And we'll dismiss the classes to go out with Jess to Sunday school this morning. Thank you very much to Tonya and Christopher for playing the music this morning. I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of Ephesians this morning, the book of Ephesians. I had fully planned and prepared to go back to the book of Acts after four and a half odd months, I guess it's been now, and finished my sermon last night and was sitting on the couch just enjoying a bit of relaxing time. And as I started thinking about the sermon and thinking about today and thinking about the week we've been through, it just didn't seem like the right message for today. And so I started turning through my Bible and thinking and praying, and some passages of scripture are like old friends. You know, you go back there, and as you read the words, they're so familiar, they're like lines on the face of a beloved friend. You just recognize and resonate. And this passage in Ephesians chapter one is just one of those passages. And so I did have a sermon from a couple years ago. We went through the book of Ephesians over some 50 plus sermons a couple years back, and I pulled that one up and it just, no, it wasn't right. And so I sat down with my Bible and I just made some notes. So this is going to be the most un-sermonic sermon that I've preached in a long time. And so I'm just going to work my way through the text. And we'll trust the Lord that the things that he has laid on my heart in a few hours of study will be a blessing to all of our hearts and encourage us all in the things of a living God. Let's take your Bibles, and I would ask you to stand with me as we read Ephesians chapter one, and we're gonna read chapter one, verse one, all the way to verse number 14. And the Word of God says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the Saints who are at 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 with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He set forth in Him regarding His plan of the fullness of the times to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will. To the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit, of promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance in regard to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory. Loving Father, again, as we have read your word, Father, we pray that you would speak and that we would have ears to hear what you would say to us this morning. Father, we pray that you would lift up those who are downcast, that you would encourage and strengthen those who have much work left to do. Father, for those who do not know you, we pray, O God, that this morning, through the preaching of the word, that they would come to know you. We ask you all these things, Father, in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen and amen. Please have a seat. I don't know if you realize this, some of you probably already know, but this passage I read, 14 verses in the original Greek, is one very long sentence. 200 plus words, we'll look at some of the details of it later on, but it's one long, complex sentence, and if you look at different English translations, what you're going to pick up right away is full stops and commas and breaks in the sentence happen in different places, and there's some disagreement about how verses should be changed because It's such a complex, long sentence in Greek that it doesn't translate very easily into English to give us one sentence in English. We tend to write shorter sentences than Paul did. But I think what happened was he sat down to write the Ephesian people a letter from the Lord's heart to their heart. And as he began to write, he was just overcome and overflowing with praise. He just started to pour out his soul on the paper before him. to encourage and strengthen the believers who are getting that letter in a short time. We see he says in verse 1 that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus. There's an explanation for his role. He says it's by the will of God. And that's going to tie in beautifully with some of the things he's going to say later in this text and all through the book. that we are who we are, saved by God's grace, by the will of God. It's God's work in us to save us. He addresses his readers specifically in Ephesus, and then he makes sort of a general address to the saints and faithful. And brothers and sisters, one of the things I want us to do this morning as we work our way through is I want you to see and grab a hold of all the great truths about our salvation for us who believe in Jesus. And one of the first ones is in Christ, we are saints. You say, what's a saint? It isn't a guy who has somebody in the Catholic Church write all these reviews about them and all the recommendations, and then they put him forward, and they all have a vote and say, yeah, he's Saint Christopher or Saint Jeremy. I notice there's no Saint Nelson, but that probably makes sense, too. And they take a vote. No, no, no, no, no. All of us, as believers in Christ, are saints. The word means set apart to God by God. God has gathered us out of the world and set us apart to himself. He can't. Can I have some water, man? Thanks. He set