Know The Blessing Christ Has Given Us More and More

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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Our Old Testament reading this morning is Psalm 103, and that, if you would like to read along, is in page 502 of your

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Pew Bibles. I would ask you to please stand for the reading of God's word. Bless the

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Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the

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Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.

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Who redeems your life from the pit, and who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. Who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

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The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.

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The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

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He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

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He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

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For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.

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As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

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As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

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For he knows our frame, and he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass.

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He flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

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But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him.

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And his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

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The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.

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Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word.

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Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.

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Bless the Lord, O my soul. Today's New Testament reading is

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Ephesians 3, 14 through 19. That's on page 977 in your pew

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Bible. For this reason,

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I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all of the fullness of God.

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You may be seated. Open your

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Bibles to Ephesians chapter one, please. Let's remember to be in prayer for Pastor Tim as he is ministering in Arlington.

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I invite you, all of you, for lunch today as we enjoy fellowship with one another, eating with one another.

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You know, if you look at the New Testament church, an important part of their time together was sharing meal with one another.

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And so I just encourage you to engage in that. And we'll spend some time talking about the

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FIRE Conference, the international that a few of us went to. Daniel will be ready for that, by the way.

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And it'll be a good time, Lord willing. And so I invite everyone to that.

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But we'll begin now looking at the book of Ephesians. Tim and I had talked about, in the future, kind of sharing that role together.

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And so perhaps I'll start it now and we'll see where the Lord, where we end up.

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But with your Bibles open to Ephesians one, let me read. And then we'll go to the

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Lord in prayer. Ephesians one, verse one.

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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

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He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace and with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth, period.

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In him we have obtained an inheritance because we've been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

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In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised

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Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

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I could go on and on, just read the whole book now, but let us stop there and pray to our God. Oh Lord in heaven, what a wonderful treasure we have in Jesus.

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Lord, nothing can compare to knowing him. We were once a people far off, no knowledge of you and we were not near to you.

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Instead, we lived our lives in vanity, trying to be happy with the blessings you have given us without glorifying you with those blessings and we lived a life of vanity.

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But thanks be to our great savior, Jesus Christ, who looked upon us not with a wrathful look, but rather with eyes of grace.

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We were a people that did not want Jesus, but Jesus in his kindness opened our hearts and our minds to know the blessings that come forth from him as true

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God, as true human, and as one who has died to make us alive.

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And so Lord, how can we do anything right now but to praise him and to know him and to live our lives in light of his glory?

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Oh Lord, help us in this endeavor for even now sin creeps around and tries to grab hold of us.

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May we look away from it and look upon the savior of the world. Please Lord, be with us now as we look at your word for a few minutes.

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And I pray that you'd bless the hearers and you'd bless the speaker all for the glory of the great name of Jesus.

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And it's in his name we pray, amen. Blessed be the God and father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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Well, I mean, I think this is the main purpose of Paul as he's writing this book to the

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Ephesians. And really I think he's writing to the general area where Ephesus was. But I think as we start the study,

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I want to look at, well, we'll skip one and two for now and look at the main purpose of the book and then we'll circle back to it by the end of the sermon to see

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Paul's main purpose that he is calling us to bless God, the father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ because he has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.

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I remember I worked at a country club, a very rich country club for about 10 years from age around 14 to early 20s area.

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And this country club was for very wealthy people. I worked in the shoe room for that time.

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Now the locker room was what I mean. And when you think of a locker room, don't think of your high school locker room.

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Think of a locker room where there's a bar and grill in the middle of it, okay? Lockers that are pristine. And what

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I did there with a few others was I cleaned shoes, cleaned the locker room and all that fun stuff.

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And I remember my boss who was not a believer, who is not a believer, whenever we had about a hundred shoes in our shoe room and we're overwhelmed and stressed out, he would say this often.

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He would say, I'm too blessed to be stressed. And what he means is that I have to, and he said it jokingly.

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He knew I was a Christian and I think he kind of said it as a joke. But what he was meaning is that he's too blessed with these physical things from God to be stressed out in this moment.

