The Kindness of God - Brandon Scalf

C .S. Lewis once wrote a book, and that book was called The Chronicles of Narnia.

And it's about a mystical land that has mystical creatures and mystical kings.

And there's one episode where a character of that story, Mr.

Beaver, is explaining to another character in that story, Susan, that the king of Narnia was not just any king, but he was a lion king.

That is, that he was a real lion. And of course, Susan was confused.

Susan responds to Mr. Beaver's assertion that Aslan, who is the king of Narnia, is a lion, the lion, the great lion, by saying,

Oh, I thought he was a man. He is quite safe, is he?

I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. Mr. Beaver said,

Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe.

He's a lion, but he's good. He's the king,

I tell you. Friends, the truth of scripture is that we have a god that Aslan acts as a picture of.

In fact, that's why C .S. Lewis wrote the book, is to explain gospel truth in simple ways.

We have a god who is not safe. He is sovereign. He is big.

He is completely other and transcendent. But he is good.

And he is better than you think he is. No matter the circumstance that you find yourself in,

God is good. No matter what sin struggle you might find yourself in,

God is good. No matter if people you love are going through very hard circumstances,

God is good. And he proves himself throughout all of redemptive history to be good.

And not only that, but he tells us that he's good. There's a story in Exodus chapter 33, where one of the great patriarchs,

Moses, comes on the scene, and he asks God to show him his glory.

As a matter of fact, in Exodus 33 verses 18 through 19, he says, I pray you, show me your glory.

And God actually responds. And he says, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you.

In this exchange, we are presented with the truth that God equates his glory with his goodness.

His goodness is his glory, and his glory is his goodness. We have a good God who puts on display his goodness and his glory.

And then he goes on in verse 34 to explain what that goodness looks like.

In Exodus 34 verse 7, God says, Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and called out,

Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.

The point I'm trying to make here is that God is good. And what

God just showed us in Exodus, or rather showed Moses and us by extension, is that goodness is intrinsic to God's nature.

It's ontological. It's who he is. Like God is love, God is good.

And that is filled with robust truth. That's not just something that we say at the end of a prayer before we eat our meal.

It is a declaration of a beautiful reality. God is good.

And out of his goodness, he extends kindness. To the ill and undeserving.

And his kindness, he gives us life and breath and all things.

And for some of us, the really ill and undeserving, he gives us the gift of salvation.

This is why David, King David, the author of many of the

Psalms, can say in Psalm 63, Because of your loving kindness, I live.

Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will laud you.

What would possess someone like David to say, Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will praise you.

Well, we're going to find out. Please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

And we'll be looking at Ephesians 2, verses 4 through 7.

Verses 4 through 7. This is the word of the

Lord. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Amen? Amen. Please have a seat.

As we look at our text, we must be reminded of something that came before.

We see this conjunction, but God, which shows us that there's a contrast happening between two realities.

And so by way of reminder, it's important that we have some things in mind.

Namely, what it means to be a sinful human. Because you can't understand

God's good news of salvation without understanding the bad news of human nature.

And so Paul begins in verse 1 of chapter 2 by reminding his readers, the church in Ephesus and us by extension, that all of humanity apart from Christ is dead in their transgressions and sins.

They cannot respond to spiritual stimuli. They cannot hear the word of God and receive it.

They can't see the beauties and glories of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are completely and utterly dead.

And there is nothing that they can do to save themselves. They are helpless and hopeless. And they need divine intervention if they are going to have any hope at all.

But he doesn't stop there. He begins to tell us what it looks like to be dead in our transgressions and sins.

He shows us what our conduct is, what our carnality looks like, and what the common end is of living in such a predicament.

Namely, the wrath of God and hell. The truth of Ephesians chapter 2 is that we are hemmed in on all sides apart from Christ.

We are affected by the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The world and all of its anti -godness is pressuring us to value what it values, care about what it cares about, and sacrifice for what it sacrifices for.

And we acquiesce because we want to. The world gives us and promotes the desires of our wicked,

God -hating, dead heart. Not only that, but he goes on in verse 2 to tell us that we walk according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

A spirit is working in them, but it is not the Holy Spirit. It is the spirit of the world.

It is the devil himself. Now, we talked about this at length a couple weeks ago, but it bears repeating.

Many of us don't take the devil quite as seriously as we ought, while others of us make too much of the devil.

The devil's not omniscient. The devil's not omnipresent. He's not God. He can't be in more than one place at one time, and yet he is seeking to devour the godly.

He prowls around like a lion, looking to bring us into submission to godlessness.

But lest you think you're a victim, Paul goes on to remind us that we are, by nature and choice, children of wrath, and that we are governed by our own flesh.

The reason that the world and the devil are so persuasive is because they give us, as I said, what we want.

