pt2 Ephesians

Psalm number 40, and I want to begin with verse 8. Now, I know this is a messianic psalm. If we read the verses prior to where we start, it says, "...sacrifice and offerings thou didst not desire, mine ears hast thou opened, burnt offerings, sin offering thou hast not required.

Then said I, Lo, I come in the volume of the book." And we know that's messianic. That's the Lord Jesus that this is speaking of. It even refers to that over in Hebrews chapter 9. But in verse 8, he says, I delight to do thy will. That's not just the Lord Jesus saying that.

All of God's children love to do the will of God. Our greatest desire in this flesh is to walk pleasingly in our Father's sight. And that walk, pleasingly, is the walk of faith. We walk by faith, not by sight. We walk in belief that Jesus Christ is our all in all. I delight to do thy will, oh, I delight to do thy will, oh my God, yea, thy law is within my heart.

I'm not saying that I can follow his law in this flesh, I'm saying I follow his law perfectly in my Savior. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation Lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. Verse 10, I have not hid thy righteousness. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart. I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation. Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord. Let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me. This is a consistent praise to God the Father. And yes, it's Messianic, but it's also in the hearts of every child of God. Now verse 12. Verse 12.

For innumerable evils have compassed me about. That's the evils within ourselves. Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I have not able to look up. There are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me.

We're in Ephesians chapter 1. This is chapter 2 of our studies, and it's titled, All Spiritual Blessings, and it's based on Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Brother Don Fortner wrote this to introduce this verse. He said, Paul took up his pen to write to the church at Ephesus.

But no sooner had he began his letter with the gracious salutation of verses one and two, than he erupts with the praises of God in verse three. That's what we just read. Robert Hawker wrote this about verse three. He said, reader, pause. I like the way Robert calls us, reader, pause. He knew people would be sitting there reading his commentary. Pause for just a moment over these verses.

The apostle prospereth to write an epistle to the church, but he hath no sooner opened with the salutation than he leaves the consideration of the church and breaks into a holy flame of praises to God. His heart was so full in contemplation of the divine love that, like bottles ready to burst, he could no longer contain. He says, Behold, my belly is as wine, which hath no vent. It is ready to burst like new bottles in Job 32, 19.

Oh, how doth this man's favor reproach my coldness? Lord, take away this heart of stone of mine and give me a heart of flesh. As he states in Ezekiel 36, 26, a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." We begin tonight with our verses there.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Folks, Jesus is God. So you kind of read that if you stop and you don't consider this deepness, you might think that, well, you know, there's really three different persons, and there is. but they're one. Jesus is God. Our first consideration in this statement sets before us the deity, the authority, the eternal Godhead of our blessed Savior. Paul is celebrating the praise of the three persons of the undivided God. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As He always does, the Holy Ghost declares again that Jesus, the man, is God, our Savior. If the Son is equally to be blessed with the Father, it is because He is equal with the Father and one with Him. How precious He who is our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is himself God.

Take from us this sweet truth, and you take from us the mediatorial authority of our Redeemer, and our hope will perish. There's no sweeter portion of divine truth, no gift more precious than the knowledge that our Savior is both God and eternal Son, page two. Our Mediator, Jehovah's Servant, it is this One who said, I must work the works of Him that sent me. That's in John 9, verse 4.

But why is God the Father here called the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? He is the Father of Christ, the God-Man, our Mediator, who was ordained before the foundation. of the world to his work and office as our mediator, who verily was ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you." 1 Peter 1, verse 20. That's when the Father made the covenant of grace with him who is the surety of the covenant. He is the Father of Christ as both God and man.

In his eternal deity, our Savior is the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, as stated in John 14. As a man, our Savior is that holy thing that is called the Son of the Highest in Luke 135. The firstborn from the dead is the firstborn of the firstborn Son in the family of God.

Blessed God. The Apostle calls upon us to bless God. Blessed be God. and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The Greek word here translated blessed is the word from which we get our English word eulogize. It means to speak well of and to praise highly. Bless the Lord, O my soul, cries the psalmist, and forget not all his benefits. Paul is saying here, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's saying, speak well of God and praise Him highly.

