Ephesians 1:1-4
Date: September 1st, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Ephesians 1:1-4
MIT: Paul begins the letter by praising God for electing a people to be blessed in Christ with redemption.
1:1-2: Paul introduces himself to the Ephesians and greets them.
1:3-4: Paul praises God for electing a people to be blessed in Christ with redemption.
1:3: Paul praises God because he has blessed his people with every spiritual blessing.
1:3a: Paul praises God for being praiseworthy.
1:3b: God is praiseworthy because he has already been a blessing to his people.
1:4: Every spiritual blessing has been secured before time began by God’s electing purpose to redeem his people in Christ.
1:4a: God blessed us by choosing us in Christ before time began.
1:4b: God chose us to be redeemed and to be able to stand before him in righteousness.
MIS: God is worthy of our praise because he freely chose us to be his people in Christ.
God is worthy of our praise because he is a blessing to his people in Christ.
God blessed us by electing us to be his people before time began.
Introduction:
William Carey is known as the “father of modern missions.” At the turn of the 19th Century, Carey was the first of a long line of missionaries to be sent to the end of the earth to preach the Gospel. Carey spent his life preaching the Gospel is Indians in what was then the British Colony of India. He founded the Baptist Missionary Society, the first college and university in India, the University of Serampore, he translated the Bible into Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit, and he stirred the imagination of the Christian world to reach the unreached.
There is a very famous myth around the early part of Carey’s life. When he finally felt convicted by the Great Commission, a young William Carey stood before a group of ministers and declared that he wanted to be sent to preach the Gospel in India, and the myth goes that a pastor in the group said, “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.”
You see, Carey was a particular Baptist, meaning he was a Calvinist. He came from a tradition of Baptist ministers that believed in the sovereignty of God to save sinners. So many critics of Calvinism will cite this story as proof that belief in divine election means that Christians should not share the Gospel. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, if it was not for his belief in divine election Carey would never have gone to the ends of the world at all. His love for the glory of God and his conviction that God would use him to save the lost was his motivation to be the first in a long line of missionaries to be sent to the ends of the earth. Carey’s love for a God that was big enough to save people on the other side of the world was why he went.
This morning, in Ephesians 1, we are going to see something unique about our love for God and divine election that is fascinating. Let’s read the text together and discover what Paul teaches about these things.
Ephesians 1:1-4
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
This week’s sermon and really every sermon that we are going to be preaching for the next four Sundays is about worship. Paul says that he blesses the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because he has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. The reason Paul blesses or ascribes praise to God is that God has already been a blessing to him in Christ. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20, all God’s promises find their Yes for you in Jesus Christ.
But what are those promises? What are the spiritual blessings that God has blessed us with in Christ for which we worship him? The next five sermons, including this one, will explore the works of God that he has done for us in Christ, all with an aim to help you better love the God that has done such a great work on your behalf. You cannot love someone you do not know, so we are going to spend five weeks pouring over what God has done for us in Christ so that we can bless him as Paul blesses him.
Which brings us to the main idea of our sermon. Today, we are going to focus on one of the ways that God has blessed us in Christ. The main idea of our sermon is this: God is worthy of our praise because he freely chose us to be his people in Christ.
Paul makes two moves in this text. The first thing Paul says is that he blesses God because God is a blessing to his people. This is the first point of our sermon. God is worthy of our praise because God is a blessing to his people. In reality, this could be the summarizing point of all five sermons that we are going to preach from Ephesians 1:3-14. God has blessed his people in Christ, therefore, he is worthy of our blessing. This first point will be a bit of an overview. We will see that God has done five things in Christ to bless us that are so beautiful, so precious, so gracious, that he deserves our love and affection.
Then we will zoom in on the first way that God has blessed us in Christ. The second point of our sermon, and the first way that God has blessed us in Christ, is that God has elected us to be his people in Christ before time began. God, as Creator, created time. Time does not constrain him. He lives in the eternal present where all of space and all of time exist to him in one eternal moment. His plan for how Creation would play out was set before he ever created anything. Those that are his people are those that he decided would be united to Christ before anything was ever created. His loving, gracious affection was set on you before you were born, before Christ came in the flesh and died on a cross, before he made promises to Abraham, and before Adam fell. His work of salvation is timeless, his electing purpose is good, and we gather to love and treasure him because he was kind to us before the foundation of the world.
