Our riches in Christ

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons, or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Well, with that, I'd have you turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1.

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Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 1. Praise the Lord, we're in a new book.

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Another book. Every time we come to a new book, I am just reminded of God's sustaining grace and kindness to this church.

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That we say, if the Lord wills, we'll preach another book after this one. And I'm just so grateful that He has allowed us to go through each of these books and to go into this book,

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Ephesians. And this afternoon, as we begin our study, we are going to lay a foundation for what

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I hope will be a very profitable study in the book of Ephesians. In many ways, today is going to serve as an introduction to Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.

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And in some ways, if you have ever been in seminary, or if you've never been in seminary, I suppose, and you wondered, what is it that the men in the

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Institute, for instance, study when they look at a New Testament survey? Or in other places where a survey of a book is conducted.

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What does that look like? Today, in hopefully more preaching than simply teaching, we're going to do that.

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What I hope is an overview, a survey of the epistle to the

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Ephesians. And we're going to look principally at what our text deals with in the first two verses, verses 1 and 2.

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At the author of the letter to the Ephesians. At the destination of this letter, that is to Ephesus.

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And the rich message of this important book. All of these things we find in the first two verses.

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So, with your open Bibles to Ephesians 1, let's read verses 1 and 2.

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Paul writes, inspired by the Holy Spirit, 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. This is God's word for us today.

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As we begin our study in this short passage, I want to begin with a brief story.

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In his full -volume commentary on Ephesians, John MacArthur shares a story about a woman named

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Hetty Green. I'm not sure if anyone here is familiar with Hetty Green. But to this day, this woman,

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Hetty Green, remains to be one of the greatest women in American history.

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At least in some regards. In many ways, she has left an indelible mark on the timeline of 19th and 20th century

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America. But Hetty Green is not known for being the greatest thinker in America.

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She is not known for being the greatest athlete in America, or the greatest philanthropist, or even the greatest actress, as important or unimportant as that might be.

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But no, Hetty Green is widely recognized, even a hundred years after her death, as holding the title of being

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America's greatest miser. America's greatest miser.

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Now that might be surprising to you that I would begin our time by surveying the life of America's greatest miser.

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But why would Hetty Green be referred to as America's greatest miser? For one, kids,

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I want you to picture this. For breakfast, lunch, and supper, Hetty Green was known for eating cold oatmeal every day of her life.

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And the principle reason behind this diet of cold oatmeal was she knew that to turn on her gas stove or her oil stove, depending on the technology of the day, would cost money to heat the water.

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And so to save as much money as possible, she refused to heat the water and so would pour her oats into cold water and then eat cold oatmeal.

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Now is that enough to be known as America's greatest miser? I don't think so.

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Perhaps it is this, that when her dependent son suffered a severe leg injury,

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I'm sure many boys who have grown up by God's grace to be men in this room can appreciate this, that young boys especially are accident prone, and when he hurt his leg, a mild injury, but one that needed medical attention,

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Hetty Green spent so much time looking for a free medical clinic rather than a paid medical clinic in America, that her son developed a severe infection that nearly cost him his life.

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When she finally found a free medical clinic to take him to, they found that the infection was so advanced, so severe, that his leg had to be amputated.

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Now is that enough to be considered one of America's greatest misers? But perhaps even more it could be this, that Hetty Green on the day, on one of her final days, got into an argument with an acquaintance about the merits of skim milk.

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Miss Green fiercely argued that skim milk was much superior to whole milk.

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You know, there's this inside joke in our church, or at least when people come to my home, about would you like water or superior water?

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Well, Hetty Green thought that skim milk was superior milk, because it contained the sufficient nutrients and was much less expensive.

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Only a fool would spend money on whole milk. And so Hetty became so excited, and so irate in the middle of her comprehensive case for skim milk, that she suffered a massive stroke and died, commending the excellencies of watered down dairy.

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But is this reason enough to call Hetty Green America's greatest miser? Boy, I'm going on long, aren't

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I? I don't think so. Why then does Hetty Green hold this title to this day?

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It is because when Hetty Green died, her family members sat down with the attorneys to work out her estate.

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And what they found was that while Hetty Green was living off cold oatmeal and skim milk, she was investing in railroads, and government bonds, and in real estate.

