How Do We View God and Christ?

The last time I spoke to you a month or so ago, I asked a provocative question. I asked the question, who is your God? I wanted you to consider how much the world's view of God has influenced your view. So I wanted you to do a little bit of self-examination, do a litmus test. After I gave you parameters for doing a self-examination, I ended with a substantial list of Scriptures showing how God views Himself so that you knew who He said He was, and then you could measure the effect of society upon your view with how God viewed Himself. Today I want to pursue a similar topic. Not the same topic, but a similar topic. How do you view God and Christ? A little stage setting is in order to make sense of the question. I want you to go back to Matthew 12, Scripture that all of you are familiar with. That's a statement that Jesus Christ made as He was talking to a group of Pharisees. He said to them in Matthew 12, verse 34, He said, Brute of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks? It's a principle. It's an axiom. You know, who you and I are at the subconscious level comes out of our mouths whether we intend it to or not. I was, as I was preparing the sermon, I went out to see Diane and I said, You know, I've got one particular friend. And I said, He tickles the daylights out of me because there is absolutely nothing that really totally aggravates Him that isn't going to come out of His mouth sometime. I said, He's physically not capable of dropping the shoe.

And I said, He is the one that comes to mind, first of all, when I think of out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and it being a subconscious thing rather than a conscious thing. Sooner or later, who we are, we expose to those around us by the way we talk, what we choose to talk about, or even what we choose not to talk about. Where you are in your heart and in your thinking will come out in what you say and in what you write. Now, like it or not, as I said with the previous sermon, we're all a part of our culture. As much as we are told and we agree with and we espouse coming out of this world, it doesn't mean that we can be totally unaffected by it. So I know what your desire is. Mine is the same. I do not want to be a part of this world. I agree when Christ said, come out that that's what I should do. And I endorse it wholeheartedly, but I'm not naive enough to think that I live seven days a week in a culture, and it has absolutely no bearing on me. None of us has made a Teflon. And so it's always valid to ask questions of introspection about the effect. In the previous sermon, I explored the effect of culture in determining how we viewed God. And I went all the way back to the most primitive forms of life on this earth where people really, they really hadn't even stepped up to level of gods. Their world revolved around. There are spirits, and I need to be concerned about my relationship with the spirit world because they have the ability to do me harm.

And I took you from there up to the Greek and the Roman world, which in modern times when we look at ancient worlds, we look at the Greeks and the Romans as being more advanced. But the gods of the Greeks and the gods of the Romans were emotional disasters. They were unpredictable. They were wrathful. They were totally immoral. And they had no consistent pattern of behavior. And I asked, have these things affected in any way, shape, or form your view of God?

Can you? Do you trust God as loving, faithful, reliable?

Or has any piece of the cultures of the world crept in to the way you see Him? So today we will again explore the past, but this time as we explore the past, we're not going to have to go back any farther than the lifetime of the older members in the congregation. So we don't need to go very far back in time. How has our society over the past half century or century viewed God and Christ?

If I go back to my teenage years, so anyone my age, if they would go back to when we were teenagers, you could go down to the main street of any city or any significantly sized town, and as you went from one end of the city to the other end, all of the major American denominations would be represented with beautiful church buildings, stately, dignified. The people that walked in each week walked into a formal service, and some were more formal than others, but all of them were formal.

Everyone went in dressed, as we used to say, in their Sunday best. The buildings were impressive. The services were formal. And by and large, as a broad brush, and these are broad brush statements, if you had sat in any of them, the predominant message would have been about God. I mean, in terms of the name that would be referenced, it would be God. I spent a couple of years in England, and in more pretentious societies, it was amazing what they were able to do with the simple three letters, G-O-D.

They could change it into G-A-W-D. They could stretch it out, but to sound a little more dignified and a little more ceremonious, the name of God had a little bit of stretch to it. Today, some of the oldest mainstream Protestant churches have lost significant members. Their numbers are down significantly. And now the most visible churches are the non-denominational churches. They are the ones that have experienced the strongest growth over the last 20, 30 years.

And among those, the ones that have grown the most are those that have been of a charismatic type. The churches are often suburban, dress, informal, and by and large, the services, if you ask, who is referenced?

