Ephesians 1

0:00 All right, let's do a little thought experiment. I'm going to give you a sentence here that has a blank at the end of it. And literally, I want you, if you've got a pen and a piece of paper, I want you to write down what I'm about to tell you. Like, I literally want you to do this. Don't want you to just kind of float around and, you know, whatever's going on in your mind. I want you to think about it and write it down. Here are the stipulations. I'm going to give you a sentence. It's going to have a blank at the end of it. You have to fill in that blank with no more than three words. The number of the counting shall be three. It shall not be four, and five is right out.

0:33 One, two, three. No more than three words. Are you ready? Hi, my name is, whatever your name is, and I am blank. All right, go. Three words. Hi, my name is, whatever your name is, and I am blank. Now, I don't know what you wrote down there, but what that question is meant to do is force you to think, at least for those three or four seconds that I just gave you, about your identity, who you are. When you have to boil the whole thing down, all the years of your life, all the things that you are, all the hats that you wear, when you have to boil it all down into three words or less, what that's doing is asking you to consider who you are as a person, who you are and who you know yourself to be. It has to do with your identity. What I'm hoping to do today from this new book that we're studying or starting to study today, Ephesians, is maybe challenge what you wrote down. Maybe get

1:37 you to think about who you are in a slightly different way than maybe what you wrote down on that piece of paper. I want to talk to you about your identity as a Christian. We're starting a new series today on the book of Ephesians, which is one of the 13 letters that the apostle Paul wrote to churches throughout the Roman world, and they're all collected together in the New Testament. If you've got a Bible, let me invite you to turn to the book of Ephesians. It's short, so it can be a little bit hard to find, but if you're using one of these red pew Bibles in front of you, it starts on page 976. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be making our way through this book, probably about a chapter at a time, though the cancellation of the service threw a couple things off, and we'll have to deal with that, but it's going to be more or less a chapter at a time. Ephesians has always, this letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, has always had a kind of checkered history for the last 2,000 years. On the one hand, Christians have read this book of Ephesians and they've loved it because of its really beautiful and very straightforward presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It just sort of lays it out right here in chapter

2:40 one and then again in chapter two, the glories of the gospel, the good news of Jesus. They've loved it for the soaring themes that it's got that run throughout it. They've loved it for its emphasis on the church as being right at the center of God's plan to glorify his son. And then of course there's that fantastic image and metaphor at the end in chapter 6 where Paul is sitting in his prison cell probably looking at a Roman soldier in full armor and he says, hmm, I'm going to make a metaphor of, you know, the spiritual armor of God as I make my way down all the pieces of armor of a Roman centurion. It's just a beautiful metaphor, and people have noticed that for centuries. On the other hand, though, for as much as Christians have loved this book, there aren't many other books in the New Testament, maybe three, maybe four more, but there aren't many other books in the New Testament that have come in for more criticism and even dismissal than this letter to the Ephesians, especially in, say, the last century and a half or so.

3:36 Most of that criticism that the book has sustained has been aimed at a contention by certain scholars, skeptical scholars, that Ephesians was not really written by Paul, but rather by somebody who was just pretending to be Paul. Now, I'm not going to take you into all the detail of that. There are books that have been written on that. And if that's an interesting question to you, you can either ask me about it at the door after the service, send me an email, or I can send you resources, or you can find resources going into detail. we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is just kind of leave it by saying that when you study it, when you look at it, none of the arguments against Paul's authorship finally hold any water at all. The language of the book, the themes, its history, everything that we know about it lines up perfectly with what the letter itself says about itself in the very first line, which is that it was written by the apostle Paul, whom we know from all of his other letters in the New Testament. As far as the historical background of the book, here's what we know.

4:38 In about A.D. 62, so I know Domini, the year of our Lord, right? That's what A.D. means. So it's about 62 years roughly from the birth of Jesus. In about A.D. 62, Paul was imprisoned in Rome because of his preaching that Jesus was the Christ. They threw him in prison because he said he was a Christian and he said there was a king sitting on a throne that was even greater than the throne of Caesar, they threw him in prison. That's the imprisonment that you read about at the very end of Acts. Now, in all likelihood, Paul was eventually released from that imprisonment. He wrote some other letters. He may have even made his way all the way to Spain, but eventually a couple of years later, a few years later, he was re-imprisoned and ultimately executed. But it was during that first imprisonment that's written about at the end of the book of Acts that Paul wrote at least four letters that are, well, three of which are included in the New Testament. He wrote at least four letters that were carried to various churches throughout the roman empire and the book of ephesians is one of those letters now if you've studied much of paul you know that normally when

5:43 paul takes time to sit down and write a letter to a church it was because that church was in some kind of trouble right paul is a busy guy he's an apostle he's planning churches he's evangelizing he doesn't have time all that often to sit down and write letters, right? I mean, imagine if you had only written 13 emails in your entire life, or 14, counting the one to Laodicea. It doesn't happen. There are thousands of emails that you've written. Paul's a busy guy. He doesn't write all that often. But sitting in prison, he has more time. And so you get this flurry of writing from him.

