The Christian's High Calling

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May 5/2024 | Ephesians 1:17-23 | Expository Sermon by Shayne Poirier

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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This afternoon, as we study God's holy word, we will be considering what
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I am calling, what's on the front of our church bulletin, as the Christian's high calling.
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And dear Christian, I want to ask you, do you know that you have been called to something far more than the forgiveness of sins and eternal life?
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Do you know and appreciate in your heart of hearts, in your mind of minds, all of the blessings that are yours in Jesus Christ?
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Well, it is true that our calling can never, ever, ever consist of less than the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
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Dear Christian, do you know that God the Father, through the powerful working of the
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Spirit, has called you, called me, called us to an even greater abundance of blessings in Jesus Christ?
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I'm reminded of a story that was once told by a famed Bible commentator,
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Warren Wiersbe. There was a man named William Randolph Hearst, who was a prolific art collector.
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And one day he was reading through this, I'm not sure if it was a magazine or a book, about various pieces of art, and came across an extremely valuable piece that he decided, right then and there, he wanted to add to his extensive collection.
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And he was a man of greater means than most of us, and so he went to his art agent, and with this compulsive desire, this request, this yearning, he said, this piece of art is so unique, so valuable, that I will pay absolutely any price.
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Scour the galleries of the world and find it, and I will spare no expense in acquiring it.
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And this was, as it turns out, a harder assignment than he or his agent had first appreciated.
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It took months and months and months for his agent to find this piece of art that Hearst had longed for.
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And when his agent finally came back, after hundreds of hours of looking, he reported that while he had found the piece of art,
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Hearst would not be able to purchase it. In fact, it was an impossibility. He could not buy it.
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And when Hearst inquired why, was it too expensive? Certainly it was not. He was willing to move heaven and earth to find it.
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Was it locked away in some vault in a faraway world -class gallery? That was not the case.
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But rather, the reason why Hearst could not purchase this piece of art is because as the agent went to look for it, he found that Hearst already owned it.
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Tucked away, don't you wish you had that kind of wealth? Tucked away in his own warehouse was this grand piece of art.
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He was willing to spend a fortune on this one piece. He yearned for it.
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He looked forward to the day of its arrival, and little did he know that it already had belonged to him, that he could have left his house and walked to the warehouse, gone to the shelf where it sat, pulled it off the shelf, held the rough canvas in his hands, and beheld its beauty with his own eyes.
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He could have taken it home and placed it on his wall and looked at it every day as he waited for his agent to return.
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But he did not know that it was already his. Such is the experience of many
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Christians today. How many of us in this room go about our days longing for spiritual realities that we are convinced do not presently belong to us, but belong to another world?
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We long for perfect peace and assurance. We long for the dispelling of our anxieties.
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We yearn for the day of true joy, for victory over besetting sins, for the realization of eternal life, for fellowship with the triune
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God, for the rule and reign of the living Christ, and many other such things. We pray for these things.
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We long for them. We must confess at times that we complain to God and even more often to one another that we wish that we could have just a taste of these things on this side of eternity.
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But little do we know that they already belong to us in Jesus Christ, at least in a part measure.
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We need only to reach for them, to take hold of them with our hands and enjoy them here and now in this age and then for eternity in the age to come.
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Last time, you'll remember a couple weeks back, we looked at Paul's prayer of thanksgiving for the
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Ephesians. And today we're going to take up part two of this study and look at his prayers of petition for them.
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And interestingly enough, we don't find Paul, maybe you've looked ahead, maybe you appreciate what this passage is already about, we don't find
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Paul praying that God would give them hope. We don't find Paul praying that God would give them power or give them an inheritance or even that the father would exalt
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Christ and make something of the church. But instead we find Paul praying that the believers' spiritual eyes would be opened wide to see all the things that are already theirs in Christ.
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Brethren, Paul prays that we would see our high calling as Christians.
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And this is not a call to do something. It's not even a call to be something.
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But it is a calling that is already true of us that God the Father has called us to a great hope.
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We have been called to a great Christ and we've been called to a great place of privilege in the church of the
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Lord Jesus. But this calling is of little benefit to us if we do not have spiritual eyesight to see it.
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And I think that's what the Lord wanted to do when he preserved Ephesians chapter 1 and verses 17 through 23 for us.
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That we would see this high calling for ourselves. That we might be encouraged and enlivened by it.
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And then that we would walk in a manner worthy of our calling. That's where Paul is going with this.
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That's Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 1. Paul is setting us up so that we would understand who we are in Jesus Christ.