Prayer arises from our sense of need. Praise arises from our sense of God's unchanging goodness and infinite grace, the goodness of his being and the grace he bestows upon his people. God has blessed us. That's easy to say. God has highly esteemed us and highly spoken of us in Christ from everlasting. Therefore, let us bless him.

Let us make it our business to bless the Lord, to speak highly of Him, to raise Him up before those that we come across in this world. Bless God when you're sitting in His house hearing His Word. Be prepared to come to church and hear the Word of God. Don't come tired. Get some rest, take a nap, do what you gotta do to come to church and sit and listen to His Word preached. Bless him in the house and hearing his word, then go on blessing God until your last mortal breath, praising him, raising him up, enter into heaven's eternal glory, blessing God throughout our lives here and hereafter.

Let us bless him who gave us our life. Let it be our delight to bless him who gives us all of our delights. How can we bless God? Without a doubt. the less is blessed by the greater. But can the greater be blessed by the less? Yes, we are to bless God, but in an indescribably lesser way. God blesses us with all spiritual blessings, but we cannot increase his blessedness.

He needs nothing from us, and if he did, we could not give it. God declares, if I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine and the fullness thereof. He's got everything already. What could we give God in blessings other than the praise of our hearts? God is all-sufficient within himself and never dependent upon his creatures. David said, my goodness extendeth not to thee in Psalm 16 verse 2.

Well, how then do we bless God? We bless God by our heartfelt gratitude towards him and our expressions of that gratitude to others. We say, as David says, bless the Lord, O my soul. We say with Paul, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We bless God by praising him, desiring all honor for him, ascribing all good to him, magnifying his holy name, Sit still and let your heart be silent before the Lord. No language can ever express the deep gratitude we have for Him who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Praise Him in your heart. Praise Him in your speech. Break the silence, speak of His glory. Invite others to cry with you, hallelujah, praise Jehovah. ascribe ye greatness unto our God. Oh, that all flesh would magnify the Lord within us. Look over at Psalms 34 if your Bible is still open to Psalm 40. Turn over to Psalm 34 for a moment. Listen to this praise that the psalmist has for the Lord.

And this is a... Mike Giolatti and I were talking about that this afternoon. Every single psalm is a messianic psalm. It's a psalm of Christ, but it's also a psalm that was written by a man, a man that was inspired of God through the things that was happening to him.

So listen to this inspiration here, a psalm of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. Let's begin at verse one. I will bless the Lord. This is Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear therefore and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him and were enlightened. and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encampeth around about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him. You hear the praise from this one who is writing into the poem, this psalm, this hymn of praise to the Lord. That's what this is about here. Back in our handout, mid-page three. We bless our God by our heartfelt assent to all the blessedness that is ascribed to Him. After hearing how great He is, how glorious He is, how happy He is, we bless Him by saying, Amen.

So let it be. So would we have it. Let Him be great. Let Him be glorious. Let Him be blessed beyond all conception. Let God be all that God is. We bless God when we say concerning the whole of His character, Amen, this is our God forever and ever. Let Him be just what this book says He is. We would not have Him to be anything less. Sternly, though, he will not spare the guilty.

Amen. Blessed be his name. Infinitely gracious, ready to forgive. Amen. So let it be. Everywhere present, always omniscient. Amen. our desire for Him to be. Eternally the same, unchanging in His truth, His promise, His nature, we say amen. We are thankful and we bless Him for it. Page four. Our God is just such a God as we want Him to be. And we worship, trust, love, and adore Him for all that He is. He is God indeed. Every attribute of his being is of our beauty, a beauty in our eyes. We rejoice in the fact that Jehovah is God, therefore we bless him in humble adoration.

