Ephesians, 1:1-3

Alright, well this morning we're going to start in, last week Bob Eccle taught an introduction to Ephesians and this morning we're going to take a look at verses 1-3. Before we dig into 1-3, I wanted to just briefly give you a little context for Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1 is about what God did for man through Christ on the cross and through the Holy Spirit. If you look at Ephesians chapter 1, I've got all of the text there on the slide.

And you don't have that version on your handout, but you've got the next several versions. This does not have the measles. This is Ephesians chapter 1. And if you look at your handout, the first slide that doesn't say Ephesians on the top right-hand side has this.

Everything that is a pentagon is something that has to do with man and referencing man and everything that has a triangle is referencing God, the Father, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit. Now the reason I did that was to give you a little bit of perspective on Ephesians chapter 1. Without the pentagons you can see that there are actually 55 references to God or the Holy Spirit in Ephesians chapter 1 or Jesus Christ. and only 30 references to human beings. So it's heavily weighted towards God, which is a good thing.

But when we look at this chapter, we need to have the context of God doing things in the life of the believer and not look at it and look at what is for me to do. That's often if you have a legalistic background or you grew up with a legalistic scenario, when you look at texts, you look for the to-do list. Well, this is all nice and good, but what do I do? Well, you get to rest.

So when we take a look at Ephesians chapter 1, and I'm only going to be teaching the first three verses, but Bob, Jeremy, and Brad are going to be co-teaching the rest of the chapter with myself, and so we'll go through Ephesians chapter 1, but you want to keep a perspective of God working through Jesus Christ to do things in the believer, or working through the Holy Spirit to do things in the believer, and keeping the context. This is Paul revealing to believers a heavenly context All right, so he starts off, Paul, an apostle. One of the things that I think is important is that if you have taken Acts, if you've studied Acts or taken the Acts class before, then you've been exposed to Paul on some level. What was Paul's name before he met the Lord at Damascus? Saul, okay. And what happened when Saul met the Lord on the road to Damascus? the Lord came to him and spoke to him. And he said, why are you persecuting me?

And he blinded Paul. Now, the blinding of Paul would humble Paul. And we have other indications throughout scripture that his eyes actually tended to be a problem that he had. We don't know if that was before the meeting of Christ and the road to Damascus. But certainly afterwards, there seemed to be indicators that he's had issues with his eyes. Specifically in Galatia, he mentions that.

But Paul was someone that the church in Ephesus would have a relationship and people would have met him. It was someone that they loved. He was not writing as someone that, you know, oh great, you know, like a junk mail. You know, you go out to the mailbox, you open it up and you're like, you just toss it because you already know that this is not a credit offer that you want. This is not a religious author that you want. No, this is from someone that they loved.

Someone that they knew would perform miracles. His ministry had been validated. He's an apostle. He's someone who was writing with disregard to his surroundings in prison. So when you think about, this is Paul an apostle, it's not just like, okay, I'm reading Ephesians, first verse, skip it. Remember there's some context of who was writing, who he was, there was a relationship there.

Apostolos is a messenger or a delegate once sent forth with orders. All Apostles saw Jesus the Messiah. Paul saw Christ on the road to Damascus in a vision. But the other Apostles knew Christ and walked. The Apostles were given a special missional calling to start and equip the church. Okay, so if you think of an apostle, it's not just some guy who is out there, some rogue religious Christian guy. He had a mission from God to establish and start churches and be an evangelist to go get churches started. What does Paul write to Timothy about? Does anybody remember what Paul writes to Timothy about? Tom.

How to be an under shepherd. Okay, how to be an under-shepherd is part of that. Why would he need to teach him about being an under-shepherd? Because Timothy was helping start a church. He was continuing on the work that Paul had started and starting the churches and getting the under-shepherds set up and getting things... You remember the Apostle was coming into the town. He shows up and he's teaching. Particularly Paul did this. We have at least the recording in Acts. He's teaching and he shows up and he's got to get these guys started.

Hey, you're a new Christian. let me pour into you for the short while and then I'm going to take off because I got to go to the next place. So he's got to rely on the Holy Spirit but he's got to give them a core nugget of doctrine to equip them for the equipping of the saints.

