Ephesians 1:3 | "Blessing the One Who Blesses"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

If you have a copy of God's Word with you this morning, I invite you to open it to what has been called the Grand Canyon of the New Testament.

A book that is quite deep in doctrine, but rich and beautiful at the same time.

We sang the first section of the first chapter just a moment ago, the book of Ephesians, chapter one.

Ephesians chapter one.

I'd like to read the first three verses this morning.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus and are faithful, 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.

I need to stop there even though I don't want to.

As we prepare this morning to remember the Lord's death and resurrection through communion, I want to focus for a few moments on just verse three.

Just verse three.

If you look closely, you will see that our English translations have a period to end the sentence at verse 4, verse 6, verse 10, 12, and 14.

So five times between verse 3 and verse 14, there is a period.

That is the result of English translators wrestling with how to put the Apostle Paul's native Greek language into English.

In his Greek language, there are 202 words in the Apostle's one sentence.

I don't know about you, but Mrs.

Johnson would have never let me out of seventh grade if I'd have done that.

Now, why is that important for us to know?

Why is it important to understand that kind of breakdown?

We need to know that little piece of information because it tells us that everything from verse 3 through verse 14 is connected.

Every little tidbit is linked together.

You've probably seen how if you if you pour some water on a little pile of dirt, it will make its way down to the bottom of the pile of dirt through the path of least resistance.

But what generally happens is that single stream of water begins to immediately split into several little rivulets going down the hillside.

That's kind of what happens here in this passage of scripture.

There is a single source, a place where everything begins, and then there are several elements that kind of flow out from that initial source.

And we don't have to go far to find that initial source.

It's in verse 3.

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.

That is the spring.

That's the source from which everything else in the next 11 verses comes.

Blessed be the God who has blessed us.

Blessed be the God who has blessed us.

If we were to take an honest evaluation of our lives, we would all conclude that yes, God has blessed us.

We could all make a list, and our lists might be a little bit different.

They might have some different details, some different categories of how God has blessed us.

But we would all come to the same conclusion that yes, God has blessed us.

It's good to remind ourselves of that fact.

We understand that, that God, God blesses people.

But notice how this sentence begins in verse 3.

Blessed be the God.

That's not God blessing people.

That's not blessings coming down from heaven to human beings.

That's people blessing God.

Now, generally, a blessing is given from the greater to the lesser.

For example, in the Old Testament, we see in several places elder fathers blessing their children before they die.

In that patriarchal society, the father was considered the head of the family, and the blessing that he would give would be from the greater position to the lesser position.

Now, when when God blesses, it's the same way, isn't it?

No one's greater than God.

The greater blesses the lesser.

And it's understandable when one receives something from a superior, that is, one who is greater than another, should have the resources to bless.

There's no one greater than God.

Right?

No one greater than God.

No one who has more from which to bless another than God.

So it makes perfect sense for God to bless people.

It makes perfect sense for others to receive the blessing and the benefits of that blessing.

Then how are we able to bless God?

We're not in any way greater than God.

We're the creation, right?

He's the creator.

We're the created ones.

We have nothing with which to bless him.

He doesn't need us.

He doesn't need anything that we have or possess.

There's nothing that we can give to God that will benefit him that he does not already have.

We need to understand what this means because it will impact our understanding of God and it will impact how we relate to him as well.

And I think Psalm 134 is a good place to begin in helping us understand what it means to bless God.

Psalm 134, this is a very short psalm, maybe the shortest, I don't remember off the top of my head.

It's just three verses.

We don't know who wrote this song.

All we know is that there's a little inscription at the top of it that says it is a song of a sense.

Now that that means that the people of Israel, as they were doing their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for one of the yearly feasts, would generally sing this song as they're ascending up the hills, going up to Jerusalem.

What does this song say?

Psalm 134.

Come, bless Yahweh, all you servants of Yahweh, who stand by night in the house of Yahweh.

Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless Yahweh.

