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Ephesians is a very high book. Paul is writing to a church he spent quite a bit of time with, possibly upwards of three years. Therefore, this is a church that had been taught by him, and had learned plenty of what he had to teach. Because of this, the themes in this book are very high; they’re not low. There are two options that everyone has: (1) they can try to profane this book, and put everything on the lower shelf for you and just miss the whole thing; or (2) they can preach it like it says. We are going to see that it is very high, and that means that you might not get it. It is not because you’re not smart, but it is because some of the concepts require you to marinate and to just spend some time thinking through.
On the other hand, the main thing that Paul is writing in this book is very simple. He is doing the same thing he does in every epistle, which is this: he’s saying, “Here’s what you are,” or “Here’s who you are,” and “Now, act like it.” He’s saying, “Here’s your role; here’s who you are. Here’s your title. Now, act like it. Here’s your job description; now do it.” He’s laying out who we are in Christ, what it means to be a saint, and then he’s going to tell us what that means.
The problem that he is addressing, which we can relate to right now, is that the Ephesians lived in a culture, much like ours, that was full of idolatry. It was full of false ideas about God. Idolatry was constantly coming at them, and the Ephesians had the ability to move very easily towards pragmatism, to make God something that is less. Every false religion does two things very well: (1), they exalt man; and (2), they diminish God. That’s what every false religion does. They diminish God and they exalt man. That was the danger that the Ephesian church existed within, and Paul flips that back around and exalts God and diminishes man, so that we can finally worship Him correctly. Therefore, as we start this passage, this is where this book is really relevant for us. It is the cure for casual Christianity. The cure for casual Christianity, then, for superficial and shallow Christianity, is this book of Ephesians, and it comes down to this idea of putting God and man in their proper places.
This is the introduction from Paul. It says: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1). This is a normal salutation. There are a few key elements here, but we are going to hit them a little bit later. The first thing I want to focus on is this idea of “in Ephesus.” He is writing a church in the city. In this city, idolatry was rife all over the place. I want you to think for just a minute what idolatry is. Idolatry is giving credibility; it is giving precedence to a thing as God. Anything, a statue or even an idea, that is not God that we give credit to and worship as God is considered an idol. But what really is the root of idolatry? This helps to start off the book. The root of idolatry is the idea that we want and try to get our security and our significance from something else rather than the real God of heaven and earth. You can make your job an idol because you are trying to get your security and your significance from it. You can make your spouse an idol because you get your security and your significance from them. What do I mean by security and significance? It is seen in this idea: “My 401k makes me significant; it makes me secure.” That is where you are getting your security and significance. “Well, I am okay because I won that race,” or “I’m okay because I have this job title.” These things are idolatry, and this is the common denominator from back then and today. Idols are something that we get our security and our significance from. Now idols are crazy because they demand sacrifice. Look at every other God and every other religion; they make sacrifices. For example, if you are a farmer and you want to have crops, and you say, “Well, we need to have crops,” you gather people together to have a mating ritual for fertility. And then you say, “Well, now we’ll have crops.” Or, “Well, now we need more corn, so let’s throw our baby into the fire and maybe the god of corn will give us corn.” And that’s what they did. They fed the fire god, Molech. There was a big mouth and they would roll their baby into it. The point Paul is showing the Ephesians is that they already have their security and significance in God so they can reject the allure of idolatry. It is a theme you are going to see throughout the whole Bible. You already have your security and your significance in God.
Ephesians 1 says:
“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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 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, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 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, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 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. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (vv. 3-23).
As we begin this letter, and as you see his introduction, it begins by saying that Paul is “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (v.1). As you’re going to find out, everything you see is about God. The only thing we have a part in in this whole chapter is sinning and believing. The rest of it is the will of God. His grace. His glory. His work. His this and His that. That’s Christianity, and that’s that.
Therefore, in this city, where they had these idols that they would make with their hands, and they would bow down to, and they would ask for security and significance from, Paul begins and says that the God who made everything has already given these things to you. That’s the whole premise of the chapter.
Let me tell you the main idea: In Christ, God blessed us, chose us, predestined us, redeemed us, forgave us, and lavished His grace upon us. He made known to us His will. He predestined our inheritance, and He sealed us with the Holy Spirit. We must know this Christ.
In verse 3, he says this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is an expression, an idiomatic expression that is really hard to explain. What does it mean when you say, “Blessed be God”? I mean, are you giving God a blessing? Well, in one sense yes, but it’s hard to understand the whole thing. God blesses everything. We’re just declaring Him blessed. We’re declaring God blessed. That’s kind of interesting, because normally we say, “God bless you,” when someone sneezes or something else. But when we declare God blessed, we are declaring God happy. “You’re happy God; you’re blessed.” That’s really a very good way to translate it. Blessed is happy. “Happy are you God.” God is joyful in Himself. He’s happy and complete and 100% doing what He wants to be doing. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, who’s the subject of this passage? God the Father. It is God the Father who has blessed us. His word has blessed us.
