Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD, USA
www.mycrossway.org
View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118
I want to ask for some license for just a moment to revisit a story I put into the newsletter last Sunday. It is about the Yates Oil Field in West Texas. The man who owned the property was named Ira Yates, and he was a poor sheep rancher during the Great Depression. He struggled hard and was barely able to make ends meet. Until one day when someone offered him an opportunity to allow them to drill for oil on his land. The result of that test drill was the discovery of one of the great oil fields in the United States. 30 years after that first well was drilled, even one well on the Yates oil field was producing up to 125,000 barrels of oil a day. It is still in the top 10 oil producers today.
When Yates purchased the ranch, he was more interested in grazing land for his sheep than he was in the oil & mineral rights. There he was, living on government subsidy, but sitting on a mammoth underground lake of incredibly valuable oil. He was a potential multimillionaire living in poverty. What was his problem? It was simply that he did not know the oil was there. I want you to know today that we are just like Ira Yates. Many Christians today have their eyes set on rolling hills of worldly blessings, never realizing we have within our grasp the richest reserve of blessing in Jesus that will never go empty.
With that in mind, let’s read today’s text:
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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 to himself 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 Christ 10 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. (Ephesians 1:3–14 ESV)
Verses 3-11 are one continual sentence in Greek. Within those 11 verses are some of the richest blessings of God we could ever hope to find. I decided to write down the blessings Paul identifies in these verses. There are probably a few I didn’t find, and it is certainly not an exhaustive list. I found 32 spiritual blessings:
He chose us
He made us Holy and Blameless
He predestined up
He adopted us
He gave us purpose
He placed us in His will
He pours out on us His grace
He sent to us Jesus
He redeemed us
His redemption is in the blood of Jesus
He forgave our sins
He paid for our salvation with his own riches
He lavishes on us his blessings
He provides us with His wisdom
He gives us insight into His will and plan
He provides us the plan of the ages
He gave us His complete prophetic word
He shows us how he will achieve all things
He unites all things to Him
He gave us an inheritance
He predestined us to His purpose
He gave us hope in Christ
He opened up the Heavens for us to worship Him
He revealed to us His truth and all truth
He shared with us the Gospel
He revealed to us how he will save us
He revealed Himself to us that we can believe
He sealed us with the Holy Spirit
He fulfilled His promise of the Holy Spirit
He personally guarantees our inheritance
He will not let us lose possession of His promises
He is our Lord and God
If we truly knew the riches of God’s blessings we would do everything possible to tap deeper into them. Paul wrote this letter to explain who we are and what we have in Jesus. This was a difficult time in the early church when Christians were on the run and facing danger for their faith. All the while, Paul is under house arrest in Rome, and despite his circumstances, Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus describing the fullness and richness of life in Christ. The letter to the Ephesians explained what it meant to be in Christ; to be the church, the body of Christ. Paul knew that if they knew who they were, and stepped into their identity, the world would never be the same. The same can be true for our church today. If we understand what it means to live in Christ our city and our world would never be the same. Now with that, we going to dive into these verses in the next couple of weeks.
Jesus Along Gives Us Every Spiritual Blessing (v. 3)
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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, (Ephesians 1:3 ESV)
The first emphasis of Paul is the work of the Father and to begin with, Paul gives blessings of praise to God. This is a call to worship. So full of adoration and spiritual strength is Paul that he exhorts his readers to begin to praise God.
Now, most people praise God for one of two reasons: either they hope they’re going to get something in return from Him or things are going well in their life and they feel up to it. Paul is doing neither. He’s in jail.
We bless God with our adoration and praise. Why? Because God blessed us first. We do not praise God in hopes that we will be blessed. We do not praise God based on the circumstances in our lives. We praise God because we are already blessed.
“We are not sitting here groaning and crying, and fretting, and worrying, and questioning our own salvation. He has blessed us, and therefore we will bless him. If you think little of what God has done for you, you will do very little for him; but if you have a great notion of his great mercy to you, you will be greatly grateful to your gracious God.” (Spurgeon).
You will also note that Paul tells us we’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Not just a one or two; not just a handful or even a bunch, but every single one.
Not only are these blessings, but they are spiritual blessings. Now, what does that mean? If I give you a $20 bill, you might say that I blessed you. But wait a minute, how long will that $20 be with you? That blessing I gave you is temporary. The spiritual blessings of Jesus are eternal.
God has blessed us with spiritual blessings, rather than temporal ones; with heavenly blessings, rather than earthly blessings; in Christ, rather than through something created. We have been blessed “with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.” These are eternal blessings to come to those who are saints in Christ.
Paul is an encourager. Paul wanted to remind you of who you are in Christ. The enemy wants to remind you of your failures and your shortcomings. The enemy constantly wants you to be aware of your failures. Not Paul. He reminds the church that we are victims, but victors.
Three times in verses 3-14, Paul outlines for us how God chose us for something greater than ourselves. We were chosen by the Father to be holy and blameless (v.4). We were chosen by the Father for receiving an inheritance (v. 11). We were chosen by the Father to receive the Gospel (v. 13). For what purpose? To give Him praise with our lives!
Do you know why? Because we are united with the One who is above every earthy power and authority in this age and the age to come. Our blessing and our victory are not subject to our circumstances and therefore neither is our Praise to Him. He is our Lord and He is seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Father right now. Even more, we share in his blessings by being united to Him.
2. Jesus Alone Means That We Are Chosen By God (v. 3)
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:4 (ESV))
The first of these blessings is the blessing of being chosen and predestined. Three times in this passage, Paul reminds the church that we are chosen by God (vv. 4, 5, 11.) Every heavenly blessing is granted to the saints and faithful because they were chosen; and they were chosen in Him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world. We are God’s people because God chose us before we were even born to be called His children.
