One of the advantages of memorizing God’s Word is that it forces us to really think about what a verse says. For example, when you realize what Matthew 6:25 is really saying, it’s a pretty incredible statement. Christ warns his followers not get worried about their life. The ESV has “do not be anxious” while the KJV has “take no thought.” Both are translations of the Greek word merimnao, which means to think about something over and over again because you’re anxious about it.

​That Christ says not to be anxious is perhaps not incredibly surprising, but then he gets specific. He tells people not to get worried about the little things in life, like what you are going to eat and what you are going to wear. In a society where food and drink are fairly easy to come by, and where we worry about whether our clothes are new or hand-me downs, the situation Christ is addressing seems strange.

Christ told a parable about a landowner going to the marketplace and hiring men to work for the day (Matthew 20). At one point, he comes to the marketplace at the end of the day and sees that with only an hour left in the workday, several men are still standing around with nothing to do. This type of situation was not unheard of in ancient times.
It’s likely that some of the people listening to Christ didn’t have a guaranteed source of income. It’s possible that some of them had recently not known where they would get their next meal, or that they had to skip meals because they didn’t have the money. How in the world could Jesus simply say to them, “Don’t worry. Don’t allow your mind to get stuck on repeat with anxious thoughts.”

If we aren’t even supposed to worry over the most basic necessities like food and clothing, then there isn’t ever an excuse to worry! In no situation do we need to allow our minds to become overworked and exhausted trying to figure out what job we are going to get, or how the rent will get taken care of, or if that rattling noise is going to be a $500 repair. While God wants us to be responsible, we are not to worry. Why? Because our good Father in heaven already has all of these issues taken care of.

Meditation Exercise

• What types of problems do you find yourself worrying over?
• How do we know that we have gone from taking care of our responsibilities to showing sinful worry? When does “taking thought” become “being anxious”?
• What should you do when you find yourself worrying? What does Jesus go on and suggest?

Since we are looking to memorize a passage of Scripture together, I wanted to put some thoughts down on why we are doing this and how best to go about memorizing. I hope that the some of this extra time many of us have will be put to good use as we seek to continue growing in grace.

The Reason

I cannot say this loudly enough – memorization is not the end goal! Memorization is not a magic rabbit’s foot that will instantly keep you from sinning. Memorization is a means to an end, and that end is meditation. You should memorize God’s Word so that wherever you go, God’s Word goes with you.
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As you think about God’s Word, repeating it over and over to yourself, it will begin to change your outlook on life. As you think deeply, and repeat often, the principles, promises, and picture of God that thinking will reshape you. What is constantly running through your mind is continually reprogramming you. Start thinking on Scripture all day, every day, and I guarantee it will change.

The Plan

There is only one effective way to memorize – spaced repetition. That means you repeat over and over to yourself what you are trying to memorize. And you spread those repetitions out over time. In other words, saying a verse 100 times in a row is less effective than saying it 20 times in a row over 5 days, which is less effective than saying it 10 times in the morning and evening for 5 days. Cramming might help you say the passage in time to get the piece of candy in children’s church or to get credit on the quiz, but it doesn’t set you up for true memorization.

Some Tips

• Learn verses in chunks – take longer verses and break them into several smaller phrases, learning one at a time. Don’t try to learn the whole verse at once. Memorize the first few words. Once you have them down, memorize the next few, then add the phrases together.

 

• Meditate as you memorize – look for surprising details, ask why seemingly random things are included (hint: nothing is random in the Bible). For example: “Therefore I tell you” (Matthew 6:25) could just seem like a random throwaway phrase you have to memorize so you can say you memorized the verse. But when you stop and realize that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is speaking, and has already said “I say unto you” several times before, you realize that this is the authoritative command of King Jesus. He is speaking from his own authority, not just reciting the authority of Scripture like the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 7:28-29). When you understand why the phrase was included, you are much more likely to remember it!

 

• Write, read, and speak your verse – people’s brains all work differently. Some learn best by just reading, others won’t remember something until they’ve heard it, still others need to physically write something so they get it. But why choose? Write out the verse, say it to yourself, and engage your brain as much as possible in different ways.

 

• Use verse cards – check out our previous post to find downloadable verse cards. Write out your own cards on a 3x5 card. Or, you could…

 

• Try using a Bible memory app – I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried any of these. But if using an app sounds like something that would be helpful for you, go for it! https://churchtechtoday.com/2020/03/04/7-best-bible-memorization-apps/

 

• Finally, don’t underestimate a lifetime of learning one verse at a time – learning one verse a week, or even one verse every two weeks, might seem discouraging. You may wish you memorized faster, or knew more. Part of Christianity is learning to be a plodder. You don’t have to memorize a chapter a month. Work on a verse a week or every two weeks. You’ll find that you get better as you go, little by little, and one day years from now you will look back and find you have memorized hundreds of verses, one memory card at a time.

