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Special Guest Zac Peake, joins us this week as we discuss Ephesians 1 & 2 and how You are important in God's plan for the universe.
Just like Matthew 5:13 says, Christians are the salt of the earth so join us as we find our saltiness on our journey through life together. Listen as Dr. Douglas Peake dives deep into the topics of his sermons each week, breaking down content, discussing evidence, telling stories and speaking into current events using biblical truths and principals.
[00:00:00] It's just about God is doing this, uh, you know, we should praise him for it. It's glorious grace, you know, he's freely given it to us. Uh, but that's more of kind of like the John three 16. He loves you. Like sometimes the reason is just, he loves you. He loves you. He loves you. We're getting more specifics, but just remember that's still part of the plan is he loves us.
And that's a lot of the reason why.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you learn, to think critically for yourself and grow your faith. We are here to help guide you along that path, but ultimately this is something that you have to do on your own. All we can do is just give you wisdom and insight from our lives, from what the Bible says, which is the ultimate truth.
But ultimately you're the one that has to make those decisions and learn to think for yourself and decide what you believe. Uh, my name is Jesse Maher. I will be your host here on this podcast, and we can [00:01:00] not have the Salty Pastor Podcast without a Salty Pastor, but we have the younger Salty Pastor. Zach Peake on today or the, what did we call you last time?
I'm okay with that. Some nice Sea Salt, pepper, but really expensive salt shakers. Then you can get that are like, they've got the big. crystals in there. I can be Himalayan. Himalaya sounds fancy. Very fancy.
Yes. So Zach you are going to be preaching this Sunday. We are still in our current series of Jesus Loves Me talking about the essentials of the faith.
If we take one of these essentials away, the whole idea of Christianity really doesn't work anymore. It kind of collapses. Um, and so we've covered who Jesus said he was, and who he is. Um, we talked about love and now we're onto Jesus loves me. So we're talking about me and we're both millennials, so we're very used to [00:02:00] talking about ourselves.
Right. That's kind of the stereotype.
That I thought that was what everything was for. Right. It's just for me means for like us, if we're hanging out, but mostly for me still.
So where do you want it to pick up? Tuesday tends to be our biblical study day and then Thursdays application. So what are we, where are we going in the Bible today?
Well, we're going to start off where Sunday left off. So, you know, we usually start off with, we're doing a new passage. We're doing kind of prefacing the next week, the next sermon, and we're still going to do that, but we want to pick up with that conversation that Jesus was having with Nicodemus, uh, because there's something that Jesus reveals in there that's really important and will lead us kind of to next Sunday and what the next message is going to be.
So we're in John chapter three around verse 16.
Kind of starting in 16. Everybody seems to know. I mean, stop me if you've heard this one before. No. Yeah, but I want [00:03:00] to take kind of a different view of it and also use some of the verses afterwards. Because in verse 16, as you all probably know for God, so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
This is a plan. Jesus is speaking, what God's plan is to Nicodemus. And then we see as it continues for God to not send his son into the world, to condemn the world, but to save the world through him, 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son.
And so Jesus here is explaining what God's plan is. Like, he's explaining what the basic plan is for you and me and humanity. You know, it's not for as much as we love our pets, as much as we love animals, it's not for animals. It's not for other pieces of creation. This is for us, God. So loved the world. He loved us that he sent his one and only son for us. And that's his plan.
And so that's where I want to [00:04:00] start as God has a plan. And when it comes to Jesus loves me. Because Jesus loves me. He has a plan to save me.
And this
seems to be fairly early in his ministry. Right. Um, he's, he's gone and been baptized by John the Baptist. He's gone and performed some miracles. Um, and then he goes and clears out the temple.
Um, because he's upset with all of the quote unquote religious figures that are hanging out in there. And that's when kind of this conversation with Nicodemus begins. Right. So he's laying out the plan of...
We're already doing chronology with the gospels, right. Because they did not think of time, the same way we did.
They thought a lot more, uh, there's an old Matthew McConaughey movie called Sahara. Yes. Yeah. It's it kind of bond, but it's kind of fun. It's been fun, but there's this one part where he goes to the library. And it's a mosque because it's in Mali, I think. And he's like, okay. Uh, it would have been about like 1,188.
He's like stop. We use events to [00:05:00] find dates, not dates to find events and like. The disciples didn't necessarily when they wrote these gospels think like chronologically and linearly, like we do always. Right. So to say it was chronologically that way. I mean, there's a good chance it was, but I'm not, but we can't guarantee you that you can't guarantee that, um, it, this conversation though does happen early on in John.
