WELCOME
Good morning First Baptist. We welcome you to worship this morning. Be sure to remember your brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the week as you pray for them, and as the Holy Spirit brings their faces to your mind. Be sure to also connect with them in the ways that are possible. And if you have any questions or would like to talk to someone, please don’t hesitate to contact the church through the church telephone and leave a message. (519-733-4144)
Songs
Call to Worship
The Call of Jeremiah
4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew h you,
before you were born, I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”— Jeremiah 1:4-5
Gracious God, we come to you today, seeking your guidance and strength. You have called us to ministries for which we feel overwhelmed and even inadequate in this season.
Help us to understand that it is your love and blessing that will support and sustain our efforts. Give us the courage to place our trust in your abiding presence. We ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
FBK, WELCOME TO WORSHIP!
Songs
Prayer
Prayer of Confession & Assurance
God of great expectations,
you know how easy it is for us to make excuses for inactivity.
We love to run and hide when a task is set before us.
We look at the expectation and think that we don’t have the abilities, strength, or wisdom to accomplish this task.
We think, too often, that we are doing these things all by ourselves.
And we feel sorry for ourselves and angry that you expect so much from us. Forgive our ignorance, our stubbornness, and our stupidity, O Lord.
Help us to understand that the opportunities for service that you offer to us also come with your abiding presence, love and support.
It is your love which makes the impossible possible.
Turn us around and place us back on the path of joyful service.
Let our work be part of the fulfillment of the mandate of Jesus Christ when he made his proclamation in the synagogue so long ago.For it is in His Name that we pray. AMEN.
Words of Assurance
As we have said, even before we were born, God knew us. God has always been with us. Place your trust in God’s presence and forgiving love. Rejoice! In the name of Jesus Christ, we all are forgiven! AMEN.
BLESSED ASSURANCE
The Blessings of Redemption
Today's Message: Pastor Dave Page
Imagine with me for a moment, what it would be like to be in an ancient, 1st century prison!!!
Imagine the Apostle Paul in prison: He is probably malnourished and short of sleep. He may well have suffered horrible illness; he will certainly have been beaten up by guards and perhaps by other prisoners.
We must wonder if even Paul felt helpless and alone in the dark and damp, with the smell of rot, and death all around him.
Now picture Paul, either scribbling away on a small sheet of papyrus, squinting for lack of light, maybe, hearing at last someone whispering through a slot in the door, talking to a visiting follower of The Way and telling him what to put in a letter to one or more of the central Asian churches. Would you say this is a far darker image than the usual portraits we have of Paul in our minds?? Don’t we usually think of the great Apostle, sitting peacefully at a desk, quill in hand, with a contemplative look on his face ??
What Paul experienced in prison was not serenity, but real hardship, not soothing tranquility but brokenness and anxiety. So it is all the more astonishing that it is from this burdensome period of Paul’s life that we get from him, not only the circular letter we call ‘Ephesians’ but also Philippians, the letters to Philemon, and Colossians, these letters that all emphasize the universal sovereignty of Jesus and the call for the churches to model, in their own communities, the cosmic redemption, achieved by God through Jesus, of His Children. As we said last week, Paul desperately wanted these people to know of the blessing that redemption was for them and the enormous cost had been paid on their behalf.
This morning we are going to look at what we call the longest sentence in the Bible – certainly in Paul’s letters. We are going to read a little bit of ground that we covered last week, but mostly new territory.
Scripture Reading: Ephesians. 1:3-14
Prayer of Illumination
God our helper,
by your Holy Spirit, open our minds
that as the Scriptures are read
and your Word is proclaimed,
we may be led into your truth
and taught your will,
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
As the title of this paragraph may indicate in your Bible – Paul is praising Spiritual Blessings that these believers he is writing to experience because of Jesus, and what a wonderful way to start this letter – what a wonderful way for us to start our journey in this second week.
Today, we are going to look at 5 Blessings that Paul emphasizes to the Churches around Ephesus and by default five blessings that you know in your life because of your relationship with Jesus.
Let’s talk about this idea of Blessings for a moment:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
— Ephesians 1:3
Praise language shows up three times in this section that we are looking at this morning;(1:3, 12, 14); the term “bless” occurs three times here in Greek. Paul says, everything you need is poured out on us by divine generosity. Because of this truth then we are to shower God with our praise, that should be our natural response to the God who has poured out his blessings on us.
Now also notice that Paul says we experience these blessings “in the heavenly realms,” referring not to heaven itself but to the spiritual realm that is now our true home.
