Transcript
That is a terrific segue, dad. Thank you for that sort of tracing of history and the people of the first century and why it's important to us today. And that's a perfect segue to now turn it over to the real show here, the responders, the people that you've asked to respond to your book and to St. Paul's book. So we're going to start with Ken Sunu. Ken, can you step up to the podium and maybe say
a little bit about how you got to know my father and what you're going to talk about? Yeah, thank you. I got to know Earl when I was a student at Cal and I was attending first Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. And as a student, it was so exciting to be able to attend the service where the preacher was doing Greek word studies. I'd never seen that before anywhere. And so it was fascinating to me to be
able to do that. So I was at that church sort of at a golden age of seeing because Earl Palmer was the senior pastor there. But Mark Labberton, who many of you know, he was pastor here also, was my college pastor. So I got the benefit of having both of them. And then I got to know Earl and Shirley, both of them a little bit better when I participated in first Presbyterian summer ministries program. It's sort
of like UPC's deputation program and they send students all over the world to work with ministries. And I got a chance to go to Marseille, France and Morocco to work with Arab world ministries. And Shirley was sort of leading that summer ministries program that year that I went. So I got to know both of them that way. And then finally, when I received the call to go to seminary, Earl was on the board at that time.
And it was a lot of fun because he would come out every year and we had like 11 seminarians from First Press Berkeley. And so we would all get together every time he came out. We'd have dinner and we'd have a great time. So that's how I got to know the Palmer family. I'm going to talk a little bit about the apostle Paul and his call. But first, I want to do that by way of sharing
a story from my past. So in order to become a pastor in the Presbyterian Church USA, you have to appear before presbytery and you have to be examined by the presbytery. And at that examination, they can ask you any theological question that they want. And so I prepared diligently for my ordination exam. You want to ask me the theological reasoning for why we can baptize infants. OK, I'm ready for that. You want me to explain the
different understandings of the Lord's Supper in terms of transubstantiation, consubstantiation, the real presence of Christ. I got that covered. All right. You can even ask me to explain Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical norm. I could even be ready for that. OK, so I got up and I thought I was ready and I was asked one question. And that question was, tell us about your call. And I froze. Now, to be fair, the reason I froze
and wasn't thinking very clearly was because I had just returned from a weekend camping trip with the youth group I was leading. And for those of you who know me, you know that I don't camp. And, you know, my idea of roughing is staying at the Motel 6. So I just I was tired and I wasn't thinking very clearly. I wasn't very nimble. And so I thought I know my call, but I had a hard time
articulating it. And so I froze for a moment and then I eventually stuttered and mumbled and shared something about my call. It wasn't very articulate, but thankfully it was enough for them to vote me in. But it bothered me. I thought, why can't I articulate my call? I thought about it and I realized it's because my call was very different from the apostle Paul's call. My call was more like Peter. Peter had a more gradual calling
into being a disciple of Jesus. He was a Jewish person growing up in the Jewish faith all along. And then he met Jesus early on and spent time with Jesus. And it was a very gradual calling into discipleship. That's very different from Paul. Paul had a very dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus. And I thought about that and I thought that is not my call, but it was the call of my ancestors. I am
a product of mission done well. If you know anything about mission in Korea, which is where I'm from, you know that mission was done really well there. Missionaries came. They shared the good news. And then as quickly as possible, they transferred leadership and power in the church to the Korean population. And that is why I'm here today now, because my great grandparents and my grandparents heard this good news. And they had a conversion experience more like
the apostle Paul. And in fact, you know, it turns out that there are, I think, four or five pastors in my family, my extended family, because of the mission work that was done in Korea. So that's what happened to Paul. He was a hostile and an angry person towards Christians and Christianity. That's relevant for us today because I think we live in a city which is hostile to our faith. And so how do we respond to
that? And on the road to Damascus, he had a very dramatic conversion experience meeting the living resurrected Jesus, which transformed his life. And as Earl mentioned, he became a much more mellow person. He was able to share the good news, the joy of the good news with with people around. And the one thing that I think stayed with Paul was that he always was crystal centric after that. You know, as I was reading Earl's book in
preparation for this talk, I thought, you know, reading about Paul and his conversion experience, it really would make sense if Earl included one of his favorite Karl Barth quotes. And voila, there it was. I found it. And this quote is from his dogmatics and outline where Barth says, Tell me how it stands with the Christology and I shall tell you who you are. And that is exactly why Jesus was so central to Paul's life throughout his
