Ephesians chapter one. The word of God never gets old,
does it? Never gets old. I read this and
it's usually something that would jump out at me. And in my reading
and going through this again, Verse seven jumped out at me.
I'm gonna look at some verses here, but verse seven, in whom
we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Put out by that, the forgiveness
of sin debts. Sin's a debt. It's a debt we
owe. The wages of sin is debt. It's not just the forgiveness.
I'm getting ahead of way ahead of myself here, but this blessed
me. It's just jumped out of me and blessed me. It's just not
the forgiveness of something that I've done. You know, you
say I forgive you. I didn't mean to do that. Or,
you know, can you forgive me? This is literally the wiping
out of a debt. It's a debt I owe and now it's
gone. When he says even the forgiveness
of sins, he's even the forgiveness of all your debt. Against God. Well, you've already got part
of it. I jumped about the middle of my sermon. But the title of
the message, Heavenly Blessings. Heavenly Blessings. This is why Paul wrote to the
Colossians, set your heart on things above, not on the things
of this earth. We have so many heavenly blessings
that were given to us in Christ before creation, before the world
was, when it was just a trinity, God in the trinity of his person.
And one of the things you'll notice as we go through the book
of Ephesians here, I want to go through this whole book, Lord
Willie. And it's interesting, you know, you that were in the
Bible class, Paul is in Ephesus, and we just saw the uproar in
that city. I mean the whole city was in
an uproar there was just and he writes these beautiful letters
to that church and you know he addresses no problem there's
no problem addressed here like in Corinthians and Galatians
and there's no problem addressed here just great doctrines of
the truth and the and the believers walk the believers walk and we'll
see this later on in the in the part of in the later on this
epistle Now we have in this first chapter the foundation, the foundation
of our salvation. Paul lays down the very foundation. If you're going to build a house,
you need the foundation and it needs to be a strong foundation.
And he lays down this strong foundation that we have in Christ. We have it. We have the Father
who chose us, the Son who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit who regenerates
us and by whom we are sealed. We have the great doctrines of
the faith starting out right here in this first chapter. And
it's so important. This is so important. Because
if you skip this part, and this hit me yesterday as I was going
over this. If you skip this part of the great doctrines of truth,
when we get to the walk of a believer's life, it'll just lead to self-righteousness. It'll just lead us to self-righteousness
unless you understand the great doctrines of the gospel. That's
what it'll lead to. The great doctrines of the faith. Now we know this, we know that
all blessings come from above. We know that. All who live on
this earth, whether you believe or not, are blessed with God. You partake of the same sunshine,
which the believer takes part of. It rains on the just and
the unjust. It rains on the just man's garden
and the unjust man's garden. The same rain, the rain that
fell last night, fell on some of your gardens who believe,
and it fell on a lot of gardens of men and women who don't believe.
We partake of the blessings of this life. All do. All do. However, this epistle is about
spiritual blessings given to God's people. This is written
to the church. The Bible, for the most part,
is not written to unbelievers. It's written to God's people.
Unbelievers don't What they want they don't appreciate the Bible.
I don't believe it's God's Word God This is God's Word to us
who believe Paul is writing to the Ephesian church. He's not
writing to the city of Ephesus. He's writing to the church of
Ephesus It's written to a it's written to a particular people
It's written to those who live in two worlds. I've told you
this from the last A couple sermons, because it's just been so evident
with me. This is one of those things that,
you know, there are times when something is just more evident
with you than at other times. And it's just more evident with
me right now that I'm living in two worlds. I'm living in
this world, this physical world of creation, and I'm also living
in the kingdom of God, that world. I live in it and I live more
in it, I believe, now than I do this one. I hope so. Sometimes
I don't. I hate to say that. Sometimes
I get too caught up in this. But I hope and I hope by the
grace of God that as I grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ,
I begin to live more and more and more in that. And I'm letting
this go. I've been singing to myself,
farewell. What is that song? Farewell to
each earthly joy. Jesus is. I've been singing that
all morning. All morning, because in my heart, in my heart, that's
what I want. That's where I want to come to.