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And even as her son lay dying, eventually losing his leg, due to a preventable infection, she was amassing an estate that was worth more than 100 million dollars in her day.

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As it turned out, when they counted all of the beans, at the time of her death, Hetty Green was actually the wealthiest woman in all of America.

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Translated into today's economy, she would be worth more than two and a half billion dollars today.

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And yet while she stockpiled all of that money, sitting on all of that wealth, she and her family lived, and suffered, and died, as if they were poor and wretched beggars.

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So Hetty Green was not simply frugal, she wasn't thrifty, she wasn't stingy, she was truly a miser.

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And maybe you've been sitting here going, I don't even know what a miser is. A miser is one who hoards masses of wealth, and yet is extreme in grasping and in holding that wealth, and never spending it, even on good and important things.

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Now the reason why I open with Hetty Green, and this great American miser story, is because it is very relevant to the book of Ephesians, and the way that many

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Christians lead our lives today. Did you know that Ephesians has been called, has been likened to, a great stockpile of riches for the

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Christian life. Throughout the ages, preachers, and scholars, and theologians have referred to Ephesians as, in a few different terms, the believer's bank.

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The Christian's checkbook. It has been called the treasure house of the

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Bible. Because in these six chapters in our book of Ephesians, some of the most exalted truths that God has ever revealed to man can be found.

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Ephesians is an unfathomable well of truth for the Christian life. It is a rich storehouse for doctrine and devotion.

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It is, if you can think of it this way, a cosmic checking account that can never be exhausted, no matter how much the

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Christian withdraws. Because the book of Ephesians, this little book, planted in our

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New Testaments, speaks of the great treasure that we possess in Jesus Christ.

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It heralds the reality of what we're going to look at next week, every spiritual blessing that belongs to the

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Christian in Jesus. It reveals the mystery and the glory of God's manifold wisdom at work in the church.

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And it announces, very matter -of -factly, the rich inheritance that awaits every single

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Christian. And yet, the story of Hetty Green is relevant to our study because so many of us, in light of all the truth that can be found in Scripture and in the book of Ephesians, in spite of all of this, so many of us live like the greatest misers in history, relatively speaking.

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Many of us sit here today as sons and daughters of the only sovereign and omnipotent

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God. We sit on a gold mine, as it were, and yet, how many of us live like spiritual beggars?

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How many of us frequently doubt? We are assailed with little assurance of God's particular love for us.

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We say, yes, God loves Christians, but I'm not so certain that He loves me.

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We are often tired. This probably describes many of you.

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We are often discouraged. We are often spiritually despondent. And in light of what we have in Christ, when we think about it, are we not crazy to live and to think this way?

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God has given us the book of Ephesians to remedy this strange condition. And so today, what we're going to do, we're not going to get into all of the riches, but we are going to wet our appetites to the contents of this epistle.

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And as we do, as we begin to discover the overarching theme of Ephesians, we're going to see this, the

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Christians' riches in Jesus Christ. As we just begin to crack open the door of the vault that is the book of Ephesians, we're going to see the riches of Christ for the

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Christian, for you in this room, for each one of us. And so, let's read

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Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 1a, first part of verse 1 together.

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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God.

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You may not think of it in these terms, but the first evidence of riches that we find in the book of Ephesians is actually this, a reliable source.

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That we can come to the book of Ephesians and have confidence that it is the living and abiding word of God to us.

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That it's not the words of a mere man. It's not spurious speculation, but it is

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God's word to you, Christian. And so, in the book, both in the

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English language and in the original language, the first word that appears in Ephesians is actually a name,

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Paul. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Paul was, of course, an apostle to the

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Gentiles. And we have looked at Paul's life in the study of other books. I trust that most of us, many of us, almost all of us, are acquainted with the life of Paul.

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But just a quick survey. We know that Paul was not born Paul. That Paul was born

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Saul. That he was born a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, a persecutor of the church, a violent opponent of Christians.

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He was a highly educated and zealous Pharisee. And yet, in Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 9, we hear what

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Paul tells us about all of those things. He says that whatever gain I had,

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I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Hear the words, or perhaps the language of treasure and of riches here.

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I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus, my Lord. Paul found the proverbial treasure in the field, and he sold all that he had, and he bought the field to gain the greatest treasure in the world.

