Messages from Pleasant City Church

The “Highlight Reel” of Joshua reminds us that God’s promises still stand. Our God is a faithful God-He is always faithful to His people.

Bryan Glisson's final charge to the church upon his retirement

The workplace has the potential to build or destroy a person’s testimony. Paul in the passage today is instructing us in how we are to conduct ourselves in the workplace. He begins with God’s expectations of employees and then he moves to God’s expectations of employers.

Introduction: The biggest deterrents to dysfunction in the home are love, honor, and respect. The fruits of love, honor and respect are obedience and discipline.

Marriage should resemble the relationship between Christ and the Church. God’s plan for marriage is that two become one. (Matthew 19:6)

The way you walk Determines your Destination. One wrong step can make the difference between life and death.

The Church in America is rapidly losing its influence. Many have speculated that it is because the light of the Church is diminishing. Simply put, there is a dark world but a dimly lit Church. The world needs a Church—made up of God’s people—that reflects the brilliance of His light.

Paul continues his narrative of taking off and putting on. Here in this passage, he starts with what needs to be put on and ends with what needs to be taken off. It appears that Paul is taking us on a journey to find the true meaning of love and its counterfeit sexual sin.

Jesus guaranteed the potential for a transformed life through His death, burial, and resurrection. The Holy Spirit provides what is necessary to live a transformed life—through a process called sanctification. Sanctification is the process of taking off what needs to be taken off and putting on what needs to be put on.

Paul in these verses is challenging those of us who are “in Christ” to live a transformed life which should be radically different from our previous tragic life.

Paul is exhorting us to unity that we may fulfill the calling of our life to minister to others and reach the lost with the gospel with our gifts through the local Church.

The “calling” represents when we trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord. We received by faith through repentance what Jesus provided through the cross. At that time, we are placed “in Christ” with others who have done the same. From this point we then begin to live together (in unity) the life He intends for us to live—not only in Him but also for Him.

Paul concludes the theological chapters of Ephesians (1-3) with a prayer for us who are “in Christ”—that we would fully understand who we are “in Christ.”

Paul shows us in this passage that racism and division have no place in the church. Because of Jesus, the two enemies have become friends.

The new spiritual realities that have been provided for you (1:3-14) can only be realized when you discover the true crisis of your soul and then receive the cure provided by Christ. In the passage today Paul is describing the act and process of salvation or as he puts it being “in Christ.”

Once we understand: 1) that our identity is Christ-based, 2) that we are “in Him” (meaning we are living in the new spiritual realities Christ has provided) then we can begin to pursue the life He has for us.

When we begin to understand who we are “in Christ” then we begin to know our true identity, our privileges, and our purpose.

Most scholars agree that excluding the book of Romans; the letter to the Ephesians is the most detailed written presentation of Christian Theology of all of the epistles.

Many scholars have written that Ephesians 1:3-14 are some of the most powerful verses in the entire Bible. They clearly describe who we are “in Christ” and the new identity in which we can now live.