Spiritual Blessings

So we start a new school year, rebuilding as we do every school year. So welcome to the rebuilding process. This year, we’re going to start doing some new things, and some old things and all the while, we’re going to figure out how to create the vibrant community that we have been praying for. Not just a church people attend for religious sake, but a place people can come to as a home away from home and with people that they can trust and rely on. Therefore, we’re going to take a few months looking at the Epistle to the Ephesians written by the Apostle Paul to a small, yet growing church in Ephesus. The main idea of Ephesians looks to explain what the church should look like—that is the body of Christ. In my reflections on this and on my prayers about our church, I have often stopped to think about whether we are embodying the true nature of the church. So in this series, I want all of us to reflect on whether we are embodying what the body of Christ, that is, the church, should look like. With that being said, let’s start. Ephesians 1:3-14. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Here’s who we need frame our minds and hearts in light of this passage: we need to recognize and understand and receive that God’s blessings to us, that is, His confirmation for us to be and do something is already here within us because we have faith that we are saved through Jesus Christ. That was really big, so I’m going to break it down to you again starting with verse three. We are blessed – here to be “blessed” means that we are consecrated (set apart for) by God with “every spiritual blessing” from heaven – or favors from heaven. Paul says to the church in Ephesus, the people of Ephesus; let’s praise God for setting us apart to receive here on Earth, in our lifetimes, favor that we would only see or experience in heaven. Over the past few years, as a church, we’ve been saying to ourselves, I’ve been saying it audibly to all of you, “wait for it, wait for it.” But that was wrong. We need to stop waiting to live out a heavenly faith until we get big. The Bible says we already received it and in fact, we should be praising God because we already received it and can live into it. Here’s the other thing about what we’re seeing here. He says when we have faith in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, we were taken to the very place we need to be in order to maximize God’s setting apart for us. Let me tell you how we need to manifest this blessing here and now in our lives. I’ve said it all summer, that we need to change the world around us, but what steps have we taken? Where do we want to take that? What is it that we see ourselves changing because of the blessings we received from God? I say this in full confidence because I know, as you should know that we are the focus of God’s love. It was God’s love that prompted Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross despite the fact that we were sinners. This is what the book of Romans teaches us—nobody is good and nobody is looking for God. God had to take it upon Himself to give us knowledge of himself in order that we would know and recognize him. So before we even had an opportunity to be wrongfully sinful and even after we were wrongfully sinful, we received God’s grace and His blessing by his adoption of us. I can’t begin to tell you how mind boggling that is. If you imagine what’s going on here in this first paragraph of this letter, it’s this: God has already set us apart, that is what it means by blessing for favor, which is also blessing. He does this knowing how we fail, knowing how we fall short, knowing that we are undeserving of it. So he does it and we receive it. If we haven’t received it, we should. And if we did receive it, we have to acknowledge it by praising God, that is by blessing him—because we can’t actually bless God as he blesses us, but we can worship him for setting us apart and making us holy. Here’s the problem, we don’t do that in this church. We don’t do that in our lives. We don’t live our lives like we’re set apart by God. We live it like we’re miserably fallen and helpless. We worship God in church, like it’s a religious activity as opposed to being a blessing. We treat church activities like a ritual, as opposed to an act of consecration. I want to turn around now and look at verses 7-10 again. When you look at the word redemption here, it’s not just salvation—it’s encompassing of something more than having a price paid—it intones to the reader or hearer here, that when we find ourselves at redemption or being redeemed by Christ’s love for us represented by death on the cross, we are being set free. There is an absolute freedom in this redemption. It’s a freedom to be who God created inside all of us to be. To know that freely, but to be uninhibited by anybody else. So we can shamelessly live into it. About ten years ago, I had some strange person come to my mom and tell her that my dad died so that I could live outside of the shadow of my dad. Which was weird, funny and strange all at the same time. My dad was a pastor, and my career had nothing to do with it. In fact, I was making my own waves in my career. At the time my dad had passed, I haven’t seen my dad in about two years. He took his sabbatical year to do missions work in China, Tibet, North Korea and then Turkey before he began his search for the next step of his calling out in New Mexico helping people abandoned by the coyotes in a city called Las Cruces. But this person essentially said, if my dad had not died, I would never have been free to live into the calling God had given me. I guess this person was trying to make my mom feel better or something, but essentially, even the hardship of losing a parent or a spouse unexpectedly at a young age, is a way of God consecrating us for his favor and ultimately his revealed plan for our lives. Sure we could go without the hardship and ambiguity, but what fun is that? We sit here, small and naked as a church, but even this is not an undoing. No this is consecration, we must recognize it, and live into it as freedom given to us by God for the fulfillment of his glory for his praises. So as we get smaller, we sing louder, we pray bigger, we take more faithful steps toward God in heaven, knowing that we have received blessing. I want to lay out for you what that means for our church here in 2012 and 2013 because there are implications for this. 15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. – Ephesians 1:15-23 Here’s the first thing we’re going to pray together as a group this year: we are going to pray that as we are small body of Christ, in the here and now, that God gives us, through the Holy Spirit, “wisdom and revelation” or simply put, the vision to see very clearly and tangibly the exact reason we are here on this earth for His purpose for our lives. We are too easily overcome by the vast shadow of why we are here. It is time we find out from God clearly and tangibly why exactly we’re here, instead of trying to feel our way through it. God is giving us clarity through Jesus because in Jesus, is the answer or fruition of our lives. Let’s look at verse 22 and 23 and I’m going to conclude here and give us some time after prayer for some silent reflection and prayer to conclude our praise to God this afternoon. It is something we haven’t done in the busyness of our lives, but now we are able to because we have officially slowed down and shrunk with all the college kids going back to school and all the young kids having exhausted their summer activities. It is just you, me and God here and it’s time to pray and reflect. But before we go into prayer, I want to paraphrase for you what Paul writes to the church of Ephesus here in 22 and 23. He says, Christ is the head of the church, the church being the body of people who follow Christ, thereby becoming the instruments for Christ’s actions and speaking in the world here and now, a world that he was given dominion over, by which, as the body of Christ speak, work and dominate to what God had ordained for it originally. With that in mind, I want you to look at your neighbors around you, and then look at yourself and ask yourself what is the vision God gives you to fulfill in freedom by following Him as the head of us.