And it's clipped off on the end there but the Apostles were given spiritual gifts and it seems at least according to what Paul writes in to the Corinthians that they they had a wider range of gifts that they actively operated in to establish their authority. To make it, you know, hey, if you said he's an apostle, he was doing apostolic things that let the Jews who were skeptical know, hey, this guy's legit. It was miraculous and it would get the attention of the believers and the non-believers and they would know that he was speaking with God's authority. It wasn't just a sideshow thing where, you know, my wedding ring disappear look nothing here oh look it's on this hand you know and you're like wow he did a miracle no it's not snake oil this is an apostle so Paul Paul goes on he says an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God as if being an apostle is not enough Paul also cites God's authority in writing this letter to the Ephesians. They can't just ignore what's going on here. This is an important message from God. It was for their edification and blessing. And he writes it to the saints who are Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Saints or holy ones in the New Testament are believers who have been identified with Christ. Not to be confused with those in the Old Testament who are looking forward to his arrival. The term saint is used in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It means someone who's set aside. But a New Testament saint or a Christian or a believer is not the same as an Old Testament saint because whom they're believing in is either past tense or future tense. Okay? I'm believing in the work of Christ past tense. I'm a New Testament saint.

Old Testament saints are looking forward to Christ. ever since Genesis 3.15, the first prophecy of the Messiah, God says to Eve, your seed will crush the head of the servant. First prophecy of the Messiah, and from that point forward, people were believing in a coming Messiah. Eve was a little confused by that, but we won't go into that rabbit trail. The church there was faithful and would continue to be faithful in doctrine. At Holly Hills, we definitely emphasize and focus on doctrine. I think that's important.

The Lord later corrects them about their focus in Revelation chapter 2 verse 4. Would somebody please open your Bible to Revelation 2 verse 4 and read that out loud? Actually, if you'll read Revelation 2, 1 through 4, that would be even better. Go ahead.

The angel of the church in Ephesus writes, the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men. And you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not. You found them to be false. And you have perseverance and endurance for my name's sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Okay.

Ephesus is going to maintain doctrinal integrity. They're going to be very, very concerned about doctrinal integrity. But they're going to be so distracted by the doctrine and the philosophy and the theology that they're going to forget their relationship. It's very easy, especially in a teaching-oriented church, and Holly Hills is most definitely a teaching-oriented church, to be distracted by the doctrine and forget the relationship.

Now, at Holly Hills, I think because we understand identification, position, and condition, it's less of an issue. But going to church in Texas at a seminary for, was it about two years, sweetheart? We were there. And you go, and every week you get some highfalutin theological jargon and it's really awesome because you can walk around and you can wear your little pin, you know, it's like your cub scap thing where you know all the theological jargon and you can, you know, well I'm a dispensationalist, I'm pre-millennial, pre-tribulational and I do all these things and you list off all this theological vocabulary but you're so obsessed with the technicalities of it that you're not focusing on relationship.

If I asked them about spiritual growth I would get blank stares. That's not to say that everybody who goes to seminary has that problem, that's not to say that seminary is evil, and a whole list of things that I'm not trying to say. But if you focus purely on theology or philosophy or external things, you've missed the mark. What's the mark? Relationships. I have two quick questions here.

Are we faithful like the saints in Ephesus at Holly Hills? I think the answer to that is yes. I don't feel uncomfortable and like I'm just saying that to cover my behind. I genuinely think that. Do we find ourselves distracted by dogma, theology for the sake of intellectualism, philosophy, and the world instead of focusing on our first love? That's a personal one only you can answer kind of a question so I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand and share it. I personally, I love theology. I love philosophy. I love intellectual things. I like to think about analytical details.

But when it comes to my walk with Christ, I have tried the intellectual, sterile, boring theological environs of seminary and thinking and walking on that level and without the life of Christ. as well as those things, it's generic and horrible and useless.

