By the Will of God (Ephesians 1:1-2)

If you're visiting with us today for the first time, we want to

welcome you. The word of God, we believe is

to, is, was breathed out by him, all of it, every word.

The Word tells us that all Scripture is God breathed and is

useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training and

righteousness. And that means as Christians we

should come with great expectancy every time the Word

is open that His Spirit will do a work in our hearts.

I'm going to begin by reading part of a sentence.

And I want you to finish the sentence, and I'm going to give

you time to do that. So listen, here's the sentence,

or at least the first part of the sentence.

Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is fill in the

blank. Our greatest hindrance in the

Christian life is fill in the blank.

Now, I'm going to do something that's a little bit disruptive

to what we normally do. I'm actually going to give you a

minute to think about your answer.

Don't talk to one another, but just sit quietly for a minute

and fill in that blank. Our greatest hindrance in the

Christian life is. Our greatest hindrance in the

Christian life is I so want to know what you wrote.

If we were in a different setting we would probably break

into small groups and I wonder what list your group would come

up with. I'm sure it would be really

significant and important stuff. I'm most interested though,

though, and where your eye went when I asked you to consider

that sentence and finish it. Our greatest hindrance in the

Christian life is where did your eye go?

Did it go immediately to just the awkwardness of the silence?

Did it go to other people? Did it go to culture?

Did it go to problems that you perceive to be in the church?

The greatest hindrance in the Christian life is where did your

eye go? What did you think?

What would you write? Did your eye turn inside to you

and me, sinners? John Owen is the one who wrote

this sentence, the great Puritan.

Listen to what he said as I complete his sentence.

Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack

of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our

privileges. Let me read it again.

Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack

of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our

privileges. The privileges he's Speaking of

have to do with our union in Christ, who we already are,

secure in him. Ian Hamilton and his commentary

on Ephesians starts his introductory chapter with that

quote from John Owen. Our greatest hindrance in the

Christian life is not our lack of effort, but our lack of

acquaintedness with our privileges.

Hamilton goes on to say this in his letter to Ephesians.

Paul elaborates and expands in a most wonderful way on the

God-given Christ, secured, Holy Spirit, applied privileges of

the Christian life. Let me say that again.

In his letter to Ephesians, Paul elaborates and expands in a most

wonderful way on the God-given Christ, secured, Holy Spirit,

applied privileges of the Christian life.

And I can almost guarantee you that none of you went there.

Some of you might have, maybe you've read ahead even that

commentary, but most of us didn't go there.

We went to some sin, some aspect of culture, some sin we see in

the church or even in ourselves. But he says whatever that list

is, that's not our greatest hindrance.

Our greatest hindrance is that we are not acquainted with the

privileges that are ours in Christ.

And Hamilton says Paul is giving us this letter carried along by

the Spirit to elaborate and expand in a most wonderful way

this God-given by the will of God.

From the will of God, according to the will of God, Christ

secured, there couldn't be greater security.

Holy Spirit applied the Spirit living in US privileges of the

Christian life. I mean, I have I, I, if you're a

New Year's resolution person, I bet none of you wrote, let me

think this year more upon the privileges that I have in

Christ. And I promise if you do and the

Spirit of God illuminates that it will matter so much more than

anything else you've sought to change in your life.

But we have a severe sight problem.

We have a vision issue, and God is so gracious and merciful to

give us a letter like this to help us see.

And when I say we have a sight problem and your mind is

agreeing with me about other people, then to me you are the

other people. I'm talking directly to you.

We all have a sight problem, and it's going to be that way until

Christ returns or calls us home and we behold them face to face.

Then we won't have a sight problem.

But until then, we will, and God is gracious to show it to us and

change it. Michael Allen.

Michael Allen has written a commentary on Ephesians.

He's a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary.

I didn't know him as a professor at Reformed Theological

Seminary. I knew him as a young man

serving in our middle school and high school youth ministry. 1

summer. He's written an amazing

commentary. In his introduction he says this

a key purpose of the letter of Ephesians to Ephesus.

A key purpose of a letter is to reshape the spiritual sense or

sensitivity of the reader or the listener.

In the case of Ephesus, Paul intends to stretch the

dimensional constraints of our sight lest our myopia incline us

to miss the most interesting activity.

In other words, Paul's being carried along by the Spirit to

stretch our ability to see the glory of God.

Two explicit places this happens is in prayers that we're going

to study in the weeks to come. Listen to this Paul says 15

verses into chapter 1. 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. And here's the prayer that the

God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give

you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of

Him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may

know what is the hope to which He has called you.

