Well, as the global W embraced the Enlightenment, thinking this
was going into the 18th and the 19th centuries, the spirit of
the age was to learn about man. We learn about ourselves from
studying man, and reason was elevated as the primary tool for
discerning truth. It's amazing that before, in the
Middle Ages, reason was everything.
Philosophy was everything. And then you have Aquinas saying
the queen of the sciences is theology.
That's where we got our theme for this Ephesians.
The queen of the letters is Ephesians.
And then amazingly, right after we go straight back and say no,
reason again took over and natural law took over as the
queen of the science. At by the time of the
Enlightenment, reason and natural law had supplanted
theology, which means that they set the rules for all other
sciences, including the study of Scripture and including
theology. And so with this came the the
higher criticism and the chipping away at inerrancy.
And with it came the quest for the historical Jesus, where they
began to to peel back what they perceived as layers of Scripture
and to degrade the public's confidence in the deity of Jesus
Christ. And in all this, the Trinity
became to be viewed as an addition to the doctrine of God.
And this is perhaps most apparent in the father of
liberal theology, modern liberal theology was Friedrich
Schleiermacher. And in his theology, he doesn't
talk about the Trinity in his book until the appendix.
You get to the appendix of his theology book, there's mention
of the Trinity and you even go to the the bastion of
conservative theology. You go to Princeton with Charles
Hodge, the greatest American mind, arguably at the time, the
greatest, the most popular American preacher at the height
of Princeton's conservative theology and influence and his
systematic theology. He spends 250 pages talking
about God before he ever mentions his Tri unity.
And so out of that, there's actually one man who kind of
corrected us back and got us back on track of thinking about
God as as a triune God, as a Trinitarian God.
And his name was Carl Bart, born May 1886.
He refocused the church because unlike Hodge, the discussion of
the Trinity was first in his doctrine of God.
It was first in his discussion of God.
And he said the doctrine of the Trinity is basically what
distinguishes the doctrine of God as Christian.
End Quote. And he said even Christ's
centrality is meant to point to and not away from the centrality
of the triune God. So there was a refocusing of the
church on Scripture as revelation.
We don't stand above it with our human tools and, and, and apply
ourselves to the Scripture, but rather we stand under the Bible
and we confess this is this is not written by a man, but men
under the inspiration of God. It's divine revelation.
And so we say when the Scriptures speak, the triune God
speaks and he rules and he reigns in our lives and our soul
and our heart and in this world through this open word.
And so we refocused as a church on Scripture as revelation.
We refocused on key passages, Trinitarian passages like
Ephesians 1/3 to 11. And so we're not like the spirit
of our age. We don't study, we don't have a
religion department. We have a theology department.
We don't study man to learn about man.
We study God to learn about ourselves.
And so we study the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit. And so this is our supreme
source of authority. And one of the premier passages
about the Trinitarian God is Ephesians 1, three to 14.
You can begin to turn there. Two weeks ago, Paul shone the
spotlight on God the Father and he began this sentence.
And it was 12 verses 202 words in the original autograph, 32
prepositional phrases representing one sentence of God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
And as he shines the spotlight on the Father, he says that the
Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
It says that he chose you. That's the main verb of this
whole sentence because he's trying to give you a sense of
the sovereignty of God and your salvation.
And he tells you that he predestined you for adoption to
give you a sense of the purpose of your salvation, that you
would be in relationship to him, that he would adopt you, that he
would give you a family and a home, and that he would become
your heavenly Father. And uses that metaphor of you
are a child and he is your father.
And then you come to verses 7 to 10, our passage for last week.
God or Paul shone the spotlight on Jesus the Son of God.
And he said that he purchased you with his own blood.
He was your Redeemer. And as your Redeemer he
fulfilled 3 roles. He was your prophet making known
the will of God for your salvation.
He was your priest making atonement for your soul, and he
was your king by subduing all creation.
