Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Bible teaches that those who surrender to Christ as the only solution to our sin problem receive a new status before God—forgiven, adopted, forever in Christ. God looks down on us no longer as judge, but as Father. He does not see our imperfections or weaknesses, but the perfect righteousness of His Son, Jesus. In this message, Pastor Rich walks us through Ephesians 1, 3-6 to give us a beautiful glimpse of how God sees His chosen and beloved. Have you ever been so excited about something that you just wanted to tell somebody and the first person you came across, you just gushed out at them and you were just going on and on and on about it?
Parents, you probably have had kids who, they experienced something and when they came home and they encountered you, they just went on and on and on. He's like, you've got to come up for breath sometime, right? The paragraph that Vic read for us this morning is one of those statements. It is a run-on sentence in Scripture. Paul is just gushing out and we have a three-part series here in verses 3-14, every spiritual blessing.
Today is part one. We're going to look at verses 3-6, every spiritual blessing and it comes kind of in three different categories here. First of all, in verses 3-6, we have the origin of it all.
This is the source. He gives us the big picture to remind us that who we're dealing with here is an infinite being. And so, you're going to have to pardon me this morning because sometimes I need to curb my enthusiasm and as I studied this this week, frankly it was overwhelming to me. Because that's what this is all about. This is all about God. And as we've determined from the first couple of verses, Paul, the apostle, is writing to Christians.
He's writing to saints, set apart ones. As we studied the Gospel of John, that was John the Evangelist presenting Jesus Christ as Messiah for all the world to consider who He is. Indeed, He is God. He is the Redeemer of mankind. But here in Ephesians, the apostle is writing to Christians and in this paragraph particularly, verses 3-14, all in a nutshell, He's providing us everything that God is and that God has done and who we are in Christ. He's writing to Christians. So verses 3-6 is the origin of it all.
It gives us the big picture. And then verses 7-9, he goes back and he looks at history. This is what happened in history as God is outworking His plan and purpose of redemption. And then when we come to verses 10-14, then He looks in the future. This is what Christians, this is what you have in store for you.
This is what God has for you. And from His perspective, get this, it's already done. That's why He uses words like, predestined. So, what we have here then, as He comes out, Paul gives his introduction in verses 1-2, but what we have beginning at verse 3 and all the way through verse 14 is what, it's an old word, but it's what you would call profusion. Profusion, it means just a gushing out. It's an extravagance of words and it's describing an extravagance of behavior. That's why it's a run-on sentence. You say, Rich, well yeah, there are periods in there, but the periods are not in the original.
They are not inspired, in fact, believe it or not. This is a run-on sentence. Paul is just, he's just pouring it all out there on us. You need to know who you are. You need to know who God is.
You need to know His disposition towards you and your status in Him. And there is a phrase that he chooses that encapsulates all of that. So Christians, I strongly encourage you to just read, read, read, and really focus, first of all, on reading the first three chapters of Ephesians, because all the commands come in chapters 4-6, but if you don't get the first three chapters, if you're not gripped at the core of your being, at the level of desire from chapters 1-3, you won't get chapters 4-6.
They won't make sense to you, and you won't be able to do them. So the profusion here is just a gushing out of his praise to God and of his description of who God is and who we are in Him. And he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.
Now we have to stop in the middle of the sentence there to kind of unpack what he is saying. What he is saying here is we need to bless the one who blesses us. Blessed be, this is the word eulogetos. It means to speak well, to speak highly of. As this particular word is used, it is used only from man toward God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to speak well, we need to speak highly of him, that whatever comes out of our mouth, the music that comes out of our mouth, is it true?
Is it accurate? Does it reflect who he is and what he's done? Does it make much of God? Because he has blessed us, it says. This is the word eulogeto, and that means to act kindly towards.
It's kind of synonymous with the word charias, which is grace. But he has acted kindly toward us, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. For example, as Jesus said in Matthew, bless those who persecute you.
