When I was a boy, I used to really love maps. I could (and in fact did) spend hours looking at my atlas, learning about continents, countries, counties, cities, rivers and seas. Even as a young adult living in Islington, I found the A-Z road plan of London almost endlessly fascinating. I probably needed to get out more.
When we moved to Teesside after 18 years in France, we bought a satnav which spared Kathie and me many an argument. The downside of satnavs is that you don’t get an overall picture of the route you’re taking. In 12 years living in Teesside I never really quite learned where everything was.
I just followed the pink line. I didn’t know when I was heading north, south, east or west. All I knew was that at the next roundabout I had to take the second exit – or more likely do a U-turn because I wasn’t paying attention a minute ago.
Ephesians 1 is a bit like a map for the whole journey of Christian living. It’s not like a satnav, just giving you what’s next; it’s big picture all on one grand scale page. You might call it a bird’s eye view (in fact, God’s eye view) of him, us and where it’s all going.
This is the revelation of God’s plan and purposes from all eternity, before creation, before anything existed, into all eternity for you, me, the nations, your family, my cat, the world, everyone, everything, everywhere. This is God’s grand design.
Ephesians, as you may know, was written by a key leader in the early church, the Apostle Paul, and he wrote it to a church he founded and knew well in Ephesus which was one of the five most influential cities in the Roman empire (along with Corinth, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome itself).
Paul writes in v1 “to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful…” That’s where they lived and breathed; this city of perhaps a quarter million people, with its amphitheatre, its markets, its monuments and its pagan temples.
You’re in Stockton. God has placed you in a physical, geographical location. Just as they were “God’s holy people in Ephesus” you are those whom God has set apart, he has distinguished you, he has marked you as different, he has appointed you to be faithful in this place.
But
though they were in Ephesus they had a kind of dual citizenship. And so do you.
Because not only are you in Stockton, if you are a Christian believer, you’re
in Christ as well. In the first 14 verses of Ephesians the expression “in Christ”
or “in him” or “in the one he loves” comes nine times.
You can’t fully understand what it is to be a Christian unless you appreciate what it means to be in Christ. We tend to think of Jesus in my heart, Christ in me. But the New Testament speaks far more about our being in Christ that it ever does of him being in us.
It means this; if you have put your faith in Christ, stand in the position of Christ, and you receive all the blessings of Christ through him. God the Father says of Christ, “this is my beloved son, with him I am well pleased.”
If you’re in Christ, God looks at you and is well pleased because he sees you through the filter of Christ’s perfect, spotless righteousness; his obedience, his goodness, his faith, his moral blamelessness. And all the affection the Father has for his Son he has for you.
As ever with Paul, he crams lots of big ideas into a very small space. It’s like a genie in a bottle.
One of the greatest preachers of the 20th Century, Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, spoke for 17 Sundays on these first 10 verses. 45 minutes every week; that’s nearly 13 hours. I’ve got 20 minutes, 5 of which have gone already! So we’re only going to have time for a very brief outline today.
“To God’s holy people in Ephesus.” Ephesus was a very spiritual kind of place. People would travel from all over to visit the Temple of Diana there, one of the seven wonders of the world. Occultism and superstition were rife. People bought religious tat, did their religious thing, manipulating the gods and goddesses, hoping to be blessed.
People today do feng shui for the same reason. Have you heard of this? People say, “I’m going to move the living room furniture around to balance energy forces in my home and bring harmony to my environment in the hope that I will be blessed.”
You find this quest for blessing in church as well. Some people think, “If I could fast twice a week, God would bless me; if I tithe, God will owe me blessing; if I read three chapters of Scripture every morning, God will have to bless me. These are the things I need to do to make God bless me
But Ephesians 1 says, you can’t make God bless you. God has blessed you. Verse 3; “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Every spiritual blessing. Not necessarily every earthly blessing although I reckon everyone who listens to this has somewhere to live, had breakfast today, has free education, healthcare, clean water, breathable air, law and order, TV, broadband, friends and family. They’re all great but they end when you die.
Spiritual blessings start now and go on forever into eternity. You never lose them. They never fade or lose their sparkle.
And Paul is actually writing this letter in custody, under lock and key. Earthly blessing? Not really. Paul’s been chalking up the days on the wall. “Day one – prison. Day two – nothing happened. Day three – food terrible. Day four – went nowhere. Day five – rats in the cell. Day six – nothing happened again.
Paul is in receipt of a distinct lack of earthly blessings but from his lips in v3-14 come an unconstrained torrent of superlatives about how much God has blessed him (and us) in Christ. In the original Greek, they tell me, it’s a single sentence. Paul can’t contain himself; without pausing for breath he just erupts with a cascade of enthusiasm.
