Ephesians #1 "Do The Things You Used To Do"
September 10, 2023Pastor Patrick presented this morning's message. It was the first message in a series studying the book of Ephesians. A video of the message is here. Our Conversation Starter for this week is here.
Paul opens his letter, as Patrick pointed out, with grace and peace, using the Greek for grace and the Hebrew for peace (shalom). I've discussed shalom before, here. The important thing to remember is that shalom is more than peace, suggesting or moving to a completeness, in "right relationship."
Grace is generally not thought of in an Old Testament context. However, if you think of graciousness, a few more lights may go off. Here's a good article from ZondervanAcademic.com entitled "Grace in the Old Testament."
When Patrick quoted things like "You used to be so close" and "come back," my thoughts went immediately to the Israelites who strayed and came (or were forced) back many times, all in the space of 40 years. God seemed constantly in a cycle of being ticked at them and then "saving" them (often by not destroying them Himself).
I wondered what the Torah equivalent of "in Christ" was, the phrase used over and over by Paul in that infamous "longest sentence." I would offer that "in Community" might be the complimentary Torah focus. All the laws and rituals of the Torah focus on making a better community and/or a better relationship (in community?) with God.
Bonus
Bible "Stats"
In this morning's message, Pastor Patrick mentioned that Ephesians 1:3-14 was the longest sentence in the Bible. That got me to wondering...
And I ended up going down quite a rabbit hole of Bible statistics. Bible trivia, really. If you do a search on "Bible statistics" you'll find more than you ever wanted to know. I was looking for longest this, shortest that, number of kind of stuff, but also found Bible usage kinds of statistics. How Bibles are sold, how many people are reading them, how many translations, what languages still need translations, Bible sales per year, etc. It was quite fascinating.
Here are three I can suggest visiting:
"Bible Facts and Figures," here. This one has info like number of ____, longest ___, etc., and some Biblical weights and measures charts.
"2023 Global Scripture Access," here. This one talks about how many Bibles are out there, in what languages, etc.
"Frequency of Reading Scripture," here. This one talks about how many people read how much of the Bible in various periods of time and across which religions. And much more.
So back to the longest sentence in the Bible... Interestingly, this factoid is covered in few of the many links to check out. Turns out, the Ephesians reference is but one contender depending on how you define "one sentence," which translation(s), etc. The King James Version of Luke 3:23-38 is also a contender. The next two sentences in Ephesians are also very long.
This is just for fun. In the long run, word counts and the like are not very meaningful. The translations and languages vary too much by themselves to make these things meaningful. For example, it generally takes many more English words to say what fewer words in Biblical Hebrew says. That's because a word in Hebrew can require phrases in English.
Bonus 2
"The Ten Commandments Applied Today"
Jamie is teaching the above-titled class, a 90-minute, 1-session class, with the Pillar Institute on October 4th starting at 11am. Here's the description: "If everyone in the world followed even a subset of the Ten Commandments, we’d be about as close to a utopia as is possible. We’ll walk through each of the Ten, explain what the commandment actually commands, and look at some real-world applications. You need not be any particular religion or even religious at all." The listing is here. Here's the Pillar Institute website. The "classroom" is in the Chapel Hills Mall. Classes are also available by Zoom.
We can do essentially the same thing at our TCC Life Group meeting (or over a couple meetings) if you'd like. That would avoid the $40 regstration fee for non Pillar members ($25/member).