God’s Purpose in His Calling

Transcript

GR 2310
03/28/2021
God's Purpose in His Calling
Ephesians 1:4-6
Gil Rugh


We're going to the book of Ephesians in your Bibles, Paul's letter to the Ephesians. We've looked a little bit at the history of Paul's contact with the church at Ephesus and we've just gotten into the beginning portion of this letter. Someone mentioned at the rate I am going I will be well into my eighties by the time we finish, but we'll keep plugging away. It's a great letter and he starts out with the theme, and I think the Spirit of God directed him in the order that he puts it down, because foundational to everything for us as believers, those who have come to understand and believe the salvation that God provided in Christ, is to really have a firm grasp on the sovereignty of God. Now I realize as believers we would all assent God is sovereign, we believe He rules over all, His will is being done. But when it comes down to the basic, personal level, sometimes we get a little bit shaky, and that unsettles our lives and we miss some of the greatest blessings God has for us in knowing that the One who is our heavenly Father is the One who is sovereign over all the details of our lives. Bible-believing Christians are often divided between Calvinists and Arminians, not Armenians but Arminians. Calvinists having a stronger emphasis on sovereignty and Arminians sometimes having a weaker emphasis, and particularly when it comes to the area of salvation and God's work in providing salvation, God's work in applying the salvation that He has provided and upon what basis. We can get pretty passionate about our convictions on this. This is where Paul starts out in the letter to the Ephesians. It's a church that is not an old church by any means, Paul's last contact may have been six or seven years when he was personally there, but it's not a church that has been in existence for fifty years, it's a relatively young church. And yet he starts out this letter with that which will be foundational to the rest of it, that is God is sovereign. That comes down to the details of our lives, the salvation that we have is ours because God in grace, not only provided a Savior for the world, but He determined before the creation of the world that some as a result of His choosing would come to salvation in Jesus Christ.

It's good for us to be challenged in our thinking. One of the best things that happened to me was that early in my studies at a Bible college in Philadelphia, a theology class, the professor began to explain the sovereignty of God in salvation and I thought God had called me to that class to help him understand things more correctly. He was very gracious over time in driving me back to the Word of God; you go back, I want you to look at this; and I'd come back with my answer, look at that. When we were done I had to say you are right, not because you are the professor but because you are where the Scripture is and I am not. And we have to constantly make those adjustments. That's one reason we study it together, to nourish our spiritual lives and also to put our lives under the search light of the Word to see if my understanding is as correct as it needs to be because there is greater blessing in greater understanding and clarity of God's Word.

So as we began the main section of this letter, begins with verse 3 after his introductory comments, that one long sentence that runs down through verse 14, what Paul does is set forth concisely but clearly the work of the Father in our salvation in verses 3-6, the work of the Son of God, the second person of the triune God in verses 7-12, and the work of the Spirit of God in verses 13-14. And we see that God, one God eternally existing in three persons, all three persons are working together in bringing about and applying to the individuals the salvation that God has provided in Christ. And all of this is to enable us to give greater praise, greater honor, greater glory to God, even as it was so clearly proclaimed in the music today and the words. We praise God and it is such a comfort to us. And the purpose of this is to enable us to worship Him even in greater ways, more fully, more with the depths of our being. We can sometimes get diverted into conversations when we get into these areas, like the doctrine of salvation and our role in God's sovereignty. But the more clearly we understand it, the more grateful we will be, the more praise we will give to God, the more we realize it is His work and we have nothing to do but praise Him for His grace.

