Our Blessings in Christ

Good morning, church. Good morning. Good to see all of you here this morning. It’s, uh, Back to Church Sunday. We, we, we celebrate this day every year because it seems like when kids go back to school, we start getting back into the groove, and then we take one quick break for Labor Day, and then this tends to be the Sunday people go, I got to get back to church.

And so we’re celebrating the day, National Back to Church Sunday. Glad you’re here today. And it’s also the day that we’re kicking off a new sermon series entitled Life in Christ. We’re going verse by verse through the book of Ephesians, and we’ll be spending the next 6 weeks going for the— through the first 3 chapters, and then we’ll take a break for the holidays, and then we’ll pick up the next 3 chapters, chapters 4 through 6, in 2017. And the Apostle Paul has, has given us some clear natural breaks in it so that it works out well.

The first 3 chapters talk about who we are in Christ, life in Christ, our position in Christ, and And so that’s what we’ll be talking about in this portion of the series is who we are in Christ and our possessions and position in Christ. And then the last 4 through 6, last 3 chapters, he’s really talking about living it out, our practices in Christ, how does it look to live for Christ? And so that’s kinda how he breaks it out. The key phrase in the book of Ephesians is in Christ. That little phrase, in Christ or in Him, repeats 36 times in this little book.

And indeed, it’s 11 times in our reading today in just chapter 1, in Him, in Christ, in the Beloved. He repeats it over and over again, and it’s because he makes a big deal, he makes much of the reality that we are in Christ, that what God has done for us, church, is that He has placed us in Christ and Christ in us, that this is the hope of glory, as he wrote to the Colossians. And he wants the Ephesian believers that he’s writing to, he wants them to know who they are in Christ. He wants them to know what they’ve been blessed with in Christ. And so that’s a question today, isn’t it, that everyone strives to answer, especially when we’re younger, is who am I?

You know, we want to know, who am I really? The late Tim Keller said there’s really kind of 3 categories about how people work this out, and he called one the traditional identity or the historical approach, and that’s the idea that you determine who you are by those around you, by who your family tells you are, who you are, who your village tells you, who your neighbors, who you grow up with, and so if your father is a plumber, then you’re supposed to be a plumber. If your, if your mother, you know, does this, you’re supposed— and so you grow up based on who people tell you you are. That’s the traditional approach. And, uh, and so if people put you down when you’re growing up, then you get a low self-esteem.

If they build you up, etc. So, so people often follow that approach to identity. Others tell us who we are. Then there’s the modern approach. The modern approach is that you look within.

You look in the mirror, you look within, you go, how do I feel? Well, I feel like this, that must be who I am. And so often that person is rejecting what others have said about them, probably because they’ve been hurt. And so they turn inward and they look for some truth there. But neither of these approaches would be the biblical approach or the gospel approach.

And that’s the approach that Paul wants to teach the church at Ephesus, and that’s the approach that this pastor wants to teach this church And that’s the gospel approach, that instead of asking, what do others say about me? Or looking in the mirror and going, how do I feel about me? What does God say about me? Who does He say that I am? And that’s what the Apostle Paul will do in his opening remarks here to this church of Ephesus.

What does God say about me? And let that be the determination about my identity. Who am I? What does God say about me? In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes this letter and he opens up this letter with a burst of praise, blessing God the Father for every spiritual blessing that is ours in Christ Jesus.

And I believe today that we can bless the Father, we can bless the Lord, we can praise the Lord for all the spiritual blessings that we have by being in Christ. And as we look at the text, I think we’ll see from the Apostle Paul’s letter here, 3 ways that we can praise God the Father for all the blessings that we have, spiritual blessings that we have in Christ. So let’s dig in, chapter 1, verses 1 through 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 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 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 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 God’s Word, amen.

We’re looking for 3 ways we can praise God for our spiritual blessings in Christ. Here’s the first way, by blessing the Father for choosing us, by blessing the Father for choosing us. Notice how Paul has a burst of praise here that starts in verse 3. He says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He begins with what the Hebrews would have called a baruch. He begins with a blessing of God.