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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)
?But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. (2 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV)
?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. (John 15:16 ESV)
?Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. (Matthew 25:34 ESV)
It is God the Father through His mercy chose you to be born again. You made no contribution to your physical birth; you make no contribution to your spiritual birth. And by that mercy you are given “an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, Your salvation is protected by the power of God through faith.
Now, I want you to also understand something. We are holy and blameless before God because of Jesus. We were talking the other week in our study of Revelation about how Isaiah and others would come into the throne room of God and fall down as if they were dead. Why? Because they were sinful, unredeemed, unholy people.
When we come to heaven. There will still be the same all-powerful, all-knowing, and holy God. But we will not fall over as dead, nor will we be consumed only because we have been made holy and blameless in Jesus.
Listen, this world will not allow any of us to be free of shame. There is plenty in this world to cause us shame. And Heaven forbid you to become the object of cancel culture. The glory of the gospel is that our heavenly Father has erased our names from the blackboard—the handwriting that was against us, he took away and nailed it to the cross (Col. 2:14). He no longer blames us for what shames us.
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by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14 ESV)
Not only does our union with Christ remove our blemishes; it also supplies his righteousness. We are “holy” and blameless before the Father. The righteousness that was Christ’s through his perfect obedience is imputed to us. The holiness that God requires, he also supplies not by our works, but by our union with his holy Son who shares with us his own status of holiness. This is cause for amazement: God sees me as being as holy as his own Son. Not only do I have my debt wiped away; I have the riches of Christ’s righteousness applied to my account
You see, Jesus isn’t something that we just add to our lives to make it better. Jesus doesn’t help us live worldly lives with the blessing of God. No, we are given a completely new life in Him because we are predestined to live with him forever. The Best news of all is that God has promised these things to all who call upon the name of Jesus.
3. In Christ, We Are Adopted Children of God.
...In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself 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. (Ephesians 1:4–6 (ESV)
This is an amazing statement. In an extravagant expression of love, God not only gives us life through the new birth, but He adopts us into His family so that we may relate to Him, not only as of the giver of spiritual life and the provider of legal righteousness but also as our loving and compassionate Father. We aren’t just subjects in His kingdom, we are sons in His family.
When we adopted Noah, there was never a time when had to get used to him in order to love him. Instantly, he was our son. We knew there was nothing that was going to change that - ever.
for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Galatians 3:26 (ESV))
William Perkins, Puritan, says, “We must not think that God does a thing because it’s good or right, but rather is the thing good and right because God wills it and does it.” It is an unspeakable, incomprehensible blessing, to be granted spiritual life in regeneration. The question is, how will we live as God’s heirs. Will you be a pauper in the kingdom or will you enjoy the riches given to you by God?
We minimize these blessings because we are so wrapped up in the physical world. These are true riches, these spiritual blessings but they are cheapened by religious personalities who want to emphasize the temporary and false promises of material and physical blessings- all of which eventually fade.
“Hetty Green” Henrietta Howland Robinson Green (November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916) She left an estate with an estimated value of $100 Million Dollars.
She was an American businesswoman, known for her frugal nature, as well as for being the first American woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street. Her family were Quakers who owned a large whaling fleet. When her father died in 1864, she inherited $7.5 million in liquid assets, and against the objections of most of her family, invested it in Civil War bonds. She later began to play the stock market with great success.
She formulated an investment strategy to which she stuck throughout her life: conservative investments, substantial cash reserves to back up any movement, and she had an exceedingly cool head amidst turmoil. She claimed to have made $1.25 million from her bond investments in one year alone.
Hetty became best known for her stinginess. Her son had his leg amputated because she took so long to get him adequate care because she was looking for a free clinic. Green made much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for an office. Later unfounded rumors claimed that she ate only oatmeal she heated on the office radiator.
She never turned on the heat nor used hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent a night looking around her home for a lost stamp worth two cents.
She stunk. In the summertime, the odor would be so foul that people working in the same bank office where she kept a desk would scheme to stay as far away from her as possible. Her long black dresses, decades out of style, would turn green and ragged from wear and filth. Her fingernails were crusty dirty. She went around for 20 years beleaguered by a painful hernia before she finally had to see the doctor. She was outraged by his fee for surgery for $150, but so desperate that she agreed. And later she tried to stiff the doctor for the fee.
She was given the nickname the "Witch of Wall Street". However, she was a successful businesswoman who dealt mainly in real estate and invested in railroads, in addition to lending money. She kept $20 million to $40 million (think a half billion in today’s terms) in cash at all times for quick loans. On several occasions, the City of New York came to Hetty in need of loans to keep the city afloat, most particularly during the Panic of 1907; she wrote a check for $1.1 million and took her payment in short-term revenue bonds. Keenly detail-oriented, she would travel thousands of miles – alone, in an era when few women would dare travel unescorted – to collect a debt of a few hundred dollars.
She was called the "World's Greatest Miser" by the Guinness Book of World Records. She died at 81, in a rage, probably from a stroke, when she was arguing with a maid about the virtues of skimmed milk saying it was cheaper. An estimate of her net worth was around $100 – $200 million (or $1.9 – $3.8 billion in today's dollars), arguably making her the richest woman in the world at the time. (Slack, Charles, Hetty: The Genius And Madness Of America's First Female Tycoon. New York: Ecco, 2004.)
She was wealthy but she lived like a PAUPER. She never enjoyed nor benefited from the riches that were hers.
Paul gives a long list of blessings that are ours in Christ in the book of Ephesians and encourages us to walk in them and not live in the little thinking that what matters most are physical wealth and health (Credit: Richard Vartenisian, Sermon Central)
We so often get so caught up in the world and worldly things that our vision becomes so shortsighted that we lose our eternal perspective.
