Ephesians 1:1-14 – Navigating Change

The uh the keen eyed uh among you will uh notice that Ephesians chapter one is not a psalm.

Uh we normally do psalms right through to the end of August, and so you might be thinking, well, what's going on?

Uh we have, excuse me, uh decided, uh, given the uh changes that are afoot over the next uh little while, to do a little three-week mini-series just thinking about how it is that Christians uh process and navigate change, uh hence the title of this miniseries, and we're gonna be uh looking at really the first two chapters from Paul's letter to the Ephesians uh in that sort of that sort of vein.

It's slightly uh more topical than we would normally do, uh, but still done in a uh in a kind of exposition, letting scripture speak for itself uh sort of way.

And so that's where we're gonna be for the next three weeks because uh there are uh changes that are happening to our uh to our church family uh in uh three weeks' time, three weeks today.

Uh we will not be in this building, uh, but rather we will uh have moved uh to our new venue at the Odeon uh movie theatre at the Point Village, uh in the other end, really, of the the center of the the city.

And uh that's a pretty monumental change for us.

We haven't moved uh for for seven years.

Uh you might have seen some of the throwback photographs that I put on the the website of us cleaning and getting the place ready and decorating our Christmas tree for when the the first Sunday that we moved in here, uh, because it was uh December.

And so it's worth thinking through how it is we transition well, how do we go through these changes?

Because not everybody likes change.

Uh, some people find change stressful, and uh it's worth thinking how do we process it uh as followers of the Lord Jesus?

And not only are we going through changes as a church, but uh for many of us, your lives are in flux.

You feel like things are constantly changing uh around you.

Perhaps you've just moved Ireland, perhaps you've just moved uh church, you're looking for a new family, for connection, perhaps there are changes of food in your relationships.

Uh there have been births and deaths and in your in your family, and and so it can things can feel very changeable, things can feel very uncertain, and that in turn can feel very unsettling.

And so, how do we as Christians navigate the flux and changes of life?

So that's why it is a timely and appropriate thing for us to be thinking through for these next three weeks or so.

Uh, in centuries past, if you wanted to navigate your way across an unfamiliar territory or sea, one of the ways that you would do that is by using the night sky.

The night sky can help you uh find your bearings and uh plot a course.

I'm going to speak about the the northern hemisphere now because that's the only night sky that I know.

I've never seen the southern sky.

I'd like to, uh, but if you're from the southern hemisphere, you might be able to uh inform me of how it works down there.

But if you are familiar with the northern hemisphere and you're looking to uh to do some celestial navigation, the the star that you have to look for is Polaris.

It's the pole star.

Because when you find Polaris, you know that you're facing north.

If you were standing in the North Pole, Polaris would be directly above you.

And the more you go north, the more it rises in the sky.

If you want to know where Polaris is, you need to find the Big Dipper.

Uh and the bowl of the Big Dipper is pointing at Polaris.

Ben affirms that, that's correct, isn't it?

There we go.

So if you're facing Polaris, you know where north is.

That means that your back is facing south and you can stretch out your arms and you're pointing east and west.

Why do you have to find Polaris?

In fact, it's the image that you can't quite see because of the lighting just bleaching it out.

But in the background, you might see kind of some streaks uh across that night sky image that is uh a long exposure photograph of the night sky showing stars as they move.

And what are they moving around?

Well, they're moving around Polaris.

The reason why you find the pole star is because it doesn't move, it is a constant fixed point.

You cannot orientate yourself around Orion's belt or around the Big Dipper because it's constantly in different parts of the sky.

You find Polaris, and then you know where north is.

It gives you your bearings.

You don't orientate yourself around any of the other stars because they're changeable.

For Christians in the midst of change, our Polaris, our constant fixed point in the sky, is the Lord Jesus.

He is the one around which everything else orbits, revolves.

He is the one that we find our bearings in reference to.

We know that from this passage because of the emphasis that Paul places on the Lord Jesus all the way through these verses.

Scan your eye down with me, get your phone up again, get your Bible open, have a look at Ephesians 1, and look at all of the references to in Christ or in him.

Verse 1, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

Verse 4, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

Verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he blessed us, sorry, with which he blessed us in the beloved.

That's another reference to Jesus.

Verse 7, in him we have redemption through his blood.

Or verse 10, a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him.

Verse 11, in him we have obtained an inheritance.

Verse 12, so that we may, who were the first to hope in Christ.

Verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, believed in him and were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

Christ is the very center of this passage.

He is the Polaris of eternity.

He is the fixed point in the theological sky.

He is the central point of this constellations around which we all move.

When things are changing and evolving and feel like they are in flux, we tend to look for and grasp for a sense of constancy, for a sense of familiarity, for a pole star that gives bearing to our life.