Now, before we go on, I want to share with you about something about that. I can remember clearly when I began to first hear the words of God's messenger, the preacher that stood in the pulpit here in rescue, my dear Pastor Gene Harmon. I can remember clearly when he first began to describe God, and I think it goes right, I'm pretty sure it goes right to that very first day where I was sitting on the edge of my seat, where surely my sister-in-law poked me in the rib and said, look, you're sitting on the edge of your seat, what's going on here? You're paying attention to the message. I was sitting up on the edge of the seat like this, holding onto the pew in front of me, listening to what this man was saying about a God who deserved to be called God. And it was a great joy to my heart.

I'd heard about God, you know, a God of this or a God of that all my life. I'd come from a religious family. I never remember hearing anything about a God who was sovereign, a God who was loving to a people so loving that he would give himself and die for them. And it never made any sense to my heart until that one day. until that one day when I heard for the first time about the description of one who deserved to be called God.

Back to our handout, second paragraph, page four. Let us then bless the Lord our God, spreading his praise. Listen to the words of Isaiah 42, 10 through 13. Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth Ye that go down to the sea and all that is therein, the isles and the inhabitants thereof, let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit, let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains, let them give glory unto the Lord and declare his praise in the island. The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man. He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war. He shall cry, yea, roar. He shall prevail against his enemies. Isaiah 42, 10 through 13.

We bless God by proclaiming his gospel and seeking others to bless him. Surely if there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, we are in the best and most practical way blessing God when we labor to bring sinners to Christ. Nothing so highly honors Him as the salvation of His elect. Nothing so highly honors our God as faith in Christ. Let us make it our business to spread his praise throughout all the earth.

If you'd like to honor a man, if you really want to honor a man, honor his children. Do good to his sons and daughters. If you wish to bless God, if you really desire to honor God, there is no better way to do so than by giving, by doing good to his children.

When they are sick, visit them. When they are downcast, comfort them. When they are in need, help them. When they are opposed, stand at their side. When they are spoken against, speak for them. And when somebody exposes some evil thing about them, say something good in their favor.

You cannot bless the feet without blessing the head. When you have refreshed the feet, you have refreshed the head. Our Savior says this, he says, insomuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Matthew 25, 40. If they are naked, and you clothe them, if they are sick and you visit them, if they are hungry and you feed them, you bless and honor God, their Father, Christ, their Savior, and the Spirit, their Comforter. Page five.

I can add nothing to the happiness and blessedness of my God, but I can add to your happiness, I can add to your blessedness, Oh Spirit of God, make me to be a blessing to your people. And Don Fortner wrote a poem, he says, out in the highways and byways of life, many are weary and sad. Carry the sunshine where darkness is rife and make the sorrowing glad. Make me a blessing, make me a blessing out of my life, may Jesus shine. Make me a blessing, O Savior, I pray. Make me a blessing to someone today.

And then our next thing and third thing that we see in our text is we are blessed of God. The third thing to consider is this verse declares that blessedness with which the Lord our God has blessed us in Christ. It says, who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings, in heavenly places in Christ." With those words, the apostle gives us reason to bless our God. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us, past tense, all at once, all together, at one time in the eternal past. We bless God by desiring his praise, honor, and glory. He has blessed us by commanding blessedness upon us. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. Those to whom the Almighty gives one spiritual blessing are given all spiritual blessings, eternally and forever.

Now, I want to stop there for a moment. Consider this. Our Lord says this to some unbelieving Jews. He says, you don't believe me because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. You think God's going to give you one blessing and not everything? He says in his word. all the blessings of grace, all the blessings of salvation, all the blessings of time, all the blessings of providence, all the blessings of heavenly glory. He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all If we hear the voice of truth with our heart, and now listen, there are people who hear the word of God with their head and they have an understanding of what salvation is, but they haven't experienced it. To experience salvation is to know in your heart that you are a sinner and Christ has saved you from the sin. You say, well, I don't always believe that. I don't always think that. There's many times that I think I, I'm not sure I'm saved because I sin so much. You're looking at yourself. You're not looking at Christ.

That's what he brings us back to doing over and over and over again. In our weakness, his strength is made perfect. We continue to look to him. We wouldn't look to Him continually if we weren't receiving some of, you know, His blessings. Not some, but His blessings. And if He blesses us with one thing, He blesses us with all things of Christ. That's what that's telling us there.

