If you've been tracking with us, you know we've been walking through the book of Ephesians. And it's been so special in this season of our church to see a book of the Bible speaking to us right where we're at. I would highly encourage you to check out the past two weeks if you haven't been with us. They're on YouTube. They're on Apple Podcasts. They're on Spotify. And you can always keep track and listen to previous sermons as well. We've been talking about how the Apostle Paul, 2,000 years ago, wrote a letter to a church that he founded. But this was a couple of years after he founded that church. So he's imprisoned in Rome, writing this letter to the church at Ephesus. Very important city, very strategic city, very multi-ethnic city, but it's a church on the

brink of division because you've got Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians who just can't see

eye to eye on multiple different things. And so what Paul's going to do is he's going to illustrate

how unity with Christ causes humility and reconciliation to happen in unlikely relationships.

And I just love to remind you all of that every week because in this season of being American,

it's huge to remember that the gospel has the capacity to disarm division through humility.

When you know you've been united with Christ in the family of God,

it gives you the capacity to go about your life and relationships

different. And so the first half of this letter is mostly Paul preaching the gospel and making

these supernatural realities of what Jesus has done known to us. We talked about glorious grace.

Last week we talked about breaking through darkness. And I hope that those sermons were encouraging to you.

But if you asked me at the beginning of this series, okay, you're doing a whole series on one of the most rich letters ever written.

Which passage are you the most excited about preaching?

It would be a toss-up between several, but I would have probably said at the beginning, the beginning of Ephesians 2.

Ephesians chapter 2 is the most concise definition of what the word gospel means.

So gospel is a word that I always tell you. You need to know what that means.

Gospel, although yes, it is a genre of music. It means so much more.

And that's not a churchy word that

we can just throw around without defining gospel means good news it's at the center of who we are as a church

it's at the center of the story of the scriptures it's the good news that jesus has accomplished by his

blood by his life death burial and resurrection what we could never accomplish and brought us back to life

into a right relationship with our Heavenly Father.

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