I just wanted to say that I think the whole point of understanding doctrine and studying doctrine is to deepen our relationship with Christ. Absolutely. They have to be connected. Yes, because as you said, doctrine by itself is sterile and empty. But when you understand that doctrine is getting to know who Christ is so that you have greater intimacy with Him, then that makes the doctrine valuable. Yeah.

I've drawn some rings up here. This is not the Olympic rings. Your theology is going to be interwoven and interconnected. your theology of who Christ is cannot be separate from your theology of the Trinity, which cannot be separate from your theology of identification and all the theology that's there. If you focus in on one part of it and only study that one part of it, like eschatology in time study and seminary, there were people who I thought there's jokes about computer programmers never leaving their parents' basements, or computer game players that never leave their parents' basements. Some of these guys, I don't think they left their parents' basements because they were still studying Greek and eschatology things. But if your theology is not holistic and everything interwoven, tightly integrated with relationship, you get distracted.

So Paul writes to these saints that they're faithful in the revelation to John, the revelation of Jesus Christ to John, he just warns them, hey, repent of your sterile theology and go back to the relationship. That's a total rabbit trail, but it's something that ties in doctrinally, so I wanted to point that out.

He continues on In verse 2 he says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. From the grace class, that was I think a couple quarters ago, is the unlimited unmerited blessings of God through Jesus Christ. That's the working definition Jeremy, I think you co-taught that, is that your recollection as well? I think we would add to the Totally adequate work of Jesus Christ. Totally adequate work of Jesus Christ.

But grace to you, grace is a phrase that was common within Roman letters. When you wrote a letter you'd say grace, and so this was not shockingly radical for Paul to use grace. He does write grace to them, but he brings it in a new context for believers and he enhances the use of grace, so it's not just the typical Roman concept of purely pleasure. Paul doesn't write, keep hanging in there, stay perfect under the law from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ, he says grace and peace. This is fine print, sorry. Paul uses it in each letter to the church. You've got in your handout, or you should have, the bottom right hand square on the front page has this list. Every single book that Paul wrote says grace to you, but he carries with it a deeper meaning than just the secular terminology of grace. Hey, may you have a pleasant life is nice.

But Paul adds theological weight to what grace is. Their understanding of grace in a Christian context was exceeding that of just have a great day. When we use the word grace in our lives, Do we think about what that means? I guarantee you the church in Ephesus was pretty excited about grace because their understanding of grace was limited prior to knowing Christ. Do we think about grace in a broader sense?

He continues on, he says, Grace and peace to you, and grace and peace from God our Father, Peace is restfulness, freedom from disturbance. Salvation brings about peace because your eternity is secure. God's wrath is not expected or feared. If you don't have to worry about God's wrath, can you be at peace? It makes it a lot easier to be at peace when God's wrath is not a concern that you have. Our lives are full of concern, but our position is secure. our position is there, it's solidly in place, so we can have peace.

If you watch the news, Tuesday night I went over to Trish and Aaron Anderson's house to teach, and often when I come over, they've got the news on their television, they've got a nice big screen, so you can see the nastiness in really high quality. And you come in, I came in and it was on and I noticed that the news is gone from being full of shocking stories to now just being full of really bad, degrading, it's just not getting better kind of stories. It's still crummy. The human interest stories have gotten lamer and lamer and it's hard to have peace in a world like that. It's hard to have peace from a secular, fleshly sense. But Paul's writing to them about their spiritual life, which has grace and peace.

But he says who it's from. He says, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. No other source can offer us grace and peace. I got a phone call. I believe it was Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon I got a phone call. and this woman says congratulations thanks to doing a survey on air purity and quality we're offering you a gift card for a hundred dollars to some place and I was like I didn't do a survey on air purity and quality and they wanted to hook me in to come into some sales gimmick and they were going to give me a gift card if I went in to do it they were trying to offer me something but it was a bait and switch God doesn't offer us or give us grace and peace with a superfluous, artificial, or lame source that's temporary. He officially is the source of true grace and true peace.

We can't define grace and peace without God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. If you, you know, if I go back a couple of slides here just for grins. The unlimited unmerited blessings of God through the adequate, the totally adequate work of Jesus Christ. If you said the unlimited unmerited blessings of uh, through the totally adequate works of uh, you get a pretty lame sentence and I sound like I have some kind of problem.

