Message Description

Strip District Campus Leader, Josiah Leuenberger, teaches from Ephesians 1 on the hope Christians possess in the blessings of God both in the future and the present.

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Let's pray together. Father, we are so grateful for this opportunity to be in your house this morning. God, without your word, we would be lost. God, we would be in the dark without any hope, but we thank you that you have revealed yourself to us. We thank you that you have spoken truth into our lives, that we would know you, and, God, we invite you to do so this morning through your Holy Spirit present among us. Wherever we are in our journey of faith, God, we know that you know our hearts completely. Would you speak to us in every corner, God, maybe even in an unexpected way this morning, that we would be led to put our hope into you, God, that we would be people who live by faith and not by sight, as we follow you in our lives and engage the purposes you have for us through your grace. In Jesus' name, we pray.

Well, it is so great to worship God together here this morning at Orchard Hill. My name is Josiah. Greetings to our friends up in Butler, as well as the folks joining in online. I lead our campus in the Strip District. It's always fun for me to be back here in Wexford, my roots, where I began my time at Orchard Hill as a young adult leader. So, I'm so grateful for this opportunity to share God's word this weekend.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, everybody. You look like you're doing well. I'm not going to say you look well-fed. That would be a huge insult, but you look like you're thriving, my friends, as I am myself. I did double duty on Thanksgiving this weekend, full meals at both my side of the family, as well as my wife's side of the family. So, coming here to speak is the first time I've taken off sweatpants in about 48 hours, but it really is great to be together.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. You hear people say about Christmas, "Man, if I could just fast-forward through this holiday season, I'd love to have it all done," but I have never heard anyone say that about Thanksgiving. You see, it includes all the best stuff of the holiday season without all of the hype.

I feel like, by this point in my life, I've come up with my own personal formula for the ideal Thanksgiving Day. It starts with a workout, just hard enough to build the appetite, but I've also learned from years of running Thanksgiving 5Ks that, if you go too hard in your morning workout and start the day with wanting to toss your cookies, that's a really hard one to come back from later in the day for your stomach. I'd come home from running those races. I'd turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with my family until they would put on those musical scenes that are always really weird. Then, I'd turn it off because we just watch for the floats. Then, it would be some football on TV and, of course, sitting down for that meal I look forward to all year round with all the best stuff.

I just love Thanksgiving. I love it for the food. I love it for the traditions. I also love Thanksgiving for the opportunity it presents to us to just spend time with those we love, our friends, and our family, and really reflect on the areas that we have to be grateful for in our lives.

This practice of stepping back and being mindful about areas of gratitude in our lives, it's one that can be incredibly helpful for us. It's something we talk about a lot this time of year, the practice of gratitude. Let me share with you, this is an extremely beneficial practice, but it's not exclusively Christian. A recent study from Harvard Health shares how, when we're mindful about appreciating the good things in our lives, the practice of expressing our gratitude connects us to something bigger than ourselves. With that comes a whole slew of benefits, improved perspective, feelings of happiness, better relationships, and all of those things together can even contribute towards improving our health.

So, I want to ask you, what are three things this morning that you would list off as things that you are grateful for in your own life? Maybe what are the three things that you are most grateful for in your life? Think about that. I bet, if we went around the room, we'd see a lot of overlap. To share my answers, I've probably got the big two that are on your mind, as well. Certainly, family is for me. I'm so grateful for the family that God has given me. I don't take it for granted that I have healthy relationships with my family only by God's grace. We enjoy seeing one another. I'm so grateful for the support and encouragement my family gives me. I'm so grateful for that. I never want to take it for granted.

I'm also grateful for the friends that God has given my wife and me, friends from the Orchard Hill community, through our life group, through friends we've gotten to know here at events and weekend services, even our friends here in the city who don't know Christ. I'm so grateful for all of those relationships because they add such richness to our lives. They add so much fun and a sense of purpose as we go about our days. I'm so grateful for those friendships.

