Count your blessings (pt 3)

In Ephesians 1v11-13 Paul repeats the spiritual blessings the Ephesians enjoy – chosen, predestined, part of God’s cosmic eternal plan.  Living for God’s glory because of our hope.  Included not because they deserve it but because of God’s grace through faith in the gospel that saves.

But there’s another spiritual blessing.  When they believed they were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.  Cattle and slaves were branded with a mark signifying who their owner was.  If they wandered off or ran away everyone would know who they belonged to.  God seals his people too, not with a hot brand but with the gift of the Holy Spirit – God himself dwelling in us.

The Holy Spirit is a like an invisible UV mark on his people, like the ones you used to use the pen to see on old bank notes, it’s visible in the spiritual realms, but visible here only as we see it’s impact in growing Christlikeness.

But the Holy Spirit in his people is also more than just a marker.  He’s a guarantee, “a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.”  The Holy Spirit is God himself come to live in us – just think about that sentence – isn’t that mindblowing!  What an amazing blessing!  He makes knowing God and listening to and being taught by Jesus an everyday reality.  He works to change us bit by bit as he convicts us of sin and opens our eyes to God’s word, and softens our hearts and trains our conscience.  He makes relationship with God real, and helps us know Jesus with us even to the end of the age.  

And he’s just the deposit.  He promises so much more – one day we’ll know God and see him face to face.  One day we’ll live for eternity in his presence, so glorious there will be no need for the sun.  One day we’ll see Jesus, the lamb, not for a moment, not in a vision or dream, but for real and forever.

The Spirit makes relationship with Father and Son real and that’s an amazing blessing.  And he promises us that so much more is to come so that we hunger for more and live for that day not just settle for now.       

How blessed do we feel?  Do you see again, afresh, everything that is ours in Christ.  We have every spiritual blessing in Christ.  Totally undeserved by lavished on us because of God’s glorious grace.  We’re chosen, redeemed, included in God’s family and his purposes and plans to unite everything under Christ, and you’re sealed by the Spirit who makes Jesus with us real and guarantees future glory.  And none of it can be taken away because Christ has won it all and we’re in him by faith.

So what?  Join with Paul, join with the Ephesians, praise God.  Remember your spiritual blessings – these are ours even when material blessings fade, when we suffer, when we grieve.  And they are safe because they’re in the heavenly realms, and they are ours together as God’s people.  We need to speak to one another of them, study them together, sing of them often.

Count your blessings (pt 2)

So we’re chosen and predestinated by grace in Christ. But that’s not all God’s people are also redeemed and part of God’s cosmic plan

Redemption is a Bible word from the slave market not the supermarket.  It’s not the image of a coupon that gets you 25p off but of paying the full ransom price to free a slave.

It’s a word with a bible history.  It takes us back to the Exodus and God liberating Israel from captivity in Egypt and paying; both the ransom price to buy his children back from Pharoah and from judgement for sin through the blood of the Passover lamb.

But for the Ephesians, and us, the redemption price, the ransom paid, was Jesus blood and Paul makes clear in Ephesians 1v7.  That’s the next huge spiritual blessing – disciples of Jesus are redeemed from slavery to sin, liberated from kidnap by, and service of, Satan, and freed from judgment for our sin because Jesus redeems us with his blood.

That means we’re forgiven for our sins – all of them – according to God’s grace.  Let that sink in.  Apply that to yourself for a minute.  Think of the most toe-curlingly embarrassing sin you’ve ever committed.  If I, or the person next to you, knew you’d die from shame.  If you’re in Christ Jesus has paid for it.  He’s redeemed you from it, you’re forgiven.  It’s not counted to your account because it was counted to his and he’s been judged for it, so you can never be. It has been drained of all it’s power and consequences and shame..

Think of the sins that beset you.  The temptations that shout at you, telling you you must do this, you have to give in, you must obey it’s desire.  Jesus has redeemed you from their power.

Think back to Israel and the Exodus.  Imagine for a minute one of the freed Israelites meets a former Egyptian slave master and that slave master tells him to start making bricks.  What should the Israelite do?  Not make bricks, but tell the slave master to get lost because he’s not his boss anymore.  He’s free and not under his rule.

Jesus redeems not just from the consequences of sin but from the mastery of sin.  We don’t have to listen to sins voice anymore.  The Ephesians, we, have been bought at a price, ransomed, we no longer have to obey sin.  Maybe that’s a key idea for you to grasp this week.  When sin shouts loudly and your first instinct is to obey, remember you’re not a slave to sin anymore.  Sin isn’t your master, Jesus is.

But’s there’s much more in this blessing for us to grasp.  We’re not just freed from slavery to sin and judgment because of sin.  But in Ephesians 1v8-9 Paul reminds the Ephesians that God with all wisdom and understanding makes known to his people the mystery of his will.  History is not a who dunnit where we don’t know whose done what.  History isn’t a thriller with a final twist that will turn everything upside down and maybe catch us out.