But you have a reliable authoritative source offering grace and peace and giving grace and peace. Randy? Yeah. It seems to me in my study that the grace and peace are from the Father himself and you only get those through Him. Yes. He appropriated them through Christ. Yeah. But God the Father is the one that is the source.

That's kind of a small statement in ways, but I think it's very, very true and needs to be emphasized. You know God's grace or peace without getting some of Him. Absolutely, and one of the things we're going to do a little later in the lesson, you beat me to it, I always find that I know that I'm teaching well when people beat me to the points I was going to say, because at least I know I wasn't alone.

We're going to go over what does it mean to have the Father and what does it mean to have Jesus Christ here, because I think as a whole it's good to recognize that they worked together in planning this out. If you look at Hebrews chapter 13 it says the Father and Son agreed to come in an eternity past. They worked together. So let's talk about the Father since you brought that up so carefully or astutely, Jack.

From a secular, the first point there, from a secular perspective, a God who fathered children in mythology was not trusted and was often operating in adultery. So God the Father from a pagan perspective would have been Zeus sneaking around, coming out of Mount Olympus, participating in some intimacy he probably ought not to have been participating in and then disappearing and making demigods and then you've got Hercules and all the craziness around. He may have just mixed my mythology up.

God the Father is not like that. Our God as described in the Bible does not operate that way. A father who adopted us and called us his own we have a different relationship with. We have a different relationship with God the Father. Jack pointed out the Father as a different, unique part in the Trinity. It wasn't until actually just the last quarter of last year that I started to think more heavily about the use of God the Father in the New Testament. Later on in Ephesians when we get to chapter 3 verses 14 through the end of that chapter and even into 4, Paul is going to write very specifically about the fatherhood of God and what that means for the body. What does it mean to have God be our father? That means we're all one family. What does it mean to have God be the father of the people that go to the church down the street? It means we're all one family. He's a provider.

The role of father means a lot of things, but later on when we go into Ephesians, Paul's going to talk about the fatherhood of God and what that means for us. It's very easy to be separate and go to your own church and go to your own place and do your own thing and very easy to think, well at least I go to a good church. And then just kind of feel sorry for your other brothers and sisters. They are your brothers and sisters.

And so having God the Father means something more than often I at least personally have I've always wanted to be. God the Father is a part of the Trinity and I left it there. Speaking of theological highfalutin things. God the Father is just part of the Trinity and his fatherhood was a part of my theology that was missing. My understanding of my relationship with him was missing. We are one family in Him. Ephesians 3, 14 and 15 go into that and the rest of the chapter 3 definitely does. So that's in your notes, I believe. Do please check that out. Of course, when we go to teach that later on in the series, we'll go into it in more depth.

But meditate sometime this week on the fatherhood of God the Father and what does that mean. And he talks about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I wanted to take a few minutes. We're going to go into a rabbit trail, you've been warned. We're going to talk about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When he says Lord, in the Greek, it's one to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding, a master. So, Jesus is our master. He is our Lord. He is the one who has authority over us.

But it doesn't stop there. We are bond slaves. When you become a believer, you willingly, the last act, Mike Doyle said this and I think it's good, the last act of the flesh is suicide. He gives himself up. He's willingly dying on the cross with Christ and identified with Christ. We are bond slaves. We voluntarily gave ourselves up to be servants to him. It's not just slave where you might have been forcefully ripped out of the environs that you knew and the home that you knew. you're a bond slave to the Lord who is your master. He's not a Lord who's cracking the whip and being a jerk.

He's a benevolent Lord who, as Ephesians 1.10 says, has made us more than slaves.

What else have we been made? If you were in the 33 things list, then you should at least know some of them. Sons. Sons of God. If you're a bond slave only, That's still a good relationship with God, but He's made us more than that. He's called us sons. And I think that's tremendous when we look at the Lordship of Jesus Christ, that we recognize that He is more than just simply our Master. That's only one aspect of His Lordship.