It said things in heaven and things on earth under himself,
and he subdued you to himself, which is why we bow the knee to
him and we confess him as Lord. He unites all things under
Christ. And today we're going to
continue to learn something about ourselves and our
salvation by shining the spotlight on God the Holy
Spirit, who He says is going to seal us for the day of
redemption. And that, that that's the
premier metaphor. God the Father adopts you, the
Son redeems you, the Spirit seals you.
And what he's emphasizing with that metaphor is you're being
set apart in this world for his purposes.
You're living for His glory, His ownership of you, the
authenticity or the genuineness of your faith and your eternal
security. By having a spirit, He says He's
guaranteeing your inheritance until you acquire possession of
it to the praise of His glory. And so, and all these things to
go all the way back to the beginning and all these things,
there is unity between the persons of the Godhead and what
they're accomplishing on your behalf.
All things in Scripture, be it creation or redemption, is are
from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.
And the same is true with your redemption.
It was according to the plan and foreknowledge of God the Father.
It was achieved through Jesus Christ in time, and it is
applied by the Holy Spirit. And so those that the Father
chose, the Son redeemed. Those that the Son redeemed, the
Spirit sealed. We saw through the Father was
the plan of redemption through the Son, the accomplishment of
it through the Spirit, the application of it.
So from everlasting to everlasting, God has been
building His church and He's loved His church.
He says He does it that we might be his people and that He might
be our God. And he says over and over again
in this Section 3 times, it's to the praise of his glory, to the
praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory.
That's the reason He bought his church.
And again, if you'll look to Ephesians 111, the spotlight now
shines on God the Holy Spirit. Let's read this section
together. Ephesians 111 to 14.
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 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. Go back to Ji Packer, one of the
favorites of the church he was famous for, or he was one of the
guys that popularized this idea that the Holy Spirit is the shy
person of the Trinity. And the Spirit is not shy
because he's he's timid. He's shy because his name
appears less in Scripture than the Father and the Son.
And he he's shy because his work is, is not as apparent of that
of Jesus Christ. It's internal and it's
transformative. And so the Spirit he's called
shy because his work is not to glorify himself.
When you look at the Spirit, all of a sudden the Spirit's
pointing your attention toward Christ and you look at Christ
and all of a sudden Christ is pointing your attention toward
the Father. And so it, it's hard to pinpoint
scriptures about the Spirit because all of a sudden you're,
you're looking at the Son. It's just how did, how did I get
here? That's his job is to glorify the
Son. John 1613 When the Spirit of
truth comes, he will guide you into all, all truth.
For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he
hears, he will speak. Listen, He will glorify me, for
He will take what is mine and declare it to you.
John 1526 Jesus says, when the Helper comes, whom I will send
to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds
from the Father, He will bear witness about me.
The Spirit does not bear witness to Himself.
The Spirit glorifies Christ. So the Spirit delights to focus
on the Son, and in the same way we see that the Son delights to
point the glory to God the Father.
John 718 The one who speaks of his own authority seeks his own
glory, But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent Him is
true. Jesus sought the glory of the
one who sent Him. John 850 says it plainly.
I do not seek my own glory. There is One who seeks it and He
is the Judge. And finally in the high priestly
prayer, he says, I glorified you on earth, have accomplished the
work that you gave me to do. So when you attempt to focus on
God the Spirit is to focus on God the Son.
Any attempt to focus on God the Son is to focus on God the
Father who sent him. And if you remember in the New
Testament some 200 times, it talks about our being found in
Christ and in the greatest concentration of this, in
Christ, in Jesus, in the beloved, the greatest
concentration of those come right here in Ephesians 1.
And I want to remind you the words of Carl Bart, when even as
he is, he is central here. Bart says even Christ's
centrality is meant to point to and not away from the centrality
of the triune God. And so we're going to glorify
the Spirit this morning. And in so doing, we will glorify
the Son and the Father who sent him.
And as you look down to these verses, 11 to 14, I counted 7
works of God the Holy Spirit in these 5 verses.
