Ephesians - An Introduction

Amen.

Well, church, turn with me, if you will, to the letter of Ephesians.

And today I will start a long journey preaching through the small letter, but it will be an introductory sermon.

And this morning we're going to look at the first three verses of Ephesians.

And since I only preach once a month, this may take a whole year to get through, maybe longer.

We'll see.

So, letter of Ephesians, first three verses.

This letter is known as the Queen of the Epistles.

Raymond Brown once said that Ephesians had the most influence on Christian thought and spirituality.

John Calvin preached a series of 48 sermons on Ephesians, making it his favorite letter.

John Piper, in recent years, he did a video series of 60 videos on just Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

So clearly, it is one of the most cherished letters in the New Testament throughout church history and even today.

Many scholars say this because it contains some of the most beautiful statements that could ever be said regarding the Christian faith.

It is this 30,000-foot view of who God is, what he has done, our position in Christ, and what the church is.

But before we dive into the content, like any good Bible student, we first must ask who wrote this letter and why?

We will never truly appreciate the biblical texts until we understand the context.

So this letter is written by the Apostle Paul during the end of his life while he was in prison in Rome.

It is around the year AD 62, we think, and Paul is locked up because of his Christian witness in ministry.

Paul had a tremendous ministry.

Remember, this was a man who was formerly a Pharisee.

He was previously an enemy of the church, who is now probably the most influential Christian ministry, spreading the gospel from city to city, establishing churches, demonstrating the power of Christ.

He's kicking demonic butt.

And obviously, Satan is not happy about that.

Carnal men who hate God are not happy about that.

So what is their ploy?

Their strategy was to get Paul killed, or at the very least, get him locked up and isolated.

If we read through the book of Acts, we see Paul get stoned, he gets falsely accused, and eventually he gets arrested.

And now their plan seemingly worked.

His ministry is destroyed.

But ironically, this was all a part of God's plan.

As Genesis 50, 20 reminds us, what the enemy meant for evil, God uses it for good.

And as Paul says, reminds us in 2 Timothy chapter 2, he says, the gospel cannot be chained.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

Because Paul is just as influential, if not more, in prison as if he was loose on the streets.

God simply redirects Paul's ministry and enables him to write his holy, inerrant, life-giving word to the church in which we have today.

And so all of Paul's prison epistles bear witness to this fact.

So here Paul is in prison awaiting judgment, and he writes this beautiful, marvelous, comforting letter to the church in Ephesus.

And this begs the question, why?

Well, he writes it for many reasons.

If you know anything about the city of Ephesus during this time, you learn three main things.

One, it was a very prideful culture.

There was a lot of ethnic pride, and therefore there was a lot of discrimination and racism.

Secondly, it was a very immoral culture.

Things like prostitution or drunkenness were culturally acceptable, even sanctioned.

And third, it was very pluristic, meaning it loved to adopt new spiritual ideas into its religious melting pot.

And this included Christianity.

So the church in Ephesus, which is still very much new, by the way, is living right in the middle of this culture.

And all of this junk was slowly trying to creep into the church.

There was a temptation to think that the true God, the God of Israel, did things like the false gods of Ephesus, like Diana and Artemis.

Believers were priding themselves in their Jewish or their Gentile status.

There was the temptation to make church a matter of ethnic right and power instead of being unified in Christ.

And of course, there was a dispute over how Christians should live.

If our city has legalized certain behaviors, is it really that bad if Christians participate?

And so Paul writes this letter to teach these believers who they are in Christ in a world with many labels.

He writes this letter to explain to them what God has done in Christ, in a society filled with falsehoods.

He writes this letter to clarify the purpose of the church in a culture filled with ethnic hostility, hatred, and disunity.

And he wrote this letter to teach these believers what it looks like to live for God while living in a sin-accepting community.

That is his purpose for the letter of Ephesians.

So knowing this context in the back of our minds, let us begin this wonderful letter by looking at the first three verses.

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

Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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

So Paul starts this letter by introducing himself.

He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God.

This isn't just a title, it's a declaration of his commissioning.

Paul's apostleship, if you didn't know, was often challenged.

Critics in places like Corinth or Galatia accused him of being self-appointed.

He's this rogue preacher with a message that differed from the other apostles.

But Paul sets the record straight.

Which is why Paul says here, I'm an apostle by what?

By the will of God.

Paul didn't appoint himself.

There was no public offer of someone saying, Hey, who wants to be an apostle?

And Paul stood up and said, I do.

Not at all.

It was quite the opposite.

Paul was on the road to Damascus.

He had letters stamped by the proper authorities to arrest Christians.