So in verse 3 we are told, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us.” We give Him praise and honor because He has brought blessing on us in the good things that He has brought to us in Christ. He “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing,” the blessing that the Spirit of God brings to our lives as a result of our relationship to Jesus Christ. These are blessings “in the heavenlies in Christ,” they come from heaven, they are focused in heaven. These are God's blessings for those who are ‘in Christ’, that key expression that is used repeatedly through this letter. It is for those who have a personal relationship with Christ and we looked at that, we abide in Him, He abides in us; our identification is with Him, our relationship is with Him; we are in Christ. And then verse 4 gave the reason, “just as,” or as it can be translated ‘because’, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” Let's just get it out, lay it out clearly, what don't you understand? He chose us. We get the English word ‘election’ from this word, we transliterate it over into English, it means ‘to choose, to select out of a larger group.’ Out of all humanity, all mankind, God chose us. He is writing as the introductory comments were in verses 1-2, to those who are believers in Jesus Christ, who have experienced the grace of God and continue to experience His grace. We can come and worship God and give Him praise because “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world,” so God made a choice that we would be in Christ before the foundation of the world, that's back before Genesis 1:1. We can't really go back any further than that, we don't have any markers when what we call eternity past all creation came into existence by the act of God. But what went on before that? God chose us, believers, those who would be in Christ. And thus the recipients, as the end of verse 3 said, of every blessing the Spirit of God would bring from heaven for us. If it went no farther than that, we would have to redound in praise to God.

He doesn't say why He chose us, why He didn't choose others. We begin to lose our train of thought if we are not careful, we want to just go with what God tells us. Let me inform you before we go much further, I don't have all the answers to the questions you've already thought of because I only have answers that God has given and they'll have to be good enough for us. And that's true for me. As I study the Scripture I think that raises a question, I want to search the Scripture to see if there is an answer to that question. If God hasn't given me an answer, that doesn't mean I'm going to change what He said so it fits with what I might give as an answer. So God's sovereignty in this is important, in fact there are no answers of any kind once you abandon the fact that God is sovereign. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” What would be the result of that choice? “That we would be holy and blameless before Him,” that's what matters. We give evaluations of one another, the world looks at one another and they find those they agree with, they think they are a good person, they are people I trust, I think they are fine. None of that matters. Do you know what matters? God's evaluation. When I can be holy and blameless before God that's amazing. But that is what was involved in His choosing, that we would be holy and blameless, no charges.

Wait a minute, I know you sin, I sin, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, there is none righteous, not even one (Romans 3:10, 23). Now how can you tell me we can be holy and blameless? In fact when Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians, written about the same time as this letter, remember he is in prison when he writes this, a prisoner in Rome, he says there will come a time in the future when we will be presented in the very presence of God in glory and we will be presented holy and blameless and without spot (Colossians 1:22). That's how He will see us, how He will evaluate us. That's the need, that's the condition. How do we go from sinners condemned in the sight of a holy God, destined for wrath, to being declared righteous by Him without sacrificing His justice? No charges can be brought against us, our accounts are paid in full. People think: I go to church, I partake of the sacraments, I got baptized. Let's get real, the penalty is death, the wages of sin is death. I know, I'm doing my best. It won't do it. We have in the news a man who is a mass murderer and now he says I'm going to do better from now on. Okay, let him go. What do you mean, let him go? It's too late. But yet multitudes of people think they are going to heaven on that basis. Well, I went and took communion, I got baptized. Well, so? Where do we get the idea that can cleanse my heart which is deceitful and desperately wicked? Pay the penalty for those offenses I've committed against God which require Him in justice to require an eternal penalty? Part of it is… people even read Scriptures, Catholics, Protestants alike, then we just go off and create our own system and think God should be happy with that. That's why we start with God is sovereign here, one of the things that sinners struggle with, and even we redeemed sinners at times, He is sovereign and we are not. He says how it is and how it will be, we don't. We can fool ourselves. In our day you can create your own truth, people say what is your truth? It can be the biggest lie you ever heard.

So “we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us.” So it doesn't soften it, he strengthens its. I connect the ‘in love’ with ‘He predestined’. Some you'll see… Remember this is one long sentence, so if you read it in Greek there are no break-ups in the sentences so you don't know sometimes where you would make a break. Does ‘in love’ go with ‘we would be holy and blameless before Him in love’? That's true, we are to be characterized as His children by a love and a love for one another, and living holy lives, blameless lives. And we won't live perfectly but if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. It's His blood that takes care of it, He is our High Priest in the… All that is there so I have no problem with the fact that we are to live in love.

