Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I'll have to have a little oh today, national champions.
[00:00:12] For you who aren't Ohio State fans, there's plenty of time to repent.
[00:00:23] And I want to say I thought Sarah preached a very inspiring sermon last week about faith in God.
[00:00:36] Just made me want to trust God more than I've ever done in my life.
[00:00:42] Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray that in the work of your spirit in our hearts, we could come to see you more the way you really are.
[00:00:59] I pray this morning that we could come to know you as the blessed God.
[00:01:06] And I pray that knowing you that way will change how we feel about you and will change our values.
[00:01:15] And I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[00:01:19] Going to be preaching a sermon series to you in the coming weeks on the first chapter of Ephesus.
[00:01:26] So I'd like to tell you a little bit about Ephesus.
[00:01:31] The city of Ephesus was a very, very wealthy city.
[00:01:37] It's on.
[00:01:38] It's on the west coast of what is modern day Turkey.
[00:01:44] It wasn't just a very wealthy city, it was also a.
[00:01:50] It was a city of philosophers.
[00:01:54] The city attracted philosophers from the ancient world.
[00:02:00] It was an international port.
[00:02:04] There was a harbor that's since silted in, but in Paul's lifetime, there was a harbor that was an international port that did business all over the Mediterranean.
[00:02:19] There's an amphitheater and you can still see the ruins of it today. And it seated about 24,000 people.
[00:02:29] So if you can imagine a large stadium of 24,000 people.
[00:02:36] I've stood in that amphitheater when I visited Ephesus. It's very impressive.
[00:02:41] You can sit at the top steps and somebody can speak down on the floor and you can hear them just like they had a microphone on. The acoustics in there are ridiculous.
[00:02:55] There was also a two story library in Ephesus. It's called the Celsus Library. And we take libraries for granted because we have them in every one of our towns and multiple libraries in most towns. But in the ancient world, if there was a library in a city, it was a rare thing.
[00:03:23] So that they had a library tells you something about the culture of the city.
[00:03:30] The main building in Ephesus was the temple of Artemis.
[00:03:35] And Artemis was like a Mother nature Greek deity.
[00:03:41] The. The. The temple was about 600 years old when Paul got there.
[00:03:48] So for 600 years, Ephesus had been the center of the worship of the Greek goddess Artemis. And people came from all over the Mediterranean to do festivals and sacrifices there.
[00:04:09] But Ephesus was A wicked city.
[00:04:14] I have one of their laws. I'm going to read it to you.
[00:04:19] Let no man be frugal or temperate among us.
[00:04:25] Let no man excel another in virtue.
[00:04:29] Or if he does, let him be gone from among us.
[00:04:34] They had a law. It was against the law to be virtuous in Ephesus.
[00:04:41] If you were too good of a person, they exiled you from the city.
[00:04:47] And this is the town that Paul is going into to share the Gospel.
[00:04:54] Paul spent about three years in Ephesus on his third missionary trip. And that was around the year 52 A.D. and when Paul was there, probably about 200,000 people lived in and around Ephesus. It was a huge city for the ancient world.
[00:05:17] And after he spent three years there, you know, he got arrested in Jerusalem and he was taken to Rome. And he wrote this letter to the Ephesians while he was in jail in Rome.
[00:05:34] And he starts his letter.
[00:05:39] He begins the teaching of his letter with a very interesting statement. He says, the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one blessing us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things, in Christ Jesus.
[00:06:01] Now, sometimes, if we're not careful, we read over stuff. I know your English translation says blessed be God, but we add the be. It's really not in the original text. The original text says the blessed God.
[00:06:20] The very first thing Paul says to the church at Ephesus is, everything starts with the idea that God is in and of himself, innately and infinitely blessed.
[00:06:43] Many of us.
[00:06:45] Many of us have had great blessings in our lives, but no one is innately, excuse me, blessed.
[00:07:01] In fact, many of us are rather harsh with ourselves, the way we think.
[00:07:09] Now, let's define for ourselves.
[00:07:13] What does bless blessed. What does blessed mean?