I'm sorry, I quoted Galatians 1.10, I meant 4.7. So let's talk about the Lordship Salvation Doctrine just for fun because I want to make sure that everybody can get their blood pressure up this morning and say that we had a good fight. Just kidding.

Ephesians refers to Christ as Lord many times, about 25 times actually. So if you were to count with me, you would maybe find 25 times. If you have a different calculation, the number may go up or down a little bit. But Jesus is referred to as Lord 25 times in the book of Ephesians. So we have a precedent for thinking of Jesus as Lord.

Can anyone tell me what Lordship Salvation is? Or I can define it if you can't. But I want to see if anyone in the class has a quick 25 word or less definition of Lordship Salvation. that salvation is a two-step process. First, you recognize Jesus as your Savior, as having died for you on the cross, and then the second step is that you make him the Lord of your life. Okay. That's a pretty good definition. Anyone want to add anything to that? Possibly?

I've always heard it. to find is if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. If you haven't surrendered to him, then maybe your salvation didn't take. Yeah, maybe you weren't saved, maybe you believed in the wrong thing. A lot of people when they present the gospel of their Lordship salvation, they want to add the extra detail of you need to believe that Jesus died on the cross, he was buried, he was resurrected, you might remember this from 1 Corinthians 15, and he rose again on the third day according to scripture. and he became your Lord. Make sure you add that other fourth point that Paul forgot in 1 Corinthians 15 to your list that you believe in.

And then make sure that every moment of your life you're living it, because if I see that he's not your Lord by whatever certain outward sign I see, then I might doubt your salvation. Because if he's not Lord of everything, he's not Lord at all. So lordship salvation often extends that. Now the problem that I find is that Scripture, when we looked at the 33 things, and if you've been in pretty much any of the classes at Ollie Hills at some point in time, we've gone over the list of 33 things that are true of the believer.

They're all things God did to you at the point of salvation. He made you a new creation. That's why you're free from sin, and free from the bondage of things before. But the Lordship of Christ is not part of the Gospel. Lordship salvation wants our lives to look good because of Christ being Lord. But Ephesians tells us that we do good things because we are abiding.

Ephesians 2.10, that God has good works planned for you. How many of those things are things that are as a result of you being scared out of your mind because you're a slave to this Master? Instead of walking in relationships. Walking in relationships. The Holy Spirit working through you.

Galatians 4.7 links salvation to identification and position and not works. Imagine that. It's not what you do, it's who you know. Recognize the Lord's position over the universe. Lordship is legitimate.

Christ has a lordship over the universe. but it's not a contingency on your salvation that you believe that one extra tenet that's not in 1st Corinthians 15 1-3. You need to recognize your position in him. Colossians 3 1-3 tells us that we are seated with him in the heavenlies. Later on Ephesians we're going to go over that in chapter 2. Don't judge salvation purely by works.

That's one of my favorite things. It's very easy to look and see somebody doing something wrong and say, I wonder if they're saved, because I can see that one thing. Or conversely, oh that person is doing Yeah, so he must be saved. I think of the speck in... Jesus talked about the parable of the speck in the eye, and really that's exactly the same thing just brought into the New Testament context. Well, I can see that that person... I can only handle one beer. I have liberty, I can drink a beer, but I can only drink one beer, so that if you drink two beers, clearly you're walking in the flesh, probably not saved.

I drive 25 because the speed limit says 25. Sometimes I drive 24 just to show people I'm righteous. You're doing 26? Not sure. As soon as you get legalistic, it's very, very easy to start inching the line in different places. Oh, salvation is over here. It's over here. Keeps moving. What are you doing back there? That's not the way we operate.

Lordship salvation is a dangerous theology that has been creeping into the church John MacArthur is definitely a proponent of it and encourages that theology. What people are often attempting to do is something that is a replacement for good theology. I don't have it in the notes here, but I'm just going to take a moment to follow the rabbit trail just a little bit further. The good theology that they're trying to replace is abiding. The good theology that they're trying to replace is walking in the Spirit.

