2. Blessings in Christ

Ephesians 1:3–14 (NIrV)

3 Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Those blessings come from the heavenly world. They belong to us because we belong to Christ. 4 God chose us to belong to Christ before the world was created. He chose us to be holy and without blame in his eyes. He loved us. 5 So he decided long ago to adopt us as his children. He did it because of what Jesus Christ has done. It pleased God to do it. 6 All those things bring praise to his glorious grace. God freely gave us his grace because of the One he loves.

7 We have been set free because of what Christ has done. Through his blood our sins have been forgiven. We have been set free because God’s grace is so rich. 8 He poured his grace on us by giving us great wisdom and understanding. 9 He showed us the mystery of his plan. It was in keeping with what he wanted to do. It was what he had planned through Christ. 10 It will all come about when history has been completed. God will then bring together all things in heaven and on earth under one ruler. The ruler is Christ.

11 We were also chosen to belong to him. God decided to choose us long ago in keeping with his plan. He works out everything to fit his plan and purpose. 12 We were the first to put our hope in Christ. We were chosen to bring praise to his glory. 13 You also became believers in Christ. That happened when you heard the message of truth. It was the good news about how you could be saved. When you believed, he marked you with a seal. The seal is the Holy Spirit that he promised. 14 The Spirit marks us as God’s own. We can now be sure that someday we will receive all that God has promised. That will happen after God sets all of his people completely free. All of those things will bring praise to his glory.

Thank you Annelyse for reading our text for today. You did a great job covering some really tough words like “Predestination” “Redemption” and “Trespasses”. And not only are these tough because they are not words that we use in everyday vocabulary, but their meanings are as complex as their many syllables.

Introduction

We will get back to those in a moment but first of all I want to administer an “age test” to show who the young people are in the room. The test goes like this: What do you think of when I say the phrase: “I love it when a plan comes together”

If your mind pictures a particular white haired colonel with a big smile hiding behind an even bigger cigar then you my friend are no longer young…or you just like TV shows from the 80’s.

My wife and I recently introduced our children to the original “A-Team” series and in every episode this team of renegade “soldiers of fortune” would come to the aid of someone who had no where else to turn as they were being taken advantage of by some well connected and fully corrupted people of great power and influence. And so we just “pitty the fool” that messed the A-Team.

Because no matter what scenario was thrown at them they were always able to resolve the conflict in a little less than an hour program. Their leader always had a crazy plan that had little to no chance of actually working but somehow…every week…it always did. They went up against impossible odds and encountered a string of near misses but then…in the end...everything would fall into place like it was always meant to go that way. It is at that point when we would hear Colonel Smith say those iconic words “I love it when a plan comes together”

And I know I must be getting older now, not just because I remember A-Team lunch boxes…a kid could dream... but because as I watched the episodes this time through, my willing suspense of disbelief was a little weak. I had a much harder time accepting that a crazy plan like this would work even one time, let alone time after time and episode after episode. Life just doesn’t work like that.

Plus how did they turn those cars into armored attack vehicles with like spare parts from the vacuum cleaner store in the short time it took for the bad guys to even get there? I couldn’t even change the belt on my lawn mower that quick and they are turning hoovers into bazookas.

Anyway, I drove us a short way down memory lane to get our minds thinking on what it takes not only to have a plan, but to have the power to see that plan happen…as you planned it.

Tension

Because our new series from the book of Ephesians is called “God’s Plan. Our Place In it.” And this is a great title for a series on Ephesians because in those two phrases you can find the outline for the entire book. The entire book is just 6 chapters long and chapters 1-3 of Ephesians are about “God’s Plan” as he has and is working it all out and the last 3, chapters 4-6 focus on “Our Place in God’s Plan”.

So the title works well as an outline, but it also reminds us of a very important principle. One that all of us at some point have forgotten, or at least lived our lives as if it wasn’t true. We sometimes think that we are something like Colonel Smith of the A Team and we so make our crazy plan and start delegating out the roles to our Team and since we are a Christian then of course we ask God to play a role in our plan too.

But God doesn’t work that way, and neither does the world that he has created. Things in this world will never revolve around us and our plans - no matter how good we are at making them. That only works for TV dramas, it does not work in real life. When we finally realize that our world does not revolve around us it changes how we look at everything.

It is like when Galileo confirmed Copernicus’ theory about how the earth actually revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. Everybody was like What?!

Today we can’t even imagine someone thinking this way , but just imagine how disorienting it would have been to learn for the first time that everything in our universe actually doesn’t revolve around us, but instead our entire world is revolving around something else. That discovery took a long time for people to accept, even those in the Christian Church struggled to accept it because it flew in the face of how they looked at their life and the world around them.