May Yahweh bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth.

That's a similar situation to Ephesians 1:3, isn't it?

Ephesians 1:3

It begins by calling people to bless God.

And then there's a prayer at the end of it that God would bless people.

So blessing is expressed in both ways.

But is that kind of blessing the same?

That is, does God bless people the same way that people bless God?

Whatever blessing is, is it the same?

The psalmist uses a form of writing called parallelism.

It's often used in poetry, especially in the Hebrew Bible, where there are two lines that mean the same thing, but they say it in different ways.

That's what's happening here.

You have in the first line, come bless the Lord, and then the second line, lift up your hands to the holy place.

Lifting up your hands to the holy place is how you bless the Lord.

Well, does that mean then that we are to lift up our hands physically to bless the Lord?

Well, no, not necessarily.

Because in the Old Testament, lifting up your hands was a means of praising God, of worshiping God.

So to bless Him means to praise Him, to give worship to Him.

Now, God doesn't worship us, does He?

No, that never happens.

That would be the opposite of what we see in Scripture.

The creator is the one that's worshiped, not the created.

God doesn't worship us, we worship Him.

That means then that His blessing us must be different than our blessing Him.

If our blessing Him is praise and is worship of Him, He doesn't worship us.

So He must bless us in different ways, and He does that through the bestowal of benefits.

He gives to us out of the vastness of His power, of His grace, of His mercy.

He gives to His people.

Now let's go back to Ephesians 1:3.

Ephesians 1:3

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.

Three times is the word bless in that single verse.

And those three times it's all the same word.

And it's the word from which we get our English word, eulogy.

You've all heard of a eulogy, I'm sure.

It's a compound word in Greek coming from the Greek word you meaning good and logos meaning word.

It's a eulogy is a good word.

It's something that is praiseworthy of another.

So when we speak good words, when we bless God, when we eulogize God, we are praising him.

We are worshiping, we're declaring his goodness and his greatness.

So when the apostle Paul says to this ancient church in Ephesus, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is praising God.

He's worshiping.

And he's drawing all of his readers and listeners into a spirit of worship of this great God.

He's writing good things, praiseworthy things about God that if we know them and understand them, ought to move us to worship him.

To bless God is to praise him.

To bless God is to worship him, to offer thanks to him.

And that praise is not given to just any God, but to the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now don't think too hard about that.

We know from John's gospel that, especially, that Jesus is the Son of God, meaning he is equal with God.

That's why the Jews took up stones to stone him to death, to kill him.

They wanted to get rid of him because he claimed equality with the Father.

This is a descriptor here.

It's an identifying marker telling us that Joseph is not Jesus' father.

God is.

Jesus is the true Son of God.

And these believers in Ephesus had left their pagan beliefs behind to trust in Jesus, the Son of God.

He is the Lord.

He is God incarnate, God in the flesh.

This is the God whom Paul is blessing.

And because this is in Ephesus, it's important.

You see, ancient Ephesus was a strategic place in the Roman Empire.

You might say that it was the Wall Street of the Roman Empire.

There was a massive banking system centralized in Ephesus that had an untold number of money, of wealth in it.

Some scholars have even suggested that it was the banking center of the entire Roman Empire.

But more than that, it was an important religious center, especially of emperor worship.

There were five temples to five emperors in that one city.

Emperors Claudius, Hadrian, Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Severus, all in one city.

Five different emperors who said, I am Lord, I am God, I am the Son of God, you must worship me.

Here's my temple.

Come on in.

To go to one of those temples and offer a sacrifice to one of the temple, one of the emperors, was to bless the emperor as a god.

It was to worship him.

It was to recognize the emperor as the giver of all benefits, as the one who blesses the people.

But the greatest religious activity in Ephesus was not of emperors.

It was of the goddess Diana, also known as Artemis.

