Well, Scripture teaches that God is our judge.
God is a judge, He is our judge. And it's clear as you read
through these passages of the Bible what kind of judge he is.
Exodus 23, seven says keep from a false charge and do not kill
the innocent and righteous. God says, for I will not acquit
the wicked. Proverbs 1715.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
Exodus 34, five to seven, The Lord.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, yes, but he by no
means will clear the guilty. So we say what a terrifying
thing it is to fall into the hands of a living God.
And Scripture also plainly reveals not who God is, but who
we are. And Paul says in Romans 310 that
we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and
so we are the wicked ones. Romans 6 will say the wages of
sin is what death We were guilty, we are guilty.
And he goes on Romans 47 to 8 and says, strangely, your
lawless deeds are forgiven, your sins are covered, the Lord has
not counted your sin against you.
And we, we say, how can this be that we who are unrighteous have
been declared righteous? How can, how can this be that we
who are not just, God has called us just?
How can he be a just God who calls the unjust just?
And this question is so important that a society has
given it a name. This is the divine dilemma, A
dilemma being a problem that is seemingly incapable of a
satisfactory solution. How can it be that God is the
just and the justifier of the wicked?
And the logic of the Bible is this.
Any judge who acquits the guilty is an abomination.
Any any judge who let's the wicked go free is not a good
judge. And yet you are guilty and you
have been acquitted. And more than that, as Romans
goes on in verses 7 to 8 of chapter 4, he says you're
blessed. Not only have you been
acquitted, you're blessed because your lawless deeds are
forgiven, your sins are covered, and the Lord has not counted
your sin against you. And So what does that mean for
God? He's taken the wicked and
declared them to be righteous and blessed.
And this is the greatest teaching of Romans 326.
We can phrase it as a question, how can God be the just and the
justifier of the wicked? And Paul answers the question
right then and there. And some of these beautiful
keywords. He says we're justified by his
grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be
received by faith. Amazing keywords are to pull
into our passage. It's grace, it's redemption, and
it's faith. And that's the answer to the
dilemma. Redemption is the answer to the
divine dilemma. Redemption is an act of God's
free grace to forever show sinners that he is both just and
the justifier of the wicked, the one who has faith in Jesus
Christ. And so if you turn in your
Bibles to Ephesians 1, Paul's going to take that theme of
grace and redemption and forgiveness and faith.
And he's going to put it into his theme of this cosmic plan
for the church, this mystery that's been secret for all these
ages, but now is being revealed to his church.
The cosmic significance of this. And if you'll remember, last
week we shown the spotlight on God the Father, and through the
Father came your election and eternity passed.
And through the Father came predestined toward adoption.
You were predestined to adoption, which means you had a
change in identity from that of being an enemy God to that of
being a beloved son. Or even according to the book of
John is really interesting. In the book of John, the word
Son is reserved for Jesus Christ himself.
And so if you if God, if Jesus Christ is in God and you are
placed in Christ, that makes you not a son, but a child.
Jesus is the Son. You are a child of God.
You've got to change an identity and he goes on.
Intimacy has been created between you and God the Father
because your relationship has been forever healed.
Your inheritance is given. Your future is secure.
Your eternal security is guarded by the legal status change that
came from your adoption. You're being given a family in
your church, symbolized in this local church.
That was the spotlight last week on God the Father.
That was an eternity past, and now you shine the spotlight this
week on the Son of God. In time.
The spotlight is on Jesus Christ.
And it says that when the fullness of time had come, God
sent his only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn it,
but to redeem it, that he might be just in the justifier of the
wicked. And so if the great metaphor for
our salvation last week was the metaphor of adoption, then the
great metaphor of this week is the metaphor of redemption.
Redeemed. How I love to proclaim it.
I know my Redeemer lives. And so again, the spotlight now
shines on God, the sun. If you'll open up to Ephesians
one, our verses are verses 7 to 10.
Let's hear together what God has to teach us about the redemption
accomplished by the Son of God, verse 7.
