Ephesians 1:1-14
"What God Has
Done For Us"
Page
2
Now verse 3
down to verse 14 begins the doxology, where he begins to
pour out some very remarkable things, about our position
in Christ. Verse
15, after he pours all of those things out, he says, "Wherefore
I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and
love for all the saints, cease not to give thanks and making
mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of him" (verses 15-17).
So he goes through the first 14 verses and says,
'This is who you are, this is where you are, this is what
God has done, this is how he has accomplished it.' And when he gets to verse 15 he says, 'Wherefore,
because of all that, I don't ever stop praying that God
would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him, that you might understand the truth of
all of that. In the
first 14 verses, verses 3 to 6, he talks about the things
that the Father has accomplished.
Verses 7 to 11, he talks about the Son, and what
Christ has done. Verses
13 and 14 he talks about the Spirit and what the Spirit
has done. And in
all of those realms, of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Spirit, he talks about the spiritual blessings that
we have in Christ Jesus.
He begins by talking about that in verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ."
Now 'Blessed be the God, Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ', it isn't the same as 'blessed are the meek, blessed
are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn' that
we have in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. That is a word that means 'happy, fulfilled,
happy are those who mourn, happy are the poor in spirit.' This is a different word, we get 'eulogize'
from the same word, 'to speak well of.'
When we go to a funeral the last thing they say about a person you're
there to honor is the eulogy, speaking well of that person. And that's this word "blessed" here.
Paul says "to speak well of", "to
praise, to glorify, to say the things that need to be said,
blessed, well spoken be God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us with all."
Notice that, not most, but ".all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ."
Now by the way we're going to look at some of these
spiritual blessings this evening.
Some of them he lists here are (1) "election",
(2) "predestination", (3) "redemption",
(4) "revelation", (5) "inheritance",
(6) "the sealing of the Spirit". He really goes through a list of remarkable
things that are ours. And
these are these spiritual blessings that we have received
in heavenly places in Christ.
Now look, they are for spiritual men and women.
They are not for carnal men and women [and I might
add, carnal, unconverted men and women would not
appreciate these spiritual blessings, nor would
they understand what they're all about, cf. I Corinthians
2:11-16.] They're
for spiritual men and women, where our heart should be in
relationship to the Lord.
There's people here who come to church who just come
to scope out, and see if there's any chicks here, there's
people who come to church just to date, there's people who
come to church looking for this, there's people who come
to church and say, 'Nobody said Hi to me!' 'Nobody shook
my hand!' 'That's
the second time I've been there and nobody paid any attention
to me!' There's all kinds of
reasons why people come to church, what people want. And we're certainly not here to supply carnal
things. [One
word about dating.
The other side of the coin on that matter is this.
It's not wrong to get interested in a gal or guy
in church, as opposed to dating a non-believer outside of
church. The Bible
cautions us to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers,
and that is talking about marriage.
So by all means, find that special one the Lord has
for you within the church environment. But that is not to be your central aim for attending
church. That is what
Pastor Joe Focht is getting at.]
If people want sex and people want alcohol and drugs
and want pornography there's a whole world out there filled
with it. Have at
it! We don't supply
it here. Hate to disappoint you, that's
not what the church is about.
The world is filled with that, if that's what you
want, if you're not done yet, until you're done with it,
go out there till you puke from it. [And if someone you're interested in likes pornography
or any of those other things (even though he/she may be
attending church) find someone else--they're not spiritually
minded--use discernment, marriage is for a lifetime, and
divorce is an extremely painful way of
undoing a mistake in choice.]
But if we want
spiritual things, if we want truth and we want light, and
we want to take inventory of what the Father has done for
us in a world that's falling apart, in a world where there's
war--in a world where the apostles and prophets told us
things would wax worse and worse until Christ would come--and
if in the middle of all of that, we want a Rock under our
feet, we want a Foundation to stand on, we want something
that transcends this present world with all of its problems--well
he says to us here, 'We have all spiritual blessings in
Christ in heavenly places.
That's why we should speak well of him [the Father].
Because all of those things have been made ours now in Christ. Ten times in the first 13 verses he says "in
Christ". 27
times, I believe, in Ephesians, he says "in Christ." In fact, I think there's over 200 times the
prefix "en", "to be in" is used in the
book of Ephesians, but "in Christ" specifically,
27 times, and 10 times in the first 13 verses.
That's where the spiritual blessings that the Father
has for us are, in
Christ, and because of Christ.
Not because of us, not because we deserve them, not
because we've earned them, they're in Christ.
And he's going to begin to talk about that.
He says, let's read verse 3 again, "Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places"--I know you'd like
some blessings in earthly places once in awhile, and God
does that, but we have all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places "in Christ,
according as he hath chosen us in him"--in Christ--you
want to take note of all the "in whom, in him, in Christ"--".according
as he has chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be." Not because we be, but "that we should
be". He's making
us into something, not blessing us because we were something.
".that
we should be holy, and without blame before him in love." Now,
"according as he has chosen us in him", "he
hath chosen us in him".
Now we're going to see something as we move through
here. In Christ,
first of all, realize this.
Our experience will never equal our position this
side of heaven [or "eternal life" to some readers].
Our experience is never going to match our positions. Positionally we're in Christ, justified, sanctified,
glorified--we stand before the God who calls things that
are not as though they were--he sees us complete, and pronounces
the very righteousness of Christ upon us.