Could you possibly love a bigger God than our God? Is there a heavier theological stone that Paul could have laid as the foundation of our worship? Why do we gather? Why does the Church exist? Because God, in eternity past, declared it to be. God is worthy of our praise because he set his affectionate gaze on us and declared that we would be united to his Son before the foundation of the world, before time began. He loved us and planned for us; that is a God worth knowing; that is a song worth singing; he is worthy of our praises because he freely chose us to be his people in Christ.
Dealing with Paul’s introductory words.
Now, one more thing before we get into the main body of the text: what is going on with verses 1 and 2? Do they play into our sermon at all?
Look at verses 1 and 2 with me.
Ephesians 1:1-2
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The main thing that is going on in these verses is that Paul is introducing who he is as the author of the letter and who the Ephesians are as the recipient of the letter. Which is an excellent opportunity to recognize the genre of our text.
Ephesians is a letter or the fancy theological term is epistle. Which means it is not a historical narrative, it is not a poem, it is not prophecy, it is not apocalyptic literature. We must recognize it for what it is and approach a plan for interpretation that is consistent with its genre. If you were digging through your grandma’s attic and came across a letter that she received from one of her old friends, Dawn, you would not pretend you were reading a science textbook. The questions you wondered about the letter would be questions that are appropriate for letters. Who is Dawn? When did my grandma receive this letter? Why did she keep it? What was Dawn’s purpose for writing it? If it turns out that Dawn was a missionary in China, it might change the way you read the letter than if Dawn was a cousin that lived in California.
These first two verses in Ephesians tell us a lot about how we should approach the study of the text. Paul writes to the Ephesians as an authority figure that declares his apostleship in the first line of the text.
We also get a hint at his tone and what he thinks of the Ephesians. It is generally a positive tone that thinks highly of these people. They are saints and faithful ones at that.
And finally, it tells us that this is a letter. We should read it as such. In a Gospel, we might look for characters and setting and place. In a letter, we look for an argument. Paul wrote to these people for a reason and is going to logically unfold an argument to them so that they understand the occasion for the letter. We need to follow his logic carefully. Instead of people, places, and things, look for key repeated words and logical transitions like therefore, so that, and in conclusion. If we understand the argument, we will understand the letter.
God is worthy of our praise because he is a blessing to his people in Christ.
So let’s think Paul’s thoughts after him and consider the argument that Paul is making in this first passage from verse 3-14. Verse 3 tells us what all of 3-14 will be communicating. The first point of our sermon is that God is worthy of our praise because he is a blessing to his people in Christ. Look at verse 3:
Ephesians 1:3
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
That is an amazing statement! God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, and what is the most important question that we could ask to understand what Paul is saying? Who is the “us”? Don’t you see why that is so important? We have to know who the “us” is in order to correctly understand and apply what Paul is saying. I want to be blessed with every spiritual blessing that is in the heavenly places. I want that. But I can’t have that unless somehow I am included in the “us” that Paul is talking about. So it is paramount to understand who the “us” is, because I want the blessings. Who is the “us”?
Well, as we just said, the “us” is Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and it is the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Given what we have seen so far, there is no reason for us to think that we are included in this letter. It was written by Paul to a specific people and based on the three verses that we have read so far, we are not party to it. It would be ridiculous to pick up an old letter that some soldier in World War II wrote to his sweetheart back home and credit the words of love and affection in that letter to yourself. We need some warrant, some reason to understand ourselves as included in the “us” of verse 3 otherwise this letter has no practical benefit to us and is merely an article of historical curiosity. For that, we must look at all of Chapter 1. Paul gives us reason to understand that this letter is not merely written to the Ephesians, but that the entire thing is meant for the Church.
This Chapter is divided into two sections. The first section is verses 3-14 in which Paul explains five things that God has done to save the Ephesians and then a prayer that Paul prays for the Ephesians in which he reveals the real point of the letter.
First, the five things God has done in salvation to bless his people, each one of which will be the topic of our sermon this week and over the next four more weeks. The first work of God is seen in verse 4. God chose or elected his people to be united to Christ before the foundation of the world. We will set that one aside for the moment because we will consider it in the second part of our sermon this week.
