To the Praise of His Glory

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter 1, verses 1 to 14.

Ephesians 1:1–14

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 and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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

Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he has lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

In him you also, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

What a beautiful passage we have to go over today.

This is our first week for our summer series, in which we'll be moving through the book of Ephesians.

Throughout the first half of the year, we moved through the uh second batch of our time in Genesis, which was chapters 10 through 22.

Last year we did chapters 1 through 10.

And uh for our summer series, we're moving through Ephesians.

So we get to move out of the Old Testament into a New Testament epistle, and I have to remember how to preach epistles.

I'm probably gonna say Abraham like every other word, whenever there's a proper name.

Uh, but we've got a glorious place to start the summer uh for the book of Ephesians.

Uh a couple of announcements before we move into our text.

Uh we're doing a book club on a book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

We had our first meeting on Wednesday.

Uh if you were there, how was it?

Did you guys hear that?

Overwhelming.

It was really good.

Yeah, it was.

Hundreds saved, thousands blessed.

Yeah, it was a really wonderful time.

So uh if you'd still like to participate in that, our next meeting will be uh Jan June 23rd, uh, and we'll gather together to discuss that book again.

Um today, right after service, our very own Carolyn Kellum.

Carolyn, would you stand up and wave to everybody?

Yeah, let's give Carolyn a round of applause.

Yeah, Carolyn's already doing better than the book club.

We've we're meeting for that on uh uh right after service.

Uh Carolyn is a professional disciple maker, both literative literally, and even if you didn't do this for a living, I would say that you were a professional disciple maker.

She's um and uh understands how to uh change people's lives by investing in making intentional spiritual investment in them.

And that's a pattern of living that we really want to see develop in our church.

And so we've asked Carolyn to come in and help teach us how.

So that's right after church today.

So uh you can go to that and then go to lunch.

Sound good?

It's not like a total commitment to say yes, but it's like a maybe 60%.

Uh also next week we'll have a membership class.

So if you'd like to become a member here at R C D right after church next Sunday is a membership class.

All right, let's pray and get into our text for the day.

Holy Father, we praise you for gathering us together.

Lord, we praise you for all the work that that took to build your church, to unite us in your son, to atone for us, to draw us together in love, to write all of our personal stories uh into the story of your church, and the glory that if you blink, you could miss it of a gathering on a Sunday morning.

Lord, let us uh learn to savor such things and see them point towards the glory that you show us in your word.

Lord, I pray that your spirit would allow us to see and savor the wonderful word that you have for us this morning.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh this opening to Ephesians, it's like impossible to exegete, to move through verse by verse, it's it's it's too dense.

Every word, every phrase is so wonderful and just miraculous.

There's a uh the the former president of Princeton Theological Seminary, like a wayformer, um uh his name was John McKay, and he became a Christian by reading Ephesians, uh, just as a as a kid, you know, like you do.

And he was so compelled by this book, and it really shaped his ministry for his whole life.

And he uh was given the opportunity to speak at the 1948 uh World Council of Churches in Amsterdam.

It's 1948 uh in Amsterdam, so it's three years after the end of World War II.

The world is really unsettled and trying to find its place again.

And the church was wondering how do we participate in that?

And so he chose for that moment to preach on Ephesians.

And he opened by saying, This is a letter written to a church in a critical city in a post-Augustan Roman era that was marked by social disintegration.

That's the moment that this letter is written to.

It's a period marked by social disintegration.

And he said this: Ephesians is the most contemporary book in the Bible, since it promises community in a world of disunity, reconciliation in place of alienation, and peace instead of war.

Would you like to hear that one more time?

Ephesians is the most contemporary book in the Bible, since it promises community in a world of disunity, reconciliation in place of alienation, and peace instead of war.

This book, and just this passage, even in particular, my fear with it, and what I noticed in my own soul in preparing for this was constantly going towards this is too good to be true.

And my I found my mind like unable to uh engage with at any sort of real level the wonder of the words that Paul begins with.

It just seems too good to be true.

Uh so my hope is that even in our participation with the text this morning, that our our hearts begin to be transformed by it.

Because there's a glory here.

But we need to become certain types of containers for that glory.