life. Jesus Christ made sense to Paul. He was able to put his weight down on the promises that Jesus made. He relates to Paul and tenderness like a shepherd finds a lost and hurting sheep. And Paul was forever transformed. And so he always kept Jesus at the center of his faith and the center of his life. And that is a great example for us. One of the things that I found interesting was I grew up in
the Korean Presbyterian Church. That's where my parents were. And now I serve an American Caucasian Presbyterian Church. And it's interesting to me because there are many similarities if you attend a traditional worship service in the Korean Church and the American Presbyterian Church. You know, both services you'll find confession of sin and assurance of pardon. There'll be prayers, including the Lord's Prayer that we say together. There's music, there's scripture reading, there's a sermon. But there is one
big difference that I find interesting. If you attend a Korean Presbyterian Church traditional service, every service, every time they meet, they begin their worship service by stating the Apostles Creed at every service. Now we say the Apostles Creed here now and then, but we don't say it every week. In the Korean Church, they do. And I find that interesting because the biggest section of the Apostles Creed is about on Jesus Christ the Son. It's a Trinitarian
Creed, but the biggest section is the middle section about Jesus Christ. I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead and rose and ascended to heaven and sent us on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. I like that. It helps to
remind us that at every time that we come together, both the Trinitarian nature of God and also the importance and the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ. I think Paul would have approved that. And so that's, I think, what we can take from Paul, that we always keep Jesus Christ at the center of our faith, center of our life. Thank you. And for those, I think many of you know, but for those who don't, Ken
is a pastor here at University Presbyterian Church. And from one pastor, we're going to go to another pastor. Renee Sundberg is a pastor at Union Church here in Seattle. Renee, can you just say a little bit about how you got to know Dad? Sure. I heard about Earl through Jenny Rydberg, who was my college pastor. And I heard about, well, it became a mystery of it to me, Earl, because I heard about this great preacher and
great person. And yet the person I met was doing a comedy routine and falling off a piano bench, which you did at a college retreat. Many of you have not seen this, but it's a wonder to behold, Earl's old comedy routine that he used to do. But then eventually Earl was called here to be pastor in 1991 as the senior pastor. And he encouraged me to consider seminary. So I went to Princeton and eventually was able
to return here. And we served together at the church as colleagues. So it is wonderful to be here with all of you and to share this platform with all of you. So thank you. My focus today is Ephesians 3, but it's part of Ephesians 1, 2, and 3, this great prayer that Earl mentions. And those chapters sort of unfold as a prayer. And so let me first start by giving a little bit about what precedes Chapter
3. In the first chapter, Paul establishes the belovedness of the Ephesians, which Earl has talked about. And that belovedness is revealed through Jesus Christ, where all things come together as Jesus' ruler over all. And then Chapter 2, it shows how God changes lives as Christ disrupts this trajectory of sin and oppression with his love and grace. And he breaks down those walls, the dividing walls between us, and builds this common place where God lives through the
Spirit. And then to Ephesians 3. And in the book, that particular chapter, I heard a lot about from Earl about mystery. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about how Paul talks about that mystery and how it was so inspirational. And the mystery is this. I'll just tell you right up front that everyone is included in the family of God. That is the mystery that Paul writes about that comes together in the gospel. And
Earl puts it, the mystery of God's love for outsiders. You know, we just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And last Sunday, he would have been 94 years old. One of your contemporaries, Earl. I mean that in all the best sense. And King is arguably the most exquisite and biblically inspired expositor of the demands of the gospel toward the outsider. He popularized the concept of the beloved community, which the main premise of that is that we
have a shared humanity and we are profoundly related. And Paul shares this as well through the mystery of God's love. We are united. And Earl offers a word study on mystery, Mysterion, and points out that Mysterion is usually associated with special or privileged knowledge, privileged access. And Paul takes that word, the mystery word, and he turns it around by associating it with good news for everyone. It doesn't require Gnostic like sleuthing and hoarding. Paul claims the
wideness of that mystery for everyone and then launches into this beautiful grand final prayer. And Earl calls it the mystery put to music. As all these major themes of Ephesians get put together, so I kind of feel like I got the best passage. Sorry, Daniel. So Earl describes this prayer that I'm about to read to you as pastorly quiet, totally melodic, even poetic, a family prayer and yet wide and broad and almost heavenly in its expanse.
