Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Bathed in Blessing

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

We’re looking at an astonishing claim. In the New Testament, the word “blessing” doesn’t just mean what we mean by it today. It’s closer to shalom. It means every joy and every benefit your heart and soul needs and longs for. And in Ephesians 1:3, we’re told if you’re a Christian you have already been blessed (past tense) with every spiritual blessing there is. What in the world could that mean? Let’s look at the text with these questions: 1) How do we get every spiritual blessing? 2) What is every spiritual blessing? 3) Why can we have every spiritual blessing? and 4) How do you know you have every spiritual blessing? This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 2, 2011. Series: A Study of Ephesians: Who is the Church? Scripture: Ephesians 1:1-8. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. When we look at the Christian church today, it's easy to see that there is polarization and disagreement between various groups and denominations. Yet, as Christians, we know the Bible calls us to unity. How can the Gospel bring us together? Join us as Tim Keller preaches through the book of Ephesians, which is all about the church and how Christians can experience deep unity across divisive issues. Ephesians 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

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 to be adopted as his sons 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. 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. This is the word of the Lord.

This week, for the next few weeks, for the next few months, we're going to be looking at the book of Ephesians, which is about the church. It's about who is the church. And it was one of the very first long series in books of the Bible that we looked at when Redeemer started. And it's time to get it out again and look at it in some depth so that we can have a better idea of what God says the church is as we move forward in our life together here in this city. And we start with this very first, starting verse 3 all the way to verse 14 is in the Greek is one long sentence. There's no English translation that tries to pull that off in English. It's very, very hard. It's magnificent. It's complicated.

And what we're going to do is we're going to take a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, looking at this one sentence. It is very complex, it's very rich, there's a lot of things in there we won't get to this week, so if you see a word or two that you'd like me to talk about, you know, it'll probably come up in the next couple weeks. But today what I want to do is start by looking at this astonishing claim right up here in verse 3. And that claim is, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly

realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, has blessed us, past tense, with every spiritual blessing, every spiritual blessing, absolute language and when you realize that the word blessing in the New Testament does not mean kind of what it has come to mean in English usage today. To bless means basically to wish somebody well like in bless her heart. See that's how we use the word bless. That's not the way the New Testament uses it. The word bless is closer to shalom. It means, it means every joy and every benefit

that your heart and soul need and long for. Every joy and every benefit that your heart and soul need and long for. That's what it means to be blessed. And here we're told that if you're a Christian, you have already been blessed past tense with every spiritual blessing there is. What in the world could he mean by that? I want to unpack that. Let's just try to take the text and answer the question, or this set of questions. How do we get every spiritual blessing? What is every spiritual blessing?

Why can we have every spiritual blessing? And how do you know if you've gotten every spiritual blessing? First, how do we get every spiritual blessing? How's that possible? How do we get it? And the answer is, in a series of phrases that all basically mean the same thing,

but the repetition shows how important it is and that is we get every spiritual blessing verse 3 in Christ verse 4 we're in him verse 6 we're in the one he loves verse 7 in him we have redemption you You see something going on there? To become a Christian is not simply to get the Lord as your king to obey, though it is that, or as an example to follow, though he is that, or even as a savior to be grateful to, yes, he is that too. When you become a Christian, when you believe in him, when you rest in him, you're put in him. You're put in him so everything he has is yours. So what does that mean? It means we're united with Christ. What does it mean to be united with

Christ? Well, first of all, we're united legally. In most places in the world, if you get married, if you get married to someone, let's just say you are absolutely poor, you have no money of your own, you marry somebody who is very wealthy, perhaps somebody who earned that wealth through hard work and through smarts. So if you have nothing, and this person has everything, and you get married, if you have nothing and this person has everything and you get married, now you share. That wealth is yours, not as wages but through legal union. It's legally yours even though you didn't earn it at all. And so it is with Jesus. When you believe in him, you're united to him, and that means at least you're united legally.

