Our Blessings in Christ (Jake Enns)

This morning we're starting a new sermon series out of the

book of Ephesians. Paul the Apostle wrote this

letter of the Ephesians to the church at Ephesus.

He did this to remind them to to teach them about who they were

in Christ, what they had in Christ, and then how to live out

that what they had in Christ. And this is a reminder that we

need to remind ourselves as well, in our time here at our

church and this church, what we have in Christ.

And how does that translate into daily behavior?

The letter to the Ephesians is a very short letter in my Bible

and my hard copy, it only covers about 7 pages.

That's a very short letter. Letters are simply written

documents that convey a message from the writer to the reader.

Sometimes letters can be long, sometimes short.

Sometimes they bear good news, sometimes bad news.

Sometimes they're written to teach, other times just to

inform of events and facts. Sometimes they're happy,

sometimes they're sad. In our day, we write letters

still, mostly e-mail, but we still write letters.

And I remember back in the day when I was young, there was an

Internet and so I would write a letter to a friend.

I would write a handwritten letter, stuff it in the mail and

the envelope, stick, stick, stick, a stamp on there and send

it off. And I might get a letter a month

later. Now we write a letter on an

e-mail and get it the same day or text instant.

When I think of letter writing, I imagine maybe something like a

body of water, maybe a lake, for instance.

It can be large. It can be small, but what's

visible on the surface does not always reveal what's below the

surface. For instance, a lake may have a

large surface area, but it can be very shallow, like Erie for

instance. This to the South here.

I don't know how many of you knew this, but Lake Erie is

about 210 feet deep at its deepest.

I took picture of a of a of a satellite map.

These are the Great Lakes in in Canada or in the in the US.

There's Lake Huron, a Superior Lake MI, Lake Huron, Lake

Ontario, Lake Erie. There's Lake Ontario.

There's 5 Great Lakes on the surface.

They're just puddles of water. That's all it looks, that's all

we see. But that tells us very little

about what's beneath. Take a cross section look,

that's a lake. Lake Superior is about 1300 feet

deep. Lake MI is about 900.

Lake like Huron's about 700, like here's only 210, like

Ontario is again 800. It tells us very little on the

surface. You don't see that.

As I was reading the letter of Ephesians, that's what came to

my mind. I thought, wow, this is deep.

What Paul is writing here. It's not some shallow teaching

or some shallow information piece.

And what we will learn as we go through this sermon series.

We'll do some deep diving in this one.

We went through the book of Judges recently, and that's a

book of information and history. There's principles that we glean

that we want to learn from. That's good and that's true, but

covers the vast territory, a vast region, area of time, and

so on. But Ephesians is different.

It's small, it's short, but incredibly deep.

It's focused on what God has done and how that applies to us

today, what we have in Christ. And as we go through this, we'll

come through some of the teachings of Paul.

And what we find is that as we read different writers and

different commentators, they vastly disagree.

They don't agree on this. They don't agree about this and

they don't agree about that and have their own interpretation

here, their own interpretation there.

And I want to make reference this morning to some of these

different interpretations of what people say about what Paul

means. And I'm, I'm, I'm of the opinion

here in this body right now and listening online, we let people

say, oh, that's not what it means or that's not what it

means. It means this or it means that,

and we may not agree, but I do have some very clear thoughts

that I want to present what I believe it teaches.

So the plan is to go deep, look at Paula's writing and seek to

understand and apply it to our lives, to live it out.

So our sermon title is our Blessings in Christ.

You know that many people who claim to be Christians don't

experience the blessings of Christ.

They spend a lot of time worrying about this and that and

the other in life, and they don't live deep, they live

shallow. I'm going to ask you to raise

your hands, but do you live shallow or do you live deep?

And they may be going to church, they may be reading the Bible

and so on, and they do believe in God, but very insecure in

their walk, very confused. And then in our age of identity

struggle, put that in there. Yet it becomes very difficult.

One of the issues specifically that our culture is now engaged

in is identity struggle. And if we forget who we are in

Christ or what we have in Christ, the blessings we have in

Christ, we'll miss so much. To Paul, everything always was

all about Jesus and Jesus alone In Paul's life, Jesus was

everything. And whatever Paul did, he

focused first on Jesus, who Jesus was, what Jesus did, what

he, Paul had in Jesus. And from there he'd branch out

and everything had to line up with Jesus.