This “in the heavenly places” (epouranious) was only used in Ephesians (Ephesiaons 1:20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). From the context of all its usages, it must mean the spiritual realm in which believers live here and now, not heaven. This is important to understand and realize as a significant part of our early journey through this letter. We live on Earth yes, but as part of a spiritual realm as well. We’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come.
These blessings are spiritual because they come to us on the spiritual plane and because they come through the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Peter said in this world we are “foreigners and exiles” (1 Peter 1:1, 17; 2:11), and Paul says in the letter to the Philippians we are now citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) rather than of any earthly nation.
We are members of a new family; in this new spiritual reality we experience all the blessings God has for us.
Let’s start out this morning with something for us to be joyous about! The blessings of Jesus ultimate victory can be and frankly are experienced, spiritually, by us right now.
These spiritual gifts encompass the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23 and the spiritual gifts of 1 Corinthians 12:4–11, 27–31, but are not restricted to these. And as I said, we are going to look at five of them that Paul points out in the message this morning.
Blessing 1: Chosen (Ephesians 1:4–6)
4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship n through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
The first blessing is closely related to the idea of “God’s holy people” in verse 2. — God “chose us in him before the creation of the world” to be his special people and thus to be set apart for him. This Paul says is why we praise God. Since he has blessed us by choosing us before this world was even created, we must praise him for it. Divine election – God’s choosing – involves an eternal choice, worked out originally in his choice of Abraham (Gen 12:1–3), whom God blessed to be a source of blessing to the nations) and of Israel. That choice was based not on Israel’s worthiness or strength or place among the other nations but entirely on God’s love for them. Remember what we said last week, we are not the pick of the litter. Throughout Ephesians the emphasis is on God’s love and not human worth. God’s choosing is by His mercy and grace and are unmerited and undeserved, the product entirely of His love. Every part of our salvation, including our being chosen, is made possible by and takes place in Jesus. I know this topic of election or predestination can be difficult to understand, the depth of God’s love can never be truly understood. The key, of course, is that God had already decided to come, become incarnate, and die on the cross for our sins before he performed the act of creation. The possibility of my salvation, of your salvation was ensured before the decision to create had been made! In the greeting the Ephesian Christians are called “God’s holy people” (1:1), and now they are called to live up to that name. As Jesus followers, our life contains both privilege (the gift of salvation) and responsibility (the demand to live life God’s way).
It is essential that God’s true followers actually follow. It is absolutely essential that we, live lives that refuse the ways of today’s world. It is easy for Christians to be satisfied with appearing to live faithfully and so we must remember that we will ultimately give account not to each other but to God (Hebrews 4:13).
It is “in Christ” that all the spiritual blessings become realities for us. – Blessing One – you were chosen.
Blessing 2: Redeemed (Ephesians 1:7–8)
Redemption is at the core of Paul’s doctrine of salvation. In all of Paul’s teaching, the imagery of redemption is very strong.
Permit me to make a very simple but eternally significant statement –
“JESUS CHRIST DIED SO THAT YOU WOULD LIVE FOR ETERNITY”
Jesus died so that in Him, by the new life that his saving act allowed for us, we might spend eternity with him at the renewal of all things – when He comes again. Seeing Jesus’ death in this way began with Jesus’ own use of “ransom” as a metaphor to describe his sacrificial service (“to give his life a ransom for many,” Mark 10:45). “Redemption” (apolytrōsis) builds on this. Picture something again with me – picture a ransom payment made to bring about freedom from bondage, whether from slavery or for a prisoner of war. Ransom in the context of redemption means both the payment made and the deliverance from bondage it produced. Jesus’s blood sacrifice on the cross became a ransom payment that purchased us from the bondage of sin and from the curse of the law, producing our salvation and effecting the forgiveness of our sins. As a result of this, God “justified” us; what do I mean by that word justified – It means God relieved us from the judgment seat, he pronounced us innocent in his sight because Jesus gave himself as our substitute on the cross. In the Old Testament the image of redemption was used of the exodus that freed Israel from bondage to Egypt (Exodus 6:6).
Church, ours is a far greater exodus—a “new exodus”—from the bondage of sin. Jesus died in our place, bearing the payment for our sins himself.
When God justifies us, he applies the blood of Christ to us, forgives our sins, and declares that we are right or righteous in his sight. We receive the divine pardon even though we belong in prison. – Blessing Two – You are Redeemed.
Blessing 3: Divine insight (Ephesians 1:9–10)
Paul then talks about something I think we get a bit uncomfortable with in our data centric, google capable western world, the mystery of his will – think of this as divine insight.
For me, this whole passage is one of the most beautiful statements in the Bible about God’s love. God is not a penny-pincher who dribbles out his blessings to us a tiny bit at a time. All the riches of heaven are available to us. This pouring out encompasses not only the salvific riches that lead to forgiveness of sins but also the spiritual blessings of 1:3. God’s wealth cannot be exhausted, and it is always available to his adopted!