In other words, act kindly towards those who persecute you. That's a God thing. That's why we need him in us to be able to accomplish that. It says in Acts chapter 3 verse 26 that God sent him to bless you, sent Christ to bless you in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.
That's to act kindly towards, right? So he has blessed us. We need to bless the one who blesses us. How has he blessed us? With every spiritual blessing, every spiritual blessing, every.
Think about that. This is a sense of completeness. He is speaking of the lavishness, the extravagance of the goodness that God has poured out on us. He is speaking of every benefit of his spirit, that we have his spirit, and he has lavished on us every blessing of his spirit.
It also speaks of your status in mind. Those of us who are in Christ are the status of the human spirit in relation to him. You are a spirit being.
You are an embodied spirit. And as he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, every blessing from his spirit, he blesses our human spirit in relation to him. As Peter says, we are partakers of the divine nature.
What does that mean? God imparts his goodness to us in the very person of himself, the person of the Holy Spirit. That is why the Christian and only the Christian can say, it is well with my soul. Because he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. And he says, in the heavenly places. This speaks of and points to God's infinite perspective. Remember, we are dealing with an infinite transcendent being who is not bound by space and time. He has to limit himself in order to operate within space and time.
And we are bound to think only in terms of space and time. So this is why this passage can be so difficult and why Paul gushes forth because such knowledge is too wonderful for me. We can't fully comprehend God.
He is an infinite being. But he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Understand that God created you and me, listening, God created you and me to be with him and enjoy him.
That is why you exist. He created you and me to be with him and to enjoy him. And that is reflected in Jesus' prayer in John 17. He was in the garden praying to his father the night that he was betrayed, the night before he was crucified. And he said, Father, I pray, I ask that they may be with me where I am.
Understand this. Christians, are you listening? God desires you to be with him. You need to know him that way.
That is who he is. As Peter said, 1 Peter 3.18, Christ suffered the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. And Hebrews 2.10, the writer of Hebrews says that he is the author of our faith. It was appropriate for him as the author and perfect of our faith to bring many sons to glory. It is appropriate for him to suffer in bringing many sons to glory. What do we have here is he speaks of every spiritual blessing, this gushing extravagance that the apostle is coming out here and he's just pouring it all out. Let me paraphrase it for you. He says, let's make much of the one who has lavished goodness on us. Let's make much of the one who has lavished goodness on us.
Obliterate long faced religion. It does not belong in the church. Paul wasn't that.
Why is it that he comes out this way? Paul looks for a phrase that encapsulates everything that describes God's disposition towards us and our status in him. And he brings it out right here in verse 4. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.
What a tremendous phrase that is. Just as he chose us in him, the word there is ek legomai. The root word is lego. It means to speak, to gather, to count, to enumerate, to narrate. It's synonymous with logos, to choose. It has here ek legomai, out of, to speak, to gather, out of.
In this text right here, it's used in a sense to choose, to prefer. In other words, God says, you are mine. This is how you need to know Christians. This is how you need to know your father.
He looks at you and he says, lovingly, you are mine. Do you know God that way? And he says, and this is so significant, just as he chose us in him. Those two phrases, just as he chose us and in him, are significantly juxtaposed.
It means so much that those two phrases are together. Who is him? Well, it's speaking of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And what does God refer to him as? He refers to him as my elect one in whom my soul delights. That gives us all kinds of insight as to why the apostle and the Holy Spirit, under his inspiration, chooses this word to describe God's disposition towards us and our status in him. Just as he chose us in him. There's no other words in there, and this translation is very consistent throughout all translations. It does not say, just as he chose us to be in him. He says, just as he chose us in him. You've been listening to Delighting Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, lead pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Visit our church website to see upcoming events or to listen to more messages at gbcwinston.com. To discover how to live by grace, tune in with us on weekdays at 10 a.m.
Whisper: medium.en / 2022-12-18 22:01:56 / 2022-12-18 22:07:03 / 5