THE FOURTH IN A SERIES OF MESSAGES ON EPHESIANS FOR BBCMP, DELIVERED 1/27/13
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SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN HEAVENLY PLACES
EPHESIANS 1:1-14
·
GRACE
TO YOU AND PEACE 1:2
So far,
we’ve dealt with the author and the recipients (then, and now), and the purpose
and tone of the letter, and more. We’ve
looked at the structure and the main headings, and considered an outline on the
first (doctrinal) half.
And
last week I worked mostly on this subject – that this is a book about
PRAYER. It is not only about prayer, of course. But it definitely is an important place to go
to learn about prayer and praying. You
may not feel as though you need or want any guidance on how to pray, but I
found that I needed it, and while there are many helpful resources out there
(not in your “Christian Bookstore"), the best place to go to learn what we
should be praying is of course, the inerrant Word of God.
About
half of the content of Ephesians has to do with prayer. We can find prayer
requests, invitations to prayer, some outlines of prayers that Paul prayed “for
the Saints in Ephesus”, and for “the faithful in Christ Jesus”, and even some reports
of answered prayer.
As
for the kinds of prayers we find, there are prayers of praise, prayers of
thanksgiving, and prayers of intercession.
Even the little benediction in v. 2 is a prayer – both an intercession for
them, and an affirmation of something believed by Paul (and the rest of us,
presumably).
WHAT
DOES PRAYER CHANGE?
We are
all familiar with the saying “Prayer changes things”, and I don’t dispute
that. But changing things shouldn’t really be our main
concern. Being changed ourselves should
be our main concern. More importantly
than prayer changing things is that prayer
changes us.
And I’m
convinced that it is what we confess in prayer that changes us. “The rule of prayer is the rule of
life.” When we declare what is true,
according to God’s Word, about ourselves and about God – that changes us more
than asking to be changed changes us. Just asking to be changed is certainly
important. But that has its limits because
it focuses us on ourselves.
But professing
(affirming, confessing) our faith in God focuses on God, and on the Word of God. I
think that is what Paul was driving at when he wrote,
Now
the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by
the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
Now while we’re on that subject of
what the book is about, notice the next words
let me remind you this –
FROM
GOD OUR FATHER also in 1:2
I’ll remind you again that
this is also a book about GOD. To which you
might reply “Well, duh”. What you need
to remember is that when Christians speak of God, we don’t mean “God” in the way that a Modalist Oneness Pentecostal; or a
Deist or a Theist, or a simple monotheist like a Moslem, or a Mormon, or an Arian
or J.W. might understand Him, but as One Holy Triune God existing in the three
persons of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
In other words, this is a book in
which the apostle boldly
affirms the Trinity – For example, in
this paragraph we read at the start of this lesson, Paul springs into a
discourse on the Father’s electing, Christ’s
dying and rising, and the Holy Spirit’s power and working.
And a consequence of affirming the
Trinity is that when we are done there is little room left for affirming us.
Of course, the way to success and notoriety today is to affirm the audience
– to talk about the champion or the super-hero inside of them just waiting
for the right life tip to be set free and change the world. Paul has nothing of the kind to say. He says the opposite in no uncertain
terms. But his affirmation of God is enthusiastic
and in the clouds.
The contemporary evangelical false
gospel is that you can make the right decisions and choices and learn the right
techniques to achieve your full potential and greatness.
Paul’s gospel is that the all men
are born dead in trespasses in sins, enemies of God and at war with God, but
the Triune God – and He alone - can restore dead sinners to the fullness of His
own image as Adam was created.
There is no lifting up of the reader
here or anywhere else in the N.T. The
creature is abased, but the Creator is exalted for His work of reclamation of
the creature. When we get to v. 10, I’ll show you
how this book is not only about prayer, and about God, but also about
Evangelism and Missions.
AND
FROM THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
Jesus,
of course is the Second Person of the Triune God, so it would be incorrect to talk
about Him as separate subject in the book (“prayer, God, evangelism and missions,
and Jesus).
But we
will see that Ephesians is loaded with the doctrine of the believer’s union with Christ (1:1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20; 2:6,
10, 13, 21-22; 3:6, 11, 12). References
to it drop off after ch. 3, but in ch. 1-3 Paul is building the doctrinal
foundation for the practical stuff in the second half.
J. C. Philpot assessed the key-note of the Epistle
to the Ephesians
to be The relationship of the Church to Christ as her risen and glorified Head, and wrote;
This is
the leading feature, the grand subject, the fundamental idea which runs through
the whole Epistle, and which, binding in one harmonious chain well-near every
verse, again and again sounds forth its distinctive note in various parts. If
you will refer to the last two verses of the first chapter, you will find this
key-note first clearly struck; but you will discover it sounding also
afterwards, 2:16-22; 3:1-21; 4:15, 16; 5:23-32, in all which passages mention
is made directly or indirectly of the Church as the body of Christ.
We are
united to God through Christ, but that just iterates the importance of
the incarnation. Without that we
could not be united to God. But because
of Christ, the barrier between God and man is removed. We couldn’t come up to Him, but He could
come down to us.
And in
just a few words, Paul is going to enlarge on that - right in the next
verse. So we’ll pick it up there.