And so taken together, these seven works of the Holy Spirit
represent the application of redemption to your soul, the
application of redemption to the church.
And we're going to go through them one by one.
But those seven works are the Spirit, places you in Christ.
That's the first work. The Spirit unites all things in
Christ #3 the Spirit works through the Word, through the
gospel, and through faith #4 the Spirit seals believers #5 the
Spirit guarantees your inheritance.
Number six, the Spirit fulfills prophecy, and #7 the Spirit
glorifies Jesus Christ. So we'll begin right here at the
top. The Spirit places you in Christ.
I'm going to read verses 11 to 12 again so you can see it in
this context. It says 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. Says that in Christ we have
received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
And so this, all of these spiritual blessings, all of
these blessings that are given by the Holy Spirit are found in
Christ. Everything in this section is
bound up in Christ. And so union with, union with
Jesus, the beginning of our salvation did not occur when
Jesus went to the cross and died for your sins.
It didn't occur when he raised from the dead.
It didn't occur when he was ascended up into glory.
Your being united with Christ happened through the work of the
Holy Spirit, who then applied that work of redemption to you.
Jesus accomplished redemption. The Spirit has to apply it.
And so he says that in verse 13, that happens when you hear the
word of truth, when you hear the gospel, and when you believe
He's going to work in and through those things.
And after you believe in, because you believe the Spirit
applies the work of Jesus Christ to your soul.
Do you get it? This is the order.
This is how it happens, and this is the plan of God from all
eternity. This is the wise plan that was
part of the foreknowledge that was given in all wisdom and all
insight that God would have this plan, that the Spirit would
apply it. And you see that He accomplishes
it through your faith and belief. 200 times you hear these
words in Christ, in the Lord, in Christ Jesus, in Him, in the
beloved, which means that union with Jesus Christ is essential
to your faith. Without union with Christ, there
is no salvation. It's essential to your faith.
You are dead in your trespasses and sins while you remain
outside of Him. And it's by the work of the Holy
Spirit alone that you are united with your Savior, that His
righteousness is applied to you. And so all of the doctrines
we've seen so far in Ephesians, one, we've seen election and
redemption and justification and adoption and sanctification and
glorification. There's a reason you keep going
through. It's in Him.
It's in Him and in him. All of these doctrines run like
a thread. They all find their genesis or
the thread being bound up in Jesus Christ.
It all happens in Him. First Corinthians 617 to 20
illustrate this wonderfully. Or do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God,
and you are not your own, for you were what?
But with a price, Therefore glorify God.
The Spirit unites you to Christ. And in that section.
This is the context of the words Paul says and verse 17 But he
who is joined to the Lord becomes 1 Spirit with him.
Your salvation is united. You are united in Christ.
And you can ask, how can I be sure that I'm saved?
How do I know that I'm saved? The answer is that God has given
you his Holy Spirit who dwells in you, who unites you to Jesus
so that you are found in him. And so when these verses, Paul
again remind you, this is God's sovereign plan and purpose.
And you see it in these two prepositional phrases.
In verse 11, he's underlining the thoughtful and deliberate
nature of God the Father and your salvation.
He says first it's according to the purpose of him and then
second, it's according to the counsel of his will.
He's been heaping up this, the sovereign language throughout
this passage. He's used 3 words to to stress
divine sovereignty. It says it's his purpose, it's
his counsel and it's his will. And you, you can't divide those
things. You can try and dig into them
and find shades of meaning in them, but there there's no
shades of meaning. It's it's Paul overwhelming you
with synonyms so that you get a sense of his sovereignty over
your life and over your salvation.
That's what these these words are doing.
It's his purpose. It's his work.
It's his counsel. It's his will.
He's sovereign. It's his plan at his initiative,
his power, his forethought, his design, his execution, and you
move on. And it says it's all according
to the working of his grace. Working is literally the word
inner ghetto, energetic. It's it's his power that is
accomplishing this work. It's his power that puts this
plan into effect. And we remember in verse 8, it's
not only with power, it's all power now, but it was with all
wisdom and all insight, power and wisdom.