I guess what I mean is the spirit needs to do just as much of a work to share it with us in our hearts to just make us able to receive it.

Because we'll just snap into this is too good to be true.

Now, the first 14 verses, which we're looking at today, are one sentence in Greek.

Uh so it's a total run-on sentence.

There's no there's no break in Paul's thinking.

It's uh one of the theologians that I read described it, this is like a breathless racehorse that is just careening forward.

Uh, others described it as uh this is this is a symphony.

And this is the first movement of a symphony in which Paul lays out all the themes that he'll and motifs that he'll pick up on throughout the rest of the book are laid out here.

It's like uh uh it's like a fractal pattern where you keep zooming in and you keep zooming in, and there's just more and more glory.

Uh it's it's we've got an impossible task ahead of us.

So that same theologian, uh Adam McKay, John McKay, said uh of this passage, this is truth that sings.

This is doctrine set to music.

The best exposition of this has probably already happened and will happen once more again this service.

It's when we all sing together.

Now, in this, the question is why does Paul begin with a poem or a song?

Why does he begin with this overflow?

And why uh why is it like lyrical in the way that he presents it?

And I think we're pushed into this understanding of the gospel, a true understanding of the gospel, demands singing.

It requires song in the explanation of it.

For us to just try and lay it out as raw data, it the words would be to miss it.

The words need to be empowered by song.

Like, why do we turn anything into a song?

It's because when these words just sit here, they demand to be infused with this deeper lyrical meaning that's that's it's meaning beyond what can be articulated.

And that's why we have to have songs, because that we have to sing this in order to come closer to the reality of what's being presented here.

And so Paul sees that in the gospel, and he sees that in order to grasp the reality of the glory that I'm sharing forth, to just lay it out in the data would be to miss it.

I'm gonna have to start by singing.

Isn't that that that's that's amazing, right?

He has to start by singing, and that's because the to grasp the reality of the gospel, we have to grasp it in song.

There's this great debate in theological circles.

So there's like six people, about Genesis 1 and whether or not it should be understood as a hymn.

Because in it we see the creation story, and we see that it takes on this sort of uh musical dimension because it's got repetition and it's got poetry, and we see this pattern develop in the language.

And you've got scholars on the one hand who desperately want to hold to a literal understanding of Genesis 1, because they don't want to lose this reality that God really did make this world.

And then you've got scholars on the other end which are saying, but look at this lyrical pattern that's just so evident in the text.

And there's the the combat there, I think when we come across something like the same thing, the same beginning of a of a book in Ephesians 1, we're seeing that that dichotomy just doesn't exist.

Reality itself can't be grasped outside of the singing of it.

That's why like two of the great mythologists of the last century, C.

S.

Lewis and J.R.

Tolkien, they're friends, so maybe they have this idea together.

You know, when the Narnia series begins with uh, what is it?

Magician's nephew.

And uh oh, what's the lion's name?

I know.

In Aslan is uh Aslan sings the world into existence.

That's the way the world starts.

And because he gets, look, you can't understand reality outside of song.

Or Tolkien in The Similar Alien, which I don't recommend.

I'm reading it.

There's too many names.

But it begins with this wonderful uh uh uh singing the world into existence story, a Luvatar who is God and that.

He sings, and then he teaches others how to sing along to this tune, and he says, this is understanding reality.

They're drawing on biblical understandings there.

It doesn't clash theologically with us, it clashes with us because we're modern people, and we think that to relay the data is as close to reality as we can get.

That's that's the most real thing we can say to one another.

But if I were to say, uh if I were to say something like his right hand moved at an acceleration of uh 12 to 13 miles per hour and connected with the frontal lobe of his opponent, it captures the reality less than man, he wound up and knocked him out.

You know, that's that's more real.

You see what I'm trying to say?

And in the music, we see that same thing.

Now, what's what's what we see in a text like this is that the musical wonder and the poetic wonder that we would normally place into a description as like an exaggeration.

Here, those words themselves are literal and true.

So we're going to examine it in three triplets.

This is a a way that I thought I could approach this text and maintain some sanity.

The first triplet that we see woven throughout this text is the Father, Son, and Spirit.