6:14 And normally what's going on is that there's some problem in the church, right? So in the last couple of years, we've studied the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians. And if you were here for those studies, you know that there were serious problems in the church in Corinth. And so both of those letters are aimed at trying to fix those problems. The way Paul will do it is that he'll take some theology, he'll take some gospel, and he'll apply it like medicine to certain wounds or certain illnesses in the church. And then using that theology, he then calls the church to act and behave in a different way and think in a different way. So that's normally what's happening. That is not at all what's happening here in the book of Ephesians. Throughout the whole letter as you read it you really don't pick up on any problem that Paul is trying to solve. He's not like saying you guys keep fighting with each other and you need to be united in the gospel or you guys are splitting between Jew and Gentile. There's nothing like that going on as far as we can tell in the letter.

7:13 There's just there's no crisis. Paul's just kind of writing what's on his mind. He's writing what wants Christians to be thinking about when there's nothing going on. In other words, you might say that one of the reasons people love this book is that it shows us Paul's mind at default. When there's no crisis, when there's nothing to worry about, when there's nothing particularly flashing red, this is what Paul is thinking about, and this is what he wants us as believers to be thinking about. It's his mind on default. That's an interesting question, isn't it? It's an interesting thing to think about. What is your mind when it's able to go on default? When there's no crisis, when there's nothing going on, what begins to just naturally fill your mind? Sports or kids or family or friends or news or politics or the gospel? Interesting question. For Paul, it's all these

8:13 things that we're going to read about in Ephesians. Another thing about this book, just in terms of background, throughout the centuries, people have noticed that there's a particular similarity, a very tight similarity between this book, Ephesians, and another of Paul's letters, Colossians. In fact, the language between the two books is very, very similar. The themes that he writes about in Ephesians and Colossians are extremely similar, and a whole lot, like an inordinate number of words and phrases and even paragraphs seem to have been copied from one to the other almost one for one in fact it's that similarity between Ephesians and Colossians that have led a lot of skeptics to say nah Ephesians isn't written by the real Paul the real Paul wrote Colossians and it's more normal because it's trying to deal with a problem in the church at Colossae and sometime later some pretender to be Paul came along and stole a bunch of Colossians and said this is also Paul right that's what skeptics have said about it but more likely than that is just that while in prison Paul was writing a bunch of

9:15 letters and he wrote Colossians to address a particular problem there and then after that he decided to write a more general letter aimed at a more general sort of population not aimed at a particular problem that was supposed to be circulated more widely among Christians and he took some of the themes and the words and the phrases that he'd just written to Colossae and used them in this more general letter. In fact, if we have several sort of surviving manuscripts of the book of Ephesians where that phrase in Ephesus there in verse 1, to the saints who are in Ephesus, that phrase there who are in Ephesus just isn't in the book, right? And so probably what you have here is a letter that was meant to be sent into Ephesus. One went on to Colossae, and then this one kind of circulated among all maybe the seven churches that are mentioned in Revelation in Turkey. It's meant to be circulated among those churches. So the letter was meant to encourage Christians generally, which means that it's completely legitimate for us, maybe even in a

10:16 special way in a book like this, to read it like this, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Third Avenue Baptist Church and are faithful in Christ Jesus. It's totally legitimate for us to do that, kind of in a way that, you know, you kind of have to do a little bit of an extra step to do that with Corinthians, for example. But here, this is written as a general letter to all churches of Jesus Christ. But what is it that Paul wants to say to them, to us? Well, I want to take a couple minutes before we dive into our text, the specific one for today, just to think about the structure of the whole book. So Paul's general pattern when he writes a letter, he's got a pattern that he almost always does in his letters, whether it's whether it's a letter to a church that's having problems or a more general circular letter or even personal letters, he sort of sticks to the same exact pattern. And that pattern is that first he will give them theology and then he will turn to commands. First theology, then commands. First

11:19 doctrine, then duty. First indicatives, saying things that are true, and then imperatives, saying things which must be done. And the same thing happens here in Ephesians. So it breaks almost exactly in the middle. Chapters 1 through 3 are theology. It's just one doctrine after another, one true thing about us as Christians and us as churches after another. And then at the beginning of chapter 4, you can see how that starts, I, therefore, a prisoner for the, therefore means to look back at what he's all, what he's said already. So in light of everything that I've been saying to you in these three chapters, I, therefore, because of all that, a prisoner of the Lord urge you to do a bunch of stuff, right? That's the pattern. First doctrine, then duty. First indicatives, then imperatives. And the picture you get from this whole book is that what is that Paul wants to make two main theological points in the book. He wants Christians to be convinced of two things, to have in their minds at the forefront of their heads two things. First, that God has

12:24 summed up, he's pulled it all up together, he's summed up all of history, all of creation, and everything in it, from the highest heavens to the lowest hell, he has summed up everything in the exalted King Jesus and set Jesus above it all as supreme over the universe. That's the first thing. Second thing he wants you to understand is that God has sort of horizontally now united all the peoples of the world, Jew and Gentile, into one new nation known as the church, which has as its king the Lord Jesus who reigns over all. You see those two things? That's what he wants you to understand. Now obviously there are caveats to be made, there are other things to be said, there are qualifications and distinctions and all the rest to be made. Paul is not a universalist, but that's his idea in this book, that God has summed up in Jesus from the highest high to the lowest low the entire cosmos under the kingship of Jesus and he's united the peoples of the earth

13:27 all of them Jew Gentile everybody in one new nation called the church that has as its king the exalted Lord Jesus so what that means of course is that in one way or another everybody and everything in all of creation relates to Jesus as king everything and every body in creation in one way or another relates to jesus as king remember in the movie braveheart when i think it's braveheart who finally sees long shanks the king of england and he says or maybe he's not seeing the king himself he's seeing the he's in his trial i think and there's this minister of the king and he says he says you You know, King Richard, your king demands that you do this.

