you would, turn to Ephesians chapter 1 with me. Ephesians chapter 1, and we'll take as our text this morning Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 through 14. Hear the word of the Lord. 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. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him. things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Let's go to him in prayer. Almighty God, we come to you this morning seeking your favor. God, you have blessed us so richly in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And we come seeking some guidance or some encouragement in having communion and holding communion with your son. We pray that you would draw us close to him, that we might receive the fullness of the riches of spiritual blessing that are in Christ. And God, we pray that as we study this text together, as we reflect upon it devotionally, that you would cause us to profit from this. And so illumine us, illumine this text to us and open our hearts to receive this truth. We pray all of this that you might be glorified in your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, yesterday we began to consider what it means to hold communion with each person of the Trinity distinctly, starting with the Father. And just to recap briefly so that we sort of come at this from the same framework. First of all, we said that communion with God is a matter of practical necessity. This is not just the 101 of Christianity. This isn't just the basics of having a relationship with God, but this is deeply personal and advantageous. It's a practical matter of great necessity, and especially as ministers of the gospel, who of ourselves are insufficient for the work. We need God and we need everything he will give us to help us to fulfill our duties. And I know many of you have been through seasons of difficulty and have felt your own weakness acutely. And so to the extent that we do feel our weakness, we need the Lord, his presence, his help, everything that he will give us to help shore up our many and very great deficiencies. We're dependent on God for these things. This is the language of the confession, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation for all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on Him. We depend on Him, and this in connection with our communion with Him. We need to have communion with Him as we depend on Him that we might receive that strength and support. And we find what we need from Him in connection to Him in the context of our communion. Hebrews 4.16 says, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That ought to be the impulse that regularly drives us to seek deeper communion with him, is that drawing near to the throne of grace because we're in time of need. We need that help that he might give us there. But the Lord is more than just our help. He's our happiness also. Psalm 1611, in your presence there is fullness of joy. And we need both of these things, brothers, to be helped by God and to be happy in God, because what good is it if we help others to know God and we ourselves don't know Him? We haven't made ourselves glad in Him. And so if we're gonna be effective ministers or just even persevere in the Christian life as Christian men, we need this communion. we can have neither help nor happiness unless we draw near to Him in communion with Him. And furthermore, this communion is personal. And so our communion with God must be a communion between us and the persons of the Trinity. There is no, you cannot have a relationship with an essence. And so we have to have, if we're gonna have communion with Him, we have to have communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I just have to wonder that, you know, when we're babes in Christ and we're not really aware of holding communion distinctly with the persons of the Godhead, that God just has to accommodate and by his spirit interprets our devotion, our prayers and our praises in a manner that's pleasing to him and he deals with us in our weakness and immaturity. But as we grow and seek to mature, we need to grow in this distinctively Trinitarian devotion. But how can we relate? to the persons distinctly. When the only distinctions, properly speaking, as Nathan brought out last night so well, have to do with how God relates to himself and not how he relates to us. So as we contemplate the Trinity, we can know God better. We study him, we contemplate and reflect, we know him in terms of how he relates to himself within the Trinity. in this eternal and internal way, but we have an interest in how our communion with him has to be based upon how he relates to us. And yet, he relates to us in this inseparable work. And so this is a difficulty that I won't rehash, but this is where theologians have developed the doctrine of appropriations, where And this really follows the lead of Scripture in attributing certain of the works of God to one or other of the persons of the Trinity on whom that work terminates and whose person is specially manifested by that work. And we just naturally, I think, do this as we read scripture. The Bible attributes certain works to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that makes sense to us, that's fitting to us. But as we study more and become more theologically sophisticated, we realize that this is an accommodated way of speaking, but praise God that he accommodates to our limited minds and helps us to know him better. And so when we do this, And when we speak of God's works towards us in this way, dividing