And Paul just dances in and out of the persons of the Trinity.

The second is past, present, and future.

Our own temporal experience of this.

We can't look anywhere temporally and not see the glory of God on display.

And last is from, through, and to.

There's a causal or logical framework here where we see the origin of meaning, and we see the means of meaning, and we see the purpose of all meaning in life.

So we're going to move through these three triplets together.

So let's begin in the first verse of the song and look at Father, Son, and Spirit.

Ephesians 1, verse 3.

Ephesians 1:3

It says, 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.

Paul begins by saying, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He begins by blessing God.

This explanation of doctrine is worship.

He doesn't explain and then worship.

The explanation itself is worship.

And in this, he he speaks in these Trinitarian terms, which the Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Lewis, C.

S.

Lewis calls this the dance of the Trinity.

And that's what we're being called into.

Paul at the beginning, he's blessing God, and he's describing the God who he's blessing to us, and he's demonstrating our personal participation in that Trinitarian dance, that we are called into it in Christ.

So there's this glory that we're being called to participate with in Christ.

And then there's this unthinkable phrase which says, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?

Now, this is one of those points where if you were to use this phrase like in a love song, and you would say, like, uh like she she has blessed me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

It's like, wow, that language is so beautiful.

And we'd say something like, Yeah, I like get what you mean.

Like, obviously, you know, she hasn't.

But like, I get what you mean.

Like, she must be pretty wonderful.

But in this, that poetic language, that that musical flourish, is the reality.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I feel like this is such a point that could be way up here that it might not land, but there's a there's a wonder here.

And it says, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

So let's start with spiritual.

Now we see the work of the Holy Spirit in our blessing.

But there's there's for for us, we often think of spiritual as like, okay, so that means like there's no physical blessing.

Oh, this isn't something that we can really participate with or really experience in a tangible way.

Because we think of spiritual as like like gaseous, you know, it's like there's there's solid, liquid, and gas, and spiritual means gas.

Uh this is it can't be touched, and it's like wispy, and and is off in some other realm.

Uh Tina, are you laughing that I said gaseous?

Okay, good, just so we're on the same page.

And but that that's not what that's not what the biblical understanding of spiritual is.

This isn't non-physical, because it's the spirit that creates and upholds our physicality, you know, that's participating with God in the creation of the physical world.

This is uh the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual, biblically, is thinking in terms of what is empowering this, what is empowering this goodness.

You know, the the difference between a sailboat and a motorboat uh is not in their their physicality, it's in what powers them.

And we see that same sort of thing here.

We are spirit, these blessings are spirit empowered for us, which means that God is at the same time creating the blessing that he gives to us and creating us by the spirit to be able to joyfully receive that blessing.

It's both.

It's both.

And then this crazy phrase or or the word that begins with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

I can feel your minds already checking out.

This is too good.

This is too good to be true, and it's incomprehensible, and I've got no place to put this in my life.

But uh it's it's necessary that it be every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

It's not just, it doesn't just happen to be that way, it's necessarily that way.

Because what does Christ bring us into?

The glory of the Trinity.

We are brought into the experience of the wonder of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that we are able, even as ourselves, to participate with them in a like manner to the way that Jesus participates with them, because we are in Christ.

And so it it you don't participate with the Godhead and receive 50% of the blessings in heavenly places.

It's sort of logically impossible.

By participating, being called into this participation of the Trinity, we must receive every blessing in the heavenly places.

It is the nature of God Himself.

So we see that in this glorious description that Paul is describing, at its center is our participation in the glory of the Trinity.

That the gospel of our salvation shows forth the glory of the very nature of God Himself in this deep mystery of the Trinity.

Our next triplet is past, present, and future.

In the totality of the Trinity, we also see that Paul then stretches into the totality of human experience.

So if there's this wholeness of God that he pictures our participation in, then he kind of steps back into like a human space where there's things like past, present, and future.

And he shows that you are surrounded by the glory of God.

In Christ, Christian, you are surrounded by the glory of God in your past, in the present, and in the future that is to come.

So that there is no temporal experience which doesn't shout forth the glory of God.

In the past, let's begin with this verse, Ephesians 1, 4 through 5.