It will be Jesus. And so in a lifetime, services have moved from speakers predominantly in the churches that were most visible, talking of God, to a society where predominantly the churches that have grown the most and are the most visible, focus on Jesus.

Every so often when you listen to a highly affected televangelist, he is able to do with the name Jesus the same thing that I said some of the pretentious were able to do with the name God. I think there's a couple of added ease in there and a very strong suss at the end. And it has all of the earmarks of affected preaching. So today when we ask how God and Jesus are viewed as expressed by speech and writing, it ranges from an older, more traditional body which spoke of and centered on God to the charismatic, non-denominational bodies that more strongly focus all of their messages on Jesus.

And it leads to a question. Because somewhere along the line, as you look at cultural changes, you have to ask, where's a benchmark? Culture is never a benchmark. I can tell you what the norm is. I can describe to you what it predominates. But that's immaterial. The question is, where is a benchmark for us? I'll take you to one of those bench—I was going to say I was taking you to one. I'm going to take you to the benchmark. I want you to go back to Ephesians chapter 2. We're a church. All of us are keenly aware of that. Our name was not chosen capriciously.

We are the church of God, which denotes ownership, ultimate ownership of the body. But in this body that is ultimately owned by God, the Father, there is an internal structure, and it is described in this way in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 19. Paul said to the Ephesians, he said, Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.

Once we pass the Gospels, all the red letters disappear in the Bible. And so what Christ taught, he taught by inspiration through whom? Through the apostles. The church that you and I belong to belongs to God the Father. Its foundation rests upon stones that represent the teachings of prophets, looking forward. Apostles who administered the New Testament church, and Jesus Christ is that pivotal stone. You know, when you go back to the very end of the Bible, to the book of Revelation, at the end of Revelation, when it talks about the New Jerusalem, it talks about it having 12 foundation stones, and upon each of those 12 foundation stones is written the name of one of the apostles.

And so when I ask, where do you go for a benchmark, I don't know a better benchmark to go to in answering the question, how do you view God in Christ than to go to the apostles who lived with him, walked with him, talked with him? And the Apostle Paul, who said, even though I was called out of season, I was trained in the desert, and I had first-hand training. So I'm not going to take a back seat to the other man in terms of having a capacity to speak as one who represents Christ.

When Christ ascended to heaven, he left behind a body of trained men. And you know, it was within just a few days that these men were leading, teaching, and caring for thousands of new converts.

Their teachings, like I said, you pass Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you have a history book, a single history book. When you pass that history book, all the rest of that New Testament saved the book of Revelation are the writings of those apostles. The letters, the epistles, beginning with Romans and ending with Jude, these are letters of the apostles to their congregations, to their fellow ministers, to members of the Church of God, and to scattered followers of the Church of God. All of these letters began with a salutation. Today, when you and I write letters, I don't know how Mr. Sexton is going to write the letter to the people who are attending, but there will be a salutation in that letter. Today, when you and I write a salutation, we say, Dear Bill, Dear Joe, Dear Susie, Dear Anne, or if we're briefer than that, we say, Hi, or Hello. But we always start with a salutation, don't we? If we write a letter, there is an introduction that says, Dear so-and-so, and then we get into it, or Hi, or How are you, or Hello. Well, every one of the apostles' letters began with a salutation. It was a way of shaking hands with those to whom they wrote. The question on the table today, brethren, is how do you view God and Christ? I'm taking you back now to those men who were the pillars, the foundation stones of the New Testament church, because if you want a gold standard of how you ought to, where are you going to go following the ascension of Christ to heaven, and what is left on this earth is the Church of God? Where are you going to go for a better standard? And so that's where we're going. Now, realize what follows for the next few minutes is going to be probably about as monotonous as monotonous can get, but cinch up your belt and grit your teeth and bear with me, okay? Because I'm going to read you the salutation of every epistle. And if you want to experience monotony, hang on, because you're going to hear it. But I want you to listen to one thing, because we only have one question on the table. How did the apostles view God? When I use the term God, you have to understand, I'm speaking, when I use the term God, I'm speaking of the Father, okay? So God the Father, synonymous for this sermon. And of course, Jesus Christ being separate. Romans chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God. 1 Corinthians 1.3, 2 Corinthians 1.3, Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 1.2, Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 1 verse 3, Ephesians 1, verse 2. Now, like I said, it gets numbing, doesn't it? Now, if you had my cheat sheet in front of you, you would see that every once in a while maybe one word has changed. But other than that, you've already got the message for 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians—we'll give you a little break—Colossians 1, 2. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, which are at Colossae, grace—oh, oh, here we are again—be unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1, 1. Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, under the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 2. Grace unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Timothy, we now transition from church letters, letters to congregations. We now transition to epistles to individuals, fellow elders, in one case a member. 1 Timothy, chapter 1 and verse 2. Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. 2 Timothy 1, 2. To Timothy, my dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 To Titus, another member of the pastoral community. Titus 1, verse 4. To Titus, mine own son after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. 4 To Philemon, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews. Hebrews goes a totally different direction. I mean in terms of the formulaic grace and peace. Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2. God who at various times and in different ways spoken times past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he has appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the worlds.