Over the next few weeks, as we battle boredom, frustration, and anxiety, let's remember to turn our minds to Jesus and what he said about our thinking about the future. Over the next couple months, we will work as a group to memorize Matthew 6:25-34. Weekly devotional thoughts will be posted with each verse to help jumpstart your own meditation. Below you will find the schedule we will follow, along with a couple of links to verse sheets that you can print out and memorize in either KJV or ESV.

Let's memorize God's Word together, confident that when we master God's Word it master us!

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Have you ever found yourself listening to a preacher give a gospel presentation and found yourself thinking, “This is good. I hope unsaved people are listening!” Or perhaps you looked around and thought, “Why is he preaching about how to be saved? everyone here has already been saved.” We tend to think that the good news of Jesus death, burial, and resurrection on behalf of sinners is needed for those who have to accept Christ. But Paul gives us one of the clearest presentations of the gospel anywhere in the Bible in Ephesians 2:1-10, and yet the whole passage is intended for. . . believers?

Apparently, Paul thought that believers needed to hear the gospel as did unbelievers. Paul talks in generic terms about all that God has done for believers in the longest single sentence in the Greek New Testament (1:3-14). This beautiful hymn of praise extols the greatness of God in all that he has done for us. Then he goes on to share with the Ephesian believers that he is praying that God would open their eyes so that they would really get what God had done for them. At the end of that prayer Paul concludes by praying that believers would know how powerful the God at work within them really is. How powerful? Powerful enough to raise Christ and give him all authority, making him head over the church.

Paul picks up this theme of the church and begins by giving a history lesson on how God is building the church. It begins in 2:1-10 by talking about what God has done individually to build his church, then goes on for the rest of the chapter to describe what God is doing corporately to build his church.

​Reminding us what God did for us when we were saved is crucial for our growth in the body of Christ. Reminding us of our past behavior, character, authority, and destiny ought to make us cringe, yet telling us of our current and future position in Christ should make us rejoice. Meditating on how all of this was brought to us, by grace through faith and not works, should humble us and drive us back to our gracious God for help rather than our own strength. Unbelievers need the gospel, but believers need it too! 
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I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers . . . that you may know. . .  what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, Ephesians 1:16-18

What makes God rich? Have you ever asked yourself that question? What does someone who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who owns both heaven and earth look to as his treasure, his inheritance? This passage makes a startling claim along these lines: God views us as his inheritance!

While it might be tempting to see the word inheritance here as referring to what God will do for us, it's actually describing what God views as his riches and the glory of his inheritance. The God who is filthy rich views us as his greatest treasure (compare with Deuteronomy 9:29, Isaiah 47:6, 1 Peter 2:9) . While it is true that God intends to overwhelm us with his rich goodness (Ephesians 2:7), the emphasis here is on the fact that God looks forward to the day when we will stand complete in Christ as his perfected people. God delights in and looks forward to full fellowship with his saints!

Why would Paul want believers to know this? Remember, in Ephesians 4:1, Paul commands the Ephesian believers to walk worthy of their calling. After all God has done and will do, believers ought to be ready to live for God. Understanding God's view on our lives and the important part we play in his eternal drama ought to motivate us to live for him. 

Passage: Ephesians 1:15-23

Have you ever been told, "You just don't get it?" Ever felt that way? Ever sat through a math or English class feeling like you kind of understood what was being taught sort of, but didn't feel confident that you knew it super well? Ever felt that way about aspects of your faith? After praising God for all that he has done for believers, Paul turns to the Christian believers and prays that they will understand all that God has done for them. Why? Because apparently it's entirely possible to know what God has done for you and yet not really see how that changes your life. It's possible to take notes on a Sunday School handout describing all that God has, is, and will do for us, yet not really see how that should impact us today.

So Paul prays in this next section that God would open the eyes of the believers' hearts. He wants them to see how the precious doctrinal truths of the first fourteen verses should change the way they live in the present. Specifically, he prays that they will fully know 1) the hope to which they have been called 2) the riches of God's glorious inheritance among the saints and 3) the immeasurable greatness of his power toward those who believe. 

In theology this is called "illumination" and is the job of the Holy Spirit ("Spirit of wisdom and of revelation"). God actually dwells within you, showing you and revealing to you through his Word how spectacular and breathtaking your hope and inheritance and his power really is. He opens your eyes to see the beauty you have forgotten or come to ignore. So Paul prays and asks that God's Spirit would do the work he had promised to do and open the eyes of those Paul cared about so that they could not only understand what God had done, but be changed by it. 

