The Blessings of Christ

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 1 this morning. And you’ll have to bear with me just a little bit. It’s been a weird morning.

I overslept and then I walked out of the house and forgot my Bible. And you don’t need that at church, do you? Some churches you don’t.

This one you do. So I borrowed one and it has really small print and four different versions. So I’m going to try to stay where I need to be.

If I start reading something that doesn’t sound right, just give me a minute and I’ll. . .

I’ll get right back to where we were. But we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 1 this morning. And just to be honest with you, some days are harder than others.

And Brother Shank can probably attest to this as well. Some days are harder than others to come up with a message. And I actually, most of the time, will spend more time trying to decide the topic or the text that God wants me to talk about than I will actually putting the message together once I have that.

and in particular January seems to be difficult because we’ve just come out of a time where we know we’re going to be talking about the birth of Christ and we start the year over and say okay what do we do now and this was one of those times and I racked my brain through the week and even into yesterday still didn’t have anything planned and I kept hearing and I know I’ve told you all this before but I kept hearing Brother Divine’s voice and this is the part I know I’ve told you before he told me something that stuck with me years ago that I say all the time, if all else fails, brag on Jesus. He said, if you can’t think of anything to preach, and he told me this after my first or second sermon, if you can’t think of anything else to preach, just get up and brag on Jesus. And you know what?

You can’t go wrong. If we were to spend every service just bragging on Jesus, we would never run out of things to talk about. Now, there are more things in the Bible, but I’m learning more and more as I go along in life that all of this ties back to Jesus.

You know, we have to even look at the stories of the Old Testament, and we have to interpret them in light of Jesus and what it all was pointing to, which was him. And we’re going to look this morning at Ephesians chapter 1 and brag on Jesus a little bit and talk about the blessings that we have in Jesus Christ and because of him. And some of them.

We’re not even going to get to all of them because, again, we would run out of time to discuss it before we would run out of things to talk about. So we’re going to look at a few verses in Ephesians chapter 1 and look at a few of the spiritual blessings that God identifies that are ours because of what Jesus Christ has done. But Paul begins writing to the church at Ephesus and says in verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Jesus Christ, Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is a fairly standard greeting.

We see some variation on this theme at the beginning of all of his epistles. This is the way they started letters back in those days. But he identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. And you know what?

He says, by the will of God. And he said this elsewhere at the beginning of other epistles. You know what?

I’m not an apostle by the will of man. but that it was God who called me. He’s an apostle of Jesus Christ and he reminds them this not only asserting his authority and saying you need to listen to me because I’m an apostle.

I mean and let’s be honest that is a pretty big deal. He’s an apostle. But that he’s not an apostle just because somebody appointed him to be that but because God appointed him to be an apostle. Because God appointed him to this role of messenger.

And he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ. I remember reading that the word apostle has a similar meaning to the word ambassador, that he is an ambassador for Jesus Christ, that when he speaks on Jesus’ behalf, he really is speaking with Jesus’ own authority that he’s given him, and says that he holds his office by the will of God. And that sort of reminds me that wherever we are in ministry, it’s because God has called us. Now, we can say yes to a ministry not because God has called us to that, but because we feel obligated.

Well, I really don’t want to teach nursery. And if you know me at all, I really don’t want to teach nursery. Some of you love that, and God bless you, I’m glad you do, but that’s not my thing.

But sometimes we’ll be, I’m asked to do that. I’m asked to drive a bus, or I’m asked to teach nursery. I really don’t want to do it.

I really don’t feel like God’s calling me to it, but who else is going to do it if I don’t? And so we can take on ministries because we feel a sense of obligation. But ladies and gentlemen, the fact that we’re in ministry as believers at all today is because God has called us as believers to be in ministry.

Now we can accept assignments without him telling us to. We shouldn’t, but we do. But the very fact that you are where you are today, the very fact that God has put you where you are in your life to minister where you are in this church, in your family, in your community, is because he’s called you for that purpose of ministering where you are.

And so we all, not in the same sense as Paul, but we are all, in a sense, apostles of Jesus Christ. We’re all ambassadors, if I can say it that way. You know, I don’t want to lead us in the direction of, I hear of churches where they, who’s your pastor? Well, the apostle is, no, the pastor, who’s the pastor?

Well, the apostle is, okay, no. But in the sense that we’re all ambassadors. We’re all ambassadors for Jesus Christ because he’s called us to be ambassadors right where we are. He says to the saints which are at Ephesus, he’s writing to the church at Ephesus, and then he says into the faithful in Christ Jesus.