We think perhaps even kill Christians.

He had no intention of being an apostle.

He was a legalistic Pharisee.

And his driving motive was to destroy Christianity.

But in Acts chapter 9, God intervened in his life.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

And God revealed to him the truth about Jesus Christ.

And God told him, if you read Acts chapter 9, he says, God tells Paul, you will be my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

God appointed him.

God chose him.

God gave him apostleship.

So it is not prideful for Paul to refer to himself as an apostle, because that is the title that God had given him.

And then Paul addresses his audience as saints, faithful in Christ Jesus.

Notice the emphasis here.

Paul doesn't call them sinners, though they, like the rest of us, have sinned.

Instead, he identifies them by their standing in Christ.

Saints aren't morally perfect.

I'll be the first one to raise my hand.

But they are those who have been washed by Christ's blood and who have been clothed in Christ's righteousness.

Nowhere in the New Testament do you see God referring to his people as evil sinners.

That's who we were before Jesus Christ.

But now if you are in Christ, you are faithful.

You're redeemed.

Because if you are in Christ, you've been redeemed.

You've been washed clean.

You've been purified.

I think we would do ourselves well to view ourselves in such a way and talk about other Christians in such a way.

Christians still sin, they still have faults.

But legally, before God, they are faithful saints.

We live in a world that loves to tear down other people.

Just get on social media.

We point out the worst in others.

How often do we refer to other Christians by their failures?

I wonder how much of an impact we would have on ourselves and others if we started referring to our Christian brothers and sisters with the title that God has given them, beloved saints.

When Paul thought about these Christians, he thought of them as faithful saints.

And then Paul blesses them.

He says, Grace to you, in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is not an empty formality.

Grace, if you didn't know, is the foundation of the Christian life.

In peace is its fruit.

This greeting encapsulates the gospel.

God's unmerited favor leads to a profound and lasting peace.

This I believe Paul knew.

And so out of all the Christian terms he could have used, love, mercy, glory, faith, hope, he chose his two terms, grace and peace, carefully.

And then Paul almost exuberantly proclaims his entire heading of Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is how he starts, by declaring that God should be blessed, meaning he should be spoken well of.

And then in the verses ahead, he gives us ten reasons why.

Why should God be blessed?

Why should he be highly spoken well of?

And today we're going to tackle reason number one.

God should be spoken well of because he has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

So let us dissect this verse for a moment so that we might grasp the whole picture here.

Paul starts by saying that he, God, has blessed us.

This means that God has given us something that we don't deserve.

It means that God in nature is a gift giver.

It means that God lavishes blessings upon his creation.

It means that your creator, who should have cursed you in his wrath because of your sin, has instead blessed you with something very good.

And through what means has he blessed us?

Look at the verse.

He says, In Christ, all of the blessings or the gifts that we have been given as Christians came through the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

Allow me to put this negatively.

It didn't come to us because we're such great people.

We didn't earn or deserve these blessings.

Our blessings came to us through one person, and that is Jesus Christ.

He is the one that gave us access to every good gift from above.

It was his obedience, his keeping of the law, his sacrifice, his atonement, and his resurrected life, in which we have all blessings.

So often in our broken human nature, we want to point to ourselves and say, I have these spiritual blessings because I'm such a strong and good Christian.

No, that is not true.

The only thing we have earned is wrath.

That is the only thing that we have earned.

As Jonathan Edwards once put it, he said, the only thing that you contribute to your own salvation is the sin that made it necessary.

You have what you have, you are what you are, because of one thing, and that is Jesus Christ.

Take him out of the equation, and you have no good thing.

And how many blessings have we received?

What is the amount or the volume of the blessings that we have in Christ?

Well, look at the verse.

Here's what we have been given.

You ready?

Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm.

Meaning every single good gift, every gift that God could possibly give us from his heavenly treasuries is ours.

When God sent Jesus into the world to accomplish salvation, God didn't say, hey son, after you defeat Satan and you fulfill the law and you pay for all of sin and you experience hell on behalf of humanity, let's give them 50% of the heavenly gifts that I have to offer.

No.

Jesus paid it all so that God could give us all that He has to offer us in the heavenly places.

And what exactly is the nature of these blessings?

Like, what are they?

Well, read on through the rest of Ephesians 1.

He's given you direct access to God.

He has given you adoption into the eternal family of God.

He's given you the complete forgiveness of your sins, all of them.

He's given you a right standing before your holy creator.

He's given you his Holy Spirit.

He's given you an inheritance that will never spoil or fade.

He's given you a new nature, a new trajectory, a new heart and purpose.

Friends, I could go on and on and on.

