As we continue in this study in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we must be careful not to skip merrily along, flitting from one verse or phrase to the next and on to the next, touching the surface of each, like a bee gathering pollen, and never looking back at previous verses, or even stopping to really take in the depths of where we are.
D. Martin Lloyd-Jones likens shallow Bible-reading, to people who go to a large art museum, pick up a brochure that guides them through, and as they approach a painting they find it in their guide and say, “Oh, this is a DaVinci” and perhaps they make one or two comments about its general appearance, then they move to the next. And they stop and read their guide and say “Oh, this was painted by El Greco” and they move on.
And in a little while, they leave the gallery and over lunch they say “I went to the art museum today and looked at every painting”, but they studied none.
The Word of God is like the most fabulous work of art ever put to canvas. The serious student can sit for hour upon hour, taking in every brush stroke; every subtle change of hue; every shadow or insinuation of light. And with the really great, classic works, the student can come back day after day and find something new each time; and each thing he learns about the painting tells him something new about the artist.
Let me use another metaphor. One of swimming in a mountain pool.
We can, with reckless abandon, plunge headlong into the Word of God and never have to fear shallows or rocks, because its depths we will never fathom. We can swim far and deep and come up for air and go back and never find its bottom.
We can explore new pools and lakes or we can come back constantly to a favorite pond, and each time discover new things there waiting for us and greater depths than we imagined last time we visited.
This is how the Bible should be approached by the Christian. It is the revelation of God, given by Himself, for us, because He wants us to know Him intimately. The day will come for each of us when we will know Him fully; as Paul says to the Corinthians,
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.” (I Cor 13:12)
We will be changed in an instant, and as John says, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
But God is so anxious for our fellowship, so desirous of beginning that changing process now, that He reveals Himself to us and says, “Now come, plunge, learn of Me, and we can have fellowship now”.
This is what R. C. Sproul was talking about, when he wrote,
“The Word of God can be in the mind without being in the heart; but it cannot be in the heart without first being in the mind. This point is crucial to answer the question, ‘What can I do to get the divine and supernatural light into my heart?’ ... The first thing we must do is get the Word of God into our minds. That responsibility is ours, not God’s. We are required to be diligent in our study of Scripture. We cannot reasonably expect the Spirit to give us the excellent sense of the Scripture in our hearts if we are unwilling to work to get it in our minds. A cavalier approach to Scripture will not do. The only ‘devotional’ reading of God’s Word that pleases Him is a devout study of His Word.” (from “The Soul’s Quest For God”)
So this is how I want to take us through Ephesians. Slowly, meticulously, examining every brush stroke, plunging every depth.
I’ll take a break every few weeks as we’ve just done and let you relax a little. Sort of like pizza night at our house. We try to have a healthy, well-balanced meal each night of the week; but whatever the kids might have to endure Saturday through Thursday, they know that Friday is pizza night and they look forward to it.
But we’ll continue to work our way through this epistle, and if it takes five years, so be it. At the end of that time, those who have been faithful in attending and sticking with it, will be able to say “I have studied Ephesians. I have absorbed it, by the Holy Spirit I have understood it, and by God’s grace I have applied it.”
So as we approach verse 7 of chapter one today, I want to pause and look back briefly at what Paul has been telling us.
If you’ve been with our study so far you may remember that in verse 3 Paul lifted up an anthem of praise and blessing to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
All the spiritual blessings of Heaven and eternity are put to our account in Christ. Now, just as a small child may have inherited a tremendous fortune, yet must have it meted out to him in increments to meet his present needs, but is not old enough yet, or mature enough yet, to have free access to it all; nevertheless it is all his...
...so we are partakers of, and users of our heavenly inheritance as the Holy Spirit meets our needs, preserving us, preparing us, continuing the work of sanctification in us. Nevertheless, put to our account and there to be drawn from freely when we are glorified, are ALL spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, in Christ.
So we began to study some of these spiritual blessings, and saw that the one Paul mentions first is that God has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.
This is so very significant! It is so vitally important for the believer to get into his conscious mind and meditate upon. To chew it slowly and ruminate on it often; to attempt to more fully grasp the implications of the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God, before beginning creation of material things, perfectly knowing the end from the beginning and existing in all of eternity at once...
...condescending to collect the wages of sin unto Himself, defeating death and hell for us, and then, individually, infinitely loving each one, choosing us and predestining each one of us, to adoption into His eternal family... Paul says, “...according to the kind intention of His will...according to His marvelous grace...which He freely bestowed on us, in Christ.
Later, when the printed copy of this sermon is made available to you, I strongly urge each one to get a copy and sit down and read those last two paragraphs over and over again, and just let the magnitude of that truth bless your souls.