Says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

So we look back to the past, and we see that we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

So Christian, your being in Christ was a choice that God made before the foundation of the world.

You know, the curtain that science can't peel back and look behind because there's nothing there to measure.

You know, the world had no foundations.

Back then, this is something that theologians refer to as the covenant of redemption, which is this idea that within the Trinity, God made a promise to himself for our redemption.

And he will see through to his promises.

We see that we are chosen in this place.

So that means that this gospel story of our being drawn into Christ is not some plan B after sin arose in the world.

But rather, and with all of the philosophical questions this plunges us into, this is what scripture teaches, but rather, even before sin entered, God had determined to ransom us in Christ.

And next it says, He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

So we are we see that we are chosen, but likewise we are predestined.

And so that means that God holds in his heart all of the particulars of our experiences that have drawn us to him so that we might say that we are in Christ and that we might hold to Christ by faith.

That all of the particulars of that story, all of the designs of our adoption into the Godhead, were determined by God.

So, Christian, you look back towards your past, and what you see is an unshakable security in Christ.

Normally we look back towards the past and we see all sorts of happenstance and different directions and sliding doors, opportunities for ways things would have turned out otherwise.

Christian, you look back towards the past, you see an unshakable love of God demonstrated towards you.

In the present, Ephesians 1, 7 through 8 says, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

In him we have.

So right now, Christian, this is your possession, redemption through his blood, and forgiveness of your trespasses.

Those are ours now.

So, Christian, you stand in this present moment and you you look out at the sin that still rages in your life or the your your own inability to wrap your mind around in any meaningful way a text like this.

And you you think to yourself, of course I'm not in God yet.

Of course I'm not I'm not in Christ yet.

It is yet to come.

But then in this hymn that Paul sings, we hear you have redemption.

Why?

Not because of your comprehension, not because of your sinlessness, but because of his blood.

His blood has been spilled.

Our redemption has been accomplished.

We have forgiveness of our trespasses in a real way that we can know because the blood was spilled.

And what is it according to?

Not because of deeds which we have done in righteousness.

It is according to the riches of his grace.

Now, it's a wonderful thing to have a rich father.

But when you can't experience those riches, it doesn't really matter.

But you can imagine it would be a more wonderful thing when you see that your rich father has lavished his riches upon you.

There's this great uh, I've told the story a couple of times, I'm sure it's fake, but there's a bunch of great uh Alexander the Great myths.

They're great, Alexander the Great myths.

And uh, there's not as many mediocre ones.

His general was his general had a daughter who was getting married, and uh came to Alexander the Great's assistant and said, My daughter's getting married, and I'd like for you to pay, I'd like for Mr.

the Great to pay for the wedding.

And he says, uh, sure, just write down the price and I'll show it to Al.

And you can hear the difference in proximity, you know, assistant, first name.

And he says, uh he shows Alexander the Great the number that the general wrote down, and it's just exorbitant, you know, it's like a billion dollars or something.

And the uh Alexander the Great's assistant says, Isn't this absurd?

Can you believe that that he requested this much money?

What a dishonor to you.

And Alexander the Great responds and says, No, you completely misunderstand.

He has honored me in two ways.

He has honored me by saying, Wow, Alexander the Great is a very rich man.

And so he has honored me in that way.

And then in the second way, he honors me by saying, he is also extremely generous.

And so by making this incredible ask, he has honored me in these two ways.

Look at how Paul is honoring the grace of Christ when he says, according to the riches of his grace, which God has lavished upon us.

You swim in an ocean of grace.

You can't find the edge of it.

So where do you stand at present, Christian?

A forgiveness which can't run dry.

It's from the riches of God.

We have a generous Father.

And in the future, Ephesians 1, 10 through 11 says this was done as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him that's in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

For the fullness of time we look forward and see all things will be united in Christ.

All things will be united in Christ.

And we have been given this inheritance, which is the same as Christ's inheritance.

Romans, Paul describes this in Romans as co-heirs with Christ.

And that means that all that he will inherit, it's like too much, I feel nervous saying it.

The glory, the honor, the reception of the Father as sinless, all those things which Christ deserves have been given to us, and we will experience because of the lavish grace of the Lord.