But I think it fits just as well here, maybe better, to tell us “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons.” That's the way the New American Standard Bible has it laid out, they have broken it down, “In love He predestined us.” We're going back before creation and the grammar here would connect it to the elected. “Chose us” in verse 4, there is a basic verb in the past tense, “He chose us.” The ‘He predestined’ is really an aorist participle (some of you are taking Greek) and we connect back to that. I take it that we have a package here of God's work in our redemption, our salvation. It involved Him choosing us, it involved Him predestinating us to a certain outcome; “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.” Now again you will see this, it is all based on our connection to Jesus Christ as we saw the end of verse 1 in this chapter, it's those “in Christ Jesus.” At the end of verse 3, we have every spiritual blessing “in Christ.” Now it is “through Christ,” it's all connected to Him and our identification with Christ. Outside of Christ you have nothing. Now be careful, don't associate the church with Christ in the wrong sense. You can be part of the church in a physical way, you can come to this church, you can get baptized here, you can take communion here, you can work and serve and do all kinds of things and die and go to hell because only the Spirit of God can connect you spiritually, which makes up the true church, to Christ. And as a result of the connection to Christ you are part of a physical fellowship of believers. But we become part of Jesus Christ and connected to Him through faith, and that's where he is going here.

“He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.” We have to talk about some of these words. He predestined us, same thing as back in verse 4, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,” that's when the predestination occurred. What we have is He determined it beforehand, He set it out beforehand. On the basis of this word ‘predestined,’ proorizo,’ we get horizon from it because the horizon marks out the distance for us there. He before destined this. When? Well, what we were talking about, “before the foundation of the world” He predestined us, He foredestined us to be adopted as God's sons because it was adoption through Christ Jesus. There is no other way, it is through Christ Jesus. I keep emphasizing this because you can grow up in this church but that doesn't mean you are a child of God. Everyone comes to a point where they have to place their faith in Christ Jesus, and until that happens you are just a person here. We are glad to have you, we hope the truth will be used of the Spirit to open your eyes so you will believe. But going through physical things, we've seen this in our study of Romans, we want to transition it to something tangible, but really it is a spiritual relationship brought about by the work of the Spirit.

So to be adopted as God's sons, “He predestined us,” so let's look at that predestination, just a couple passages. Come back to Romans 8, look down at verse 28, “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” You see the sovereignty of God here. “For those whom He foreknew,” we could go on a sidetrack and talk about how God's foreknowledge fits into this. Tonight after our study of Romans in the discussion time I'm going to talk to you about foreknowledge; we've done it before but I'll just refresh your minds rather than do it now. Just trust me, when we look at the Scripture you'll understand it the way I understand it, the way the Scripture teaches it, of course. “Whom He foreknew,” it has to do with God's sovereignty in choosing, we'll see how that word is used, “He also predestined,” there's the word we came here for. So you see it is God, He calls people according to His purpose, the end of Romans 8:28, and how this unfolds is He foreknew them which involves putting His love on them as we have in Ephesians, “in love He predestined” them. “He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.” So you see there that adopted as sons; here we become His children through our connection to the One who in the unique way is the Son of God that we would become His children. Now through Christ, faith in Him, we are born into God's family, so through that relationship with Christ we come into a relationship with His Father and He is our Father. “And these whom He predestined He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified;” declared righteous, “and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”