The Temple Diana was the largest building that we know of that was constructed in ancient times, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

You see a little bit about the worship of Diana in Acts chapter 19, beginning about verse 10 or so.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Paul almost got himself kicked out of the city of Ephesus because of the fervor of their devotion to the goddess Diana.

And it may be the worship of that particular false goddess that was in the back of Paul's mind when he wrote this sentence.

You see, Diana was believed to have unlimited power.

She was believed to have power that transcended every other kind of power.

And so anybody who came and put themselves under her authority would be protected from everything, even from demons.

She was said to have power over the spirit world.

It meant that she could intercede for her followers and help protect them from the cruel fate that this world would offer them.

So to anyone who came to worship Diana, she was their savior.

She was their lord.

She was the queen of the cosmos.

Imagine someone who has been a worshiper of Diana, who now comes to understand that everything that Diana promised was empty.

And now you come to Jesus.

And you hear from the Apostle Paul He's given you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

For Gentile converts to Christ, this statement from the Apostle Paul challenged everything they left behind.

The emperors of Rome were not all-powerful.

Neither was Diana.

Neither one of them could be great blessers of all people.

The one whom Paul praised was the true God, the father of the true Lord, Jesus, the Messiah, he alone is worthy of worship.

And by beginning this section with this statement, he's encouraging us to come alongside him, to stand up and to praise God, to bless the great God, to worship the Lord Jesus Christ by declaring the good word of his greatness and his grace.

But why should we do that?

Why should we join him in declaring the greatness and the goodness of his grace?

I think we see three reasons in this verse, three reasons to join in and bless our God.

First reason is we bless because he first blessed us.

We bless because he first blessed us.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has.

Past tense, has blessed us.

Do you see there that the blessing is completed?

The blessing has been given, who has blessed us.

The church in Ephesus, the Christians in Ephesus had been blessed.

If you are a Christian, you have been blessed.

This is not a blessing for which we are still waiting.

The Apostle Paul did not command us to gather together inside of a warm building in the middle of frigid winter to pray for a blessing.

No, he said, we have gathered because we have been blessed.

You know the verse from 1 John 4, I'm sure.

We love him.

Why?

Because he first loved us.

We love God and we love other people because God first demonstrated his love for us in the same way we bless God because he has first blessed us.

He is the first cause.

Nothing happens without God acting first.

He loved first.

He blessed first.

It's it's good and it's and it's healthy and it's even healing to remind yourself of that particular truth on a regular basis.

To sort of untangle it from the cobwebs of your mind and your heart and bring it to the forefront.

He first loved us.

He first blessed us.

That is true no matter the circumstances of your life.

That is true even if you have had the hardest week you have ever lived in your life.

That is true even if you have the darkest week that you've had in your life.

If you see no light at the end of your tunnel, if you are hurting, if you are suffering, if you are anxious, if you are, if you are praying for a family member, it doesn't matter your situation.

That is true.

He first loved you and he first blessed you.

Understanding that and bringing that to the forefront of our thinking can help move us toward a place of contentment in life, of resting in who God is and what he's provided for us, resting in his unchanging blessing.

We bless because he first blessed us.

We also bless God because of the blessings themselves.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.

Here's another subtle contrast, I think, with those ancient pagan religions.

The emperors would promise their people blessings of peace and prosperity.

You've probably heard of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.

Not much different than our modern politicians.

Elect me, and you've got all the blessings and the security and the peace that you would want.

Prosperity to no end.

The goddess Diana was supposed to provide protection not only from the spirit world, but from life itself, and the bad things that come into the world.

So much so that it was believed that she would provide every one of her worshippers with health, wealth, and everything good that could be found in the world.

Identical to the modern health and wealth movement.

But the people to whom the Apostle Paul wrote, the Christians who heard this left behind all of those empty promises for blessings of another kind.

For promises that were not empty, but fulfilled in Christ.

God first blessed them.

And he blessed them with every spiritual blessing.

When life hits you like a ton of bricks, remind yourself that everything that the world offers you in return is just empty promises.