And that means, for example, Romans 6 says, we're united in his death. We're united to him in his death. What's that mean? Well, it means that when you believe, God treats you as if you were as free from condemnation, as if you had paid the full penalty for sin on the cross, too. See, what Jesus Christ did on the cross too. See what Jesus Christ did on the cross is now yours. That penalty he paid is now yours. So that freedom is now yours. On the other hand we're told we're united with him in his resurrection. And remember the resurrection of Jesus was his vindication, his triumph. It's as if, we're being told, all of Jesus'

medals, all of his awards, all of his honors are pinned to your chest, and now the whole world salutes you. See, we're in him. And what's that mean? It means that we're legally made one with him, so all the things that he's accomplished are now ours. And so the one thing union means is we're united legally, and that has to do with the benefits that other parts of the Bible call justification or adoption. We'll get to that in a second. But it's also true that we're united vitally, really, organically. The Holy Spirit comes into our lives. And then there's a whole lot of benefits that come from that, like the new birth and character change and eventually glorification, which means a perfect flaw-free, sin-free, suffering-free existence in the future. So every spiritual benefit, because we're in him,

everything that he has is ours. When you believe in him, you're put in him, you're united to him, and that's the reason. Now, let's summarize this first point. It's not just part of the answer to the question, how do we get every spiritual blessing, but it's also an important point in its own right. Becoming a Christian isn't really a process, not really.

You're in him and you have all the benefits, even though it takes all of your life to work them out into your life. Or you're not in him and you don't have any benefits. But it's not really a process. If you ask the average person in America, are you a Christian? They may say no, I don't believe. But they may say I'm trying.

I'm trying, I hope so. Which shows they have no idea what it means to be a Christian. Because look, you're either adopted or you're not. You're either pardoned and accepted or you're not. You're either born again or you're not. You're either in him or you're not. Now be careful. When I say becoming a Christian is a process, that doesn't mean that when you believe it has to be a dramatic event. Some believe it has to be a dramatic event. Some years ago I remember reading the autobiography of C. Everett Coop who was a very prominent attorney general, surgeon general, excuse me, surgeon general of the United States. He was a doctor. And he tells how he was a very,

very prominent, I think he might have been the first surgeon to separate Siamese twins or something if I remember correctly, but he was a very prominent surgeon at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. And his wife pretty much dragged him to 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. And he says there was a year in which he began to go to the evening services at 10th Church and listen to Donald Gray Barnhouse preach. And he says he remembers that in the very beginning when he first heard this man preach, he disagreed with almost everything he said in every sermon. And he says a little over a year later he realized he believed it all. That slowly he had come to say, okay, I grant that point, I grant that point, I grant that

point. And so he began to not just get intellectually convinced, he began to get personally convicted, and he began to give more and more of his heart to God from what he could tell. And when he looked back, over the year, he says, somewhere in there, I gave myself. At some point, it happened.

I can't quite remember where it was. I think it was in these couple of months. I think it was these sermons. At some point, it happened, but I can't remember just where. But the point was that there was a point. And he knows there was a certain spot, he can't quite remember what night it was or when it was, that he finally said, I take my hands off my life, you know, or I stop trusting in the things I've been trusting in, and I trust in what you have done for

me. And I trust in Christ. So it's not that he wasn't even sure what happened. It doesn't mean it has to be a dramatic process, but there's a point. And the reason there has to be a point that you're either in or you're out of Christ is because salvation is by grace. If it was something you could earn, then of course there could be stages. But if it's something you receive by grace, it happens. It's like getting married. You're either married or not. And therefore, it's in him that we have these things.

I hope you understand the power of this. Here's Paul. You know who Paul was. Paul had killed people. In his religious fanaticism, he killed people. He persecuted people, threw people into jail and had people killed for their Christian faith. And later on, of course, he knew many people whose relatives and dear friends he had killed. How did he live with the guilt of that? How did he overcome the guilt of

that? How did he overcome the guilt of that? 2002 movie called Heaven with Kate Blanchett. Story about a school teacher in a poor part of a city and she sees a particular drug dealer hurting, ruining kids' lives with his drugs. And he actually tries to plant a bomb in his office to injure him or kill him and the bomb actually goes off in the wrong place and a lot of innocent people get killed and when she finds out about it she's crushed, she's destroyed on the inside and the rest of her, the movie and the rest of her life she cannot overcome this sense of self loathing, this horrible crushing guilt, what she did. She can never work it off, she can never work it off.

And here's Paul, moving forward confidently saying, now there is no condemnation. How can he be so confident? How did he get through that? I'll tell you why. Romans 8.1 says, and now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He's in Christ, he's in him.

Paul is saying, in myself, I am poor, I have nothing, but in him, I'm rich, I have everything. You know the power of that. Do you see the power of that? Okay, secondly, what do we get? We know what spiritual blessings do we get. I said that's how we get them, by being in Christ. Well, where, you know, what are they? And of course the answer is, when he says what spiritual blessings do we get? I said that's how we get them, by being in Christ.