So we look back towards our past, we see an incredible security in God's intentions to rescue us.

We stand in our present and we see the lavish grace of the Lord.

We look off to the future and we see we've only just begun to experience it.

I feel like I'm selling something up here.

It sounds so good.

You know?

Like where's the catch?

Ephesians 2.7.

So we're skipping ahead.

But it says, it describes, like, hey, you're saved.

Summarize the first couple of verses.

And then in 2.7, it says, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

Why were you saved?

Why did your father rescue you?

So that he might show you the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward you towards you.

Why does the next age last an eternity?

Because that's how long it will take.

Paul had to sing to communicate something like this.

Next, from the temporal, we move to the causal, the logical links from through and to.

Ephesians 1, 5 through 6 says, He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

Okay, uh we'll we'll look at this more closely.

The from, the through, and the to are all in these verses.

He predestined us from.

What is the cause of such a great salvation?

The mind of God, his love, which he is, right?

God being and expressing of that being, there's no, there's no hypocrisy in God.

He predestined us, it's from, for adoption to himself as sons.

And what was the means in which he accomplished this adoption, where we're drawn into the Trinity, the family of the Trinity?

It's through Jesus Christ.

Why is Christ the glorious center of all creation?

Because he is the means in which things like us, humans like us, could come into the glory of something like the Trinity.

How could we do that only if God became something like us?

If it was not actualized by God, it was not redeemed.

But God took on all parts of our humanity, becoming like one of us, so that we might participate with God through Jesus Christ.

This is according to the purpose of his will.

It's kind of another from, and it's to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

What is the purpose of such a great salvation?

This is to the praise of the glorious grace of God.

Why does he do all of this?

It is so that we will praise.

Why does Paul sing such a wonderful song of the gospel?

It's so that we might sing too.

But why is it that he desires us to sing the praises of God?

It's because that is the fulfillment of all that it means to be human.

That's the fulfillment of all that our faith is.

It is all arcing towards and designed to elicit the praise of us towards the Father.

Because that is where we become all that He designed for us to be.

It is in beings that praise Him.

In praising God, the world becomes this song that develops a real meaning.

This is what all the meaning of life is.

It is found in praising God.

Listen to these last two verses.

In him, you also, Paul does this in his letters, where he'll he'll speak way up here and then dash in a little bit of his personal experience, and then he'll say, and you, in him, you also, what does it take to participate in this song?

When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

What is the purpose of all of this?

To the praise of his glory.

How do we participate in such a wonderful dance?

We hear the gospel.

We hear the gospel.

The Lord did not spare his own son.

By faith in him, we might be reconciled to the God of all creation.

We hear the gospel, we believe it, and we are drawn into the glory of this song.

And what is our response to that?

It's to sing praises so that the Lord might be praised.

When Zach comes back up here and we'll start singing again.

You know, this is one of those things I'm stuttering because it's like, can you really say this?

This is it seems too good to be true.

And we're all singing the praises of the Lord together.

You will be standing in the purpose of all existence.

You will be getting a flavor of the deepest aspects of your humanity.

And they are shown in the praise of the Lord.

We don't sing just because it helps us.

We sing because this is the end for which God created the world.

That he might be praised.

There's no higher joy.

So let us participate.

Before we sing, let's participate with a time of communion.

So we are drawn into the Trinity by the poured out blood of Christ.

And Christ established this new covenant of faith by the Last Supper, in which He take He took the bread and broke it and said, This is my body.

And he took the wine and they shared the cup, saying, This is my blood poured out for you.

Now, in the physicality of this, we're entering into the dance, the music of creation.

Paul describing it says, This I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

We remember to praise the gospel in this practice.

If you are a Christian, we invite you to this table.

Come and eat.

If not, don't.

This meal is a, among other things, a demonstration of this faith, that at the center of this song is the person of Christ and his sacrifice for us.

So we'll sing along to that.

Holy Father, pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that we might begin to get a glimpse, even if it feels now just like a frustration of the heights that we feel like we can't we can't see over the counter.

Lord, let that draw us closer to you, to the wonder and glory of of this song of your gospel.

Let us learn to sing along in the way that Paul does here.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.