The second thing God did in his great work of salvation is seen in verse 5 and 6:
Ephesians 1:5-6
In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Clearly, Paul is continuing the explanation of the spiritual blessings with which the Father has blessed us in Christ, his beloved, namely, that he predestined us for adoption. Outside of time, God not only chose us to be his people, he guaranteed it would happen by ordering all of time and history to bring it about according to the purpose of his will. What is his will? His electing purpose that we would be united to Christ. This will be next week’s sermon.
The third action God took in salvation is seen in verses 7-10.
Ephesians 1:7-11
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
By being chosen and predestined to be united to Christ, we have been redeemed and forgiven for our sin as an act of God’s grace. Your sins were forgiven in Christ before the foundation of the world. We will think about this mindboggling reality in two weeks and consider how this redemption not only saves us from the consequences of our sins, but unites us to Christ in the Church.
The fourth thing that God did in his great plan of salvation is in verses 11-12.
Ephesians 1:11-12
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
You have an inheritance as a son or a daughter. You have been promised a future and a hope in Christ, but it is not yours yet. One day you will receive it and when God blesses you with the hope that he promised you in Christ, he will be praised. His glory and majesty will be seen and his kindness will be appreciated in that last day.
But until that day, he has done one more thing. The fifth and final thing that God has done in the great work of salvation is seen in verses 13-14.
Ephesians 1:13-14
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
To seal you and prepare you to receive that future promise of an inheritance, God gave you his own Spirit to guarantee your right to your hope in Christ until you reach the day when you will get possession of it. Ephesians 1:3-14 is a beautiful explanation of salvation from the perspective of eternity. It began before time and in someways was truly accomplished, but it also takes place within time and has a future that has not yet been realized.
It is a beautiful story, but it is not until we get to verses 15-23 that we see where we, the members of Mosaic Church, fit into that cosmic narrative. Look at verses 15-23 and let’s see the point Paul is driving to in the letter.
Ephesians 1:15-23
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Who is the us? Look at verse 19. The “us” is the “us” who believe. The saints that are in Christ Jesus. Who has God given his most treasured possession? “22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” We fit into Paul’s letter to a group of people that are 2,000 years dead, because we are the body of Christ, just like they were. Everything that Paul has said in the first Chapter and everything he is going to say in this letter are true for this Church, because this Church is physical representation of the Church, the body of Christ, the true people of God. God is worthy of our praise because he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ just as he blessed Paul and just as he blessed the Ephesians. If we want to worship the Father in spirit and in truth, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman in John 4:21-24, we must know how he has blessed us so we can bless him.
One way to do that is to think deeply about the timeless things God has done, which we are about to do. But before we do that, consider one very practical application of this point. If we want to truly worship, then in the moment of worship, the acts of God must be clear in our mind. Affection that is not informed by knowledge is zeal not love, and risks worshipping a god of your imagination, not the true God of the Bible. If you want to truly worship God, you must hold the truths of his word in your mind during the moment of worship. Which means, they have to be in your mind before the worship moment. What better way to do that than to memorize Scripture? How simple would it be to take these five acts of God over the next five weeks and memorize Ephesians 1:3-14? It would be a noble and worthy goal to commit this passage to memory over the next five weeks and at the end reflect on this, was my worship more meaningful than it has been in the past?
God is worthy of our praise because he is a blessing to his people in Christ. He has been a blessing, we can see that in this first Chapter, and that blessing is for his people, which we are because we are in Christ as his body, the Church. May the worship of Mosaic Church always be informed by a true knowledge of what God has done for us in Christ.
God blessed us by electing us to be his people before time began.
So let’s return to verse 4 and see the first spiritual blessing that God has blessed us with in Christ. The second point of our sermon is that God blessed us by electing us to be his people before time began. Look at verse 4 one more time.
Ephesians 1:4
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
If you take nothing else away from this verse, I want you to hear this clearly: Salvation is God’s work, not ours. He chose us, we did not choose him. If at some point in your life, you put your trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ to save you from the consequences of your sins, you made that choice because God already chose you in Christ before time ever began. In eternity past, he claimed you as his own. He set his loving affection upon you in Christ. He is and was the ultimate and true cause of your salvation. All the credit goes to him. He did it, you did not. Let this be the one thing that you remember, I want you to understand that the credit for your salvation goes to God and God alone. “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
I attempt to state it that clearly because I think Paul states it that clearly in Ephesians and Scripture states it that clearly over and over again. No where in Scripture does it say that salvation is the work of men. The work of salvation, from beginning to end, is God’s work and God’s work alone. In eternity past he chose you to be united to Christ and in reality that is the end of the story. Paul could have stopped there. Everything else that he explains is an outworking and aftershock of the cosmic decision that God made before time began according to the mystery of his own secret will.