Every word you are going to hear in this, for the most part, is either an aorist or a perfect, which simply means that these are past actions that happened at one point in time. Not one of these words is going to be present, even the word “believe.” They are all point-of-action words. These are words that happen once, but the results are current and ongoing. This is talking about the past. In fact, every time the word “salvation” is going to be used in this book, it’s going to be the word “sothsomenoi,” a perfect passive participle, which is describing something that God did in the past in one moment in time,with results that are current and ongoing.
Again, he says “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” (v.3). Now, I could stop right there. Unfortunately, I can’t because there’s a comma, and in your Bible, there should be a comma that goes from verse 3 all the way to verse 14 because it’s actually one sentence in Greek. In English, we broke it up a little bit, so it makes sense. However, when you’re trying to diagram it or you’re trying to look at it, you’re like, “Oh, it’s going; it’s going; it’s going; it’s going; it’s going…” It’s a super long sentence that would take up your whole wall if you wanted to diagram it out, so it’s not very easy.
He says “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (v.3). Now, let me take a step back and tell us what that means. First of all, it says that we’re blessed “in Christ.” In John 14:20, Jesus says something to the apostles, or disciples. He’s talking about leaving, and He promises the Holy Spirit. This is all having to do with this Holy Spirit indwelling in us. He says, “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Okay, on that day. That’s the day that the Holy Spirit fills us. “You will know that I’m IN you, and you IN me, and I IN you.” Therefore, this idea that Jesus is talking about is that something that happens after the cross, after Pentecost, after that day when Christians believe. If you sit here today, not knowing Jesus Christ and you believe in Christ, you literally enter a new sphere of existence, much like a fish going to another bowl of water, where the water is in the fish and the fish is in the water. You’re IN Christ, and Christ is IN you. It’s a new sphere of existence. In 1 Corinthians 15, there are two other spheres. It says that when we began, when we were born, we were either IN Adam or IN Christ. Now what does that mean, this word “in”? It’s the most profound theological term ever, and I don’t want to over-explain it. Just understand that that’s what the whole theme is: “IN Christ.” Now this sphere has to do with our salvation. Some of the ways I’ve described it in the past, that makes sense to me, is this idea that if there’s a forest fire coming and it’s going to burn you up and you have to pick one place to be dropped into that forest fire, you always want to go in the middle where the fire’s already burned, because there’s a ring. You would have to have faith that everything in that circle was already burnt up, that when the fire came, there was nothing left to burn and by standing in that, you would be safe. Does that make sense? That would be your sphere of safety. That’s what salvation is; it’s believing that God’s wrath has been fully taken out on the cross of Jesus Christ and you’re standing on that promise. You’re standing in that sphere of existence. You’re believing that that sphere is what helps you. You’re in that new fish bowl. You’re in that new place, and that’s your new sphere of existence, of relying on that event to save you. That’s what it means to be “in Christ.” It’s standing on the promises of God that His wrath was fulfilled fully on the cross.
So, he’s talking about two spheres of existence. If you’re not a believer in Jesus Christ, you are not “in Christ.” These promises are not for you. This is written to believers. So, in Christ, he says, we have been blessed. At one moment in time, God blessed us “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (v. 3). You’re not going to get more. There’s nothing left. You can’t get more. You can’t be like, “Well, I can get more blessings if I do this.” No! You’ve already been given every blessing in that place, in that sphere.
You’re one. When we talk about communion, I want you to think about what we’re doing. God has allowed us to be one with Him, symbolically, but also in reality. One day we will have this new glorified body; we’ll have this place where we’re living perfectly, where we’re in communion with the God Who made every planet; with the God Who made the laminin, Who made all these things, Who made everything there is. We get to have communion with God who is perfectly happy in Himself. Before He made anything, He was perfectly in love with Himself, and it was perfectly right for Him to be perfectly in love with Himself, with the Trinity, because He is perfectly worthy of His own love. Also, He was most perfectly able to glorify Himself, and to serve Himself, and to have a relationship with Himself. We need to enter that perfect union somehow, and it blows your mind. It’s a new sphere of existence.
“In Christ he’s blessed us with every spiritual blessing” (v.3). Now, what does that mean? Well, that means that we don’t have to earn any more spiritual blessings. In fact, the rewards that we earn in Heaven are pictured as crowns that we will actually lay down at Christ’s feet and give back to Him for the joy and privilege of serving Him. It’s not going to be like, “Hey, I’ve got a Ferrari in Heaven, and you got a Pinto.” You know what I mean. That’s not really what we’re dealing with here. He’s blessed you. Do you believe this? You don’t need to say it, but do you believe this? This is what Paul is telling the Ephesian church. Do you believe that you have this?
