Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-11
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
It is the season of Thanksgiving. We give thanks for family, and health and all kinds of blessings. We can try to count our blessing as the song says, but we know there’s always way more than we can really count. We give thanks for good and loving relationships among family and friends, gainful employment, economic security and political and religious freedom. We give thanks for our national security and all our armed forces that protect our liberties and prosperity. It is good to give thanks! And we give thanks to God for making it all possible.
That’s good too, even commanded of us. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” That’s command language! It’s kind of a funny thought for parents, thinking about how much they do for their children and wanting to tell them, “You ought to thank me!” But we tend to refrain from commanding anyone’s gratitude. We just carry on with what we sometimes call the thankless task of parenting. Sure, we would enjoy experiencing their expressions of gratitude, but not if we force it out of them. It kind of defeats our real desires if we tell them they have to. So how come God gets away with commanding our thanks?
The answer to that lies in the facts of human existence. We would prefer to be self-made, owing nothing to anyone and having no need to thank anyone for what we want to believe we have accomplished on our own. The best of us work hard to make our own way, build our own reputation and secure our own financial security. Nothing wrong with that, except that it’s not really the whole story. All of our accomplishments are only possible because God provides the resources we use to accomplish anything.
We should remember that easily, but there is an inbuilt refusal to thank God for our blessings that started with Adam and Eve. It’s called a “sinful nature.” All of us are born with that ever since our original parents broke the world with their first act of ingratitude. We think of the original sin as that great act of disobedience, in which they partook of the forbidden fruit. But Martin Luther pointed out that the real original sin was ingratitude. Adam and Eve fell into satan’s trap of wanting something more the moment they stopped thanking God for all the paradise they already had. If they had only been grateful for all the blessings already granted, they never would have wanted to be more like God by eating of that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
Since God knows that ingratitude is the root of all coveting, and coveting is the root of all acts of selfish sin, God wants us to know the importance of giving thanks to him, and so he and perhaps he alone, is right to command us to give thanks in all things! It is self-destructively deadly if we don’t!
And that, dear parents, is why we don’t force our kids to thank us. We need to teach them to thank God for everything, by setting an example of thanking God for everything right along with them. And that includes thanking God for them, too! (Even when they act like ungrateful little imps!)
So, when we celebrate Thanksgiving, we best be giving thanks to God, more than to our relatives, for good and loving relationships among family and friends. We should give thanks to God, more than to doctors, for good health and for healing when we need it. We give thanks to God, more than to our soldiers, for our national security and all our armed forces that protect our liberties and prosperity. We give thanks to God, more than ourselves, or to anyone else, for friends, gainful employment, economic security and political and religious freedom and all kinds of blessings. There is no such thing as a self-made man, or woman either.
However, none of the material blessings we may enjoy on this earth can compare with the glory and riches of the spiritual blessings that are ours through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. And yet, many people alive today, if not most of us to be honest, are much more focused in the material blessings we want, than on the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. So today, I decided to focus on a list of spiritual blessings that are recorded for us in the text from Ephesians that Larry read for us.
That passage begins with an expression of gratitude: “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” Yes, we are blessed beyond measure, not because we deserve it or have any goodness in ourselves that would cause God to love us, but just because he does love us because God is love!
Paul said it this way in Ephesians 1:3, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” That means that even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. I don’t know about you, but I think it feels great to be chosen. I thank God that he is a god of love and not one who demands performance.
I mean, I remember waiting in gym class for the captain of either team to pick me. I never got chosen, until the gym teacher insisted that I couldn’t be left out! That’s because those guys were looking for skills and trying to load up their teams with all the best players for the win! But God chose me just because he loves me! His choice was not based on what I could do or be. I thank him for that love! Thank God that he is so loving!