Page six. He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Excuse me just a moment. The word places is in italics. If you notice that in your Bible there, it was added by our translators. Don Fortner writes, perhaps the word would be best read, heavenlies, let's read it that way, with all spiritual blessings in heavenly heavenlies, or heavenly glories, or heavenly things.

However it is translated, Paul's meaning is that God blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heaven before the world was made. God, our Father, who blessed us in heaven, Christ, our Savior, in whom we are blessed, is in heaven, and all blessings shall at last bring us to heaven, where we shall forever enjoy them perfectly and fully. Spiritual blessings. are blessings pertaining to heavenly things, spiritual things. The Lord Jesus says, my word is spirit. Everything about the truth of God is spiritual. When we read God's word, we need to look at it as a spiritual thing, in a spiritual way.

Blessings that can never decay. They are absolutely secure. They can never decay or be taken away. This blessedness bestowed upon us originated in heaven and brings us to heaven. It is a blessedness that makes us fit for heaven. And it's all in Christ. Again, our brother Don Fortner wrote this. It says, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ. What blessed words these are in Christ. Everything is in Christ.

If we have not yet learned that Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the foundation, essence, and fullness of all divine truth, if we have not yet learned that the message of the Bible and the hope of the gospel is Christ and Him crucified, then we have read the word of God with no profit to our souls. Our religion is a vain show, and we are yet without hope before God. What knowledge we have of this sacred book will only add to our condemnation in the Day of Judgment. Without Christ and Him crucified, we have no forgiveness of sin. no comfort in trouble, no strength in trial, no atonement, no peace or reconciliation with God, no hope in death, no access to God, no door of entrance into heaven. Yet Christ is all. All blessings to God's people are through Him. Without Christ, we are nothing. We have nothing. We can do nothing. It says in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30 through 31, but of Him are ye in Christ Jesus.

That means but of Him, of God Himself, of God the Father are ye in Christ Jesus, who God has made unto us wisdom. The Father has made His Son unto you and I wisdom. He's made him righteousness. He's made him sanctification. He's made him redemption. That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Page seven. All God has for guilty sinners is in Christ and only in Christ. The father loveth the son and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not, the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. That's in John 3, verse 35 through 36.

Listen to these words, Colossians 2, verse 9 and 10. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power. I want to read a question for you folks that was sent to me earlier this week. Let me just pull it up real quick here. Am I to believe or to expect The psalmist experiences you've shared previously now also are not needed in or to be found similar in my life as a saint because Jesus has fulfilled them or because Jesus is them for me. That's exactly right, you are to believe that. There is nothing in this flesh for any of us to look at. And this question is presented by someone who's looking to the flesh.

They felt for some reason that the Bible studies on our Sunday morning Bible studies had made a turn, which they had not. The same message was being preached last Sunday as the message that was preached three or four Sundays before. But for some reason, This person heard things differently and he started to hear Mike speak more boldly about everything we need, we find in our Savior.

People want to call us antinomy and lawless. We don't need the law. The law has been fulfilled by our Savior. That's what this is talking about. That's what I'm talking about here. We are complete. in Him, which is the head and principality of all power. We don't need to look to anything else. We need to look to Christ and Christ alone for all things. That's our blessedness. That's what we have been blessed with, having one that we can look to to fulfill everything for us that we need for eternal salvation.

The love of God is in Christ. It's not in you, it's in His Son, the Lord Jesus. When the covenant of God was made before time began, before the world was created, God the Father said, you're gonna die for my children. You're gonna die for my people and cleanse them from all their sin. Or they can't be in my presence. That's the covenant of God. The love of God is in Christ. The mercy of God is in Christ. The grace of God is in Christ. Without Christ, there's no mercy, there's no love, there's no grace, but only wrath, judgment, and condemnation.