So we learn from this, his writings are to the church at Ephesus, but it’s not just for the church at Ephesus. He wrote to the church at Ephesus, but it applies to the church at Lindsay today. It applies to the church at wherever it’s found, wherever his local churches are found.

It applies to the faithful in Christ Jesus down through time to today. and says, grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says to them, blessed, in verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. And so he begins by thanking God. When he says, blessed be the God and Father, you know what, I still struggle with what the word bless means.

I have an idea of it, but every time I try to formulate a definition, it seems so incomplete, like there are more facets of it than are occurring to me. We were asked this years ago when I was in a youth group at Southgate in a Monday night Bible study. What does the word bless mean when they use it in the Bible?

We all tried to come up with our definitions, and it started with something as simple as to do something nice for them. But there’s so much more to it than that. And we talked about all these other definitions because the Bible talks about blessing the Lord, and the Bible talks about the Lord blessing us, and you know what?

The Lord doesn’t need me to bless Him the same way I need Him to bless me. God doesn’t need anything from me. And so any definition I can come up with for the word blessed just seems inadequate.

And yet, even though God doesn’t need our blessing, you know what? I need the blessings of God just to get through every day. God could get through every day with or without me even existing, let alone blessing Him.

and yet there’s something to be said for whether he needs it or not, he deserves it, and so I’m going to bless him. I’m going to praise him. I’m going to worship him.

I’m going to give him everything I’ve got. That’s what we ought to be doing. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. The reason he blesses God is because God first blessed him.

and in a different way. God has imparted to him and to his fellow believers, and to us as well, all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. God has said, all the blessings I have to bestow are yours, and they’re yours in Jesus Christ. Now, hear me on this. When I say all the blessings he has to bestow, I told you all last week about the truck I was driving.

Loved that thing. I no longer have it. I saw a commercial for the 2015 GMC Sierra last night.

Oh, my truck. I miss it. And my mother was telling me, well, we just need to start praying that God has somebody give you that truck.

Okay, you know, I could pray that if God wants me to have the truck. He’ll either send me away to have the money or he’ll just send me the truck. But that’s fine.

It may not be God’s will. I say that to say this. When I say that all blessings he has are available to us, don’t think, okay, he slipped and hit his head and he’s into name it and claim it theology this morning.

Not what I’m talking about. It says all spiritual blessings. Don’t make the mistake of reading that and interpreting it as though that means because of what Jesus Christ did, I can have anything I want.

I can have anything I can name and claim. Because you know what? We’ve been praying for over a week now and that truck still isn’t in my driveway.

And you know what? It may never be. It may never be in my driveway.

And I’m okay with that. The insurance and gas would kill me on that thing. It may not be.

All the material blessings of this world are not necessarily mine for the taking. But all spiritual blessings have been made available to us. He says, in heavenly places, God from the very throne of heaven has spoken and said that belongs to you.

I’m giving you all spiritual blessings. Because we’re so wonderful, because I deserve it. Who in here thinks I deserve it?

Well, okay, you’re my favorite. No, I’m sure, as far as I know, you all like me, I think. I don’t know.

It’s church, we have to at least pretend to like each other, right? So I don’t know. I think y’all like me and probably think, I guess think I’m nice, but that doesn’t mean I automatically deserve God’s blessings.

Because in contrast, when it comes to God’s standards, I’m not nice enough to deserve everything God’s got. I’m not good enough. None of us are.

We’ve all fallen short of God’s standard of perfect holiness. We’ve all sinned against God. We’re deserving of nothing from God, but death and hell and eternal separation from him.

And so when the Bible says that all spiritual blessings, he’s blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, it’s not because we’re so good and so wonderful and deserve it, but we look at the end of the verse. He’s blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Because we stand in Christ. Because of what Christ did, all spiritual blessings are now available to us. And that, to me, reminds me that he is, to borrow the phrase from the song, he is the fount of every blessing.

We sang that song, or well, we didn’t sing it, but we went next week. We learned about that song with the kids in chapel on Wednesday. They do this neat thing where first Wednesday of every month during chapel, they pick a hymn and they give the story behind it and tell the kids the story.

And then they memorize one of the great old hymns of the faith, and they sing it every week. And for this month, it was, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. And you know what?

When it says, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, it’s not just talking. We could very easily gloss over that phrasing and think we’re singing about, Well, come on, blessings, I could use some more of you. No, the fount of every blessing is Jesus Christ. There’s a saying in Britain and some of the Commonwealth countries that the sovereign, the king or the queen, is the fount of all honors.

I believe it’s fount of honors. That anytime somebody is knighted, anytime somebody’s given a title, it’s not given by parliament. It’s not given by, I mean, they can make recommendations.