And you look at the created order.
You can tonight when the sky goes dark, you can get out of
telescope and you can look out at this created order and you
can see something of the power and the the majesty and the
bigness of God. And then you can get out your
microscope the next morning and you can see something of the
wisdom of God because it's all there and apparent for you.
He's showing you this and you can look through all of it.
And he says here that he's uniting all things under Jesus
Christ, the work of the Spirit. He says things in heaven and
things on earth, they will all be brought in and made to reign
under the one head of Jesus. It says here he's building his
church from eternity past to eternity future, that we might
be his people and he might be our God.
And to remind you of this truth, he says it again.
He says this phrase again that we were predestined making it.
It's at the beginning, it's at the end.
It kind of makes it a refrain of this passage.
It begins and ends our section. And as you go into verse 11, I
want to make a note too that scholars argue here over this
word inheritance, and they say, do we have our inheritance in
Christ or are we the inheritance for Christ?
And I want to say that regardless whether you're the
inheritance or we've obtained an inheritance, Paul is going to
stress in Ephesians that you are a people after God's own
possession. It's one of his main focal
points. And your secure place in God is
intentional. And it required the Holy Spirit
uniting you into Christ so that you can be found in him.
That's his first great work. And moving to the second one,
the Spirit unites not only you, but all things in Jesus Christ.
Look at verse 12 into verse 13 he says verse 12 so that we who
were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of him
glory might be to the praise of his glory.
We who were the first to hope in Christ and then in 13 he says
and and in him you also and so he's making a distinction here.
You got to choose as he is he making a distinction between the
first to hope in Christ literally just being like some
people believed first and now some people are believing
second. You also, or is it we who were
the first are the Jews and you also are the Gentiles.
I think he's getting at that. And whether he is or isn't, he's
going to say this in chapter 3. This mystery is that the
Gentiles are fellow heirs, member of the same body,
partakers of the same promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel.
So you've already seen it illustrated at Pentecost where
he's taken the two unique bodies who are hostile to one another.
He's going to say the Gentiles who could not even approach the
throne of grace and he's saying I've taken those two and I've
united them under one head. They are now found in Christ in
submission to him. He's saying it's not just it's
all things things in heaven and things on earth and here's your
premier illustration. The Jews and the Gentiles, 2
distinct groups of people have been found in him.
And you see this when God poured out his Holy Spirit and
established his church, he pours out his spirit on the Jews and
3000 believe in the spirit comes on them and there's the same
spirit and there's the the tongues and there's the sign.
And then he goes to the Samaritans and trying to show
that it's one church united under Jesus Christ.
They received the same spirit and they know they have the same
spirit because it's the same sign, the same tongues.
And then you come to the Gentiles and here it is.
It's the same spirit. It's the same sign.
And so when the Spirit unites you to Christ, he's
simultaneously uniting you to the church, which is why anybody
that doesn't love the church doesn't love the Father.
You can't say I believe in God, but I don't believe in organized
religion. When you are given a new
orientation toward God, you're given a new orientation toward
His church. We have fellowship with Him and
we have fellowship with one another.
Ezekiel 11/19 prophesied. And I will give them all one
heart, and a new spirit I will put within them, and they shall
be my people, and I will be their God.
That's the only distinction. Now, those who are God's people
and those who aren't, we have been united under our head.
You become God oriented and you become church oriented.
And this unity is the very thing that Jesus prayed for.
We said last week that he's our priest and part of the the work
that Jesus accomplished as a priest was our atonement.
And as he's going to make atonement, he's praying.
This is all under his office as a priest, and as he was praying
to God the Father the night before or the night he was
betrayed, he says this. I asked for all those who
believe in me through their word, that they may all be one,
just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may
be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me
the glory that you have given me.