The “in his sight” phrase is important. We all know that we’re not perfect. But God sees us as perfect when he sees us in Christ. That is so key. Jesus covers all our sins. And God sees the children he loves. We are family! God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So, we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
I thank God that he is a loving Father who wants us close to him! I thank God that he is far better than the kind of scary God that is usually invented by idol worshippers. He is not the tyrant god that people usually seem to see in the Bible if they miss his father’s heart, a god of rules and regulations that rob us of any fun, or a god who just wants to use and abuse puny humans just because he made us and is powerful enough to make us do whatever he might want, and punish us terribly if we refuse.
That’s not the God of the Bible at all, that just the way we portray him when we don’t want to accept responsibility for the terrible consequences we suffer as a result of our own sins. It’s easy to think God doesn’t want us to have any fun, when he has to take a stand against the sins that we think are fun, but actually trap us before we realize the danger, and would destroy us if we didn’t turn to God for rescue.
However, going on in Ephesians, we see how God really talks about himself, “God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.”
That is called a good plan, and it is a good plan! It’s a good plan because we don’t like seeing warring nations battling each other for limited resources or unlimited supremacy over all others. That’s all going to go away one day when we get what we really need, a world at peace with God. It will be a true peace that is not enforced or coerced by military might against our will. There will be one Lord and King, ruler of the world that we can all equally acknowledge is the absolute best candidate based on his goodness, wisdom and concern for all. That King will be Jesus! When that day comes, we will surely thank God for establishing an orderly and benevolent rule that seeks the good of all its citizens.
And we can thank God now that such a day really will come. We know it for sure because it’s God’s plan and his will shall be accomplished. Nothing can stop it from coming. We can thank God that we have assurance of this because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. In 2 Cor. 1:22 we learn that when we put our faith in Jesus, then God “put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” The Holy Spirit is how we know that all this is true and that we get to enjoy it. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are united with Jesus Christ. God has given us his guarantee!
Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. We have a tremendously wonderful future in store for us if we trust in Jesus Christ to get there. An inheritance is the blessing passed down from a father to his children. So how can we possibly get an inheritance from God? We have to be his children! Some think that everyone already is a child of God. But that’s not what the Bible teaches.
It says most clearly in John 1:12 “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.” The right to become children of God would not exist or be needed is everyone born is a child of God just by being born on this earth. The Scripture says something is needed in order to become a child of God. All who believe in him, that is in Jesus, the Lord and Savior, these are the only ones who become children of God.
Furthermore, 1 John 3:1 reminds us of the love we have already mentioned in this thanksgiving message and adds, “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”
Now we can see two distinct groups of people, there’s the children of God, that’s all the believers who trust in Jesus for forgiveness and salvation; and then there’s the people of this world, who are called that because they don’t believe in and follow Jesus according to the words of Truth in Scripture.
So, which group are you in? How do you know whether or not you are among those who were chosen even before he made the world? The simple answers is in Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There is a longer answer, Romans 8. If you haven’t read that in a while I strongly urge you to do so!
But let me summarize: If you live like you believe God is there to forgive you but you are still in charge of your life and try to do a good job of it, that’s called living by the flesh, not the spirit. You are outside of Christ. But, if you live like you believe God died on the cross for you and that fills you with gratitude that moves you to want to devote your life to being his servant, you see him in charge of your life and all you want to do is learn to obey everything he commanded, and you love doing it because it draws you closer to your heavenly Father, that’s life in the Spirit. You’re saved by a genuine faith in Jesus Christ.
Now you can test yourself. You can know for sure what group you’re in. But the most beautiful thing of all is that if you find you are really in the first group, living by the flesh, and have only been a half-hearted Christian, or a Christian in name only, or not even caring about being Christian at all, today is the day you can make a change and move to life in Christ. If you are so moved, that’s the Holy Spirit nudging you! God your heavenly father is calling you. It’s like he is saying to you today, “Come home.” All is forgiven through Christ. Believe that and come to me. Let my love fill you!”