What are they? And of course the answer is when he says every spiritual blessing, that would mean it would be impossible to enumerate them. And there are quite a number in this sentence but he doesn't even try. Nevertheless, let me just show you two real quickly. Just to show you how infinitely, almost infinitely rich they are. The two he mentions are adoption and redemption. And adoption is down here where he talks about we're adopted as his sons. And let me see if I can in about 75 seconds show you just how rich even this one benefit is. What is adoption? Well, it means that through Christ God is not just your king and he's not just your deliverer, he becomes your father. You're brought into the

family. What does that mean? Adoption means, first of all, access. Imagine that your father is the President of the United States. If anybody else tries to get in without an appointment, anybody else tries to get in without an appointment? He stopped. If anybody tries to actually run toward the president, they're shot. And if you are his little child, you can go in without an appointment, you can run right into his arms.

Why? He's your father. You're his child. Access to God. You realize what that means? Nobody else has that except in Christ. Access, intimacy. Adoption also means inheritance.

Inheritance. And if anybody out here says, oh, what a shame, you know, that they, that Paul didn't have gender neutral language, a little bit sexist of him to say we're all Christians are adopted as his sons. No, not sexist at all. It's the opposite. You know what it's saying? In Roman times, only sons could be heirs.

Only sons could inherit the property of the father. And so when Paul repeatedly, through the New Testament, says to Christians, men and women, you have all been adopted as sons, what he's saying is men and women are co-heirs of the future. We don't quite even know what that means, but the meek will inherit the earth.

You're going to inherit the earth. We're going to inherit the world. We're going to inherit the new heavens and new earth because it's our fathers, and men and women are co-heirs together. Very inclusive, wouldn't you say? It's easy to assume that if we understand the gospel and preach it faithfully, we will be shaped by it.

But this is not always true. How can we make sure that our lives, churches, and ministries are being shaped by, centered on, and empowered with the gospel? Tim Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, is meant to help congregants, lay leaders, and pastors understand how to make the gospel the center of all ministry. In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how gospel-centered ministry is more theologically driven than program-driven. As you read, you'll discover how reflecting on the essence, the truths,

and the patterns of the gospel lead to renewal in your churches and ministries. This month when you give to Gospel in Life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book Shapedaped by the Gospel, as our thanks for your gift. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. So adoption means access. Adoption means inheritance.

Adoption means access. Adoption means inheritance. Adoption means security, why? If you're an employee and you have an employer, how far does the employer go before the person fires you? I don't know, everybody's got their limits. But if you're a child, this is your father, how far, how long does a parent put up with the problems of a child or the waywardness of a child? Kind of like forever. I child, kind of like forever.

I mean, kind of like it happens like that, right? You're secure in his love because he's not just your king, he's not just your boss, he's your father because of what Jesus Christ has done. And one more thing, discipline. Fathers discipline their children. And what we're told in the Bible over and over again is everybody out there is suffering. Everybody has trouble. Why? It's a broken world. It's a mess of a world. Bad things happen. And yet because your Father

is in charge of the universe, your Father is going to turn the bad things into something that will make you more mature, grow you, turn you to gold. The bad things that happen are under his hand and they're parts of his way of trying to show you how to grow up into the fullness of the likeness of your elder brother Jesus Christ. And this is all part of adoption. I can't stop. I got to go on. I mean, every spiritual blessing and that's just one spiritual blessing and that's just, I've got to go on. I mean, every spiritual blessing. And that's just one spiritual blessing. And that's just, I'm just showing you six or seven aspects of one spiritual blessing.

But the pride of place here is redemption. Because at the bottom he says, it's in him we have, this is verse seven, redemption. Now what's redemption? Redemption is a loaded word. At first it looks like payment and it is but it's actually the word for ransom. You know, remember on 9-11, Sunday 9-11, I actually drove here before the service, parked my car a couple blocks away. When I came out afterwards to try to drive over to the 10-30 service, my car was gone. It was 9-11 and it was towed. While I was preaching a

sermon. Is there nothing sacred anymore? So anyway, what I did was of course I had to go over to the West Side Highway place where they take the car. And I noticed something interesting. When you walk in, there's a big sign and it says redemption center. And when you pay the $189 fine, it doesn't ‑‑ they don't stamp it paid. You know what they stamp it? Redeemed. And the reason why they do that is because you are not just paying a debt, you are getting your car out of captivity. See it's a ransom. It is not just ‑‑ you are not just paying a debt, you are also liberating. That's what a ransom is. And the word redemption means not only to pay a debt that you owe, but also to be released from slavery. Mahatma Gandhi was a very interesting student of Christianity. One of the things he said was that Eastern and Western religions all agree that human beings are not free. They're