The last thing I'm grateful for, maybe we match up on all three, guys, you and I, I'm also grateful for coffee because it is God's new grace and hot cups of coffee that give me hope with each new day. So, I am grateful for coffee, but here's what I'd really like us to consider this morning is that for, as real and genuine as those areas of gratitude are for me, because God is the giver of every good gift. I really mean those things.

As genuine as my gratitude is for those things of this world, for any person who has a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, when we turn to God with a simple understanding, God, I've done my best to live this life on my own, but I've made a royal mess of things being a center of my own universe. I'm someone who's deeply in need of your involvement, your presence in my life, and I put my hope in what your Son, Jesus Christ, has done through His death and resurrection to restore me to a relationship with you and give me hope for eternity, for any one of us who has made that story our own.

The source of gratitude that you and I have in our lives go so far beyond what anything else in this world will ever be able to offer, and it's a source of gratitude that can supersede all that we experience, even in our most difficult moments of life, because God, His blessing that we see in this passage, the blessings of God that come into our lives through faith in Jesus Christ, they are absolutely complete. Jesus hasn't left any stone unturned.

So, this weekend's teaching that we heard just a moment ago, is the opening of the apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and he begins with a praise psalm. This is Paul's song of gratitude for God's grace. Think about it. Paul, this guy's a renaissance man. Here he is a church planter, he's a tentmaker, singer, and songwriter. This guy could do it all. We're digging into Paul's praise psalm. This expression of his gratitude for God's grace in his life.

Let's work through the text here beginning in verse 3. Paul writes, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing." There are some passages where digging into the original language can be really helpful for us. This is certainly the case here. Let's keep verse three on the screen. You see, this Greek word, when Paul speaks of followers of Jesus as ones that are blessed by God, that word translated blessed into English is the word eulogétos, eulogétos. This is the English word that we get our word eulogy from, that talk at someone's memorial service, where others speak well of them and remember them in a positive light. A eulogy is that kind of speech. This word eulogétos, what it means in the original language is to speak well of. Eulogétos, to speak well of. What Paul is communicating here in verse three is that, for any one of us who has found our hope in Jesus Christ, God has spoken well of us in the ultimate way. He's spoken well of us in the ultimate way.

If you think about it, this is a really big deal because we know that we speak about one another all the time. People love to talk about one another. If we cut that out, we'd have a whole lot less to talk about when we're driving in the car with our spouse or maybe sitting down to dinner with friends. Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever wondered what people talk about when they talk about you?

I remember back in college, I started off in college at Calvin College in Michigan. After my freshman year, I transferred to Grove City College, about an hour north of here. One of my friends at Grove City came to me and said, "Hey, I heard some people talking about you, and they thought that you actually came here late in the game because you're an exchange student from Europe." I was like, "What?" All because I have a really long, last name that's hard to pronounce doesn't mean I'm from Europe. I have no idea where that came from.

Have you ever wondered what people talk about when they talk about you? For me, I hope that when people talk about me, it's in a favorable light, or if it's not in a favorable light, I at least hope they hit me with words that are hard for me to hear that are fair. I just want the fair ones. If someone was to say, "Man, Josiah, he could be a better listener," or, "Man, I wish he would just slow down a little bit. Be more patient." I'd say, "You got me. You got me," but if someone said to me, "Man, Josiah, what a sad excuse for a European exchange student," I'd say, "Wait, hold on a second. At least give me the hard words that are true."

Here's why I bring all this up. What do you think God would say about you if He was asked? What would God speak about you? What if we tried this conversation in prayer? If prayer is a conversation with God, what if we tried this in prayer? Maybe start it with someone else first. "God, what do you think about David Bowens? God, what do you think about Brady Randall? Is anyone really that good of a guy?" Maybe that's a good way to start. Ask God about someone else. What do you think God would say about you?