My job is only to urge you to respond to that calling. I know it can feel like, if you make a decision to follow Christ it will limit your freedom because you will have to start obeying a list of commandments, or rules and regulations. But that’s not it at all! Jesus said the truth will set you free and that truth is here. In Romans 8:15 we are assured that the Spirit we receive through faith in Jesus does not make us slaves, so that we live in fear again; rather, the Spirit we receive brings about our adoption to sonship. We become his beloved children. And we get to call him “Daddy.”
Can you imagine that? What would be like to be able to look up to God in heaven and realize that he is the most perfect, most loving father you could ever imagine, even better than the best earthly father you have ever known or imagined. And through faith in Jesus you get to look up to the almighty, most holy, most powerful God of the Universe and call him Daddy. And he loves you and wants only what is best for you and to bless you.
If you are responding to this call today, faith in Jesus puts you in a good relationship with Jesus and offers forgiveness of all your sins, but it doesn’t mean you get an easy life from here on out. Jesus assured us that in this world, we his children would still have trials and tribulations, but that he will be with us through it all to help us and strengthen us to deal with everything in the power of the Spirit, not so it becomes easy, but so that it becomes worth the effort. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
So, since God is for us, who can be against us? 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? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Believe that and let him help you live up to it. That’s why we participate in the fellowship of believers and the worship of God. We’re celebrating life in Christ.
We’re giving thanks for so great salvation. Thank you, Lord, for choosing us! Such love as yours is overwhelming! We thank you Lord for the gift of the blessed Holy Spirit who dwells within and assures us of our life with you, secured in Christ when we trust him. Thank you for your glorious grace, poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. Thank you for being so rich in kindness and grace that you purchased our freedom with the blood of your Son and forgave our sins.
Thank for showering this kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. Thank you for revealing to us what used to be your mysterious will regarding Christ, and for fulfilling your good plan. And thank for planning to bring everything together under the authority of Christ, at just the right time. We know you bring what is the very best for all humanity who trusts in you!
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
It is the season of Thanksgiving. We give thanks for family, and health and all kinds of blessings. We can try to count our blessing as the song says, but we know there’s always way more than we can really count. We give thanks for good and loving relationships among family and friends, gainful employment, economic security and political and religious freedom. We give thanks for our national security and all our armed forces that protect our liberties and prosperity. It is good to give thanks! And we give thanks to God for making it all possible.
That’s good too, even commanded of us. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” That’s command language! It’s kind of a funny thought for parents, thinking about how much they do for their children and wanting to tell them, “You ought to thank me!” But we tend to refrain from commanding anyone’s gratitude. We just carry on with what we sometimes call the thankless task of parenting. Sure, we would enjoy experiencing their expressions of gratitude, but not if we force it out of them. It kind of defeats our real desires if we tell them they have to. So how come God gets away with commanding our thanks?
The answer to that lies in the facts of human existence. We would prefer to be self-made, owing nothing to anyone and having no need to thank anyone for what we want to believe we have accomplished on our own. The best of us work hard to make our own way, build our own reputation and secure our own financial security. Nothing wrong with that, except that it’s not really the whole story. All of our accomplishments are only possible because God provides the resources we use to accomplish anything.
We should remember that easily, but there is an inbuilt refusal to thank God for our blessings that started with Adam and Eve. It’s called a “sinful nature.” All of us are born with that ever since our original parents broke the world with their first act of ingratitude. We think of the original sin as that great act of disobedience, in which they partook of the forbidden fruit. But Martin Luther pointed out that the real original sin was ingratitude. Adam and Eve fell into satan’s trap of wanting something more the moment they stopped thanking God for all the paradise they already had. If they had only been grateful for all the blessings already granted, they never would have wanted to be more like God by eating of that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
Since God knows that ingratitude is the root of all coveting, and coveting is the root of all acts of selfish sin, God wants us to know the importance of giving thanks to him, and so he and perhaps he alone, is right to command us to give thanks in all things! It is self-destructively deadly if we don’t!