14:21 And Braveheart kind of spits on the ground. He says, I don't care. I'm not going to do it. And I forget what the minister says. But it's something like, it matters not he is your king. It matters not he is your king. Well, friend, you can say, I don't care about all this stuff. I don't care about religion. I don't care about Christianity. I don't care about the Bible. I don't care that Jesus is king. I don't care about this. I don't care about that. You know what Paul's answer to that is? Paul's answer to all of those objections.

14:53 Paul's answer to all of those things that you don't like about Christianity or about what the Bible teaches. His answer is, it matters not. He is your king. That's what Paul wants you to understand. Well, today we're going to be looking at chapter 1 of this book in particular where Paul kind of launches this whole idea. I'll be honest with you. It is hard, really. It's extremely difficult to describe, especially if you haven't ever read this before. Maybe you're totally new to Christianity, totally new to the church.

15:23 It's great. You're welcome here. But it is really hard for me to describe what you're about to experience here as I read this. This chapter has been compared to all kinds of things. People have tried to describe it as a glorious thing. So, you know, one commentator describes it as a magnificent gateway to the book. Someone else describes it as a golden chain with many brilliant links. Somebody else has described it as a kaleidoscope of dazzling lights and swirling colors. Another is the overture of a beautiful opera.

15:55 Other people have described it as other things. A snowball that just keeps rolling and will not stop. An avalanche of words. A sprinting, snorting racehorse. A salad of words. Well, however you want to think about it, the fact is that the language that I'm about to read to you in this chapter is, without a doubt, it's almost overwhelming to the point that if you're going to understand it, you're forced to look at it slowly and carefully, or else it'll just run you over.

16:28 Well, that's what we're going to do today. We want to look at these couple of paragraphs of chapter 1 a little more slowly, a little more carefully than maybe you have in the past in your normal Bible reading. But let's read it and let's see if you can pick out sort of the main structure that organizes the two main sections of it. All right, Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 1. before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

17:19 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as the plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained and inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and a revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches

18:20 of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. All right, you can see why it's called all those things, right? Especially at first until you understand it, the negative ones. You can see why it looks like a snorting racehorse or an avalanche of words or even a salad. It almost begs you, and you could probably feel me kind of having to pull the reins back, right?

19:05 It begs you to read it faster and faster as you go along because the phrases are just piling up on one another until it's hard not to just sort of glaze your eyes over and go, fine, I'll just give in to the avalanche. Just bury me, please. But as much as it might feel like it, the fact is these paragraphs are not chaos. They're highly structured. And once you see that structure, you really can't unsee it. Now, I'm gonna show you that structure as we go along, But for now, I want to talk about what Paul is doing with these paragraphs.

19:38 So whatever their structure, you just read them. What is Paul doing? What's he trying to accomplish in the hearts of believers as he writes this book? Well, in the first paragraph, 3 through 14, some of your Bibles will break that into two paragraphs. It's not. It's one big paragraph. In that first paragraph, 3 through 14, he's just telling them things that are true about them as Christians. It's just one long string of this has happened to you, and this has happened to you, and this has happened to you. Oh, and this and this and this have happened to you, and this has happened to you.

20:11 That's what he's doing. And then in the second paragraph, what's he doing? Well, starting in 15, running down through 23, he says he prays for them, right? For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. Why all that? Why is he praying for them, these things?

20:43 Right there, middle of 18. So that you may know certain things. I pray for you that the Holy Spirit will be in you, opening your eyes, giving you wisdom to the end that you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that certain things are true. In other words, what he's doing throughout these chapters is trying to form in these new believers. They're all new believers, right?

21:13 The gospel just isn't that old. They're all new believers. And what he wants to form in them is a rock-solid, immovable, unbending identity as Christians. When they think of themselves, when they present themselves to others, he wants them to say, hi, my name is Greg, and above all and beyond all, I am a Christian. That's my identity. That's who I am.

21:45 So that's the main idea of the chapter. Really, you could say it's the main idea of the book. It gets more complicated. But the main idea of this chapter is you are, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you are above all and beyond all a Christian. And you should know that to the very depths of your being so that it becomes your main identity. When you're at the office or at a conference or whatever it is and you meet somebody new and they say, hi, tell me a little bit about yourself, your answer should not be, hi, I'm Greg and I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. It should be, hi, I'm Greg and I am a Christian.

22:17 Beyond all and above all. All right. I want to think about this chapter in two points, just looking at those two main paragraphs, 3 through 14 and 15 to 23. So 3 through 14, those verses we're going to be looking at. Number one, what has happened to you as a believer in Jesus? What has happened to you? And then number two, what you should therefore know. Number two, what you should therefore know. All right. So point number one, what has happened to you? Ephesians opens in its first couple of verses in a very unremarkable way.

22:51 It's more or less just the way Paul opens all his other letters. So they're in verses 1 and 2. If you look at that, Paul identifies himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus. That was central to his identity, central to his mission, though it doesn't come up much here in this book, so we don't need to talk about it. Then he addresses the letter to the saints in Ephesus. Now, two quick things to note there in that phrase. To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Two things. For one thing, notice there that saints are believers. Saints equals believers.

