Abundantly Blessed

Introduction

There is a great video clip that I would have loved you to see this morning. It’s a group of actors debating over Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet phrase ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’. I love it because the actors all scram for first place by the way they think the phrase should be said….

The first actor stands on the stage along and addresses the crowd ‘To be or NOT to be….’. ‘No no no,’ interrupts another actor ‘it’s ‘To be OR not to be that is the question’ - it’s about a choice. In comes Benedict Cumberbatch saying ‘excuse me but the line needs to be ‘To be or NOT to be’ … and so one by one David Tennant, Judy Dench and Ian McKellen and others argue amongst themselves. Finally, Prince Charles comes in to correct them all saying ‘To be or not to be that is the QUESTION’ and the audience rises in applause.

As we begin together to consider what Paul’s letter to the Ephesians might say to us, about what it means to be God’s people, his church, the question posed to us is ‘Who do you think you are?’. But, similarly to those actors, there are different ways we might ask that question: WHO do you think you are? Who DO YOU THINK you are? and Who do you think YOU ARE?

WHO do you think you are?

A question that every human being - men, women, children, young people – has to wrestle with. Over the past three weeks, as we have looked at the lives of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph they also wrestled with this question – WHO do you think you are?

WHO we think we are shapes us. Whether we are conscious of it or not, what we think about ourselves shapes how we see others and how we relate to them. Like many other families this week we have faced the start of the new school year – a new school, a new class, new teachers, a new way of doing life compared to homeschooling during lockdown. During these days, children and young people are living with this question in very real ways. As they try to make friends, as they relate to others in their class, WHO they think they are matters a great deal. A young person who thinks they matter very little and that their achievements won’t amount to much, will relate to others very differently to someone who has come to believe in themselves.

For us as adults, life may have dealt us various blows are different times and, deep down perhaps, we may also know that there is a quiet voice whispering “what’s the use – you’re just a farce – you’re not like so and so – they have it together – or they are a good Christian”. If only people knew you better. We even may think ‘if only God knew you better’…

As Paul begins his letter to the Ephesians he already knows about all these deep questions we ALL live with and so he chooses to address those Christians on a firm foundation:

‘This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus, who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.’ (Ephesians 1:1-2 New Living Translation).

If you want to wrestle with the age old whisper of ‘WHO do you think you are’, then start it firmly rooted in what is true:

God has chosen you - Paul knows his own experience of how God turned his life around – see Acts 9

you are HOLY - something that God does for us - we can’t make ourselves holy

you are faithful followers of Christ Jesus – he doesn’t start by focusing on their limitations or their own self-doubt. He points to what is true, to what God has enabled them to be. They have faithfully followed Jesus and that needs recognising.

Paul writes to ‘Faithful Followers’, not new Christians, but for some reason Paul thinks it’s important they get in touch with their roots again. Much the same as the famous actors who take part in the ‘Who do you think you are’ TV programme, why might we as God’s people need to get in touch with our faith roots? Why do Faithful Followers need to be reminded of who they are?

Who DO YOU THINK you are?

Paul knows that these faithful followers need to be reminded of WHO they are because their default is to focus on what they are not. You know what I mean by default, right? When a machine is set on default it means it will automatically revert to whatever the factory has set it to. It happens to be with so many of my gadgets at home – just last week Annie saw me frustrated with the printer in the office – trying the get the news sheets printed and I just could not get the machine to print double sided the right way up. Why? Because the default setting made it print one way up and I had to make it change to the other way round. Default settings need an intentional choice to behave differently.

Even as faithful followers, their default was still to hark back to who they were before they met Jesus. Their default was to look back and notice their difference rather than the things they had in common with each other. Their default was to remember the way they lived before they knew Christ and judge each other by the standards of society rather than the grace and peace they had come to know in Jesus.

Remember who you are! You are a people who have been ABUNDANTLY blessed by an ABUNDANT God.

You have been blessed (v.3) – as Abraham, Jacob and Joseph had been – blessed to live in faith, to know hope and to be able to love.

You have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (v.3) – nothing is missing – God’s blessing covers it all.