But I will suggest to you right now
that we have arrived here at the subject that has caused so many believers to
adore the book of Ephesians – and it’s not prayer, or the Trinity, or missions. It would be their union with Christ. All that the Triune God had planned
from before the foundation of the world, was provided for in The Lord Jesus, and
delivered in HIm. If the Father gave it
to us, He gave it in Christ. If He did
it for us, whatever “it” is, He did so in Christ. Our prayers are acceptable because we
are united to The Lord Jesus Christ. The work of missions is being accomplished
through the Holy Spirit, working with His own Word, and through the Church,
because the Church is united to The Lord Jesus.
CHOSEN, PREDESTINATED, ETC.
And
now we come to the controversial part of the chapter.
Some
commentators see everything from here on to the end of the chapter as a prayer. They see 1:3-14 as a prayer of praise, or
adoration (to God for who He is and what He has done), and 1:15-23 as a prayer
of intercession that God would open our eyes to all the things that have been
given us.
Whether
or not it is all prayer, the last
part of it surely is, and the first part is certainly full of praise. And I hope you know that it is suitable and beneficial
to praise God, when you are praying, and when you aren’t. So if it isn’t a prayer, in the sense of a request, it’s
still good stuff to have in your prayers.
But the
controversy isn’t over whether v. 3-14 is or isn’t a prayer. It’s over the stuff in there that has to do
with God’s choosing, and His foreknowledge, and His calling, and purpose, and
predestination. And I’m
not eager to get into any kind of controversy over it. And I think that the best way to avoid that
is to just take it as Paul presented it – not as something to argue over, but
something to praise and thank God for.
Seriously
– look at it. This is an eruption of praise
and thanksgiving. “Blessed be God…” And where does he go from there? To how good God makes him feel? To how God does what Paul wants God to
do? No.
He goes to how God worked everything out in order that people could be
saved, and that he is privileged to be one of them.
PRAISE
THE LORD – FOR WHAT?
We all
know that we are supposed to be living lives filled with praise. And many of us might confess that we know we
are falling short of that. The praise
seems to have gone out. That may be because
what we praise God for only those things that happen to us that we consider to
be “good”. And we may even begrudgingly
say “praise the Lord” for things that we aren’t so happy about.
But
look at what Paul is praising God for – God’s saving work, and planning of it
from before the foundation of the world.
I wonder how many professing Christians have praised God for a new car,
or for winning some trophy, or something else just as meaningless, but have
never ever praised God for His Eternal plan of redemption that was in place
before Adam drew his first breath, before there was air to breathe on an earth
to wrap in an atmosphere.
Don’t
whine “I don’t want to”. Learn how to do this, and you will perhaps begin to be
able to trust and commit yourself to God’s care instead of living with a black
cloud over your head and sensing impending doom every minute of the day.
And if
we can take the approach that Paul took, not to carefully construct iron-clad
theological systems out of these things, but to simply acknowledge them as
true, they will become for us the sort of life-changing truths that I was
talking about just a few minutes ago at the start of the introduction.
If we
can just take God at His word about these things, and not be so worried about
how we are going to build a system out of them, or explain them away until they
are meaningless, it will completely rework the way we look at the circumstances
of life.
I think
we defeat all the good that God meant for them to do, and completely miss their
real purpose when we start reasoning in the direction of, “Well if only some
are elected to be saved, then everybody else must be elected to be damned”, and
then reject the idea of election because we can’t abide by our conclusion that
we came to on our own. Just as
bad is saying something like “Well, if the elect are all foreknown and the
number is fixed, then the elect are saved even before they believe.”
Either
one of those extremes will just take all this great and precious truth that we
should be praising God for and drain all the wonder and thrill out of it.
HOW
DOES BELIEVING, REMEMBERING AND PRAYING THESE THINGS CHANGE US?
To begin with, it will help us to fix in our
minds WHO is the most important person in all reality. Think of your catechism questions.[1] That would be God, of course.
And we
can go through life saying “God is the most important person in the world” –
“It’s cool to put God first”, and be saying nothing more than slogans we don’t
really believe anyway, without ever touching
on what that means in ways that upset our ideas of how things should be.
But
when we come to something like the doctrines that are cited here, we’re going
to be confronted with the fact that since “God (not man) is the first and best
of beings” that requires that His Will
carry more weight than ours.
Secondly, it will fix in our minds WHAT is
most important in all of reality. That
would be the glory of God.
Finally, it will fix in our minds for what
purpose we exist.
Think of your catechism again.[2] That would be “to glorify
God and enjoy Him forever.”
Now you
might not like coming at the subject of praise this way, but it is in full
conformity to the Scripture. Of course, I
could strut around up here and flip my coattails out throw my leg up on the
pulpit, and scream till I was hoarse about how “yougotta just make up your mind
that you-uns er a-gonna want God more than anything.” And I might be able to get you to an altar to
make a decision to do that. That’s
certainly not unheard of. There are
plenty of folks that think that’s how it’s done. And they really feel that they mean
business. And for the record, I don’t
doubt their sincerity. I used to be one
of them, on both sides of the pulpit.
But I
don’t think it does any actual good, because for one thing, that’s not how Paul
did it. He didn’t bless the Ephesians
out for not desiring and appreciating and delighting in God. Instead, he gave
them several things to think about, and to confess in prayer, or not in prayer,
it doesn’t make any difference, that are true about God, that ought to cause
them to desire, and delight in, and appreciate Him.
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