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His Lavish Grace Bestowed to Us (Ephesians 1:3-14)
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His Lavish Grace Bestowed to Us (Ephesians 1:3-14)
--
Sunday Message recorded 09 January 2022
by Associated Pastor Josh Shell
First Baptist Church
1700 Milam
Columbus, TX, USA 78934
http://fbccolumbustx.org/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Church Information
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Growing in Grace with Associate Pastor Josh Shell. This is a ministry of First Baptist Church located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas. We are praying that God will bless you as you listen to this message. If you would like additional information on worship times and ministries at FBC Columbus, you can find out more at our website, fbccolumbustx.org. And now take your copy of God's timeless word as Pastor Josh gives today's message.
Staying Faithful to Christ
00:00:42
Speaker
Well, good morning, everyone. I hope you guys are doing well. It's good to see you guys here. In Ephesians 1, Paul will really, this letter to Ephesians or to the churches of Ephesus, Paul is writing to these churches because he's reminding them of this. He's saying, hey, you guys are doing so good. I'm remaining faithful to Christ.
00:01:04
Speaker
I've seen it. I've journeyed to you. I've stayed with you. I've seen your passion for the gospel. Stay with it. Do not lose sight of that. Do not lose sight of who you are in, and that is in Christ, because as soon as you lose sight of it, you're gonna go down a very dangerous path.
Surrender and Sacrificial Love
00:01:21
Speaker
When you lose sight of who Christ is in your life, you become first and Christ becomes second, and that's dangerous. You idolize yourself.
00:01:33
Speaker
And so in this passage today though, in chapter one, I want us to see the blessings that we have where we remain in Christ. And I want to encourage all of us to put aside any expectation or any idea that we have about what we think is best for our lives here in this life. And that we need to surrender any of that to the Lord today.
00:01:57
Speaker
Because if we're going to have any effectiveness to share the gospel to our community or to our family or to those who are lost, we need to die to ourselves, pick up our crosses, and we need to follow after the one who came and laid his life down for us. Because it's only through the acts of service and through sacrificial and gracious love that we can ever have a witness to those around us.
Spiritual Blessings and Inheritance
00:02:23
Speaker
So will you guys read this passage with me? We're gonna be in Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14. You guys can stay with me in honor of God's word as we read through this.
00:02:37
Speaker
Picking up in verse three, it says this, 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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons to Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
00:03:06
Speaker
to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the beloved. 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.
00:03:27
Speaker
according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an 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 are the first to hope in Christ might be the praise of his glory.
00:03:57
Speaker
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.
Prayer and Adoption into God's Kingdom
00:04:15
Speaker
Will you guys pray with me? Lord God, we come before you and Lord, we thank you for the way that you have set things forth from the beginning of time for us to be your children.
00:04:26
Speaker
those who confess in the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of your life, Father, we are now adopted as sons and daughters into your kingdom. That is something that you set forth from the very beginning. We thank you so much for that. We thank you for the fact that you sent your son Jesus to down the cross to fulfill the Old Testament covenant so that way the New Testament covenant can be established and this could take place for us.
00:04:52
Speaker
God, I pray that you'll lead us and guide us through this time today. May your words truly be spoken. It's in Jesus' name, amen. All right, I think you guys may be seated. So there's three things that I'll want us to look at this morning as we work through this passage.
Exploring Predestination and Free Will
00:05:09
Speaker
The first thing that I want us to see here in verses three through six is that for those of us who are in Christ, it's not by coincidence.
00:05:17
Speaker
Now, this is where it gets tricky when you read a passage like this, because some of you guys might think I'm going a little bit more Calvinism here, and I'm not a Calvinist, okay? But we have been chosen by the Father. We have been chosen by the Father. That's what we see here in these verses. It's not by random fact that we have come to know the Lord, okay? And we see that here in these verses.
00:05:43
Speaker
Going back to verse three, it says, and this is the scary word that everybody's afraid of in the church today.