[00:07:19] It's a compound word that literally means to speak well of all. Right. Now I want to ask you, has there ever been a time in your life, in your inner thinking that you did not speak well of yourself?
[00:07:36] Yeah, most of us about something every day, Right. I can find something to be grouchy with myself about almost every day. All right.
[00:07:46] The thing that makes God.
[00:07:50] One of the things that makes God so unique is he has never spoken poorly of himself to himself.
[00:08:01] He is innately blessed.
[00:08:05] His thoughts about himself are true, pure, holy and good. He is the blessed God.
[00:08:18] Paul said, you have this temple here and you worship this, a Greek deity.
[00:08:27] And one of the most famous stories about Artemis is one day she was at a spring with some of her friends, and a hunter accidentally found them at this spring.
[00:08:43] And she felt insulted, turned his Dog turned him into a roebuck and his dogs chased him down and ate him.
[00:08:54] And that's the goddess they worshiped.
[00:08:58] Can you imagine, can you imagine what your life would be like if one of the big stories about God was he turned people into animals and other animals ate them?
[00:09:15] Who would feel safe in such a world?
[00:09:19] So in that world, Paul says, I want to talk to you about the true God. He's very, very different than the goddess you've been hearing about all your life.
[00:09:31] And one of the major things that makes him very different is he has this internal self talk that is healthy, holy, good and right.
[00:09:45] The second thing that blessed means is to wish well. When you bless someone, you wish them well.
[00:09:56] God is eternally and infinitely blessed. He wishes himself well.
[00:10:05] He and we're going to talk about this, how it works in the Trinity, day after day. God has goodwill toward himself in his heart.
[00:10:17] And the third thing that it means is to have good intentions toward God, has good intentions toward himself. He has no self destructive behaviors.
[00:10:34] Everybody in this room, everybody online, we have self destructive behaviors that we have to confront.
[00:10:42] God has no self destructive behaviors. His intentions toward himself are always good. They're healthy, they're noble, they're holy.
[00:10:58] So Paul says, you've heard about the goddess Artemis your whole life and I can understand you being intimidated by her.
[00:11:09] But I want to tell you about the true God, not a mythological God. And the true God, you, your first thoughts of him should be, he is a self blessed being, he speaks well to himself, he wishes well for himself, and he has good intentions toward himself.
[00:11:33] Now how does that work?
[00:11:35] Remember, God is a trinity. There is one essence and three persons. And these three persons speak to each other.
[00:11:46] The Father blesses the Son and the Spirit.
[00:11:51] How does he do that? The Father says to the Son, you are divine, you're wonderful, you're beautiful. I enjoy your company.
[00:12:06] The Father says to the Spirit, you are awesome. You're beautiful and you're good and I enjoy your company. That's God blessing himself within the Trinity. Are you thinking with me? And then the Son blesses the Father and he says to the Father, I want to speak well of you. You're wise, you're consistent, you always accomplish your purpose.
[00:12:38] You are noble.
[00:12:40] And the Son blesses the Spirit and says, you are the beauty of God touching human souls.
[00:12:50] You're altogether awesome.
[00:12:53] The Spirit blesses the Father and the Son. The communication between the three persons of the Trinity is a blessed communication. All right, we've all had conversations that went real well.
[00:13:11] But we've also had conversations we'd like to have a do over on.
[00:13:15] Right.
[00:13:18] We've all said things that we'd like to say. Okay, I want to take that back. I want to mulligan on that one.
[00:13:27] God in his eternal blessedness has no regret for how he speaks to Himself in the Trinity.
[00:13:38] It is a blessed conversation. And the Father feels blessed by the Son, and the Son feels blessed by the Father, and the Spirit and the Son feel blessed by each other. It is a communication of beauty and goodness.
[00:13:57] It's not only a good communication, but they really wish well for each other.
[00:14:05] The Father really wants what's best for the Son, and He really wants what's best for the Spirit and the Son wants what's best for the Father. Our God is a self blessing God not only in how he speaks to Himself, but in his desires for the other persons of the Trinity.