Interestingly these are all in the Greek in what would normally be a past tense, aorist tense, you'll note, “He also glorified.” Why? Because God has determined that will happen he puts it in the past tense. It's like in the Old Testament we talk about the prophetic past, sometimes the prophets in the Old Testament give a prophecy about the future, maybe the distant future that hasn't even happened yet. But they'll give it in the past tense because once God says it is going to happen, it is as good as if it had been done. So here you have “He also glorified” them, He has determined that they, too, will experience the final step, glorification. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” You see how it becomes very personal and practical in our day-to-day life. I belong to God, He in His sovereignty is working on accomplishing His purpose and His purposes on my behalf. Who can stand against that, who can frustrate God's will and purpose for my life? Well, you don't know what has happened and you don't know what so-and-so has done to me. No. How do you explain that? I don't, but what God says, all things work together for good, verse 28, for those who love Him, and nobody can frustrate that. So all I can say is I don't know why God has done this to bring about His work, but we rest in the confidence of God is sovereign.

Look at verse 32, this is where we are going in Ephesians 1 so we may not come back to this verse. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the One who justifies,” declares righteous. “Who is the one who condemns?” What did we say, remember? Holy and blameless. If God says He has declared me righteous, there are no charges to be brought against me, that's all that matters. My evaluation of you, your evaluation of me, that's not what matters, ultimately God is the judge and Christ Jesus is our representative at the right hand of the Father, where verse 34 goes on.

Come over to 1 Corinthians 2:7, Paul reminds the Corinthians he is speaking wisdom, God's wisdom. We want to be careful, we try to marry the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God and we get a mess, and then our lives become a mess. Verse 6, we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, we're going to talk about that word ‘mystery,’ it is coming up in Ephesians 1. It's that wisdom which is hidden, “which God predestined,” down in verse 7, “before the ages to our glory.” Ages, those are the periods of time, before those periods of time began with the creation, He predestined and it was for us and the salvation He would provide and apply to us, it was predestined. Well, I don't know what I think about that. But we back up, God just tells us what He did, now we have to make some adjustments, it's not how I thought of it, I thought I made a decision. He threw it out there and then everybody made a decision. Well, there is an element of truth in that. He put it out there, He made the provision, and everyone made a decision: I reject it. God did something more, out of that mass of rejecting humanity He chose some. I don't think it's fair if He didn't choose all. Wait a minute, who is sovereign here? I know, but I think I know what is right and that wouldn't be right. Wait a minute, did He have to provide salvation? No. Did He provide salvation for all? Yes. Can anyone who wants to come to Christ for salvation come? Yes. Jesus said, Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest (Matthew 11:28). The Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge (2 Peter 3:9). We went through all these verses. There is one mediator between God and men, the Man, Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). God has made provision.

People say no and everybody is saying no, no, no, but God in His grace has made a choice that some will come. Is that fair? It's more than fair. If I with my billions… sometimes I hear, there are things circulate around, that I'm a very wealthy man… if I have billions and I come to town and say, I'm going to pay everybody's debt, I offer it freely and everybody says no, you're not paying my debt, I won't have any of it, go away. And I come and say, nobody wants it but I'm going to choose so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, I'm going to pay their debt and it is paid. And all they'll be able to do is come and say thank you. Well, that's not fair. Is it fair or isn't it? You say it's more than fair, I wouldn't have paid anybody's debt who treated me like that, that's basically where we are in this whole picture. And God has predestined, He is sovereign in doing it. You cannot fight against God, the world keeps trying to do it. But He is sovereign, that's my greatest comfort. If He is not totally sovereign the things coming into my life in this unsettled, uncertain world, every day becomes more confusing, more unsettling, and I'm more frustrated with what is not going the way I had planned for it to go, and I'm more worried about it's not going the way I had planned for it. Sometimes you have to step back, like I say, go into your room, open the Word, and say, God, You are in charge. I go back to these passages we keep reading and say, Lord, You don't lie, I don't understand it, but my comfort is knowing that you have planned it and everything is under control. I can relax, take a deep breath, trust the Lord.