God has loved you and chosen you to be holy (v.4)

You have been adopted into his own family – you don’t serve a God who is aloof or untouched by what you face in life. You can know God as the perfect parent that none of us can fully match. You can also know the depth of love and fellowship from other people that can transcend blood and lineage.

And there’s so much more! If Paul’s words were a piece of music it might sound a bit like Elsa’s procession by Eric Ball or Ennio Moriconne’s Gabriel’s Oboe - a rising crescendo of chords rising and rising because there is just SO much that God has done.

God has POURED out his glorious grace on us (not just trickled).

God has been rich in kindness and grace by purchasing our freedom from selfishness and forgiving us our sins.

He has SHOWERED his kindness on us.

Paul goes on because it’s not just about what he has done for you and me. God has a UNIVERSAL plan – to redeem all things on earth and in heaven – to bring the first people he revealed himself to (the Jews) and all other peoples together in Christ.

‘Oh boundless salvation’ – those founding words that we sing continue to be part of our Salvation Army DNA – boundless – without limit – extravagant – offered to the whosoever – no matter what you have done – no matter who you thought you were.

This is who you need to THINK you are! These are the thoughts that need to shape your view of yourself and others – GRACE and PEACE. The truth that it is only by God’s abundant grace that we can be his children. Only by God’s abundant grace that we can be forgiven. Only by his abundant grace that we can be holy and blameless.

Who do you think YOU ARE?

You see – so often we are concerned about answering the question “what do you think you do?” because we measure ourselves by what we do – our achievements, our efficiency – We think God also measures us by what we do and many of us continue to carry an image of God weighing up our value by what we can do for him.

But we have already seen that if anyone is going to do anything – it’s GOD! The only 2 things that we are to do is to trust (v. 12) and ‘praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son’ (v.6) Paul knows that before the Christians at Ephesus can truly understand what God wants them to DO, they need to really grasp WHO they are.

In this time of COVID so much of “what we do” has been stripped back. The world challenges us to reassess how we live life – we see the demonstrations with thousands of people who are saying we cannot carry on living with environmental greed and the racial inequality in our society. For us to truly grasp what God wants us to DO to be his church and fulfil his mission here in our local community, we need to grasp who we are. As we ourselves have begun to consider how we might use our hall again for worship and service, we need to start from a place of offering WHO we are to God.

So how do we do this? How do we keep our eyes on WHO we are? How do we keep thinking about who we ARE and not about who we were or who we are not? How do we focus on who we ARE rather than what we do?

Paul ends there. In v.13-14 he reminds those faithful followers that the secret lies in the Holy Spirit. ‘When you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own (another translation says ‘he put his seal on you’) by the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he purchased us to be his own people.’

The word ‘Guarantee’ seems to have lost its meaning a wee bit for us in today’s world. We buy our appliances and, if you’re anything like me, you see that piece of paper that says ‘Warranty’ or ‘Guarantee’ and you think ‘what’s the point in going through all that hassle’ - you have to register the appliance and then they charge you extra to guarantee all the small print list, and then it’s cheaper to buy a new appliance when this one breaks…. A guarantee may not mean much these days. But in Paul’s day – in the days of the Roman empire – a guarantee, a wax seal at that, was a sign of total reliability. It was proof that the item was genuine – it proved that something was authentic, it wasn’t fake and it hadn’t been damaged in transit. The Holy Spirit is the final proof that the signs of faith, hope and love that we show are genuine and that they are possible because we are children of God.

The Holy Spirit, God’s promised presence that we sang about just a few Sundays ago, can fall on us. He can be our helper. He can remind us that we belong to God. He can help us to look up and focus on the unchanging truth that we belong to God and that what God promised to put right in us and in our world he WILL do.

Conclusion

So let me ask you this morning – Who do you think you are? WHO are you? Who DO YOU THINK are? Who is God reminding you to BE?

The Holy Spirit is right there with you wherever you are. Do you sense him? What do you hear him saying to you just now? What do you need to ask him to help you with? What does he need to remind you of? For a moment just pause your thoughts, gather your scattered thoughts on what the rest of today will bring – and focus on desiring to hear God. As a faithful follower, what does God need you to know again right now?