If you are in Christ, the fruits of the kingdom, the benefits of heaven, the gifts, and the promises of God are all yours.

He who has Christ has heaven with all of its benefits.

Church, do you understand what's being proclaimed here?

This verse is literally saying that there's absolutely nothing that is good in heaven that God has not withheld from you and I.

Christ has granted us access to God's infinite riches.

There's this terrible, pathetic view floating around out there in Christian thought that Jesus, you know, the whole purpose Jesus came was just to give us a little hand up.

You know, we're struggling, we're a bit miserable, and Jesus came to give us a helping hand, to lift us up a little bit, take our name off the naughty list, be our cheerleader.

What a shallow view.

According to my Bible, Christ came to raise my dead bones to life.

He came to drink the wrath of God in my place.

He came to transform me into a new creature that I might experience a new life.

And as this verse says, He came to give me full access to the King Himself and His kingdom.

Now it's important to note, considering the popularity of the prosperity gospel, which is a false gospel, by the way, that the blessings mentioned here are specifically labeled as heavenly.

They're not earthly gifts, they're not temporal gifts.

They originated from heaven and have heavenly value.

And this is where so many people go wrong.

They read this verse and they think, well, if God's given me every blessing, why am I still struggling financially?

Why isn't my marriage fixed?

Why am I still sick?

Now listen, God may or may not give you material wealth.

He may or may not restore your marriage.

He may or may not heal your physical sickness.

But realize, friends, that these are temporal things.

They're earthly things that God may or may not do according to his good purpose in your sanctification.

The verse doesn't say that God has blessed you with every personal preference and desire in the earthly realm.

It doesn't say that.

And if God actually did that, it would ruin us.

Imagine if you gave your kids every toy and treat they ever wanted, you would corrupt them.

No.

He gave us something of far greater value, something of far greater need, the spiritual restoration of our eternal souls.

God is not interested in meeting every single temporary relief.

He's interested in giving us what we truly need.

As Charles Spurgeon once said, he said, A new heart is better than a new coat.

To feed on Christ is Is better to have the best earthly food.

To be an heir of God is better to be an heir of the greatest nobleman.

These are the rarest, the richest, the most enduring of all blessing, and they are priceless in value.

We think that we want more money, more popularity, more pleasures, a better reputation, a better car, a bigger house.

But what we truly need is redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, unfailing love, power from above, security in our Savior, and union with our Creator.

It is in these things that our hearts find rest.

And so Paul wants these Christians to understand that God has given us everything we need spiritually.

And why is this important?

Because if I don't believe that God has given me every spiritual blessing, then my natural bent is to believe that God is withholding something from me.

And if we believe that God is holding something back from us, then we will doubt his goodness and we will begin exploring for ourselves other things that satisfy.

Does that sound familiar?

The serpent's lie to Eve in Genesis 3 echoes this throughout history.

God is holding back from you.

Perhaps you felt this in your own life.

Tragedy strikes, dreams shatter, hardships persist, you lose your job, you lose a loved one, life doesn't go the way you planned, and the enemy whispers, did God really say that He's blessed you with everything you need?

Did God really say, Don't touch the fruit?

God's holding back from you.

He's hiding good things from you.

And then we start getting all twisted.

Work isn't going my way.

My kids are so misbehaved.

I didn't get the pay raise that I wanted.

I start complaining my life, comparing my life to other people.

My car falls apart, I can't afford a new one.

I prayed that God would help me in a certain area and He doesn't seem to be helping.

Maybe God is holding back from me.

Maybe there are more pleasures outside of God.

Maybe God cannot provide all that I need.

So I'll explore the forbidden fruit.

Maybe sin can give me and provide for me pleasures and needs that God simply cannot.

But the truth of Ephesians 1:3 silences this lie.

Ephesians 1:3

God has not withheld any spiritual blessing.

He's opened heaven itself, and he's given you the greatest gift you could ever need, His Son.

God is not so low and short-sighted to merely give us temporary treats and toys from this world.

God has given us his very presence through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

And when we have these things, church, what more could we possibly need?

How foolish we can be.

Complaining to God, blaming him for our infirmities, our disabilities, our trials and tribulations, our tragedies.

We shake our fist at him, saying, You've dealt me a bad hand.

Life is so hard, it's so tough, it's so miserable, and it's your fault, God.

Nothing ever goes right in my life.

You've given me nothing good.

And we yell at God as if he has not provided anything for us.

Meanwhile, 2,000 years ago, God gave us his Son Jesus Christ.

We complain about our earthly finances when Christ has paid for our eternal debts.