us apart to himself. We're dedicated to God. We're called to be holy. That's what the word means. Agios. Just as the tabernacle furnishings in the Old Testament were made holy by the presence of God, so also the believer in Christ is a saint by the presence and the influence of Christ on him or her through the Holy Spirit. Brother and sister in Christ, be encouraged this morning. You're not working towards sainthood. You're growing up in the sainthood that you already are. And the work that God is doing in your life to take you from a newborn believer in Christ and raise you and train you and make you saints, that's His work. And the encouragement is, having set us apart for Himself, He will finish the work He has begun. And even though it feels like the work just seems to be going slowly, things seem to be crawling along, like our renovation out back, it just seems to be going so slowly. Poor Peter, looking after that. But you know what? God is faithfully at work in your life. He is working to make you that saint that he has called you to be. Notice also in Christ, he says to the Saints who are at Ephesus, and faithful, or and are faithful in Christ. There's three implications that stand behind that word. We are those who have faith in Christ, and we are those who have been given faith, that's Ephesians 2 verse 8, and we are those who will continue faithful, sorry, in the presence of Christ within. So the question is, will we who truly believe in Christ finish this race, this journey to the end? And the answer is yes, overwhelmingly yes, because in Christ, we are faithful. His presence within us ensures the completion of our journey. Your faithfulness doesn't depend on your grit, determination. Thank the Lord for that, amen? It doesn't depend on us. It's God's work in us, making us and ensuring that we will be faithful all the way to the end. In verse 2, Paul commends the grace and peace of God to us. It is his greeting that combines two words. In the Hebrew, one word is shalom, and one word in the Greek is charis. It's a beautiful display of God's bringing those two things together, the Old Testament Hebrew faith and the Gentiles as they're merged together. And he says, grace and peace to you. It's a beautiful picture of the church, but it's also a greeting that reminds us of what God has done and what God is doing in our lives. Brothers and sisters, we have all received grace and peace from God the Father and Christ. We are still daily recipients of God's grace and God's peace. And by the way, that order, which happens the same way all through the New Testament epistles, whenever Paul writes it, he says grace and peace. He never says peace and grace. Do you know why? Because the simple reality is that we will never know true peace until we first know and experience the grace of God towards us. It's God's grace, it's God's kindness, it's God's compassion towards us. That is why we have peace with God. We live in that lasting peace. But it's not just peace with God, it's peace with God, with our neighbors, with those around us, and it's peace within. I read, I love biographies. I got a wall full of them on my shelf, on my bookshelf at home. And I love pulling off these old saints and you read how they wrestled and struggled with the gospel message. And that moment that they believed in Christ and they understood the gospel, they literally just had a tremendous sense of peace. You hear the stories about they feel like they can walk five feet off the ground. Why is that? A cleansed conscience, the weight was taken away. They felt that tremendous peace with God because they knew they were forgiven. They knew it was set free. And brothers and sisters in Christ, if you don't have that peace within, there is sin that's taken root in your life. And there is a disturbance. The Spirit of God is bringing conviction against you for that sin. And I will be willing to argue from my own experience repeatedly. You know what that sin is. And you know what needs to be done to deal with it. My friend, if you're sitting here this morning and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior, I assure you, you'll never know real peace. Peace that can be truly had until you turn towards Christ. and cry out for His forgiveness. Know the grace of God's forgiveness, God's saving grace, and you will know peace within. In verse 3, Paul gives us the foundational point of his whole argument from 202 words, 32 prepositional phrases, 21 genitive expressions, six relative clauses, and five adverbial participle clauses included in one sentence in 14 verses. And this is his argument. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Literally, in your Bibles, you should have the to be verb, whether it's an are, or an is, or a be, after blessed, should be in italics. It shouldn't be in straight up and down letters. Why is that, you say? Because the verb's not there in the Greek. Literally, it's blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is describing God, but in that description, he is calling all of us to worship. What's he saying? The word is hilogytos, and it means he's worthy of praise. It's literally the idea of a eulogy. You say, what's a eulogy? Went to the funeral a week and a half ago and listened as grandson and son and sister got up. and spoke good words about Andy. That's a Yulogitos, that's what it means, to speak well of. Literally, in the sense of the whole text, it says, he is worthy of praise. Brothers and sisters, this morning we come to worship a God who is truly and fully worthy of all our praise. Heaven will not be boring. We won't get 100,000 years into heaven and go, what are we doing today? We're worshiping the Lord. No, really? Again? Seriously? I mean, we do that for the last 100,000 years. No. No, no. God is so great. God, the almighty, most holy, unchangeable, indescribable, incomprehensible God, who is most gracious and kind and compassionate and good, God who takes vengeance on his enemies, God who is full of indignation over sin every day, but God who loved us with a great love to make us alive in Christ, to give us the faith to believe, to save us who justly deserved his unmitigated wrath, He is worthy of praise. Amen. Oh, brother and sister, he's worthy of praise. There is no other being in all of existence like our God. And yet sometimes I feel like our worship is, our best worship is reserved for the hockey game or the golf game. Our best worship is reserved for our job or some new thing we've got. You know, we get a new toy and we run around, oh, did you see my new toy? This is not a toy. This should be used for a hammer most days. We have toys that get more excitement and more attention out of our hearts. And the living God does. And Paul says, no, no. He says, blessed be worthy of praise is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Why is he worthy of praise? Because of his person fully. If God never did anything for us and we just saw him as who he is, he would be worthy of all of our praise from eternity, all through eternity, even from hell. Because he is the first and greatest being in all existence. But God has done something. He is worthy of praise, and Paul defines more specifically why God is worthy of praise. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Notice the abundant grace of God. You know what I love about this text? There's one word I just love. Every time I read it, I giggle almost. He lavished grace on us. In this thing here, he blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. You know what you hate when you go to the restaurants? There's one particular sandwich making restaurant, I won't say the name out loud, but you know who I'm talking about. And sometimes you go there and they say, oh, and what would you like, sir? And I'd say, you know, I want the footlong, you know, all the best food groups, fat, grease, meat, sugar, you name it, dump it on there. And they get out and they take the piece of lettuce and they stretch it out. Take the piece of cheese, the grated cheese, and they put one little link. You know, it's like, seriously? And sometimes you go to that same restaurant, and the lady will come up and she'll say, well, what would you like for your thing? And I tell her, I want that sandwich. And she gets out there, and she puts the meat on. And then she puts the lettuce on, dumps it all on. And then she puts the cheese on. And she's, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, the cheese thing. And then she puts on all the jalapenos and olives and peppers and onions. Heather loves that part. And then she takes and tries and folds this sandwich together. And you're like, you're never going to fold that together. It's too thick. She lavished that stuff on there, right? Now you know why I'm like this. That's a different story. But you know what, brothers and sisters? That's how God deals in grace towards us. He doesn't look at Christian and go, okay, we'll give a little bit of grace for Christian and a little bit of grace for Rosemary. No, he opens up the gates of heaven and dumps out his grace on us. He abundantly blesses us with his grace. And Paul says he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing. You say, you know, those blessings of God, I don't see my bank account getting much bigger. In fact, I got a mortgage and now it's shrinking fast. I don't see my car that is old and rusty and doesn't run so great. All my possessions aren't like some of the other possessions in the world. Well, that's not what God promised you. And frankly, if you look long enough, you'll see all those bright, shiny possessions that people buy, you know what happens to them in the end? They wear out. Cars are not designed to last very long anymore. Why? Because they want to sell you a new one. Watches wear out, phones wear out. All the material, physical things that we enjoy as a people, they wear out, they fade, they rust, they get moth, they get rot and corruption, and pretty soon they just crumble to dust. And we live in a world that's surrounded with people and filled with people who are spending every waking bit of energy trying to have the things that are fading and dying. And Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Meaning what? Meaning 100 million years into eternity. Those spiritual blessings will still be as fresh and bright and clean and shiny as the day we first received them. What a hope