That hope is a privilege. What are the riches of His

glorious inheritance? In the Saints?

There's no greater inheritance. It's not one you can earn, and

it's not one you can lose. It's perfect.

And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us

who believe, according to the working of His great might, that

He worked in Christ when He raised him from the dead and

seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above

all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every

name, that His name not only in the sage, but also no one to

come. He's stretching our vision.

He's enlarging our hearts and our minds.

Another place Paul prays in a similar fashion this type time.

It's in chapter 3, verse 14. We'll study this in the weeks to

come as well. Paul says, For this reason I bow

my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and

on earth is named, that according to the riches of His

glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through

His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your

hearts amazing through faith, that you being rooted and

grounded in love. Now listen to these dimensions

may have strength to comprehend with all the Saints what is the

breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love

of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be

filled with all the fullness of God.

Those dimensions are perfect dimensions.

How wide, how deep, how long, how high is the love of God?

It doesn't stop. You'll never fully comprehend.

That's amazing. Paul gives us this letter

carried along by the Holy Spirit to stretch the dimensional

constraints of our site. And we have constraints.

You do not see as clearly as you think.

You do not think as truthfully as you should.

You do not feel appropriate things to what God has done for

us. We have a sight problem, and

it's a serious problem. You might notice I'm wearing

glasses. For most of you, you've only

known me as wearing glasses. For many years, I wore contacts.

The problem with the contacts became that I could not see the

word here, though I could perfectly scan those who are in

the balcony. When did I get glasses?

You probably don't really care to know, but I'm going to tell

you anyway. It was in the fall of 1994.

I was sitting in my first seminary spring, fall semester,

and I remember looking at the board.

Now, that already tells you something of my age.

It wasn't a chalkboard. That's the age of other people

around you. It was a white board.

But I looked at it and I realized I can't see it that

clearly. So I did what you would do.

I moved a little bit closer, never once thinking I might

actually have an issue with my eyes.

I began to notice at night driving that it was harder to

see certain signs. But I never really thought I

needed glasses. I'm too young until I was in

Oklahoma City visiting over the holidays.

My brother-in-law, Ron, had set his glasses on the table to get

up and go. I didn't even know where we

went, but the glasses were there.

So I grabbed them and I put them on just for fun, mostly to see

what I might look like. And I could see.

I was like, oh, I have a sight problem.

So I went to the doctor and the doctor prescribed something for

my eyes. Not too severe, but definitely

needed help. And I could see.

It's pretty interesting though. The moment you can see and

you're in an eye doctor's office, an optometrist office,

the first thing you look at is yourself.

You look in a mirror to see what do I look like wearing these

glasses? And that's a bigger problem than

we want to admit. You see, my sight problem in

seminary wasn't just my physical eyes.

My sight problem in seminary was far worse spiritual.

I went into seminary expecting every question I had to be

answered. I left seminary with my favorite

word being mystery in seminary, studying God's Word deeply,

immersing in systematic theology, biblical theology,

pastoral theology. I loved all of it.

But I had a serious sight problem.

Time after time, day after day, I needed the mercy of God to

shift my eyes, to fix them in the right place, and then to

focus them and keep them fixed in the right place.

In seminary, the struggle with envy, the struggle with pride,

the struggle with being thankful for gifts and then wishing you

had another's or worse, and this is envy, wishing they didn't

have those gifts. Seeing things for the first

time, having my mind blown only later in the day to have to

confess along with the psalmist Lord, turn my eyes from looking

at worthless things. We have a sight problem.

Most of us are looking at worthless things all the time.

And I'm not just talking about evil vile images on a computer.

I'm talking about staring at ourselves, wondering what other

people think about us, consumed with image and it can find its

way into every crevice of our heart and mind.

We have a sight problem, but we have a God who meets that, who

rescues it from us. So we come to the letter of

Ephesians this morning. I simply want to ask three

questions. Who wrote the letter?

Who was it written to or to whom was it written and why?

Why did God carry Paul along to write this letter?

Well, let's begin by just looking at the passage.

Verse one verse, one word. 1 Paul.

Isn't it amazing that in a letter intended to stretch our

vision, that is written by a man who was made blind by God and

then healed by God? You might not be all familiar

with the story of Saul of Tarsus, or you may be so

familiar of it that it doesn't really astonish you anymore.