23:21 all of them not just the special ones so anyone who is a believer in jesus christ is called repeatedly in the bible a saint a holy one and therefore the practice of the eastern orthodox churches and the roman catholic church of identifying a special category of saints who are more special or more meritorious than other believers is just flatly unbiblical for another thing the word faithful there to those who are faithful in christ jesus it means literally just those who are of faith, those who are marked by faith, those who have faith. So it's not those who are reliable to Jesus or those who are obedient to Jesus or those who are allegiant to Jesus. It's just those who have faith in Jesus, those who are of faith in Jesus. That's what marks them. And finally, you've got this very distinctive Christian greeting, grace and peace. The Greeks had a word that they would use at the beginning of letters normally. It was karen, karen, and it just mean greetings hello you know that that sort of thing be happy you know that's what it meant well christians began to change that word karen into the much more distinctively christian word

24:25 karis or grace and and they would write their letters paul does it almost every letter grace and peace to you who are in christ jesus you've been given grace and therefore you have peace with god there's a very distinctively christian greeting so that's what you got in verses one and two and then everything just erupts. So starting in verse 3, you get this just incredible explosion of words describing what's happened to these people who are Christians. And that explosion of words runs all the way, without even really giving you time to take a breath, all the way down through verse 14.

25:00 So it's one paragraph. And what's incredible about it, even before you even get to what it says, is that it's not all just one paragraph. It's literally one huge sentence. It's one gigantic sentence from 3 to 14 explaining what has happened to Christians. Now, why did Paul do that? Why did he write one long sentence like that? Like, it wouldn't kill the guy to, I mean, he didn't use punctuation, but like put a new subject in there, right? I mean, why keep it at one long sentence? Well, part of it is just because this is Paul, right?

25:32 And often in Paul's letters, he just gets carried away by what he's saying. His words just pour out of him, and you just find him kind of running off on tangents and obviously saying more than he intended to say when he started the sentence. The sentences just get out of hand. Sometimes he'll just drop them, in fact, and start them over. We're going to see in the next couple of weeks where he does that a couple of times. But there's another reason this is all one sentence, too, and it's a reason that's rooted in Old Testament practice. So this practice of blessing God or declaring God's goodness in one sentence was a very Hebrew, very common Hebrew thing called a barakah, a barakah.

26:12 It was like a blessing to God in one sentence. And usually they were short. And you see them, you know, really all over the Old Testament. So Melchizedek in Genesis 14 does one of these barakahs. And he says, blessed be God most high, who has delivered your enemies, O Abraham, into your hand. or the servant of Jacob in Genesis 24. Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. It's a little sentence that declares the goodness of God. And Paul is aware of that. He knows what a barakah is. He knows that he's supposed to bless God in one sentence.

26:46 But Paul has way more to say than one sentence. And yet he knows it's supposed to be one sentence. And so he makes it one sentence. Well, at any rate, it's not just a word salad. The thing's got a structure, it's got a weight, it's got a movement. So let your eyes roll down through 3 through 14. This thing is highly structured. How is it structured? Well, some have said it's structured chronologically. You've got the past and the present and the future. I think that's true as far as it goes.

27:18 So if you look at verses 3 through 6, you've got the past. This is stuff that God has done like back in eternity past, right? We're talking about choosing and predestination and before the foundation of the world. That's all past. If you look at 7 to 10, you've got the present. You now have the blessing of being forgiven of your sins. And all of these things are true of you now. And then in 11 through 14, what are we talking about? Well, we're talking about the inheritance, right? The future. I think that kind of works, but I also think it kind of breaks down in verses 10 and 11, though, doesn't it?

27:51 If you look at it. Because 10, if you look at it, it doesn't stop in the present, it goes all the way to the future, right? We're talking about the last day, the fullness of time, the uniting of all things in heaven and on earth under the rulership of Jesus. So it swings off into the future. And then if you look at 11, it reaches back into eternity past itself with this kind of predestined. So you've got the chronology sort of breaking down there in 10 and 11, but it's still there. It's just almost like at 10 and 11, you kind of get this slingshot effect. It's almost like a hammer throw, right?

28:23 So 10 takes us into the future, and then in 11, we swing back through the present, into the past, and then off into the future again, right? So it's just this highly dramatic, energetic movement. I think probably the most fundamental way to look at the way this is structured, though, is in three distinct sections that center on the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. all right now you see that you see that in there so verses 3 to 6 that is all about the father's work of ordaining salvation all the stuff that happens before the foundation of the world the groundwork of salvation is being done there by god the father then in 7 through 10 you have the work of god the son the beloved king jesus right who who accomplishes salvation through his blood And then in 11 through 14, you've got the work of God the Holy Spirit who seals, who applies all of this work that God the Father and God the Son have done.

29:30 You've got this triune structure to it. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit all working together for the salvation of his people. And the effect is to sit you, the believer, down and look you in the eye, grab you by the shirt and say, look at all this. Look at what the triune God of the universe, who sits enthroned above the circle of the cosmos, look at what he has done for you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rejoice about that. That's what he's trying to do. Sit down and look. So let's look.

