Blessed With All Things

Ephesians 1:3a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

The most real thing that I think we could do at this moment is for you to think how much you paid
for your shoes. How much did you pay for those shoes that you’re wearing now? And if you’ve
settled that, then think how much did you pay for your nose? Now how much did you pay for your
eyes? Each of us can give some figure for our shoes but our nose, even though we know there is
cosmetic surgery possible, yet the whole nose and all that it does for us we would answer, “Well, I
don’t even know where I’d go to buy one.” And then when the question of the eyes comes up we say,
“Well, I couldn’t get eyes like this. Probably if I had all the money in the world I couldn’t get
eyes like these.” And then I ask you how much did you pay for your left leg? And you say, “Well, I
could not get a left leg. They would fit me with some kind of wooden or metal thing. I couldn’t
buy a leg like this. Even if I had the money there is no place I could buy a leg like this.”

And then you go on to the utterly impossible things — your brain, how much did you pay for your
brain? And then how much did you pay to get to see yesterday’s sunset or sunrise? And you say,
“Nothing, I just looked out and there was the sunrise. I didn’t pay anything. And that’s probably
one of the – if not the most important thing– we can settle in our own minds at this moment. All
these things that you and I have that we could not buy anywhere, they have been given to us. And we
probably wouldn’t dream of selling even one of them because they’re our very life. And some of the
most beautiful things that we see like the sunrise cannot be imitated and yet we do not pay anything
to get to see them. And I think that’s why there is only one attitude that we can have each moment
of every day. And that is continual thanks, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Every time we see bricks, every time we see a table, every time we speak we say, “Thank you, thank
you, thank you. I couldn’t do this if you didn’t give me this and if you didn’t maintain it in
working order day after day. I couldn’t do these things. Thank you. Thank you.” And that’s what
we talked about last time in the third study of Ephesians. We talked about blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was only one attitude that was legitimate and justifiable for
men and women like ourselves. That attitude was just, “Bless you Lord. Bless you, bless you, bless
you. Thank you.”

And part of the reason I bring it up is because it’s so easy to slip into the attitude that the
first man and woman expressed. You know the attitude. We may not use those words but it was the
attitude found in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that
the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the
garden’?” And it’s easy to slip into that. “Yes, but I have a wrinkle here.” “Yes, but why didn’t
he give me a husband?” “Why didn’t he give me some other situation that I would enjoy better?”
“Well, why couldn’t I do what so and so does?”
When you look at it, it sounds ridiculously ungrateful. It sounds the meanest, pettiest, small
minded attitude that you could imagine.” All these trees are here in this garden but has God said,
“Is there any tree that you can’t eat? Did he say any one? Did he give you them all?” And it’s so
easy instead of having our life a continual benediction to the Father, with continual joy, continual
thanksgiving, continual gladness, it’s so easy for it to be filled with, “Oh, I resent that I didn’t
get this.” Or we complain that, “I don’t have that.” Or we worry that, “I won’t get this.” And
it’s so easy for the life to sink into headaches and worry so that vaguely life leaks away. Maybe

it’s not quite as bad as that but there is a vague kind of satisfaction but with a bit of
discontent.

But most importantly our attitude is not what is normal, and natural, and reasonable in the light of
the fact that, “I have fingers that I couldn’t buy, I have a hand that I couldn’t buy, I have legs
that I couldn’t buy, I have eyes that I couldn’t buy. Father, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Lord, thank you for this wonderful life that you’ve given me. Thank you that I can see, that I can
hear. Thank you Father that I can think. Thank you that I can walk.”

It’s probably good, just as we think of what we studied the previous Sunday, to check out the posts
and see, “Now what is the mark of my life? Is the mark of my life praise, delight, and joy, or is
the mark of my life a kind of grudging, ‘Well I’ve got something but Lord, help me to be better,
help me to be happier.’” Is it always, “Lord, give me something else. There’s another tree that I
haven’t got. I’ve got all these trees, but help me to feel this.”

