May 3, 2009

Lesson: Ephesians 1.3-14

Sermon Title: Fully Loaded

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INTRODUCTION

Trash in My House (1)

Russell Brownworth, Thomasville, North Carolina Called in to WBFJ Radio, Winston-Salem, NC (2-21-02), and told the following story:

On a radio program I heard, people were invited to call in and tell stories about kids. One lady told how her family had company for dinner, and after dinner she put all the food scraps in a big, black trash bag. Forgotten on the back porch, the trash the following morning was strewn across the deck and back yard. The family did not look forward to coming home to pick it all up after church.

During church the children's sermon was about how it is important to keep God's earth as good as it used to be in the Garden of Eden. He had a black plastic trash bag and emptied it on the platform--soda cans, papers, and wrappers. He then asked the children, "Now, what does that look like?"

The lady's son stood right up, hands on hips, and loudly said, "Well, it looks just like my house!"

  1. Well, our house may be clean, neat, everything in its place.

    1. Sometimes our houses are cluttered and movement is hampered.

    2. This is the way it was in Ephesus.

      1. Paul is seeking to provide insight and understanding.

      2. He is seeking to empower their spirits and lift them higher towards Jesus Christ.

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MAIN BODY:

  1. This passage is so loaded with all kinds of goodies.

    1. It is more beautiful that Monet's painting, Water Lilies.

    2. It is more awesome than Marc Chagall's huge stained glass window at the Chicago Art Institute.

    3. It is more ennobling than da Vinci's, The Last Supper

    4. It is more inspiring that Michelangelo's statue of David.

  2. It is also the longest sentence in the Bible.

    1. I know that there are periods in our text, but they are not on the original.

      1. The translators have taken liberties with the grammar.

      2. It doesn't not impact the understanding, just the reading.

      3. You may not run out of breath before you finish the sentence.

    2. Parker Cross was once was teaching a Bible study of Ephesians in Houston.

      1. This is what he said: When we got to Ephesians 1:3-14, he pointed out that this was one long sentence.

      2. There was a high-school master teacher of English in the class and Pastor Cross challenged her to diagram the sentence, saying he thought it impossible.

      3. The next week she came to Bible study grinning from ear to ear.

        1. In her hand was a 3 x 12-foot scroll with the complete diagram of the sentence.

        2. They all gathered around and looked at it.

        3. What we noticed was that Paul was making three points.

        4. It was so clear.

      4. It was also the first time in Peter Cross's life since those days in elementary school that a diagramed sentence has been of any use to him!

  3. This text is fully loaded, What are the points and their benefits?

    1. First, we were chosen by grace (vv. 4-6).

      1. "Before the foundation of the world" God had already planned its salvation and "destined us for adoption" as God's own children.

      2. The thrust of the message here isn't so much about the predestination of individual souls as it is about God's plan for all of creation.

      3. God has established a plan of holiness for humanity and, indeed, all of the created order; a plan of salvation, making God's adopted children "holy and blameless" through the "glorious grace" of Christ, God's own "Beloved."

      4. Our individual salvation is part of the larger purposes of God.

      5. We were chosen because God wants to accomplish something with us.

        1. When we follow the Christ of this text, we live our lives for a greater purpose than just ourselves.

        2. When we engage in acts of justice, mercy and peace, we're accomplishing God's plan for the world, what Jesus called "the kingdom of God."

    2. Because we are chosen we know who we are.

      1. You're blessed You're blessed, you're holy, you're grace-gifted, and you live to the "praise of his glory."

      2. It's good to know who you are, as in the case of the chicken lady:

Christian Herter was the governor of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1956

He was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes (and no lunch) he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

"Excuse me," Gov. Herter said, "do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?"

"Sorry," the woman told him. "I'm supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person."

"But I'm starved," the governor said.

"Sorry," the woman said again. "Only one to a customer."

Gov. Herter was a modest and unassuming man, but he decided that this time he would throw a little weight around. "Do you know who I am?" he said. "I am the governor of this state."

"Do you know who I am?" the woman said. "I'm the lady in charge of the chicken. Move along, mister."

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    1. Next, we were redeemed by Christ's blood (vv. 7-10).

      1. S & H Green Stamps.

        1. Get the stamps from the retailers.

        2. Fill the book

        3. Fill many books

        4. Redeem the stamps for products.

      2. We are not redeemed by Green Stamps or Green Points (S & H Green Points are available online.)

        1. Here Paul evokes some Passover imagery. "Forgiveness of our trespasses" means release from the bondage of guilt and shame we carry with us from our pasts.

        2. God did not allow us to wallow in the poverty of spiritual slavery, but instead has "lavished" the "riches of his grace" upon us.