Make sure that the Lord is the Lord of your life. Why don't you disciple the people instead? So that they can understand. Why don't you teach the people instead so they can understand what walking in the Spirit is? Why don't you teach the people instead that they can know what their relationship is, that their position is in Christ, that they're identified with Him. Their condition is earthly, it's temporal, and that they can walk in a manner that is according to their position because of the Holy Spirit. That's way better theology than the bondage of further legalism. How many of us... It doesn't appeal to the old man. Oh, it stinks. You try to sell grace to the old man and he's like, Ha! Whatever.

How many of you, just show of hands, please do raise your hand if you have faculty of your arms. How many of us grew up with some legalism at church? So the thing is that an overwhelming majority of us understand legalism on a first-hand basis. Hopefully all of us do, actually, by virtue of understanding how the flesh operates. But if you've come from legalism, Lordship Salvation is part of the package that you can get to help feed the legalism.

Remember the Gospel is presented in 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4. It's just simply not adding on that Lordship. It's not that the Lordship doesn't exist. I'm not saying that Jesus is not Lord. It's just that the Lordship is not part of your salvation. It is a result of your salvation. It is the new relationship that's established.

Randy, just thinking about Lordship and looking at the Old Testament, where they're under a different system, even under that legal system, that law system, there were plenty of times in the prophets, where God, through the prophet, rebuked the people because of their fake show of religion.

So, I don't know if so much the problem is... The problem is that we mix in law with grace, but even in understanding law, there are many Christians that don't understand exactly how law operated. Even under the Old Testament, it wasn't simply about what you did. You know, God didn't judge Abraham or even Moses or all of those simply based on what they did.

It was because of their faith in God. And even under that system. So, we have two problems there. Understanding what law means and then understanding what Lord means. And certainly under grace it's going to be different. I think that's a really important point when you discuss that with people. I've had quite a few discussions with people who believe in Lordship Salvation.

I can never persuade them, and they can never persuade me, because it's a philosophical system that they have constructed that they want to believe. It's not rooted in Scripture. And they like it, so they have not been persuaded. Unfortunately, I've also not been persuaded, so we just argue every time it comes up. But don't attach anything else to the Gospel.

So, off that rabbit trail, since the Lord is used so many times in Ephesians, I wanted to address that, because eventually, if you haven't already run into somebody who talks about Jesus as Lord, beyond that you will. Roy? Well, it's just a thought that keeps going through my mind whenever I hear somebody say the word of salvation.

It's going on in Timothy's head. He's Lord. Yeah. It's pretty arrogant to do that. But yeah, the thing is we recognize the position he already has. How can I, if I'm walking in that recognition, if I'm abiding, then that's awesome. Then I'll do righteous things. But focus on the relationship with Him.

Not the outward signs. Because that's almost always how we... We see ourselves resisting His Lordship when we want to make Him. We aren't interested in Him being there. Yeah, that's a really good point. We have to rest in His Lordship. And I think it takes a long time. For some people to get that or for people to understand. I think part of one of the biggest things that I run into is that people don't understand sanctification as progressive.

Positionally, our sanctification is secure. It's a line. It's a straight line because it's 100% in Christ. Conditionally, the Lord is conforming us to His image. We're being conformed from glory to glory as we behold him, that's progressive. That takes time.

One of my favorite stories about that is actually a guy I knew in Nevada had a roommate. He was at seminary, by the way. He had a roommate at seminary who just had a foul mouth. And the guy was really upset. He was like, dude, what is with the swearing? He probably didn't say dude, I said that because I'm from California. What's the point of swearing? And the guy sat down with him, and they finally got a chance to have a heart-to-heart talk, and it turns out the guy came from an alcoholic, abusive family with lots of pornography and lots of swearing.

And the Lord had dealt with the alcohol and dealt with the pornography, and he was working on the swearing. and he wasn't done yet with the sanctification of the Holy Ghost. And when you have that context and you look and see, geez, the Lord's taken them a long way, you go, wow, he's only swearing! It's not that we should encourage swearing by any means, but the Lord works and deals with us over time. In my marriage with Jessica, we've been married for over 10 years now, I hope that Jessica would agree with me in saying that I've learned to be a better husband and the Lord has worked in my life to show me how I can love her in more ways and more genuinely.