And when you study the disciples and the Bible project has, uh, some great. They do overviews of every book of the Bible. And when they do overviews of the gospel, they do a great job of showing how. They, they, they include story elements in there and that doesn't take away from how historically accurate they are.
It doesn't take away from the fact that these events happen. It's just, they wrote differently than us. Right. You know, the disciples, when they sat down and wrote the gospels, they did not think of writing a history paper. They thought this is who Jesus was. And that's what I want to show. And also the holy spirit was involved.
So, but, but basically, you know, th there's more story elements, you know, [00:06:00] it's kinda like if you were to tell, you know, somebody, like, if someone says, Hey, what's your story. You're not going to be like, well, on this year, at this time, this happened. And you're like, well, this is a big thing in my life. And it kind of led to this.
There's some, you're leaving out some that, you know, you're not focusing on as much, but you're still telling what happened. And that's kinda what, so it's, it's tough sometimes to talk about chronology. I mean, that's a little bit off topic right now.
But I think it's important for us to clarify that because not everybody knows that.
I mean, and so that's part of this thing is edifying people that when they're reading, they're also not going well. It happened exactly like this, cause this is how they tell the story in the gospel.
Well, and that's why you can see small differences between gospel sometimes. Um, that's something that apologetics talks a lot about is why are there discrepancies between the gospels?
Because there are differences in the way stories are told. But there's a whole lot of reasons for that. Again, these people weren't there, the disciples weren't sitting down writing academic papers.
Well, and they weren't academics, anyways, they're blue collar men that were called to follow [00:07:00] Jesus after they had already basically been dropped out of the program.
Right. And so their writing was not there. I mean, that's probably part of the reason Paul did so many of them because he was the most, you know, he had the most qualifications to be a writer. Everybody else was basically just, a, blue collar...
Probably. Yeah. And it's yeah. And so, you know, for all these different reasons, basically each of the disciples wrote down and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I wrote what they saw, what they experienced. Some of them like the book of mark mark was not a disciple. He was a follower of Christ. And he like was, he was kind of on the edges of, um, Jesus, his story in the gospels, but then he's involved a lot in the book of acts and he was involved heavily in the early church.
And so you see all these different guys. Tried to find the truth. And as with any historical event, you know, they have different perspectives, which again, doesn't mean there's things that are wrong. It means they saw different things, right. Or they decided to focus on different things or they thought [00:08:00] something led to something in a specific, you know, it's like, if you watch a sports, fans are great example, anybody who watches, you know, a football game or whatever, like some guy would be like, oh man, there was that interception.
And it changed the game. And other guy be like, no, no, no, it was this sack right before, you know, like. Everybody will debate about when it changed, but it's like, okay. I mean, they all kind of changed it. They all happened. They all kind of changed it. And so that's kind of what we see in the gospels. And this probably you're right.
This probably happened earlier in the ministry, but also what's most important here is that John's putting it more in the beginning because it's an important thing to know about the rest of the book. It's an important thing. John wants us to understand what God's plan is for the rest of. His gospel that he's writing.
Um, but what we want to focus on today is that God has a plan for you in me. And that's what this is about. That Jesus came down not to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. So that's the plan. That's like, you know how whenever you're supposed to form like an organization, you have to come up [00:09:00] with like a mission statement or something.
That's the mission statement.
This is the, what's the goal. This is what we're going for.
But as with any goal as with any. We want more specifics too, and there are more specifics and that's what leads us to our next passage of scripture that we're really going to be focusing on today. And that's Ephesians. Paul, as you were talking about earlier, who wrote a lot of letters, he writes in his letters to the Ephesians. And
kind of expound on what this plan is. Uh, but a couple of notes I want to make before we dive into Ephesians chapter one. And we'll, we might do a little bit of chapter two. We'll see how much time we have, but I'll be in Ephesians chapter one and two on Sunday. A couple of things to know about this. First off, some of the things Paul is going to cover in here is stuff we already know.
It talks about. God's love for us. It talks about that. Being a driving force of the plan that God has for us, which is true, God loves us, but there is more than just that, you know, it's kind of like, love is a very big word, which is good. It also means that it's light on specific [00:10:00] sometimes. Right? So there will be a lot of stuff about loving here because yes, God loves us, but there's also some other details.
And that's what we kind of want in this one. The second thing to know about this is Greek did not have punctuation. So the language that Paul wrote this in did not have punctuation. And so this passage of scripture, especially, it's really funny. Because, I don't know if anybody had to read like old English books when they were in high school
Like Beowulf and things like that.
