The Father's Plan to Bless - Ephesians 1:3-14

1:15And as a child of God, you are lawfully in line to be favored and promoted this year. And then he goes on: Never forget this. When the devil attacks you, God will always promote you. Your hour. Of promotion has come. Your time of favor has come. Just release your faith, and divine favor will invade your finances. Guaranteed. It's guaranteed. All that you have lost will be restored. Guaranteed. All the enemy has taken from you, it's coming back and coming back double. Guaranteed. Total restoration and recovery are coming your way. Guaranteed.

2:00You've had losses and trials and pain, but you've been in the valley too long. You're going to get back on top. Guaranteed. All you have to do is release your faith. As you serve Him and you give to His work, you ensure the Lord's favor on your life. It's an interesting perspective. Is He right? What do you think? Is God some sort of gumball machine that you press the right button and somehow He pours out His blessings to you? You know, if you can obey just a little more, if you serve Him a little better, maybe then He'll pour out His blessings that you deserve in your life. Is that right? If you put a few more tokens, or you give a little bit more money, then divine favor will come and overtake you as He. Says, and unleash some treasures back to you, double.

3:05No, I don't think that's how it works. I think this guy is wrong. It's Benny Hinn, by the way. Benny Hinn is his New Year's resolution letter to all his listeners. But I think he's wrong. I think he's wrong. God is not some kind of gumball machine that dispenses his treasures. We can put money into, and out come all his treasures. It doesn't work that way. You can't earn God's favor like that. But he is a benevolent father.

3:42He is. And God does bless, but he blesses according to his own plan and his own purpose, not according to ours. You see, the Father has a plan to bless, and it was not an afterthought. It was carefully crafted from the very beginning, and it's a glorious plan with incredible blessings. And so this morning, I want us to study the Father's plan, bless, so that you will marvel at the immense blessings that are available to you and that you would know how to truly access them to the praise and glory of the Father. Now, our text this morning, again, is Ephesians 1, and we're just going to be looking at verses 13 through. 14. Now, this text before us is actually one long sentence in the Greek. It's just one long run-on sentence, word after word, phrase after phrase. It begins in verse 3, and Paul begins his thoughts there, and he really doesn't come up for air for, what is that, 12 verses, something like that, till the end of verse 14. And the tone of this particular passage is an outburst of praise to God. It's an outburst of praise to God.

5:06Have you ever been so excited about something that it just builds up and then all of a sudden it just comes out all at once? Have you ever done that? My four-year-old, Ryan, this was just a few weeks ago. He got to take a trip. And it was with Kim's dad. We call him Big Dad because he's 6'2 and I'm not. But he got to take a trip with Big Dad, and he got to ride in his airplane. Father-in-law flies an airplane, and he got to sit in the front seat for the very first time. Normally, my number one son gets that spot. But this time, Ryan got the front seat. He was the co-pilot. And man, he had the greatest time. They flew about an hour away from here, had lunch at an airport, and came back. And when he came back, he Ran up to me, and you could just see the excitement in his face, right? He was just super excited, and he goes to try and just tell me everything that had happened, and nothing came out, right?

6:13And it took a while for all his work, you know, his words to catch up with his mouth, and then when it did, it just all came out all at once, right? In one big long sentence, all strung together, all the events that he could think of came out. It came out really fast. And this is kind of what Paul is doing here. This is what happened to Paul. He was contemplating the infinite wisdom of God the Father and the immeasurable goodness of his blessings, and it was just too much for him.

6:45And so he bursts out in praise to God, and he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He blesses God. Praise be to God. Now, this sets the tone for the entire passage. So from here on to the end of verse 14, he continues this one string of praise. You can see at the very end, to the praise of his glory. He's still in the verse 14, he's still praising the glory of the Father. And so it's just one string of praise. And as he does that, he recounts to us the Father's eternal plan and all the blessings that flow from it.

7:31And so this morning I want to highlight for you four actions that the Father takes and that he has taken to ensure that his blessings are received by us. Now there's a whole lot in this passage and more than we could ever cover in just one sermon. And so that's why I just want to highlight you four of the main actions that the Father has taken. Let's look at the first one together, beginning in verse 3. It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

8:15The first action that the Father takes is that he has blessed us. He has blessed. Now, what does that mean to bless? It means that the Father has determined to look favorably upon something or someone, right? He has looked with favor. It means that he has extended his kindness and his goodness as opposed to his wrath and his judgment. You see that? He has blessed. And this should not surprise us, really, because it's in the Father's nature to bless. All throughout Scripture, we see evidence of this. We see God extending his goodness and his favor. Towards man. Even from the opening pages of Scripture, chapter 1 of Genesis, towards the end of the chapter 1, verse 28, it says that God had created man in his image, and in verse 28, God blessed them. And then he goes on: Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed, every tree which has fruit, every beast of the earth, every bird of the sky, everything that moves, every green plant.

