Well, it's a great honour to be here once again this evening to preach to you all, and I bring the greetings of Jump Church as well this evening. Well, in your Bibles, if you'd like to be turning to Ephesians chapter one, and we're going to be looking at the first 14 verses this evening, but why don't I pray for us before we read the text. Our Heavenly Father, we ask you now that you would help us by your Holy Spirit to understand the words that you would have me preach, and may the words that come out of my mouth not be my words, but be your words, to the glory of your name. In Jesus' name, Amen. So the sermon that I'm going to preach tonight is called Every Spiritual Blessing. Every Spiritual Blessing, because in the first 14 verses of this text in Ephesians chapter 1, we learn about all the wondrous spiritual blessings that we have in Christ. So as I read the text for us, maybe think about it and pick out the wonderful blessings that we have as I read it for us. So Ephesians chapter one, and I'm gonna read verses one through to 14. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus 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 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. 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. Amen. And now when I hear those words of the scripture, I can't think of anything more fitting to say than thanks be to God for his word because the Lord has spoken to us and he's revealed himself to us. And when we hear the word of God, it's not like we're hearing William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens or a nice story being read to us. This is the word of the living God and the apostle Paul here writes to the Ephesians under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is God speaking to his church. and this epistle written by the Apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. is what we'd call a more general epistle where he doesn't necessarily write to correct some of the specific issues going on in the churches. For example, if you were to read the letters in 1 and 2 Corinthians, there's a lot of specific things that do apply to the whole church, but he's correcting specific errors of that time. But here he's writing to Christians in Ephesus and then to the whole church. And one of his purposes for writing is to explain to them the mystery of the Gospel, to tell them what exactly has been done for them in the Gospel by Christ. And that's in the first chapters, and as always in the writings of Paul, you have two halves, if you like, just as in Romans. You have, here's what God has done for you in Christ, and then the second part of the epistle is, now here's how you are to live in response to the gospel. So that's what we see. So we see these wonderful blessings in the first few chapters, but then later on, we see directions for how we should live as Christians, that wives should submit to their husbands, husbands should love their wives, children should obey their parents. And then at the end, we see about the whole armour of God as we heard from Adam this morning. But the title for this sermon from chapter one is Every Spiritual Blessing, because the Apostle Paul here writes to us about the wonderful blessings of being in Christ, of being a Christian believer. And in verse three, it begins with, 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. And I've been looking forward to preaching this sermon because I don't know of many texts in the scripture that are so full of rich blessing for us and such a great reminder that being in Christ, that being a Christian believer is the greatest treasure that we can ever have because in Christ we have something much greater than this world can offer. We have something that's described in the scripture as the pearl of great price. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in him that we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, all of the blessings of the gospel, every blessing. And these blessings come as a direct result of the union which we have with Christ by grace through faith. And if you're sat here tonight and you know Christ, if you have a relationship with Christ, if you have faith in Christ, I'll tell you this, you are richer than even the richest person on this planet right now. I don't know who it is, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. If they do not know Christ, you are richer than they will ever be. Because unlike our treasure, their treasure will perish with them. But our treasure is eternal. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul. Because these blessings which the Apostle Paul speaks of, they are spiritual blessings. They are heavenly blessings found in the heavenly places. These are eternal blessings, not temporal blessings. Everything that this world might have to offer is everything that perishes. One day each and every one of us will die and we take nothing with us that we have in this life. If we have a nice car on the driveway, that stays there. You know, we die and someone else gets all those things. We don't take them with us. But these are the things which go with us for all eternity. So these are the important things. And I remember that when I became a Christian a good few years ago, when I was about 19 years old, I met with an older Christian. And the book that we went through was the book of Ephesians. And I remember the first time I studied this passage, I'd grown up in the church, I'd behaved myself, I'd been good, I'd fooled everyone into thinking I was a Christian and then realizing that I wasn't and that I can't live under my parents' faith and you have to have your own faith in Christ. But then here I came across this letter to the Ephesians. I'd already become a Christian by that point. But despite growing up in the church for all that time, the eyes of my heart hadn't yet been enlightened. I'd not come to that knowledge of the truth. And