Every Spiritual Blessing

If you have your Bible, I hope you do. Ephesians chapter 1 is where we're going to
be this morning, turn to Ephesians 1. We began last Sunday what will be an extended
study, a slow stroll through the book of Ephesians. And the reason we're going
slowly through the book of Ephesians is there is so much in this book for us to
see and to wrap our heads and hearts around. I want you to imagine for a minute
that we were all on a tour together and we were in Paris and I said We're gonna
spend some time we're gonna go to the Louvre Museum the most popular most famous
art museum in the world 8 .7 million visitors at the Louvre last year and I said
we're gonna go to the Louvre Museum And we're gonna have a full two hours at the
Louvre Well anybody who's been to the Louvre would know that's basically enough time
to run in, see the Mona Lisa, and run out. That's about all you're going to get
if you've got two hours at the Louvre. The Louvre has 35 ,000 exhibits, 35 ,000.
If you spent 30 seconds looking at each exhibit in the Louvre, it would take you
about two years to get through the Louvre Museum. So two hours in the Louvre is
not enough time, and Ephesians is the Louvre Museum of gospel truth.
It is so rich and so full of precious truths for us to wrap our heads around.
It's loaded with masterpieces, so we're going to spend a lot of time in this book
and we will still leave things unexplored by the time we're done.
I'm going to recommend to you that over the next month, you start every day reading
Ephesians 1, slowly. Just get up in the morning, read Ephesians chapter 1 every day.
Here's what you will find as you read a chapter over and over again for 30 days,
it starts to really penetrate your heart, you start to get a picture of the
framework, the truths really start to soak in, and to help you read through
Ephesians every day I'm going to give you the roadmap for what chapter 1 looks
like, because it's helpful as you're reading to know where you are and know where
you're going. So chapter 1 starts with verses 1 and 2, which are the greeting. We
started looking at that last week. We'll revisit it this morning. And then chapters
3 through 14 are Paul's hymn of praise. He just lets loose with this overflow of
praise in his life. It's one long sentence in the Greek.
And this hymn of praise has three sections to it, so he begins by praising God the
Father for ordaining our salvation. That's in verses three through six. And then he
praises God the Son for accomplishing our salvation. And then he praises God the
Spirit for applying our salvation to our lives. So as you read and you're on the
trail, you're either looking at what God in eternity passed decreed by declaring our
salvation, or what God in eternity present as Paul is writing this has accomplished
in our salvation, or what God the Spirit does in the lives of every believer when
they come to faith, applying salvation to our lives. And that leads us to the
second half of the chapter, which is Paul's prayer for enlightenment. So once he has
talked about all that God has done, he has this prayer where he says, in fact I
want you to look at it, look at verse 17 in Ephesians chapter one. He prays that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts
enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what
are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. Paul says, "I want you to
to read what God has done, and then I want the eyes of your heart to be
enlightened. I want the blinders off. I want you to fully comprehend what this is."
So as we begin our trek through chapter 1 of Ephesians, we should know that this
is why Paul is beginning with his praise. praise, praising God in verses 3 through
14 in detailed and specific ways for his work of salvation and praying for us all
the while that it will sink in. Not just sink into our heads, but sink into our
souls. That it will become a part of the experience that we have in our
relationship with God. He has recounted the work of God in salvation not simply to
enlighten us, but so that we will know, we will begin to clearly see and embrace
as true, comprehend the hope we have in the riches that are ours in the glorious
inheritance as a result of the finished work of Christ. And here's Paul's point as
we start this journey. As you start to wrap your heads and your hearts around, What
God has done for us in Christ, in saving us from our sins, the wonder of His
amazing grace in rescuing us, while we were still in rebellion, while we were still
enemies, the price He paid for us by offering His Son so that we could be
reconciled to Him. As you begin to see and comprehend these truths,
this will totally transform and revolutionize your life. This is not just theology to
be understood and regurgitated on an entrance exam to heaven somewhere. Now this is
something God wants us to get our hearts around because when you understand grace,
when you understand what God has done for us in Christ, it's revolutionary. That's
why he's praying that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened as we hear and
think about what God has done for us in Christ. That's the goal. This outpouring of
praise at the beginning of Ephesians 1 that we're gonna explore is not here
primarily to inform or to satisfy your curiosity or to cause you to think, well, I
need to know more about predestination 'cause that word's, we'll explore all of that.
