August 14 2025

Thursday August 14

Sit, Walk, Stand

Ephesians 1:1-3

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

Again, let me thank everyone who has signed up to pray for the pastors in India. As we look at this book of Ephesians, we're going to find that we need strength to enter into spiritual warfare to stand against the wiles of the devil. And especially as we pray for these men of God who are serving the Lord on the front lines in a country of 1.4 billion people who desperately need to be delivered from the powers of darkness. Thank you again for joining our prayer team for the Indian pastors.

The first three verses of the epistle of Ephesians give us the theme for the entire book, especially verse three where it says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.". We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, everything we need to serve the Lord. And this all comes from being in Christ, especially knowing that we are seated with Him in the heavenly places as we're going to see in Ephesians chapter 2.

Structurally, Ephesians 1-3 reinforces the believer's position as a Christian. Ephesians 4-6, teach us the specific practices and the way that Christians should behave. As a very young Christian I was introduced to a book called “Sit, Walk, Stand”, by the Chinese author, Watchman Nee. He outlined the book of Ephesians by showing the Christian life begins with sitting and resting in Christ.

Interestingly, in Genesis 1, you can’t help but notice the phrase that is repeated six times at the end of every day of creation: "And the evening and the morning were the first day,… and the evening and the morning were the second day, … and the evening and the morning were the third day." All the way through all six days. And then on the seventh day, in Genesis 2:2, “God rested from all the work that He had done”. If I was writing that first chapter of the Bible, I would have said “the morning and the evening…”. In our western culture the day begins when the sun comes up in the morning. But in the Eastern culture in the Hebrew Bible, for the Jews the day began in the evening, when the sun went down.

So many things we can learn from this. In the Old Testament God went from work to rest and the seventh day, the Sabbath was the day of rest. But now in the New Testament, God reverses that in the sense that in the Old Testament the Sabbath was the seventh day. They rested on the Sabbath. But now in the New Testament, the first day of the week, Sunday, is the day that we go to church to rest spiritually in Christ. And we prepare for the work that is ahead of us.

Notice now in the New Testament, the evening, we rest first and then in the morning to go to work. We go to bed not to get rest from the work we've done. We go to bed to get rest for the work we're going to do. And that's what we find in the book of Ephesians 2:6, “And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. That's our position. We rest in Christ. We go from rest to work. We go from rest in Christ (Ephesians 1-3), to our walk in Christ (Ephesians 4-5). Then we go from our rest and walk to standing in Christ against the evil one, the wiles of the devil, the flesh, the world, and the devil himself (Ephesians 6).

I believe this is such powerful lesson for us because we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ! Also the book of Ephesians gives us the great mystery of the church. This epistle shows us the great mystery of the Church.  The real Church is the Body of Christ, and believers are members of that sacred Body of which Christ is the Head. The Father not only prepared a body for Jesus Christ to suffer in, but He prepared a Body for Him in which He would be glorified.  The Greek word for church is “ecclesia,” which means an assembly of called-out ones. We are the called out ones. We're called saints. Paul writes this letter to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

My friend, that means we've been set apart for heavenly purposes in Christ to fulfill His will. And we learn first to sit in Christ in Ephesians. Then we learn to walk worthy of the Lord. And then we learn to walk carefully for the Lord. And then in chapter six, we stand. We stand in Christ against the wiles of the devil, because we do not wrestle with flesh and blood, but we have on His armor and there we can stand and be strong Christians for the glory of God.

Think about these things today as we enter into the great book of Ephesians in our study.

God bless!