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That treasure was not a nation, it wasn't a possession, but it was a person.

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It was Jesus Christ and the righteousness that he is by faith. And Paul tells us that he is an apostle.

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Now, what is an apostle? There are religious groups today that meet in Edmonton, that we interact with from time to time, that believe that there are living apostles today.

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And so, as Christians, as informed Christians, we need to be able to respond, to answer that question intelligently.

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What is an apostle? Well, it depends what we're talking about. In the 19th century, a

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Presbyterian theologian, Charles Hodge, you might have heard that name before, pointed out, I think correctly, that the word apostle is used in the

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New Testament three different ways, to refer to three different types of people.

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There was the common term of an apostle, that was used for a messenger.

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And so, just a common messenger. And we see this in John chapter 13, in verse 16, when

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Christ is speaking to his disciples, he says, Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

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Now, if you didn't see it in the original language, you wouldn't notice it at all, but that word messenger is actually the word apostolos, which means apostle.

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And so, in a very general sense, the word apostle doesn't refer to a particular office even, but just to a messenger.

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But more than that, the word apostle was used, in a second manner, as a missionary, in a general sense.

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And we see this in Romans chapter 16, in verse 7, when Paul says, Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and fellow prisoners.

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They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

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And sometimes people come and they try to stump Christians and they say, but there are others who are referred to as apostles who are outside of the twelve apostles, or the twelve plus one or two, depending on how you're counting it, how you include

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Paul in that. But the Bible refers sometimes to missionaries, to those who are delegates, sent on a mission, as it were, as apostles, in a general sense.

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But Paul is not referring to himself as an apostle, as just a generic messenger, or just a missionary in a general sense.

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These two groups are altogether distinct from the kind of apostle that Paul has in mind.

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And that is the third kind of apostle, the kind of apostle that Paul here refers to himself as, and that is an apostle as a divinely appointed representative.

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This is what Paul had in mind. How do we know that? Because when Paul begins his letters, he doesn't use the word apostle simply as a job title, but he is demonstrating the authority of the letter by demonstrating the authority of the letter writer.

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And this kind of apostle had very special qualifications. That means that if someone were to come to you today and say, well,

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I was at church this morning and the apostle told me this, you can ask them, well, is your apostle biblically qualified?

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And if they say, well, how is an apostle biblically qualified, you can say, well, these are the three qualifications of an apostle, as Scripture teaches it.

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To be an apostle, as Paul was, was to be, number one, an eyewitness of the bodily resurrection of Christ.

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You might remember that after Judas had killed himself, and they sought to find a new apostle, one of the conditions of that apostleship was this, they said in Acts 1 .22,

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that the man had to be with them beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us.

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One of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. But it wasn't enough to see

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Christ's life and his resurrection, but they had to be appointed by an apostle. And so in that same chapter, in Acts 1, what did we see happen?

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The apostles did not come together and put their heads together and say, okay, we need to exercise common sense, do we want to choose this man or this man or this man?

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But rather they prayed to the Lord, and they cast lots, and they left it in the

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Lord's hand to choose an apostle. An apostle means, after all, a sent one, and that necessitates a sender.

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And that sender is Jesus Christ. But there is a third qualification of an apostle, and that is, those are the signs and miracles of an apostle.

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In 2 Corinthians 12 .12, as Paul was dealing with the Corinthians about their doubting his apostleship, he said this, to demonstrate that he was in fact an apostle, he said that signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

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So for someone today to qualify as an apostle, if there is a church down the road, about eight minutes that way, that believes that they have a mission from living apostles today, if you want to ask them, you can ask them, well, did your apostle see

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Christ while he was alive, and become witness to his resurrection? Did your apostle, was he personally appointed as an apostle by the living

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Christ? And, does your apostle perform signs and wonders as all the apostles did?

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The answer will be, necessitates, must be, no. The only reason then, why we can read

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Paul as an apostle, is because of this. Because when

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Paul himself refers to himself as an apostle, in 1 Corinthians 9 .1,

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he says, am I not free? Am I not an apostle? He says, have

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I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my workmanship in the

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Lord? In 1 Corinthians 12, he speaks to his own miracles. In Galatians 1 .1,

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he says, Paul an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the

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Father who raised him from the dead. And so here we have the words of Paul, an apostle.