This is astonishing. Acts Chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

Just listen as I read. But Saul, that was his name

before it was Paul, still breathing out threats and murder

against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,

and he asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so

that if he found any belonging to the way, the way this verse

is capitalized, it means the way of Christ, it means

Christianity. If he found any belonging to the

way men are women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Paul had a vision, and that vision was for the glory of who

he thought God was. And what God wanted him to do

was to destroy the way. And the way was the church and

people that belong to the way it heard about this man saw, he

delighted in seeing Christians bound up, put in prison, even

killed. That was his vision and he

wasn't going to stop on his way to Damascus.

Verse 3 says Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus

and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to

the ground he heard a voice saying to him, Now just for a

minute I want you to understand that this really happened.

There was a real man named Saul. There were people travelling

with him. He truly hated Christians.

He wanted to destroy the way, He wanted to destroy the church.

He wanted to destroy people like me and you and your children who

proclaim Christ. On this way he hears a voice.

The voice overwhelms him. He falls to the ground.

The voice speaks, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me and

Paul? Saul said, Who are you, Lord?

And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

This really happened. The risen, resurrected Lord

Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, spoke to him his name

twice, got his attention, brought holy disruption into his

life, and then said these words. But rise and enter the city, and

you will be told what you are to do.

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing

the voice, but seeing no one saw, rose from the ground, and

although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

That can be true of so many of us.

So often, though his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

That's not a metaphor. He literally couldn't see.

He could see until that voice spoke, until the one behind that

voice blinded him. So they led him by the hand and

brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was

without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

So this is the one to whom the first word of Ephesians starts

with a name, Paul. It's mind boggling that God by

his will would knit together in the womb of a woman who was

Saul's mother, a child who would become a man who would then kill

Christians, throw them in prison, while the whole time

that individual soul was being knit together.

He is the one that is going to be used by God, carried along by

the Holy Spirit, who is God, to write 13 books of the Bible,

including Ephesus. Paul, we're told, is the one who

wrote this letter. You can read in commentaries

about some more contemporary debates, but the most biblical

anchored in truth commentaries, commentaries do not deny that

it's Paul. Paul goes on there to describe

himself not just by his name, but by who he is essentially his

occupation. Paul, an apostle of Christ

Jesus. The word apostle means a sent

one. It means a messenger in the

Bible. There were the 12 apostles.

Judas falls in the early part. The book Acts he's replaced by

with dyas. But Paul is also called an

apostle. He was not there witnessing

those events first hand the way that the disciples were.

He was against them. He was against the church.

But here and this profound holy disruption, Paul sees the

resurrected Lord, he hears the resurrected Lord and he is

appointed as an apostle. He says he's an apostle and he

aligns it with the person in which he's an apostle.

He is a sent 1A Commission 11 given authority by Christ Jesus.

And then we have this phrase by the will of God.

Now this is a phrase that is going to be saturated in the

book of Ephesians. It's beautiful to think about

the profound reality of God's sovereign will and His sovereign

grace. Four times in chapter 1 alone

you will hear that phrase according to the will of God or

by the will of God. Paul wants everyone listening to

know where is authority lies and why he is what he is.

He is what He is by the will of God and you're going to see in

Ephesians that which is true of him is true of you as well.

Ephesians is a book that only contains 2429 words.

In some bibles it takes up 4 pages and other bibles through

some, like some of you have giant print.

It might be more pages, but it takes between 18 and 22 minutes

to read the whole letter. Yet in this letter, such

beautiful theology and doctrine is presented in a clear,

concise. Now I think some of you are

starting to count words. That's not going to be helpful

to you. Stop, Don't do that, do it

later. These words that are written act

as a manual, a guide for the church.

Who are we? What are we to be?

The church is desperate for guidance and always has been.

Left to ourselves, we will make it things it was never intended

to be. Paul gives us this letter and

this letter tells us so much about who we are and how we are

to behave. James Boyce says if Ephesians is

profound, and it is, it is so not for the mysterious nature of

its unfathomable deep secrets. And they are deep.

They're profound. What I read to you in his

prayers from chapter 1 and chapter 3 are remarkable.

But Ephesians is profound because of the clear way it

presents the most basic Christian truths

comprehensively, clearly, practically, and winsomely.

It actually is not a difficult book to understand what God is

giving us. It's hard to understand some of

the mysteries of his sovereignty, but it's not

difficult to see what he's calling us to.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, by

the will of God. He wrote this book by the will

of God. I'm preaching this book by the

will of God. You're reading and studying this

book if you're in Christ, which leads to the second question, to

whom did Paul write the letter? Look at the text with me.

