So before I introduce Pastor Josh to us this morning briefly, I just wanted to say thank you to Joseph and the choir. It's a beautiful. beautiful set of music that they sang for us. So, thank you very much. It's nice to have that to focus our hearts. So, we have the privilege of having in our pulpit today Pastor Josh Appel. He's the pastor at Trinity Reform Church in Moscow, Idaho. Many of you know him very well. He's also a teacher at New St. Andrews College, and he's got a really, really busy time, which is why his family couldn't come down with him. They're all getting ready for end of school and the Thanksgiving holiday, et cetera, et cetera. So welcome, Josh. And thank you for bringing God's word to us today. Really appreciate it. Well, thank you for that kind introduction. It is always a pleasure to be here. I have very fond memories of coming to be with you all. It's a real pleasure. And I'm looking forward to getting to talk with you all later on during the fellowship hour. Before we begin this morning, can we begin by asking the Lord to bless us? Let's do that. Our Father, we come before you this morning in Jesus name. And we ask that you would give us insight and wisdom into your word. We thank you for the marvelous passage that is before us and the glory that it contains, the glory of your name, the everlasting God. And the precious truths that are here about how you communicate that glory to us, how you take us in our sin. and how you cleanse us and how you restore us and how you set us with your son in the heavenly places crowned with honor and majesty. And so father, would you open our hearts? Would you expand them? Would you enable us to understand the weight of glory that is in this passage that our hearts may be lifted up and that we might be joyful in your presence. Thank you for so great a privilege. We ask all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, if you will open your Bibles with me to chapter one of Ephesians, we're going to be looking at the first 13 verses, or actually the first 14 verses of Ephesians. I think your bulletin says that I'm going to be considering the first four. I'm sure that mistake is mine. We're actually going to look at the first 14 verses. So if you will just read with me, I'd like to begin by reading the Lord's Word here. 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 the God and 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. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have the 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. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. Well, Ephesians is Paul's greatest work on the church, the body and the bride of Christ. It was John Calvin's favorite book, and F.F. Bruce regarded it as the quintessence of Paulinism. Because, he said, in large measure, it sums up the leading themes of Paul's letters and sets forth the cosmic implications of Paul's ministry to the Gentiles. Now, it turns out that Ephesians bears strong resemblance with which epistle? Anybody know? It's sort of a companion volume. It was written during the same time. While Paul was in prison, and it was sent by the hand of Tychicus to be distributed to the church, the epistle that is its companion is the book of Colossians. If you read the two side by side, you'll notice that there are many parallels in these two books, and they are certainly worthwhile reading together. While the sufficiency of Christ's work is central to Colossians, Ephesians, as I said, is dedicated to the message that God's new society, the church, is a manifestation of the cosmic reconciliation and unity of Christ's work proclaimed in the gospel. And that is why Paul always, in this book, moves from the indicative to the imperative. And the indicative and the imperative simply are two ways of expressing what is and what ought to be. So, if I were to tell you that you must leave this building, is that an indicative statement or an imperative one? It's an imperative statement, right? And when you hear an imperative statement, you normally begin to ask yourself, why? So why must we leave now if I were to supply the indicative, which is the building's on fire? Then, of course, the imperative would make sense. We must all leave because of some great reason. Now, it turns out that this is exactly what Paul does in all of his epistles. He is always concerned to start with the indicative. The indicative supplies the reasons for why things are the way that they are. And then he turns at some point, in the book of Ephesians, it's right in the middle, in chapter four, he turns in the last three chapters of the book to consider the imperative, which is what we must do, what we ought to do, what compels our life in light of what has been done. And of course, when we are talking about the indicative for the Apostle Paul, that means a careful consideration of what God has done. And so for Paul, the God-centeredness of his theology is built upon the notion that what God has accomplished in his son Jesus serves as the foundation for everything that we do, that we are called to do, that we hope to do. Without the foundation of Jesus, all of our striving, all of our doing would be nothing. It might at best be trying to earn some place in God's favor or His sight, but that's of course not at all what Paul is going to proclaim throughout this book. And in this morning's passage, these first 14 verses of Ephesians 