For the Love of God

8th Sunday after Pentecost July 15, 2018 Ephesians 1:3-14 Year B For the Love of God Children’s Time Object: a man's dress jacket with buttons on the cuffs Good morning, boys and girls. Check out this nice jacket I brought with me. Do you think you could wear this jacket? Might be a little big right now, wouldn't it. This is a man's jacket, and I want to point out something interesting about it. See these buttons on the sleeve? Why do you think they are there? Did you know that there is NO purpose for these buttons? So how did they get there? Hundreds of years ago, there was a military general named Frederick the Great. Now Frederick the Great was in charge of a lot of soldiers. And Frederick noticed that the sleeves on his soldiers' uniforms were getting very dirty. He discovered that the soldiers were using their sleeves to wipe the sweat off their faces. That's why their sleeves were so dirty. Well, Frederick the Great didn't like that, so he ordered the men to sew buttons onto their jacket sleeves. Now, if they used the sleeve to wipe their faces, the buttons would scratch them. Soon, the men stopped wiping their faces on their sleeves because they were tired of getting scratched. Now these days, men don't wipe their faces on their sleeves, so we don't need these little buttons. They don't have any purpose. But we still sew them onto men's sleeves for no reason. Unlike these little buttons that don't have any purpose, the Bible says that you and I were created for a very special purpose. We were created to bring glory to God, to praise and worship God and tell everybody about Him. That's why God created us. That's our whole purpose. That's a pretty exciting reason, isn't it? You and I aren't useless. We are very special and important in God's eyes. He made us for a very special reason to worship Him. That's why it feels so good to pray and sing songs and to learn about God. Because that's what we were made for. Let's thank God for making us for this special job. Dynamic Preaching, Collected Sermons, by King Duncan Ephesians 1:3-14 Common English Bible (CEB) The believers’ blessings 3 Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven. 4 God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before the creation of the world. 5 God destined us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ because of his love. This was according to his goodwill and plan 6 and to honor his glorious grace that he has given to us freely through the Son whom he loves. 7 We have been ransomed through his Son’s blood, and we have forgiveness for our failures based on his overflowing grace, 8 which he poured over us with wisdom and understanding. 9 God revealed his hidden design[a] to us, which is according to his goodwill and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son. 10 This is what God planned for the climax of all times:[b] to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth. 11 We have also received an inheritance in Christ. We were destined by the plan of God, who accomplishes everything according to his design. 12 We are called to be an honor to God’s glory because we were the first to hope in Christ. 13 You too heard the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit because you believed in Christ. 14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment on our inheritance, which is applied toward our redemption as God’s own people, resulting in the honor of God’s glory. Footnotes: a. Ephesians 1:9 Or mystery b. Ephesians 1:10 Or the fullness of times Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible I remember the experience like it was yesterday. In grade school, during recess, and the class would decide that we were going to play kickball. The strongest kickball players would be designated at captains, and the rest of the class would all line up waiting for the captains to choose you for the team. Those of us who were not particularly good athletes, would just hope that we were not the last one standing in line waiting to be chosen. Our self esteem was dependent on how soon we were chosen. The good news is when we came off the heavenly assembly line ready to come down on earth, God personally chose each of us to be a part of the heavenly team. How can you be sure? Do you have a belly button? That is where as you were coming off of the assembly line, God touched you and said, I want this one, and this one, and this one. We all have a belly button because we were all chosen personally by God. That is the message of Ephesians for today. The book of Ephesians is the epistle lesson for the next 7 weeks. Usually when I read Ephesians, it is a bunch of words to me, nice words with a message that makes no sense to me. But this time when I looked at it makes sense, and I think that it is an important message for all of us. The message is that God chose all of us to be a part of God’s team. Each is us is important. And those who follow Jesus Christ have been picked and specially prepared to do a job. This is the beginning of the book of Ephesians. It is intended to be a prayer of thanksgiving, when we become aware of all that God has done for us. It was sung in worship, it was sung after a baptism service to remind people to bless God, because God has blessed us. The message of Epeshians one – we are beloved, adopted children, we have been redeemed, we have been forgiven, we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. In other words we have nothing to worry about. Billy Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz is both an author and an evangelist. Her house was broken into a few years ago. The robbers took almost everything of value. The night after the break-in, Ms. Lotz lay awake while fear filled her heart and mind. Not only had all of her valuable possessions been stolen away and so had her sense of security. , She began worrying about all the other precious things in her life that she could lose. Through illness or accident, she could lose her children or her husband. She could lose her health. She could lose her job, or her finances, or even her reputation. Just as anxiety was about to take over completely, she recalled the words from I Peter 1:4, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade - kept in heaven for you . . ." Did you catch that? We have an inheritance that cannot be