Every Spiritual Blessing (Ephesians 1:3-14)

So starting in verse 3.

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

For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love before him.

He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the beloved one.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.

He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ, as a plan for the right time, to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.

In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will.

So that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory.

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

We thank you that we have it.

We thank you that we get to hold it in our hands, that we get to have this at home with us.

Lord, this is your word.

Lord, you've put us in this place in Ephesians for a purpose right at this time.

So I pray that as we approach these passages, that you would open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, our minds to the things that you have for us.

Lord, may we be softened clay in your hand for you to mold and shape us so that we can become more and more like Jesus on a daily basis.

Use your word to chip away and carve at us here this morning, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So last week, if you remember, if you were here, we did the intro to Ephesians, and we covered verses 1 through 3.

1 through 2 being the greeting that Paul had for the Ephesian church, and verse 3 really being the thesis statement for the whole book of Ephesians.

But we're gonna cover verse 3 again today, as it's part of the riches of God theme that we're gonna see in verses 3 through 6.

And the way that this is broken up, I've got a slide for this.

Verses 3 through 6 is really the riches that we have in God the Father.

Verses 7 through 12 is the riches we have in God the Son.

And then verses 13 and 14 are the riches that we have in God the Holy Spirit.

And all of these riches that we're gonna look at today are riches that were freely given to us.

But they were at Christ's expense.

But we're gonna see that verses 3 through 14 are really God's salvation plan for mankind and how that is accomplished through the Trinity through Christ.

And today, it may feel like a fire hose of information that we're going through here today.

So I'm just gonna give you a heads up if you need another cup of coffee.

Go grab that.

And you might be asking why we will cover all of this in one day.

There is a lot in these verses.

Well, verses 3 through 14 are one flow of thought from Paul.

In the original Greek, as we talked about last week, verses 3 through 14 are one sentence.

It's one just long run-on sentence from Paul.

It's 186 words in the CSB translation that we're using here today, and that's one sentence.

But it's that one flow of thought of how blessed we are as sons and daughters of God.

Blessed with every spiritual blessing.

So it really felt wrong to break it up the way that we're going through these passages.

And I do want to remind you, as I did last week, that we can't think about God's riches like we think about worldly riches as we read this.

It's so different.

Worldly riches are so different than heavenly riches.

You know, worldly wealth just leaves us wanting more, doesn't it?

It leads us to emptiness.

It leads us to loneliness as we pursue those things and even as we gain those things.

God's wealth leads us to contentment.

It leads us to joy.

It leads us to the peace of God that surpasses all understanding because we have peace with God through Jesus Christ.

So today I hope we can leave here really recognizing the wealth of God's spiritual blessings and how he does not hold those blessings back from his kids.

That's the thing I hope we can really walk away with here today.

So let's take a look at verse 3 again.

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

If you're a note taker, underliner, highlighter, that word every in there, it means everything, really, with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.

God the Father loves us so much that He not only desires every spiritual blessing for us, he provided every spiritual blessing for us through his Son.

We already sang about it this morning, and I hope we don't ever grow tired of this verse.

But John 3.16.

It's so important, we hear it so often, sometimes we can glaze over it, but please don't ever grow callous.

There's so much in this verse.

For God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

But the thing is, God doesn't just leave us there.

He doesn't stop there.

You know, it's not like God's sitting there like, well, we got them eternal life.

You know.

Now they'll go to heaven.

You know, that's enough.

Or, you know, thinking of that, and then, you know, but when they get here, we're gonna treat them like slaves, you know, or something like that.

God loves and desires us so much that he shares his wealth with us.

He calls us sons and daughters and adopts us as sons, as we're gonna read here today, into his family so that we can share an inheritance with Jesus Christ.

God loves us so much, he wants us to be an integral part of his family.

And this is all a free gift from God that he gives us.

Jesus paid dearly for it, but it's a free gift to us.

Now, before we get to verses four and five, I want to preface these verses a little bit, as these are highly debated verses in Christendom.

You know, we're about to look at the words chosen and predestined.

Some very loaded words that we often hear about.

These are different words from called and for new.

I just want to point that out at the beginning.

We talked a lot about called and for new when we went through the book of Romans.

So you can go back and listen to that specifically to Romans chapter 1, the first sermon that we did in the book, if you want to hear those words explained and defined a little bit more.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

You know, but oftentimes people will take the words chosen and predestined that we have here in these verses to mean that God had a secret list before creation and created some people to go to heaven and created some people to go to hell.

