Ephesians: Chosen, Redeemed and Sealed (1:1-14)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

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Heavenly Father, you have chosen us.

Heavenly Father, or Lord Jesus Christ, you have redeemed us.

And Holy Spirit, you have sealed us.

Lord, would you illumine the truth of your gospel to our hearts once again that we may believe and have life in the name of our Lord Jesus?

It's in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So, friends, why bother with the church?

Have we ever wondered that question?

Let's be honest.

We've probably all wondered that question at one point or another.

I don't think I'm alone in that.

One pastor and Bible teacher named Sam Albury writes a book called Why Bother with the Church?

Pardon me, why bother with church?

I've more or less shamelessly stolen that title from my sermon series.

Sam Albury describes his experience walking through a park on a Sunday morning while on his way to service.

He says, being honest, on some Sundays the park looked like a better option.

The park looked like a lot less effort than church.

It looked like a lot of fun.

You could choose what you wanted to do, how often you went, if you went, and how long you stayed.

And the park looked a lot more normal.

No one, I think, was going to think I was strange for going there.

See, I think we've all had these thoughts, haven't we?

I mean, substitute the park for whatever you'd like.

Maybe it's brunch, maybe it's gardening, maybe it's golf, maybe not in this weather.

But we've all wondered why bother with the church in one way or another.

Church is an effort, Sam Albury writes.

It's sometimes hard and it's far from normal.

So why bother going at all?

Why bother making it a priority in your week?

After all the park or brunch or sleeping in is right there, ready and waiting.

I wonder if this is especially true for us in this particular moment of maybe we'll call it consumer Christianity.

We live in just a remarkable time where we've got unbelievable access to whatever media or or or uh teaching we'd like.

We can go on uh any podcast service and find the world's best Bible teachers.

We can go on YouTube and find the world's best sermons, not just that new song, Port Perry's YouTube channel, by the way.

We can curate our spiritual life from the comfort of our home.

We don't have to bother with the songs we don't like at church.

We can ask Alexa to play our favorite worship albums.

And we don't have to, you know, put up with life together.

We can scroll through Christian living books on Amazon.

Today I looked it up, and we're$18 away from living our best life now.

We can curate our spiritual life easily in almost a pre-packaged way.

It can make us wonder why bother with the church.

And maybe especially in this COVID moment where it's particularly hard to gather.

And perhaps some would even say Christianity is better off without the institution of the church, anyways.

After all, the church is not without sin, and it's caused so much pain.

Crusades come to mind, inquisitions, abuse, residential schools, all these things come to mind, don't they?

When it comes to living out the Christian faith, perhaps the church doesn't have a problem.

Perhaps we might wonder, the church is the problem.

And if that's where you're at this morning, I guess I want to say, I'm just so thankful that you're joining us, that you're willing to make it this far and even give the church a chance in this way.

And I hope over the course of our study, for those of us who've wondered why bother with the church, for one reason or another, we can discover something of God's own heart, his will and his purpose for the church, that we can get drawn deeper into this marvelous mystery of what it means to belong to Christ's body and Christ's bride, his people, the church.

So, all this being said, why bother?

See, I suspect that the Apostle Paul has some form of this question in his mind as he's writing to the Ephesian church.

He's writing a circular letter to this church in Asia Minor.

Churches gathered all around kind of the this greater area, its capital being Ephesus.

And it's a diverse and metropolitan and spiritually pluralistic culture.

In those ways, it's a lot like ours.

Paul introduces himself in verse 1, an apostle of Christ Jesus, authorized to preach the gospel and to teach by Christ Himself.

And he addresses this letter to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

So this says a few significant things here.

This is a letter, in other words, addressed to the church, to saints, to the faithful, to those who are set apart to be holy in Christ and known as saints, and those who are faithful have put their trust and believe in Jesus for their salvation.

To them, to the church, belong grace and peace from God the Father.

So already Paul's introducing some of the big themes of his letter.

John Stott writes that in Ephesians we see what God did through the historical work of Jesus Christ and what he does through his spirit today in order to build his new society in the midst of the old.

So, in other words, the church belongs to God in Christ.

And through Christ, God gives the church and its members generous, marvelous, lavish spiritual blessings by the ministry of his Holy Spirit.

