This morning we're starting a new sermon series out of the
book of Ephesians. Paul the Apostle wrote this
letter of the Ephesians to the church at Ephesus.
He did this to remind them to to teach them about who they were
in Christ, what they had in Christ, and then how to live out
that what they had in Christ. And this is a reminder that we
need to remind ourselves as well, in our time here at our
church and this church, what we have in Christ.
And how does that translate into daily behavior?
The letter to the Ephesians is a very short letter in my Bible
and my hard copy, it only covers about 7 pages.
That's a very short letter. Letters are simply written
documents that convey a message from the writer to the reader.
Sometimes letters can be long, sometimes short.
Sometimes they bear good news, sometimes bad news.
Sometimes they're written to teach, other times just to
inform of events and facts. Sometimes they're happy,
sometimes they're sad. In our day, we write letters
still, mostly e-mail, but we still write letters.
And I remember back in the day when I was young, there was an
Internet and so I would write a letter to a friend.
I would write a handwritten letter, stuff it in the mail and
the envelope, stick, stick, stick, a stamp on there and send
it off. And I might get a letter a month
later. Now we write a letter on an
e-mail and get it the same day or text instant.
When I think of letter writing, I imagine maybe something like a
body of water, maybe a lake, for instance.
It can be large. It can be small, but what's
visible on the surface does not always reveal what's below the
surface. For instance, a lake may have a
large surface area, but it can be very shallow, like Erie for
instance. This to the South here.
I don't know how many of you knew this, but Lake Erie is
about 210 feet deep at its deepest.
I took picture of a of a of a satellite map.
These are the Great Lakes in in Canada or in the in the US.
There's Lake Huron, a Superior Lake MI, Lake Huron, Lake
Ontario, Lake Erie. There's Lake Ontario.
There's 5 Great Lakes on the surface.
They're just puddles of water. That's all it looks, that's all
we see. But that tells us very little
about what's beneath. Take a cross section look,
that's a lake. Lake Superior is about 1300 feet
deep. Lake MI is about 900.
Lake like Huron's about 700, like here's only 210, like
Ontario is again 800. It tells us very little on the
surface. You don't see that.
As I was reading the letter of Ephesians, that's what came to
my mind. I thought, wow, this is deep.
What Paul is writing here. It's not some shallow teaching
or some shallow information piece.
And what we will learn as we go through this sermon series.
We'll do some deep diving in this one.
We went through the book of Judges recently, and that's a
book of information and history. There's principles that we glean
that we want to learn from. That's good and that's true, but
covers the vast territory, a vast region, area of time, and
so on. But Ephesians is different.
It's small, it's short, but incredibly deep.
It's focused on what God has done and how that applies to us
today, what we have in Christ. And as we go through this, we'll
come through some of the teachings of Paul.
And what we find is that as we read different writers and
different commentators, they vastly disagree.
They don't agree on this. They don't agree about this and
they don't agree about that and have their own interpretation
here, their own interpretation there.
And I want to make reference this morning to some of these
different interpretations of what people say about what Paul
means. And I'm, I'm, I'm of the opinion
here in this body right now and listening online, we let people
say, oh, that's not what it means or that's not what it
means. It means this or it means that,
and we may not agree, but I do have some very clear thoughts
that I want to present what I believe it teaches.
So the plan is to go deep, look at Paula's writing and seek to
understand and apply it to our lives, to live it out.
So our sermon title is our Blessings in Christ.
You know that many people who claim to be Christians don't
experience the blessings of Christ.
They spend a lot of time worrying about this and that and
the other in life, and they don't live deep, they live
shallow. I'm going to ask you to raise
your hands, but do you live shallow or do you live deep?
And they may be going to church, they may be reading the Bible
and so on, and they do believe in God, but very insecure in
their walk, very confused. And then in our age of identity
struggle, put that in there. Yet it becomes very difficult.
One of the issues specifically that our culture is now engaged
in is identity struggle. And if we forget who we are in
Christ or what we have in Christ, the blessings we have in
Christ, we'll miss so much. To Paul, everything always was
all about Jesus and Jesus alone In Paul's life, Jesus was
everything. And whatever Paul did, he
focused first on Jesus, who Jesus was, what Jesus did, what
he, Paul had in Jesus. And from there he'd branch out
and everything had to line up with Jesus.
So this morning let's read Ephesians chapter 1 beginning
verse one. We read this Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ by the will of God to the Saints who are in Ephesus
and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
in Christ, 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, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus
Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us
accepted in the Beloved. How many times in this short
passage does he talk about Jesus Christ?