Really removing the idea that we ever had a choice in following Jesus or not.

As a church, we believe that Jesus called us to follow him and that we have a choice to respond yes or no to that calling that Jesus has called us with.

You know, if you remember in John, Jesus called his disciples to follow him.

They had a choice in their response.

They had to choose if they were going to do that or not, if they're gonna lay down everything and follow him, or if like, no, I'm gonna continue in this fishing business.

They had that choice.

And we believe that it's no different today.

That God calls and we need to respond to that calling.

But really, that has absolutely nothing to do with the words that we're looking at today.

But I just wanted to kind of clarify where we come from when we're talking about these words.

You know, oftentimes predestined gets lumped in with the words called and for new, like we saw in Romans.

You see, whenever we see this word predestined, like in verse 5 and 11 of our text today, it's used in two different ways in the New Testament.

Six times, six times, six times total in the New Testament.

It's used twice in regard to Jesus being predestined for the cross.

So predestined to be the sacrifice for our sin, for salvation.

And that's in Acts.

We have a slide for this too, so you can look it up later if you want to.

That's Acts 4.28 and 1 Corinthians 2.7.

And then the other four times that it's used, it's in regards to Christians being predestined for glorification.

Christians being predestined for glorification.

That's Romans 8.29 and 30, and then in the two verses that we're looking at here today.

It's never once used in the context of a non-believer becoming a believer.

A non-Christian becoming a Christian.

In verse 5 here, it's believers being predestined to enter the family of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

You know, today we need to look at these versions, these verses, and we need to look at these words chosen and predestined in the context of the method in which God chose to save us.

That makes sense?

I know I'm giving you a lot right now, but we need to look at it in the context of the method in which God chose to save us.

We were chosen and predestined to be made holy.

That's what we're predestined to.

Our holiness coming through Christ.

Not who would be holy and who wouldn't be holy, but how Christians would be made holy.

And if we just simply keep things in context here, it's actually pretty simple.

It's when we start looking at these words and these verses individually that we can go down all kinds of different paths.

But we have to remember it's part of this one long sentence that Paul's writing.

And our context here is the spiritual blessings of God through Christ Jesus for those that are already believers.

He's speaking to the believers already.

Got it?

Long preface, okay?

There's a lot there, I get it.

But now look at verse 4.

For he chose us, us, he's writing to believers, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love before him.

That's agape love that he uses right there.

That's that sacrificial, godly love.

Did he choose us to be saved?

Just from this verse alone.

It doesn't say that.

He chose for believers to be holy and blameless in love for himself.

To not leave us followers of Christ in our sin is what he chose to do.

You know, he didn't say, you know, it's great that you want to follow Jesus.

Now go sacrifice animals and try your hardest.

Praise God, right?

He set it up for us to be holy and blameless through Christ.

What Paul's communicating here is that it was always God's plan before Adam and Eve ever sinned.

It was always God's plan for our holiness and blamelessness to come through Jesus.

Blameless is also translated as without rebuke.

So without criticism, really.

We're made so pure and so spotless through the blood of Jesus that God can't even criticize us.

Think about that for a second.

So spotless and pure through the blood of Jesus Christ that God can't even criticize us.

That's what blameless means.

No grounds for blaming, for rebuking, or for criticizing.

You know, if God doesn't criticize you, why do you criticize yourself?

Or why do you criticize other believers?

He sees us as righteous and pure and white as snow.

So why do we beat ourselves up over guilt?

Satan is the accuser, not Jesus, not God.

Romans 8:1 says, There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

Because, what's it say here?

Because we're blameless.

You know, if you put all of this together so far in what we've covered, God the Father chose a plan for salvation before the foundations of the world, that those that follow after Christ would be made holy and blameless in Christ.

And that, can you think of a better, bigger spiritual blessing than what we're talking about right here?

And I really think that's all that the context allows for this specific verse, for this passage, which we're going to actually talk a little bit more about this, but let's take it in context again.

We're going to read verses 5 and 6 as a whole now.

Verse 5.

He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself.

That's what we're predestined to.

Why?

According to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in his beloved one.

It was predestined that our adoption would take place through Jesus' work on the cross.

God's plan for salvation was predestined, not people.

And it was his good pleasure to do that because he loves us so much.

We're going to see the same thing in verse 11.

Predestined for those that had already put our hope in Christ to bring praise to his glory.