At the same time, it is tenderly individualized. And so let me share it with you and listen for yourself. Listen for that quietness, the poetry, the personalization, as well as the wideness. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family and here Paul means family in a broad sense, every tribe, every nation in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that according to the riches of his glory, he may
grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Friends, this
prayer is our commissioning for living as people of the gospel. And Earl calls the beginning of that prayer as a description of sanctification. Big theological word, but sanctification, simply put, is growing in the grace of Jesus Christ in heart and mind and action. It's more than personal piety. It's more than words. It's concrete faith happening in our daily life and in our relationships. Faith in Christ lived out over the course of a lifetime. And you heard
it. Paul prays that the Ephesians may be strengthened in their inner being with power through his spirit. Paul's talking about the spirit that is in him and that power that is given to all of us and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love. And the phrase rooted and grounded in love is central to this prayer. And it's a theme that Earl explores as a dynamic living
parable of the Christian life. We know that it takes time for a tree or a plant to be established and grounded the same way that growth and grace takes time. And Earl proposes that time is a friend of building Christian character, character development. As we grow in age, we may grow in grace. As we grow in age, we may grow in grace. And many of you may have heard Earl work out that concept in the pulpit
of this church. It stuck with me, especially as I, along with all of us, grow in age. We work out God's understanding of love over time. And Paul also prays for our minds that our minds would be able to have the power to comprehend this breath and this depth, this height of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So that is an interesting thing to consider. But what Paul does with this is he lays a foundation.
He lays a foundation for our feet firmly planted on the truth of God's love. And when we do this, when you do this, when I do this, that allows me to discover the extravagant dimensions of that love to reach and stretch and dig and explore. And the mystery that we find is that in Jesus, we can never reach the end of that love. It goes before us. It goes beyond us. We can't find the edge of
that love because it's beyond our full grasp. And so when we run up against things that are discouraging, that are ugly, divisive, and all that is contrary to God's love, we can be grounded in that foundation of God's love. And as we do, our roots become more sure. You know, God's love, as Paul tells us, cannot be fully understood, but it can be explored. It can be trusted and it can be shared. Last year, I finally
got around to reading Richard Powers, The Overstory. Have any of you read this book? Maybe a few of you. It's a good read. It's a remarkable novel about trees and human connections. And trees are ancient and resilient. We know more and more about trees, right? They support so much life on Earth. The root systems alone are a marvel to behold. But they are subject to their environment. And unlike trees, I was thinking, you know, God's love
can't be ravaged by disease. It can't be felled by an axe or a bulldozer or a storm. God's love is and always will be. And that eternal and beautiful and comforting mystery stays with us. That God's love can fill us in this full expansiveness of grace and invites us to share this message of welcome to others. That's pretty amazing. Well, finally, I just want to comment on the musical quality that Earl talks about in Paul's Poetic
Prayer for the Ephesians. And he notes that this is Earl-language, the grand positive. It's one of my favorite phrases you use. The grand positive of the theme that runs throughout, interrupted sometimes by the chaotic and the negative. And Earl proposes that George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue piano concertos as representative of the moods in Paul's prayer. Do you know it? Raise your hand if you know this. Okay. If you flew United recently in the past, you
will definitely know this song. And you know, it's beautiful. It's like 15 minutes long. It's characterized by strong, motivic, interrelatedness. And the piece, it's quiet and gentle and melodically inspiring with these rhythmic interruptions of street sounds. And each interruption comes with that good surprise of variations of the grand and beautiful theme that keeps running through. Just as Paul with his tender words echo the theme of grace with that surprise melody of the net cast for the