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What our calling is. And that we would walk there in it. So with Ephesians chapter 1 before us, let's look,
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I'm gonna begin at verse 16 for context and read verses 16 through 23. Paul writes,
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I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the
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God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.
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Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
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And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
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So Paul begins verse 17 by shifting the gears of his prayers from thanksgiving to supplication.
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And we find here, if you look really carefully, Paul evokes all three persons of the
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Trinity in his petition for the Ephesians. When we have eyes to see, we will see the
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Trinity in all manner of places in our Bibles. It's amazing when you begin looking for it.
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And in this seemingly obscure place, we find the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit working in perfect harmony for the benefit of believers.
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And Paul writes in verse 17, he says, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.
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And as we get into the substance of our high calling as Christians, I think that we need to pause here for a moment and ask ourselves, what is going on in this verse?
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I don't know if you looked at that verse 17 as closely as we just did, but how do we make sense of verse 17 where we read,
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Paul is praying, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
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Father of glory, may give the spirit. How is it that the Father of glory is the
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God of Jesus Christ? Have you ever read that and asked yourself that? How is it that the
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Father is the God of Jesus Christ? If Jesus Christ is God, does this undermine the doctrine of the deity of Christ?
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Or how is it that the Father has authority to give the spirit to those whom
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Paul is praying for? Does this call into question the personality and even the divine will of the
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Holy Spirit? Some people, some cults in particular, have looked at this verse and said, well, this clearly undoes the doctrine of the
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Trinity. But does this undo the doctrine of the Trinity? I would contend, absolutely not.
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And it's not very good advice, usually, for a preacher to begin a sermon and immediately take an excursus off to the right.
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But we're going to look at this for a moment because we need to understand. We need to get a sense of what
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Paul is speaking about here in his prayers. And here we actually get a clearer picture of the
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Trinitarian theology of the Bible. Here we actually get to glean truths that I would contend probably the vast majority of Christians in our nation know absolutely nothing about.
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But this is a text and a concept that we need to understand. How is Jesus Christ God? And yet the
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Father is referred to in this prayer as our Lord Jesus Christ's God. We need to understand this concept for two reasons.
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Firstly, we need to understand the finer points of the Trinitarian theology of the Bible. Lest we fall prey, as I just mentioned, to the many cults who would twist this text in an effort to lead us astray.
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And we must not be doctrinally weak and anemic Christians who are allergic to deep theological study even in sermons, especially in sermons.
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The kind of people that are weak, doctrinally weak and anemic Christians are the kind of people that cults love to encounter when they knock on your door.
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I recall one time when I thought I knew a little bit of the Trinity. And the
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Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on my door. And at some point they had me conflating the Father with the
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Son. And I said, well, the Son is the Father. And spouted all kinds of blasphemies. This was a number of years ago, not last week.
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And cults know how to do this. And we know how. We must know how to respond, not with creations of our own imagination, but with true biblical
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Trinitarian theology. But secondly, to understand what Paul is going to say later about the
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Father exalting Christ, we need to understand what this text is referring to, how the relations in the
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Trinity exist, how they are ordered. And so at the very onset,
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I want to say that we could go to any number of texts that would assure us of the deity of Christ, of the personality of the
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Holy Spirit. We are not going to go there today. But yet at the same point, what
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I want to demonstrate, where am I going with this? If the Jehovah's Witnesses were to knock on your door, that's what
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I'm going to say this evening, you could go to even just a few chapters to, and feel free to write these down, to prove the deity of Christ.
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We could look at John chapter one, or I call them the chapter ones, the John chapter one, the
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Colossians chapter one, Hebrews chapter one, 2 Peter chapter one, just four verses that if you encountered a group of honest
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Jehovah's Witnesses would take down the entire Watchtower Society. Irrefutable evidence for the deity of Christ.
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Make no mistake about it, Jesus Christ is God of very gods, and the Holy Spirit is not a force, but a divine person.
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He too is God. And yet at this point, I want us to see that verse 17 alludes to the fact that there is a kind of subordination within the relationships of the
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Trinity. This is true. But it is absolutely crucial that we understand the kind of subordination that we are speaking about here.
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There are three kinds of subordination, or subordination -isms we might say, that are taught by theologians across the spectrum.
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And as Bible -believing Christians, perhaps you've never heard of this before, this is all new to you, we must affirm two forms while staunchly rejecting the third form of subordination.
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The first kind of subordination that we need to recognize in our Bibles is what is often called economic subordination.