Nobody's touched the Beowulf, but more like 18 hundreds, like the Victorian era and stuff where they just loved their words. And they would like, see like, How few commas can I use to get my sentence across? And so you get these sentences that are just going on forever. And because there wasn't punctuation in Greek, when this was translated, there's a whole lot of commas and not very many periods and it can make it hard to follow.
So we're going to do our best to break it down a little bit. Um, What's called an aside, which is where Paul will say like, so Jesus Christ, [00:11:00] but then it's like comma, he's like the Lord and savior of the universe comma. And so it talks about Jesus Christ. It's not necessarily needed for the overall sentence, but it kind of defines what he's saying more.
There's a ton of those. And so it makes it really easy to get lost while you read it.
It's almost like one of those, it almost belongs in like parentheses rather than like commas. Right. It's just something like Jesus. Parentheses da da da da parentheses. And then that would be the way you should maybe more interpreted as you're reading it, rather than with commas, which are like continuations for most of the time when
we're reading.
And so because of that, I may skip some asides in here. So if you're reading along right now or like, you know, these verses and you're like, Hey, he missed that part. Yes. I may do that on purpose a few times. Cause like, you know, even in some of the first ones, it'll be like, Um, you know, God loves us. It's like, he loved us so much.
It's like, okay. Yeah, we know let's skip that little one and let's get back to the [00:12:00] overall sentence. Cause at that it's that declared of thought that we're after. But with all that said, let's dive in. Okay, we're going to jump in in verse chapter three or sorry, in chapter one, verse three, because the first couple of verses are Paul's greeting to the church saying, Hey, if Asians, how are you doing?
This is from Paul. And then in verse three, he stood up. He starts by saying praise, be to the father or to God. And father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. So there's your first example of a comma. He's like, okay. Praise be to God and to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Boom. Awesome. But instead of leaving it there, he also defines it, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing. So again, that second part, it's like, awesome. It's true. Not as much needed for like the overall thought. And since we're here looking for the specifics, we're not going to focus on stuff like that as much.
Let's go to verse four for, he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and [00:13:00] blameless in his sight. So here is our first piece that was not in John. That was not in the, um, discussion between Jesus and Nicademus. Why does Jesus love us? Why is there that me at the end of the sentence, the first part is he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
So a couple of things he chose us. Like again, part of the plan, and this is a specific part of the plan was us being chosen.
It wasn't like a, oh, they're around. So I guess, I guess there, there it, yeah.
Well, we talk a lot about purpose and it's like, yeah, he, he created us with a purpose in mind, like, it's, it's not like, oh, look at this thing.
It's a human, it walks funny. No, it's like, I'm creating humanity for this. And that was before he created the world. He didn't create the world and then come like this was before creation. And then to be holy and blameless in his sight, this is, uh, this goes back to kind of what Israel was supposed to be and what we were originally [00:14:00] made to be before the fall, which is sharing in God's glory to be holy, to be set apart in special, to be blameless, to be perfect in his sight.
And so he has this idea for us, you know, I believe, I believe it's Paul who writes somewhere in the New Testament that, you know, we are now. A community of priests. Like we are all supposed to be part of the priesthood of Christ. It's like, maybe you're not a pastor, but you're still part of the priesthood of Christ.
If you're a Christian.
Holy and set apart and blameless, I'm just actually reading that. I'm doing the Bible in a year, the CCV version, um, which is really great because you only do five days a week. And then the other two, you get off on the weekends. But I'm in Exodus right now. And I just went through the slog
that is here's God talking to Moses. He's like, this is how I want you to build out the Ark of the covenant and all this stuff and how I want you to set Aaron apart to be my priest and his sons. And it's like, it's a whole thing. And it was like only that family was [00:15:00] allowed to be set apart like that.
Everybody else just had. Come to them, but and then
went to God. Right?
What's cool is real. Is that yes, Aaron and his family has set apart as like the priests of God for Israel. But Israel as a nation was also supposed to be set apart. Right now. We know it didn't work too well. Right. That's kind of the whole point of the old Testament that Jesus coming back.
But, but that was the point. That was the point. Showed, we can't do it as humans and we need something else. And Jesus, and then this is the plan now is that before the creation of the world, we were set apart, like, so there is something special about us. We're going to get to exactly why later on, but there is something special about us and it was bef he chose us before the creation of the world.
Uh, continuing on in verse five in love, he predestined us for adoption, adoption to sonship through Jesus. And then it says one of those little commas that says in accordance with his pleasure and will basically, because he wanted to. Is what that means. But what's really cool is I don't know if [00:16:00] you're a I'm on Bible gateway reading and it's got a little footnote right there.
