Sunday, August 11th
Ephesians 1:7-14
Matt Rawlings
"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." Ephesians 1:7-14
Do you ever feel like you don’t have everything that you need? In some
sense we feel like this is true, don’t we?
·
Maybe you wanted to go to college and you didn’t have the
money – or maybe you currently want to get a degree but you don’t have money
for college.
·
Maybe you don’t have a job or you are underemployed.
·
Maybe you feel like you need to be smarter.
·
Maybe you feel like you need to be prettier or more
handsome.
·
Maybe you feel like you need a spouse. Or maybe you feel
like you need a spouse that will communicate with you.
·
Maybe you feel like you can’t get any respect and so
respect is what you need.
·
Maybe you feel like you need community – because after
all, aren’t we made to have community?
·
Maybe you crave good biblical fellowship and deep
intimacy in God with someone - that is
good isn’t it?
·
Maybe you just need to know what it is that God has
planned for you, because you are confused and discouraged by life.
·
Maybe you are suffering and in pain and you just want it
to end. There is nothing wrong with wanting the pain to stop is there? Maybe
you feel like God is punishing you somehow and you are confused.
·
Some in this room don’t have money to pay the bills and
don’t know if they will be able to buy groceries or keep the electricity on
this month.
·
Some are in danger of losing their homes.
So what do we do if one of these things I mentioned applies to us? Do we
just pretend everything is ok? Do we just act like nothing is wrong, put on a
smiley face and get dressed up and act like we’re all good? If so, is
Christianity just a feel-good religion then? Is it really just another religion
and thereby “the opium of the people” as Karl Marx accused in the late 1700’s? Are
Christians just blind and do we just gloss over hardship and difficulty or pain
and suffering? Do we just cling to ideas that make us happy but don’t deliver
in the end?
The Ephesians and the other churches who originally heard and read this
letter from Paul were faced with all of the same concerns that we are – just
without any of the modern conveniences that we have. Indeed they faced even more hardship than most of us do and they faced even
more threats to their personal security and livelihood than we do. They faced
the very real threat of persecution for their faith as we may in the next few
years if things keep going the way they seem headed. They faced the
confiscation of their property and the shunning of their family for believing
in Jesus. They faced possible jail sentences and all manner of difficulty for
choosing to follow Jesus. They had many needs and I am sure that if they were
alive today and in our shoes, they would probably say that they had far more
needs than we do.
So, what does Paul do? What message, what encouragement, what hope does
Paul point them to? As the great apostle writes to us from his own
imprisonment, does he lie to them and tell them that everything will be ok and
that they will be healthy and wealthy if they follow Jesus? That can’t be the
case can it, because in Ephesians 3:13 he says, "So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you,
which is your glory." Again in Ephesians 4:1, he says, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been
called..."
The Ephesians faced very real physical challenges and they also faced some
very real spiritual challenges. You see, the enemy of their souls and the enemy
of our souls would have liked to snuff out the gospel message – the message of
hope that they had been given. And they were probably tempted to be fearful of
the devil and his attacks.
So what does Paul do in this letter? How does he address the physical and
spiritual challenges that they faced? Well, in almost the entire first chapter
of Ephesians, from verse 3 to 23, he prays for them. In fact, in the original language,
verses 3 to 14 are just one long sentence. And Paul doesn’t just say “I’m
praying for you” and then tell them to buck up or just suck it up and obey God.
Paul prays.
And what does Paul pray? You might think that Paul would pray for them to
be delivered or for himself to be out of prison and there would be nothing
wrong with those prayers at all. In fact, in other places, we see that Paul
prays for deliverance and encourages the church to pray for his release. But
here, Paul’s prayer is instructive and it is God-focused. His prayer is focused
on the objective truth of who God is and who Christians are in Christ.