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Economic subordination. And this refers to the subordination of Jesus Christ to the
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Father, and the Spirit to the Father and Son in the economy of redemption.
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You see, as part of God's redemptive plan, Christ willingly subordinated himself to the
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Father to accomplish our salvation. And you might ask, where does it teach that?
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Philippians 2 is a perfect example in verse 6. You can turn there with me if you'd like. Where it reads in verse 6,
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Though he was in the form of God, this is speaking of our Lord Jesus, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Here we see a picture that for the sake of lost sinners, Christ condescended, he willingly subordinated himself to die on a cross for our sins.
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At no time did he become anything less than God of very gods.
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At no time did he forsake either his godhood or his humanity, but he subjected himself to the
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Father in the economy of redemption. This is thoroughly biblical.
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It shows us how the Father can be called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. But more than that, the
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Bible also teaches what theologians call a hypostatic subordination. You might have heard of the hypostatic union, how
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Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man. This idea of the hypostatic subordination of Christ speaks to the fact that there are differences in the internal relations of the
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Trinity. We see this in the case that Scripture plainly teaches that there is a willful, we could say voluntary, order in the relations between the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And we see this evidenced in Scripture, that the
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Son is the begotten of the Father, that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the
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Father and the Son. Together they are one God, uncreated, and yet they are distinct in relationship to one another.
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This is why this verse that we read, that most of us have memorized, John chapter 3 and verse 16, where it says,
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, that the
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Son finds his begetting in the Father, begotten and yet not created. And this is why
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Christ could say, in John chapter 15 and verse 26, But when the Helper comes, whom
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I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
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And so, I need to repeat it. The Son is begotten, not created. The Spirit is himself
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God and yet proceeds from the Father and the Son. They are uniquely one and uniquely three persons in the divine
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Godhead. And without these distinctions, there is no Trinity. There would be no
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Trinity. As one theologian has written, Without hypostatic subordination, it is impossible to distinguish the different persons of the
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Trinity. We are left with three colorless, unvarying, indistinguishable persons.
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The result smells of the barrenness of human philosophy, not the richness of biblical revelation.
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Now, you might be sitting here and going and saying to yourself, I don't fully understand that. To which
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I would like to say, Welcome to the club. We're not here to understand all of this perfectly, but we are here to submit to what scripture has to say.
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And that there is a subordination that subordination might be called in the modes of subsistence, in the relationship of the
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Trinity, voluntarily. This is why the Father is called the
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God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, maybe if you're wondering if I'm spouting heresy at this point,
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I hope you're not, but hopefully subordination number three will clear up maybe some concerns you might have in your mind.
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Yet while we have formed these lesser forms of subordination, there is a kind of subordination that we must deny altogether.
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And this is called essential subordination. Or, if you've heard a lot of debates between theologians in modern years, eternal functional subordination,
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EFS for short. And those who argue for EFS, eternal functional subordination, would say that this type of subordination that occurs in the
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Trinity, it's not true, that essential subordination teaches that the Father is above and beyond the
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Son, and above and beyond the Holy Spirit in His very essence. That's where we get the word essential, in His essence.
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The Father, they would say, possesses full deity, while the Son and the Spirit possess a qualified form of deity, a lesser form of deity.
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In their essence of being, the Son is less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit is less than the
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Father and the Son. And we must, in no uncertain terms, reject this concept of essential subordination, while at the same time holding fast to the less radical forms of voluntary subordination within the
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Trinity. So where am I going with all of this? That the reason Scripture speaks about the
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Son in relation to His God and Father is not because the
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Lord Jesus is not God. He is God of very gods. I pointed to all those chapter one verses, passages, that you can go to.
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But rather, He is God because He has willfully, voluntarily subordinated
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Himself unto the Father to accomplish redemption and to live out as the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony. Now that was our excursus, and it's important.
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It'll be important as we move forward. So here in verse 17 and 18, Paul beseeches the
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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to give believers the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that the eyes of our hearts, he says, might be enlightened to see the hope of the
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Christian calling. And if we as believers are ever going to recognize our calling, it must come by the
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Holy Spirit, by Holy Spirit -empowered illumination. You actually see some repetition here that speaks to this, that the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, we've got revelation, we have knowledge, and having the eyes of our hearts enlightened, then only may we know the hope to which
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He has called us. There are some people who read the Bible. There are some people who read the
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Bible every single day and understand nothing of what it says, because Scripture itself is plain, that apart from the powerful working of the
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Spirit, the Scriptures are nonsense, at least to them. They can make out basic details.