[00:14:32] And because God is a self blessed God, we learn that when our souls are healthy, we want to bless God also.
[00:14:46] When my soul is healthy, I have a longing to bless God.
[00:14:53] Listen to the Psalmist, Psalm 10:31 Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name.
[00:15:07] Well, how do I do that?
[00:15:09] Speak well of the Lord, O my soul.
[00:15:13] Have good wishes for the Lord, O my soul.
[00:15:20] Have good will and good intentions toward the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. You speak well of the Lord also.
[00:15:32] How about Psalm 141? Bless the Lord, O my soul.
[00:15:38] And now he does it. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty. Do you see what he did? He said, my soul wants to bless the Lord. And then he speaks well of him. He says, you are very great and you're clothed with splendor and majesty.
[00:15:59] When I bless the Lord from the authentic best part of who I am, I am saying to God wonderful things about who I think he is.
[00:16:14] That's blessing the Lord.
[00:16:17] When I bless the Lord from my authentic best self, I'm saying to God, I believe your ideas are best and I wish for your ideas to triumph everywhere in me, in my home, in my workplace, and in the world.
[00:16:36] We don't bless the Lord by mindless cliches.
[00:16:42] We bless the Lord by intentional personal connection with who he is. That leads to this impulse to say to God, I know how great you are. I know how good you are. I recognize how wonderful you are.
[00:17:03] And it turns out that God is delighted when we bless him by speaking well of him. It delights God all Right. We are created in the image of God.
[00:17:18] And here's something true about the human soul. We like it when people say nice things about us. We don't like it when people say mean things about us.
[00:17:29] Is there an amen in the house today?
[00:17:32] All right.
[00:17:34] We are innately hardwired. It makes us feel good and it makes us feel connected to people who say nice things to us.
[00:17:45] It makes us feel bad and disconnected from people who say ugly things.
[00:17:51] Church.
[00:17:53] Well, it turns out God himself is blessed. And he has a sense of joy when he hears you say nice things about Him.
[00:18:06] So I want to ask you, when was the last time you said something nice about. About the blessed God?
[00:18:13] When's the last time you said something to yourself nice about the blessed God?
[00:18:19] When was the last time you said something to someone else nice about the blessed God?
[00:18:26] You see, God delights to hear the people who love him speak well of him.
[00:18:39] God loves to hear us bless him by wishing him well.
[00:18:47] It isn't uncommon us for us to have a running debate with God.
[00:18:53] Can we be honest with ourselves? God is at work on us, trying to make us better people.
[00:18:58] And sometimes the areas he wants to make us better people, we're not ready to cooperate with him in becoming a better person in that area.
[00:19:08] Any other sinner here, okay. And I have found over my life, when God gets me better in one area, he starts picking on me in something else because he really wants me to be a good man.
[00:19:23] And I find that often when God starts working on me to make me a better man, I'm not cooperating.
[00:19:35] I'm not wishing him well. I'm saying, hey, didn't we just do this about this issue? I mean, really, now we have to start this all over?
[00:19:49] I find that in some things in my life, I'm not wishing God well. I'm wishing him to be a little less intrusive.
[00:20:03] No.
[00:20:05] All right.
[00:20:06] I bless God when he starts chipping away at my heart and I say, I wish you well.
[00:20:15] I wish that what you're doing in my heart you will have your perfect work and I will become the person you want me to be.
[00:20:26] I bless God when I say I'm not. I have to admit something in me is contrarian about this, but I wish you well. I want you to have your perfect will in my life. Church.
[00:20:45] I wish God well. God takes joy in our blessing him with good intentions.
[00:20:55] Sometimes the best I can offer to God is good intentions. I intend to be a better person in this way. I'm not right Now I admit it.
[00:21:07] But I intend to be because you want me to be.
[00:21:12] God takes joy when I say to him, I have every intention of becoming the person you want me to be. I bless God by having the intentions toward him that he wants me to have. Can you hear this church?
[00:21:41] And with Paul in the church of Ephesus, that was the starting point for everything.
