Blessed is Not a Hashtag

The word “blessed” has become a hashtag. It is slang for when everything’s going right in your life. If you could sum it up in a picture, you would be sitting in a field of wildflowers in the sunshine, so happy you could explode. The word has been so misused lately that it first became a hashtag, then a meme mocking the hashtag.

If we are going to experience true blessing, we need to better understand that word. Ephesians 1:1-14 helps us with that. Dave gave us a good introduction to the letter to the Ephesians, and he used this passage to show us how the letter flows from God’s provision in chapters 1-3 to God’s instruction on living in unity as the church, which is God’s dwelling place on earth (2:22) in chapters 4-6.

What we want to focus on as we go through this letter is the central fact that God has made Jesus Christ the head over all things to the church, and what that means for our lives.

We are going to go back through the same passage Dave introduced twice more as we start this letter to get a full understanding of everything Paul is saying here. What we will see today is that our most blessed life begins and ends with worship of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Blessing Flows from Knowing God

Paul starts this letter with worship. After the greeting in verses 1-2, verses 3-14 are one run-on sentence of praise to God. It starts with the word, “blessed”. Some of your Bibles might use the word “praise”. Either is appropriate. The word would literally be “a good word”. Do you have a good word to say about God? Can you praise Him for who He is and what He has done? That would be a blessing.

We think of blessing as coming from God to us. The first lesson we learn here is that it goes both ways. Paul blesses God, speaks a good word about Him, for the blessings God has given us. This is a call to worship.

Verse 3

This is a broad statement of God’s blessing of us., “every spiritual blessing”. Dave helped us understand last week how Paul expounds on this phrase and describes the multi-faceted spiritual blessings God has given us.

But lest we think that these blessings are about us, Paul makes it a call to worship. In fact, he calls us to worship God three times. One for God the Father, one for God the Son, and one for God the Holy Spirit.

Verses 4-6 are a call to worship God the Father for choosing to adopt us as His holy and blameless children through Jesus Christ. It ends with verse 6, “to the praise of His glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Can you bless God the Father for the blessing of your adoption as His beloved child?

Verses 7-12 are a call to worship God the Son as our Redeemer, who lavished the riches of His grace on us when He shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sins. And in Him we have have hope because we belong to God. He closes this section in verse 12 saying, “so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.” Can you bless God the Son by living a life of worship for the redemption and cleansing from sin He has provided you?

Verses 13-14 are a call to worship God the Holy Spirit, who seals us with a guarantee of our inheritance in God until we take possession of it, “to the praise of His glory.” Can you praise the God the Holy Spirit whose grace gives you assurance that you have an eternally secure future with God?

Do you know God and what He has done for you? Do you know God the Father in His love for you? Do you know God the Son in His redeeming grace for you? Do you know God the Holy Spirit in His power to hold on to you and remind you of the truth of the gospel until the day you enter glory? Can you speak a good word about God?

Our culture has developed a bad habit of focusing attention on ourselves, and thinking that the blessings we have received are about us. One of the most annoying is the humble brag. “Humbled and blessed to be named head of the department.” “Humbled and blessed to be top salesperson for the third month in a row.” “I was blessed to be the key note speaker at the annual conference.” “I was blessed to be awarded the most humble pastor prize by our district. #blessed” We don’t understand the meaning of blessing.

The blessings Paul talks about say much more about God than about us. God is love (vv. 4-5). God is lavish in grace (vv. 6-8). God is wise (v. 8). God is glorious (vv. 6, 12, 14). God is our Father (v. 3), Savior (v. 7), and the Spirit (v. 13) who holds us until the end. You are blessed because God is so glorious. We return blessing to God for the blessing of knowing Him.

When you talk about your blessings, is the story about you, or about God? When we worship God on Sunday, are we saying more about our blessings, or about the One who has blessed us? How do you return blessing to God for these blessings? Do you talk about Him with others? Is your heart filled with songs of praise? Are your prayers filled only with asking for things or do you begin with good words about God for what He has already given?

Blessing is Living in God’s Will

If we could summarize God’s will in our passage, it would be: to glorify His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ by making Him the redeemer of sinners who will be adopted in Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit, according to the riches of His grace. Every part of your life can be summed up in relation to God’s will.