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They can read a narrative and understand it, but when it comes to the spiritual realities that are spoken of in the
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Bible, it is altogether lost to them. I think of one person that I went to church with, a number of years ago, who was actually, this was not a particularly healthy church, it was a woman who was on the board of elders, and I was one of the few men not to pump my own tires, it was by God's grace, but I would bring my
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Bible to church, I would bring my Bible to the elders' meetings, and she began reading the
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Bible for herself, and as she was reading the Bible for herself, I was excited, enthusiastic to see her bring her
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Bible to the meetings, and I said, what are you getting from your reading of the Bible? And she said, there is a lot of incest in the
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Bible. And I thought, that is the only thing you are getting from the Bible.
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Now, was she a believer or not? The Lord knows. I do not know. But one thing is for sure, the apostle
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Paul says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
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John Calvin says it succinctly, till the Lord opens them, the eyes of our hearts are blind.
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And here, I think Paul is speaking about this, that we need the Holy Spirit's help to read all of Scripture, but even more than that, we need further illumination from the
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Spirit in the hearts of our regenerated Christianity to receive the full scope of divine revelation.
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And so, what could be so grand that we as Holy Spirit indwelt
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Christians can read the Bible, and yet Paul is saying even further, may God give you even greater revelation, greater enlightenment, greater understanding.
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Paul recognizes that there is something more that's needed here, and it's because we are not inclined to see it.
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We are not naturally inclined to see it. We have this stunning piece of artwork in our own warehouse.
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It's been there for as long as we have been believers. And we have longed for what is in that piece of art, and yet we have failed to see that it is our own, that we can walk and grab it and take hold of it and believe it and live it.
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And so Paul begins by detailing some of these things that, brethren, I hope we can see with our own eyes as well.
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And he begins with our calling as Christians. If you're following along, this is point number one.
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Here Paul lists a threefold aspect to the calling of the Christian, the blessings of the
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Christian that he would like the Ephesians and us by extension to see. Paul wants the
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Ephesians to understand that they have been called to hope, to a glorious inheritance, and to a place of immeasurable power, of receiving the immeasurable power of God.
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Now I want to dissect each of these, beginning with this understanding, this idea of hope, that we may know what is the hope to which he has called us.
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The language of hope can actually be traced all throughout our New Testaments, but also in Paul's letter to the
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Ephesians. In chapter four and verse four, he says, there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call.
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There's a call sandwich here. We were called to hope, which belongs then to our call.
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And what is this hope that Paul speaks of? I like what John MacArthur says, writing about a different passage, he says, unlike the
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English word hope, when we think of hope it is a very tentative thing.
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Oh, I do hope that we can go to the grocery store tomorrow. That is not true hope.
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That is not biblical hope. That's saying, we might go to the grocery store tomorrow. We might not go to the grocery store tomorrow.
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But in Scripture, in the New Testament, the word hope possesses no uncertainty, he says.
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It speaks of something that is certain, but not yet realized. And that will be realized because of Christ or because Christ himself secures it.
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Without the clear and certain promises of the word of God, the believer would have no basis for hope, except that we have a true word spoken.
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And Scripture abounds with causes for hope. I want to bunny hop just through a few.
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But brethren, before I do, let me ask you, will you characterize your life as a hopeful life?
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Not of the, I hope we go to the grocery store tomorrow, but of, I have a certainty, an expectation, that what the
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Lord has promised will be fulfilled because Christ himself has died for it.
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God himself has inspired it in his word. It is in Scripture and it lasts forever.
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Are you a hopeful person? If we are to take hold of this masterpiece that the
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Lord has given us, we must be filled with hope. We have been called to hope. In 1
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Timothy 1, in verse 1, we read Paul is greeting his protege,
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Timothy, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God, our
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Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. We hope, brethren, in the trustworthiness of Christ.
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As we were singing, he is our sure and steady anchor in the floods of unbelief.
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Hopeless, now, oh my soul now, oh, I'm going to mess it up now. As soon as I try.
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In every storm of life, that's what happens when I ad -lib. We can fix, we must fix, our eyes on the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And can I ask you, generally speaking, do you go through your day saying, my only hope is
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Jesus Christ. He is my soul's longing. More than Mr.
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Hearst longed for his painting, I long for Jesus Christ. I look forward to that day.
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I traded everything for it. Such is the Christian hope.
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Galatians 5 speaks about, in verse 5, about how we not only hope for Christ, but we hope for the righteousness that is by Christ.
