I’d like to ask you to try and put yourselves to some degree, into the minds of the Christians in Ephesus who first read this letter.
Paul had been with them briefly during his second missionary journey, and then during his third journey he and those with him had undergone horrible persecution.
In fact, in I Corinthians 15:32 Paul refers to having fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, and if you look at II Corinthians 1:8 you can get a glimpse of what was going on in the evangelist’s mind and heart during that time.
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia; that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us,...”
So it is apparent in this, that Paul and those with him were tossed to wild animals in the arena, and according to what he says here in II Corinthians they just reckoned themselves dead and placed their trust entirely on God, knowing He would either deliver them, or raise them from the dead in His time. Well, He subsequently delivered them from this peril to continue in the work of the Kingdom.
Now the Christians of that city, perhaps even some who were not Christians yet at the time Paul underwent his persecution there, are reading and hearing this letter from the one they saw suffer so much and ask for so little.
Knowing Paul’s humility and his patience with suffering, and his courage to go on even after such a terrifying ordeal as that must have been, ... how their hearts must have been encouraged to have him declare in the opening lines of his letter to them,
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,...”
Friends, many folks in this world will never see Jesus except for the Jesus they see in us. But history has proven that when they see us suffer in His name, and when they see in us patience through it, and our trust in God to deliver, and then see that deliverance come, that is the moment He becomes real to them and they begin to see their need and seek Him for themselves.
We are so loathe to accept any amount of adversity coming into our lives. We are so vigilant against it; so ready to use any means at our disposal to avoid it. But what I see in the lives of the great men and women of the faith recorded for us in scripture, is that their testings and trials, no matter how severe, ended eventually in deliverance and praises to God.
If you skim through the Psalms, over and over again you will see the Psalmist crying out to God for help in a time of trouble; assistance against the onslaught of enemies; rescue from certain death; comfort in time of pain and grief; but at the end of each one, praises for God’s faithfulness and lovingkindness and mercy and deliverance.
What a much stronger witness to the world the church would be, if we bore our sufferings as though God-ordained ~ trusting and waiting on Him ~ seeing His eventual deliverance from it ~ and lifting up loud praises to Him as a result of it.
A good friend and sister in the Lord gave Lynn and me a nice card some months ago, and in it she included this short poem I had never seen, but that meant so much to me:
He cannot heal who has not suffered much
For only sorrow, sorrow understands;
They will not come for healing at our touch
Who have not seen the scars upon our hands
-Unk
These people had witnessed Paul’s suffering and his patience and his deliverance, How much significance their knowledge of those things must have lent now to this line; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...”
Also, Paul does not write to them of all the really swell things God has given him. “Oh, I prayed and believed God and He gave me a herd of camels and a two story condo on the Mediterranean!”
Far, far too often, our first thoughts are of ourselves. What will God give me? What will God do for me? What should I ask God for?
Even when seeking His will, as we’ve recently discussed in our Tuesday evening study, in most cases it seems, we’re seeking to know His will concerning a decision we think we have to make about ourselves; a business venture, or the prospect of a large purchase or a new job. It’s ok. It’s good to pray and wait on the Lord for an answer to those things. Always.
But often, we tell ourselves and others that we are seeking the Lord’s will, and please, by the way, pray with us; and if we were entirely honest with ourselves we’d really be saying, “I want the Lord to show me which decision will most benefit me”.
We go to prayer when we have a perceived need.
We have a pain or a concern; we see a problem coming at us down the road ~ and our first thoughts of God are in connection with what He will do for us concerning those things.
But Paul begins by blessing God. The One who delivered him from wild beasts in that same town. Further, blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now that is significant, ... infinitely significant ... because as you will see if you continue reading this chapter, all that God does or has done or will do for us or in us or to us or through us, is first, in, of, through and by His Son Jesus Christ.
Paul raises this anthem of praise to the Ephesians; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us...” Who has blessed us? God, the Father of our Lord. He has blessed us.
What has He blessed us with? Every spiritual blessing
Now I want to slow down and look primarily today at this phrase, ‘every spiritual blessing’.