You know, one of the reasons that I personally don't believe in predestination, being like the secret list that God had before time, and he created some people to go to heaven and created some people to go to hell, is 2 Peter 3.9.

And I want to read that to you.

2 Peter 3.9 says, The Lord does not delay in his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

If he doesn't want any to perish, I don't think he would create some to do just that.

He desires that none should perish.

No, not one.

Okay, I'm gonna jump off my soapbox really quick here, okay?

And steer away from the technical.

And just think about how astounding this is.

That God wanted to adopt us for himself.

That's what we should get hung up on when we read these verses, not those two words.

We should get hung up on the fact that God desires us.

He wanted us for his own.

He knew we couldn't come to him on our own.

So while we were still sinners, while we were his enemies, he chose to do this through Jesus.

Jesus was picked and chosen and predestined to do this, not against his will.

But Jesus chose this for himself before time began.

This was God's plan all along to adopt us as sons through Jesus.

You know, according to Roman law in this time when Ephesians was being written, and Ephesus was under the rule of Roma at this time, if you were adopted into a family, it gave you every single privilege of that family, as if you were born into it.

And it also released you of everything from your previous family, including any debts that may have been owned by your previous family.

You're completely released from that.

When Paul says that we've been adopted as sons, he's not being sexist here.

He didn't forget to write sons and daughters.

Sons were the ones that were in line for an inheritance.

We've all been adopted as sons.

We're all in line for the inheritance and that right standing within the family of God as being completely debt-free.

And I just want to clarify real quick that we entered the family of God through regeneration, through being born again.

However, we're adopted so that we can be treated as adult sons as far as gaining our inheritance, so that we can inherit it now, really.

Galatians, if that's a little confusing, Galatians 4, verses 1 through 7 explains that very well.

Galatians 4:1–7

If you want to go check that out later.

But the end of verse 5 says that God did all of this according to the good pleasure of his will.

If you ever have a hard time being in awe of God, please come back to Ephesians 1.5 and just sit with this verse.

Do it tomorrow morning, actually.

Sit with this verse and just let it soak in.

How much God desires you and takes pleasure in you.

Not based on anything that you've done, right or wrong, but what's already been done through Jesus Christ.

That's the grace that He has lavished on us that we see in verse 6.

So now, that's the riches of the Father.

So let's take a look at the riches that we have in God the Son.

So look at verse 7 with me.

In him, that's the beloved one, so Jesus, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

So there are three statements here that as Christians sometimes we tend to glaze over.

And if you're not a Christian, must sound really weird when you hear them.

Let's start with redemption through his blood.

Redemption, the definition here is a releasing affected by payment of ransom.

So wrap your head around that.

A releasing affected by payment of ransom.

Sometimes this word is actually translated as deliverance.

We were enslaved to sin.

We were enslaved to the effects of sin in this world.

So Christ paid our ransom to free us, and the price of that ransom was blood.

You know, way back in the Garden of Eden, the price that Adam and Eve paid for their sin was death.

And it was really death in two ways.

They would die eventually of old age, which they were not created for.

And animals would have to now die as sacrifices for their sin, as a covering for their sin.

Which was temporary.

The covering was temporary.

That's why they had to continue the animal sacrifices over and over, year after year.

It was only a covering, it was temporary.

But Jesus came as a one-time perfect sacrifice that wasn't a temporary covering, but was a one-time permanent payment of that ransom through his blood.

So it says we have redemption, payment for our ransom, through his blood.

And then now the second thing that might sound a little weird to you the forgiveness of our trespasses.

Think of it that way.

Forgiveness means to release from bondage or imprisonment.

It's not just like, oh, that's okay.

Yeah, it's okay, I forgive you.

It's a release from bondage or imprisonment.

We were enslaved to sin.

It controlled our lives.

It owned us.

That's what this is telling us.

It owned us.

Think about what dominated your thoughts before Jesus.

What we were chasing after before Jesus.

Whether that's substances, you know, living for the weekend, you hear that all the time.

Whether that was meaningless relationships, chasing after sexual desires, chasing after the objects of this world, you know, the next car, the next house, the next outfit, the next job, whatever it might have been.

We needed to be purchased out of that bondage and forgiven of our trespasses and made new in Christ.

And it's the blood of Jesus that did that, that paid that ransom for us.

And he did all of that.

Look at the end of verse 6.

According to the riches of his grace.

That can be another statement that might sound weird to you if you're not familiar with it, if you're hearing it for the first time.