That's why Paul begins his letter here with an act of praise.

He's blessing God for the spiritual blessings he's received.

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.

So God has given us a free, generous gift of heavenly blessing in Christ.

And so, like Paul's praise, our praise is only ever a response to that generous initiative that God has taken towards us in Christ through his cross and through his resurrection.

God always takes the first step towards us and invites us then to step forwards in thanksgiving and praise.

So the church is marked by spiritual blessings in Christ.

What are those blessings?

Paul identifies three that I'd like us to see this morning.

Three spiritual blessings that the church is graciously gifted with in Christ.

This makes the church unlike any institution that we'll find.

This makes the church unlike any other body or group that we might find in the world.

The church and its members are chosen, redeemed, and sealed.

Chosen, redeemed, and sealed.

And it's Paul's corporate language of us and our that should clue us into this reality.

Paul is not talking about me, myself, and I, the book he ordered on Amazon or the podcast he might have been listening to on his own.

He clues us in that this is a corporate reality.

This belongs to us as brothers and sisters in Christ together.

And these promises, these pledges, these spiritual blessings come to their fullness in the life of the church itself.

So I suspect that if, like Paul, you're asking the question, why bother with church?

We can see an answer right here.

In the astonishing spiritual blessings we've received in Christ, we are chosen, we are redeemed, and we are sealed.

Let's dive in.

We're chosen in Christ.

Verses 3 and 4, God 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.

God has chosen us in Christ.

A choice is a deliberate and purposeful selection.

God has pointed at us, corporately as the church, even the church gathered here at New Song, and individually as members of it, and God has said, mine.

Paul probably had it in mind that God is always this sovereign and deliberate God.

He's always has a purposeful character.

He chose Abraham and Abraham's descendants after him to move forward his plan of salvation and blessing in the world.

And he chose the nation of Israel to be his covenant people, to be a blessing to the world.

And this character, this choosing character of God, does not change in the New Testament.

Jesus says to his disciples in John chapter 15, You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide.

John 15 · chapter mention

So it's clear to Paul, we do not take the first step toward God.

Rather, God in Christ takes the first step towards us.

He chose us.

What a remarkable blessing that is.

See, if there's any doubt, consider when God made this choice towards us.

Verse 4, He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

This does not mean that God looked forward in time and figured out who would choose him, and then said, all right, well, I guess those are my people.

They've chosen me.

No, God makes this choice freely and without impediment, or anything that suggests that our own worthiness or merit, he freely chooses us.

And that's important to consider because it means we who are in Christ are freely chosen by his grace.

God did not choose us because we measure up to his standards, or we showed ourselves to be particularly virtuous, or we merited his favor in any way.

That's why Paul says, in love he predestined us, he chose us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.

And that's important because it tells us why God chose us.

The purpose for which he chose us is adoptions as sons through Jesus Christ.

God chose us, lonely and hopeless orphans, apart from grace, to be his well-loved children, who know and enjoy his fatherly love and care and provision.

We've been adopted as sons in Christ, by whom Paul writes to the Romans, we cry, Abba Father, the spirit of adoption within us.

See, God chose us not to be his colleagues, not to be his associates, not to be those people he kind of knows and sends a Christmas card one, you know, to every once in a while.

God chose us to be adopted.

He chose you and he chose me to be his family, to be his sons and his daughters, and his well-loved children.

That is a remarkable reality of the church.

We are God's family.

And Paul says we're adopted as sons, we're given a spirit of sonship, he says elsewhere, not to elevate the position of men over women, but really to say that we all of us, together, men and women, in his own first century context kind of way, we all of us have inheritance rights as children, as sons of God.

It was the sons, of course, in the first century who had inheritance rights, and Paul wants all Christians, men and women, to know you all of us have a heavenly inheritance waiting for you.

There is no distinguishing between men and women in that way.

God chose us and promises us an eternal, imperishable, enduring inheritance, a heavenly blessing.

We all of us have the hope of eternal life in and through Christ as his adopted children.

When I think about adoption, I think about a story that a friend of mine told me.

He has an adopted brother.

And growing up with this adopted brother, I guess the impression I always get is that, you know, it's the adopted children who get teased for being adopted.