Why? Because the God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Father, has blessed us. Bless God because He’s blessed us. Praise God because He’s blessed us in Christ. So all of the blessings of God are found in the person of Jesus Christ.

And so that if you’re in Christ, you have how many spiritual blessings from heaven? Look at the text. How many? All. Does it say most of?

No. Does it say some of? No. It says every, every spiritual blessing, everything that Christ has, every blessing. How many?

Every, all are yours in Christ, in Him. 11 times, in Christ, in the Beloved, in Him. If you’re in Christ, God is not withholding one single blessing of heaven from you. Oh my goodness, let’s praise the Father. Let’s praise the Father, amen?

Because we have every spiritual blessing in the Son, in Him, and the Father has chosen us. Now that’s a term that we pick up very early here. It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him. Who’s Him? Christ.

He chose us in Christ. When did He do that? When did He do that? Before the foundation of the world. So in time past, in eternity past, before He said, let there be light, Before He flung the stars and the planets into space, before He made us, in His heart, in His will, that word will repeats 4 times, in God’s heart, in His will, He’d already decided what this was going to look like.

And He’d already chosen that the Jew and the Gentile would be one, where? In Christ. That He’d already chosen how He was going to bring humanity back because He knew what was going to happen. Now, this is beyond my understanding. It’s beyond your understanding.

It’s a mystery concealed.

The word mystery, we’ll see it down there, I think in verse 10. And Paul’s going to talk about this some more as he continues. It’s a big word in the book of Ephesians. In the Greek, musterion. It doesn’t mean like a mystery like you watch an Agatha Christie movie and try to solve whodunit.

It’s not that kind of mystery. It’s not a puzzle for you to solve. It’s a secret that God kept in His heart from eternity past. He didn’t even tell the Old Testament prophets about it. It’s revealed now in Jesus.

That, what was that secret that He kept? The church. And you’re the secret that He’s revealed if you’re in Christ. That He would cause all things to come together in heaven and on earth Where? In Him, in Him.

Oh, this is a cosmic chapter. This is an unbelievable chapter. We now look in history past, before history, if you will, and we realize that Paul begins the story of salvation not with a choice we make, but a choice that the Father made in time memorial, before time. He made a choice according to His will, it says, The purpose of His will in verse 5 and verse 6, it says, to the praise of His glorious grace.

This is what he’s talking about. Now we have some preliminary work to do before we begin a book like this. We’re going to be going verse by verse. We have verses 1 and 2 that we need to cover before we dig in further to this reality that we can praise the Father because He chose us to be part of His church. We’re going to work that out, but before we do, let’s work out who’s writing and to whom he’s writing.

This is Paul, an apostle of Christ, Jesus, he tells us. Paul, who began his life born in Tarsus, born to a Roman citizen, so at birth he was a Roman citizen. He was given the name Saul. He was from the tribe of Benjamin, and so he was named after King Saul. That’s a powerful name.

And really, he grew up, he went to Jewish Harvard. He studied under Gamaliel in Jerusalem. His father must have been wealthy to send him off to Jerusalem to study. He was a Hebrew among Hebrews. He was a Benjamite.

He was a Jew among Jews and according to the law a Pharisee, but yet he says, I’m an apostle here, and in another place in his letter to the Corinthians he says, an apostle untimely born, because he saw Jesus revealed to him on the road to Damascus after Jesus had already been ascended to the Father. This is who we’re talking about, this is Paul. He’s writing from a Roman prison in his first imprisonment, He wrote several letters, he was very prolific in Rome. He wrote this letter to the church at Ephesus, he wrote letters to Timothy, his son in the Lord, and other letters he wrote in that first imprisonment. He’s writing to Ephesus, it was a church he planted along about 51, 52 AD.