So what is grace?

It's the free and undeserved favor of God that we can only experience through Jesus.

And it doesn't say that God has just enough grace to cover your sin.

No, it says he's rich in grace.

He has grace upon grace.

2 Corinthians says God is able to make every grace overflow to you.

Peter said he's the God of all grace.

In the next chapter we have here in Ephesians 2.7, Paul will say that the riches of God's grace are immeasurable.

God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.

And his grace is one of those huge blessings that he chooses to lavish on us.

Now let's look at verse 7 and 8 together now, keeping all this in context.

In him, that's Jesus, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.

Can you imagine if God had a daily grace tank that was filled every morning, but once we emptied it, no more grace?

He richly pours it out on us.

Could you imagine if the richest person in the world, I don't even know who that is right now, that's probably Musk or Bezos or Buffett, right?

Those are the three that Tim Warren, not Jimmy.

Say Warren Buffett came to church this morning and asked you to lunch at In N Out, right across the highway here.

And he goes to pay for your double-double.

And you ask, wait, Mr.

Buffett, are you sure you have enough to cover this?

John 1.16 says that God has grace upon grace.

It's unlimited.

It's like free refills.

And he poured it out on us richly in his wisdom and in his understanding.

Have you ever doubted God's wisdom when he extends grace to someone else?

You're kind of like, really, God?

I don't think they really deserve it.

We never seem to ask that question for us, though, right?

We always deserve it, right?

In his wisdom and understanding, in his omniscience, really, he pours it out on us undeservedly with free refills.

That's how I read this passage.

Now look at verse 9.

He, God the Father, made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ.

The mystery being that Jesus was predestined for the cross for our redemption.

And that we would get to spend eternity as co-heirs with Christ.

You know, this word mystery, we see it six times total in the book of Ephesians.

Paul's really going to hone in on it in chapter 3, where he's going to elaborate on the mystery of God's will for salvation, both for the Jew and the Gentile, and how that mystery was finally revealed in Jesus Christ.

But that's in a few chapters, so we're going to save it for that.

Now look at verses 9 and 10 together.

He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ, as a plan for the right time to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.

Your translation may say, in the dispensation of the fullness of time, or as a plan for the fullness of time.

Really, God has a plan in the dispensation of the fullness of time, he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth.

You can read all about this at the end of Revelation if you want to see all of that taking place, where we're going to stand before Him in glory, redeemed as His bride.

After everything is brought together in Christ, under his authority.

So the idea here is of bringing everything together in verse 10.

It means to sum up.

It's a mathematical word, kind of like final accounting or reconciliation.

And there's going to be two columns of final accounting in eternity.

Those whose debt was paid by Jesus and those that refuse to have their debt paid by Jesus.

And if you're in the debt paid by Jesus column, look at verse 11.

In him, Jesus, we have also received an inheritance.

If you're in that right column, you have received an inheritance.

We're not just going to heaven like, whew, we made it.

But we get to be joint heirs in Christ's inheritance.

The spiritual blessings just keep on coming, don't they?

Now look at the second part of verse 11.

It says, Because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory.

According to God's plan, our sins are already forgiven.

Our sin is already wiped away to never be brought up again.

All to God's praise and glory.

We don't have to look at those two columns that we've been talking about with fear.

We get to look forward to every blessing that God has waiting for us.

And that's our inheritance.

We don't have to worry about judgment.

Instead, we get to look forward to being co-heirs with Christ.

2 Corinthians 5.10 says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

For us, if you are a follower of Christ, we only will be judged for the good.

The evil is gone.

The sin is wiped away as far as the east is from the west.

We have nothing to worry about, only things to look forward to in eternity, because God has already cleansed us with the blood of Jesus.

Now, let's look at the riches we have in the Holy Spirit, starting in verse 13.

In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

So things like letters, scrolls would be sealed.

If you remember Daniel in the Lion's Den, they did a seal over the lion's den to make sure that it didn't get messed with.

Jesus' tomb was sealed as well.

And usually this would be a softened wax and a signet ring of some sort from a very important person or somebody that has authority that'd be pressed into that wax as a mark of this is a seal and through this authority, you know, it was sealed through the signet ring.

It's like when we sign important documents and we have to go get them notarized, kind of like that.

Kind of similar to that.

When we come to a believing faith in Christ, we're sealed with the Holy Spirit.

We're under the ownership and protection of God.

We are authenticated and identified as his, meaning that no one else can possess us or steal us away.

