Paul the Roman Citizen (Walk Thru the Bible Week 50)

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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting

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book on the planet.

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It will transform your life one page at a time.

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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible

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to life.

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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.

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Well, hey there.

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While the apostle Paul was handpicked by the risen Christ for pioneering and groundbreaking

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calling, this zealous Jew was called to take the good news of the kingdom to a pagan, Gentile

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world.

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What could be harder than that?

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Why Paul?

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Well, the answer to that question is the same answer to the question, why you and me

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are together.

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So stick with me.

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I want to welcome you to this week's Walk Through the Bible.

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We are in week 50 of the Walk Through the Bible.

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I am so excited as we are beginning to come to the end of our journey through the New

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Testament.

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But we have such exciting content over there our last few weeks together.

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Nevertheless, I wanted to take this moment to ask you if you've enjoyed our time together,

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maybe you haven't listened to the whole year, but you've listened to parts of it.

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If you've liked it, please be sure and to like this episode, to subscribe to this channel,

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to let us know because your likes and subscribes are just going to help more people find this

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teaching when they do searches.

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Which brings me to my next point.

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We have provided all of this great teaching content for you free of charge.

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Now I'm asking you, if you have enjoyed it, if you have gained from it, if you have learned

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from it, would you please pray about paying it forward, making a donation today which

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is going to help us to reach more people with this great teaching and to lay these biblical

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foundations in the lives of more believers.

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It does cost money.

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And so we're asking you to make a donation today.

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We have put a link in today's show notes where you can make a donation.

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And I also want you to know that even though we're coming to the end of our walk through

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the Bible, we are not coming to the end of the out of Zion show.

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We will continue.

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We have all new series planned for 2022 and beyond.

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So stick with us week to week.

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We're going to continue feeding you even after we wrap up our walk through the Bible.

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So let's get started and let's review what we talked about last week.

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Last week Paul was on his third missionary journey and he wrote long, doctrinal and instructional

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letters back to the church at Corinth and at the church in Rome.

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One of the contentious issues that the apostle Paul had to deal with was over the role of

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the mosaic law in the early church.

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God had given the law to the Jewish people as a part of his covenant with them.

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It was the requirements of their covenant with God.

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So early believers in Jesus still obeyed the law.

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Gentiles, however, were not expected to follow the law given to Israel.

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So how did these two groups mix in the church?

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How did they worship together?

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It was not easy.

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And if the law was not required to be saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, then on what

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bases are we saved and what is the role of the law?

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And this is what we talked about last week, what the apostle Paul talked about in particularly

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in his book to the Romans.

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Let me just sum it up.

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You and I are saved by faith in Christ alone.

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Just as Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith, which came hundreds of years

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before the law, so we are counted righteous because of our faith in the death of Jesus

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for us on the tree.

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But the law was given as requirements of the covenant with Israel, with the people of Israel.

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It was given to instruct and to guard them, to teach them the way to point them to the

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need for Christ, his substitutionary death on the cross and the further forgiveness of

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sins and to make way for the Holy Spirit to be poured in our hearts.

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If the Gentiles are led by the Holy Spirit, I should say if any believer in Christ is led

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by the Holy Spirit, they are fulfilling the requirements of the law because the Holy Spirit

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is only going to lead us to walk in love and love is a fulfillment of the law.

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But what about these Jewish believers in Jesus?

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They are also saved by faith.

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But is there still a role for the law in their lives?

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Well, the apostle Paul did not address this in his epistles to the Gentiles, but this week

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we began to get a little hint of how the early believers in Jesus were approaching the law.

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So let's get started.

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This week we are reading Acts 21 to the end of the book.

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Paul arrives in Jerusalem, even though he's been warned all along the way that he may

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be arrested, that bad awaits him in Jerusalem, he was determined to go.

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So he goes to Jerusalem and he meets with the church leaders there, James and the other

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leaders of the church.

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And he tells them the wonderful reports of what God is doing with the Gentiles.

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And they all rejoiced.

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And it says that when they heard this, they praised God.

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And then they said to Paul, but you see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed and

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all of them are zealous for the law.

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So while Paul was bragging about the Gentiles coming to faith, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem

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were bragging about the myriad, the thousands of Jews who were now believing Jesus as Messiah

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were a part of that early church, but they made it very clear and they are very zealous

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for the law.

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And he says, they've been told that you are teaching Jews who live among the Gentiles

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not to obey the laws of Moses.

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And he said, what should we do then?

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He knew it wasn't true.

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The epistles that you and I have been talking about were written largely to Gentiles in

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the churches.

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And he was explaining to them, you don't need to convert to Judaism in order to be a Christian.

