Bringing Praise To His Glory Series

Date: April 26, 2009

Title: Bringing Praise To His Glory

Text: Eph. 1:7-14

Subject:

Complement:

Main Idea:

Intro: I have felt a bit like Job recently in regards to my cars. One car was our 1996 VW and it died. Then my Durango had its transmission die, then two Friday’s ago my Volvo had it’s engine blow. So, from three cars to zero and unfortunately we have had to get a new transmission installed and are looking at purchasing a car.

One thing about buying cars is that there are thousands of options! All sorts of things that are added on to entice you to buy. The list goes on and on, moon roofs, power door locks, alloy wheels instead of steel, radio with MP3…

What is really great, though, is when you buy a car and later on find out that something came with the car you weren’t aware of. I remember buying a car a few years back and we had test drove it, heard the salesman go on and on about all the features and sort of tuned him out. Well, a week or so later, I’m driving the car and I flip open the arm rest and there I find a great treasure! An added feature I didn’t know I had! They had this loose change thing that I could put all my coins! How cool is that! And, it was spring loaded.

I was so thrilled I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my wife, Pat! “Honey, come out to the car and look at this!”

Patiently she comes and then says, “Yes honey, that’s nice!”

Then she walks away mumbling something about boys and their toys”, but I didn’t really here her because I was hunting around for change to put in the spring loaded coin holder. This discovery was going to revolutionize car ownership and driving!

I share all this, because I believe there are some added features to this life we call Christian that some of us are not even aware of, or we have forgotten about and I hope that once we are made aware, we can live more fully! We can learn to embrace these benefits and enjoy life more completely!

Background:

Last Sunday we started to study together this letter written to the church in Ephesus and we saw that Paul wanted them to know just how blessed they were to have all the riches they have in Christ. He started out by saying, “praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” Paul was excited to be able to write to those early Christians and us today about the added features, the blessings we have in Christ!

So today we are going to continue where we left off last week at verse 6.

As we read this text, it is obvious that Paul is excited about Christianity. In the Greek, these first twelve verses, 202 words, form one long, very complex sentence. It almost seems as if Paul gets a little carried away. In fact, one commentator says, "These verses are like a snowball rolling down the hill, going faster and getting bigger each second." As Paul writes about how God has blessed us and the benefits of being a Christian, he finds it difficult to stop. For Paul, knowing Christ was clearly the greatest thing he could ever imagine. And, Friends, today it is my hope that God will use His Word to remind us of the marvelous benefits of knowing Jesus, and to help us better realize how great it is to be a Christian. Let’s pray that would happen.

PRAY

Can anyone imagine what the theme of the Bible is?

I. In Christ We Have The Spiritual Blessing Of Redemption. (vss. 7-8)

A. Biblical redemption is a gift that God purchased by His Son’s death. (v.7)

1. Redemption is the theme of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation!

a) If someone asks you, “What is the theme of the entire Bible?” you are correct in answering them by saying, “Redemption!”

b) One great theological scholar by the name of B.B. Warfield wrote, “There is not one of the titles of Christ which is more precious to Christian hearts than ‘Redeemer.’”

2. The problem is, what does redemption mean?

a) When we think of redemption the first thing that comes to my mind is redeemable bottles.

b) We can take our bottles to the redemption center and they “buy back” the bottles from us.

c) The entire theme of the Bible is God’s buying back a relationship with humankind!

d) In the garden, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God until the Fall.

e) Then from there on, all the rest of the Bible is the story of God buying that same kind of relationship back again.