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“A View from Heavenly Places”
The book of Ephesians, week 1
We are Blessed
Ephesians 1:1-14
Today we are going to begin a new series called, “A View from Heavenly Places”. This will actually be a study of the book of Ephesians. In this letter Paul uses the phrase “heavenly places” five separate times. I believe that we can interpret the phrase and Paul’s use of it as an attempt to teach us the realities of what God says and sees rather than being constantly bombarded with what we see, feel and understand in this world that surrounds us. We have to remember, Philippians 3:20 tells us “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We may live on earth but we are citizens of heaven, so our hearts, our minds, our love, our affection and even our reality has to be based on our place of citizenship, not simply on the place where we now reside. There is more to life, more to the world, more to reality than what you can see, feel, touch and understand; and the “more” resides in “heavenly places”. So, over the coming weeks we are going to study our way through Ephesians and my prayer is that when we have finished we will have a clearer view of ourselves, of Jesus, of the world we live in, of the calling and purpose of the church and of the enemy that we wrestle with; and that our view would be based on what God sees, from heavenly places. Today we will begin by reading the first verses of the letter and talking about how God sees us.
Paul opens the letter with a basic greeting and then jumps into giving thanks to God for blessing us.
Vs. 3 “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”
Paul either makes a major assumption about the people he is writing to, or he is making a major declaration to them. “We are blessed!”
What does it mean to be blessed?
How do we view blessing? Is it external or internal; future or present; tangible or intangible; temporary or eternal? I guess we could answer the question by saying both, but which one do we focus on? Which one do we really, truly consider our blessing? How do you desire to be blessed?
James 5:11 “As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
My definition of blessed is often, not having to persevere. Blessing is usually defined as happiness, ease, provision, plenty, abundance, etc. James says that the blessed are those that have persevered, that means the blessed are those that endured something, overcome something, were strengthened in difficulty or provided for in loss. Blessing is not a life of ease; it is something much, much greater.
How we view blessing determines whether we recognize it when it comes, or even whether or not we call ourselves blessed. Paul and James don’t allow blessing to be something temporary that we sometimes experience and sometimes don’t, they seem to use it in a finished form, you are blessed or you are not, but you can’t be blessed from time to time. Yes, there are blessings in life, but being blessed is something much more than having blessings.
Listen to some of the passages that define a blessed person:
Psalm 1:1 “Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”
Psalm 32:1-2 “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
Psalm 40:4 “Blessed is the man that makes the LORD his trust.”
Psalm 84:5 “Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee”
Psalm 84:12 “Blessed is the man that trusts thee”
Psalm 94:12 “Blessed is the man that thou discipline”
Matthew 21:9 “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.”
Psalm 84:4 “Blessed are they that dwell in thy house”
Revelation 14:13 “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.”
Have you noticed what all of these passages have in common? They all define a place of relationship with God. The Bible defines blessing as being near God, not about what we have or don’t have, understand or don’t understand and believe or don’t believe.
Just consider Mary for a moment. Luke 1:42 “Blessed are you among women.” Basically, you are more blessed than any other woman. Consider her life though, Mary got pregnant out of wedlock, ruining her reputation and adding stress and pressure to her life. She bore a Son, that within a few days of his birth it was promised that a sword would prick her heart. She lived the first years of the child’s life on the run from a crazy king. She was apparently poor, considering the offerings the Bible tells us that she brought and also the lifestyle that Jesus lived. Her own house was divided over the identity of her son. She watched and listened as her son was lied about, reviled, taunted and ultimately killed by the government. What part of that is her blessing, in an earthly sense? She was blessed more than any other woman because of her relationship with Jesus. His presence, His power, His love and His care were her blessing, Mary was blessed.
So being blessed is not about what is going on around you, it is all about what God says to you, about you and what He has done for you. Paul says that you and I, in Christ are blessed; we have to believe this, declare this and understand it more fully.
So if we define blessing by God’s intervention in our lives, how have we been blessed? Paul tells us:
Vs. 3 “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”
That is amazing! Every blessing in heaven has been given to us. Do we realize how deceived we can be? We have been given every spiritual blessing in heaven and sometimes we look around and set our attention on the temporary things that we wish we had, if we are honest, that at times we would rather have.
II Peter 1:3-4 “His (Jesus) divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
Peter says that we have been given everything that is needed for life and for godliness. When you and I say we don’t have, don’t know or are not able, we are being deceived! Paul says that we have every spiritual gift in heaven and Peter says we have everything we need for life—all in Jesus. He is our blessing and in Him we are blessed!
Paul then, in my opinion lists some of those spiritual blessings—let’s take a quick look at them:
1. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Before we had a chance to get it right or wrong, to show whether we were useful or not, obedient or not, faithful or not, loving or not, worth it or not, Jesus chose us. Listen to me, declaring that you are chosen does not mean you are declaring that someone else is not—you were not chosen over someone else, you were simply chosen. Before the world began you had been chosen. How can you think you are not blessed, when you have been chosen? Stop trying to determine blessing by the current state of things and determine it by the fact that you have been chosen!