And that, dear parents, is why we don’t force our kids to thank us. We need to teach them to thank God for everything, by setting an example of thanking God for everything right along with them. And that includes thanking God for them, too! (Even when they act like ungrateful little imps!)
So, when we celebrate Thanksgiving, we best be giving thanks to God, more than to our relatives, for good and loving relationships among family and friends. We should give thanks to God, more than to doctors, for good health and for healing when we need it. We give thanks to God, more than to our soldiers, for our national security and all our armed forces that protect our liberties and prosperity. We give thanks to God, more than ourselves, or to anyone else, for friends, gainful employment, economic security and political and religious freedom and all kinds of blessings. There is no such thing as a self-made man, or woman either.
However, none of the material blessings we may enjoy on this earth can compare with the glory and riches of the spiritual blessings that are ours through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. And yet, many people alive today, if not most of us to be honest, are much more focused in the material blessings we want, than on the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. So today, I decided to focus on a list of spiritual blessings that are recorded for us in the text from Ephesians that Larry read for us.
That passage begins with an expression of gratitude: “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” Yes, we are blessed beyond measure, not because we deserve it or have any goodness in ourselves that would cause God to love us, but just because he does love us because God is love!
Paul said it this way in Ephesians 1:3, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” That means that even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. I don’t know about you, but I think it feels great to be chosen. I thank God that he is a god of love and not one who demands performance.
I mean, I remember waiting in gym class for the captain of either team to pick me. I never got chosen, until the gym teacher insisted that I couldn’t be left out! That’s because those guys were looking for skills and trying to load up their teams with all the best players for the win! But God chose me just because he loves me! His choice was not based on what I could do or be. I thank him for that love! Thank God that he is so loving!
The “in his sight” phrase is important. We all know that we’re not perfect. But God sees us as perfect when he sees us in Christ. That is so key. Jesus covers all our sins. And God sees the children he loves. We are family! God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So, we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
I thank God that he is a loving Father who wants us close to him! I thank God that he is far better than the kind of scary God that is usually invented by idol worshippers. He is not the tyrant god that people usually seem to see in the Bible if they miss his father’s heart, a god of rules and regulations that rob us of any fun, or a god who just wants to use and abuse puny humans just because he made us and is powerful enough to make us do whatever he might want, and punish us terribly if we refuse.
That’s not the God of the Bible at all, that just the way we portray him when we don’t want to accept responsibility for the terrible consequences we suffer as a result of our own sins. It’s easy to think God doesn’t want us to have any fun, when he has to take a stand against the sins that we think are fun, but actually trap us before we realize the danger, and would destroy us if we didn’t turn to God for rescue.
However, going on in Ephesians, we see how God really talks about himself, “God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.”
That is called a good plan, and it is a good plan! It’s a good plan because we don’t like seeing warring nations battling each other for limited resources or unlimited supremacy over all others. That’s all going to go away one day when we get what we really need, a world at peace with God. It will be a true peace that is not enforced or coerced by military might against our will. There will be one Lord and King, ruler of the world that we can all equally acknowledge is the absolute best candidate based on his goodness, wisdom and concern for all. That King will be Jesus! When that day comes, we will surely thank God for establishing an orderly and benevolent rule that seeks the good of all its citizens.
And we can thank God now that such a day really will come. We know it for sure because it’s God’s plan and his will shall be accomplished. Nothing can stop it from coming. We can thank God that we have assurance of this because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. In 2 Cor. 1:22 we learn that when we put our faith in Jesus, then God “put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” The Holy Spirit is how we know that all this is true and that we get to enjoy it. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are united with Jesus Christ. God has given us his guarantee!
Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. We have a tremendously wonderful future in store for us if we trust in Jesus Christ to get there. An inheritance is the blessing passed down from a father to his children. So how can we possibly get an inheritance from God? We have to be his children! Some think that everyone already is a child of God. But that’s not what the Bible teaches.