I have given to them that they may be 1 even as we are one, I
in them and you and me, that they may become perfectly 1, so
that the world may know you sent me and loved them even as you
loved me. So Jesus is praying that we
might be 1 even as the Trinity is 1.
Even his Father, Son, and Spirit are one.
That's the unity that we are to embody as a church.
And that prayer of Jesus Christ is accomplished by the work of
the Holy Spirit who unites all things in him.
The third work of the Holy Spirit as he says that the
Spirit works through the word and through the gospel and
through faith. And here's where Paul presents 2
truths in tension and the the tension of these two truths kind
of become a hallmark of his letters.
And those two truths are God's sovereign will for the salvation
of his church and the individual believers responsibility to
respond to the gospel in faith, God's sovereignty in man's
responsibility. And there's no need to reconcile
these verses. As Spurgeon famously said, how
do you He was asked, how do you reconcile these two truths to
each other? And he responded, I wouldn't
try. I never reconcile friends.
There's no contradiction, there's no tension between God's
election and mankind's response and faith.
Ji Packer wrote a book on it, Evangelism and the Sovereignty
of God. He says they're not enemies,
they're not uneasy neighbors. They're not in an endless state
of Cold War with each other. They're friends and they work
together. And you see it in verse 13 and
all of this language of sovereignty and the divine
initiative of God. And it says right here, read it
with me 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.
And there's a word that we use. It's not a contradiction.
It's not a paradox. There's a word we use when
there's two truths that that the Bible affirms are both true and
our there's limits to our human understanding that we can't see
how they fit together. We know that they're true.
We confess them as true. Again, not a paradox.
We call it an antenna, me an an enemy.
And the main subject of this passage, going all the way up to
the main verb is God's sovereign choice of the church in eternity
past. And we see that again, that the
initiative of Jesus Christ as he comes and redeems his church,
the initiative of the Spirit as he applies that.
But then Paul presents 2 human elements that are necessary for
salvation, and the first one is the proclamation of the gospel.
You have to hear the gospel, and the second human element that is
absolutely essential is your belief in that gospel.
You have to hear and you have to believe.
And so there is human responsibility that is
compatible with divine sovereignty.
And the first human responsibility is to preach the
Word to every tribe, tongue and nation.
It's the responsibility of all of us and us collectively.
This is God's divine Commission. He says go there for and on the
basis of God's divine sovereignty and foreknowledge,
preach election to all those who are elect.
That's what he says. Oh no, that's not at all what he
said. Go therefore, and make disciples
of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I've commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always,
even to the ends of the age. He's saying we have a
responsibility to preach the gospel, and that gospel is never
encumbered with the language of election.
We never proclaim election in our to say whoever is so
predestined. No, it's not restricted.
It does not restrict the free offer of the gospel, Whosoever
will believe in Jesus Christ. And then there's the other human
responsibility, not just to proclaim it, but to respond to
it and to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.
You hear Paul's theology in Romans 10.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe
in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. It's enough to believe in your
heart and to confess with your mouth that he is Lord.
They have to hear, which is why Paul says in the same context,
How will they hear him and whom they have not believed, how they
call on him and who they have not believed?
How are they to believe in Him and whom they never heard?
How are they to hear without preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is
written? How beautiful are the feet of
those who preach the good news. Verse 13 For everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved, and this is your
opportunity. The salvation is here.
If you believe in Jesus Christ, you have to trust in all of
these tenets of the gospel that He is the eternal law.
Goss. He is the Son of God.
He took on flesh. He was born of a virgin.
He lived a perfect life that you could never live.
You sinned and fell short of the glory of God.
And by his work of redemption at the cross, he accomplished
perfect righteousness. And here's the beauty.
If you trust that that work is enough for your salvation, the
Holy Spirit, according to the plan and foreknowledge of God
the Father, will apply Christ's work of redemption to your
heart, and you will confess that Jesus is Lord and you will be
saved. And you can do that now.
If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ now, you will be saved.
