©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

04/06/03

Seated With Him In Heavenly Places

Ephesians 2:1-10

4/6/03 Seated With Him In Heavenly Places

EPH 2:1-10 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

What a truly remarkable passage!

Do you know what I just read?

I read a perfect,

accurate life history of every Christian here this morning.

It is not a description of what should happen if all goes well.

It is not a description

of what you should try to make happen.

It is a description of what has already taken place.

This is our third week in this passage,

and I don’t promise we’ll finish our study of it yet today.

I really do love passages like this

because they provide us with such a superb mirror

in which we can see reflected

the huge errors in our own thinking and emotional responses.

Here is Paul telling us

that right now, at this very moment,

we are seated with Christ Himself in heavenly places.

Doesn’t that sound secure?

Doesn’t it sound safe, and protected?

Do you know the mental image that comes to mind to me when I hear that?

I picture a father and his ten or eleven year old son on an outing together.

They are driving an old pick-up truck down a dirt road on a warm summer day.

Then the father stops the truck,

turns to his son and says, “Do you want to drive?”

The boy breaks out in a big grin

and then crawls up into his dad’s lap.

The boy grabs hold of the steering wheel,

the father puts in the clutch,

places the truck into first gear,

then lets the clutch out slowly and away they go.

In the boy’s mind

he sees himself totally in control.

When he turns the wheel the truck turns,

where he points it, they go.

And in truth he is driving it...sort of...

But what he doesn’t notice

is his father’s careful control of the clutch,

and the gear shift,

and the brake,

and the accelerator,

deciding how fast and how far they go.

And the boy doesn’t notice his father’s strong hands

that hover just a few inches away from his own,

always ready to grab the wheel in an emergency.

“...seated ... with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...”

That is where we are.

That is where you are right now.

The day you entered the family of God

He did not just invite you into His house

and show you your room

and then tell you He’d check back in a few days to see how you were doing.

He didn’t just bring you into the group,

He brought you to Himself,

seating you right with Him, beside Him forever.

And it is not the way you may remember it from your childhood.

It isn’t like those little trips you’d take with dad on Saturday afternoons.

You remember them -

you were there with him, next to him in the car,

but dad’s mind was in some other world,

some world you couldn’t get into,

some world you couldn’t understand.

Maybe he was going over his to-do list,

or trying to figure out some project he was working on,

and, although you were physically together,

sitting right next to one another,

dad’s spirit was far away from you.

But it’s not that way with you seated there with your Lord.

And it isn’t like those trips you took

with all the other kids in the car, either.

You remember them, don’t you?

Everyone’s there, physically together in this little space,

but the only ones who were noticed

were the ones causing trouble,

the ones whose behavior prompted a sharp word,

or a terrifying threat,

or maybe a thump on the head if dad couldn’t take it any longer.

It’s never, ever that way with our God.

It is always, only personal.

It’s always just you and Him together.

And His mind is never on His to-do list.

He’s not just allowing you to be in His presence

while His mind is churning over the war in Iraq.

He’s with you,

focused on you,

giving you 100% of His undivided attention.

PSA 40:5 Many, O Lord my God ...are Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count.

That’s what’s happening at this very instant.

Look at this!

Here we all are this morning - several hundred people

all sitting together as a group.

My voice is droning on up here,

speaking the same words to all of us.

And yet God’s Spirit is taking those words

and using them in deeply personal,

absolutely unique ways

in each individual here.

One of the fringe benefits of teaching Scripture

is having people attribute to me

a far greater wisdom and insight

than I have ever possessed.

Three times this past week

I have had individuals tell me

that something I have said when I’m up here

lined up exactly with some major question they had been wrestling with.

Several have even wondered how I could have had such insight

into what was going on in their lives.

Folks,

I don’t have a clue what’s going on in your lives.

The truth is,

I have my hands full every day

just trying to stay on top of what’s going on in my own life.

I’m certainly grateful to you for giving me the credit for what you’ve heard,

and I will even accept it and enjoy it.

But the truth is,

it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

It’s because right now you are seated with your Lord in heavenly places,

and there is a personal conversation taking place between you and Him,

and He is saying things to your mind and spirit,

things that I have no knowledge of whatsoever.

But let me get us back on track here...

Paul tells us in this passage

that something remarkable took place in our lives

at the time we came to Christ.

He tells us that we were raised ... up with Him, and seated ... with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

Paul’s wording in the passage makes it clear

that this is a completed act in the life of the believer.

It is a statement of absolute fact about the child of God.

We are now seated with Christ in the unseen world.

And Paul’s wording here is carefully selected

not only to communicate truth,

but also to create the correct mental image of that truth for us.

We are not standing with Him.

We are not waiting for Him to notice us,

we are not responding to a summons,

or visiting His presence on a temporary or occasional basis.

We are not standing on the fringes of His presence,

hoping to catch His eye,

hoping for a few minutes of His time before He rushes off to something truly important.

We are SEATED with Him.

You know how that is, don’t you,

to invite someone to sit in your presence,

or to be invited to sit in theirs.

You hear a knock on the door

and when you open it

you see someone you’ve never seen before.