In verse 3, it says that we formally conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath.

We were born into sin, we suffer from congenital spiritual disease, or we're under original sin, and we participate in it because we love it.

We love our sin, and we have a sin nature. And the problem with this, as Paul has alluded to, although implicitly, is that Christ is the head of the church, and when we are born into sin and we participate in sin, we are underneath the wrong headship, and that needs to change.

We need to be transferred, as it were, from the headship, the federal headship of Adam, to the federal headship of Jesus Christ the righteous.

Now, Paul is speaking to Christians here, which means Christians need to hear about their sin. And they need to hear about their sin because they need to repent of it, they need to hate it, they need to see how vile it is before God, and what state we are in when we cherish it and we coddle it.

But more than that, the reason that Christians need to know about sin, and their sin nature, and the state of their predicament, namely that they were dead, is so that they might worship, so that they might adore, because God decides to resurrect the dead and to give them life and so much more.

And that's where we find ourselves today, here at the beginning at verse 4. When we were helpless and hopeless, while we were dead and hanging out in the grave, not looking for God, not looking for help,

God steps in. And so the first thing that I want you to see in this passage is God's loving interruption.

Now, some of this is a little bit of review, but we need to wrap our mind around it so that the other parts make sense.

Now, here we have this conjunction, but God. And this conjunction is an assertion that essentially preaches the gospel to us.

The assertion, but God, might be the most important assertion in all of Scripture, if you understand what's behind it.

It is the hinge on which the entire gospel swings on.

It solves the central problem of humanity and the church, namely, putting it under the right headship.

And it solves the problem of sinners being estranged from God. This is why

Martin Lloyd -Jones once said that these two words, in and of themselves, in a sense, contain the whole of the gospel.

What this reminds us of, friends, is when we think about how vile we used to be, or how many mistakes we made, if we like to use those words, though those are not biblical words, and how we really fouled things up in our past, or how we're fouling things up now, or how we're afraid we might foul things up in the future, it's this.

The Bible asserts that we don't need good ideas, we don't need self -help, we need God's help. And we need him to divinely intervene.

We need him to step in where he was not invited, if he's going to bring us to himself.

Now, the reality is not many people have a correct view of God. Their theology proper, as it were, is completely just deficient in many respects.

Many believe that God cannot do much, that he is limited by evil and controlled by his circumstances, much like we are.

Others think that God sure is powerful, but he's distant and far away and would rather look the other way.

And if you don't think that theologically, that is, if you're not principled in the way that you're thinking about that, you probably do in your prayer life.

It might reveal to you that your theology is not what it ought to be. Many believe that he could help, but he doesn't care.

But the truth of these two words, but God, is the truth that God gets into our mess.

He gets his hands dirty. He gets his hands, through the personal work of Jesus Christ, bloody, to help us.

And he does so by sovereignly altering all of our futures, who name the name of Christ.

But God is the only two words that you will be able to utter on judgment day, or you will not see

Jesus face to face. Why should I let you into heaven, Jesus may ask. It's not because your preacher told you that you would be there because you said a prayer one time.

It's not because you essentially made the right decisions, that you were morally superior, that you were a great mom, that you were a great dad, that you were a great, you fill in the blank.

The reason that God will receive you to himself through his son is because of him.

So cheat sheet, you're standing in front of Jesus, and he asks you why.

Should I extend my fellowship to you for all of eternity? You say, but God. Amen.

But God is the truth that binds everything in the gospel together.

The triune God of Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, the utterly sovereign

God, and his determination and action employed on behalf of sinners who are spiritually dead and physically dying is a truth that should drive you to your knees.

Children, would you look at me for just a second? Did you know that the only reason that God can extend his love to us is because he ran to us?

Even though we don't like to think about him very often, and we oftentimes run from his commands, or we run from him, he runs toward us.

Isn't that good news? He doesn't ever leave you. He makes himself present through the person and work of his son,

Jesus Christ. And if you believe in him, he did that. The second thing that I want you to see is the saint's spiritual resurrection.

The saint's spiritual resurrection. We have seen here that God steps in by divine intervention, and he does so being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us.

So why did he but God us? You want to verbify that? Because he loved us.

Not begrudgingly, not reluctantly, he loved us.

Yes, everything is for God's glory, and we're going to get to that in a moment. But don't forget, good reformed

Christian, that God loves you. He loves you, and that is why he begotted us.

And then it says in verse 5, even when we were dead in our transgressions, even when we were dead, we didn't start looking for him, right?

We were in the grave, had our grave clothes on, and we were, as the King James says, stinketh.

That is all the dead people are good for, stinking. That's it. So while we were stinking, while we were dead, while we were wallowing in our own nasty, blood -ridden grave clothes,

God made us alive together with Christ. He made us alive together with Christ.