9:33He gave mankind everything. And then he saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. It was very good. So from the beginning pages of Scripture, we see God extending his goodness towards man. Now, of course, the very next chapter in Genesis, man chose not to believe that, that God wanted to give him everything that was good, and he doubted that, and he sinned. But even after man sinned, we still see evidence that God was determined to bless, and he was determined to show his favor upon mankind.

10:16Let me run through a few of these examples. Genesis 4, Abel, the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering. He looked upon him with favor. Chapter 6, verse 8, Noah found favor. In the eyes of the Lord. Chapter 12, verse 2: Abraham was blessed to be a blessing to the nations. Exodus 2: The entire people of Israel, the sons of Israel, God took notice of them. He showed his favor, he blessed them. The psalmist puts it this way: For the Lord God is a son and a shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

11:06Come to the New Testament, James chapter 1. Every good thing given and every perfect gift, all of it, is from above, coming down to us from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. You see, the Father is good by nature, and he has chosen to extend his goodness towards us. It's the Father who initiates the blessing, not man, like Benny Hinn described. It's not us, it's the Father. It's the Father who blessed. And notice also what He has blessed us with. Look at the next part of the verse. It says that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

11:56This speaks of the totality. Of divine blessings. You know that the word there says every. You know what that means in the Greek? It means every. It means every. Everything. All of it. Everything at God's disposal, He has made available. To put it another way, God has opened up the treasure house of heaven, the treasury of heaven. He's unlocked the vault and he's thrown open the door. All the heavenly treasures, all the divine resources, all of the riches that exist in the Father's domain, in the heavens, everything that one could possibly need, he has given, he has made available. Now, Paul expresses this idea of richness and blessing really throughout the entire letter to Ephesians. Let me highlight a few of them for you. Chapter 1, verse 7, it speaks of the riches of his grace. Chapter 1, verse 18, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Verse 19 of chapter 1 talks about the surpassing greatness of his power towards us.

13:11Skip over to chapter 3, verse 8, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Verse 16, the riches of his glory. Verse 19, the love that surpasses knowledge. That's some pretty rich stuff, right? And we have access to all these riches. His glory, his power, his love, his grace. In fact, the word grace, which means just unmerited favor, his undeserved kindness, the word is used twelve times in this letter and becomes a theme of the letter to the Ephesians.

13:52Perhaps maybe the fullest expression of this can be found at the end of chapter 3. Turn there with me real quickly. Chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. Paul is praying. He says, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit and the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up with all the fullness of God. The fullness of God is available to us.

14:55He's given us Himself and everything that He has. He hasn't held anything back. That's the point. He's lavished it on us. Now, back to our text here in chapter 1, verse 3. He's given us every spiritual blessing. Now I want you, in the heavenly places, now I want you to notice to whom he has directed those blessings, to whom. And this is the essential part really to the rest of the passage. So I don't want you to miss this. It says, He has blessed us, right? Who is the us? It is the saints in verse 1, right, who are at Ephesus. It is the faithful, right? The faithful ones. And get this in Christ Jesus, right? That phrase, in Christ Jesus, that is the key to everything. It's actually used 27 times throughout this letter, in Christ. It is because we are in Christ that we can receive the fullness of all the riches, of all the inheritance, of all the glory, and all of his grace. It's in Christ. Do you see that? It's the ones who receive the Father's blessings are the ones who are in Christ. They have been united with him.

16:18That is the only way you can receive the favor of God is by being in Christ. And so the first action that the Father has taken is that He has blessed us, right? He has poured. Out His favor on us in Christ. So you may be saying to yourself, well, that sounds pretty good, right? It's a lot of riches, a lot of grace, a lot of glory, a lot of inheritance. In Christ, that sounds great. How is that possible?

16:49How are we united with Christ? How do you get to be in Christ? Well, let's look at action number two that the Father takes, and I'll show you. Let's read the next verse. It says, He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Verse 4, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. He chose us. He blessed us, and He chose us. Now, the word chose here is eklegomai in the Greek. And it means just to make a choice, literally to pick out of the many, to choose out from a group for oneself, to select out of the many. And we can see this action being taken by God throughout Scripture in a variety of different contexts. One example of this is it's used to speak of God's choice of Israel. He selected Israel out of all the other nations. He chose Israel.