They’re carrying a handful of literature,

or maybe a brief case,

and what do you do?

You stand there at the door,

listening politely,

but blocking entrance into your home with your own body.

You let them say their little speech,

and you promise you’ll vote,

or you thank them for the literature,

or you tell them you’re not interested in a free car vacuum in exchange for an in-home demonstration of their Dirt Scourge 2000 home cleaning system.

What you do not do

is to remove yourself from in front of the door.

And you certainly do not invite them in.

But what happens if you go to the door

and open it

and see your brother,

or your sister,

or your son or daughter standing there?

What if it is a family member

or your close friend?

Instantly, without even thinking about it,

you stand to the side

and bring them into your home,

and then you lead the way into the living room,

or the family room,

and you all sit down together.

And the very act of sitting defines the nature of your relationship.

It communicates acceptance.

It communicates friendship.

It communicates a commitment of both time and attention to one another.

When you came to Christ,

whenever that was...

yesterday,

or last month,

or last year,

or 30 years ago,

when you knocked on the door of His kingdom

dressed in those old, filthy self-righteous rags of yours,

carrying that great big suitcase full of your sin,

wondering what kind of reception you’d receive,

and Christ Himself opened the door,

let me tell you what happened.

As soon as your Lord saw you at the door

His face lit up with joy.

Before He even spoke a word,

everything in His manner

told you He was thrilled to see you,

told you that He had been waiting for you,

watching for you,

expecting your arrival.

And before you even realized what was happening,

He reached out and grabbed that suitcase from you in His almighty grip,

and you could hear Him saying,

“Here, My child, let Me take that for you.

You’ll never ever have to carry it again.

If you’ll give it to Me, I’ll carry it for you from now on.”

And then He reached into the closet

and pulled out the most beautiful, soft, pure white robe as He said,

“We’ll also need to do something about those rags you’re wearing.

Here - why don’t you slip them off,

let me help you get cleaned up,

and then you can slip this on instead.

I think you’re going to be very pleased with this robe I’ve chosen for you.

It is exactly your size,

it will never wear out,

and it will never ever get dirty, no matter what.

You see, I had it woven special,

just for you,

woven from My own righteousness.

And once you were all cleaned up

and then wrapped, all warm and secure,

in the robe of His own righteousness,

He then led the way into His home.

He showed you to the most comfortable chair you’d even sat in

next to a cozy fireplace,

and then He sat down next to you.

...seated ... with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

And what I’ve just described

is not something that will take place when you die.

It is not something that may take place at some time in the future

if you prove yourself worthy in some way.

It is what has already taken place at the spirit level

in the life of every person who has reached out to God

through faith in Jesus Christ.

You are now, at this very moment,

seated with Christ in the eternal world of the spirit,

clothed in the absolute purity of His righteousness,

your burden of sin removed from you forever,

taken from you by Christ Himself.

Now, I want you to take that image

and set it next to what you were thinking and feeling when you woke up this morning.

Or possibly, set it next to what you’re thinking and feeling right now.

Did you begin this day aware of that warmth,

that security in His presence?

Or did you begin it

with your mind and your emotions

returning to whatever it was that you were churning over when you closed your eyes last night?

I got a cold this past week,

one of those colds that keeps your throat soar,

and makes you sneeze all the time,

and makes breathing, especially at night almost impossible.

I spent one especially bad night

in which I kept dropping in and out of sleep,

dreaming about all sorts of things.

At one point I remember waking up

convinced that I’d caught that killer virus that’s now around,

the one that has no treatment,

the one that people are actually dying from.

When I finally dragged my ravaged body out of bed at 6:00 A.M.

I did NOT feel like I was seated with Christ in heavenly places.

In truth, I felt like I’d spent most of the night

in that other spirit world location that nobody wants to end up in.

If what Paul is saying to us here in Ephesians is true,

if we really are right now seated ... with God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...,

why do we so seldom seem to sense that reality?

Why does most of what we feel,

and most of what we think

seem to be so far from that truth?

A few days ago Sandee shared an illustration with me

that I think pictures well what’s going on.

She found the illustration in a book titled, “The Rest of the Gospel: When The Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out”.

In that book the author says that the Christian life is sort of like a swing.

At the top of the swing is a strong, solid, secure bar onto which our life is anchored.

It doesn’t move,

it doesn’t change.

This is the true reality of our union with Christ.

This is our spirits seated ... with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus....

But then, hanging down below that bar,

suspended below that truth, that reality,

are our minds and emotions that swing all over the place

depending on what’s pushing them

and how hard they’re being pushed.

But no matter how high

or how low they may swing,

the bar they are attached to never moves,

the truth never alters, never changes.

As soon as Sandee shared that with me it made sense.

Every once in a while,

when I quit squirming around

and just focus on the truth about my Lord and my life in Him,

my thinking,

and my emotions line up directly with the truth.

But most of the time I’m swinging all over the place.

Sometimes one little thought can cross my mind

and instantly I lunge out after it,

caught up in the belief that I have to somehow hold my life and my future together by myself,

or that I have to figure out how I’m going to meet some need in my life,

dealing with all of the stress and emotional turmoil that comes with such thoughts.