First, He has blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing
I want you to see that nothing has been held back. God has, already, not gradually and not at some future date, but ‘has’, blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
Not some, and not to some lesser degree that will increase as we grow more spiritually mature.
He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
In this world people are usually measured by what they have or do not have.
The famous become rich because the world idolizes them, and it is expected that when you worship an idol you offer your material things to it.
I remember when I was in Thailand, traveling to Bangkok during my R&R (rest and recreation), I watched the proceedings of a festival of some kind, honoring Buddha.
There was a very large statue there of Buddha; you’ve all seen them, grossly obese fellow with big rings in his really big ear lobes, sitting cross-legged with a grin on his face that to me says, “Can you people really be this deceived?”
Well, by the thousands, Thai men, women and children were bringing flowers, bowls of rice, bowls of fruit, and in some cases money, and laying them at the feet of this monstrosity. When I asked one of them why they did this, they answered that during the night Buddha would come and accept their gifts of flowers and food and money and take them with him, and in turn, bless them with material wealth.
I fail to see how they can keep believing that, when year after year they continue to live in abject poverty, but they do. They don’t even seem to realize that the Buddhist monks are, strangely enough, eating quite a bit better than usual during the festival period.
When people worship an idol, they give to it mindlessly, and the idol gets richer.
Conversely, in this world, not only do the famous get rich, the rich get famous. They have money, so they get heard, no matter how shallow or self-serving their cause is.
I have seen celebrities on game shows, and of course when celebrities are on the game shows they are always there to win money for their favorite charities. Now, some of those charities are good and worthwhile; but I have heard some of them name charities, the names of which, make me picture a bunch of aging hippies sitting around and smoking pot and talking about ways to clean up the environment.
When you’re rich in this world, people listen to you and cater to you and congratulate you and fawn over you...as long as you stay rich.
We live in a world where the poorest of the poor can live literally within a stone’s throw of the richest of the rich, and the two never meet. Neither is either one helped or humbled by the other’s circumstances.
Another snapshot I have of my tour in Thailand, is the day I arrived there from Viet Nam. We landed in Bangkok and had to spend a night in one of their hotels, waiting for a bus that would arrive in the morning to take us to Utapao Air Base.
When I reached my 4th floor hotel room and went to look out the window, I was amazed to see, from my very plush and comfortable room, small shacks made of corrugated metal, or wood, or cardboard, or in many cases a combination of these, and people hanging up their clothes on lines stretching between them, or taking a bath from a barrel of water outside the shack; dirty, raggedly dressed children chasing mongrel dogs down the alley... all of this surrounded by tall modern city structures, filled with wealthy businessmen and tourists.
The haves, living shoulder to shoulder with the have nots.
But God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing!
The brand new believer, from the moment he or she believes, is an equal sharer, not only with the oldest and wisest of saints, but he or she is an equal sharer with the saints who have gone before; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Luke, all of them.
Not only that, but he or she is an equal sharer with our Lord Jesus Christ!
Can you fathom that? No, of course you cannot. Neither can I. But God’s word tells me that it’s true.
The Father loves us with the same and equal love with which He loves His Son.
“And the glory which you have given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that You did send Me, and did love them, even as You did love Me.” John 17:22,23
And the Father blesses us with every blessing available to Christ in glory:
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,...” Romans 8:16,17
God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, IN CHRIST. Every spiritual blessing is IN CHRIST, and we are partakers of them with Him.
The next thing I want you to see is that they are SPIRITUAL blessings.
The world goes after its material wealth with vigor and often with moral abandon. Men scratch and dig and bite and claw to get to the top of the heap and find there nothing but emptiness and vanity. And in the end they go to their grave with no more than they came into the world with.
King Solomon said it all in his book of Ecclesiastes, when he wrote,
“I enlarged my works; I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself, I made gardens and parks for myself, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and I had home-born slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. Also, I collected for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of men - many concubines. Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. And all that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.”