When you think that that you know what, your life is not what it should be, and and you need to have what everybody else in life has, remind yourself that everything else that everybody else has is empty promises.

When you think that you need something more because uh the people on your your in your neighborhood have it and you don't, remind yourself that it's just empty promises.

What are you reminded?

What comes to your mind when you are reminded to count your blessings?

Some of you older saints might remember that old hymn, Count Your Many Blessings.

See what God has done.

Now I've just distracted you.

You're off singing that song, aren't you?

Come back.

Come back.

Focus.

When you make a list of your blessings, what are you most likely to write down?

If you're like most people, you'll write down, oh, I'm thankful for my family, thankful for my home.

I've been blessed with fairly good health in my life and my family.

You know, we've got food on the table, we've got friends, we've got a good job.

Whatever.

Our minds naturally gravitate towards the things that we can see and hold on to, don't they?

The earthly things.

But those are not the blessings that the Apostle Paul is telling us to remember here.

Now we may or may not have the kinds of blessings that other people around us have in this life, but there are blessings that every single person who has come to Christ has received, and they are spiritual blessings.

These blessings belong to the realm of God's Spirit.

They're benefits that come to us through God's Spirit.

Look down to verses 13 and 14.

In him, in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, there's that faith, that trusting, leaving behind all of the emperor worship, all of the Diana worship, everything else, and saying, No, I trust in Christ.

When that happened, you 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.

My wife has made some fantastic grape jolly this year.

It's true.

Never tasted anything like it.

When she makes that jolly, she she processes it and puts a lid on it that seals it.

Right?

It seals it so that it preserves what's inside.

It keeps it, it protects what's inside.

You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

God has said, You're mine, and I'm gonna seal you, I'm gonna protect you, I'm gonna preserve you.

I'm gonna do that through the Holy Spirit.

Who is the guarantee?

It's as though he's saying, Here's the down payment that promises I'm gonna pay the rest of it.

It's as good as done.

This is what God has done for us.

God seals us for himself by his Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is our guarantee.

That means that every single believer in Christ who has done what is written here in verse 13, you've heard the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, and you believed in him.

Every single person has received the Holy Spirit, and with the presence of the Holy Spirit has the blessings that come with that Spirit.

God has blessed every single follower of Christ with spiritual blessings.

Which blessings?

Yes, all of them.

Every one.

Peter told us in one of his letters that God has provided everything we need for life and godliness.

Everything.

There's nothing that any Christian lacks to follow Christ.

God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.

We are not lacking any spiritual blessing given by God's Spirit.

Now we don't have time this morning to go too far into the details of those blessings.

But the ones that are in the apostle's mind fill out the rest of this 202-word sentence.

They include verse 4, God choosing us, verse 5, our adoption as God's children, verse 7, redemption and forgiveness of sins, all the way down in verses 11 through 14 to our inheritance in Christ.

God has blessed us.

And these blessings and others that we find all throughout Scripture aren't lavished upon us.

He doesn't just said, I'm going to give you a little tiny bit.

I'm willing to give you this much.

No, they're poured out, they're lavished on us.

And they are intended in verse 6 to move us to bless God, to praise his glorious grace.

Maybe we should work to know the spiritual blessings God has given us.

Maybe we should work to know that.

And some of them are listed here, but there are many others.

That would be a great spiritual exercise.

In fact, for those of you that have already failed in your New Year's resolutions, here's a new one to start.

Seriously, start a list of spiritual blessings that God has given you.

Make a list.

You could start with the ones that are listed here and then maybe move over to Galatians chapter 5 and list the ones that are there and then work through the rest of Scripture.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

And when you have your list of spiritual blessings, take a few moments each day and give God thanks for that blessing, praising Him for what He's done for you.

I guarantee it'll change your life.

We bless because God first blessed us.

We also bless him because of the blessings he has given us.

But there's a third truth here, and I think it's one of the most important for this section of Ephesians.