Now, this is the first of three words that Paul created.

Now, you've already seen, as we've walked through the book of Ephesians, that when Paul gets excited, he throws all of grammar and syntax out the window.

Verses 3 through 14, the picture of what God has done in eternity past and even into eternity future, is one giant run -on sentence in the

Greek. He just goes off, as it were. He loses his mind.

He's so excited to speak about the gospel that he can't be held back by any sort of guardrails, linguistically speaking.

Now, let me ask you a question by way of grammar and syntax. How many of you create your own words when you're excited?

I do. You've just heard me do it today when

I said, when God but gods you. That's not proper English, and I know that.

But it helps us understand something, and Paul does the same thing here. He creates words to help us understand the gospel that did not exist in Greek before he decided to say them.

The first one is made us alive. The second one is raised us up. And the third one is seated us.

And what Paul did here is he took the Greek prefix sin, meaning together with, and combined it with three words used elsewhere because he wanted you to understand that all of this but -godness stuff that has happened is bound up together with Christ.

And it's not just enough to say, oh yeah, by the way, Christ was in that. A new word needed to be created to show the unity and the reality behind that statement.

Not only is that important, but it's also important that these words are in the aorist tense.

Now, I know none of you care about Greek, and that's fine. But the reason that I say this, and the payoff, is that an aorist tense verb shows us that the action being talked about has already been completed.

It's already done. So when Paul says, for instance, that he made us alive together with Christ, what he's actually saying is, and it was already done, you can essentially cash the check.

It's in the bank. And what we will see is it actually happened when

Jesus went to the cross, when Jesus ascended to heaven, and when

Jesus was seated, sat on the throne, was seated on the throne. And so the first thing here that he says is that he made us alive together with Christ.

And that's good news because if you remember the problem, we're dead. And dead people, if they are to be of any worth and value, they must be resurrected.

And so when Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, that is talked about at the end of chapter 1, was raised from the dead, sealing for us our justification, it's as if we were risen from the dead as well.

It's not as if, actually. It happened. If you love Jesus, you were risen from spiritual death.

Jesus rose from physical death, and you will rise from spiritual death if you bow your knee to King Jesus.

And you will eventually be raised from physical death as well, although we're still waiting on that reality.

And so what does it mean that we were made alive? Well, I told you it means to be resurrected from spiritual death.

But the theological doctrine or underpinning of this reality is called something like regeneration.

It means that we as Christians were born again. It means we were given the gift, and I say that, we were given the gift of new birth.

We didn't decide one day that all of this made a lot of sense. We didn't decide one day that Jesus died for our sin, and we would like to take that, please and thank you.

We were dead, and dead people don't want anything to do with God.

And so we needed to be born again. This is the truth that Jesus was trying to get across to Nicodemus in John chapter 3.

And John, of course, is saying, or not John, Nicodemus is saying in John chapter 3, how is that possible,

Jesus? How can I be born again? I've already been born once. People don't just rebirth themselves.

And Jesus responds by basically saying, dude, you should know this. You're a teacher of Israel, but I'll play your game.

And what does he say? He doesn't give us a systematic theology about how people are born again and what they have to do.

He says, it's kind of like the wind. It blows where it wishes, and we don't know where it's going, but you can see the effects of it when it blows.

Think about it. Quite a few months ago,

I don't remember because I'm really bad at timelines, there was like a, which is crazy to me.

I'm from Indiana. And so like Twister, the movie to me was like Star Wars.

You know what I mean? Like it just is like, that doesn't happen. And I move here and it's like,

I've almost died like four times because of the wind. It's hyperbole, of course. But there was the one that happened not too long ago where we had to do church service outside because it just messed up Tulsa so bad.

We didn't know that wind was coming, but it showed up. And when it showed up, we knew it. That's the new birth.

It shows up and it wrecks us. It changes us. It transforms us.

The old things have passed away. Behold, new has come. We used to hate

God. We were dead, wallowing in our grave clothes, and he resurrected us to spiritual life where we see him and we love him and we cherish him.

And just like our first birth, we didn't do anything to cause it. God caused it.

And not only did he cause it, he caused it because in order for us to be saved, if I'm not being redundant, let me keep going.

It's necessary. We needed spiritual surgery to be performed in order for us to love

God. We needed a new spiritual pulse. And as the promise of the new covenant states in Jeremiah 31, 31, we needed our heart of stone ripped out of us violently, and we needed a heart of flesh that beats with love and affection for Christ.

And when he regenerates us, when he causes us to be born again, he gives us that heart.

He gives us new desires. He gives us new appetites. Where our lusts of the flesh governed us, now we have a new governing reality, which is the mind of Christ.

