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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.
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