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And really life is made up. And as we consider that just that basic premise, we should ask ourselves, is life made up of having enough blessings from God in order to just simply be happy?

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You see what I'm saying there? Is that a legitimate philosophy that I can be happy in life or I don't need to be stressed in life if I just have enough blessing from God?

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If I just had this and that and the other, I would be happy enough not to be stressed.

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Now I know if you have enough Christianese in you, you would hear me say that, is life just made up of enough blessings from God so you're not unhappy?

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I know most of you have enough Christianese in you that would revolt against that and say, of course not. But of course, whenever we live our life with this mindset that if I just had this,

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I would be happy. Now of course, we wouldn't explicitly say that we just are wanting enough blessings from God to be happy, but we live like that maybe implicitly as we within our hearts say, if I just had that, if my 401k was just big enough, whatever the situation might be in your own life, we can live with this tendency that if I just had a certain amount of blessings from God, then

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I would be satisfied. Or on the flip side, when

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God withholds blessing from us, our hearts then do what?

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Far too easy to murmur and complain. And so this, I'm too blessed to be stressed is a goofy phrase, ology, but far too often the world's gonna live like that.

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They just had enough stuff, they'd be happy. But as Christians, we can certainly have that philosophy rattling in our brain as well.

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If I just received enough things from God, then I would be happy. If you're an unbeliever before me now,

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I guarantee you that is your philosophy. That is why you do the things that you do that get you in so much trouble is because you're just wanting to get enough stuff from God so you can be satisfied.

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And while the stuff from God comes supposedly and never satisfy, and so you want more and more things.

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But again, this is a philosophy that can very much guide us in our life that if I just had this, that, and the other,

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I would be happy. And I think the main point of Paul in Ephesians is to set this blessing thing straight.

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He says in verse three, blessed be God, the God and father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. And so it's not wrong per se to look at things that way.

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When he says blessed be God, what he's saying is praise God because he has blessed us.

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You see, it's the same blessed word, but God blesses us by giving us things that we need.

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And we bless God not by giving him stuff that he needs. He doesn't need anything from us, but rather we bless God by praising him for giving us things.

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And so if we just look at it from there, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us, we can see that there's an aspect in which

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God does bless us and we are to respond with worship to God.

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This is the heart of our existence. This is what we sing in the doxology every single day, or every single

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Lord's day at the end of our worship. Oh, now I'm gonna forget it. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

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This is the heart of our existence. There's an aspect where this is true. We sing that every Lord's day because it is a fundamental truth that we can repeat over and over again because it's so foundational.

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Have you noticed that? Foundational truths are worthy of repeat. We sing this, praise

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God from whom all blessings flow. This is the heart of our existence. God created

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Adam and Eve to bless them. God is a all powerful, all good, all loving

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God. He cannot help but to bless his creation. Do you get that?

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It's because of who he is. He cannot help but to lavish blessing upon his creation.

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That's why he placed Adam and Eve not in a wasteland, but in a garden because he created them to bless them, to give them stuff so that they would respond with that blessing, glorifying him.

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That's the very foundational purpose of their existence so that they would worship

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God using the physical blessings they got in the garden. We do not worship those blessings.

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Adam and Eve were not to worship those blessings of themselves. You get what I'm saying? Those blessings were a revealing of who

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God was, and so they used that to know who God was and worship him in light of it.

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That is the whole existence. That's the foundational principle of our existence that God created us to bless us, and we would use that to know who he is and bless him for it.

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So Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden. They walked spiritually with God in the blessing, in the garden, in the blessing.

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You see, spiritual blessing kissed physical blessing, and all was well.

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Do you get what I'm saying there? They walked with God in the garden, physical blessings. They walked with God's spiritual blessings.

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They used the garden to walk with God. They came together nicely, but that changed.

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That changed when what happened? Eve was tempted to use a physical blessing to not praise

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God from whom all blessings flow, but rather, in disobedience to God, to find happiness of itself.