Come back to Ephesians 1. We're predestined to adoption, and that ties to the sonship, we'll go right back to Romans 8 in a minute. Let me tell you, there is a man who did quite a bit of writing, and if you read commentaries they will probably reference him, on the Roman law of adoption. The Old Testament doesn't talk about adoption, but it talks about Israel as the sons of God. So the concept is there but the idea of adoption comes from the Greek/Roman world. He writes this, “What did adoption mean in law, in practice, and metaphorically? The profound truth of Roman adoption was that the adoptee was taken out of his previous state and was placed in a new relationship of son to a new father. All his old debts were canceled and in effect the adoptee started a new life as part of a new family. From that time on the father of the family had the same control over his new child as he had over his natural offspring. He owned all the property and acquisitions of the adoptee, controlled his personal relationships and had rights of discipline. On the other hand, the father was liable for the actions of the adoptee and each owed the other reciprocal duties of support and maintenance. Christians are the sons and daughter of God, being claimed as such by Him. Having been bought by the blood of the Lamb, they no longer owe obedience to their former master, the head of their own family.” And on he goes with several paragraphs explaining adoption and how it applies.

What happened? We placed our faith in Christ by God's grace, we were removed from the family of the devil. Remember Jesus told the very religious Jews of His day, you are of your father the devil and you do his will (John 8:44). But now we've been taken out of that family. And I love it, in the Roman adoption and what would happen there, you see the application: all the former debts, all the former obligations are canceled when under Roman law you were placed in that new family with a new authority, the father of that family. Now He has canceled all my debts, He paid them all, past, present and future, I can be holy and blameless in His sight. Now in the practice and outworking, that's where we are growing and striving, and through the work of the Spirit and the nourishment of the Word of God applied to our hearts by the Spirit. And as we submit to it, we are being more and more brought into conformity to the character of God as His children. I belong to Him.

Come back to Romans 8, you see the work of the Spirit, we're getting that further down, Romans 8:14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” And as we'll see, the Spirit of God takes up residence in our life when we place our faith in Christ. Now we are in Christ, Christ is in us, God is in us. Jesus said that when we believe in Him He'll come and take residence in us, His Father will come. We are now in a relationship of intimacy and closeness with the living God. We are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Verse 15, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out ‘Abba! Father!’ ” Father, Father, no matter which language you use He is Father, the intimacy, the closeness. It's like a child, security is in the father and you tell your children and they are young, you don't have to worry about that, I take care of that. Are we going to have enough food tomorrow? We watch the news or something and they are old enough to think, it says people are hungry. That's all right, I have taken care of it. The trust is there, you see the closeness and the father is looking out, caring for. That's us. Jesus said to His disciples, don't worry about tomorrow, don't worry about what you eat, what you wear, Your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things, He sees that the birds of the air are fed. I look out the window and I see the bird out there and I'll say to Marilyn, there is a plump one, he's been eating well. And I say our heavenly Father took care of him and he didn't store up in the way we do, he doesn't have a bank account, God took care of him. So we are the children of God.

As we'll see when we get down to verses 13-14, verse 16 applies. “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” That's going to involve some suffering, that's what puts the suffering of this life in the right context. I've become a child of God, I'm out of step with the world, I don't fit like I did. There are going to be clashes, there is going to be difficulty, and sufferings will come with a variety of kind because, come down to verse 23, “Not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for,” here we go, “our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” We say, wait a minute, we've already been adopted and placed into the family of God. Yes, but there is more to come; all that is provided for us in becoming the son of the living God, a child of God, we haven't gotten it all yet. The final phase of this will be the redemption of this body; the sickness, the illness, the viruses, the cancers, the heart trouble, whatever, it will be a thing of the past, we'll get glorified bodies. So He has provided all these blessings in the heavenlies, applied to us by the Spirit and we see a culmination of that when the Spirit of God (and we'll get to this at the end of Ephesians 1 if the Lord doesn't come first) that we'll be transformed by the power that resurrected Christ's body from the dead and transformed it, will do the same to ours (Philippians 3:21).