Next, we focused in just a little sharper to see why it was He chose us. That is, what was His specific purpose in choosing us? And we were blessed again to see that the reason He chose us was so that we might be holy and blameless before Him.
But He didn’t choose us, set us apart and then say, “Now, be holy and blameless”; as though that was the only way to stay in His favor.
On the contrary, He chose us and set us apart to Himself because He knew we were entirely helpless on our own, ever to attain to a position of holiness and
blamelessness before Him.
So He sent His only Son to die for our sins so that through faith in Christ’s shed blood we might be declared ‘blameless’ by Him; justified,...declared right...
And raised Him from the dead and gave us eternal life, set apart, sanctified, made holy, in Him.
He chose us, to make us holy and blameless before Him...in His presence. Because He wanted our fellowship. He wanted us to be with Him. He wanted to adopt us through Jesus Christ, to Himself.
And, says Paul, all of this inspires and results in praise to the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us.
Did you hear me Christian? He has freely, without measure and without holding back, ...freely... bestowed (gave, conferred, granted) His grace on you.
Now if your mind has difficulty processing this idea of grace and what are the implications of the word as it relates to you; don’t let it bother you. In part two of this sermon we’ll be examining that facet of the painting in as much detail as the Holy Spirit will reveal to our hungry hearts.
For now, we linger in the first part of verse 7. There’s a bench. Sit down, relax, and gaze.
“In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, ”
Let’s look first, at these two words:
IN HIM
In the Beloved. He freely bestowed His grace on us, in the Beloved.
Although we have touched on this term in a previous sermon, we should take note that the Apostle Paul stresses over and over again, that all that we have from God is in Christ. The term ‘in Him’, or ‘in Christ’ or ‘in the Beloved’ is used no less than 12 times in the first chapter of Ephesians.
He never tires of saying it, and we should be invigorated by the very thought of it ourselves.
Since very early in man’s history, philosophers and religious men have attempted to fill the God-shaped hole in men’s hearts through every means their minds can conjure up.
Paul tells us in Romans 3 that there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God, All have turned aside, together they have become useless,... and man has proven his words to be true with every futile effort to find a way to Paradise, bypassing God and His decrees.
We don’t want to acknowledge our need; we don’t want to admit to sin ~ we even try to explain sin away by putting our bad behavior down as someone else’s fault.
We don’t want to acknowledge God, because to do so is to give credence to His claim that all have sinned and are in need of a Savior outside of ourselves and our own recourses.
So we chant and meditate and do religious exercises. We sacrifice our children and make up gods for each and every aspect of our lives; gods of the crops, gods of the weather, gods of fertility, gods of recreation, gods for travelers, gods for newlyweds, gods for simple-minded people,...
...or if we want to avoid the idea of gods altogether, we make ourselves our own gods and develop philosophical salves and ointments to explain away our troubles and either bury the pain deep within ourselves or inflict the pain on others in order to transfer it away from ourselves...
and in the end we look like the silly priests of Baal on Carmel; dancing and crying and cutting ourselves like blithering idiots, hoping that by sheer force of our will some miraculous answer will come from some unnamed void and fill our needs.
The evolutionists have fostered upon this generation the notion that when there was nothing, suddenly there was a big bang and all material things came from it ~ well it’s no wonder they have been so successful in feeding this tripe to the masses and having it swallowed. Every time men pray to a god who is not there, or place their faith in some unsubstantiated ideal in order to continue suppressing the truth in their unrighteousness, in essence they are exercising the same fallacy of thought. “That which I want will be there simply because I choose to believe it is true”
“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” Romans 1:21-23
But it all comes back to this, hearer today; IN HIM we have redemption, and NO OTHER!
Go ahead, dance. Cry out. Cut yourself to show your sincerity. Adopt a philosophy that tells you you’re ok and that if you just ‘have faith’, everything will be alright.
But a reckoning is coming. God’s judgment express is comin’ down the line. The day is not far off when all will stand before His judgment seat and give an answer for what they did with His good news...
...and I stand here to tell you today, no matter what you’ve heard in the past, no matter what you’ve conditioned your mind to believe, no matter what excuses you make for yourself in order to avoid facing the real issue of your sin and your helplessness,...
God sent His only Son to suffer and shed His blood and die for you; and you can rest assured that redemption back to God is only, IN HIM.
Now let’s talk for a few minutes about this phrase, “...the forgiveness of sins...”
We must be very careful not to let our minds get lazy here. There is the tendency to scan over this phrase and move on, and have the impression left in our subconscious that Paul is saying that is what redemption is.
It tends to register with us as though the wording is “In Him we have redemption through His blood, that is, the forgiveness of sins...”