And so divine election and human belief are necessary for your
salvation. We say from God's perspective,
the very actions of hearing and believing are part of his
sovereign plan. We say that he ordained the
means or the end, which is salvation, and he ordained the
means, which is belief and trust.
And from our perspective, the gospel has to be preached and it
has to be heard and it has to be believed and men are responsible
for their response, which you can sum it up this way.
If if a man goes to heaven, we say all glory be to God.
And if a man goes to hell, we say he is responsible for his
unbelief. And those two are not intention.
And so God's Holy Spirit works through the preaching of the
gospel, through belief, through trust, and through faith.
And there's actually, you got to make a decision grammatically
here. And you'll see it really is no
decision to how you're sealed. It's either because you heard
and believed in this prepositional phrase, or it's
after you heard and believed and the commentators are all in
agreement. The answer's yes, because you
heard and believed, and after you heard and believed, you were
sealed with God's Holy Spirit, who was the guarantee of your
inheritance to the praise of His glory, which leads you into the
most important work of God's Holy Spirit.
This is the work that's emphasized.
This is the main verb of the section as you go into the 4th
work of the Holy Spirit. As emphasized in this passage,
the Holy Spirit seals believers and you can read verse 13 again.
Again, this is what's emphatic in him.
You also, when you heard the word of truth or after you heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in
him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
So here's the works. God the Father adopts you, that
that's his emphasis. The Spirit or the Son redeems
you. That's the main metaphor of the
Son here. And then the Holy Spirit seals
you and I want to show you that like adoption there, there's
several things that get communicated in that metaphor.
And there's several things that are communicated and, and this
metaphor of being sealed, these three things are it communicates
ownership, genuineness or authenticity and security.
And there's a commentator named folks who kind of wraps all this
up, ownership, authenticity, security.
He says in this brief description of what it means to
be sealed. He says, quote, in the ancient
world, the seal was the personal sign of the owner or the sender
of something important. And thus, as in a letter, it
distinguished what was true from that which was spurious.
It was also the guarantee that the things sealed had been
carried intact. So the king or the dignitary
would take his, his ring or his stamp and he would seal the
letter saying, now you know this is from me.
It's that it, it's saying that this belongs to me.
I am the owner. It's the mark you, you know that
it's, it's secure because it's sealed.
And so first, it's a mark of ownership.
And you can use this metaphor. The spirit seals you like unto
how we, we brand cattle. It's a mark of ownership.
I bought this one. This one belongs to me.
Or if you don't like that metaphor, Richard Cokin says the
Holy Spirit is the birthmark of every believer.
When you're born again, you receive a birthmark, and that
birthmark is the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 619 to 20 says
you are not your own. You were bought at a price.
And so Jesus is saying this one is mine, this one belongs to me.
It's first a mark of ownership, and then it's a mark of
authenticity. Who gets the Holy Spirit of God
except those who have a genuine faith?
If you have a spurious faith, if you have a, if you're a cultural
Christian, a civic Christian, then you do not receive the Holy
Spirit. There is no transforming of your
life because you lack the power. You you try and manifest
outwardly what there is no power internally to manifest.
The spirit marks genuine faith. It's the final proof to the
individual and it's the final proof to others that you have
this internal and transformative force which works its way, its
way out. And then it actually becomes
external assurance because you are not who you were or who you
once were. It becomes assurance to you and
it moves into this Third Point. This this metaphor is security
and you go to the book of Romans in chapter 8, the Holy Spirit's
chapter. It's a beautiful it multiplies
metaphors for what it means to have this Holy Spirit.
He's like you're a live in contractor.
It says it's like a a dead man coming to life is what it's like
when you receive the Holy Spirit of God.
It's like you were dead and you're alive.
He says it's like you were a slave and now you're a son.
Some fundamental legal changes happen, some ontological change
has happened, and you are no longer as you were.
And with adoption, this metaphor provides the assurance that you
belong now and forever to God. And we talk all the time.