It’s not given entirely by birth. It’s given at the behest of the sovereign. They’re the fountain from which the honors flow.

And if somebody is a baron or a duke because their father was a baron or a duke, ultimately it goes back to the fact that the crown said you get to be that. And in the same way, Jesus Christ is the fount of every spiritual blessing. And we could focus this morning on the blessings, but we would make a mistake if we focus on the blessings and forget to focus on where they come from and why we have them.

And so this morning we can’t separate the two. And we’re talking about Jesus and the blessings he’s given us. We’re also talking about the blessings and the need to give thanks because he’s the only reason we have these things.

We’ve been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. And through the rest of this message, we’ll talk about what some of those are. Four of them that are discussed in this text. It says in verse 4, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.

And we’re going to stop there. There are other things we could go through chapter 1 and talk about that are very good, but we’re going to stop right there. And talk about four things that God has blessed us with in Jesus.

And we can’t forget that little, that tiny two-word prepositional phrase, in Jesus, or in Christ, because it conveys the meaning of the whole thing. We would not have these blessings apart from Jesus Christ. And the first blessing that we have in Jesus Christ is that our redemption through Jesus Christ has always been God’s plan A. You hear that?

It’s always been God’s plan that he would redeem us through Jesus Christ. It says in verse 4, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. And there are some words in here that people get hung up on. Words like chosen and predestinated.

And some of you may be mad when you leave here this morning. That’s fine. I don’t want to make anybody mad on purpose, but if you’re mad at me, well, I still love you, but I can’t help it.

Some people get hung up on these words. I’m going to tell you what I understand them to mean, and I don’t think they’re as difficult as people make them out to be. Okay, he’s chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.

Well, has he chosen me? Has he chosen you? Has he chosen just some of us?

And there are people who argue back and forth because there are groups of Christians who say, well, he’s chosen some, and only those he’s chosen can come to him. Okay, sometimes I can see where they get that. I’m not saying I agree with it, but I’m saying I can see where they get it.

There are others saying he chose everybody. He chose everybody, and so everybody’s going to be saved. Well, I definitely don’t agree with that, but I sometimes can see where they get it from.

Can I encourage you to look at the context here who he’s talking to? He’s talking to one of the cultural capitals of the Gentile world at that time. Ephesus was a city where a lot of the, you had in the church there at Ephesus, you had some Jewish people who had come to Christ, and you also had some pagan people who had come to Christ, some pagan Romans and Greeks.

And it was a big deal for the Jews to say, we are the chosen people of God. We as the Jews are the chosen people. And depending on what you mean by that, we still use that phrase today.

They’re the chosen people. And there was this thought for millennia that their descent from Abraham was going to be what got them into heaven. Now you read back in Galatians and other places in the New Testament, and it makes it very clear that what saved Abraham and what would save them was not their DNA, but was the faith that justified Abraham.

Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And nobody is saved by descent from Abraham any more than anybody is saved by being the son of a preacher or the grandson of a deacon or any of those things today. And so there was this idea still among some of them, well, we are in Christ because we were chosen.

We’re the chosen people. And what Paul is telling them is not, he chose you, he chose you, sorry he didn’t choose you. But I understand it to mean he’s talking to the Gentiles and saying, you know what, he chose us as well.

He chose the Gentiles to be grafted in to Israel. He chose us in Christ as well. Now, did God choose some for salvation and some for hell?

You know what? He could have if he chose to. That’s up to God.

I’m not going to tell him what he can and can’t do. But that’s not what I understand the scriptures to teach here. According as he had chosen us in him.

As I read through scriptures, and I’ll be honest, I struggled with this question for a lot of years. Calvinism, Arminianism, which is it? It’s got to be one or the other.

Who did he choose? Who did he not choose? And then it occurred to me because somewhere else in Scripture, and I can’t remember exactly where, it refers to Jesus Christ as the elect, and suddenly a light bulb went off.

He’s the chosen one. And I don’t believe, as I read the Scriptures, and you know what, there are smarter people than me. Or is it smarter people than I?

On both sides of the argument, who probably could mop the floor with me in a debate on the Scripture, and I don’t deny that. But as I read it, feeble man that I am, and try to understand it for myself, it occurs to me that what I understand the Scriptures to mean is that Jesus Christ is the chosen one. And God said, whosoever will may come to me through him.

He’s the chosen one. I’m not chosen. I’m not elect because God looked through time and said, I choose Jared.

But because God said, I choose all those who will come through Jesus Christ. He had chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. And there was some discussion with the high school students this week, not about election, but about God creating people and realizing there’s this sin problem. I’m going to have to do something about it.