Doesn't it, after it says sonship that footnote, which is so cool that they include this, uh, when it says that God predestined us for adoption to sonship, that phrase adoption to sonship, is a legal term, referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture. And in Roman culture, you know, it was one of those cultures where you had a man and then if he was powerful, he could have many, many women and many, many children, but only like some of them were full legitimate, you know, children according to culture.
And so what Paul is saying here is in his love for us and using Jesus Christ. God has in mind for us to become full heirs. Like he used the legal Roman term for that, which is a really cool and really powerful statement. Again, this speaks to part of his plan, which is, you know, [00:17:00] before the creation of the world, we were supposed to be holy and blameless.
Obviously that hasn't necessarily happened because, sin. But, what he's done instead now is he's going to adopt all of us to full standing with him through Jesus Christ. So these are some of the specifics of the plan of how he's going to save us. And they're really, really cool. Uh, in verse six, we go on to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given to the one he loves.
Again, that's one of those verses that's in there. It's just about God is doing this. Uh, you know, we should praise him for it. It's glorious grace. You know, he's freely given it to us. Uh, but that's more of kind of like the John three 16. He loves you. Like sometimes the reason is just, he loves you. He loves you.
He loves you. We're getting more specifics, but re remember that's still part of the plan is he loves us. And that's a lot of the reason why, uh, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Again, just like what [00:18:00] Jesus told Nicodemus, you know, whoever believes in him, we can be forgiven.
We shall not perish all of that similar, you know, that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Okay. And so now this is the next kind of specific that we get. And it's the last part of verse 8, in the first, uh, in all of verse nine. With all wisdom and understanding he. Meaning God may known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ verse 10 to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
That's a big one.
That is a very, very big one.
That is a very, very big sentence. So that's one sentence. It's one of those, you know, where he's, he's got commas everywhere. There's one of those. It's all over the place, but let's break that down because that is a huge, huge part with all wisdom and understanding.
So we're just saying, God smart. True. Right. [00:19:00] God may known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure. So he has told us, and you know, what's interesting is he has told all of us as humans, some of us haven't decided to listen to it. Some of us have some of us don't believe it. Some of us do, but he has made known
to us, the mystery of his will. He has made known to us this plan, this idea that he has, again, according to his good pleasure, cause he wants to, which he purposed in Christ. So why did he sin Christ to be put into effect when the times have restrained from element fulfillment? And this is what it is to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
That is the end point of all of this. So we've gone from John three 16, God. So loved the world. He sent his only son. We believe in him. We have eternal life, you know, we're not condemned. We are saved. We've gone from that to, we know that we, as a people, we, as humans were chosen before the creation of the world to be set apart, we are predestined to be his sons to be [00:20:00] adopted sons and daughters, to be adopted to a full, full standing in him and his kingdom.
And then what is the point of all of this to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
Um, so I mean, having that completely flips the way you think about yourself and why you're here. Right. I think. We, sometimes get so caught up on, we're just living our day-to-day life and, you know, depending on your circumstances, uh, have a family and stuff.
Sometimes you're just like, you know, I was an accident or, you know, I, you know, had a rough family life. Like, why am I here? And it's like, God's giving you this, this statement. Even if you had a perfect family life, sometimes you go through moments where you're just. I just really hard and it's, it doesn't necessarily get easier, but you have a different form of hope and purpose.
When you go, God put me here for a [00:21:00] reason. He chose me. He loves me and he made a way for me to be United with him, not just. Well, you made your choice and now you're out in the cold bye, he said, no, I want you back. I want you with me. I love you. And I care about you and there was a purpose and you matter
to me.
Yeah, well, and not just to unite with him, which is an amazing, you know, it's healing for us. It it's becoming what he's made us to be, but then, you know, to bring unity to all things, not just us. We then are co-laborers with him. I believe it's, it's either first or second Corinthians where Paul writes that we are co-laborers with God.
We get to work with him to bring unity to all these things. We as humans have a very special position in God's kingdom. We are blessed with it. We are privileged. We talk about privilege in our society. Talk about a privilege, right? We are, you know, intended to be adopted to sonship. [00:22:00] Of the creator of the universe and to co-labor with him to bring unity, to all things in heaven and on earth, that is an amazing privilege.
That's an amazing blessing for ourselves. We are healed through it. We become a, we were made to be through it. We fulfill our purpose through it, like, so it's great for us. And we get to see the fruit of that in the lives of others and the lives of other things, you know, not just the lives of other humans.