Paul focuses on what is most needed – eternal, objective, transcendent,
glorious truth. He doesn’t focus on hope that is temporal and fading or based
on what we feel we need. Paul instructively pointed the Ephesians back to God,
so that they might gain perspective and reorient their lives around God, no
matter what happened, no matter what might come, no matter what they need and
no matter if they experienced suffering. Why? Because the Christian life isn’t
one of denying reality – it is facing the cold, hard reality of life and
finding hope in Jesus that is secure no matter what. And it is no opium – it is
a sure and secure hope, trusting and relying on the fact that we have all that
we need in God - come hell or high water. And I believe that the main thing God
would have us see this morning from our passage is that...
Main Idea: We
have all that we need in God.
We have been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. No, we
may never have all that we desire. And we may often experience hardship and
trials. In fact, Jesus promised us in John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have
overcome the world." And so, Paul reminds the Ephesians of true and
real and lasting hope, and the first thing we see in verses 7 & 8 is that...
1. We have been
given us the riches of His grace (verses 7-8)
“In him we have
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to
the riches of his grace...”
It is as we are found “In Christ” that God pours out
every spiritual blessing. And in Him, we have redemption and the forgiveness of
our trespasses. Why is redemption important? Because humanity needed to be
redeemed and each and every human that walks the earth needs redemption. Our
condition is not only bleak apart from Jesus – it is hopeless. Hopeless
enslavement to sin. We all were in hopeless bondage to our inability to do what
is right and we are hopeless to change our own hearts.
We have been enslaved by the cruel taskmaster of living
only for our own selfish desires. Redemption speaks of being set free, being
liberated from imprisonment and being redeemed from the shackles of death and
bondage to our own sinful desires. No longer do we have to stay the same. No
longer are we doomed to repeat the past. No longer are we bound to live only
selfish lives. We have been set free. We’ve been mightily delivered.
The people of Israel were in Egypt for 400 years and a
Pharaoh rose up who did not know who Joseph was and he oppressed and enslaved
the people. He was a cruel king and when Moses asked to let the people go, he
only made their lives harder. He gave them less materials to make bricks and
yet still expected them to meet their quotas. He beat them and punished them
for wanting to go free. He made life hard on them and they had no hope for any
relief. They had no way out, no plan and no means to go free. They had been
enslaved for so long that they were unable to sustain or provide for themselves
outside of Egypt.
But God mightily delivered the Israelites through sending
10 plagues on the people of Egypt, until the Pharaoh finally relented. But then
the Pharaoh realized what had happened and he went after them to kill the Israelites
and they were trapped between the Red Sea and the World’s mightiest army and
they had no means to defend themselves. Can you imagine how helpless, how
hopeless it must have felt for the people of Israel? They had fled with their
families and all their livelihood thinking they were getting away – only to be
trapped and doomed to watch the Pharaoh’s armies punish and most likely
slaughter them and their families.
Then, God mightily delivered them by parting the Red Sea
and they went across on dry land and when the armies of Egypt followed, God
crushed and drowned them in the waves and they were all killed. They knew what
it meant to be redeemed. They knew what it meant to be set free. Their
individual and national identity was changed that day – they were no longer
slaves of Egypt, they were God’s redeemed people. They were liberated. Their
greatest enemy had been vanquished.
Can you imagine the jubilation that they must have felt?
Can you imagine the relief? Can you imagine the joyful hope that they must have
had at that moment? In God they clearly had redemption. In a greater way
though, we have redemption in Jesus – who is better than Moses – because Jesus
Himself secured our redemption. Through the waters, Moses led the people to
freedom. But it was only temporary. Through the shedding of His own blood on
the Cross in our place, Jesus vanquished the greatest enemy of all time. The
Creator Himself paid the price of His own life in exchange for ours. And in doing so, Jesus bought us back from belonging to
the devil and purchased us as God’s people.
The wrath of God loomed over us as punishment for how we went astray, but
Jesus stood condemned in our place and took all of God’s wrath, so that we no
longer need to fear. And instead we receive God’s favor – His grace. And we
have the forgiveness of trespasses. Every time we have disobeyed God’s commands
and every time we have failed to be who God calls us to be, if we place our
hope in the sacrifice of Jesus for us, we have received the forgiveness of
every one of our sins.
