We Are Blessed in God - 2A

Jack Hibbs: The blessings that are ours in Christ have all been provided. You might be saying, "I want more." Well, let me tell you, there is more and it's been laid out in front of you and it's available.
David J: This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J. Thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.
Jack Hibbs: Hey everybody, we want you to be aware of a great book and please listen up. Our friend Charlie Kirk, right before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk had finished up a book titled Stop in the Name of God. And I gotta tell you friends, you're going to want to get a copy. It teaches you how to rest in our Lord Jesus Christ. Stop in the Name of God by Charlie Kirk. Get a copy for yourself. It's the featured item for this September.
David J: That's Stop in the Name of God by Charlie Kirk. Get your copy at jackhibbs.com. On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series now called The Book of Ephesians and a message titled "We are Blessed in God, Part Two." Ephesians is a letter the Apostle Paul wrote from prison to the church in Ephesus, showing every believer who they really are in God. And here Paul wants us to know we've already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You see, so many of us feel drained, run down, and barely getting by. But the truth is, everything we need has already been given to us. We're not waiting on more. We just need to reach out and take hold of all that God has for us. So today Pastor Jack teaches that God has blessed us, meaning it's already done. So if we're just getting by, well, it's not because heaven ran short. It's because we haven't tapped into all that's really ours in Christ. Now with his message called "We are Blessed in God, Part Two," here's pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.
Jack Hibbs: Right now, though, Book of Ephesians beginning in Chapter One and we're going to cover verse three tonight. Maybe half of verse three then. Verse three, Ephesians One: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." And we are still talking as we were last week. We are blessed in God. No doubt about it. We are blessed in God. And you need to realize that tonight if you're sitting here or if you're listening and you're feeling, "I don't feel blessed at all. I just feel absolutely zapped, drained, dead, and run down." Then please stay tuned for the next two and a half hours or so as we see how we can get re-energized and charged by how blessed we are in God, in Christ. There's a great story that came to mind in putting this message together. I heard it years ago through Dr. J. Vernon McGee. If you hear it through McGee, you know it's got to be a kind of a corny thing. But I got it off the Bible bus and he's such a great storyteller. A lot of people don't even realize his program is going so strong and so good. A lot of people don't realize he's dead and in heaven—or alive now in heaven. But he told this story and I want you to listen to it tonight. He said there was a little boy who went to his mother one day and he had oatmeal and he wanted to sweeten up that oatmeal. So he said to his mama, he said, "Mama, can I have some lasses in my oatmeal?" And she said, "Well, I'll be there in a minute, honey." And she's preparing the kitchen and he says, "Mama, I need some lasses in my oatmeal." And she walked over to him and she said, "Honey, what is it you want?" And he says, "I want some lasses in my oatmeal." And she says, "What is lasses? Oh, you mean molasses!" And he says, "How can I have mo' lasses when I haven't even had any lasses yet?" And as we get into verse three, we need to realize tonight that the blessings that are ours in Christ have all been provided. You might be saying, "I want more." Well, let me tell you, there is more and it's been laid out in front of you and it's available. You don't have to cry out, "I want more Jesus." He's been given. We'll talk tonight about the Holy Spirit and how he's available to us, but he's been given. We don't need any lasses because we've got the mo' lasses. We've got it all in him. In 2nd Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9, the Bible says, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich." And I know in this body tonight there are some of you that have an extreme amount of money and some of you have middle-class kind of money and some of you are praying that by the end of the service tonight, money will come. But as Americans, as westerners, you're going to need to right now divorce yourself while we lay the foundation that we're not talking about material things. Though God will bless with those and he has. But even if he doesn't and even if the economy—which I think is going to crash sooner or later, maybe sooner—it really doesn't matter because of who we are in Christ. There is a power available to us and there is an existence in Christianity afforded to us that we can walk in the Lord and know him that it transcends anything that you and I can experience by threat or by debt or by peril or by sword. And do we know it? If the news comes, what does it do to us? Do we fold up? Many people accept Jesus Christ and then God—they don't know it, they don't realize it, maybe they're not discipled and understand—but God will engineer a trial to test their commitment. Many people will give up because they don't realize that just because we're Christians doesn't mean that things are going to be perfect in life. God has called us to be Christians because he's adopted us in Christ before the foundations of the world were ever laid. We'll get there next week in verse four. But the awesome thing is no matter what happens, we're going to heaven. We're saved. And it's secured in him. But my question tonight—and I want you to be searching your own heart and I need to search mine—we are in Christ. That's great and we have him. But let me tell you and let me ask you: do we have and have we submitted and committed ourselves completely to him? Does he have all of us as believers? He's living in me, he's living in you. But am I, am I in him? Meaning, have I yielded all of the compartments of my heart to him? Those dark little hallways and closets. Have I given him everything? Or are there things that we're holding back and we're afraid to give him for fear that he won't like us anymore, for fear that he'll reject us? Listen, we are such a funny people. The very thing that you're afraid of God seeing and people seeing and your spouse knowing or your friend or your father or your mom finding out about is the very thing that God will just quietly