That's what the law is. When the flood came, listen to this, listen to this carefully. When the flood came, There was no mercy other than to those eight souls that were in the ark. The ark is a picture, a type of Christ. We talked about this last Sunday, an article that Paul Mahan wrote about the, you know, Noah was a preacher of righteousness. That's what the scriptures tell us. He's a preacher of righteousness. That means he preached for a hundred years. That's how long it took him to build the ark. A hundred years he preached the righteousness of God found only in Christ and not one soul. Well, eight. Finally, in the end, there were eight. That's it. They say there were millions of people living on earth before the flood.

I'm telling you, when the flood came, there was no mercy, no deliverance anywhere but inside the ark, and the ark was Christ. When the manslayer fled, this is mid-page seven, when the manslayer fled, from the avenger, the one who wanted to kill him, of blood. He found no safety until he entered the city of refuge. You know the story of the city of refuge? That city of refuge was Christ. Brother Don wrote this, he said, when a manslayer fled for refuge, he found no safety until he was in the city.

He might know everything there was to know about the city, It's size, it's gates, it's walls, it's beauty, but he was not safe until he was in the city. Now hear me well, writes Don, you may know everything there is to know about Christ. You may know about him, his person, his work, his doctrine. You may even fight for and defend these things, but no blessing of grace is yours until you are found in Christ by faith. I know that's bold, but that is so true.

We are either in Christ or we will stand before God and answer. We will answer for our sins ourselves. God said to Israel, I will meet with thee upon the mercy seat from between the two cherubims. That's in Exodus 25, 22. Christ is our mercy seat. God meets sinners nowhere else but in Christ. Among the untold millions of redeemed in heaven, there shall not be found a single voice that shall not sing the praises of Christ, the Lamb of God. There, ransom sinners sing, thou art worthy, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy holy blood.

That's in Revelation 5.9. To him alone every knee shall bow. To him, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2.10, page eight.

Every blessing of life and grace is ours only in Christ. In this first chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he uses the words in Christ, or their equivalent, 14 times. He means for us to understand that all grace, all salvation, all blessedness is in Christ. Beware of those who come and Christ plus this or that equals salvation. I'm here to tell you that salvation is of the Lord alone.

All that the triune God has done for us, all he gives to sinners, and all he requires of sinners is in Christ. All spiritual blessings all covenant mercies, election, predestination, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, acceptance, truth, knowledge, and the internal inheritance of God's saints.

Christ is all blessedness and all blessings are in Him. He's not one blessing among many, but all blessings in one. All blessedness is in Christ. All the blessings wherewith God blessed us were conferred upon us in Christ. He, by his merit, purchased them for us as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He, as our head and advocate, as our mediator and surety, as our representative and forerunner, has received them in our name. and by virtue of our union with him, we have the right to them." Again, Brother Don Fortner writes this, he said, behold the transcendent bounty and liberality of our Heavenly Father. He has more than one blessing for his children. He has all spiritual and heavenly blessings for us.

Grace on earth and glory in heaven, grace to enable us to glorify him upon the earth and glory as the reward of grace with himself in heaven. So let's consider in closing Christ. the true blessing. You see, all blessings are in Christ, but that's not all. Christ is the blessing.

How often have we talked about what would heaven be like? Streets of gold, highways of crystal, buildings taller than anything we can think of, a mansion for every participant, Harleys that don't leak oil in the front room, That was a discussion Bill and I love to remind each other of and laugh at back when Bill and I used to ride Harleys. You know, it comes down to this every time. Christ is our blessing, and if we have Christ, we have it all. That's why we know that there's no measurement of rewards in heaven.

There's one reward. There's one reward, and that's Christ. And if you have Christ, you have it all. He is the blessing. Where Christ is not, there is no blessedness, only cursedness. I seek Christ's hand and Christ's blessings in the mercy He bestows upon me, but this makes the blessing sweetest. Christ Himself is my blessing. He gives me light, and He is my light. He gives me life, and He is my life. Christ gives me salvation. And that is wonderful, but this is better. Christ is my salvation. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul. Therefore will I hope in Him. Lamentations 3, verse 24. This is our lot and portion forever. Rejoice, dear brethren. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ.

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