I wonder if you've ever been told to count your blessings. Normally that phrase comes out, count your blessings, after some disaster. And it's not always welcome advice, count your blessings, because the blessings you happen to count in that moment will tend to run out after a couple, because we are focused on the stuff we've just lost. We've just experienced some problem, lost some joy, and someone says, count your blessings, and it's really hard to. Because the blessings that we want are temporary blessings. The blessings that we've just lost, the reason why someone has just said, count your blessings, is because we've just lost a temporary blessing. And so it can be hard to think, okay, what other temporary blessings do I have? Because our mind just stays focused on the negative. Well, in Ephesians chapter one, we have a set of blessings laid out for us, and they're blessings that cannot come and go, as worldly blessings do. They can't disappear in the way that temporal blessings easily can. These are spiritual blessings. They're blessings that we can't necessarily put your finger on, or take a photo of, or have hard evidence of. A lovely holiday is a brilliant blessing. You can take a photo of it, you can see, here's my blessing. A healthy bank account, you can look at your bank statement and there's my blessing. But these things can disappear very easily. Spiritual blessings, you might not be able to point to. You might not be able to identify concretely, if that's a word, but they're no less real for that. They are spiritual blessings, they are real blessings, and they are in Christ. As Christ is eternal, the spiritual blessings are eternal, unmovable, unlosable. And Paul sees these blessings in Ephesians as reasons to bless God, to praise Him, to honour Him, to thank Him, to adore Him, to enjoy Him. That's what blessing God is. These spiritual blessings are for us in order that we may bless God. We may enjoy him, love him, honour him. Verse three says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. And then he goes on to not quite list them, but they appear throughout the next few verses. And I just want to explore some of these spiritual blessings and briefly see them as reasons to bless God, reasons to be thankful. I almost want to say reasons to be cheerful. And if you're a certain age, you'll be humming a song now. Reasons to be cheerful. But that doesn't mean going around with a fixed grin on your face, like you've just had a lobotomy. It's reasons to bless God through all the changing scenes of life. When worldly blessings may disappear, the spiritual blessings remain. And Paul sees these as very real, I want to say tangible, but they're not quite tangible, if you know what I mean. They're real blessings that will go on forever, and they should impact us as much as any physical blessing might. So verse four, here's our first one. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. He chose us and he predestined us to be his sons. There's blessing number one. God chose us. If you're here today and you're a believer in Jesus, if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and your God, your Saviour, ask yourself, why did you do that? Why did you become a Christian? Is it because one day you saw the light? Is it because a friend or a pastor explained things to you, maybe over a period of time, and it gradually made sense? Is it because you admired another Christian? You saw the way they lived, the way they behaved, the way they thought, and you wanted to be like that? Why are you a Christian if you are a Christian? Well, it might be any one of those, it might be all of those, but ultimately, It's because God chose you to be his. He chose you before the foundation of the world. It wasn't that you chose him. Nowhere in scripture does it say that. You chose him. You responded to his call. You didn't find him, he found you. There's a big difference there. God was not hiding in some corner. Oh, you found me. He chose you. That reveals something of his nature, that he goes looking for sinners like you and me. You responded to that pastor or that friend because God drew you, irresistibly, to himself. Because before the foundation of the world, he chose you. He looked down through all eternity over the world covered by a plague of sinners, people dishonouring themselves, each other, ignoring God the creator. He looked on that plague of sinners and for some reason he chose to open your eyes to see him. He chose to allow you to respond to that call. That's a gift from God, that is a blessing from God. Think of the gospel accounts where Jesus opened the eyes, literally, of blind men so that they could see the face of the Savior. He did it in many ways, but sometimes he touched their eyes, put his thumbs on their eyes and said, open your eyes, you can see. Now consider that miracle, Jesus touching the eyes of a blind man and then saying, open your eyes. Did that blind man choose to open his eyes? Or was he forced to open his eyes? Or is there a third way? When God chooses to open our eyes, to choose us, it's as if Jesus is touching your eyes and says, open them. Now you could say, no, I won't do it. But you couldn't, could you? It would be irresistible, the urge to open your eyes. Because Jesus says, open your eyes. So there's this balance of God's sovereignty. He chooses you, and man's responsibility. You will respond. And it's your choice to open your eyes, but it's not your choice because it's irresistible. This is God choosing us. An irresistible drawing of himself to us, to himself, sorry. When God chose us, it's as if he puts his hand on our eyes and says, open, see me. Maybe you've still got your eyes shut. You've heard people explaining