We are his.

We're his possession, it says in Titus 2.14.

He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession.

And then he sealed us as his own with the Holy Spirit.

You see, Satan can mess with us, he can even oppress us if we're believers in Christ, but he can never possess us.

We are Jesus' possession.

Satan can mess with us, but he can never steal us away from Jesus.

We have security in our salvation because we are sealed with the Holy Spirit.

Now the second half of verse 13 says, when this sealing happens.

So gospel simply means good news.

So when we heard the word of truth, the good news of Jesus, and believed, that is when we were saved.

That is when we were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

He goes on, look at verse 14.

The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory.

So if you put a down payment down for something, for anything, basically you're saying that you're going to follow through to the end.

Until you fully gain whatever it is that you're entering into.

You know, for us, that's being resurrected with Christ into glory.

And all that comes with that.

You're at the fullness of time when everything is under the authority of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit being in us is the guarantee that we're going to get to be a part of that.

The redemption of the possession.

We can be so sure of that because we have the Holy Spirit sealing us.

We the church are the purchased possession of Jesus.

Isn't that incredible?

And the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of that.

We have the Holy Spirit inside of us.

That is the guarantee, the down payment.

You know, the word down payment in modern Greek, so not ancient Greek, but modern Greek, it's used to describe what we call an engagement ring.

To this day, that's what they call an engagement ring.

It's the same word in the Greek that we see for down payment.

You know how appropriate that is.

The Holy Spirit is like the engagement ring that Jesus gave us as a promise for the union that we are going to have with Jesus as his bride throughout all of eternity.

We are Christ's possession.

But we can't live in the kingdom of God yet.

We need to faithfully finish our time on earth.

So God sends the Holy Spirit to be his kingdom inside of us.

And all of this, at the end of verse 14, is to the praise of his glory to bring him glory and honor.

So I have a question for you.

Do you feel rich yet?

Do you feel that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing?

Through his glorious grace, he's richly poured out every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

I want you to turn to 1 Peter 1.3.

And we're going to end with this.

It was towards the end of the New Testament, so to the right in your Bible, it's right between James and John.

1 Peter 1 3.

And I want you to turn there because this really sums up and reinforces our verses that we have here today.

But it also answers the question of why we have to live as aliens really on this earth.

And why God doesn't just take us away to heaven as soon as we come to faith in Jesus.

Why do we have to stay here and struggle during this time?

So 1 Peter chapter 1, starting in verse 3, we're going to read through verse 9.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

You are being guarded by God's power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials, so that the proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold, which through, though perishable, is refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Life on this earth is a struggle, and it's going to continue being a struggle.

For Christians, we're kind of in this limbo right now of living in another kingdom.

While the kingdom of God is inside of us.

Being in the world but not of the world.

As we await this, or as I should say, as we await finally living in the kingdom of God, which is in heaven.

But we have, as 1 Peter just said right here, we have a living hope in Jesus that has sealed us with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that one day we will be in glory with Jesus in his kingdom.

As his bride, sharing in his inheritance.

All because he washed us with his blood in the first place.

It all starts there, and then all these spiritual blessings just keep coming.

You know, we're about to celebrate communion this morning.

And this is what it's all about: a celebration of the body and blood of Jesus that he poured out so that we can have all of these spiritual blessings that we looked at here today.

You know, if you haven't placed your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I want to encourage you, do it now.

Why wait?

All you have to say is, I surrender and I accept the cleansing blood of Jesus to redeem me and make me blameless in God's sight.

And then you can make your first act as a believer in Jesus, the celebration of Jesus' sacrifice, through these symbols of the bread being the body that was broken for us, and the juice being symbolic of the blood of Christ that was spilled for us for our cleansing and for our washing.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, we thank you so much again for your word.

Lord, I pray that we would leave here feeling like the richest people on earth, just understanding all that you've done for us.

All that was put into play through the sacrifice of Jesus, through the washing of his blood, to make us pure and holy and blameless in your sight.

Lord, I pray that you would continue to help us remember all of these blessings, to not neglect them, but to realize how rich you are in all of these things and how you desire to give us these things so freely, so richly.

Lord, I just want to thank you for all of these things.

Help us to be grateful and help us to live our lives as the richest people on earth.

Taking all of these things and putting them into practice and not neglecting them, but realizing them and talking about them and thanking you for them and living out our lives as the richest spiritual people on earth, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.