Then, he says the next thing: He’s chosen us. Look at verse 4. He says, “even as he chose us.” Who chose us? Who’s the subject now? The “He” is God the Father. “Even as he chose us.” Now, the verb is not in present tense; He’s not choosing us. It’s not past-present, which is like “He was choosing us.” “He chose us.” Completed action. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love” (v. 4).
In John 15:16, Jesus tells His disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Today if you are debating this idea, this Calvinistic idea of the sovereignty of God, stop! It’s settled. You can’t argue. I went to the book of Ephesians, not sure where I stood on the whole thing; I left being like, “Whoa!” You can’t argue it. You can’t argue with the grammar. You can’t argue with the sentence structure. It’s right there. “God chose.” Now, we live in our sphere of existence. We live in time; we live around other believers. All we know about it is, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Josh 24:15). That’s the sphere we live in; however, it ultimately doesn't change the command to choose Him because the only thing we can experience is this: the door to Heaven says “whosoever will, may enter.” If you desire and repent and give your faith to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’re saved. Anyone that wants it, gets it. Once you enter the door, you see the engine that was working the whole time that says, “By the way, you were chosen before the foundation of the earth.” That’s how it works. If you’re sitting here today, you’re on the other side of that door. If you’re a believer, you’re on the other side of that door, and you’re supposed to own this. You’re not supposed to be like, "That’s not for me."
This is a central premise to your faith. It’s a central premise to what you know about yourself and about God. He saw you, and He didn’t know what you were going to believe and chose you. He chose you if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ today. Christian, God knew you before the foundation of the earth and chose you and worked, and your whole life was there waiting for the day you were going to believe. He knew you would choose it, and set the circumstances up for you to do so, and convicted you and called you to do it. He chose that, not you.
We don’t want to give God the ability to choose. We say, "Well, God needs to give everyone that same thing." I always say, "How many of you are married here, raise your hand up? Okay, do all you with your hands up love me? Okay, good. Do you love me the same as you love your wife?” You’d better not say yes. Okay, well wait, wait. How can you do that? Don’t you have the freedom to choose to love your wife in a different way than you love me? Doesn’t God have that same freedom? Doesn’t God have that same freedom to choose to love people? If you’re here today, it’s not fair. You were chosen and it’s wonderfully unfair that He picked and chose you to believe in Him. Own this truth. Own this truth. Don’t run away from it.
Talking about His choice, my daughter asked a great question the other day. She said, “Well, wait a second. How can God choose for people; don’t they get to?” I answered, “Kaylee, did you choose to have me and mommy as your mommy and daddy?” She answered, “No.” She got it. None of you chose your parents. None of you chose your geography. None of you chose your background or where to be born. We live in a life like that, and we walk around like that. Everywhere we go, it is the reality that we live in: we did not choose our parents, our geography, or our DNA. We did not choose it. We just get it. That’s apparent, isn’t it? Who did? Well I didn’t, so who did? God, God, God!
Spurgeon reminded me that we love the idea of God as our Father, and we love Jesus as our homeboy. We love Jesus as our friend. We love God on the workbench, making little toys for people, making little mountains for people to run on. We love this idea of God, but we never want to give God the credit for actually sitting on the throne and actually being God and actually making choices on what He’s going to do, but that’s the God that exists. He made everything. He chose. If you’re here today, He chose you, and you own that. He picked you and gave you that faith. He gave you that faith and chose you in Christ. If you’re not in Christ, He didn’t do it. That’s how you know He chose you, in Him, before the foundation of the world. And what did He choose about you? He chose that you should be holy and blameless before Him. Are you holy and blameless before Him right now? Yes. With whose holiness? Christ’s. You’re in Christ. It’s like you’re inside the fishbowl of Christ. You’re inside the big giant Christ suit. You’re in there and you are holy and blameless with a holiness and with a blamelessness that’s not your own. That’s what it means to be “in Christ.”
Verse 5 continues by saying, “In love he predestined us.” Now, the last one was about choosing. This one, “predestined,” is about planning. Planning is the laying out of the map. He’s putting the thing before you. It says, “He predestined us.” At one moment in time He did this. It’s still referring in the same sentence to “before the foundation of the world” (v. 4). Before He created anything, He predestined us for something. What was it He predestined or planned for us? “For adoption as sons” (v. 5).
Now, before we go any further, we have to deal with the false notion that everyone on earth is a child of God. That is just simply not true. That is not Biblical. In a broad sense, it’s true. In a narrow sense, it’s not. Broadly speaking, God is the First Cause and then everyone came from Adam. Everyone bears, imperfectly, the image of God and is responsible for that. But, specifically, we find out in the first verses of Genesis, chapter 5, that Adam had a son in his own image, not in God’s image; in his own, now fallen image. We are all children of Adam, and we’re children of wrath. The Bible calls us children of wrath, and yet God, in salvation, adopts us as sons and daughters into His family, where we become children of God. And so they’re separate; not everyone gets that. “He predestined us,” planned for us, to be adopted “as sons through Jesus Christ” (v.5).