I want to say farewell now. I don't want to say farewell
when I'm about to take the last breath. I want to say now, right
now, I want to say farewell. Farewell to this world, these
earthly joys. Jesus is mine. I want to say it now. It's written
to those who live in two worlds. It's written to the people who
have fellowship with God. Not everyone has fellowship with
God. Paul said, all men have not faith. Without faith, it's
impossible to please God. You can't have fellowship with
God and not believe God. They have this people here in
Ephesus and here in Bethel-Papis. It's written to you. who have
fellowship with God, who know God, that's a powerful statement.
That's a powerful statement. It's the difference between knowing
there is a God and believing there is a God and knowing God. Knowing God. It is written to
a people that have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ
and born of the Spirit of God. Born of God. Sons of God. Now are we the sons of God. Let
that sink in. Now, I'm a son of God. I'll never be disowned. I'll
never be disowned. God is my father. What kind of
father would he be if he disowned me? Now, there are several reasons
to study this epistle. First of all, it is of God. It's not an epistle of Paul.
It's attached to Paul. Paul wrote it. God used Paul
to write it. But it's of God. And if it's
of God, it's good. If it's of God, it's to be studied.
In fact, we ought to digest every word written in this epistle. I mean every word. One of the
benefits, one of the best benefits I have learned in studying the
word of God is to study the words. Find out what they mean. Find
out what words mean. Words are powerful. Words are
powerful. Find out what they mean. I'll
try, if I don't forget, before I get there, I'm gonna try to
point something out on this matter of adoption that I learned this
morning as I was going over this again. It's interesting if you
consider the time period in which Paul wrote this. But there's
several reasons to study this. It's of God. It's to his saint. It's to you. If God sends you
a letter, let's say this, if your parent, your father, your
father, say, my father sent me a letter, I get one in the mail,
I get a mail, am I gonna throw it in the trash? Am I gonna take
it and lay it over on the desk and just not open it? If my father sends me a letter,
I'm gonna read it. When I wrote to Henry, and I wrote to him
several times when I lived in Milton, And I wrote to him. I went to the mailbox every day
to see, because he always wrote back. He always wrote back. I
went to the mailbox every day. And when I got that letter, I
opened it as quickly as I could open it and read what he had
to say concerning the questions I asked. It's to us. This is to us this
morning. Don't just look at it as to the
Ephesian church back thousands of years ago. A couple thousand
years ago almost. It's to us. And then listen.
It's about our spiritual blessings in Christ. This is what we have. This is ours. It's not going
to be ours. It's ours right now. And then
it sets our minds on things above. When you read this, as I did,
and I've read it several times again, it set my mind on things
above. It got my interest again. And
then it promotes growth in grace and in knowledge of Christ. You
want to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ? Open the
book. Read the Word of God. Read the
Word of God. Those who are weak in faith,
I can assure you they're weak in the Word of God. They're weak
in the Word of God. Look in verse 17. That the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto
you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
Him. That's why it's written to you. Now, if you want to grow
in grace and the knowledge of Christ, read the Word of God.
And then pray and ask the Spirit of God to make it known to you,
to open scriptures to you. Now, there's a lot in this epistle.
First of all, we have the source from whom all our blessings flow. The source is God the Father.
Look in verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places and That word places had been translated
by those who translated this. They supplied it, but it really
has this meaning in heavenly things. In heavenly things. He has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly things in Christ. All the things that
you and I need, he's given to us in Christ. Who gave them to
us? The Father gave them to us. Salvation begins with him. It
begins with God the Father. It pleased God to make you his
people. That's what Samuel said to Israel.
It pleased God. So the one through whom all blessings
are given to us is the Father. And then the channel of all these
blessings that we have had come to us through the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. Look in verse three and four.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ, according as he has chosen us in him, in Christ,
before the foundation of the world, having predestinated us
into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, to himself. He's the channel. He's the channel. He's the mediator. He's the one
through whom all the blessings flow. You know, we must have
water. We can't do it without water.
And there's a source of water down at the city reservoir. Now for you and I to have that
water, that water, that's been purified. It's pure water, clean
water, supposed to be. Anyway, for us to have it. It's got to come through a channel.
