Week #1
Posted December 7, 2009

Ephesians 1:10

          

I want to begin this week to look into one of Paul’s grandest epistles and that is the Book of Ephesians. I am interested in just one word and it is the word ‘together’. The word literally means the bringing together of two warring parties and making them one. My theme will be ‘When Two Become One’. You can find a clear Biblical explanation in Ephesians 2:14-15.

            The word is used 7 times is this book. The references are 1:10, 2:5 (2 times), 2:6 2:21, 2:22, and 4:16. The number 7 is the number for the perfecting work of God. Our desire in this study is to look at the perfecting work of God in making two to become one. The two being His Son and His children

For our first study I want to begin with Ephesians 1:10 and look at ‘The Redemption Of Gathering Together’. We know the redemption to mean the great price that was paid by Christ to ransom His people. In order for God to make two to become one a great price was paid on Calvary. In order for the warring party to be reconciled there must be the death of the righteous party. My, that doesn’t make sense but that is surely the way God did it.

In Ephesians 1:10 let us draw out attention to ‘The Place Of The Gathering Together’. In verse 10 we find ‘The Times Of This Place’. The word ‘times’ in the place is the dispensation of the fullness of time and it means a prayer accounting or a            of times and seasons. Our God is the God of timing yet He lives in a world of no clocks or calendars. I have never known Him to be late or early but always on time. The word ‘fulness’ means the completion of repetition. The word ‘dispensation’ means the administration, overseer, or controller. Let us not get ahead or behind Him but let us wait upon His timing. In the middle of history and geography He sent His Son to a little place called Jerusalem to ransom His people from their sins.

In verse 10 we find ‘The Triumph Of This Place’. We are told that ‘He Might Gather Together’. The word ‘gather’ means to RUMINIZE or CONDENSE. I remind us that the work of making two become one I is the sole work of our God. The root of the word ‘gather’ means to strike the head. In Genesis 3:15 there is the first mention of the Gospel. God said, ‘Satan would bruise His heel but that He, (God), would bruise Satan’s head’.  All of this gathering work will take place ‘in Christ’. The phrase is mentioned 18 times in this book.

In the great work of redemption it was all about time in making two to become one. Paul summed it up in Galatians 4:4-5, ‘But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.’ Thank God for His timing.

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