In Him, in Christ, and so on? Well, let's first look at how
does Paul introduce himself? He wrote the letter after all.
What's his identity? Paul identifies himself as an
apostle of Jesus. I don't think he had an identity
struggle. He first tells us his name, then
second is ministry. You know how people today in our
world, you get a business card or you see somebody's title on
a, on a magazine, There's letters behind it.
MA master or something. Master degree or PhD, meaning
doctor degree, or maybe CEO, meaning chief executive officer.
And there's a whole bunch of those things.
Paul never referenced himself as to what he was trained in or the
job he had trained in early in life.
When Paul references himself, it's always in relation to his
calling or position in Christ Jesus.
Another thing, I just want to go to a little bit of history on
Paul here. Before he was Paul, he was first
called Saul. He was born as a Jew in the city
of Tarsus. And what's also important in
Paul's life, he was also a Roman citizen by birth, which
obviously meant his dad was a Roman citizen as well.
That was a huge deal in this time.
Another thing about Paul, he was very educated for his time.
He was steeped and just saturated and marinated in
Jewish religion and culture. And to compare what kind of
teaching and education Paul had, one might perhaps say maybe he
went to the Harvard of his time or to Yale or Princeton,
something like that. Anyway, he was trained at the
highest level, the best known, the high reputable teacher,
Gamaliel. He of all people was his
teacher, but all of what he had before he was a follower of
Christ somehow never gets mentioned after he becomes a
follower of Jesus. He had a complete change.
Paul never once in his letters talks about I Paul the Roman
citizen trained by Gemalion in the givener whatever the
university of so and so. He never does that.
He talks Paul an apostle of Jesus, served of Jesus, slave of
Christ and so on. He identifies himself only as
who he is in Christ, never his Jewish credentials that he had
before he was a Christian. His role, his calling was
central to everything he had, his whole existence, everything
about him, all of it centered around his calling in position
as an apostle. It was not that Paul himself had
decided on this course in life as an apostle.
He writes here in Ephesians that his calling was by the will of
God. Let's look a little bit also
what led up to him becoming a Christian?
His ministry as an apostle was a calling Early on in Paul's life
when he was still Saul, we find he was a persecutor of the
church. He hated the church, he hated
Jesus, he hated the apostles. He hated everything about the
church. And when in Acts chapter 8 and
9, Stephen was stoned to death, Saul was a young man at the time
and he was agreeing to it. He was supporting that in Acts
chapter 8 verse three. I won't read that.
He went into a very he went and started going and persecuting
the church, dragging people off and putting them in prison.
But then in Acts Chapter 9, something interesting happens.
Saul was on his way to Damascus doing what he believed was the
will of God as a good Jew would, following the law as he thought
he was. He was blind, but he was thought
he was doing the right thing. On his way to Damascus, he's
going to take some more Jews to from a Damascus to Jerusalem and
put them in prison. And he thought he was doing the
right thing. He's on his way to Damascus and
all of a sudden there's a great light shines around him and he
falls and he hears a voice from the light says, Saul, Saul,
where are you persecuting me? And he says, Who are you, Lord?
And the voice says, I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting.
It's hard for you to kick against the goads.
Some translations say, against the bricks.
Trembling and fearful, he replies, Lord, what do you want
me to do? He said, the voice says, arise
and go into the city and you'll be told what to do.
Those are the voice words of Jesus.
So Saul got up, was blind and was led by the hand and went
into the city. And he fasted for three days,
not eating or drinking. He no longer persecuted
Christians. He now surrendered his life to
Jesus, the one he tried to persecute before.
It was not that he intentionally had wanted to do wrong.
He thought he was doing the right thing, but he was blind.
Now in Damascus, he's physically blind.
But spiritually now you can see. We find further in Acts that God
spoke to a disciple named Ananias and told him go to a
certain St. called straight, meet Saul, lay his hands on him
that he may receive his sight. He's not very willing.
I know this guy, Saul. He's a persecutor, persecuting
your believers. And the Lord says I've chosen
him as a vessel of mine to go and take my name to the Gentiles
and and so on. That's all.
In Acts chapter, Chapter 9, Ananias does as he's told, lays
his hands on Saul, He receives his sight, Paul's baptized, and
from then on he becomes one of them that he had been
persecuting. And then later his name is
changed to Paul. In reading and studying Paul, we
never find one single time ever that he shrank back or
complained about his lot in life.