Now we move to the general epistles. Paul is responsible for all of these. Now we move to a younger brother of Jesus Christ, a very close companion of Christ among the twelve apostles. The closest of all of the apostles to Jesus Christ. And we end with another brother of Jesus Christ. James, a brother of Jesus Christ in James 1.1, says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1.2, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.

You know, you need to pay special attention to this one because this is probably one of the few times in all the Bible that you'll find Peter being wordier than Paul. 2 Peter 1.2, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Now John is writing to a totally different audience in a totally different time. And so it really is very difficult to parse out the exact verse or piece that constitutes a salutation in 1 John. Let me take one verse because I'll come back and read the rest of it later. But we'll take 1 John 1.3, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. So that verse is probably as close to the formulaic salutation of the previous writers as we will get in 1 John. 2 John 1.3, grace be with you, mercy and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in truth and love. 3 John is the only epistle with no salutation, no formal salutation. He gets right into the beloved lady, as he refers to the audience to that letter, but there is no formulaic salutation of 3 John. And the last of all the epistles, bringing up the rear, is one of the brothers of Jesus Christ. And Jude writes in the first verse of Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ. Now, as I said to begin with, apologetically, fasten your belts because there is a ton of monotonous repetition in all of that. But it's necessary because go back to the point I made. If you're going to look for a model of how to view God the Father and Jesus Christ, where are you going to find a model that is superior to the model provided by the apostles? They are, by their very description, the foundation stones of the New Testament church and will even have the honor of being such in the New Jerusalem.

They were the only people who had first-hand experience.

What was obvious about all of these salutations?

If you stand back, take them all as a package. What was obvious from all of these salutations? Let me come at it sideways.

Their salutations did not conform to the model that I gave you from my youth.

I grew up—when I made a generalization, I should mention to you, I grew up in one faith. My family were Mennonite. But my father, because of the job that he had and the fact that the job was seniority-based and he was constantly bidding to move up the seniority ladder, put us as a family in a position where we were moving all the time. And as a result, we went to whatever church happened to be in the community. And in one community, being on the Idaho-Wyoming border, you can fully understand attending a Mormon Sunday school, in another area, an Episcopalian, in another a Baptist, in another an Adventist. So prior to coming into the Church of God, I have sat in a range of different congregations. And as I said, the name of God was the predominant choice in messages. The Charismatic model today is one where Jesus is the predominant model. What was obvious from these salutations is that neither of these models was the model of the apostles. In every single salutation, the apostles gave honor and respect to both.

These salutations make one thing clear about the thinking of these men that I think can probably be expressed. And the more you read the apostles, all of the apostles, all of Paul's letters, both of Peter's letters, the three of John's letters, the more you read them, the more this particular reality comes off the page. They had a particular view, and it is not necessarily the view of a half century ago or of the present time. Philippians chapter 2 makes a statement.

Philippians chapter 2.