00:06:06
Speaker
Now, again, I'm not trying to get into this whole predestination versus free will conversation, because again, that's for a whole another sermon, for a whole another day. But just to kind of give you an idea, though, what he means about by this word, when he talks about how we are chosen, that we are predestined, okay? Predestined means that it is to mark out the boundaries beforehand.
00:06:26
Speaker
to mark out the boundaries beforehand. So God, when he says that you are predestined, he's not saying, all right, Josh, this is your life, and this is how it's gonna go, no matter what, you have no choice in the matter. That's not what God is saying here. See, God, what he's doing is says, hey, I'm gonna set the boundaries beforehand for you guys, but I'm gonna give you the free will to choose to follow. And if you choose wisely, then you will inherit the kingdom.
00:06:54
Speaker
But if you choose unwisely, then you're gonna be like your original parents, Adam and Eve, and you're gonna follow the path to destruction. Again, you see that picture back in the garden. God gave Adam and Eve everything they ever needed. They told him, hey, you could eat of any tree in the garden except for this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Redemption through Jesus' Sacrifice
00:07:13
Speaker
But as soon as you eat of this tree, you will surely die, right? And then they get to seed, right? The serpent comes into the picture and he said, now did God really say you can't eat of this one tree?
00:07:23
Speaker
And Adam and Eve give in, and Eve takes the fruit, eats it, gives it to her husband, Adam, and they both fall into this perpetual state of sin, right? In that moment, they were at a crossroads. They had the opportunity to remain faithful to the one true God who was abiding with them, who was dwelling among them, who gave them everything that they needed in this life. What's even crazier is that the way that the snake, or the serpent, or the evil one deceived them was saying, God knows that if you eat of the tree, you will become like him.
00:07:54
Speaker
And so man, thinking that they knew what was right for themselves, chose this path of destruction. And guess what, guys? We're still doing that today, right? But all that to say is that God, predestined beforehand, for those who choose to follow me, they will inherit the kingdom. They will inherit life. And as a result of those who follow me, guess what they will receive? Every spiritual blessing.
00:08:22
Speaker
every spiritual blessing. That's what he's talking about there in verse three, he says, he who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, blessed be the God of the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when this is not just talking about the good feelings that we receive when we're inside the church, or when we're meeting in a Bible study, or when we're praying in the one time of the week that we pray, this is talking about for everything in our lives, people. Okay, this is talking about
00:08:51
Speaker
When it talks about our spiritual blessings needed, it's talking about for our spirit, for our soul, for our body, for the past, present, and future, for salvation and service, for a time and eternity, both now and forever. This is everything we ever need in this life.
00:09:09
Speaker
God, when we choose, when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord of our life, when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, we now receive every spiritual blessing we need in this life to walk forward in faith and assurance in the gospel. Nothing else. When we choose to confide in the things of this world, we're saying God is not good enough, that his blessings are not good enough. They're not sufficient for us.
00:09:40
Speaker
But for anyone who's at Christ and they've experienced the grace and the love and the true blessings that come with salvation, there's nothing else that we would want to follow, right? So again, the father in this matter, when he set the parameters from the beginning, when he predestined a group of people, right? So when you look to the Old Testament, who is that group of people?
00:10:12
Speaker
The Israelites, God's promised people. He set them apart for the purpose of his glory, right? And then he gave them the Old Testament covenant and says, hey, if you guys abide by this, you will remain in me and I will remain in you. And unfortunately, they weren't able to abide. They weren't able to fulfill that Old Testament covenant. But God knew in the beginning, he predestined from the beginning that he would send the one who could fulfill that Old Testament covenant. And that is Jesus Christ.
00:10:42
Speaker
And through him, we now are able to obtain every spiritual blessing. And through him, we were able to obtain the inheritance in which he promised through his people. So again, why would we want to try to turn and follow anything else in this life when we know that we have such a great inheritance in this life with every spiritual blessing?