wider family. You might read chapter two and notice that tension starts to rise as he describes the power of sin and deadness and a crescendo of danger and rage threaten us. And then, boom, that clear and steady theme of stronger good enters the story, bringing the new possibility of Christ's love. And so through earlier analogy of a musical piece, I've been thinking about this. We can imagine our lives, our story, intermingling with the grand love of
Jesus Christ. Sheer grace that brings us all under one roof, a new household, a new humanity. What does that musical motion look like for us? What's the melody that helps you remember your belovedness? What minor keys might get overtaken by sweeping grand themes? How do the parts that seem like they don't have a place or seem like they don't fit somehow mingle into that chorus of grace and begin to make sense? And where do those scary
crescendos or interruptions meet a clear tune of love? We all have ups and downs in our lifetime, joys and challenges, but the intervention of grace and the truth of God's love provides resolution. And friends, Jesus Christ is that grand good resolver. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Renee. And now we're going to go to Dr. John Medina, who is the only other person on this dais that is not a pastor, other than myself. John is a
developmental molecular biologist and an accomplished author and a lecturer and a professor, and I have to say, someone who gave me very valuable advice about my child's brain at an early age that I have taken to heart all these 20-some years of raising kids, so thank you. Oh, well, bless you. I first heard about Earl before I met him. I was working with a guy named Mike Yacconelli and Denny Rydberg, who had been editors of
an interesting magazine called The Door. It used to be called The Wittenberg Door, and it actually had an investigative arm of evangelical territory, I guess you'd call it, and Mike could get cynical a little bit about it in the days of the late '80s and early '90s. You could be cynical about certain parts of the pastorate or in the evangelical setting. So I asked him, Mike, who is the guy who got it right? Who is the
one that has the integrity of the gospel, who has the knowledge and sharpness of the gospel, and maybe even has the scholarship of the gospel? Who in the United States is still getting it right? And he said without equivocation, probably a 50-millisecond response. He goes, well, that's easy, Earl Palmer. And he didn't even say the half of it, buddy. My goodness. We were so thrilled in 1991 when we heard that he was coming over here.
We finally got a chance to meet. Earl and I hit it off. We eventually formed a small group and eventually did the Wednesday Bible studies together and teaching, and it has been a riot and privilege of my life. So that's how we met. As is my tradition when we did those Wednesday studies, I usually read something, so I'm going to spend 15 minutes essentially reading this on some reflections. That's the scriptures on the next chapter from
what Renee was talking about in Ephesians 4. My comments can be summarized simply by my favorite quote from C.S. Lewis, which I'll share at the end of these 15 minutes. In the meantime, I have three reflections to share on Ephesians 4, and let me start by saying when Earl asked if I would be a responder to this text, I immediately thought, I'm not making this up, of mathematics. And then I thought, what a weird way
to respond to a theological discussion. I mean, even if it wasn't weird, as a culture, we don't have an easy relationship with math. I've heard sayings like, in fact, I've seen this on a t-shirt. I'm so glad I learned about trapezoids instead of how to do taxes. It comes in really handy during trapezoid season. So another one, it's also another t-shirt. Math is the only place where people can buy 64 watermelons and no one
wonders why. And even politicians get into the act. It was rumored that the late president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was horrified to discover that half the U.S. population had below average intelligence. All right, the reason why I was reminded of math, of all things, is because there's actually an arithmetic term embedded in the text we're going to be describing. Earl tells us it's the word axios, which is translated as worthy, steadied, and from which we get
the word axium, or postulate. So my first reflection of three centers around that word here translated as worthy. The first reflection from Ephesians 4:1 through 3. Now axioms or postulates are statements that are assumed to be true without proof that they are true. For example, two points determine a line segment. No proof, just is postulate. A circle contains both a center and a line that can be drawn from that center to its edge. No proof,
just is postulate. I would argue that the bones of math are like that, too. Mathematics is mostly just a faith agreement, assented without real proof that there is such a thing as quantity. In reality, there's no such thing as the square root of 17 grazing in the grass. We just made that up. There's no such thing as 1 plus 1 equals 2. We just made that up, too. They are ephemeral. Problem is, as postulates, as axios,
