Transcript

Thank you, Brother Wes.

Let’s go back to Ephesians this evening, Ephesians 1, and I want us to look at actually one verse very closely but I want to read verses 1 through 14. Greek scholars tell us this is one sentence in the original language and it’s an exceedingly cumbersome sentence. Grammarians just wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with how to diagram it which I think is basically impossible to do but, nevertheless, it’s Paul unable to end the glorious unfolding dynamic beauty and wisdom and power of God in our great salvation.

So Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, beginning in verse 1 and going through 14,

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention [the second time he said that] which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,

That’s the third time he said it. He just does all this because he willed to do it. Verse 12, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 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, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Now, in verse 6, verse 12 and verse 14, he has the same basic phrase, “to the praise of His glory; to the praise of the glory of His grace; to the praise of His glory.” So there is a great emphasis here on that. I want to talk to you about a true theology produces a true doxology. You must have a true theology to have a real or true doxology. In other words, genuine worship and praise must come from true knowledge of who God is and what God has done. I’ve heard through the years people say something maybe about a church and say, “Well, you know, their praise and worship is fantastic but, boy, they’re just, the preaching there is weak or they don’t really preach the word there.” Well, I beg your pardon. If the word is not thoroughly taught, well taught, taught in the power of the Spirit, then the praise cannot be strong. It may be high, it may be exciting, it may be stirring, but it’s not true praise if it’s not true, full of, rather, true knowledge.

When I was a little boy, my family moved to a brand new neighborhood out on the edge of the country and we moved into one of the first houses on the first roads that were put in and it was just a vast area; seeming for miles it was just cornfields, or rather, cotton fields. There wasn’t any corn growing in Lawrence County, Tennessee at that time; it was all cotton. Cotton fields and cow pastures and what a different day it was because I would get up about daylight and go play with my buddies. I mean, as a little guy, and there was no curfew and no limit on where I could go and, man, did we go places. I mean, we explored wood lots and gullies and ditches and hills and just, I mean, it’s just the way we played in those days, all the neighborhood kids did that. But one of the things we really loved to do was go hang out at some of the new construction sites and, I mean, I’m just a little fella and it was just really cool to me when they’d let me carry a board or something and I was helping build those houses. And one of those fellows, isn’t it funny the things you remember from your childhood? One of those guys, well, he’d just be hammering away and then he’d stop and he’d sing a refrain out of an old country song, “Ruby red lips and coal black hair.” Now, that’s what I remember. He’d do it probably, I don’t know how many times, just about every 10-15 minutes, he’d just stop, “Ruby red lips and coal black hair.” And I would often wonder, “I wonder if his wife looks like that? I wonder if that’s really true about her?” And Pam says it sounds like a Conway Twitty song to her. She knows country music, I don’t know much about it, but she’s versed on it real well. But I don’t know, but, you know, think about that for a moment. It’s amazing the things we’ll say with passion and with conviction and they have no substance in reality. I mean, what if I…most of y’all know my wife, what if I came up to my wife and I said, “Flaming red hair and sea green eyes. Our love is filled with much surprise.” Whatever it is. I’m not a songwriter but what if I said that? I don’t think she’d be blessed by that. She doesn’t have flaming red hair and sea green eyes. She’s got dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. My point is: it’s not true about her no matter how much conviction or passion I put into it.

When you’re little, another memory I just have from childhood is we buy our moms things when we’re little boys for Christmas and it’s amazing the things we buy and they think they’re just wonderful but really they’re just worthless, you know. And I saved up my money one time and bought and bought my mother this, there is no other way to say it, it was hideous, this hideous brown vase and she put it in our living room and just acted like that was the grandest. It didn’t match anything. It was out of place, but it was sincere to me. But now, once you’ve known a woman for a while and she’s the love of your life, you don’t have any excuse for praising her not according to knowledge. You should be praising her according to knowledge of what she is, what she’s like, her personality, the way she looks. You should be, and when you get 25 years of age and you buy your mom something it should be something she likes. You’re without excuse when you get to 25.

Well, the same truth goes for God. God does not want you praising and honoring him based on your subjective feelings about who he is. God wants you to learn who he is from his word and joy in the truth of who he has revealed himself to be and praise him and worship him for this truth. By the way, this is a big book. There’s a lot here about God and to be able to praise God right, our doxology must be built on a sound theology, the truth. Now, this first section of Ephesians is just full of the rich and glorious truths of who God is and what he has performed through his Son, Jesus Christ. Then he says, “That’s all to his praise. That’s all to his praise.” And so we need to learn well what the Bible says about God and what he’s accomplished so that we can worship him and honor him and praise him well.

