Abundant in Christ (Ephesians 1:3-14)

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Today’s scripture can be found in the book of Ephesians, chapter one, verses three through 14. It can be found on page 946, of your pew Bible. So Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus, Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in him, before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight, in love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the time, when the times reached their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth. Under Christ, in Him, we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory, a man named Nikolai Mustad, awesome baby name, by The way, in 1908 went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He went there with the hopes that this painting that he just bought was a lost art piece of Vincent van Gogh himself. But as he walked into the museum, the staff saw the painting, and they started examining it, and they said, there is no signature on this. This is a fake. All the enthusiasm that he had sank down. He was devastated. He was heartbroken, and he just tossed it into the family attic, until two decades later, he had passed away, and nothing had been heard about this painting. And in 2013 in 2013 several, several decades later, more than a century later, this painting was found. It was found, and it was re authenticated, and it was found out to be an original Van Gogh. See Mustad died without knowing the value of the painting that belonged to him. He was devastated because he could never celebrate the jaw dropping worth of that treasure, if only he knew the worth of the masterpiece that belonged to him. Mustad isn’t the only person who doesn’t understand the greatness of possessing something so grand. We too fall short of understanding how great a blessing it is to know Jesus and to be found in him. In Ephesians, one, three to 14, we see Paul, who realizes the abundance of these blessings that he has in the Lord Jesus Christ, and this compels him to break out in praise. He acknowledges the various characteristics of the Triune God and finds himself rejoicing in them hopefully, as we read through these mysteries that have been revealed to Paul, it will prompt us to know God all the more and praise Him to better understand Paul’s reason for praise, we will look at the Trinity, the Father Son and the Holy Spirit, and we will dwell in these characteristics that belong to the Triune God. Firstly, we praise God, the intimate father, starting with verse three, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every blessing, every spiritual blessing in Christ. And there’s so much packed into this one verse that the next 10 verses are focused solely on being able to dwell in what it means to have every spiritual blessing in Christ, kind of like a pinata where. Here, it’s filled with all this candy, and we’re now about to break in and taste the sweetness of each and every blessing, and hopefully that just won’t be for the rest of the sermon, but the rest of our lives. But before we even try to explain that, verse three focuses on the origin, the source of all the blessings, the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In verses three to six alone, we will see Paul talk about topics such as love, grace, Will, predestination and adoption. But he doesn’t just talk about that in the abstract. Paul talks about these blessings as blessings that come from the God and Father. He says. He seems to say that if you want to better understand love, grace, will predestination and adoption, you will have to do it from an understanding that all of these are gifts that reflect the blessings that God has for you. God the Father desires to bless you. Some of us have a picture of this, the Father as this judgmental God of the Old Testament, and Jesus, this good come God of the new but Jesus himself says in John 638 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to the to do the will of Him who sent Me, the Father who sent Me. What Jesus reveals about the Father is that he is good and more than that, he’s loving, because everything that Jesus did is focused on the Father’s love for us. And maybe if we can see God is loving, then we can better understand how Paul can praise him as he looks through all these spiritual blessings, look at verses four to six, for he chose us in him, before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight, in love. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with this pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. If you’ve been in church long enough, you’ve probably heard this passage talked about in the context of predestination or election, which is a teaching that before the creation of the world, the eternal destiny of man was already settled by God. There are so many debates whether God is in control or whether we have the choice to choose God, and it’s important to have these conversations, but that is not what Paul is focusing on here. When we talk about predestination, we almost always separate it from the blessing of adoption, and when we do that, we miss what the father’s intention for our electing us is, and why it is important that we have been chosen in Christ before the foundations of the world. See this so called judgmental God of the Old Testament can be found being so compassionate in the calling of Jeremiah, which we heard earlier. Jeremiah 145 the word of the Lord, came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born, I set you apart, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations see to know somebody in the Hebrew text is not referring to opening a textbook and learning about somebody. No, this is intimate. If Evie, my fiance, said, Reve, I want she would have known me a little bit more. And I started going to her friends and saying, Hey, this heavy girl. What about her? She would be so disappointed in me. You know, I would be disappointed in myself. See, it’s not an intellectual understanding of somebody and we get this. It’s a deeply intimate one. It makes us want to picture covenants. It’s the kind of intimacy of a husband and wife like Adam knew Eve best friends like David and Jonathan, who were knit together at heart and most fitting to this imagery in Ephesians, like a father and a son. Like I said before all these debates about election talk, they’re just talk about God as if God is not involved in our lives whatsoever. If he is God, He knows everything right. But that almost fails to, always fails to acknowledge the fact that God loves us. The text doesn’t say in the supreme knowledge of God, we were predestined, whereas it says, in love, in love, we were predestined. This is not just philosophical, no, this is deeply, profoundly personal. God, the Father, desires to bless you, and this text points to how he has always desired to bless you who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And