we have. What a God we serve and worship, beloved. Paul begins to unpack the blessings that we have. In verse 4, he says, just as he chose us. Some have tried to say that word speaks corporately only, but the reality is it speaks both individually and corporately. He chose us. It follows a long line of God's active choosing. He chose Abram in Genesis 12. He chose Aaron in Psalm 104 and Psalm 105. He chose Moses to lead his people in Exodus chapter three. He chose David to be a king and a man after his own heart in first Samuel 16 and 17. He chose Jesus Christ in Luke 9 35, not for salvation, but rather for the purpose of securing our salvation. He chose Israel to be his special people. And now he has chosen us as first Peter two in verse nine says to be his special people. God chose us in him, in Christ. The context of our election is that without Christ there is no election. Jesus said in John 14 and verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. In John 6 and verse 65, the Bible says in Jesus' words, no man can come to me unless it's granted him by the Father. And so we think, oh, the point is that we get ourselves into Christ, and then we can say, hey, we're chosen, right? No, it's not right. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1 verses 30 and 31, by God's doing, you are in Christ. You cannot come to God apart from Christ. There's no other way to God than through Christ. Now, you might be tempted to think, I chose Christ. Well, here's what the Bible says. Romans 3, verses 10 and 11, and quoting Psalm 14, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. If you could do the greatest good of all, it would be to seek God, but the scripture says that no one does good and no one seeks for Him. Praise God Almighty, most gracious, that He chose us. If I were God looking at me, I'd say, not Him, but He chose me. That doesn't make me proud, brothers and sisters, that humbles me to the core. Notice the context of our choosing. It's before the foundation of the world. In Romans 9, verses 6 to 13, Paul makes it abundantly clear it's not because of race, it's not because of parentage, it's not because of any of the works that we would do, but because of God's sovereign, free purpose in election. Notice the purpose of our choosing, that we would be holy and blameless. We who were dead in sins and transgressions, we who were slaves to sin, no freedom, by the way, in slavery, we who were certainly destined for wrath, chosen to be holy and blameless. That's grace, beloved. That's why God is worthy of praise and glory. That's why all through eternity we will sing the praises of His grace. Did you notice as we read through which word pops up over and over again? Grace, grace, grace. In Him, in Christ comes up repeatedly as well, but it's grace. Isn't that interesting? Just in analyzing the way Paul uses the words. It's in Christ that we experience grace. In Him, grace to us. Even being in Christ is God's grace. In verse 5, Paul continues, in love, God predestined us to adoption. In great love for us before the creation of the world, he purposed to adopt us. In love while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. In love while we would not and could not choose him, he predestined us to adoption. Adoption bestows all the rights and privileges of physical birth on one who was not born into the family. In Roman times, adoption was irrevocable, as I understand it. We're not like the distant second cousins. You know, you go to a family reunion and you meet some guy and you go, I'm related to that guy, but I just can't remember his name. A little embarrassing. Hi, I'm your cousin. What's your name again? We're not like that in God's family. We're not some distant. The relationship between us and our father, having been adopted by him as his children, isn't that we're far off removed. We're just some distant relation that you see once in a while. No, we have an intimate, personal relationship. He is our adopted father. In Christ, in Christ, that pivotal phrase again, we have all the rights and privileges of children, co-heirs with Christ, free and able to call Him Father, call the Father, Father. Able to speak with Him, to commune with Him. Notice, by the way, it was all according to the good pleasure of His will. I mean, that just makes me smile. Think about it, brothers and sisters. Nobody put a gun to God's head. You better save John Mulder, because ain't nobody else going to do it. You better save that Nelson, because nobody is going to do that. No, you know what the Bible makes clear? It was the good pleasure of his will. I don't mean to be irreverent, but it's almost as if God said, I get to save them. They're my people. I get to save them. Jesus gets to go and die on a cross and he gets to save us. It's the good pleasure of his will. Nobody compelled God to choose us, to save us, to adopt us, and to bless us so richly. It was the good pleasure of God's will. Why would God do that? And verse 6 answers the question. To the praise of the glory of His grace, He willingly, lovingly, kindly, graciously chose to save us, so that in the unending ages of eternity, we would unceasingly praise the glories of the riches of God's