        3. In Christ, God's plan, "the mystery of his will," has been revealed and accomplished "according to his good pleasure" and in "the fullness of time."

        4. What an awesome thing it is to know that God has released us and offered us a clean slate made possible through Christ.

        5. Paul wrote joyously about this release from bondage while chained to a prison wall, not focusing on circumstances but on Christ.

    2. To be redeemed is to be chosen

      1. Place a basketball in front of the children and tell them you want to create two basketball teams.

      2. Pick two of the youngest children in the group to be team captains and have them stand in front of you, one on either side.

      3. Instruct them to take turns picking children to be on their team, until everyone has been selected.

      4. Then have the children sit, and ask the team members, "How did it feel to be one of the first children picked? How did it feel to be one of the last children picked?"

      5. Admit that it feels much better to be one of the first to be picked, and tell of a time when your feelings were hurt by being picked last.

      6. Then tell them the good news of what God has done: "He chose us in Christ " (Ephesians 1:4).

      7. Explain that this means that God chose us first -- before the world was even created -- to be God's special people.

      8. "How does this make you feel?"

      9. Stress that they never have to worry about where they are on God's team, because God chose them long ago and wants to be close to them always.

      10. Encourage them to act in ways that are good and loving, and to thank God for giving them a place on his team.

    3. Last, in Christ, we have an inheritance (vv. 11-14).

      1. These days we think of an inheritance as simply money we unexpectedly receive or some property that can be turned into money.

        1. In the ancient world, an "inheritance" was usually received in the form of land that was not to be sold away.

        2. To continue the exodus motif, the Israelites enslaved in Egypt held out hope that one day they would return to the land given to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

        3. It was this hope that kept them going in the midst of horrific oppression.

      2. Paul picks up the imagery of the exodus again and expresses it in spiritual terms.

        1. Having been delivered from slavery to sin and death through the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul reminds us that we are promised an inheritance, too.

      3. What is that inheritance, that promised land?

        1. Many Christians would say that it is "heaven," which is often defined as the distant spiritual place to which those who have been redeemed by Christ are eventually going.

        2. But Paul's idea is different and bigger than that. In verse 10, he says that, in Christ, God would "gather up all things things in heaven and things on earth."

        3. All through this passage, Paul has been assuming that God is the creator of the world and that God has no desire to abandon that creation.

        4. Instead, God's purpose is to redeem the world and renew it, which is the whole reason Christ came into the world in the first place.

        5. Our inheritance, then, is a new and renewed world; a world that is being made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus and will be completed when he comes again.

        6. It is this vision that we pray for every time we repeat the Lord's Prayer -- that God's will and purpose would be accomplished "on earth as it is in heaven."

        7. Notice also that Paul's description of our inheritance is in the present tense.

        8. We have obtained it, meaning that we are to live and work with that inheritance as a present reality.

        9. Because of what Christ has done for us and in us, we are to be at work now accomplishing his purpose for the world.

        10. We are to enjoy spreading the wealth of our inheritance!

    4. On Garrison Keeler's radio program, The Writer's Almanac for May 1st, he quoted a poem, "Music," by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother's piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I've never understood
Why this is so

Bur there's an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

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CONCLUSION:

  1. Concerning the richness of this text in Ephesians 1: Ray Stedman, for years, pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in California, tells the story of an old Navajo Indian who had become rich because oil had been found on his property.

    1. He took all the money and put it in a bank.

    2. His banker became familiar with the habits of this old gentleman.

      1. Every once in a while the Indian would show up at the bank and say to the banker, "Grass all gone, sheep all sick, water holes dry."

      2. The banker wouldn't say a word -- he knew what needed to be done.

        1. He'd bring the old man inside and seat him in the vault.

        2. Then he'd bring out several bags of silver dollars and say, "These are yours."

    3. The old man would spend about an hour in there looking at his money, stacking up the dollars and counting them.

      1. Then he'd come out and say, "Grass all green, sheep all well, water holes all full."

      2. He was simply reviewing his resources, that's all.

  2. That is where encouragement is found -- when you look at the resources which are yours, the riches, the facts which undergird your faith.

    1. If you value the resources they will be a source of strength and hope.

    2. Expenses (2)

The teenager lost a contact lens while playing basketball in his driveway. After a fruitless search, he told his mother the lens was no where to be found.

Undaunted, she went outside and in a few minutes returned with the lens in her hand.

"How did you manage to find it, Mom?"Mom? the teenager asked.

"We weren't looking for the same thing,"thawing she replied. "You were looking for a small piece of plastic. I was looking for $150."

    1. What are you looking for? What will you find?

Amen!

1. Church Laughs Newsletter [churchlaughs-html@lists.christianitytoday.com]

2. Pastor Tim [posts@cybersaltlists.org]

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