1, Paul is giving us the great indicative that He is going to return to again and again throughout the rest of the epistle, drawing us back to what God has done for us in Jesus, what He has accomplished for us, which is the bedrock foundation of our lives as Christians. Our confidence is not in what we do. Our confidence alone is in what God has done, because when God does it, He does a proper job of it. It can't be undone. And when it's secure in that fashion, then it turns out that what God does is not just make the possibility of life for us. He gives us everything that we need to live godly in Christ Jesus. And so for Paul, indicative statements, or we might say the investigation of the theological moorings of our faith, are not just abstract intellectual contemplations. They are the very roots of our practice. They are the roots that hold the tree in the ground and that supply all the nutrients that result in the fruit that ladens the branches. If you find in your own life or in a church where there is waning fruit in the branches, often the answer is that you need to dig deeper. The roots need to go down deeper into what Christ has accomplished for you. You need to understand and have your heart captivated by Him and what He has accomplished. And then, the fruit comes. Let me give you an example of how Paul does this from the book of Colossians. I said it's companion piece. Paul prays in both books, but you'll notice when Paul prays, often when Paul prays in Colossians and in Ephesians, Paul never prays for anything practical. Have you ever noticed that? He never prays that they would have more money in the bank or that the emperor would stop persecuting them or that they would be more successful in their evangelism campaign. He never prays for any of that. He prays often for understanding. He prays that God would open their hearts and their minds, enlighten them so that they might come to know the fullness of what God has done for them. And let me give you an example of this. This is taken from a place where Paul talks about what he is praying for the Colossians. Colossians 1, verses 9-10. And so from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you. asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God." Do you see the connection right there? He prays that the Colossian church might be filled with knowledge, so that they may walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which they have been called. They can't walk in a manner worthy if they don't understand what God has done for them. And so, for the Colossians, the key to walking is understanding. Now, it is possible to know without actually being obedient. James warns us against hearing without doing. But it is impossible to do without hearing. Because, of course, our actions are all grounded, first off, in what God has accomplished through us. So the very structure of Ephesians, and I wish I had more time to proclaim for you the whole book so that you can see how this works out, but this much you'll have to trust me for. The very structure of Ephesians proclaims the God-centeredness of Paul's theology. This opening passage is like a bud from which the rest of the letter unfolds in the most glorious way. Well, this morning I want to focus on just three things, three things which are at the center of these 14 verses that are jam-packed. If you were listening to me read, it's hard to read them. They're so full of what God has accomplished. But three major organizing pieces that give us insight into what Paul is communicating here. The first is the gift in verses 1-6, the goal in verses 7-12, and then finally the guarantee in verses 13-14. So first, let's think about the gift of the Father revealed in verses 1-6. Verse 3. begins one of the longest, richest, and most complex sentences in all of Paul's letters. It's 202 words in the Greek, and it is one sentence. One sentence from verse 3 all the way to verse 14. Now, I am sure that the Apostle Paul, had he submitted the sentence to his grammar school teachers, they would have sent it back for revision. Because you don't write 14 verses. 10 verses, 11 verses that is, without a period. But Paul did. And it's not an accident. Paul has a reason for doing this, grasping all of these ideas and all of these sub-clauses and just wrapping his arms around them and trying to encapsulate them in one glorious, overflowing sentence. It begins with an extraordinary outburst of the praise that the father for the father, for the sheer lavishness of his gifts given in Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Notice first three. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So, you'll notice something if you were paying attention as we read through these 14 verses. They are explicitly Trinitarian. It first begins with what the Father does, and then it transitions to what the Son accomplishes, and then finally concludes by meditating on what the Spirit has done. So, the whole passage is Trinitarian. But it turns out that verse 3 is an announcement of this Trinitarian theme by focusing on all of it together. Notice, he is saying that the Father gives us every blessing that belongs to the Spirit in the person of His beloved Son. Every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly places. Father and Son and Holy Spirit. All blessed forevermore by what they have given to us, God's people. To speak of the Father, then, as the source of every blessing is immediately to draw attention to the procession and the work of the Son and the Spirit. They are the glory of the Father that is given. And this is the first thing that I want you to see in this passage. of this opening scene in Ephesians, from verse 3 all the way to verse 14, is focused on what the Father has given. And that's why Paul bursts into praise at the beginning. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So what this first 13 verses is all about is what God gives. What are these gifts that the Father has given? And the first thing that we see is that God gives his son and he gives his spirit and that both of these are the glory of God bestowed on his people. Now, flip in your Bible back to the book of John, just so you can see this from a different place. John, chapter 17. And let's look at verse 20 and read through verse 23 together. This, of course, is the upper room discourse where Jesus is meeting. The only place we have this is in the Gospel of John, where we get a glimpse into this upper room when they're celebrating the Passover, and Jesus is talking to His disciples about what's to come. Verse 20. He's praying to the Father, and He says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their words, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me and I in you, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may know and believe that you have sent Me. The glory that you have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one. I in them and you in Me, that they may be perfectly one. so that the world may know that You sent Me and love them even as You loved Me." Now, there's a lot contained, and this is the way John likes to talk in these little iterative expressions, round and round. But what he is saying is that all the disciples that I have called Father, I want them to be one, even as you and I are one. So, in other words, the unity that the apostles experience is the unity of the Father and the Son. And that the glory that you have given me, Father, I have given to them. You have glorified me and I have bestowed that glory on them. And, of course, that is also part of what the unity is all about. That we are one. My disciples are one even as I am one with You, Father. And therefore, the glory that You have given to Me also belongs to them. It is on them. And then notice what He says at the very end there, so that the world may come to know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me. So just think about that for a moment. Remember, John 3.16 tells us that God so loved the world That He gave His only begotten Son. He loved and therefore He gave. But how much did He love? What Jesus is saying is that God loved His beloved, His children, in the same way that He loved the Son. that you may understand that you love them even as you have loved Me." So when the Son is sent from the Father, He comes as an expression of God's love. But Jesus lets us know how much that love is. It's the same love that the Father loves the Son with. That love is now being given to the disciples, to you and I. So the love of God communicates the glory of God. The same glory that the Father bestows on the Son is bestowed on us. The same love that the Father gives to the Son is bestowed on us. That's what Paul is saying. And notice then also how the Spirit is involved as well. If you just flip back just a couple of pages to chapter 16 of John, In v. 13, Jesus puts it this way, when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me. For He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine. Therefore, I said, He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. So you see what the Spirit does. He glorifies the Son by taking all that the Father has given to the Son and declaring it to us. And of course, that's why Paul can say in Romans 5 that the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Spirit whom He has given us. So the very thing that we see here is that the Father intends to give us every spiritual blessing, which is what Paul's meditating on this opening part of Ephesians, by giving his Son and by Jesus giving the Spirit. And what we get at the end of that great chain of giving is everything that belongs to the Father. The Father gives it to the Son. The Son sends His Spirit to communicate the love and the glory and all that belongs to the Son that's given by the Father to us. Do you understand why Paul prays that the church would come to understand that? And why that's so key and so pivotal to everything? Because if you really are thinking about that, that's hard to understand. That's a weight of glory that's hard to wrap your heart around. That the glory that the Father gives the Son from all eternity is the glory that we're invited to share. God doesn't bottle it up. He doesn't hold Himself aloof. He gives freely what is His. And this gives us an insight into the nature of true glory that the Bible reveals. It is God's glory to give. So you remember the first question of the Shorter Catechism, which is that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him. Well, the first key that we understand about glorifying God is that we have nothing with which to glorify God but that He first bestows on us. So the glory that we're to give the Father is like a little child who has nothing to give his father at Christmas time but that what mom helps him buy with dad's funds for dad. It's