So now, we don’t just have a hope of redemption, it is a present possession
– it says “we have”. Did you catch that – not that we will one day have
redemption – but it is ours now in reality in Christ. And one day, we will
experience the total redemption of all things in Jesus. And as the first few
verses of chapter one of Ephesians tell us, God didn’t do this because He saw
we would repent or because He saw we would obey Him or choose Him or earn any
of His favor. It tells us that God did this according to the riches of His
grace. And in all of God’s wisdom and insight, it says He lavished His grace
upon us. "which he lavished upon us,
in all wisdom and insight..."
God is not stingy with His grace. From His inexhaustible riches, He has
lavished His grace on us. Our perspective is off at times though isn’t it? We
sometimes think God has not lavished His grace upon us. We sometimes fail to see God’s grace because we are so aware of our
challenges, our difficulties or what we don’t have and we sometimes only see
the problems in our life. But God has lavished His grace upon us.
Sometimes, we get worked up about things and life looms so large. We
sometimes are more aware of what we don’t have or what we wish we had. There
are times when I dream about winning the lottery and think that that would
fulfill all of my needs. But it wouldn’t. If we had all riches, if we had total
and complete health, if everyone loved us, if everything went our way, if we
always got what we wanted we wouldn’t know we needed God. And if we had
everything but didn’t have God’s grace, we didn’t have His forgiveness and we
didn’t know God, we wouldn’t have true freedom and we wouldn’t have any
spiritual blessing. We wouldn’t have any real hope. We wouldn’t have real
peace. We wouldn’t have real security.
But, the things that matter most, God has taken care of. He has adopted us
and lavished His grace on us and given us every spiritual blessing. There is no
spiritual blessing that is withheld from us now as God’s children. Over in Romans
8:31-32 Paul tells us, "What then
shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who
did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with
him graciously give us all things?"
God has given us His Son – He has given us every spiritual blessing we need
for life to love Him and glorify Him. He has chosen us and adopted us. He
didn’t spare any expense – He gave His own Son. How will He not with His own
Son freely give us everything we truly need? Abraham didn’t understand what God
was up to, even though he trusted in God’s promises. The people of Israel
didn’t understand what God was up to. Moses didn’t understand what God was up
to. From the sin of Adam and Eve until Jesus Christ came, no one understood the
mystery of God’s will and what God’s plans were. It was clear that God had a
plan for Creation and that God had a plan for humanity, but what that plan was
and just exactly how God would fulfill His plans was a mystery for thousands of
years until Jesus came. And in verses 9 and 10, Paul reminds us that God made
known to us the mystery of His will, which is the second point we are going to
focus on.
2. We have been
shown the mystery of His will (verses 9-10)
"...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 the fullness of time – at just the right time, God revealed the
culmination of all of His plans to unite all things in Jesus Christ, His Son. Through
Jesus, God would truly unite God and man once more. Through Jesus, God would
give peace to all mankind. Through Jesus, God would unite all things once more.
And if you know who Jesus is and why Jesus came and you understand that He is
the fulfillment of all of God’s plans to redeem mankind, then God has made
known this to you, that was once a mystery for so long.
Part of this plan is that God has always planned to reunite every different
nation, every different tribe and people of every different language all into
one family – into His people through Jesus. And much of Ephesians is written to
help us understand what it truly means to be God’s people, the church – the
body of Christ. And now, God has made known His plan to make all things new in
Jesus Christ through His church.
I like the way that the NASB version of this verse puts it – it says that
God is “summing up” all things in Christ. All of the cosmos are summed up in Christ in
some way and Jesus is the One who will restore harmony to the entire universe. The
entire cosmos was disrupted when Adam sinned. All of Creation was subjected to
futility unwillingly. When sin entered in, death and decay entered into
Creation and everything was corrupted and in need of being restored. All of the
Created order will one day be made brand new in Jesus. One day the heavenly
kingdom will be completely united with the earthly kingdom. Even though the mystery has been revealed in the Bible, the fulfillment of
God’s plan has not yet been fully carried out.