00:11:15
Speaker
Which leads me to the second thing, is that we've not only been chosen by the Father, but rather, the second thing is that we've been redeemed by the Son. We've been redeemed by the Son. We see this in verses seven through 10. Verse seven says, 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. What does it mean to be redeemed?
00:11:47
Speaker
To find redemption. Yes, this is a, I'm asking you guys to answer. It's fine. It's not rhetorical. To be redeemed. To be purchased. At a cost? What was that cost? Jesus. His blood.
00:12:11
Speaker
We have been purchased, we have been redeemed, we have been saved from our trespasses and sins. You know, the things in which Adam and Eve brought about, which has now been perpetually going throughout history of mankind. The thing in which the Old Testament covenant was supposed to bring about salvation for, but it couldn't because we could not fulfill that standard, but Christ did.
00:12:34
Speaker
And when Christ came on, He died on the cross, when He lived that perfect life and died the perfect death and rose from the grave in His sentence and sitting on the right hand of the Father, we now have redemption. We've been bought by the blood of Christ. We have been redeemed by the Son.
Role of the Holy Spirit
00:12:51
Speaker
Guys, again, from the very beginning of the time, that was God's original plan.
00:12:57
Speaker
He was not surprised by sin. He was not surprised by Adam and his decision. He was not surprised by the fact that his chosen people, the Israelites, could not fulfill the Old Testament covenant. That's why he had Jesus. And that's why he planned for him to come at the right time to die for the sins of the world. And not just for the sins of the world at that time, but for the sins of the past, present, and for the future. That's absolutely incredible.
00:13:26
Speaker
That's where we find our hope. That's where we find our assurance in this life today. When we face each day, when we face the uncertainties in which there are unfolding in our homes, in our communities, in our city, in our nation, in our world, we can find assurance and hope in the redeemed blood of Christ knowing that through his redemption, we now can have a great inheritance that has been predestined from the beginning.
00:13:57
Speaker
Again, I'm not saying that we're just pogs in a chess game, or pawns in a chess game, but rather, God is saying, hey, no, no, no, no. I have it all figured out, but I want you. I want you to desire it. He wants you to have that relationship as much as he wants a relationship with you.
Unity in Christ amidst Distractions
00:14:14
Speaker
He's not gonna force it upon you. He wants you to desire it. And if you don't desire it, then,
00:14:27
Speaker
You're just gonna be walking down a lonely path of destruction. And you're not gonna see the benefits of the redeemed blood of Christ, inheritance in Him. Again, I feel like we say this every week. In a church this size, not everybody in here is saved. Not everybody in here has a relationship with Jesus. Not everybody in here has been redeemed. Somebody in this room could be living a really dark and lonely life, but they're masquerading it.
00:14:56
Speaker
They're covering it up, making it look pretty. That's a lonely life. That's a scary life. So I pray that if that's you here today, that you will just humble yourself just as God did by sending his son. He humbled himself thinking on the form of flesh to come into the world to die the most agonizing and most embarrassing death that any man could ever die.
00:15:23
Speaker
so that way He could demonstrate His love for you and for me. Praise God. And that through that death, through that burial, through that resurrection, through His blood, we now have been sanctified. We've been redeemed, we've been purchased, so that we could have that relationship and have eternity with the Father in His kingdom.
00:15:47
Speaker
And this is all lavished upon us. This is a free gift. We don't deserve it. Not one bit. But it goes on there in verses nine to 10.
00:16:03
Speaker
And it says this, it says, making known to us, so he lavishes upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, which was the inheritance, right? So the mystery, we'll go back to the Old Testament, his inheritance, his promise in which he laid out for us has now been fulfilled in Christ and has now been revealed in Christ, his inheritance.
00:16:26
Speaker
according to the purpose which he set forth in Christ. So again, this was the purpose for Christ was to come in to redeem us. And the purpose of man for you and I from the very beginning was to have intimate relationship with God the Father.