He stayed there longer probably than he did any other location of any other church he planted. If we read in Acts chapter 19 and 20, we find out that he stayed there about 3 years, which for Paul was a long time. I’ve been here almost 35 years now as your pastor, and so Paul calls it a long time if he’s somewhere 3 years, ’cause he was a church planter extraordinaire. He was always on the move planting churches, so he was— he planted that church about 52 AD, stayed there through about 55 or so AD, and so he planted this church to who? To the saints To the set-apart holy ones, the believers.

Now he knows these people in Ephesus, he knows them, and he says, and you’re faithful. He knows they’re faithful ’cause he’s put his son in the Lord Timothy in charge as their pastor. And so he’s keeping up with them. And he says, grace to you. And that word grace is important for Paul.

Grace is God’s redemption at Christ’s expense, amen? That’s a good acronym to remember, that it’s God’s unmerited favor. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. And then he’s gonna give us a Trinitarian doxology starting in verse 3. Why you say Trinitarian?

‘Cause he’s going to bless the Father, he’s going to glorify the Son, and he’s going to say we can get our joy from the Spirit before he’s finished in these verses here as we continue. The will of God is an important theme that we’ll see here as well. Now, what is this place Ephesus? You know, one of the things I’m always talking to you about is the Bible Talks about real people that lived in real places in history, and the Bible is not a gathering of myths, but it’s a true story. Now, I’ve been to Ephesus, or at least I should say I’ve been to the ruins of Ephesus, and it seems appropriate at this point I should show you a map, right?

And so let’s look at a map. Ephesus is on the west coast of what would be modern-day Turkey. Today. It was on the west coast, it was a seaport city on the west coast of Asia Minor. It was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire.

Some estimate that maybe 200,000 to 250,000 people lived here. It was the seat of the Roman proconsul for all of Asia Minor. Paul planted that church there in his 3rd missionary journey. Paul here, he grew up in Tarsus and then He knew this area fairly well, and Ephesus became a point of spreading the gospel throughout the area to Colossae, to Laodicea, to Smyrna, all up and down here, Pergamum. A lot of that radiated out of Ephesus.

I told you I’ve been there before. Here are a couple of images from a trip that my wife and I made to Ephesus some years ago. You can see here as we’re going down the colonnade road here towards the Library of Celsus, You can see in the distance a valley out here and mountains in the far background. During Paul’s time, there would’ve been a seaport right here as it was one of the largest seaports in Asia Minor where they would bring in much of the commerce for all of Asia Minor from the Mediterranean Sea. But because the river carried silt down the river over the centuries and there was an earthquake in the land, it moved the coast out And Ephesus little by little became a place of ruins.

The people moved away because it was no longer prosperous or profitable to be there. Go to the next slide. You can see the amazing engineering of the Romans and this Roman road that still today you can walk on, the Street of the Colonnades. There may have been marketplace people in some of these spaces that they rented to sell their wares. And so you can walk down that street today.

Next slide. They even had indoor plumbing, by the way. And so that’s how advanced this time was. I don’t know what you think about 1st century Ephesus, but this is who Paul’s writing to. They didn’t have a lot of care about privacy, apparently.

And this little— there would’ve been water running in this little gutter, and they had water running underneath. And apparently they had servants here that would hand you stick with a sponge and you can figure out the rest. Go to the next slide. Just to prove that we were there, there Robin and I stand in front of the, uh, Library of Celsus. And it’s really amazing.

Now I’ve got other pictures, but if you stand down there, you can see that person. This thing is huge. Uh, just an amazing city. The ruins are amazing. Go to the next slide.

Uh, uh, 2 servants of Caesar were set free by him and became wealthy men, and they built this triple arch in the city to commemorate their thanks to Caesar. And if you could read this, I could read it to you later, but it shows their commemoration of Caesar. Go to the next slide. Here is the 25,000-seat stadium or theater that’s in Ephesus where a riot took place that you can read about in Acts 19:20, where Demetrius, a silversmith, caused a riot saying, we’re losing business because this Paul has come here and got all these Christians growing. And now nobody’s buying our little images, our little silver images of the goddess Artemis.