Beginning in verse 5, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven, of those on earth, of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The interesting statement in that group was that Jesus Christ did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 because that statement in Philippians 2 rests upon its own foundation, and that foundation is 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the resurrection chapter, makes the statement about what God has done with Christ, and it says, verse 27, 1, For he, this is God the Father, has put all things under his, that is Jesus Christ's feet. So God the Father has put all things under Christ's feet. But when he, that is God the Father, says all things are put under him, Jesus Christ, it is evident that he, God, who put all things under Christ is accepted, meaning he is the exception. So God the Father says, I have put all things under Jesus Christ's feet. And Paul says, but you must understand one thing. That is with an exception. There's an asterisk. It does not include him. If you want the view of the apostles in the New Testament church, I don't know any quicker, easier way to give it than Philippians 2, 6, 1 Corinthians 15, 27, and 28.

Christ considered himself equal to the Father. As long as you understand that that meant I will always be subservient to the Father. And he's put everything in this universe under my feet, but not his office, and that I respect.

I don't know about you over the years as I look at my wife, our marriage, and I look back at Genesis where it says, God, when he saw that Adam was alone, and that wasn't the best place to be, that he would make a help meet for him. Lousy old King James English. He was making him a fitting compliment.

I will never have the abilities my wife has, and she will never have the abilities that I have, but I respect her abilities as highly as I respect my own. I understand, having been literally and personally in every form of authority or under authority that this Church allows, I understand what it means to be in authority and I understand what it means to be under authority. The early years of United were absolutely humorous as I would go to Arcadia, first of all, and then later to Cincinnati, and chair the Council of Elders Meeting and come home and be under the jurisdiction of my regional pastor, Mr. Denny Luker. Now, Mr. Luker was one of the Council members, and so on the Council I chaired meetings, and he had to abide by my governance of order in those meetings. And when I came home, he could say, Bob, I need ministerial reports from you, and I'd say, yes, sir, Mr. Luker, I'll have them in the mail to you. We live in a world that gets all wrapped up in authority, gets all wrapped up in how many bars, how many stripes, how many this, how many that, rather than simply acknowledgement of what it means to have mutual respect, to understand that the buck has to end somewhere, but beyond the buck ending somewhere, we are as if we are peas in the pod in the way we think. I love the statement of Christ where the Apostle said, show us the Father and it will suffice. And he said, have I been with you so long that you haven't seen the Father? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. What did he mean? He means anything I've said to you, he would say to you. Any direction I've given, he would give. Any answer to questions that I give you, if you'd ask him, he'd have given you the same answers.

It's a little scary that a man and a woman can live together for 50 years and start looking like each other. My wife and I, my wife and I every so often look at friends and we say, wow, you know, the older they get, the more they look like brother and sister. This is scary. I can't imagine having lived forever what God and Christ are like if we in half a century can watch a commonness of mind, a commonness of goal, a commonness of love and concern for one another, actually begin to turn you physically to the place where you start looking more like each other. And so when Christ said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, boy, that one plays with my mind.

But these two scriptures say a ton.

Now, I gave you all the short salutations. Obviously, it wasn't difficult to see that they were thanking God and Christ for grace and peace.

I don't know how you and I get grace without both of them being involved.

Do you? Anybody figure out how you get grace without both of them being involved? I can't. Peace, not a whole lot different, but grace is more visible.

Because if God had not, and I have to put it in the only way that I can think of putting it, if somebody pushed back, I'd said, look, I'm not married to the verbiage here, but if God had not asked Christ to come down and die for our sins, then the supposition is it would never have happened. And He had to agree to do it. But that tandemness then provided us pardon from sin. And so it's a co-opt situation.

