has become nothing more than a social club or a feel-good society. There's no head And then there are others who believe that they can worship God through Jesus
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on their own. They don't have need of a church. They have a head but no body. And I don't know whether Paul set out in his mind to write two letters, but I can
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easily see by reading one or the other that the other one is needed. that one without the other is in danger because of the fallibility and the and
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the ignorance of ourselves. Not because of anything wrong with the letters themselves, but that we would get out of focus and that we would look at the church and our ecclesiology. We would dot our eyes. We would cross our tees
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and we would have everything right and we wouldn't have Christ. We'd have a bride with no groom and a body with no head. And so here comes the letter to the Colossians or in reverse
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again. Maybe he wrote Colossians first. Here comes the letter to the Ephesians. And and again, it just seems like if you read the two, they they don't quite overlap as much as they mirror. So that
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we turn to Colossians, we enter into Paul's doctrine of Christ, christologology. And again in in chapter one of Colossians, he says he is the head of
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the body, the church. Okay, this is almost the same thing we read at the end of chapter 1 in Ephesians. He is the head of the body, the church. But in Ephesians, he goes on to say, "The
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church is the fullness of him who fills all in all." The focus is on the church. But listen to what he says in
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Colossians. He is also the head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. so that he himself might come to have to have first
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place in everything. For it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness of deity to dwell in him.
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Ephesians says the church, Colossians says Christ. says Christ. Ephesians is the church of Christ. Colossians is Christ of the church. And
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together together they are truth alone they are halftruth. Not to say that one is not truth. I know that could be misunderstood. But they were not given to us that way.
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He did not send out one without the other. That's what this passage at the end of Colossians is telling us. He sent out one. He sent out the other. And he intended for them to circulate as the
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spirit has intended them to circulate throughout the ages ever since. But if your minds forget the General Electric Power
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Company and realize that Ephesians and Colossians go together and when you do in your reading, when you read one, read the other. And maybe perhaps if you have
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the opportunity while we're going through this study, read the one and the other together. Read Ephesians 1, then read Colossians 1, read Ephesians 2, then read Col. They're only four or six
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chapters. They're not that long. But as you read them together, you will see what the Holy Spirit's intention is in giving us these circulars.
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As I said, you can't read one without the other. the other. And I'm going to attempt not to preach one without the other. We're going to be looking at these two
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letters together and Lord willing learning more about Christ and his church and more about the church and her
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head. And may the Lord bless us on this journey. Let us pray.
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Father, we do thank you for your word and we thank you for Paul's imprisonments and we know that he would thank you and did thank you for his imprisonments
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because he thanked you for all things and he had the wisdom to know that in all things your hand and your purpose undergur our actions
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and why we pray that we might learn from him that when circumstances in our lives change that we would have the wisdom to adjust to your will.
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And if we are no longer able to do what we once did that you would make it evident what we are to then do for your glory and for the edification of the
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body. We thank you for these two letters. We thank you that they are twins and that they complement each other in an inescapable and vitally
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important way. And Father, I ask that as we dig in to the material of Ephesians and Colossians, Colossians and Ephesians, we would indeed grow in our
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knowledge of the church and of her, Christ, in the knowledge of Christ and his bride. We ask that in all things Jesus Christ might be exalted in our
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lives, in our words, and in our writings. For we do desire that he should be glorified. So we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