This week's passage has the answer for us, and we don't have to cross our fingers and hope that the words will be positive, or at least if they're hard, they're the ones that we deserve because God's word tells us here that, through faith in Jesus Christ, we can have certainty about God, what He will say about us for any one of us who has found our hope in Jesus Christ. And when God looks at us, His attention isn't on all the things that we've gotten wrong or the things that we were different about our past. God's words that He speaks of us are about the ones that His son, Jesus Christ, has gotten right on our account. He doesn't look at us and see all of our errors highlighted in red. He sees the perfect score of His own son that has been written over our own lives and through Jesus Christ's presence in our lives. Our heavenly Father, He couldn't be more pleased with us. Jesus has spoken well of us in every way.

There's another phrase here in verse 3 that shows how powerful this truth is to make a difference in the here and now. Let's get this on the screen again. Paul says, "Jesus Christ has blessed us in the heavenly realms, in the heavenly realms with, every spiritual blessing in Jesus Christ, in the heavenly realms." That's kind of a weird phrase. It sounds like something you'd hear in a medieval TV show. In the heavenly realms. What's that all about? It sounds kind of strange and nebulous.

Is Paul saying, "Hey, take heart. This world, it might be depressing and hopeless, but at least you can know that good things are coming for you when you get to heaven. In the heavenly realms, that's where your hope is found." Is that what Paul's saying? I don't think so at all. I think what Paul is pointing out here is actually the exact opposite, that all of these blessings that God speaks to be true of us through Jesus, nothing could be more true about who we are in the here and now because this is who God already sees us to be. When we know Christ, God's grace is powerful to define us for who we are. His grace is powerful to determine where our lives are headed because it's written over our lives from beginning to end.

There are four truths that I hope you'll remember from this weekend's teaching about the level of blessing that is available to us, any one of us who will hope in Jesus Christ. The first is this. God's grace in Jesus is powerful to define our lives, from beginning to end. It's that truth that Jesus has spoken well of us in the ultimate way.

So, the Christian life is about living in light of who God already sees us to be, who we are in Christ. That word, that phrase that Paul keeps using, "In Christ," it's our unity with Jesus that makes us who we are. It's our unity with Jesus that determines where we are headed. The challenge of the Christian life is living in light of that truth because it's not always easy to do.

If you and I think about some of the words that we have allowed to shape our understanding of who we are and where our lives are headed, I'll bet that not all of the words that come to mind for us are ones where we have been spoken well of. What's really difficult is some of those words, some of those hurtful words, some of those lies that have stuck with us, they haven't been from people who we knew were absolutely against us. They haven't come from people who we thought were our enemies. They've come from some of the people who we've trusted, people who we thought cared about us, but thank God His word here in today's passage, Jesus, He tells us the truth, that any one of us who will hope in Him, it's the words that God has spoken to be true of us, that make us who we are, and it's His grace that will chart our course moving forward because the blessings we've received through Jesus are absolutely complete.

Let's continue in how Paul spells these out in the passage, picking up in verse 4, he writes, "For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will - to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves." Paul continues with this train of thought in verse 11, writing, "In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory."

So, the next key truth we receive in this teaching is that having a relationship with God begins with Jesus, taking the first step. Having a relationship with God begins with Jesus, taking the first step. This is simply the blessing that God loves us enough, that He doesn't leave us to ourselves because, like I said earlier, each and every one of us, we are lost in our own sin. We're dead in our sins. Paul tells us in the book of Romans, "Going our own way," but what we see here is the truth that God loves us so much, that if you and I could look back on the story of our own lives from God's vantage point, what we would see is His presence through every step of our journey. We would see God working in our lives, drawing our hearts to know His love.

Paul tells us here that God has been scheming up a plan, from before we were even born, to show us the depth of His love for you and me. So, what we would see, if we could look back on our stories from God's vantage point, is that even in those times when you and I were running away from God, even in those moments in our lives where we were telling ourselves, "God isn't real," whether we believed that or whether we just didn't want to be accountable to His word, even in those times when we were hiding from the truth, if we could look back on those moments with God's perspective, what we would be able to see is the redemptive plan of God unfolding, how even in the mistakes we made, even in the things we wish we would've done differently, God was present, and none of that was wasted by Him.