But ultimately, it's here to stir you to worship. It's here to provoke in you a
sense of awe and wonder and cause you to fall on your face before God saying,
"Great is God who has done this for us." Paul wants us to see clearly what God
has done in Christ because when you see it, clearly it's a game changer in your
life. So we're going to get to it, we're going to get in and we're going to read
verses 1 through 14 again, even though our focus is going to be just on the first
few verses this morning so we'll read it now let me pray for us before we do that
Father again we need your help we need our eyes to be open we need the
enlightenment that Paul is praying for here so we asked that your spirit would be
our teacher today that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to understand and
our lives would be lived in obedience that we would not just be hearers of your
word but that we would be doers of your word. We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Here is God's word, Ephesians 1 beginning at verse 1, the word of God for the
people of God, and I'm just going to read it slowly. 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 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 Christ, things in heaven, things on earth in him. 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.
Hallelujah, amen. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers, the
flower fades. the word of our God stands forever. And we saw last week that this
is a letter written by the apostle Paul, a former persecutor of the church who on
the road to Damascus was confronted by the resurrected Christ. He was converted,
he was commissioned to be the apostle to the Gentiles by the will of God. And he
is writing this letter as we saw last week with apostolic authority. "This is the
very word of God. "He is passing on to us what Jesus taught him "after his
conversion." And he's sharing this not just with the people in Ephesus, but I think
with all in Asia Minor. I think this was meant to be a circular letter that
started in Ephesus and went to other churches. But this is from God. This is
inspired and super intended. This is the word of God given through Paul. And he's
writing to the set -apart ones, the saints. These are normal Christians, not some
special group we saw last week. They are those who are faithful in Christ and are
united to Christ. And again, the phrase "in Him" or "in Christ," we see that over
and over and over again. He's driving this home. What it means to be a Christian
is to be in Christ, to be in union with Him. And then he begins with What is for
Paul a very familiar greeting? In fact, it's so familiar that we can kind of think
it's like dear friend or hello, or just a throwaway greeting,
it's not. He says, grace to you, verse two, and peace, from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ. This is so familiar, Paul opens every one of his letters with
some variation of grace and peace. Sometimes it's just grace to you in peace.
Sometimes it's grace to you and peace from God our Father. Sometimes it's grace to
you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. When he writes to
Timothy, he adds mercy into the mix, grace, mercy and peace. But grace and peace
are at the beginning of every Pauline epistle. He is intentional with this greeting
because he wants to show here, God the Father and God the Son "are together in the
offering of grace and peace." He is establishing at the very beginning for us as
his readers the equality. It is God the Father and God the Son who are together
the dispensers of grace and peace. In fact, notice in the first three verses of
this book, Paul specifically mentions Jesus Christ five times.
It's like he just can't quit talking about Jesus. It's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus. He's the apostle of Christ, the Ephesians are in Christ, grace and
peace come through Christ, Christ is worthy of blessing in verse three, and we are
blessed in Christ. It's just Jesus over and over again. He wants to make it clear
to us who the centerpiece of this letter is. We have what we have because of what
Jesus has done for us. And Paul goes on in these verses to bring the Holy Spirit
into all of this, the one who is a guarantor of our salvation. So at the very
beginning of this first chapter, Paul is saying, "Our salvation is a cooperative work
between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." This is a profoundly
Sectarian section of the Bible a lot of your friends will say you know the
trinities that words not found in the Bible They're right the word trinity is not
found in the Bible the concept of the trinity the idea of the trinity is rich and
pregnant right here It's found clearly in the Bible and Paul lays it out the father
did this the son did this the spirit did this they are all working together and
cooperating to bring about our salvation and And there's There's something else that's
familiar about this greeting that Paul has when he says grace to you in peace. So
the Greek way of greeting somebody, even down to today, one of the ways Greeks say
hello is they say kerite. Kerite is a Greek word that means rejoice,
but it's used in Greece as just a way of saying how are you? So you come up and
say kerite, kerite, it's calling them to rejoice. Well, the Greek word for grace is
the word Charis. So Paul's taking Charite, the traditional greeting, changing it to
Charis and going from rejoice to grace. And he begins with that and then the second
word is the traditional Hebrew greeting. When two Jews would meet one another, they
would say shalom, they would say peace to you. So Paul is here uniting Gentile and
Jew with his greetings, Charis and Shalom, I mean it's the Greek word for peace
here, but he's bringing these two together and he's saying we have become one in
Christ, which he's going to talk about later in Ephesians chapter 2. One commentator
I read this week said this grace and peace greeting is like a table of contents
for the book of Ephesians. Because chapters one, two, and three are about God's
grace in our lives. Chapters four, five, and six are about walking in peace as a
result of God's grace. I think it's fair to say you could sum up the book of
Ephesians by saying it's all about God's peace coming to us through God's grace.
Our understanding and experience of God's grace is what leads us to the experience
of peace. Peace with God, peace with one another, and peace in our souls. In fact,
I want to give you a simple definition of both of these words, grace and peace, so
we can be sure we understand what Paul's talking about when he says grace and peace
to you. Grace is most often defined this way, God's unmerited favor.
If you ever ask on a test to define grace, that's a simple definition you will get
100 % if you give that answer. God's unmerited favor. You and I are the recipients
of, and the beneficiaries of God's blessings, not because we deserve it or earn it,
it is freely bestowed to all of us, and as Pastor Ligon Duncan points out,
it is also expensively purchased for us. God's grace, as the hymn writer says,
is marvelous, infinite, matchless, grace, freely bestowed on all who believe. It's
freely bestowed, but we should never lose sight of the fact that it was not freely
obtained.
We receive it as a free gift, but the purchase price for God to give us grace was
a costly price. So let me just make sure you understand this. Because of our sin
and rebellion against God, what we deserved from him,
what we earned for our sin, was judgment and death and hell. That's what we're due
for how we've lived our lives. And God could not be both just and righteous if he
just said, oh, don't worry about it, forget about it, case dismissed. He can't do
that. Someone had to pay for your sins, and for my sins, it's either you or me,
or in this case, it's Christ. That's what's going on here.
Jesus goes to the cross to purchase the grace that God can give to us.
The grace was expensively purchased by Jesus. That's why when Paul says, "Grace to
you from God our Father," He says, "And from the Lord Jesus Christ." God dispenses
the grace that Jesus made available by his death in our place.
You may have heard the acrostic for grace. I don't remember when I learned this a
long time ago. The G -R -A -C -E, God's riches at Christ's expense.
That's what grace is. We are the characters of God's riches at Christ's expense.
That's grace, God's unmerited favor. We get blessings we don't deserve in Christ.
And when we understand and walk in grace,
and when I'm talking about walking in grace, walking like that's true, like God
really does love you and has brought you into his family and you're his child. When
you walk like that's true, you begin to experience peace. Peace with God,
you're no longer at enmity with Him, you're at peace, He is for you, not against
you. And peace with one another because of our experience of God's grace and our
experience of His unmerited favor in our lives, we can dispense grace to others.
It's the overflow, God pours His grace into us, we pour out grace and love to
others. That's why we can be at peace with others, because of grace in our lives
dispensed through us. And we can experience shalom, peace in our own souls.
In fact, the Hebrew idea of shalom is just that. It's rest and contentment and
wholeness and satisfaction in life, no matter what your circumstances are. Instead of
your soul being agitated or disturbed, instead of being anxious or fearful,
instead of being discouraged or depressed or downcast, no matter what is in front of
us, because of God's grace we can be at peace.
Now think about this, has anybody been agitated or disturbed this week or anxious or
fearful or downcast or depressed, and you go, "What's my help? "Here's what your
help is. "You reflect on the goodness of God's grace in your life, "and the more
you meditate on that "and the more you get your arms around it, "the more peace
comes to your soul." I've told this story before, but whenever I think about the
peace of God, I remember this story. There's an artist who lives up in in Missouri,
and he had heard about a contest that had happened years ago, and people, artists
were invited to paint a painting that represented peace. And so the submissions that
came in this contest were what you might expect. There were pastoral scenes of
meadows and quiet sunsets, things that you look at and go, ah, right,
And one person submitted a very unusual painting, and this artist in Joplin decided
he was going to do his own version of it. This guy's name is John Dawson. And so
he painted a painting called "Peace in the Mids of the Storm." Let me show it to
you. So this is Dawson's "Peace in the Mids of the Storm." Does anybody look at
that and go, "Ah, that just brings such peace and tranquility to my soul." No,
but look in the center, at the lower center. Do you see in the lower center,
right? Can we zoom in on that? So what is that? A little bird in the nest resting
while the torrents rage around, while the floodwaters erode.
That's peace. Whatever's going on around you, your soul can rest. Like Emery Boyce,
the pastor said, "In times of outward peace, anyone can be a peace, or at least
many can, but it takes an exceptional piece, a supernatural piece, to prevail in the
midst of great outward troubles and inner distress." And Paul's simple greeting at
the beginning of this letter, grace and peace, is a clear declaration that the peace
for which we long, The calm assurance of God's love and his sustaining care for us
comes only When we are able to deep down really genuinely believe in our soul That
we have been reconciled to him That that he is actively pouring out his grace on
our lives right now That no matter what our circumstances might look like We are
recipients of God's unmerited favor and blessing. You see why we shouldn't run too
quickly past these two words, grace and peace, and just go, oh, that's his normal
greeting. No, he wants you to stop and think about that. When you get your heart
and mind around grace and peace, it's revolutionary. In some respects,
that's shorthand for the gospel and the Christian life. "Grace and peace are two
shorthand words "for what God does for us and in us "as a result of the gospel."
The doctor, Martin Lloyd -Jones, summarizes this greeting this way. He says, "Grace is
the beginning of our faith. "Peace is at the end of our faith. "Grace is the
fountain, the spring, the source. "But what does the Christian life mean? "What is
it to produce?" The answer is peace.
I wonder if you're here this morning and you can say,
that you're loved and accepted by a holy God who loves you so much that he offered
his son to be reconciled to you, to be an atoning sacrifice for your son. This is
love, John says. Not that we love God, but that he loves us and gave his son to
be the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Do you believe God loves
you? Not just as a theological concept, but do you know that as a daily experience
in your life?
And as a result, are you able to calm and quiet your own soul when your soul is
in distress? Can that truth, that knowledge be the balm that brings peace to your
soul? Can it quiet the storms in your life? Can you say and really mean it,
whatever my lot, It is well with my soul You're struggling with that today.
One of two things are true either You're simply not a child of God.
You've never experienced the new birth You've never surrendered your life to him or
maybe The issue is you just need to be reminded as I do often reminded that these
things are true. Because the path that leads us to experience grace and peace is
the path that Paul is about to take us on here in Ephesians chapter one. So let's
go there. Look at verse three after grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse three says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly
places, along with Jesus being mentioned there twice. What's the other word that
shows up there? Bless, bless, blessing. It's right there. So what does that word
mean? You know, we throw it around today. You may know people who got it on their
hat, their T -shirt, you walk up to him and say, "How you doing?" They say, "I'm
blessed." And nothing wrong with that, but what are we talking about? What does it
mean to be blessed? Well, the Greek word here is the word eulogio.
We get our word eulogy from it. Eulogio means to speak good,
to speak well of someone or something. So this starts with blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is saying I'm about to speak well of God.
God is worthy of being spoken well of. I'm going to bless him with my words.
I'm gonna sing his praises. I'm gonna speak well of him as I ought. We bless God
when we speak about how good he is and how great he is. God tells us it's good
and right for us to praise him and bless him. Now that's not because God is an
egomaniac who says you better bless me 'cause I need it. No, that's not the case.
God tells us that we are to bless and praise him for this reason because he knows
how quickly you and I and forget all his benefits. How quickly you and I can get
distracted by other things. He wants his praise to continually be in our mouths,
to bless him at all times, because when we stop doing it, we forget where we are,
who we are, who he is, and we drift. So he's saying, you need to bless me,
not for my sake, for your sake. You need to praise me, because it's good for your
own spiritual life for words of blessing and praise to be on your mouth.
So verse three starts with this declaration. Paul says, "Bless the Lord.
God is blessed. He's worthy of the praise I'm about to declare." And that's what
the word "eulogio" means when it's talking about us giving praise to God. But now
flip this around. So when it says God has blessed us, does that mean God looks at
us and say, I'm going to speak words of praise to you? I mean, you're so good,
you're so, no, that can't be what this means. God doesn't look at us and say,
you're good and great, so I'm gonna speak words of blessing or praise to you. Now
when the Bible talks about God blessing his people, here's the difference. When God
speaks, he's not just recognizing something, God is speaking to create something.
When we speak praise about God, we're recognizing his greatness, but when God speaks
a blessing to us, he is creating the greatness that he's talking about.
When he declares something, it comes to pass. So when God speaks well of us,
he looks at us, he's not looking and saying, "Look how great they are." He's
looking and saying, "Look at how great things are going to be in them because of
what I'm doing." So we bless him with our words of praise. He blesses us by
bringing good to us through speaking words that make that happen.
We declare what already is when we bless God. When he blesses us,
he is declaring what will be true, what he's making true when he blesses us.
So verse three says we should remember and we will to bless God our Father to
declare his words with greatness and glory because of what he's already done. And
then it says here's what he's done and what he's doing for us. He is blessing us,
he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. Paul says,
"I'm going to praise God and speak good of him because of what he's done for me,
but he's blessing me. He's speaking words that are true about me now that I have
every spiritual blessing." He's going to go on in this chapter to outline the
spiritual blessings we have. So you move through here and you go I don't know what
my spiritual blessings are Well, he's going to talk about the fact that God chose
us in him Gonna talk about the fact that he predestined us that he's redeemed us
that he's forgiven us that we have an inheritance That he's united us with his son
that we he's revealed the mystery of his will all of these blessings These spiritual
blessings are what Paul's gonna enumerate for us the list goes on as we'll see He
describes these as spiritual blessings in the heavenlies or in heavenly places and
you might think to yourself. Well, that's no good. I'm not there Yes, you are if
you're in Christ you have dual citizenship You are here.
You're a citizen of the United States of America But you also have a citizenship in
heaven. Here's the problem for us. Most of us are materialists. When we think about
blessing, we think about material blessing. We're living in a material world and you
are, I'm sorry, I have to, you are a material boy or girl, right? Some of you got
that. So when you think about, when you think about being blessed, most of us
default to
material blessings when we say God has blessed us you're thinking with the car or
with the house or the food or these Friends that I have or my job we we say
these are God's blessings very material in our thinking and We ought to recognize
that our material blessings come from God God after all is the provider of every
good gift So the Jews in the wilderness when they got the manna in the morning
That was a blessing from God When they had the pillar of fire leading them, that
was a blessing from God. Those were material benefits. And it's why, by the way,
before we stop to eat, we make it a habit to stop and say, "I should thank God
for what I have, because this is from His hand. I have this as a blessing from
Him." But Paul is saying here that, "Yeah, yeah, your material blessings, God takes
care of that, but those aren't the big ones." You have bigger needs than your
material needs.
You need to wrap your head around the fact that your material needs are not your
primary needs. Our highest and greatest needs are our spiritual needs.
What our soul needs is greater than what our body needs. We need to be reconciled
to and at peace with the God who created us. We need to know and experience his
love for us. We need to have the experience of our sins being forgiven. We need
our lives to be reshaped and remodeled to be conformed to the image of Christ. We
need a hope and a future that we can cling to and look forward to. When our
material needs are met, our bodies are taken care of, but our soul can still be in
turmoil, right? I And you can have an abundance of material needs and your soul is
still not at peace. Just look at the rich people you know or the rich people who
are in the news.
Material blessing is not where real joy comes from. But when you can finally look
at yourself and say, "I'm a child of God. I see what my real needs are,
the needs of my soul soul are, and when you could wrap your mind around, your
heart around, what God has done to meet these needs and take care of every one of
them, that's when your soul can rejoice and say, "Okay, I may be facing some hard
times right now, but you know what? I have peace with God. I'm in his family.
I'm going to be with him forever. I have a hope and a future, I have an
inheritance. I can deal with light and momentary afflictions for a season because
what's ahead for me is an eternal weight of glory.
But most of us think, not like that, we think like a five -year -old. Let me
explain what I mean. My mother -in -law, one of the things she does for her great
-grandchildren, she has, how many she has? I don't know. She's got a bunch of great
-grandchildren. She's 96 years old. So she started when she had her first great
-grandchild going to the parents and saying, "I will buy a share of stock. You pick
the stock, I'll buy one share as a gift to my great -grandchild." Now,
if the parents who had had the baby, if it had been May of 1997, and mom and dad
had been smart enough to say, "Buy me one of those $18 shares of Amazon stock." A
child today with that one share of stock would actually now have 240 shares of
stock with the splits that have happened, and that one share of stock would now be
worth $50 ,000. That's pretty good return on investment. But if you go to a child
on their fifth birthday, and you say what do you want for your birthday? Not a
child I know in America who has ever said, "I want a share of Amazon stock for my
birthday," Or any stock? No, a child is going to say,
"I want the Melissa and Doug design your own bracelets with 100 sparkle gem and
glitter sticks that cost $8 .99 on Amazon." That's what they want for their birthday,
because that looks like fun, and it's nine bucks. The child is not able to grasp
the value of the Amazon stock. It's meaningless to them because they can't wrap
their head around it. Paul is saying in the book of Ephesians that God has blessed
you not with one share of heavenly stock, but you got the whole stock market in
your portfolio, every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, but most of us look and
go well what good's that doing me now? When you realize the value of it, it does
you a lot of good now and will do you more in the future. Remember what We
studied when we look at Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I
need."
Jim Boyce says, "We need to realize "that material provisions are relatively
unimportant "when measured against spiritual riches." That's what Paul's saying in this
chapter. He wants our eyes to be opened to see what our most urgent, most pressing
needs are, the needs of our soul, the need to be reconciled to God, and he wants
us to see that God has blessed us completely in him with every spiritual blessing.
When it comes to material blessings, God has different plans for different people.
Some people are rich, some people aren't. Some have a roof over their heads like
most of us do, but we have many brothers and sisters in the world who don't have
a roof over their head. They go to sleep With an open sky above them every night
some people have three meals a day some people don't but every believer in Christ
Has the same provision Every spiritual blessing for their soul is is met in Christ
There there are no believers in Christ to say well, I have more spiritual blessings
than you do We all have every spiritual you can't say I'm more adopted than you
are You can't say, "I'm more loved by God than you are." You have every spiritual
blessing in heavenly places. And like I said, the next 11 verses are gonna outline
what those are. But many of us, like five -year -olds getting Amazon stocked for our
birthday, we miss the significance and the splendor that's unfolded in this chapter
because we need the eyes of our heart to be enlightened.
You see it? Do you recognize that your deepest needs are spiritual needs? Your most
urgent need in life, the only thing that will ultimately bring peace to your soul
in the midst of all that life's gonna throw at you, is for you to see that you
are rightly related to God, reconcile to Him that your deepest needs have been met
in Him. Every other need you have pales in comparison into that. And God has in
Christ, for those who are in Christ, chosen to bless you with every spiritual
blessing that your soul needs. And we ought not miss those two important words in
verse three, in Christ. In Christ, the blessings we've talked about are blessings for
those who are in Christ. God blesses all of us with common grace. The sun came up
for everybody this morning. That's a blessing from God. You have life and breath
today, blessing from God for everybody, but the spiritual blessings he's talking about
here are not for everybody. It's for those who are in Christ, for those who have
been transferred from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of his dear son.
It's like, I mean we think of it, again I'm back to material terms, but it's like
you used to live over here apart from Christ, now you've moved in to his house.
Now you've moved in to his kingdom. Now he is ruling and reigning over your life.
That's what being in Christ means. You've come into his kingdom. Under his reign,
you have a new identity, a new family, you have a new passport. Yes, you've got
the dual citizenship, but you are a stranger, an alien, and your Allegiance to him
is greater than your allegiance when we pledge allegiance to him It's greater than
pledging allegiance to the flag and to the Republic from which it stands. I Love my
country But I love my kingdom more I love What our country stands for but our
country is imperfect just as every country in the world is imperfect the kingdom is
perfect and our king rules and reigns and there is nothing to besmirch his
character. All the spiritual blessings promised here in Ephesians,
we have, because we have new citizenship in heaven, because we're in Christ. This is
how Pastor Richard Phillips says it. He says, "You may find in God's kind providence
all the blessings this world has to give, wealth, love, power, pleasure, blessings
that will perish with this passing world. But of these spiritual blessings,
you will know nothing unless you are in Christ through faith in him. And that's the
last thing I wanna say this morning.
Ultimately, the spiritual blessings we receive in Christ are because of what Jesus
has done for us. The real blessing is not what Jesus has done for us the real
blessing as Jesus himself.
When we talk about the blessings in Christ, being in Christ is the blessing,
moving into the home. You may look around and say, "Look at what's wonderful here,
but what's wonderful here is you're with Christ. He's the blessing." Ian Hamilton,
who's the President of Westminster Seminary in the UK, says, "The greatest practical
good for the Christian derives from an ever -deepening knowledge of and communion with
Jesus Christ. Let me read that again. "The greatest practical good for Christians
derived from an ever -deepening knowledge of and communion with Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is to be an unceasing exploration and ever -deepening experience of
the spiritual blessings the Father has blessed us with in Christ." And that's the
hope and prayer for our study in this book.
That this will lead us not just to a deepening of our knowledge of Christ, but a
deepening communion with Him, a deepening experience of the spiritual blessings that
we have in Him that He's blessed us with in Christ. And if this study causes you
to begin to realize, Well, I've known about Jesus, but I've never really known him
I've never experienced the joy that comes from a relationship with him knowing him
and being known by him if you start to realize in this study that That maybe you
just have knowledge about God, but you don't have a relationship with him My prayer
is that God will open the eyes of your understanding to help you see the riches
that are ours in Christ, and that you will say, "I need to be in Christ." Maybe
God's doing that here this morning in your own heart. Maybe as you're hearing these
things, you're going,
"I haven't understood this before, what it means to be in Christ. I haven't
understood this gospel offer, the riches that are being offered to us. I need to
know more about this, or "I'm ready now to move, to be in Christ,
to turn from where I've been living and to come and live with Him and in Him." If
God's doing that in your life and your heart this morning, don't do, "Well, I'll
think about that tomorrow." Today is the day of salvation, the Bible says. If God's
stirring, don't quench the spirit, But reach out and embrace what he's saying to you
There is no greater joy that you can experience in life than surrendering to him
and Saying I'm gonna follow you and I'm gonna experience every spiritual blessing in
The heavenlies that comes in you Let's pray together father Thank you for your word
Thank you for your grace. Thank you for the peace that comes as we know you. Thank
you that we can endure all that life throws at us
because of what Christ has done for us. That like that bird in the nest, we can
hide in you and find rest in the storm.
And Lord, I pray that we would Have the eyes of our heart opened that we would
understand the spiritual blessings we have in you And I pray for anyone here who
needs to surrender and to come over Into your kingdom Submit themselves to you and
follow you To receive a new identity a new passport new citizenship in the kingdom
of God.
I ask all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.