So this morning let's read Ephesians chapter 1 beginning

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

verse one. We read this Paul, an apostle of

Jesus Christ by the will of God to the Saints who are in Ephesus

and 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 with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of

the world, that we should be holy and without blame before

Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus

Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us

accepted in the Beloved. How many times in this short

passage does he talk about Jesus Christ?

In Him, in Christ, and so on? Well, let's first look at how

does Paul introduce himself? He wrote the letter after all.

What's his identity? Paul identifies himself as an

apostle of Jesus. I don't think he had an identity

struggle. He first tells us his name, then

second is ministry. You know how people today in our

world, you get a business card or you see somebody's title on

a, on a magazine, There's letters behind it.

MA master or something. Master degree or PhD, meaning

doctor degree, or maybe CEO, meaning chief executive officer.

And there's a whole bunch of those things.

Paul never referenced himself as to what he was trained in or the

job he had trained in early in life.

When Paul references himself, it's always in relation to his

calling or position in Christ Jesus.

Another thing, I just want to go to a little bit of history on

Paul here. Before he was Paul, he was first

called Saul. He was born as a Jew in the city

of Tarsus. And what's also important in

Paul's life, he was also a Roman citizen by birth, which

obviously meant his dad was a Roman citizen as well.

That was a huge deal in this time.

Another thing about Paul, he was very educated for his time.

He was steeped and just saturated and marinated in

Jewish religion and culture. And to compare what kind of

teaching and education Paul had, one might perhaps say maybe he

went to the Harvard of his time or to Yale or Princeton,

something like that. Anyway, he was trained at the

highest level, the best known, the high reputable teacher,

Gamaliel. He of all people was his

teacher, but all of what he had before he was a follower of

Christ somehow never gets mentioned after he becomes a

follower of Jesus. He had a complete change.

Paul never once in his letters talks about I Paul the Roman

citizen trained by Gemalion in the givener whatever the

university of so and so. He never does that.

He talks Paul an apostle of Jesus, served of Jesus, slave of

Christ and so on. He identifies himself only as

who he is in Christ, never his Jewish credentials that he had

before he was a Christian. His role, his calling was

central to everything he had, his whole existence, everything

about him, all of it centered around his calling in position

as an apostle. It was not that Paul himself had

decided on this course in life as an apostle.

He writes here in Ephesians that his calling was by the will of

God. Let's look a little bit also

what led up to him becoming a Christian?

His ministry as an apostle was a calling Early on in Paul's life

when he was still Saul, we find he was a persecutor of the

church. He hated the church, he hated

Jesus, he hated the apostles. He hated everything about the

church. And when in Acts chapter 8 and

Acts 8 · chapter mention

9, Stephen was stoned to death, Saul was a young man at the time

and he was agreeing to it. He was supporting that in Acts

Acts 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8 verse three. I won't read that.

He went into a very he went and started going and persecuting

the church, dragging people off and putting them in prison.

But then in Acts Chapter 9, something interesting happens.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

Saul was on his way to Damascus doing what he believed was the

will of God as a good Jew would, following the law as he thought

he was. He was blind, but he was thought

he was doing the right thing. On his way to Damascus, he's

going to take some more Jews to from a Damascus to Jerusalem and

put them in prison. And he thought he was doing the

right thing. He's on his way to Damascus and

all of a sudden there's a great light shines around him and he

falls and he hears a voice from the light says, Saul, Saul,

where are you persecuting me? And he says, Who are you, Lord?

And the voice says, I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting.

It's hard for you to kick against the goads.

Some translations say, against the bricks.

Trembling and fearful, he replies, Lord, what do you want

me to do? He said, the voice says, arise

and go into the city and you'll be told what to do.

Those are the voice words of Jesus.

So Saul got up, was blind and was led by the hand and went

into the city. And he fasted for three days,

not eating or drinking. He no longer persecuted

Christians. He now surrendered his life to

Jesus, the one he tried to persecute before.

It was not that he intentionally had wanted to do wrong.

He thought he was doing the right thing, but he was blind.

Now in Damascus, he's physically blind.

But spiritually now you can see. We find further in Acts that God

spoke to a disciple named Ananias and told him go to a

certain St. called straight, meet Saul, lay his hands on him

that he may receive his sight. He's not very willing.

I know this guy, Saul. He's a persecutor, persecuting

your believers. And the Lord says I've chosen

him as a vessel of mine to go and take my name to the Gentiles

and and so on. That's all.

In Acts chapter, Chapter 9, Ananias does as he's told, lays

his hands on Saul, He receives his sight, Paul's baptized, and

from then on he becomes one of them that he had been

persecuting. And then later his name is

changed to Paul. In reading and studying Paul, we

never find one single time ever that he shrank back or

complained about his lot in life.