We complain about our physical ailments, when God has restored our souls eternally.

We grumble about our relationships or the lack thereof, when God has given us the most fulfilling and reliable relationship with Him.

We grumble about our earthly living conditions, when we have an imperishable mansion reserved for us in heaven.

We complain that we don't have enough when we have every spiritual blessing available to us in the heavenly realms.

God always gives us what we need, not what we think we need.

What I think I want in the flesh, just to be honest, in my old man, I think I want meth to give me energy and power.

But what I really need is God's Holy Spirit, who will perfectly empower me.

What I think I want in the flesh is lots of unlawful intimacy, so I don't feel lonely and depressed all the time.

But what I really need is a perfect, everlasting, reliable relationship with my Creator.

What I think I want is a lot more money for security.

But what I really need is to feel rich and secure in Christ.

What I think I want is more recognition from people, but what I'm really looking for is my heavenly Father's approval of me, his love showered on me, saying, I love you and you are my son.

There is no drug, there's no program, there's no surgeon, no relationship, no friendship, no circumstance, no measure of wealth, no created thing on earth that can fill that God-sized hole in your heart.

Give me all the kingdoms of this world, give me all authority over men, grant me every fantasy I ever wanted on earth, give me the perfect health in living conditions, give me the ability to have whatever I want among the nations.

And my heart will still be craving and shouting the same words of Ecclesiastes: meaningless, meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

Our hearts need filled with something out of this world.

And God knows this, which is why two thousand years ago, He cracked open the heavens and he gave us the greatest gift that would cure our horrible, our miserable, sinful condition.

He gave us Jesus Christ.

Church, this is why God should be blessed.

This is why God should be spoken well of.

In what ways are you this morning spiritually lacking?

And why are you not going to God through Christ?

What are you trying to find in sin that can only be found in Christ?

Imagine for a moment if I gave one of my sons the keys to my pantry, and I told him, help yourself at any point, any time, help yourself to my food.

The pantry is full, it's endless in resources, it has everything you could imagine.

Son, it's all yours.

And then a week later, he comes to me and he says, Dad, I'm starving.

I haven't eaten in seven days.

I'm going to die.

Something's wrong, right?

Like either one, he forgot that he had the keys or he lost them.

Or two, he refuses to believe me that there's good, edible, enjoyable food in there.

Or three, he found some other counterfeit source of food that isn't nourishing him.

And we do this as believers.

We either one, forget that Christ has given us access to this, or two, we refuse to believe that God's gifts are what we need, or three, we are so preoccupied with idols, and our sin has convinced us that we don't need the real food, the good food, the true nourishment.

And so I ask you this morning, personally, what are you lacking?

Are you lacking love, care, and attention?

Stop trying to fill that void with social media likes or the applaud of men.

Stop trying to find that in a boyfriend or a girlfriend or even a spouse.

Nothing can fill that deep void better than your creator himself, his love, his care, his attention.

He's given you that gift for Christ has given you access.

Are you lacking security?

Stop trying to find that in money or stable employment.

Stop trying to build security by trying to control everything in your life.

Go and receive security in the surest thing in the universe, in God and in his promises.

Receive that gift, for Christ has given you access.

Do you lack pleasure?

And you're trying to find that in drugs or porn or alcohol.

God offers us everlasting, complete pleasure.

Go to him.

Experience the joys of his Holy Spirit, for Christ has given us access.

Do you lack comfort?

You're grieving, you're emotionally hurting.

Look, the body of Christ is great, counselors are great, mentors are great, but God in First Corinthians chapter 1 is referred to as the God of all comfort.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Go to Him.

That is who He is, and that is what He does.

He comforts.

For Christ has given you access.

And do you lack wisdom, guidance?

Life is tough right now, and you're unsure on what to do.

Stop getting all of your life advice from Reddit or podcasts or even authors.

Again, people can be helpful, and God uses people to speak to us.

But first and foremost, go to God's word.

Go to his word.

It has answers for all of life.

We have this gift, for Christ is giving you access.

Church, all things pertaining to godliness, all things pertaining to spiritual life and satisfaction, all things pertaining to steadfast love, all things pertaining to power over our sin and our misery is found in God through Christ.

These gifts are yours.

They're at your disposal.

You cannot exhaust God's unlimited power, his abundant blessings or his heavenly gifts.

They are yours.

Lay down the counterfeits, shatter the idols.

These things are just compounding our misery, anyways.

And realize, O faithful saint, that you have been blessed with every good gift from above.

Marvel in that reality this morning.

Glory in it.

Glory in it until you're able to cry out, like Paul, blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Church, let's pray.