always that way. And that's because the Father gives freely, and then we give back what He first gave to us. You never notice that when we come to the Lord's table, we have bread and wine. And many of the Eucharistic prayers that the church has prayed over the years have a phrase that says, what human hands have made, what you have given and what human hands have made, we take grapes and make wine, and we take wheat and we make bread, and then we give it back to the Lord. Eucharistically, we give thanks and we offer it up to Him. The work of man's hands, which we have made, we offer back to the Lord. And the glorious thing is that God receives it. He loves it. Like a dad getting a Christmas present from his son that he knew he bought. He gets it and joyfully receives it. And that is what the Father does. He glorifies us so that we can give glory back to Him. The glory of His own gift and giving. So it is the Father's glory to give His glory through the gift of His Son and His Spirit. And I think this brings Jesus' words to his disciples about glory into sharp focus. You remember the time before Jesus went to the cross, where his disciples were arguing about who was going to sit at the right hand of the Father and who was going to have that kind of glory. They were arguing about it. And Jesus turned and said to them, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones exercised authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you shall be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." So the disciples are arguing about glory, and they're arguing about it from a worldly perspective. And Jesus says, you've gotten it all wrong. You're arguing like one of the kings of the earth who lorded over one another. That's what the glory of man is about. Trying to put yourself first and to rule over and to take from others so that you can be glorious in their place. But that's not the glory of God. The glory of God is seen in Jesus, who did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Do you see that? It's the glory of God to give. And so He gives. And then, as His people, He tells us that it is our glory to be like Him and to give our lives. And that's why the disciples should have been marked in leadership by the way that they lay down their lives. Jesus washed their feet to say, look, men, this is the way to glory in the Kingdom of God. Because God's glory is a given glory, a glory that the Father first gives to the Son and to the Spirit, and that is given to us. And of course, this fell like a bombshell on the ancient world, whose concept of glory was exactly the opposite. And just take for an example Achilles in the Iliad. The whole story of the Iliad is a story about glory. How do you get it? How do you preserve it? What's worth trading for it? And, of course, it begins with Achilles' rage. And Achilles is mad in the Iliad because someone has stolen his glory. Or, to be more specific, his Timae, which is his honor, his war bride. Agamemnon has stolen her. Yeah, well, because his war bride was also stolen. And so Achilles pouts because his time has stolen, his honor has stolen, the things that are given amongst men to honor him, because if his honor is stolen, then of course his kleos, his glory, will also be stolen as well. And who will remember him when he dies if he has no glory? And so, the whole point of the Iliad, well, one of the points of the Iliad, is that glory is found by taking before others take from you. It's the inverse of the Golden Rule. Do unto others before they do unto you. That's the way glory is found in the ancient world. No one is going to give it. You have to stand up for it yourself. And when Jesus said, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve, he flipped the whole paradigm on his head. This is what irritated Frederick Nietzsche so much about Christianity. It was about dying and giving your life for other people. What glory is that? No self-respecting Greek hero would ever do that. But Jesus did. And in so doing, he changed the notion of the heroic forever. Have you ever wondered why it is that we don't sit around putting, you know, young men don't put up posters of Achilles on their wall and long to be like him? It's because the notion of the heroic has changed. Now, from everywhere, think about even just a simple hero like Spider-Man. None of our heroes are understandable in our American sense, Captain America, so forth. They're built on the paradigm of Jesus and the gospel because they give their life for others. They don't take others' lives as a means of glorifying themselves. That's because of Jesus and the gospel. And this is why it is so glorious to give our lives away Notice how what follows here in Ephesians 1, what the Father does is grounded in His generosity. Look in v. 4. Predestination and election, two of the doctrines that tend to make people think that God is somewhat stingy. It's exactly the opposite for the Apostle Paul. Election and predestination are all expressions of God's generosity. Notice v. 4. Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. Why did He choose us? Instead of being sinful and bound up in death and bondage, He set us free that we might be holy and blameless like He is holy and blameless. And also look there in verse 5. He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ to the praise of His glorious grace. So, He predestines us as sons to Himself. His own possession. We're predestined to become sons. He chose us that we might be holy and blameless. And in verse 6, to the praise of His glorious grace which He has blessed us in the Beloved. Notice then also in verse 7, according, after giving us redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us. Do you see how this initial section is all full of the gifts of God? Not stingily given out like an eyedropper given to us, but lavished upon us. We were once paupers and now we're sons. We were once polluted and unholy and now we're holy and blameless like He is. All of it is the gift of His grace which is lavished on us. That's how great and generous God's gifts are. And that's why it is so glorious to give our lives away. We bear the image of the One whose glory is to be perfectly generous with His own life. Now, you'll notice later on in the book of Ephesians, if you were to read further, in chapter 5, this is the foundation for Paul's exhortation for husbands to give up their lives for their wives. Husbands, love your wives. And that kind of love is the same kind of love that Christ had for His bride, which was the sacrifice of His life for her that He might present her a glorious bride, holy and blameless. The reason why a man's sacrifice is his glory is because it is the glory of God. So, husbands, There is no more God-like thing you can do in your home than to lay down your life for your wife. A man who sacrifices and gives his strength for her, to adorn her, to build her up, to wash her with the Word, is doing the very thing that Jesus does for His bride. It's true glory. And that's why a man should be known. And particularly, for instance, we get in later on in the pastoral epistles when Paul is talking about selecting elders. The heart of what it means to be a man worthy of being followed is whether or not you're willing to sacrifice your life like Jesus did for his bride. And the way you understand that is by looking at how a man does it in his home. Does a man's wife look like a woman who has been adorned with her husband's sacrifice? Or does she look like she has been beaten down and worn down by a worldly use of authority? True sacrifice is an expression of real moral authority in your home. The sooner men you learn that about your authority and in your home is the sooner you will actually be able to lead like a man. where you understand that doing the hard things, the things that no one else wants to do, is precisely what earns you the moral authority in your home to be followed. It makes your wife trust in you and your children trust in you. And know that you are a man like Jesus that's worthy of following. It's far too easy to take the path of simply sitting back and commanding people to do things and ruling from a position of, do what I say, not what I do. That kind of authority is precisely the way the kings of the earth operate. But Jesus loves to give life, and he gives life by giving his life for the life of the world. And that's what we're called to do as men and women. So that's the gift. It's an extraordinary gift. The gift of God himself to his people. His glory to cover them. But it's all heading, we find, toward a goal. And that is the summing up of all things in the Son in verses 7-12. The purpose of the Father to give every blessing is headed toward an ultimate goal, and that is, Paul says, the summing up of all things in Christ. Not only our redemption and forgiveness of sins given to us in Christ, but He is the instrument and goal of the Father's plan to sum up and reconcile all things to Him. whether things in heaven or on earth. Notice verse 9. And 9 is the centerpiece of this entire long sentence. It tells us what the goal of the Father is in sending the Son, 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. What is that plan? Well, it's to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. So, Jesus comes at the proper time, the fullness of time, as the means by which the Father plans to unite everything. Now, since our first parents' sin in Genesis, death means that everything falls apart. Our relationships, our loves, our bodies, our work, and our world. This is what the death of exile means. It means that once the things that were meant to be together fall apart. William Yates, in his wonderful poem, The Second Coming, expressed it this way. Turning and turning in a widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. That's what Ecclesiastes calls the mist and the vapor, the vaporousness of life. Though you try to build and try to hold on to things, everything, like sand, slips through your fingers and it falls apart. The mystery of His will in verse 9, which is now made known to us, is the Father's kind intention to bind it all up, to hold it together, so that all things in Christ are put right and the separation and alienation of our sin is taken care of. All that makes people fall apart is brought together in Christ. But in order for that to take place, and this is the important point, Jesus had to endure the wounds, our wounds, that we might be healed. Isaiah 53, verse 5. Colossians 1, verses 19-22 brings all of these elements together. Listen to this. For in Him, that is in Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through Him, to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, making peace, how? By the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, He is now reconciled in the body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. So God reconciles all things. And He does it by reconciling those who once were dead in their trespasses and sins and alienated. That's all of us. He does it through the body of His flesh by His death. By making peace through the blood of the cross. The cross is the centerpiece of human history because it reveals what the Father and Son were willing to give in order to restore us and all of creation. So remember that the first part of this consideration that we saw this morning is the gift of God given. Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. This tells us how much it cost him. He was willing to give, not at a small cost to himself, but he was willing to give all of that by the means of his own beloved Son, bearing what we deserve to bear. We deserved to be on the bloody cross. And instead, God was willing to pay that for us. So the gift cost an extraordinary amount. And that reveals just how much the Father loves us. Because He was willing to part with His own beloved Son that we might be forgiven. 2 Corinthians 8-9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. And this is why generations of preachers look out at their congregation the way I am looking out at you and say, beloved, if you want to know how much God loves you, look at the cross. Because He was willing to go through that for you. He wanted to give the gift of His glory to you. And in doing so, He couldn't just give it. He had to take care of our own rebellion and our sin. And He was willing to incur that cost. And He was willing to be broken. He was willing to be crucified. He was willing to be humiliated so that you could be glorified. He was willing to become poor that you might become rich. It was His joy to do that. And He endured all of it for you so that you could know the glory of His love for you. And the great thing about this is just as giving our lives away is a glory because it's God's glory, so now, our own weakness, the brokenness of our sin, and the brokenness of sin in our lives, in our world, is not something that can withhold or withstand the glory of God. It actually, in the providence of God, becomes the very thing where His strength and His glory is most clearly seen. You remember the passage in 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul says that he was given a thorn in the flesh and he prayed that the Lord would take it away from him? And God says, no. For my strength is made perfect in your weakness. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. In fact, take one look with me if you have your Bibles there again. Flip over to 2 Corinthians 4 in which Paul makes this very same point. In verse 7 of chapter 4. Notice how he puts this. In verse 7 he says, we have this treasure. The treasure that he's speaking of is the knowledge of God. The light of the knowledge of God, of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, which he speaks of in verse 6. God said, let light shine out of darkness. He has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. the glory of God again in the face of Jesus. Notice what Paul says, but we have this treasure, this treasure of the glory of God in jars of clay. to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies. for we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. We carry in our bodies the dying of Jesus, that we may also carry the life of Jesus. So these weaknesses, being afflicted, perplexed, struck down, persecuted. All of these things are the very means that God manifests His glory and His strength. There are not limits to it. When the martyrs go to their death, they are unleashing the power of God, not concealing it. Because in the gift of our lives, the weakness of our lives, God manifests the glory of His Son because His Son was willing to incur the cost that was necessary for us to be forgiven. That's the goal. Now, finally, the guarantee, and I must be quick with this because I've kept you long enough. Verses 13 through 14, the guarantee is being sealed by the Holy Spirit. The first sign of this cosmic reconciliation is the gift of the Spirit who comes as a seal and a pledge of Christ's work. In the Greco-Roman world, a seal was a mark of ownership that implied a promise of protection. It was a seal of ownership that implied a promise of protection. A master would brand his possessions with his seal in order to protect them from theft. In the Old Testament, God places a sign on His people to distinguish them as His possession and to protect them from destruction. Ezekiel 9, verses 4-6 is a perfect example of this if you want to look it up later. Ezekiel 9, verses 4-6. And in this way, then, the Spirit is given as a mark that we are God's inheritance. Listen to Deuteronomy 4.20. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people for His own inheritance, as you are this day. God's people are His inheritance. Later on in chapter 1, the second part of this chapter, Paul's going to pray, and one of the things he's going to pray that they would come to understand is the greatness of God's inheritance in the saints. That we belong to Him. And the Spirit is the sign that we belong. And not just that we belong, but that God will make sure that what belongs to Him will never be stolen from him, and that it will arrive at the purpose that he intends forth. Think of Romans 8.31. What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? It's a rhetorical question. The answer is, He will give us everything and no one can take it away from us. It's secure. And just as the Spirit is given to seal us and to mark us as God's own inheritance, verse 13 and 14 tell us that the Spirit is also a pledge or a guarantee of our inheritance. He is the down payment who gives us a foretaste of what the new creation is all about and who is the promise that we will obtain the full possession of what the Father has promised to give us. You know this well. Down payments are always a sign that we are in earnest. When you make a down payment on a house, it's a sign that all the rest of the money will come and that you are in earnest. So it is when the Father gives the Spirit, the Spirit is given that we may know that what the Father has purposed for us will come to pass. No one can thwart Him. The mind-blowing truth of this opening eulogy in Ephesians is that God has chosen us as His inheritance. And He has given Himself as our inheritance. He's chosen us to be His. His precious, beloved, the apple of His eye. And in turn, He has given us Himself. His glory. All that He is. He is given in communion and fellowship with his people. That's why the marriage is chosen, I think, by Paul or communicated to us in the fifth chapter to be such a beautiful picture of what God's relationship to his people is like. The same kind of intimacy, the same kind of communion, the same kind of unity that a husband and a wife experience with each other is what God has given to us in his Son. through the power of His Spirit. And that's why you need the Lord's help to understand it. It ought to be the kind of thing you post on your refrigerator and in your bedroom, so when you wake up in the morning, when you walk in the way, when you lay down at night, you understand and meditate that this is true of you. We're the richest people in the world, beloved, because of this. And I fear that we spend far too little time actually thinking about it. Actually thinking and meditating that this is true of me. The freeness of God's gift by which we are chosen, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified is the gift of God. Martin Luther really understood this. There's a wonderful quote from The Freedom of the Christian Man that I want to close with, in which he captures all of these dimensions. It's a beautiful passage. Christ, he says, that rich and pious husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all of her evils and supplying her with all his good things. It is impossible now that her sin should destroy her. since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him. And since she has in her husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, or which she can set up with confidence against all of her sins, against death and hell, saying, if I have sinned, my Christ in whom I have believed has not sinned. All mine is His, and all His is mine. As it is written, my Beloved is mine, and I am His. And this is why Paul says, thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Victory over sin and death. And so it is in these opening verses, Paul has shown us that the free and generous work of the three Persons of the Trinity is the sole basis for our justification, our sanctification, and the certainty of our glorification. It is the ground of our confidence. Hebrews 10.9 And our boasting. 1 Corinthians 1.31 And as Luther noted so beautifully, it's the basis of our freedom. Galatians 5.13 It is the great imperative upon which everything else in the Christian life is built. This is bedrock. Without this, we are lost. With it, we get everything else thrown in. Most people think that religion is about working hard to become something that you're not. In other words, God is at the top of a mountain, and the path is a long and arduous one that finally gets there. The Gospel turns the man's wisdom on its head. Because of God's grace freely given in Christ, the generosity of His gifts, we are set free to become more and more of what we have already been given in Him. That's the glory of the Gospel that Paul proclaims. And it's also why he spends so much time speaking, talking, and praying that we will get our roots deep down into this. Because when we do, we become a people who are free. We become a people who are confident. And we are a people who love to boast. But not in ourselves. In the fact that we have been covered in the lavish gifts of our Father. And we do not deserve them. That's what it means to be amazed by grace. May all of us meditate upon these things, storing them up in our hearts, because they are our inheritance. They are the very source of life. May they be so to each one of us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we acknowledge that the weight of this glory that You have given us in Your Son through the power of Your Spirit is more than we can bear. Our minds do not understand it, and our hearts are not big enough to contain it. So, Father, would You open our hearts and our minds Would You strengthen us by Your Spirit to have strong legs to stand fully under the weight of this glory? And Father, may this glory be the roots that cause all of our lives to bear the fruit of Your Gospel. Teach us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Because You are the God who gives his life for the life of the world. Thank you for such a precious gift. In Jesus name.