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Not an apostle in the general sense, but Paul, one of the apostles.

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And so he comes to us with the authoritative word of God.

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Many people have questioned if Paul is indeed the author of this book.

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And there are many good reasons for it. For one, the scriptures themselves claim it.

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Someone went and tried to count the commonalities between Paul's writing in Ephesians and his writing in the other letters and what they found, that this letter is 95 % consistent with all of the other

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Pauline epistles. And Paul's authorship is attested to.

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If we were to go back through the annals of church history and talk to Marcion and Basil and Clement of Rome, all of them attested to the canonicity of this letter.

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And still more compellingly, Ignatius and Polycarp, who were disciples of John the

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Apostle, recognized the apostolic authorship of this letter.

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So if we were to, brothers and sisters, if you were to encounter a skeptic on the street who says, well this is not

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God's word. You cannot trust what you read in your Bible. You can't trust Ephesians any more than you can trust an article in the

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Globe and Mail or a segment on CNN. What you can say is this.

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That I have the most reliable, most trustworthy, historical, divine document that the world has ever seen.

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Many of us have been on White Avenue or you've been in your workplaces or you've been amongst your families and people will come to us and they will say, you can't trust the

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Bible because the Bible has been changed. And all you need to do is respond to them with two words.

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If they say to you, the Bible is full of inconsistencies, it's full of contradictions, and the

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Bible that you have in your hands was not the Bible, was not the letter to Ephesians that Paul wrote.

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And you need to respond with two words. Such as? Like what?

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Just give me one example of one of these inconsistencies, of one of these changes, of one of the ways in which this

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Bible is not the same Bible that Paul wrote when he wrote to the Ephesians. And you will be met, almost certainly, by stunned silence.

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Why? Because while we can haggle with a little word here or there, we have a divinely preserved

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Bible unlike anything else found in the world. I went back and looked.

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I think it was just over a year and a half ago that we, maybe not quite a year and a half ago, that we looked at the reliability of the

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Bible. You'll see actually in your bulletin, I think it's figure number four, of a comparison between the reliability of the

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Bible compared to other books. I'm not going to go into it at length.

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But what I want us to see is this. That when we open the book of Ephesians, the letter of Ephesians, we have a reliable book from a reliable source.

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That we can rejoice in the riches of a preserved Bible. And we can rejoice in the fact that all that we have in this book is

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God's word to us. That we have a true Bible. That we can trust it.

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That you can believe it, brother and sister. That you can stake your life on it.

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And this is a level of riches that no other group in the world can enjoy.

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The Muslims do not have a book preserved like this. The Buddhists do not have a book preserved like this.

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The philosophers, you'll see in that little handout in your bulletin, who want to hold to the philosophies of Plato.

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Do you know how many copies of Plato they have? They have seven manuscripts that date back,

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I think it's something like 900 years between when it was authored and the last available copy that they have.

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And yet if you search Plato today, based on those seven documents, I googled it, there are 763 million search results.

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There's a whole world view built on seven documents. The Christians, our

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New Testaments alone, we have over 5 ,600 copies, or partial copies of the

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New Testament. The oldest manuscript, the oldest papyrus with Ephesians on it, it's called

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P46. It dates back to 175 AD.

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Just over 100 years after Christ. We are rich in the

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Word, in having the Word. Let us trust it. But more than that, let's look at the second part of verse 1.

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It reads, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

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Not only do we have a reliable source, but we have a historical destination.

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I want you to look at the opening words there with me. To the saints who are in Ephesus. Now interestingly enough,

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I speak about the reliability of the Bible. The New Testament and the book of Ephesians itself is so well preserved that in some copies there is a haggling that happens where to Ephesus, does that actually appear?

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Or in Ephesus, does that actually appear in the oldest possible manuscripts or not?

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And there's been some debate. Some of the early church fathers argued about perhaps it was the letter to the

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Laodiceans that Paul wrote when he wrote to the church in Colossae. Others have argued various things.

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One of the most beautiful things as we've looked at this with textual criticism in times past, is we have so many copies of the

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Bible that we can nitpick. Does it say in Ephesus? Or is it just to the saints?