how does the Father bless us? He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. Last week, Abby’s family, which is as close to me as my own, had the privilege of adopting Jaden. Jaden is a little boy who they foster for the past two years, and he may not, at this age, understand what it means to be adopted. He may not understand. This blessing and see if you have children of your own, you’re kind of stuck with them, but Jayden, no, he was chosen. One day, Jaden is going to realize the awe and wonder of being chosen by his dad and mom and their commitment to raise a child not as an outsider, but as your very own. He’s not a foreigner. He’s dear child, and that day he will understand the blessing of sonship. To be adopted means that we belong. See God choosing us doesn’t convict us the same way that it did the Ephesian church that was small and persecuted because we live such comfortable lives, we’re so neglectful of this blessing, kind of like a child that was born into a rich family that has never known what it means to work hard, that has never ever gotten the chance to know the pain and toil that their parents went through so that they could have that blessing. But there will be moments, even in our comfort, where we feel lost, abandoned, confused and maybe even hurt by those most close to you. What can you hold on to in such moments? It is this blessing. If we place our trust in Jesus, we have what the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ, has with the Father. We are the children of God, the apostle John. In John, one says yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in his name, to those who believed in his name, not to those who believed in the comforts of this world or even in themselves, no to those who believed in the name of Jesus, he gave the right to become children of God, children not born of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. To be born of God means that we were chosen by God, and that is an intimacy unlike any other modern hymn writer, David Ward has this wonderful stanza to help us picture this. He says, I sought. I walked because your grace, long before had fixed my place and now I love. How can it be to us, you who first loved me? We praise God because it is in His good pleasure to choose you and I to be children of the living God. The intimacy of the Father is revealed in the election of his children. We praise God because we have an intimate father. Secondly, we praise God the reliable son. Let’s look at verse seven in Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. We tend to look at this concept of redemption as a transformation story where somebody has gone from a state of being not good to good. But if that was merely the case of our lives, then Jesus would not have to shed his blood on the cross. No he could have just been a counselor or gym instructor or a motivational speaker telling everybody Hey, just feel better about yourselves. Or kind of like a first century rabbinic Jordan Peterson, where you’ll hear wake up early, do your bad do 100 push ups every day you live a great life. Yeah, you can ban me from doing Canadian accents. That was horrible, but I’m going to be honest here. There are many times in my life where I’ve made waking up at 5am reading my Bible, working out my gospel. Almost all the time. I’ve done this or taken pride in the fact that I have this good discipline routine. I’ve done it without acknowledging God, and that made me realize something, I don’t have a discipline problem. I have a sin problem. Redemption is costly, and it’s not sleep that it’s lost, no, it’s the life of Jesus who, in love, in love, acknowledged our inability to save ourselves, and he chose, he chose to shed his blood on the cross for us so that we who deserve death have been given the gift of eternal life. Jesus choosing to bear the cross on our behalf is the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. You see, at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. As Paul says in the Romans, He didn’t die for you because he saw some holiness in you. No, He died for you because he wanted to bestow holiness, His Holiness to you. And how does God bestow His Holiness. He does that in Christ. Let’s look at verse nine. Verse nine just points to the good pleasure of His will which He purposed in Christ. Keyword in Christ, between verses three and 10, we see something that we will we tend to almost always overlook, and it’s the words in Christ, or in him, he. It occurs six times in eight verses, and 216 times in all of New Testament. And that means there is something significant here. Most of us have a perspective of Jesus being this middle man between a bad circumstance and a good circumstance, and that’s why, when we share stories, we tend to say, I was living an awful life of sin, and then I encountered Jesus, and wow, now I live a happy life striving for him. What we miss out when we talk this way is that we look at Jesus as a bridge to get to the other side of sin, and when we get to this other side, we don’t know what to do, because if Jesus is not on the other side, we have nothing what really is happening when we place our faith in Jesus is that he steps into our life of sin. He carries us through this bitch and by making, by making his arson his own and the beautiful union that he has with the Father, He bestows upon us. Jesus not just aiming for you to have this happy life. No, he desires for you to have eternal life. First John 520 states, we know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true by being in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God. And eternal life. If you have a vision of eternal life, absent from being in Christ, I’m sorry, there is no other eternal life. So when Paul points to the mystery of his will according to His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, he means that when you accept Christ, you are in him. Think of a one time membership, where once we’re in, we’re in forever, all the amenities are ours. We have access to the every part of the facility in the same way every part of Christ is ours. And that’s why we also get this imagery of believers being the body of Christ, because in a mysterious way that is only known to God. We’re all one with him. And this has so many implications. It means that all of us who are the body of Christ are not just united to Christ, but united to each other. What was once this abstract idea of being the capital C church, the Body of Christ, is now a personal one. Look at the person next to you, and if they are a professing believer, they are in Christ, and you are in them, maybe that will well up in you a curiosity. You get to know them. It’s a privilege. You get to know those who are next to you, and maybe your hearts are filled with compassion when you look at these other churches and not competition. And maybe for those who have such a tough time sharing when they are struggling, just