There's got to be pipes put into your house. And through those
pipes, that water comes to you. Christ is the channel through
whom all the heavenly blessings, all that heaven has to give,
all that God the Father can give, all that He can give, all that's
even possible, comes to us through this one person. Jesus Christ,
he's the channel through whom all blessings flow. And then we see why these blessings
come to us in verse five. Look, here's why they come to
us. Having predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
It's God's good pleasure to give you all these blessings in Christ. It's your father's good blessing,
the scripture says, to give you the kingdom. It's his good pleasure. God didn't save me because he
had to save me, because he created me, now he's responsible to save
me. No, that's not why, that's not why. He saves all whom he
saves according to the good pleasure of his will. God's will is holy
and just. God saves all whom he saves according
to the good pleasure of his will. That speaks of sovereignty. Jesus Christ, and you know this,
God the Father did not put him on a cross, execute his justice
upon him, and then leave the end result to a bunch of rebels.
No, he's not going to do that. That's not infinite wisdom. And
if you've got any wisdom and sense at all, you'll know that's
not infinite wisdom. And if I've got any wisdom and sense at all,
we know that's not wisdom. In fact, the Lord said over in
the gospel, He said, they said, this is the heir, come let us
kill him. That's what we do with him, kill
him. Okay, we saw the source of it,
that's Father, the channel of it is the Son. We see the reason
for it, the good pleasure of His will, and we see the purpose
of it. We see the purpose of it in verse six, to the praise
of the glory of His grace. This is why God is a God of grace. Every attribute of God, every
attribute of God will be expressed. You said, well, the angels have
failed. They have no savior. Well, there's
a lot of them that didn't fall. And the reason they didn't fall,
they are called the elect angels. God chosen to keep their first
estate. He didn't let them fall. That's why. Now, God being a
God of grace, he's going to express that grace and we will spend
eternity to the praise of the glory of his grace. That's why. So we have the source
of it, the Father, the channel of it, the Son, the reason for it, good pleasure
of His will, and the purpose of it, to the praise and glory
of His grace, these blessings. Now let's just look at some of
these heavenly blessings. First of all, election. Now to
the Armenians, that's a dirty word. They hate it, they despise
it. Because you know why? It gives God all the glory. and
it takes salvation out of your hands. Anything that takes something
out of our hands by nature, we eat and makes us man. Take something
away from a two-year-old. I mean, it starts early. You
can take it from a two-year-old and they throw a tantrum. They
throw a fit. That's us by nature. That's us
by nature. Election is of God. Christ said to his disciples,
are you a disciple? If you're a follower of Christ,
you are. He said, you didn't choose me,
I chose you. That's the truth. There would be nobody in heaven
if God didn't choose us. It'd be an empty place. I mean total, I mean zero. Zero. There wouldn't be one person
there. Election has never kept any person out of heaven. You
know that? Election, the election of grace, it's called the election
of grace, has never kept anybody out. It's the reason there are
a multitude there. God purposed that if He's gonna
have a people, sinners are gonna be saved. He's gonna make them
willing in the day of His power. That's a blessing. Election is
a blessing. It's a reason to rejoice that
God chose me. I'm no different than anybody
else on this earth. I'm not any better. I'm just
as wicked by nature as anybody on this earth. And yet God chose
me. According to what? The good pleasure
of His Word. Now, listen. A person, a sinner
is not to worry about whether he's elect or not, or she's elect
or not. Here's what it is, are you a
sinner? That's it, that's it, great, die for sinners. You know, they want to argue
over the election. Let's talk about sinners. What is a sinner? It's a rebel, it's a God-hater.
It's unrighteous, ungodly. Well, I ain't gonna go quite
that far. Well, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to those
who are in the gutter and they know it. God's made them to know
it. That's who Christ died for, sinners. That's who Christ elected. That's who he chose, sinners.
He chose to save sinners and they're gonna be saved. Here's
the second one, adoption in verse five. Having predestinated us,
having predetermined us unto the adoption of children by and
through Jesus Christ. according to the good pleasure
of his will. But now listen, you can find that over in Romans
8.15 and Galatians 4.5. But here's something I read,
and I just didn't realize, didn't notice,
but Paul is writing to the Ephesians. Under Roman law, and Ephesians
knew exactly what he's talking about, under Roman law, When
a person, there's two things here. When a person adopted another
person, which usually that's what it was, they adopted an
adult. They really didn't adopt babies,
but they adopted adults. That's what I've been reading.
Before Roman law, that person whom they adopted was considered
to be that person's other self. I thought that's interesting.