Have you ever shaken a coke can before opening it? Shake the tin like mad for a minute, then give it to an unsuspecting friend and stand back. I confess I’ve done this a few times and it never loses its comedy appeal. Well, what Paul pours out here reminds me of that explosive surge of frothy, sweetness.
For a start, it says (v4-5) that you’ve been, not overlooked or ignored, but chosen - in fact predestined. It says God wants you, purposes you, to be holy and blameless, not shamefully riddled with guilt.
Some people have a problem with this. Maybe you’re one of them. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute. I chose God. I can even remember a day when I took the decision to become a follower of Jesus. I weighed it up, I counted the cost, I got on my knees and asked Jesus to be my Saviour and Lord. How can you say that he chose me?”
I read a testimony online this week; Here’s what it said. “I hated God. I have 666 tattooed on my butt, the Virgin Mary with devil horns on my leg, and an angel hanging herself on my arm. I picked up the Bible. I was going to read it so I could tell people why I hated God and how stupid it was. I found out that Jesus was real and not just the main character in an old novel. My life was changed forever. Before I got done with Matthew, I was a believer, started going to church, and was saved.”
Question 1: did God go ahead of that guy? Undoubtedly. If you start out with the number of the beast tattooed on your buttocks and you end up as a passionate follower of Jesus that cannot be all your own work!
Question 2: did that guy make a real decision, choose independently to leave his old life behind and commit his future to Christ? Undoubtedly.
Salvation,
you see, has a human perspective and a God perspective. From our standpoint, we
use our free will to choose to become Christians. If you haven’t already done
that, I strongly encourage you to do it today. But from God’s standpoint, he sovereignly
chooses to give life to whoever he wants.
Think of a cylinder. Viewed from one angle this is round. But from another viewpoint this is rectangular. Which is it? Both are correct. It’s both rectangular and circular. But there is a further viewpoint, God’s eternal viewpoint, where you can see how both are true and do not contradict each other.
And the bottom line is this; as C. H. Spurgeon put it; “Among the lost souls of hell, there is not one who can say, “I went to Jesus and he refused me.”
It says (v5) that you’ve been adopted, not excluded or snubbed. It says God took pleasure to welcome you into his family; he wasn’t reluctant or grudging about it, nobody forced his arm behind his back.
God had in mind, even before he created the heavens and the earth, that he would adopt you. He delighted in choosing you, and decided to lavish favour on you, knowing you would turn out a sinner, and that you would never really deserve it.
He knew the worst about you, things perhaps that only you know, and he factored that in to his decision to make you part of his family. All this was in his mind from before the beginning.
Therefore, your position has nothing to do with your performance, your qualifications, your CV, or your talents. Your status is secured forever in God’s irreversible purposes.
So God will not change his mind about adopting you. He’s never going to say, “Oh my gosh! I’m surprised at you. I’m disappointed with the way you turned out.” He always knew everything.
It says it was a work of grace, freely given kindness, absolutely undeserved. So there’s no small print to use against you down the line.
It says (v7) you were redeemed. This is a word you sometimes hear watching football.
A goalkeeper lets a tame shot slip through his gloves and into the net. It’s an absolute howler. It will feature in calamitous YouTube videos for years to come. All the cameras are on him. It’s a career low.
But then, the same keeper goes on to pull off some stunning reflex saves and he ends up heroically stopping the decisive penalty in the shoot out to win the trophy for his team. And the commentator will say, “the goalkeeper has redeemed himself.”
So redemption means this: something dreadful happens, but then something unbelievably good happens after. And the really good thing completely outshines the bad thing to the extent that the bad thing just doesn’t matter anymore.
That’s true for every Christian. The really bad thing; I was without a hope, without God, without a future, deserving of hell, broken, messed up, lost and spiritually dead. Then Jesus found me. He cleaned me up, sorted me out, cleared my debts and made me new. That’s what redeemed means.
Then it says (v7) your sins were all forgiven and forgotten, not kept on record in a little book to remind you just in case.
It says (v8) that God lavished all this blessing on us. He didn’t count it out like Scrooge and show grace grudgingly or half-heartedly.
It says (v9) that he let us in on the secret of his eternal purposes; he gave us understanding and revelation “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’s plan is big scale; reaching every limit of time and space, stretching from before time began to beyond time and into eternity, and including all things; everything, everywhere.
The God who holds everything together also sees and cares about every beat of your heart. And this is the assurance he wants you to enjoy as a confident and loved child.
“Does
God really love me?” Yes. “Is God really in charge?” Yes. “Do I really belong to
him?” If you have an ongoing faith in Jesus, yes. Be blessed – because, in
Christ, you already are.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 6 September 2020
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