And sometimes that's true, and that's not right.

But he said in my family it was actually quite the opposite.

It was the adopted brother teasing all of the biological children on that basis.

He would say things like, uh, you know, mom and dad are really stuck with you guys.

Like there's kind of nothing they can do about that.

But they chose me.

And all that teasing aside, I think it's that kind of confidence that we see in Paul's understanding of what it means to be adopted in Christ.

It means we have a confidence to come before God.

He's not stuck with us.

Okay, I guess you guys get to tag along, whatever.

No, he actually chose us.

And he chose us to have an inheritance, and he chose us to have this inheritance from before time began.

What an assurance.

What a confidence we have to come before God our Father.

He has chosen us in Christ for this purpose.

And that's why theologian John Murray can write that it's adoption into the family of God as sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty that accords to the people of God the apex, the peak, the pinnacle of blessing and privilege.

You, if you are in Christ, are chosen to be a son, a daughter of the Most High God.

That is a spiritual blessing.

Here's a second one that Paul wants us to see, verses 7 to 10.

We are redeemed in Christ as the church.

In Christ we have redemption, Paul writes, through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

The biblical word for redemption here has to do with emancipation, a purchasing back, a paying the price to release a slave and purchase their freedom.

Paul's language reflects Leviticus 25, where the law is given to redeem a slave from their bondage and the price that has to be paid.

We also see an example of this kind of idea in Ruth chapter 4.

Ruth 4 · chapter mention

And you might remember our study in the book of Ruth so many months ago.

In chapter 4, it's the kinsman redeemer Boaz, who secures the future of the otherwise poor and helpless Ruth, and threw their lineage together all of the people of Israel.

He purchases her future, secures her future at great personal cost.

And it's this redemption that points forward to a greater redemption to come.

Paul uses this idea to say that our freedom has been purchased, our future is secured by Christ.

But our redemption has not come without great personal cost.

We have redemption through his blood.

No doubt Paul has the litigical sacrifices of the Old Testament in mind.

These sacrifices that spilt blood that pointed towards a greater sacrifice to come that would cover over a multitude of sins once for all time.

And now in the New Covenant, the author of Hebrews can write that when Christ appeared as high priest of all the good things that have come, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

See, as the church, we have been purchased back from the slave market of sin and death by the blood of Christ shed on the cross.

Our debts and trespasses have been forgiven once for all time.

That is a complete forgiveness.

Our forgiveness is as secure as Jesus' death on the cross for our sake.

So if you are in Christ, God looks at you not as a worthless transgressor, not as another person who's just irritated him enough to screw up again.

No, God looks at you in Christ and sees someone that he has purchased through his own blood.

He sees a redeemed sinner.

And when God looks at his church, and when God looks at New Song, he sees sinners that he has purchased through Christ's own blood.

And why did he redeem us?

Well, Paul says it's according to the riches of his grace.

It's God's lavish gift to his church that he's purchased us.

And he also purchased us to make known the mystery of his will, to unite all things in Christ, things on heaven and things on earth.

See, the church lives at the intersection between the price paid for our salvation, the redeeming blood of Christ that claims us, and the sinful world that's still yet to be fully renewed and fully restored and fully redeemed in Christ.

We live right there at the intersection of the already and the not yet.

We live right there at the intersection of the glorious age to come where all things are redeemed in Christ and the age that is, broken and fragmented by sin.

And that's why you will always find the church is never without fault on this side of eternity.

The church is full of sinners, and it's full of sin.

And it is not a club for holy rollers, it is a hospital for those who need healing from this fallen world and fallen condition.

But Christ has purchased our redemption by his blood.

We're not left wondering how God thinks of us.

He thinks of us as those who he has purchased, whose future is secure in Christ.

Individually and corporately, on our very worst day, the price of our redemption has been paid.

So the church is blessed, saints.

We are redeemed in Christ.

Paul mentions a final spiritual blessing that the church receives.

The church is chosen, the church is redeemed, and the church is sealed.

Verses 13 and 14, Paul writes that in Christ, you also, speaking to the Gentiles, now included in this plan of salvation, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

See, it's this image of a seal that gives, well, it's like legal protection.

It's authorization.