And there was discussion, the question was asked, but you know what, there was never, I cannot see from what we know about God in the scriptures that there was ever a time where God was caught off guard by our sin and went, I can’t believe that just happened. You ate that fruit. I did not see this coming.

What a plot twist. The God I know from the scriptures was not surprised. The God I know was not walking through the garden and said, where are you? Because he didn’t know where they were.

He was asking, where are you? Because he wanted them to know where they were. You know what?

And before it happened, God knew before it happened, but there wasn’t even a time before it happened where the realization occurred to God. Try to wrap your minds around this. God has known from before the foundation of the world.

God knew from before creation. God knew before He ever formed us that we were going to fall into sin and that He was going to have to redeem us. And God’s plan A before He ever set the world in motion before Genesis 1-1 ever happened, God’s plan was to create us knowing that God the Son would have to shed His blood and die for us.

It’s always been God’s plan. And he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. You think, why is this a blessing?

This is kind of a bummer. The reason this is a blessing is because think about the fact that he could have saved himself so much trouble knowing all of this in advance that he was going to have to do this. He could have just not created us.

And yet before he formed us, he knew us and he loved us. Not because we’re good and deserving of it, but because he’s loving. And so God, before any of this began, knew that mankind would be created, mankind would sin, mankind would need a Savior, knew who I was and knew who you were, and loved us enough that knowing He was going to have to die for us, created us anyway.

And it’s always been His plan A to redeem us from our sins in Jesus Christ. That He’s chosen. God could have chosen any plan of salvation He wanted, well, I guess, could have planned any plan of salvation He wanted or no plan of salvation at all. But he chose before the foundation of the world to offer salvation through Christ and whosoever will would come unto him.

We don’t have to twist God’s arm. We don’t have to. .

. Nobody had to go to God and beg him and say, we’re going to hell. Would you please save us?

You know what? When we didn’t even care as a human race about the consequences of our actions, eternal or otherwise, God already had formulated the plan to redeem us. And salvation, his grace, his calling us, however all of that works, was his plan A before the world ever began.

And it’s a blessing to know that our God was never caught off guard. We didn’t have to talk him into it. He did all of this because he loved us in spite of how he knew we were going to turn out.

And he’s chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. We’ll come back for the second part of that verse in just a minute. But the second blessing we have in Christ beyond this redemption is that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ means that our sins are forgiven.

His sacrifice means that our sins are forgiven. We do not have to be good enough. We can’t be good enough.

That’s just the basics of it. We can’t be good enough. But we don’t have to try to be good enough.

I don’t mean go live your life however you want. He’ll take care of it. But there’s a difference between trying to live a godly life to please Him because we love Him and living in fear that we’re going to fall short and fall into eternal hellfire.

There’s a big difference between that, isn’t it? As a believer, I still sin. And I feel that horrible feeling of disappointing my father and knowing I’ve let him down.

But I also know that I can go and confess it before him and be done with it. And he forgives and he restores and he reconciles. I don’t have to live in.

. . I can live with the.

. . I have to deal with the conviction of sin.

But I don’t have to live with the fear of, oh no, I’ve messed up one too many times. It’s over. He doesn’t love me anymore.

Now it says in verse 7, in whom, speaking of Jesus Christ, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. We have redemption through His blood. We were not just, the slate was not just wiped clean.

He bought us back. He bought us back from the sin we had sold ourselves into slavery to. We hear stories from American history about people who worked for decades, maybe their whole lives, just trying to purchase their own freedom.

And how many people in our country’s history died with just the simple dream of being able to buy back their freedom but never got there? They were born in slavery, they lived their lives in slavery, and they died in slavery. And it was a horrible, horrible thing.

And we were born in slavery to sin. And we dug ourselves deeper and deeper into it because we’re sinners and we can’t help ourselves. That’s what we do.

And we would have died in bondage to sin apart from Jesus Christ. No hope. Hear me on this. Zero hope of ever purchasing our freedom from sin.

Of ever getting out of that. And along comes a man who was under no obligation to do so because of his love and his mercy and his grace bought our freedom at tremendous personal cost. It’d be the same as, well, think of it this way. It would mean something if back in the slavery days, a man who was a millionaire had come through and purchased a slave’s freedom with a few hundred dollars or whatever it cost. It didn’t cost him much, but it meant a lot to the slave.

Now think of the same story, but you’ve got a slave who’s born into slavery, has lived his life in slavery, is about to die in slavery because he’s about to be beaten to death for some kind of infraction. And a man comes along and says, let him go free and I’ll take the beating. I’ll take the punishment for whatever it is he’s done.