30:02 All right, first, in verses 3 through 6, Paul's main point, the thing he wants you to grasp above all, is that your salvation is not ultimately the result of anything that you have done. If you're a Christian, you're a Christian not at all because of anything you have done. When you get to heaven and somebody walks up to you and shakes your hand and says, hey, nice to meet you, why are you here? You will not, if you're there, because that would mean you're a Christian, You will not begin your answer to that question with any sentence that begins with, because I.

30:41 You will begin the answer to that question with a sentence that starts, because God. Because God did this. Now, Paul makes that point in two ways here. If you look at 3 through 6, that's what we're looking at. So for one thing, he says that we have been blessed with all these spiritual blessings, right? Because, verse 4, God chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world. And then in the next verse, verse 5, he says that all of this has happened to us because in love he predestined us for his adoption as sons.

31:13 All right. This that Paul is teaching right here in these verses is the doctrine of unconditional election, which is the Bible's teaching. I'm about to give you a definition of the doctrine of unconditional election. It's the Bible's teaching that the blessings of salvation come to specific people because God has determined from before the creation of the world to give those blessings to them, and for no other reason.

31:46 You hear me on that? Unconditional election, the doctrine of unconditional election is the Bible's teachings that the blessings of salvation come to specific people because God is determined from before the creation of the world itself to give those blessings to those people and for no other reason. Simply because of God's purpose. Now there are, when you start articulating that, pointing that teaching out in the Bible there are lots of different objections that people make to that doctrine. But what I want you to see before we even get to any of those what I want you to see right from the start is that the one move that's not really possible, the one intellectual move that's not really possible.

32:25 If you're a Christian and intend to believe the Bible, the one thing you cannot do is deny that there is a doctrine of election. I mean, there just is. It's right there in black and white. You can have all kinds of other conversations. You can talk about how election works. You can assert that there's something in it that makes God choose one person over another. You can say, well, I don't believe it's unconditional. I believe it's... There's lots of stuff you can say, But you can't deny that it happens. Not if you say that you intend to believe what Paul believes.

32:57 All right. But I think there are a couple of other details in here without just kind of knocking off objections. I don't want to do that. There are a couple of other things to notice here that I think answer sort of big categories of objection that are often made against this doctrine. And in fact, Paul is so careful to mention these couple of details that I wonder if he already had those objections in his mind. And he's sort of cutting them off because he's very deliberate to say these things. So here's one detail I want you to see in here. The doctrine of election drives us to holiness.

33:31 It does not free us to sin. The doctrine of election drives us to holiness. It does not free us to sin. So some people say, well, okay, fine. If you're elect from all eternity, if you're one of the chosen ones, well, you can just do whatever you want and you'll be saved in the end anyway. But no, look at what Paul says in verse four there. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. And then there's the great purpose clause, so that we should be holy and blameless before him.

34:04 The very reason that God elects people to be Christians and receive the gifts of salvation is so that we will be a new nation who are holy and blameless before him. Shining like stars, Paul is gonna say in another place in a dark universe. That's why he does it. And of course the logical flip side of that is that if you're not doing that, if you're not shining like a star in a dark universe, if you're just blending in with the dark universe, if your life doesn't reflect that kind of striving for holiness, then there's a really good case to be made that you were never elect in the first place.

34:39 Now, none of that means that we as Christians cease to sin, that we become like angels or something like that. No, the question that Paul puts over and over again in his letters is, do you care about holiness? Is that something that you desire? Is that something that you strive for? Friend, if so, if you're a Christian and you strive for holiness, then you need to understand that that's not natural to you. It's not just because you're a good person.

35:10 That desire for holiness, for the glory of God, to live a life that's worthy of the calling he's given you, was created in you, ex nihilo, out of nothing, by the electing love of God. Here's another detail in here, another truth that you've got to see that tends to quiet objections to this doctrine. Not only does it drive us to holiness, but the doctrine of election drives us to humility, not to pride. The doctrine of election drives us to humility, not to pride.

35:44 I mean, look, think about it a little bit. What if, what if God had simply sort of strolled up to the gates of heaven and thrown the doors open and said in good southern Kentucky style, y'all come, and then sort of left it up to us? Well, the biblical truth is that none of us would have come in the first place because all our hearts are bent against God. We wouldn't have come. That's the truth. But let's say, let's just say that a few people struggled up out of the muck of their rebellion and stumbled into the kingdom, right?

36:15 You've got a few people that made it through the door that God has flung open. They'd have some grounds for boasting, wouldn't they? They'd have some grounds for pride. Those people that stumbled over the line would have some grounds for pride. I got here. I made the good decision. That guy over there, he didn't make a good decision because his heart isn't good enough. But my heart, my heart made it. God opened the doors of heaven and, baby, I came. I did the right thing. But that's the opposite of what Paul says here.

36:46 Look at four. All this happened before the foundation of the world. You were chosen before the foundation of the world. Before you had done or thought or intended or been motivated by anything good or bad. It wasn't because of you in any way whatsoever. And then look at five. All this happened according to the purpose of his will. That's why it happened. According to the purpose of his will and to the praise of his glorious grace. you see that all of it happened to his praise not to ours that's why if anybody asks you in heaven why are you here you're going to say you're not going to say i'm here because i believed or i'm here because i did this or that you're going to say i'm here because god chose me to be here out of the huge pile of human corpses that was the human race god looked at me and said live I have no idea why I have absolutely no idea why

37:46 there's no reason for it that I can see because I knew I knew a lot of people in that life who were better than me morally but he did it anyway and so here I am second thing second big thing in verses 7 to 10 Paul turns to the work of God the son or as he calls him there at the end of 6 the beloved the beloved So here's the story so far. God has chosen us, chosen believers before the foundation of the world.