So that's what it means to be an adopted son. One has been taken out of a former family, placed into a new family, God's family, and now we are joined together. That's why we have had that context of love for one another that the Scripture brings up so much. We are God's family, we're not just a collection of physical people here, and what binds us together as we talked in Romans is not our race, not our intellectual levels, not our financial status, none of those material, external things; it's a spiritual connection. That's why we have to be careful that we don't deny that in our practice and let external things become issues. What marks us out as different from the world is we can be all kinds of people that have a relationship of oneness and closeness that can only be brought about by the Spirit of God, so that's our position.

You're coming back, stop in Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son,” His Son, sent Him forth, He is the eternal Son of God to be born, having a human nature now as well as a divine, “born of a woman, born under the Law.” Why? “That He might redeem those who were under the Law.” You never could be saved by keeping the Ten Commandments. When they placed their faith in God and His promises God saved them on the basis of the fact that He would provide His Son to pay their penalty. So since God did this before the foundation of the world He could declare them forgiven when they placed their faith in Him. So verse 5, “That He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive,” and here we go again, “the adoption as sons.” So we start our prayers, our Father who is in heaven, and we give praise to Your name. And then we pray in our personal prayers, Father, we come to Him with that intimacy. We don't come with fear, will He accept me, maybe worried about me?

I remember when our daughter Cheryl was a teenager, she said, Dad, nobody is ever going to want to date me because they'll think they have to come and pass a theology test with you. Well, she was probably right, she had to go to the west coast to get a husband. Really, there is no fear. I went to the East Coast when we were on vacation back when we were on the radio. And I went to church and somebody came up and found out I was on the radio and they were starry eyed. You see me every week, you don't get starry eyed, you say hi, sometimes you don't even say hi to me. We were standing there and this person said to me, I can't believe I'm talking to you. I almost said, well, get over it lady. But here we go to the God of heaven and I say Father, I'm here. And what does Hebrews (4:16) tell me to do? Come with confidence to the throne of grace to receive what you need. I come and ask my Father, seated in the glory of heaven. The angels have to step aside, Gil has something to bring before You, one of Your children is here. All of a sudden the Father makes time. I remember when John Kennedy was President, his little kids would play under the desk in the Oval Office and other people would have to have an appointment and wait and could never get in. But as his child, of course, he is available anytime, as with God, come with confidence to the throne of grace, that's what it means.

Come back to Ephesians 1. I'm glad God is totally sovereign. Aren't you glad it depends on Him, His grace that He predestined us, Ephesians 1:5, “to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself”? This is not, well, I connected him to Gabriel, Michael the archangel. No, to Him. Would we not praise Him for this? We get sidetracked and say, well, I don't know what I think about God. Really, what it is to be is to remind us, not trouble us. God chose us before the foundation of the world, He predestined us before the ages of time. It all comes in Christ. We think, where does that leave me if God didn't choose me? Get on your knees and say God, I'm a sinner, I believe what you said that I deserve hell. I'm letting go of everything, God, I'm casting myself on your mercy, be merciful to me, I'm a sinner, I want Christ to be my Savior. Do it. Oh, I don't think He chose me. No, you just don't want to do it and you are looking for an excuse. He says he that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37). Come to Him. He says come unto me all you who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest. If you choose to exclude yourself, don't blame God. Where is it?

Now the thing that bothers me, we as Christians get confused and we give up sovereignty. If God is not sovereign in this matter and He just looks to see who will believe in Him and then He picks them, we are out here in a world of hurt. Where does that stop? God just knew ahead of time what would happen and so He planned it. Wait a minute, if He just looked ahead to see what would happen, He's not in charge. Who is in charge? How do we get there? Well, just works out. That's not comfort. He is sovereign, that's where we have to make an adjustment, we're not going to fight against it. I don't have all the answers, we're going to move on here, and God will give us His answers which will have to be good enough.

