Living Water Community Church

We ended on verse eighteen and this time we will be starting there. This verse wraps up the section we were exploring about the armor of God. The section on armor really sets a great final theme for wrapping up this letter. Paul encourages us to put on this armor to stand against the devil. We are not in a battle against flesh and blood. It may feel like it at times but everyone you encounter who...

We explored the section where Paul addresses slaves and masters. It is interesting historically because the roles of slaves and masters at this point in Roman history was much closer to the modern roles of employees and employers. Because of the slave uprisings and because it is estimated that two-thirds of the population of Rome were slaves, they were treated generally pretty well. Slaves had mor...

We are looking at what God calls us to consider as we think about worshipping Him.  We have looked at the fact that all of life is really to be lived in worship of God. Yet how important do we hold worship to be? It is such a core element of seeking God that it would not be overstating it to say worship to the most crucial component of the Christian life. We fail to think properly about worship wh...

As we considered the first four verses of Ephesians 6 we continued to deal with the topic of roles and responsibilities which was introduced with the topic of marriage in chapter 5. What Paul addressed in those 4 verses was the roles of children and parents. These roles are critical and important. Paul is laying a solid groundwork for what is the core unit of the church; the family. What he shows...

We worked through the last part of the section on the roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives. The picture the text paints is majestic in how it points us to the person and work of Jesus for the church, as the model for married couples to look to. Wives can think of their role as mirroring the role of the church in its relationship to Jesus. Men can think of their role as mirroring the ro...

We began to work through the section dealing with the roles of husbands and wives in the context of marriage. What we discover in this section is a call for Christian husbands and wives to work at doing the things which are contrary to our fallen nature and the curse. We explored how the curse of God on Adam and Eve brought division and strife into their relationship. In looking at the things brou...

We examined verses 15-20 of chapter 5. Here we see Paul calling us to build up the body of Christ to be free standing moral agents in this world. The world needs to see people who are different and make a difference. People who stand for what is right according to God’s word and live it out. The opening verse calls us to walk in wisdom. The call is to follow the will of the Lord. In order to follo...

The worship of God matters to God. While all of life is worship there are certainly things which God finds unacceptable. Understanding how to worship in the right way is the duty of every Christian. We all need the ultimate and only sacrifice found in Jesus death, burial and resurrection. Jesus is our only hope and the best possible hope. Any man centered method of gaining salvation is intolerable...

Today we turn our attention to how Paul is calling us here to be agents who call people out of the world of sin. We see a foreshadowing of God’s plan of salvation being heralded in the opening verses of Genesis.  This passage we are in contrast again and again light and darkness.  Philippians 4:8 teaches us to set our minds on, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever i...

We worked through the beginning of chapter 5. The chapter really began the time before last as Paul laid out the reasons to be motivated to be imitators of God. Namely, the great love God has shown us in Jesus and His work on the cross for us, which brings us into His family as beloved children. This foundation is the basis for Paul to address how the people he is writing to, face enormous temptat...

We explored the end of chapter four and the first two verses of chapter five. Keep in mind Paul is addressing the city of Ephesus and probably the cities in the region. We know by the time John wrote Revelation the Ephesians were diligent about their faith and defending it in the midst of a perverse culture. But the one problem they had was a loss of their first love for the Lord. These things Pau...

For some time the subject of worship has been recurring in my life and study. It has been increasingly grabbing my attention and has come up in multiple conversations with different people. It seems like this is a good time to explore this topic and see what the word of God has to say about it. Today I want to try and lay out from scripture what it tells us worship is. Since our main point of gath...

We are called as Christians to fight for each other. This is where we turn our attention. We are not called to do work on being transformed in isolation but rather in community. We seek to build each other up and turn the focus of one another toward Christ (Who alone brings lasting transformation). 

We learned from Paul how we must have a different walk from the world. Meaning our lives need to look different from the world. But this difference in our lives needs to be rooted in the life of God and not in simply following a set of rules for living. Paul’s main contention is if we have come to know Jesus we have received the light which comes along with knowing Him. This illumination comes alo...

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the b...

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the b...

Today we celebrate explicitly the great work of Jesus in overcoming sin, and death by sin, in completing the work of paying for our sin, and rising from the dead. He lived a perfect life and He who new no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We call this transfer of our sin to Jesus propitiation. We became righteous because His righteousness was given to u...

We just finished summarizing how the prayer is a petition for Paul’s readers to be strengthened by the riches of God’s glory through the Holy Spirit. That Jesus may dwell in our hearts through faith. That we would be strengthened to comprehend the immeasurable nature of His love for us. That we would know this love not just in our heads but we would experience it. God calls us to "put up with one...

We worked through the prayer Paul prays for his readers. He wants them to know the immeasurable riches of God. God gives us these riches for His glory, He does this because He has given us His Son and He sees us in Jesus. All of this is bound up in God’s love for us. This love of God is immeasurable. God has given us all of this so that we can manifest the greatness of God’s glory to all generatio...

We worked through the beginning section of chapter 3. It is a section where Paul takes a short excursion into his role as the apostle sent to the gentiles. He does this immediately after highlighting the new great mystery of how the Jews and gentiles are now one new body of Christ because of Jesus work on the cross. Paul is a minister of the gospel to the gentiles. The church is now the physical m...

We wrapped up the majestic ten verse declaration of why we need salvation, how that salvation is brought to us through grace and how that grace alone is what saves us and protects us from having anything we could potentially boast about. The ten verses start by showing us we are completely corrupt and children of wrath. Because of God being rich in mercy and having great love for us He has made us...

We worked through the end of chapter 2 and looked at how the world has really been changed by the person and work of Jesus. After Jesus became our substitutional sacrifice He caused a radical change in the world. The people of God were no longer simply identified as the Jews. Now the people of God were identified by faith in Jesus. The idea of national identity in God’s economy is done away with....

We worked through verses 4-7 as we dealt with the magnificent work of God done on our behalf to save us from the state of corruption we were in. We began by looking at the rich mercy and love of God for us. A love which was poured out on us even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. He made us alive together with Christ. He saved us by His grace and seated us with God in the heavenly place...

We worked through the beginning of chapter 2. These first 10 verses are really a continuous flow of thought culminating in verse 10. We are taking the verses in 3 sections. The first section dealt with the radical corruption which plagues mankind because of the fall. This corruption is rooted in the fall of Adam. In Adam we became dead in our trespasses and sins. Our spiritual death makes all men...

We worked our way through the end of chapter 1. The 8 verses which wrap up the end of the chapter really highlight the unlimited almighty power of God which is in Christ and because the Holy Spirit indwells us it is also in us. Its existence in us is for the glory of Jesus. He blesses us and He sustains us in the midst of difficulties. It is there to help us come to know God better. This happens a...