38:18 He's predestined us to have this destiny of adoption as his sons. He's blessed us in the beloved. And now in 7, he's going to tell us what that blessing is that has been given to us in the beloved. And it is, he says there, that we have redemption, which in the very next phrase he defines as, what is redemption? Redemption is the forgiveness of our trespasses. That's how he defines it. It's extraordinary, isn't it? Because what Paul is doing here is he's saying, look, of all the blessings of eternity, the crown jewel, the one that sits right at the top of the crown of all the blessings of eternity, is the blessing of forgiveness of sins.

38:56 Now, why would that be? I mean, of all the things that you could say are the blessings of eternity, I mean, the fireworks display of what God is going to give us and has given us in the blessings of eternity, Why is forgiveness the one that Paul singles out here? It's because without that, none of the others are possible. Without the forgiveness of sins, none of the others are possible. You say the great blessing of the gospel, the great blessing of eternity, is to spend forever with Jesus.

39:28 Friend, that's not possible unless you're forgiven of your sins. You think the great blessing of eternity is to be glorified in heaven before the presence of your Father? Yeah, but that's not possible without the forgiveness of sins. You think it's the resurrection at the last day, the new heavens, and the new earth? It's only possible when you've been forgiven of your sins. Listen, maybe you're the kind of person who says, yeah, I believe in God. I believe in God. And deep down in my heart, when I really sit down and think about it, I want good things from God.

40:02 I want God to bless me. I want God to give me good things. Listen to me. Listen to me, every single good thing that God could ever give you, however small or however big, is impossible unless you've been forgiven of your sins through Jesus. And how does that happen? Well, he says it right there in that same verse, through his blood. See, not a single one of us deserves anything good, any blessing from God. What we deserve is catastrophe from God, judgment from God, condemnation from God.

40:39 And yet Paul is saying that when Jesus died on the cross, when he died on the cross, he won all the blessings of eternity because he won forgiveness of sins. Friend, you need that. It is the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ. By you going to Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, I have sinned and rebelled against you and I need you to forgive me. I need your blood to count for mine. I need your payment of the penalty for sin to count as my payment.

41:11 I need that. And that is the key to all the good that God can give you. And it will not come unless you have it. Go to Jesus. Find forgiveness. Well, from there through the middle of verse seven, Paul goes on and brings this little section to another crescendo and it builds and it builds and it builds. So verse 7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. And he says that that forgiveness is according to the riches of his grace, right?

41:42 So it's all by grace. It's not earned. And then he says in verse 8, that grace has been lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. Okay, now we're talking about knowledge of something, seeing something, perceiving something, right? He's lavished his grace upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will. What is it? What is he making known? what is the mystery what's he making known according to his purpose you see it getting higher what's the purpose which he set forth in christ great what is it as a plan great for the fullness of time and then finally he gets there to unite all things in him things in heaven and things on earth in other words to enthrone jesus christ the redeemer over all that was the plan that was the purpose that was the mystery the entire time from the time that god said let there be light and there was light the end of it all through all the sin through all the rebellion

42:45 through the tree in the garden the snake the flood abraham isaac jacob the kings all of it the plan was to enthrone jesus from the very beginning it's not plan b because of man's sin from let there be light the purpose was let there be a king when history gets to its fullness that's what's in the final frame Jesus Christ reigning supreme look at that little word united there united it's an interesting word it literally means summed up and what it means is just that everything is summed up in him he is the head of everything down in verses 21-23 Paul's going to get more specific about that and make it clear that even the demonic powers in hell are finally under his kingship.

43:40 Which means you realize that, like we said a minute ago, one way or another, you will one day, yourself, you will one day acknowledge Jesus as king. you will be summed up in him. And the question is how? I mean, here's the thing. To be under a king's rule, summed up under him, doesn't necessarily mean that you are summed up or united to that king happily.

44:19 In the end, there will be some who will be united to the king because they sit at the king's table and drink from golden goblets, stamped with his royal seal. There are going to be some like that. And then there are going to be others who are summed up under the king because they're suffering in chains who are marked with that same seal. But friends, all of it is under his rule. The blessed and the cursed, those who are welcomed into his presence and those who are cast out of it, everyone will bow and acknowledge Jesus as king.

44:54 The question is when and therefore how? Will it be now? When his hand is extended in mercy or will it be then? When his hand is closed around a rod of iron to crush you. Then go to Jesus now. Here's the third thing in 11 through 14. There Paul turns to the work of God the Holy Spirit. I want you to see two things here. The first one I think is a little hard to see. but it's important. It's a little hard to see because it gets obscured by English translations of the Bible, really just trying too hard to smooth out what they see as strange phrases in the text, which is why it's always a good idea. This is a little parenthesis for you. It's always a good idea when you're studying the Bible, when you run across really anything, if you're studying it and, you know, and trying to really understand it, you should read it in more than one translation. Because when they translate, when English translations translate a phrase a little bit differently you should stop and say well wait what's going on there and then you can go ask

45:55 somebody right well anyway look at look at verse 11 in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according etc etc now at first glance in him we have obtained an inheritance that looks like it's talking about the heavenly inheritance that we as christians are going to get right but it's not that that phrase is actually in him we have been made an inheritance not that we have obtained one it is that we have been made one in other words here we don't get the inheritance we do in other places but here we don't get the inheritance we are the inheritance that someone else gets.

46:42 Same thing down in 14. Look at 14. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. It's not really what it says. It doesn't say we. There is no we in there. All it says is until the acquisition of the possession. Until the acquisition of the possession. And ESV is changing it to say, it's adding a little bit to say Until we acquire the possession. It doesn't actually say that. Okay. So what does this mean?

47:14 Well, first thing to notice is that here, we believers are called two things. We are called an inheritance and we are called a possession. An inheritance and a possession. What are those? Well, those are two words that God uses repeatedly over and over and over in the Old Testament to look at the nation of Israel and say, these are my people.

47:44 This is my inheritance. This is my possession. And what Paul is saying here is that if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, that is who you are to God. You are his inheritance. You are his possession that he will acquire fully on the last day. You ever think about that? I mean, I know we think about our inheritance, what we're going to get from God. But do you ever think about the fact that God is not blithely uninterested in who winds up in his presence in heaven?

48:16 It's not just a y'all come if you want to kind of situation. That throughout the Old Testament and here in the New Testament, God is fiercely possessive of his people, even jealous for them. They are his. You are his if you put your faith in Christ. It's an incredible thing that God says, these right here, these chosen ones who have been forgiven of their sins and they are mine. That's how it is when it comes to you.

48:50 We as believers are not just a ragtag mob that happened to stumble through the door of heaven. No, God says these are my inheritance. This is my possession. And then look at what Paul says in 14 about how that inheritance, that possession is sort of ratified. How it's like sealed up. He says it's sealed in 14 by the Holy Spirit. Common image, right? I mean, some of you even in your own, you know, like letter writing and stuff will use wax seals with your letter on it, right? You put it down in the wax and you seal it.

49:21 It says, you know, this is sealed up, right? It's a common image. And Paul says here that the fact that we are God's possession, in fact, the guarantee that all of it's going to come to its intended end in the end, is the fact that the Holy Spirit is in us. He is the seal that presses the image of God into us. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Now, this is not the main point of the passage, But I want to put your attention, because Paul kind of makes a big deal of it anyway. I want to put your attention on a particular detail.

49:54 When is the Holy Spirit, the seal, given? When is the Holy Spirit given to a believer? When does he come as the seal and guarantee of salvation? Well, Paul dates that moment. He times that moment with two very specific phrases in 13. The Holy Spirit is given when you heard the gospel and when you believed. That's when you get the Holy Spirit. When you heard the gospel and when you believed.

50:28 Now, there are certain churches, especially kind of here in sort of Kentucky, the Midwest. There are a lot of them here called Churches of Christ or Christian churches. Which, I mean, to me seems like a bit of cheating anyway, if you think about it. It's like calling yourself the Church of Jesus Christ, right? It's like, well, why do you get that name and we don't? There was even a church some years ago in Arizona that called itself the One Church. And you're just like, oh, okay, you can be the One Church, sure, you know. Anyway, churches of Christ, Christian churches, say that the Holy Spirit is given.

51:04 The seal of salvation is given at baptism. Friends, that could not be more unbiblical. And Paul nails it down here as clearly as he nails it down anywhere else in the New Testament. When you heard the gospel and when you believed it, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit at that moment. Not before and not after. Okay, back up and see what Paul's doing here. What he's doing is telling you in this fireworks display of words what has happened to you if you're a Christian.

51:40 From eternity past, swinging all the way through the present and into eternity future, you were chosen by God sheerly because of his love and his grace. You were forgiven of your sins and united to King Jesus, the king of the universe. And now you've been sealed up by the Holy Spirit to be delivered to God as his possession on the last day. Because there is deep, deep, deep reason for worship in all of that. And there's a reason, friends, to just take a breath and rejoice in what God has made you.

52:17 Humanity and humans are in a constant fight to define ourselves, to find ourselves, to figure out who we are. And it's true to a societal level, it's true to an individual level, and we ask all these questions. Am I really just a bunch of cells? Am I just a cosmic accident? No, maybe I'm stardust. Are aliens going to show up and finally invite us into the galactic council so that human society matters now? Is that what all the drones are? Well, you know what you can say to all that?

52:51 You know what you can say to all that if your faith is in Jesus? You can say, none of that matters. I am a Christian. I'm one who's chosen by the Father, forgiven by God the Son, and sealed up forever as God's own possession by God, the Holy Spirit. I am a Christian, and all the praise to God. All right, here's point number two, much, much more briefly, as usual. Point two, what you should therefore know. So let's look at the second paragraph.

53:21 A whole lot of the themes and stuff, they show up again in this second paragraph, so we don't have to deal with all of them, because we already have. But in verses 15 to 23, Paul turns from this one-sentence praise of God, this barakah, to a prayer for the believers who are going to read the letter. Actually, if you look at it in typical Pauline fashion, he keeps getting lost in his own words here. And in fact, over the first three chapters, he restarts this prayer at least two more times and doesn't actually finish it until the end of chapter three. Like the whole of chapter three with all of its doctrine and theology, it's literally just Paul trying to finish his prayer.