In him that's in Jesus Christ, in the Son of God, in the elect,
in the apostle. In him, Jesus, 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 a plan for the fullness of time to
unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
And I want to introduce you as a, as an introduction and kind
of a framework to understand this passage.
I want to introduce you to a document called the Westminster
Shorter Catechism. It'll be very helpful for
understanding this, to guide us through this.
This was a document that was written by the Puritans.
The shorter was was to teach children and church members the
tenets of the Gospels, to preserve truth and to to lay
this truth out again for church members, for families, and for
children. And they did it in this question
and answer format. And I like to compare it to
Ephesians here because like Ephesians, this document, its
power and its glory comes from its focus on Jesus Christ and
his exaltation as Lord, the cosmic significance.
And like Ephesians, it, it frames the church within the
glory and the rule of God that extends over all creation.
And so as you begin this document, it starts with, as
most of you know, the chief end of man.
Why were you made to glorify God and enjoy him forever?
And it it takes you through his his Providence.
It begins with creation. Question 9.
What is the work of creation? Question 10.
How did God create man? It it's taken you from the
beginning and it's setting up your need for for a Savior.
You come to question 14. What is sin?
You move on. What did what did sin cause?
Question 17. What state or what estate did
sin bring us into? Answer sin brought us into an
estate of sin and misery all working its way guiding the
readers toward their need for Jesus Christ.
Question 20 kind of hits the the climax of our own lostness.
It asked this did God leave all mankind to perish in their state
of sin and misery? We, we've earned this before the
judge. We're guilty, we're an
abomination. We're enemies of God.
Did God leave us in that state of sin and misery?
Answer no. He entered into a covenant of
grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to
bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.
And my favorite question, the high point of this whole
catechism, this whole document, ask question 21, who actually
this is a I'm going to set it up because this is the great
transition from Ephesians 1, three to six, God's predestining
and electing work to tie it in to Jesus work of redemption.
It asks this question beautifully.
Who is the Redeemer? Who is this Redeemer?
Who is the Redeemer of God's elect?
Answer? The only Redeemer of God's elect
is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God,
became man and so was and continues to be God and man and
two distinct natures and one person forever.
And so the only Redeemer is Jesus.
This is where it introduces you to Jesus Christ.
And the same is true for Ephesians.
We are introduced this morning to Jesus.
God did not leave us in sin and misery, but He delivered us.
He did it by a Redeemer. He did it by grace.
So here again the words of Romans 324, you are justified by
His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. And look at Ephesians 17 again.
And here are those words compared to this.
In Him we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his
grace which he lavished on us. Our Redeemer is the Lord Jesus
Christ, our only Redeemer, the only Redeemer is the Lord Jesus
Christ. And highly interesting and
relevant to our tech is how the Westminster Shorter Catechism
continues. After introducing Jesus, it
moves to this question. What offices does Christ execute
as our Redeemer? OK, Jesus is our Redeemer.
Now what did, what did he do? What, what roles did he fulfill
as our Redeemer? And the Old Testament figures,
they had offices. We would just use the word
roles. There were certain things that
that they did in the Old Testament.
There were prophets, there were priests and there were kings.
And here comes Jesus, the Son of God.
And what roles did he perform? We say he perfectly performed
the role of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king.
He was to fulfill all of these roles, and he was to do it
perfectly. And these three roles connect to
the cosmic scope of redemption. So Jesus, by fulfilling the work
of a prophet and a priest and a king, would fully accomplish the
salvation of his people. What I hope to show you is
that's the subject of our passage.
Verses 7 to 8, Jesus fulfills the office of a priest.
We're going to go a little bit out of order because our text
takes it out of order of Catechism 7 to 8.
He fulfills the office of a priest.
Verse 9, Jesus fulfills the office of a prophet.
Verse 10, Jesus fulfills the office of a king.
It's all laid out here before us, and we're going to start in
verses 4 to 8 with Jesus fulfilling the office of a
priest. And we're going to start
especially by defining what redemption is, what is.
If Jesus is our Redeemer, then what is redemption?