Your holiness and righteousness, according to verse 4, are not dependent on your actions or decisions, they are dependent on God’s. He decided that you would be holy, so you are. He decided that you would blameless, so you are. He makes you stand before the majesty of his throne, and so you do. All of God’s promises are yes for you in Christ if you have been chosen by the Father. To God be the glory.
Many Christians do not like talking about election. Having a God that is truly sovereign is scary, because when God is sovereign, man is not. But this is not the way that a Christian should think about election. The free and sovereign election of God should not be a source of fear in the Christian’s life. In fact, Paul is saying in Ephesians 1 that it is the foundation for their worship.
We should not fear the doctrine of divine election but we should embrace it. The argument here is not that God’s sovereignty is true, that his electing purposes are definitive. That is a given. The argument here is that his sovereign choice to choose his people from before time is reason to worship him, to love and adore him for being so gracious and kind to those he has united to Christ. We must be a people that so love the freedom of our God to choose a people for his own possession that it fuels the prayers that we pray, the songs that we sing, and the encouragement that we give one another. Our God reigns! And that is good news.
Let me give you some reasons why God’s sovereignty is something to be treasured and should be the foundation of your worship.
Here is a radical idea that I think is perfectly consistent with Paul’s teaching in this passage. A God that is not free to choose who he has mercy on and whom he doesn’t is not a God at all and certainly not worthy of our worship and affection. Listen to Isaiah 46:8-13:
Isaiah 46:8-13
8 “Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
11 calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.
12 “Listen to me, you stubborn of heart,
you who are far from righteousness:
13 I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off,
and my salvation will not delay;
I will put salvation in Zion,
for Israel my glory.”
He is either God or he is not. He is either all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere and at every time or he is not God. When an all-powerful, all-knowing being that is present in all places and in all times makes any choice, that choice must be reality or he is not all powerful; that choice must be true or he is not all-knowing; his choices must rule over all other choices or he is not God.
The problem it would seem is not whether God’s choice is definitive. The problem is actually that our choice is not. The problem most Christians have with divine election is not that God is God, but that we want to be. God’s choice must be definitive or he is not God.
The second reason that God’s divine choice is the foundation of our worship is that God’s sovereign choice demonstrates his radical love for you. Paul said this in Romans 5:8-10:
Romans 5:8-10
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
God’s choice to save you required the death of his only begotten Son. While you were still an enemy, while you were still a rebel, while you were a sinner, Christ died for you because the Father willed it to be so. How do you know how much someone loves anything? By what they are willing to sacrifice to protect it. John 15:13:
John 15:13
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
The third reason that we God’s sovereignty should be the foundation of our worship is because it gives us a reason to pray. If God is not able to accomplish what we ask him to do for us, why do we pray? God’s freedom and sovereign choice give us the boldness to pray expecting him to answer us and be able to meet our needs. Every time we see the command to pray in Scripture, it is paired with the idea that he will answer us and is able to accomplish what he says he will do. We are to pray with eager expectation that God answers prayers. His sovereignty gives our prayers meaning.
The fourth reason that God’s sovereign choice should be the foundation for our worship is that it puts us in the right heart posture to worship and praise him. In Luke 18, Christ tells the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee stands in the synagogue and metaphorically beats his chest as he prays out loud for all to hear, claiming how righteous and noble he is. The tax collector actually beats his chest, but not because of pride but because he is so aware of his sinfulness. He begs for God’s mercy. If God freely chooses in the mystery of his own will who to unite to Christ, then it cannot be because we deserve his grace and mercy. He chooses us in spite of our sinfulness not because of our righteousness. Therefore, election prepares us with the humility to approach the throne of grace in worship.
I could continue but the point stands. God’s free and sovereign election is the foundation of our worship. It is only one of the many reasons that we sing praises to his name, but it is the most important. He chose you, before the foundation of the world, simply because he decided to and that choice cost him the life of his only begotten Son. This is love. This is purpose. God’s choice outside of time and space made us his people and that is reason to bless his name.