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.