MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG
FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC.
I invite you to pray with me, Father God hear our prayer, and we humbly cry to you as it is written in your word, Lucas 11:9:” Keep asking and it will give to you, Continue searching and you will find it, Keep knocking and it will be open for you)” We are requesting healing for our dear members of our family and also dear friends who are suffering from illnesses in their lives fighting and suffering under a lot of pain, You know them by their names; (Gaby P, Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Gloria F, Stevie A, Les N, Miguel A H, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Sergei B, Margarita G, Fega G. Manuel D, Marlen C. Rosy Ch. ) Also, some of them are tired of spiritual struggles, losing their faith in you, Strengthening their trust in you with a miracle in their lives, oh! Father God, hear our prayer, and we also pray for all the people around the world, especially the children who are suffering from wars, devastation, hunger, pain, hate and disbelieving in you also, bless the ones who are reading this message and their families. Heal the Land of those Countries at war; you love them so much, oh Father God, hear our prayer, we ask you in the name of Our Lord of Lords and King of Kings, your beloved son Jesus Christ. AMEN!
As a very brief review, Ephesians is written to Christians living in a very non-Christian world. A very cosmopolitan city with a wide variance of beliefs. A city of wealth, pleasure and indulgence.
Within this context and to this context, Paul, in the preceding chapter lays out who they are and what they have been given but now he encourages these relatively new believers to look back in order to draw some very clear lines between what was and what now is. Without these clear distinctive in place, they run the risk of being drawn back to beliefs and actions that once characterized them. The simple truth is, we are people who too easily forget what shouldn’t be forgotten.
In essence, Paul is wanting to pin up a refrigerator ‘before and after’ picture, so what is looked back on doesn’t get photo shopped to look better than what it was.
Surrounded by fast paced life that is entertaining, loudly attractive and by appearances successful, it can be easy to gloss over where that life had taken them and us. Getting drawn back in again as we forget or downplay what was and who we were.
To do this Paul gives them a cemetery view where he strips away the serenity of flowers and green grass to remember the wails and tears. Where emptiness and heartache were also real things experienced. Here, despite lovely facades, grave markers and caskets take center stage.
You were dead in trespasses and sins.
That is the reality along with the dancing and laughter, along with the revelry and the rush of life - lots of good things enjoyed, we were all part of the walking dead. Achieving and doing, taking and getting – only to discover that you, along with those around, doing no more than assembling artifacts around us to indicate we were here. The parties attended, the places we went, the houses we furnished, the trophies we won.
Memorabilia collected only to be discarded by those who come next.
Kind of depressing huh?
It gets worse. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. :1-3.
Paul goes on to say that not only are these people dead, they are under the control of a power they cannot see, a power committed to perpetuating death. That phrase, ‘course of this world’, conveys one of those Disney like rides that takes you through thrills, adventures and heart stopping twists and turns. Your feelings of surprise, shock and joy very real but not as real as the track that is taking everyone on the journey that it is laid out to do. But that track is forgotten and unseen, hidden under the presentation of boisterous, music loud life, a life everyone else is living. A life presented as freedom where everyone can live as they choose, engaging in lifestyles they want to enjoy, passions they want to pursue, independence they want to feel. Don’t miss that people in this state are described as the sons of disobedience which is to say that inherent in what has been offered, is a spirit of rebellion that is inside all of us where no one is telling us what to do, no one has a say over what we want. That right belongs to me as we are so often told - we are the captain of our lives, we author the life we want to live. Yet do we?
Here Paul telling us that in truth, before coming to Christ, we were actually no more than a marionette whose strings are being pulled by the prince of the power of the air.
The problem is nothing about this life conveys there are any strings attached. At least not until passions enjoyed no longer satisfy, the desires of body and mind no longer fulfill. But familiarity keeps us returning to the same place thinking that perhaps this time things will be different.
With that picture clearly re-established, Paul once again brings them back to the fridge picture that needs to have their full attention. He does this with two powerful words that if we get these right, they will change everything about how we live life - :4 BUT GOD.
God who stepped in to do what we couldn’t. God who spoke life into things that were dead. God who didn’t just stop death, He ended it forever for those who know Christ. The point is that death can only be overcome by Resurrection power. Which means BUT GOD.
4 BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us.
Don’t overlook how Paul describes this – His great love.