If you’ll go to the next slide, you can see that the stadium was built into the side of a mountain and it’s missing now because an earthquake destroyed it. But the Temple of Artemis, the Temple of Diana was one of the 7 Wonders of the World. And so the sailors would come there and they would buy these little silver statuettes of Artemis and they would take them out and carry them around the world. And Demetrius was mad because Christianity was ruining their idolatry business. And a riot broke out and Paul and some of them almost got beat up here in this place.

Now this little road goes all the way out to what used to be the port. May I say to you, Ephesus is a real place, I’ve been there. The Apostle Paul is a real person, these letters that we read about really happened. This is what we’re reading today. Paul says to them, those in Ephesus, grace and peace to you from our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then he begins from verse 3 through verse 14, in the original Greek, a sentence without any punctuation. It has to be the longest run-on sentence anywhere in the Bible, 202 Greek words without punctuation that some, like N.T. Wright in his commentary, calls it a shout of praise. Others call it a burst of praise. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And it’s as if Paul, couldn’t even punctuate his own language. I don’t know if he was able to say this in one breath. If so, he had a great powerful set of lungs and a diaphragm to suck in his breath and to just say this shout of praise all in one breath because that’s apparently— and he decides not only to do that, but he decides to use every Christian terminology found almost anywhere in the New Testament and say them all at once in these verses.

Which this week for our study time, my son Jonathan and I were overwhelmed. We always do word studies before we dig in very far, and, and we’re like on page 7 now writing down definitions, and we’re like, how are we going to preach this? We, we need to do like 10 sermons just on these 14 verses. Well, we can’t do it justice, not, not the way we’re proceeding. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to fly over at 35,000 and just dip down occasionally, okay?

But this, I want you to get it the way Paul wrote it, and it’s a burst, it’s like he sent off fireworks across the heavens, this is a cosmic view of who we are in Christ. I don’t know if you’re excited yet, I’m excited to talk about this. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Bless Him because He’s blessed us with how many blessings? All of ’em.

And then Paul begins to list them. He begins with, He’s chosen us before the foundation of the world. That word chosen is where we get the doctrine of election from. It’s the eklegomai is the verb in Greek. Eklegomo, ek means out of, lego has the idea of to choose, out of choice or out of the will like that, out of the Word like that.

And so it’s where we get the doctrine of election. He also says He’s chosen us, but He hasn’t just chosen us, it says when He chose us, He chose us before all creation. What did He choose us for? You see, this is very— what did He predestine us for? In other words, He decided beforehand, what did He do it for?

For us to be holy and blameless, it says in verse 4. He chose us to be, His holy and blameless ones in Christ, that we would be set apart, holy, that we would be blameless, without sin, in Christ. What else did He choose us for? Verse 5, for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. Now why sons?

Why not sons and daughters? It’s because during Paul’s time, sons received the full inheritance. So sons and daughters are included, but to be particular, it was to make sure that even men and women knew they had equal footing in inheritance here, that you get the inheritance of a son. You can go back and read in the book of Exodus and read in the first 5 books of the Bible and see that there were some daughters that didn’t have a father or a brother that went to Moses and said, can we get a possession in the land? And he had to go before God to get an answer to that.

And so I think that’s a good setup right there to remind us that God hasn’t left, he hasn’t left the women out here in this verbiage right here. No, it’s to say that you get the full right as sons. And so he’s not trying to say something other than that. And so you’ve been adopted. And then he’s not finished, he goes on to say, to the praise of his glorious grace in verse 6.

And so what have you been chosen for? You’ve been chosen so that He might bless you with every blessing He has. You’ve been chosen so that you might be adopted into His family. You’ve been chosen so that you might praise Him to the glory of everyone so that you’d be a representation in this world of His wonderful grace. You’ve been chosen to be holy and blameless.

