The Church and God's Saints

Ephesians 1:1–16 ESV

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 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him 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, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 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, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

Scripture: Ephesians 1:1-16

Sermon Title: The Church and God’s Saints

           As we have been using some of the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Days to capture the foundational truths of our faith, we come tonight to Lord’s Day 21. Hear these words that hold what we believe about the “holy catholic church” and the “communion of saints.”

We believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community we are and always will be living members. 

Believers one and all, as members of this community, share in Christ and in all his treasures and gifts. Each member should consider it a duty to use these gifts readily and cheerfully for the service and enrichment of the other members.   

We believe these things about the holy catholic, or universal, true church, and about the communion of saints, those who are forgiven believers. Ephesians 1, our Scripture lesson for tonight is one of the passages that feeds into this answer. Let’s pray before we go to God’s Word…

Brothers and sisters, the last time I was outdoors for any type of worship service was before seminary when I was doing youth ministry in the South. We would go and meet with high school and middle school youth groups in campgrounds and state parks that would be our home for the week as we served in those areas. Part of our schedule included times for worship put together by the youth each night.

           One of the many memories that sticks with me is of an evening when we were sitting in a pavilion for worship. On one side of us was Melton Hill Lake, a section of river in eastern Tennessee. On the other was a road running along and leading up the side of a hill where people camped. There we were; this group of a dozen or so teenagers and their leaders singing—similar to what we have done here tonight. All of a sudden a thought popped into my head that made me wonder what we must look like to the people camping nearby. There were families eating dinner around picnic tables; others gathered around campfires enjoying a beer and conversation. Then there was us, within sight and earshot, young people singing in a campground pavilion.     

           People sing in the shower or in the car, fairly private places. They sing at performances or sing along at concerts. Children and young people are known for usually singing silly songs at camps. But the type of singing that I had become so used to in leading these trips every week was not all that normal for where we were. It is the same type of singing that we do in our worship services and have done here tonight—we sing songs by which we seek to give praise to God. Music for worship is quite different than silly songs about baby sharks, or the latest radio single about a young man’s love for a girl, or a country hit about getting mud on the tires of a truck.

Maybe some of you even picked up on that here tonight or at an outdoor service in the past. What we as worshipping Christians do when we sing in worship is not normal or ordinary in the world we live in today. We are not singing as a performance to show others how well we sing or simply because we might like the lyrics or tune. We sing, hopefully, because we are seeking to bring glory to God, even though it may not come easy or be at all that familiar.  When we understand that, especially out here in the open without the walls of our buildings, we may perceive ourselves to be strangely different from people who do not worship.

This message is not intended to be about singing or not singing in worship services, it is intended for us to see that we who connect ourselves with the church will be different. When people who do not believe in God look at your lives and mine, they should see differences. How we work, how we treat our loved ones as well as those we struggle with, and how we use our time ought to look somewhat peculiar. We saw some of those outside differences this morning in Micah. We are the church, whether we are inside or outside of any particular building, and we bear that name 168 hours a week, not just 2 or 3.  What Paul calls believers’ attention to in the opening of this book is that there will be inside differences. The spirit of individuals who are in the church will be different because of what God has done for us in Christ. 

The first thing that we want to consider tonight is that “God chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” That comes from verse 4, and this is one of the key differences about Christians based on what God has done in Christ. We have been selected or picked out. Furthermore, that decision is not a future decision based on how we have ended up living, or after a comparison has been made of the number of rights versus the number of wrongs in our lives. He decided it before sin existed here, and even before the world’s creation.

What does God’s choosing look like? In Genesis, we find God making a major choice among people. God actively chose certain individuals and families to carry out his will.  He called Noah, Abraham, and Jacob who became Israel. God told these men that he would take their families and their lineage and they would become a great nation. He chose the descendants of Israel from everyone else to be especially for him. 

If we look at it and leave it at that, we might say, “Good for them, but what about everyone else?”  God’s choosing may seem so exclusive that no one else has a chance.  Yet part of the covenant when God chose Abraham was the promise, “You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people on earth will be blessed through you.” God’s choosing is exclusive, but by working through his church with the help of the Holy Spirit, those who are chosen by God can and should include others beyond the original recipients.

