BENEDICTION OF GRACE & PEACE (EPH 1:2)

Amen. Well, let's go ahead and open up your copies of God's Word to Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1, we're still in the greeting that the Apostle Paul has written to the church in Ephesus. And today is week 4 of our study through this letter, and we finally come to the benediction of Paul's greeting here in verse 2.

But I want us to read starting in verse 1. And Paul's greeting is, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the reading of God's holy inspired word. Let's pray. Let's pray that he would illuminate our hearts and minds to this truth. Oh dear heavenly Father, we come to you once again and we thank you.

Thank you for your word. Thank you for its clarity. Thank you for its truth. Thank you for its life-giving abundant joy. Lord, thank you for not leaving us to ourselves. But God, I pray that as we look at your word, that you would allow us to see it in truth.

Lord, illuminate our hearts and minds to its riches. God, guard me from speaking error, that I would speak only truth from that word. In Christ's name, amen. Well, as we've seen over the past couple of weeks, Paul uses this same greeting in all of his letters.

As a matter of fact, almost verbatim in some of them and others, it's essentially all the same material in a different order. However, these phrases are not just habitual hollow platitudes in the same vein of us greeting another brother or sister and saying, hey, how are you?

Which often we don't care how the other person really is. We just want them to say, fine, how are you and move on to the weather, right? That is not how Paul writes these letters and greets the saints.

These words carry in them significant purpose. They carry in them great meaning. And this phrase here in verse 2 that we're going to be looking at today, as I said a moment ago, is a benediction of sorts.

And what is a benediction? A benediction is a blessing being pronounced. And that's what Paul is doing. He's pronouncing a blessing over the readers. And as you saw last week, who are the readers? Christians, us, right?

We might as well have read that letter to the saints at 12 .5, right? So to the readers, he is pronouncing a blessing. And he says, grace to you, grace to you, and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, that's encouraging. I don't know about you, but when I read those words from Paul and I realize this is to me, I'm encouraged greatly. It's interesting. John Piper points out an interesting fact that Paul always pronounces grace to you and to the reader at the onset of all of his letters, and he always ends with grace with you.

He does at the end of Ephesians. In chapter 6, verse 24, he says, Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. You see the distinction? He says grace to you, and when he leaves them, he says grace with you.

And I believe that this is because Paul understood the Christians' ongoing need of grace in our lives, right? So much so that in every single letter that he writes to the church and to the saints is with bookends of benediction, of grace.

Grace be pronounced to you. Grace be pronounced with you. And grace is a beautiful word, isn't it? It just flows off of the tongue in every language. Grace is a beautiful word. In essence, it means unmerited favor.

It's not something that can be earned. It's not something that is deserved on our end. And we realize that deep within us when we hear the word grace. It goes far beyond another dearly loved word that is very similar, which is mercy.

Mercy is another good word, right? But see, grace goes further than mercy. You see, mercy is merely not getting what you deserve. But grace is so much deeper. Mercy is when you've stolen from your neighbor and your neighbor chooses not to press charges.

That's merciful. But grace is when you've stolen from your neighbor and your neighbor's response is to open up their house and say, what else is it that you're in need of? You see the distinction? It's a beautiful distinction.

And if you're in Christ today, you have experienced that overwhelming, life-changing grace. The grace that Paul talks about in chapter 2 of Ephesians. Actually, flip over to the next page. Look at chapter 2, or it might be on your first page there.

In verses 4 and 5, you're familiar with this text. He says, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, because of His love for us, not because we're lovable, mind you, but because He set His love upon us.

And here's how we know we weren't lovable. Verse 5, even when we were dead in our trespasses, even when we were at odds with God, even when we were enemies of God, we had committed high treason, cosmic treason, towards the Creator.

We were undeserving, right? But even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ. And here's that beautiful phrase, by grace you have been saved. It's undeserved favor. It is a beautiful thing.

