Father in heaven, we come in the name of Jesus, confident of the
work of the Holy Spirit, asking again that You would enable us
to see, to hear, to think and feel rightly for Your glory.
We give You praise for Your Word, which is God.
Breathe useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness. And we thank you for this church
which upholds your word, trusting that it is from you,
God, Do what only you can do. Summon us to yourself.
Remind us of who we are in Christ and remind us of your
glory and the perfection of your will.
We pray in Jesus name, Amen. This morning we're going to
continue in the book of Ephesians.
We're going right back to the same section of scripture we
were in last week. If you were not here with us, we
covered a lot of ground as it relates to the doctrine of
election and predestination. We're going to continue that
theme this morning. But if you feel a bit lost or
wonder why certain things aren't being covered, you might listen
to last week's sermon for a little benefit.
To help you know where we're going, let me read now,
beginning at verse 4 through 6 of chapter 1.
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 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.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please be seated. We're moving through this small
letter at a very slow and intentional pace.
Remember why it's written. First and foremost, it's written
because God wanted us to have this word.
He called his Apostle Paul, his own son, his child, carrying him
along to write these very words to encourage this one specific
church in Ephesus. This pastoral letter would then
be circulated to other churches and 2000 plus years later, we're
still being fed by this very word of God.
Paul begins his letter with this large, beautifully written,
dramatic, magnificent sentence, one sentence, hundreds of words
long. And at the beginning of this
sentence he talks about the blessings that we have in
Christ. So everything that he is
offering is meant to be a blessing.
And early in this letter, he begins by speaking about this
teaching of God's sovereignty, of God's Providence, of God's
election of predestination. Very quickly in review of last
week, I shared that there's never been a question I've been
asked more as a long time youth pastor, pastor in this church.
Then the question, do you believe in predestination?
The joy of answering that question with the word of God is
truly a joy. Many people don't believe it's
in there because the idea of it overwhelms us.
It's hard for us to wrap our hands around it.
Today I'd like to do 2 things. I would like to look at the
puzzle of predestination and then the purpose of
predestination. It's clear in the text, and not
just this text what God has said about who He is.
Last week I encouraged you with three simple statements.
Anytime we come across any teaching in the Bible.
So this applies certainly to doctrines that are harder to
understand. We must start with scripture.
In other words, if we don't start with Scripture, it's just
your idea, your inference, your experience that you're bringing
to the text. And that's man centered
theology. It begins with us and how we
make sense of the world. And therefore that's what God is
saying. We can't do that.
It's not how God has made us and it's not truth.
So we start with Scripture. Second, stay with Scripture.
God's word is meant to be read not just only one verse, but in
context, in context of the chapter of the letter of the
testament, of the whole. And so we start with Scripture,
we stay with Scripture, and then we surrender to Scripture.
We submit to Scripture. When we cannot make sense of
something. We don't say.
Therefore, because I can't make sense of it, it can't be true.
So predestination doesn't exist. It's a puzzle.
It is a mystery. Paul's going to use that word.
But just because it's a mystery doesn't mean it's not true.
So I encouraged you last week to think of a dot to .1 verse leads
to another and you begin to see the picture.
I also encouraged you, if you're in Christ, to trace your
testimony, and I hope you did. I know some of you did because
you sent it to me and it was wonderful to read.
You trace your testimony back to when you professed faith in
Christ. And if you're a child that's
grown up in a covenant family and you've always known Christ,
that's your story. And you trace it back and you
begin to look for what's going on behind the scenes.
And behind the scenes, you're going to see a sovereign God who
brought people into your life, messages into your life, ideas
about life into your life that caused you, whether you were
little or older, or maybe even today to say, I need Jesus.
I rest in him alone. Everybody has a testimony who is
in Christ. And I encourage you to go back
to the beginning. And I said, if you go back to
the beginning, you're either going to start on the day you
were born or you're going to start on the day you were born
again. And then I said very carefully,
according to this passage, that's not the beginning for
everyone who was in Christ. According to Paul, as he's
carried along with his Spirit to write, the beginning of your
testimony is before the foundation of the world.
Think about that. His word says verse 4.
Even as he Speaking of Jesus, God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit
shows us in him before the foundation of the world.
I went to other passages that showed where this exists, that
there is a list, and this list has all of those who are in
Christ. So here's what that means for
all who are in Christ. Before you were knit together in
your mother's womb, Before your mother was born.
Before your mother and father fell in love, Before they had
the idea of this time to start a family.
Before you ever met any siblings, you were already a
child of the living God. You are already one who had
Jesus as his brother before the foundation of all things.
That blows our mind. And because it blows our mind,
some of you immediately are like, so it can't be true and
you just want to take a sharpie and mark out that part of
Scripture. You can't.
It's what His Word says. And Paul gives us this word not
to confuse us, not to cause us to be dizzy, but to encourage
us. And so I shared with you that in
some ways, it's like looking at one of those prints, one of
those Magic Eye prints, where if you look long enough and your
eyes get distorted enough, suddenly there's a 3D image
coming at you. Some of you could see those very
quickly. Some of you never could see
them. You just couldn't figure out how
they saw aliens in a spaceship or reindeer.