You know, I've grown up my whole life in Idaho and it's a beautiful state, you know, people here, we love the mountains, we love the forest and everything. And, you know, we want to bring unity to that and God as well, you know, we want to, you know, let it prosper and be good, you know, and rule over it with stewardship and wisdom, you know, to, to encourage a good world, not just for us and not just our children, but for
all of God's creation. And it's so cool that we get to be in that special spot. That is a very special spot that we get. Isn't it? Yes, absolutely. [00:23:00] Now why do we get that special spot? We've gone through how special we are. Why do we get all of that stuff that is so, so special.
I mean, that's kind of his plan for us.
Right. And he loves us?
Yes. Yes. But is there anything else? Does he give us any other hands? Like again, he loves us. But just like we expounded in Ephesians on that conversation in John chapter three, we can get a little bit deeper and yes, he loves us, but why do we have such a special spot in his kingdom?
I don't know, pop quiz.
I didn't know. I don't know if I like you on here, your pop quiz and me.
Or just having some fun. That's okay. That's one of those things where the teacher plans a question, you know, just so it's like, look, I want to do a transition, but I've been talking a lot. So we're going to get this other person call just so I have an excuse.
So tell me Zach, why, why are we so special?
Well, it goes back to Genesis. And what I'm really excited for to talk this [00:24:00] week is not just that we got to break down a really awesome passage in that Ephesians. That can be man. When I first read that passage, my eyes glossed over, I was like, what's going on? I'm so lost.
So I'm really happy. We get to break down the Ephesians today and really get after it and help people, you know, understand some of why the Bible is so hard to read some times and how we can break it down and understand it better, but also to set up Thursday's podcast. Because it, something that is happening in the world is the denial of who we are as humans and what special status we have as humans.
And part of the reason why is because we failed to go back to why we are so special. And the reason why we're so special, it goes back to creation. It goes back all the way back to Genesis chapter one. Okay. In verse 26. Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild [00:25:00] animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground in verse 27.
So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them male and female. He created them. That is why we are so special. That is why we get this opportunity. That is why we get this glorious purpose. That's why we get this special privilege in his kingdom because he created us in his image.
You know, the, the shorthand for that, as we call it Imago day in the image of God, it's Latin for that. And, and that is where this specialness comes from is we are created Imago day.
Well, I am excited to see what you want to share with us on Thursday, about how our culture has kind of started trying to take that away from us.
We hope you guys join us for that. Um, as [00:26:00] we kinda wrap up today, we got a couple minutes. I wanted to actually read some YouTube comments. Some people that have left some comments for us before we wrap up today. No, that's all good stuff. It's all good stuff. Uh, we've got Jen Frisky saying, keep doing what you're doing.
This podcast is my favorite, and actually the only one I listened to these days. It's so life-giving and full of good thoughts. Eyeopening things to be aware of and watch for as a mom. So, um, thanks Jen for that awesome comment. We're glad you're enjoying it. We've had Lauren Broyles says great message guys.
Um, Don pin Pilkington, Don Pilkington. Sorry. If I butchered that we said, thanks guys. It was very blessed, encouraged. Keep up the good work, Godly work. So, um, we just really love hearing what that you guys are enjoying this. I get the opportunity. I think probably a little bit more than Zach does, but, um, and less than Doug, but we love hearing when you guys are getting something out of this, um, that we're [00:27:00] helping you on your journey, that we're, you know, our mission is to help guide you, but ultimately you're doing the work and if we're doing that and you're enjoying it, we love hearing about it.
So we just really appreciate you guys joining us for that. Um, and that it's making a difference in your lives. Cause that's what we're here to do is try to help you make sense out of this life that you're living. If you're new to the podcast and you haven't listened to all 128 episodes, um, leading up to this, the ones I would recommend the most that you catch up on.
Um, we did a special series called What in the Sam Hill. And those were episodes 1 0 2, 1 0 4, 1 0 6, 1 0 8 and those ones are kind of like an overview of some of the bigger philosophical thoughts we hit on a lot in this podcast. So rather than you having to play a hundred episodes of catch up, um, those are great ones to kind of just, and they're, they're a little bit shorter, but they're just Pastor Doug kind of breaking down here.
Some, um, philosophical thoughts that we hit on a lot here on the podcast that are gonna help get you up to speed more rapidly [00:28:00] than listening to a hundred episodes worth of content to try to figure it out. So, um, if you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to watch those. Zach you have anything you want to say before we close out for the day?
I think he covered a man.
We got it all good. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. We'll see you on Thursday here on the Salty Pastor Podcast.