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For through the spirit by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
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There is an already and a not yet aspect to this. That we hope, we have, we possess a present righteousness that is ours in Christ.
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An alien righteousness that is imputed to us through faith. But then there is this future righteousness.
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This glorification that we long for. We long for the day when there will be no more sin in our mortal bodies.
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And that we will not have mortal bodies, but immortal bodies. Resurrected bodies. 1
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Corinthians 15 Paul is speaking about the resurrection of the dead. And he says,
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If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
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That we have hope in this life certainly, but hope for the life to come in the resurrection.
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Jumping through these quicker and quicker. 1 John 3, verse 2 and 3. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
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That we hope for the glorification of our bodies. That we shall see him, and we shall be like him, and because we long to see him, and we long to be like him, then we purify ourselves.
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Romans 5 speaks about the glory that we will share with God himself.
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The ultimate destination of the believer. Through him we have obtained, in verse 2, an access, sorry,
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I have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
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As Christians, we are to be filled with hope. Hope for the present, and hope for the future.
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Hope for Christ. Hope for the resurrection. Hope for eternal life. But why does it seem like most
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Christians I meet have very little hope? Like the people of 1
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Corinthians 15 who are, of all people, most to be pitied, because they have only hope in this life.
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More than that, we have an inheritance. And I've spoken about our inheritance at length, and so I'm not going to go into it in great detail, except to speak perhaps of the dual nature of this inheritance.
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You'll remember when we spoke about the Jews, and the importance of the inheritance in their lives, in their understanding of Scripture.
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We have a much greater inheritance than a land, a sliver of land along the
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Mediterranean Sea. But a city whose builder and founder is
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God. And more than that, the Lord treasures us as his inheritance.
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As one commentator has written, he has made his church the venue to display his manifold wisdom.
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The outcome results only from his grace, and redounds only to his glory. So we have hope in Christ.
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We have an inheritance, but what I really want to major on for a moment here is power. Power. Verse 19.
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And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working, listen to this, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.
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This passage is filled with superlatives. One translator said that it could be translated as the superabundant magnitude of his power.
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And what Paul is doing, it's a bit of a word salad, but he is putting together this idea of power, of strength, of greatness, of the working of Christ, and see this with me, that the awesome, astounding power of God, the same power that rolled aside that stone that stood in front of the tomb, that weighed some 2 ,000 to 4 ,000 pounds, that same power that raised the
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Lord Jesus Christ up from the grave victorious, the same power that glorified
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Christ at his ascension, the same power that now sees
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Christ in his session, seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
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Do you believe this? That same power is now at work in the life of every believer from the moment of conversion onward.
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And yet, how we live with such little power day to day, it seems. Kids, maybe you would appreciate this.
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I was reading an article this week about a man named Art Evans who built the world's fastest lawnmower.
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Noah, you've mowed the lawn at our house before. You know it can take a little while. Well, Art Evans took an old lawn tractor and retrofitted it with a jet turbine out of a
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CH -47 Chinook helicopter. Now, if you're familiar with Chinook helicopters, those are the ones with two blades on top.
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They're the only heavy lifting helicopter that I think the
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American and the Canadian military use. And they can lift somewhere of up to 48 ,000 pounds.
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Now, imagine 48 ,000 pounds of thrust mounted on the back of a lawn tractor.
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At this very moment, somewhere south of the border, there is a lawnmower with a turbine engine that has enough power to launch
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Art Evans conceivably into the stratosphere. It's a silly illustration.
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But that does not even begin to compare to the immeasurable power of God toward all those who believe.
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And for the discouraged Christian, the greatness of his power at the end of verse 19 or midway through verse 19, to us who believe according to the great working of his might.
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Notice it does not say to us who are the spiritual elite. To us who are pristine in our understanding of scripture.
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To us who pray two or three or five hours a day. But to us who believe.
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And yet brethren, how we live as if that power is not at our disposal. How we seek to walk, not in the strength of his might, but in the weakness of our own pitiful might or lack thereof.
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We are far too worldly minded in this aspect. There's a story about David Livingston who, if you know anything about him, was a missionary to Africa.
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He found himself in the South Africa region in the greater Kalahari Desert and he ran into a tribal chief leader named
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Sokomi. And Sokomi said to Livingston one day, they were sitting down, he said,
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I wish that you would change my heart. Give me medicine to change it.
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You know, missionaries, they would come, they would come with the scriptures, they would come with the gospel, and they would often come with medicine.
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He said, give me medicine that will change my heart. He said, for it is proud. Proud and arrogant, angry always.