He considered it a privilege to suffer for the name of Jesus.
And I just want to repeat he never had intentions of
disobeying God, Jehovah God. He did what he did in ignorance.
He believed he was doing the will of God.
And when he met Jesus, the light went on and he suffered much for
following Jesus. So all the things, the hardships
and the struggles and the difficulties that came his way,
he accepted as part of this is what a disciple of Jesus called
to do. So here in the letter of Ephesus
to Ephesus, Paul writes to the church.
He's an apostle of Jesus, Jesus Christ by the will of God.
And as far as we know, this letter was actually written from
prison or from a place called house arrest, not quite sure.
But he was not a free man when he wrote this letter.
Who were the Ephesians? Well, briefly, the Ephesians
were in the Ephesian church, was in a church in Ephesus, a port
city, important Roman city and an Asia Minor, and was a
thriving idol making place as well.
And so Paul had spent some time there and he says to the Saints
or in Ephesus faithful in Christ Jesus.
There's a record in Acts chapter, I think it's believed
19 where we read that Paul had come to the city, starts a
church and trouble develops and there's this idol making factory
or business and guy named Demetrius building these little
silver idols and trouble erupts. And then he didn't go to prison.
Paul didn't go to prison there and it became a big riot there.
Gospel was taking hold, was taking root, and things were not
going well. So let's look a little bit at
what are Saints now. Saints are people set apart for
Christ, grounded in Christ and live separate from the world.
So trying to get a background picture here, What's happening
here, All of us who are followers of Jesus here this
morning, today we're set apart. We're Saints as the Bible teach
us, and at the end of the passage here, Paul writes to the
faithful in Christ. That word in Christ or in him is
key. In this passage.
We want to keep that in mind. In him is key.
We see here the relationship connection.
When a person is in Christ, that person has a relationship with
God. The word relationship is
mentioned in some translations, but not in all.
The NIVI mean the new King James or King James does not mention
relationship, but the the new living translation does.
And there's some others I think that might as well, but the
repeated reference here is to us in him to we one body and so on.
And I would also mention here for us this year at in 2026, all
EMC is the year of connections. And so this lends itself well to
that. He says in verse 2, grace to you
peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So here we see the shepherd heart of Paul speaking grace and
peace to his readers and again, knowing where Paul was when he
wrote this, this adds depth to the text.
And as far as we know, again, Paul was not a free man when he
wrote this. Paul focused on the spiritual
well-being of the Saints at Ephesus and he brought into
focus the source of peace and grace.
Peace and grace in our lives comes from God the Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ. The first few verses were not
that unique from his other letters.
He has other letters where he writes and very similar
introductions, but now we come to a part of the letter that go,
that start. Now it starts getting deep.
It goes deep very quickly. This is where a lot of people
have very different views and very different interpretations
of what it means. Verse 3, blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Now again, this is deep and it's not as deep as it's going to
get. There's connection here.
Our spiritual blessings, God's grace are standing in Christ.
All of it is in Christ. In other words, the nature and
character of God are revealed in the Lord Jesus.
Again, the nature and character of God are revealed in the Lord
Jesus. So when we see Jesus, we don't
see him physically, but we know his character.
We know his teachings to the Ephesians he's writing.
That's who God was. That's how God is.
He's our Savior, but yet also he's God.
And again, we'll see in the following following verses as we
go through the relationship factor here is core, very key
part of what Paul is teaching. And again he says, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
He brings that in repeatedly. But here's where it gets
difficult. Verse four and five, 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, having
predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself
according to the good pleasure of his will.
And it goes on. But let's stop there.
Now. This is getting deeper yet.
What's he saying? This is this is where you ask
different Bible teachers, different pastors, different
denominations, they give very, very different responses to
this. A lot of discussions and debates
and different church groups happens over this.
Volumes have been written defending one view or another
and the debate goes on. Today people go on arguing over
different points of view on what this means.
What I want to say this morning may well be dismissed by someone
that's incorrect. Incorrect at best, maybe heresy
at worst. I'm OK with that.
I want us to see what Paul is saying, not some interpreter,
and how what he says aligns with what he says elsewhere in other
scriptures and what the Bible says in general on the matter of
being chosen and predestined. Sometimes it's important to not
just look at what a passage says.
Also, look what it does not say. Remember again, in verse one,
Paul refers to the readers as Saints.
