Kevin Dibbley - September 24, 2023
"Every Spiritual Blessing"
This Sunday’s message is called Every Spiritual Blessing. In Ephesians 1:3-4, the apostle Paul writes one long run-on sentence about the incredible riches of God’s grace in the gospel. One commentator called this section of Scripture“ a snowball tumbling down a hill, and picking up volume as it descends.” (Sorry to bring up snow in September!) Paul praises God for the mind-blowing grace that He has shown us in Jesus Christ. For Paul, it really is undeserved. It is riches to rebels. It is lavish love completely at Christ’s expense. As Paul calls the Ephesian believers to pursue unity in gospel love to each other, he sets before them just how much God in Christ loved us when we did not love Him. The Father chose to give us the opposite of what we deserved. This week we are just going to look at verses 3-4. There we see God made the first move towards us. God was all in for our salvation before we would have or could have moved towards Him. The reason any of us belong to God is because God chose to save us from our hell-bent sin and rebellion and granted us every spiritual blessing in Christ. Let’s come together and consider the undeserved and stunning riches of God’s initiating grace. We are taking communion this week and celebrating Every Spiritual Blessing in Christ.
Scripture References: Ephesians 1:3-4
From Series: "Ephesians: One In Christ"
We are beginning a sermon series focusing upon the New Testament letter of Ephesians. Our series is called “One in Christ”. In Japan, there is a form of artwork called Kintsugi art. Kin means gold. Tsugi means to mend. In Kintsugi art, an artist will take, for example, a piece of ceramic teaware that has been broken during an earthquake or something like that. Instead of repairing it to make it look like the original plate or teacup, the artist will instead use Japanese lacquer and gold to actually highlight the fractures. Out of the broken vessel comes a brand new piece that is considered more beautiful and more valuable than the original. The apostle Paul teaches in Ephesians that God in Christ has chosen to take our lives broken and alienated from God and each other by sin and make one new community. John Stott writes “Through Christ and in Christ, we are nothing less than God’s new society, the single new humanity which he is creating and includes Jews and Gentiles on equal terms. We are the family of God the Father, the body of Jesus Christ his Son, and the temple and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.” Our hope and prayer is that over the next several months, we would get a vision of the church as God’s new creation, His masterpiece, which is just the beginning of what God intends to do throughout all eternity and throughout the entire heavens and on earth. Out of his brokenness, we become one. Pray that together we would become in real relationships what we are in positionally through the gospel – One in Christ.