[00:21:48] If I can see God as self blessed and I can begin to see that the healthiest thing my soul does in relationship to God is to bless him, that is the beginning point for all of the rest of the Christian life.
[00:22:06] If I don't think God is a blessed God and I think he's kind of grouchy and I think he's a little bit like Artemis, you better be careful. You get too close to him, you might be in trouble.
[00:22:19] Then it's going to cripple my whole Christian life.
[00:22:22] On the other hand, if I say the God that I worship is internally self blessing, something good is going on in there. His thoughts are good, his ideas are good, his self speech is healthy. When I start thinking about God that way he comes, he becomes incredibly more trustworthy and incredibly more personal. And it changes how I relate to him.
[00:22:57] The blessed God is the beginning of all spiritual life.
[00:23:06] And then he says the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:23:12] We best understand the fatherly nature of God through his relationship to Christ. All right, I've learned over the years it's hard to talk about the fatherhood of God because we connect too much of our thinking about fatherhood with our fathers.
[00:23:38] And every dad in the world made mistakes.
[00:23:43] You know? What? You think your dad made a mistake? Yeah, he did. Just like every other dad in the world, including U.S.
[00:23:54] church. All right, so when we think about the fatherhood of God, that gets mixed up with the reality of humanity. All right, so I want to talk about the fatherhood of God in the relationship of the perfect father to the perfect Son. The Father God and his Son Jesus Christ. That is the perfect model.
[00:24:22] There is no flaw in that model. The Father never made a mistake with the Son and the Son never made a mistake with the Father. It is a perfect father and son relationship.
[00:24:36] As the Son as, as a man. Jesus is the son of God by birth.
[00:24:44] As God the second person of the Trinity. Christ is the Son of God by voluntary submission.
[00:24:52] We believe that Jesus Christ is man and God. He is the son of the Virgin Mary and he is the son of the living God.
[00:25:04] He is the son of a man by birth. He is the son of God by voluntary submission.
[00:25:14] Jesus Christ the Son, is equal to the Father in absolutely every way.
[00:25:21] But he voluntarily, in the Trinity expressing itself to mankind. He voluntarily submits himself to the plan and the purpose of the Father. Do you see? He is not subjected. He voluntarily submits.
[00:25:46] And so we have this. We have this image. A perfect Father who has a.
[00:25:55] Who has the Second Person of the Trinity is His equal in every way. But the Second Person of the Trinity voluntarily obeys the Father because of the eternal purpose.
[00:26:11] Now I have the model for what the fatherhood of God looks like.
[00:26:18] There is a perfect being. We call Him God the Father, and he adopts us into his family and we become his children.
[00:26:29] And in the very same way that Jesus blessed the Father by voluntarily obeying him. We bless the Father by voluntarily obeying Him. I want you to hear this.
[00:26:44] This. This business. I hear it from. I hear it from time to time. It sounds. It sounds something like this. God bullied me until I became a Christian.
[00:26:56] That is the most wicked thing I've ever heard. First of all, God doesn't need to bully you.
[00:27:03] And second of all, who do you really think you are?
[00:27:08] I mean, what makes you such a catch that God goes against his nature to bully you?
[00:27:18] It is insane.
[00:27:20] There is only one true obedience to God, and it is voluntary obedience.
[00:27:26] If you only obey God because you're afraid he's going to kick you in the teeth, first of all, you don't know God. And second of all, it's not obedience, it's intimidation.
[00:27:39] Church Jesus teaches us that there is really only one.
[00:27:45] There's really only one true obedience to the Father. And that is a voluntary obedience out of the love and the knowledge of what a wonderful and perfect person he is.
[00:27:59] Listen what Jesus said.
[00:28:03] John 5:19.
[00:28:06] Truly, truly, I say to you. The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
[00:28:15] For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that He Himself is doing.
[00:28:26] And greater works than these he will show him so that you may marvel. Did you. Did you hear what Jesus taught us? There? Here's what he said.
[00:28:36] I'm doing in my life what my perfect heavenly Father showed me to do.