That is our position. Our experience is "working out our own
salvation with fear and trembling"--the God who wills
to do his own good pleasure--working in us, we're being
changed from glory to glory. But positionally we're complete. He's going to tell us where we are because of
Christ and in Christ. And
the first thing he says here to us about that, he says,
"that we are chosen in
him", very interesting phrase here.
First of all, and some of this will bore you, but
hopefully you'll see why it's important.
It's in the aritis tense [not sure of spelling],
which means 'once and for all.' He's chosen us once and for all, out from,
in the choosing there's a pre-fix act which means "out
from", he's chosen us "out
from this world", and it's in the middle voice
in the grammar, which means "for one's self."
Paul says a very remarkable thing here, "God
has given us all of these spiritual blessings in the heavenlies
in Christ, according ." Now this is the way it begins and this
is the way it happens. "He
has chosen us once and for all, out from among this present world unto himself
for himself, as a treasure."
God has looked down at your life and my life and
the world in human history and he has chosen, he's made
a choice, election, he has made a choice. OK, somebody's going to argue, let's settle
this before we go any further, 'What about man's responsibility? What about God's sovereignty?' 'Just teach the next verse and shut up!'--that's
what God tells me. You
know why? Because
they're both in the Bible.
You have a Jesus who says "Of all those the
Father's given me I won't lose one"--and--"any
man who comes to me I'll in no wise cast out."
He gives us both in one verse.
That should calm everybody down.
"Of all the Father's given me I won't lose one,
and if any man who comes to me", that's sovereignty
and responsibility in one verse.
And the Bible is filled with it.
If we're too much in Armenius we put all the responsibility
on man, we rob God of his glory and his sovereignty.
If we're too much of a Calvinist on the other side,
we rob man of his responsibility. We shouldn't be anybody, because they're both
in Scripture. Hugh
Ross gave my favorite analogy when I talked about this day
in my Bible class. But he's a scientist, he's a brilliant guy,
and he said, "To me, sovereignty and responsibility,
trying to reconcile those two is like this."
And he held up, he had a photograph of a triangle.
And he said, "No matter how many times I turn
this, because it's a photograph, it only has height and
width, it's only two dimensions, it can never be a circle.
It's got three angles and three sides, no matter
which way I turn it, it's a triangle. Both things can't be true. It can't be a circle and a triangle."
But then he showed a photograph of the same object
from above and it was a cone sitting on the fat end.
He says "Now by adding one dimension both things
can be true, it can be a circle and a triangle."
He said, "As a scientist, when I see the contradiction
between sovereignty and human responsibility in Scripture,
it tells me that where God wrote this book from, he enjoys
more dimensions than we do, and from where he is both things
are true. Because
we lack dimension we can't reconcile them.
We can't understand."
We find both things in Scripture. [There are other
"doctrines" some ascribe to, that oppose other
Scriptures which form Bible doctrines--like the promises
of God to the Israelites, Israeli's, in the millennial kingdom
of God, promises of kingdom and land--Ezekiel 36, and Jeremiah
31, whole chapters of prophecy, which at first glance appear
to be cancelled out by what Paul wrote in Galatians. Yet Paul later wrote in Romans 11 that the promises
are in no wise cancelled out to the Jews. How can the apparent doctrine of "replacement
theology" in Galatians square with many prophecies
in the OT and in Romans 11?
Again, aren't we thinking inside a box again,
or two or even one-dimensionally, while the Lord God who
inspired and wrote the Word of God in its entirety is looking
at how these apparent contradictory Scriptures really properly
fit together? Hmm.] And certainly in the beginning of Ephesians
we don't want to take an iota away from the wonder
of what this is saying to us. He's chosen us, not just
that he's chosen people, there's a greater wonder, he's
chosen us. Look around, let it
really blow your mind, us!
Look, he's chosen us.
And how he did that was, he made up his mind, once
and for all, he picked out from among whatever [and each
of us should remember back to when and where you were when
God first started really calling you].
And he did that, in the middle voice says, "to
bring us to himself."
Is he going to change his mind?
Is he sitting in heaven saying, 'I got a lemon, I
didn't realize that.'? No, look what it says here. You can tell because of when he did it. "He hath chosen us in him"--look--"before
the foundation of the world." No mistakes there. "That's in heavenly places." "He
chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love, that we should be holy
and without blame before him." Another remarkable phrase, "before"
come from caennta-opion.
Before is: "Cata" is down, "enn"
is "in", "opion" is "to look".
"He has made a once and for all choice and chosen
us out from among human history for himself before the worlds
were framed, that we should be holy and without blame as
he looks down into us in love."
It says exactly what it sounds like.
He looks past all of our failings, in Christ.
He looks past all of our faltering and our weaknesses,
in Christ. He looks past all of our sin, in Christ. And he looks down into us with pleasure. He cherishes us, we're
the object of his desire.
He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places in Christ. And Paul says, it begins, "According to"--he
brings pressure on it, this is how it begins, 'that he's
chosen us.' It was
an election, before the worlds were formed.
He chose us out from among the whole train of human
history, with a decision that will never be changed, it
was once and for all, and the reason he did it was for himself, that we may be holy and without blame, as he looks
down into us, he sees us holy, and without blame. And he looks down into us in love. Now to me that's a spiritual treasure. I don't know about you. That's a spiritual treasure in Christ.