The book of Ephesians drives us toward a similar kind of struggle. We no longer need convincing that the earth revolves around the Sun, S-U-N, but we often live our lives with little or any regard to the reality that everything in our world revolves around the Son, S-O-N. The Son of God. That everything in our lives and the lives of every person on the face of the earth revolves around God’s plan to unify everything in heaven and on earth under Jesus.

That is God’s plan, and we are going to look deeper into it from the book of Ephesians. So if you haven’t already, open your Bibles up with me to Ephesians chapter 1, that is on page 976 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and we will dive into the text together.

Truth

So our text today, and all that is packed into it, is packed into one long sentence in the Greek. The longest sentence in the New Testament, 202 Greek words in a row with no ending punctuation. That is what my High School English Teacher “Mrs. Spellman” would have angrily called a “run-on” sentence. True story…both that my English teacher was named “Spell-man” and she yelled at her students for “run on” sentences. I may or may not know this from personal experience.

So to appease the “Mrs. Spellman’s” of the world, or just to help us track with all that Paul is saying here, the translators who translated the Bible into English have broken it down for us into sentences and paragraphs.

But I share this bit of Bible trivia with you because Paul wrote it this way for a reason. This is a grammatical device in Greek writing that gives the reader a sense that what they are reading should be read with incredible excitement, like someone rushing up to you to tell you this great news that has happened an they are so excited that they try and tell you all of it at once in one long breathe.

(I tried to get Annelyse to read it in one breathe but that was a hard “no” and understandably so.)

But Paul was sharing this great news, the greatest news in the world! And more than just reading it with that excitement we should receive it with great joy and excitement. For it begins with the great news that...

In Christ, we have been chosen and adopted by God the Father

I love how this section gives us the full picture of the Godhead - Father, Son and Spirit - working together in their plan to work all things out for our greatest good and their greatest glory. So it begins by saying...

Ephesians 1:3(ESV)

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

Paul begins with blessing God, or declaring Him worthy of praise because what he has done for us “In Christ”. As we said last week, everything in this book of Ephesians is written to those who are “in Christ” and here in this long sentence we see this phrase, in Christ or in him repeated over and over again.

And what has God done for us? He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

Don’t confuse the adjective “heavenly” with the noun “heaven” (Look at me, using my parts of speech, Mrs Spellmen would be so proud) But when we hear the word “heaven” our minds quickly go to the our eternal destiny when we will be with God in all his perfect glory, but this is the descriptive adjective “heavenly” and it describes not just one place but “places” plural.

So this is not the throne room of God, but the spiritual realm where both righteousness and evil exist and are battling for control right now. This battle is described in chapter 6 where it says:

Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

So there are “spiritual forces of evil” in these “heavenly places” so not heaven as we would think of it, but we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the spiritual realm of heavenly places. And then chapter 6 goes on to describe the blessing of the armor of God so that we can engage in the battle…but I don’t want to get too far ahead, I just wanted to make sure we are understood that “heavenly places” is the spiritual realm that we spiritually engage in.

So let’s get back to chapter 1 where God the Father has blessed us and given us EVERY spiritual blessing in this spiritual realm. Did you hear that “every”? “Every” is a very absolute word. It means that God has given us absolutely everything that would be a blessing for us to have in the spiritual realm. He could not give us any more, we already have every blessing.

How has he done this? Let’s pick up in verse 4

Ephesians 1:4-6(ESV)

4 even as he chose us in him (in Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

These are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture. That before time began, God the Father saw you and chose you to be holy and blameless before Him. But of course, He also saw that we were not holy and blameless and that we could do nothing on our own to become so. So He did what was needed in sending His one an only begotten Son so that he could adopt us as His sons.

And it says “sons” not children for a very important reason. This is not gender elitism or gender confusion. This is about our position in God’s family being equal regardless of our gender.

You see the inheritance of the Father was given to the son. Daughters received from the family of their husbands, but the sons received from the Father. So Paul is telling the saints, both male and female saints that they - regardless of gender - have been adopted into the position of Son with all the benefits that goes with it.

Because in this time in history, both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman world recognized adoption. Especially when the patriarch of a family estate did not have any living sons to pass the family fortune onto, then he would adopt one of his faithful servants or slaves to become his heir. The Father would have to choose to adopt his son, and Paul is saying that God has chosen everyone who is “In Christ” to be his heir.

How is it that God who chose us can adopt us as sons, even though our record is not “holy and blameless” as his heirs should be? Because...

In Christ, We have been redeemed and forgiven by God the Son

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

When the leader of the A Team said, “I love it when a plan comes together” there was a sense of relief because no one ever knew if his crazy plan would actually work. Not so with God. If God were to say something like that, it would only be as he sat back and enjoyed seeing everything that he knew would happen unfold before Him.

That is his meaning behind this “fullness of time” phrase. It isn’t the “perfect time” in the sense that God looked across time and compared every moment to find the best one…it is a declaration of God’s sovereignty in that He is bringing all His perfect will into existence so that everything that He desired to be now is fulfilled.