Now look, When you look inside, you might not feel holy and blameless. Have you heard this phrase, there’s something called experiential truth and there’s something called positional truth? Have you heard this? The Scripture talks about your position in Christ, but your experience in this world, and by the way, Paul teaches us, the Bible teaches us that we walk by faith and not by sight. Sight.

And so we walk by what God’s Word says about us, not what we experience. We walk according to our position as the Bible describes it, not according to how we feel. We walk by faith, not feelings. We walk by faith, not sight. You still here?

What’s our position? In Christ. Now that’s the repetitive phrase 11 times. In Christ. Now, in Gary, I’m not holy and blameless.

In Gary, in the flesh, I’m not holy and blameless. In Christ, I’m holy and blameless. In Christ, I’m a child of God. In Christ, I exist for the praise of His glory. In Gary, not, not, not.

And so I got up very early this morning with full awareness of who Gary is, but full, fully understanding who God is. In Christ, in Christ I can step up here. In Christ I can talk to you. In Gary, I don’t wanna be anywhere near this pulpit. Please God, anoint my words so that the sermon they hear is not the sermon I preach, but the one the Holy Spirit preaches to them.

So that between whatever I’m doing and whatever He’s doing, that that’s what you hear.

My position, when God looks at me, He looks at me through the lens of me being in Christ. So when He sees me, I’m already holy and blameless, I’m already adopted, I already exist for His glory. That’s my positional truth, in Him. And that’s yours too if you’re in Christ, if you’re in Christ. The idea of being chosen and predestined is another way of saying it.

Dr. Tony Merida says, unfortunately, this passage has generated a lot of debate because it mentions the concepts of election and predestination. While this discussion in itself is not a bad thing, I think we can miss the spirit of this text. The spirit is one of worship. Paul’s not attempting to explain these things. He’s attempting to tell us, hey, you’ve been chosen by God, so you should bless Him, you should praise Him, ’cause you were chosen.

That’s what he’s saying. The idea of God choosing a people to display His glory is not new. He chose Abram, Genesis chapter 12. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country to the land I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So He blessed Abram to bless us through the seed of Abram, which is Jesus. And so we can’t help but see that Paul’s working out the whole Old Testament here. He’s not only giving us every Christian doctrine that’s invented, I mean, every single doctrine is listed here, but he’s also, he’s doing it in the order of the Old Testament of how God chose, da da da, you know, He’s working it out. In fact, Jesus told His disciples this in John 15:16, He says, you didn’t choose Me, I chose you.

Now, we have several families in our church that have adopted children. I think it’s a beautiful thing for Christians to do that. I think Christians should be into adoption because God’s into adoption. And it costs a lot to adopt a child, but these parents, they’ve paid the price to adopt. And that child didn’t choose them, they chose that child.

Now, the child comes to a point in its life where it chooses to call them father and mother. Just as surely as they were their biological parents. Now, by the way, I feel like I chose my wife. I think I did. I think I chose Robin before Robin chose me.

There was an order to the choosing. There was an order to it. When I first asked her out, she said no, which made her much more interesting to me, ladies.

Just the way men, at least this man, is shaped. I asked her out again. Guess what she did? She told me no again. Now she had to be mine after this.

She said it was because I waited till the last minute. She said it’s probably because she was farther down the list than somebody else to turn me down. That’s why I asked her at the last minute. She didn’t realize I was just kind of a last-minute guy at that point in my life. So the third time I said, are you going to this concert this come Thursday night?

She said, well, yeah, we have to go because we’re both music majors at Radford University. We had to go to this particular orchestral concert. And I said, well, good, we’ll sit together. I didn’t even ask her. I was tired of asking her.

So we sat together, and so the journey began. I feel like I chose her. But there came a day, June 2nd, 1979, where she said I do back to me. She chose me back. Now what’s the mystery there?

