Knowing Who I Really Am Series

KNOWING WHO I REALLY AM – EPHESIANS 1:1-14

INTRO

Christmas and New Year bring into focus just how much the vast majority of us value our relationships more than anything else. This is a continual source of either our joy or our pain – For at Christmas time we become acutely aware of the pain of relationships we have lost – sometimes through bereavement or family breakdown. And at the same time we celebrate and enjoy the relationships we value.

In fact, our relationships are more important to us than any anything else.

Example Evidence for this, if we need it, can be found in such things as the last messages sent or spoken by those who knew they were about to die in the 9/11 plane crashes. The final messages were all expressions of love towards those they had meaningful relationships with. No-one left a last message to make sure their car was serviced regularly or about maintaining the service contract on the central heating boiler.

POINT

I would go further and say that if we were to ask the question, ‘Who am I?’ we would not find the answer to this by looking at our possessions or to our career. The answer lies in our relationships.

Now that we have reached the dawn of a new year and a new decade we might how can we make the most of the future God has given us?

A good place to begin would be by giving some thought to our relationships = in our ‘be-ing’ rather than our ‘doing’; in who we are becoming rather than what we might achieve.

And what better place to begin than by focusing first and foremost on our relationship with God as our Father. And what better part of Scripture to begin with than Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

READING: Ephesians 1:1-14

QUESTION

How have you begun the New Year?

• Some of us have begun the year with resolutions.

• Others have rededicated themselves to Jesus Christ as Lord.

• Some of us are looking for guidance

• Others for answers to prayer

THESIS The best way to begin is to focus first of all NOT on what we will choose to do BUT on our relationship with God as our Father.

For in this way we may learn not only who we are but also who we can become.

1. WE HAVE BEEN BLESSED BY THE FATHER WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING IN CHRIST

Ephes. 1:3

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.

POINT

What does this mean? And how does it apply?

John Stott says of this text: ‘every spiritual blessing is a phrase which may well mean ‘every blessing of the Holy Spirit’, who as the divine executive applies the work of Christ to our hearts.

Paul gives some examples of these in here:

Forgiveness, redemption, sonship and salvation, and later in the letter he unpacks this even further including the gifts the Holy Spirit gives.

POINT

These blessings are Trinitarian: We have been blessed by the Father with every blessing of the Holy Spirit in Christ.

POINT

But the main practical point that we should understand is that these blessings are ours NOW.

ILLUSTR/POINT

There’s a song of worship we have sung a few times now that says:

There must be more than this

oh breath of God come breath within

There must be more than this

Spirit of God we wait for you

Fill us anew we pray

Consuming Fire

Fan into flame

a passion for your name

Spirit of God

fall in this place

Lord have your way

with us

It gives expression to our understanding that since the Father has ‘blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ’ that this can yet be applied in greater ways in our lives as individuals and as Fellowship of believers – the Church

APPLIC

For 2010 and for the next decade, what might this mean for us if we resolve just now to press in to God and begin to experience more of the fullness of what it means to have been blessed in this way?

2. WE ARE SET APART FOR A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD AS OUR FATHER

Ephes. 1:4-5

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love [5] he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—

POINT

God found pleasure in adopting us.

In NT times children were often abandoned, and some of the early Christians took such abandoned children to into their homes and adopted them as part of the family.