You see, much of God’s will is a mystery to us, but nothing God has ever put in motion is a mystery to Him. Before time began, God launched His plan to rescue His wayward adopted “sons” through His one and only begotten Son. It was His plan from the beginning, and somehow He receives even greater glory by sending His Son Jesus to do what He did for us on the cross.

That through the shedding of His blood, our debt would be paid. We would be redeemed - purchased back to God by God. And that is not all, in his lavish love for us, “In Christ” we have been forgiven of our trespasses, which is our sin or our corruption of God’s design in us - from last week. He set that plan forth “In Christ” to be realized in the fullness of time.

But not all of God’s plan has yet been fulfilled. We have chosen and adopted, we are redeemed and forgiven but “all things...things in heaven and things on earth”, have not yet been fully united under Christ. It is like our adoption has been finalized but we have not moved into our new home yet. We have heard about it. We are excited about it. We long for it…but we have not realized it fully yet.

Until Christ’s returns we just get a taste of it, something like a down payment or gaurantee. This brings us our final theme in this long breathe of a text where...

In Christ, we have been sealed and guaranteed by the God the Holy Spirit

11 In him (in Christ) we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

So this is a reference to a theme that we will dive into later in this series, but basically the first to hope in Christ were the Disciples and the Jewish Christians. There may be some Jews in the many Churches that this letter got passed around to, but most of the people around Ephesus would have been Gentiles. And Paul is only making a timing distinction here, not a value distinction between the next thing he says is:

13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

So the word translated “guarantee” here is the Greek word ἀρραβών (arrobon) and it is used only three times in the New Testament and always in reference to the Holy Spirit. And “guarantee” is an ok word, but it takes you down a more accurate path when your realize that this was a legal term in that the guarantee was given as a “down payment” or “first installment” of something that is to come.

Think of it like this. You go out to your mailbox and in it you find an official looking envelope that you open up to read in official type language that you were the long lost nephew of some wealthy aristocrat in a country you never heard of and they want you to fly over right away. Well you would probably be pretty skeptical of something like that…at least until a caravan of stretch limos with matching flags on their hoods stop in front of your house. The doors opened and a dispatch of ambassadors in full regalia exited the vehicles and walked up your front steps and knocked on the door.

As you let them in, you stare wide eyed as they march into your living room carry what looks like a large jewel encrusted chest of some kind. They reference the letter in the mail, explain the situation again including describing the lavish inheritance that is being kept for you in this far away land.

Then to reassure you that this inheritance is truly yours they offer you a guarantee, a “first installment” or “down payment”. They reach down and unlatch the chest and as they slowly open it your eyes are blinded by the dazzling beauty of the most beautiful treasure you could ever even imagine.

Now do you believe the letter in the mail?

And “In Christ” our guarantee is better than temporary wealth of some foreign estate that can be lost, squandered or stolen. Instead, our blessings are sealed by the presence of the Holy Spirit working in and through us and giving us our first taste of what the full Kingdom of God will be like.

Do you realize that this is what being full of the Spirit is? It is to experience in the spiritual realm the peace with God washing over you in such a way that it causes you to respond differently to others and the world around you. It is to have in the spiritual realm what we will one day experience in every realm.

On that day, Jesus will return and unite all things to himself, things in the heavenly places and things of earth. Right now, through the Holy Spirit, we get a taste of the presence, power and glory of God that someday we will be fully immersed in.

But that taste is not just for us to soak up, it awakens us to the very present Kingdom where the rule and reign of God compels us to obedience as it forms us into something closer to what God intended us to be. That “In Christ” we would turn our backs on our trespasses and sins and walk “holy and blameless”, in step our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

God the Father chose us for this, Jesus is the door that gets us there and the Holy Spirit helps us to walk in it.

This is how God’s Plan comes together for those who are “In Christ”:

That we are chosen and adopted by the Father,

Redeemed and forgiven by the Son

and sealed and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.

Application

You see God’s plans are nothing like ours. His plan is more like a promise, and God always keeps his promises. This is why so many of us are frustrated and confused about what it happening in our lives right now. We have been asking God to fit into our plans instead of asking Him how we fit in His.

When we put ourselves in the center of our universe and try to make our plans to keep all our different spheres of our life rotating around us then something will eventually crash. This world was never designed to rotate around us.

But we ask, “What do we do with the things of earth? What do we do with the needs, roles and responsibilities that we have right now while we are waiting for Jesus to return? Well Jesus told us what to do with the things of earth. He said:

Matthew 6:31–33 (ESV)

31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

These Gentiles had to seek after these things because they don’t know God, His plan or their place in it. But for those of who are “In Christ” Jesus says:

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Landing / Next Steps

Keeping Christ in the center and seeing everything else in our lives revolving around Him is the only way to have lasting peace and true life. We get a taste of it now in the Spirit, but some day we will have it in the full.

Lets pray into that together.