He considered it a privilege to suffer for the name of Jesus.

And I just want to repeat he never had intentions of

disobeying God, Jehovah God. He did what he did in ignorance.

He believed he was doing the will of God.

And when he met Jesus, the light went on and he suffered much for

following Jesus. So all the things, the hardships

and the struggles and the difficulties that came his way,

he accepted as part of this is what a disciple of Jesus called

to do. So here in the letter of Ephesus

to Ephesus, Paul writes to the church.

He's an apostle of Jesus, Jesus Christ by the will of God.

And as far as we know, this letter was actually written from

prison or from a place called house arrest, not quite sure.

But he was not a free man when he wrote this letter.

Who were the Ephesians? Well, briefly, the Ephesians

were in the Ephesian church, was in a church in Ephesus, a port

city, important Roman city and an Asia Minor, and was a

thriving idol making place as well.

And so Paul had spent some time there and he says to the Saints

or in Ephesus faithful in Christ Jesus.

There's a record in Acts chapter, I think it's believed

19 where we read that Paul had come to the city, starts a

church and trouble develops and there's this idol making factory

or business and guy named Demetrius building these little

silver idols and trouble erupts. And then he didn't go to prison.

Paul didn't go to prison there and it became a big riot there.

Gospel was taking hold, was taking root, and things were not

going well. So let's look a little bit at

what are Saints now. Saints are people set apart for

Christ, grounded in Christ and live separate from the world.

So trying to get a background picture here, What's happening

here, All of us who are followers of Jesus here this

morning, today we're set apart. We're Saints as the Bible teach

us, and at the end of the passage here, Paul writes to the

faithful in Christ. That word in Christ or in him is

key. In this passage.

We want to keep that in mind. In him is key.

We see here the relationship connection.

When a person is in Christ, that person has a relationship with

God. The word relationship is

mentioned in some translations, but not in all.

The NIVI mean the new King James or King James does not mention

relationship, but the the new living translation does.

And there's some others I think that might as well, but the

repeated reference here is to us in him to we one body and so on.

And I would also mention here for us this year at in 2026, all

EMC is the year of connections. And so this lends itself well to

that. He says in verse 2, grace to you

peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So here we see the shepherd heart of Paul speaking grace and

peace to his readers and again, knowing where Paul was when he

wrote this, this adds depth to the text.

And as far as we know, again, Paul was not a free man when he

wrote this. Paul focused on the spiritual

well-being of the Saints at Ephesus and he brought into

focus the source of peace and grace.

Peace and grace in our lives comes from God the Father and

the Lord Jesus Christ. The first few verses were not

that unique from his other letters.

He has other letters where he writes and very similar

introductions, but now we come to a part of the letter that go,

that start. Now it starts getting deep.

It goes deep very quickly. This is where a lot of people

have very different views and very different interpretations

of what it means. Verse 3, blessed be the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every

spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Now again, this is deep and it's not as deep as it's going to

get. There's connection here.

Our spiritual blessings, God's grace are standing in Christ.

All of it is in Christ. In other words, the nature and

character of God are revealed in the Lord Jesus.

Again, the nature and character of God are revealed in the Lord

Jesus. So when we see Jesus, we don't

see him physically, but we know his character.

We know his teachings to the Ephesians he's writing.

That's who God was. That's how God is.

He's our Savior, but yet also he's God.

And again, we'll see in the following following verses as we

go through the relationship factor here is core, very key

part of what Paul is teaching. And again he says, blessed be

the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us

with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

He brings that in repeatedly. But here's where it gets

difficult. Verse four and five, just as he

chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we

should be holy and without blame before him in love, having

predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself

according to the good pleasure of his will.

And it goes on. But let's stop there.

Now. This is getting deeper yet.

What's he saying? This is this is where you ask

different Bible teachers, different pastors, different

denominations, they give very, very different responses to

this. A lot of discussions and debates

and different church groups happens over this.

Volumes have been written defending one view or another

and the debate goes on. Today people go on arguing over

different points of view on what this means.

What I want to say this morning may well be dismissed by someone

that's incorrect. Incorrect at best, maybe heresy

at worst. I'm OK with that.

I want us to see what Paul is saying, not some interpreter,

and how what he says aligns with what he says elsewhere in other

scriptures and what the Bible says in general on the matter of

being chosen and predestined. Sometimes it's important to not

just look at what a passage says.