Well, the mystery is who chose who? Did she have her eyes on me before? Found out later she was kind of looking at me. I had my eyes on her before. Who chose who?

Well, it’s a mystery. If we get really caught up in this mystery of election, and it’s a mystery, that’s one of Paul’s favorite words in this book. If we get caught up in trying to figure out where to move the scale of God’s sovereignty and man’s human responsibility, who chose who, we will get in a divided place, believers. And so I somewhat resist categories here. It’s created so many denominational differences.

Let’s rally around Christ and let’s give praise to the Father that I believe He— the Bible is teaching us He chose us first. But he doesn’t finish, Paul doesn’t finish this little section before he tells us we got to choose Him back. Get down there to verse 13, in Him you also, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. So He chose me first, but I chose Him back. Now some of you are here and Robin told me no the first 2 times and I kept chasing her.

And God’s been, He’s been asking you, He’s been knocking at your heart’s door and you’ve been turning Him down, you’ve been making excuses. He’s been pursuing you, He knows you. Stop saying no, stop saying wait, stop saying later, today’s the day of salvation. Say yes, say yes to Jesus. Stop grounding your identity in what others think of you or of what you think of yourself.

If you are in Christ, The Father has set His gracious love upon you before He even made the earth. He has chosen you in Christ to be holy and blameless, to be His adopted child. And let us admit that the doctrine of election is a great mystery, and it’s like many other mysteries. I don’t fully understand the Trinity. I don’t fully understand that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man, but I believe I believe it because the Bible teaches it.

He chose me first, but I must choose Him in return to believe and follow. This leads us to the second way that we can praise God for all the spiritual blessings we have in Jesus, and it’s by glorifying the Son for redeeming us, by glorifying the Son for redeeming us. Paul moves from the Father’s eternal purpose to the Son’s historical accomplishment. He moves from eternity past to the first century, and Paul has just in a few verses, in one breath, moved to what Jesus has done for us. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions.

In who? In Christ. We have redemption. Redemption, that’s a big old Christian word. That means to be released from slavery by payment, to be liberated from slavery because someone bought you out of slavery.

Redemption, to be redeemed, bought out of. And so this is the word that Paul used here. You’ve been redeemed. Church at Ephesus, you’ve been redeemed. Church in Wilson, you’ve been redeemed.

If you believe in Jesus, if you’re in Him, you’ve been bought out of what? Slavery to sin.

Slavery to sin so that you could be holy and blameless before God in position. You’ve been forgiven. All your debts have been canceled. Are you walking in guilt today, believer? Are you a believer, you’ve got Jesus in you, you’re in Christ, but yet there’s still reminders of your former life?

People still remember what you did. Some of you have moved to Wilson to get away from that. You move from another place because they were— they knew who you were there. May I say to you once again that your truest identity, your real identity, is not what others say about you. It’s not even what you say when you look in the mirror.

It’s not what you say about yourself. It’s what the Father says about you. He chose you and he redeemed you in Jesus’ name. So glorify Jesus, not yourself. You didn’t get yourself saved.

You couldn’t save yourself. You couldn’t get yourself out of slavery to sin. You couldn’t stop Some people say, I’ll come to Christ once I clean this up. I need to get this straight before I become part of the church, and I gotta fix this. You’ll never get there.

You’ll never fix it. You’ll never clean it up. The Scripture, it’s not a self-help manual. It’s a die-to-self manual. Die to self.

Just as we saw in the baptism this morning, the old life is dead and the new life is risen in Christ. So glorify Jesus because He’s redeemed us. He’s forgiven us. And from what account did He pay this tremendous price? He paid it from the riches of His glorious grace.

He paid it from the eternal heavenly bank account of His righteousness, which is infinite. He paid for your sin. According to the riches of His grace. And did He just sprinkle just enough to get us over the line? No, it says in verse 8, which He lavished upon us, which He poured out on us to the extent that it overflows in us and through us and over us and spills out on others, this grace.

