NOTE – A couple weeks ago, I was reading through the lectionary and realized I had opened the wrong series! However, the reading I came across stirred some thoughts. Hope you enjoy.
Several years ago, I used to play regularly in Texas Hold ‘Em online poker tournaments. It was a great source of entertainment for me, and for a time I was doing pretty well for myself. For a five or ten dollar buy-in I could play for three or four hours, and I began placing regularly high enough to get a tournament pay-out, even winning first place in a few.
I tended to play conservatively, passing the vast majority of the time on bad or mediocre hands, while trying to make the most out of promising or good hands. The strategy usually served me pretty well. Play conservative and when you get a big hand, sucker the other person in so that they were committed to the pot. Then go all-in on a Sure Thing.
A Sure Thing bet is what every gambler wants. He wants the hand that can’t be beaten, something you can bet everything on with the assurance that the bet will pay off. If you can get a guarantee up front, you take it and cash it in.
However, every person who has played Texas Hold ‘Em has experienced a bad beat or two. This is when you have what appears to be a solid hand, a Sure Thing bet, while your opponent bets on a junk hand. Anyone who has spent any time watching the World Series of Poker knows what I am talking about. One player goes all-in on a pair of Aces and gets called by someone with a five-two. The odds of winning in this situation are astronomical, and yet, the junk hand sucks out and gets a straight or a flush on the community cards. It is absolutely maddening when it happens, but it happens. Every poker player gets reminded frequently that there is no Sure Thing bet.
We all experience this in life. We are all a little skeptical.
And yet, in his epistle to the Church at Ephesus, Paul tells us that in Christ we have a Sure Thing.
When Paul had first come to Ephesus, he met a group of Jewish believers in John the Baptist. They knew of John the Baptist and his message of repentance from sins and baptism. They knew that by their sins they were condemned before the Father, and that they needed to be cleansed of those sins. But they didn’t know of the one who would come to do the cleansing and to bring atonement. They were ignorant of the Christ who was sent to reconcile them to the Father.
This is how Paul began preaching the gospel in Ephesus. He began telling them of the promise of the one to come after John the Baptist, and then baptized them into the name of Jesus. As a result, they received the Holy Spirit and were saved. Eventually this same message of repentance and salvation through Jesus Christ was preached to the Gentiles as well, and a Church populated by both Jew and Gentile would take root and grow there.
At the end of this time, Paul had been so successful in his proclamation of the Gospel, that many of the pagans in the city felt threatened. They feared that he would turn the masses away from the burgeoning business of selling idols for which the city was famous. This resulted in a great mob that arose, beat some of Paul’s followers, and threatened violence against the Christian community. And though the mob was eventually disbursed, Paul was eventually forced to leave Ephesus. However, the Church he had founded there continued to worship and serve the Lord under the threat of oppression.
It is in this context that Paul opens his letter to the Church at Ephesus, which we read today:
“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, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise and glory of His grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which he lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us for the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fulness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed with Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”
In his opening, Paul reminds the Church at Ephesus that their faith is founded on a Sure Thing. Their hope is founded upon the grace and mercy of a loving God, working out His plan of salvation through the work of the Holy Trinity.
Paul begins his case that we have a Sure Thing by starting with God. This is the God that created all things and holds all things together. And it is this God who is providing us with every spiritual blessing that we need. In other words, we lack nothing because God is providing everything.
Paul tells his readers that since before the foundation of the world, the Father has chosen for himself a people to adopt as His own children. This chosen people would be brought to him, Holy and blameless, by the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ. This Christ would bring forgiveness of sins and redemption through the shedding of His own blood. And we would receive this gift by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon His Church, that He might provide apostles and pastors who would make known to us the riches of his grace that God has poured out upon us through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Every sentence of this passage speaks of the certainty of God’s faithfulness to us through his Son.
Jesus Christ is not God’s Plan B. Jesus Christ has always been the means by which we have relationship with the Father, since before the creation of the world. And it is God’s will from before all time, that He would send to us His Son.
Later in this epistle, Paul will describe us as dead in our trespasses and sins. We are sinners, helplessly enslaved to sin, death, and the devil.
Yet, though we are sinners, God freely sent His Son, that we might be reconciled to the Father. It is Jesus who was made flesh, made to be as we are, who lived a holy and sinless life, that he might bear the curse of the law that we justly deserve. He is the spotless Lamb who takes away the sins of the world and makes atonement for us. Through the shedding of his blood he won for us freedom from sin, and forgiveness of our debts.
This was always the means by which we were to be adopted as sons and daughters of God, and counted as heirs to eternal life with Him. Christ is the Sure Thing upon which God bet all for our sake.
And yet, God’s work did not end there. Paul reminds his listeners that it was God who revealed His will to us that we are to be reconciled to Himself through His Son. It was He who established His Church and commissioned them to spread his gospel far and wide, to which we became obedient. He was the one who appointed apostles, pastors, and ministers to spread the gospel of His Son. Through the spreading of this gospel, God has given us faith in Christ, and has allowed us to take hold of our inheritance – Salvation and Eternal Life with the Father through Jesus Christ. And just so that we might be sure that we have obtained the gifts that God has promised us through Christ, He gave us a down payment. He gave to us the Holy Spirit.
In our Baptism, we received the Holy Spirit and faith, the guarantee that God will grant to us what he has promised. Just as one wins chips in a poker match guaranteeing the House will pay out at the end of the game, so the Holy Spirit was given to us in Baptism that we might know the certainty of God’s promises.
Therefore, do not doubt or fear. Our faith is founded on a Sure Thing.
We can reflect upon our Baptism and know for certain that God has claimed us as his sons and daughters. We know for certain that we were claimed as God’s children when the waters of Holy Baptism dripped down our forehead because we received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When we are burdened by our sins, we can rest assured that God hears our confession, and that He has provided ministers to declare the gospel message, that in Christ, we are forgiven.
When we are unnerved by illness, unrest, or death, we can go to the Lord’s Table, beside our brothers and sisters in Christ, and receive the body and blood of our Lord. When we eat his flesh and drink his blood we know that we are participants in the covenant that made us adopted sons and daughters in Christ, together with all the saints before us.
We can rejoice that by God’s grace and through Jesus Christ, we possess the winning hand. We are betting on a Sure Thing because God has made it so. Amen.