There’s a sense in which it’s just ungrateful and petty. It’s ungrateful and it isn’t what’s normal
or natural in the situation. And of course, you realize it every time your dad goes into the
hospital. I remember my dad saying, when he was in the hospital, he said, “Oh, if I could only feel
the rain in my face.” And that’s what always happens. You don’t realize that delight of a rainy day
until you’re stuck in a bed and can’t move. We need to look above it all and not say, “Yes, I
better be grateful the way pastor says.” No, it’s not that.

Rather, look up and see, “How much more could this dear Father give us? How much more could he give
us?” And, “How much more understanding or how generous or magnanimous could he be?” It seems to me
that when you see that then your life is marked with just an unselfish joy and delight in him.
You’re not filled with your own mighty virtue, or your own stoical wonderful promethean struggles to
be a virtuous man or woman. It’s then that you see, “I am nothing and everything that is good is
what has been given to me. He’s maintaining it every day, thank goodness, because I couldn’t
maintain it.” And that’s the spirit, that the dear Apostle Paul is expressing, “Blessed be the God
and Father or our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And then you remember, if you look at the next verse it’s the second half of Ephesians 1:3 that we
have the privilege of looking at today. Ephesians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” and then, “Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places.” And the bewildering and startling thing about this verse is the tense of the verb. It
throws you completely and it’s what tumbles us into the depths of this remarkable book of Ephesians.
The tense, you can see in the English is, “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places — who has blessed us. And we normally think, “Well, doesn’t he
understand Greek? He should say, ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will
bless us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.’ That’s obviously talking
about the time when we get to heaven and God is going to bless us in Christ in the heavenly places
and that’s what the verse should say, ‘Who will bless us in Christ in the heavenly places with every
spiritual blessing.’ And at that time we’ll receive all the spiritual blessings that we’re missing
now. We’ll enjoy them, and we’ll experience them fully and freely. And that’s what he should be
saying. Paul just has his tense wrong. He means who will bless us.”

No, the Greek is very clear. It’s eulogesas. If you were going to parse it, the subject of the
sentence is masculine because it applies to God, and the Greek word is past tense not future tense.
The Greek word is past tense and it means who has blessed us.

What it does is it gets us back to what we’ve mentioned before, that God and Jesus, and the Holy
Spirit had everything that they needed in each other. And God our Father resolved that he would
share that with other beings like himself and his Son. But he knew if they were to be like
themselves they had to have free wills. The Father did what he did because he wanted to. And Jesus
does what he does because he wants to.

Our Father knew that to have beings like himself he had to give them free will. But that meant that
he had to give them the freedom to kill and destroy him, and to choose themselves. And that meant
that he had to be in a position where he could destroy them. That’s because, if he was destroyed
there’d be nothing. But he could destroy them and yet raise them again. He could make them alive
again so that they saw a real choice. They saw what life was like apart from God and they saw what
life was like with God.

So he turned to his Son and he said, “My Son, will you become the first of these beings? Will you
allow the others to be created in you so that when they have to be destroyed you will bear the pain
of their destruction? And then because of your love and your life for me you yourself will raise
them back to life again inside yourself.” And our Savior said, “Yes, I will. Into thy hands I
commit my spirit.” And at that moment, in that millisecond, in the heavenly places, in eternity,
God did all that.

I think you can see that it happened there because God conceived it all in a millisecond. And the
moment he conceived it, that moment he experienced all the pain, agony, and the destruction of that.
And so it all happened back then. That’s why for Greek scholars, this is so important. I’d point
out to you that you know, the ordinary past tense is not “eulogesas”. It’s “eulogekas” with a k not
an s, which is the ordinary perfect tense. Strictly speaking the RSV would be better translated,
“who blessed us”, rather than “has” because in English we tend to express the perfect by “has
blessed” and we do that because we say the emphasis is on a past act that has brought about a
present state. It’s a past act that has brought about a present state. But the Greek word
eulogesas is a special past tense that means “just blessed”, a past single act. The emphasis is on
the past single act rather than the present state.

