Soul Thirsty
- Jake Chambers
- Jan 31, 2010
- Series: SDSU
Soul Thirsty
Ephesians 1
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Today we will focus on verse 3 of of Ephesians 1, but we will be looking at it through the lens of verses 3 through 14. You see in the original Greek that this fourteen verses was not broken up into multiple verses, sentences or any natural grammatical breaks … it was one long run-on sentence. It's a beautiful run-on sentence about God that Paul wrote in great excitement and worship. He is writing this in a dirty Roman prison, and yet the description of God and the gospel came flowing off his pen in one run on sentence and led him to jump into doxology, praise and thanksgiving. My hope is that as we break down this verse today we will have a glimpse of what Paul glimpsed: a glimpse of the magnitude, character and glory of our God.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Blessings to this God and Father! He is the one to be blessed, he is the one who is worthy of worship and praise and blessings and honor. Paul proclaims “blessed be,” and then he breaks down why God is the one worthy of praise, blessing and honor!
The God – he is worthy of blessing because he is the one true God! There are not multiple ways to heaven and multiple gods worthy of praise ... there is only one God. Blessed be this God, the God of the Bible, the God that is community, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the God that created all things and defeated death and sin to reconcile all things to himself. Blessed be this God, the God! Amen.
Father (verse1,5) This God is blessed because he does not reveal himself as a tyrant, but as a Dad. What a beautiful attribute this is - our God is a loving and perfect Dad, who is always there for his children. The Dad of Jesus is our Dad. We are brought into a family, adopted by a loving dad. Blessed be the God who reveals himself as a loving Dad.
Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, he is in control and Lord over all. There are evil lower case “l” lords in this world, but we can rest that they are not The Lord, and are not in control. Our Lord Jesus is the capital “L” Lord and he is lovingly Lord over all. Blessed be the only one worthy and good enough to be Lord over all!
Christ Jesus is the promised one. He is the Christ! The messiah! The anointed one promised in the OT to come and rescue us. Jesus is the one who came to save. Praise be to Jesus the promised one.
Verses 4,5 Our God is sovereign, Creator, eternal, holy and blameless. There is a lot here and we will get into it deeper next week, but it is good that we have an eternal, sovereign and holy God. It is good that he is in absolute control and has always been.
Loving Blessed be our God because he is loving. Isn’t this great that a loving God is in control?
Verse 6 Glorious, generous. He is the glorious one. He is generous.
Verse 7 Redeemer, sacrificial, forgiving, rich in grace. Blessed be the God that is sacrificial to the point of spilling his own blood. He spills his own blood so he can pour out his forgiveness. He does not run out of forgiveness and he does not run out of grace. Blessed be the God who is rich in grace!
Verses 8,9 Wise, insightful, communicating, purposeful. Our God is not ignorant to our emotions, needs and wants. He has insight into how we feel. He has insight into our times of loneliness, desperation and isolation. And like a loving dad he communicates with us his purpose and that all things are for that purpose including our struggles and our suffering. Praise God for revealing himself and his purpose!
Verse 10 Reconciling A God orchestrating a complete cosmic reconciliation.
Verse 12 God of hope. Blessed be the God who brings hope to the hopeless. (Jake shared a story of a Haitian man being interviewed here – listen to the audio)
Verse 13 Truthful, Saving, Covenant keeping. Just as the promised Jesus Christ came to save us the promised Holy Spirit has come to seal us. Our honest God keeps his promises. Praise God, for God the Holy Spirit who seals us and transforms us!
If we dig deeper in these verses we can find even more attributes of God and explore their meaning in further depth, and I am excited for us to do just that over the next few weeks, but for now lets look at this list and marvel at our God who is blessed.
The God, Father, Lord, Christ, sovereign, creator, eternal, holy, blameless, loving, glorious, generous, redeemer, sacrificial, forgiving, rich in grace, wise, insightful, communicating, purposeful, reconciling, God of hope, truthful, saving, covenant keeping.
The character and attributes of God are so beautiful and pertinent to us because the gospel, which is what these eleven verses are, flows out of the character of God. Understanding God leads us to understanding the gospel.
Let's go back up to verse 3. Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Because our God is a blessed God, he blesses us. Blessings flow out of the character of God. Because God is Creator of every spiritual blessing, he can give us every spiritual blessing. Because our God is hospitable we get to be with him in the heavenly places. The gospel is good news because it flows out of the character of a good God.
We get blessings in Christ because our God is like a loving dad who wants to spend time with his kids, enjoying the blessing he gives them, and is nothing like an overworked parent who spoils their kids but doesn’t see them.
