Walk Through The Bible: Ephesians
Text for Sermon: Ephesians 1:1-6; 2:1-10
Introduction.
Ephesians is the first of what are called Paul’s Prison Epistles. During his four years of imprisonment, two years in Caesarea and two years in Rome, at the end of his life, Paul wrote at least three letters to churches, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and two to individuals, Philemon; and Timothy, II Timothy.
History has given us some of the greatest literature from prisons.
John Bunyon’s Pilgrims Progress.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s writings.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.
What kind of letter would you write from prison?
Paul calls himself a prisoner for the Lord and an ambassador in chains, willing to suffer anything for the Gospel.
Paul made a brief visit to Ephesus on his second missionary journey and then stayed three years during his third missionary journey.
Ephesus was the wealthy, prosperous commercial center and crossroads of Asia Minor. It was the largest city in the Roman province of Asia, a thriving metropolis of between three and six hundred thousand people.
It was most famous for her temple to the great Greek goddess Artemis (Diana). It was the largest building in the Greek world, four times larger than the Parthenon in Athens. She was the national deity of the city, the mother goddess even of all of Asia.
The citizens of Ephesus were fanatical about their worship of this goddess. In Acts 19 we read about Paul’s first visit there and his encounter with the magic arts practiced there and about the riot that started because Paul interfered with this cultic worship.
This was a city as pagan as any large city in the world today. It was filled with cult worship, temple prostitution, sensuality, secularism, idolatry, unholy alliances and unholy tolerances, sorcery, magic. It was a dark place.
On his third missionary journey Paul ministered with tears day and night for three years, the longest he spent at one church.
The church Paul established there was strong and was the mother church in Asia Minor. The first Christians there were very strong, they had to be in the face of such strong opposition. They followed Jesus at great personal sacrifice (Acts 19:19).