they are also powerful. Postulates serve two purposes in science. A, to explain undefined terms, meaning that they're non-negotiable, and B, to serve as a starting point for proving other statements and even extending those statements into the practical world. For example, if everybody agrees that 1 plus 1 equaling 2 is not negotiable, you can put rovers on Mars, cure diseases like smallpox, and use the James Webb telescope to see the actual birth of the universe. Paul
says in Ephesians that Christ's love has this characteristic of non-negotiability. He uses the word axios again in Ephesians 4:1. I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, encourage you who receive this letter to lead a life steadied by, there it is, and as a consequence of the truth and assurance of Christ's love. Now postulates are not only good for explaining undefined and undefinable terms, things that just is. As I said, they can provide platforms for
powerful extensions, even become the basement layer for scientific progress. The only entrance requirement is that everybody agree that 1 plus 1 equals 2, that the postulates are true. Let me give an example of that extension. Last year, an Italian bioengineering group wondered if you could use the brain to move a wheelchair for people paralyzed in all four limbs. Researchers put exquisitely sensitive electrodes on these patients' scalps, hooked the electrodes up to a computer with highly intelligent
software, and then began training the patients. The researchers asked the patients to visualize a virtual steering wheel in their heads using just their imaginations. They learned to turn that imaginary wheel right, left, backwards, forwards in their heads with the computer at each point recognizing and reading the electrical signature behind each of their imaginary commands. Each command, turns out, gave a different electrical signature, and the machine memorized each one while the patients were turning the wheel in
their heads. After the training, this electrode computer software device was hooked up to a special wheelchair that could understand the training and the brain's commands translated by the computer, and an astonishing thing was observed. The patients could now move that wheelchair simply by imagining the steering wheel in their heads. Generated an electrical signal which commanded the computer to move the chair right, left, backwards, forwards, but they learned to move that wheelchair with a thought, which is
all they had left. This is the power when you agree that two points determine a line segment, that a circle has a center and an edge, and that one plus one equals two. Second reflection, Heisenberg, not Breaking Bad Heisenberg, the Heisenberg. Taken from Ephesians 4:11 through 14, scripture declares, we must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. The
word focus here is on the word kubaya, which literally means gambling dice. We get our word cube from it. Earl says in his book that this is the only time the word is used in the entire New Testament. Dice players in those days, as they are in these days, sometimes cheated, could be deceitful to their fellow players. So the context in these scriptures is essentially a warning. Forces exist that can threaten truth, and you need to
be aware of deceivers and schemers and tricksters throwing out their potentially tainted dice. Well, if we compare that to the second reflection, being tossed to and fro is the opposite of axios, of a solid life anchored in something immutable. If you don't have a solid anchor, you can be blown from one doctrine to the next. If we put our science and our math, forgive me, hat back on, imagine what would happen to research. If people didn't
really subscribe to certain scientific axioms, if everybody thought you should decide for yourself whether one plus one equals two, well, if maybe you're in a bad mood today, so for you one plus one is going to equal three, or you want to be open-minded today, so one plus one is equal a ham sandwich, you won't accomplish very much in science. No one will see the beginnings of a universe. No one will cure smallpox. No one
will guide their wheelchairs with their brains. Absolutes draw their power because they transcend people's opinions about them. Now, even though as a boy I long since ascribed to mathematical postulates, have my whole life, I'm in the department of bioengineering, that does not mean that uncertainty has no place in scientific life, just ask anybody who's ever done an experiment, but it goes deeper than that. It was the lesson of 20th century physics that mathematical uncertainty not only
abounded in creation, in many ways uncertainty, or better, its clever offspring probability, defined it. For example, physicist Heisenberg showed that we cannot simultaneously know both the position and the speed of a small particle, like a photon or an electron. We can know where the particle is, or we can know how fast it's going, but we can't know both at the same time. In honor of this strange idea, it is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And if
that doesn't make any sense to you, then I am communicating correctly. Another example concerns an atom, which has both a nucleus and particles that swirl around it, sort of. When I was little, I was taught that electrons orbited around the nucleus like tiny little planets orbiting the sun. That's totally wrong. We now know that electrons surround the nucleus in what are called probabilistic clouds. Let me explain that. Imagine an atom in your finger. The space surrounding
the nucleus of that atom in your finger describes a cloud-like region where an electron is likely to be found. But notice I said likely. We now know that sometimes it's not found there. Sometimes that electron likes to take a vacation and can be found an inch away from your finger, a meter away from your finger. There's even a probability that your finger's electron will spend some quality time near the moon. Which means your finger, like
almost any other object, is not so much a solid as it is a smear. You know what else that means? At one level, it means the universe has a lot of unpredictability embedded in it, instability, riddled with mathematical probabilities. It also means if you, as a Christian, if you are going to look for axios, you're going to have to find it somewhere other than in creation, because creation is too unstable. We can do many things with
our scientific method, revealing the marvels of the universe, but you quickly run into the fact that though the marvels of the universe may be worthy of your admiration by themselves, they're just too unpredictable, too unstable, too un-axios to be worthy of your worship. And if you worship creation, as many did in the first century, or follow any other form of deceitful scheming, you are playing with dice. Paul doesn't think that's a very good idea. Your
faith is fairer without it. Reflection number three. Behavioral modification. And then we'll do the C.S. Lewis quote. Ephesians 4:22 through 24. Scripture declares, You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. These scriptures involve changing human behavior, and every change Paul will
imply and goes on towards the end of the book to state openly involves a choice. If you choose the axios of faith, Paul admonishes you to swallow the whole idea. Put away the old things. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, which involves at some level your psychological interiors. In my view, entering into a relationship with Christ is a little like entering into a giant lifelong lesson in cognitive behavioral therapy. For those of you not
familiar with this technique, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, is one of the most powerful talk therapies capable of creating lasting changes in behavior that exist in therapy land. But it derives its power the same way the Bible does. It focuses on your thought life, your psychological interiors, your mind as the root of any behavioral issue. CBT asks you if you are willing to change your thought patterns. Let me give a greatly oversimplified example. Suppose you have a
negative thought, a self-defeating thought, one you got from your former way of life. You wake up in the morning and you say to yourself, I'm an idiot. Look at everything I've done in my former life. CBT asks this question. Is that self-defeat the whole story? Is that self-defeat the whole story? Is it true you are an idiot? It's one thing to repent. Certainly cognitive behavioral therapy like Paul asks you to reevaluate your behaviors,
especially toxic ones on the way to repentance. But it also asks you to do that repentance in the light of different information, of new information. That updated information is supplied by Paul in Ephesians when he talks about the immutability of God's love. So you say, you know, maybe sometimes I am an idiot. God still loves me. Maybe God has given me people who do the same. Maybe I'm allowed to believe that my opinion of me should
not always trump God's opinion of me. I know. Every time I think I'm an idiot, I will think that's not entirely rational. That's not the whole story. That's not the new story. I have worth because I am loved by someone who will never quit on me. CBT suggests that every time you do that, you give yourself a reward of some kind. And research shows if you're willing to pair that self-defeating thought with rewarded non-self
-defeating thoughts over time, self-defeating thoughts will wither of their own accord. You actually don't have to do very much to it. So it's not thought replacement. It's truly transformation. It's not instantaneous either. It takes anywhere between 66 and 254 days of constant application to accomplish a change. Now, CBT is only done in the hands of a competent therapist, and it's not the point here to have you rush out and find one. Well, at least for