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And one of the best explanations that we can find is this. That very likely this book was written to the

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Christians in Ephesus. But as Paul did it, it was a book written to the church in Ephesus and yet it was meant like the book written to the

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Colossians to be a circulatory letter. And so it was to go to the church in Ephesus and then to be circulated throughout the

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Lycia Valley in the surrounding region. But it is going to a historical destination.

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And so what do we know about Ephesus? It's actually a fascinating study when you begin to look at the history of this place.

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Ephesus was considered one of the most important Roman provinces, sorry, one of the most important cities in the

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Roman province of Asia. It was the fourth largest in terms of population.

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So if you were to go to Ephesus in Paul's day, there were about 250 ,000 people.

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It is a real historical place. For a long time, no one could find it until as we've seen over and over and over again, right?

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That when they begin putting shovels in the ground in these old historical biblical places, they find the real historical places of the

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Bible. And so it was located at the mouth of the Keister River between the mountain range of Caressus and the sea.

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And it was a magnificent city. There was a road, in terms of Roman days, this is magnificent, a road that was 30 feet wide and that had columns on either side of the road that ran through the city.

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It had a massive library, bathhouses, an agora or an assembly place.

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It had a gigantic theater on the edge of Mount Pion that held 25 ,000 people.

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Now there's a young man in this assembly today who's wearing an Oilers jersey. Do you know how many people

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Rogers Place holds? Something like 21 ,000, 22 ,000.

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It cost the taxpayers a lot of money. Downtown, it took cranes and years to build.

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The theater in Ephesus took 60 years to build and held more people than Rogers Place downtown.

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But that wasn't even the most famous building of all in Ephesus. The most famous building was the temple to the

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Anatolian fertility goddess Artemis. You might remember reading in Acts chapter 18 and 19 when there was the big uproar in Ephesus and what were the people chanting in this theater.

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You might remember all the people gathered in the theater. Let's go to Acts chapter 18 together, if we would.

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A bit of a bunny trail. But in Acts chapter 18, just a bit of a biblical history lesson.

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Paul was passing through Ephesus at the end of his second missionary journey and he ran into Priscilla and Aquila.

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We see this in Acts 18 and verse 18. And he was cutting his hair in verse 18 for he was under a vow.

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And they came to Ephesus together. And he left them there. But he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the

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Jews. And when they asked him to stay for a long period, he declined. But taking leave of them, he said,

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I will return to you if God wills. And there we see that Priscilla and Aquila remained in Ephesus.

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Later, Apollos came who was educated. He was, we're told in Acts 18, 24, he was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures.

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And yet he needed a little bit of guidance. And there with Priscilla and Aquila and Apollos, the church itself was established.

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And when Paul came, it appeared it was the Lord's will. In Acts chapter 19, Paul came back through Ephesus on his third missionary journey.

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In Acts 19, 21, we read what happened there. That after Paul was teaching in the

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Hall of Tyrannus, he started in the synagogues and then was in the Hall of Tyrannus for two years.

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Eventually, the idol makers were becoming upset. And so, they started a riot in Acts 19, 21.

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And they chanted as the people came through the city in verse 34.

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See that with me. They recognized that he was a Jew. For about two hours, they all cried out with one voice,

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Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said,

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Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the

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Ephesians is the temple keeper of the great Artemis and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?

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And so, we had all these people that went into that theater that we can now find. It's in your bulletin insert again.

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I included a photo of it so that you can see and trust that these are indeed true events.

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And they said, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And they speak to this rock falling from the sky that one of the things that was likely in the temple of Artemis was a meteorite fragment that had come down and became an object of their worship.

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And this temple of Artemis was one of the largest buildings in the

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Greek world. I have a friend who passes through Salt Lake City from time to time.

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And he speaks just about the spiritual darkness of being in Salt Lake City.

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Of all the buildings, but chief among them, the Mormon temple in the middle of the city.

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And how it is just an edifice of darkness in that particular city. Well, here, as Paul is writing to these

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Ephesians, perhaps it was a similar context. The largest building in the

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Roman world. Is in Ephesus. And it is a temple to a false god.

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It was 425 feet long. 225 feet wide. In it were 127 white marble columns that were 62 feet high.

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It contained the image of that goddess that we're told fell from heaven. It became so popular a place for worship that it became the center of a false religion in Asia during that time.

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And so Paul is writing to a historical people in a historical place, in a historically dark place, to show them the riches of Christ.