I hear you guys talk all the time about the Westminster
Shorter Catechism question #1 and you say that all the time.
What is the chief end of man? But I, I, I will buy a book To
anyone who could tell me the Heidelberg Catechism question
number one, What is your only comfort in life and death?
My only comfort in life and in death is that I belong.
I am not my own, but I belong in body and soul and in life and in
death to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
Heido Catechism, Hebrews 912. He bought you, He secured for
you an eternal redemption. He snatched you from the fire.
Your name is written on his hand.
Your name is written in the Lamb's book of life.
Your legal status has changed. He sealed you with His promised
Holy Spirit. He says He will never leave you.
He will never forsake you. You're His.
He'll bring to completion what He began.
And how can you be sure? Because God has given you as His
first fruits, His Holy Spirit. And it's based on the work of
that Holy Spirit, not on yours, that He will bring it to
completion. We can trust in the work of the
Holy Spirit. He has sealed you and the
element of security continues into the 5th work.
It brings us into the 5th work, which is that the spirit
guarantees our inheritance. This is kind of the positive
counterpoint counterpart to the the last work.
You will receive your full inheritance because it says here
that he is your down payment. The guarantee.
He's the guarantee of your inheritance until you require
possession of it. And to say it another way again,
he is your firstfruits. He's given you this firstfruits
and the rest is to come. It's not just then, but it's
now. There's much more coming.
And this is where redemption and forgiveness.
It's already been talked about. This is where it it ends up
eternal redemption, this future inheritance, our full
inheritance in glory, our final redemption.
And you come to the to this passage.
Guarantee is the Greek word Arabon, which means literally
earnest money or caution money. And anybody who's ever made a
large purchase, or if you've ever bought a home and you've
had to put a massive earnest money or down payment on a, on a
home, then you understand this metaphor.
This is literally what he's saying.
You're making a promise to buy this house and you're saying,
I'm so committed to buying this house that I'm going to give you
this money as a promise and an assurance that I'm going to
continue and buy it. And so in Oklahoma, this is as
little as 1% or as much as 5%. You're saying with this money,
I'm making this promise. I'm swearing this to you, and
God's showing you how serious he is, His earnest money to you as
he says, I'm giving you myself, I'm giving you my Holy Spirit.
This at its core, at its most basic expression, is a promise.
And this image of a deposit also reminds you that this is not all
yet future. You have his Spirit now.
He's transforming you now. It's the first fruits you have
now the Spirit, and there's more to come.
So you're not yet with Jesus, but you will be.
And you know, because He's given you this promise that you may
know that His blessings are coming.
The 6th work, I'm going to keep moving.
The 6th work is easy to overlook.
He is fulfilling prophecy. The Spirit fulfills prophecy.
Look at verse 13. There's this little name for the
Holy Spirit. It says that He is the promised
Holy Spirit. Interesting title.
He's the promised Holy Spirit and you go back.
There are so many. It could be a sermon in itself
of all of the prophecies about the Spirit who's coming.
I want to highlight three Numbers 1129.
Moses cries out, exclaims, would that all the Lord's people were
prophets, would the Lord put his Spirit in all of them?
And we say, church, you've lived to see the day it's here.
It's now Joel 228 to 29. It prophesied about the day the
Holy Spirit would be poured out on all flesh.
And it shall come to pass after that I will pour my spirit on
all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophecy and
your old men shall dream dreams in those days I will pour out my
spirit. Ezekiel chapter 36, I will give
you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I
will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give
you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you
and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey
My rules. The Holy Spirit's transforming
presence actually does. He's given you a heart of flesh
and He causes you to walk in the statutes of God the Father.
And so each of these prophecies, and there and there are many
more, are telling you in advance that this was God's will and
plan, this was his design, that the Spirit would give you a new
heart, that he would cause you to delight in the commandments
of God. The world looks at the
commandments of God and says they're so restricting, they're
so limiting, they're fun killing.
And to us, the church, we say we delight to do these
commandments, we love it. That's the work of the Spirit.