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And seeing this as a golden opportunity, Livingston said, he sought to minister the gospel to this tribal chief, and he lifted up his
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New Testament and was about to tell him where he could get the almighty power of God to change his life.
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And Sokomi interrupted him and blurted out, and he said, no, no, no. I wish to have it changed by medicine.
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To drink it, to have it changed at once, for it is always very proud and very uneasy and continually angry.
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And when Livingston remarked that earthly medicine could never change him, could never give him that power,
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Sokomi, the tribal chief, rose up and went away. We read that and think, how foolish that you would ask for power through medicine when a man is trying to dispense the very power of God from the scriptures.
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And yet, brethren, we do the same thing. Don't we? We wake up and try to live this life by our own power.
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And that is evidenced by the fact that we can go, it'll be noon, one o 'clock, four o 'clock, five o 'clock.
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It can be bedtime when we realize I have not even said good morning yet to my Lord. I have not even so much as come to Him for power and strength.
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His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, and yet we do not believe it.
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How many of us are looking for a worldly fix to our problems while we neglect the very power of God that is at our disposal at every moment?
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Charles Hodge said he prayed that they might at once be humbled and confident.
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Humble in the view of death, the death of sin from which we have been raised and confident in view of the omnipotence of that God who has begun our salvation.
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That is right down the middle. When men and women of this world meet you, they should find you in this dual state, simultaneously humble, that our power is from God, and at the same time, an other worldly mingling, an attractive confidence that is altogether desirable.
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But brethren, we live, it seems, without that humility and without that confidence. Why? Because we do not seek the
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Lord for His power. The very power that rose the Lord Jesus Christ from the grave.
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But we must. It is a great place to start every day. Seeking the power of God from His Word.
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Seeking the power of God in the Scriptures. Seeking the power of God, moment by moment throughout the day.
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Brethren, are we doing that? But more than that, we see here our high calling before Christ.
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Point number two, our high calling before Christ, in verse 20 and 21. According to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when
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He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.
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Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named.
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Not only in this age, but also in the one to come. Brethren, we can never.
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Have you ever thought when we sing that song All Glory Be to Christ? Or when we speak about worshiping the
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Lord Jesus Christ? Or when we pray in the name and for the glory of Christ?
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Have you ever thought that we are really overstating this? Should we not be saying,
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All Glory to God. All Glory Be to God our King. All Glory Be to God. Why All Glory Be to Christ?
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This text shows us that we can never extol Christ too highly, or too often, or with too much intensity.
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Our lives would be well spent singing and living that refrain that we just sung a moment ago, All Glory Be to Christ.
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Here we see, and we're going to get to a little bit of the economy of redemption, the subordination of Father and Son in a moment, but here we see, just for a moment, if I can point to verse 21, that the
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Lord God raised up the Lord Jesus Christ, He seated
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Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, and then we read, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.
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Now if you're reading this and you go, well that sounds a lot like the same word four times.
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Rule, authority, power, dominion. The reason why these words are used is because all of these were terms that would have been recognized by the
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Jews as referring to angelic beings. Some would even say different levels of angelic beings.
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I'm not sure how true that is. And this was not an insignificant detail for the
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Ephesians. Put yourself in the Ephesians position for a moment. If we remember back to the very beginning of Ephesians chapter 1,
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Ephesians was a major center for the occult. It was home to, you'll remember me saying, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
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The temple to Artemis, a grotesque many -breasted fertility goddess. It was here that the worshippers of Artemis claimed that a sacred stone, perhaps a meteorite, had fallen from the sky, and as a result
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Ephesus was one of the main hubs for godless idolatry in all of Asia, at least the
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Asia of that world. But if that wasn't enough, if we were to look at Acts chapter 19 we see that it tells us even more that Paul, while he was preaching in the hall of Tyrannus all day, and we think about how wonderful that would be.
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Imagine for a moment that I suppose we would have to work at other times, perhaps not during the day, but to sit in the lecture hall and to hear
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Paul speak, teach all day for two years. Well, all of that was happening.
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At the same time, in Acts chapter 19 we read about a priest named Sceva who had seven sons, who tried to use the name of Christ in their incantations to expel demons.
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But rather than expelling demonic spirits they were overpowered, they were assaulted and fled naked and wounded out of the home that they were in.
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There was something demonic, something extra demonic perhaps, about Ephesus.
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But there weren't just false gods and demons, but occult magic arts were a mainstay in the city.
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And this is evidenced by Acts chapter 19, if you're there you can look with me. There we see that the Ephesian citizens were avid readers of occult literature.