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We have such a rich history as Christians that we belong to a great heritage of saints.

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Again, using contrast for the sake of clarity. If we were all to get into the van,

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I don't know if this place exists, but let's say it does exist. We get into a bus and we were to drive to the

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Book of Mormon Museum of Archaeology. Wherever that might be if it exists.

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Guaranteed, it is full of things that are not that old and probably a lot of paintings of what things would have been like.

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Do you want to know why? Because there is no historical basis for their beliefs.

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There is no historical basis for the nation of Israel splitting and traveling across the world to North America and then

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Jesus Christ after his death on the cross and resurrection arriving in South America and leading the people to the

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Book of Mormon. If we were to go there, we would not find artifacts from ancient temples.

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We would not find gold tablets. We would not find special spectacles by which those tablets were interpreted because it's not true.

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But such is not the experience of the Christian. But that we have a real and a historical faith.

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And this is a letter written to Christians just like us. Real Christians who live in a spiritually dark place with real spiritual struggles, with real sins, with real opposition.

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Real Christians even who dealt with miserly dispositions like we sometimes do.

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And it was a letter to be circulated in the Lycaea Valley to other similar Christians.

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Now, how does this offer us riches? For one, it offers us great confidence in the

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Scriptures and great confidence in the counsel that is offered to the Ephesians. But number two, we can read the

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Book of Ephesians. We can read this letter to the Ephesians and we can say that this book was written to Christians like me.

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Real people in the real world. It is not a rich storehouse for Christians at a different time and a different place.

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But we can say, I can say this to you, this is your book. This is your heritage.

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This is God's Word. He owns it, but it's His Word to you and for you and for your joys and for your struggles and so that you would know the riches that are found in Jesus Christ.

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And so as we study this Word, we can say it comes from a reliable source and it comes from a reliable source to us.

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And so as we come to dine at the table, at God's table each week, as we begin our study in Ephesians, we can rejoice that this is not an old word for someone else, but it is

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God's Word to us. And lastly, the third mountain of riches that we find in this text is what

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I'm calling an incredible message. In verse 2,

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the

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

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. How often do we read through these greetings as if we're reading through our grocery list or as if we are reading through even the genealogy of the ancient nation of Israel at the beginning of one of the

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Gospels or in Chronicles or something like that. How many of us read verse 2 and never give thought to those words?

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Grace to you and peace from who? From God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to highlight a couple of different things here.

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I want to highlight the word saints in verse 1. I want to highlight grace to you and peace.

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And I want to highlight to you the word Father. So we're going to rewind just a little bit, but we'll get back to grace and peace.

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It's been said that verses 1 and 2 really contain a distillation of the theme of the book of Ephesians.

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One of those themes is in that word saints. The Christian, you have a new identity in Christ.

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You are not, lol if I can use you as an example brother, you are not lol the worm, but you are lol the saint of God, loved of God from before the foundation of the world.

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Where does that word saint come from? It actually comes from an Old Testament concept.

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And we see this idea of what it meant to consecrate or to make holy in the

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Old Testament. It comes from the Greek word hagios, which means holy one. And so what would happen in the

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Old Testament, what did happen in the Old Testament, was that God chose to make particular things holy or saintly.

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That whether it was the sacrifices or the utensils in the tabernacle or the people themselves, they were set apart as holy to the

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Lord. They were consecrated in their service to God. And as such, the people, like the utensils, even though they were not inherently holy in and of themselves, they were declared holy by God.

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This is an Old Testament concept that Paul is taking and he is applying to the

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Christian. That you and me, brother and sister in Christ, we know if someone were to say, apart from Christ, are you holy?

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We would say, we would have to say, absolutely not. Apart from Christ, I am not one little bit holy.

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But if I were to say to you, in Christ, are you counted holy?

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Are you declared holy? Has he consecrated you, sanctified you, and made you holy positionally before him?

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Our answer would have to be, absolutely yes. And if anyone were to say anything else, because I am in Christ, they are a liar.

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We have been declared by God holy. We have a new identity.

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And it is devastating that in many ways, this truth, this

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Christian truth of the Bible has been robbed of Christians by practices like we see in the

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Roman Catholic Church. Where a saint is only, if I can call them, a spiritually overachiever.

