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Jan 08, 2023

You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’

You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’

Passage: Ephesians 3:14-4:6

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Song & Dance - The Gospel Melody that Moves in Ephesians

As we’ve said from the beginning of this series, song and dance are each distinct, but they are often inseparable. Melody inspires movement; the movement rests on the melody. This week we come to the “hinge” passage of Paul’s letter–the part that leads us from the section on the song of the gospel into the dance it compels. The gospel’s tune makes us feel like dancing to its beat, to live out what it works in. Here you might say we find the dance, the moves, and the Beat.

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 150:1-4
LEADER: Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!

ALL: Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;

 AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:
Nicene Creed
LEADER: What is your only comfort–in life and in death?
ALL: My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own,
but belong—
body and soul,
in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven:
In fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

ALL: We believe in one God, the Father Almighty;
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of Very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father;
By whom all things were made;
Who, for us men and for our salvation,
Came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
And was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered and was buried;
And the third day he rose again,
According to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven,
And sits at the right hand of the Father;
And he shall come again, with glory,
To judge both the quick and the dead;
Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life;
Who proceeds from the Father;
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified;
Who spoke by the prophets.
And we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
And we look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

CENTRAL TEXT: Ephesians 3:14-4:6
Eph. 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Eph. 3:20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Eph. 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 13:14

LEADER: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

ALL: Amen

Additional Resources

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Malachi 2:10
  • Psalm 1
  • Acts 8:16
  • Romans 3:28-30
  • Romans 9:24
  • Romans 16:2, Philippians 1:27, Colossians 1:10, 1 Thessalonians 2:12
  • 1 Corinthians 12:13-19
  • 2 Corinthians 13:14

Illustrations:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Wallflower or dancer? Two-left feet or grace in motion? Ballroom, square, contra, or something else? Go.
  2. While there is no error in considering only Ephesians 4:1-6 on its own, why is it helpful to see that urging in context of the prayer immediately preceding (as we heard preached last Sunday)?
  3. Given what you’ve heard so far in Paul’s letter, why is him “urging” us–rather than merely inviting or suggesting–an appropriate way of making his point? And, in your own words, what is he urging us to do?
  4. The passage suggests that to walk in a worthy manner has a particular context in mind. What is that context? Why might that context matter, or even be crucial?
  5. It’s a question we’ve asked before but worth asking again (and perennially): what reasons do people (maybe we, too, secretly) give to suggest the church doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter? What reasons do we hear in this passage, or have heard so far, that Paul would use to offer a counter-point?
  6. Paul ticks off seven things believers share in common. Recount them. (What’s interesting about the ordering Paul chooses?) Why is he rattling those off in quick succession? What’s his point? What do we remember from earlier in the letter that explain why he takes the time to recount what we share in common ?
  7. So…as one application to the sermon, (if you’re willing to share), what are your “dragons”--what taunts and haunts you, what keeps you up, what matters have you come to conclude Jesus has no part in (or where you secretly want him to have no part in)? Deep question, we know! If the gospel is true, and it became powerfully believable to you today, how would it assist you, if not in “slaying” your dragons, at least facing them with love and courage? Need help with this one? Finish this sentence, “if Jesus is real, then this is what can change about how I think about or respond to this [dragon.]”

 ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES: 

 

  • I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats – any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death – then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don’t you see, this is just the point – what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. Boris Pasternak
  • I do not put much stock in “believing in God.” The grammar of “belief” invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian…I am far more interested in what a declaration of belief entails for how I live my life.  Stanley Hauerwas
  • Let us be what we are, and let us be it well, to do honor to the Master whose work we are. St. Francis de Sales
  • Christianity is less a what and more a how, a question of how to live given what has happened in Christ. James K A Smith, How to Inhabit Time
  • One life on this earth is all we get... we are fools if we do not live it as fully and beautifully and bravely as we can. Frederick Buechner

 

  • Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. . . . The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.  C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 

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