So we have a new mind. We have new eyes to see Christ with, new hearts to hear his word, new hearts to love him.

It is a complete and utter personal overhaul. So much so that 2

Corinthians 5, 17, Paul says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, if you are saved, if you have been regenerated, he is a new creation.

The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. If you love

Jesus today, God did that. If you're a Christian today, that's something that happened to you. You didn't happen to it.

And you're a new person. You're a new person with a new nature that loves

God, that cherishes in him, and delights in obeying him.

And the accomplishment of the new birth, on your behalf, it's as if God takes those dirty, blood -ridden grave clothes, and he gives you family robes of righteousness.

He gives you the gift of his son's perfect record. He justifies you, and he calls you new.

Children, would you look at me for just a second? If you are in Christ, that is, if you believe in him by faith, all of the bad that you have ever done, or all of the bad that you will ever do, it will be paid for, it will be taken care of by the

Lord Jesus Christ. He will pay our debt.

The third thing that I want you to see as we look at this text is the saints' joint ascension.

And we will look at verse 16 for that reality. Or six, rather, not 16, six.

He goes on and says, by grace you have been saved, and there's a reason I'm passing over that.

Grace is a huge deal. It's so huge, in fact, that next week that's all we're gonna talk about. By grace you have been saved, and raised up with him.

You've been raised up with Christ. Now, if you're following along in the book of Ephesians, you can start to see arguments being formed, and you can start to see why

Paul says what it is that he says. This is not another way of saying the same thing.

This is not him saying, you've been made alive, you've been resurrected, and oh, by the way, you've been made alive and you've been resurrected.

No, remember the pattern that Paul set forth, talking about the power that is aimed at the people of God, that he was raised from the dead.

And then what? Where did he go? Went to heaven. Jesus went to heaven.

Jesus went to heaven to rule and reign as king.

If your eschatology won't let that fit too bad, that's Bible. He was given a crown and a throne, but we're not there yet.

He ascends to heaven. And where is heaven? Heaven is where God specifically and especially manifests or shows forth his presence and his glory, the place in which the

Lord Jesus Christ, in his glorified body, now dwells. Jesus, the

God -man in two natures, ascended to heaven, and he sits on a throne as the

God -man. He didn't re -spiritualize himself. God, in the second person of the

Trinity, is now the God -man forever. And he sits there, and he dwells there.

And what Paul is trying to get us to understand is when Jesus ascended to heaven physically, we ascended to heaven spiritually.

We went where Jesus went. What does that mean? It means he's cured the second problem, namely that we are governed by or we walk according to the course of this world.

You see, the world is a big problem, and we need to be taken out of it, but we also need to be in it.

In order for us to understand our salvation, we have to understand the reality behind us being in heaven.

Now, when I say we're in heaven, I'm not saying we're actually presently in our resurrected state in heaven simultaneously living.

That would be strange. That would be incorrect. That would be wrong. But spiritually, it's as if we are ruling and reigning with Christ right now.

Well, pastor, how does that work? If I understood that, I'd be God. But we act as his vice -regents here on the earth as we rule and reign with him, putting forth his gospel, pushing back the darkness here.

But in order for us to do that, we have to have a heavenly mind. We can't have a worldly mind. And so as the old adage goes, we are to be in the world but not of the world.

And if we are to actually do any good in the world, we must be people who have hearts and brains that are not governed by the things of this world.

So in the ascension, where Jesus leaves this earth, we leave this earth for a better place, spiritually speaking.

And our minds are caught up to the things of God, and we care about them.

Does that mean that Christians should have their head in the clouds? No. You should always have your head on a swivel.

But you must have your eyes fixed on heaven. Because if you don't have your eyes fixed on heaven, you'll be of no earthly good.

Now I know it's popular in our circles to say if you are not, you know, don't be so heavenly minded that you're of no earthly good.

But I'll be the first one to tell us our breath stinks. That's a stupid quote. And it's a stupid quote because in order for you to be of any earthly good, you have got to be so heavenly minded that you stink like heaven in the best way possible.

That you have the perfume of heaven all over you with the balm of Christ running down your back.

We are not to be of this world. And this also means that we are no longer influenced by the devil and his schemes.

Now because of our flesh, we can fall prey, but we don't have to where we used to be governed by it.

We can now say no to sin. Sin, the Bible says, no longer has dominion over us.

And when we understand this reality, we understand a lot more about what it means to be saved.

Don't just take my word for it. Paul makes this argument for me in Colossians chapter three, verses one and two.

He says, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, if you have been regenerated, everything that we're talking about right now, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth. The place of heaven is the place of intimacy and revelation.

And it's the place where God dwells. It's the place where Christ dwells.