Who knows what was there. But there are popular books.
We stay in scripture, not relying up on our own ability to
do something with our eyes, but upon the Holy Spirit to show us
what is there. And let me encourage you, if
you're wrestling with these things, it's understandable.
People have wrestled with them for a long, long time.
For example, in 1618 and 1619, in order to counter what they
believed is heresy, the Canons of Dort were printed.
Listen to this statement seeking to go straight to the Scriptures
and to stay in the Scriptures and surrender to the Scriptures.
My language they wrote this election is God's unchangeable
purpose by which He did the following before the foundation
of the world by sheer grace. That means not looking into the
future, seeing who would believe that would be something more
than grace. By sheer grace, according to the
free good pleasure of His will. God chosen Christ to salvation a
definite number of particular people out of the entire human
race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original
innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better
nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the
common misery. God did this in Christ, whom he
also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all
those chosen and the foundation of their salvation.
Start with the Word, they did Stay with the Word.
They did. Surrender to the Word.
Even when your brain begins to crack, even when you simply are
like, I don't know how to make sense of this, keep staring,
keep looking at the Word. Wait upon the Lord.
Something that might be helpful is this.
In our worship today you've seen lots about creation.
Scripture, clearly from the beginning of to the end, tells
us that God is the creator of all things.
Not once in Scripture does it ever say God's not in full
control. Hebrews 1/3 Christ upholds the
universe by the word of his power.
Jesus speaks of the sparrows falling and knowing everyone in
the book of Job. God speaking to Job says, does
the lightning go out from you and report back?
This is where I've been. God is awesome and big and
mighty and transcendent, but everything he has created, all
things he has created with specific properties.
So water acts like water, always it's wet.
A rock acts like a rock. Its property is hardness.
So a rock is always hard. Plants are really alive because
God made them with the property of life.
We created in the image of God, have been made in such a
wonderful way that we have the property of being able to make
willing choices, choices that have real consequences and real
results. Many people think, when they
hear terms like election or predestination, therefore, that
we're just puppets that were just pawns.
That is not true. The thought that we are just
puppets reduces us to a subhuman category, to a thing created by
man. We have been created in the
image of God and have the property to make real decisions
based on our own preferences and desires.
And in God's grace, all who are in him, all the elect, like the
rest of the world you'll see in Ephesians 2, was dead.
But by God's grace, he caused those dead hearts to beat the
elect, those whose names were written before the foundation at
some point in their life, and maybe it will be for you today,
that heart began to beat. That spiritual heart, the need
to know Jesus, to trust in Him, became alive, and the desires of
your life changed. Before that, you were carried
along by the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is
now at work among the sons of disobedience, among whom we all
once lived in the passions of our flesh.
But your desires changed not because you simply decided to
have them change. Something had to happen first.
God gave you a new heart. You are regenerate.
You were born again. And as you were born again, the
desires of your life begin to change.
God causes all things to happen, but He does so in such a way
that He somehow upholds our ability to make willing,
responsible choices, choices that are real and for which we
are held accountable. Exactly how God combines His
providential control with our willing choices Scripture does
not explain to us. But rather than deny 1 aspect or
the other, we should accept both.
In an attempt to be faithful to Scripture.
The Bible teaches both divine predestination and full human
responsibility. It was prophesied that Judas
would turn Christ over to the officials, but it was still his
choice and he received the consequences of it.
Our minds have a difficult time wrapping around that mystery and
around that puzzle. So this is what we have to
remember. God did not make everything
equally clear in Scripture. We start with scripture, we stay
with scripture, we submit to scripture.
And as God through the spirits work, opens our hearts and minds
to see, we give Him praise for what He reveals.
But this is so important. Ian Hamilton and his commentary
says this The Christians concern should not be how to puzzle
through the mysteries of God's sovereignty.
And it doesn't mean you don't study, it doesn't mean you don't
read it doesn't mean you don't keep staring at it.
But he said the Christians concern should not be how to
puzzle through the mystery of God's sovereignty, but to bow in
worship before the sovereign God who loved us and gave his Son
for us. He writes this divine
sovereignty is never presented to us in the Bible as a puzzle
to solve, but is a comfort to cherish.
It's a comfort though we can't wrap our minds fully around it.
Paul is writing this word to this specific church in Ephesus
to bring them comfort and encouragement.
Well, the question then might be how?
How is this comfort? Paul tells us the two statements
in the verses that we looked at, particularly verse four and
five. The puzzle of predestination
must be met with the purpose of predestination.
What is the purpose? Look at verse 4.
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be home holy and blameless before him.
Well, there's part of the answer.
If somebody asked you what was the purpose of predestination?
What was the purpose of Christ coming?
Purpose, Paul tells us, is that we who were not holy, we who
were not blameless, even though we had our names written in the
book of life, we should be holy and blameless before Him.