If you read each of the epistles that I read to you, with the question of where does the introduction end and the topic of the epistle begin, you'll find that the real salutations were longer than the snippets. Anytime you read an epistle and you say, okay, how much time is spent introducing before you get into the topic? I remember reading an editorial from William Sapphire years ago as he was writing in, I don't know, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and he was talking about having been a speechwriter for presidents. And he said, you know, one of the necessary things in being a speechwriter is to help the speaker, first of all, shake hands with the audience. If you launch right straight into what you have to say, you've missed your salutation. You haven't shaken hands with the audience and said, hi, how do you do? Good to see you. I've never forgotten that simple comment from Sapphire about speaking. Well, the apostles did it in writing, and their salutations are actually longer. For instance, in Romans, Philippians, Titus, James, 2 Peter, and Jude. In those books, Romans, Philippians, Titus, James, Peter, and Jude. So you've got a representative of Paul, Peter, James, and Jude. All of them in their salutation made a profession. They said, so and so, a servant of Jesus Christ. Now Paul said over and over and over again, and so did Peter, an apostle. But in those instances, these men, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude, all said as an addition to grace and peace in God the Father and Jesus Christ, a servant of Jesus Christ. You know, that's a proper acknowledgement because the term, doulos, servant, actually means bond servant. And since slavery is long past in our country, we're not currently a society that thinks that way. But a bond servant means I bought you. I want a title to you, just like my car and like my house. It gives me complete ownership and the ability to sell you whenever I want to sell you under any circumstances. That's what a bond servant is. And so these men weren't saying I'm a servant. I come in Monday to Friday from 8 to 5, I clean the house, and then I go home to my family. They said, no, we are bought and paid for. Now could they have said we are bond servants of Jesus Christ and God the Father? I'm sure they could have. But at the moment in the conversation, they were aware of the fact that somebody had to actually put the money on the table. And the one to put the money on the table in this case was Jesus Christ, his own life. And so they said, grace and peace to you through God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. But by the way, I am bought and paid for by Jesus Christ. So you can add to grace and peace, bond, service. Time in a sermon wouldn't allow a full study of all of the extended salutations.

But let's read a couple of them, and do me a favor. As I read them, forget the doctrine. Meaning, this is not a doctrinal study. This is a read so that you can see how the speaker in his mind sees the beings that he's writing about. So listen to it through the lens of how is this speaker relating to the parties involved. Probably the easiest one to read. There are some that are easier and some that are harder. Let's start with what I consider probably the easiest, longer salutation to read, and it's the introduction to Galatians. It's five verses long before Paul finishes saying hello, and he gets into—now let me talk to you about why I wrote this letter. Now listen to the relational side of it. Paul an apostle, Galatians 1-1, not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. So as he looks at where his gratitude is, he looks at the function that each performed in producing the end product. And he says, I'm an apostle, and I wasn't put in this position by a man. I was put here through—so the agency or the vehicle was Jesus Christ and God the Father. And I am put here through Jesus Christ and God the Father, because had God the Father not raised him from the dead, I wouldn't be an apostle of anybody. So I represent both of them, each of them having performed a different part of putting me where I am. But both of them totally involved. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. So again, we see the same co-oping, don't we? I am thankful for Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age. And he did every bit of this according to the will of God the Father. I'll let the cat out of the bag, because I'm not going to speak more than probably another 10 minutes or so. The longer salutations are for Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Peter, and 1 John. What I've shown you, and probably the easiest of those salutations to read, is that when an apostle addresses a church and he wants to express how he feels about God the Father and Jesus Christ, he sees their actions in bringing him to where he is and the church where they are as so inseparable that he can't cut the fine line to excise one or the other out of the picture. And you're going to see it in every single solitary instance. It doesn't change. One may get a little more, because of the direction of the letter to the congregation or the person, one may get a little more press, as we use the term, than the other. But you won't find a salutation that exclusively speaks to the honor and glory of one to the exclusion of the other. It doesn't exist. 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

This one's nine verses long. In my particular version of the New King James, it calls it a greeting of grace and a prayer of thanksgiving. But when you take the nine verses, it's all the introduction before God. Or, excuse me, before Paul gets into the topic. Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and saw the knees of our brother. So he immediately says, look, I was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, but it was totally by the permission and the stamp of approval of God the Father. To the church that belongs to who? To the church of God, which is in Corinth. To those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Now, as I said, this is not a doctrinal study. We could really get bogged down in the mire very quickly. But I will stop occasionally so that you see the connection. I'm a member of the church of God. You're a member of the church of God. You and I are sanctified by Jesus Christ. What does sanctified mean? It's a high-fluting nose-in-the-air word that simply means set apart. How did you get set apart? Well, somebody paid your debt. If they didn't pay your debt, you wouldn't be here. Once your debt was paid, you were a different individual. And so he simply says, I am a member of God's church, but the one who paid the debt so that I could be here was Jesus Christ. Then he gives the standard, verse 3, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 4 he says, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus. Again, we see this tremendous inseparability of praise and credit for work done.

Who do I thank? I thank God the Father.