They were considered, just like if I adopted Craig, in Roman
law, he's considered to be the other me, just like me. It's a conference of myself to
him. So when Paul speaks that you
have been adopted, you have been made a son, God has conferred
on you and considered you his other self, just like him. Now, that hit me this morning. I'm just like his son, Jesus
Christ. Isn't that right? We've been adopted in Christ.
We're just like him. We're the other self of him.
Are we not being conformed to the image of Christ? We are. And then here, redemption. We've
been bought back. A price has been paid for us.
We are His. He owns us. You've been bought
with a price. But as I've already mentioned
to you earlier there in verse 7, in whom we have redemption
through His blood, we've been purchased by His blood, the forgiveness
of sins. And usually when we read this,
we think we've been forgiven of what we've done, things that
we've done, things that we've said. Our sinfulness, we've been
forgiven. But it goes deeper than that.
It's deeper than that. He's talking here about a debt. He's saying through this redemption,
through this purchase price, through the blood of Jesus Christ,
the debt is wiped off. I don't owe it no more. You know, we need to realize
it's not just the forgiveness of an act. It's the forgiveness
of death. And listen, it's not just this
death, then this, it's all of them. It's one death. You know,
my sins, my, my, all my sins against God, it comes down to
one death. It just comes down to one death.
I offended one law. Defending one point of the law
is offending the whole law. God only has one law. I'm forgiven. I'll tell you this,
I can feed on that. I've been feeding on that since
I read it and came across it and thought about it. The debt's
paid. All the sin debt I owed. And
I'm not, I'm still living. You know what that means? I'm
still gonna sin. I'm gonna sin tomorrow. I might live, you know,
I might live, be like my parents, be in my 90s. Another 30 years
or 25 or whatever. You know, a number of years I
haven't even lived yet, but you know, those debts are already
gone. Those debts are gone. And then listen, verse six, verse six. We'll go back one
here. To the praise of the glory of
his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted. Accepted. I missed that one. Accepted. What is they say today? What is they say today? That
young lady sitting out there yesterday, she dropped one on
me. Open your heart and accept Jesus. Let him come in. That's
blasphemy. The scripture says that the natural
heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? What does God
want to do with my heart? What does he want to do to come
into such a filthy place? I need God to give me a heart,
a new heart. He said in Ezekiel, I'll give
you a new heart because he ain't going to have anything to do
with that old heart. He ain't coming in that cesspool of sin. Here's the blessing. It has nothing to do. with me
accepting Christ as my personal Savior. It has everything to
do with God accepting me in Christ. It says He has made us accept. The work is all of Him. He has
made me through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ
to be such a person that He accepts. And listen. He has made us accepted,
past tense. It doesn't say He made us acceptable.
Though He did. But that doesn't say that. Because
something can be acceptable and I don't want it. You can say,
here, this works. It works, it's good. There's
nothing wrong with it. But I can say, well, but I don't
want it. But now, where it says He has made us accepted, He has
received us. He has accepted us. We're His. We are His. The Father sees us
complete in His Son, Jesus Christ. He sees me complete. He sees
me as His Son. As He sees His Son. And then listen, all this is
according to grace there in verse 8. Let me read verse 7 with verse
8, because they go together. In whom we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches
of his grace, wherein which grace he hath abounded toward us. All
this is through grace and all these blessings that we have,
God has abounded toward us by his grace in all wisdom. You see, salvation is according
to the infinite wisdom of God. And Christ is the wisdom of God,
but it's in all wisdom and prudence. abounding grace, abounding wisdom, abounding prudence,
all that toward us in Jesus Christ. And then listen, here's another
blessing. It's a revelation of a mystery. Revelation of, do you understand
how God saved you? Did you know that was a mystery
for ages? It says for ages. The mysteries
of the Gentiles being made one with the Jews in Christ, the
ones he saved out of the Jewish race, the ones he saved out of
the Gentiles, they are one in Christ. That was a mystery. The gospel, the way God saves
sinners to the world and to the Gentile world was a mystery.
The Gentile world, for the most part, was just in darkness. It
was a mystery. But God's revealed that to you.
Look in verse nine. having made known unto us the
mystery of his will. What is the mystery of his will?
I don't know all that. I don't know all that, but I
do know this, that you believe on him whom he has sent. That you'll be saved in Christ
and that there would be one body, the church, Have He made known
unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure,
which He had purposed in Himself. But you understand the gospel.