It is by God's grace that we have been brought from death to life. But grace doesn't stop here. I think we oftentimes, especially when we dive into theology and we love to dive into the topic of salvation and justification, and we think of grace, well, grace is the moment I got saved, and now I move on from grace.

But that's not according to Scripture. Grace is not something to be moved on from. Now, I will say it would be great if we were saved by grace, through faith, and immediately formed into the image of our Savior.

I guess there are some deathbed experiences, right, where that comes to fruition very quickly, but that is not often. Usually we're left here. It would be great to be freed from the residue of the sin of this world, to be free from this wretched flesh that constantly wars within us, but that is not how God has chosen to do it.

And we can question that all day long, but here's the thing, we all know that God does all things well, and He has a purpose in it. He has a meaning behind it, and He knew that that was the best way, because everything that happens in this universe was exactly the best way, even when we don't see it.

So that's not how God has chosen to do it. He leaves us here to go through that process of sanctification that we talked about last week. He allows us the means and the participation of being sanctified and being made more into the image of our Savior, and being able to be obedient to Him.

And yes, we've been freed from the bondage of sin. We've been freed from it, right? Most of y 'all in here, y 'all have seen me, I like to stand up against this wall like this wall is the master sin, and we were once chained to it, right?

And we were bound to it, and we had no choice but to obey it. And we have been freed from the bondage of that, because we now have a new master, a good master, Jesus Christ. But here's the thing, in this world, our old master sin is still chasing us.

It's still seeking to devour us. It has no power, it's a lion without teeth. But it is pursuing us. You know, it's been said that God is like the hound of heaven. That sounds blasphemous, doesn't it? But hear me out.

It's been said that God is the hound of heaven, chasing after sinners. Chasing after sinners who, before Christ, saved them by grace through faith, chased after sin. That's you and I, right? That's exactly what we did, we chased sin.

We chased sin because we obeyed sin, because we were slaves to sin. We chased after it. But now, because of the transforming power of the sanctifying grace and the life of a believer, through faith in Christ and Christ alone, they no longer chase after sin, but sin chases after them.

And so, we see the continual need for God's grace. Dax knows what I mean. We need this continual grace, and Paul understands this. Because he himself knows his need for it. And so, he pronounces this blessing on us, the reader.

But he doesn't just pronounce a blessing of grace. He doesn't stop there. Look at the passage there in verse 2. He says, grace to you. Oh, and peace. Grace and peace. Notice that he closes with it too.

If you flipped all the way to the back, to chapter 6 and verse 23, he says, peace be to the brothers. He's closing with grace. He's closing with peace. He's opening with grace. He's opening with peace.

And just like with grace, we who are in Christ, those of us in here who are in Christ, have experienced ultimate peace, haven't we? We've experienced it. Because we've experienced grace. Look back again at Ephesians chapter 2, but look at verse 14.

It says, for he himself, who? Christ. He himself is our peace. Christ is our peace. And how is he our peace? Well, look at the passage. Now, mind you, as we read this, it won't make sense unless you understand the context.

This is referring to Jew and Gentile. Because remember, there was this wall of hostility before. The Gentiles had the precepts of God, or the Jews did, and the Gentiles were left in the dark. But now the Gentiles have been grafted in.

And he says, who has made us both one and has broken down? In his flesh. That's key. In his flesh. Whose flesh? Christ. By the fact that he shed his blood for us. In his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

That hostility, right? It was between Jew and Gentile. Look at verse 15. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. For what purpose, though? Why did he do this? Look on. He says that he might create himself one new man in place of the two.

So making peace. He's the source of peace. He's the only peace. He's the only way to peace, right? Look at verse 16. And might reconcile. That's the key word here. Reconcile us both to God. So now he's talking about Jew and Gentile here.

But what he's really driving home is the fact that now no one is justified by works. No one is justified by their own means. No one is justified by doing good. No one is justified by ceremonies. No one is justified by anything.

No one has peace apart from Christ and his shed blood. That's it. That's all we have. And we might be reconciled to God in one body through, and he clarifies it, the cross. Thereby killing the hostility.

This is peace. And we've experienced that peace from the cross. And why do we need to be reconciled to God? I think that's a topic that maybe some churchgoers don't quite comprehend the weight of. Why do we need to be reconciled to God?

Because the nature of man is at enmity with God, isn't it? We've already spoken of that. We are naturally at war with God. It is the opposite of peace. We have no peace. There can be no peace in wartime, right?

When you're not in Christ, you're at war with God. You cannot have peace. You can't find peace. You can't scrounge up peace. You cannot accomplish anything that brings lasting peace. But through the grace of God, he made a way.

He makes that way through his son to bring about peace by reconciling us to himself. What a beautiful truth. And now for you and I, those of us that are in Christ, we have everlasting peace with our creator.

And this is a wonderful truth. These are things that, if we're in Christ, we know these things. We've experienced them. We've experienced the grace of God. We've experienced the peace that comes with knowing that we are in good standing with our creator because of the righteousness of Christ.

But again, we are currently left here to war against our old master, sin. And even though we know that we have peace with the triune God, we can intellectually say this and we can go, okay, well, I know the theology.

Like, Jesus covered my sins. Like, I'm supposed to have peace. I'm at perfect peace with the creator. He's not angry with me. Like, even when I sin, he's not mad at me. Like, I'm at peace. Like, there's no war going on.

I'm his child. Like, I intellectually know that. But how often do you not actually experientially experience that peace? Right? Because, one, we forget about our position in Christ often. And, two, we need ongoing peace.

We need ongoing grace as we do battle sin. And those privileges and benefits are seen through grace and peace in that position that we have in Christ. These are privileges that we have access to. It's interesting.

Paul actually robs this greeting. You know, I mentioned, I think in week two, we talked about this whole thing being an uncommon, common greeting. Right? So this was common in the fact that this is how you introduce yourself at the onset of a letter.

But Paul actually kind of comes up with his own, and the church really kind of adopts it, which is this greeting that you're seeing right here. And he robs it from two separate cultures. He takes two separate cultures.

The first one is within the Greek culture, it was common to greet each other with haris. That's how they would, you know, I come up to my buddy here. I'm like, haris. This is where we get our word grace.

And to the Greeks, this word carried with it this idea of joy, this idea of pleasure and goodwill. This was something that we wanted for the person that we come in contact with. However, to them, these were just words.

They're simple niceties, polite social norms. And I'm sure that they weren't always meant like that. I'm sure that when you'd come in contact with someone you truly cared about, you truly wished this for them.

You wanted joy and pleasure and goodwill in their life. But this is the problem, is that it's not rooted in anything that can actually produce joy. It's just a phrase. It's truly just hopeful thinking that the Greeks would greet each other with.

But then the second part, the second greeting that Paul robs is one that he himself grew up using, which is from the Jewish tradition of greeting one another with shalom. This is how they would greet one another if they were writing to one another, shalom.

If they come in contact with a brother on the street, it's shalom. And this is where we get our word for peace. To them, this word was far more than polite good wishes like the Greeks' greeting. The Greeks were without hope.

They were in the dark, right? And so theirs was just, man, I hope goodwill on you. I hope joy on you. I don't know if one of these many gods that we have statues of are going to accomplish that, but I sure hope it happens.

But it's different with the Jewish people as they say shalom, it's rooted in something eternal. When we think of peace in our culture, it's limited. We think of a lack of conflict, don't we? We think of having a little peace of mind, a little peace and quiet.

The absence of difficulty is peace. But shalom is much more than that. Shalom encompasses this idea of completeness, wholeness. There's nothing missing, a soundness and a welfare. It's a much broader idea than what we can comprehend with the word peace.

You see, when the people of Israel, when they greeted each other, they had passages like Isaiah 54 in mind. I'll just read the first verse for you, and this gives you a concept of how they perceived the reality of shalom and peace.

When we think of peace, we think of just peaceful circumstances, right? But this is how they saw it. The first verse of Isaiah 54 says, Sing, O barren one, who did not bear? Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor.

And here's the paradoxical nature of this verse. For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. Did you catch that? Isaiah says, sing out, rejoice, the one that has no children.

Rejoice, the one that even has no husband to help accomplish children. Rejoice, because your children will be more in number than the one who is married and isn't barren. That seems contradictory, doesn't it?

It seems like, wow, that seems odd. And then it's rooted in, says the Lord. You see, they understood that shalom wasn't necessarily circumstantial peace, but a peace that comes from a trust in God's promises.

You see the distinction between our idea of peace and shalom? It's so much more. Ours is the absence of conflict. The other goes far beyond the idea of absence of conflict. It doesn't matter if there's conflict.

It's the presence of wholeness and completeness. That even in the midst of conflict, there is surety and faith and trust and peace and comfort. Now, unfortunately, by this point, as Paul's writing this letter, the Jewish people had lost sight of its real meaning.

So as the Pharisees and religious leaders walked around the city saying, Shalom, shalom, they really had a very distorted perspective of what this means. Because by the time you got to Second Temple Judaism, they had turned it into straight legalism, and they had lost sight of what the Old Testament actually taught.

Now, we'll be talking more about shalom here over the next few weeks to come, because we will be dealing with this idea of peace in the book of Ephesians. So I'm not going to beat a dead horse today. But you see, when Paul robs these two greetings and combines them together, what is he doing?

He takes the Greek greeting. He takes the Jewish greeting, which by the way, the Jewish greeting had been distorted by this point. And he brings them together, and he creates a greeting. What's he doing?

He's redeeming it. He's redeeming these phrases. He's grounding them in the truest meaning. He's bringing them in light of what they truly are grounded and sourced from. Because he's grounding them in, look at our verse in verse 2.

He's grounding them in grace to you and peace from. Is it from your circumstances? Is it from some wishful thinking? Is it from this idea of what you think you want grace and peace to be? No, he says it's from God, our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

These are not just well wishes and hopeful thinking. They are not legalistic declarations. They are the name it. They're not name it and claim it, you know, prosperity gospel kind of declaration. They're rooted in the fact that both grace and peace flow from God the Father by Jesus the Son.

God is the source of grace and peace. The Father chose to show us grace because of His great love with which He had loved us. And the Son purchased us and bought us. And He bought us peace. Peace with the Father.

And true, lasting, ongoing peace despite our circumstances. Now, I do want to point something out here in this text because I think it's important. When you see from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ, some have tried to use this phrase to deny the deity of Christ.

They say, see, Paul makes a distinction between God the Father and Jesus. He's making a distinction. He's saying, hey, God our Father, oh, and the Lord Jesus Christ. They're trying to detach the trinity, aren't they?

The problem is the word and here in the Greek kai indicates equivalency. This is where we get messed up with the English language. We're so limited. What does this mean? This means that this conjoining word is connecting both Father and Lord back to God.

So when we read this and we say from God our Father, from God our Father and God, our God, Lord Jesus Christ, we have to make that distinction. The point, the reason I want to point that out is one, to be able to combat people that would teach otherwise, but also this source of grace and peace is a work of the triune God and it is important that we identify that and we know this because if this is not a work of the triune God, we are all hopeless, aren't we?

We're all hopeless because if Jesus is not God, he could have maybe paid for his own sin. He couldn't have paid for ours. If Jesus isn't God, we are all without hope and we have no grace and we have no peace.

Now, I have to be honest with you. I am trying really, really hard and maybe you can tell. There's a governor on me today. I'm holding back significantly. I'm holding back from diving into any depth of these categories of grace and peace.

Me and Pastor Jeremiah talked about this yesterday because we're going to be making our way into Chapter 1 and these verses that allow us to dissect these concepts much, much further over the next few weeks and months.