I truly believe that when we get to heaven, we will be shocked by how little of God’s philanthropy we have actually used; we depend on ourselves far more than we should.
One of the primary blessings lavished on us is knowledge—God’s “making known” (gnōrisas) the “mystery of his will” (1:9).
Wisdom and revelation are closely intertwined throughout Scripture, and God’s wisdom determined the “fullness of time” when it was best to reveal the truths he had kept hidden throughout the old covenant period.
From eternity past God had decided how he would bring humanity back to himself through the death of his Son (see 1:5) and how he would bring history to an end, but he kept many of the details hidden until he determined the time was right. Paul’s point was that the time of fulfillment had arrived in Jesus, and the mysteries have now been made known.
Now “Mystery” as Paul is using it here is connected in meaning with “apocalyptic,” referring to the process by which God reveals hidden truths (apokalypsis is the Greek title of the book of Revelation). All of this proceeds from God’s will—that which he determined long ago to do in order to redeem humanity and bring this evil world to an end by replacing it with the new heavens and new earth.
Is it comforting for you to know that God’s sovereign will is ultimately behind the progress of history? I hope so, especially in the world we find ourselves today… This is called “salvation history”: God’s control of human history to end evil and bring about final salvation. Here, the mystery is the redemption of the cosmos in Jesus at the end of history. In general, then, the mystery is the progress of God’s salvation from the coming of Christ to the end of this evil world and the arrival of the eternal reign of God. This all takes place “in accordance with his good pleasure,” which demonstrates further the love of God for his redeemed people. He doesn’t just want too, but our God is pleased and filled with delight to see his salvation worked out in human history (as in 1:5) and to reveal to his followers the plan he has formed for accomplishing this. Note that this plan has been “purposed in Christ,” meaning that the Father and the Son devised this plan in union with each other. It was designed to be carried out by Christ in his coming to earth to become the atoning sacrifice on the cross (Philippians 2:8). In verse 10 we are told that this plan, devised by the Godhead “before the creation of the world” (1:4), was intended to “come into effect in the fullness of times,” a phrase paralleled in Galatians 4:4, which speaks of the birth of Christ in “the fullness of time.” This is like the summary of Jesus’ teaching in Mark 1:15…Don’t miss this Church – “The time is fulfilled,” when Jesus came, God’s plan had then completed the old covenant period and begun the new covenant with the arrival of the kingdom in Jesus.
And God has revealed that mystery to us in Christ – Blessing Three, You have Divine Insight.
Blessing 4: His divine plan (Ephesians 1:11–12)
Now in case you’ve missed something here along the way and you’re asking, “divine insight – divine insight into what? God has a plan and you my Brother and Sisters appear prominently in that plan. In Jesus, God has made you his own – adopted remember. The idea is similar to that of 1 Peter 2:9: “You are a chosen people … God’s special possession.” The church is the new Israel, the chosen people of God and his special possession. Paul says we are “predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” God’s actions are not contingent on historical developments on earth. He is in absolute, sovereign control and has a plan of salvation that guides history in accordance with his will. The forces of evil, even pandemics, are powerless against God’s plan and purposes. We belong to God as his inheritance, and he will protect each one of us. Paul wants his readers to realize how incredibly blessed and privileged we are to have the God of all creation care so deeply and work so mightily for us! And, I want you to realize that same truth!!
Now understand as well, that the purpose (1:12) of God’s sovereign action on our behalf is that we might exist “for the praise of his glory.” This whole section centers on the praise God deserves for all the blessings he has poured into our lives, as seen in the opening statement of verse 3, “Praise be to the God … who has blessed us … with every spiritual blessing,” and then again in verse 6, “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Here is the very meaning of our existence: We exist as his children and heirs, blessed with his lavish riches (1:7–8) and the chosen for his mighty work (1:11). Blessing Four – You are part of a Divine Plan!