tap on and tap on until you spring it and give it to him because he just wants to clean it up. He's not going to pull it out and beat you with it. He's not going to put it up on PBS or HBO or whatever that stuff is. And it's going to be gone in him. He wants to better our relationship together. But as Christians, we are positionally in Christ. That's what this book is all about. But are we experiencing him practically? It's true that at the moment of our conversion, the Holy Spirit comes inside of us and baptizes us into the body of Christ once and for all. That's what Paul says in Corinthians. But there's more to the Christian walk than what we experience just in that moment. When you accepted Christ, the Holy Spirit came in and you were baptized positionally into Christ, into the body. Now, listen. Some of you have come from some Baptist backgrounds or some other backgrounds. You might have a hard time with this, but listen carefully. It is true that the Holy Spirit is in you never to leave you or forsake you. But read your Bible carefully. There is an experience that God has told us about in the Book of Ephesians 5:18 and other places in scripture, that there is another work of the Holy Spirit. For when he comes in you in conversion, it is the word in the Greek, *en*. He's inside. We spell it I-N. He's come inside. But then as a believer, to have the power to walk as a Christian, there is the coming upon, the *epi* in the Greek. The Holy Spirit coming upon you and literally empowering you to walk the walk. Listen, how you doing? I forgot it. I left it on my desk today. Cut out of the Duracell battery package, the little tester that you take your battery and you touch the two ends and you get a reading on it. Well, God so to speak does that with us and we find out how we're doing. Our batteries are checked. And how are you doing? How's your walk? Are you just feeling like you're just barely getting by? Or are you energized like that insane bunny? That rabbit just kind of drives me nuts. But I'm envious of that stupid rabbit. I see that little guy beating his drum going across the Mojave Desert. He's just got endless energy. And every time you see that guy, there's that little Energizer Bunny. And God by the Holy Spirit wants to energize us daily, moment by moment. It's not the inside working of the Holy Spirit, that is done. It's the coming upon experience of the Holy Spirit. That is a subsequent event. And I'm not talking about this thing that some of you might have heard about called the second blessing. I am not talking about the second blessing. I'm talking about the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the 20th, the 110th blessing. Because in Ephesians Five, Paul will teach us when we get there in a couple of months that it is a power that is available to us over and over again. In fact, the very Greek construction tells us that it is a constant need to be filled over and over again with the power of the Holy Spirit. Why am I saying this? Because you and I are blessed. And we are not tapping into all that's available for us. Listen to this. We have been saved in Christ and we are sealed in the Holy Spirit. This book will teach us. But listen to Luke 11 beginning at verse 9. Jesus says, "So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks will receive, and he who seeks will find, and to him who knocks, it shall be opened. If a son asks for bread from any among you, will you give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks from you an egg, will you give him a scorpion?" The answer is absolutely not, of course. "If you then being evil..." Jesus is saying, not that we're all wicked, though we probably are wicked. He's saying, though you being a lost human parent, you know how to love your child or friend by giving them something good. He says, "How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask?" And he was talking to believers when he made that statement. The Holy Spirit was in them. But the Holy Spirit also needs to be upon us in that great empowerment. And the key to a powerful Christian walk is right here in the Book of Ephesians, right here in verse three when he says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." And I love this: "Father." It's great how God talks to us and he wants us, as the Holy Spirit writes the Bible through men, he wants us to call him Father. Isn't that great? Well, you might say, "Well, yeah, that's great because I had a great relationship with my father and I can see how God is even a greater father." Well, what if you didn't have such a good relationship with your father and that's the mental image, that picture that you have? Well, God says take all that kind of stuff, set it off to the side. I'm your Father. Did you have a good father? I sure did. Well, then I'm going to be a better father. Did you have a bad father? Yes, I did. Well, then I'm going to be a good father so you're going to know the difference. And isn't it great he says, "Blessed be the Father." And that's our Father forever. And by the way, since Jesus Christ came incarnate, it's the Father in relation to Christ forever. There's a family unit that God has seemed to establish. He seems to enjoy that. But the word is "blessed." Listen to this word. It means to be well-spoken of or to be well-off. Now, when I think of the word "well-off" and the Greek meaning to this word "blessed," I think of Corona del Mar. I think of a house on the beach. Didn't you guys feel guilty today? Was not today—was not the sunrise, the sunset, and every moment in between today perfect? Beautiful? It was one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen in my life today. And you could see from the mountains to the ocean today. It's incredible. Snow on the mountains, people skiing with shorts on. This is a weird world we live in here. The rest of the world is freezing to death. And many of you thought about ditching work and going to the beach today and surfing or taking your boat out. Shame! Outrageous day. Blessed of God. Now, those of you who get the tapes back east, you are blessed of God too. But if you really want to be blessed... just an absolutely perfect day. And there's the kind of day like it was today where the air was kind of crisp in the morning and it was a little cool in the evening, but there's that breeze that's going across your skin that's saying, "Beach. Balboa. Corona del Mar." And it's just, when I think of well-off, I'm thinking about just being like that at the beach just enjoying God's blessings. And it says here that God is well-off. That he's blessed. Why? Because we're going to see that