Also, look what it does not say. Remember again, in verse one,

Paul refers to the readers as Saints.

What are Saints? They're believers.

They're saved. They're walking with Jesus.

They've repented of their sin, living in relationship with

Jesus, people in Christ. That's the people group Paul is

writing to now. He says in verse 4, chose us in

him. Let's pause.

What does chose mean? That's a decision.

That's an action. In this case, Paul is saying God

decided to choose us in Christ. Let's break this down to its

individual parts. Who's chosen?

We are US, meaning the the readers.

When we read this letter. We've repented of our sin.

We're following Jesus. This means us today.

It is us here at this church, those of us who believed and are

repented and are children of God.

That's number one. Number two, where did God choose

us? It says in him, not outside of

him. All who are chosen by God are

chosen in His Son Jesus Christ. Now the, the third question

here, when did he choose us? Let me just pause there and get

back to that a bit later. This I want to say go to

question #4 first, then come back to #3 it says before the

creation of the world. But what does that mean?

OK #4 what did he choose us for? And here's where it gets and I

have listened to people talk about this and preach on this.

And the first thing they say for salvation, it's not what it

says. It says that we should be holy

and without blame. That's what it says.

Remember, Paul is referring to saved people.

God chose them in Christ, that they should be holy, set apart

for for Christ without blame. He does not say chose in him for

salvation, not what he says. It's important to note that I

understand there are people who read this chose us in him.

They jump to for salvation. But that's not what the text

says. What is in the text is that the

Saints are chosen, that we should be holy and without blame

before him in love. OK, now let's go back to

question #3 this is before the foundation of the world.

What about that phrase I said before?

We're going to do some deep diving.

This is deep. Let's look at the part that says

from before the foundation of the world.

Let's read verse 4 again. I'll put it on the board.

Just as He chose us in him before the foundation of the

world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him.

Again, the US here means God's people.

We were chosen from before time. That's what He says, that we

should be blaming this and holy, holy and blameless.

Listen carefully. This does not mean that before

time we were holy and blameless. It's not what it says.

Listen carefully. Or that from before time we were

saved. It's not saying that either.

God knew from before time that sin would come.

The Bible clearly teaches that that he would send a Savior,

That through Jesus Christ, all who would repent would be saved.

So God's plan for His people is to be holy and blameless.

That predates creation and human existence.

That's his plan. What it does not say is that God

decided to choose who would be saved and who would be

condemned. That's not what this passage

says. I'm aware there's some passage

of Scripture that some people might point to and argue, and

those passages God did decide beforehand who to save and who

to condemn. If you take an A passage

isolated from what's before and what's after from the rest of

Scripture and read just that, then you could understand it

that way. But that's not the total

interpretation of Scripture. It doesn't align with God's

character how it's described in Scripture.

My understanding is that Scripture must be compared with

Scripture. I firmly believe that God works

in relationship and partnership with human beings.

We find that right at the start of Genesis, God created Adam in

his image, gave him a job to do, Adam and Eve, and he gave them

an assignment, all in the context of relationship.

And they had the freedom to disobey or to obey.

It was not predestined, not predetermined.

That was their free will and this does not negate or cancel

out the fact that we're saved by grace through faith and not

through works. When salvation happens, when

salvation happens, it's because Jesus loved us, called us, we

respond, repent and believe. That's relationship.

That's the channel. Adam and Eve, they had a

relationship, they decided to disobey then Cain and Abel.

Abel pleased God, Cain didn't. We have the story of Noah

pleased God and and God used him to rescue to perpetuate the

human race. Abraham, father of the faithful

story of Isaac and Rebecca story of Jacob, story of Joseph, Moses

and the Israelites at every single level and connection

there was relationship, relationship, relationship.

You can't deny it always a relationship factor.

Every time we you, I we have a say in our eternal destiny.

The text simply says God chose those who would be saved to be

holy and blameless. If people get the idea that God

from before time choose some to be saved and some to be

condemned, they cannot get that through consistent

interpretation of this or any other passage.

Let's read verse 5 again. Having predestined us to

adoption as sons by Jesus to himself according to the good

pleasure of His will. Paul does use the word

predestined, but let's pay close attention.

Predestined to adoption as sons, not for salvation.

The people in question are saved people.

God predestined saved people to be adopted as sons.

This was God's plan from before the foundation of the world.

Do I read this passage? Salvation is not the topic in

this passage here. Choosing people who are in

Christ to be predestined, that is.

And those are the blessings we have.

Let me use an illustration to bring a bit of clarity.

Analogies always breakdown. Somehow they don't always work

and they work for some but not for everything.

Imagine you want to take a trip on a plane.

Let's say you want to go to Vancouver and British Columbia.

You go online, you buy a ticket and you pay the ticket and you

have flight number so and so at airport number, such airport

such and such. And you go to the airport, let's

say to Toronto and you go into the airport and then to the to

the terminal. And then you find your gate and

then you find your NUM flight number and your destiny.

And it says Vancouver, That's you.

You get on that plane, you're predestined to get to Vancouver

because you decide to get on that plane.

That plane's going to Vancouver. No matter when you buy the

ticket, the plane's going to go there.

And if you get on that plane, you're predestined to go there.

Then there's another plane, there's beside that gate that

says Saint John, Newfoundland, sitting on the East Coast.

The plane you get on Predestined's where you'll go.

And through the window you can see the two planes getting ready

and so on. And you get on your right plane

and off you go, and you're predestined to go to Vancouver.

I know it's not a perfect illustration, but it helps to

understand a little bit that we have a part to play.

We have a role in this. The truth is clear.

God chose and predestined all people who repent and turn from

their sins, who put their faith and trust in Jesus to be holy

and blameless and predestined them for adoption of sons.

That is part of the blessings that we find here.

God does not want us to just be saved.

That's a great point, but that's the starting point.

To be saved from sin, from the judgement of death, is great

blessing. It's something we need to always

keep in mind and heart and remember what we've been saved

from and for what purpose. But then we need to go a step

further and remind ourselves that what God did already,

before he created the world, he made a plan.

Before he created the world, He made a plan for those who would

heed His call, who would repent, that he would choose and

predestine them to a holy life, blameless life.

Maybe you're here this morning. When did God choose me?

Well, if you've heard the gospel, if you repented of your

sins, you are in a relationship with Jesus, then you're chosen

and you're predestined to live holy and blames before God.

It's that simple. I know there are some who say

salvation has nothing to do with people.

It's everything to God, but everything about God, only about

God. God does the calling, He does

the the saving and so on, and we have nothing to do with it.

Yes we do. We must repent, we must obey.

That's not works for salvation, but that's a response.

In the end, it is relationship based and God never has ever

forced anyone into relationship with Him.

It's not, as some would say, irresistible or it's not about

election. This is simply God, what God has

in store for us. It's not correct to say that we

have no say. We have no part in this.

We do, and for all who received the message of grace and

accepted to repentance and faith, they're the ones as he

says. I'll read verse 4 again.

Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the

world that we should be holy and without blame before him in

love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ

himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the

praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in

the beloved. The end goal here, verse 6 to

the praise of the glory of his grace.

That's what it's all about. We will never fully know or

understand in this life what God has done for us.

We know some of what he did. It's he we know enough.

We know what we need to do, what we're called to do that we need

to obey and through our worship, God is glorified, God is

honored, and we've been blessed beyond measure.

And next time you want to continue with this theme.

And by the way, for those of you who have done sincere study, you

will know that the 1st 13 verses of Ephesians, chapter one in the

original language that Paul wrote, this was just one long

sentence. That's how intense and how

passionate, how deep this was with him.

He wanted the Ephesians to focus on God, to be reminded of God

and to understand the blessings they have in him, what God has

done for them. So what does this matter for you

and I today? We have been blessed in Christ

beyond what we can grasp. This is incredibly deep.

Our understanding is very limited how truly deep this is.

We'll never be able to fully go to the depths of this, grasp it

fully. We are chosen as Saints to be,

to be, to obey him, to glorify Him.

He's predestined the Saints for adoption of sons.

So if you're a follower of Jesus, you're chosen your

predestined. If you've not yet repented, then

you're not in that group. The choice to repent and believe

is our choice. We've been given that choice.

And to all who make that decision to repent and believe

to be holding the blameless. They're predestined for adoption

as sons in God's family for His praise and His glory.

Let us pray. Lord, we pray that we'd be

humble. Lord, help us to surrender

completely to you. Lord, You've given us so much.

Without you, we could have never come to you.

You came to us, You called us, you invited us, You called us to

repent, You called us to follow. And it means something or you

call us to obedience. And we find so many passages in

the New Testament where this is explained over and over and over

again. Help us, Lord, to be mindful of

it. Help us, Lord, to keep you

always before our hearts and minds.

We're chosen by you and destined for holiness and relations with

you as as your adopted children. Thank you, Lord, for your

continued grace to us. May we live it out faithfully in

your name, Amen.