grace. Nobody will stand in heaven and say, I'm here because I deserved it. If I understand from the story of Lazarus going to hell and Abraham saw him across the chasm and could speak to him, I think there'll be times when we look across, if it's the same situation, and we will see the fires of hell and we'll say, no, I deserve that. I'm here because I preach great sermons? No. I'm here because I survived helping in the creche? Close, but no. I'm here because my parents believed? No. Listen, just for a moment, young people, listen and listen closely. Your parents' salvation has nothing to do with your salvation. And trust me, as a parent of three boys whom I love dearly, I remember growing up and looking at them as they were just running around the house and, you know, setting things on fire and all kinds of fun stuff, and thinking to myself, I wish so badly I could believe for them. I wish so badly I could just step in their little hearts and say, Lord, save me, and let them be saved. And the answer is no. We don't go to heaven because our parents are there ahead of us. I'm not in heaven because I suffered horrific, violent martyrdom. Every single solitary worshiper throughout the heavens ages will cry and shout with an overflowing, unceasing joy. It's all God's glorious, amazing and wonderful grace. How kind is our God. Notice, by the way, he lavished grace on it in verse 6. Oh, beloved, when it comes to his grace, the God we serve is not stingily or miserly. I know I said this earlier, but it's just worth repeating. He's not constrained in his dealings with grace. He lavished it on us. Oh, beloved, our God is worthy of praise. Amen? Amen. We serve a God who is worthy of all of our praise. Oh, just pause and wonder. Pause and marvel. I think one of the things that the enemy has done to distract and to tear down the church as he's filled our lives with so much stuff, you can now be up doing things of all sorts of things, 24 hours a day, 367 days of the year, and not miss a beat. There's so much going on, and it crowds out our thinking about what's truly important. In a sense, what Paul is doing to his Ephesian believers, he's saying, hold on to everything. Before we dive into the theology, which we're going to get to, he just wants to overflow with praise. And in a way, what he's doing is working like a venturi effect, hoping that he will suck them up along with him and their hearts with his heart will rise and praise and worship for God. Oh, beloved, our God is worthy of praise. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, bless his holy name. My prayer this morning is as you listen, your hearts are just soaring upwards in praise to God for the tremendous grace that He's had to us. In verse 7, it carries on, in Him, in Christ, that is, we have redemption. What does that mean? Sometimes I think we use theological terms so quick and we rattle them all off and we haven't stopped to thought what they really mean. Redeemed means release, deliverance, freedom. Freedom from what? We have freedom from the enslavement to sin. Romans 6 verses 15 to 19, it makes it very clear that we were slaves to sin, but Christ has set us free. Free from the penalty of sin through Christ, free from the power of sin through Christ, and one day in the future, free from the presence of sin through Christ. We can't imagine When Paul writes, I think it's in 1 Corinthians 2, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, the heart of man cannot comprehend what God has planned and prepared for us. The simple reality is we've never lived in an existence that's free from sin in any way, shape, or form. We're born in sin, we live in a sinful world, we're surrounded by sinful world. Even the creation we're surrounded by is marked and stained and tainted by sin. But one day we have been redeemed. We have been delivered and set free from the power of sin. We have been set free from the penalty of sin. And one day we will be set free from the presence of sin. And beloved, we will just stand there in amazement. We have freedom from the wrath of God. In Ephesians 2 verse 3, we were by nature children of wrath, destined to fall under the unrelenting wrath of God because of all our sin which we had committed. And God, the absolutely just God, will deliver his wrath against unrepenting and unbelieving sinners, and we were one of those. Oh, beloved, never lose sight of the fact of what you've been saved from, as well as what you've been saved into. Christ was born, he lived, he suffered, he died, and he rose again. And we who know Christ, who trust Christ, have been set free from the wrath of God. Literally, the idea is we have been pried loose from. It's like the idea of taking a hammer and a nail, and you hook the nail with the back of the claw as the hammer, and you... You pull it and the nail comes out and the piece of wood pops apart. That's what it means. He's pried us loose, pried us free and away from the wrath of God. So quite literally, the gospel message is that God in great grace has redeemed and freed us from himself, his own wrath against us. Oh, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us. Surely this morning he is worthy of praise because we