[00:28:45] I'm voluntarily doing in my life what my perfect heavenly Father showed me to do. Now, that's the model for us.
[00:28:53] The model for us is we have a perfect Heavenly Father.
[00:28:59] And he is passionate to show us how to live in a way that is. That is best, that is most profitable, that is, that is noble.
[00:29:14] That leaves us without regret and without remorse.
[00:29:18] And when he shows us that we follow Christ's example and we voluntarily do what he's showing us to do. Can you hear this, Church? It's the only obedience that really counts.
[00:29:37] The blessed God is our Father only if Christ is our Lord.
[00:29:45] The blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The only way the Father is your heavenly Father is if Jesus Christ is your Lord. And Jesus Christ introduces you to the wonder and the majesty of His Father. You cannot know the Father without the Son. Church.
[00:30:12] The blessed God is our Father through Jesus Christ.
[00:30:18] Could I ask you today, have you ever given yourself away to Christ without reservation?
[00:30:26] Have you ever said to Jesus Christ, I am yours.
[00:30:32] I want to live the life you want me to live. I want to think the thoughts you want me to think. I want to treat people the way you want them treated. And I am giving myself away to you without reservation.
[00:30:47] I want to bless you by giving myself away to you without reservation.
[00:30:58] And then Paul said, the blessed God blesses.
[00:31:04] See, out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Because God is full of blessings. He blesses out of the infinite blessedness of his own blessed existence.
[00:31:19] The blessed God blesses us.
[00:31:23] You don't know. You know what? When God speaks about you, he speaks well of you.
[00:31:30] In fact, there may not be anyone in the whole universe who speaks as well of you as the blessed God does. He blesses you. What does that mean? He speaks well of you.
[00:31:44] It isn't only to Jesus Christ that the Father says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. It is to all those who know what it means to be blessed by the blessed God.
[00:31:59] Your God speaks well of you.
[00:32:03] Your God wishes you well. Every day you get up and God says, I hope you have the best day of your life today. I wish well for you.
[00:32:13] This business of when bad stuff happens, we blame it on God. It's the work of the Antichrist to make people think that God is blessed. And he blesses the blessings in your life. They have their origin in God blessing you.
[00:32:34] God has goodwill and good intentions toward you. All the intentions of his heart toward you are good.
[00:32:42] Listen. This will help you. If you've been daydreaming, wake up and come home to me.
[00:32:49] Listen.
[00:32:50] In Christ, God connects us to his deepest affections.
[00:33:00] So when I need to be blessed, it stimulates God's great passion to bless me. Do you hear this?
[00:33:10] You don't annoy God. Your desire and your prayer for blessing, it stimulates his desire to bless you.
[00:33:21] Church.
[00:33:24] A mother raising a child, a hungry child stimulates the mother's heart to feed the child. Right, moms?
[00:33:36] All right, you're out. Dads.
[00:33:41] When my kids said they wanted they were hungry, I wanted to get them something to eat.
[00:33:48] It was more than utilitarian. When they wanted ice cream, I wanted to get them ice cream. Their desire stimulated my passion to be a good dad to them.
[00:34:01] And if we're evil and we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more? Your Father in heaven, can you hear this? Your need to be blessed is not an annoyance to the blessed God. It stimulates his passion. And out of the riches of his blessings, he blesses you not because he has to, but because he has a heart full of blessing as the blessed God.
[00:34:39] I don't know why this has to be so hard, but it is.
[00:34:42] All right, I'm going to give you a grammar lesson.
[00:34:50] Bless is a verb.
[00:34:54] It's an action. It's something you do.
[00:34:58] Blessing is a noun. It's a thing. It's a person, place, thing, or idea.
[00:35:07] So bless, the verb is an impulse of God's heart.
[00:35:18] Blessings are the results that that impulse creates.
[00:35:26] The, the. The action is God blesses me.
[00:35:32] What I get are blessings.
[00:35:36] All right? Now why is that important?
[00:35:39] Because we get all messed up on this.