So how is this meant to give us hope? We can rest assured knowing that
nothing is outside of God’s plans. God worked all of human history up to the
perfect time to reveal His Son and the fulfillment of all things. And since the
coming of Jesus, God is still about working all things through Jesus. Nothing
is going to thwart God’s plans for His people. God has always purposed to save
a people for Himself and to unite all things in Jesus Christ. No difficulty and
no challenge and no government, no hardship, nothing will thwart God’s plans
for making all things right in Jesus and no one can stop God’s good plans for
His people. That is why Paul could write in Romans 8 that God works all things
together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His
purposes.
Even though we don’t understand His purposes. Even though we don’t see how
God is working things for our good. Even though we don’t understand God’s
plans, like Abraham and the Israelites and Moses and even Solomon didn’t
understand God’s plans. God is still working His good plans and He will make
all things new.
But we lack perspective don’t we? Back in 1984, there was a ground-breaking
movie for its time that came out. It had never before seen special effects, it
had multiple camera angles and it made the extraordinary out of brooms and
grass. I’m talking about that great movie, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids”.
If you haven’t seen it and you go back and watch it now, it looks cheesy
and the effects don’t seem realistic at all – but for back then, it was awesome
– at least to 12-14 year olds like me it was. Great that is until all of the
ridiculous sequels came out that no-one liked.
In the movie, the kids are small enough to ride on the backs of bees and
ants. The humble broom becomes a weapon of mass destruction, sweeping death in
its path. Blades of grass are like massive trees and the nicely trimmed back
yard is an insurmountable obstacle. There are threats on every side.
The kids are vulnerable to being blasted by even small water drops falling
from a sprinkler, that become like massive bombs of damage from above. Everything
is big to them and everything is a threat. Their entire perspective on the
world is radically altered.
And I would submit that often we are like the shrunken version of those
kids. We can see blades of grass as trees. We can feel threatened by ants and
all manner of things. But we forget God. We can fail to remember that the
Creator of all is in control. We can forget that He planted the yard and He
created all things. And we can forget that He is working all things according
to the good counsel of His will. We need perspective – not the perspective to
see everything for how large it is, but the perspective that God wants us to
have – that everything is not so large as we think. We need to know that
nothing can stop God’s plans. Paul wants us to know that we have all that we need in God. And the third thing that Paul
prays that comforts us that we have all that we need in God is that...
3. We have been
given assurance of our inheritance (verses 11-14)
We can see in verse 11 that...
a. We’ve been made
an inheritance – we’ve been predestined by God
"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”
We have received an inheritance. If
you knew you had a guaranteed
inheritance coming from a long lost relative who was worth billions of dollars
and you were the sole inheritor – how would you live? Would it affect your hope
for the future? Would you live in anticipation of it? Would it affect your
confidence or perhaps how you affected by momentary financial pressures? Would
you have hope to at least hang on financially until the inheritance was
received?
In C.S. Lewis’ book, Prince Caspian, the young prince Caspian does not
truly realize that he is the rightful heir to the throne and he doesn’t
understand that he is set to inherit everything and as such, is a threat to his
uncle’s reign as king. But when Dr. Cornelius explains who he is and what he is
meant to do – that he is the long awaited one, chosen by Aslan, to carry out
his will and receive his kingdom, it changes everything.
And this great inheritance that we have been given as God’s chosen sons and
daughters – as the long ago predestined ones, it is meant to shape and effect
our entire outlook. These verses don’t just refer to the inheritance that we
have in Christ – it also refers back to the fact that we have been chosen as
God’s people. That is why the NIV translates verse 11 saying, "In him we were also chosen, having
been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in
conformity with the purpose of his will”. The translators were wrestling
with the fact that the context is one of God choosing us as His inheritance for
His purposes. Yes we have an inheritance in Jesus and at the same time, we are
God’s inheritance – we belong to God through Jesus Christ. We are no longer our
own. We don’t belong to ourselves. And in being adopted, we belong to a new
family. This is meant to effect how we live practically too.
