Father God, we ask now in the name of Jesus that our hearts and minds may be open to see the Way, receive the Truth and, by Your Spirit, live the life that You offer to us through Christ; that we may bring glory to You Lord. Amen.
When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed,?
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,?
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,?
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
(Johnson Oatman, Jr.)
One of my very early childhood memories is of hearing my mother and grandmother singing that hymn to me.
Anyone else remember it?
The refrain goes something like this:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,?
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
The heading given for today's sermon, the first in our series on Ephesians is "Counting our Father's blessings". For that is exactly what St Paul encourages us to do - not just in chapter 1, but throughout this Epistle. Those of you who're studying it in a Priory House Group will have already been reminded that Paul wrote this Letter during his imprisonment in Rome.
He was, as he described himself in the final chapter, an ambassador for Christ - "an ambassador in chains" (6:20). Hardly the easiest of circumstances in which to count blessings; and yet count them Paul certainly did.
So what does it mean to 'count our Father's blessings'? Well, we know from elsewhere in the New Testament, that counting our blessings should include being grateful for the ordinary every-day things that we can all too easily take for granted: thankfulness for food and drink, for health and strength, for clothes to wear and work to do, for our home comforts, for family and friends. Daily expression of gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His provision for these needs is an important part of Christian living. As is praise to the Creator for the wonderful world He has made: for the beauty of the changing seasons, the amazing variety and richness of earth, sea and sky. 'O Lord, my God, when I, in awesome wonder, consider all the works Thy hand has made... Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee: How great Thou art.' That's another aspect of counting our blessings.
But, let's face it, all of these things are transitory.
Our home comforts and our health can be here today and gone tomorrow - as they were for Job. And one moment we can be aware of the beauty of creation, the next of the blight and brokenness of the natural world. So while it's right and good to thank God for such blessings when we enjoy them, they are not actually what St Paul is urging us to count here.
Rather, the blessings that Paul wants all Christians to count again and again are those which, in Ephesians 1:3, he terms 'spiritual blessings' (Greek: eulogia pneumatike). Of course, what's here before us in these verses from Ephesians 1, is in fact, Paul's own prayer of praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is Paul counting his blessings, naming them one by one, and blessing God for them. And Paul's prayer recounts the story of what God has done in Jesus:
the Father has blessed us in Christ - v 3;
He chose us in Christ - v 4;
gave us our destiny in Christ - v 5;
lavished grace, free but priceless, on us in Christ - v 6;
redeemed us through the blood of Christ - vv 7-8;
revealed the mystery of His purposes in Christ - vv 8-9;
intends to sum up all things in Christ - v 10.
And in verses we didn't read today, but which conclude this section, vv 11-14, Paul also counts the blessings of our inheritance in the Christ who is the fulfilment of human hope, and of the gift of the Holy Spirit, God's guarantee of the reality of what is yet to come.
What an astonishing list of blessings this is!
It's a summary of the whole divine plan of salvation.
It's a celebration of the big picture within which every single Christian story is set. Every story of individual repentance and conversion, faith and hope; every story of God at work in people's lives - from St Paul's to yours and mine - is set within this celebration of 'spiritual blessing in the heavenly places'.
There is so much to think about in every phrase of this extract from Ephesians that we'd all have to miss our Sunday lunch to begin to do it justice! Better then, to study it with others in a House Group, or on your own with a good guide-book - like Tom Wright's Paul for Everyone - The Prison Letters (SPCK 2002). Bishop Tom responds to some of the difficult questions arising from the passage, such as what is meant by the word 'destined' in verse 5; but I'm not going to get bogged down in the question of 'predestination' now, or we really would be here til tomorrow!
What is more important for us to reflect upon together today is the sad truth that people who've been church-goers for ages and heard Bible readings like this many times over, are at risk of losing our sense of awe and wonder at just what God has done for us in Christ.
We can take for granted what St Paul says in 'praise of God's glorious grace', as easily as we take for granted our other kinds of blessing.
So we need to remind ourselves that salvation is not a human right;
adoption as God's child is not my privilege - it's sheer gift by divine prerogative;
redemption isn't something you deserve;
forgiveness isn't a perk that I have earned.
No. Your freedom from slavery to sin,
my release from the realms of death and destruction, are brought about only through God's choice, God's decision, and the shed blood of God-in-Christ upon the Cross. 'In Christ alone my hope is found'.
And in Christ are blessings that should not for one moment be taken for granted. Christians should be characterised by our continual counting and re-counting of our Father's blessings - the spiritual blessings which are there regardless of our sickness or our health; our wealth or our poverty; the beauty or the brokenness of our environment.
John and I were at a meeting last week with the new Bishop of Worcester. Bishop John Inge quoted a recent survey which found that the single characteristic which marks all growing churches - irrespective of tradition or style of worship - the outstanding characteristic of growing churches is.... ?
Joy. Infectious joy.
The attitude of gratitude shown by church members.
Joy in the Lord; the joy which is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Not a superficial frothy happy-clappyness, but a deep down irrepressible overflowing joyfulness which is there whatever the weather, whatever the stress and struggles of this life - because men and women, young and old, make it an act of the will, not an outcome of nice feelings, to count our Father's blessings. When we count our spiritual blessings, we can (as Paul says elsewhere, Phil. 4:4) 'rejoice in the Lord always', because spiritual blessings - unlike physical and material blessings - don't fade away; they are new every morning; undying; everlasting.
The teaching on our Lee Abbey weekend picked up a similar theme. In the culture of negativity that we inhabit, it seems to come much more naturally to focus on what's wrong with the world, the church and the people around us, than to find things to affirm and to praise. But one of our speakers, quoting Romans 14:17, reminded us that 'the kingdom of God is... righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit'. And that joy, as CS Lewis put it, 'is the serious business of Heaven'. (Letters to Malcolm, chap. 17)
So if we really want God's Kingdom to come on earth as in heaven, as we say we do whenever we pray the Lord's Prayer, then we must count our Father's blessings with thankfulness and praise.
Whenever Christians count their blessings, the joy of heaven permeates the here-and-now of earthly life.
And that is one of the surest signs that the Spirit of God is at work in our individual lives and in our life together as church.
Mary Barr
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