In the gospel God has revealed where history is headed, his purpose, his desire, “to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”  God reveals himself in his Son and makes his purposes plain to his people.  All of history is heading unstoppably to the day when Jesus returns and everything is united under his rule and reign.  It’s a blessing to know the future is certain.

For this church living among all the spiritual and occult forces worshipped and let lose in Ephesus this tells them they don’t need to fear.  Jesus is over all, he rules and reigns, and one day he’ll bring every spiritual force into submission and they’ll bow to him.  They’d glimpsed that in the casting out of demons and miracles and so on, but that was a tiny foretaste of what’s to come.  So don’t fear it!  Don’t feel second rate!

No matter what spirituality those around us are in to we don’t need to fear it, because we know the one before whom they will bow, and one day everything will be made right when Jesus returns and rules.

And God has made that known to us so we don’t fear.  So that we know the spiritual blessing of hope and certainty and confidence in the future.  Nothing and no-one will stop this coming true.  And God has chosen us and predestined his people for that joyous moment.  We may not know everything that will happen between now and then, but we know that it all works somehow to fulfil God’s eternal purpose and desire of uniting all things under Christ.

Even when we don’t feel blessed now, even as we struggle and suffer that future is undimmed,  we still have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and so we are to praise God and live for it.

Do you see your spiritual blessings?  Do you see it’s certainty?  We don’t need to be intimidated by the world or spiritualism or occultism or any-ism because history is headed to unity under Christ.  We don’t need to be shaken, or tossed up and down by circumstances because this is certain and God has chosen us for it in Christ by grace.

Count your blessings (pt 1)

So far in Ephesians 1 Paul has made a staggering claim about the off the scale spiritual blessings every believer enjoy as those who are in Christ. But what are they? That’s what he moves on to next, though I think he starts off somewhere where we may wish he didn’t: Praise God you are chosen

Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t understand and so misused?  There’s a video on YouTube of a daughter asking her dad how he’s getting on with the iPad they gave them, how he’s finding the apps.  All the time he’s chopping vegetables on what looks like a chopping board.  As he asks what apps, he scrapes the chopping board into a pan and we see it’s the iPad, before rinsing it under the tap and putting it in the dishwasher whilst his daughter stands staring at him agog.

We’re like that with the bibles teaching on God choosing his people.  We fail to see this as a gift.  Instead we treat predestination as theological rubiks cube, a problem try to unravel, or as an unpalatable food to isolate on the edge of our plate.  Or as something vaguely distasteful we don’t want to look at.

But, Paul says, it’s one of the great spiritual blessings that’s ours in Christ.  (4)God chooses his people, he predestines them to be adopted to sonship in Jesus.  Not because we’re any better than anyone else, or because of some untapped potential to glorify him in us, but “to the praise of glorious grace…”  God delights in choosing the weak things, the foolish things, the lowly things, the despised things – that’s us! But he chooses us.

And that is a spiritual blessing.  It’s a source of joy for us.  We’re chosen to be made holy and blameless in Jesus.  We’re adopted into God’s family with all the privileges that entails of access to God, an eternal inheritance and so on.  And we didn’t earn it.  We didn’t deserve it, so we can’t forfeit it.  It was freely given to us by grace by Jesus lavished on us.

God chose you for salvation – that’s a blessing not a burden.  It’s a gift of grace not something we can take pride in. It’s also a gift of grace not a conundrum or a problem.

I know some of you will be thinking but that’s not fair.  How is that right?  Let me ask you some questions: Is God just?  Is God good?  Is God trustworthy?  Yes. Yes. Yes.  Then, just like Abram did, trust that the God of all the earth will do right.  

Is God wiser than you?  Does God know the end of history from it’s beginning?  Does God see every heart and every motive and every thought?  Is God’s judgment better than yours?  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So trust God’s judgment not your own.

Do you deserve to be saved?  Did you earn it?  Or in any way contribute to it?  No. No. No. It is all of grace.  No-one deserves to be saved. No-one is good enough or nice enough, or sinless. Salvation is all of grace and is always totally undeserved and it is offered to all freely.

So let this blessing be a comfort to you – God has chosen you.

God’s grand vision for his people (pt 2)

How blessed do you feel on a scale of 1 (totally unblessed) – 10 (utterly blessed)?  Take a second, think about it.  What’s your answer?  Not the one you know you should say because you’re a Christian, but your actual answer.  What is it?  4, 6, 9?

Now let me tweak the question because I think we tend to work out our answer by adding up our bank balance, our health, how our family are doing, how we feel about work, and so on and assigning it a number and aggregating the score (without away goals counting double).  So here’s the tweak; On a scale of 1-0 how blessed are you spiritually?