The seal distinguishes what's legit from what's false, and it gives total assurance and confidence.

Think of a signet ring.

Maybe you've seen a signet ring.

I saw one once and I thought it was really cool.

But a signet ring was an important part of ancient culture.

It gave authorization and it extended a sort of protection over whatever it was that uh whatever it was that a particular treaty or covenant had in mind.

A king would use his signet ring to extend his authority.

And it's as though Paul is saying that God has stamped his signet ring upon us, upon our very hearts, and claimed us for his own.

And the seal that Paul has in mind is the promised Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is promised throughout the gospel.

The prophet Jeremiah pointed to that day when God's Holy Spirit would be poured out upon all flesh.

And now in the church, Paul understands the Spirit has in fact been poured out.

He is a seal upon our hearts, and he marks God's ownership over us.

And this Seal, it's understood, cannot be broken.

The Holy Spirit is the Christian's guarantee of our adoption, and it's his guarantee of our redemption.

It's his guarantee that we will have a heavenly inheritance.

You can also translate this word guarantee as a sort of a down payment.

We had to make a down payment when we were purchasing our home.

And it secured this home, it marked our possession, and it guaranteed that one day we will fully possess this home in the future.

Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit indwells the hearts of Christians presently, so that we rest assured that one day we will have the fullness of our inheritance in Christ, a heavenly inheritance, a share in eternity with God Himself.

And it's this ongoing proclamation of the Spirit in the heart of the Christian.

The Spirit says to us, You are a child of God, and as a child of God you share with Christ in heaven.

So we get to sing to the Spirit, hear's my heart, take and seal it.

Seal it for thy courts above.

We get to sing that with assurance.

No matter how fickle our hearts may be.

And friends, if your heart is anything like mine, it is fickle.

And it wants this and it wants that, and it flits to and fro.

And so rarely is it set on the kingdom of heaven.

Our hearts are sealed by the Holy Spirit for his courts above.

God's stamp is on us.

He has marked his ownership of us.

He has said, They are mine.

And through the Holy Spirit, he keeps us to the end of our heavenly journey by his grace.

So, friends, the church is the chosen family of God.

The church is redeemed by God through Christ's blood, and the church is sealed by his Holy Spirit as a guarantee of their inheritance.

What a Trinitarian work.

And friends, if we were to ask why bother with the church, I suspect that Paul would say this.

It's because the church is chosen.

It's because the church is redeemed.

And it's because the church is sealed.

If we want to grapple with this gospel reality, we have to grapple with the life of the church, in which these promises come to their fullness.

But it's only the work of the Holy Spirit that can impress this truth upon our hearts, who can impress the good news of the gospel of our salvation upon us.

See, this is a free gift offered to all.

But it is only through faith that the Holy Spirit works in us such that we can grasp this gift for ourselves.

Notice what Paul says here in verse 13.

In Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, having believed, were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

Friends, this is a gift offered for all.

It is a gift we can only receive by faith.

God's choosing, God's redeeming, God's sealing.

This is a gift that we receive.

These are spiritual blessings we can only receive by placing our faith in Jesus, by responding to that freely offered gift and saying yes.

So the question for us is this do you believe that?

Have you said yes?

Friends, this is a gift freely offered to you.

To be members of God's family, to be purchased from sin and death and have a secure future, and to be sealed by the Holy Spirit.

Will you say yes?

Even today could be the day where you are brought into the family of God and redeemed and sealed.

And for those who do believe, we should marvel and praise God.

We should be moved to thanksgiving and praise just like Paul is.

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

He has blessed us saints with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

And he has secured for us a place in his new creation.

So, friends, why bother with the church?

I want to suggest it's because God first chose to bother with us.

Us helpless and poor and needy and otherwise desperate sinners.

God has done for us what we, apart from grace, could never do for ourselves.

He has chosen us to be his family.

He has purchased us by his blood, and he has sealed us with his Holy Spirit.

God wants to make his magnificent beauty, his lavish love, and his dazzling eminence known right here at the intersection of Christ's blood in a world in need of redemption, right here at the church, and even here at New Song Church.

All to the glory, all to the praise of God's glorious grace.

So, friends, blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow Him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

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May God bless you and keep you today and every day.