God was with us through all of those moments, working inside of us, that even as we sought satisfaction in things of this world that would never satisfy us, even in those things, as we found disappointment and frustration, God would be working in our hearts to draw us to see that He is a source of satisfaction that will never let us down. He is the well that will never run dry. He'll meet our every need.

What we see in this passage is that even before you and I were born, God had our names circled. He marked us out in eternity past. That's what that big word predestined meant. It simply means God had marked us out before we were even born. I don't know why God would love us so much, but that's what His text tells us here, this word of truth that God loves us so much that somehow, in His sovereignty, even as it is mysterious to us, God made a choice before we were even born that nothing, nothing would stop us from seeing the depth of His love.

That's what it means to be chosen. This is a gift from God that none would boast, salvation. It's nothing that we have done to earn it or deserve it. It's only a gift that we can freely receive, and it is a mystery for us. We can only receive it with humility, saying, "God, I don't deserve this, but I am grateful for this blessing you've poured out into my life," but one thing that is certainly true all throughout scripture, it's all throughout scripture, and we see this in actually the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, is that for any one of us who will receive this blessing of being chosen to know the depth of God's grace, when we've received this gift, it does come with a responsibility, and that's to share this blessing with others so that we who have received it would be able to extend the grace we've received and pass it along to others, that they might share in it, as well. God's grace in Jesus is powerful to define our lives from beginning to end, and having a relationship with God begins with Jesus, taking the first step.

In the next part of this passage, Paul explains further how complete this salvation that any one of us can receive through faith in Him really is picked up in verse 7. Paul writes, "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment - to bring unity to all things in heaven and on Earth under Christ."

What we see here in this part of the passage is, as it relates to sin in our lives, the next key truth Paul lays out is that forgiveness and freedom in Jesus are complete. Forgiveness and freedom in Jesus are absolutely complete. What this means is that, when we know Jesus Christ, it is His work on our behalf that absolutely defines us and not our sin because we are redeemed. We are redeemed. What that means is that we have been purchased back from sin and death at the cost of Jesus' own life. Forgiveness is free for you and me because Jesus has paid for it all with the cost of His own blood. We're redeemed, and we are forgiven. What that means is that our penalty has already been paid. Our penalty has already been paid.

Have you ever wronged someone, and they told you that they'd forgiven you, but then later on down the road, you wrong them again, and what they say to you is, "Man, I am hurt and I am offended, but I am not surprised because you have done this to me before?" Has anyone ever said that to you? "I am hurt and I am offended, but I am not surprised." That always hurts the worst because what you then know is they never actually forgave you. They just told you they forgave you, and then they hold it over your head the moment you screw up again, which is inevitable for each and every one of us. That's not real forgiveness.

The most common Greek word for forgive in the New Testament literally means to hurl away, to hurl away, to let go. As far as the east is from the west, there can't be any greater separation between us and our sins that wants to find us if our hope is in Jesus Christ. They're completely out of the picture. They've been paid for through the costly price of Jesus' blood, His finished work on our behalf. They're finished. Jesus keeps no record of wrongs. So, we never have to worry about Him turning around on us and holding over our heads the things we've done wrong. We can be confident in this through Jesus' work on our behalf. He's paid for our sins completely. Jesus has bought us back. He's purchased our redemption.

Have you repented to God of your brokenness? Have you received His grace? If you've confessed your sin to the people around you, as well, and made right what needs to be corrected in your own offense, you and I, we can move on with a sense of freedom that we have done our due diligence in God's forgiveness in our life. We are completely freed. We're completely forgiven.

I love this quote from the author, Eugene Peterson, how he writes about this. He says, "Our sins aren't interesting. It is God's work that's interesting. After recognized and confessed, the less said about them, the better." I love that. The bottom line, our sins aren't interesting. Have you repented? Have you confessed, found hope in Jesus? Get over it. Time to move on. What a gift it is to be able to walk through life with this kind of freedom. Only the gospel is able to do this, and this is a blessing that God extends to each and every one of us through Jesus.