So we look for constancy from our from our family, from our career, from the person that we from the person that we love.

But if those things change, we feel like we've lost direction.

We feel like we're adrift again.

We feel like we are disorientated.

Isn't that one of the one of the effects of uh of grief is that sense of disorientation that you don't know how to find your bearings?

Often today, as a way of remedying that, is people don't look outside of themselves for that uh for that uh constant bearing.

We're told more and more to look inward, to make ourselves our own pole star, our own constant.

That if you the way that you find your place in the world is by maximizing your own self-expression, your own expressive individualism.

We grew up being told that we could be anything, do anything, that we were the masters of our own fate, the creators of our own destiny.

And so that's what we have tried to do.

That to orientate ourselves towards anything, any other constant star than ourselves was to diminish our value as a person.

And so we make this ourselves the center of our own little universes around which everything else orbits.

The problem with that, the fairly major problem with that is it doesn't work.

And that it's not true.

It doesn't work on an individual level because well let's look around us and take stock.

People in our world have been told to create their own identities, to express their own uh individuality.

And yet, hand in hand with that, people don't tend to feel freer, they tend to feel more anxious and more fearful and more depressed.

Maybe that is because there is no goal to aim for outside of yourself, no constant bearing.

You're not only your own compass, you are your own destination.

Win or lose, it's all on your shoulders.

That can be a bewildering and disorientating feeling.

It also doesn't work on a societal level because if everybody is orbiting around themselves, that sets us on a collision course with one another.

If all of our central orbits of self-interest begin to come in conflict with one another, then who says who should win out?

And so we break down.

We break down as a society into our factions, into our hierarchies.

We develop hierarchies of identity and make victimhood the aim and destination of our lives.

Is there a better way?

Is there a better way to orientate ourselves?

Well, Christianity has a different vision, it is a different vision in the midst of life's changes and uncertainties.

It offers us a Polaris around which we can orbit and find bearing.

What's another way of thinking about bearing?

Well, it's meaning.

The Polaris of Christianity is Christ Himself.

One of the first things that we learn and come to recognize as young Christians, and maybe you're wondering what Christianity is all about.

Well, here's lesson number one Christ is the center of the universe, not you, not me.

Not only do all things orbit around him, but in that orbit we truly find blessing and flourishing.

In the same way that as our planet orbits around the sun in that in that perfect orbit as a context for life, so as we orbit in that perfect sphere, so too as we orbit around Christ, we find that our lives begin to bloom and burst forth with meaning and with flourishing and with blessing.

That is what we see here in this passage.

Verse 3, that God the Father has blessed us.

Blessed us with what?

With every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

It's easy, isn't it, to think of God as some austere father who rations out his goodness, who drip feeds his blessing, who gives begrudgingly.

That is not the view that Paul has in Ephesians chapter one here.

No, it's quite different.

It is of a father who lavishes his grace, his blessing on his children.

He has bathed us in blessing because of the Lord Jesus.

Let's just look at those blessings, just a few of them, just for a moment, as we consider the goodness of having the Lord Jesus as that fixed point in our lives, as that polaris that gives us bearing.

What are the blessings of being in that faith-wrought orbit?

Well, the first blessing is right there in verse 3 and 4.

It is that we have been chosen by God before the foundation of the world.

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, 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 as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

Before the universe came into existence, God determined that he would make a people for himself.

And what was his attitude in doing this?

Some people struggle with to varying degrees with this idea of God's choosing, God's electing, God's predestinating.

This is not going to be a sermon on that.

This is a sermon on navigating change, including the title.

There are sermons in our back catalogue on that, and I'm happy to have a conversation about it, but I'm going to kind of uh offer a sketch.

What is God's attitude in his choosing of people?

What is his heart in doing it?

Well, we're told, and this should be a central part of our theology of predestination or of election or however you want to call it.

Because it's down there at the end of verse 4.

There's a very awkward verse break at the end of verse 4, start of verse 5, because it isn't a sentence break.

Because if you were just to read verse 5, it would read, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.

But that's not how the sentence starts.

The sentence starts at the end of verse 4, do you see?

In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons, daughters through Jesus Christ.

What is God's disposition in his choosing of a people for himself?

It is an overflow of his love.

In love, he chose us for adoption as sons.

When we have difficulty with the idea of God's choosing, the first thing that we must remember that it is a love-wrought doctrine.

The believer is bathed in blessings because of God's gracious work, his loving work before the world began.

See, this isn't this isn't that God looked and he saw those who were more lovely or were more lovable or were more deserving.

No, he loved people and in his grace set his love upon them.

This is great news for us in the changes and uncertainties of life.

Because it comforts the believer that our salvation is not based on our merits, on our goodness, on the strength or clarity of our faith, but on the sovereign, good, and loving will of God.

As a result, it is the ground of our assurance.