This is a word that's used 10 times in the New Testament, 7
times by Paul. Redemption is the cancellation
or the release from a legal charge, from a financial
obligation or from a punishment. Redemption is release from a
legal charge, a financial obligation, or a punishment.
And if you were to step into the ancient world and and use this
according to their usage, the the most obvious popular usage
of this was release of a prisoner of war upon receipt of
ransom or release of a slave. Your status has changed, the
payment has been made and the emphasis is on release.
It's communicating rescue, redemption is simple rescue.
And so for this reason, commentators are going to point
out, this is not emphasizing in the New Testament a ransom or a
redemption money being paid. The emphasis is on the release,
on the receipt of ransom. The emphasis is the release, the
the freedom that comes from the payment.
And this has caused a lot of commentators in history.
This is just for fun spent a lot of time with their Pins saying,
well, who was the ransom paid to and you've got some saying,
well, there's just an obligation that needed that was built up.
And so a price had to be paid generally Origen said that the
payment was made to Satan because we all sold ourselves to
to Satan. And so God paid the ransom price
to Satan and another people in the church say no, God doesn't
know Satan anything. And so for that reason,
Augustine comes and he says God paid the price to himself to
satisfy his own need for justice.
And interesting to know the the New Testament does not tell you
who he paid the ransom to. The emphasis is on receipt.
The emphasis is on your deliverance.
That leaves the metaphor vague. A ransom was paid and you are
free. And there's a famous parable
that's kind of disseminated through the contemporary church.
I want to read Kent Hughes version.
And it kind of leaves it like this, just a metaphor for
redemption. Kind of vague, but beautiful.
He says this, and in a city on the shore of a great lake lived
a boy who loved the water and loved sailing.
So deep was his fascination that he, with the help of his father,
spent months making a beautiful boat which he began to sail at
the water's edge. One day a sudden gust of wind
caught the tiny boat and carried it far out into the lake and out
of sight. Distraught, the boy returned
home inconsolable. Day after day he would walk the
shores in search of his treasure, but always in vain.
Then one day as he was walking through the town, he saw his
beautiful boat in a store window.
He approached the proprietor and announced his ownership, only be
to be told that it was not his, for the owner had paid the local
fisherman good money for the boat.
If the boy wanted the boat, he would have to pay the price.
And so the lad set himself to work doing anything and
everything until he were finally returned to the store with the
money. At last, holding his precious
boat in his arms, he said with great joy, You are twice mine
now, because I made you, and because I bought you.
And so for the Christian Scriptures say that redemption
came not with money, not with silver, not with gold, but with
blood. And the object of redemption was
not a boat. This blood of Christ, as of a
lamb, without blemish and without spot.
Acts 2028. Pay careful attention to
yourselves and all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made
you overseers to care for the church which He ordained with
His own blood. First Corinthians 620 You were
bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body. First Corinthians 723 You were
bought with a price. You're a bond servant of God,
therefore do not be bond servants of men.
Revelation 1/5 And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the first born of the dead ruler of the kings of the earth, to
him who loves us and has us from our sins by his blood.
And Revelation 59 says, worthy are you to take the scroll and
to open its seals, for you were slain.
And by your blood you ransom people from every tribe and
every language and every people in every nation.
And maybe the the greatest passage on redemption, we've
already read it. David Houghton read it earlier.
I want to highlight Hebrews 912. It says that Jesus entered once
for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of
goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing
an eternal redemption, the once for all sacrifice, an eternal
redemption. Look back to Ephesians 17.
It says in him we have redemption, the forgiveness of
sins and those might not seem like they go together.
You can see that forgiveness here is actually put in an
apposition to redemption. And so we see that the
relationship between the two here is the relationship between
cause and effect. The cause is redemption.
You are bought. The effect is your sins are
forgiven. It's relate.
It's a cause and effect. And so forgiveness is the word
effacin and it's used to, to translate a lot of words that
are really, really beautiful. This is a, an incredible word in
the New Testament. It, it communicates or it can
communicate amnesty, meaning pardon for political offenses.