And it's where his kingdom is, not exclusively, but primarily.

And so when we ascend to heaven, Martin Lloyd -Jones makes the case, and I think he's right, and so do many other theologians.

It's not like Martin Lloyd -Jones is the only person who said this throughout church history. If he did, we should probably reject it. But I know he's a respected name around here, so just wanted to put that out there.

That when this happens, we are put into a new kingdom. So we're not just taken out of the world just to exist kind of on our own, alongside

Christ, helping him to rule and reign. We help him rule and reign by nature of being in his kingdom. Colossians 1 .13

says that we were rescued from the authority of darkness. We were rescued from Satan, sin, death, and hell.

We were rescued from our spiritual deadness and transferred to the kingdom of the son of his love.

Now, to sum all of this up, a commentator who generally is quite boring and analytical couldn't help but praise

God in his commentary for the reality that I'm speaking of right now.

Because once you taste and see that the Lord is good, it runs off your lips, even if you're stoic and analytical.

And because I didn't know if I could say it better, we'll read his quote. He said, it's as if our names are inscribed in heaven's register.

Our interests are being promoted there. We are being governed by heavenly standards and motivated by heavenly impulses.

The blessings of heaven constantly descend upon us, and heaven's grace fills our hearts.

Its power enables us to be more than conquerors. That'll preach.

How do you conquer for the sake of Christ? By being Christ -minded, being heavenly -minded.

And to heaven, our thoughts aspire, and our prayers ascend. Children, would you look at me?

Once more, it's important that you understand, alongside your moms and your dads, that the best way that we can live our lives to grow in wisdom and to be a person that is helpful to the people around us is by looking to heaven, where Christ is at, and to saturate your mind with heavenly things.

And that means reading your Bible. That means paying attention when your parents do family worship.

And that means memorizing Scripture, memorizing Bible verses. Because you'll be able to, on the day that you need them, recall them back to memory.

And that goes for you too, adults. Keep seeking

God. Keep seeking Christ, where he is.

And keep seeking the kingdom, which is God's. And all of these things, the

Scriptures say, will be added to you. After God raises us from the dead, he made us alive.

And after he plucks us spiritually from the world, he then seats us with Christ in the heavenly places.

So the next thing that I want you to see in this text is the saint's sovereign placement. The saint's sovereign placement.

You see, God does for the believer what only God can do, which is to spiritually sit him next to his son on his throne.

If it wasn't enough that we were resurrected from the dead, if it wasn't enough that he also justifies us, all these other things that are implicit in the text, if it wasn't enough that he raised us up and gave us heaven's gifts, he sovereignly gives us a seat next to the son of his love.

It says here, continuing on in verse six, and he seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Now, this is important. You see this word heavenly places? Or a phrase, two words?

It's actually one word in the Greek, which is why many translations translate it the heavenlies. It's also the same place that occurs in Ephesians chapter one, verse three.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

So he sits us next to his son in the same place that he has given us every single spiritual blessing known and created by God.

Now, it's not as though he discovered them. He knows them because he made them, and he made them for you and paid for them by the blood of that same king sitting on that same throne right next to us in the heavenly places.

So what does that mean that he set us on the throne? Well, there are quite a few different interpretations.

I like them all. The first one being that we reign with him, and we've already talked about that.

We are extensions of Christ's presence and authority in the world. So as he reigns, we reign, which is why it's very important that we get our doctrine right.

It's why it's very important that we get the gospel right because if we find ourselves being wrong in these areas, we're doing ministry with the dead, not

Christ. We're ruling and reigning with the spiritually grave clothes laden.

But so far as we are doing the godly thing, believing the right gospel, the one that has not been anathematized in Galatians 1, we reign with him.

I think that's true. I think that's true. The scriptural warrant for that is replete, and I think that there's merit to that interpretation.

In fact, it's a very good interpretation. It means also that we are seated on the throne of victory where security, privilege, and every spiritual blessing is found.

Now, that's where the bread and butter is for me. Psalm 110 says what?

Which is God's favorite Bible verse, and I say that because it's the most quoted passage of scripture in all of the

New Testament, which is the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make an enemy as a footstool for your feet.

The idea here is the battle's been won. Jesus, why don't you kick back and have a grape juice, a cold one?

And all of your enemies are going to be stacked up underneath your feet because of your victorious effort on the cross.

And one day, once all those enemies have been stacked up, once there's bodies essentially laying, and I don't mean human bodies, although some people take

Revelation 19 to be just that, but greed, lust, every impure thought, theft, sinful human nature, godless nations who profane the name of God, they will all lay under your feet.

And one day I will send you back, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says, to defeat the final enemy, which is death.

Physically raise the people whom you purchased so that they might dwell with me forever.

And so we sit next to the reigning king, ruling and reigning with him as he is seated in victory where we are showered with security, showered with privilege, showered with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Do you know why? You ought not fear tomorrow,

Christian, because you're seated next to Christ and he's already won. When we look outside at the world and we see godless people murdering their children at abortion clinics all around the place or if they pass laws and pretend like that's not happening anymore and they start divvying out pills to people on their couches to kill their babies, we must be provoked in conscience and we must do something about it, but we ought not fear that that is the reality of the rest of human history.

When we see murder in the streets, when we see ghettos filled with drug addicts, when we see cancer eating us or our family members alive, when we think it not strange but do not fear, you can't trust

God and fear the future at the same time. You can't sit with Christ and be worried about the world.

That doesn't mean we don't love it. It doesn't mean we don't reach into it. If you are a part of Heritage, you know that we believe that we need to go evangelize, that we need to be a part of pushing back the

Holocaust and his abortion. We believe in doing things. We believe in kingdom work as it were, but our backs are not pushed up against a wall.

This doesn't rely upon us. Christ.

Christ on his throne. Christ in the heavens. Christ with us.

He made us alive together with Christ. He has raised us up with Christ and he has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Is your salvation big enough to fit these pieces into it? The last thing that I want you to see is that God did all of this for a reason and it wasn't just so that you could get out of hell free.

He did all of this for a reason and it wasn't just so that you could be excited. It wasn't just so that you could be told that you're awesome, although we would like it to end there.

He did what for me? Awesome. Now let's just continue being awesome. No, he did it for a very specific reason.

So the next thing I want you to see is God's divine motive. God's divine motive.

Verse seven begins with these words, so that, so that.

So that functions kind of like a therefore and if you've been around heritage long enough, children, why?

When we see a therefore, what do we have to do? We must ask why it's therefore.

And so, so that is what we will call a purpose clause and a purpose then is set forth for why all of these things have happened.

Now, of course, it's grace, right, that has been the backbone of this sort of thing.

By this sort of thing, I mean salvation. It's because of the rich mercy that God possesses and the great love with which he loved us.

All of this is true, but there's one central divine motive and one central purpose that binds it all together and Paul's gonna tell us.

We are not left to wonder. Praise God for that, amen. He tells us, verse seven says, so that, the reason being, that in the ages to come, he, that is

God, might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So the reason that he has done all of this, raised the dead and given them new life, caused them to have heavenly disposition and to seat them next to the son as the son sits at the father's right hand is so that his kindness, rooted in the riches of his grace, might be put on display for everyone to see, to cherish, to love, to bask in, and to promote.

In other words, what God is in the business of doing is not saving you so that you might just be saved.

God is in the business of glory hunting. God does not wait to be exalted.

He pursues exaltation. He pursues being gloried in.

He pursues being much of. So who did Jesus die for?

Famously, John Piper has said what? God. Yes, Jesus died for you, and yes, all of these things are true because God can both glorify his name and do good because he is good, and he can do so by showing his love and kindness.

But even the act of him glorifying himself, making much of his great name, and to showing the riches of his grace, even hunting that glory and receiving it from you is still him doing the most loving thing that could possibly be done because it's what you were made to do, and there is no goodness outside of God, and so when you get

God, you see God, you believe God, and you want God, there is nothing better than that, friends.

God pursues his own praise because when you praise him, you get everything that has ever been what you were made to be and do.

You don't believe me? Jeremiah 13, 11, God is speaking to the Israelites and says, for as the belt clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole household of Israel and the whole household of Judah cling to me.

I made them do it, declares Yahweh, that they might be for me a people for a name, for praise, and for beauty.

Do you know why Jesus Christ died for your sin? Ultimately, so that you might be for God a people, for a name, for praise, and for beauty, that we might be presented to God as a spotless virgin before him.

But you don't even have to go to the Old Testament. You don't even have to look at the rest of the New Testament. You can see that even in Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter one, verse six, that God chose us in him before the foundation of the world, him being

Jesus, that we would be holy and blameless before him by producing us. To what?

To the praise of the glory of his grace. Verse 12 at the end.

He made us inheritance. That is, he made Christians trophies of his grace for what purpose?

To the praise of his glory. And in verse 14, at the end of the verse, he gives us the

Holy Spirit. Why? To the praise of his glory.

Why does God do what he does in salvation? That people might have an everlasting remembrance of his kindness toward the un - and ill -deserving.

And that we might praise him for his work. Now, I know that makes many of us uncomfortable.

And that makes many of us uncomfortable because we understand when people are self -seeking, like, who's the most annoying person you've ever met in your life?

The person that can't shut up about themselves and how great they are, right? We don't like people who are self -absorbed.