Second part of verse one to the Saints who who are in Ephesus

and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Let's take the first word to the Saints.

This is a place where most of you have smudges on your

glasses. You don't see this word St.

correctly. And you think you do.

You think you do. Because if you're in Christ, and

I heard that, and I said to you, oh, you're a St. you would say

no, no, no, no, no. Out of a sense of humility.

I hope you would say no, no, no, no, no.

But you're wrong and bad. Theology's always dangerous and

bad. Theology finds its way sometimes

in clever statements, that we actually begin to embrace this

truth. For example, God's not

interested in your holiness, He's interested in your

happiness. Nope, people say it the other

way. No, he's not interested in your

happiness, He's interested in your holiness.

Nowhere in the Bible to be found.

Not a Bible verse. And it's not true.

God is so concerned about your happiness in Him that he sent

his Son to die. And by making that statement,

and I've heard so many people say it, he's not interested in

your happiness, He's interested in your holiness.

It puts those two things in opposition.

It creates a false dichotomy. The more you live for the

holiness of God and according to God's Word, walking in a manner

that is worthy of Him, as Ephesians will say, you will be

happy. Not a shallow happiness, but a

deep rooted joy. God's deeply interested in that.

Here's another one to the Saints who are in Ephesus.

To the Saints, the word St. is the most frequent word in

Scripture for Christian. The word Christians only used

three times. So if you are a Christian, you

are a St. I'm not talking about your

behavior, I'm talking about you being set apart by Christ, which

is what a St. is. You being set apart by Christ by

his will to experience the privileges of that union.

Let me give you an example of how bad theology finds its way

into some of our common language and even books that we read.

There is a wonderful book on marriage and I'm going to say

it. It's got a terrible title, but

the title sounds good and some of you have read the book and I

bet you've given it as a gift. You may have even taught small

groups, but the title is not helpful.

The title of the book is When Sinners Say I Do.

But every time a man and a woman comes for marriage, they are

sinners and they're going to sin against each other.

But if they are in Christ, Sinner is not their primary

identity nor their permanent identity.

Their permanent identity and primary identity is the same.

They're Saints, standing in this place many times with husband

and wife. There's not many weddings that

would go by where I won't say something like this to the man.

The woman you are about to marry is a beloved daughter of the

living God. He created her, He died for her,

He saved her, and He's sanctifying her.

He's going to use you to help. And to the man, as I look at the

man, I speak to the woman and say the man that you're about to

marry is the beloved son of the living God.

He died for him. He knit him together.

He rescued him. He saved him.

He's sanctifying him. He's going to use you to help.

So many weddings I go to, it's almost as if the minister saying

good luck, this is going to be hard.

And it is. There's not a day I don't sin in

one way or another against my wife, and there's not a day that

she doesn't sin against me. But if I want to change my

behavior, and I do, it's far more powerful for me to remember

who it is he called me to marry, who she is, who he called me to

marry, and who she is as a St. as who she will always be and

who I am in Christ is who I will always be.

A St. this side of heaven, a St. that struggles with sin.

This is a big deal. Now don't go home and trash the

book, but I would encourage you to take a sharpie and change the

title. If you're in Christ, you're a

St. and all the privileges that Paul is going to talk about in

this letter, in these 2429 words are going to expand your vision.

It's going to cause your vision to stretch.

He's going to elaborate and expand in a most wonderful way.

The God-given Christ secured Holy Spirit of pied privileges

of the Christian life. I got to stop.

If you want to hear more, you can listen to the 8:00 service,

but I'm going to stop here next week.

Paul's preaching, not the apostle, but our pastor Paul.

That would be amazing. And he will pick up with these

two profound words in Ephesus and in Christ Jesus.

In Christ Jesus. 9 times in the 1st 14 verses that phrase is

used. One of Paul's favourites.

It means everything. And Grace to You in Peace is not

just a clever introduction, it's actually the table of contents

for the whole book. At the very end of the book,

Paul's going to give those words to us again, but in reverse

order. Let me pray, Lord, I'm excited

for us to walk through this together.

I'm excited that when we say that, we know that we're walking

together in You. We all have a need for help with

our vision. We need You to fix our eyes upon

Jesus. We need You to focus our eyes.

When even we're looking at Your word, we're still not seeing

clearly. You do that all the time, make

us cry out like the blind man when you asked him, what do you

want me to do for you? Give me sight, maybe pray the

same and may you truly stretch our vision to see that the grace

and peace we need is given by you and in you alone.

We pray this in Jesus name and all of God's Saints said Amen,

please stand.