Our second lesson will cover a hymn of praise that Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3-14. In the original Greek, these 12 verses are only one sentence! That's quite the sentence! At the very beginning of that sentence, in verse 3, we see one word show up 3 times: blessed/blessing.

If you were to trim away everything else from this very long sentence you would get “Blessed [be] God.” So how does Paul take such a simple sentence and stretch it into 12 verses? “Blessed be the God . . . who blessed us with every spiritual blessing,” and the rest of the hymn simply details what those blessings are by examining the blessings that God has given us from one member of the trinity to the next.

Paul is making a very clear connection here between praising God (blessed be God) and what God has done for us (who blessed us with every spiritual blessing). Our praise to God should flow from an understanding of all that went into our salvation. We often think of our salvation in very simplistic terms “God forgave me of my sins so now I can go to heaven and not hell.” That’s a great foundation! But we need to build on that foundation with a deeper, richer understanding of what God has done and is doing for us (cf. Hebrews 5:11-6:3).

Notice that these blessings are called "spiritual blessings." Often when we hear blessings, we think in terms of physical blessings. Too often spiritual blessings are thought of as second rate. But Paul got excited about what God had done for him in the unseen, spiritual realm. In this hymn of praise, Paul glories in the blessings of God the Father (vv 4-6), God the Son (vv 7-12), and God the Holy Spirit (vv 13-14). When was the last time you praised God for the spiritual blessings God has given you?

As we begin our study on Ephesians, I thought it might be helpful to include the notes on the background and history of the book, as well as the discussion questions we covered for further reflection.

Blueprints matter. When a building goes up, you can be sure that a lot of people have spent a lot of time looking over computer screens and blue paper so that they know where things go and where they shouldn’t. A building will only be as good as its construction plans. If the measurements are off, if the design is flawed, or if the instructions aren’t followed to the centimeter the building is in trouble, because a building is only as good as its plan. Ephesians gives us God’s blueprint for our age. It shows us what God is doing, and what he desires to do, and perhaps most importantly, what our role in that plan is. Many Christians become frustrated and confused by what God is doing, because they don’t understand what his plan is.

Recipients
Some debate whether the book of Ephesians was intended solely for the Ephesians, or if it was a circular letter to several churches, the most prominent of which was Ephesus. This possibility is included as a footnote in the ESV, NIV, and NASB. There are several reasons for this:

1. A few very old copies of the New Testament lack “in Ephesus” in 1:1.
2. One early heretic (Marcion) referred to this letter as the letter to the Laodiceans (some also speculate that perhaps Ephesians is "the letter to the Laodiceans" that Paul mentions in Colossians 4:16).
3. Paul doesn’t greet anyone from Ephesus at the end of the letter, which is unusual for him.
4. Paul doesn’t seem to be addressing one specific issue as he often does in his letters. Normally Paul is seeking to correct heresy (Galatians, Colossians), say thank you (Philippians), introduce himself (Romans), or answer questions (1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians). But in Ephesians Paul does none of that. This letter appears to be a broad picture of what the Christian life is all about.

But in the end, there are good reasons for maintaining that this letter was meant for Ephesus.

1. The vast, vast majority of manuscripts have the phrase in it.
2. The sentence becomes awkward if there is no destination put there “to the saints who are and faithful”?
3. Some suggest that a space was intentionally left for other cities, but we don't have one copy with another name included.
4. Even the old manuscripts that don’t include “At Ephesus” in Ephesians 1:1 still have as the title on the top of the page “To Ephesus.”

For these reasons, it is best to view this letter as written to the church at Ephesus. We will now briefly discuss Paul’s dealings with that church and when it was that Paul wrote the letter.

Historical Situation
Paul first visited the city of Ephesus briefly on his second missionary journey, which took place around A.D. 49-51 (Acts 18:18-20). On his third missionary journey, he spent almost three years there (Acts 19), and then after visiting Greece made one final stop on his (A.D. 52-57) way back to Jerusalem and gave a passionate speech to the elders of the Ephesian church at the city of Miletus (Acts 20:17-38). After delivering that speech, Paul travels to Jerusalem and is arrested, eventually traveling to Rome to appeal his case. This is the end of Acts’ description of Paul’s travels.

At a couple of places in Ephesians, Paul reminds us that he is writing from a prison (Ephesians 3:1; 6:20). Although Paul was in prison on several occasions, the most likely candidate for this imprisonment is his imprisonment in Rome. Paul was in prison long enough to have written this letter, and had enough freedom to send it out. Much of this letter parallels his thinking in Colossians, and for this reason many people think they were written about the same time – during Paul’s Roman imprisonment. This would make the letter of Ephesians one of, if not the last letter Paul wrote to a church. (Paul would later write 1, 2 Timothy and Titus, but they were written to individuals and not churches).