But the thing is that God being God -absorbed is not him being arrogant.

God, as John Piper has said, which I didn't mean to bring John Piper up so much, but he's the glory guy.

God being uppermost in his own affections is not the same as you and I being uppermost in our own affections because there's no lack of deficiency in him.

Everything that is in him is good and it's something that we need.

So God has saved us for his own sake and for our good. And he glorifies himself in extending gracious, loving kindness to us.

He gets the glory, we get the kindness. That's a pretty good deal. That's a great deal.

That's the best deal. In fact, it's the only deal. Because if you don't want to glorify

God, I've said this before even in this own sermon series, if you don't love to glorify God, to praise

God, to worship God, then you're probably not going to find yourself in heaven because heaven is a place for people who love

God, not for people who are scared of hell. And so we receive his kindness, we are loved by him, and we get to worship him for eternity, which is what we were made to do.

Returning back to C .S. Lewis, this is actually how C .S. Lewis became a

Christian. The fable goes, which I don't know if it's true, he was helped along by J .R

.R. Tolkien who wrote The Lord of the Rings. And they worked together and they were both huge fans of medieval literature.

And so C .S. Lewis had read the Bible quite often. And so much medieval literature had

Bible in it. Because at that time, you were a Christian or they killed you.

So you had to kind of navigate that in a special way. And so he would always say the reason that he's not a

Christian, C .S. Lewis said this, the reason that I'm not a Christian is because I read the Psalms and he tells me that I need to love him,

I need to glorify him because he's so awesome. And I believe C .S. Lewis's exact words is like, that's like a self -absorbed housewife who just runs around asking and needing compliments.

Like it's not attractive. It's not a good look. I'm not saying you should say that.

I'm saying that's what C .S. Lewis said, okay. And he was on a bus ride somewhere.

I don't remember the exact story. And he was reading through the Psalms and God regenerated him there on the spot.

And he said, I came to realize that it was the most loving thing that God told me that I needed to love him.

Who else is there to love but him? To worship him. Who is there to worship but him? I was made to do this.

And for him to restore to me the ability to do these things is the most loving thing he can do.

So God being for God and being a glory hunter and seeking after and pursuing his own praise is not something horrible.

It's something beautiful that is still extending kindness to us. And this teaches us a very, very, very important lesson, biblically speaking.

And that is this, that the ultimate goal, the ultimate goal of God presenting to us truth is not ethical.

I'm gonna say that again. The ultimate goal of God presenting us truth in the scriptures is not ultimately ethical.

So it's good to have application in sermons. It's good to know what to do. But the primary reason that God has revealed himself in scripture is not so that we would possess more information or even have more application as helpful as it might be.

And it's needed. Don't hear what I'm not saying. If you're not applying the text, you're not preaching the text. But it's about adoration.

It's about worship. It's about beholding your

God. And Ephesians is gonna get into some heavy application. But Paul wants us to understand

God before we even do anything. Because if we don't understand God and our head's not in the right place, namely heaven, and we are not saved, regenerated with new hearts, desires, affections, and appetite, who cares?

Then it's just behavior modification and we can do that without Jesus. Amen. It's about beholding your

God. So what are you adoring? Is it Christ? Is it your profession, your marriage, your leisurely time, your job?

What is it? Because there's one and one only that should get your adoration, and that's God himself.

Now in closing, I wanna just take a few minutes here to talk about kindness at length. And it won't be at length because I'm already over my time, but it's important.

The kindness of God, which is what he's trying, not trying, what he's accomplishing and showing, is amazing.

God's kindness is so deep that we don't have time to get into all of it.

I mean, we've gotten into it by reading Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14. We've looked at it by looking at what

God has done for the sinner, and the regenerating work of the

Holy Spirit in Christ. And so God's kindness is revealed to us in salvation.

We've seen that. We glory in that. But God's kindness is also revealed to us in repentance.

Repentance. When you see your sin for what it is, and you actually repent of it, that's not

God slapping you on the wrist and being angry with you if you are in Christ.

It is God being kind to you, that you might have sin, that you might otherwise be blind to, apart from the

Holy Spirit and your community looking in. Because sin eats and decays all that it touches.

And if God so graciously shows you what that sin might be, it's kind.

Romans 2 .4 makes this argument for me when it says, or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness?

Like do you keep on sinning, not thinking that you're gonna have to pay for this? And forbearance and patience, not knowing the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

The kindness of God is not meant to keep you in your sin. It's meant to pull you out of it.

Stephen Charnock says it like this. If God is in fact our enemy, with only destructive intentions toward us, why do we experience any good at all?

That's a good question. The question is not why do bad things happen in the world. The question with the presupposition that we brought sin into the world should be why does anything good actually happen to us at all?