It says by that riches you have, by his work, you have a new
heart, you have a new nature, you're delight in Him.
And yet we have to confess. Yet not I, but through Christ
and me. Just like Michael Farran's song,
with every breath I long to follow Jesus.
For he said He will bring me home, and day by day I know He
will renew me until I stand with joy before the throne.
The work of a Spirit. To this I hold my hope is only
Jesus. All the glory evermore to Him.
When the race is complete, my lips shall repeat.
Yet not I, but through Christ and me.
And the final work of the Spirit in this the 7th is that the
Spirit glorifies Jesus Christ. And this long sentence ends with
the purpose of all of it. He uses it three times for the
Father of the Son and the Spirit, He says to the praise of
the glory of God the Father, to the praise of the glory of God
the Son, to the praise of the glory of God the Holy Spirit.
So this morning as we glorify and shine the spotlight on the
Spirit, we participate in his work of glorifying the Son and
his work of glorifying God the Father.
And so at the end of all of this, at the end of these 12
verses, the sentence begun in eternity, I hope you see more
clearly who you are. Not because we've studied man as
man, not because we've stood over the Scriptures, but because
we've submitted to the divine revelation, because you've
studied who God is. And I hope that because you've
got a sense of how big God is, that you now understand just a
little bit more who you are. And I, I can think of no greater
summary for these verses than these legendary words of a
commentator named Daryl Bock. I want to read his quote at
length to sum up this whole sentence.
He says quote, the theology of the unit is one of praise tied
to an awareness of all that God has done for believing sinners
from eternity past into the present and looking ahead to
consummation. These believers have received
from God everything they need for a fruitful spiritual life.
They can bless God for all He's done on their behalf because
they are rooted in His choice of them in eternity past, tied to
the work of Jesus Christ, and are living in a context of the
forgiveness of sins, redemption, and the provision of the Spirit
as a down payment and seal of what is to come.
We are part of a larger drama in which God is summing up all
things in Christ to the praise of the glory of His grace.
This awareness of and gratitude for what God has done is fuel
for the direction and stability of the Christian life.
When we realize how much God has done for us, the sense of
gratitude that emerges leads us to responsiveness for the
challenges of living the new life that we've received from
God. These divine acts He performs on
our behalf have a future destination that will lead us to
full redemption, and we can add to his quote to the praise of
his glory. So I want to end with this
Heidelberg question number one. What is your only comfort in
life and in death? I only read part of it.
My only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own,
but I've been bought and belong in body and spirit in heaven.
That I've been bought in body and spirit by my faithful
Saviour Jesus Christ. And He goes on because I belong
to Him, Christ. By His Holy Spirit He assures me
of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for Him. So please pray with me, Lord,
You are our only comfort in life and death.
This is our comfort, that we belong to You.
You bought us and when you bought us, you branded us.
You gave us this birthmark at our regeneration when we're born
again. This one is mine, says the Lord,
we belong to you. And this is not a this is not a
slave as the world would see slave.
This is not chattel slavery. This is a a bondservant of love
that you've given us an awl in our ear and you've said I belong
to you and we say, Lord, what a great and benevolent Lord you
are to us. And the better metaphor that
you've given us is it doesn't in there.
You are our Father, and you love us.
You've adopted us. You've given us a home, You've
given us an inheritance. And we know that we have because
you've given us your Holy Spirit who's regenerating our hearts
and transforming us so that we have assurance and we know that
we believe, and we know that nothing can separate us from
your love. And you are our Lord.
You are a Lord who loves us, a Lord who's adopted us, who's
demonstrated that love Romans 55 to 8 by redeeming us.
And praise God this morning you are glorified and that you have
sent your Holy Spirit to keep us.
We put all of our faith and all of our assurance, not in our
works, but in His works that He's accomplishing in us even
now. It is to your glory that we now
sing Lord in Christ's name. Amen.
Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage
Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit
our website at www.heritageshawnee.org.