The passage of Scripture upon which our message is based this morning is Ephesians 1, verses 1-14. And if you don't own a Bible, there's one that looks like this under the seat near you. And our text is on page 633, and the Metro-Crestians would like to give this to you. We are the Metro-Crestians. We come in peace. And they would like to give you this. You can take it home. And you got it free at church today. Three brief matters of housekeeping before we get going. First of all, it is NHL playoff season. And they often switch on the fly, you know. And the camera is looking away. You don't usually see it. Well, did you notice our musicians, our music team did that this morning? The player that was added sports by far and away the coolest haircut in this church. So I just wanted to tell you all that I think that if there was a competition between churches in the 150 range of attendance, a music competition, that this church would blow all the other churches out of the water, or most of them. They'd do it in love, of course. Second, those of you who are carefully watching where we preach from, You may be wondering, Rasmussen, why are you going backwards through Ephesians? Because we just looked at the second half of chapter one last week. The reason is that I got home yesterday early evening from speaking at a men's retreat and that text had been on the schedule as one of the talks in that men's retreat for many moons and I do not have enough RAM chips to crank out a new talk between then and to get it all done. So that's the reason why, but I know that I don't have any Dane bramage from doing too much speaking. Third brief piece of housekeeping. Where's Renata? Where's the better half, the lovely and gracious Renata? Well, she's in Atlanta and she is planning our responsibility in our 28-year-old son's wedding, which takes place on June 30th. I said we should have the rehearsal dinner at Denny's. You know, people can order whatever they want and it'll save me some money, but you know, I got voted down. So she's there planning stuff, florist and groom's cake and all of that routine. So it'll be a tag-team wedding between me and Hal Farnsworth, PCA pastor in Athens, Georgia, and I'll be doing the vows as long as I don't dissolve into tears. That's happened before at profound moments in my son's life. It's happened at least once before. So I'm going to have a plan where Hal will also have the vows so I can tap out. Because I don't want to ruin the deal. I had to actually, at his baccalaureate high school graduation, which I was not involved in, thankfully, I chose that discretion was the better part of valor, and I went out to the parking lot, just because I just loved the young man so much. Okay, I want to begin our message in this Presbyterian Church by referring to a well-known Catholic, and that is one Thomas Aquinas. who taught, and it's been debated six ways from Sunday, and I'm not trying to refine our vision of Thomas' teaching, but he taught that most of the stuff we learn in the Bible about God comes to us by way of analogy or metaphor, where God uses things on earth to teach us about Him. For example, the psalmist says, taste and see that the Lord is good, which is using food to entice people to try God. The Proverbs say that the name of the Lord is a strong tower, which is using military architecture, fortresses, to teach us about the Lord as our protector. The Psalmist says the Lord is my shepherd, which is using sheep herding to talk about the Lord's loving care. So, In Ephesians, the central metaphor is family. God presents himself, the single overarching analogy, more than in most of what Paul writes, although he uses it all the time, but more as a percentage basis, more in Ephesians than elsewhere in his writings. And as I read the text, then this presents a challenge for us, because none of us comes from a perfect family, yet God is a perfect Father. But as I read our text, I'm going to stop and explain these family references, which is easy to read right past them. And then we're going to take four bus stops, we're going to look at four things in this complicated passage. So, Ephesians Chapter 1, verse 1. 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. Now, he mentions God as Father again in just a couple of words. And this is one of his relatively shorter letters. In his two longest letters, Romans and 1st Corinthians, he only mentions God as Father once up front. Paul, he hits it twice here. Verse 3, 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. Now, who gives blessings in the Old Testament? Well, dads do, by and large. Blessings are powerful affirming words pronounced by fathers to offspring. So this whole text that I'm about to read can be construed as one of those from God our Father and our elder brother to us. Verse 4, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us for adoption as sons and this is a matter of family law here adoption to take one who's not a son who as Paul says in chapter 2 is a child a child of wrath not on God's not in God's forever family still in his or her sins and brought in and family law is where families call upon the authorities, they declare it, it's kept in a courtroom, we declare that this one is now in the family. Adoption of 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, which is a sonship term. This is the Beloved One, this is the inter-Trinitarian father-son relationship. In him we have redemption through his blood. I'm going to get to in I think about 16 minutes how redemption is also a matter of family law in the book of Exodus. 