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But when many were converted they brought their books on the magic arts and burned them in the sight of all.
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And Paul tells us that the total number of books was so significant I started to say
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Paul Luke, the author of Acts, it was so significant that the recorded value of these books was 50 ,000 pieces of silver.
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And so a small fortune, a great fortune of occult books being burned in the sight of all in the city.
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Now we might look around today brethren and begin to question what in the world is going on?
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Why? Why is the world why are our governments passing these laws?
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Why does it seem that everyone today wants to be spiritual and yet no one wants to be a
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Christian to place their faith in Christ and to be saved from their sins? Why does it seem that the world is going in the wrong direction?
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We may be tempted to grow pessimistic, even disenfranchised and ask where is
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Christ? Where is Christ in all of this? To which the scriptures exclaim to which this text exclaims
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He is on his throne. Above all rule and above all authority and above all power and above all dominion
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Christ has perfect lordship. He is supreme. He is preeminent.
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Colossians 2 .15 says He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
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And he is seated at the right hand of God. In biblical times when a person again this doesn't mean anything to us in our context does it?
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If I were to say PJ come sit at my right hand. Well he wants to turn his head right to speak to PJ I suppose.
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But in biblical times when a person in authority placed another individual at his right hand there he was bestowing upon him equal dignity equal honor, equal authority what this conveys is that all of the power and the majesty and the might over the cosmos is in our great redeemer's hands.
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That when our lord gave the great commission he was not speaking in a hyperbolic fashion in excessive generalizations but all authority in heaven and on earth brethren has been given to Christ at this very moment.
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This is an honor that the lord our God would never bestow upon a mere man. It is an honor that the lord our
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God would never bestow upon a mere angel. Well Shane are you making this up?
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Where do you get that? Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 13 and to which of the angels has he ever said sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
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David spoke a place speaking about David's lord the lord of glory the lord says to my lord how do we make sense of that by what
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I taught us about just a few moments ago on the trinity how does the lord say to my lord because there is a voluntary and willful subordination within the trinity as far as it concerns their modes of operation their modes of subsistence the lord says to my lord sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool and as such brothers and sisters if I've lost you let me gain you back
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Christ is now seated at the right hand of God and there he sits as the chief governor and administrator over all things everything is his
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Abraham Kuyper has a fantastic quote he says there is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which
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Christ who is sovereign over all does not cry mine every inch and all things have been placed under his feet that's a significant text next time the
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Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door why? Isaiah 66 verse 1 thus says the lord
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Yahweh Jehovah thus says the lord heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool and what is the house that you should build for me and what is the place of my rest in the triune
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God's economy of redemption in the hypostatic relationship within the trinity
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God the father or I should say God the son
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Jesus Christ subjected himself submitted himself is a better word subordinated himself under God the father that he might die on the cross in our place and then because of that subordination he is now high and lifted up and exalted above all things so we are not exaggerating when we say all glory be to Christ we see this in Philippians chapter 2 how the lord
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Jesus humbled himself we read that a little while ago and then at the tail end of that passage in Philippians 2 9 therefore
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God because of the humiliation because of the condescension God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the father because of Christ's subordination there is greater glory for him still brethren is
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Jesus Christ in your life in the storehouse of your life is
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Jesus Christ preeminent supreme the all sovereign over the universe the one to whom we cry glory or is
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Jesus Christ a historical figure who died for sins who rose and now lives somewhere in the ethereal realms
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Jesus Christ is on his throne and he is sovereign and there is no maverick molecule in all of creation that is not subjected to his perfect lordship and this ought to move us to praise him to sing all glory be to Christ to submit to him to look to him as God the son who is seated at the right hand in power and in glory and it ought to give us great comfort that he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives now lives to make intercession for us we know that all things work together for good to those who love
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God to those called according to his purpose why because Jesus Christ is on his throne
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R .C. Sproul says not only is Christ at the most exalted position in the universe he is there representing believers and governing the universe for their sake for your sake the principles of conduct in Ephesians emphasize that authority exists for the sake of service
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Jesus is majestic use of power and authority in the interest of his people is now the
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Christian model that the Lord is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases and it pleases him to bless you and now we go and bless others but one more privilege that we are called to number three our high calling as the church our high calling as the church