Let’s say this is the timeline. The past is one end of eternity and this year is another end of
eternity. Let’s say you go back to the beginning of Old Testament history and then you go back to
the creation of the world itself. In this, (what you can only describe as infinity) eternity of
time, in the heavenly places, the lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. And God
blessed us in Christ back there with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

In other words — in Christ himself Joe, in Christ himself Greg, in Christ himself Joanne — God
blessed each one of you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in these heavenly places. That’s
what the verse says. Back then, before the creation, before any of us were born, we were blessed in
Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That means with every spiritual
blessing, everything that we would need. That’s what the word is in English transliteration
epouraniois — those are the heavenly places. These are the places in eternity, where God himself
dwells which is our real home, not this little plot of time that we call this present world. This
isn’t our home. This is our home here. This is where we were created, this is where we will live
forever with God and it’s here that God blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

God has blessed every man and every woman with everything that they need. When we get sick God

blessed us with the spiritual blessing of healing in Christ and the Holy Spirit is able to
administer that to us here in time. But we do not need to reach up to it and pull it down because
God blessed us with it in Christ. He blessed us with every spiritual blessing. It’s the same with
forgiveness. Sometimes we take the unreal attitude, “Oh, I need forgiveness.” But the fact is, God
blessed you with forgiveness even when you were yet a sinner. If you say to me, “You mean he paid
us before we did the work?” That’s right.

However, stupid we think that was, he paid us before we did the work. He bore the pain of our
destruction and our resurrection before ever we knew anything about it. He gave back these things to
us this before we had even started to cut his Son. That’s what it is, God blessed us with these
things even before he had any guarantee that we would turn towards him at all. Indeed, in the case
of (as far as we can see, and we have to be careful) but in the case of Adolf Hitler it never
happened. Now, it appears there are millions that not only spat upon Jesus but ground his blood
into the dust. Yes, that’s our gracious God.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us back then with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And so there is nothing that any of us need today
that God has not already given to us in Jesus. And it’s important that you see that. “You mean he’s
given it to us in Jesus?” He gave it to Jesus in you and he gave it to you in Jesus. Whatever
Jesus has you have. Whatever spiritual life and rest that’s needed, you have already got. That’s
where we can take such an unreal attitude in regard to the second rest of the people of God. We say,
“I’m trying to get into the second rest. I am. I’m trying to get into the baptism of the Holy
Spirit. I know that’s what I need. If I only had the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” If you had only
the baptism? But you have. God gave you that in Jesus.

“Well, I know but I really have to…,” “You have to explain it to him?” “Yes, I have to explain it.”
But, it is yours. Are you willing for it? Are you willing to be in the baptism of the Holy
Spirit? Are you willing to rest from your labors? “Oh, well if I could only rest from my labors it
would save me such worry and such anxiety.” “But you wouldn’t have the credit for your labors.”
“Well, I don’t need the credit.” “Well then, why don’t you rest from your labors? Why don’t you
accept that God has blessed you with a second rest of the people of God? Why don’t you accept that
you are nothing in Jesus, God has destroyed you in him, Jesus alone lives in you and he will do all
the living for you? Why don’t you accept that?” Well, it’s not so easy. Well it is.

It’s not a matter of us trying to get the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or trying to get the second
rest of the people of God, or trying to get forgiveness, or trying to get regeneration, or trying to
get conviction of sin, or trying to get an awakened spirit. These we have all been blessed with in
Jesus. All we have to do is be willing for the life that results from those.

You remember the two men that used to ride to church on a pony cart for years in the states. They
attended a church where holiness of heart was preached, where the clean heart was preached, where
sanctification, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the second rest of the people of God, the victory
over sin, the ability to do what you knew was right, and that we are not to be continually saying,
“The good that I would I cannot do.” And these men went there every Sunday and sought for a clean
heart, and sought for entire sanctification. They sought for years, and years, and years and then
one of them entered in. He was picking up the other man to take them both to church as usual, and
the other one said to him, “John, how did you enter in?” And John looked at him and said, “I just
got honest with God.” And that’s it.

It is not that we need something more, we need to just get honest with God, stop playing around, and
stop saying, “Oh, I’d love to be free from my labors.” All we mean is, “I wish we hadn’t so much
trouble with myself. I’d love to be free of having so much trouble with myself.” Yes, but are you
really free from making yourself the important person? Are you willing for Jesus to be the only
one? God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in
Christ from before the foundation of the world. You are blessed with it, it is yours now, and
you’ve only to live in it. Let us pray.