All of us from time to time, and maybe some of us now, wrestle with questions and doubts about whether or not we are a Christian.

And so often those doubts come because we look at ourselves, we look at the state of our lives and wonder how could God love us?

He has loved us before we acted.

It is not the extent to which we hold on to God, but the extent to which he holds on to us.

Christian assurance does not find its roots in us, but in God and in his loving choosing of us in the Lord Jesus.

It's also if I pick up the pace, I'll try and do questions because I can see on your faces that there are questions, okay?

So uh let's see, if I'm done by a quarter two, we'll do questions, okay?

You can hold you can hold me to that, right?

So we're gonna go, right?

The third, the third reason why this is well, the third reason why this is Ben's skeptical.

Don't start, oh, don't start taking bets.

Um the third reason why this is really good news for us as we transition is because it means that evangelism effect is effective.

Because evangelism isn't based on our efforts, but on God's sovereign choosing of people.

That means that God takes our weak and feeble words and uses them to bring about life.

That's great news as we move into a new area.

That's great news as we move into the Odeon that has 32,000 people living around us.

Brand new Trinity Halls of people who, spiritually speaking, don't know their right hand from their left, that God will use our efforts to bring people to knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

Another blessing that God brings about here, another blessing that we enjoy because of Christ, our constant star, that stabilizes us in uncertainty, is that God adopts us as his children.

Adoption stories are beautiful, aren't they?

It's one of the things that we're going to be looking at in more detail in our seminars uh on Tuesday night.

I often find as I'm scrolling aimlessly through Facebook or Instagram reels, you get those videos of uh of like grown-up children uh bringing adoption papers to their stepfather or something, and I feel like I've got a little something in my eye when I watch them.

For children who have seen difficult or tragic circumstances far too early in their lives to find a home where they are loved, given safety, security, given a new family name, made part of the family, loved in a way that is indistinguishable from biological children.

It's a glorious thing, isn't it?

And yet that is a glimpse of what God has done for us.

It's a photograph of the reality that God has wrought in eternity.

How do we navigate the chaos of life?

We do so knowing that God has permanently and irrevocably made us his own.

He has not employed us as servants to wait on him.

He is not like Allah who needs our worship, who needs our praise.

No, he has adopted us as sons to enjoy his blessing and the security of knowing.

That whatever happens, that we are his.

How is it that God does this?

Well, again, we are told, verse 7, in him that is in Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

So God's grace, that is his unmerited, undeserved kindness, motivates him in love to redeem us.

What does redeem mean?

Redeem just means to buy back, to buy out of, to buy the freedom of a slave in the Roman marketplace.

That's where the word comes from.

That God has bought us, bought our freedom from slavery, slavery to sin, slavery to death, slavery to our own self-centeredness.

And how has he done this?

By the blood of his son.

Our adoption papers are signed in the blood of Jesus, never to be revoked.

And as a result, what has he done, verse 8?

He has lavished his grace upon us.

Lavish his grace upon us in all wisdom and insight.

And more than that, he's brought us into the plan.

Don't we just love?

Don't you love to be in the know when somebody comes up to you and says, Have you heard?

You're like, no.

What?

I think that's maybe why kind of Bond movies are popular.

Why why guys, this no, this is generalization, but this means that it's generally true.

Guys tend to like spy novels.

Uh, because guys like to have secrets and girls like to tell secrets.

I think that's broadly how it works out.

But we l we like to have to have the secret.

We all like to be in the know and like, did you hear?

Because it's a sense of being brought in, being at the table, being in the know.

And God has sat us all down and said, let me tell you what I'm doing with all of reality.

Let me into the let me bring you into the secret that nobody else knows of what's happening in the cosmos, about where all of reality is going.

And where is it going?

It is all going towards that pole star, verse 10.

A plan which is set forth in Christ as a plan in the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Where is time and eternity going?

It is going to come together in harmony and wholeness under the reign of good King Jesus.

That is what our Heavenly Father is about.

That is what we get to join him in.

We join him in that work of bringing everything in subjection under Jesus, under his good rule.

And for what purpose?

Well, the purpose is repeated three times in this passage in order to give it emphasis.

It begins, the first one is there in verse 6.

God works to the praise of his glorious grace.

Really, that is to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Verse 12 at the end, he works to the praise of his glory.

At the end of verse 14, again, the third repetition, to the praise of his glory.

Why does God work in the world?

To the praise of his glory.

So that we might praise his glory.

It is by faith that you see his glory as praiseworthy.

The non-Christian looks at God and goes, that's not praiseworthy.

Why would I praise that?

But the Christian with the eyes of faith looks at the glory of God and says, That's praiseworthy.

Now, what does that mean?

I've got 10 minutes.