Blessing 5: being sealed with the spirit (Ephesians 1:13–14)
Now, I know some of you watching this morning might be thinking “wow Pastor 4 blessings, eh? Have you seen my life lately? – Blessing is the last word I would use for that1”. If that’s you this morning…if that’s even a part of any of you then hear this:
When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession
— Ephesians 1:13–14
Here Paul addresses you directly. All five of these blessings this morning have come to you the moment you asked Jesus into your life, here “when you heard” and “believed.” The source of this was the gospel, described as both “the message of truth” and “the gospel of your salvation.” Just like today, the first century featured a chaos of religious and divergent claims about how to live your life. Today there are even more religious alternatives, distractions really and we need to know the truth of Jesus. We must remember that Christianity is an exclusive religion, in the sense that there is no hope for eternal life apart from Jesus. This is clear in John 14:6 (“No one comes to the Father except through me”) and Acts 4:12 (“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved”). When we, in the name of tolerance think pious people from any religion can be saved by following different paths, we couldn’t be more wrong. There is only one gospel, only one truth that can be the source of salvation! And so Paul encourages us by saying when you have heard this gospel and believed you have received God’s salvation, and the proof of this is that they “were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” This is key…in the ancient world a seal was often a glob of wax with the mark of an official signet ring to designate the authenticity of the document and the authority behind it. So the Holy Spirit is our “mark,” showing that we belong to God, who has marked or sealed us as his treasured possession and both watches over and protects us. The Spirit is not only our seal but is also a “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (1:14).
This is a commercial metaphor that functions here much as it does today, referring to a down payment that guarantees the future full payment of the amount promised. God has promised an inheritance to every believer, and the Spirit is a first instalment or payment that anchors completely the full amount in the future. But the inheritance is not entirely in the future. The Spirit is part of that inheritance, so God is initiating our end-time inheritance now. The full inheritance will be received in heaven at the when Jesus comes back and the Spirit both initiates the process and guarantees full payment in the future. A seal means finality, a seal means security – because of Jesus’ presence in your life, your inheritance status is secured!! A seal means identity – It means identity: it means that you belong to Him. You see, not only is there a finished transaction; there is a grateful transference and the seal put upon it means it passes out of this ownership and it passes over to this ownership. Now you belong to Him. As a matter of fact, in Ephesus, where Paul wrote this, Ephesus was known for its lumber, and they would ship trees and big parcels of wood to other seaports. And the owner would put his seal upon his piece of lumber that would be shipped because when it got to the new port, that seal would be the sign of ownership. “This belongs to me. There’s my seal upon it.” A seal is a mark of identity. Blessing Five – You are sealed!
Do you know, one of my favourite verses in all of the Bible is Romans chapter 8, verse 32. Now remember, Paul, was a religious lawyer. Paul liked to argue. You know, I like to argue; I really do—Marlee says too much. I like to argue. I mean, in a good sense more like debating. I like to say, “Well, if that means that, then this means this.” I like that kind of thing.
Now, here’s the way the Apostle Paul was thinking. Look. He says in Romans chapter 8, verse 32:
“ He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
— Romans 8:32
Now, notice what he’s saying here – if God gave Jesus for you, then would He hold back anything else? I mean, if He didn’t spare Jesus, would He hold back anything else? Are you with me???
If there was ever a promise that God would have been tempted to go back on, it would have been the promise to send His Son, right? If He kept that one, can we expect Him to keep the rest? That’s Paul’s argument. If God loved you enough to send Jesus, if He’s got that kind of an investment in you, don’t you think He’s going to take care of us? You see, the seal means ownership. And listen, not only do I have a responsibility to him; but friend, He’s got an investment in me. He’s got an investment in you – His chosen one!!
Let me finish with this – In today’s world, if people could really understand what we mean by eternal security, I don’t believe you could keep them away from Jesus with a machine gun. People just don’t understand what it means to know the Blessings of our God in Jesus Christ. If you’re saved, you’re blessed; over and over again…and when you’re blessed, you’re sealed and when you’re sealed, you’re safe.
Let’s Pray.
Prayer
Lord, too often we are quick to look past these Blessings your love has made real to each of us. We say we want to do things, but we back away because we think things will be too tough for us. We don’t always believe that you will be with us, guiding, healing, and strengthening us for service. So rather than doing your work, we are tempted to just go through the motions.
Father, you are LOVE…you are Blessing!! In you resides all hope, peace, and justice. Your blessing has been poured out on us and all creation from before the beginning of time. Teach us again the great message of hope that we might share it with others… Remind us that love is also risk….and you call us to risk… We risk criticism and alienation from people who don’t understand. May we be your tool of understanding in a Broken world.
Loving God we pray this morning for those in our lives that are hurting, sick, healing and struggling with the times we find ourselves in. Let us know that you are with us, through this time. May the blessings these people know in Jesus be
- Healing
- Peace and comfort
- Encouragement and strength.
Lord, give them courage and resilience to persevere.
Give us all courage to be your faithful witnesses, equip us to be the blessing of loving service and care we give to others.For we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
Song
Benediction
God did not say that it would be easy to bring the good news to all people, but God did say that through Jesus and the Holy Spirit He would be with you.
So go now in peace, walking confidently with God.
Bring the good news of His blessing to all the people you meet.
Have a Great Week. Blessings.