We don’t want to be like the Jews when the prophet said and as Mark recorded from the prophet in Mark 7:6-7, Mark wrote, again quoting the prophet from the Old Testament, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips but their heart is far from Me.'” In their hearts they do not treasure me. They do not know me for who I am and joy in that. They’re just praising me according to who they think I ought to be. They honor me with their lips, he says, but their heart is far from me. “And in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” How many churches today are carrying on some kind of great show during the singing and worship time and probably God is saying, “You honor me with your lips but your heart doesn’t even know who I am. You’re teaching stuff about me that sounds good but it doesn’t matter if it sounds good or it warms your heart or it impresses you or it blesses you. The point is, is it true?” You see, you need to hear sound doctrine and sound truth until the Spirit of God causes your heart to change to where that does bless you. I don’t start with what blesses you and try to sort of bait and switch you into loving God, I want to give you God from his word and let the Spirit of God cause you to treasure the God as he has revealed himself in Scripture. That’s it. A true theology is essential for true doxology.

Jeremiah 3:15, you’ll just have to listen to all of these; I’ve got them all written down here. “Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.” Then from Hosea 4:1-2, “Listen to the word of the LORD, O sons of Israel, For the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land, Because there is no faithfulness or kindness Or knowledge of God in the land.” Now wait a minute, you can read the whole prophet and know that they had a lot of stuff going on in worship; they did a lot of things in their sacrificial systems but God said, “Yeah, but you don’t know me. You’re doing a lot of religious ritual and acts and worship things, but not according to knowledge, not according to truth.” Brother Tom, a lot of the charismatic brethren, some good brothers and sisters, but they can get super excited about worship and don’t have a thimble full of truth. Now look, that’s okay if you’re a baby Christian and that’s all you’ve learned but that is pitiful when you’ve been at it for years and you’re still functioning on what a kindergarten student might could grasp of God in your worship of God.

Now, there is no way in the world that Brother Tom can find songs that are going to lay out like an exegesis of Ephesians 1. He’d have to write enough songs to fill up a day of singing to do that, but he can bring out truth and aspects of who God is in our singing and then when we see those words and those phrases and those truths, the whole body of knowledge we’re gaining rises up in our hearts and minds. So we worship God, Tom can only give us a little bit of the truth because songs are limited, but as we sing those little limited truths, it lights a fuse igniting so many thoughts of the grandeur, power, wisdom and beauty of God through his Son, Jesus Christ, and our salvation.

Hosea 6:6, the prophet says again, he says, “I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” So they were busy with their religious stuff but not according to knowledge. Malachi 2:7, “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.” Romans 10:2, “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge.” They didn’t know the truth. 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Paul says we’re maintaining, and listen to me, we’re maintaining a discipline not to hold to viewpoints and conclusions and precepts about God just because our mind and emotions like them. We go to the word of God and make sure they’re right, and if they’re not right, we reject even some cherished thoughts about God and replace that with the truth about God and discipline ourselves to rejoice in the truth and get rid of what sentimentally causes us to feel warm.

Now here’s the challenge here. This was easy for me because my parents were very, very shallow at best to anything religious but some of you have sweet and godly moms and dads and grandmothers and granddaddies and, by the way, they taught you a lot of good stuff and you ought to be grateful, but it’s likely that God may have matured you in your sanctification beyond what they knew or understood and you will have to reject some of the sentiments of even your own forefathers. I’m not talking about the major truths of doctrine but some of the sentiment of even your forefathers to grasp more fully a true knowledge of God. Don’t you hope that every generation is sanctified and surpasses the former generation in the knowledge of the things of God? So you always hold in honor and respect, even my parents who did not have much mark of anything spiritual, they taught me a lot of good stuff and I honor them for that, but I don’t want to stop where they stopped and neither should you.