some of you. The point of this reflection, and also the last two is a bit deeper, is to show how biblical principles like those described in Ephesians 4 regularly percolate through the sciences, and that God got there first, from His universe to your renewal. You make a choice to put away the older self transformed by the renewing of your mind. Taken together, it's a small price to pay for choosing not to gamble away your absolutes. Axioms
give you stability. Postulates allow you to recognize unsteady dice. Behavioral renewal lets you see a God who will never unlove you. So it reminds me of the C.S. Lewis saying, which I mentioned I would say, and many of you are familiar with it, here it is. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. It's not a bad summary
of the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. And that brings us to our fourth and last responder, Reverend Daniel Triller, who's pastor of the church in Dillon, Montana. Welcome, Daniel. Maybe you can say a little bit about how you got to know my dad. Yeah, absolutely. I would love to share a brief story or testimony of the role that Earl has played in my life. First, I just want to say
what an honor it is to be here and to share with you all. I'm so grateful, Earl, for the invite. So before I begin my assignment for today, I want to take that moment to share the role that Earl has played in my life. As you may have seen on the screen, I had the opportunity to serve as Earl's study assistant many years ago from 2009 to 2010. I was 23, 24 at the time. I was
in that post-college season where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and I was kind of struggling to figure out which direction to go. I was open to the idea of becoming a pastor, but also wanted to be a teacher, maybe in a traditional public school sense. And then one night I was traveling with Earl. Earl, I'm not sure if I've ever really shared this with you before. Earl
at the time was the interim teaching pastor in Washington, D.C. We were sitting in his living room where he was staying. We were watching the Winter Olympics. And I remember we were kind of sort of not really watching women's figure skating, which is a memory that still kind of makes me laugh to this day, that moment. We were talking about life. He was telling me about his journey to becoming a pastor. I was describing my
own personal indecision. And somewhere in that conversation, Earl, you said something to the effect of, you know, Daniel, a lot of being a good pastor is about being a good teacher. And I remember as soon as he said that, everything started to click into place and that indecisive fog started to lift. And I began to see the relationship between being a pastor and a teacher. From there I went to seminary, became a pastor, and I thanked
God that I did. And Earl, I'm so grateful for the role that you have played in my life in helping me get there. All right, let's get to it. And my assignment for today, we're in Ephesians 6 now. It's the final chapter of Paul's letter. And for the next few minutes, we're gonna focus on that classic passage in verses 10 through 20, where Paul introduces us to that powerful imagery and metaphor that we know as the
armor of God. And you and I so desperately need this armor because there is indeed a enemy in our midst. We do indeed have an opponent, someone who wants to drag us down and divide us, who wants to keep us near to sin and distant from God. Of course, I'm talking about the devil himself. Here's what Paul says as he introduces this section, saying, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on
the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Now notice here the serious yet hopeful balance that Paul strikes here, where he does not diminish or shy away from the reality of and the schemes of the devil and the potential role that he plays in the lives of Christians today. He's serious, and yet he's also simultaneously really wonderfully hopeful, where he's here to tell us, to encourage us that if
we are indeed strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, that we can have hope, that we can stand firm, that we can defend ourselves against whatever the devil throws our way. There's a quote from the 90s movie, The Usual Suspects, where one of the characters says this, that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. You see, Paul wants to make sure that the devil doesn't pull that
trick on us, because that would make us vulnerable for an unexpected attack. And so he equips us with this powerful imagery, this metaphor, as he tells us, put on the full armor of God. And the idea here is rich with meaning and symbolism that just as a person who is heading into battle needs physical armor when engaging in physical warfare, that we too, as Christians today, need a spiritual armor of sorts when confronted with spiritual warfare.