17:55Deuteronomy 7, 6 says, For you are a holy people to the The Lord your God. And the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. He chose them out of the peoples of the face of the earth. It's also used, we see of Jesus choosing the twelve disciples. In Luke 5, while Jesus was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man. Let's see here. I mean, I have... I copied the wrong verse.

18:32Well, it's in Luke 5. But you see Jesus choosing his disciples. He went up on a mountain to pray, and then he came back down and he chose the 12 disciples out of the many, right, out of the group. Also in Acts, you see God's choice of Paul as a preacher. He chooses Paul as a chosen instrument to bear his name before the Gentiles and the kings and the sons of Israel. So he chose us, and in this context, in Ephesians, he chose us for salvation. This talking about his sovereign choice in salvation, his sovereign election, the picking out for himself a people out of humanity to be in Christ.

19:28So how did we? Get to be in Christ, to receive all of God's blessings, the Father chose for us to be there. He chose us out and he put us there. There is no one in the course of history, whether past or present or future, who will ever be found in Christ apart from the Father's choosing. Jesus makes this clear in John 6 when he says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will not cast out. And then in verse 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent him, sent me, draws him. You see that? So the Father chose us. He chose us to be in Christ. Now, notice also the purpose of his choosing. He chose us to be in Christ when he chose us. He chose us before the foundation of the world. This choice of us in Christ took place before the foundation of the world. Now, why is this important? Why is it important that it's before the foundation of the world?

20:50Well, I think it's because it means there's no one else around. When the choice was made, it was just God. We weren't there, it was before. We were created. It means that we have nothing to do with it. We had absolutely no say in the matter because his choice took place before we were even born. And the fact that he chose us before the foundation of the world, it really destroys any notion that we somehow, in some way, deserved to be chosen by God.

21:28His choice was completely independent. Now, if you read some of the theology books talking about election, some try and say that God, in his infinite foreknowledge, he looked forward into the future, right? And he saw that we would come to Christ in faith. And so, therefore, on that basis, he chose us. Because he knew that we would believe, it prompted him to put us into Christ in eternity past. I don't think that's how it worked. I think what God saw when he looked into the future from eternity past, turn to Ephesians 2. It's just a chapter over.

22:18Let me show you what I think he saw: the kind of individuals that God had to choose from. It's quite a group of people. Verse 1. Said, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, right? You in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. So you've got some dead people, dead in sin, walking according to the course of this world. He goes on and says that they lived in the flesh, the lust of their flesh, indulging the desires of their own flesh. They did whatever they want.

23:04They were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. And then you skip down a few verses in verse 12, and it describes them as being separate from Christ, being strangers of the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. That's the kind of people that God had to choose from from eternity past. So when he chose us, there was nothing in us to influence that choice. We were a bunch of sinners, dead in our sins, excluded from God, having no hope unless God chose us. It was only by God's choice that we were able to be set apart and made holy, which is what this text says. Is the purpose of his choice. Look back at verse 4. He chose us before the foundation of the world so that we would be blameless and holy before him.

24:13That's the end result of God's choosing of us, is that we would be holy, that we would be set apart for his purposes. And it's the Father who did it. God, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who chose us. He blessed us and He chose us. And then there's a third action. He adopted us. He adopted us. Look back at verses 5 and 6. It says, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will.

24:54Let's stop there and notice in verse 5 that He predestined us to adoption, to adoption. Now, what motivated God to adopt us? It says right there, the first, actually the last phrase of verse 4, in the beginning of verse 5, it was motivated by love, right? He was motivated by His divine love, and it was a predetermined love. It was a predetermined love to adopt us. Our adoption. Is an extravagant expression of the Father's love towards us, and it was planned out in advance. You see that? Predestined, pro-orizo, to decide beforehand, to preordain, to preorder.

25:48This goes on beyond the mere decision to adopt. It speaks of arranging all the details necessary. He took all the necessary steps to ensure that our adoption would be final. Notice the other language that Paul uses in verse 5. It was according to the kind intention of his will. Some versions, your version may say, according to his good pleasure, his good pleasure. He must have worked at Chick-fil-A. It's my pleasure. My pleasure. It pleased God to adopt us. And so he wrote it into his plan. He wrote it into his plan. In verse 9, in all wisdom and insight, he made known to us his plan, the mystery of his will, according to the kind intention, his good pleasure, which he purposed in him.