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You get what I'm saying? It was detached from the commands of God, and so now Eve and Adam were going to use that fruit to not praise

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God from whom all blessings flow, but rather to find happiness separated from God. No longer is spiritual blessing kissing physical blessing there, but now spiritual blessing of being close to God and using all things for that great purpose is now separated, and we're instead going to use

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God's physical blessings of itself, and of course, that's what happened. Adam and Eve fell in this sin, and so now all of Adam and Eve's posterity outside of Jesus Christ, who then returns us back to the spiritual blessing, all of Adam and Eve's posterity now uses

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God's physical blessings as an end of itself for happiness, and it gets us in trouble.

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It is getting you in trouble. Good things that come forth from God, like what?

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Sex, eating, drinking, entertainment, all these things, a lot of them we don't even like to hear as Christians because we blush too much.

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These are blessings from God, and we are so prone after our sin to use them not connected with knowing

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God, but rather connected with our own sinful desires of the flesh, and it gets us in trouble.

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The more, sadly, in this state, the more physical blessings we get, the more we use it not for spiritual blessing.

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We can get more stuff from God, and it goes through the lens or the filter of our sinful hearts, and so we receive more, but it's not even a blessing because we use it in a sinful way, but notice what

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Paul's main point here in Ephesians 1, verse three. It is blessed be

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God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every what blessing?

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Spiritual. Notice it doesn't say physical, but he purposely says spiritual blessing in the what places?

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Not earthly places, but heavenly places, and so here Paul is making a very specific point that's gonna have very serious implications for the

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Christian is that we are to praise God because he has blessed us in everything in Jesus Christ in the spiritual heavenly places, and so chapters one, two, and three are all about what it means to be blessed spiritually in Jesus.

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That's what Paul is getting at here. He's saying what does it mean to be blessed spiritually by Jesus?

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It is a blessing that far outweighs any kind of physical blessing you can receive. It is a blessing that brings you back to be with the

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Father so that you can enjoy this world again to honor him, which brings the two blessings of physical and spiritual back into conformity with one another.

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You know why you're unhappy is because you are not bringing the physical blessings of God or the lack therein with the conformity with the spiritual blessings of being near to him and Jesus.

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You following what I'm saying? And so this is a blessing that Jesus provides that are all spiritual blessings is he brings you back to be with the

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Father so that both of these blessings come together and we honor our God.

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Not only that, but I think Paul is saying blessed be God for giving us all things in Jesus, all spiritual blessings, and his desire in Ephesians, his main point or thesis in Ephesians is not only that we would know that once, but that we would know the blessings that Jesus brings, the implications, more and more and more.

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Look at what he says. I think it's the main point. We gotta keep the main point in our brains and minds as we read the rest of the book of Ephesians.

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Look at what he says in chapter one, verse 15. He says, for this reason, after he describes some of these spiritual blessings we have in Jesus, he says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the

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Lord, Jesus, the one whom these blessings come through, and your love toward all the saints, he says in chapter one, verse 16,

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I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. And what is this desire? That the God of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom. That is, knowing and working out that knowing in your doing.

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I want you to give, I want the spirit of wisdom to come forth and of revelation or of knowledge or understanding what

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God has revealed in the knowledge of him. He says, I want your eyes of your hearts to be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the, look at these massive words, immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come, he put all things under Christ's feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

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In other words, Jesus came to reconcile all things under his authority to give you spiritual blessings so that these things meet together, so we can say, praise

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God for whom all blessings flow. We are going to use the blessings of God to praise him because Jesus has brought us into conformity back to be with the

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Father. And I want you to know that more and more and more. The eyes of your heart would be enlightened to understand that more.

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Do you understand that the truths of the Bible, what Jesus Christ has done, is something that you need to grow in more and more.

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You're never exhausting it. You can exhaust almost every physical blessing, but you cannot exhaust the spiritual blessings that come forth in Jesus.

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All you can do is grow more in understanding this. I think he says this again, the same thesis, the same point.

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Look at Ephesians three, we read it earlier today. We'll read it again here. Look at Ephesians three, verse 14.

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For this reason, he says again, just like he said in chapter one, I bow my knees before the

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Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he might grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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So I think the point, thesis, Paul is writing this epistle to the Ephesians is that you would understand the blessings that come forth from Jesus in the spiritual places and that you would grow in understanding that more and more and more.

