Beloved family of God, I would like us to open our Bibles in the letter to Ephesians, the letter of Paul to Ephesians in chapter one. That's where I would like us to meditate this morning on the word of God in this letter of Paul to the Ephesians Church. I'll be reading it from verse 1 until, actually I'll read the whole chapter, my focus will be from verse 3 until verse 14. It reads thus, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ 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 Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be to the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him things in heaven and things on earth in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory, for stating in him You also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, believed in him, were served with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of the inheritance until we acquire positions of it, to the praise of his glory. Amen. That so far is the reading of our way. Brothers and sisters in the Lord, we read in this letter that we are to praise our God, for he has blessed us in Christ Jesus. You know, today when we speak about the blessings of God, many people think about material things of this world. things we can acquire in this world. We hear today teachings about being blessed to have material things. A beautiful house or a big house, a beautiful car. We hear teachings where blessings today are about being rich and wealthy. All these blessings are from God. Please understand me. I'm not saying that God does not want to bless his children. Amen. That's not what I'm saying. I believe in a God who is able to provide for our needs materially and also spiritually. Today brothers and sisters I would like us to look at this letter to the Ephesians where Paul speaks about spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus and I believe this is what As servants of God, wherever we ascend, we are to proclaim to the world today. The world needs to hear that God has blessed us spiritually in Christ Jesus. I've rephrased my message as follows. Praise be to God for he has blessed you in Christ Jesus. And I would like to look at how, from our text, how Paul says God has blessed us spiritually in Christ Jesus. The first that we see from our text is that Paul says God has chosen you in Christ Jesus to be holy and blameless. Second, we see from our text that Paul says he has also redeemed us in Christ. He has bought us through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. Thirdly, we see that God has sold us with the gift of His Spirit as believers. We know that the letter of Ephesians is written by the Apostle Paul himself and we know from the book of Acts that Paul had spent over three years with this Ephesian church. When you read in Acts chapter 20, verse 17 to 38, we read that. that this church was very close to the Apostle Paul himself. And when he wrote this letter to them, his purpose was that he wanted to strengthen the believers in their faith by explaining the nature and purpose of what the church is, the body of Christ. And today, as I would I would be looking at this. I want to meditate with you on what Paul speaks about when he says believers are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. And Paul mentioned in verse 3 and 4, let's look at it. Again from our text in verse 3 and 4 it reads blessed be the God the father of Our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him We are chosen in Christ Jesus, to be holy and blameless. Beloved congregation, Paul says it is our Father, God the Father, through Jesus Christ, who has blessed you by choosing you to be holy and blameless. In this verse, we see that Paul is thinking of Christians as the people of God, the church, Paul here says, let's praise our father. For he's the one who chose us in Christ Jesus. He gives us the reason of praising God. for he is the one who chose these efficient believers and all the believers who believe in Jesus Christ today. Paul in verse three says, believers are blessed in the heavenly places in Christ. What does this mean? The heavenly places means that these blessings that God has blessed us through Jesus Christ are eternal blessings, spiritual blessings, temporal blessings. Not material blessings that are temporal for this world. But when a peasant leaves this earth, which out of those material blessings he doesn't even take them with. But here Paul says God the Father has chosen you in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. This means that My salvation and your salvation, it is not our efforts, but it is the work of God through the grace to us through Jesus Christ. We are not saved because we deserve it. As Paul says in Ephesians 2 verse 8 and 9, but it is because God has graciously has given us freely his gift of salvation to his children. This means that we are saved according to the plan of God. Beloved congregation, it is through his plan that today we believe in our savior Jesus Christ. He continues to say, God has chosen you in Christ to be holy and blameless. Here Paul uses these two important words from the Old Testament, to be holy, being the idea of being set apart, to be different, to be dedicated. From the Old Testament, We know that the temple of God was holy because it was different from other buildings. A priest was holy because he was different from ordinary men. He was set apart to do certain tasks for the Lord. The Sabbath day was holy because God has chosen this day from other days that his children may come to serve him. So Paul here is saying that believers are chosen, are set apart in Christ to be different from other men. This means that the church must be different to the world. People must be able to identify that this college, it's a Christian college. Amen. Whether we are at school, at work, or at our homes, everywhere, in speech and in action, we must remember that the Lord has set us apart for his purpose, that we may serve him. The difference does not mean that as Christians, we should not mix ourselves with the world. but it means that we are set apart from the world to save our father who has chosen us. The second way, Paul says, he's chosen us to be blameless. And this word was used As we know from the Old Testament in the sacrificial laws, where under the Jewish law, before an animal could be offered as a sacrifice, it had to be inspected by the priest. If any blemish was found in it, it was unfreed to be offered to God. Now here Paul says, our whole life must be an offering to God. This means that every part of our life, whether we are at school, at home, at work, in our relationship, it should be an offering, a sacrifice to God. It means that our life as a Christian is to be dedicated for God's glory. And as he continues in this chapter, he moves to The second topic where he says in verse 5 that he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. Paul speaks about this plan of God. Paul here uses a picture of adoption. We read also in Romans 8 about this in Galatians 4 where we read that God adopted us as his sons to be his family as the church. When you look at the ancient world, even today when a child is adopted, that child has all the rights of being a legitimate child of his new family. where he is adopted. Paul says that God, through Jesus Christ, makes us his children in his family. God graciously accepted us, though we did not deserve to belong to him, to be his family. It is by his grace that we are accepted as his children. Beloved congregation, it is by his love that we are called his children. And we see that in the next verse, where Paul says, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. Paul says Christ, in Christ we have this redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. These