it up among the persons of the Trinity, strictly speaking, we are making improper attributions. But nevertheless, it does really manifest something about the person that we are describing. And so, for example, since the Father is unbegotten and a source from which we have every good gift, it is appropriate to think of the Father in terms of love. and to reflect on the loving heart of God as revealing something of the Father. What is it then that reveals the Son to us? Which of God's actions toward us or ways of relating to us best serve as the basis for our communion with the Son because of the way that they manifest the Son to us? Recall how John Owen says, communion with God is comprised in actions, God communicates himself to us and he communicates other good things to us and we receive and respond to these gifts. This is how we have communion with God. And so in terms of what we receive from the Son in particular, I'll follow the lead of John Owen here who suggests that we receive from him grace. And it is especially in the receiving and responding to the grace of God that we have communion with the Son. John says in chapter one, verse 16 of his gospel, that from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. And I love that language, it's so devotional and it just fills my heart to overflowing. Ephesians 1.3 is perhaps my favorite verse in all of scripture, that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. He goes on to talk about the riches of his grace, this treasury or storehouse of grace that we have in Christ. How can you not be affected by reflecting on His grace. And this is exactly what we ought to do as we seek to have communion with the Son. And so in order to encourage you this morning in your fellowship with God the Son, I would simply like to walk through Ephesians 1 and just make some devotional observations here in order to highlight some of the dominant features of this grace. One thing that I haven't touched on Nathan, I think, touched on this last night to a degree. But when we have communion with any one person of the Godhead, we might have a communion, for example, this morning with the Son in particular, but not in separation from the other persons of God. And so anytime that we have communion in the love of the Father, ultimately and primarily, we are secondarily enjoying communion with the other persons of the Godhead. And whenever you find a passage of scripture like this, it is full of the grace of Christ, or 1 John, and we see the love of the Father, or we will go tomorrow in John's gospel and see the comfort, the consolation, the help, the assistance of the Spirit. These are Trinitarian passages. You can't get away from the role that the Father and the Spirit play in this same teaching. Nevertheless, we'll focus in here on the way in which it is the grace of the Son that comes to us through Jesus, that is the basis or foundation for our communion with Him. And so we begin here in Ephesians chapter one with the grace of election. In verse three, Paul, in a sort of all-encompassing way, just begins with, it's all, all grace is ours in Christ, every spiritual blessing, And again, I can hardly get over this verse. And I want you to know that God is not withholding. Just to know that in Christ, there is no withholding in God the Father. Some fathers are withholding of their affection, some people are withholding with their love, but God, there's no sense in which God is withholding. It's every spiritual blessing. Anything that God could bless you with, He has blessed you with. Anything that He might give to you, He has given to you in Christ. That's phenomenal. And in verse four, we begin to look at this specifically, and it is first the grace of election. Paul says here that He chose us, that is God the Father chose us in Him. before the foundation of the world. We see this also as we go on several places because this is the grace which is ours in Jesus. It's a discriminating grace that from all eternity you have been the grantee of grace. to be received by you in time. But this is sort of the first grace, which is the basis for all further grace that God has chosen to bless us with. And so if we look on it, verses five, and in verse five, we see that in love, there's the love of the Father, in love, he predestined us for adoption. So one grace leads to another, and the grace of election predestination, it leads on into further graces of adoption and so forth. In verse 11 also, in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. And so there's this inheritance or, again, further blessings that come out of this first blessing, this mother blessing. and that God began to set his affections upon us. And this is a wonderful truth. He did not choose you because of who you are or what you've done or any potential that God saw in you that might distinguish you and serve as the basis for God's choice. But rather he chose you according to the purpose of his will to bestow grace on whom he will. And this is a humbling, it is a devastatingly humbling grace to receive. And it's not always the first grace that we sort of receive in terms of our awareness of it. I love the illustration that Spurgeon uses of the door in the base of the cross, and he uses this illustration to to point out that oftentimes election is something that is appreciated in hindsight. After we've come in, sometimes the first grace that we are aware of is the grace of faith. But nevertheless, as we reflect back on the grace which God has shown us, we are humbled in this incredible