Jesus Christ is God and He planned this according to the purpose of what? Of His will. Who chose? He chose. Whose will was it? His. Why did He do it? I don't know. Because He wanted to. And if you come up with any other answer, you're false. Why did God choose you? Because He wanted to. That’s the answer in the Bible. Because HE wanted to. If you say it's because you have some merit or some worth, then that means that you deserved it, and you didn't. The unfairness of Christianity is why YOU get to have it, not why everyone does, but why YOU get to. “He chose us… according to the purpose of HIS will, to the praise of HIS glorious grace” (v.6, emphasis added). Who gets credit for that salvation, that choice, that predestination? He does. Any religious system that tries to take Christianity and make it so that you have to work your way into it or be worthy in some way is faulty according to Ephesians because all of it is His will. All of it goes to His grace, all of it goes to His Glory. None of it comes to us. “With which he has blessed us” (v.6). So again, let me read the whole sentence, “He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of HIS will, to the praise of HIS glorious grace, with which He HAS blessed us in the Beloved” (vv. 5,6, emphasis added). In Christ. That word "in" is all over in the passage.
In the famous passage of Romans 8:28-30, Paul says we’re “predestined to be conformed into the image of his Son, in order . . .” Why? So we can experience fun? No, “In order that he might be (this is the Christ here) the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called.” If you’re here today and you don’t know Jesus Christ, God might be calling you! Do you want to believe? Why are you here? “He called, and those whom he called he also justified.” Justified is past tense, pointing back to Him. Justification. It’s a court sentence. It says, “You’re innocent.” Boom! “You’ve been justified.” Boom! Hit the gavel. It’s one moment in time. When you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, God has declared you righteous. He’s justified you. It’s a legal term of righteousness. It’s happened. “And those whom he justified he also glorified.” That’s the weird one. It’s in the past tense. We’re still talking in the Beloved, in the foundation of the Earth, throughout the whole thing. This all happened in God. Not one thing, then the other. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, though you have yet to be glorified, in God’s eyes, it is as good as done.
C.S. Lewis said this, “We don’t understand the weight of God’s glory.” If we were to look at the most pathetic Christians around us - and there are some people that are bad Christians, but some of them are probably saved -we might be surprised. I don’t know. You never know. But C.S. Lewis makes a point that if you were to see them in their glory, you’d be tempted to either run from them or worship them. It’s kings and princes whom we joke with, and we snub, and we say things to. We don’t realize the real inheritance and what it really means to be a believer in Jesus Christ, to really have these things, and that we will be glorified one day. That when an angel would appear, which is even lower than what we will be, people would fall down cowering with fear because of their glory, of their light, and because of how wonderful they are. When we say this, it doesn’t make sense to us. Unless we think of ourselves, as say, a tennis player. You say, “I’m a pretty good tennis player,” and McEnroe walks out onto the court. You’d be like, “Oh, I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” And that’s a person! If the President’s around, you don’t want to say the wrong thing. When an angel is in front of you, you just fall down. We’re so casual about these wonderful things. This book is the cure for that.
So, here we are in Ephesians 1:5-6. “He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” He already did it. He did it “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved,” in Him. What is this point about? He redeemed us, forgave us, and lavished His grace upon us. In Him we have redemption. We’re not going to have it, we have it.
Now, I’m not here to pick on other beliefs or religions, but one of the problems that you might experience in other beliefs is that they have this idea where they mix up these terms. They blend the process and the timeline together a little bit, and they forget these terms. That we’ve been redeemed means totally set free under God. That doesn’t mean we’re BEING redeemed. We have BEEN redeemed. It’s not going to happen. It’s not gradual. There are not seventeen steps to heaven. You don’t need to have last rites to makes sure you’re going into heaven. If we believe and He redeemed us, these people we are supposed to be certain now of these things.
What Paul’s writing is a certainty. If this is a certainty, how could anyone believe in any belief or religion of Christianity that does not imply a certainty of what you own as a Christian? It’s either true or it’s not. If the Bible’s true, if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, these things are fact and you have them. Not that you can get them by doing things. It’s fact. You either get them or you don’t. The fact of the matter is, getting these things - the praise and the predestination - he says that we have redemption. We’ve been set free. The idea of redemption is slavery. We have been set free of the slavery to our sinful nature. Now how are we set free? “In him we have redemption through his blood” (v. 7).
We’re going to take a little side track for a second and explore this. We’ve received redemption through His blood. We wear cross symbols. We decorate, we bedazzle our crosses, we put diamonds on our crosses. We have crosses everywhere. We have movies where Buffy the Vampire Slayer puts on a cross and the vampire dies. Crosses are great, but we forget the point of the cross. The cross was not bedazzled, it was bloody. And it was not a little bloody, it was really bloody. As Americans and as Christians, we don’t like the blood of the cross. In fact when Passion of the Christ comes on, some people say, “I don’t want to see that.” I understand. But that’s what it looks like.