“He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.” There we are, you wanted the answer. Why did God do it? How did He do it? Here is the foundation, it pleased Him. And that is a blessing to us who have come to trust Him, isn't it? That it was God's good pleasure, He was well-pleased to exercise His will in predestining us, choosing us to be the recipients of all the blessings of heaven. Should that not cause us to join in praising Him? If we had more of this focus we'd have less of church worship that is focused more on entertaining and trying to give people what they want and what they think they need and will find helpful. This is the most helpful thing you can have in your life and as a believer it's essential. My God is sovereign, I'm safe. As we say in the expression, I don't know what happens tomorrow, but I know who holds tomorrow, I don’t know what the future holds but I know who holds the future. Those kinds of things, are they true? If it's not true regarding salvation, how do I know it's true of anything?

There is something in the evangelical world that has had a great influence, it is called open theism, this is among evangelicals, those who claim to believe in Christ's death on the cross and resurrection. It basically teaches that God is omniscient, God knows everything that is knowable but your future decisions have not been made yet, so he cannot know what they are for sure. Now scratch your head and think about that. You have very intelligent men in the ‘evangelical’ world who claim to be Bible-believers, who are reinterpreting the Scripture and they are basically saying God does not know for sure what the future is. Now He has a better idea than you because He has a history of observing things, but your decisions that will be made tomorrow He can't know because He can only know what is knowable, and until you do something, He can't know it. I hope you don't understand that, but that's what happens once you begin to drift away from a solid, clear hold on the Scripture. Where will it stop? God looked ahead in the future and saw that Gil Rugh would place his faith in Jesus Christ at a meeting in western Pennsylvania so I put him down as chosen. Well, what about everything else going on? Could I have gotten killed in an automobile accident before I got to the meeting? We think we are just helping God out. Be careful that we don't try to fill in the gaps with our logic because pretty soon we are building our theology on our logic and not on the Word of God.

We'll go where the Word of God takes us and I'll have to leave unanswered the answers that He doesn't give me. Remember in Romans 9 when we studied that? Paul is talking about the same thing, God made a choice between twin sons and He didn't choose the one that might have been the logical choice. And the questions came back, is that fair, if I can paraphrase it, is there injustice with God? Do you know how Paul answered it? Who are you to answer back to God? Does the clay say to the potter, what are you doing? (Romans 9:20, 21) We as believers, we tell the world our God is sovereign, but it comes down sometimes we are pretty shaky on this sovereignty matter. That's why I'm spending the time stressing it. If we don't have this, we just run off, give a little overview, try to avoid any problems that we might raise, but then we are building our theology on sand out here. Because this is foundational to everything. If this is not true as it is said here, then we are just drifting out here with opinions and what confidence do I have? I don't know where our country is going, I don't know what that will mean for us as believers in a year, in five years, in six months, I don't know, but my heavenly Father does and He always takes care of me. Even when it seems my world is coming apart it's not, because He is using my weakness to magnify His strength. And besides, what can man do to me? When I leave this life, I'm going to glory, so everything is good.

That's what we're talking about here. You go to see your doctor, is the response going to be good or bad? Well, it would be good if it is positive for me and bad if it is not, but in the ultimate plan of God it will be what is right for me. If I come to that… now Lord, you'll have to help me relax, I have the Spirit of God who dwells in me, I want Your peace to take over my heart because you know I'm starting to go a hundred miles an hour on the inside. He is acting according to His good pleasure.

“To the praise of the glory of His grace,” verse 6. “To the praise of the glory of His grace,” this is what it's about. That same expression basically down at the end of verse 12 when we get done talking about the Son, “to the praise of His glory”; when we get down to the end of verse 14 when we get done talking about the Holy Spirit, “to the praise of His glory.” I lose my perspective. This is all about giving God due praise, due honor. And we come to worship God and we are all so tied up with ourselves and I come back and consider what He has told me so that I can give Him praise. Yes, but I'm living in the real world and it's falling apart. And I come back and say, He chose me from before the foundation of the world and He predestined me to be one of His special children and to receive all the blessings of heaven that He has provided for me. And it was His pleasure to give me a salvation I was so undeserving. What we ought to do is praise the glory of His grace. It's all about grace. Do you know what grace means? Something undeserved, unearned, unmerited. We keep wanting to put something in here—I made the decision. Well, you did as a result of the Spirit of God moving on that rebellious, stubborn heart. We give Him praise, we sing His praise, we should.