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I know this has been a particularly theological sermon I hope that you are capturing some of it that it would feed your soul that it would weigh down our wanton hearts in the truth of the gospel and the truth of who
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Christ is verse 22 and he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church which is his body the fullness of him who fills all in all brethren the church is his body the body of Christ one of the highest callings if I might say it this way in terms of our location in the world the highest calling it is not to be called to be president the highest calling in all the world is not after you have served
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X number of terms and in parliament that you get to go and now work at the United Nations the highest calling of the
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Christian in this world in terms of the location the best place in the world that you can be at this very moment brethren is in this room belonging to the church the privilege and the blessing of belonging to the local church it is almost altogether lost that's why the world never thinks about church membership believers rarely think about church membership they go to church they visit churches they shop for churches but where are the
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Christians who belong to the church such as the calling of every believer of everyone who believes 1
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Corinthians 12 now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it
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Ephesians chapter 4 that the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the shepherds and the teachers have been given to equip the saints for the work of ministry why to the great end for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ brethren we get to belong to the church if you are a believer in this room and you do not belong to a church this church or another church let me exhort you belong to the church be a member of the body of Christ declare it to the church declare it to your own soul declare it before the
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Lord that I belong to this church it is one of the highest honors in all the world and Christ himself is her head what a wonderful thing when we were singing that last hymn all glory be to Christ if I can grab the lyrics here for a moment rather than trying to quote it from mine should nothing of our efforts stand should no legacy survive unless the
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Lord does raise the house in vain its builders strive as we were singing that song
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I looked at our brother Alex and there was just a glimpse of a smile and I thought what a wonderful merciful precious and good thing it is that the
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Lord is the head of this church I recall sitting in a living room in downtown
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Edmonton and Steve was nothing against our brother Steve but he was the church he was the member of the church and I looked out at this room and thought the
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Lord himself is building his church his body and he is the head
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I'm so glad that he is the head and that I am not the head one commentator says the sense in which
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Christ is the head of the church is that he is the source of its life the supreme ruler ever present with it sympathizing with it ever present with it you remove a head off a body that body is dead ever present with it sympathizing with it and loving it as a man loves his own flesh that is our
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Christ that is the head of our church and he fills all in all what does that mean here we see that in Christ we find the great fulfillment and completion of all things and the marvel of all marvels is that he doesn't principally speak of Christ filling the world or filling missions agencies or charities or soup kitchens as good as they are or the souls of celebrity pastors no but he fills the church the everyday ordinary amazing supernatural blood bought church of the living
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Christ Charles Hodge says the church may be called the fullness of Christ because it is filled by him hear these words as the body is filled or pervaded by the soul so the church is filled with the spirit of Christ or as God of old dwelt in the temple and filled it with his glory so Christ now dwells in his church and fills it with his presence or what a precious glorious picture of the church and it betrays our truncated small puny pathetic view many of us that we have of the church
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I'm convinced we need a major overhaul of our view of the church we don't go to church we belong to the church because we have been called to belong to the church and it is not a social club as important as fellowship is it is not a preaching center as important as biblical expository preaching is no but it is we have been called to be the earthly body of the living
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Christ to fulfill our ministry through song and prayer and fellowship and preaching the ordinances the reading of scripture the ministry of mercy the protection and the propagation of the truth the advancement of the gospel the discipling of the nations the proclamation of the excellencies of him who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light we are more than a weekly meeting the church is not optional it is not a vestigial organ from a previous iteration of old time
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Christianity the church is nothing less than the body of Jesus Christ Charles Spurgeon endured a stream it seemed of personal attacks
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Ian Murray wrote a book called The Forgotten Spurgeon about this man Spurgeon who was the center of controversy always it seemed and as a result he often had to defend himself and then in turn defend the reputation of the church when people spoke disparagingly about the church he would be quick to come to her defense and he once said
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God loves the church with a love too deep for human imagination he loves her with all his infinite heart therefore let her sons be of good courage is this not what
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Paul is praying for that we would be of good courage, she cannot be far from prosperity and another time he said the church is not perfect, we can say a hearty amen to that but woe to the man who finds pleasure in pointing out her imperfections,
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Christ loves his church let us do the same brethren do you count it one of the greatest treasures of your storehouse that you get to belong to the church or do you leave it in the warehouse under a dust cover only maybe one day to discover its value one commentator said,
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I'll finish with these words, the Christian who does not know his high calling who does not know his holy calling who does not know his heavenly calling will never be able to walk worthy of that calling oh that God would enlighten the eyes of our hearts today that we might know the hope to which he has called us that we might live in a manner worthy of that calling let's pray together thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church if you would like to keep up with us you can find us at facebook at gracefellowshipchurch or our instagram at gracechurchyeg all one word finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca