Ephesians: Chapter 1, Chosen - 09-13-26 - Pastor John Authenreith

All my life you have been faithful.

It's one of my favorite songs that we sing because it's so true.

It's so true.

If I had a dollar for every time God has been faithful, I'd have a house in uh Bali or something.

I don't know.

I don't know.

If I just had uh a dollar for every time God has been faithful, I'll tell you.

And that's why I can I'm standing up here today, is because of God's faithfulness.

And I hope you're doing good, and I hope you had uh uh have had a great weekend so far.

Glad you're here, glad you're at home.

Uh I don't do this very often, but I'm going to today.

We have a birthday today, and uh we have uh Patty Dieter is 95 years old today, and she is in our midst.

Yes, 95.

She's right there.

Hi, Patty.

Happy birthday to you.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, but uh Matt deserves an applause, and she is so faithful and she comes every weekend.

It's just good to see you here.

Happy birthday to you.

So it's a special day today.

Look, uh many of us have our shirts on again, right?

Ask me about my live group.

So there's a lot of us have our shirts on today, and because it is today is fall launch.

It's a uh a celebration around here.

And uh so guess what?

After you leave this room today, we have free caffeino iced coffee, we have cupcakes and cookies and all kinds of stuff in the gym for you.

That's right.

Even the second service gets it today.

So uh you have got to make sure that you head back there before you go home and grab something.

I've been told that there is a lot of stuff, and we need all of you to participate, okay?

So, fall launch, what is that?

Well, we start a new series, we kind of we sort of follow the school year around here, you know, in our message series and stuff and in our uh special events and whatever.

We kind of follow the school year.

So uh the group, life groups start today in our fall launch and go for six weeks through the book of Ephesians.

Plus, uh our Sunday morning messages are going to be based on the book of Ephesians and go for those same six weeks.

So it's just a celebration all around, and so happy to have you here today or watching wherever you may happen to be to participate because there's a lot to be excited about.

We still have some room in some of our groups, and we have those back in the gym on the table.

You can look at the list of groups that are still available.

We have uh, man, well over 150 people in groups.

I think we have 16, 17 groups going on, something like that.

I don't remember exactly, but a lot.

And so the gospel is going to be talked about for weeks uh among our amongst our community.

And I'm so blessed and thankful for that.

And thank you for your participation.

And if you're not in a group yet, like I said, there's still some spots available, and we'd love to have you join us uh because it all ties together.

For six weeks, it all ties together.

But let's get started today.

And I'm gonna ask you a question.

I'll start with a question like I always do.

Has anybody ever won a contest?

Raise your hand if you've won a contest.

Okay, some of you, how many of you are one of those that say, I never win anything?

Raise your hand.

Yeah, yeah, right.

So some people put two hands up.

Never won anything.

I'm one of those, I was one of those for a long time.

I never won anything until I won something.

And uh there's an organization called Cirque du Soleil.

Has anybody heard of Cirque du Soleil?

They do these amazing circus-style acrobatics shows.

They tour all over the world, and they are amazing.

And they have them in arenas like hockey arenas and stuff like that.

So it's a there, it's a big deal, and they are really good.

Donna and I are fans.

We've probably been to a dozen Cirque du Soleil shows, I bet you, over the last uh 20 years or so, because it's one of our favorite things to do.

And uh so they sent out, they had a contest one Valentine Day.

They had a contest.

They said, write to us and tell us why your Valentine, your spouse, why she deserves free tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show.

So I wrote in.

I started talking about my poor wife, my poor wife.

I said, Oh my gosh, I've drugged her all over the country for my ministry pursuits, and she's lived in five states, and the poor soul.

You know, she she has just been such a dutiful wife.

And and guess what?

They sent me an email and said, You won! We feel sorry for your wife.

We're gonna give you free tickets.

So we got free tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show.

And uh we went, and when we went into the arena, we had to go to the ticket place or whatever, and somebody met us there.

You're John and Donna Othenreath, you're the winners of our contest.

And so we were so excited that we were treated like royalty.

Come with me, come with me.

And we followed the lady, and she took us into the arena, and she put us about a quarter of the way up, dead center of the show, right in the seats were right in the center.

These are your seats, you got special VIP seating, you know.

And we were so excited, and she said, after the show is over, stay here, we're gonna come and get you.

So we're like, oh, okay.

So the show went on, it was lovely.

After it was over, they came and uh they got us.

They said, uh, all right, come with us, we're gonna take you backstage.

We want to give you a tour.

You can meet some of the performers, you can see how we do all the props and all of the stuff that we do.

So we got to go behind the scenes at an arena and see all the stuff that they did uh to put on the show.

But it was amazing, and they treated us like royalty.

We were special guests in their eyes, and and they treated us differently than they did everybody else in the show that day.

And and that was amazing.

And so over the next six weeks, I want us to think about that, right?

We're gonna continue to dig into the book of Ephesians, both we're gonna dig into the book of Ephesians, both in here and on Sunday morning and in our life groups during the week, and we're going to discover that because of who we are in Christ, we've won the contest.

We are different, we are set apart, we are called, we are equipped, we are empowered, we are blessed, all these things, and I want us to get that and not miss that today.

If you get nothing else, right?

So turn to the book of Ephesians.

Let's start.

Chapter one.

Yep, we're gonna be going through all six um chapters.

Start with chapter one today.

But not today, we're not going through all six chapters today.

You'll be here until like five, six this evening.

No, we have iced coffee from Kaffino in the back.

Are you kidding me?

You guys are all looking at your watches, going wrap it up, Pastor John.

We want a cupcake.

We want a cupcake from uh were they from giant eagle or something?

I don't know.

Yeah, I know, right?

I think they're from giant eagle.

So, anyway, we have Ephesians chapter one.

We're gonna be in now, Paul, the Apostle Paul, wrote this book.

He wrote this letter to the believers in Ephesus.

He was in prison at the time that he wrote this.

And he wrote this not necessarily because of a specific crisis, like he usually writes his books.

When everything is fallen, his letters, everything is falling apart.

And we read a bunch of Paul's interactions with uh the church in Ephesus in Acts chapter 18 and chapter 19.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

So if you get a chance to go there, I don't know if you knew that or not, but it talks a lot about Paul's travels to Ephesus in the book of Acts.

And so he planted a church there like he does in other places by preaching Jesus to the Jews in the synagogue.

That's where he always starts, that seems to be.

And there's a whole that and that's a whole series in and of itself.

We could look at Acts chapter 18 and 19, talk about Paul planting churches, and again, it's a whole series in and of itself.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

Ephesus was home of the Greek goddess Artemis, for one thing.

And one author said that Paul wrote Ephesians to remind Christians living in this spiritually hostile and divided culture, who they are in Christ, what they have received through Christ, and how this new identity, which is what we're talking about today, should transform the way they live.

As such, should transform the way we live as we look at this 2,000 years later.

All right, and we're gonna talk about it over the next six weeks.

So there's the setup.

Let's look at Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Says this Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

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

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

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

Talking about Jesus there.

There's a lot in those first six verses there.

And maybe you're wondering about what does all this mean, right?

What does all this mean?

And it's like this Paul obviously starts this letter with an introduction, right?

Grace and peace to you.

God's holy people in Ephesus.

And then he gets right into the meat of this section.

He wants them to understand something, and this is what we're talking about, okay, today.

This is the whole point of today.

He wants them to understand their spiritual identity, who they are, because of their salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

They won the contest, basically, right?

That's what he wants them to know.

And he talks about in this section, he talked about being chosen and predestined.

And maybe you're wondering, what does that mean?

What is that all about?

Well, let me tell you something.

When you talk about predestination in the Christian faith, there's several uh sides to that kind of story there, what uh that narrative of predestination.

And there's so several schools of thought.

Now, I'm not gonna get all crazy into the in-depth details of predestination, okay, because it in itself is a sermon series, and there's volumes of books written on what all of this means.

So I'm gonna be very, very surface-y, but I want us as believers to understand what he's talking about when he talks about predestination and being chosen.

And it's been a controversy for over 2,000 years, what Paul means here, right?

And I'm not gonna argue this point or tear it all apart, but it's something that we should know.

There are generally two beliefs to the idea of this election or this being chosen or predestination and uh that Paul references here.

One belief is kind of known as Calvinism.

I'm not gonna go into what all Calvinism believes, but when you look at predestination and election, um, and when it comes to Calvinism, that it means that that God already knows and has chosen who's going to be saved.

And you don't really have a say-so in the matter.

No, you're gonna be saved.

All right, now that's just a surfacey explanation of that.

You don't choose Jesus as your Savior because God has already chosen you.

Okay?

You're predestined by God to be a Christian.

That's a simple definition, and you can you can tweak that and argue it, and and um I'm not gonna go there, but you could.

The other belief system is what we call Arminianism.

So there's Calvinism and Arminianism, and based on the teachings of uh theologian Jacobus Arminius, it contradicts Calvinism in the belief that humans do have a choice to respond to God's call to salvation or not.

Both sides believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's not let's not think worry about that.

But they disagree on how you get there.

Arminians will argue that once we choose to follow Christ, right, uh, then we're predestined to salvation.

And that they will argue that that's what Paul is talking about here, right?

And we can cite John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him, whoever believes in him, or 1 Timothy 2.4.

God desires all people to be saved.

And both both uh both sides have scriptures that they quote to make their point.

And again, I'm not gonna beat this up, but but our Minianism, the belief that we have the choice to choose Jesus as our Savior or not, is my belief and the belief of our denomination.

So I want you to know that we we lean towards Arminianism, as they would say.

But salvation is by grace through faith.

But I choose to follow Christ, and that's the only part that I play in it.

So I just had to get that out to you so that you knew what that meant, because that's kind of a glaring point in that first chapter that I don't want us to miss.

And now that's a real simple explanation, and either way you look at it, if you believe Jesus died for your sins and you have him as your savior, you're good to go.

Okay, that's the bottom line there.

And quite honestly, most believers don't spend a whole lot of time arguing over one point or this point or that point.

And I explain that to you so that you have some understanding of this, but that's not the point of the passage.

Paul says God chose us to be holy and blameless.

He says we're adopted into the family of God when Jesus becomes our Savior.

So understand this.

Number one, my identity comes from who God says I am.

That's the bottom line for our message today, to be honest with you.

My identity comes from who God says I am.

Man, do we miss this so much?

We miss this.

Fourth grade, Vorce Elementary, Akron, Ohio.

There's a teacher, Mrs.

Clater, she was born in the mid-1800s.

I'm sure of it.

I'm sure of it.

One thing you did at the end of the year in third grade was that you hoped you didn't get Miss Clater for fourth grade.

So I'm looking at my thing.

Please don't let me get Miss Clater.

Please don't let me get Miss Clater.

I got Miss Clater.

Yeah, so there she was.

I walked into the room.

She was, she was, she was really elderly.

And uh I walked into the room in fourth grade, sat down at my desk.

She does um roll call, first day of school.

And my my last name begins with an A, so I always got called first, usually, unless there was somebody with the last name of Abbott or something.

So I was usually first.

So she says, John Othenreath, you know, and I said, Here, and she said, Oh boy, here we go.

Another Othenreath.

She said something like, I hope we have a better time together in this class than I had when your brother was in this class.

And I'm thinking, that was nine years ago.

We were nine years apart, me and my brother.

And uh she's holding this against me.

So she identifies me as my misbehaving, and he was my misbehaving brother, a troublemaker.

And she expects the same uh behavior from me, apparently.

And what do you do with that?

What do you do with that?

It's like, you know, I don't I'm not my brother.

I'm not my brother.

And so let me ask you then, where does your identity, where does it come from?

From somebody in your family, right?

Does your identity come from your job?

Does your identity come from your past?

Your position as a mom or a dad?

Does your identity come from whether you're an athlete at school or a cheerleader?

Whether you're a grandma?

Who are we?

Who are we?

Paul says, we are holy and blameless.

We have been adopted.

You see, first and foremost, if you are a believer, you are done, you are identified as a child of God.

No matter who Mrs.

Clater says in fourth grade, she's not with us anymore, bless her heart.

Of course, she'd be 300 years old if she was still alive right now.

But you know what I'm saying?

You see that?

We're holy and blameless, we've been adopted.

And if you are a believer, you're identified as a child of God.

Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Look at this, verse 7.

Paul goes on, he gets pretty thick here, all right?

So stay with me.

In him, in Jesus, underline in hymns, in Jesus, we have redemption, churchy word, redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished.

I love that word, lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

He made known to us, believers, the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

In him, there's another one, in Jesus, we were also chosen, having been predestined.

There's a word again, according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Why?

In order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.

Ah, it's all about giving God glory.

And 13 says, and you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory.

Now you're thinking, what was that?

Right?

What was all of that?

There's a lot there, isn't there?

It sounds crazy complicated, doesn't it?

What in the world is he talking about with all of that stuff there?

And and he usually starts off with a churchy word, right?

Redemption.

In him we have redemption, churchy word.

The fundamental idea of redemption is being released by means of a payment.

As one author said, cashing something in for something else.

Alright?

You redeem a coupon at Walmart and you get something in return.

You get a discount.

It's like this we we were enslaved to sin.

Jesus paid the price, we have been set free.

That's redemption.

And Paul says, Paul says, this is huge.

He says, lavished.

I told you I love the word that he uses there, lavished.

God, he lavished this on it.

God's grace is it's huge.

He lavished it on us.

It's amazing.

And Paul says that that this unearned favor that that uh God lavished his grace, his unearned favor on us by giving his son on our behalf.

Paul says, in him, in Jesus, in Jesus we have redemption, and in him we were chosen, which we just talked about, which is God's plan.

And Paul ends this section by saying, All the praise of God, all for the praise of God's glory, because everything points back to giving God glory.

And we haven't even touched on the Holy Spirit part that he talked about there.

That's one of the best parts.

Verse 14, what does he say?

When you believed, you were marked in him with the seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession.

When you believe, you receive the Holy Spirit that dwells within you.

This is good news, right?

Guaranteeing your salvation, it says there.

That's how you know you're saved.

You can't conjure the presence of the Holy Spirit into a room or a space when He already lives inside of you.

Do you get that?

The spirit in believers' lives is the undeniable mark of God's work in and through them.

I had a cousin who lived in Akron.

And I remember going over to her house, and her house was falling apart.

And I remember going to her house and going upstairs into the bathroom, and you could see down into the kitchen from the bathroom because there was a hole in the floor.

It was like, yikes, this is horrible.

And she couldn't work and she didn't have any money and we didn't know what to do about it.

And one of my other cousins who who uh had resources swooped in and bought the house from my cousin.

Bought it, took it over, rehabbed the whole entire house and made it livable.

She still lived in there and made it livable, rehabbed the whole place.

And then what did he do?

After it was all said and done, it's paid off, all of those things.

He takes the deed and he signs it back over to my cousin and says, Here, this is yours.

I did this for you.

And he gave her the house back, saved it from foreclosure, had the whole thing redone, all of that.

Swooped in and fixed it all up and did all of this.

Hers free and clear.

And when he signed on the dotted line, it was a done deal.

It was a done deal.

You see, Christianity isn't simply God erasing your debt.

God redeemed you, forgave you, adopted you, gave you an inheritance, and then put his spirit in you as a guarantee that he'll finish what he started.

You getting this?

My identity comes from who God says I am, and number two, my identity is guaranteed.

Get that?

My identity is guaranteed.

Look at verse 15.

For this reason, because of everything that we just talked about, for this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, talking to the Ephesians here, I have not stopped giving thanks for you.

I remember remembering you in my prayers.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance.

There's that word again, in his holy people.

Man.

You see, Paul starts this section for this reason.

All the other stuff that we just read, right?

All the other stuff we just read.

My identity comes from God, who God says I am.

My identity is guaranteed, and for this reason signifies that he prays in the light of the wealth of spiritual blessings of which he just talked about.

The thought of the purpose of God in Christ, the blessings of sonship, redemption, adoption, revelation, the gift of the Holy Spirit leads Paul to naturally praise and pray for the members of the church.

And Paul tells them what he's been praying.

This is so cool.

This is what I've been praying.

He tells them, he prayed that they would know God better, have their eyes enlightened.

He prayed that they would understand the hope of their calling.

That they would listen, take this to heart, that he would then that they would understand the riches of their inheritance and understand the greatness of God's power.

Paul prays for God's truth to be something that they understand.

He says, I keep asking.

I keep, you notice he says, I keep asking, I keep asking that.

What's that mean?

That means that this is not a one-and-done prayer.

Paul's praying continuously for these people.

It's ongoing, and this is important.

And number three, my identity includes many blessings.

That's what we're talking about today, our identity.

Where does your identity come from?

Man, we beat ourselves up so much.

I'm worthless.

I'm not worth anything.

I'm not good at what I do.

I'm not good enough to do this or good enough to do that.

I'm not this, I'm not that.

We get beat up all our lives by school teachers or whoever else, like I did, Mrs.