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One who has been so holy, if I can use that term, so holy that they have accrued extra holiness, more holiness than God requires, and is therefore stored up in what is called the treasury of merit.

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And therefore, because they have been so holy, in fact, too holy, they are canonized and made saints.

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That is the furthest possible thing from what the Bible has in mind, what God has in mind, when he inspired this word saints.

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But what it is, is this, that a saint is every ordinary

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Christian who places their faith in Jesus Christ and is, by God, declared holy in him.

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It has nothing to do with the merits of a man or a woman, but the merits of the

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Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. Therefore, Calvin says,

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I love this quote, in almost every commentary I read this week, they quoted Calvin on this quote.

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But I found it in his commentary first, which I'm grateful for. No man, therefore, who is a believer, is not a saint.

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And no man who is a... And sorry, and there is no man who is a saint who is not a believer.

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What this means is that probably most of the people, especially more recently, that the

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Roman Catholic Church calls a saint, was never a saint. But many in this room who don't feel like saints, but are in Christ, you are, in fact, saints.

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That you are loved of God. That you are accepted of God. That he doesn't see you as unclean, unclean, walking through the city, telling people, stay away from me,

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I am unclean. But he sees you because he has made you, because he counts you as pure and holy and altogether lovely in his eyes.

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And so, if you are a Christian in this room today, you are probably more a saint than half the saints that you'll find wherever they count saints in the

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Roman Catholic Church. But more than that, you have a greeting. A declaration.

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Grace to you and peace. That comes from a couple of different concepts.

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It's really interesting. We will see in the book of Ephesians this idea between the unity of Gentile Christians and the unity of Jewish Christians and how

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God has broken down the dividing wall of hostility and made out of the two groups one united people.

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And that is recognized even here in Paul's greeting. That he takes two different greetings and puts them together.

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If you were in Greek times, the Greek speaking world, and I were to come through that door as I did earlier today, the way that I would be greeted is something along the lines of Kyrene, which just means greetings.

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Or I rejoice even. I rejoice to see you. Greetings. And if you were to go into a

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Jewish synagogue during that day, you would be greeted with the words Shalom. Now.

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Which means peace. Peace to you. And when Paul says grace to you and peace, no, you're not all studying

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Greek, but just see this with me because I think it's important that rather than saying Kyrene, he says

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Kharis or Kharis, which sounds like Kyrene. And then the word, the

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Greek word for peace, which would be very similar to Shalom. And so he takes a Greek greeting and a

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Jewish greeting. He combines them, changes the words in a way, and so he greets the people in a way that recognizes their

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Gentile background, their Jewish background, and yet to both of them, grace to you and peace.

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It was a play on words and a blessed greeting that came with divine authority.

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Matthew Henry says of this, he says, by grace understand the free and undeserved love and favor of God to you.

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That when God, when Christ, when Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says to you grace and peace to you, it is more than just a mere greeting.

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One commentator says, it is more than a wish for their general well -being. It is an acknowledgement of the divine grace in which we stand, which he has made us mutual members of Christ's body and of God's divine family.

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Grace is the fountain of which peace is the stream. Because we have grace from God, we have peace with God.

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That when the Lord looks to you, he declares to you, saint, grace to you, undeserved merit to you, and peace.

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We just skim over those words without even thinking about it. But that the

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Lord has for you, has declared for you, says to you in Ephesians 1 and verse 2, grace to you.

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And the reason why we need to hear that, and the reason why those are riches, those words are riches in Christ Jesus, is because most of us approach our day -by -day experience as if grace is something that we are to earn.

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That if I perform well enough, that if I read my Bible long enough, that if I go to church consistently enough, then

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I will be deserving of God's grace. God's grace is unmerited favor.

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And the number one thing that you need to learn about grace is that you can never merit grace.

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You can never earn grace. But that you are the recipient of grace. Why?

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Because as we will see throughout the book of Ephesians, one of the crystal clear ideas that comes up over and over and over again is this, that God sovereignly chooses in his own love, and according to his own will, to give grace, to bestow upon unworthy people his grace, and his love, and his mercy, and his forgiveness, and peace.

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We were singing that song. I almost took up the hymnal. I didn't bring it up.

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Almost took up the hymnal. Those words in the hymn, grace and peace.

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Oh, what an amazing mystery that his grace should come to me.