know everybody in this body is struggling with you talk to them. But there is more. When we participate in the salvation of Christ, we’re acknowledging that Christ is mediating on behalf of God and on behalf of man. He’s not just a bridge between God and man. Rather, he is in us and we are in Him. The unity of all things in heaven, on earth and on Earth doesn’t take place in a random location. No, it takes place in a person. It takes place in Jesus Christ, where we will receive every spiritual blessing, because he has taken on every spiritual curse that our sin has brought about. Christ stepped down from the throne of heaven so that he can bestow heaven to us. In Him, we praise God, the reliable son. Thirdly, we praise God, the promised spirit. Look at 11 and 12. In Him, we are also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. Last week, Alex pointed out two specific things about God in the sermon, he said, First, God is preparing a place for you, and second, that God is preparing you for that place. Both those realities reveal an important truth. Both you and the place that God is preparing are secure in God in Romans eight, if this is a means for us to endure suffering, then Ephesians This is a reason why we can praise God. Praise God. We were chosen, predestined all according to God’s will, so that we who were the first to put our hope in Him, get to praise Him. Kathy Keller, on the topic of being predestined, says I would not be able to get out of bed if I didn’t believe in predestination. Crazy statement to make, but she acknowledges something, that the anxiety of having to live a faithful life is just not possible without the security of heaven. This constant. Does not foreign to us. We get anxious when we don’t feel secure. If you woke up every day thinking, will I have a job the next day, you’re gonna hate the job. And you know what you probably will say, I don’t have job security. Or think about the relationships most close to you. If you felt insecure in your relationship with your friends, no, maybe somebody closer, like a parent or a spouse. You’re not just going to lose trust in the person or lose confidence in the person. You’re going to lose confidence in the very idea of love itself, because there is no love without the security that comes with it, and we find that security in being chosen in Christ. But how do we, who are sinners, experience the security of God in the promised Holy Spirit? Verses 13 to 14, you see, and you were also included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed in him, you were marked in him with a seal the promised Holy Spirit, who was a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory. God didn’t just leave us with a good message of hope. No, he left us with a guarantee. You were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. And the word seal is meant to meant for us to picture this locked up letter, or like a tied up letter, and our salvation is like this letter that has been signed, sealed and delivered. We receive the blessings that are for legitimate children of God, because we are secured in the spirit of the legitimate son, Jesus, the Christ. We are sealed in him. And there is this possibility for us to start thinking that this spirit thing is only meant for the future. No, the Spirit in us. The Spirit is in us for today and every day that we live this life on Earth. If there’s one passage in scripture that sums up the role of the spirit of security for us. It is John 1415, to 20. It starts by saying, Jesus starts by saying, If you love Me, keep My commandments. Easy, right? No, if, if, if he left us there, we might as well be like every other religion, trying to work our way to God. But no, he follows that by saying, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. The Spirit of Truth The world cannot accept him because neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live. You also will live. On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. The Spirit of God is in us, so that we aren’t alone in this world of sin. The Spirit of God is in us, so that we’re no longer orphans, rather children of God. The Spirit of God is in us so that When the world cannot see Jesus, we can you. A son who stepped down from the throne of heaven to bestow heaven on us, an inheritance that will never be taken because of the spirit that is within us. Why are we so fascinated by the sinfulness of the world, like Nikolai Mustad? Have we just living? Have have we just been living this life as if we don’t know the worth of knowing Christ? Do you believe that what Christ is offering is far better than what this world offers? Do those who say that they Jesus is their Lord and Savior? When you hear the words, you are chosen by God, adopted by God, loved by God, do you feel like you want to know Christ more? And if it doesn’t, then maybe you just don’t understand the value of having every spiritual blessing in Christ. So when you leave this place, don’t leave this place, just ignorant of this reality. Every spiritual blessing in Christ is a beautiful thing that pawn. Upon. Spend some time just reflecting, talking to God, and don’t ignore him this time, just pray. Pray that you’re able to receive Him and taste his goodness. And as you draw near to Him at he he promised. This is a promise that he makes, He will draw near to you. And if you’re here and you want that relationship with God, you want to be a child of God, you want to have the security of heaven, then give your life to Jesus and trust him. Speak to those around you and hear from them what it means to have a relationship with him. And I promise you, it is worth it, because Paul, when he was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, He just couldn’t ignore such great a salvation. Now you you draw near him that in repentance we can come to him and know that he loves us so much that he will come to us praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below, praise him above. Ye Heavenly Host, praise Father Son and Holy Ghost. Pray with me, Heavenly Father. We thank You. We thank you so much that you’ve blessed us so abundantly with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms that we get to taste this for the rest of our lives. If we place our faith and hope and trust in Jesus and Lord as we come, in this moment, we acknowledge there are so many ways that we’ve been neglectful of your goodness, your kindness, your mercy and your grace draw us near to you, Lord, and as we come, receive us, may the words that you’ve spoken to us remind us that we have our security, our hope, our joy in you and you alone. Uphold us in your love, help us treasure every single word that you’ve prayed upon us, Lord and we pray that, as we think and ponder of your goodness, that we have hearts that are changed and transformed. Come have your way in us, Lord, bless each and every soul in this room. In your name we pray, Amen.