When we started out being newlyweds, we had our first fight, and I thought, what have I done? Did I screw up? Did I get married too soon? What's going on? I didn't have any understanding because I had one fight. I didn't understand that the marriage was going to help conform me to the image of Jesus Christ.

It's part of my sanctification. So, wow, Lordship Rabbit Trail. I knew it was going to be a rabbit trail and it definitely fulfilled that obligation. Let's try to go through verse 3 here because this is really where I thought the meat of the lesson was going to be.

He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Blessed be The Greek for blessed here is at least translated only in the King James to be ascribed for God. It's that particular word for blessed is one that is used for God only. And that's not to say that the Greeks never used it in any other context, but it has to do more with exalting and praising and worshiping God. You can't bless God more than he is as far as what we think of blessings for human beings. How can a human being bless God? Like Roy said, how can we make God Lord? He's already Lord. How can we make God more blessed? He's already infinite.

This has to do with us saying what is true of God, about Him, to Him, understanding and respecting that. Wayne? One of the things that has always bothered me is if I have somebody say, well, the Lord has sure blessed me this year. He's given me a job and all that kind of stuff. And I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. Now, this guy over here is also a believer, but he didn't get a job. He's been without work.

So God has blessed you, but not him. And it draws a line that says, well, you must be better than this guy because God has blessed you. And we have a tendency to put the word blessing on things that maybe are not necessarily should be called blessing. Sure. Well, and they can be blessing, but I think part of the problem is that it's a very Jewish mindset. The Jews felt like God blessed Abraham with material things. He blessed Isaac with material things. He blessed Jacob and Israel with material things. We take that in the New Testament. We're like, sweet, I got a Nintendo Wii. You don't have a Wii. I've got a BMW. You don't have a BMW. I've got this and you don't have this.

And we, oh, God's blessed me. God, stop. Material blessing is not wrong. God may choose to do that, but it's a stewardship. So it's a responsibility. My buddy Tony called me up and said, hey, somebody hit God's car. Somebody rear-ended his wife and son when they were in the car. This was back, I think, five or six years ago now. Somebody hit God's car. Why? It's God's car. He's just a steward of it. If you're given a million dollars or one dollar, you're a steward.

Material blessing is of less concern. That's why I think the second half of this verse is so critical. But I just wanted to point out that this first use of blessed be here is in the Greek a reference to something we say to God. We're not enhancing God's blessedness.

We are merely praising Him and worshiping Him for who He already is, recognizing that which is already true. He says the God and Father. What's interesting when you look at this is, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. God chose to bless us. As Jack pointed out, God the Father is choosing to do certain things, and God the Father is the one who is orchestrating some of these things, and he's using Christ to fulfill them, and using Christ as a way to do that. But blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, obviously the key component for why we are blessed is Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Now what is every spiritual blessing? It's on the handout, it's on the board. You can read that or take some guesses of your own if you'd like. Blessing is the full abundant gift of God in salvation. Okay? It's the full and abundant gift of God. It's not the stuff. That's one of the things is, hey, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. None of that is here right now in a physical, tangible sense of stuff. What did God promise Abraham? What were the three tenets of God's covenant with Abraham? The blessing. The blessing was a material blessing to Abraham. That's not the blessing that we get. Our blessing is heavenly. which means that you know my dad and Bruce Batey are going to go to Uganda soon.

I was thinking about it and I should almost turn off the recording for just a second if I say, I'll rephrase it so I don't say it the way it needs to be not recorded. They get paid $2 an hour, I'm sorry $2 a day on average for their salaries. I'm not going to divulge my salary but I can say I make a whole lot more than that. You know, a most inexpensive paper Bible in Uganda costs $6, three days salary to buy a Bible.

In the first world America, you know, we have a tough time as consumers picking which out of the hundred different styles of genes that are available to us fit us best. They're hoping that they can get fresh water and not lose babies to diseases. We have a lot of first world problems and we take the material blessing and we ascribe to it something that it isn't.