Nothing has really changed.

I am still seated securely with my Lord in heavenly places.

He hasn’t let go of me.

The rope hasn’t broken.

But everything I’m thinking and feeling at the moment

seems to deny the truth.

You see,

long before we met our Lord

we carefully programed our minds and emotions

to process information with the assumption

that God either isn’t there,

or doesn’t really care personally about us,

or cannot be trusted to understand us and our needs correctly.

That is the default mental setting with which all of us live.

That’s why,

when you woke up this morning

rather than your spirit surging with a burst of praise and gratitude to your God

for the security you have in Him,

and the day He has planned for you,

what you very likely did

was to begin with a quick mental catalog

of all the things you’re going to have to cope with during the next 24 hours,

with special emphasis being given to those things

that you feel powerless to change

and incapable of dealing with effectively.

And your emotions then immediately fell right in line with what your mind was believing.

That’s where we usually start.

Then, from there, we face the most critical choice we ever face on a daily basis.

We either choose to accept and believe

whatever it is our minds and emotions are telling us at that moment,

and then invest all of our energies into attempting to cope with life on that basis,

or we choose to focus our minds on what our God has told us is true,

to focus our minds on that bar above us,

to focus our minds on the truth

that even now we are seated with our Lord Jesus Christ in the world of the spirit,

and that any thought we have

or emotion we feel

that is not consistent with that truth is simply not true.

Do you know what that is?

That is what God calls living by faith.

But look at this!

Contrary to what we are so often led to believe,

living by faith is not trying to deny the reality of the way things really are

on the basis of some blind hope in the goodness of God.

True faith is exactly the opposite.

It is choosing to accept the reality of the way things really are,

no matter what lies our minds and emotions may be telling us at the moment.

And the truth is we really are right now seated ... with God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

There is a passage in Colossians chapter 3 that I want to close with this morning

because I think it will help pull together what we’ve been looking at during the past few minutes.

It’s found in Colossians 3:1-3, and it reads,

COL 3:1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

COL 3:2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.

COL 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, I know this is one of those dangerous passages

because if we’re not careful

we can easily perceive it as a rather impractical call

to join a monastery,

or quit our jobs and go to Bible school for the rest of our lives.

In other words,

we can see it as having no practical day-to-day life application.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In reality, what Paul is saying in these 3 verses

is intended to be some of the most practical instructions he’s ever given us.

These instructions are based on two things.

First, they are based on the truth -

we really have been raised up with Christ

and our spirits are right now seated with Him, united with Him.

No matter what you’re thinking,

no matter what you’re feeling right now,

you are being held in His eternal grip of love.

Our Lord said it lots better than I ever could.

JOH 10:27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;

JOH 10:28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

JOH 10:29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

That is the truth.

And second, Paul’s instructions here in Colossians

are built upon the fact

that the human mind can only focus on one thing at a time.

That is by design.

Half a dozen times during the past half hour

something distracted you,

or some thought crossed your mind,

and for several minutes you were no longer with me

because the human mind cannot focus on two things at the same time.

And when Paul tells us to,

“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth”,

he is telling us

that our most effective weapon against the lies that bombard our reasoning and our emotions each day

is the weapon of choosing to turn our minds once again onto the truth

and then telling ourselves that truth

no matter what we may be feeling at the moment.

And most of the time we are called to fight these battles virtually every hour

of every day of our lives.

I don’t know how else to illustrate this except by making it personal.

Shortly after The Fisherman was released

I made the unfortunate discovery

that amazon.com posts a sales rank number for each of its books,

a number that’s updated every night based on sales from the previous day.

During the weeks after the book came out

it didn’t take long before I found myself emotionally glued to that number.

I found myself waking up earlier and earlier each day

so that I could check the latest figure.

If the book had moved up a little in the ratings it was a good day,

and my future looked brighter.

If it hadn’t moved, or lost ground,

then it was a bad day,

and my future looked bleak.

You know what that means, don’t you?

It means that, at the emotional level,

I had exchanged Gods,

replacing the living God for a number on a web page.

Each day I would ask the number what my future looked like,

and each day I believed what the number said.

It wasn’t until I once again chose to focus my mind on the truth,

telling myself that my future,

my hope,

my purpose in life always has and always will come from just one thing -

the fact that my God holds me securely in His hands

and will never ever let me go,

only then was the power of such a stupid little lie broken in my life.

And, you know, I don’t think I’m alone in these things.

Of course you have no interest a silly little number on a web page,

but you may have something else that you have chosen to determine your future.

Maybe it’s the way that certain person responds to you,

or doesn’t.

Maybe it’s the balance in your bank account,

or what the doctor is going to tell you this next week.

There is really no limit to the number of things

we may select as alternate gods,

telling ourselves that they have the power to determine the quality of our lives.

And breaking the power of those lies

comes through following Paul’s simple instructions:

“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth”.

Tell yourself the truth about the way things really are,

no matter where that swing may be positioned at any given moment.

And then, just so we don’t forget the fundamental truth we need to remind ourselves of,

Paul states it for us.

COL 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

I think we may need one more week on this passage in Ephesians before we move on in the letter.