Because in Ephesians 1v3 that’s what Paul is praising God for.  And Paul says it’s not a 10 it’s an 11.  You’re blessed spiritually so much that it is off the scale.  “Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

Let me show you why it’s an 11.  Because the Almighty sovereign God the giver of every good gift, who created everything, gives us every spiritual blessing.  There’s no spiritual blessing you could possibly think of that God has not imagined and blessed us with.  Just think of God’s creativity in creation – God is endlessly brilliantly imaginative isn’t he?  He created the blue whale and the krill, the Horse Head Nebula and your appendix.  And God is just as explosively mind blowing creative and generous in creating spiritual blessings which he showers on us.

Secondly where are we blessed?  “in the heavenly realms”.  The heavenly realms will keep on appearing in Ephesians because Paul wants them to see that the spirituality and occult around about them isn’t outside of God’s control, but he is totally sovereign over it.  The heavenly realms means spiritual reality, the place where God rules and reigns with other spiritual forces that if we glimpsed them would terrify us, but which bow to him, and can only ever obey his will.  That’s where we have every spiritual blessing, it’s safe because God keeps it there.

Do you ever lose stuff?  Forget where you’ve put your phone or your keys, or lose a jumper?  Do you ever buy something only to be disappointed and wish you hadn’t traded your hard-earned cash for it?  Have you ever had something stolen?  Or had something you love break or rust or just wear out?  Yes.  That can never happen to our spiritual blessings because we don’t have them in our pocket, or under the mattress, or wherever you put stuff to keep it safe before you forget where that is.  They’re safe in the heavenly realms, all of them, every spiritual blessing the almighty endlessly inventive and creative God has created for you.

And we can’t forfeit them.  Because we didn’t earn them in the first place.  It’s not like a quiz show where if you get the next question wrong you’re back to zero.  Look at where we are blessed, “in Christ.”  They are Christ’s blessings that he deserves and we are credited with them because we are in Christ by faith.  That’s another big idea in this letter that we need to grasp.

We can never be offered more spiritual blessings anywhere else.  We can never lose our spiritual blessings, no one can ever take them from us because we’re in Christ and he has finished his work and is sat down at the right hand of the Father.  How blessed are we spiritually on a scale of 1-10?  11.

God’s Grand vision for his people

Do you ever feel a bit disappointed with church?  Sometimes, maybe often, it just doesn’t seem very significant does it?  It’s easy to look at church and then at the area where we are and see how small we are.  It’s great to be filling this room but even if we do that’s less than 1% of the population of the area.  And at work, in your street, in the playground, in the staff room you feel alone in your faith.  You love church, you love those who come, but you just wish it was doing a bit more, having more of an impact, was a bit bigger, a bit better, a bit more significant.

Paul is writing to a church to help them see the glorious reality of church.  He’s helping them see the church with gospel goggles so they see past the misprint in the song words, the stumble from the preacher, and the slightly awkward conversations over coffee.

Ephesus was a city built on power and wealth.  It was a city insatiably hungry for glory.  A city steeped in the spiritual and the supernatural.  Obsessed with the mystical and the magical.

And the church in Ephesus started in blaze of power and glory, as the early believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and prophesied, and then God through Paul did extraordinary miracles; healing the sick and driving out demons.  A church was born and people showed their repentance in burning a fortune of magic and occult scrolls.  That brought hostility; there was a riot because this new faith with its power and glory was causing so much change that others thought it threatened the very culture of Ephesus.

That’s exciting isn’t it!  That’s powerful!  But that’s some time ago.  Now things have settled down in Ephesus.  Now there’s just a low level grumbling hostility to the gospel, and the question is what is God doing now in the ordinary and everyday of following Jesus together as a church?

Ephesians takes the blinkers off our eyes so we see more than just the physical of church, more than just the chairs needing to be stacked, the person singing offkey just to our right, and the coffee and cake that need serving.  Paul is helping these believers, and us, see the glory of church behind the ordinary and the everyday of church.  The scale and wonder of our salvation, the joy of being aware of and included in God’s larger cosmic purposes for the whole of creation, and what he’s doing through the ordinary and everyday of church.

In an age that prizes celebrity, power, wealth, influence and anything that sparkles of glitters, Paul wants the church to see a more weighty, more tangible, eternal glory which God is working through the church.  In a society that searches for the supernatural and the spiritual Paul wants the church to know God is at work by his Spirit doing the supernatural among them as they gather together around Jesus.

We also need reminding of the cosmic nature of church.  To see God’s bigger purposes as we gather.  We need reminding this is what really matters for eternity.  This is where reality is shaped and we learn about the God who in his triunity reigns over all sovereignly.  There is a far greater glory in the ordinary and everyday of church gathered in Christ than we dare dream or imagine.

Paul begins by praising God for what he has done for this church, not just this church but every church, before he prays for them.