Just so we get this correct, God wants us to see the blood. Am I making something up? No, I’m not. Go to 2 Chronicles 7 for a second. In the Bible we know that God has pointed forward to His sacrifice all throughout the Old Testament through the sacrificial system. It was a bloodbath in the Old Testament, and all this was prefiguring and pointing to the future event of Christ paying for our sins with His blood. Every sacrifice was supposed to represent that. So, if you came in and were sinful and said, “God, I want to bring a sin sacrifice,” and you came in and brought a sheep and said, “Here’s my sheep,” I’d say, “Put your hand and hold the sheep’s head.” There’s a little hair on the top of his head. You’d hold his head, and I’d say, “Look at that sheep’s eyes,” and you’d look at the eyes. And I’d say, “You’re going to put your sins on that sheep,” and then I go slit its throat right in front of you and you’d watch that sheep die. You would turn away. And yet we cry when Bambi dies. We miss this. The brutality of that is to show us that the lifeblood, that was supposed to be you, paid for it. That’s the seriousness of our sin and our need for a Savior.
Go to 2 Chronicles 7:4 which talks about these sacrifices. I want you to imagine for a second. We’re talking about blood. It says this: “As soon as Solomon finished his prayer… (he was dedicating the temple), then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord” (vv. 1, 7). I don’t have time, but if you go to Leviticus, one of the things they would do when they would kill these sheep is they would catch the blood and then fling it against the altar or fling it against the wall. Blood was everywhere. I want you to imagine this. This wasn’t a clinical room, like a hospital, where people had bags of blood. That’s how we take care of stuff. This was gnarly. It was stinky. It smelled like copper or whatever blood smells like from animals. I don’t kill animals, so I don’t know. In the Bible it says if you want to, bring a turtledove, and then they wring its neck. How do they do that? They don’t have a tool like a hammer. They just rip its head off. God wanted people to see this. That’s all I want you to recognize. God wanted people to see this.
Look at what it says. They came and offered sacrifices. How many sacrifices did they bring? Did they bring one sheep? Look. “King Solomon offered as a sacrifice 22,000 oxen” (2 Chronicles 7:5). When you’re driving up North, and you pass all those farmlands and you see all those cows, that’s not 22,000. That’s not even close. That’s maybe 1,000. So multiply them by twenty-two, and they all got killed in one day. How much blood is that? That’s giant swimming pools and oceans of blood. Twenty-two thousand oxen “and 120,000 sheep.” I can’t even tell you how many that is. That’s a stadium. That’s bigger than a stadium. Full of people, and they’re all sheep, and all dead, and all the blood.
So, the King and the people dedicated the House of the Lord and that’s it. What was all this prefiguring? The blood of Christ. We’re supposed to see the blood. Why? Because when you go to Hebrews it’s all pointing forward to the one event of what Christ did. Go to Hebrews 9. It’s all through Hebrews. He’s trying to show us the one complete sacrifice that came.
In Hebrews 9:11-17 it says this:
“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not the tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” Christ’s blood is eternal. “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he, Christ, is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called (remember those He predestined and called?) may receive the promised eternal inheritance.” He’s saying it’s for those who are called. “Since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.
We talk about this term “inheritance.” Well, how do we get inheritance unless the One who left it to us died? Oh, right. He’s also the one who sacrificed Himself for us.
“Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood” (Heb 9:18). Moses would take blood and they would fling it on the people when they’d make a covenant. How would you like that? Instead of bubbles at a concert, you get blood thrown on you.
“For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you’” (Heb 9:19,20). That was prefiguring what we remember and look back to when we take communion. “And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship” (Heb 9:21). Everything is covered in blood in that temple. All that blood. What would you do with it? It would just be rivers and the temple (the temple was high) would just be like a river of blood running down.
“Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly” (Heb 9: 22-25). The Mass is not true. The Mass is not a re-sacrifice of Christ every week. He does not offer Himself repeatedly, over, and over, and over again every week.
It was not “to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him” (Heb 9:25-28). My friends, we have that now. That’s what Ephesians is talking about.
Go back to Ephesians 1:7-8. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.” Those words “lavished upon us” makes a lot more sense when you think of all that blood that covered everything. “He lavished,” His gifts “upon us, in all wisdom and insight.”
Just to briefly understand what we’re talking about, go to Psalm 8:3. You can’t miss this. This is probably my favorite section of the Bible. In Psalm 8:3, the Psalmist says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” All I’m pointing out in this is just an expression, just an idiomatic expression where he says, “When I look at your heavens and the work of your fingers.” The description that the Psalmist uses to describe God creating the heavens and the earth is finger play. The expression, the amount of effort that God put into Creation is finger play.