You understand how God can be a just God. You understand how
God can save you. You understand that. He's revealed
that. It's not a mystery to you no
more. He's made it known to you. This word mystery keeps coming
up in these epistles of Paul Rome. And then here's another
blessing. In verse 10, that in the dispensation
of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, which are on earth,
even in him. Here's another blessing, reconciliation. God's reconciled you. I didn't
reconcile myself to God. Christ did that. Now he tells
us to be reconciled to God. In other words, Scott Richardson
said, lay down your shotgun. But he reconciled me to God.
All that stood between me and Almighty God, Jesus Christ reconciled. He reconciled me. He made peace. He reconciled me. That's a blessing
of God. That's a blessing. And then verse
11, and I'm gonna close here. In verse 11, in whom, that is
in Jesus Christ also, we have obtained an inheritance. Oh my, the blessings we have.
All things are yours in Christ. By grace, we have inherited the
kingdom of God. By grace, we have inherited the
riches of Christ. By grace, we have inherited all
that God can give us. All that God can possibly give,
we've inherited. It's ours. What a blessing. I have a great inheritance. I
have a great inheritance. And all God's children, are going
to get that inheritance. They're going to have the full
experience of it in just a little while. In just a little while.
I'm preaching to you right now. And I'll probably, unless I die
before you do, unless I die before you do, I'm probably going to
do your funerals. Some of them anyway. Some of you may be younger,
you may live to be older. I don't know. I've done young
funerals too. But here in a little while, in just a, I mean, short while,
we are going to experience that inheritance. We're going to experience it.
And all of this in verse 12 is to the praise, here's the purpose
of it, to the praise of His glory, that we should be to the praise
of His glory who first trusted in Christ, to the praise of all
that God is. We have not yet experienced the
fullness of God. We can't in this flesh. Everything
we have, we have by measure. We have by measure. We can't handle it all until
then. But now listen to this, last of all. 13, 14. In whom
ye also trusted, that is Christ you trusted, after you heard
the word of truth, the gospel was sent to you, the gospel of
your salvation, the gospel of Your salvation, it was purpose
for you, given to you in Christ, and it came to you. And you heard,
and one day you heard the gospel, you heard it in power, and you
believed. Because God sent the gospel of
your salvation to you. It's your salvation. And God
sent it to you. In whom also after that you believed,
you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. You're sealed. which is the earnest, the earnest
that is the guarantee. It's like a down payment. You
go buy something, you give an earnest money down on it, then
the rest of it will come later. The Holy Spirit here is spoken
of as the earnest of what's coming. He's the, I don't want to say
down payment, He's the down payment of what's coming. But here's something interesting.
And Paul said, you were sealed. Now, the Ephesians under the
Roman law and Roman society, they understood what that meant.
There was a lot of, it was a lot of merchants there and they would
give a lot of ships come in and there would be a lot of cargo
on those ships. And those, the cargo on those ships had different
seals on them. If you had your own seal, And
then you would stamp your seal on that cargo. So when they unloaded
the ship, that seal would be on your cargo, what you had on
that ship, you'd have your seal on it. So when it was unloaded,
it was evident with no doubt, that's yours. That's yours. And the seal that God has on
every one of his children is the Holy Spirit. You know what
I said, I don't know if this, I didn't get time this morning
to look this up. I'm going to think it out and
study it out. But over in Revelation 7.3, he
said, hurt not the earth until you seal my servants in their
forehead. Until you put my stamp on them. And I thought, well, that's interesting. You were sealed. with the Holy
Spirit. That seal is the Holy Spirit
of God. There's going to be no mistake
who you are. Known unto the Lord are all His. He knows them. He knows everyone. He has His seal on them. And
His seal on them is the Holy Spirit of God. And He's the guarantee. He's the guarantee. If you have
the Holy Spirit, you are guaranteed to get the full, the full inheritance
when it's over. Aren't these blessings, aren't? It's phenomenal what we have. We should look at, we should,
we should study these epistles like this. I mean, this is our
inheritance. These are the blessings that
we have. And notice every one of them
was of God and had no strings attached to it. There was no
strings attached. It was not, I'll do this if you
do that. The Lord said, this is what I've
done. And this is what I've done. All right.