the goodness of Christ to you, the goodness of God. You've seen Christians and they're not perfect, but they've got an assurance about them. Maybe God is calling you and you're refusing to open your eyes. You have that responsibility to respond. But if you have responded, if you are a Christian, thank God that he chose you. He put that irresistible urge in your heart to see that he is God. The invitation goes out to all. This is the doctrine of predestination, and it's there in verse five, having predestined us to adoption. He chose you before the foundation of the world in verse four. And it can be a controversial thing to be thinking about, but it's here in the Bible. And those who keep their eyes shut, despite the call of God, those who are ignoring the Savior, they can't complain about that. The invitation goes out to all. We can't say predestination is unfair. If you want to open your eyes, if you want to see God and accept God as your Lord and Saviour, then you have been called. If you don't want to, you can't grumble about being left out. Imagine you're invited to a wedding feast. It's the best wedding feast ever. but you choose not to go. You can't then complain that you haven't enjoyed the cutting of the cake. You were invited, you chose not to. The invitation was there. There is this, I don't think balance is the right word, but this double strand of God's sovereignty, man's responsibility. And I'm really pleased that I don't have to sort that out completely in my head, because I can't. But I know that God chooses and God draws us irresistibly towards him, those who will be his. And if you have any inkling in your heart to be one of the chosen, then I would suggest you are one of the chosen. Open your eyes and say, yes, God, I want you to be my Lord and Savior. And if you don't want to, you can't complain because you are just simply being left in your natural state We are all sinners, all fallen short of the glory of God. If we choose just to remain in our own way, ignoring God, not going his way, seeking our own will, never mind him, that is the natural state of every single human that ever lived and ever will. That is our natural tendency since the fall of Adam. And it would be the endless, universal state of every single human ever. If God, in his goodness, hadn't intervened and chosen some, if he hadn't made that way possible through the blood of sacrifice, sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament pointing towards Jesus, the perfect one true Lamb of God, if God hadn't stepped into that, we all would have been lost forever. That is just our natural way. How good God is to choose, to elect, to predestine, whatever word you want to use, any one of us. And if he's chosen you, if you are his, worship him. Adore him for who he is. If he chose you, he chose you to understand enough of him to be able to accept him and worship. What a great privilege it is to be chosen. and to be chosen before him in love, verse four. I've lost it, end of verse four. That we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He chose us in love and he adopted us as sons in verse five. It's not just a quick pick, it's choosing in love as adoption. Not simply chosen to be able to appreciate who God is. Chosen to be able to know enough sort of theology and big words to know I know that God is my savior. But chosen in love to be an adopted son. Adoption is an amazing thing. My parents didn't choose me. I was born and they were stuck with me. No choice in that. And they loved me as their son. Because that's what I was, their son. They kind of had to. They loved me despite my shortcomings, despite the problems, the stresses, the financial strain I brought with me. They still love me. Because that's what they're supposed to do. But if you were adopted, your parents chose you. They didn't have to adopt you. They didn't have to take you home. They didn't have to love you, to clothe you, to feed you. They are under no obligation to do that. They could have left you to somebody else. Their decision to adopt you was a positive decision. I will love you. And this is God. His decision to adopt us is a positive decision. He has no obligation to us. And yet he has chosen, I will adopt you. I will love you as my own son. Even though I don't have to. Even though I don't need to. I have no obligation. God doesn't need us. We don't complete God. God isn't lonely in heaven wanting more worshipers. He is entirely self-sufficient, and yet he chooses in love to adopt us. And that's the only reason he adopts us, in love. That is his nature, in love. That's amazing. What a God we have. He could have left us to our own devices, to go our own way, and yet he chose not to. That adoption, that positive decision, I will love you, and it's more than that even. It's adopted as sons. That word sons is important. Not adopted as children, but adopted as sons. In Paul's mind, in the world, in the time of Jesus, the son is the one who gets the full inheritance. The daughter doesn't. The daughter's married off to another family and there's somebody else's problem. But the son gets the full inheritance of the father and we are adopted as sons. The family inheritance, if you are a Christian, is yours. Whether you're a man, woman, child, boy, girl, old, young, it's yours. You are all adopted as sons if you are his. A son in the ancient world would expect to receive everything the father has to offer. And God has a lot to offer. And there's one more thing about this choosing in love to be adopted as sons. It is to the good pleasure of his will, verse six, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he has made us accepted in the beloved. Oh no, that's not the right verse, where am I? Verse