Go to Isaiah. I’m going to start in Isaiah 52:10 and then I’m going to jump to Isaiah 53:1. It’s talking about the salvation that God wrought. “The Lord has bared his holy arm.” Do you know what the expression means there? God rolled up His sleeves. When He talks about Zechariah and He’s like, “How dare you accuse a brand I plucked from the fire,” (Zec 3:2), he’s talking about pulling a brand out of the fire. He rolled up His sleeves. He got dirty. He “bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” It didn’t take any effort for God to create everything, but it took a lot of effort at the cross.
He “bared his holy arm,” and in Isaiah 53:1 it says, “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Finger play was making Creation, but when talking about the grace He lavished upon us in salvation, it took His whole army to roll up His sleeves to do it. It was a big job. How much does He love you? A lot.
This is what we’re stuck with when Paul’s writing to the Ephesians. He’s laying out truth in this one giant sentence of awesomeness. How wonderful it is; what God’s done. How He’s redeemed us and forgiven us, and how He has lavished His free gift, His grace, upon us. Lavished it. Here’s more. Here’s more of it. Grace upon grace, and glory upon glory you’ve been given. And yet we turn to other things.
Look at the next section here in verses 9 and 10. “He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will.” We’re going to get to this in chapters 2 and 3. The mystery of His will. The word mystery, “mysterion,” is like the “secret” of His will. It just simply means that what God revealed to us was not previously spoken of in the Old Testament.
The idea that there would be such a thing called “the Church” was not in the Old Testament. The Old Testament describes a nation. We’re not a nation. It describes a nation that had Gentiles come to it, but it was still a nation. What the New Testament describes is something brand new. That’s the mystery that Paul was revealing: a special called-out body called “the Church,” and this church is made up of people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. And it’s special. And it’s new. And we, on this side of the cross and in this place in history as you sit here right now, just like the Ephesians, have been given the knowledge of God’s master plan. We know where we are in history and who we are in history. We are not a part of Israel; we are not part of the Gentile nations. We are part of the Church, the body of Christ. That’s what this book is all about really. This is the one hinge of the whole thing. It’s amazing.
“Making known to us the mystery of HIS will, according to HIS purpose which HE set forth in Christ” (v.9, emphasis added). Are we getting it? “As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (v. 10). In 1 Corinthians 15:27 it says the same thing. “For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’” We know that “every knee shall bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2: 10, 11) of everything. “But when it says, ‘all things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him”, Christ. “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:27, 28).
What he’s talking about is that the master plan of all the ages is that God calls out this body of the Church. We’re part of His body, and we’re in communion with God, and we’re all one. We’re all returning to our unity, and our community, and our communion. All these things are together in God’s master plan, and we get to experience it right now. We get to symbolically live it out with communion and in our fellowship. This is the Church. This is the “ecclesia” of the called-out body. This is the thing that we so casually put dancers up here and AC/DC things. That’s the Church. It’s amazing and yet we profane it.
It says that He did this whole thing in Christ. The whole thing is a plan for the fullness of time. What does the fullness of time mean? It means it hasn’t happened yet. In Revelation 9, it talks about how on an appointed day and hour, the gates broke loose, or the flood broke loose, and the thing that God had prepared for man broke loose. On the exact day and hour. There’s an alarm clock that God set before the foundation of the earth, and it’s not the Mayan calendar. But God knows the day and the hour and the whole thing. “The fullness of time.” God has a plan. He knows exactly what He’s doing.
So, here we are. He made known to us His will. He predestines our inheritance. Look at verse 11. “In him.” In case we haven’t gotten it yet, what’s the key word in the whole thing? In Him. In Christ. In the Beloved. In. The word is in. It needs to be your favorite theological word after today. “In him we have obtained an inheritance” (v. 11). What is this inheritance?
Before we go further, go to Romans 8:14. I’m telling you what you own. This is what’s in your bank account. This is the problem that we’re experiencing today. You see, Christians are out and we go to bookstores and we write books about how you can try this method to get this thing to happen, or how you can get God to bless you if you do it this way. I’m going to use an analogy. We are like people out begging for bread on the street with a million bucks in our pocket. I’m trying to tell you what’s in your pocket. What’s in your bank account? What do you possess? Pay attention. Write it down. Believe it or reject it, but don’t ignore it.
This is your inheritance. In Romans 8:14-17 it says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Now, my friends, when it says we are “fellow heirs with Christ,” we will not be citizens of heaven. Did you hear that right? We will not be citizens of heaven. There will be people that are citizens of heaven. We will be co-reigners in heaven. We will be co-reigners with Christ. We’ve been given an inheritance of royalty. This is why - I’m going to use a fancy term - that term ‘dispensationalism’ becomes so rich right now. These truths become so emphatically powerful that we are co-reigners with Christ.