00:16:46
Speaker
Anything outside of that is not part of our purpose. We are to worship, we are to praise and to glorify God in everything that we do. That was the intended purpose of man. And the intended purpose of Christ and his coming was to renew that for us.
00:17:11
Speaker
It goes on in verse 10, it says, and as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. And guys, there's gonna be a day where Christ will return and he will truly unite all things in him. But the key word, the key words there is in him, in him.
00:17:31
Speaker
He will reunite all things in him. So for those of us who are in Christ, we will be united. And it's gonna be a beautiful picture when Christ returns and he establishes his kingdom forevermore. Because those of us who are in Christ, we have his inheritance. We have hope in the next life in the kingdom. But for anybody who's outside of Christ, it's gonna be a dark and lonely place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. We looked at that a few weeks back.
00:18:03
Speaker
But again, all this was set in place so that we could all be united in Christ. And God's desire is for all to come to know Christ, and not just specific people. So again, going back to the chosen, the Israelites, the chosen people of God. People have a tendency to think that God is selective on who he chooses. But you see, God chose the Israelites in the Old Testament as an example.
00:18:33
Speaker
He chose them as an example to show the world that mankind cannot fulfill the standard of which God has for us. And that it can only be fulfilled through what perfect sacrifice Jesus. And now as a result of Jesus coming, that chosen group of people has now been expanded. For anyone who's in Christ is now being adopted, grafted into this chosen people, the Israelites.
00:19:00
Speaker
So it's no longer about a location in the Middle East. It's about those who confess Christ. We who are a Christ are part of God's people. We are Israel. And it's gonna be a really lonely day whenever Christ returns and you're not a part of the chosen people.
Hope and Inheritance through the Holy Spirit
00:19:26
Speaker
And you're not grafted into the family.
00:19:28
Speaker
He goes on though in verse 11, this is where the final thing is, my third point. So not only have we been chosen by the Father or redeemed by the Son, but we are assured by the Spirit. We are assured by the Spirit. We see that here in verses 11 through 14 where he says, in him we have obtained the inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to his counsel of his will.
00:19:56
Speaker
so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in Him. And those who have believed in Him are sealed by the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.
00:20:21
Speaker
So for any of us who are in Christ, we have been given this extra gift called the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and He assures us, and He leads us, and He guides us. And He is the guarantor of our inheritance. This is where we can have hope today. When we look out to our world and we will look out to our community and be like, man, this world is going to hell in a handbasket.
00:20:52
Speaker
Guess what? Our hope is not in that. Our hope is in Christ. Our hope is in the fact that we now have the Holy Spirit, the gift, the guarantee of our inheritance until we become in possession of it.
00:21:08
Speaker
You know, the one who prays our behalf when we don't know how to pray, the one who leads us and convicts us when we walk in sin and then we don't confess it, the one who gives us wisdom and knowledge and insight into the word of God, the one who gives us insight and wisdom and knowledge in how we interact with each other, the Holy Spirit, Him, He's living, He's active, He's among us right now. We can have assurance today.
00:21:35
Speaker
When we confess in Christ, we receive this Holy Spirit. It becomes a part of our daily life.
Living a Life of Worship
00:21:50
Speaker
And there's no other position for us to take when we think of all this than one of praise. Isn't it funny how it all comes back full circle?
00:22:01
Speaker
Again, our intended purpose as man in the beginning was to glorify God, to worship Him. We were made in His image, we were made in His likeness, we were sharing His attributes and characteristics. Sin came into the picture, broke that relationship. We lived thousands of years, hundreds of years. Christ came, died on the cross, renewed that relationship to where now, when we receive Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit, which only makes us what? Come back to worship Him.
00:22:35
Speaker
Come back to worship. So if we're not living a life of worship every single day for the gospel, for Jesus, for God, we've lost our purpose. Again, it doesn't matter what you face. It doesn't matter what curveballs come in this life. We have hope. We have insurance. We have a guarantee.