Let’s sit on this for a bit but doing so by changing our reference point. Imagine the scene. It’s dark and you find yourself in a part of town that with any sensible way of thinking, would never bring you here. This is back alley living but back alley in the worst sense of the word. Rat infested squalor. Discarded garbage and spent needles never intended to find their way into a receptacle. Evidence everywhere of broken lives and broken dreams. Yet those living here are not just the unfortunate or victims of wrong choice but also the home of the intentionally evil who give no thought to the lives they ruin.
But you are here wading your way through the filth to get to one. He, one of the most undesirables who should be the last one you want to see. He has done you harm but not just you but others who you loved. In many ways his choices of how he had lived have come back on him. He, as dirty, disfigured and despised as the squalor in which he lives. Yet you have come to find him. To condemn and destroy? You would think so. You have every right to do so. But no, you have come to forgive and restore, yet even that doesn’t actually tell the story. Understand, you haven’t come with some heroic sense of duty, no sudden ‘feel good’. Is he worthy of your coming? Not in any way but you have come because of love. Loving the one you have no right to love but you do. Beyond reason. Beyond any possible reason why you should. For reasons completely undeserved which is why our reference point goes to a different place.
To Jesus in His mercy offering you and I what we don’t deserve. Coming to us because of His GREAT love, finding us when we had no hope, no way of escape, no hope of anything more than the lusts that held us prisoner, of passions that could never be fulfilled, of desires that despite all efforts, never fully met. Mercy extended because He loved the unlovable.
Let’s be honest, most of us never thought of ourselves quite that way, at least not the way ‘others’ around us were like. I mean, we were different than them. As good if not better than most. A standard that more or less made sense, until we stood alongside Him – the One without sin. This Jesus who seeing our trespasses, our sin – the things done, the words said, the lies told, the thoughts entertained. The repeated clicks on that website, the banter at the worksite, the words about those drivers, the sexual messages sent, and the so much more we don’t want anyone else to know – yet God seeing it all. That God, rich in mercy. Not just compassionate but His great love - mercy to us while we were far away from God. Romans 5:8 tells us, But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
There’s something else that we too quickly pass by in these 2, ‘but God’ words - GOD. You and I have no idea what we are talking about when we think of God - who is SO far above what we think of when we speak His name. This God who speaks a universe into existence, who places galaxies upon galaxies upon galaxies. Who weaves the spectacular into the microscopic and who places 2 million working parts into the complexity of the human eye. This God who numbers every star and gives names to all of them. Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite Ps 137:4,5.
And we, who think ourselves so important, just 1 in a mass of 8.2 billion who currently populate earth, not to mention the billions who have gone before. No wonder the Psalmist repeats, What is man that you are mindful of him? Ps 8:4.
This God who loves us and knows us by name Is 43:1. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness Lam 3:22,23. Every day, God coming to us with the hope of new beginnings, no matter where we’ve been, no matter what we’ve done. Coming to us as :5 tells us,
Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus :5,6.
BUT GOD doing far more than just bringing rescue. He making us alive together with Christ. Making us alive is one thing but making us alive together with Christ?
Our resurrection not merely for the here and now for a better, more purpose filled life, but to a destiny that where Jesus is, is where we will be. He doesn’t take us out of death simply to give us life now, He takes us out of death for a forever Life that is to come. Life to be lived now but saved for the everlasting life to come.
All because of grace – God’s great love. The words repeated? WITH Christ.
Raised and seated with Him in the heavenly places.
Not rescued and sent on our way, but rescued to be with – seated with Jesus. With speaks of relationship, of intimacy. This isn’t familiarity and acquaintance - loved from a distance but up close, with Him nearness and connection. Seated with Him. Metaphoric language? I’m quite certain but in the metaphor don’t miss the intimacy of which it speaks. But in some ways, this isn’t metaphoric at all. It is positional reality. That you and I are so identified with Christ that when Jesus died and rose again, we died with Christ, we were buried with Christ, we rose with Christ, we ascended with Christ and just as Christ is seated positionally at the right hand of the Father, in some sense, we are seated there as well. God loving us not as some global restoration project but returning to us a face to face walking intimacy with Him just as was true for Adam and Eve.
Phil 3:20,21 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
CS Lewis observed, A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the great thing a Christian is meant to do. If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were ... those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased talking about the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.