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You don't have to get circumcised.

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That's what circumcision meant, was converting to Judaism.

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He was letting them know they didn't need to follow the law, that they needed to obey

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the Holy Spirit and in so doing they would fulfill the law.

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But now it's question about his teaching to the Jews.

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And he says, what should we do?

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In other words, this is wrong.

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And they said, you need to do this.

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And they gave him instructions, go to the temple, which he did.

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And in the temple, he didn't do anything wrong, but people saw him.

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They said, this is the guy who's been teaching all through Asia against the law, against Israel,

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against the people.

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And they said, we need to stop him.

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And then there were rumors that he had broken the laws of the temple.

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He'd brought a Gentile in, which he hadn't.

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And the Romans end up then sweeping him away for safety and to question him, what is this

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all about so they can determine what needs to be done.

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Now, this is the beginning then of Paul's imprisonment.

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Because it's so dangerous for him in Jerusalem, the Romans then whisk him down to Caesarea.

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And he is held in Herod's palace there in Caesarea.

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And then we have the story of how he comes before the Roman rulers.

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You can read it all this week in your reading.

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I want to take a minute and talk about something that we have happening here.

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So so far in our walk through the Bible, we have been discussing the Hebraic context of

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the Bible, of the Old Testament, of God's dealings with the Israelites.

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And then of the Gospels, Jesus came in that context.

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It was a Hebraic context.

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He came to the people of Israel.

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So to really understand what he was saying, what he was doing, who he was, what he was

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all about, we needed to understand that Hebraic context.

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But now we have a transition that's taking place.

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To really understand a lot of Paul's writings to the churches, we have to begin to understand

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the Roman and pagan context.

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Yep, because Paul, a lot of his epistles were written to Gentiles, and he was speaking their

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language and he was drawing from their context.

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There are some things you just cannot understand in Paul's epistles.

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No matter how well you may understand the Hebraic context of the Old Testament, of Jesus,

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you will not understand what Paul is saying if you do not understand what was taking place

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in the Roman pagan society around them.

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In the early church, there was a mix.

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For the most part, most of his epistles are dealing with either the issue of the law,

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which is a Jewish and Gentile issue, or then it was talking about behavior issues that were

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really a reflection of the pagan background of many of the Gentiles.

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Next week, we will talk about two books in the New Testament that are written primarily

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to Jews who believe in Jesus.

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For this week, let's stay in our train of thought.

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We have been reading Galatians, and this week we're reading his prison epistles.

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We read Corinthians and Romans, this week it's Colossians and Ephesians and Philippians,

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and these are reflecting largely a need to instruct and guide the Gentile members of

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the New Church.

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Paul was uniquely called and qualified to do this.

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So in Philippians this week, we're going to read where Paul begins to brag about his

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Jewish background.

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I'm going to read it here in Philippians 3.

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He says, If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I

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have more.

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Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew

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of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for

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righteousness based on law, thoughtless.

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But whatever were gains to me, I now consider laws for the sake of Christ.

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What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

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So Paul was not a disciple.

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He had never met the Jesus when he lived on the earth.

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He met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

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And Jesus, when he spoke to Paul and Paul had that vision, it was so impacting that Paul

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was able to give up everything and count it as loss.

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And he began to realize that righteousness is by faith.

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It's not because of obedience to the law.

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And he gave his life to take that message to a pagan Roman world.

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So Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, educated of Pharisee, zealous to the point of persecuting

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the church.

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But Paul was also a Roman citizen.

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He didn't grow up in Jerusalem or Judea in the land of the Bible.

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Paul grew up in Tarsus.

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Tarsus was one of three educational centers in the whole Roman Empire.

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Today we'd call it a university town.

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It was a place where there were educational institutions that was known for intellectualism,

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for education.

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We don't know exactly how Paul was educated in that system.

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But I think it's safe to say he was very educated for sure he grew up as a Jewish minority

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in the town of Tarsus.

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So he had to interact every day with the Roman culture, the Roman society, with the pagans

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around him.

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We do know that according to what we just read, he read, at least read Hebrew.

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He may have spoken at some.

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He studied in Jerusalem.

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He was later sent as a young man to Jerusalem to study there under one of the famous rabbis.

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So he was able to get around in Hebrew, particularly to read the ancient Hebrew manuscripts.

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But he spoke Greek.

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And it's interesting when Paul quotes the Old Testament in his writings, he's quoting

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the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint.

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So that means I think he was more comfortable in Greek than in spoken Hebrew.

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He could also reflect that he just knew the people around him were more familiar with

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the Greek, and therefore he was using it.

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He also spoke Aramaic.

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We know that because this week we're going to see that he addressed the crowd in Jerusalem

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in Aramaic.