way to realize that this didn't begin 20 years ago when my parents evangelized me. I put my faith in Christ. This happened in eternity. It's incredible. It's a most humbling grace to receive, but it is a grace that is revealed to be ours in Christ. And so the grace of election is first. I do have to move a little bit through these because I've got seven of them. So we'll move on to the next one here, the grace of sanctification. And I don't mean to, I mean, I won't even begin to scratch the surface. I think you'd have to have a more penetrating intellect to scratch the surface of this than mine. But man, we're just, I want to suggest to you the range of blessings that are yours in Christ that you might rejoice and receive these with great joy. Secondly, there's the grace of sanctification in verse four, because he chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. The longer that we walk with God in communion with Him, the more weary of sin we become, I think. The greater our view of God's holiness, the more discontent we become with our remaining and dwelling corruptions and pollutions due to sin. And this is both because we desire to be like Him, I mean, to behold the glory and the greatness of God, and we just have to have a desire to imitate Him in some of His perfections and to be like our Heavenly Father, but especially because we want to be near Him. And there's nothing that makes it separation, and we know that there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God ultimately, but experientially, we can become distant in our relationship with God because of our sin, and it just grieves us so, and more so the longer that we walk with Him and enjoy communion with Him. And so the fact that God has shown us this grace, that it is His purpose to make us holy and blameless before Him is an incredible blessing that we possess, that He is cleansing us from all unrighteousness. You know, this is incredible. And so we have the grace of sanctification likewise, the grace of election, the grace of sanctification. In verses five and six, we see here the grace of adoption. In love, verse five, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. Paul wants to make it clear that these are blessings, and again and again, this is grace, and it comes through Jesus Christ, and it includes our adoption. This is such a sweet grace that we have in Christ, because it is, I think, unexpected in a lot of ways. We can almost make sense of the fact that God would show leniency with us or that he would forgive us or pardon us, although that is really unfathomable, but we can almost make sense of it. But the fact that adding to that, that he would desire to have a personal relationship with us and to draw us near and to take us from the courtroom, as it were, into the family room and to seat us at the family table, to sit at the table and to dine with Him. This is just so incredible to be called a son of our Heavenly Father and to have access to Him and to be able to cry out, Abba, Father. The sweetness and the dearness of this is unreal. Here's the grace of adoption. Fourthly, we have the grace of justification in verse seven. In Him, We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. There's the grace of justification that God, through Christ, he's put away our sin. He's covered it, he's put it away, he has canceled the debt, and now we have a pardon for sin. We have been we have been pardoned and forgiven in Christ, and now there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, and we've been redeemed. And this according to the riches of his grace. And so there is the grace of justification. Fifthly, there's the grace of union. we might, if you've kind of got a more systematic mind, maybe the order of these things bugs you and you want to rearrange Paul and kind of set this in an ordo salutis type of ordering. And if we did that, maybe we put union first, that by uniting us with Christ, that we have everything that's in him by virtue of our union with him. And this really touches on, on this all-encompassing nature of the grace that's ours in Christ that we see in verse three, that every spiritual blessing is ours in Him. We're just united with Him. What's ours is His, and praise God that He's taken our sin and made atonement for us. But then what's His is ours, and we're clothed in His righteousness. And the full merits of Christ belong to us, and that everything that He has deserved through His perfect obedience now belongs to us, and we can rejoice in this. Verses eight through 10, we read that he has lavished the riches of his grace, he's lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. Sixthly, we have the grace of glorification. in verses 11 and 12. There is an aspect of this grace that is future-oriented and that gives us hope, and we see this here in verses 11 and 12. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ, we have hope in Christ, might be to the praise of his glory. And so there's this wonderful sense in which, as Peter brings out, that we have this inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and kept in heaven for us. And we await the full reception of all of the blessings because there are some that are for the future. And then finally, we see here the grace of perseverance in verses 13 and 14. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. If there's one thing that we might, after having received his promise, that all of this grace is ours in Christ, wonder or worry is losing it. And my wife has sort of a little bit of a pessimistic streak. And so she sometimes begins to think about, so we got a dog like a year ago. And almost immediately, she's thinking about, oh, it's going to be sad when this dog dies. Like, what is wrong with you? Just enjoy the blessing of the dog. It's going to die, obviously, but I mean, not soon. I shouldn't have said that. She's going to listen to this. I did say I loved her yesterday, though. I love her. A lot. But these blessings are irrevocable, I'm sure. They cannot be taken away from us. We can't lose them because they don't depend on us. And praise God that they don't, because if they did, we would lose them. There'd be no question about it, we would lose them, but they don't depend on us, they depend on Christ. And if Christ can lose them, then we can lose them, but Christ can't lose them. We are united with Him, and so our grace will persevere. We will persevere in Him. And so you see that as we just reflect on these many, and this is just, I mean, again, scratching the surface, just highlighting the breadth of the grace that we have in Christ, you see the richness of it. And so how is God's varied grace in Christ then the basis of our communion with the Son? Well, let me suggest to you a few ways that we can make use of these truths. And number one is, as with the love of the Father, first you should acknowledge the grace that is yours in Christ. Acknowledge the grace that is yours in Christ. If you limit his grace to a single benefit, like forgiveness, then you will not enjoy the fullness of communion with the Son in the abundance of His grace. And so this is a part of just reading the Bible as a means of grace, is to learn from God's revelation to you more of the grace that He has given you as a possession. I mean, I think that sometimes we're like people who have this wonderful inheritance and we just don't, we've not itemized it. We don't actually know what we possess. And so by reflecting on what is ours in Christ, we first of all, just acknowledge this grace. And so search out the scriptures in order to understand the extent of your spiritual blessings, which are your possession in Jesus. He is a treasury of grace. And in him are unsearchable riches, grace upon grace. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is yours in him. No good thing is withheld from you. And so acknowledge it, first of all. Secondly, understanding what it is, you must not fail to receive this grace by faith. And so, brothers, believe that it is your possession, and that by faith God has opened the storehouses of heaven for you, that these things are yours in Christ Jesus, and appropriate each one of them. Believe that you are justified in Him. Believe that you are adopted in him and live out of that adoption and actually address God as father and draw near to him as one would draw near to a father who looks on you with a tender parental care and kindness. Believe that through Christ, sin's controlling power over you has been broken and you're being cleansed from all unrighteousness. Believe that through Christ, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Embrace these graces by faith and rejoice in the richness of your inheritance. And then finally, And we'll close with this this morning. There needs to be a response to what we know and believe to be ours in Christ Jesus, the Son. Because after all, this communion, it's not a one-way thing. There needs to be a sense of receiving these good things that God is communicating to us that come from the heart of the Father. And we find the source in the Father's love, but they come to us through Jesus and are ours in Him. We receive them, but then we respond to them. There needs to be this response. And so make sure that you grow in the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let your heart be strengthened by this grace. Draw near to the throne of grace that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And know the sufficiency of his grace in your weakness. And set your hope fully on this grace. And finally, praise him for his glorious grace. Praise him for his glorious grace. And let's do that this morning as we pray together. Father God, we thank you that you've not only revealed yourself to be a trinity of persons to us, but you have invited us into this Trinitarian life. As you have communicated to us severally, distinctly, through each of You're a divine person. You have communicated to us these good things. And God, we especially are thankful this morning of the good things that you've communicated to us through Jesus Christ, your son. And for the grace that we have in him. And it's not a little grace. It is measureless and vast. But it is unsearchable. It is a treasury, a storehouse. And we accept your witness and your testimony. We believe these promises that this is our inheritance. This is our possession. It cannot be taken away from us because we are united to Him. We don't hold Him, He holds us. And we have everything that is His, and help us to believe it, God. We believe, help our unbelief, convince our hearts that we have these things. And God, we pray that You would help us to live in the reality of this. And God, to not leave these graces on the shelf, as it were, without improving them, without appropriating them, God, but that we would take them to ourselves and make use and, God, that you would give us help and you would make us happy as we enjoy the grace that's ours in Christ. And God, we, as your people, give you praise. Thank you, Father, for this grace. We pray all of this in Christ's name, amen.