What are Saints? They're believers.
They're saved. They're walking with Jesus.
They've repented of their sin, living in relationship with
Jesus, people in Christ. That's the people group Paul is
writing to now. He says in verse 4, chose us in
him. Let's pause.
What does chose mean? That's a decision.
That's an action. In this case, Paul is saying God
decided to choose us in Christ. Let's break this down to its
individual parts. Who's chosen?
We are US, meaning the the readers.
When we read this letter. We've repented of our sin.
We're following Jesus. This means us today.
It is us here at this church, those of us who believed and are
repented and are children of God.
That's number one. Number two, where did God choose
us? It says in him, not outside of
him. All who are chosen by God are
chosen in His Son Jesus Christ. Now the, the third question
here, when did he choose us? Let me just pause there and get
back to that a bit later. This I want to say go to
question #4 first, then come back to #3 it says before the
creation of the world. But what does that mean?
OK #4 what did he choose us for? And here's where it gets and I
have listened to people talk about this and preach on this.
And the first thing they say for salvation, it's not what it
says. It says that we should be holy
and without blame. That's what it says.
Remember, Paul is referring to saved people.
God chose them in Christ, that they should be holy, set apart
for for Christ without blame. He does not say chose in him for
salvation, not what he says. It's important to note that I
understand there are people who read this chose us in him.
They jump to for salvation. But that's not what the text
says. What is in the text is that the
Saints are chosen, that we should be holy and without blame
before him in love. OK, now let's go back to
question #3 this is before the foundation of the world.
What about that phrase I said before?
We're going to do some deep diving.
This is deep. Let's look at the part that says
from before the foundation of the world.
Let's read verse 4 again. I'll put it on the board.
Just as He chose us in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him.
Again, the US here means God's people.
We were chosen from before time. That's what He says, that we
should be blaming this and holy, holy and blameless.
Listen carefully. This does not mean that before
time we were holy and blameless. It's not what it says.
Listen carefully. Or that from before time we were
saved. It's not saying that either.
God knew from before time that sin would come.
The Bible clearly teaches that that he would send a Savior,
That through Jesus Christ, all who would repent would be saved.
So God's plan for His people is to be holy and blameless.
That predates creation and human existence.
That's his plan. What it does not say is that God
decided to choose who would be saved and who would be
condemned. That's not what this passage
says. I'm aware there's some passage
of Scripture that some people might point to and argue, and
those passages God did decide beforehand who to save and who
to condemn. If you take an A passage
isolated from what's before and what's after from the rest of
Scripture and read just that, then you could understand it
that way. But that's not the total
interpretation of Scripture. It doesn't align with God's
character how it's described in Scripture.
My understanding is that Scripture must be compared with
Scripture. I firmly believe that God works
in relationship and partnership with human beings.
We find that right at the start of Genesis, God created Adam in
his image, gave him a job to do, Adam and Eve, and he gave them
an assignment, all in the context of relationship.
And they had the freedom to disobey or to obey.
It was not predestined, not predetermined.
That was their free will and this does not negate or cancel
out the fact that we're saved by grace through faith and not
through works. When salvation happens, when
salvation happens, it's because Jesus loved us, called us, we
respond, repent and believe. That's relationship.
That's the channel. Adam and Eve, they had a
relationship, they decided to disobey then Cain and Abel.
Abel pleased God, Cain didn't. We have the story of Noah
pleased God and and God used him to rescue to perpetuate the
human race. Abraham, father of the faithful
story of Isaac and Rebecca story of Jacob, story of Joseph, Moses
and the Israelites at every single level and connection
there was relationship, relationship, relationship.
You can't deny it always a relationship factor.
Every time we you, I we have a say in our eternal destiny.
The text simply says God chose those who would be saved to be
holy and blameless. If people get the idea that God
from before time choose some to be saved and some to be
condemned, they cannot get that through consistent
interpretation of this or any other passage.
Let's read verse 5 again. Having predestined us to
adoption as sons by Jesus to himself according to the good
pleasure of His will. Paul does use the word
predestined, but let's pay close attention.
Predestined to adoption as sons, not for salvation.
The people in question are saved people.
God predestined saved people to be adopted as sons.
This was God's plan from before the foundation of the world.
Do I read this passage? Salvation is not the topic in
this passage here. Choosing people who are in
Christ to be predestined, that is.
And those are the blessings we have.
Let me use an illustration to bring a bit of clarity.