Because our God is holy and blameless he makes us holy and blameless. Whereas we stand blamed and one with the sinful world, God sees his perfect Son and because his perfect Son stands holy and blameless, God sees us as well. This is what Martin Luther called the great exchange, and it is a gift from God. Not only that, but God the Holy Spirit is then at work in us to make us who we are! The gospel is not a one-time event but is good news to a lifetime of making us holy and blameless because our God is a reconciling God who reconciles us to himself.
Because our God is a sacrificial God, he made himself the sacrifice for our sins. He shed his blood for us and the work of the cross flows out of the character of God. All of the good news of what was accomplished at the cross is because of the glorious character of a sacrificial God.
The gospel is not just that we will be reconciled to a reconciling God, but that all things will be reconciled. God is a God of cosmic reconciliation. All the labor pains, suffering, and mess of this planet and the people in it will be reconciled to God and redeemed to his glory. Imagine how beautiful and awe-inspiring a sunset, thunderstorm, or snow capped mountain is. We are able to enjoy these things even on an earth where we are fallen, skewed and sinful, and the earth itself is fallen and broken. The gospel will allow us to enjoy God’s creation perfectly because its creation will reflect his perfection, and we will now have the ability to see his perfection in all of creation without the taint of sin over our eyes. The gospel is good news for all of creation! All things will be reconciled and redeemed.
We could go on and on about the gospel and its magnitude because we could go on and on about our God and his magnitude!
In the heavenly places. Let’s go back up to verse three. Are we excited for the heavenly places? Are we excited for heaven? Many of us look forward to heaven but not really for the right reasons or the most preeminent reasons. Maybe you want to go to heaven because it is not hell. Or you want to go to heaven to get treasures or these spiritual blessings. These are definitely some of the benefits of heaven. That it is not hell and that there is going to be a lot of wicked cool stuff in heaven. But is that the preeminent reason we should desire heaven? No, the good news is that we get to have God. This God who is blessed has created us to be in relationship with him. This is the deepest desire of our hearts and because of sin we aimlessly try to fill this desire elsewhere. But we were created to be with God and because of the gospel we get to be with God!
God gives God! He gives a perfect relationship with himself for all eternity … this is the good news! Jesus Christ won our salvations so we could have him which is the best thing. Our great groom for eternity.
This is our deepest desire. Even our fairy tales reflect this. The princess does not delight most in being rescued and taken to her new castle, but in being rescued and brought to her prince. We get to be with the perfect prince. Christ has rescued us to be with himself.
Psalm 42:1-2 Does your soul thirst for God? Is your deepest desire this God? You may say: 'but I am not thirsty for God I am thirsty for money, rest, love, comfort, health.' Yes these are real thirsts and real desires but they are not primary desires. The answer is not to crush those thirsts or to quench those thirsts ... the answer is to quench your primary thirst. Your deepest desire. We are like the woman at the well who encounters Jesus. Jesus offers her living water, a soul quenching drink that will fill her deepest desires and leave her thirsty no more. This is the gospel! We desire God. And God gives us himself. We were created to be in relationship with our Creator, we were created to worship our Creator, and because of sin we settle for lesser, weaker desires. The woman at the well tries to fill her empty bucket with men. What are you settling for? What dry well do you keep dropping your bucket into? Don’t you see that, like the Psalmist, our primary thirst is for God. The Psalmist is stranded outside of his home. He is thirsty, scared, hungry, in need of shelter, friends, rest and comfort. It would be easy for him to cry out for a spouse or for money or for a plane ticket back to Jerusalem. All of these would be tempting to see as an ultimate desire, but he knows what he needs. He needs God! He needs the gospel that freely gives broken, separated sinners God!
Kaleo, I plead with you to stop throwing your buckets in dry wells and to come to this great God to fill your desires. I plead with you to be so close to one another that you would help fill in the dry wells of one another and point each other to the living water. I pray that we would see a dying world that has a deep desire for a prince to come and rescue them and that we would not shy away from pointing them to this great Rescuer. We live in the heart of a city that is dying of thirst and we have a well that is filled and overflowing and will never run out. Why do we try to suck moisture out of the desert and why are we so stingy with our water?
Rejoice in this: that our God is so good that he came to us with living water even when we didn’t want it. He showed us the way to this water even when we were satisfied trying to quench our thirst off prickly cactus. He created a path to himself, a path to living water even after we put up walls and thorn bushes and did all we could to try to fill that well. Christ did that and we get him!
This God, whose beautiful character we have explored today, loves us and gives us himself all the awesome parts of himself to enjoy for all of eternity. Jesus Christ did not die so we would settle for less. He did not die just so we could do MCs, or go to heaven, or have Christian online-social networking sites … he died so we could have him. So we could know him, love him, praise him and be known by him. I want to call us as a church to believe the gospel, and praise the one worthy to be praised, and to not settle for less, but embrace this God! The gospel flows out of his character because he is the gospel! Amen.
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