it's in Christ that he purchased us. And that turns him on! That no matter how you look or what you're feeling or what you're thinking, God is so in love with you that he's blessed to have you. He's well-off. Now, this word also means in its truest form that he is blessed, meaning that his very nature, his very character—listen, God is always blessed. It's the way he is. But what's exciting to me is that it says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. In heavenly places in Christ." You know "in Christ" appears five times in this chapter alone, ten times in the book. Just "in Christ." Then there's "in himself" and "in the spirit" and "in God." The whole book is about us being in him. And if you're a believer tonight, that's exactly where you're at. God our Father, God yes, supreme being over all. Father, yes, because Jesus came in the flesh. Listen, Hebrews chapter 5, verse 8. You ought to jot it down right next to verse three. Hebrews 5:8 says, "Though he was a son,"—Jesus, that is positionally God incarnate—"yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered." Did you hear that verse? That's about Jesus Christ. "Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things that he suffered." And listen, so will you and I. That's why this verse three is so important. You are blessed in God and you better hang on to this verse the next time a trial hits you upside the head. We're blessed in God. So was Jesus, but he suffered. This is a thing that you will not find in your little promise scripture that you can buy down at the bookstore. It will not say, "All those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Or, "It's through much tribulation that we inherit the kingdom of God." You're not going to find that in one of those promise books. But if we understand God the way we ought, there are things that you and I will only learn through suffering. Jesus, isn't it amazing that Jesus in the flesh learned obedience by the things that he suffered? And you're thinking, "Could God learn something?" God cannot learn anything. He knows everything. But Jesus who is God and taking upon him the form of a human incarnate, there's that thing that we mentioned before, the *kenosis*. It means that he willfully laid aside—hear me carefully—he didn't stop being God, he didn't stop being all-powerful, he laid aside certain tools. In other words, he had tools in his hand and he put them in his belt, his work pocket thingy. Somebody help me. One of those things, your construction dealy-bobber that you put your nails and your hammer in. They were available to him at any moment. He wasn't less. When he was born as a baby, he was still the creator of the universe. It's amazing. Jesus the creator. When we say that we're blessed in God, what is it that we mean? It says in verse three here that he has blessed us. Past tense. He has. He's given it. So why are we missing it? Why are we hurting? Lack of appropriation is what's going on. He has given it to us. Not only that but every spiritual blessing. Number one thing I want you to realize: it is all in the past tense. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. It's in the past tense in the Greek as the Bible was written, and the English and the Russian and the Spanish. It's in the past tense. It is an absolute fact, it's been done. And what was needed for us to succeed as Christians in this world until the day the Lord calls us home has already been given. If you and I are just barely squeaking by, it's of our own choosing. Because we can be victorious in Christ. We can be so victorious in Christ that we can be obnoxious to the world. Have you ever noticed that? I mean you've just got the peace of the Lord. You had your time with God and things are just—you know, you just know that the Lord is with you and you get to work and there—things are going nuts and people are freaking out and you can just kind of like, "Oh, wow. No raises this year? Oh well." I had somebody ask me once—this is way back and I was just a punk and I had just started at Baxter—and they were paying me this amount and come to find out, like two months went by and they had made a mistake. They were supposed to be paying me more. So they called me in the office and I thought, "Oh man, I got three-month probation, I didn't even make it through my three months." I go in there and I sit down and the guys are going, "We don't know how to tell you this." "Well, just go ahead and tell me." "Well, here," hands me this piece of paper and it's just a check. "Wow, what's the deal? I thought I was out of here." He goes, "Well, we just messed up your pay scale totally and we just—this is back money and we just made a big mistake. We're so sorry." And I went, "Wow, far out." So when I walked back out into the lab, everybody goes, "What happened? What happened?" "Oh, they just gave me money." And it was great because a couple of guys went, "Cool," and a few people went, "What do you mean they gave you money?" And they all got bent out of shape. And from that point on, every time I had a review, I'd come out of personnel going, "Oh man, God is so good!" And they'd go, "What? What? What?" "Nothing, just God is so good to me." And they probably thought by the time I left there I was making millions. So funny. But you have that day, you go to work and things are falling apart and you're just, "Hey, praise the Lord, man. What's going on?" And people will hate you for having peace. It drives them nuts. "Come on, man, don't you realize what's going on?" "Yeah, I sure do. I heard what the guy said." "Well, don't you know what it means?" "Yes, I do. God just has a better job for me."
David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called "We Are Blessed in God, Part Two." Thanks for spending part of your day with us. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Book of Ephesians. It's a series through Paul's letter to the Ephesians, discovering the riches, the walk, and the warfare of every believer. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
Jack Hibbs: Father, we thank you, Lord God, for your faithfulness, your goodness, your kindness. And the truth of the matter is, Lord, let us respond back to you in worship. Worship and fellowship. Your Bible tells us not to forsake the gathering together. And so we might need to repent of that and get to church on Sunday and mingle with the brothers and sisters. There's no doubt that doing that helps us grow deeper in you. So Father, we lay it all out before you, and may you find our worship sweet. In Jesus' name, amen.
David J: Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.