two words are very important to understand our salvation. First is the word, this redemption. In Greek, it comes from a verb which means to buy back or to ransom. This word was used when a man who was a slave or a prisoner was bought by an owner who wanted to buy the slave. The children of Israel were delivered and redeemed by God from their slavery in Egypt. Paul here says we also were delivered, were redeemed by God from the slavery of sin. Redemption is the price that Christ paid on the cross to release us from being slaves of sin. And it is through this redemption that we receive the forgiveness of our sins. And we know from the Old Testament that the basis of this Redemption was granted on the basis of shedding an animal's blood. Now Paul here says we are forgiven our sins on the basis of Christ's blood which was shed on the cross. Christ died as the perfect sacrifice for us. All this was done by the grace of God. for us. God saves us through his grace, beloved congregation. We ourselves cannot earn or work for our salvation. Without the grace of God, no person can be saved in this world. And Paul says this grace gives us this wisdom and insight. It is through this grace that Paul says we have There's knowledge which satisfies our mind. The knowledge which enables us to handle the day-to-day problems, practical life through the Holy Spirit. In verse 9 Paul speaks about the mystery of the will of God. And mystery here refers to something which was long been kept secret and now has been revealed to us. It should not be understood as something which is hard to be understood. But Paul says this mystery is that the gospel was open to Gentiles. In Jesus Christ, God revealed that in his love, his grace and mercy on man, not only for the Jews, but for the whole world. It does not matter if you are white or black or from which tribe you are from or which background you are from. The gospel is for the whole human race. Jesus came to this world to wipe all the divisions among men. Paul continues to say all this happens under the will of God. It was through His plan that we receive all this blessing. God has planned to bring us together to be with Him in Jesus Christ. God's plan is to offer salvation under Christ's rule. Even when we see chaos, even when we see things which are not going well in the world we live in. All these evil deeds we read about, we see on TVs. Beloved congregation, we must rest in the truth that God is in control. He's in charge. No matter what evil is happening, no matter how things look bad, God is still in control. And this leads me to my last point. Paul speaks that when we were redeemed, we received this gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul in verse 13 gives us how a person, or maybe how a person receives this gift of the Holy Spirit. Let's read it again, beloved congregation. Verse 13 says, You also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, believed in him and were sold with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Paul says, firstly, it is when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ being preached It is when we hear the good news about Jesus Christ that we believe in the gospel message and we receive the Holy Spirit. Here he says the gospel has two things. Firstly, it is the word of truth. It brought truth about God, about the world in which we live. and the misery we experience. Secondly, it is the good news because it was a message of love, message of grace to sinners. When we receive this message and believed in it, the Bible says we were saved with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the ancient world, when a package or a letter was sent away, They had this way of using a seal, and we know of also the symbol of the ring, maybe of the king. That seal functioned to indicate where the letter was from and to whom it belonged. The Holy Spirit is the seal which shows us that the believer belongs to God. The Holy Spirit both shows us God's will and enable us to do it. He's our guide in our lives. Paul in verse 14 says the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our redemption in Christ Jesus. He is the guarantee that a believer will receive what God has promised us. Now today, The weather that we find is equivalent to what we normally use as a deposit price when we want to buy whatever it is, a product or anything. When you put a small amount on it, you promise that you will pay the rest in due time. Paul is saying here about the Holy Spirit that he is that guarantee. The Holy Spirit is the foretaste of this blessedness life that God has promised us. It is a guarantee that someday we will enter into this full position of the blessedness of God. The presence of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life demonstrates the genuineness of faith. I think Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14 says, you can only understand the things of God through the Holy Spirit in you. Brothers and sisters, we have all the reasons to praise our God because he has blessed us in Jesus Christ. God is the one who has given us all this blessing in Christ Jesus. And Paul here says that is the reason we can bless him. That is the reason we can praise him and thank him for what he has done in our life. Let us praise God for the spiritual blessings he has given to us. God is the one who has chosen us in Christ Jesus that our lives may be holy and blameless to give glory to him. For God has redeemed you by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and it is by his grace and will that you are his child. God has given you his son. He has given us for him for us to believe. You can take this message out and proclaim it to the world. And I believe we are here as the college that Through the lectures that we receive, our goal is to take this message to the world and share it with the world. And it is through the Holy Spirit that we experience this foretaste of the blessed life that God has prepared for us in heaven. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Shall we bow our head to thank the Lord? Our Heavenly Father, our Father through Jesus Christ, the Creator of heaven and earth, Almighty One, indeed, we praise you this morning. And Father God, as we have read in this passage about how you have chosen us in Christ Jesus, how you had us in your plan, Father God, before the world was created. How You, through Jesus Christ, has redeemed us, has delivered us from sin. How You have chosen us that we may be Your children, that we may be set apart to serve You, Lord. How You have given us this guarantee in our life, the Holy Spirit to live in us, to be with us, Father God. And we are thankful this morning to hear this message about the blessing that we have received in You. Lord, we pray that let it be also this that we hold on, that we may know, Father God, that we are in your plan, that we are here because of you, Father God. And through that, Father God, that we may have the reason to worship you, Father God, and to glorify you. I pray, Father God, for this college, The lecturers, the administration, the peasants, the students, I pray, Lord, that you may be with them. You know their plans as they prepare for the coming exams. Be with them. Give them the wisdom, Father God. Help them with what they have studied to be able, Father God, to save you through also their study. Lord, I ask that you, through their work, that this college may be a light to the community that it is there. For everyone who is in here, when they go back for a quote in their ministry, that we may have this encouragement to know that you, Lord, have chosen us, that we may come to serve you, Lord. Be with them, for a quote, and bless them. And all this we want to thank you in Jesus Christ. Amen.