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And he also said that Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and spoke Aramaic

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to him.

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Now that's interesting, isn't it?

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And we expect Jesus would speak Hebrew to Paul.

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He spoke Aramaic.

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And then Paul probably knew some Latin growing up as a Roman citizen.

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He would have to.

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So Paul was educated.

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He was multilingual and he was a cross-cultural.

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Therefore, Paul was the perfect bridge.

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He was a pioneer, pioneers are often controversial, and Paul was controversial.

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Still is.

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He was a visionary.

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He saw beyond the confines of the Jewish religion.

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He was able to put pieces together.

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He was able to put two and two together and came up with that we are saved by faith alone.

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The law still has its role, but it's not about salvation.

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He was relational just as any Middle Eastern Jew would be.

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It was about the family.

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It was about the body.

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It was about the honoring of all the parts of the body that we would be rightly related

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together.

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Very relational.

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He was also very vulnerable.

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He worked alone as a pioneer.

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He was exposed in many ways.

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I heard one teacher say that Paul traveled 10,000 land miles in his missionary journeys.

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That's just phenomenal.

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He was driven.

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He was driven to share the good news with as many as he could.

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And he was a phenomenal theologian and exposer.

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And his writings and his story take up a third of the New Testament from him.

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14 different books.

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I thank God for Paul.

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He was the perfect person to play that role, to be called to be that bridge, to bridge

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the gospel, which was a Jewish gospel from a Jewish Messiah for the Jewish people, and

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be that bridge to take it into the Roman world.

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It was Paul.

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You know, I also thank God for Luke.

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Luke wrote over one fourth of the New Testament.

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Luke traveled with Paul.

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And it's believed he wrote the gospel of Luke as well as the book of Acts.

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Both books address and reference someone named Theophilus.

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No one knows for sure who Theophilus was, but one theory, convincing theory, is that

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Theophilus may have been a part of the legal defense team for Paul when he finally was

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taken before Caesar and Rome.

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And so Luke took it upon himself to write for the legal defense team the entire story

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of who was this Jesus.

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What did he do and say how he died, how he rose from the dead, how he met this Paul on

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the road to Damascus, how this birth, this church that's been birthed throughout the

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Roman Empire is following this risen Christ and who Paul was.

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And the fact that the book of Acts kind of just drops off at the end, Paul's in Rome.

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We don't ever hear the end of the story.

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I think that's because it was written for his legal defense.

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Once it was presented, it was done and over with.

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And of course, what tradition tells us is Paul was eventually beheaded by the emperor,

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probably Nero, there in Rome.

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And because the writings of Luke had already been turned in, turned over, Luke didn't finish

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the story.

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So I thank God for Luke.

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That's how we know all of this about Paul, even about Jesus.

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He told the story of the birth of Jesus to such detail that none of the other Gospels

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did.

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So many of the stories about Peter and the other apostles, they were also on the road.

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They were just as busy as Paul.

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They were dealing with all the same problems.

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They were writing letters.

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Many of them were martyred for their faith, too.

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They just didn't have a Luke who was traveling with them, who then saw the need and answered

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the call to chronicle it.

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So I want to encourage you.

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Are you a unique pioneer like Paul?

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Are you the I want to go out there kind of person?

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Let God use you as who you are.

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Don't try to be somebody else.

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Or are you Luke?

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Are you the more kind of educated intellectual one?

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You like to chronicle.

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You like to assist.

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You like to be behind the scenes and you like to write.

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Let God use you for who you are because that's the whole point of this.

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God called Paul because of who he was.

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God used that man to the fullest because he knew who Paul was.

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He knows who you are.

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He wants to use you just as you are.

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Don't try to be somebody else.

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And don't beat up on yourself because you're not somebody else.

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Get to know yourself.

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Get to know your strengths and your weaknesses.

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And let God use you.

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Now this week we read Paul's what are called prison epistles.

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And these are the letters that he wrote while he was in under arrest by the Romans.

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And so that's the books of Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians.

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Now as you're reading through those this week, now you've kind of got this background.

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But I want to stop just a minute.

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I want to talk about the book of Ephesians because I want to make a point here about

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this transition now in our reading that we are transitioning from a story and from writings

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that were hebraic.

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They were hebraic in language, in mindset, in culture, in religion, everything.

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They used hebraic terminology, hebraic imagery.

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We're now making a transition as you're reading and even beginning last week.

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Paul's now speaking to Roman Gentiles.

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They may be citizens, they may not be citizens, but they are of the culture and the society.

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So he's beginning now to use imagery and context that's not hebraic.

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It's Roman because these Gentiles will understand what he's talking about.

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You and I, some of it goes right over our head.