2 Corinthians 11, Paul says, “But even if I am unskilled in speech,” now they complained that Paul wasn’t so charismatic; he wasn’t so dynamic; he wasn’t the orator perhaps that Apollos was so he didn’t appeal to some of the carnal Corinthians. He said, “Well, I may be unskilled in speech but I am not so in knowledge. I’m not unskilled in the thing that really matters. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether I or Apollos are the most polished orator. At the end of the day it matters do you know God?” Some days God may put me up here and I may not yell, I may not raise my voice, I may not run around, I may not put on a show and I don’t mean to put on a show ever, I just preach the way I feel. But there might be times when I just need to stand up here and speak the truth so that you will forget me and only think on him.

2 Peter 1:3, “seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us.” 2 Peter 3:18, “but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” Knowledge.

So glory, praise and honor, that’s what Paul is getting to in this first section of Ephesians. God is worthy of all praise and he is particularly focusing in on the doctrine of salvation. Now, why do we put such emphasis on the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, the grace that was bestowed on us through Jesus Christ? Because nothing God has done shows forth all that God is better than his work of redemption. God saving sinners like us and God saving sinners and building his church, the New Testament tells us, is such a marvel that the angels whose intellect is far above us, look down on this work of redemption and they marvel over it, the Bible says. It shows…when God spoke heaven and earth and all the universe into existence, that was a magnanimous thing but not to be compared with his work of saving his sheep and building his church. So that’s why when Paul says, “I want you to praise and glorify God,” he unfolds the work of God through his Son, Jesus Christ, in saving his children. You need a true theology, what the Bible teaches, to have a true doxology.

Now, again, this section of Ephesians is one long sentence and it’s one flowing symphony of theology and doxology. Paul will just unpack and lay out there some glorious truths of sovereign grace, then he’ll say God did it because he just willed to do it and he did it all to the praise of the glory of his grace. He repeats a threefold repetition there. God did these wondrous things, he did it because he willed to do it, and he did it all to the praise of the glory of himself. Praise and glory is the centerpiece of the universe. God being worshiped is the centerpiece of the universe and God’s worshiping element, if you will, is his local church. For time and eternity, we will be the centerpiece of God’s work and we will be the centerpiece of showing forth God’s praise to the rest of the universe. The ultimate purpose of all that exists is always to the praise and the glory of God, but we cannot glorify him according to our sentiment, according to what blesses us, according to what makes us feel good, but according to true knowledge or true theology and since we are the objects of his great love and forgiveness and grace, then we have this dual dynamic inside of us that we are the recipients of this truth and we have the knowledge of this truth. Something didn’t just great happen to me in my salvation, he has given me a significant understanding and knowledge of what he did and how he did it. So we of all creatures are to be of his glory, of his honor, and of his praise.

Now, that was the introduction. We praise God, now I. if you want to keep an outline, I. We praise God the Father because we know his Son. We praise God the Father because we know his Son. Look at verse 3, he said, “Blessed be the God and Father,” now here’s the phrase, “of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What Paul is saying is that God sent his Son that we might know a lot more about God. Now, in the ancient world, I guess it’s still true in this world, if a ruler wanted to become better acquainted with another kingdom, another ruler, but he was unable to go personally, he would send a close associate. Often he would send his son because you can often tell much about a father by getting to know that father’s son. Now certainly there are exceptions, but this is certainly true with God the Father and God the Son. So God sent his Son because his Son, Jesus, is the perfect expression of himself so when Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father,” he didn’t stop there. He could have stopped there but it would be terribly incomplete with all that Paul wants to say here. He said, “I want to praise God because I know glorious, marvelous, praiseworthy things about God because I know his Son now, Jesus Christ.”

It has been my blessing through the years to, this has happened several times, Pam and I would run into somebody who, I know you won’t believe this, but for some reason they had been told very negative things about me and in some work environment or whatever, they were associated with one of my daughters and they saw that my daughters were normal and decent and honest and hardworking and respectful and we’d get a report back that they said, “Well, that really surprised us but they were sweet and kind and decent and good and wholesome and hardworking folks.” And so they gained a better esteem of Pam and I because they got to know one of our kids a little better. Now, my kids are like yours, there are some times when, you know, you’d like to knock a knot on their head perhaps, but that’s a typical pattern that the Lord let’s us run into and we’re blessed sometimes if our kids are doing okay. Never perfect, but if they’re doing okay.