This is the word that's used to translate the, the concept of
liberty or the state of being free within society from
oppressive institutions or oppressive instructions that
would violate your freedom. It's used to translate the
concept of jubilee, or the forgiveness of sins.
And for you this is so beautiful, so incredible.
It's used to translate the concept that you have been
forgiven of your sins. You have been set free from your
sins. God has cast them behind his
back. God has separated them from as
far as the east is from the West.
He's thrown them into the bottom of the sea.
He says I will remember your iniquities no more.
I've forgotten them. And it's it's emphasis is that
it's your sins, your lies, your short temper, you're taking your
spouse for granted, your sexual immorality, you're stealing,
your failure to love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, your mind and all your strength, your
failure to love your neighbor as yourself.
For this, God the Son faithfully became your priest.
He faithfully became your high priest and He secured an eternal
redemption for you. It says He died on the cross for
you. Verse 7.
We have redemption. You have redemption for your
sins. His blood was poured out for
you. The price was paid, and we
confess even with the songs that we just sang, you are free now
and forever. There's a legal status change
and it can never go back. Westminster Shorter Catechism
question 25. How does Christ execute the
office of a priest? Answer.
Christ executes the office of a priest by once offering up of
himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us
to God and in making continual intercession for us.
So what was the role of the priest?
You go back to Leviticus. You read Leviticus 16.
What did a priest do? What the catechism is teaching
you is the priest did two things.
The priest prays for the people and the priest makes atonement
for the people. He does those two things.
And when Jesus comes, this is exactly what he does.
You see your great high priest, Jesus Christ, he prays for the
people. He makes atonement for the
people. Actually, if you go back and
read Leviticus 16, it says that the high priest made, prayed and
made atonement for the covenant people of Israel.
And in the Old Testament, the the high priest did not make
atonement for everyone. It was Israel and those who were
included in it. And he prayed for Israel and
those in it. And Jesus says, our high priest
says, I do not pray for the world.
The High priestly prayer you can read through John 17 and I
encourage you to to read it along this passage.
Jesus says in Chapter 9, I am not praying for the world, but
for those whom you have given me.
For they are yours. All yours are Mine, all mine are
yours, and I am glorified in them.
Here's what I want you to see. There's this great truth that
we've been seeing come through Ephesians, that there is this
group called the church, the beloved of God, and all those
that the Father has given to the Son.
The Son has died for Jesus died for every sin that was ever
committed by every person who would ever believe.
And how many sins did he accomplish for Himself?
None of them. And yet He died for His church.
All those that the Father gave to the Son he died for, He prays
for, He keeps them believing. All those that the Son died for,
the Holy Spirit indwells keeping us until that day.
This is the treasure. This is the beloved ones, the
chosen ones. And Jesus perfectly fulfills the
office of the priest by redeeming his church.
And even now it says he lives to make intercession for you.
He redeemed you and now he prays for you.
And we confess with the apostle Paul.
But by the grace of God, I am what I am.
And his grace toward me was not in vain, he actually says, and
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.
And though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me, yet
not I, but Christ in me. And we have to remember grace is
a major theme running through this and it's not earned.
Grace is not earned. Grace is not merited.
Grace is not deserved. And yet Paul says in verse 8, he
lavished grace on you. He lavished it on you.
It's the riches of his grace. And this is it says he does.
He did this. This was not on accident.
This is not haphazard. It says in all wisdom and in all
insight, he poured out his grace.
So Jesus fulfilled the office of a priest.
And you move into verse 9. The second thing that Paul see
is that Jesus fulfills the office of a prophet.
Read verse 9 with me. It says, making known to us the
mystery of His will according to His purpose which He set forth
in Christ. We can ask along with
Westminster divines, how does Christ execute the office of a
prophet? What does it mean to be a
prophet? Christ executes the office of a
prophet by revealing to us by His word and by His Spirit, the
will of God for our salvation. Go back again, Look at the old.
We saw the Old Testament high priest.
What did he do? Makes atonement and praise.