[00:35:42] We grow to like the blessings more than we like being blessed.
[00:35:50] Church.
[00:35:51] We grow to like the blessings more than the idea of the blessing heart of God. Now I can prove this to you.
[00:36:04] The most valuable of the two is the impulse of God's heart to bless. That's more valuable than anything.
[00:36:12] Ah.
[00:36:13] Ah. You can receive a gift from a person who doesn't like you. And it's not a blessing, it's a gift.
[00:36:23] In fact, it maybe have been given on given to you to make you feel bad to begin with. Not every gift is a blessing.
[00:36:31] Ask some of the people who won the lottery what happened to their blessing. All right, all right.
[00:36:38] The blessing is the gift.
[00:36:43] The blessed is the heart of God. And God's heart to bless me is infinitely more valuable than any blessing he can ever give me.
[00:36:55] Can you hear this?
[00:36:57] There is nothing. There is not one person, place, thing or idea that is more valuable than the impulse of God's heart. When he looks at you to say, I want to bless you.
[00:37:15] My intention toward you, my passion toward you, what I'm looking to do in your life is to bless you.
[00:37:25] That passion in the heart of God is infinitely more valuable than anything he will ever give. You God's inexpic, inexplicable impulse to bless is far more precious than any actual gift that he gives. Listen to what the psalmist says.
[00:37:51] Your steadfast love is better than life.
[00:37:56] Do you hear this?
[00:37:58] God's steadfast love, his impulse to bless us is better than anything else in life.
[00:38:06] Now I want you to ask yourself, do you really believe that?
[00:38:11] Or have you been trapped in materialistic thinking that the good stuff is really what I can touch and the good stuff is really not what happens in the heart of God and in the soul of man.
[00:38:25] I like this also.
[00:38:27] God does not limit himself when he blesses us. Look what it says.
[00:38:35] He blessed us with all blessings.
[00:38:42] Did you read over the all I know some of your English Bibles translate that every.
[00:38:47] Listen, God does not limit the blessings.
[00:38:52] All blessings.
[00:38:55] Every blessing you need, God has for you.
[00:39:01] Could I remind you, James wrote, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above. Coming down from the Father of Lights. Did you hear that? Every good blessing you need originates in the heart of God and He has all that you need. The trouble is the the devil lies to us and says you need this and you need that. You deserve this and you deserve that. And we, we hear the whispers and we miss the heart of God.
[00:39:41] You can read in the Old Testament that God gave them what they wanted, but he also gave them leanness of heart.
[00:39:50] They had the stuff, but they were living an empty souled life.
[00:39:58] Next week and the weeks following, we're going to look at seven specific spiritual blessings. I'm just going to introduce them to you today. Verse 4 out of the blessed heart of God he elects us.
[00:40:14] Verse 5 and 6 He predestinates us. Verse 7 and 8 He redeems us.
[00:40:21] Verses 9 and 10 he teaches us the mystery of his will.
[00:40:26] Verse 11 he calls us.
[00:40:29] Verse 12 he fills us with hope.
[00:40:33] Verses 13 and 14 he seals and guarantees our acceptance to the Heavenly Father.
[00:40:44] Ah, these are the spiritual blessings that Paul listed and we're going to study them one at a time. And I think it will enrich your soul Church because we have not known the blessed God, we have flawed values and we live materialistic lives with empty souls.
[00:41:09] Knowing the blessed God, studying His spiritual blessings will change our values and will eternally enrich our souls. Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray that your spirit would do what only he can do.
[00:41:30] This is good seed and I pray that it would land on fertile soil.
[00:41:41] I pray that there are hearts here today that this message will take root in them and it will. It will grow and produce fruit.
[00:41:52] I pray that will. That there'll be souls who think about you differently and relate to you differently.
[00:42:00] I pray especially for those who.
[00:42:04] Who have not ever really sensed how blessed you are and how you are passionate to bless them.
[00:42:16] I pray this morning that, as only you can do, your spirit would pass over their souls and you would do something special, and they would hear them saying to you, bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name, Amen.