Our being chosen is not the final end, but rather Paul says we are chosen to be holy and blameless in his sight. There is to be a personal yield from being selected. The majority of us likely confess to be part of the church, “the elect gathered, protected, and preserved by God.” Yet there are likely times in our lives when we wonder about this being holy and blameless piece. When we examine ourselves we might be surprised not at how much without blame we are, but rather we may seem to be full of blame we are due to the sin in our lives. Now we certainly ought to live lives of increasing purity and accordance with God’s commands to love, but we must take hold of the repeated refrain in this chapter that this is all in and under Christ. We are holy and blameless in the sight of God, not because we are those things 100% of the time in our reality, but rather because of the redemption we have in Jesus, we do appear to be holy and blameless in God’s sight. That we are chosen is to his praise and glory, not us!

Maybe a helpful way to look at this choosing process is by thinking about God putting together a team. There are no tryouts, but rather he selects certain individuals, and then he tells them that there will be more players added, some of which they will get to help bring in. God knows the full roster ahead of time, but he does not sign them on all at the same time. He does not pick all of the best performers according to the world’s standards, but rather he picks those whom he will now enable to hold onto the values and the goals of the team. 

This enabling is what gets us into the second point that we want to look at from our passage that Paul highlights as different about the church, and that is: “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ. That word predestined means “decided beforehand or determined ahead of time.” It is a word that is true to the historical text, but we probably never hear the word outside of theology. We hear that a person is “destined” for greatness. We use that term after seeing an athlete or a singer or someone with another talent perform, and we walk away knowing that we have seen something special, something that will develop into something great. What makes pre-destination different is that God did this ahead of time. 

In understanding God’s choosing of us, we understand him to have foreknowledge. He knew that sin would come into the world, but he also knew that he would choose certain people for himself. What we believe about predestination falls along a similar line. God not only chose us before we made a choice for him, but also before any one of us had determined that our lives would be on a course to intersect with the cross of Christ, God determined that would happen too.         

I know that a number of Christians, myself included, have wrestled with trying to pin down how exactly God has accomplished all of this. Some of the questions that arise are: if God had everything already figured out ahead of time, what does what we do matter—especially what does evangelism matter? There are also people that have trouble with God’s exclusiveness in that a limited number of people are chosen—they would like to know why, if God foreknew that sin would come, and he can do anything, why didn’t he just put a fix in the system of creation beforehand? 

Your 26 year old, rookie year pastor does not have all the answers for you. This is one of those hard doctrines of the church. But it is not just a church doctrine created by humans, it is something we find spoken of in Scripture. Typically, the word “mystery” has been included close-by, and that is true in Ephesians 1. While Paul and Christians throughout history have agreed with this doctrine, there is a mystery to it that we cannot perfectly grasp it.

Let’s not leave out what Paul tells us predestination is for—that is, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons. This is significant, because the normal trajectory of our lives is to be enemies of God. To live for ourselves or simply being good to other people is not the same as living for the glory of God. To not live for him above all things is to live against him. That is what we do on our own, yet God predestined us for adoption. He does not come and look at how we are doing, on the one hand, how rough we are or how much we swear and fight against authority, nor does he tally up how nice and kind we are, and decide we are the better option.  He foreknew us enough to choose us, but he adopted us that we would learn and be taught to grow into his family’s will.

Do we have to come to a perfect understanding of all of this? To know for sure that we have been chosen and predestined, do we need to have the perfect handle? To bring others the opportunity that they might be able to join the team regardless of their current status, do we need to have it down pat?  The answer is no. No, because this is God’s plan, this is up to God working things out, according to his will, purposes, and pleasure. 

What matters is that we know redemption and forgiveness and the riches of God’s grace are for all who come and put their hope in him. Paul passed these words onto the church and I do the same here tonight, because these words hold God’s grace and love for all who receive them. We may not always look or feel the most holy or blameless, but if we are in Christ, we receive these benefits.  

Being a Christian is different from not being a Christian. Not just because we ought to look and act different, but because God has called us different. We can and ought to live with grace for believers and unbelievers, but that grace is a small glimpse of how great the saving grace of God really is. He knows who is and will be in his church. He knows who he has redeemed, and who will receive an inheritance in his kingdom. We need not worry about deciding such things, but rather all of us are tasked with continuing to spread the message. Whether we are in a church building for worship or in a campground, or on the farm, in the hospital, in the office, let our attitude and behavior always be the same. Let us live and encourage one another as we are being built up as the communion of saints under the claim of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.