Go to 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 real quick. Let’s just nail more down. Paul’s talking about people that are suing each other and he just makes this little remark that I think is exquisite. He writes: “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” This idea of being co-reigners and co-heirs is amazing. It’s amazing. It’s a study that you can explore. There are some great works on it. There’s actually the commentary on Ephesians by Lewis Sperry Schaeffer which is wonderful in this regard.
So here we are in verse 11 of Ephesians. “In him we have obtained an inheritance.” Our inheritance is amazing. Now notice this, “we have obtained.” The “we have obtained” is passive. You didn’t earn it. You didn’t go out and get an inheritance. You obtained it. It would be like waking up in the morning and getting something. We’ve obtained it. It’s passive. You received it. You didn’t do anything. It’s like me saying, “I’ve obtained a fist in my face.” You don’t have to do anything to get the fist in your face; you just have to stand there. I’ve obtained a cold. You didn’t have to try to get the cold. You were just there and it got you. That’s what happens. You didn’t go get it. You don’t even obtain a child. God does it. You do other things, but He may or may not give you one. That’s how it works. This is a passive thing. We’ve obtained an inheritance. He did it.
“Having been predestined,” as he already said, “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (v. 11). Paul is nailing this down. Him. Him. Him. He planned it. He chose it. He did it. It’s His will. His purpose. His glory. Him. Him. Him. What are we? Recipients. We’ve obtained this inheritance “so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory” (v. 12).
Here’s the next section, verses 13 and 14. “In him (in that sphere, in Christ) you also, (and this is really the only active verb for us in the whole thing) when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him…” Now we just saw the engine. That’s the end. The means to those ends are what he’s talking about right now. This is our part that we see, that we experience. It’s the only active role you play in any of these gifts and wonderful things. We have the role of believing, and even that’s a gift.
Now, listen to this. I love how he gives a possessive here. “In him you also, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation” (v.13). When you hear the Gospel, it’s for your salvation. When the Bible was written, before you were born, it was written for you. It was written for you to possess the whole time growing up. There are children who grow up, and this Bible is supposed to be theirs. It contains their promises. This book has contained your promises since before you existed.
The “truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him”(v. 13). Did it say believed and baptized? Did it say believed and followed commandments? Did it say that they believed and did good deeds? Did it say they believed and did anything else? It says that if you “believed in him,” you “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (vv. 13, 14). Verses 13 and 14 are pivotal because they describe the in-between, the already/not-yet aspect of what you have. You possess these things in the heavenly, but we’re just not in the heavenly yet.
Therefore, what Paul’s saying here is that when you believed, God sealed you with the Holy Spirit. Now what’s a seal? There’s a couple ways to look at this. If I was going to give you a letter back in the day, and you needed a receipt to know it was from me, I would melt wax and stamp it with my signet ring. They would know that that seal means you can’t open it up unless you’re the right recipient. If you break the seal, everyone knows it. It’s sealed up. The seal of the Holy Spirit is on you. It means the contract is certain. That you’re going to be given.
It also says (and the term is used in a more round-about way) the Holy Spirit was given to you as a guarantee. The idea here is that He is given to you as a deposit. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. He’s in you. In one sense the whole Trinity is in you, but the Holy Spirit is the one we know about that’s actively empowering you. It says that when you believe, just to assure you that these promises are true, God fills you with His Holy Spirit. When you give a deposit you might say, “Hey, I’d like to buy that bicycle, Sir.” And the owner might respond, “Great. It’s a hundred dollar deposit.” “Okay,” you say, “I’ll come back later and pay for it.” Later you decide that you don’t want that bicycle and they say, “No problem. We’ll keep your deposit.” So what do you do? You lose your deposit. That’s what a deposit is. It’s a guarantee that you’re going to pay. And if you don’t pay, what happens? You lose your deposit.
God gave His Holy Spirit as a guarantee that He’s going to give you these things. He can’t lose His Holy Spirit; He can’t lose Himself. It is certain. That’s what we have. It is certain the moment you believe. The word ‘believe’ is punctiliar, one moment in time. This is describing a decision that you make at one point and the power of God to believe in Christ that all these things happened. At that moment, your fish bowl changes. You were in sin and now you are in Christ. It’s amazing.
The last section is one section. Let me tell you the main idea again. This is what we just went over: In Christ, God blessed us, chose us, predestined us, redeemed us, forgave us, and lavished His grace upon us. He made known to us His will, He predestined our inheritance, and He sealed us with the Holy Spirit.
Paul’s prayer for them is not, “You need more stuff. I pray that you have this.” His prayer is, “I pray that you can know what you have.” He prayed that we must know this Christ, that we must know what he’s talking about.
Look at what he says in verse 15, “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.” What does that mean? Because you’re a believer the proof of purchase on your life is evident. You have faith and you love one another. Love is the outworking of that. “For this reason… I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom...” (vv. 16 and 17).