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 there we talked about that's family law that is families calling upon the authorities things that are kept that are recorded as the family commitments people inherit from families 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 now this we you thing it's we plural y'all plural is also a family matter because Ephesians was written by Paul and his posse Jewish believers welcoming Gentile believers into the family so in general in Ephesians the we are Jewish believers Paul and his cohort and the the y'all are Gentiles and they're saying welcome into the family verse 13 in him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation, believed in Him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who was given to you. Why? If you were converted as an adult, the radical turn, like what happened to me when I was 19, almost 20, the radical turn in my life, not that I'm perfect, but that was the seal, that was the Spirit changing me into a believer, from a rebel into a believer. Why is He given? Well, it is a down payment. a little bit of family money up front for the inheritance. Verse 14, "...who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory." So, it's clearly not the only metaphor in this text, but it is the main one. In fact, we see it elsewhere in Ephesians, just a couple of places elsewhere. So you can see it really is the main deal. in Ephesians, if you look for me in chapter 2 verse 18, which I believe this is like the guts of Ephesians here, this is the theological headquarters of Ephesians right here in this region, chapter 2 verse 18, for through him we both, that's the we and the y'all, the Jew and the Gentile, both have access in one spirit to whom? The Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household, a.k.a. family of God. And then just one more, well a couple more in chapter 3 verse 14, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom the whole patria, Father concept, all the dads, the whole family in heaven and earth is named, and then just one more in chapter 5 verse 1. Why really try hard to be a kind person when the chips are down and when it's tough? Well here, 5.1. Therefore be imitators of God, why? As beloved children. So God's love for, God's Father love for you will help you show it. when the chips are down. So it's clearly not, it's not the only metaphor, but it is the main deal in Ephesians. The foundation for Christian living, the reason, if you're a believer in Christ, the ultimate reason for your feet hitting the floor in the morning is to clearly see your father's smile through the eyes of faith, focused on the Scriptures, to clearly see his smile, even when circumstances might tell you otherwise, for whatever reason. So, dads, this poses a challenge. Frankly, all of us, we're all part of a familiar lineage with imperfect father, and we are imperfect fathers, and our kids are being fathered by imperfect fathers, and I'm not here to bash fathers today. What did Rasmussen do today? Well, he went after the dads. No, well, no, but the fact of the matter is that we are flawed fathers, so because God shows himself by analogy, it can be hard for us in a flawed world to use those analogies to get a sharp focus on the father. Twenty years ago, when our two sons were age six and eight, they were having a blast playing in such a way that involved them going inside, outside, inside, outside many, many times to get a toy, to get a glass of water, in and out, in and out, opening the door, closing the door, allowing far too many house flies into my home. thus irritating the authority figure, the father, in their lives. So, I said to them, boys, do I ever have a deal for you? Six and eight. Here are two fly swatters for every fly that you successfully swat. I will reimburse you. I'll pay you 25 cents. If I tried that when they were 14, I would have got like a or something, but they were young enough for me to pull this off. So let's just say that the fly population in the house was dramatically reduced that day. A reduction by the induction of cash on the barrel head. And they had a blast, my boys had a blast, with this brief foray into a fee-for-service relationship with their dad. However, if fee-for-service characterized the way I related to them, if conditional love characterized the way I related to them, this would have had a distorting effect on their ability to live the foundation of the Christian life, which is to, as it were, catch eyes with your father and by the eyes of faith see his smile. So we're surrounded with imperfect models of leadership, in the family and outside of the family. George Frederick Handel ran an opera house in England with imported prima donna sopranos from Italy, and one young lady named Casoni refused to sing one of his arias because it was an unworthy showcase for her florid voice. Handel's motivational technique was to grab the young lady and hold her out of an upper story window and threaten to drop her unless she saw the way more clearly and the young lady immediately she saw far well that it was actually a fine piece of music when