It says most clearly in John 1:12 “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.” The right to become children of God would not exist or be needed is everyone born is a child of God just by being born on this earth. The Scripture says something is needed in order to become a child of God. All who believe in him, that is in Jesus, the Lord and Savior, these are the only ones who become children of God.
Furthermore, 1 John 3:1 reminds us of the love we have already mentioned in this thanksgiving message and adds, “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”
Now we can see two distinct groups of people, there’s the children of God, that’s all the believers who trust in Jesus for forgiveness and salvation; and then there’s the people of this world, who are called that because they don’t believe in and follow Jesus according to the words of Truth in Scripture.
So, which group are you in? How do you know whether or not you are among those who were chosen even before he made the world? The simple answers is in Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There is a longer answer, Romans 8. If you haven’t read that in a while I strongly urge you to do so!
But let me summarize: If you live like you believe God is there to forgive you but you are still in charge of your life and try to do a good job of it, that’s called living by the flesh, not the spirit. You are outside of Christ. But, if you live like you believe God died on the cross for you and that fills you with gratitude that moves you to want to devote your life to being his servant, you see him in charge of your life and all you want to do is learn to obey everything he commanded, and you love doing it because it draws you closer to your heavenly Father, that’s life in the Spirit. You’re saved by a genuine faith in Jesus Christ.
Now you can test yourself. You can know for sure what group you’re in. But the most beautiful thing of all is that if you find you are really in the first group, living by the flesh, and have only been a half-hearted Christian, or a Christian in name only, or not even caring about being Christian at all, today is the day you can make a change and move to life in Christ. If you are so moved, that’s the Holy Spirit nudging you! God your heavenly father is calling you. It’s like he is saying to you today, “Come home.” All is forgiven through Christ. Believe that and come to me. Let my love fill you!”
My job is only to urge you to respond to that calling. I know it can feel like, if you make a decision to follow Christ it will limit your freedom because you will have to start obeying a list of commandments, or rules and regulations. But that’s not it at all! Jesus said the truth will set you free and that truth is here. In Romans 8:15 we are assured that the Spirit we receive through faith in Jesus does not make us slaves, so that we live in fear again; rather, the Spirit we receive brings about our adoption to sonship. We become his beloved children. And we get to call him “Daddy.”
Can you imagine that? What would be like to be able to look up to God in heaven and realize that he is the most perfect, most loving father you could ever imagine, even better than the best earthly father you have ever known or imagined. And through faith in Jesus you get to look up to the almighty, most holy, most powerful God of the Universe and call him Daddy. And he loves you and wants only what is best for you and to bless you.
If you are responding to this call today, faith in Jesus puts you in a good relationship with Jesus and offers forgiveness of all your sins, but it doesn’t mean you get an easy life from here on out. Jesus assured us that in this world, we his children would still have trials and tribulations, but that he will be with us through it all to help us and strengthen us to deal with everything in the power of the Spirit, not so it becomes easy, but so that it becomes worth the effort. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
So, since God is for us, who can be against us? 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? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Believe that and let him help you live up to it. That’s why we participate in the fellowship of believers and the worship of God. We’re celebrating life in Christ.
We’re giving thanks for so great salvation. Thank you, Lord, for choosing us! Such love as yours is overwhelming! We thank you Lord for the gift of the blessed Holy Spirit who dwells within and assures us of our life with you, secured in Christ when we trust him. Thank you for your glorious grace, poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. Thank you for being so rich in kindness and grace that you purchased our freedom with the blood of your Son and forgave our sins.
Thank for showering this kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. Thank you for revealing to us what used to be your mysterious will regarding Christ, and for fulfilling your good plan. And thank for planning to bring everything together under the authority of Christ, at just the right time. We know you bring what is the very best for all humanity who trusts in you!
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