Let's close out today's teaching. Paul's words about the blessings that we have to look forward to in our future, picking up in verse 13, he writes, "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession - to the praise of His glory."

The last truth that we receive here is this. Through the Holy Spirit, we can know that God's love lasts forever. Through the Holy Spirit, God's love lasts for all eternity. So, this blessing is simply the word of assurance that for any person who has found our hope in Jesus Christ, we can know that through the presence of the Holy Spirit inside of us. We can know that God will hold us secure in His love forever because the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts to dwell inside of us at that moment we first believe. This Holy Spirit's presence inside of us, the presence of God within us, He is our power to grow. He's our power to be transformed, to look more like Christ and less like the people we were when we were left to ourselves and our brokenness. God is powerful to do that inside of us, as we root ourselves in His word and live life and community. God can do that inside of us all for the sake of His glory in the Holy Spirit.

He's also, as Paul says here, he's a reservation tag hung on our hearts, a reservation tag of sorts, that we belong to God for all eternity. The Holy Spirit is a deposit present in our souls, that we have been purchased back from sin and death, that we know God's grace, that we belong to Him forever. So, we can be people who are filled with gratitude and knowing that God will never let us go. The Holy Spirit is a deposit of the future that we have when we will experience life in eternity with God. So, every follower of Jesus can live with this level of assurance.

I remember, as a kid, there were different times where I would lie awake in bed at night and wonder, if I was to pass away in my sleep, where would I go? I'm sure many of you had those things. I wish I would've thought about baseballs or something, but deep existential questions can keep you asleep. Here are three questions each of us can answer, where we can know whether or not we can live with that kind of assurance. Here they are. Do you know you're a person who deeply needs God's grace? Have you trusted Jesus for that? That's one. Number two, is God's grace evident in your life, not because you have it all together, but because the Holy Spirit is at work inside of you? That's number two. Number three, are you committed to following Jesus as the Lord of your life? Are you committed to following Jesus?

If you answered, "Yes," to those questions, you can live with confidence knowing that you are saved and God has your life secure in His hands for all eternity because His Holy Spirit is present inside of you, and God will never disown Himself. He will never turn His back on you. There may be times when you and I will struggle. There will be times when you and I temporarily lose sight of who we really are and where our hope ultimately lies, but God's word tells us here very clearly, if we have made that commitment to trust in Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our lives, there may be moments when we let go of God, but we can be certain God will never let go of us. He who began a good work in us will carry it to completion because His Spirit inside of us is a deposit guaranteeing our future with God forever.

So, I hope what you really have seen in this weekend's teaching is that everything we have in life is ultimately a gift that comes from God's own goodness. It's a gift from His generous hand to us. This holiday season, I hope that each of us will come to see everything we enjoy in life ultimately is a gift of God's grace, whether that's the blessings of this world or the ultimate blessings that we have looked forward to through the way that God has spoken well of us in Jesus.

I love this perspective, which comes from the author, G.K. Chesterton, of how we can walk through life when we see God as the generous giver of every good gift. He writes, "You say grace before meals. All right, but I say grace before the concert and the opera and grace before the play and grace before I open a book and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

Everything we have to be grateful for in life is ultimately a gift from our generous God. So I hope this holiday season, as you and I reflect on those blessings that we've received in our lives, that we'll do so with an eye towards the one who is the giver of every good gift, the one who has made us who we are, the one who defines our lives and determines what the future holds for us because He has spoken well of us through His Son in the ultimate way.

Let's pray together. Father, we are so grateful for your word, for the way that you shine the light into our lives, God, for the way that you wake us up to our spiritual need and the all-sufficient hope that we can find through your Son. God, I pray that if there's anyone here this morning who hasn't encountered you in a personal way, through faith, that you'd be stirring in their heart right now through the presence of your Spirit, that they would be drawn to put their trust in Jesus and experience the one who's able to satisfy us in a way that lasts. God, would you remind us of these promises? Would we be people of gratitude in such a way that others would see the hope that we found and know something about who You are. We pray this together in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it has been so good to worship God together. Go in peace. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.