Because we can think of it like just giving kind of due deference, just kind of groveling and making sure that we give honor where it's due.

Maybe you uh grew up in a in a very strong kind of uh honor shame uh culture where you just you had to give respect to the person who was who was above you.

But that's not quite what's going on here when it talks about praising God for his glory.

No, actually, C.S.

Lewis really helps us, I think, understand this.

C.

S.

Lewis says this.

Think jot this down if you're taking notes.

C.S.

Lewis says that praise is the climax of enjoyment.

Praise is the climax of enjoyment.

He says that lovers praise one another because they enjoy one another.

And that that delight is incomplete in a sense until it is expressed.

Do you see what C.S.

Lewis is seeing there?

That we praise those things that we enjoy.

We praise those uh those lovers, those people, you know, I love your eyes, I love your hair, I don't, you know, I love your laugh.

And we praise that person, that spouse or whoever it is, because we enjoy them.

We enjoy their laugh, we enjoy spending time with them.

And it and in a sense, C.S.

Lewis is saying that the delight that you feel isn't really fully felt until it's given voice to.

Do you see?

What that means for our understanding of praising God is that praising God and enjoying God are inextricably linked.

That your life will be a life that praises God if it is a life that enjoys God, that enjoys his goodness and his grace.

And the good news is the good news is that that is what he has given you.

There's this language in verse 11 about an inheritance.

In him we have obtained an inheritance.

What is it that's waiting for us?

What is it that we will fully come to know in eternity, in heaven, in the new heavens, in the new earth?

Is it eternal life?

Well, we will get that, but I think that's a byproduct.

Is it glorification never to sin again?

Yes, we will get that, but I think that's a byproduct.

No, the the thing that we inherit, the greatest gift that God could give us is Himself.

He has given us Himself now by His Holy Spirit, that He has set as a seal and a guarantee he is with us and in us.

But what we're going to as we journey towards that constant star is a full experience of all who God is for you.

And so our praise of him is maximized when our enjoyment of him is at its fullest.

So God blows our minds and bursts our hearts with his majesty and with his might and will do so in eternity, as we glimpse his beauty and his love and his care of us, so that as we enjoy that eternal wonder, he is glorified.

That is why Jesus needs to be our constant star.

We are creatures who are constantly seeking enjoyment and pleasure, are we not?

But we're also creatures that are seeking to give praise, to give honor, to give glory.

And the Christian reality is that those two things go together.

Enjoyment and praise go hand in hand.

They are bedfellows.

We often seek our own glory, our own adulation for people to congratulate or applaud us in order that we might feel the pleasure of that, and boy, it's pleasurable, but it's fleeting.

Or it fails us, people deride us and despise us.

So the enjoyment of our own glory is gone.

Or we live for the enjoyment of comfort, and that is why you work, you work, you study now, so that you can get the career that you want, so that you can get the salary that you want, so that you can maximize your comfort.

Yet it never really satisfies you.

Never really enjoy it fully.

There's always more to be done.

The message of Christianity is that our fullest enjoyment, our fullest satisfaction is found in the Lord Jesus.

It is when our lives are orientated to around him, all of those other orbiting components of our lives, our career, our romantic life, all of those things, they all become gifts to enjoy.

You try and point your life at it and you find that it's moving.

You can't chase it through the night sky.

You've got to be pointed at Polaris.

You've got to be pointed at Christ.

The message of Christianity is that all things come from him and are going to him.

That he is the supreme satisfaction for our souls, the pole's star that we look to in order to get our bearing in life, the absolute reality from which we derive meaning and a hope that cannot be shaken.

And so as we go through these changes, there are always so many unknowns as a church and individually.

What we need to remember is that the Christian, the person who has placed their faith in the Lord Jesus, is not a planet spinning out of control.

He or she is orbiting around that central and glorious sun.

God, in a sense, today from this passage encourages you to take a moment to stop and to look and to find your bearings, to look at what is known, to look at what he has done for you in the Lord Jesus and who he has made you to be, and how he has redeemed and adopted you, how he has set your holiness as a goal that one day will be achieved by his grace.

And in the midst of the day-to-day uncertainty, he invites you to praise him for who he is, for his love for you from the beginning, from before the world began, to praise him that all time and eternity is in his hands, to praise him that he has made you his own, adopted you, and has become your father.

To praise him by enjoying him, enjoying all that he is and has for you.

To render thanks to him for all that he has given you and to delight in your salvation again.

Let me pray.

Help us, Father, by your Holy Spirit to arouse again delight and enjoyment in you.

So often our hearts are cold, our affections dull.

Astound us again with your glory and majesty.

Orientate every part of our being towards Christ, that central pole star, around whom all of time and eternity orbits, and to whom all things will go and be united under his good reign.

We praise you, Lord Jesus.

And we pray these things in your name.

Amen.