And that's an important part. All are going to stand before
Him. All but all who are in Christ
for all eternity will be be before Him, and we will be safe
and secure because He has made us blameless.
He has made us holy. This is a dual description of
what's taking place in Paul's words.
First, let's take the word blameless.
You and I, because of what God's Word is revealed and what we
know to be true of ourselves, have a long list of things that
we rightly can be blamed for. The word blameless comes from
the same root word as the word blemish.
And so when you think about your life, you think about the
choices that you've made. You think about the things that
you didn't do that you should have, and the things you did do
that you shouldn't have. Every one of us have so many
marks, so many blemishes, so many ways in which we have
sinned. When Paul says, even as he chose
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and blameless, there is this dual description of two
things taking place. First, something is removed.
All of those blemishes, every evil thought, every bitter deed,
everything you've ever done wrong, everything I've ever done
wrong, known and unknown, those blemishes in Christ are removed.
For the Christian, those things are removed.
Every ounce of greed, every selfish act, every lust, every
moment of pride, every time my tongue is set a forest on fire,
every blemish has been removed before him.
But something else happens, and that is something is received,
the righteousness of Christ, His perfection, the one who had no
blemishes is imputed to us. It is given to us.
We are holy because of Christ. We are holy in Christ.
What it means is that all of the blemishes, a list longer than
any of us could make or identify, they have been removed
as if that was in your bank account.
All the negative, all the negative, all the deficiencies,
they're removed. Suddenly your account before God
does not have those. They're gone before him.
But your account is not just left neutral.
You're not just starting with a clean slate and then good luck.
You receive something and what you receive is a person.
And that person Jesus, who has no blemishes, whose
righteousness says perfect, it's imputed to you.
And so Paul says This is why he chose us, that we should be holy
and blameless. Now.
This is why it's really important.
Some people come against the doctrine of God's sovereignty
and the doctrine of election and predestination and say, well, if
that's true and I discover that I'm elect, then why would I ever
care about the way I live? I'll do whatever I want.
That's called license. I have the freedom to do
whatever I want, sin however I want because I'm one of His.
If that is your thinking and you actually believe that, do not be
confident and your salvation. That is not at all what God's
Word teaches. God's Word reveals to us that He
sent His Son for the purpose that those who are His elect
will be saved to be blameless and holy.
So our holiness matters, one who is truly saved, who understands
what God did apart from any work in themselves, and I mean any
work in themselves. This is the greatest motivation
towards holiness. Here's an example.
The first Christian book I ever read, somewhere between 1984 and
9585, was Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges and NAV Press
Publication. I've never read a Christian
book. I read that book and tried so
hard to be holy because God's word says be holy, because I'm
holy. And I fell miserably short.
You would too. You did too.
But I was inspired. I wanted to be holy, but who was
I focused on? Me, my ability.
Not long after that book was released, he would write another
book called Transforming Grace, and in that book he would admit
there wasn't enough grace in the pursuit of holiness.
He would write a third book called The Disciplines of Grace,
which was the best of those three.
Speaking about our dependence upon the Lord and the Lord
making us holy. And because the Lord makes us
holy, it inspires true believers to say, I want nothing to do
with filth. I want nothing to do with
anything that God opposes. So when we get to Ephesians 53
and Paul says these words, but among you this small church.
There must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or impurity.
We all agree with that. But then he also says or greed
for these are improper for God's what holy people, we read that
and say, yes, Lord, please, by your power, take away all greed
in my heart and you know it's there.
Take away all lust. You know it's there.
There's a desire born out of his purpose of predestiny and that
is to see who we are blessed and holy.
Marta Lloyd Jones says something that's really important.
I actually have been blessed so much by this over the last few
weeks. He says, according to the
apostle Paul, we are not chosen with the possibility of
holiness, but to the realization of holiness.
God has not chosen us before the foundation of the world in order
to create for us the possibility of holiness.
He has chosen us to holiness. And brothers and sisters, this
is what we should be encouraging one another with this desire to
bring him holy because he says even as he chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and blameless before him. OK, we're going to stop there.
The theme of this morning's sermon will continue next week,
focused on the word adoption. I thought we would get there
today, but it's 1032 and what we're going to do is this, take
your bulletin home along with the Word of God.
Read Westminster chapter 12. It was our profession of faith.
That's where we're going next week, and we're going to focus
on what it means to be the adopted children who have all
the privileges beyond what we can even ask or imagine.
I'm going to close this in prayer, and then we're going to
sit as the music begins to play, and then we're going to rise and
we're going to sing. I pray with full voice.
Holy, holy, Holy Father in heaven, Your Word is impossible
for us to understand or to believe, to embrace or to live
apart from us being in Christ above all things.
What Paul is saying is that this is what it means to be in Jesus.
You, Father, before all time have listed those who are yours,
and in your own perfect way, at the pleasure of Your will, You
summon your children to yourself.
Indeed you do. Adopt us today, though, Lord,
even as we listen to this music, and then as we sing, press
deeply into us the truth that You have made us to be a people
set apart. Blessed, blameless and holy
because of who we are in Jesus. Amen.