While it is true that forgiveness of sins is a part of our redemption, it is by far not all that redemption is. The reason Paul mentions specifically the forgiveness of sins in this verse, is that it is the first part of our redemption. That is to say, there could be no redemptive process apart from it.
Lloyd-Jones reverently asserts that forgiving our sins is the biggest problem God has ever had to deal with.
God wanted to have our fellowship. We’ve discussed this in past sermons. God wanted to purchase us back. Redeem us back to Himself from the fall. But the sin issue had to be dealt with first.
By His own decree, the wages of sin is death. Only the shedding of the blood of an innocent could make propitiation; but since none of us was innocent, the shedding of our blood in death could only be just recompense for sin;
...never could it atone for sin. We could justly die, but He could not justly declare us right before Himself...even if we could live a thousand lives and shed our blood and die at the end of each one; never could we atone for sin!
“Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone”
- Toplady
In order to redeem us, sin could not just be avenged ~ it had to be purged. The degree of debt we owed could not just be satisfied ~ it had to be taken out of the way.
That is why the phrase “...through His blood,” had to be in this verse. The forgiveness of sins ... the FORGIVENESS of our sins, could only come through the shedding of HIS blood, and not our own.
It was through the shedding of His blood. It was IN HIM that redemption was made possible.
We were utterly lost and enslaved to sin and to Satan.
I remember reading a news story years ago, about a teenaged girl who had been found in chains, in the basement of her parent’s home.
The girl had been born severely retarded, and her parents had been ashamed. So they had moved to a new community where they weren’t known, moved into their house during the night, placed this infant in the basement, and kept her there.
When the girl was discovered due to the suspicions of a neighbor who had heard a sort of mewling cry during the night, she was naked, her hair looked as though a comb had never been through it, she was emaciated for lack of nutritious food, her skin was bleached white from never seeing sunlight, and a portion of the floor in one corner was her bathroom.
She had never learned to talk, she had never known love or affection from her own parents, ... she didn’t even know what the upstairs portion of her home looked like; she had NEVER been out of the basement.
This is a picture of all mankind, enslaved to sin and its guilt. And since the wages of sin is death, there could be no redemption for us by any means available to men.
No, it had to be IN HIM, through His blood; but His blood was sufficient.
Listen to Hebrews 9:11-15
“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves; but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, in order that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”
Now before I close today I want to linger here in Hebrews for just a few minutes, and talk to you about this heifer that is referred to in verse 13.
The writer is making reference here, to ordinances given for cleansing. To these Hebrew minds, the message was extremely clear without further explanation, as they had witnessed and partaken in these sacrifices all their lives.
God gave them this statute; That they were to take an unblemished red heifer with no defect, on which a yoke had never been placed.
This heifer was to be slain by the priest outside the camp, who would then take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the tent of meeting. After this, the whole heifer was to be burned to ashes. When this was done the ashes would be carefully gathered and placed in a clean spot outside the gate, to be available to all the Israelites. Here is why.
By God’s decree, anyone who touched a dead person, or was in the same room with a dead person, or touched a person who had touched a dead person, was unclean and could not worship in the temple for seven days; during which time, they would have to go through a ceremonial cleansing twice; on the third day and on the seventh day.
A small amount of the ashes from the heifer, there outside the camp, would be mixed in a bowl of water. Then, the one helping the unclean person would sprinkle that water on the unclean person, and at the end of the seven days he was declared clean.
There was no special day set aside for this particular sacrifice. When the ashes were gone, another red heifer was brought in and the ritual repeated. There were always to be ashes available to the people, for ritualistic cleaning because, after all, even in innocence someone could come in contact with a dead person at any time. Someone you are working next to has an accident. A family member for whom you are caring dies. It may even be your job to bury the dead, or to investigate mysterious deaths. etc.
After the sacrifice outside the gate, the priest would put the blood of the heifer on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the tent of meeting. Whereas on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled on the mercy seat, here the blood was never taken into the temple at all, but sprinkled toward it, even from outside the gate.
This sprinkling was to signify that the death of the heifer and application of the ashes cleansed the worshiper to make him fit for approaching the place of worship itself.
The blood of Christ sprinkles our conscience clean of dead works (empty religion, futile attempts of our own to be made good enough), so that we may come with confidence into His presence and SERVE the Living God.
IN HIM, we have redemption through His blood, THE FORGIVENESS OF OUR SINS... This is not all that redemption is, but it comes first.
Why? Because our conscience must be sprinkled clean of dead works and the guilt of our trespasses, before we can ever enter into His presence and claim our inheritance in Christ.
The biggest hurdle between us and God...our trespasses...overcome by the blood of the heifer, sprinkled outside the gate, for you and for me...forever.
----------------
“There’s pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black their cast;
And, oh! My soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come there’s pardon too.”
John Kent