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So when God gives you physical blessing, it's so that you use it to walk with Jesus.

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You would use it in conformity with Jesus. So when God withholds physical blessing, it's that you would use it to walk with Jesus and all the blessings that come forth through his work of forgiving you and bringing you into his flock.

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So I think the first three chapters is really highlighting what that means. It's a doctrinal treatise of Paul.

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What does it mean that Jesus gives you all spiritual blessings in him? I think the first three chapters is highlighting that and he wants you to know it more and more.

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I think chapter one, and I'll just kind of run through it, summarize it quickly before we actually dive into it in the coming weeks.

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I think if you look at chapter one, verses four through 14, that's all about, again, describing the spiritual blessings that's found in Jesus.

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It's all about the fact that God has predestined a people to be brought near to him through the work of Christ.

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That first chapter, he goes right into this huge view of salvation in which God has predestined a people to conform them after the image of Jesus through their faith in him.

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I think as we get into chapter two, verses one through 10, he describes the life of the non -Christian, the curses therein.

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The curses of the non -Christian is to live dead to God. You were dead in your trespasses and sins.

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You know what that means? Is you had no desire for the Lord. You had no desire to use the physical blessings he's given you for his glory and honor.

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Instead, you live dead to that. And instead, you live just to enjoy the physical blessings of itself. Paul describes that in chapter two, one through 10.

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You were dead in that, but then you were made alive together with Jesus Christ. And he changed your heart and caused you to say,

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I am gonna use this now to honor and glorify him like I was always meant to do. The spiritual blessings that come forth in the contrast between being dead in our sins and being alive in Jesus.

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But it's not just an individual thing. When we see 11, chapter two, verses 11 through 22, it's not like the spiritual blessings only came to us as individuals, like we're all islands.

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But instead, we see in 11 to 22, that Paul says that it happened to all the church of God.

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In other words, it happens to individuals and they come together and they make the church of God. There is no existence of the individual

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Christian outside the church. And there are many of you who I'm sure have been influenced by the teachings of the world that tell you that it's okay to be having a relationship with Jesus in the woods.

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I'm just not gonna join the church, I don't need to. That is not biblical. Because God saves us individually and he has us joined together with his church and blesses us in that arena.

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That's where the blessings of Jesus is found, is in the church. Yes, the church fails sometimes and they burn you sometimes.

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Get over it. We are sinful people. But if you give yourself to it and you contribute to it, you will find blessings there.

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That's assuming you're going to a healthy church like this one, of course. We see in chapter three, verses one through 13.

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I wanna be careful with me saying get over it. I wish I wouldn't have said it that way. But it is something, we've all been burnt in the church.

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We all have. If you have been in the church long enough, you have been burnt. That's because we're in a fallen world.

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But we don't respond to that by saying, okay, I'm gonna get out of it now. We respond to it in love and saying, as Jesus invested in this church that hurt him,

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I'm going to invest in this church. That's the way we respond. And when we are doing that, there are all spiritual blessings that flow from Christ.

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That sounds a lot better than just saying get over it. Chapter three, Paul talks about his role of the spiritual blessings that come forth in Christ in that.

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He talks about his role as an apostle, his role as a minister to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus.

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And then finally, after that, first three chapters are describing doctrinally the spiritual blessings that's found in Christ.

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We have four through six, the last half of the book in which we see a lot of application. And what that means is, okay, so this is what it looks like now to enjoy the spiritual blessings in Jesus in your life.

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We are not meant to simply just have knowledge of Jesus, but we're called to have wisdom in which we understand the blessings that come forth from Jesus and it applies itself in the way we live our life.

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And so the blessings are seen in the way we live. The Christian is one who conforms himself to the blessings of Jesus and it shows itself in everything we touch, our families, our societies.

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Everywhere around us, life comes forth because we are living in tune with the spiritual blessings we have received from Jesus.

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This is the life of Christian. Not only that we would know him in chapters one through three but that we would apply him, the implications of it is far reaching in our lives.

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And this is the burden of Paul as he writes chapters four through six. It's all about how to live this life like how

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Adam was supposed to in the garden, walking with Jesus in light of this life.

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How do we live now in light of having all the spiritual blessings in Jesus? And so we see in chapter four, one through 16, how does the church act?

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Yes, God cares about how the church acts. The church doesn't just act any way it wants to but we are called to worship

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God in a particular way. And so the church is to act in light of the spiritual blessings we received in Christ in a particular way and we see that in chapter four.

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We also see in chapter four and five how we are to live as individuals in light of no longer being dead in sins but being alive together with Christ.

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We are to do away with the deadness of the sin and we are rather to live in conformity in Jesus.

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We are to put off the old man and put on Christ. And he talks about what does that look like particularly in four and five, he gets into that.

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In chapter five, verse 22 through six, nine, he talks about how the family is supposed to look in light of being blessed by Jesus in the heavenly places.

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Yes, the family is supposed to look like a particular way. We do not let the family function in any way they desire to act no matter what the world tells us is right.

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And we see from Paul in a very summary statement, wives are to submit, husbands are to lead and children are to obey.

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It is amazing how controversial that statement is now in our society. Wives, do you want the spiritual blessings found in Jesus?

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Submit to your husbands. Husbands, do you want the spiritual blessings found in Jesus? Lead your wife like Christ leads the church.

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Lead your wife, get off of the couch, stop watching your sports and figure out how do

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I lead my family into holiness? Children, obey your parents for this is right.

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This is the spirit, you raise your children saying this is how you're gonna be blessed in Jesus. Your obedience is not just, your obedience of your children is not just caught in because I said so.

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It's because the life of Jesus is found here. You tell your children that, that's gospel -centered parenting.

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The spiritual blessings that's found in Jesus that changes everything about you is found in your obedience to your parents.

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So you connect everything with the spiritual blessings we can have in Christ, especially in your family.

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I don't wanna get lost in this because I'm not there yet, but your family should be a little church. Your family should be a little church.

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Man, you need to be the pastor of your little church. And you need to show this is what it looks like to have the spiritual blessings found in Jesus here.

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Finally, in chapter six, to end it, it's like Paul gives kind of like a battle cry in verses 10 through 20.

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He says, put on the armor of God because Satan and your flesh want to destroy you. The greatest blessing you can have is to look to Jesus and live for him.

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And Satan and your flesh want nothing more but to abandon Jesus and go back with the world and be destroyed in the desires of the flesh.

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And so Paul says, put on your battle rattle and get ready to go to war because this is no picnic.

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That's why I love the Pilgrim's Progress. Because in the Pilgrim's Progress, you have Christian who wars the whole time, who battles the whole time by the strength that Jesus provides.

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And he receives the crown of the celestial city in the end. Oh, it's a beautiful story.

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Paul ends by saying, put on your armor, get ready to battle because the blessings that's found in Jesus is worthy of it all.

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God reveals himself to us through blessing. And the greatest blessing is in Christ who has brought a people near to God, enabling them to use their physical frame to glorify

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God's beautiful name. This is the whole purpose of the Christian.

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And so with the main point of Ephesians, that God would bless us with all spiritual blessings is found in Jesus, that we would know this more and more, that it would find its implications in all of our physical life and our physical blessings.

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With the main point established, I want to briefly go through the first few verses. And I mean briefly.

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Look at what Paul says in one and two. And notice, remember, who is the cornerstone of the blessings, the spiritual blessings

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God gives to his people? Who's the cornerstone there? Jesus Christ. And notice

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Christ is in every single line. He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And he continues on. That whole chapter, Jesus is almost in every sentence. Every single verse.

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As he's describing the spiritual blessings that's found in the heavenlies because Jesus is the medium, is the cornerstone, is the one who brings you into that blessed state.

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So he says in verse one, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. An apostle is a messenger of Christ Jesus.

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He is a messenger. He is proclaiming the word of God. In a world filled with lies, the apostle

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Paul is here to proclaim the truth from Jesus Christ. Where everything else you ought to be a little leery about, here in Ephesians with the apostle

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Paul as its writer, who is an apostle of Jesus Christ, he, this is true.

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An apostle is a messenger. But more than that, in the New Testament, we see that the apostle was an office created by Jesus Christ to further the foundational message of Jesus Christ in the early church.

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Jesus Christ came, he proclaimed, he lived, he died, but before he died, he sent, well, he died, he rose again, and before he went back to be with the

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Father, he sent his apostles, his messengers, to go and create the foundation of that church.

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And so now we have the New Testament, which is written by apostolic authority, message. And so now our purpose here now, 2 ,000 years later, is to take the apostolic word and proclaim it to our own context here in 2023,

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I think it is. Yes, am I right? Please tell me I'm right. Okay, good, good, good, good. So this is the whole purpose here, is that the apostle has delivered

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God's word to us about what it means to receive life in Jesus, and it is true because he is an apostle of Christ.

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He's laying out that foundational message, so now we are here to proclaim it again in our own context.

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So Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, and it's by the will of God.

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Paul did not aspire to it by his own power. If you look at the popes, if you look at the false religions of the world, they grab it because they are thirsty for power.

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But Paul was nothing. He didn't want anything to do with it. Actually, he did want something to do with the church.

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He wanted to destroy the church, but he was called out by Jesus rather to be a messenger to the church.

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It was by the will of Christ that he became an apostle in that first century.

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So Paul is the apostle, is the writer, and look at who he's writing to. He says, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

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So he's writing to the saints, and he's writing to the saints who are in Ephesus. Now, if you notice what's a little different about this letter versus Paul's other letters, or at least most of them,

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I think all of them, is that in Paul's other letters, he really writes in a personal way.

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Like, look at the end of Romans, the last chapter. It's all these people. He's saying, okay, say hi to this, say hi to that, say hi to these people, right?

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It's very personal, but here it's very interesting. In this letter, it misses that personal mark.

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And so the idea is that most likely, now you can either take this or not. It's not the major point of this book, but most likely,

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Paul was writing a general letter that was meant to be sent to the area churches.

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And so we have Ephesus was a church in Asia. Now, when I say Asia, I don't mean the continent that you're thinking of.

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I mean like Turkey, the west part of Turkey. That region was called

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Asia. And Ephesus was on the coast, and it was a major city in that area.

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And so most likely, Paul wrote this letter as a letter for the churches, kind of like Revelation.

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And since Ephesus was the main church in that area, it became known as a letter to the Ephesians. It's not meant to, the letter isn't trying to address particular problems like the

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Corinthians were facing. It's rather just a general letter talking about the general beautiful blessings we have in Jesus.

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But notice he's writing it to the saints who are in Ephesus. The Bible's written to the saints.

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You know that. That's why when an unbeliever opens up the Bible, they don't see the beauty therein, do they?

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They don't have the spirit of Christ dwelling within them that makes this beautiful to their eyes.

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The Bible as a whole is written to the saints of Jesus. This letter is written to the saints of Christ.

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Those who have received the blessings of Christ, they can understand it here.

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He says to the saints who are in Ephesus. Who are the saints? It's not like a saint is like a hyper -Christian, right?

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As we see in the Catholic system. One who is like, you know, particularly pious.

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A saint is anyone who has believed upon Jesus Christ and is now saved by his blood and his life and his death and his resurrection.

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A saint is one who believes upon Jesus. If all blessings come forth in Jesus, a saint, the one who receives those blessings, is one who is believing upon this

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Jesus from whom all blessings flow. A saint is one who believes upon Jesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

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To be faithful to the Lord. The Christianity that tells you that all you gotta do is say a prayer and live a life of wickedness does not exist.

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That doesn't exist. Christ did not save you so you can go and live like the world.

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Christ has saved you so you'd be faithful to him. And this isn't like a moralistic statement that's like, well,

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I just gotta do better. The point is is that Jesus has saved you by his power and he keeps you by his power and he grows you by his power.

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You're faithful to him because of his power. This is the life of a Christian.

