God is for You
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
In so many ways, I hate the title of my sermon. In the past I have seen commercials and billboard signs that proclaim these very words: “God is for you.” I cannot help but think (and sometimes say aloud), “Really?” How do you know that God is for every person that is watching this show or driving down this interstate? God can certainly oppose many people. He opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So I cringed a little when I wrote out the title of this sermon. However, I do think these words are true for those who are believers--those who are in Christ. This is the message that we see throughout this letter we call Ephesians. God is for you. While it is found throughout in many subtle ways, it is explicitly clear in these first fourteen verses that Paul writes. We are going to be studying these first fourteen verses for the next five weeks (including today) because they are foundational to understanding the rest of the letter, but also because they are foundational to living a victorious Christian life.
What I want us to see this morning are the ABCs of our Christian faith that point us to God’s favor upon us. By the end of the sermon, my hope is that we not only have mentally understood God’s favor, but emotionally and spiritually grasped it as well. In other words, I don’t want this to simply be a theological truth in our heads, but a joyous truth in our souls. The ABCs are simply this:
The Abiding in Christ
The Blessing in Christ
The Choosing In Christ
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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,
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
The Abiding in Christ
The Abiding in Christ
The letter A of the ABCs of our Christian faith is the Abiding in Christ. This comes directly from the first verse.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:
Quickly, I want to focus on the second half of that verse: “To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” The word “saint” literally means those who are purified and set apart. In other words, God has purified and set apart from the world, those whom we call saints. That is God’s doing. But then Paul also states that they are faithful in Christ Jesus. Some might say that these are parallel ideas, and to some degree that would be true, but the faithfulness of the saint is the responsibility of the saint. Thus, as God’s saints we are to abide in Christ--to live faithfully in him. God then, in his power sets us apart, and we continue on by his grace and power (which we’ll see later in the book) faithful in that calling.
And we see that Paul is a great example of this being set apart and faithfulness, so let’s go back to the first part of the verse. If you know the story of Paul, you know that he was of the religious leaders known as the Pharisees. He was taught by the great Gamiliel, who is not only known in the Bible, but in Judaism as well. He was an elite teacher of what we’d call the Old Testament. By the time Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, he would have had what we’d consider to be two PhDs. His life was set. He knew who he was, what he was going to do, and how he would do it. He was zealous for God and for Pharisaism. And then Jesus showed up out of nowhere, and everything changed. Paul was suddenly set apart. As a believer, he was a saint set aside in purity unto God. And in that, he was called to be an apostle - by the will of God. Don’t let that slip by as if it means nothing. This was not Paul’s will. This wasn’t Paul’s plan. This was all God’s doing. Paul had his future mapped out, but it wasn’t the future God willed for his life. And in that apostleship, Paul was faithful. He abided in Christ and in his purity. Paul sees that same saintliness and faithfulness among those to whom he writes.
Now, what we’re going to see is that Paul continuously uses this word “in” throughout Ephesians, but especially in these first fourteen verses. You’ll find the words “in Christ Jesus,” “in Christ,” “in him,” and the like over and over again. What does Paul mean by those phrases anyway? The easiest way to put it is that he is your identity. You and he are so closely united that you take on his identity as your own. This may sound weird, but we do this in similar ways today. They aren’t exact, but close enough, I think, to help us.
For example, when an actor takes a role for a long time, we tend to think of that person as the actor portrayed. So, when we see a picture of Rainn Wilson, we don’t think that’s Rainn Wilson; we think, “there’s Dwight Schrute!” Christopher Reeve was Superman. He will always be remembered as Superman even though he played in 20 non-Superman movies. There are other actors that are the same way. And sometimes, if there is a child nearby, we might just see these actors get “in character.” Just as Rainn Wilson is so closely associated with Dwight Schrute and Christopher Reeve is so closely associated with Superman, so we are so closely associated with Christ that we are considered “in Christ.”
The Blessing in Christ
The Blessing in Christ
And being so closely united to Christ brings blessings in Christ, which is the B of our Christian faith. We’ve seen the Abiding in Christ that now leads to the Blessing in Christ.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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 himself wanted to bring God’s blessing to his readers in the form of grace and peace. But notice that the grace and peace come from God our Father. He is God our Father. So, our first blessing is that this grace and peace comes from God our Father. Our Father is a Father of both grace (favor) and peace. Paul can confidently write to the churches asking for the Father’s grace because the Father is by nature gracious and peaceful. And this blessing comes because we abide in Christ. He is not only our Father, but as Paul reminded his readers He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are in Christ, the very Father of Christ becomes our Father. We’ll see next week that it through adoption, but only adoption in Christ.