But the Bible says in Colossians 1:15, “He,” Jesus, “is the image of the invisible God.” If he just said, again, “I want to praise you for God the Father,” he’s in effect saying, “We really wouldn’t have a very full knowledge of who God the Father is until we got to know God the Son.” And by the way, there’s a real challenge for some of us, more than others perhaps, because some of us didn’t have good fathers. Some of us may not have had faithful fathers. It’s possible some of us even had an evil father and there’s a real pilgrimage you go on if you grow up in the experience to get in the word of God and reprogram your view of God because you’re naturally going to think about God the Father based on the Father you had naturally. So there’s a real reprogramming that you have to do to not impose on God the Father the view or the image or the experiences you had with your natural father if it wasn’t all positive or good. But I would challenge you, again, just as a pastoral exhortation, no matter who your dad was or what he did or didn’t do right, there were still some good things he did. If you’ll seek the Lord, there are good things he did and good examples he left you. I just remember my dad was a very, very hard worker. Talk about a work ethic, I mean, a work ethic and that was instilled in me. So there’s always good things but obviously when we’re talking about God our Father and how he has shown himself through Jesus Christ, it transcends in so many ways what we could ever know about a human father.

So Paul is here saying in verse 3, “What we know of the Father, we know it through Jesus Christ and we can know the truth about the Father through his Son, Jesus Christ.” And when he says there, verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father,” the word “blessed” comes from the word that we get “eulogy” from and it just means “to speak well of.” He said, “Oh, what wonderful things we want to praise God the Father for because we’ve learned so much about him by looking at him through his Son, Jesus Christ.” We know now how to praise him and why we should praise him because we’ve looked at his Son, Jesus Christ.

Just a few basic thoughts here. First of all, he sent his Son. He didn’t just send an angel, he didn’t just send a faithful prophet, he sent his Son. Now, that tells you a lot about God the Father. He sent the greatest heaven had. He sent the best of the best. He sent his Son. John tells us what was from the beginning what we’ve heard, what we’ve seen with our eyes, what we’ve looked at, what we’ve touched with our hands concerning the word of life. In other words, he’s saying, “We saw in every way, we’ve experienced his Son and in every way he’s incomparable.” He’s above and beyond anything we could have thought. He was sinless. He showed compassion. He was just prone to show the deepest mercy and compassion to those whom the world had thrown away. The woman with the issue of blood. Jesus is walking by, throngs are just packed tight around him. She had just very, very little strength because of her sickness, somehow fights through, touches the hem of his garment and he’s aware that she’s there and he was concerned and ministers to her. Blind Bartimaeus, this old, dirty, literally stinking, abandoned beggar on the roadside that the disciples were saying, “Be quiet! Don’t bother him. He’s got great…” I mean, Bartimaeus cries from the gutter and says, “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” and deity stopped in his tracks and healed blind Bartimaeus. John says, “We saw him. We heard him and he’s incomparable.” So that tells us something about his Father. That’s why he says, “Praise be to the God and Father,” the Father of Jesus Christ, that is.

He was true and faithful. He was so in radical contrast to the religious hypocrites that the Pharisees and their religious leaders of the day were so encompassed in. He would associate with the lowly that others rejected. And on and on we could go. His teaching. His power. His forgiving sin. His raising the dead. Just the disciples would just say, Paul writing here would say, “He’s incomparable. We know something of God the Father because we know something about his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Not only did he send his Son and not only did they see his Son, his Son was sacrificed for us. That tells you something about God the Father. He sent him. We see him. He was sacrificed for us. And then Paul writes this incredible section in Ephesians along with certainly other corresponding truths of the Scriptures about the glorious way the wisdom and power of God in saving his children. So let’s go on to number 2. We praise him not only because we know his Son, Jesus Christ, but we praise him for the blessings of salvation. These are all inclusive blessings. He says in verse 3 again, “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.” Every means nothing is left out. Now, they are spiritual blessings in heavenly places because the comparison between the value, the goodness of heavenly and spiritual blessings compared to worldly temporal blessings is just, well, it’s infinitely transcendent. You can’t, there’s no comparison so God through his Son, Jesus Christ, though he does bless us with some temporal stuff down here, certainly he does, he said, “That’s not even worthy to be compared. God didn’t want you to have just some momentary, temporal, menial, base blessings, he gave you heavenly quality blessings.” No zirconium whatever it is for a diamond ring. He went to Tiffany’s and picked out the best diamond in the store. Heavenly blessings that far exceed anything earthly.

