God’s Immeasurable Riches For Us

Ephesians 2:07c

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Could we look once more at the – this would be the last time I think at this verse in Ephesians that
we’ve been studying the past few weeks. And it’s Ephesians 2:7, “…That in the coming ages he
might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” God knew
that you would beat his Son. God knew that you would beat his Son. I mean, I think we’d probably
all agree that’s really what we do when we — oh, cut somebody dead, or criticize somebody, or whip
them with our words as certainly I have done at times, because Jesus said, you remember, “In as much
as you do it to one of the least of these my brethren you do it unto me.” So, in reality we know
that if Jesus is in that person then of course we are beating him. We’re doing what the Roman
soldiers did.

And the sentence came to me and was as startling as it is to you, that that was what I should say,
“God knew that you would beat his Son.” And then if you begin to reflect upon it, of course you
see, “Yes, yes, yes, I suppose that’s right.” I mean, that’s the whole point of that piece in
Romans 8, “Whom he foreknew…,” and then the remarkable next clause is, “He predestined to be
conformed to the image of his Son.” “…Whom he foreknew.” And we’ve talked often about that, that
obviously God is not caught in time as we are. And he’s not caught in the human limitations that we
are. He didn’t in fact think, “Ah! I’ll make little birds and then I’ll make little animals, and
oh, I think I’ll make little people. And who knows what will happen to them I’ll just watch them
and see how they turn out.” We know that our Father is not light like that. That’s not the
impression he has given us even by the world that is around us. It’s not a world that is without
meaning. It’s what old Einstein said, “God does not throw dice.” God did not make a world that he
didn’t know how it was going to work or what was going to happen to it.

He made everything and therefore he knew how it would be, just as we do even in our limited
discipline that we have when we make a piece of wood into something, or we create something, or we
write something. We know how it will work, generally. And that’s even we who have fickle and
unreliable minds. But God, of course, has a perfect mind. And so when he made us he knew what we
would do; he knew what we would become, he knew what we would do with him. And that’s why he made
us inside his own Son. We’ve said that often. “In Jesus all things were made, and all things hold
together in him.”

And so God first of all had his own Son, and then his own Son, as he had him, as he begot him in
eternity, he begot him also as the first human being. And in that human being he made all the rest
of us. And he made us in his Son because he wanted us to be exactly like his Son. That is, to have
a free will so that we could love him as his Son loves him. And he made us with free will so that
we could love him or not love him. And he knew us. He knew us, and he knew that we would end up
sometime in our lives beating his Son.

I know it’s – I mean, it sounds hideous to us, that all of us would be in Jesus, and we would beat
Jesus in each other. And so we would actually beat him. But worse than that, because he is in us,
we would force him to beat himself in the other person. And God did that because he is serious
about us. He’s serious about us. He does not want little Yorkshire terriers. He does not want
little funny human beings that he can play with. He wanted men and women like his own Son who could

be part of him. And so that’s why it’s true to say, “God knew that you would beat his Son.”

And then you think to yourself, “Well, then he committed himself to bearing whatever he would have
to bear so we could have free wills?” Yes, that’s right. That’s right he did. “You mean he
committed himself to years and centuries of this?” Yes, yes, that’s it as it really is. God
committed himself to bearing everything that every one of us did, and to feeling it, to truly
feeling it. And that’s why the verse is not lightly spoken, “Jesus was touched with our
infirmities.” It isn’t only that he bore the same weaknesses that we bore, but he himself was
affected by our weaknesses, and God is. And you remember, old Barth is good because he points out
that we have had such a wrong conception of God because of our preoccupation with that old platonic
Greek and Roman idea of the gods, who lived up there in Mount Olympus, and were untouched by us
human beings, and could not be touched, and could not be affected by us human beings.

And so we were brought up with that idea of God. We would say, “Oh yes, God is without shadow of
change.” We would forget that that meant God is consistent and God is faithful to himself, and we
would interpret that, “Oh yes, he’s not touched by us at all. He’s not affected by us at all.”
Then you remember, I don’t know if you know in church history there was a “Pater Passionism,” the
idea that God suffered. And generally it was treated as a heresy, “No, no, God can’t suffer,” in
spite of the fact that, of course, Christ’s whole life and death evidenced something different. But
I think from all that we got the idea, “Oh no, no, God is not affected by us.”