Your sinful rebellion only glorifies the riches of God’s grace, that He would plan to grant you forgiveness before the foundation of the world, before you could ever earn it. Your hearing the gospel glorifies the counsel of God’s will. Your believing in the gospel glorifies the salvation God provides in Jesus Christ. Your redemption glorifies the finished work of Jesus on the cross and in His resurrection. Your holy and blameless status glorifies the purpose of God, to set apart a people for Himself. Your hope in Christ glorifies God’s eternal purpose in salvation in Him. Your very being as a saved person is to the praise of Christ’s glory.

Paul has a lot to say about God’s will in this passage. God has a plan and a purpose, and He will carry it out to completion. The extent to which I live according to God’s will is the extent to which I will experience the blessings I have in Christ.

In verse 1, Paul says he has been called as an apostle by the will of God. Being an apostle was not Paul’s will. He had other plans for his life. God made this choice, and Paul is now living according to God’s will.

In the same way, he addresses the Christians who will read this letter. He calls them saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. A saint is not someone who has performed three verifiable miracles and has merited God’s grace in a special way. According to the Bible, to be a Christian is to be a saint. A saint is someone who is set apart to God. To be faithful in Christ Jesus is to be fully invested in Christ. My life is in Him. I am fully His. I am surrendered to His will.

And that means your life as a Christian is a miracle performed by God. Because humans by nature do not want to do God’s will. We want our own will. Every human, by nature and by choice, rebels against God and wants to rule ourselves.

God’s plan, even before the foundation of the world, even before we rebelled in our sin and desired our own will over God’s will, was to send God the Son to live as the perfect human. He only ever did the will of God the Father. And it was the will of God to crush Him for our sins, to die the death we should have died as traitors. And Jesus obeyed the Father’s will. And because of that obedience, God raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to the throne of heaven so that all who are united with Jesus through faith are united with Him in His death to sin and His resurrection life to righteousness. All the blessings we see in Ephesians 1:1-14 are available to us in and through Jesus Christ.

God’s plan is eternal, and His timing is perfect. At just the right time, He sent Jesus Christ to accomplish redemption for us. If we are going to participate in God’s blessing, we will only do it in Christ. This is God’s will.

Paul uses the word “predestined” twice to describe how we get “into” Christ”, in relationship with our adoption and inheritance. This word basically means God does what He does on purpose. Your adoption as His child is not an accident. God’s love sought you out and won you over with His love, and adopted you to Himself through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will.

So, what about my will? Does God’s will override my will? Not at all. In verse 13 we see that we heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and believed in Christ. Our faith in the gospel of Jesus is required. Then the Holy Spirit gives our faith perseverance until we see God face to face and we will not need faith any more.

While our faith is essential to the process of salvation, Paul wants to tell Christians, make no mistake, redemption and the blessings we have in Christ are all because God carrying is out his glorious grace in your life.

The question for us is, am I surrendered to His will? Am I living in the holiness and blamelessness He has given me in Christ? Am I a hope-filled testimony to Christ among those who do not know God? Am I asking to be filled with the Holy Spirit who holds me in God’s grace?

Some people fear that talking about God’s choosing and predestination will result in excluding some people. But as we will see as we go through this letter, it is quite the opposite. God has chosen to work out His plan of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is the center of God’s plan. His grace is available to anyone who believes in Jesus is united with Him, and everything God has accomplished in Jesus Christ becomes theirs to claim.

Paul’s message is that our faith in Christ is part of God’s predestined plan. It is reassurance. Your salvation cannot be undone. God loves you. God wants you. It is God’s will to redeem you in Christ. If you are united to Christ by faith, your faith will prevail until the last day because you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. So this is all to the praise of His glory. Your most blessed life is not a hashtag, it is a life of worship.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

What are some blessings you experienced this week?

What does it mean to bless and what does it mean to be blessed? How do we bless God, and how does God bless us?

What does our passage teach us about God?

What is God’s will, according to our passage?

How do we live within God’s will?

What does our passage teach us about ourselves?

What does a life lived to the praise of God’s glory look like?

How will you respond to this passage?

Who is someone with whom you can share this passage this week?