Praise for the Triune God

Sermon Series: Ephesians  ~  Sermon Title:  “Praise for the Triune God”

Pastor Chris O’Brien

It’s always fun to start a new series.

We’ve spent the past two years or so on Sunday mornings preaching historic narratives like the Gospel of Mark and the book of Joshua. With narrative books, you can take it in big chunks. A chapter, maybe two. You can look at the big picture and see what’s going on without always addressing every little detail.

But now we come to a letter from the Apostle Paul, and we’re in different terrain.

Think about it this way. You could read the Sermon on the Mount — chapters five, six, and seven — in ten or fifteen minutes. But if you preached just one sermon on chapter five, one on chapter six, one on chapter seven? Nobody would argue that was adequate. We know how rich the Sermon on the Mount is.

And so it is with Paul and all the apostles and their letters. There’s a richness here. A depth here.

So for the next several months — six or eight, I honestly don’t know, because these things never play out the way you plan — we’re going to work through the book of Ephesians. Smaller chunks. Careful attention. We’ll keep a proper pace. Not what James Montgomery Boice did when he preached through Romans at 10th Presbyterian. Literally ten years. People would join the church and tell you when they joined not by the year but by the verse Boice was preaching. “Oh, we joined at 4:15.”

I wouldn’t torture you that way.

Who Is Paul Writing To?

Paul tells us right away who he is: an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. You know who Paul is. He was, as he described himself in Acts, doing everything he could to destroy the early church, a raving persecutor of Christians. Then in Acts chapter 9, Jesus knocked him on his back and converted him.

And Jesus wasn’t exactly gentle about it. He didn’t spend a lot of time coddling Paul and patting him on the back. He just told him: you’re going to find out how much you’re going to suffer for my name.

And that’s what happened to Paul. He went on to become one of the great apostles, giving us a large portion of the New Testament in his letters.

Now, Paul tells us who he’s writing to. He’s talking to the saints, or the holy ones, who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

When Paul uses the word saints, it literally means the holy ones. Now, you’re looking at me and I’m looking at you and we’re all thinking, “This crew? Holy ones? Really?”

What Paul means is we’ve been set apart. We’re not holy in ourselves. We’re holy in Christ. All Christians have been set apart by God. And notice — he can describe all the Christians at Ephesus that way, whatever their ethnicity, whether they’re slave or free, whether they have a lot of money or they don’t, whether they became a Christian yesterday or six years ago. They’re all holy ones in Christ.

But then he says they are faithful in Christ Jesus. It’s a package deal. If you’re a holy one, you’re going to be a faithful one. There’s no such thing as a saint, a holy one, that’s unfaithful, not in terms of ultimately turning your back on Christ. Those that are truly in Christ, who have been set apart by God, will go on to live a faithful Christian life.

Ephesians 1:2 Grace and Peace: More Than a Greeting

After Paul has told the folks who he is and reminded them who they are in Christ, he says hello.

In a sense, that’s what Paul does in verse two. The old term used in Paul’s day was greetings. But Paul changes the word greeting to grace and peace.

Grace is God’s undeserved kindness to you and me. For by grace we’ve been saved through faith, and this not of ourselves, it’s the gift of God. If you’re here today worshiping the triune God, it’s by grace. It’s not by your works. It’s not by mine. It’s not by anybody’s.

And peace, but not the subjective peace that Paul talks about in Philippians 4, the peace we have when we stop worrying and start praying. What Paul means here is: look, you’re not at war with God anymore. You have peace. You’ve been brought near.

When Paul starts his letter with grace and peace, this is not some kind of religious add-on. Some church traditions greet each other that way during the service — grace, peace, peace of Christ. Whether they have a clue what they’re saying… I don’t know. But Paul did. These words carry real weight.

Blessed Be the God Who Has Blessed Us

Now here in verse three, Paul gets into what he really wants to say. This is a word of worship.

“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.”

Notice how Paul uses the same word two different ways. “Blessed be the God and Father.” He’s using that to mean praise God. And “who has blessed us.” God doesn’t praise us, but God gives us blessing. He gives us grace.

Sometimes preachers will stand at the back of the church after a service, and people will walk through and try to think of something to say. And one of the things people say is, “Oh, pastor, that was such a blessing.” In my more cynical moments, I want to say: I hope you didn’t come primarily for the blessing. I hope you came to bless God, which we mean by that, praise him.

That’s what Paul is doing here. He is praising our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What God Do You Believe In?

Who is this God that we praise and worship? Paul describes him, and the shorthand version is: it’s the triune God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Notice how he’s highlighted that already in just the first three verses. And here’s my point: Paul assumes — he just assumes — that our God, the true God who has revealed himself, is the triune God. One God in three persons, as our catechism says: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Same in substance. Equal in power and glory.

Paul never proves the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible. He simply assumes it’s true. How can he do that? Because the triune God of the Bible acted in history. The Father ordained our salvation. Christ accomplished it. The Holy Spirit indwells us now. When Jesus was baptized, that was the triune God in action, the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus in the form of a dove, the Father from heaven saying, “This is my Son.”

My point is simply this: Paul assumes the doctrine of the Trinity is true because it is, and God has revealed himself that way. Paul just writes like it’s true. He talks about the Father, the Son, the work of the Holy Spirit throughout his letter.

Now here’s the question. What God do you believe in?

I’m pretty sure you believe in this God, the triune God, the one God in three eternal persons. But let me ask it a different way. There are professing Christians who may go to churches that don’t necessarily preach the gospel on a consistent basis, and their notion of God is just very, very vague. You might as well be in AA and have a higher power. Somebody up there.

Brothers and sisters, we don’t believe in some God up there. We believe in the sovereign God of the Bible who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And those that claim to worship God but don’t worship this God — they may be a lot of things, but they’re not Christians. Because this is the Christian God.

And this is the first thing Paul says after he says hello. All worship be to the triune God.

For those searching for a Bible-believing church with formal worship services rooted in the Reformed faith, this is what our liturgy is built on week after week, pointing us back to the God who has really revealed himself.

What Is Man’s Primary Purpose?

We’re trying to teach this to the kids in Sunday school. What is man’s primary purpose? Man’s primary purpose is to glorify God.

There’s a real sense in which what Paul does in this letter at the very beginning is remind us what our primary purpose is: to glorify God, to worship him. And he’s going to go on and tell us why. We’ll get to that next week in terms of our salvation. But we don’t even have to get into salvation to have reason to worship him. Just because he’s the sovereign creator and sustainer and provider of life, we have every reason.

It’s worth asking ourselves: is this our first priority? Publicly, yes. On the Lord’s Day together, yes. But every day?

I’m not going to give you six little sub-points for how to do that. I’m going to say: as a committed Christian, ask yourself and meditate deeply on this truth that Paul found most important, the very first thing he said to this church. Worship the triune God.

Next Week in Ephesians

Next week we’ll take a bigger chunk — verses three through fourteen — where Paul goes deep into God’s sovereign will and the doctrine of election. We’ll look at what it means that God chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

If you want some background reading before Sunday, spend some time in Acts 19 and 20. You’ll get the backstory on Ephesus, including some of the crazy things that happened there, including a demon who knew Jesus and Paul but didn’t know a group of Jewish exorcists who tried to use their names. It did not go well for them.

You can look that up. Just not during the sermon.

Praise for the Triune God

Fairfield Church, PCA