Now how do we do this as we move out here and we're running our world? And it's not good enough just to have a general theology. That can be the problem with our preaching, we just give general truths and we all say yes, but we don't have enough of a foundation to be stabilized. We are “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us.” We miss something, we always do, we have a great translation and ‘freely bestowed’ is a good translation but you miss something. The word translated ‘freely bestowed’ is the basic word ‘grace.’ “To the praise of the glory of His grace which He ‘graced’ upon us in the Beloved.” And it's just a reminder as they would have read this, it's grace, and it has been grace that has been showered upon us. “In the Beloved,” here we are back again. Who is the Beloved? Christ, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And we are in the Beloved, and as those in the Beloved we have become the children of God, also, and we are the objects of His love. But Christ is the beloved One. It all comes back, if you are not in Christ you are just out there, child of the devil. I was raised here, I was baptized here, I take communion here. No, it has to happen on the inside. And you know how that is, the struggle you have with family and friends; if I could only get them to see, and all I can do sometimes is pray for them, love them, remind them of God's love for them and leave it in God's hands. I'd rather have it in God's hands than their hands. Good grief, where would my kids be if it depended on them? And where would my kids' parents be if it depended on them? And where would you be if it depended on you? It's God's grace.

I have to read you the rest of it, I can't comment on it, going to be hard, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” And it's not enough to talk about the riches of His grace, you have to add verse 8, “which He lavished upon us.” You get the idea God wants us to understand this at the beginning as He moves Paul to write. The riches of His grace which were lavished, they are overflowing as He pours them upon us in grace. What else could I do but praise God? My whole life is about grace. Paul would say I am what I am by the grace of God. We can all be bound together in that, that's why we understand, we are tolerant. When one of us fails we want to come alongside and help because we understand we are all the recipients of grace and that grace continues to be poured out. That's why he started out in verse 2, “Grace to you,” they are recipients of grace, he has called them saints, holy ones, but that grace we need day by day. And if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous One (1 John 2:1). Hebrews (7:25), He is at the right hand of the Father making intercession, I died for that. We want to help them get back. It all comes back to recognizing God's total sovereignty and it's all about grace, it's all about grace, it's about He was pleased to do it, there is no other place to go for an answer. Why are you saved, why am I saved? Grace. And God was pleased to do it. Why me, why would He choose me, why would He choose you? You can't go any further back. This is why the angels… when we get further in Ephesians, we jumped ahead to look at in a previous study… they are looking into this. Can you believe the grace of God? There was none of that grace provided for angels who sinned, remember, don't forget that, God doesn't have to provide salvation. And He provided salvation for the world and they continue to reject Him, but He still chose and predestined. Why? Grace. Yes, but there has to be another answer. As soon as we think we'll work it out and fill in, then our theology is out here on the sand and then we begin to build further theology on a building we've built on the sand and then our life gets all confusing and messed up and I don't know what is going on. That's why we have to come back, get anchored in the Word and the truth and how gracious God is.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of Your grace. We as Your children need to stand on these promises, need to fill our minds with these truths. Lord, they need to be the first thought that comes to our mind when difficulty comes, when trials come, when disappointments come, when the pressure of life squeezes us. Lord, our confidence, our joy, our peace is that Your grace is sufficient, You provide for us in every situation, You are a loving, heavenly Father, You have planned good things for us; even the physical problems are good things for us, the trials of life are good things. You are preparing us for the time when we will enter into the fullness of all that you have prepared for us. I pray for any who are here who do not know You as their heavenly Father, who have not placed their faith in Christ, how gracious You are to provide another day of opportunity, I pray that this might be a day of salvation. We pray in Christ's name, amen.