taken away from us. Anne Graham Lotz sat down and made an alphabetical list of the eternal blessings that cannot be taken away from us. Listen to the items on her list and notice her clever use of the letters of the alphabet. She wrote: I am: Accepted by God / Beloved by God / Chosen by God / Delivered by God / Enlightened by God / Forgiven by God I have: Grace of God / Hope for the future / Inheritance in heaven / Justification / Knowledge of God / Love / Mercy of God / Nearness to God / Oneness with God / Peace / Quickening of the Spirit I am: Redeemed / Sealed with the Holy Spirit / Treasured by God / United with other believers / Validated as an authentic child of God I have: His Wisdom And one day I will be: / Exalted with Him! (1) What a beautiful way of saying that we are BLESSED with an ongoing inheritance from God. Remember, we are blessed. It is easy for us to want to be a part of the crowd and to think like everyone else. We all want to be picked on the kickball field. Even when we go to church, and learn to say we are a Christian, when we are in life with or friends, we want them to think of us as just another person. When by definition, we are different. Being Holy means being different. It means standing out. It means letting God make our choices, whether then using our own reasoning. The world tends toward division and strife. We as people tend to choose sides, we exclude people, we get selfish, we even sometimes put on blinders and forget what may be going on in others lives if it does not apply to us. When we deal with others, people give what they deserve, not what they need. And God says that I chose you to be on my team, to make things different. It is that difference that brings us all together in love. In his book Dangerous Wonder, Mike Yaconelli recounts a time he hired a man to lay tile in his kitchen. Yaconelli knew this man to be the alcoholic father of a teenager whom he had come to know through a youth ministry. The father had been emotionally and physically abusive to everyone in his family. Yaconelli determined not to be cheated or pushed around by this fellow. He demanded (and received) a written estimate in advance -- $350 for three days' work. When the work was finished the tiler said, "I need to talk to you about the money." Yaconelli braced himself for a battle royal. He writes: I was ready for him and glanced at my wife with the look of testosterone on my face. He started to hand me the bill, but then paused for a moment and said, "A couple of years ago I was drinking too much. I am an alcoholic and was at a very low point in my life. I almost lost my family because of my drinking. I mistreated my wife and my children, especially my oldest son. "But you and your wife spent a lot of time with him at a critical moment in his life when he could have gone either way. Shortly after that I went to AA, and I've been sober ever since. Because of you and your wife, I still have a relationship with my son. I've never been able to thank you, but I'm thanking you now." He handed me his bill for $350. "Paid in full" was written across the page. This abusing, untrustworthy man ... had just shown this arrogant snob the meaning of grace. God chose us in heaven, because God made a plan in heaven. God gave each of us free choice, and in free choice, we tend to forget about God and do what we want to do. That creates divisions and misunderstandings. In order to clear up those misunderstandings, God sent Jesus into he world, he took us out of the world and showed us what real love is. And when we spread that real love, we fulfill God’s plan of trying to unite the world together as one. God gave the world away, and God is trying to bring the world back under God’s rule. God is depending on us to carry out that plan. Ephesians 10 says that God’s purpose in creating the world is to gather all things in earth and heaven together united through Christ. When the Church Rises When the church rises up to be the church, the world rises up to be the world. What is the meaning of grace? It's that none of us deserves the love of God. None of us deserves another chance. That's the heavy part. But the lightness of grace is that God, magically, considers us worthy of being in a relationship with the Creator of the universe. The incredible news is that God has written across the debt-sheets of our personal lives, "Paid in full." CSS Publishing Company, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, by Glenn McDonald If we can’t remember anything else from this sermon, remember the fact that God gave us two wonderful words to live by – grace and peace. As long as we have grace and peace in our lives, we have all that we need. Alister MacLean tells of a lady in the West Highlands who lived a hard life, yet one of perpetual serenity. When asked the secret of it, she answered: “My secret is to sail the seas, and always to keep my heart in port.” Wherever the Christian is, he is still in Christ. According to Henry Alford Porter, The Greeks had a beautiful word for humanity--'anthropos,' meaning the being with the upturned face. "Men are queer things," Porter goes on to comment, "Man is so made that he cannot be content with forever looking down. He may look down a long time, so long that he almost forgets there's anything else, anything above, forgets that he was made for God ” until something happens, some crisis comes. And then he remembers and looks up.