Leonard Bernstein was young he appointed himself his little sister's piano teacher and his motivational method was every time she made a mistake he'd hit her And it's, yeah, it's a little bit, but you know, the girl, and to what extent, I don't know how much of a mark it left on her metaphorically, but she then had, she could look back and remember pain, emotional, physical pain, from a family member. So, although God's Word is perfect, our eyesight in a fallen world is not. So let's just try to get a sharper focus with 4 bus stops here, and we could have 4 to 11 bus stops in this text, but just 4. And the first one I want you to see in verse 4 and 5 is that your Father is watching you. And He is, well, He's smiling. because it says he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless before him or as other versions say in his sight and it's a the Greek word there's a marker of position and it's most commonly used in ordinary literature of the day to have two folks standing face to face looking at one another so believer in Jesus, that your father is, he sees your every flaw better than you, but he is smiling upon you. He is smiling upon you. When Bob Kuchenberg, he played offensive line for the Miami Dolphins back in their heyday with Bob Greasy, Larry Zonka, Jim Kick, Paul Warfield, etc. And Kuchenberg was the first one in his family to attend university. And a sports writer asked him one time how he had decided to go to college. And he said, well, my father and my uncle were human cannonballs in the carnivals. My father told me, Bob, you can go to college, or you can come be a cannonball with us. Then one day, my uncle flew out of the cannon, missed the net, hit the Ferris wheel, and I decided to go to college. Motivation by the threat of pain, you know, might get someone to briefly fly in the correct direction. But for the person who has turned to Christ, the threat of hell, and hell is real. Heaven is real, hell is real. For a person who has turned to Christ, the threat of hell is downplayed. You can see it in chapter 5 of Ephesians, and it's only for someone who crashes through the barriers, and says, the heck with this noise, I'm going to do what I want, But other than that, it is His Father's smile. You are standing before Him, holy and blameless, facing Him, and He's looking at you as holy and blameless because of, well, because of Jesus, the Beloved. Second snapshot that God has adopted you into His family. Years ago, A young lady in southern Florida, a single young lady, received the unwelcome news that she was with child and she made the choice to give this little boy, turns out, up for adoption. And the child would have probably been consigned, at least in the short term, to a situation of considerable hardship. And Bill and Gail a, as far as I know, multi-millionaire businessman in southern Florida. He and his wife were having trouble conceiving and they decided to adopt. Well, they adopted this little one who became Bill Junior. And when that happened, we received an announcement that had a picture of Bill and Gail with the baby and the parents were looking down at the baby and what kind of expression would you imagine was on their face? No, no, the adoration, the adoration in their eyes was just off the chart. It was a really happy picture and it says here, in accordance with his good pleasure, that's the King James talk in it, that God is, in spite of whatever, your lack of energy in following Christ presently, or what, in spite of those things, His good pleasure that the Lord is stoked that you are in His family, in accordance with His good pleasure. And this verse uses the term Beloved, and it's talking about the inter-Trinitarian love relationship between Father and Son, in which there's a lot of mystery there, but the adoption is not just like you're off in the corner wearing a family name tag, but it's that you've been swept up, you haven't been deified, but you've been swept up into this inter-trinitarian love relationship, and that's adoption, adoption with a capital A, where you're in a family and you're not going to get thrown out. Motivation by implied threat may get a quick reaction from someone, A citizen received a second notice from the IRS stating that his tax payment was overdue and unless it was immediately forthcoming, the IRS would be forced to take legal action. The very next day, the citizen appeared at the IRS office with the overdue payment in a quivering hand and he said, well, well, I would have paid sooner, but I never received your first notice. The clerk implied, well, we ran out of those, but we've also discovered the second notices are far more effective. So, motivation by potential rejection, by calculated self-interest, may motivate you to meet a minimum standard of some sort, but motivation by adoption will make you want to leave no stone unturned to become like your father. Thirdly, redemption verse 7 in him we have received redemption through his blood the forgiveness of his sins in accordance with the riches riches God has he's bellied up to the bar that's riches that's a money word that's a finance term he's he's bellied up to the bar with the payment of Jesus on the cross for you and There's a lot of redemption going on in the Old Testament. Where should we look for the original idea? Well, Paul doesn't tell us exactly, but I know one excellent place to look is Exodus 13. Because in Exodus 13, which is couched within the Passover service, Jesus had the Last Supper on Passover. He timed his death. You coincide. And this is right in there, shoehorned into the Passover. And it talks about this kind of redemption. It's in Exodus 13. Let me read it for you. And I'm starting in verse 11. When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, You shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. Firstborn. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord's. That's like a burnt offering, a sacrifice. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb. So you can keep the donkey as a beast of burden and have enough food for your family. Or, if you will not redeem it, you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of a man among your sons you shall redeem, i.e. with a lamp. Not human sacrifice, with a lamp. And when in time to come your son asks you, what does this mean? you shall say to him by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery for when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first opened the womb but the firstborn of my sons I redeem i.e. with the blood of a lamb So, I like to think that Paul had this in mind, although redemption is a broad idea in the Old Testament, this one talks about sons and blood of a lamb. So, this is my story and I'm sticking with it. So, let's think about this. In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh fancied himself the son of the sun god. And, in the book of Exodus chapter 4, the Lord announces through Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn. son. Let my son go. So, when we put all this together, we have this. In Exodus, the Lord redeemed his firstborn son, Israel, from the enslaving clutches of the Son of the Sun God, and he did so by killing the Son of the Sun God's firstborn sons and then he told the Israelites to commemorate this by redeeming each of their firstborn sons and daughters with the blood of a lamb sacrificed as a substitute. Now, isn't that a clever coincidence that way, way, way, way, way before Jesus came all of this was to occur, all this was going on historically. It's enough to make one suspect there could be a higher power involved in some of this stuff. So, your father, there's no threat of withheld payment. Your dad has bellied up to the bar, opened his wallet, there's no threat of the wallet shutting. A visiting American textile buyer was speaking through a translator to an industry luncheon in Seoul, South Korea. He told a very long funny story. The translator repeated it to the group in just a couple of words, very brief, and the audience laughed and applauded, practically fell out of their chairs. So afterwards the textile buyer was talking with the translator and he said, I think it's wonderful the way they appreciated my joke, But it's amazing how the translation was shortened so much from English to Korean. And the translator said, no, not really amazing. I merely said this. Man with big checkbook has told funny story. Do what you think appropriate. So, motivation by the implied threat of a closed wallet might entice someone to put on an act for a short while. but motivation by redemption paid out in full, in advance, will motivate you to want to catch eyes with your Father and stay that way, and see His fatherly smile in spite of your flaws. This is an illustration I used at the men's retreat. I'm changing it slightly. I was wondering whether I should use it or not, but here we go. regarding their father's smile vis-à-vis temptation. I work out at the YMCA a lot, and so first I lift my tiny little weights, and then I go get on a cardio machine, because if I reverse it, I'll lack the psychological gumption to want to lift weights after I'm exhausted on the cardio machine. So I'm sitting there on the cardio machine, and a well-designed example of the Lord's creative work shows someone immodestly dressed. chose to perch herself on the machine directly in front of mine. Now, lust, we can look at our wives and say, wow, that's a wonderful thing that God has done, but Jesus clearly says that lust is a sin. And let me just put it this way, it was my father's smile, did I react perfectly? No. Did I totally, completely fail? No. But it was my father's smile, not his frown. that induced me to just call out and pray, Lord help, Lord help. It's the smile, not the frown, that worked in me. Fourthly and finally, as we talked about last week, the text mentions inheritance, mentions it twice. That God promises to bequeath His estate to you, your elder brother, we inherit, as we talked about, we inherit from deceased relatives. Our deceased relative did not stay deceased, and he promises to bequeath his estate to you, which is planet Earth. The meek shall inherit the Earth. God's people will inherit the Earth. So, the foundation not just for obedience, but the very reason for living as a follower of Christ, the reason your feet hit the floor, the thing that will keep you going when everything else fails and when everything heads south for you, is to fix the eyes of faith upon your Father's smile, His unwavering smile, through His Son, for you. The title of this talk is The Sophisticated Child of God, and that's an oxymoron on purpose. What do you mean, sophisticated child? Children are, by definition, isn't