What about the prophets? What do prophets do?
What do the prophets of old do? In short, they made known the
will of God. That's it.
They made known the will of God. And it says right here, Jesus
says making known to us the mystery of his will.
And they did it in two ways. In the Old Testament.
They did it by foretelling. They said this is the future.
That was a they didn't do that as much, but you go back and you
it's the the lion's share is 4th telling.
But you see that the prophets of old, you look at Daniel, you
look at Isaiah, you look at Jeremiah, you look at Ezekiel.
They told the future. This is things that are going to
come to pass in the short term. This is the things that have
come to pass in the medium term. And because of those, because
I've been faithful in those. These are the things that are
going to come to pass in the long term.
And you can trust me. Jesus foretold he made the will
of God known for the future, but he also more than that, just
like the prophets more than that, they made known the will
of God to their generation. That's what prophets did.
And so they, they said, this is, this is the word of God.
This is what God has spoken. Now this is how you are to live
your life. And you, there's actually a
continuity. We can say that there are
prophets and there is prophesying today along those
lines. God has not left his church
without teachers and preachers. And this is what teachers and
preachers are to do. We make known the will of God.
It's actually the only authority that we're, we're given as
pastors in the New Testament church is to open up the Bible
and say this is what God says. And now this is how you must
live your life. And every time you take
authority over the Word of God, and every time you open the Word
of God before people, you're getting that measure of
authority you're given, that prophesying.
You're saying this is God's word and this is how he requires you
to live. This is what Jesus did.
He lived to preach and teach and to make the will of God known.
And the beauty of the message of Jesus comes to this very
pregnant New Testament word that is in this verse.
The word is mystery. He came to make known the
mystery of His will. And we get our New Testament
word mystery from this word mysterion.
And it means something hidden in God in ages past that is
impossible to discern by any human means a mystery that God
has hidden. And it's not revealed until God
chooses to reveal it in Christ. And that mystery is the plan of
salvation. It's the gospel.
It was hidden, He hints at it, there's promises made, and we
don't see it fulfilled until Jesus comes as our prophet and
tells us. And so you see in verse 9, this
mystery is a plan. And I know that because it says
making known the mystery of his will, verse 9, verse 10, as a
plan for the fullness of time. When Paul wrote at the same time
he's writing Ephesians, he's writing Colossians, he says to
them in verses. In chapter 1, verses 25 to 28,
he says of which I became a minister according to the
stewardship from God that was given to me for you to make the
word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages and
generations, but now revealed to his Saints, that's you to them.
God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the
riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you
the hope of glory. Christ we proclaim, warning
everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may
present everyone mature in Christ.
So the mystery is God's plan of salvation.
It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And here's the plan. We've seen it unfold in
Ephesians one. The plan was adoption and the
plan was redemption, but it had to be accomplished through Jesus
Christ. And so he gets the spotlight
this morning and he gets the glory.
And we would never have been able to understand the way of
salvation if God had not revealed the gospel to us
through Jesus his prophet. And we could say it another way.
God blessed his people by revealing to them what they
could have never discovered on their own.
The glorious riches of this mystery.
The salvation for the church to be redeemed through the Son of
God, the will of God has been named, made known to us.
We say Hallelujah, The will of God, His plan of salvation has
been made known to us through his Son.
Barclay says for that reason, Christ gives to men the ability
to see the ultimate truths of eternity and then he adds to it
and it's applicable for the day-to-day life.
And you get to apply them so that you know how to live.
There's no confusion. We get these great mysteries and
we get to live according to the will of God.
The third office role of Jesus Christ is in verse 10.
Jesus fulfills the office of a king.
Read it with me. It says as a plan for the
fullness of time to unite all things to him, things in heaven
and things on earth, which reminds us of this glorious
truth that all history is going somewhere.
We're not just floating through the cosmos and the world.
Very pessimistic as relates to the end of the world.
You know, we're the world, the universe is slowly cooling.
We're all expanding and then one day it's just going to be over.
That's that's not the biblical worldview.
