INTRODUCTION:
Considering the book of Ephesians a chapter at a time is a little bit like taking pictures of the Rocky Mountains from outer space. There is no hope of covering everything; there is perhaps some hope of stirring up a desire in you to give yourself to a lifetime of meditating on the themes of this book. As we learn later in this epistle, the Church is the bride of Christ. As she is gloriously adorned for her husband on her wedding day, she wears a golden crown, made up of all the Scriptures. If that image be allowed, the book of Ephesians should be understood as one of the central jewels in it.

THE TEXT:
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ . . .” (Eph. 1:1-23).

EPHESUS THE GREAT:
Ephesus was a harbor city on the west coast of modern Turkey It was the capital city for Proconsular Asia, and contained one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—the temple of Artemis (or Diana). It is a ruin today because the harbor silted up. But in Paul’s day, a street called the Arcadian Way ran about half a mile east from the harbor, where it connected with the cross street called Theater Street. The theater itself—where the riot occurred (Acts 19:29) was straight across the street at the intersection. The city had a population of roughly 250,000. The city was a center of great learning, as well as of great superstitions (Acts 19:19). Paul lived there from A.D. 52-54, and this letter is written about ten years later from prison in Rome.

When we think of manna, we tend to think of daily provision, or the fact that manna was the Lord Jesus in a type. This is all good, but there is a good deal more. Recall also that when the manna was gathered, it was to be gathered for that day—sufficient unto the day is the grace thereof.

But there was one place where the manna would last, where it would not rot the same way it would in the tents of the Israelites. That place was inside the ark of the covenant, under the mercy seat. There, in that place, the bowl of manna was a bowl of mercy (Ex. 16:33). And it was not a small bowl either; it was not a small museum piece morsel, kept for sentimental reasons. God had them store up about 3/5 of a bushel within the ark of the covenant. His grace is sufficient.

As we watch the global economy, we are often dismayed or shocked. We are not dismayed or shocked at the fact of disaster—we live in a fallen world, and we know that disasters happen from time to time. But we are watching a slow-motion, self-inflicted, suicidal disaster. God has struck our leaders with a judicial blindness.

And this makes us wonder how we should live, what we can do. If we have been forgiven, chosen by Him in love before the world was made, what should we be doing? What does wisdom at the individual level look like?

"A return to heathen midmight is an impossibility. Those who walk in darkness now are doing so in a world suffused with light. This is hard to do -- you have to remain blind or hide in root cellars. There are ways to stay out of the sunlight, but they are difficult to accomplish . . . The task of evangelism, now that Christ has risen, is not so much to run around at night, poking our flashlights into corners and cellars. Rather, the task of evangelism is more like pulling back curtains" (Heaven Misplaced, pp. 70-71).

"A preacher must have a systematic plan of regularly reading through the whole Bible, with a portion from both the Old and New Testaments being read each day" (Murray, How Sermons Work,  p. 17).

Here is a loose collection of thoughts about the Elephant Room imbroglio. I don't pretend to comment as an insider at all, but I can say that my perspective and sympathies are basically the same as Justin Taylor's. If anybody wants what I consider to be a fair and judicious take on the whole thing, I would refer you there.

So what's for me to talk about then? I want us to consider some of the larger issues that I think are in play out here in the wider world, and boy, are they in play.

First, the whole initial point of the Elephant Room was to demonstrate how to have manly disagreements between brothers, and the result of this attempt has been a very unsightly fracas between brothers. It is has struck me as being beyond ironic that the prototype model for irenic disagreement has turned into a fireball. It reminds of those old film reels with a guy standing on a barn with batman wings, with a large crowd below in response to the publicity, gathered there to see him fly. And then something else happens.

I am not saying anything yet about what T.D. Jakes believes -- more on that in a bit. Modalism is a big deal, rejecting one of the primaries of the faith. But before we get there, this controversy is about something else -- the center of this disagreement is between those who trust Jakes when he says he is not a modalist and those who don't trust him. For various reasons -- even though it is very important -- this question is not one of the primaries of the faith. It is a judgment call, not a doctrinal call, and the people who are differing over it are very close doctrinally. This therefore needs to be processed very carefully.

For example, I take it that John Mark left Paul's first missionary journey because he was of the circumcision party, and was distressed that Paul had preached the gospel to the first Gentile out in his native Gentile habitat. Those Gentiles who heard the Word prior to this had been in the orbit of Jewish life somehow, related to the synagogue. Mark couldn't handle cold-calling on the Gentiles, and so he left Paul's entourage at the next stop (Acts 13:13). After this, the Jerusalem Council met, and settled the question for good and all (Acts 15:6-29). Mark apparently accepted the decision of the council, and Barnabas believed that he had accepted it, and Paul didn't think so (Acts 15:37-39). Now the council had decided the issue of circumcision, with Paul and Barnabas both in agreement. But the council did not decide one way or the other on the issue of whether Mark now "got it." They said nothing at all about Mark's trustworthiness. Paul and Barnabas agreed on the doctrinal question before the house; they disagreed on how reliable Mark was.