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That in Christ, we have peace with God.

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That's exactly, turn with me to Romans chapter 5 and verse 1. What an amazing mystery that not only his grace should come to us, but his grace and his peace.

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Romans 5 .1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, by grace through faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. That means that there is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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If you live every day without assurance, then come back to the riches of Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 2.

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That he has set his grace on you by definition, not because you earned it, but in fact because you don't.

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And having sovereignly set his grace upon you, he now offers you peace. That you would be right and reconciled with the living

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God. And so if you are in Christ, you not only have a new identity, but you have a new standing before him.

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That you are loved and accepted of God. And, isn't it fascinating,

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Ephesians 1 and verse 2, if we flip back there, that it's grace to you and peace, not from God, our judge.

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Not even from God almighty, but from God, plural, our father.

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Because of his grace and peace, we now relate to God as a child, to his or her father.

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One commentator said, this is the most extraordinary privilege imaginable.

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1 John 3 .1 talks about this. What kind of love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called the sons of the living

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God. And so we are. That we, in the riches of his kindness, come to God as children to their father.

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And how often we live like the greatest misers in the world, when we approach

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God as the judge, when we approach God only as king, but not as king and as father.

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I don't know about you, but if I were a king, and my children were to relate to me,

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I would not want them to come to me, like the rest of the people in the court, saying, oh dear king, and refer to me only as king.

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But I would want, and I trust that the Lord has given me this heart, because this is the heart in him, that he would come to us and say, it is true that I am the king, but I am your dad,

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I am your father, and you can come to me, as a child comes to his father.

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I was at a baptism service this morning, seeing someone very dear to me be baptized.

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It was a tremendous answer to prayer. And while I was celebrating this baptism with the rest of the congregation,

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I had a very strange mix of emotions. Because on one hand, the ordinance of baptism is beautiful, and it is always wonderful to see people profess their faith in Christ, and be baptized.

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But on the other hand, this baptism was happening in a church that has many difficulties.

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I will put it that way. And as I watched the people being baptized, I had this mingling of joy and of concern.

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It was in fact one of the strangest things ever. How many times have I done baptisms down the hallway, and I am never weeping during a baptism typically, in that situation, but I felt the tears welling up in my eyes.

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And I think it was for two reasons. One, because I rejoiced that the

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Lord had saved them, and I watched their joy, and I watched them go into the baptismal, and I watched this very important person in my life, go down into the water, with tears streaming down her face, and going, there is no way that this person would have done this, save by the grace of God.

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And yet at the same time, I think I had tears welling up in my eyes, because I thought, if they stay in this church forever, they will only ever know

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God on a superficial level. They will never know.

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They will never crack open the vault of Christ's inestimable treasures.

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But they will be fed pablum their entire lives. Unless, and I pray it would be true, that the

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Lord would bring revival in that church. And so I would watch these people go down into the water, with these tears in my eyes.

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And what I want for them is exactly what I want for you. Not that we would live a superficial

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Christian experience. I don't want you living on spiritual pennies, for your whole

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Christian lives. But I want you to break open the vault, as it were, of Christ's inestimable riches, and draw near to Him.

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To draw near and to find all the riches that are found in Christ. To see that it is more than just reading your

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Bible, just going to church, just checking off a list of items on your prayer journal.

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But it is to come and to know the living God, through Jesus Christ, in all of the riches that are found in Him.

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And so in this book, we will over and over and over again, examine the riches that are found in Christ.

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Ephesians 1. We have a redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.

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Ephesians 3 .8. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the

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Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ. What I want for you,

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Ephesians 3 .19. 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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Heddy Green, or Elon Musk, or some rich prince in Saudi Arabia, has never known or conceived of the kind of wealth that the

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Christian has in Jesus Christ. And my hope is that as we reflect on these words, and as we make our way through the book of Ephesians, that we would not live like the greatest miser in Christian history, but that we would see the riches that are in Christ, that are beyond our wildest imagination.

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That we would be able to, as men and women in Christ, to not walk around depressed and tired and despondent, but in Christ, to lift our chins, to raise our eyes to heaven, and as the sons and daughters of God that we are, to love

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Him, and to know Him, and to enjoy and experience all of the riches that He has for us in His Son.

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With that, let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our

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Instagram at gracechurch, y -e -g, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.