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So I just want to share one thing about the book of Ephesians.

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When I learned this, I thought it was phenomenal that the book of Ephesians describes our

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citizenship into the body of Christ in very Roman terms.

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Paul is actually using here the context of how someone becomes a Roman citizen to describe

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the process of how we have become citizens of the kingdom of God.

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New citizens went through a process that they had to be selected in a way, they had to be

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adopted.

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After they became a citizen, they had to be trained, they went through citizenship classes,

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how to relate to other people now that you're a citizen because it was a very classist society.

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If you were a citizen, you went here and you did this and you used that entrance and you

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had all these privileges.

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And so they had to be taught and trained.

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What were their privileges as a citizen?

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And then of course he used imagery that was familiar to every single Roman citizen or

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resident and that was the armor of a Roman soldier.

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So first Paul describes our calling into citizenship and how that we were adopted into this sonship

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into the citizenship and he describes all of this in the first couple of chapters of Ephesians.

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And then he begins to talk about our conduct as a member of the kingdom of God, how we

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should conduct ourselves.

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And then at the end he talks about the conflict that the citizen, that the believer will encounter

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and how to take on that armor to cover ourselves and to be equipped and prepared as we go

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into this conflict.

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Wow, this is all terminology that was for the Roman reader.

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Now I just want to read to you a couple of sections here from Ephesians 2 as we began

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to come to a close today.

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So reading here from Ephesians chapter 2 starting with verse 11, therefore remember

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that formally you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call

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themselves the circumcision, remember that at that time you were separated from Christ,

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excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope

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and without God in the world.

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But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood

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of Jesus, skipping down to 19.

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Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's

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people and also members of his household.

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Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the

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chief cornerstone.

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So this is where he is using a lot of the imagery about Roman citizenship.

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But the point I want to make for you and me today is we are no longer outside the family

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of God.

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Do you understand?

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The family of God was the nation of Israel.

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They were his people.

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You and I were Gentiles.

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We were pagans.

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We were barbarians.

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We were out in the world lost.

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We didn't know the God of Israel.

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We didn't know his goodness.

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We didn't know his ways.

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We didn't know he was the Creator.

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We were following all these idols, all these pagan gods, all these idols made out of stone

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and clay and silver.

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That's who we were.

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But through Jesus we can now become a part of the family of God.

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We can know the God of Israel.

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We can know the God who sent the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah who died on the cross for

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us.

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We have been brought in.

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We are no longer far away.

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We are now brought in to the family.

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We're citizens of the kingdom of God.

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Isn't that exciting?

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And then as we wrap up today, I want to read one more verse from Ephesians.

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I love this little section of scripture.

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I believe it wraps up the entire Bible.

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You know, you and I spent the last 11 months reading through the Bible.

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And I keep reminding you of the story that's taking place behind the stories.

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And here in Ephesians we have it all wrapped up in Ephesians chapter one starting with

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verse four.

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For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in

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his sight, in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance

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with his pleasure and will.

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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with

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the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.

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Verse 10, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

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We have it all right here.

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It says that before God even created the world that he had a plan that you and I would be

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adopted into his family through Christ Jesus.

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Wow, is that not amazing?

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He always knew man was going to fall.

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He knew we were going to need forgiveness.

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He knew that he was going to create a people, the Jewish people through whom he worked through

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and is still working through to reach the Gentiles.

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Here it's all here that we would be adopted into sonship through Jesus.

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That means that Jesus' death on the tree was always a part of God's plan set in place

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before all eternity.

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Jesus was to die on the cross for you and me so that in the end God is going to unite

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all of heaven and earth together under Christ in the kingdom of God.

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That's when God rules over the entire heaven and earth.

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Wow, it's all right here in Ephesians 1.

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So I hope you enjoy your reading this week.

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You'll remember these things that I've shared.

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You'll see this in Ephesians and may the Lord work deeply in your heart as you spend time

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in his Word this week.

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And I'll see you back here next week.

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Until then, God bless.

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Hey there, I hope you've enjoyed the teaching so far during our walk through the Bible.

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We would like to ask for your help.

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If you've enjoyed it, if you've received from it, if you've learned something and you

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would like to bless others with the opportunity to be a part of these teachings, would you

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please go down below in today's show notes, follow the link there to make a donation.

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You know, it costs a lot of money for us to provide this teaching to you free of charge,

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but we've done so just wanting to bless you.

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I'd like to ask you now, would you bless others, make a donation so that we can get

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this teaching out to more people?

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We would appreciate it.

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We just appreciate your partnership with us in that way.

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God bless you.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.

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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, cpnshows.com, YouTube, or

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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA All Rights Reserved.