So, I apologize. You can tell I'm really trying not to squeeze everything out of this concept. However, I did not want to spend, I did not want us to skip over this beautiful phrase. I wanted us to look at Paul's words here primarily for the reason of application.

I want to kind of speak from the heart here. There's application that I think we see here as a church. We, as a church family, are getting ready to have a members meeting this afternoon where we are going to lay out plans for the year and all of those plans are well and good, right?

We should make plans. We plan and God directs our steps. And we often, in the busyness of planning, can lose sight of what's important as a church. We can forget that the church is called to equip the saints.

We can forget that the church is called to discipleship. Part of discipleship is reminding each other of the grace that is ours in Christ Jesus. Part of discipleship is reminding one another the peace that we have in Christ Jesus.

Not only reminding each other of this, but praying for it to be evident in each other's lives. Declaring it over each other in the name of Christ. Again, not as a name it or claim it, but as a promise.

This is God's words. These are God's words. We can look to them. And greeting each other with these reminders. Departing from one another with this declaration. See, we're called to encourage one another, to stir one another up to good works, right?

That's what a church is. That's what discipleship is. That's what community is. And this is one of the ways that we do that. We see the example of the Apostle Paul and how he always starts with declaring this benediction over the believers and then leaving them with it.

Every single time. And so I say this as we prepare to do all of our stuff and make our plans. I want us as a church this year to be known less for our preaching. I want us to be known less for our music.

I want us to be known less for our ministries. Known less for our organization. Known less for our reformed theology. And more as a people who know our desperate need for grace and peace. To know it. To know it so much so that we ourselves show this never-ending grace to each other.

That this grace is portrayed to those around us. In our lives, our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members, our friends. I pray that we would live at peace with everyone. That's what we're called to, right?

As much as it depends on you, you should live at peace with everyone. And it's all because of the grace and peace that our gracious God has graciously blessed us with. Paul understood this. Paul knew our propensity to move on from being shown tremendous grace and being made at peace with our Creator and then to turn around and not live a life that is encouraging each other to live in light of that grace.

And to show fruit of that peace. And I feel guilty. I'm one. I get distracted by all of the things. Like in preparation for today's meeting, I'm working through all the plans. And I'm like, okay, so what's the plan for the church this year?

How are we going to do this? How are we going to do that? And I just get lost. When was the last time I contacted my brother or my sister and said, hey, grace to you. Peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

Hang on to that promise. It's yours. That promise is yours. And I want you to experience it. How often do I come into this building and I look at my brother and I see Joel over there. How often do I go to Joel and say, hey, Joel, grace and peace to you, brother.

You live in light of it. You have experienced it, but I want you to experience it more. I want that in your life because I want you to be able to war against your old master sin. And this is what you need to do.

How often do I do that? I talk about the weather. I talk about how your job's going. There's a place for that. We need to know about each other's lives. I'm pointing to the fact that there's got to be this hunger and desire to encourage each other in this.

We need to follow the example of the apostle Paul. Paul's not just writing this greeting just to hear himself speak or to see his words written down just so he can jump into the meat of this. No, this is the meat of this.

There's purpose in it. And I pray that for us. I pray that for me. I pray that for you. Encourage me in it. Challenge me in it. Call me to task when I haven't encouraged you in grace and peace. This is what we need as a church.

This is what I want us to be known for this year. This is what 12 .5 needs to be known for, a lost and dying world. The world out there looks like, I tell you what, they have a weird building and they have a weird driveway and they're kind of a weird bunch.

But daggum, they're gracious and they're at peace. There's Christ-likeness that's just oozing out of these people. And it's contagious because the light of Christ is showing forth from us. And we have such a propensity to hide that, don't we?

Well, one of the ways that we can experience grace and peace in our lives is what we do every single week. Go to the table, right? We see the word. And so I actually want to take a moment. I want to read from 1 Corinthians chapter 11 today as we prepare our hearts to go to the table.

Sometimes we just jump right in. Sometimes we want to go to Scripture and realign our thoughts. Today I thought we'd take the opportunity. I preached a shorter sermon today so we can pull this off, right?

But 1 Corinthians chapter 11, starting in verse 17, Paul says,. But in the following instructions, I did not commend you. Or I do not commend you. Because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse.

For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. The church in Corinth was not living peaceably, were they? They were living divided. Paul condemns them.

They're not living at peace. They're not showing the grace and peace that has been shown to them. And then Paul, down in verse 23, he introduces. He didn't introduce. He reaffirms what Christ has taught him about the Lord's Supper, which is what Jesus affirmed.

The Passover meal in the upper room. He says, For I have received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. It's that grace that we talked about a moment ago. The peace that we're talking about. It was purchased by his body. It was given for us. And when we go to this table, when we take of these elements, we're not taking of the physical body of Jesus here.

We're taking of unleavened bread. It's a symbol. And all we're doing is we're able to visibly see that sacrifice before us and that we share in that sacrifice. Because we've been given grace and peace.

He says, In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, that shed blood. By his blood. The blood of the spotless land.

Perfect blood. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. We continue to do this because Jesus is returning. And this is a reminder that we share in unity with Christ.

Now, Paul goes on now. Paul goes on and he shares a warning. I want us to take heed to this. In verse 27 he says, Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, you will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a person examine himself. Then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. And that is why many of you are weak and ill.

And some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. What Paul is speaking of here is unrepentant sin.

We are to evaluate ourselves. We are to judge ourselves. We are to look in our own heart. And here I have to be careful with this. This does not mean that you go and you panic and you say, I am not going to go to the Lord's table because I bet there is a sin in my life that I do not even remember right now that I have not confessed of and God is going to kill me if I go to the table.

That is not what we are talking about. Here is what is more often than not. You have that pet sin in your life and you are hanging on to it and you are saying, I know I need to repent of that. I do not want to right now.

I know I need to be a part of a healthy church. I do not want to do that right now. I know that I need to give up this habit. I do not want to do that right now. I know I need to align my life to what God has called me to be in this particular area, but I am not willing to submit yet.

If you are in that state, I encourage you, please do not come to this table. Paul said some of you are sick and some of you even died from doing this. This is a serious matter. This is very serious. You are coming to this table in a way that not only is a time for you to see and to acknowledge your position in Christ and what Christ has done for you, but it is also for us to see that you are in good standing.

This is why this is not prescribed for you to take it home. This is for the ecclesia. This is for the gathered together ones. This is the church. So that when you come up and you take these elements and go back to your seat, we know so and so, Pastor Jeremiah is taking of the elements, meaning Pastor Jeremiah is in a state of repentance towards God, meaning that he is in good standing.

But what if Pastor Jeremiah does not go up and does not take the elements? Ah, that gives us opportunity to pray for our brother. He must be struggling right now. Sin is crouching at the door seeking to devour him and it's chasing after him.

Let's lift him up in prayer so that this week he has the power, the grace, and the peace to overcome that sin. That's what this table is for. It's communal. And we can look around and we can see the community that we have.

We can see the oneness that we have in Christ together, and we're looking to that great feast. Amen? What a beautiful time. So I encourage you, go to the Lord. Don't overanalyze. But repent, a repentant spirit, a repentant heart.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, God, we come to you now and we thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. We thank you for the wonderful grace and peace that you have bestowed on us, your children, through the blood of your Son.

And, God, we want to express our worship to you and obedience through this ordinance as we look to what your Son has accomplished on our behalf. Oh, God, help us. Lord, search our hearts. Help us to be a people of repentance.

Help us to be a people who long after you and want to be obedient to you and want to serve you. God, help us to align our lives to your will and to your purposes. God, help us also to be a people that encourage each other towards grace and peace.

Guard us, grow us, mold us. The brightness of your Son would shine forth out of this place in Christ's name. Amen.