26:44His divine love, his good pleasure. Verse 11, having been predestined according to the purpose who works all things after the counsel of his will. You see that? It's a predetermined love. The entire process, it was. Thought about beforehand by God the Father. It was carried out according to His will and to His purpose, and it was motivated by His divine love. In love, He predestined us, and He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. That's the next part of the verse. Now, let's talk a little bit about what it means to be adopted. What does it mean? What all is involved? Well, there's a couple things that I want to highlight. Number one, when someone is adopted, there is a transfer of rights, there's a transfer of privileges. And I think most of us are probably familiar with today's adoption process. We either know of someone, maybe some here have actually adopted somebody and have gone through that process. But in adoption, you have parents who are eager to love for and care for a child whom they've never met. And so, out of that love for that child, they fill out stacks of paperwork, they pay a boatload of money, and they travel sometimes thousands of miles to go and claim this child, this son or this daughter, and bring them back into their family.

28:25And sometimes this involves months or even years of preparation. To have this happen. But the months and the years of preparation is not the actual adoption. The adoption doesn't actually take place until the court hearing. When the judge gets up and he declares, in a moment of time, he declares that child is now a member of this new family. He conveys the rights. He legally declares that child in an instant and gives him the rights, the full rights of being a legitimate child of that family.

29:07And that's exactly what the Father does for us when he adopts us. He gives us the right to become a child of God. John 1:11, Jesus says it this way: He came to His own, or John writes, He came to His own, speaking of Jesus, but those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but by the will of God. You see that? So when we are adopted, we are given the rights of sonship. We are brought into God's family, and we are accepted into the beloved. We are accepted into His beloved. Beloved Son, and all the rights and all the privileges of the Son, of God, the Son, of Jesus, are ours through the adoption. All his righteousness, all of his perfect character, all of his good works, everything that belongs to Christ now belongs to us. We possess it because we have been adopted and accepted into the family.

30:31We have even obtained his inheritance. In verse 11, it tells us that, right? The inheritance of Christ, we get to share in that because of the adoption. It was a total and complete adoption through Jesus Christ, fully accepted as legitimate sons and daughters of God. Transfer of rights, right? We are given this. It's also a transfer of ownership. It's a transfer of ownership. Notice in verse 7. Notice in verse 7 when it says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. Which He lavished on us. One of the rights that He has conveyed to us is that of complete forgiveness, complete forgiveness. The Word says we have redemption, right? The Word redemption literally means to release, to release from captivity, and it was often used to describe the purchase of a slave from the marketplace. You see, in the Roman Empire, there's lots of slaves, there's a whole slave system. And if you wanted to free someone, you wanted to free a slave, you would actually have to go to their owner and you would have to purchase them for yourself. You'd have to pay the required price. You had to redeem them, pay the ransom to set them free.

32:10So when Paul says this in verse 7, that in him, in Christ, we have redemption, it's actually quite a fitting word to be used because Christ has indeed purchased us and he has released us from captivity, and we're now under new ownership, right? No longer owned by our former owner, our slave owner, but we are under new ownership in God's family. Now, the Bible is clear before God stepped into our world, before he adopted us, we were all slaves to sin. We were slaves to sin. Every human that's been born since the fall has come into the world enslaved to it.

32:56Nobody has escaped the shackles of sin. And it owns. Us, right? It was our master. We were in bondage to it. Our nature was completely corrupt, completely bent towards sin. And we've all sinned. We're all included in this category. And the scripture is also clear that not only are we enslaved and owned by sin, but that sin, in order to be free from it, it demanded a price. A price had to be paid. And Romans tells us that that price was death. Nothing else would do. Therefore, according to the riches of his grace that he's lavished on us, Christ became our redeemer. He redeemed us. He redeemed us from sin by paying the price of death with his own blood. His own blood. It was his death that has canceled out our debt of sin. It was his death that provided the forgiveness of our trespasses. It was his death that set us free from the bondage of sin.

34:14We are no longer, because of Christ's redemption, we are no longer slaves to sin, but we are now sons of the living God. And we have been adopted into his family and given an inheritance through Christ. You see that? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us and chose us and adopted us into his family. So we've looked at three. Let's look at the fourth and final action in the Father's plan that I want you to see this morning. And I want you to go down to verse 13.