have been set free. Tragedy is, reminds me of a story, we're not gonna get through all this, don't worry about it, that's okay. I promise I'll quit in good time. It reminds me of a story. I watched this movie many, many years ago as a kid. It was a story about the Civil War in America. And the story sort of follows a young artist who travels around between the camps of the war, and he draws pictures before photography came along and phones and all that. And he draws these pictures. And one day, there's news about an emancipation proclamation made by Abraham Lincoln. And they're going to go and spread the news into these little hideouts of these runaway slaves in areas that have been sort of war-torn in that whole story. And he goes to a little encampment, and there's all these free slaves or runaway slaves all gathered around. Most of them can't read. And the guy gives them the newspaper and said, here, did you see this, the newspaper? And the one older man, who obviously can read, takes the newspaper clipping, and he begins to read it. And he reads it, and he looks up, and his eyes are just wide. Is this true? And the journalist says, yes, it's all true. It's in the newspaper. And he reads it, and he starts to shake. And he looks up, and he starts to shake like this. And he says, oh, I don't want to mock them at all. Oh, gather round. The day of jubilee has come. We have been set free. And all the runaway slaves, that little encampment, began to sing and shout, and they're lifting up their hands in praise to God and singing and shouting because they had been freed by that emancipation proclamation. And you know what the tragedy was? Most of them went back to the farms they were in and went back to their life of slavery. And we go, oh, that's so tragic. Oh, beloved, how many of us are doing exactly the same thing? We have experienced the almighty grace of God. He has set us free from sin. And knowing that freedom, we go back and we put ourselves in slavery to sin again. He's redeemed us. He set us free. Why is it that we choose to go back and live under that reign of sin in our lives? Paul made the point, he drove it home in Romans 6, don't submit the members of your body as instruments to slavery, to sin. You've been set free, Christian. Live as free Christians. Now, what does that mean? I can go and do anything I want, right? No, it doesn't mean that. What it means, as Paul makes a point in Romans 6 a little later, we can go and become slaves to righteousness. And the rest of our lives are spent pursuing righteousness, living in those activities and behaviors and attitudes that make that relationship between us and Christ that much more sweeter. Oh, beloved, we've been redeemed. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless His holy name. He set us free. Please don't go back and live in slavery to sin again. Through Christ we have, in verse 7, the forgiveness of trespasses. Christ has suffered and died and risen again. The penalty that we all owe has been forgiven. God, the just God, has forgiven us. But it's not just a cold, calculating debt. Well, this is how much sin you have. This is volume one. The Christ's death has... Yeah, it's good. You're all covered. Oh, good. No, it's not like that. It's so much more than that. The sin we've all committed offended God. And the Bible says in Proverbs 18, 19, that a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. And the forgiveness of our sins has the sense that the offense that our sin caused has been removed. How is that removed? Christ's suffering, to use the biblical word, propitiated the wrath of God, meaning that Christ's sufferings soothed and placated the righteous indignation that our sin caused him. In other words, Christ's suffering turned the anger of God away. This is what Isaiah 12 says, a short little chapter. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away. That's exactly the idea. Your anger is turned away that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation with joy. Not with grumbling, but with joy we draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted, sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. That's exactly what Paul is saying here. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Surely beloved, he is worthy of our praise this morning. Surely we can say this morning from the depths of our hearts, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. But wait, there's more. But you know what? We're going to just skip over a lot of it. It's funny. Prepare a message thinking it'll go very quickly, and before you know it, half an hour has gone roaring by. That clock is fast, by the way, just in case you're wondering. And no, it's not. In Christ, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, beloved. Consider this, just to summarize the chapter, the 14 verses. I haven't gone through all of it by any stretch. In Christ, we're called saints. In Christ, we are faithful. In Christ, we've received and still receive grace. In Christ, we have peace with God and peace with our neighbor and peace within. In Christ, we have been blessed. with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. In Christ, we've been chosen