this book just so helped me to grasp the riches of what we have in Christ, to understand the depth of the gospel. And I was just amazed at how much God really has blessed us. And the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 11, all the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. And this should be our response when we encounter such a text like this. And imagine, imagine inheriting a painting and hanging it in your house in the living room. It's a nice painting. But one day someone's around for a cup of tea and they say, Did you know that this is worth millions of pounds? And you had no idea, you know. What would your reaction be? I think you'd be so surprised. But this should be our reaction and even more for when we consider the riches of God's grace to us in Christ. And I ask you the question today, are you amazed by grace? And we should be amazed by God's grace that we've been given such rich blessings. And the Apostle Paul here in this text is not pointing us to something that we haven't yet attained. He's reminding us of what we already have if we are a believer in Christ. Perhaps we haven't yet come to understand or appreciate just the sheer depth of our salvation. And that's why he writes, we learn later on in the text as we've heard in that prayer that was that we prayed earlier on, that the Lord may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, that you may have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And then right at the end of the text is benediction at the ending in chapter 6 verse 24. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. And this, I believe, is what his purpose is for writing. It's to strengthen our faith, to make us strong in the Lord, to exhort us to love the Lord with love incorruptible. And we're only going to do this if we understand and grasp the depth of what's being done for us in Christ. And we have many blessings to be thankful for. And I've picked out from this text, I've divided this into seven blessings for us. So this sermon has seven points and it's not going to be seven long points. What I want to do is to really give an overview of all these blessings. and to do, if you like, a flyover where we survey what's before us rather than land and go into each town and explore it in such detail. But there's seven points. And just before I begin the points, it's firstly important to recognize from verse three that all of these blessings, all of these spiritual blessings are found in one place and that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because all blessings come from God, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if someone doesn't come to God the Father by the way of Jesus Christ, then they are lost. It doesn't matter about any of the other mediators that people might claim. If you don't come by Jesus Christ, you are lost and have a grand total of zero of these blessings. And that's a very serious thing because having faith in Christ is the most important thing any of us will ever do and there really isn't, there's no point of anything in life if we haven't come to Christ. Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And that's all that we are if we haven't come to Christ, sinners in the hands of an angry God. But wouldn't we much rather be sinners saved by grace? Those of us who are in Christ have every spiritual blessing. It says every blessing. It doesn't say, you know, it doesn't say some of the blessings. It doesn't say you're going to have some now and then if you're good and well behaved and whatever, you get some of the others later. It says you have every spiritual blessing. Now, some groups teach that there is, you know, you can be a Christian and be in the church, but there's a hierarchy, there's different levels, there's some secret knowledge to attain to, some secret experience that only the initiated have. There's those who teach that, well, you know, you have faith but now you need to seek the second blessing that's usually shown by receiving the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, which is generally just a load of gibberish. But this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible doesn't teach of a second blessing. It doesn't have any basis in the Word of God because all believers in Christ, as the Apostle Paul says, have every spiritual blessing. We have the first blessing, the second blessing, and the one millionth blessing. And if anyone ever comes to tell you that, you know, you're a believer, but have you had the second blessing? Because you won't be saved in the end unless you have the second blessing. Well, take them to Ephesians 1, open up the Bible, and tell them to take their nonsense somewhere else, because the Word of God tells you that you have every spiritual blessing and we see these blessings summed up for us in this text because there are no second-class citizens in the body of Christ because the ground is level at the foot of the cross and that's what makes the gospel such a good news for us. So the first of these blessings then, and see if you can remember them all at the end, but the first of these blessings is that we've been chosen. We've been chosen. We've been chosen. that we should be holy and blameless before him. Verse four and five. We've been chosen in him before the foundation of the world. This is where our blessing begins. This is where salvation begins for us. Not when we put our faith in Christ, but before the foundation of the world. when God chose us in Christ that we should be holy and blameless before him. We are chosen, we are elected to become part of the body of Christ before the foundation of the world. Now, that's a very long time ago, before time even existed, before the foundation of the world. And what it teaches us, it teaches us something very important about our security as believers. And it teaches us that God's plan in the world, that the fall of man, all the way back in Genesis, it teaches us, well, this wasn't just an accident. God has somehow lost control and his creation, mankind, has gone haywire. It's not something that God just didn't expect and make him think, well, what am I going to do now? No, this is being God's plan from the beginning that firstly mankind would be created but he would fall into sin and then God would save a people for himself, a chosen people. And now God is sovereign and nothing ever happens apart from his decree and his foreknowledge and that includes us coming to Christ, that includes us being saved. Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father first draws him. God is always the primary cause in salvation. Salvation belongs to the Lord and I'm thankful that salvation belongs to the Lord because if it was up to me and my strength in exercising my faith, I would most certainly be lost and so would everyone else. I thank the Lord that our Lord Jesus is a Calvinist and that he teaches that God is sovereign and he saves his people. And furthermore, God chooses his people. He elects his people that we should be, verse four, holy and blameless before him. The apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2, verse nine, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." Did you hear that? We're a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And we are both chosen, and verse five, we are predestined. In other words, our destiny and our future is already planned for us. We're predestined by God for a glorious future. And that glorious future is that we are predestined for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. According to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, You see, it's not by our will, but by the will of God. It's all about what God is doing in salvation, as opposed to what we do. And what we do isn't really very much at all. In fact, all we do to contribute to our salvation is the sin which made it necessary for Jesus to come and die on the cross. But God has sought us and he has predestined us to adoption. Those who were not called his sons are now adopted into his family. And the blessing of adoption is one of the most, you know, it's one of the most beautiful treasures that we can have as Christians. We've been saved, we've been justified, we've been redeemed, but we've been adopted and we've been predestined for adoption. So if you ever doubt the love of God that he has for you as one of his children, as one of his adopted children, we need to remember that we have been predestined for adoption. We've been chosen in him before the foundation of the world. And that's a wonderful thing. And this point also teaches us that all true believers are chosen to be holy and blameless. They're growing in holiness. because the Gospel doesn't just justify us, it sanctifies us and this is one and the same thing. It's part and parcel of the Gospel and these things are not to be separated. There's no such thing as a carnal Christian who exhibits no signs of the grace of God working in their life. You can't be a believer and not be growing in grace and being sanctified and being made holy. That is the person who will not enter heaven, but as Jesus says, will cry, Lord, Lord, and he will say to them, depart from me, I never knew you. Holiness and sanctification, they're not optional extras for the extra spiritual person. Every believer has been blessed with this truth that they are elected, they are chosen unto holiness before the foundation of the world. And secondly, the second blessing, that's certainly the longest of the ones that I wanted to speak about tonight, but the second one is found in verse 6. that we've been predestined to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. So blessing number two is that we've been blessed with his glorious grace and that we have been graciously accepted through Christ. And if you're here today and you're a believer in Christ, you can be assured that you've not just been elected and predestined unto adoption, but you can be assured that God has given you his grace and that he's dealt with us graciously, that his wrath has been removed, and his wrath has been removed for us and replaced with his robe of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, so that we stand before God before his throne of grace, and we are accepted. God has made us right with him. We are declared to be righteous. We're not dealt with as our sins deserve, but as one with perfect righteousness. In other words, our place has been traded with Christ. And it's in and through Christ, who verse six is described as the Beloved, and it's through him that we are blessed with his grace. And this teaches us that this is the motivation of God's salvation plan, that we are to be to the praise of his glorious grace. And then thirdly, the third blessing for us is that we have been redeemed. In verse 7, we have been redeemed through his blood. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. And it's according to the riches of his grace that we have this redemption through his blood, the blood of Christ, the blood of the lamb who was slain. And it's because of his blood that was poured out when he was put to death on the cross at Calvary, where he took upon himself all of our sins. And it's there where he bore the wrath of God for our sins in our place. And the good news is that we are forgiven of every one of our sins, that we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. And this was foreshadowed in the Old Covenant through the shedding of the blood of the sacrifices. And it's the blood of Jesus which redeems us. And redeems, in other words, it buys us back from slavery, the slavery to sin. And it's because of his precious blood that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. And it's because of the blood of the Lamb who was slain that we have redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. And I ask you tonight, are you thankful for the blood of Jesus Christ? Amen. Because the price has been paid in full And as the scripture says, though our sins be as scarlet, they are washed white as snow. And that's such a wonderful blessing for us. Where would we be without the blood of Jesus Christ? And the fourth thing I have for us, the fourth blessing, is the blessing of Revelation in verse 8 and 9. It says, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ. So he's made known to us the mystery of his will, it's been revealed. And this is the mystery which the Lord Jesus Christ came to reveal, the mystery which had only been seen through the types and shadows of the Old Testament, but has now been revealed in the person of Christ, who came and he came to preach the gospel to mankind. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This mystery, this is the secret and hidden wisdom from God that the Apostle Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. The things which are revealed by the Spirit to those who are spiritually discerned, those who have the mind of Christ. And every Christian believer has the mind of Christ. We have the tools to understand this mystery of his will. And you know, there are very clever men in the world who try to dissect the Bible and to understand the truth of salvation, but they just can't make head nor tail of it, they can't understand it, they have no idea how the gospel works. But for Christians, this has been graciously revealed to us. In verse 13 it says, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him. This is the great mystery that's been revealed to us, and we know that it's been made known to us because we have believed in it. You know, if you haven't believed in Christ, it's because the mystery of the Gospel hasn't yet been made known to you, and you need to ask God to teach you your need of the Gospel, to ask Him to show you your need of salvation. And blessing number five, carrying on from the mystery of his will. Blessing number five is that we have union with Christ in verse 10. 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. Because it's through the work of the gospel that God is uniting all things in Christ. And throughout the whole Bible you have all these different things going on in different times of history. Very different periods of time, but there is one central message throughout. If you like, if you were to draw arrows from all of these different periods of history, you would see that they all point towards Christ, that he is the very centre of all divine revelation. He is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, and it is in and through Christ that all things in heaven and on earth are being gathered together. This is the great work of the gospel. We learn further on in the book of Ephesians where Paul talks about the mystery of the gospel revealed. The mystery is that the Gentiles are going to be fellow heirs and members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. God has united these two different people groups through history. He's broken down the barriers between Jew and Gentile. And then further, all things in heaven and earth have been gathered together where eternal peace is going to be made. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. And if you remember in Galatians chapter 3 verse 28, the apostle Paul writes, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So we're all being made one. in Christ by being united to him through faith. Because the great head of the church, we sung this morning, the church is one foundation, is Jesus Christ, our Lord. The head of the church is Jesus Christ. The head of the church is not the Pope in Rome, though we may think that he is. The head of the church is Jesus Christ, and I'm thankful for the Protestant Reformation. I'm thankful that I'm a Protestant Christian, because our head of the church is the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the church, in both the triumphant church, all of the saints who were already with the Lord, and the church militant, the church on earth, this plan for the fullness of time is being brought about and one day it will be completed. And Christ, when he comes again, will come in the same way in which he ascended into heaven in all of his glory and he will judge the living and the dead and set up his eternal kingdom in the new creation. And then blessing number six for us is that we, our, are heirs. We are inheritors of the kingdom. Verse 11 and 12, 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. Now we saw in verse five that we are predestined for adoption to sonship. And the sons of God are all Christians, both male and female Christians, they obtain an inheritance. We're predestined to adoption and we are thus predestined for this inheritance. And this is a glorious inheritance that we have as Christians. Just think of the eternal inheritance that we're called into, the eternal heaven in the presence of God, in the presence of the Lamb of God and with all the saints. And this is by far the sweetest of all of these blessings that we have in this text because this is the great end of God's salvation plan, to be to the praise of his glory. And I hope that you see that these blessings are really one following on from the other. You've got an order here. And what's great about the inheritance that we have in Christ is that this is inheritance that can never, ever be lost. There is no moth or rust that can destroy it. There are no thieves that can break in and steal the heavenly inheritance that we have. No one can take away the treasure that we have in heaven. So we ought to set our minds on the things which are above and not worry about the things of the world because, as I've already said, we cannot take any of these things with us. And leading on from this point, because we haven't yet attained this inheritance, we are still heirs of this inheritance. It's something we look forward to. It's something that gives us hope. It's something that we long for. But verse 14 tells us that until we acquire possession of this inheritance, that we have a guarantee of our inheritance and that this guarantee is the promised Holy Spirit. So number seven, blessing number seven is that we are sealed. We are sealed. That's a wonderful word to describe our status. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Verse 13 and 14, 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. And the order there, you see the order in verse 13. You heard the word of truth. It's important that we hear the word of truth, not just read it, but hear it. The gospel of your salvation. So when we hear the truth, what the truth that we need to be hearing is the gospel. So preachers need to be preaching what if people are to be saved? The gospel of salvation. And then the next in the order is, and believed in him. So you hear the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And it's then, in that moment, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. And notice here how it is exactly the same time when you heard and believed you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. There's not some believers who have the Holy Spirit and some who don't have the Holy Spirit and the ones who do sit on the right and the ones who don't sit on the left. As some teachers might say, all believers, because we have every spiritual blessing, all believers are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. And this is one of the spiritual blessings which every Christian has. And the promised Holy Spirit is the guarantee of the inheritance And the word seal is very helpful because if you think of how letters used to be written, you'd write the letter, you'd fold it up, put it in an envelope and then you'd have your wax seal over a candle and then you'd stamp that down over the letter because that person would then know if the letters arrived to them and that seal had been broken or tampered with, they would know. But there's one seal that's unbreakable, and that's the seal which the Holy Spirit applies to us as Christians, who is the guarantee of our inheritance. Our inheritance has been placed, it's been promised, and it's been sealed with the Holy Spirit. Because the Lord Jesus said in John chapter 6, in verse 39, And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day." This is the great doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, the tall true believers in Christ. If you're a true believer in Christ, though you may suffer trials, and rough periods in your spiritual walk, no true believer will fall away from Christ but persevere to the end and acquire their inheritance because they're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. And doesn't this give us such a A strong foundation, such an assurance of our salvation that it's something that's been predestined before the foundation of the world and then we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. It's the will of God, the divine will, the God who saves his people from beginning to end. And we have such an assurance that we belong to Christ. that he will uphold us, that he will help us by his hand through the powerful working of his Holy Spirit who indwells each and every one of us. And we might think often of the Holy Spirit and remember of him being described as our helper or he's called the comforter. He's the one, he's the writer of Holy Scripture. We might think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that he gives to the church, but something I want us to really add to that list as we think about the Holy Spirit is that he is our guarantee. These blessings set before us, these are blessings which are forever. And that's such a wonderful thing for us to treasure, isn't it? And the final thing that I'd like to mention that's been going on through this scripture is the great end of all these blessings. In verse six, to the praise of his glorious grace. Verse 12, that we might be to the praise of his glory. Verse 14, to the praise of his glory. You see there's a pattern here. These blessings, these things that are being given to us, the great end of all these is to be to the praise of His glory. This is God's plan of salvation. This is what He's doing to glorify Himself through His work in saving sinners, in saving a people for Himself. A people who are chosen, elected, chosen to be holy and blameless. They're predestined to adoption. His grace has been poured out upon them. They've been redeemed through the blood of Christ. He's revealed to them the mystery of his will. We have union with Christ, that we're heirs of the inheritance, and finally that we're sealed with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. And this is all to the praise of His glory and His grace. And isn't it such a blessing that we are blessed by God in such a way that we are called to be a part of His work in salvation, in which He is glorifying Himself in all the earth and the heavens. And I'll close with the verse from Habakkuk chapter two, verse 14. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And it's a privilege to be a part of that mighty work of God. May the Lord bless you. Amen. Shall I pray for us as we close? Our Heavenly Father, we often struggle to even find the words to say to you after contemplating such a text of Scripture that you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Oh Lord, what can we say to this blessing? What can we say to this? love other than that Lord would you help us to know the riches of your grace and your love towards us. May we live lives that honour you and may you help us by the Holy Spirit who is our guarantee. Lord above all, we say thank you for everything that you have done for us in Christ. And may our lives be to the praise of your glory. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.