00:23:04
Speaker
in Christ and the Holy Spirit. So I pray that if anybody's here today and you feel lost, you feel lonely, that you feel like the world is crashing down around you or that there's no hope, or if you're on the other side, if you feel like everything's going great, you feel like nothing can bring you down, you need to be very, very careful. Because as a life of a believer, we're not promised blessings all the time. If anything, we're actually promised trial and persecution.
00:23:34
Speaker
hardship. Because when you choose to put Christ on, when you choose to believe in Jesus, guess what you put on your back? A target. A target for the evil one. Satan himself to come and to try to tear you down and to make you feel like you are unworthy of the gospel of Jesus. Which is true. None of us are worthy of it.
00:24:00
Speaker
None of us. But by God's grace and His goodness and His love, He shows compassion on us and mercy. And He chooses to bring us back into Himself. So as we wrap up, I want to encourage you as a church, us. I say you, us, because I am just as sinful and just as
00:24:26
Speaker
I was gonna say a word, but it's probably, I was just gonna say dumb, but, because I'm talking about myself, as the next person, right? But I'm gonna challenge us with this. When we go throughout each day, I'm gonna challenge you with what Paul's challenging the church's emphasis. You need to remain in Christ. Remain in Christ and allow His fervent love to stir you and spur you on.
00:24:56
Speaker
Because it's easy for us to read letters like this and not to put it in context and think, oh, the Ephesian people, they didn't struggle with the things that we struggle with today. Have y'all ever read about the city of Ephesus? They had more, if anything. It was a large port city, probably one of the largest cities at that time, that had a lot of different merchants, that had a lot of different philosophies and ideologies and different people who come in and try to teach different truths.
00:25:25
Speaker
They had big pagan idol worship going on. And so for the church in Ephesus, the struggle was real, just like it is for us today. But yet they, in this season, in this letter, were remaining faithful. We see later on in Revelation that they don't necessarily cling to that, but that's why Paul is writing to encourage them to stay true in Christ. So I'm gonna challenge us to do the same.
00:25:57
Speaker
But again, if anybody's here today and you don't have a relationship with Christ and you feel like there's no hope, don't believe the lie of Satan. If you're a believer here today, you feel like there's no hope. Don't believe the lie of Satan. You need to surrender that. You need to confess it. And you need to just cast that.
00:26:21
Speaker
way off. Let Christ take that for you. Because Christ came and He bore the penalty of our sin and our death so that we don't have to carry it anymore. So I'm going to pray for us and we're going to go into a time of invitation. If anybody has anything on their hearts, anything to pray for, I challenge you to come down here. You can pray at the altar yourself. You can come talk to me. You can come talk to anybody. But make it right today. Get it fixed. So what do you guys pray with me?
00:26:49
Speaker
Lord God, we come before you, Lord, and we just thank you so much for your word, for how it is timeless. Lord, the things in which the apostles wrote about to the different churches in their day, Father, are still very prominent today. It can meet us where we're at. So God, I pray that if there's anything in our hearts
00:27:11
Speaker
that we need to confess to You, that we need to surrender to You, so that way we can better serve and better love and better worship You, God. I pray today we will just lay it all down at the altar, that we'll lay it, whether it's here at the altar or in the pew, wherever, Lord, that we'll just surrender to You, so that way You can do a redeeming work in our lives, so that way we can truly worship and praise You, God, as You intended us.
00:27:35
Speaker
And I just pray that if anyone does not have a relationship with you today, they don't understand the inheritance of which they can be receiving in every spiritual blessing. Lord, that today you will reveal that to them. That they will come to know you in a very real and personal way. Or that you will reveal, or that you will remove the veil of their heart. That way you can get them eyes to see. God, we love you. We praise you. We thank you for this time. We get to start your work together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.