But God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with that which cannot pass away. It cannot be stolen, it can not be burned up, it can not wear out, it cannot be used up, it cannot be wrenched from us as punishment for some supposed infraction...
...His blessings are spiritual, and eternal, and not of this passing world.
We’ll discuss them all in more detail at a later time, but I’ve listed some of them for you here, because Paul listed them in this first chapter.
God has blessed us with these spiritual blessings in Christ:
He chose us before the foundation of the world vs 4
He freely bestowed His grace on us vs 6
He has given us redemption through His blood vs 7
He has revealed His kind intention toward us by making known to us
the mystery of His will vs 9
We have obtained an inheritance in Him that includes all spiritual
blessings in Christ vs 11
We have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise vs 13
Now I want you to observe that they are spiritual blessings in the HEAVENLY PLACES.
Jesus, in His sermon on the mount, said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
In this case He is exhorting us to set our affections on things above. He is saying that we ought to be looking, not for worldly gain and reward, but for heavenly rewards which will not pass away.
But to the Ephesians, and therefore to us, the Holy Spirit through Paul is promising that God has already blessed us with every, every, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and if we understand that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, and that He does not change, and that His promises are sure and eternal, then we know in our heart of hearts that what we have been blessed with is ours completely and eternally ~ and it’s value is infinitely greater and more precious than the most valuable and precious thing the world has to offer.
There can be no comparison.
Finally, and most importantly,
I want you to see that all of these spiritual blessings laid up for us in the heavenly places are IN CHRIST.
I say ‘most importantly’, because the one thing we must understand and never lose sight of, is that all that we have, all that we are, all that we ever will be is only in and through Christ.
This is the thing that Paul stresses over and over again throughout this letter.
The spiritual blessings I listed for you from chapter one did not, by far, comprise a complete listing.
It is in Christ that we have a place in heaven. Chapter 2 verses 4 and 5
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ...and raised us up with Him, and seated us with HIm in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.’
We were “...created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”, according to chapter 2 verse 10
Verses 11 through 22 of chapter 2 educate the reader to these facts:
1. When we were separate from Christ, we were excluded from the commonwealthof Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. BUT...
2. In Christ Jesus, we who were formerly far off, have been brought near by His blood,
and...
3. In Him and through His work on Calvary’s cross, the dividing walls between Jew and Gentile,...between fallen man and Holy God have been broken down.
“For through Him,”, says verse 18, “...we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father”.
and...
4. Therefore, we, believing Jews and believing Gentiles alike, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the very cornerstone, are being fitted together into a holy temple in the Lord, IN WHOM we are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
That’s just a quick over-view of chapter 2, but taking all these things from chapters one and two, we can see that Paul’s entire thinking process began and ended with Christ.
This One who had raised him up from the dusty Damascus road and commissioned him for ministry; Who led him into the wilderness and personally taught him for three years; Who guided him on his missionary journeys and kept him through testings and trials and perils and dangers and hunger and exhaustion and exposure to the elements; Who raised him to life after being stoned and dragged from Lystra and deposited like trash alongside the roadway; Who delivered him from the fangs of wild beasts in Ephesus...
... ...to him, this Christ was truly all and all.
Christians, none of us has been through worse hardships than Paul went through, and certainly not for the sake of ministry.
I am aware of, and I would never minimize the suffering and the troubles that most of us have experienced in our years, and I am happy to be able to point the one who hurts to the great Physician for healing, to the Comforter for counsel, to the Champion of our faith for deliverance.
But I will also pray that the Lord open the eyes of your understanding, and give you grace, that you may, no matter how deep the wounds, no matter how dark the pit, no matter how insurmountable the hedge of circumstances around you may seem, be able to shout with the Apostle Paul,
“BLESSED be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus...”
This is a present and everlasting truth for you to contemplate and cling to throughout the remainder of your days on this earth, Believer; In Christ, you have, been blessed, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
You are rich, INFINITELY AND ETERNALLY RICH, beyond man’s wildest imaginings......IN CHRIST!
Blessed be God!