the faith of a child unsophisticated? Well, I guess, but the scripture communicates this by analogy. God's Word is pure and perfect. The exemplars are not. So This can gum up the works and make us lack the energy to maintain the gaze. In the major cities of Russia, there's a subculture of glue-sniffing, subterranean-dwelling orphans whose impoverished, alcoholic, miscreant parents kicked them to the curb when they were little bitty kids. And you really can't find them in broad daylight because they're in the storm sewers and so on. But if you did find one, and if you could speak Russian, and you came to them and said, let me tell you about your father, don't you see you might have a tough job on your hands? And clearly, I'm not going to bash the dads that hard here, but clearly, to a lesser degree. We have experienced an imperfect family situation and it can dull our vision. Hence the sophisticated child of God, or Paul might call it the enlightened child of God, because right after he sets forth these profound truths in one long Greek sentence from verses 3 through 14, 202 Greek words in which Paul does not even come up for air, he's so excited about this stuff, we usually, our English versions, chop it up into approximately eight sentences. But then right after that, he prays for enlightenment, where he's basically saying, hey, Ephesians, all this great stuff I just told you, you don't get it yet. You need to be enlightened to really see it, to really sharpen your gaze. Because our experience as children on this earth are between, I would say, these two extremes. Two true stories. Well, the first one's probably not true. The second one is, it's a person in this church that I've got permission to share. The loaded station wagon pulled into the only remaining campsite. Four youngsters leave from the vehicle and began feverishly unloading gear and setting up a tent. The boys then rushed off to gather firewood while the girls and their mothers set up the camp stove and the cooking utensils. All with military precision. A nearby camper marveled at the youngster's father. That, sir, is some display of teamwork. The father said, well, I have a system. You see, no one goes to the bathroom until the camp is set up. Now, it hurts if you're not allowed to go. And many of us, we look back and there's pain of one sort of another in family background. On the other side of the coin, I spoke at your father-daughter banquet a few weeks ago, a month and a half ago, or something like that. And at one point in the banquet, as I was munching on my salmon burger, there was a young lady, maybe 10 or so, And this was just all in like five seconds. And she had a new dress on that was purchased for the occasion. And she walked up to Dad, and they briefly caught eyes. And the mutual affection between them was quite profound. It's enough to make this typical male remember it. I'm looking up and, wow, Dad holds the little girl's hands and she is frankly too young to understand the profundity of the adoration of the father for the girl, even though she knows it pretty much, but she's too young to know the depth of the situation and the affectionate security in the little girl's eyes. It impacted me. And that, although we come from imperfect fathers who gave it their best shot, that's the picture of what Paul is trying to get across in Ephesians as we prepare for this family meal. So the foundation for Christian living, the reason why your feet will hit the floor in the morning, if you're a sophisticated child of God, is to catch eyes and maintain that, the eyes of faith, through what the scriptures say, to catch eyes with your father, your Abba, Dad, to catch eyes and lock stairs throughout the day. True story in preparation for the Lord's Table. And then I'm going to turn it over to Reverend Jimmy. I appreciate him doing the heavy lifting as I'm recovering from the men's retreat. True story, in the early 1600s, English King James and his son King Charles took it upon themselves to wipe out Protestantism in Scotland, and to exalt themselves as the head of the Scottish Church. The devoted followers of Christ didn't want to do this, and they headed up to here and they weren't going to take it anymore because their only spiritual head was Christ himself, plus all the underlying politics, which will be left aside. On 28 February 1638, 60,000 Scots gathered in the streets around Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh to sign the National Covenant in defiance of the King, so they became known as Scottish Covenanters, and the King declared open season on Scottish Covenanters. A little girl was walking to attend communion held by the Covenanters on a Sunday afternoon, and of course communion services were absolutely prohibited. The soldiers of the King of England were on the prowl, looking for people who were going to meet together at this communion service. As the little girl turned the corner on her way, she came face to face with a band of soldiers, and she knew that the jig was up. For a moment, she wondered what she was going to say, but immediately, on being questioned, she found herself answering as follows, and they're going to read his will this afternoon, and he has done something for me, left something for me, and I want to hear them read his will. Clever girl, as we prepare for this family meal.