I think Barth’s right. Barth says, “God put himself at risk for us.” He put himself in the way of
us. He put himself in front of our fists. He put himself inside his Son where we could beat him.
And then, then in his Son we saw us, and he saw us completely exterminated as he exterminated his
Son. And then when his Son, who was not only a human being but the divine Son of the Maker of the
universe, when his Son rose from that destruction by the power of his own Spirit and his own nature
which he shared with his Father, God allowed us to be raised with him. And he raised us up there
before the world was ever made, and “made us sit with him in the heavenly places.”

And you say, “And then?” And then, walked into history. Walked into the hundreds and thousands of
years of temporal life here on earth where there was worked out, second-by-second-by-second, all the
beating that we would do to his Son, so that every little child that died in a concentration camp,
every old man that died in the slums of Bombay, every one that has ever been hurt by his mother, or
his father, or his son, every one of us that has ever felt embarrassed by what someone else said,
all that he began to absorb into himself. Or began to display in history what he had already
absorbed in his Son in that millisecond in eternity. And despite all that, he raised us up. And I
think that’s quite hard for us to grasp, that as he set out on a lifetime for this world, on eons in
this world, when we would in detail display the pain and the torture that we had caused him in that
millisecond of eternity. In the midst of all that he had raised us up and made us sit with him in
the heavenly places.

And that’s what it means that despite what we are doing even at this very moment, God has raised us
up and made us sit with him in the heavenly places and he is asking us to see that. I said to Joe
yesterday in conversation, “It’s as if Jesus is here, and you’re there. And you’re striking him on
the face, and he has one hand up to keep the blows off his face, and his other hand is round your
waist to draw you into himself.” That’s what it is. That’s what the real situation is, that God
has raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly places even as we ourselves are still
beating his Son, at times in ourselves, and at times in each other.

And it seems important to realize that, that we have been raised us in that situation. In other
words, that there we are with God sitting with him, and here down in the world we are still bent
often on destroying him. And that what we are up here is the reality. And I don’t know if you know
all the verses, I just got some of them from old Barth who points out that we are ‘crucified with
him’. I’ll just put some of them down, Galatians 2:19 and 6:14. And we are ‘dead with him’, and
that’s Romans 6:2 and Colossians 2:30, and 3:3. And we are ‘buried with him’, and that’s Romans 6:4
and Colossians 2:13. And we are made alive with him, in Colossians 1:13. So we’re crucified with
him; we’re dead with him; we’re buried with him; we’re raised with him. And we’re made to sit at
the right hand of God with him. And Barth makes a point, those are all past tenses. They’re all
past tenses. They’re not future tenses. They’re not even present tenses, they’re past tenses: “We
have been raised.” “We have been made to sit with him in the heavenly places.”

I don’t know that I can do the old French of Calvin, but I can certainly quote you Barth. He says,
“This ‘with Christ’ determines our past, and present, and future. We are crucified with him, dead
with him, buried with him, made alive with him, and even made to sit together with him in the
heavenly places. What is really meant is that we are already with him in heaven, that we have
already taken this seat, that we live already in the commonwealth in heaven. Living in the flesh
therefore, we are to have before us and keep in mind and consider only that waking or sleeping that
we should live with him, only that we should seek those things that are above where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God, because that’s where we are.”

Calvin in his French says, “Jesus had to enter in first, but he only entered in so that we would
enter in with him at the right time.” And so where Jesus is, we are and that’s where we are at this
moment.

Now, do you see that it’s just silly to think that with this being the situation God has any desire
but to give us what he wants us to have? I mean, God is with us and for us. God has raised us up
here. [Pastor indicates heaven at God’s right hand on the whiteboard] He has us sitting with him.
So here on earth he has no desire but to give us whatever he knows is best for us in this present
life. In other words, we don’t need to plead with him for healing. We don’t need to plead with him
to help us to do this or to do that. All we need do is realize, “Of course he who has not spared
his own Son,” will obviously give us everything we need. And he has already put us beside himself
in heaven so that all those things are available to us.