It says that all history was looking forward to the coming of
Jesus Christ. And at the fullness of time, he
sent his only begotten Son in the world, and all heaven and
all earth rejoiced. And it says, now we look forward
to the second coming of Jesus Christ at the fullness of time.
He's going to come again and all creation will rejoice.
And we saw this theme and our last two books we've gone
through. This was the theme of Isaiah.
You remember there was a search for the righteous king.
We're looking for a king. And we see Hezekiah, and maybe
it's him. And Hezekiah lets us down.
Hezekiah fails. And so they promised that
there's this other king that's coming.
He's going to be a suffering servant.
He's going to accomplish salvation.
Isaiah 53. And we're looking forward to
him. The same theme was in the
Psalms. As we looked to David and as
he's making it known that there's this king, Gerald Wilson
said this kingship is the whole theme of the Psalms.
And as we go through it, we see that, well, David isn't the king
we're looking for because he failed.
He was an adulterer and he was a murderer and he fell short.
And so we're looking forward to this new king.
And it ends with a Hallelujah court of everybody exalting this
king of glory and the the beauty of Ephesians and the beauty of
this text is it's reminding us that Jesus was that king.
Jesus was the king that we were looking forward to in Isaiah.
He was the suffering servant. Jesus is the king that will sit
on David's throne, the fulfillment of all the psalms.
This is the king of all creation.
Westminster Shorter Catechism question 26.
How does Jesus exercise the office of a king?
How does he execute? In what way is he like a king?
Answer. Christ executes the office of a
king in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and
in restraining and conquering all of his and all of our
enemies. He starts by subduing you to
himself. And I love that.
He says one day everybody, every knee shall bow, and every tongue
shall swear fealty, will swear allegiance.
But it begins now with us when we say, God, you rule and you
reign in my heart. You are Lord of my life.
And we bow our knee, and that is he is King.
He is king over our life. That's what we confess when we
confess him as Lord. And he says that he's coming and
he's going to subdue all things in heaven and on earth, and it
will all be wrapped up under him.
He will unite all things under his banner.
John Stott says in the fullness of time, God's two creations,
his whole universe and his whole church will be unified under the
cosmic Christ who is the supreme head of both.
And Paul says in Ephesians that in his language, in the fullness
of time, God is going to unite all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth. This word unite all things is a
really interesting word in Greek.
I'm not going to pretend like I can pronounce it.
It's a very complex word. The etymology has the word
kefalay, which means head, where he is the head and all things
are going to come under him. This word is used only one other
time in the New Testament in a really interesting context.
Romans 13, nine. Paul says that all of God's
commandments are summed up or all united under this one head.
That is, you are to love your neighbor as yourself.
So there's this one commandment that all others are shepherded
under that that rules over all the others.
And that one is love your neighbor as yourself.
And he says in the same way, all things on earth and all things
in heaven are going to be summed up or united under the headship
of Jesus Christ as King. And we say, when is that going
to happen? The answer is right now.
It's happening now. And then we confess, especially
on that day, it's happening now and it's going to happen on that
future day. And you can tie 9 and 10
together with with Ephesians 3 when he says this mystery is
already happening. The the mystery is to include
the uniting of Jew and Gentile under the salvation of Jesus
Christ. He says in chapter 3, verse five
that the mystery of Christ is that Gentiles are fellow heirs.
This was part of his plan of salvation.
Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and
partakers of the promise in Jesus this Christ through the
gospel. And so he says, if you want to
see what it's going to look like to unite all things, look at
this foretaste. Have you had Jews who are the
elect of God? And they had this temple and the
Gentiles kind of were relegated to the back.
We'll talk about this later. They couldn't even come into the
court of the Jews. They couldn't even approach the
throne of grace. And when Jesus dies, the veil is
torn. And now he says, all have access
to me. And from that moment, Jew and
Gentile come together. They are united under Christ as
their common king. And he says just like Jew and
Gentile are under submission to God, one day all heaven and
earth will be brought under submission to Jesus Christ.