For the last few days, Nancy and I have been at the Desiring God pastors' conference in Minneapolis, and our time here has been wonderful. We have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the other speakers, and hearing them speak, and the hospitality of the saints here has been exceptional. Our particular thanks to John Piper, for his continued generosity to us.

This time well spent at DG is also (no doubt) part of the reason I have not been blogging about Newt losing in Florida, not to mention my passing by the Rogue Elephant Room in almost complete silence.

You can interpret it in other ways if you like. You could treat my silence over Romney carrying Florida as me not wanting to pressure test my optimistic eschatology beyond what it could bear. That's a possibility.

And you might guess that I have been silent about the Elephant Room fracas because I have spotted an even bigger elephant outside the room, and am trying to get a bead on that. Could be something in that.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God, as the poet put it, and it will flame out like shook foil. The world is only a set of blinders for the blind. In all other respects, the world is front-loaded with God's glory. And in order for us to see that glory, really see it, the world has to get thicker -- not thinner.

C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful way, shows us this in the second half of The Last Battle, and throughout The Great Divorce. The world really is "transparent," and it is such through being really solid. The world is that which enables us to see God's glory, and those who try to help this process along by treating the world as ephemeral and wispy are making a great mistake. The world does not need to be diluted to help God's glory shine through. Do you glorify the jeweler by smashing the diamonds?

God has chosen how to reveal Himself. The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God, not that they obscure it. They obscure it only for the obscurantists.

Thinning out the world, gnostic style, does not glorify God. Focusing on the world as it is, without reference to Him, does not glorify Him. But seeing what He has done, the way He has done it, with matter packed tight, does glorify Him. This is why Christian hedonism doesn't not climb up to the Beatific Vision by means of a material ladder in order to then kick the ladder away. We will always have bodies, and God will always speak to us in this way. It can only get more solid -- in the great words of Newton's hymn -- "solid joys and lasting pleasures, none but Zion's children know."

I am happy to announce the winner of the great Newt poster caption contest. But first the honorable mention . . . Alan, with "Newt -- a passionate conservative."

The bronze was taken by Rich Hamlin -- "Because it takes a lot of Big Ideas before you get the right one."

The silver goes to Angie B -- "Annuit Coitus."

And the gold, which is the prize-winning poster, goes to Kirsten Miller -- "Newt -- he's all about term limits."

Congratulations to Kirsten, and if she would be so kind as to email us her ground address ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ), we will send the poster on her way.

I just finished reading (again) John Bunyan's great book Grace Abounding, and it made me think of the Lord's kindness to me over the years. Bunyan recounts in great detail the morbid pathologies that had him by the throat for some years when he first came under conviction of sin. The thing that struck me this time through was how dependent on detailed argument everything was -- reminding me of Chesterton's observation that a madman is not someone who has lost his reason, but rather someone who has lost everything but his reason.

My temptations over the years have been in different areas, but they have been dependent upon certain premises, doctrines, and arguments. And, like Bunyan, the deliverance came by that means also.

I grew up in a post-WW2 vertebrate evangelical home. And then, a few decades later, when the rest of evangelicalism went to mush, my family, like dinosaurs in a valley that time forgot, continued to live in exactly the same way they had been.

The emphases of the home I grew up in -- for which I continue to thank God -- were absolute faith in the Scriptures, an emphasis on practical obedience, a commitment to the foundational necessity of the new birth, and a contrarian bent. It didn't matter what everybody was saying, it mattered what God was saying.

All the things that we weren't -- Calvinist, postmillennial, and paedobaptist -- changed for me over the years. But they all grew out of the good soil that God gave to me in a wonderful family. And that good soil has not changed -- Scripture is absolute, we should do what God says to do, the new birth is not optional, and it doesn't matter what "they" say.

So there were great blessings that came with these emphases, but as I encountered them there were also some real problems. One of the central ones was a kind of perfectionism -- here's the verse, what's the problem? -- a moral perfectionism that collided with the ongoing realities of sin and temptation. John Owen, it turns out, knew a lot more about the human heart than did glib devotional writers. If you believe that the Bible teaches that every Christian can (easily) dunk a basketball, then it causes a certain amount of consternation when you can't get anywhere near the rim. What usually happens is that a bunch of thoughtful church leaders (for everybody is in the same tough spot) decide to lower the net. But in my family, there was too much intellectual honesty to lower the net -- the Bible said what it did, and so do it already. This had a tendency to drive all the consternation inward, which is fertile ground for hypocrisy. You can't talk about the nature of temptation honestly, but you can talk honestly about what the Bible requires. In effect, this sets up a vise, enough to crack any heart.