(5) I started with a memory from my childhood. And I want to end with another memory. I never watched this television show, but I do remember the show Ateam – it starred Mr. T. I do remember the Ateam was a team of people who would have assignments to catch the bad guys. I never really watched the show, but I would watch the opening and closing of the show. I do remember them driving around in a black van, that did not always follow traffic rules. At the end of each show, they would drive off in the black van…… Every great accomplishment begins with a vision, a dream, then a plan. Some of you may remember one of the more absurd shows that ever graced our television screens, the infamous "A Team." The black van careening around the corner on two wheels. B.A. is at the steering wheel. Face and Murdock sit back and relax as "The A Team" streaks away from the bad guys once again. In the copilot's seat, Hannibal reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulls out a cigar, leans comfortably against the door of the van and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, says, "I love it when a plan comes together!" (5) Our text for the day comes from that immortal television series, The A-Team. At the conclusion of each show the leader would light up his cigar and say, "I love it when a plan comes together." He's right! It is great when a plan comes together. What case can there be for the worth of an individual human being? Only this, that according to the Sacred Word, we are at the center of God's plan for creation. When we forget that central fact, then life does become meaningless and burdensome God’s plan starting with choosing you in heaven, showing you love and making you apart of the family, and a part of the plan, to unite all things in heaven and earth together in God’s love. It is a blessing to us in life, because it gives us grace and peace. And as long as we have grace and peace, we have all that we need. Praise God. Let us pray…. Amen. Other illustrations…. You Spell God Three women die and all three reach Heaven at the same time. There they meet St. Peter. He tells them he has some other important business to transact and asks them to wait outside. Finally he returns and calls the first woman into his office. He apologizes for making her wait so long. "Oh, I don't mind at all," the woman says. "I'm so thrilled just to be here in Heaven." St. Peter is delighted by her attitude. "Well, then, if you can just answer one question for me, we can finish processing your papers. Now tell me, how do you spell `God'?" The woman spells it for him, then she goes on into the celestial realm. St. Peter calls in the next woman and also apologizes to her for making her wait. "It will be worth it, I'm sure," she answers. "I am willing to wait one thousand years if necessary in order to see God face to face." St. Peter is very pleased. He insists, though, on asking her one more question for the Records. "Tell me, dear lady, how do you spell `God'?" The woman spells it perfectly, then enters the Pearly Gates. Finally, St. Peter calls in the third woman. He also apologizes to her, but she refuses to accept his apology. "It was quite rude," she says angrily. "All my life on earth I had to wait in lines. Wait at the checkout counter, wait at the bus stop, wait for the kids to get home from school, wait for my coffee break. And now you expect me to wait to get into Heaven? Well, I just won't stand for it!" St. Peter said, "I'm so sorry. If you'll just answer one more question for our records, then you can go on in. Tell me, how do you spell 'Czechoslovakia'?" Traditional Humor Unknown Can you recall a significant event that changed many things about you: maybe a natural disaster like a flood that swept away your house, maybe you had a car accident that left you with a limp, or a happier change when you got married? Either way, on the next day you are different and now you must start living life differently. That's how Paul begins our text. "Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light." Dr. Sandy Winter, pastor of the University Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, AL, tells a wonderful story about a conversation a daughter had with her mother when the mother was 88 years old and was dying. The daughter knew that as a tiny child during the worst part of the depression her family lived with her grandparents out in a rural area. There were the grandparents, this young family of 4, and nine more brothers and sisters and family members living in one place, all trying to eke out a living raising enough food. Of course, there was no means of transportation, other than walking. But this daughter also knew that later as she was growing up her family lived in town not out in the country. She wondered how this came about. So she asked her mother how she managed to get the family moved in to town in the midst of the depression at a time when people were using every resource they had just to put food on the table. The mother was weak and couldn’t say much, but her mind was clear. Her answer was, “I had to.” The daughter said, “What do you mean, you had to?” The mother replied, “We had to go to church!” Think about that. “We had to go to church!” “Her family being able to go to church,” says Dr. Winter, “was a matter of life and death for the mother, a matter so important that it empowered her to move mountains.” (4) Praise is our witness to the world that God reigns in our lives. We gather each week in this place to say to the world, “God lives! God matters!” What does it mean to be a chosen people? It means we live lives of integrity; it means we love one another as Christ loves us; it means that weekly we gather and lift our hearts in praise to God. We are chosen, not for privilege, but for purpose for serving God. A minister in Vermont tells about a Bible Class teacher who was registering the children in Sunday school, and she asked two brothers their ages and birthday. One of the two boys said, “We’re both seven. My birthday is April 8, 1976, and my brother’s is April 20, 1976.” The teacher was a little confused and said, “But that’s impossible!” The other brother said, “No, it’s not, one of us is adopted.” Before she was even aware that she had asked, the words came out, “Which one?” The boys looked at each other and smiled. Then one of them said, “We asked Dad that a while ago, but he just said he loved us, and he couldn’t remember any more which one was adopted.” (5) A piece of humor has been circulating on the Internet for some time about a young polar bear cub that approached his mother one day and asked, “Mom, am I a polar bear?” “Of course you are,” she replied with a smile. “OK,” said the cub, and padded off. Later, he found his dad out by the iceberg. “Dad, am I a polar bear?” he asked. “Sure you are, son!” said his dad, wondering why his son would ask such a silly thing. The next day, the cub asked the question again and again. “Are you and mom polar bears?” he asked his dad. “You are? Well, then, does that make me a polar bear? Pure, 100% polar bear?” Finally, his parents couldn’t stand it any longer. “Son, you’re driving us crazy with this question! You are a polar bear! Why do you keep asking?” The cub looked up and confessed, “Cause I’m FREEZING!”