five, sorry. Having predestined us to the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ himself according to the good pleasure of his will. The choosing that God did, when God chose you, if you are a Christian, he did it for his own good pleasure. My experience of being chosen is not entirely positive in the world. Picture the scene, the school sports hall, dressed in my PE kit, lined up against the wall with the prospect of an hour's wet football ahead of me. We're all lined up against the wall. Alex and Mark go to the front, because they're the star football players. And Alex and Mark start choosing people to be on their teams. Alex chooses you. Mark chooses you. Alex chooses you. Mark has this one. Alex, Mark, Mark, come on, my team, my team, my team. Guess who's left? It's horrible. Eventually, I was picked. Alex has me on his team. Not because he wants to, but because I'm the last one there. And he'd rather not have me. But Mr Burns says he has to have me. That's not me being chosen by Alex. I've not been chosen in that situation. There's no good pleasure on Alex's part in choosing me. Not at all. I'm the dregs. I wasn't picked. It's that I was left. That's not being chosen. That scene played out many times in my childhood. You can come for me at the end. Every time that scene was played out, I would try and make eye contact with the person picking, pick me, pick me. Not that I want to be involved in the sport, but I don't want the humiliation of being last to be picked, because that's not being picked. When God looks down the line, when God chooses you, to be adopted as a son. It's for his own good pleasure. It's not, oh, I have to have him because he's last. It's for his own good pleasure. He looks down the line, and he catches your eye. And do you know what? He doesn't say, I choose you. He catches your eye, and he smiles. And he says, what are you doing in line? I already chose you. I picked you since before the foundation of the world. I already chose you. I picked you first. I want you with me. I want you. I picked you before the game of football began. I picked you before the world was founded. God does not scoop up society's drinks, the losers, who are not gonna get on anywhere else and says, well, they can be on my team then, we'll make them a Christian, because they're not gonna get anywhere else in life. He chose you first. Whether you are one of life's winners or losers or somewhere in between, God chose you for his good pleasure. That is astonishing. If you look into your own heart and think, God chose me for his good pleasure? That ought to be mind-blowing. And he chose you first, before the beginning of the world. You were his first choice of player on Team God. And so was I. And a Christian born a hundred years ago was God's first choice for his good pleasure. And a Christian that hasn't been born yet was God's first choice for his good pleasure, not an afterthought. What a God we have. This is not a grumpy God. This is a loving God, adopting as sons for his own good pleasure in love. What a God we have. No one makes him pick us. It is just his love. It is his nature to love the unlovely, to adopt the unadoptable. And our response to that? Not surprising, verse six, the praise of the glory of his grace. How can there be any other response? The praise of the glory of his grace. We get to praise God for who he is and what he's done. And that in itself is another blessing. You get to praise God if you are a Christian. I used to be thrown by the question, what do you have to do to be a Christian? What are the rules? Do you have to go to church? Do you have to pray? Do you have to not do this and not go there? It's not what you have to do. It's what you get to do. You get to worship God. You get an outlet for the joy caused by the knowledge of the fact that he adopted you out of his love, according to his own good pleasure. That's a sentence and a half, isn't it? Let me read it again. What do you get to do as a Christian? You get an outlet for the joy caused by the knowledge of the fact that he adopted you out of his love according to his own good pleasure. It's not you have to go to church twice on a Sunday. It's not what you have to do, it's what you get to do. This is our God. The only true and lasting source of joy is in him. And you get it if you are his. Everything else fades away. Everything else that the world might consider a blessing fades. But God doesn't. I think one of the saddest things about loved ones who are not yet gods is that they don't get this knowledge of love. They don't get this peace, the joy, the pleasure of knowing God and all that he offers. They're stuck in the world with temporary blessings. They're not miserable, they're not unhappy people, but they don't get the ultimate joy. Their peace, their love, their joy is fleeting and unreliable. And if you don't know Jesus is your saviour yet, you're still dependent on these fleeting, passing joys. If you don't yet know God as your adoptive daddy, you are missing out on the greatest family. If you have any urge in your heart to look at God in the PE line and say, pick me, then cry out in your heart even now, God, I want to be yours. And if you do that, you'll hear God metaphorically say, I already chose you. Get out of line. and into my family. I want to adopt you as my son out of the pleasure of my good will. Other blessings that are asked briefly. Verse seven, redemption, forgiveness of sins. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. This being adopted as a son, is being moved from a family with no future, no hope, into the family of God, redeemed, forgiven, your maker's family, where you belong, where you've been bought back at a price, that's what redeemed is. And that price to adopt you is the highest price. It's Jesus' blood, his life given for you. To adopt you into that family, is not free. It's free to you, but it's not free. A sinful rebel can't just stroll into the kingdom of God. We'd ruin it. We have to be forgiven. We must repent for the things that we've done wrong, for our lack of honour to God, for our own selfishness, for our own selfish pride. We have to humble ourselves and accept the blood of Jesus, the cost of that adoption, We have to be made fit for heaven. And here's another blessing, verse four. To be made holy and blameless. That's another blessing, ready for heaven, holy and blameless. Now that's not having a personality transplant, to go around like this the whole time. We could still be ourselves. But it's to be washed in the blood of Christ. To be given a new set of values, to want to be like Christ, to want to be a mini Christ, that's what the word Christian means. To be like him, his values, his attitudes, his approach, his outlook. And still we can't get that right. Despite all the example we have in scripture, we still can't get it right. We're not gonna be blameless. And so we have to have his blamelessness given to us. Without it, we would wreck heaven. It's another blessing, another gift, His own blamelessness transferred to us. When He suffers on the cross, when He dies and is buried, He removes our guilt, our sin, as far from us as the East is from the West. He takes it away so that we are fit for heaven and we can be counted blameless, righteous, not in anything we've done, but because of what He has done. So we can stand before Him accepted and loved according to his good pleasure. That's being redeemed, that's being forgiven. His blamelessness, his holiness for our unrighteousness. And if he's given you the full riches of his grace in verse seven, we should be bursting with praise. wanting to live for His glory, His honour, according to His will, in a God-honouring way. Not out of duty, not because we have to, but because we want to. Our loving Father has adopted us freely, willingly, drawn us irresistibly to Himself, opened our eyes, given His Son so that we may be righteous, So our response is to live and to praise Him joyfully, not out of a sense of duty only. And how do we honour God? One of the next blessing is according to His will. Verse nine, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, He's told us how to honour him. He's made known his will to us. If you are a child of God, God has made known his will to you. Now we can sometimes struggle with that, because we think, I don't know the will of God. I don't know whether I should take this job or that job. What's God's will? I don't know if I should move here or there. What's God's will? I don't know the will of God. What's he talking about? He's made known to us the will of God. Discerning the will of God can be a real source of angst. We tie ourselves up in knots trying to work out what does God want? Should I retire this year or next year? Should I attend this church or that church? We have this kind of idea that the will of God is a very narrow bullseye to be hit in the dartboard. Everything else is a miss. If we get the bullseye, we've got the will of God. That's not what the word says. The will of God is to love him, honour him, worship and obey him. He's made that abundantly clear through the whole of scripture. That is the will of God. And then verse 11 says, he works, is it verse 11? He works everything according to his will. In him also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So the will of God is to worship and obey him and honor him and love him, and he works things according to the counsel of his will. So if you want to worship, honor, obey, and love God, he will work things so that will happen for you. You'll be able to do that. Now the problem is, with our narrow view of what is the will of God, we get caught up in, I want this car, I want this qualification, I want this job. And if we don't get them, we're disappointed. Change your view of what the will of God is. Why do you want that car, that job, that qualification? Is it to honour God? Because if it's not, God has no obligation to give you those things. Why do you want these things? To look after my family. I need a car and a job to look after my family. Why do you want to look after your family? To honour God, I hope. And that's the key. Honouring God is the important bit. Everything else is secondary. Honouring God is the important bit. You don't need this car or that car. You don't even need that job or this job. You don't even need any job. You don't even need your family, your health, all these things that we think are so important, we love to have them, but they are temporary blessings. If our focus on the will of God is to honour him and love him, God will allow us to do that, not necessarily in the car or the job that we wanted, not necessarily with the good health that we were hoping for, But if your will is to honour God, you can do that, whatever. And he will work things according to the counsel of his will. He may say, no, you can't have that car. No, you can't have that job. No, you can't have that health. But he's not going to say, no, you can't worship me. No, you can't honour me. No, you can't love me. No, you can't praise me. That's the will of God, and he will allow that no matter what, through all the changing scenes of life, we're saying. We can say with Job, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the Lord. If we have our eye on what the will of God is, it's not this narrow thing, it's this big, broad, honour him. A few years ago, my life kind of came crashing down. My career was