So that God, himself, is bent now — on that last part of the verse — that in the ages to come,
that’s these ages and then there are future ages — but in the ages to come, so that “he might show
forth the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus. In other words, God
has no desire but to give us what his kindness wants us to have.

Now what I can see in that is we can know then that he is going to give us what is best for us,
because he has no reason to hold it back. So he’s going to give us what is best for us, so we don’t
need to decide that. So, he takes away the symptoms of one of us who has a sore back, and he allows
the other one to retain those symptoms. Why? Because, one has prayed better than the other? Or
one has believed better? Or one is better? No, because we’re all there [in the heavenly places in
Jesus]. So he’s not about the business of saying, “Oh, I like this guy. I don’t like this one.
This one has me,” because we’re all the same. He’s raised us all up with his Son. We’re part of
his Son. So the Father is always giving us what is right for us. So no, we don’t need to plead
with him, “Lord, give me sales; give me sales; give me sales.” He has already given us a place

beside himself despite what we do to his Son, so he is not in the business of dealing out cookies to
some and brickbats to the others. He is giving to each one of us what he sees as the very best that
we ought to have at this moment.

So really, it brings of course, a great relief to us in the whole business of prayer, because at
last you’re delivered from, “Did I pray right? Did I say this right? Have I prayed often enough?
Have I asked in Jesus’ name?” Rather the attitude is, “Lord, this is what you have for me and I
want to thank you for it and I want to thank you for the purpose you have in this for me and I know
that you’re going to reveal it and make it clear.” And instead of the prayers being begging, or
being complex attempts — we don’t say it — to manipulate God, but complicated attempts to make
sure we do it right. Instead we realize, “Wait a minute! My Father has already given me everything.
He’s put me beside himself in his Son. I’m here in heaven. What he’s doing now is giving me the
very best that he knows, so that his Son will be manifested in my life, and so that I will be
conformed to his image.”

So I think it changes our attitude to this business of either suffering, or sickness, or the battle
with business or finances, or even the things that we have with each other or with other people. We
do not have to tell him what to do. We do not have to struggle to try to say it in the right way.
We can relax, “Father, you’ve made me sit with you in the heavenly places in Christ, far above every
rule and authority and dominion and power. And I know, therefore, that you’re not in the business
of withholding from me anything that I need. And so you will in fact, give me what I need. And I
want to thank you Lord for this present life and for every detail in my present life.”

Yes if you say, “I want to thank you for the article that I haven’t written yet.” Yes, yes,
because, “You’re speaking to me through that, and you’ll enable me to do it, and you’ll bring about
in me, too, a consistency that enables me not to be late next time.” But yes, even the things that
don’t seem inside God’s will, in a deep way, they are what God has given us at this moment and he is
using that.

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we cannot imagine you withholding anything from your own Son. We cannot imagine you
ever doing that. And we cannot imagine you doing it now, when he has been so obedient to you and so
pleasing, and you have raised him up to your right hand. And then Lord, we see that that’s exactly
what you’ve done with us. You’ve raised us up and made us sit with you in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus. So that now you have no desire to do anything to us except to show forth the
immeasurable riches of your grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus. So Father, we bow before you
to thank you for your mercy, and your humility, and your readiness to bear any pain to give us the
opportunity to freely submit our wills and our hearts to you.

So we thank you Father, that you are the one who keeps giving. Even if we keep taking, even if we
keep opposing, you are the one who keeps generously giving. You are the one who loves us into
loving. And we thank you, Lord, for that. So we thank you for our present life and for every
detail of it. We thank you especially Lord, for the things that are not normally thought of as
blessings, for the odd pain that we have, for the little bit of sickness that we endure, for the few
moments of discomfort that we have, and for the little challenges that you have allowed us to face,
so that we may sink deeply into Jesus. Father, we thank you for these things. We thank you that
you will make available to us all the powers that we need. They are all around us here in heaven at
your right hand: the power to heal, the power to overcome spirits of evil, the power to ride high in

victory over every difficulty. We thank you Lord, that all these powers are available now to us,
they surround us and we’ve only to pick from the tree those that you wish us to have.

So Lord, we thank you and we praise you for such a life and for such a dear Father.