2. “That we should be holy and without blame before Him”
What were you chosen for? Too often we view God as the great delegator, He chose you and I for jobs that He either didn’t have time for or didn’t want to do. You were chosen to be holy and without blame in His presence. Do you remember last week when I talked about negative vision? We talked about never doing things or defining ourselves by what we don’t want to be or don’t want to accomplish. Well, we have made holiness about negative rather than the positive that it is. When we say be holy, we immediately think of all that we have to not do to be holy. That is the enemies trick to keep your mind on the world rather than the heavenly places. God is not holy because He doesn’t lie, or doesn’t hate, or doesn’t drink or smoke; God is holy because His character is love, is beauty, is purity, is perfection. Even that word, perfect, we have made it the absence of error rather than the presence of all that is good. So, consider this, when the Bible says you are perfect, it means that you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. You are perfect because of the presence of God in your life and the reality of the Holy Spirit that lives within you. You are holy.
I am not sure we get this other one very often; we are without blame before Jesus. This means that Jesus did not just pay for our sins, He did not blame us. Some of us believe we are forgiven but we still carry a lot of blame around. Blame is guilt, it is shame, it is a belief that we failed, even if Jesus made it better, we still failed. When you stand before Him, He sees you as righteous, He sees you as forgiven, He sees you as blameless. Stop bearing blame that has not been given to you. Enjoy, reap the blessings of being forgiven, one of them is being without blame.
3. “In love predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”
“The words “he predestined us” do not imply that God picked some in order to condemn others. Rather, they show us that God did not act in a purposeless way but has a destiny in mind for us.” Walter Liefeld
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
I know most of us are familiar with this verse, we love it. But think of this, the same God that told these words to Jeremiah, also told Him “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I knew you”. So God knew not just who Jeremiah was, He knew the plans that He had for him, before creation was formed. Think about this, just picture God, before time, standing over His thoughts of you, before you were born He was loving, planning, preparing and choosing to love you and order a life of blessing for you.
All of the plans for your life, and your life in general are all according to “the good pleasure of His will.” This means that while God is blessing you, you bless God! Consider this, while we constantly want stuff to bless us, God says that we bless Him and I believe His desire is that we find our blessing in Him the way He has chosen to find His blessing in us. Your life is built according not just God’s will, but God’s pleasure that He has chosen to find in you. So, when you struggle, it is not God testing you harshly, it is God being blessed by you, building you up, strengthening you, showing you the blessing that He has found in and through your life from before there was time.
4. “He made us accepted in the Beloved”
In this instance, the “Beloved” is Jesus; we have been accepted in Christ. Our election is secure, our place is eternal and our future is established. We are in Jesus, accepted into the Beloved and as Scripture says “no man can pluck us out of the palm of His hand.”
Have you ever longed for acceptance? Jesus chose and accepted the most overlooked of His day: fishermen, tax collectors, women, Samaritans, lepers, disabled, children, demon-possessed, an adulteress, Pharisees that would listen and even a dying thief. He has not changed, He continues to accept those that have been overlooked and left out, including you and me. We are not tolerated, we have not been brought into God’s grace because He had to or we did the right thing to get in, we have been accepted in the Beloved because we have been loved with an everlasting love by the Almighty God.
We are going to continue this message next week, because there are three more spiritual blessings that we have all been given in Christ that I want us to look at: Redemption, inheritance and the Holy Spirit.
Proverbs 31:28 tells us about the woman of virtue, the woman of righteousness that “her children will arise and call her blessed.”
It is time for us, for you and I, for all of us that are in Christ, to arise and call ourselves blessed. Paul says that we are blessed, he teaches us that as God sits in His throne room in heaven that His view of us is that we are blessed. How easily swayed we are when we measure blessing by what we have or don’t have right now, according to our understanding of what we need or want. Blessing is defined by God’s nearness, by His work and by His love.
R.C. Sproul writes that the Jews “understood blessedness always in terms of the proximity that one had to the presence of God.”
You and I have been given every spiritual blessing in heavenly places; there is nothing in heaven that has not been given to us. That means that everything eternal, everything above, everything that transcends time and space, everything that God has surrounded Himself with has been given to you. In fact, to use Philippians 4:8 as a back drop, this means that everything that is noble, everything that is right, everything that is pure, everything that is lovely, everything that is admirable, everything that is excellent and everything that is praiseworthy has been given to you. Let’s not settle for less!
You are chosen by God; you are loved by God, you are holy and blameless with God and you are accepted in Christ. All of this adds up to one thing—the view that God takes of you from heavenly places is that You Are Blessed!