What’s wisdom? Wisdom’s a hard word. We just throw it around. Wisdom is different than knowledge. I kind of like to think of it this way: wisdom is really applied knowledge. Knowledge is “I know how to cook this thing. I have a cookbook. See? Here’s the knowledge.” Wisdom is having already cooked it. You know what it’s like and you’ve experienced it. You know how to do and use your knowledge.
What Paul is praying for is for you to have a spirit of actually taking these truths that you know to be true and being able to actually wield them, to experience them, to live them. He’s saying, “I pray that you have “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (v. 17). That’s what the word of God gives us.
“Revelation and knowledge of him.” What is the purpose that he wants us to know? He wants us to know more about Christ. The Christ that did all that. “Having the eyes of your heart enlightened,” having it so you can see, “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, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might” (vv. 18,19). That’s what Paul prays. “I pray that everything that you just heard, that you can know it, and apply it, and believe it.”
He goes on, “Of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 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. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church” - ecclesia, to that mysterion, that called-out body that’s unique for this age, that has never been told before in the Old Testament, to this body that you sit a part of right now- “to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (vv. 19-23).
I love that chapter. Based on everything we know - that He’s done all these things - we must know this Christ. Let me tell you it one more time: in Christ, God blessed us, chose us, predestined us, redeemed us, forgave us, and lavished His grace upon us. He made known to us His will, He predestined our inheritance, and He sealed us with the Holy Spirit. We must know this Christ.
Now turn to Exodus 14. How does this apply to us today? These are beautiful truths. He’s talking about wisdom that you can apply.
In Christianity I hear a lot of people wondering about “how to.” Do you want the great blessing of God on your life? Don’t you want the anointing of this? We’re walking around so desperate for God to do something for us. We’re always asking Him to fix us, to help us. The escalator’s broken. We say, “God, I can’t go forth.” We can’t move in our Christianity. We’re shallow, and we’re stuck, and we’re praying for things that He already gave us.
In Exodus 14, God told Moses and the Jews, “I’m going to deliver you.” And He says, “I’m going to take you and part the Red Sea.” He does the whole thing and look at verse 10. The people of Israel are trapped. The Red Sea is on one side and Pharaoh isriding hard after them. The theme in this whole scene is God’s sovereignty. Isn’t it? Just like the theme in Ephesians. “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes.” These are not enlightened eyes. These are eyes of flesh. They “lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.”
Is that your life right now? Do you look around and see all the people like Bill Maher and silly Richard Dawkins and Hitchens and “Oh look at them, they’re so strong, I’m scared.” We look at these things and “I don’t know what to do. Oh the Egyptians are coming.” It’s okay.
“They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?’” God, why are we so weak? We don’t even have anyone that’s doing that. We want God to do all these things. “Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’?” Now they’re trying to come kill us. “For it would’ve been better for us to serve the Egyptians than die in the wilderness” (vv. 11,12).
I had just become a Christian and everyone was mean to me. It would’ve been so much easier if I could’ve just shut my mouth and not said something about my faith. It would’ve been so much easier to stay in the sins I was in and live my life happily and just watched Lady Gaga and gone to silly movies and done stuff with the Chargers and whatever. A much easier life, isn’t it? I didn’t want this.
“And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (vv. 13, 14). Just be quiet, be silent.
You have to give me a little bit of license here. You have to read into the story a bit, but it’s there. “Just be quiet.” Now what do you think Moses does after this? You get this from the next verse. Moses very likely falls on his knees (like he does all through his ministry; this is Moses’ tendency) and very likely he begins to pray to God. “God please deliver us. The Egyptians are marching on us right now. I don’t know what to do. I feel like we’re going to die.”
God didn’t just say, “I’m going to bless you, Moses.” God promises specifically that He was going to deliver them in that moment. Moses was praying for something that God specifically told him He was going to do. This isn’t a general promise. This isn’t like saying, “God will bless me at my job.” He didn’t promise that He’d bless you at your job. Okay? Not necessarily. He said, “Bless you,” but not that way. You don’t know. But this time He said: “I’m going to deliver you from them.” So, Moses gets on his knees and says, “God, please help me.”
What does God say to Moses? Verse 15 says, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.’” There’s your Christianity. There’s your application. Lift up your staff and walk through it. It’s going to part. There’s a time for prayer, and there’s a time for action.
My friends, we have our security and our significance from God, and yet we cry to Him for these things that He has already given us. Stop. Stop. Stop asking for things that He already gave you and start believing that you have them and act on the fact that they’re true. That’s the wisdom that Paul talks about. This is the most profound, powerful Christianity. You don’t need to go to a prophet; you don’t need to go to some special person to get advice. God gave you everything. He gave you a Spirit to guide you. He predestined you. That means He planned your steps. He did all these things. Stop asking for them and believe it’s true and act. What a profound message for the New Year.
