Text: Ephesians 1:3-14<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Blessings in Christ<\/p>\n
Grace,
\nmercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
\nJesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
\nfrom the Epistle, which was read earlier.<\/p>\n
In our
\nmodern age of today, letter writing has gone out the window. Now, we send an email to a person, using
\nInternet lingo that if you didn\u2019t use it, you would have no idea what it was
\nyou were reading. Our life stories are
\nnow on our blogs for everyone to read. Most of our emails or blog entries are short, disconnected pieces that
\nmake little or no sense to those who don\u2019t know us. In our Epistle reading for this morning, Paul
\ndoes the complete opposite. His letter
\nto the church at Ephesus is concise, it has a purpose. Paul sees
\nlife from a cosmic perspective, giving us a God\u2019s-eye view of things. He begins by seeing the individual
\nChristian\u2019s life in the light of eternity. Our present faith has an eternal cause, God\u2019s gracious choice of us in
\nChrist before the foundation of the world. It leads us to an eternal goal; that we may live forever to the praise
\nof His glorious grace. <\/p>\n
Paul
\nclearly wants to teach the readers of this letter to look beneath the surface
\nof life and understand its true nature. Life\u2019s true nature is known only to God, summed up in Christ, and revealed
\nto us through the apostolic Word. The
\nimpressive depth and breathtaking vision of the letter is all the more
\nremarkable in view of Paul\u2019s confinement while writing it. Only faith in the promised love of God can
\nsoar to such heights or sound such depths.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That is why For Paul, The answer All of this From the Being a In the final part of our text, Paul In these final verses, Paul talks We have been chosen by God to We have Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith until life everlasting. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text: Ephesians 1:3-14 Blessings in Christ Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPaul begins our text for today with the following: \u201cPraise be to the God and
\nFather of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with
\nevery spiritual blessing in Christ.\u201d<\/em> These words are a hymn of
\npraise. They aren\u2019t found in a generic
\nhymnal for anyone who believes in a \u201chigher power\u201d or \u201csupreme being.\u201d These are words that a Christian speaks. It is directed to the God who is the
\nFather of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus
\nis the only way we can approach God, trust in Him, and have life everlasting
\nthrough His death.<\/p>\n
\nhe could not say these words of praise for the first part of his life. He was too busy crucifying Christians and
\ndoing all he could to destroy Christianity until the fateful day on the road to
\nDamascus that he saw Christ and his eyes were opened to the gift of everlasting
\nlife that Jesus Christ came to give to all of mankind. Paul, who was one of the staunchest at trying
\nto destroy Christianity, now became pastor or missionary to many of the
\nchurches in the New Testament: Corinth, Rome, Galatia,
\nEphesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica. How is any of this possible? How can one kill Christians and then become
\none of the chief teachers of the time?<\/p>\n
\nto this is simple: \u201cFor he chose us in him before the creation
\nof the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.\u201d<\/em> Before
\nthe world was born, God set His heart on having you as His own forever. Not only did He determine to embrace every
\nhuman being by the redeeming death of His Son, He also selected you personally
\nand individually in Christ before time began. He chose you, not because<\/u> <\/em>you were holy and blameless, but that you might be<\/u> holy and blameless
\nbefore Him. The entire world can condemn
\nyou, the devil may accuse you, and your own conscience convict you, but God has
\ndetermined that in Christ you are holy and blameless before Him.<\/p>\n
\nwas done out of love by God for us in Christ Jesus. He chose us not out of a requirement or by
\nlaw, but we were chosen purely of His grace. He chose us \u201cbefore the creation
\nof the world.\u201d<\/em> Even before the world
\nbegan, God chose us to be \u201choly and
\nblameless in his sight.\u201d<\/em> But ask
\nyourself why. Why did God do what He
\ndid? If God knew that there was going to
\nbe the Adolf Hitler\u2019s and the Saddam Hussein\u2019s and Osama Bin Laden’s of the
\nworld, then why did He choose us to be His children? The answer is simple: it is because of the
\nlove that He has for His creation. God
\nis the Father and we are His children. Ask any parent what they would give to their children and they would
\nprobably answer that they would give them the world. If something bad happened to them, they would
\ndo anything to save them. That is
\nexactly what God did for us.<\/p>\n
\nmoment that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
\nmankind became eternally separated from God. The only way to bring mankind back to God was through a Sacrifice like
\nno other. All throughout the Old
\nTestament, the chief priest would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the
\npeople. Once a year, the chief priest
\nwould enter the temple and go to the Holy of Holies. These sacrifices failed in comparison to the
\nSacrifice that would occur through the death and resurrection of Jesus
\nChrist. <\/p>\n
\nchild of God brings with it several benefits that we can barely grasp what it
\nmeans. First, \u201cwe have redemption through
\nhis blood, the forgiveness of sins.\u201d<\/em> Stop and ask yourself if you
\ntruly understand that we have redemption through the blood of a Lamb that was
\nsacrificed for us. When we were at the
\nHigher Things conference, one of the in-depth sectionals we attended was The
\nHitchhikers Guide to the Liturgy. There,
\nthe pastor presenting went through all the various parts of the liturgy. When he got to the Agnus Dei, \u201cLamb of God
\nyou take away the sin of the world\u2026,\u201d<\/em> he showed a picture of a lamb who had
\nits legs tied, pierced in the side, with blood flowing. This visual, while a bit disturbing, shows a
\nvery moving picture of what it was like for Christ to give up His life and the
\ngreat cost it was for us to have redemption.<\/p>\n
\nsays quite a bit about what it is that we have received. \u201cIn him we were also chosen, having been
\npredestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity
\nwith the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in
\nChrist, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you
\nheard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you
\nwere marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit
\nguaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God\u2019s
\npossession\u2014to the praise of his glory.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nabout \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cyou.\u201d \u201cWe\u201d refers
\nto Paul and his fellow countrymen, the Jews. \u201cYou\u201d refers to the people of the Gentile nations, among whom Paul
\npreached and for whom he had been appointed an apostle. The basic thrust of the passage is to tell us
\nthat God decided from eternity to unite Jew and Gentile believers in Christ, to
\nform one people who would be His \u201ctreasured possession.\u201d Paul shows yet again that there is no
\ndifference between Jew and Gentile, for all are saved through Christ. <\/p>\n
\nreceive forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Note what Paul says. All this happens \u201caccording to the plan of
\nhim who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.\u201d<\/em> Paul doesn\u2019t say that it is due to what we
\ndo. The plans of men fail, and
\nall our personal visions of the future fade, but God\u2019s resolution concerning us
\ncannot fail. Through faith created in us
\nby the Holy Spirit, we have heard the saving message of the Gospel. Through faith, \u201cyou were marked in him with a
\nseal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance
\nuntil the redemption of those who are God\u2019s possession\u2014to the praise of his
\nglory.\u201d<\/em> By means of the same gospel He will
\npreserve us in faith until we reach our glorious goal; heaven. To assure us
\nthat the inheritance of heaven will be truly ours, He sealed us with the gift
\nof the Holy Spirit. Just as a seal
\nserves to mark out an object as belonging to an individual, so the Holy Spirit
\nis God\u2019s \u201cseal of ownership on us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nbeen chosen to be the Father\u2019s child. We
\nhave been set free by the blood of Christ. We have been sealed by the promise of the Holy Spirit. These are the blessings that we have in
\nChrist Jesus, our Lord. Amen.<\/p>\n