From Acts 19 we learn that the city of Ephesus was deeply idolatrous and deeply superstitious. The making of idols was big business, so much so that the idol makers feared that they would lose too much business from the spread of Christianity (at this time called “the Way”). We learn that there was a lot of witchcraft and sorcery, because after coming to Christ the young believers burned all their pagan writings (in a time when writing was not cheap!) which amounted to quite a lot of money (although we don't know how much those silver coins weighed, if they were one ounce coins the total would be over 8,000,000 dollars by today's rates). This explains in part Paul's repeated reference to spiritual powers (1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:11-12).

Structure
Ephesians breaks evenly into two halves, Ephesians 1-3 and Ephesians 4-6. The first half of the book has one single imperative (command), and that is to remember something (2:11). The first half of Ephesians focuses on doctrinal truths Christians should know and remember. The second half of the letter begins with the a strong call to action, a call to action this is supported by 40 commands in three chapters. 4:1 sets up this interplay well when it says:

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,”

These two words sum up well the first and second halves of the book: the call of the believer (what God has made him in Christ) and the walk of the believer (how that call should change the way he lives). Paul always unites doctrine and application. For him, truth will affect the way you live, and he’s not going to tell you how to live unless there is some doctrinal reason behind it (Titus 1:1).

1-3 The Call of the Believer
      1:3-14          A hymn of praise for God’s blessings
      1:15-23       A prayer for spiritual understanding
      2:1-10          A spiritual history lesson
      2:11-22       Spiritual unity in the church
      3:1-13          Paul’s mission to the Gentiles
      3:14-21       A prayer for spiritual strength
4-6 The Walk of the Believer
      4:1-16          Live out your calling in the church
      4:17-32        Live out your calling in your conduct
      5:1-14          Live out your calling in purity
      5:15-22       Live out your calling in your attitude                                 
      5:23-6:9      Live out your calling in your relationships
      6:10-24        Live out your calling in spiritual warfare

Theme: So what is Ephesians about? In Paul’s opening benediction he mentions three times “the purpose of God’s will” (1:5, 9, 11). In the third chapter, Paul describes his function as an apostle by three times using the word “mystery” (3:1-5, 8-10). Ephesians is the blueprint God has given to show us what God is doing in the world and how we ought to live in light of that.

So what is this mystery that Paul has been tasked to preach?

making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (1:9-10)

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (3:6)

God’s desire is to unite all things in Christ. This will ultimately happen when he is given his kingdom and the whole world becomes reconciled back to him. But this happens now as a taste of that future glory in the church. Former bitter enemies, Jew and Gentile, are now made one through their changed status of being “in Christ.”

Why would God do all of this?

so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (3:10)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (3:20-21)

But what does this mean for us? How do we as a church bring God glory? Ephesians 4:1-3 shows us that we do this by living together in community together as we help each other grow and develop 4:15-16. Paul realizes that God has so designed it that growth in Christ is impossible apart from a community of believers. Paul then takes the rest of the book to outline what that change should look like.

Why did the sun come up this morning? The sun came up this morning so that God could bring himself glory through the church. Sometimes this is hard to believe. It’s hard to believe that a small congregation of 35 people meeting on a Sunday morning is more important in God’s eyes than a presidential briefing in the pentagon. But what God
Your mission (and you had better accept it) is to be a part of what God is doing in the world through the church. You do this by joining a church, being united with that church, growing in that church, and serving in that church to the glory of God. 

Discussion Questions
How clear a picture do most people have of God’s plan for their lives? What do they understand? What do they not understand? Why is this?

In what ways does having a clear understanding of God’s plan for your life make it easier to live for Christ?

How does walking worthy of our calling protect from the extremes of legalism (relating to God as though following a list of rules is everything) and license (not caring about God’s commands)?

“Paul always unites doctrine and application.” Why don’t we? What happens if we don’t?

“Growth in Christ is impossible apart from a community of believers.” Why is this difficult to accept? What does it mean practically?
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“It’s hard to believe that a small congregation of 35 people meeting on a Sunday morning is more important in God’s eyes than a presidential briefing in the pentagon.” Would you agree or disagree with this statement? Why is this the case?

​With the thousands of blogs on the internet today, every good blog needs a reason for existing and Refocus is no exception! The purpose for this blog will be a little different than most. It won't primarily seek to answer relevant cultural questions or discuss matters of Christian living in the world in which we live (if you want that, our pastor does blog at pursuingthepursuer.org). The intended audience doesn't extend beyond our own group, though anyone is welcome to read. The purpose of this blog is to coincide with our Sunday Morning Bible Study small group curriculum. Several posts a week will help get the readers' minds engaged on the topic that will be discussed on Sunday. This way everyone has the opportunity to be thinking over the material and prepping for the weekend, not just our table leaders. 
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