7 so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Some of the most popular shows on tv are house makeover programs. In our housing market what can be done with $150,000 is far different than what we see on screen. In our context, that dollar amount might get us some blinds and a new countertop but for the programs on screen, that amount of money brings dramatic transformations - main floor depressing into home show spectacular. As we watch, the show has its inevitable ‘unexpected issues’ – a main support beam rotted out or water damage that has caused black mold to set in and with that news – the homeowners’ despair. But wait on it – the renovator’s great reveal is still to come. And as is to be expected – early despair turns into magnificent transformation.
That, on an infinitesimally small scale, is what we are told here where we read, So that ...He might show.
The reveal that God has in store for us? the immeasurable riches of His grace. That God has prepared for us the immeasurable riches of His grace that He has prepared for us. Riches that will far exceed the sunset that fills us with awe, the northern lights that set the skies on fire, the spectacular of watching nature on display. But our eyes won’t fix on the heavenly things that will be seen. What they’ll fix on will be Jesus and God’s amazing grace given us in Him. Which is to say what John tells us, We shall see Him as He is 1 Jn 3:2. Paul tells us, Now we see in a glass darkly but then face to face 1 Cor 13:12. The riches front and center - Jesus and the message that will be heard loudest:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. :8,9
In other words, everything God has planned, everything God is doing is given to us by His love offered us in Jesus. A gift undeserved, given because the price required to be paid to come into God’s presence cannot be earned.
Everything else we are told in Scriptures takes a back seat to this. Everything we hear about Christianity takes a back seat to this. That Jesus saves and that means saving sinners like you and me. This is the Gospel – God’s good news. It’s not how society can be better with Jesus. It’s not highlighting the compassionate acts done is His name. It’s not how our families can be better, our lifestyles safer, our happiness greater. Are things like these true? – yes but only as byproducts of being made new through Jesus’ redeeming blood on the Cross.
It's also important to understand that these verses put before us as truth aren’t up for debate or alterations we might wish to make. It’s offered as stated as a gift - God’s gift of grace - but like any gift, offered is not the same as received, opened and owned.
Genesis 6:3 tells us, God’s Spirit will not strive with man forever and that there is a day coming when, Jesus will judge the living and the dead 2 Tim 4:1. No wonder warning is given, I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation and Today, if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts 2 Cor 6:2, Ps 95:7,8. Pastor Jordan Senner observes, Grace has no sin limit, but it does have a time limit.
We could add a tagline to Senner’s observation - that God’s grace also has no qualification limit which is to say no one is disqualified from receiving God’s gift of grace and being made new. God’s gift that cannot be earned, it can only be taken.
Of course we can affirm this theologically but practically? Where we truly believe that God can change what we’ve come to believe is the unchangeable, the inescapable? But that’s what God’s grace does which is what Paul goes on to describe when he says, For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them :10. God doing what we can’t. Our decision to let Him do what He wants to do but only possible when we have accepted His free gift of sins forgiven in Christ.
Paul taking us from Jesus not just saving us but changing us to be used us for His purposes. God’s workmanship, His fingerprints all over us, working from the inside out. Implanting in us what He uniquely crafted in our personality, our giftedness, our passions and putting in things that are new. With some, He working with our inclination to pay close attention to detail, while with others, it’s using our orientation to vision in large pictures. Visionaries needing the other to put in place, details they give little thought to. Or the carefree spirit who meets new people with ease and the other whose happy time is with a few.
Sometimes God doing the completely new, sometimes refining what’s already been given. The athletic and those not; the artistic and those barely giving that a look. ALL in their own way - God prepared. This understanding often missed as someone looks over elevating what another has while dismissing what they’ve been uniquely given. We are His workmanship His masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good works. But not, just good works that I think would be good things to pursue based on who I am and how I tick. BUT good works GOD PREPARED in advance, beforehand, that we should do.
So, not just God prepared but God placed. You. Me.
People, God saved, God shaped, God prepared. God purposed, God placed. YOU! Called to walk in what created you, in Jesus, to do. Not looking to find some grand event but to celebrate who He has made you to be in the here and now and to faithfully serve Him as He has made you to be. NOW not in some time future. Let God take care of what one day might may be. You in the immediate. Just giving this day, this time to be used for His purpose and letting Him do what He has already has planned for your life.
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