We bless God because of the location, the placement, the blessings.

We bless because of the location of our blessings.

It's emphasized twice in this one verse.

In Christ and in the heavenly places.

But if you work your way down through the chapter, you'll see it over and over again.

Verse 4, we're chosen in Him.

Verse 7, in Him we have redemption.

Verse 9, set forth in Christ.

Verse 10, unite all things in Him.

Verse 11, in Him, in Christ, in Him, in Christ, over and over and over again.

This is a fundamental change of focal point.

What's that?

What's focal point?

Well, you photographers understand focal point.

In photography, the focal point is the point at which you want the camera to focus.

It might be a person's eyes in a portrait.

Or maybe a particular detail in a flower.

Or some other interesting detail that you want a person's eyes to be attracted to.

So when the photo is developed, the focal point is the one place you want eyes to notice.

You want everything directed towards that one point that is perfectly in focus.

And if you are a Christian, your focal point is Christ.

Period, end of story.

Notice how it's emphasized, not just in this chapter, but throughout the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Chapter 2.

Chapter 2, verse 5.

We've been made alive together with Christ.

Verse 6, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Verse 7, showed us his grace in riches, grace and kindness toward us in Christ.

Verse 10, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

Verse 13, now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far off have been brought near.

Verse 18, through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

Verse 21, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him you also are being built together, all over and over and over again.

It was important, the Apostle Paul said to these ancient people living in Ephesus, it's important to know that the location of your blessings is not in Rome with the Emperor.

Don't look to that big white house in Washington.

Location of your blessings is not at the temple of Diana.

Which, by the way, was also a place of the bank.

The location of their blessings is in a person.

In Christ, the Son of God, who loved them and gave himself for them.

The location of their blessings was not in a man-made temple, but in heaven, where their true and eternal citizenship resided.

But those, because those blessings have already been given and they are spiritual blessings, and they are in Christ, they can't be taken away.

You can't lose them.

They cannot be lost.

They're like the treasures in heaven where moth and rust don't creep in and destroy, where thieves can't break in and take away.

Now we may not be walking in fellowship with Christ and instead living in sin, and so we don't enjoy the blessings of those benefits, but that does not mean we have not received them if we are truly in Christ.

If you are in Christ, you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and that is astounding.

No wonder, no wonder we should bless God by giving him praise and thanks.

Imagine what that would do to our evangelism.

If we lived, if we if we truly lived with the hope and the contentment brought about by these blessings, others would begin to see the difference in us and wonder why we're different.

If the things of this world grew dimmer and dimmer, while the things of Christ grew brighter and brighter, would that not be seen by those around us?

If we, if we like Paul, could know, could could really, truly, life-changingly know what blessings God has given us and to live in light of them, what kind of people might we be?

We'd be the strange kind of people.

The kind of people that can rejoice in the midst of trial.

That can give thanks in the midst of persecution.

I can rejoice in Christ no matter what experience we go through.

We could bless God for making us his children when the world disowns us.

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, so that so that we would be holy and blameless before him.

In his love predestined us to adoption.

So we might we might be as children.

Lord Jesus, we're simply astounded at the lavishness of your grace.

May your spirits move in us to enable us to recognize all that you've lavished upon us.

Do not allow us to remain unchanged.

But grant us grace so that we might return to you and give praise to your glorious grace.

And this morning, too, we are reminded that all of all of this grace and mercy and spiritual blessing did not come without cost.

You left the glories of heaven to take upon yourself a human body.

God become flesh to experience the effects of the curse of sin on this world.

And you experienced the greatest of curses.

Death and the punishment for our sin.

But death could not hold you.

You rose from the dead, proving once and for all that no other so-called God is greater than you.

So it's to you that we come this morning blessing you, giving praise to the name of Jesus, the one who died so that we might be made righteous, the one who died so that we might be reconciled to God and forgiven.

The one who died so that we might be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

We bless you, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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