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This is what the letter is written to those who are saints in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

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So in other words, when we look upon these deep doctrines of predestination, of God choosing a people before time began, if you are not faithful in Christ Jesus, if you're living in sin,

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I don't care what confession you have, don't start applying these deep truths to your life. That doesn't mean it's like, well,

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I'm just enough perfect today so I guess I can apply these things. A true

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Christian is one who has repented of their sins and continues to repent of their sins and look to Jesus. And if this is what you are doing, grab hold of the promises found in Ephesians and grab hold of the spiritual blessings that's found in Jesus.

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But if you are living in sin, if you, when you think of, oh, I'm saved because at one time I said a prayer,

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I don't need the church. I can just do my own thing. Beloved, don't apply these things to you but instead repent and believe upon Jesus so you can apply these things to you.

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But to those who are the struggling saints, for those of you who have believed upon Jesus and are struggling because you don't like sin anymore and you love righteousness in Christ.

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And so when it comes in your life, you're constantly giving it over to him. Oh, take courage because there is all sorts of spiritual blessings held up in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus for you.

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The ones who have looked upon Jesus and are continuing to look upon Jesus who are faithful to him to turn away from your sins and say,

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Lord, I want you instead. Beloved, this is all the spiritual blessings laid up for you.

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And verse two says, and this is kind of the message miniature. It's just a salutation.

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It's just a greeting, but it has so much rich theology in there. And this is a typical greeting that he even says in Romans, grace to you and peace from God our father and the

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Lord Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus has came to do. These are the saints in Christ. The ones who have received grace, unmerited favor by God.

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And the one, that grace, that unmerited favor is that we could be at peace with God.

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And that is the spiritual blessing that he's laying out now in the rest of the book. That although you were dead and in your sins and trespasses and sins, you were an enemy of God and you lived like one hating him, even though if you claim him, but you still live as if you hated him.

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You didn't want anything to do with him. God in his kindness has grace upon his people and he gives them peace through Jesus Christ.

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And so I want to finish by saying, if you are an unbeliever, if you are an unbeliever, if you've never professed the name of Jesus, or if at one time you said a prayer and you have lived a life of enmity with God thereafter,

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I encourage you, repent now and believe upon Jesus. God's grace is available for you now to take hold of.

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His grace is there, unmerited favor, to bring you at peace with him because Jesus Christ has put on enmity upon himself that those who would believe upon him could receive the peace of God and live like they're at peace with God.

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So I encourage you, if you are living a life of at odds with God, look away from your sin, look to God because he has provided peace in Jesus.

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And for those who are living in the faith, those who are a saint of Jesus Christ, those who have received

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God's grace and peace through Jesus Christ, oh, may we look upon this book with eyes of wonder that Jesus Christ is giving you every spiritual blessing, that all things are made right in him and that you live this life to the glory and honor of his name and all the blessings that flow forth from that.

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May we look upon this book and see the blessings that are laid up for us in Jesus and what he has done and may that result in us living a particular life in light of it, glorifying

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God with our lives. Let us pray. God in heaven, I thank you for Jesus.

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Lord, I can't help but as I read this, I think back of my own life, how at one time

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I was at odds with you, I lived in the passions of my flesh,

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I took hold of the physical blessings that you have blessed me with and I used it for an end of itself instead of glorifying you with it.

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This was my life or I should say this was my death. Thanks be to your grace.

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Although I was once dead in my sins, you made me alive in Jesus Christ and all the spiritual blessings flowed forth from that.

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God in heaven, I am preaching, I am talking before a people, a church, who you have done the same thing in their lives.

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What blessing there is that although you could have left us in our death, you instead offered us

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Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is to be forgiven of our sins and no longer be at odds with God but instead we are sons and daughters so that in this life that we have, the blessings that we receive, we say this is

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Jesus's now, this is for him, this is for his honor and glory. So I know,

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Lord, that many times we get distracted from this, the saints do. So I ask God that you would help us to look upon this book of Ephesians and you would remind us of the blessings we have in Jesus that will compel us to look to him and live for him by the power that he provides in his gospel.

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That you would remind us more and more of the implications of Jesus Christ and his gospel and so that we would live a life in keeping with the gospel so that the power of God's salvation would be revealed even in us, weak vessels.

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Thank you for your grace and mercy that we have to rely upon each day and I thank you for giving us abundantly all things in Jesus.