He lavished it because the Father’s love is a lavishing love. He pours it out.

This is who He is. And so He pours it out and He lavishes. And then we see in verse 9, He talks about that mystery I was mentioning before.

He’s making known to us the mystery of His will. There’s that word will again. It’s in there 4 times, I think, in this reading today. And it’s this secret that God had kept from time past in his heart before he said, let there be light, that only the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit knew about it. And they were like, let’s— let us make man in our own image, in the image of him.

He made them male and female. He made them— let’s do this. And they did it. The Holy Spirit was there. The Son was there.

John tells us the Son was present at creation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and that life was the light of all men. This is the Son.

All 3 were present at creation. But God has this mystery, this secret that He’s kept. But now, Paul says, now He’s made this mystery known. He’s revealed it. Where?

In Him, in Jesus, in Jesus, He made it known. And what is this mystery? According to His purpose, which He had from before the beginning, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time. There’s 2 Greek words for time. One is chronos, which is tick, tick, tick, tick, tick time, and the other is kairos, which is seasonal or opportune time.

Like when we say, well, when the doctor says the lady’s gonna, the pregnant lady’s gonna give birth on such and such date, it’s rare that he gets that right because it’s kairos time, it’s not chronos time, it’s when the baby comes, the baby comes time. And that’s the kind of verbiage that Paul’s using here, that Jesus has come in the fullness of time and He is coming again. In the fullness of time. And what’s God’s ultimate purpose? To unite, look at verse 10, in the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, who’s Him?

Jesus Christ. He’s gonna unite Jew and Gentile into one church in Him, but he’s not finished. All things on earth, yeah. All things in heaven, yeah. So the abode of God and the abode of man is one.

In Christ. That’s His cosmic plan, Paul says, and it’s been revealed in the King of God’s kingdom, King Jesus. Paul wrote this to the Colossians, he said, speaking of Jesus, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Some believers punish themselves and they need to stop. They need to find their position in Jesus.

You’re made holy and blameless. You’ve been forgiven, you’ve been redeemed. Walk in the position that you’ve been blessed with and give glory to Jesus. Give glory to Jesus that He set you free.

And that leads us to the 3rd way that we can praise the Lord, we can praise God, for this, the, the every minute, every blessing he’s given us. And it’s by rejoicing in the Spirit for sealing us, by rejoicing in the Spirit for sealing. Uh, sealing is a, um, it’s a metaphor, right? The idea, uh, in ancient times was if you sent a letter, you sent a scroll or a letter, that you would put a, uh, drip some wax on it and then take your signet ring and put your seal in it, and that’s your signature, your signet ring, and it would leave the mark, and it was not to be opened by anyone except for the recipient. And so that letter is now sealed.

We know that the Jews asked Pilate to seal the tomb of Jesus so that it had a Roman seal on it. That didn’t stop him, did it? But that was the point, was that, okay, it’s sealed. And so the idea of being sealed is the idea of assurance that when you’ve received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and seals you unto the day of going home with Him, unto the day of redemption, so that you get the new body and you get the time with the Lord in heaven for eternity. But in the meantime, you have as a down payment, what does the Scripture say?

It says as a guarantee. Let’s look at it. It. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth— what’s the word of truth? It’s the gospel of your salvation.

Paul doesn’t leave us out on a limb. He tells us. What’s the word of truth? The gospel of your salvation. What’s the gospel?

Jesus died for your sins. He was buried. He was raised on the 3rd day according to the Scriptures. Now he’s risen and ascended to the Father and returning again someday. Do you believe that?

Do you believe the gospel? Do you believe that Jesus is the Lord of Lords, King of Kings coming again? Died for your That’s the gospel, that’s the truth. You heard it and you believed it. That was that mysterious part I was telling you about.

That’s the human responsibility part. Paul tells us in another place in Ephesians, he tells us, for by grace you’ve been saved through faith. So even that faith you can’t boast about ’cause he gave you the ability to do that too. It’s a mystery. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee Of our inheritance.