35:01It says, In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given us as a pledge of our inheritance. Let's stop there. You were sealed, right? That's the fourth action that I want you to see. You were sealed by the Father with the Holy Spirit of promise. You're sealed. Now, this sealing that Paul speaks about refers to the placing of an official mark. In the past, a seal was how they kind of signed important documents, right? If the king had a decree or some contract that he wanted assigned, then he would take some hot wax and he would melt it and he would draw. Drip some of that wax on the document. And while the wax was still soft, he would take his ring and he would press it into the wax. And his ring had his emblem on it, right? It was a signet ring. And he would press it into the wax, making his mark on that document.

36:18And that mark, as long as that mark was there, you knew that it was truly signed by whoever wrote it, by the king. That mark guaranteed that it was legit. It verified that it wasn't a fake. It wasn't a counterfeit. Now, we don't really do that today, I don't think, or at least not that I've seen. We don't melt the wax when we sign our documents to buy a house or something. But in my business, in financial planning, we sign a lot of documents.

36:58We move a lot of money around for people and use documents to do that. And on these documents, there's a lot of times a section on there for what's called a signature guarantee. And this would maybe be a modern-day example of the wax seal. But that signature guarantee, it's not just a stamp. If you're not familiar with this, it's not just any stamp. I can't just create this stamp and say, This is my stamp, and I'm going to signature guarantee it. It's a special stamp with special green ink, like neon yellow ink. And it's got special ink, it's got special barcode, and it's got special numbers that are assigned specifically to the person who owns the stamp. You get the picture? And so, when I take this special stamp and I stamp a document, it guarantees that everything in that document, everything in that contract, is legit, and that the owners of that and the creators of that document agree to it. It was actually them that signed it. And so, I think that's in the same way, that's kind of like what Paul's talking about here: in that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit in Christ. The Father has blessed us, He has chosen us, and He has adopted us, and now He has placed His seal upon the whole thing. He has placed His seal on us, and He has guaranteed His entire plan. The entire plan from the beginning is guaranteed, and we know that because He has placed His seal, that special green stamp, if you will. All that the Father has promised, all of His blessings, all of the riches in Christ, all of it has been guaranteed through the seal of the Holy Spirit of promise. It serves as. That permanent mark on the life of a believer and that guarantee, that down payment or pledge of our inheritance that God will bring about fully and completely at the end of the age.

39:17You see that? He sealed us. He sealed us. And it's a marvelous plan. He didn't leave anything out. And before we close, I want you to notice the last phrase in verse 14. He did all of this. He blessed, he chose, he adopted, he sealed with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory. All of it. His entire plan, this was the end result, is that the Father would get the glory for it all. He actually has repeated this phrase three times, once in verse 6, it was to the praise of his glory, another time in verse 12, it was to the praise of his glory, and then again in verse 14, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of the glory of the Father.

40:14An incredible plan, isn't it? Not quite like Benny Hinn described, but an incredible plan, incredible blessing. And so, what is the exhortation to us? Well, I think there's just one, and that's be in Christ. Come to Christ. Those of you who are not in Christ, come to Christ. You want the divine favor from God? You want God's blessing in your life? Come to Christ. You want to be set apart for noble purposes and made holy? Come to Christ. You want to know the love of the Father through adoption? You want to be in God's family? Come to Christ. You want redemption? Do you want to be set free? Do you want forgiveness? You want grace and mercy and peace and hope? Come to Christ.

41:11For those of us who are already in Christ and maybe finding ourselves not experiencing Christ's blessings more fully in our life, the exhortation is the same. Come to Christ. Keep turning your affections to Christ. Love Him. Love the Christ of Scripture. It is there where all the blessings of heaven are found. And you know what the funny thing is? We already possess it all. There is no more to be given. He's given it all. It's all accessible to us. And when we understand that, it changes everything. It changes how we pray.

41:54We don't go to God anymore asking, God, give us more blessing, give us more. Grace, give us more mercy, give us more hope. He's already given it all. Now we can pray, Lord, help us, help us to utilize that grace. Help us to trust you more. Help us to rest in your peace and the hope that you give through the Holy Spirit. You see that? It's amazing. It's amazing. Let me end with this. I'll read the last few verses of chapter 3, the exclamation point of Paul's discourse of praise and glory to God.

42:43In verse 20 of chapter 3, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are so overwhelmed by what you have done. Lord, that you have planned everything out and took care of all the details that we, an unfit, an unholy, and undeserving people. Might somehow, some way, through Christ, receive all the blessings of heaven. We're so grateful. Father, turn our hearts to Christ. May we love Him.

43:50In Jesus' name, amen.