53:57 And he finally does it after three chapters. But he gets some of it at least out here in these verses. This paragraph has the same kind of, if you look at it, Trinitarian character as the first one. If you look, you can see the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But it's got a different structure to it. So in 15 to 18, first few verses there, you get the main thing that Paul is praying for these believers. So you see it there? He prays for them, verse 17. What he wants for them is for God to give them the spirit of wisdom and knowledge, right?

54:28 So that they grow in the knowledge of him. And then in 18, that their eyes would be enlightened. And then in the middle of 18, he says that what he hopes will be the end or goal of all this, what he wants this Holy Spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge to show them, he wants them to know three things. He wants them to know three things. So first, he says there, I want you to know the hope to which he has called you. I want you to know the hope to which he's called you.

55:01 Now, usually when Christians talk about hope, what we have in mind is generally hope of the future, right? It's a rock-solid confidence that God is going to keep his promises. And so hope is the assurance of things not yet seen. We are sure that heaven is out there because God has said that it is. That's usually what we mean. And that's part of it. But it's more than that. And if you look through the New Testament, if it is hope to which God has called us, then you look through the New Testament, you see all the things that God has called us to as Christians.

55:31 And all of that together is this hope in its past, present, and future. So God has called us to belong to Jesus. He's called us into the fellowship of his Son. He's called us to be saints. He's called us with a holy calling. He's called us to be holy, for I am holy. He's called us to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called. He's called us to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. And he says that, Paul says, he races toward that goal. See, the hope to which we've been called is not just, oh, I hope it all comes true.

56:06 No, it's a rock solid confidence that it all is true and it all will be true. It's a whole life lived right now and in the future in honor of our king. Second, he says also in 18 that he wants us to know what are the riches of the inheritance of the saints. He wants you to know what are the riches of the inheritance of the saints. Christian, you have no idea. And I have no idea what God has in store for us when we get to heaven.

56:41 In just a couple of minutes, we're going to take the Lord's Supper. And it's going to be just a flash of a foretaste of the celebration that's waiting for us. Which is why, for the Christian, death has no sting. It's why I can pray in the pastoral prayer for Sandra Austin. Lord, it's enough. Take her home. Friends, if we didn't have that hope, I'd never pray it.

57:14 Never pray it if we didn't have that hope. If all that happens at the end of life is the snuffing out of life into nothingness, I'd never pray, Lord, take her. Because existence is better than non-existence. But there's something else. And so I can pray, Lord, take her home. Death has no sting. I mean, sure. Sure, there's the dread in all of us about how death is going to come to each one of us.

57:46 Just exactly how cold the waters of that river are going to be. but the beauty is that there is no dread of what's on the other side we know what's on the other side of the river no we don't know every detail because that would spoil the surprise but we know that what's on the other side is the riches of the inheritance that jesus the king has won for us and that gives us strength and peace third thing he wants us to know verse 19 the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believes and then what is that power well look how he identifies it very next phrase it's the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him over the universe everything about that the power the world creating life-giving power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you if you're a Christian shaping and molding you into what God wants you to be.

58:45 That's what you've got at your disposal to turn from the world's enticements, to fight sin, to pursue blamelessness and holiness. I don't know how much TV you've watched with regard to the fires out in California, but every once in a while on the news, you'll hear some high official, maybe even the president of the United States, saying something like, I want the people of California to know that the full resources of the federal government are behind you in this fight. Well, listen to me, believer.

59:16 What Paul is saying here is that for you as a believer, all the resources of omnipotence are behind you as you fight this battle. Okay, last thing. Look at 22. Look at 22 because what Paul says in 22, I think is just mind-blowing. And it kind of launches the rest of the book. And he put all things under his feet, Christ's feet, and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

1:00:00 All right. Now, when we talk about Jesus being made king, being enthroned over the universe, the first thing that would come into your mind is that Jesus has been made king. He's been made head over all, sort of for his own sake, right? For his own glory. And that's true. But look at what Paul says in 22. I think we typically read this like this. He put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things, including the church. Generally how we read it. Gave him his head over all things, including the church.

1:00:34 But that's not what he says. He says that God has made Jesus the head over all things and given him to the church. I mean, in other words, it's mind-blowing. In other words, Jesus has been made king of the universe. He has been made head over all things for the good and the sake of the church. I mean, you see the craziness of that? It's almost too big to be believable, and yet there it is in black and white.

1:01:05 It's as if when Jesus is resurrected and ascends into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, the Father comes up to him and says, I'm crowning you, my son, as king of the cosmos. I crown you as king of the cosmos. I am wrapping these robes of universal empire around your shoulders. I am giving you all authority in heaven and on earth, and I am doing it all so that you can save them. It's mind-blowing.

1:01:39 Jesus made king for our sake. Brothers and sisters, if you're a Christian, if you're united to Jesus Christ, the king in faith, you are not just loved. You are cherished. Walk away in that knowledge and live in it. Let's pray. our lord god we praise you and we honor you as the sovereign god of the universe sovereign over creation sovereign over redemption and salvation we honor you jesus as king of kings and lord of lords you who have universal empire all authority in heaven and on earth resting in your hand and lord we thank you and we praise you that all that power all that power you have determined to use for our sake and for our good. We pray that you would help us to remember these

1:02:39 things. In Jesus' name, amen.