Analogies always breakdown. Somehow they don't always work
and they work for some but not for everything.
Imagine you want to take a trip on a plane.
Let's say you want to go to Vancouver and British Columbia.
You go online, you buy a ticket and you pay the ticket and you
have flight number so and so at airport number, such airport
such and such. And you go to the airport, let's
say to Toronto and you go into the airport and then to the to
the terminal. And then you find your gate and
then you find your NUM flight number and your destiny.
And it says Vancouver, That's you.
You get on that plane, you're predestined to get to Vancouver
because you decide to get on that plane.
That plane's going to Vancouver. No matter when you buy the
ticket, the plane's going to go there.
And if you get on that plane, you're predestined to go there.
Then there's another plane, there's beside that gate that
says Saint John, Newfoundland, sitting on the East Coast.
The plane you get on Predestined's where you'll go.
And through the window you can see the two planes getting ready
and so on. And you get on your right plane
and off you go, and you're predestined to go to Vancouver.
I know it's not a perfect illustration, but it helps to
understand a little bit that we have a part to play.
We have a role in this. The truth is clear.
God chose and predestined all people who repent and turn from
their sins, who put their faith and trust in Jesus to be holy
and blameless and predestined them for adoption of sons.
That is part of the blessings that we find here.
God does not want us to just be saved.
That's a great point, but that's the starting point.
To be saved from sin, from the judgement of death, is great
blessing. It's something we need to always
keep in mind and heart and remember what we've been saved
from and for what purpose. But then we need to go a step
further and remind ourselves that what God did already,
before he created the world, he made a plan.
Before he created the world, He made a plan for those who would
heed His call, who would repent, that he would choose and
predestine them to a holy life, blameless life.
Maybe you're here this morning. When did God choose me?
Well, if you've heard the gospel, if you repented of your
sins, you are in a relationship with Jesus, then you're chosen
and you're predestined to live holy and blames before God.
It's that simple. I know there are some who say
salvation has nothing to do with people.
It's everything to God, but everything about God, only about
God. God does the calling, He does
the the saving and so on, and we have nothing to do with it.
Yes we do. We must repent, we must obey.
That's not works for salvation, but that's a response.
In the end, it is relationship based and God never has ever
forced anyone into relationship with Him.
It's not, as some would say, irresistible or it's not about
election. This is simply God, what God has
in store for us. It's not correct to say that we
have no say. We have no part in this.
We do, and for all who received the message of grace and
accepted to repentance and faith, they're the ones as he
says. I'll read verse 4 again.
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, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ
himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the
praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in
the beloved. The end goal here, verse 6 to
the praise of the glory of his grace.
That's what it's all about. We will never fully know or
understand in this life what God has done for us.
We know some of what he did. It's he we know enough.
We know what we need to do, what we're called to do that we need
to obey and through our worship, God is glorified, God is
honored, and we've been blessed beyond measure.
And next time you want to continue with this theme.
And by the way, for those of you who have done sincere study, you
will know that the 1st 13 verses of Ephesians, chapter one in the
original language that Paul wrote, this was just one long
sentence. That's how intense and how
passionate, how deep this was with him.
He wanted the Ephesians to focus on God, to be reminded of God
and to understand the blessings they have in him, what God has
done for them. So what does this matter for you
and I today? We have been blessed in Christ
beyond what we can grasp. This is incredibly deep.
Our understanding is very limited how truly deep this is.
We'll never be able to fully go to the depths of this, grasp it
fully. We are chosen as Saints to be,
to be, to obey him, to glorify Him.
He's predestined the Saints for adoption of sons.
So if you're a follower of Jesus, you're chosen your
predestined. If you've not yet repented, then
you're not in that group. The choice to repent and believe
is our choice. We've been given that choice.
And to all who make that decision to repent and believe
to be holding the blameless. They're predestined for adoption
as sons in God's family for His praise and His glory.
Let us pray. Lord, we pray that we'd be
humble. Lord, help us to surrender
completely to you. Lord, You've given us so much.
Without you, we could have never come to you.
You came to us, You called us, you invited us, You called us to
repent, You called us to follow. And it means something or you
call us to obedience. And we find so many passages in
the New Testament where this is explained over and over and over
again. Help us, Lord, to be mindful of
it. Help us, Lord, to keep you
always before our hearts and minds.
We're chosen by you and destined for holiness and relations with
you as as your adopted children. Thank you, Lord, for your
continued grace to us. May we live it out faithfully in
your name, Amen.