to be holy and blameless. In Christ, we have adoption into the family of God. In Christ, we've been lavished with grace, more grace, grace upon grace upon grace. That alone is enough to stop and just sing the praises of God. In Christ we've been redeemed. In Christ we've been forgiven. In Christ we've been informed of the mystery of His will to gather all things, everything under one head, who is Jesus Christ. In Christ we have obtained an inheritance. That would take a month of Sundays to unpack all of that. And in Christ we've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. Surely Oh, beloved, surely that demands, that calls, that draws us to offer our lives, to take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. God isn't making a difficult call on us. He's making the easiest call He could possibly make it when we understand our salvation. Oh, beloved, when you think about all that, what place is there for boasting? What place is there for pride? None. What place is there for anything but thanksgiving and praise and worship and lives lived to the glory of the living God? Oh, my dear friends sitting here watching at home, you know You sense deep down that you do not know God, that all these spiritual blessings are not yours. And you feel within your own heart a heaviness, a weightiness, the load of sin that you have committed is weighing down on you. And your conscience unceasingly convicts you of your sin and of the reality that there's an ever-increasing mountain of debt that you owe for all the wrongdoing that you have done. There is a conviction. Assure knowledge deep within that judgment day is coming of the reality that God's wrath is set towards you. And my question this morning is, do you want to be forgiven? Do you want to have peace with God? Is that the desire deep within your heart? Is there a longing, a craving inside your heart to be right with God, to be forgiven and set free to love and serve the living God? than knowing what the scriptures say about the work of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Be assured that that conviction is there because He put it there. He's at work in your heart already. He calls you to repent of your sin. He calls you to trust in Him, in Christ's sufferings and His death and His resurrection to save you. Listen to what the Bible says. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever, you, that includes you, believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Romans 5 verses 6 to 8 say this, for while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Oh, beloved, what a great salvation we have. If you're sitting there, I cry out to you, and you want to know what it is to be saved, trust in God. Turn away from sin. Cry out to God for His forgiveness. He assures you in Scripture that He will be yours, and you'll know what it is to have peace with God that lasts forever. Let's start. Would you stand with me? We're gonna close in prayer and then we'll go to the Lord's table. Let's pray together, please. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we give thanks again this morning for the Lord Jesus Christ. And Father, we do not get tired or weary of thanking you for him. He is the joy of our hearts. Father, he is everything to us. Apart from him, we have nothing. And Father, we would join with Paul this morning and say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, For you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You've given us more than our hearts can even comprehend. An unceasing eternity of praise and worship to the living God awaits us. And Father, we rejoice, we give thanks, O God, that we can begin even now. to lift up our hearts and our voices in praise and thanks. Father, we pray, too, that it would not just be a week by week, a small hour or two hours of worship, but, Father, our whole lives would be lived in worship for you, in obedience to you. Oh, loving Father, we just would say thank you. We want to say this morning, Father, that we love him who first loved us to the point of death, even death on a cross. Father, for the one, two, or more fathers standing here in this room, and the Spirit of God is working hard on them, convicting them of sin and righteousness and judgment, Father, we cry out to you for them. Father, we pray that there would be no rest, no peace, until they turn and cry out for forgiveness. And Father, then in that moment, to know the peace that passes all understanding. Loving Father, we give thanks. We praise you, O God, for the work that you've done in our lives, the work you're still doing. And Father, as we would now take this little piece of bread and a little cup of juice, and we would partake of them in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we pray that as we chew the bread, it would remind us powerfully that his body was given for us. As we drink the little cup of juice, Father, we pray that you would remind us powerfully his blood was shed for us. He died that we might live. He was cut off and abandoned for a time that we might be reconciled. And Father, we praise you for it. Oh, God, we give thanks. We pray all these things in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.