Not why does bad happen, but why does good happen? Bad makes sense, good does not from the biblical perspective.

It isn't surprising that life is painful. What's surprising is that life is joyful. Redundancy. What do our simple daily joys mean?

Is God pretending to be our friend? Is he setting us up for the ultimate nasty surprise?

Like Islam. By the way, if you didn't know that, Islam, they have no assurance of salvation.

They can live a godly life and they can get to their perceived heaven and God can go, gotcha.

He's called in their book at times the great deceiver, which is a wild thing, but it's true. Or is

God sending a signal every day that his heart is loving and kind? So kind that we can go back to him in repentance and find his arms open to us.

You know why you can repent, friends? Because God has open arms. He's not watching over you to mess up, having a scowl on his face, waiting to crush you when you admit what you've done.

He's a loving father. He has his arms open to the needy and we are needy, amen?

God's kindness is also revealed to us in our progressive sanctification, that he continually conforms us to the image of the son, that tomorrow we're more holy than we were yesterday, and that he lovingly walks with us as a father does to a son.

God's kindness is also revealed to us in suffering and you might be thinking, well, that's a huge leap.

How does that work? Because in suffering, God chisels and mold us into the image of his son, much like he does in sanctification, but more pointedly and faster.

It's like a barbecue. That's why it's called a fiery trial.

It heats things up quickly and molds you into the image of the son.

It also proves that we are God's children. Hebrews chapter 12 tells us that we are disciplined because God loves us.

It says that he scourges every son whom he believes. And so if you are not suffering, there's probably a chance you're not one of God's children.

If you think the godless are just getting away with everything and they don't have to punish, they are not punished for it.

Nope, they will. God will get his vengeance. And when you are being disciplined, you are not being punished, you are being refined.

You are being refined by a loving father. Also, when we suffer,

God is removing our grip from the things of this world. Though we have ascended into heaven spiritually with Christ and we are not of this world, but we are in it, we still cling to the old man, or the old man still clings to us, and we, much like Egypt, prefer exodus.

We want our chains, because our chains were easy, and our chains were what we didn't have to fight against, we just gave in to.

But as we suffer, the things of this world grow strangely dim, and they mean a lot less to us.

And God means all the more. Suffering also humbles us and reminds us that we are not

God. One of our biggest needs in the Christian life is to realize not how strong we can be in Christ, but how weak we actually are in how much we need

Christ. Lastly, God's kindness will not last. I mean, we can keep going for days and days and days and days, but I won't, because I will show my loving kindness on you.

That God's kindness is revealed to the nations when he preaches the gospel to them. Matthew 28,

God's people are given a command to go get the nations. So he's kind to the nations by going to get them, and that could be a sermon in itself.

And lastly and finally, God's kindness is in Christ. In Exodus 33, you remember

God, where Moses asked God to see his glory, and God said, okay, I'll show you my goodness.

He says something which I left out in verse seven. He says that he's good, right?

He forgives iniquity and sin. He extends kindness to a thousand generations. But he says this.

He says, but he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

Psalm 32, David cries out, blessed is the man whose sin is covered.

Friends, how is it possible that God will not leave the guilty unpunished, that he will cover iniquity and sin and bless those who are sinners and dead and their transgressions and sin and give them the full gamut of everything that we just said?

How is that possible? Because he punished

Christ in his kindness toward you.

The Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, eternally generated from eternity past, bled and got his hands dirty for you.

Pierced hands, pierced nails, bludgeoned body, and he absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf.

And the reason that I end this way is not because I'm just trying to add Jesus onto the end of a sermon because that's what you gotta do to be a

Christian. It's because that is where Paul ends. He says all of that and he ends by saying, he does all of this for us and toward us at the end of verse seven here, in Christ Jesus.

Like Paul invented those words, never forget and let it be on notice that the name of Christ is repeated here on purpose for no grace, no love, no favor, no salvation must be expected by us from God except through the mediation of his perfect and only

Holy Son. It is Jesus and Jesus alone that helps us to understand the complete and utter kindness of our

God. So how do we apply it? Recount the kindness of God. Always remember it. That's what he wants us to do.

Hand this information down, parents, to your children and to their children's children. And children, when you have children, remember to promote this reality and stamp it on the foreheads of your children.

I hate hearing, well, we'll let our children decide if they want to know God. No, God has saved so that we would remember.

Secondly, imitate the kindness of God. God did not owe us anything and all we did is spit at him and throw our middle fingers in the air and rebel against him and hate him and he yet shows his kindness.

So when you think you're being treated poorly, suck it up, eat dirt, and be crucified.

That's what Jesus did. Thirdly, behold the kindness of God in Christ.

It's all about Jesus. It'll always be about Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.