And so Paul, in vivid detail, describes the various pieces of armor that we'll need. A belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Put on this full armor of God, Paul says, and we can have hope. We can take our stand against the devil's schemes. Now,
as for the intricacies and significance of each and every piece of armor, well, I'm going to let Earl's book do the talking there, because you certainly don't need me to tell you this. This is where Earl shines as a pastor and as a teacher, as he helps us understand the connection between each attribute and each piece of armor. Like, why not the belt of righteousness or the breastplate of truth? Why these specific pairings? I'm going to
let Earl's book and Earl himself do the talking on that one. And instead, given our time frame here, we'll drill down on one piece of armor in particular. One of the questions that I was asked to respond to today is, what do you think is the most important part of the armor of God and why? And my goodness, I really struggle to come up with an answer here. It kind of reminds me of that one time
I heard someone ask, which bike pedal is more important, the left or the right? I mean, I guess both, and I kind of feel the same way about the armor of God, all of it. But nevertheless, I will do my best to not dodge the question. You see, if I had to choose one, I think I would go with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, Paul tells us. On one hand, I'm
drawn to this one because it's really the only offensive weapon, the only offensive piece of armor that Paul gives us, where every other piece of armor helps to protect us and defend ourselves, which is so very important. We must be ready to stand firm, or as Paul will later say, to be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And with the sword of the spirit, we are in a way fighting back in
a sense, not with the use of a physical sword, but rather with the word of God and the power of the gospel message. I'm drawn to this one for that reason, and yet even more, I'm drawn to this piece of armor in particular because it's the one that I believe received Jesus most clearly utilized when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, where each and every time Jesus was faced with temptation in that wilderness
long ago, each and every time the devil tried to make him stumble in sin, Jesus responded with scripture. He responded with the truth and power of God's word, saying, it is written, it is written, it is written, that you and I shall not live by bread alone, that we should worship the Lord our God and serve him only. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. You see, with great care and tremendous power, Jesus
drew the sword of the spirit. He leaned on the very word of God, and so we should too. And in order to do so, we must too know the scriptures inside and out. We need to be able to detect the counterfeit, to discern what is true, because from the very beginning of time, the devil has been trying to plant seeds of doubt, saying, did God really say, did God really say, did God really say? Well, in
order to respond to that attack, we need to know what God really said. And even more, we need to be able to identify the insidious and sneaky half-truths of our day. These are often some of the toughest ones to try to reason and think through. Take, for example, the idea God wants you to be happy. Well, that's true in one sense. God does want you to be happy, insofar as our primary joy and contentment is
found in Christ alone. But yet, he doesn't want our pursuit of happiness to come at the expense of obedience to his word, for that is only for our folly. You all, as Paul said and as Jesus did, we need to take up the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. That is indeed one sense in which Jesus uses the truths and promises of God's word to stand firm against the devil's schemes. And yet,
there is one more way in which I think Jesus relies on the truths of God's word, where just before Jesus' temptation is his baptism, during which our Heavenly Father blessed him with these words, saying, This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. And when Jesus hears the devil say, If you are the Son of God, let's see you do this. If you are the Son of God, let's see you do that.
Well, what I imagine in his head over and over and over again are the words of his Heavenly Father. This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. In other words, Jesus doesn't have to prove anything because he knows who and whose he is, the beloved Son of the Father. And friends, when we too know who we are in God's eyes, we don't have to prove the devil, we don't have to prove
to him anything either. That through faith in Christ, because of Christ's work on our behalf, God looks upon his children and says, This is my Son, my daughter, whom I love. With you I am well pleased. You see, when we are rock-soled in our identity, when we remember who and whose we are, Paul reminds us that this gives us the strength and power to stand firm against the devil's schemes. And so you all, there you
have it, the armor of God. Can it help us stand firm in midst of all that we face in our present day? Well, you better believe it. You see, if these pieces of armor were good enough for Paul, if they were good enough for Jesus, then my goodness, we can rest assured that they are good enough for us too. Thank you.