Right, Mrs.

Glater, telling me, oh no, you're gonna be just like your brother.

We hear words from people that hurt our feelings, that make us feel less than, right?

But our identity is so secure in Jesus Christ.

One resource said that knowing what God has done is one thing, here it is, but understanding what it means for our lives is another.

Do you understand that the redeeming work of Christ means for you?

Get this.

If you are a believer, redemption, you've been bought with a price, adoption, revelation, and of course the Holy Spirit, and this is all crazy.

It's just crazy.

Look at this, verse 19.

Paul goes on, continuing his thought, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.

Far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his Jesus' feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

This is what I want us to get: the power for us who believe.

Did you catch that?

Paul talks about the greatness of Christ and the power it took to raise him from the dead and set him next to his father in heaven, and with and he has power over everything now that he's there.

In the New Testament commentary, put Paul's concluding remarks this way: By Jesus' resurrection and ascension, Christ is exalted to be Lord of all.

He is head of all things for the church.

The church, which are Christians, are his body intended to express him in the world.

And remember, he's addressing the church body in Ephesus.

And we have the power to accomplish his work because he set it up that way.

Got that?

Look at this, number four.

My identity then includes the power of Christ at work in and through me.

Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Don't let anybody beat you down.

Make you think less of yourself.

Don't you think less of yourself or think of yourself unworthy.

The power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that Paul wants believers to understand and experience in their own lives.

Boy, do we miss this?

This means we have the power to live differently.

We have the power to persevere.

When the going gets tough, listen to me.

We have the power to accomplish the will of God.

And on and on.

Have you thought about this lately?

I bet you haven't.

Have you ever done something?

Let me ask you, have you ever done something?

And you and uh that made you say to yourself, I don't know where that came from.

Have you ever done that?

I don't know where that came from.

And you knew that you knew in here that it had to have come from God?

That you couldn't have done it on your own?

I do that all the time.

I don't know where that came from.

That's the power of Christ at work in you.

So, what can we learn from this?

I don't have to live the Christian life in my own strength.

The risen Christ lives in me.

This is where Paul starts this letter to the church in Ephesus.

And his power is greater than my weaknesses.

What's your weakness?

What do you think it is?

What do you battle?

What are you struggling with?

What are your weaknesses?

And what do we do with all of this?

Paul wants us to understand something very important.

Our bottom line: our identity is not something we have to create.

It's something God has given us in Christ.

You are adopted, you are redeemed, you are forgiven, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit, you have an inheritance, and you have the power of Christ at work in you.

Don't miss this.

This is amazing.

It's amazing.

This week, then, listen, this week, live like God, like who God says you are.

When you are tempted to let your past define you, remember you are redeemed.

When you are struggling with rejection or wondering if you matter, remember you are a child of God.

When you're facing something you don't think you can handle, remember you are not alone.

The power of Christ is at work in you.

That's what Paul wants us to understand.

Don't just know who you are in Christ.

Live like it.

Live like it.

My identity comes from God.

My future is secure in Christ.

I have been blessed beyond measure, and the power of Christ is at work in me and through me.

So this week, live like a child of God.

Don't just know who you are in Christ.

Live like it.

Live like it.

And I always ask, if you if Jesus isn't your savior, today's the day that that has to happen.

Right?

Because all this, all this can be yours when Jesus is your savior.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

You win the contest.

Jesus came that we may have life and have it to the full, and he wants for everyone to be saved.

If he's not your savior yet, I implore you to ask him to be the Lord of your life.

Don't miss that.

Above everything else, don't miss that.

Pray with me.

So much in your word, Lord.

So much to think about, so much to pray about and process.

And I know, Lord, that this is uh some deep stuff today.

We know that, but Holy Spirit, you give us the ability to discern this.

And thank you for that.

Thank you for the words of Paul.

Thank you for the truths of Scripture.

Scripture is truth.

Your word is truth.

Thank you for that, Lord.

May we understand who we are as believers and begin to live like it.

May others see in us something that is different and ask, what is it that's different about you?

Oh Lord, give us the ability to draw our strength from you when times are tough.

Lord, lead us to understand that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is power that is available in our lives here on this earth as we struggle day to day to make it through.

Lord, may we represent you in everything.

May people see us in you and understand that yes, there is something different.

Because of our identity, and our identity being in Christ and not in anything of this world.

Amen.