But notice also that in verse three, we find that all of our blessings come to us in Christ. If Christ is not a part of our lives, then these blessings--these spiritual blessings are not for us. These are blessings that give to those to whom he favors--shows grace upon. But even beyond that! These blessings are not future blessings only. Instead, Paul wrote that we have already been blessed. It’s like there is a treasure trove of blessings that are already ours that are continuously being presented to us when we need them.
I’ve brought this sermon up by Adrian Rogers up a long time ago, but he once preached on Eleazer’s going to bring a bride back for Isaac, his master Abraham’s son.
Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master; and he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor.
So Eleazer took with him 10 camels worth of gifts and when he found Rebekah, the first thing he did was lavish her with some of them.
When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels,
Then again, we find in Genesis 24:53
And the servant brought out jewelry of silver and of gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave to her brother and to her mother costly ornaments.
Adrian Rogers at this point might have gotten a bit imaginative here, but he said as much. He could picture Eleazer leading the caravan back with Rebekah mounted on one of the camels, and every time Rebekah would get cold feet or wonder if she had made the right decision, Eleazer would take one of the gifts that he had taken with him and tell her, “Here, Rebekah. This is from Isaac. He just wanted you to have it.”
And Rogers likens, appropriately, this who scene to the way God, Christ, and the Spirit all work. Abraham--representing God-- is the source of all gifts. Isaac--representing Christ--is the sum of all gifts. Eleazer the servant--representing the Spirit--is the giver of the gifts. And her Paul makes a similar statement. As the bride of Christ, the Church has already received these blessings--these spiritual blessings (not only spiritual as opposed to earthly blessings, but spiritual as to the the giver--the Holy Spirit) are stored in the heavenly places. Again, not material blessings, but heavenly/spiritual blessings. And then he goes on to name some of them: verse 5 adoption; verse 7 redemption and forgiveness; verse 11 an inheritance; verse 13 the sealing of the Spirit.
The Choosing in Christ
The Choosing in Christ
This takes us to the C of the ABCs of our Christian foundation: The Choosing in Christ.
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
The word there for chose is the aorist form of the Greek word exlegomai, which means to select. But being that it is in the middle voice, it doesn’t just mean to select. The middle voice is a reflexive voice. It means that something is done on one’s own behalf--for the benefit of the person doing the action. In other words, God did not only choose us in some general way; he chose us for himself. And he chose us for himself before we were ever a glint in our mother’s eye. In fact, he chose us before Cain was a glint in Eve’s eye; we were chosen before creation itself--long before there were fish in the sea and birds in the air, before there were animals roaming around and before trees and bushes ever existed. Before earth was created and the universe was made, God chose us for himself. But the choosing was in Christ. Again, there is no coming back to God outside of Jesus.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
And lest we think that we had anything to do with God’s choice, let’s not forget that God--in his sovereignty--has the right of choice. Out of all the pagans and idolaters of the world, he chose Abraham to found the nation of Israel. He chose Israel out of all the other nations to be his people. And as the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, he reminded them that it was not because they deserved his calling them and setting them apart. They were not there because they were somehow better than anyone else. The same is with us. Paul told Titus
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
And so we end as we began. He chose us in Christ so that we should be holy--the same word as saint--to be set apart and pure, saintly. In other words, we are saints because in Christ we were chosen to be saintly because that is the only way we can be faithful in Christ and blameless before our Father.
Conclusion
Conclusion
He made the way for us to return to him before we even knew we needed it. That’s how we can be assured that God is for us. It’s as easy as ABC. In Christ, we abide because God set us apart in Him. In Christ, we are blessed because God blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. In Christ, we were chosen by God before the foundation of the world. Why? So we could stand before a holy God without fear and without judgment because that same God has made us holy and blameless.
If you don’t know Jesus, then you don’t know God. He’s the only one who has made him known. If you do know Jesus, then know that God has made it so that who you were is no longer who you were. You are so closely united to Christ, that it is fitting to say that you are in Him. He is your identity or as Paul wrote to the Colossians: he is your life. You are no longer a sinner; you are a saint--holy, pure, separated, blessed with every kind of spiritual blessing. Let that sink deep into your soul.