That's what he's teaching, which says Jesus is the reference
point for making sense of all creation.
He is the purpose of history. He from him and through him and
to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever.
Amen. That's the purpose of creation.
That's history, the focal point of history, and it's helpful
every few weeks as we're moving through Ephesians to remind
ourselves what the context is. Remind ourselves that Paul is
writing this from prison and he's handcuffed to a guard under
house arrest, chained to a guard, and he's telling you from
prison about the freedom that he's experiencing in Christ as
his Savior and Lord and chained to a guard.
He writes that verse 8, that His grace was lavished on us.
Lavish means sumptuously rich or elaborate or luxurious, and this
isn't an accident. This is part of His eternal wise
plan, which is why it says it's done, verse 8, in all wisdom and
it's done in all insight before the creation.
It says that this was His plan, that redemption would be
accomplished through His Son, and it was done.
Look back to verse 6, to the praise of His glorious grace
with which He blessed US. Verse 7, it's done according to
the riches of his grace which he lavished on us.
And I want you to take a minute and search your own heart and
say, do you treasure that grace? This great?
It's, it's compared to immeasurable riches, it's
glorious grace. Do you consider it a treasure?
Do you understand the cost of eternal redemption and what your
freedom cost the Son of God? What more is there for heaven to
give? It's Amazing Grace.
It's lavish grace. Ephesians 25 Even when we were
dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved, verse 8.
For by grace you have been saved through faith.
This is not your own doing, it's the gift of God.
He says in chapter 2, verse seven, He compares it to
immeasurable riches. So I'm going to ask you, what
would you trade for your salvation right now?
How much can I, How much could I pay you for your salvation?
What gift could I give you in exchange for your salvation?
And there's no answer. This is the greatest gift that
any of us will ever receive. It is our treasure.
You wouldn't trade anything for it.
So make sure that you treasure it.
The application for the believers is in in the room is
is treasure, disgrace. And the application for the
unbelievers in this room is to remember that God is the judge,
and He will not acquit the guilty, the wicked, 1 the
sinful, 1 the abomination. But you've seen His salvation.
You've seen His plan of salvation in Ephesians, one from
God the Father through the Son, applied by the Holy Spirit.
And it says that through redemption, by His grace,
through faith, you can be saved from sin and death and hell, and
your judge will be the one who pardons your sin.
This could be your inheritance. Jesus, it says in this passage,
is the prophet who makes known to you the will of God.
You can trust in him as your prophet.
Jesus is the priest who makes atonement for you and prays for
you so that you will never fall away.
He prays so that your salvation will be secure.
And we confess God will answer his prayers.
His prayers are effectual. And Jesus is the King of all
creation, the King of glory, the King of kings, and making known
the will of the Father. He says to you that salvation is
by grace, through faith, through trust, through belief.
So trust in Jesus as your Savior if you never have believed in
him. And Jesus can be your prophet,
your priest, and your King. And let me pray for you as we
look forward to worshipping him and his grace.
God, what grace is this? That though we were sinners, we
weren't good people. Lord, we were your enemies.
And for a, you know, a good person, somebody might even dare
to die. For a great person, somebody
would die. For a good person, some may even
dare to die. But you loved us, and that while
we were sinners, you died for us.
What grace is this? That you would out of heaven
pour out your grace through your son.
You'd pour your your spirit into your church.
You would pour out your Son and spill his blood for the
salvation of your church. God, we confess there's nothing
more from heaven to give. I pray that anybody in this room
who does not know you as Savior would trust in you and your Son
alone for salvation and that by grace through faith you would
bring people into your fold. That you would call their name
and that they would hear your voice and that they would
respond like John 10 says, and that you would be their Good
Shepherd and you would lead them and you would pray for them and
for all those in the room who do know you.
We pray that this moment we would see just how great your
love is experientially. That we would understand what
redemption purchased, the freedom, the grace to see how
loved we are. And Lord, we confess we love you
because you loved us. We love you with all our heart,
soul, mind and strength. And we ask all this in Jesus
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.