not free at all. That we're all slaves. And we're slaves to selfishness and we're slaves to ego. And he's fairly right about that, by the way. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, we're slaves to ego. We are not free. We're selfish. And we're grasping things because our ego is so needy and we have to put everything in it to satisfy ourselves and we need popularity, we need love, we need status, we need money, we need power. And that's why the world is miserable. And Gandhi went on and said, here's how Christianity helps. Now Gandhi's understanding of Christianity was filtered through Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy,

which wasn't, I don't think, the best way to understand Christianity. Nevertheless, he understood this. He says, in Jesus, you have a way to really be freed from the selfishness and the ego centricity that binds us What is it his example? Jesus was the ultimate example of non-violence the ultimate example of Deferring and giving up wealth and power the ultimate example of sacrificial service. So look at Jesus Christ Forgiving the ultimate example of sacrificial service. So look at Jesus Christ, forgiving, loving, serving and dying for others. And when you see that, it will move you

and that will liberate you from your own selfishness. It'll redeem you, essentially. It'll get you out of your slavery. With all due respect for the unbelievable accomplishments of Gandhi, I would say that doesn't work for me, and I don't think it really works in general for people. Why? Because if I see, if I look real hard at Jesus Christ,

and look at his life, it's a pure life, it's a perfect life. There's no egocentricity at all in it. It's astounding. See, he's not driven by any, he's a perfect life. There's no egocentricity at all in it. It's astounding. He's not driven by any, he's a free man. He's not driven by the need for security, by the need for approval, by the need for power. He's, you're right. So, but when I see him forgiving everyone and loving everyone and serving everyone and

dying for everyone, it just crushes me because of the exam. I can't live like that. It doesn't make me feel good. It doesn't make me feel liberated. It makes me feel worse. I could never live up to that. I just want to go away and hang my head. So how can Jesus Christ help us?

Well, the Bible says make sure we understand why we are enslaved, why we're selfish, why we're mastered, why our ego is so needy, why we're so driven. Here's why. The Bible says that all human beings deep down, no matter who you are, at some deep level, conscious, semi-conscious, unconscious, you know you aren't what you should be. You know you aren't what you ought to be. You know you need to be far better than you are. You know that at some level. And so what are you trying to do about it? Everybody senses that we need to prove ourselves, we need to cover ourselves, we all feel naked, we all

feel something's wrong with us. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to get out there and reassure ourselves, reassure other people. And we do it all kinds of ways. There's secular ways. I'm going to be beautiful. I'm going to be powerful. I'm going to be accomplished.

I'm going to make money. There's secular ways. But there's religious ways. I'm going to be a good father, a good mother. I'm going to be a good person. I'm going to be a moral person. I'm going to be a devout person. Do you not realize though that in an effort of turning to those things, if you turn to

those things and you say this is what's going to make me, cover me, make me prove myself, make me feel like I am the person I ought to be. In other words, if you're essentially trying to earn that by looking at those things, those things enslave you. They enslave you. They enslave you. To show you how pervasive that is, let me just give you a little talk I give whenever I'm talking to ministers. I'm sorry about giving away trade secrets. Ministers hear this, I'm sorry. I hate to air out your dirty laundry, but why not? Here's what I say to

ministers. I say, if you care about your ministry and the success of your ministry and the effectiveness of your ministry, then if you're not doing well at it, you'll feel sad. And if somebody is kind of getting in the way of you doing your ministry, you'll be mad. And if there's some threat to the effectiveness of your ministry, you'll be anxious, okay? If you care about being a good minister and these things come up, you'll be sad, you'll be mad, you'll be anxious. But if instead, when you find yourself not doing well in the ministry, you're devastated,

or when you find somebody kind of making your ministry difficult, you melt down with anger, or when you see some kind of threat out there to your ministry, you absolutely are paralyzed with fear. You know what your problem is? You're not serving God. Your ministry is a way for you to cover yourself and to sort of patch up a righteousness for yourself and to prove yourself and to make yourself

and to assure other people that you're okay and you're all right. You're not serving God. You're serving the ministry and it's killing you. Okay, you can just put that in anything else, your job, your parenting. You see, career is going to kill you. You need to be redeemed. You need to be redeemed. If you love anything more than God,

the thing you love more than God is your real God, and it's gonna drive you to the ground, it's gonna say, serve me or I will curse you. Achieve me or you will die. So how does Jesus really redeem us? Point three, through his blood. Not just serving, not just being unselfish, through his blood.