whipped away from me. I'd spent 22 years loving and living being a teacher, and it just fell apart. And I was absolutely devastated. Because it felt like everything I knew changed. And I said to one of the church members at Lincoln, My whole identity is gone. And he smiled, and he said, nonsense. Your identity is in Christ. Nothing's changed. The career's changed, but my identity, what matters, hasn't. It was the most helpful thing anyone said. I'd lost sight of the will of God. It's not that I should be this great teacher. The will of God is that I should honour him. It may be in a different place than what I was hoping for. Things move on, things are great. Because the blessing of God, the eternal blessings of God, the things that matter, they don't move, they don't change. I'd just lost sight of it for a bit. Finally, I want to look at the source of all these spiritual blessings, all these eternal blessings. They are all in Christ. A quick scan through our passage. Verse three, in Christ. Verse four, in him. Verse six, in the beloved. Verse seven begins, in him. Verse nine ends, in himself. Verse 10, in Christ. Ends again, in him. Verse 11, in him. Verse 12, in Christ. In him, in him, in him, in Christ. Do you get the feeling Paul is trying to make a, drop a hint here? Where do the blessings come from? Jesus, and Him alone. In Him, these blessings. For a long time, I wondered what it meant to be in Christ. This phrase pops up so often in the Bible, in Christ. What does that mean? That little preposition, in. I understand what it means to be with Christ, next to Christ, beside Christ. I get all that, but in? How can you be in Christ? And when I was preparing this sermon, I came across a really, really good illustration. Well, I thought it was good, which I'd like to share with you, just to finish, what it is to be in Christ, from all these blessings flow from. Consider a goldfish. It lives in water, in its bowl, surrounded by water, totally dependent, totally surrounded by water. It's in water. Without the water, it's nothing. Taken out of the water, it gasps, it's hopeless, it's dying, it's dead. It needs to be in the water for oxygen, for food, to be able to move and swim and do whatever it is fish do. it needs to be in the water. And so it is with the Christian and Christ. We must be surrounded by him, totally dependent on him, looking through him as the fish look through water and sees nothing unless it's looking through water. We are shaped only by Christ, by his life, by his values, by his sacrifice and his resurrection. We are shaped entirely by him, as the fish is shaped by the water in which it lives. If an alien saw a fish out of water, it would make no sense. What is the shape of this body all about? What are those big unblinking eyes about? It's going to dry up any second now. It's got no legs. How does it move? Scales? What are they for? What are those fins about? It makes no sense out of water. Put it back in the water. Ah, it makes perfect sense. Everything about that fish only makes sense when viewed in the water. And so it is with the Christian. The Christian only makes sense if you realize they are shaped entirely by Christ. Their confidence in the love of God only makes sense when you look at Christ and what he did, what he achieved, and how much he demonstrated the love of God. That's why the Christian's confidence makes sense. It's not some airy, fairy, wishful thinking for the future. It's in Christ, our peace in adversity. When we go through trials and horrible things, we don't fall apart entirely, because we have Christ, and he's got us, he'll hold us. We can face death even, with serenity. That doesn't make any sense at all, unless you realise that there in Christ, Christ conquered death, into the grave and rose again and promised he's got a mansion waiting for us. That only makes sense when you view the Christian according to Christ. Our love for others, our habit of meeting together, spending these hot Sunday mornings in the little chapel, it doesn't make any sense at all what we're doing that for. Because of Christ, he gave himself for us. He told the church to meet together to encourage each other, to support one another. The Christian only makes sense if you view them in Christ. Your attitudes, your values, your response to everybody else. And our dependence on him, our view of the world through him, as a goldfish looks through the water, is shaped entirely by him. We don't look at anything in this world without looking at it through the eyes of Christ. What would he want? What are his views? How would he approach this? How can I honour God most efficiently, most brilliantly? We only make sense through Christ. And through Christ, in him, all these spiritual blessings flow. What a great God we have. Let's pray together before we sing again. Heavenly Father, your word is rich with blessings, revealing what a great, marvellous, loving God you are. It's astonishing that you would look at us through all eternity and choose any one of us. How great a nature you have, a compassionate, loving father. God, accept our praises. Words fail us when we consider how awesome your love is, your richness of blessings. And we recognize again, God, that we fail to honor you adequately. We offer you our hearts, our souls, Help us to worship you. And we thank you so much for every spiritual blessing. If we are a believer here, we thank you that you adopted us. We thank you that we are your pleasure. We thank you that you look forward one day to being with us in heaven. And if we're not yet yours, God, please open hearts today. Draw us irresistibly to open our eyes and see a loving father waiting to welcome us with open arms into the kingdom of God. Amen.