But we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing and abundant gift from God in salvation in the heavenlies. It's not earthly stuff. We've been identified with Christ and that gives us a context. If you look at the second half of this verse he says, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Where's your spiritual blessing? It's in the heavenly places. Where is it inside of the heavenly places? It's in Christ. Where are you? In Christ. It's not the stuff, it's the who. It's the relationship.

The last point I've got on here is that it is not a list of blessings, but a heavenly life of blessing with earthly impact. It is going to have an earthly impact. If you know you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing, it makes the circumstances of earthly sorts bearable if they're uncomfortable. I'm co-teaching with two guys that have a really good understanding of unemployment.

Jeremy, for a while, was still looking for the teaching position last year and he's got one and we praise the Lord for that. But you know what that meant for me? I got to pray for Jeremy a whole lot. I got to continue to pray for Jeremy a whole lot and he got to rely on the Lord a whole lot.

Brad right now has got some things in the works. He's getting things going. But last, was it December, you kind of got your see you later notice from the last job. And so he understands it. He's not freaking out. I had coffee with Brad and he didn't come in crying and moaning and whimpering. He came and said we're trusting the Lord. Why? Because he knows his position is secure. He knows he's got every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Now he's just biding his time with the Lord. until the Lord does the next thing or continues to do the thing he's doing. It's not about this stuff. It's not about that. But there is an earthly impact because of that blessing.

If you've ever had to be without and you've been under a legalistic system much like the Jews where material blessing was a sign of God's favor and a sign that you were walking with God Then you probably thought, I'm in the desert, what am I doing wrong, Lord? And you started thinking through the checklist. What sin haven't I confessed? What thing haven't I done? What do I need to do? What chicken do I need to go sacrifice? Just kidding, you don't have chickens in the sacrificial system.

But it's a heavenly blessing with an earthly impact. We should, I'm running out of time here, so we'll close. Our identification with Christ is critically linked with our blessing. The blessing is not separate from Christ, it is completely in Christ. It seals the past tense nature of our salvation. Can you imagine? You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing with Christ, and then you go out, you do the thing that's wrong, I don't know what it is, but you do that one thing that's wrong, you lose your salvation, and suddenly all the blessings are like, gone. It just reverses, sucks back in, so it's gone. So I think the blessing is one of the many confirmations of the security of salvation. You don't see Paul going, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing almost. at least right into the next lesson.

Ephesians chapter 1 contains the longest Greek sentence that we have recorded. I think chapter 2 is the second longest Greek sentence. So the idea continues on, but you're going to have to come back next week because I'm not teaching verses 4 through 6. So, any questions or thoughts on 1 through 3 before we close in prayer?

Randy, I think that statement at the top of this last slide, our identification with Christ is critically linked to our blessing. It's because of the identification. Yeah, that's it. OK. Well, I'm glad that's a useful statement. I haven't known here. Sure. Previous lesson. One of the lessons is elect. Do you want me to? Oh yeah, we're called.

The 33 things are recorded in scripture and there's actually more. Arnold Friedenbaum had a list of I think 215 things that the scriptures say are true of believers. Some of those are pretty heavily overlapped. But 215 places in the New Testament that talks about the blessing of the believer and what we have in Christ.

Election is one of those. Being called is one of those. resurrected into a new creation. Christ being the first of the type is one of those. As we go through Ephesians, we're going to see almost every single one of the 33 things is covered. So this is a bonus class. You get two classes in one. Ephesians and the 33 things, almost every single one of them is going to be listed through and sorted through.

That's the second bell. I should probably pray. Oh, Jack, you've got a... I'm not mistaken? 4-7. 4-7, okay. So 4-7 next week. And let's close in prayer and if there's more discussion we can continue to have it. I'll turn off the microphone so people can tune in next week.

Heavenly Father we thank you for every spiritual blessing that we do have in you. We thank you that you are Lord. We thank you that you, well Heavenly Father, we thank you that your Son is Lord. We thank you that you are our Father and we thank you for the ramifications of our relationship with you, our identification with you. And we thank you for everything that you have blessed us with, heavenly and earthly. And we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.