What? It says, it is freely given to us through his blood. If I see Jesus Christ forgiving, loving, serving, and dying for others, all that does is crush me. But if I see him forgiving, loving, serving and dying for me, doing all that for me, doing that in my place, if I know he objectively has taken away the penalty for what's wrong with me, my sin, and if I know that he was willing to come to earth to do that for me, don't you see on the one hand that objectively I have been accepted, I have been pardoned, that gets rid of my fear and my shame. But subjectively I finally see the love that I've been looking for. I finally see the value deep down in my soul

I've never really believed in. I'm trying to get it and trying to steal it from everywhere else. It's only when I see his blood was shed for me, it's all done for me, in my place, It's only when I see his blood was shed for me, it's all done for me, in my place, I'm redeemed. Not just objectively, out there because God has redeemed me. When I believe in him, I'm objectively redeemed, but then I spend the whole rest of my life subjectively working that into my heart

to more and more find myself freed. So even though we have every spiritual blessing, we haven't realized every spiritual blessing, otherwise we'd be perfect. We'd be perfectly happy, we'd be perfectly confident, we'd be perfectly courageous, and yet we've got everything we need already in us to live the kind of life that we all just dream about. And that leads to the last point, and it's the very last point. How do you know if you have gotten this spiritual blood? How do you know if you trusted in the blood of Christ? How do you know if you have been redeemed and adopted?

How do you know? And the answer actually is there. It's in verse six, to the praise of his glorious grace. And that phrase comes up three times. It'll come up again in 12 and 14. To the praise of his glorious grace. You know what that means? Here's how you know you've gotten every spiritual blessing. Three times, it'll come up again in 12 and 14, to the praise of his glorious grace. You know what that means?

Here's how you know you've gotten every spiritual blessing. You don't just believe in grace. You don't just believe with your head that yes, I know salvation is by grace, not by my good works, not by my earning. It's not just you believe it, it's glorious to you. It means it's beautiful to you. It catches you.

It catches your imagination, it captures your heart, to you. It catches you. It catches your imagination. It captures your heart and you praise it. You adore it. You sing to it. This is not just the way you know that you have received every spiritual blessing. It's the way the spiritual blessings actually work themselves into your life. Because there is no more powerful narrative structure. There is no greater moral beauty than a story of someone giving his life. True or false? True or fiction? There's no more moving moral narrative in general, narrative structure in general, than someone dying to sacrifice the free other people. I mean, true story, January 1982, Air Florida flight 90 trying to take off from Washington National Airport. This goes back

a long way for you young people but you don't remember this. But it hits the 14th Street Bridge goes into the Potomac, into the icy Potomac, and when the rescue helicopters get there, there's only a tail sticking up. When the rescue helicopters get there, there's only one guy that looks like he's aware, because people are already going to sleep in the cold water and dying. There's one guy that they could see swimming and all that, and every time they came up to him and they lowered him, you know, the cable, he went under and grabbed somebody and put them on.

And then he came back for him and he kept putting other people on three, four, five times and the last time they came back, he was gone. And it was Arlen Williams. He had given his life to save five people, the only people that were saved. Or Harry Potter's mother. Harry Potter's mother gives her life. And that's the strong magic. It's the reason why Voldemort can't touch him.

Why? It's sacrificial love. And there's an absolute credibility when you hear, this is a children's book, this is, you know, wizards and stuff like that, you know? And here's Dumbledore just explaining to Harry, Harry says, well, why can't the bad guy touch me? Because your mother gave her life for you. Because your mother sacrificed her love for you and that's the strongest magic there is. That puts a power on you that evil can't deal with. And you sit there and you're reading this children's book and you're 60 years old and

you say, that's right. There is no greater, there's no more powerful narrative structure. There's no more incredible moral beauty than that. And to not just read about somebody else doing that for somebody else, but to know that Jesus Christ came to earth and did that for you to get you eternal glory and love, that will change the aesthetic center of your life. It will move the aesthetic center so things that you used to find captivating will no longer drive you and captivate you and he will capture you. His glorious grace. And if your aesthetic center is changed, the thing that really captures your heart the

most, you will change. This is powerful. Absolutely powerful. Give your heart to him. Go and find out what this means. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. Let us pray. Father, we thank you that you've given us everything we need to become what we ought to be because in Christ, we've already received every spiritual blessing. Help us to access some of those blessings right now as we come to you over your table.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting gospelinlife.com slash stories. That's gospelinlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was recorded in 2011.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.