What’s our inheritance? Well, it’s everything God’s got. Everything that belongs to Jesus is yours because you’re a co-inheritor with Christ. Every spiritual blessing.

What’s a guarantee? Well, did you ever buy a house? You buy a house, you make an offer. It’s a written offer, it’s a contract, and you have to put some money on it. You say, 30 days from now, I’m gonna close on this deal.

And here’s X amount of earnest money, guarantee money, deposit money that if I don’t close on that date, I lose my guarantee, I lose my deposit, I lose my earnest money. So it’s attaching. Now on the day of closing, I have to show up with all the money, or at least the bank does. And then I got to pay that for the rest of my life. But anyway, you got to come up with a deposit and you lose that if you don’t close.

Are y’all with me? That’s the language that Paul is using describing the Holy Spirit. He’s your guarantor, that he’s given you the Holy Spirit as his guarantee that all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ are yours. And the Holy Spirit is the assurance of that. So the word sealing is a metaphor for the assurance of the Spirit living in you so that you know that you know that you know that you belong to Him.

Paul writes about this to the Romans in Romans chapter 8. He says, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Our assurance does not rest on how we feel ’cause our feelings If you ate pepperoni pizza last night, you might feel a certain way the next morning. Our feelings are fickle, but God’s Word and what He says about us is on the rock of Jesus. In Him, in Him, we have the Holy Spirit as a guarantor, as a guarantee that all that He’s promised us is ours, that we will acquire possession of it all to the praise of His glory.

So that we give glory to Jesus, we give blessing to the Father, and we take and rejoice in the Spirit. And so this is what Paul has called us to in these verses, this burst of praise, this doxology of what we have in Christ. In Him, we have been chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and sealed by the Spirit. So my friend, who are you? Who are you?

Are you what other people say about you? Are you what you see in the mirror? Or are you what God says about you in His Word? Who are you? The Father says, I chose you.

The Son says, I redeemed you. The Spirit says, I sealed you. Who are you? None of this begins with you. We’ve learned today it begins with God.

But Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in. Stop saying no. Stop saying wait. Stop saying later.

Say yes to Jesus today. He came for us. He lived the life we couldn’t live, died the, the death that we should have died. On the cross, raised on the 3rd day, ascended to the Father, returning again. This is the gospel.

Until that day, He’s given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that everything He has promised will surely be ours. So Christian, bless the Father, glorify the Son, rejoice in the Spirit until He comes again. And if you’ve never trusted in Christ, notice what Paul says, you just heard the truth. The gospel of salvation. Believe, believe.

Turn your life away from your sin and place your faith in the Lord Jesus who was crucified for you and died for you and was risen for you and is returning again for you. In Him, we have how many spiritual blessings?

All, every. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you. Lord, thank you. We give you glory. We give you praise. Hallelujah.

Praise you, Lord. I pray for the one that’s here today, you’ve never given your life to Jesus. You can do business right now with the Lord. You can say right now, I believe. I’ve heard the good news, I’ve heard the truth, I believe.

I want Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I pray right now, Lord, forgive me of my sins, I repent of my sins, I turn from my former way of living, I give my life to you, I surrender, I believe you died on the cross for me, that you were raised from the grave, that you live today, come and live in me by your Spirit, adopt me into your family. I wanna follow you as my Lord and Savior all the days of my life. If you’re praying that prayer of faith believing He’ll save you, He knew you, He pursued you before you ever made this decision today. Others are here today and you’re a Christ follower but you’re beating yourself up with shame and regret and grief and would you recognize who you really are in Jesus today?

Would you say, Lord, thank You for Your Word, Help me to walk in my true identity in Christ and put to death the former ways and to fully walk in you, to be assured of my salvation and to know that I know that I know you’re mine and that I’m yours. In him, in you, Lord Jesus, we pray, amen.