Every spiritual blessing. As a matter of fact, scholars tell us this is an aorist tense verb here where he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Aorist tense means finished action in past time with continuing results. He has already dumped the full load on us and we’re just now beginning to take in. So you’re just now, even some of you tonight, just now the light is coming on a little bit brighter and in your soul, you’re spiritual soul, you’re getting a little bit deeper drink and taste of how wonderful and glorious these heavenly spiritual blessings are and if you keep growing in Christ, that light’s going to get a little bit brighter and one day you’re going to open your eyes in heaven and it’s going to be brilliant light and you’ll see in the full the glory of the blessings that were already, aorist tense verb, already fully laid onto your account and are yours. And Paul says, “My goodness, when I contemplate all that is mine in Christ Jesus, it tells me something about God the Father, to give me such a Savior as his Son. Oh, praise his name,” Paul is saying. There is spiritual blessing. They are all inclusive and they’re spiritual.

Now, I do want to say that, and I try to use the word “balance” a lot in my pulpit because we’re so prone to be unbalanced. We run out of one ditch and run right into another. The Bible does have quite a bit to say about the fact that God blesses us with temporal things down here but the great, great error is when we emphasize that over the value of the spiritual heavenly blessings.

You know, I’ve seen these posters go up, maybe years ago moreso than now. It would be about an evangelist coming to town and it would list what’s going to happen in that revival meeting. It might say something like this, “Signs and wonders and miracles and the blind see and the lame walk.” Then at the bottom, “And the Gospel will be preached.” That’s radically out of balance. It should be, “The Gospel will be preached, souls will be saved and God might move and do other stuff. We don’t know, but we do know he’ll bless the preaching of his Gospel.” So, you see, they’ve got it inverted; they’ve got it upside down. God does do some wonderful things and there’s a place for us to ask for those and believe he’s going to do them. Material things. Sometimes we get so against the false prosperity Gospel that we see from a lot of these guys on the television who preach that the full end of God is to make us healthy, wealthy and live to be 110 and die without any pain, I guess, and we react against that to believe that God doesn’t do any of that. Well, sometimes he does do that. Sometimes he does bless with wealth. Sometimes he does heal something and praise his name, amen? But they are not to be compared with the heavenly gifts we have in Christ Jesus.

I just jotted down four quick things of how these heavenly and spiritual blessings differ from material blessings. First of all, they’re eternal. Everything God gives you down here has an expiration date on it. It’s a part of a fallen world that’s going to pass away. They’re eternal, not temporal.

Secondly, the proportions are equal. We all gain all the blessings that Christ has for us. They’re equal in Christ Jesus. Down here, the Bible teaches God makes the rich and God makes the poor. I don’t understand how that works in sovereignty but God sometimes chooses to bless a brother over here, another brother over here has worked just as hard and materially he’s just not blessed as much. God just has his sovereign purposes in that and that’s why we’re to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, amen? And not judge either way. But in heaven, all the blessings from everything we can gain in Scripture, yeah, there’ll be rewards in heaven but the blessings in Christ Jesus are all equal.

We’re blessed in eternity in both body and soul. It just blesses us all the way from all the way out to all the way in and all the way out again and, of course, the blessings of the spiritual heavenly blessings are untouched by sin in any way. When God blesses us down here, inevitably sin gets in it somehow. We get to loving what he gave us a little too much and we can get a little bit greedy about somebody got a little more than I got. I mean, we’re just so prone down here with every blessing having some kind of sin attached to it, but not our heavenly blessings.

So these grace blessings and just looking again at these verses, verse 4, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” That’s one of those heavenly blessings, “that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love predestined us to adoption as sons.” Verse 6, “to the praise of the glory of His grace. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace. He lavished these on us.” Notice the wording here, “He lavished these on us,” so as we unfold this, think again how Paul is thinking, “God the Father sent his Son to do this for us. That makes us know who God the Father is, what kind of God he is and how he is worthy of praise.” Verse 10, “with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” Now he switches things over and says we are trophies. By us being glorified in heaven, we are objects that cause all the creatures of the eternal realm to praise God for what he could accomplish in getting us there and saving us. Verse 13, “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.” Now he brings the Holy Spirit’s work in here, another thing to tell us what a wonderful God the Father we have. “Who is given to us,” verse 14, “as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” Back to the original statement, Paul’s point is: grasp all you can with the gray matter God has given you, the glorious true knowledge of what the Father has done for you in his Son because you need a true theology if you’re going to have a true doxology. You must know the Bible as well as you can to praise him as you ought to praise him.

Let’s stand together in prayer.