But you’re a free man. It doesn’t matter. I’ll take the punishment for what he’s done.

Take me instead. It’s exactly what he did for us. We had no hope.

Today we still have no hope of getting out of the shackles of sin. getting out of the shackles of death and hell apart from what Jesus Christ did. We have redemption through his blood.

That word redeemed means he bought us back. He gave us value. We have the forgiveness of sin.

He bought us back. He said the sin that we had committed and the filth and all of it, the slate was wiped clean. The more I begin to understand grace, the harder it is for me to understand why God would give it to us.

the more I understand, and I’m still not all the way there yet, but the more I understand how God views our sin and how really vile we are compared to him. And I don’t tell you this to make you feel bad. So instead of we, I’ll say me.

The more I understand how vile I really am, in contrast to a holy God, the harder it gets for me to understand why he would do what he did, why he would even think about loving me, why he would send his son to die for me, Why Jesus would go and why God would be willing to say, okay, now you have a clean slate. Wait a minute. You don’t know what I’ve done.

Of course he knows what I’ve done. And you’re willing to just forgive all of that. You’re willing to let all of that go.

Of course, it’s been paid for in full. Folks, that kind of grace ought to bring us to our knees in recognition of what he’s done. Of this incredible weight of sin that’s been lifted off of us.

And for no other reason than because it’s who he is. He is gracious and He is merciful and He is forgiving and He was born to be a sacrifice. So all of that sin is forgiven according to the riches of His grace.

God doesn’t just give a little bit of grace but He’s rich in grace and He just gives it to us freely because of what Jesus Christ did. You know what? Any other material blessing we could pray for sort of pales in comparison to that one.

Pales in comparison to the sacrifice of Christ and the forgiveness that we have because of Him. Third of all this morning, the righteousness of Jesus Christ means that God sees us as holy and blameless. We didn’t get there ourselves.

We didn’t get there on our own. I can attest to that for myself. Verse 4, going back to that, says, According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Well, that’s a pretty tall order. Holy and without blame. I’m not even holy and without blame this morning.

And yet we’re supposed to, through our whole lives, be able at the end of it to stand before God wholly and without blame? I have no righteousness of my own. I have no goodness of my own.

I know myself, and no matter how hard I try, and we’re all this way, no matter how hard I try, even my purest actions are tainted with just a little bit of wrong. And we’re to stand before God who sees everything, who knows everything, who knows the thought in our hearts. He knows it all.

and knew it before we ever thought it or did it. And we’re supposed to stand before him holy and without blame in love. Can’t do it.

Can’t do it. And yet, he’s chosen us before the foundation of the world that we might be able to stand before him holy and without blame. And the Bible talks about us being able to take on the righteousness of Christ. The Bible says that all of our good works are like filthy rags.

And so we stand before a holy God on our own, and we’re supposed to appear before him spotless and holy. That’s his standard. That’s what he’s looking for.

And we stand before him clothed in tattered, filthy rags. And yet the Bible says, as I’ve already mentioned, that Christ’s righteousness is accredited to our account. It’s like covering over those filthy rags with a bright white garment.

And we stand before the Lord in these white robes. Now, God’s no fool. God knows we’re sinners.

It’s not a trick here. The Bible doesn’t say really that God forgets our sins. It says he chooses to remember them no more.

God knows they’re there, but he doesn’t hold them against us anymore. He knows we’re sinners, but he looks on us and he chooses to see the righteousness of Christ. Nobody’s being tricked here, but part of his sacrifice was so that we could have his righteousness. And so God, as a result, looks on his children and sees us as holy and blameless without spot, without imperfection.

He puts our sin, God puts our sin as far from us as the east is from the west. I’m sure you’ve all seen a globe. It’s got a north pole and it’s got a south pole. You start at the south pole, you can only go so far north before you start going south again.

There’s a finite amount of area between north and south. But you can start at a point on a globe and move from east to west and you can’t ever stop going west. There’s never a point you get to where, oh, I can’t go west anymore. It’s a long way.

The Bible says he puts our sin that far from us. So not only does he forgive it, but he says, you know what, you’re somebody new, and I’m going to see you as somebody new. Not who you are, not the rotten old Jared, not the sinner, but the Jared who’s in Jesus Christ, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

We couldn’t do that apart from the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And finally this morning, our new life in Jesus Christ means that we were adopted and accepted as God’s children. I taught a message on this one time before not here about the prodigal son and about how it would have been amazingly gracious of God if he, of the father in the story of the prodigal son. It would have been amazingly gracious and forgiving if he had just allowed the son to come back as a servant after what he did, after what he had done.

And that’s all the