I thank Him for the grace that He has extended to me. But how did He do it? Well, He did it through Christ Jesus.

That you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift eagerly awaiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. So He's simply acknowledging you and I are awaiting. You know, this was a time where Paul, when you read Paul, I think we're all schooled enough in Paul's writings to know that in the early part of Paul's ministry, he expected, like many of us have and do at times, expected to be standing with his feet on the ground when Jesus Christ descended on the Mount of Olives. And at the very end, as he is turning the mantle over to Timothy, you see him now say, I've fought the fight, I've run the race, there's laid up for me a reward, and I'm passing the baton. But now he's still in that earlier mode where he says, look, we're all here waiting for the time when his feet stand on the Mount of Olives, who will also confirm you at the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son. What did Christ say back in John 6? No man can come to me unless the Father calls him. He says, you're here in the Church of God because God called you, and He called you into the fellowship of His Son's Church.

Ephesians.

Ephesians is a mid-length intro. It's six verses long.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. You know when Christ said, I can do nothing of myself?

Paul said, I am an apostle because of God's calling. Paul gave me an assignment. My assignment is to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, but I am here by the will, the checkmark in the box, the okay, whatever it is, I am here by the will of God. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you, peace from God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Again, that total complete inseparability. God is the one who has blessed us. But how did we get there? Well, we got there through Christ. So who do you credit? You credit right hand, left hand. You credit both hands. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him, just as God the Father chose us in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before God the Father in love. Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His, that is God the Father's will, to the praise of the glory of God the Father's grace by which He made us accepted in the beloved, who is Jesus Christ.

Let me read Peter and John so I don't so I give you at least one other apostles look at things or two other apostles look at things.

As I said, I can read all of them to you. You wouldn't see one iota of variation.

When it came to gratitude, they couldn't separate their gratitude between the Father and the Son. When it came to credit for how did I get to where I am, the credit was binary. It went two directions. 1 Peter 1 1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, who the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. 2 Peter, an apostle of the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time.

Peter didn't see the world any differently than Paul did. Peter had his own vocabulary. He had his own way of saying. But what Peter had to say to these scattered people, the dispersion, wasn't any different than what Paul said. To congregations and to fellow members. I said to you earlier that in 1 John, John had a different way of putting it all together. So let's read the first four verses of 1 John 1. This would be his lengthier introduction. And again, though it's purely coincidental, in my New King James, it simply puts the title introduction as the label for the first four verses of 1 John.

Though this is said totally differently than all the rest, listen again for credit, respect, and honor, and where it's directed. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life, the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life was with the Father and was manifested to us. That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

Slightly different approach. Not one variation of the needle on the meter in terms of how He saw and how He viewed.

Gratitude, respect, credit.

We commonly read the epistles for doctrine. Now we've had a chance to read it to examine approach. Approach to God. I don't know how many years ago I was talking to Fred Reeves before services, and I said, somebody made a comment about nine years ago that triggered this study. And I thought it was a statement. I won't repeat it to you, because frankly, I didn't think it was a spiritually healthy statement. And that's what startled me. And I thought, hmm, let me look at that. So nine years ago, I said, let me look not at the teachings of these books for a moment, let me look at how the men spoke. Let me look at the abundance of the heart side of the message. How did you express yourself? When you wanted to be grateful for something, who did you point it at? When you wanted to look to authority for what you were doing, who did you point at? When you wanted to encourage the church to respect something, where did you direct them?

And when you're finished, you say, you know what? It doesn't fit the model that I gave you from 60, 70 years ago. And it doesn't fit the model that is very popular and current today. It is its own model, and it's a very different model that doesn't pit one side against the other side, do the pendulum swing from all the messages are about one member of the Godhead, or all the messages are about another member of the Godhead. This manner of speaking showed appreciation for both God the Father and Jesus Christ. And the more you read it, the more you come to understand that it expressed the inseparable nature of their joint actions in carrying out the plan of salvation, that both are committed 100 percent. The evidence from the epistles provides an important lesson. The apostles, when they looked at our calling, when they looked at our redemption, and when they looked at our destiny, saw the contributions of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, his Son, as so inseparably linked that they couldn't express their beliefs or their appreciation without acknowledging both.