Verse: Ephesians 4:7-11
7 I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. 8 Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, 9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. 10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Devotion
Have you ever wondered where the verse numbering comes from? It’s not line numbers from a specific text. It couldn’t be, because – since we’ve always been working off of multiple texts, with different page and font sizes (1). And certainly, Paul wasn’t breaking up his e-mail into chapters (2). The books of the Bible were broken up by several groups over the ages, but the ones we use were put together by Robert Stephanus in the 1550s. So, they’re sort of new. Why he breaks verses up mid-sentence – no one knows. Why Christian split my passage up leaving a dangling sentence fragment is equally a mystery.
But, I digress.
Verses 7-8 really feel like that they could only be a rehash of my last devotion (https://www.ourcitylight.org/2021/03/29/1st-century-humblebrag/). Paul hunted down Christians and imprisoned them before he became a Christian. As far as being a good Christian – hunting down and having Christians executed is sort of a zero out of ten move, in his opinion. And yet, he is excited to get to preach the good news of Jesus. He preached it to new Christians and they figured it was all a trick. He preached it to the more urbane Jews and they tried to kill him. So, he was sent out to preach to the Gentiles.
So what? Well, here’s the thing. It’s like he’s read all of the Harry Potter books, like five times (3). You’ve seen people like that, right? The ones who know what the film is missing or messing up, or skipping? The ones that read the entire wiki for the movie before they got there and end up talking through the movie (4)? Paul is like that to Judaism. He learned under an amazing Jewish teacher or Gamaliel (who is somehow not also a Harry Potter villain, too). He’s an expert on Jewish law. And so, God called on him to go out and preach to … people who wouldn’t care, at all.
He’s spreading the good news of Dumbledore’s plan to stop Voldemort to Star Trek fans who really don’t care about Harry Potter. Every practiced metaphor, every easy reference he could make – will be totally lost on these people. At Citylight we try not to use words in the message that someone who wasn’t raised in the church won’t know. It’s really hard. Sure, you can avoid saying transubstantiation or even transfiguration. We still end up saying things like “Invite the Holy Spirit into your thought life.” Honestly, I can’t really explain to you what that means. Not only was Paul going to be making these “gaffes,” but he’s wasting YEARS of education, doing it.
Heading into Greece and trying to make a big deal about God having a human son doesn’t play the same way that it would among the Jews. Zeus had over a dozen “sons of god.”(5) Several of them saved the world. And that’s ignoring the ones that were gods. Mary was a virgin? Athena was born out of Zeus’ head. Jesus was a descendant of David? Who’s David?
And what is he preaching? He’s preaching spoilers.
He’s sent out to talk about God’s secret plan to save the world. He’s gone forth to let you know that not only did Snape kill XXXXXXXXXX, but also that he’s actually a XXX that is instrumental to stopping XXXXXXXXX.(6) God has just revealed the end of Oceans 11. He snuck Jesus into the picture, to create a way to reconnect with his creation. He did it in a way that no one saw coming, even if all the clues were in the background of every scene leading up to the end. He doubled down on making sure that both Mary and Joseph could be traced back to David. He protected the bloodline for centuries and centuries through wars and captivity. In Babylon, the focus was on Daniel – in the lions den; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Meanwhile, Hank was in the background being protected by God’s plan without having a single speaking part. It’s really cool – and none of the Gentiles were going to get why. That’s probably how you feel about this devotion about now.
Matthew’s gospel was written for the Jews. It makes the case for how Jesus is the promised Messiah that they were waiting for. If you know what to look for, what’s he doing is very clever. If you don’t, then it’s just a longer-winded version of Mark’s gospel. Paul would have known what to look for. He may have even been able to make a more convincing case. However, God gave that job to an IRS agent, except this IRS agent showed up at your door, and he kept some of your tax money for doing it. He’d be a really popular guy with the Jews.
So, when you start feeling like God might be pushing you in the direction of something that you don’t know how to do – relax (if you can). He does that. Do you hate being filmed, are self-conscious about your weight, and are you not super thrilled about hearing the sound of your own voice? When Christian asks you to record a video snippet on mental health, God might not just be doing it in spite of those things, He might just be doing it because you ARE those things.
Prayer
God – I trust your will in this world. I trust that you seek connection with us, not condemnation. I believe that you want to carry me through anxiety, through shame, through fear. So, use me, because I know your plans are good, wise, and incredibly clever.
Amen.
1 – The New Testament, being primarily written in Greek, was probably on A4.
2 – Epistle-Mail
3 – Or insert any other series with books and tv or film versions. I may have watched Game of Thrones with my eyes closes half the time.
4 – Shut it, Josh.
5 – Aeacus: son of Zeus and Aegina who was the daughter of a river god. He was the father of Telamon and Peleus and grandfather of Ajax and Achilles.
Amphion: son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus.
Arcas: son of Zeus and Callisto, a nymph and minor goddess associated with Aphrodite.
Dardanus: son of Zeus and Electra, daughter of Atlas.
Dionysus: son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal. Later on he became a god, part of the Olympians when Hestia gave up her seat for him
Epaphus: son of Zeus and Io, a priestess of the goddess Hera (Zeus’ wife).
Harmonia: daughter of Zeus and Electra.
Heracles: son of Zeus and Alcmene, a mortal woman.
Iasus: son of Zeus and Electra (one of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione). He was the brother of Dardanus.
Perseus: son of Zeus and mortal princess Danae, whom he impregnated as a golden shower.
Polydeuces, son of Zeus and the mortal Leda while his twin had a mortal father, king Tyndareus (Leda’s husband).
Tityos: a giant, son of Zeus and Elara.
Zethus: son of Zeus and Antiope, twin brother of Amphion, co-founder of Thebes.
6 – He’s going to be explaining why it’s so amazing that Harry Potter survived the killing curse in every town and never expounding on the likelihood that Aurelius was created out of attempting to use the philosopher’s stone on Ariana’s obscurial.
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