So, in 7th grade when the other kids make fun of the boy that
looks funny or dresses differently or the girl who is awkward or overweight, we
say no – I’m not going to join in and I am going to love that other kid because
this is what my adopted Father has done for me – he loved me when I was
completely unlovely. And in High School, when all of your classmates invite you
to go drinking with them or get high on drugs, you can say no, because you know
that you don’t belong to yourself, you belong to God and He wants you to love
for Him. Even though you know it will mean that you will be mocked or maybe
treated like an outcast or rejected when you don’t do the things other people
do. Your worth isn’t in what other people think about you, it is in the fact
that God has chosen you to be His people and God has made you His son or
daughter. You don’t need the approval of others because God has accepted you in
Jesus.
And in College, when you are tempted to have sex with your girlfriend or
boyfriend, you can say no because you belong to Jesus and you don’t have to
look to physical gratification for fulfillment and you don’t have to look to
someone else for acceptance - you can find your acceptance in God. If you are a
Christian, God has predestined that you would be His adopted son or daughter and
He chose you so that you might bring Him glory.
Verse 12 tells us that God predestined that the Jews who first hoped in
Christ might be to the praise of His glory, "so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise
of his glory." And verse 13 tells us that it is not only the Jews, but
all who believe who were predestined to be to the praise of His glory. It says, "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,
b. We’ve been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit
It is not the Old Testament circumcision that is a sign or seal of the
receiving of the promise. It is not even baptism that is a seal of the
receiving the promise – it is the Holy Spirit that seals us. The seal of the
Holy Spirit is received when we believe the good news of Jesus Christ and are
saved from death, saved from the punishment for our sins and saved from the
wrath of God. It is when we believe in Him that we become members of God’s
covenant family and are sealed by the Holy Spirit.
But what does this word “sealed” mean? In Matthew’s gospel it tells us that
Jesus’ tomb was sealed and soldiers were put around it to guard it. It was
sealed for protection, it was sealed to secure it and close it in. In Biblical
times too, correspondence would often be sealed with a wax and a stamp proving
who it came from would be affixed, showing that it was authentic. So a seal is
a sign of authenticity as well. In the book of Revelation, God seals His
servants as a way of protecting them from the coming wrath. So, to be sealed
with the promised Holy Spirit means a lot. God has secured us through His Holy
Spirit. And God has given us the Holy Spirit as a sign of the fact that we are
His true children. And God has given us the Holy Spirit to protect us and keep
evil from entering in. Being sealed by the Holy Spirit, is the source of our
hope to remain faithful.
A hundred years ago, when cattle roamed the west freely, they were branded
to show who they belonged to, as proof of who owned them. An owner would guard
against theft from occurring by this seal that served as a protective seal or
sign. It was an undeniable proof of belonging. Today, we still seal or mark
things that we own. My dad has a special mark and all of his possessions have
his own mark on them – and we all make fun of him for it a little.
Now, we have received the seal or stamp of the Holy Spirit. God has given
His Holy Spirit to us as proof that we are His possession. It is God’s
guarantee that He will protect us as His own and that He will one day receive
us to Himself on the final day. Verse 14 tells us that the Holy Spirit, "who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory".
c. We’ve been
guaranteed for His glory
The Holy Spirit
is the down payment that guarantees our inheritance until we fully receive it. When
we put a contract down on our house, we had to make a down payment in order for
the bank to give us the right to buy the house. It is our house now in a very
real sense, but we don’t fully own it quite yet – and we won’t for another 30
years now. The Holy Spirit has been given to us as the first installment – He
is the guarantee.
And we can
begin to enjoy our everlasting possession now through the Holy Spirit. We are
God’s treasured possession – God has made us His own and given His Spirit to us
as a guarantee that one day, He will fully and finally redeem us as His
treasured possession. And God has done all of this so that we might praise Him
for His glory.
So, in the
here and now, in the nitty-gritty of life, in very real difficulties and trials
and hardship and pain, what would God have for us? I think a good place for us
to start is in prayer – and following the prayer of the Apostle Paul in getting
perspective and remembering that we have all that we need in Christ Jesus. And
that is meant to give us a very real and lasting hope indeed.
