The Revolutionary Sentence

When I was asked to go to Omaha, they wanted me to talk about God. I thought, that's very good.

Lots of times, young people, lots of times church people want to talk about themselves.

It's back to that whole where's Waldo thing that we talked about before that Sinclair Ferguson would say. You read a book of the

Bible and you first say, where's Waldo? Where am I in this passage? When we're not to be found at all, the passage wouldn't be about us, it would be about God and who he is.

And so they said, we'd like you to talk about the Trinity and redemption. The father's role, the son's role, and the spirit's role in redemption.

And when I heard that, I thought, it has to be Ephesians chapter one.

If you had a desert island book, I hope you would bring the Bible. If you had a desert island book of the

Bible, which one would you bring? Well, some might say Romans, some might say John, maybe

Galatians, maybe Matthew. But if you had to have one paragraph on a desert island, what paragraph would you bring?

Maybe Romans five, maybe Romans chapter three. But if you had to bring one sentence to a desert island, you could have no scripture for the rest of your life, except that one sentence that you could look at and read and rehearse and memorize and see in black and white.

You would bring what sentence to the desert island? Aye, that would be first chapter of Ephesians verses three to 14.

Let's turn there. It is one sentence in the Greek language, 202 Greek words.

Our Bibles, ESV, NIV, NAS, all chop it up, but it is one sentence.

And I'm going to encourage you from the very beginning, would you memorize Ephesians chapter one, three to 14?

I have not memorized it yet, but I'm going to memorize it in the next few weeks. I want to memorize Ephesians one, three to 14, talking about the triune

God and his great redemption. It's all about God. It's all about who he is and what he has done.

Spurgeon said, nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of deity.

The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and him crucified and the knowledge of the

Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Basically, Spurgeon says this, would you like to be smarter?

Would you like to have your IQ in a sense increased, your spiritual IQ? Study the

Trinity. Don't study people, study the Trinity. And so what we're going to do probably tonight and next week, and then we're going to have a couple of Sunday nights off, we're going to look at this one sentence in the original language, the father's electing love, the son's redeeming purpose accomplished, and then the spirit's sealing ministry.

And you're going to find out that we are not the ones really involved here. We are the recipients. Remember, in the

Christian religion, Christians are not the active ones, they're the passive ones.

Christians aren't the ones initiating things, Christians are the ones receiving things. And this passage will help us all.

You say, well, a couple of years ago, you went over this and you preached through Ephesians. I did, but as I taught this to the young people last week in Omaha, I thought, our church needs a good dose of it.

Here's one of my problems. Sometimes on Sunday nights, I think there's not going to be enough people here to hear the sermon. I'm going to save this for a

Sunday morning because I want everybody to hear this. I almost pulled the plug on this sermon tonight because I wanted everybody on Sunday morning to hear it.

But we'll go through with this Sunday night, maybe a two -parter, the Trinity's role in redemption and how as you study it, you will begin to not focus on yourself as much and you will begin to praise the

Lord more and more as you become face -to -face, as you become closer to God, as you understand

His Word. Lloyd -Jones says, how little have we been told about the glory, the greatness, the majesty, and the sovereignty of God?

And basically, Paul, for 202 words, just begins to roll out this red carpet of, here's how great

God is. I dare you to just look at Him and stare at Him and get your eyes off of yourself.

This is the book that the president of Princeton Seminary, when it was not liberal, when it was conservative, said,

I owe my life to this book, the book of Ephesians. This is the book when

J .C. Ryle was in the congregation. He heard Ephesians 2, 1 to 10 read and God saved him.

Why do we do scripture reading? Well, lots of reasons. One is because it's commanded. Another is

I think people could get saved through the public reading of scripture. How many people here have seen

Niagara Falls? Good. How many people here have seen the Grand Canyon? How many people want to see the

Grand Canyon? How many people here have seen Victoria Falls? How many people would like to see

Victoria Falls? I would. I'm so close. Zambia, it's a Zimbabwe to see it.

This passage is like the Grand Canyon of the Pauline writings.

It is like the Niagara Falls where you just stop and you think, this is amazing. You could have heard it preached one time or a thousand times and you just sit there and look.

It's one of those phrases when you, I want to say, take a picture. It lasts longer. Just take a good, long look.

And what the purpose of this is, and I could ask you the question. You probably know it because I taught you this a couple of years ago. What's the main verb in Ephesians 1, 3 to 14?

Every sentence has a verb or it's not really a sentence your grammar teacher would teach you. And so if it is,

I hit the ball, there's a subject, there's an object, there's a verb. What's the verb, the main verb in Ephesians 1, 3 to 14?

Bruce? Pardon me? Well, that's the theme. You could summarize the book with in Christ.

Everything about this book is in Christ. Who you are in Christ, chapter 1, 2, and 3. And how in Christ people live versus chapters 4, 5, and 6.

But how about a verb? Give me some action. A verb, what does a conjunction do?

Conjunction, junction, what's your function? Hooking up clauses and phrases. What does a verb do? See, some of you are all pop culture people.

A verb describes some action. What's the action verb in this sentence?

Bernard? Praise, where do you see praise? The first word, verse 3, is that ESV?

Oh, you mean praise down in verse 6, verse 12, and verse 14? Okay, praise is a verb, but grammatically, if you diagram the sentence, praise is not the main verb.

Cindy? Chosen, I love chosen, it's a huge thing. We're going to learn tonight that before Paul praises

God for the son's death, he praises the Father for unconditional election. When's the last time you said,

God, I praise you for election before I praise you for my own forgiveness? But that's not right either.

Yes, Erickson? Blessed? Who has

ESV? Does it say blessed? Okay, it's where we get the word eulogy, it's to speak well of.

You is good, and logos is a word, a good word, we say a good word of something.

Say good words about God. You're very, very close, but not technically correct. So let me keep asking the question,

I'll try to keep you paying attention on this Sunday night. Paul? All right,

I tricked you. The main verb in Ephesians 1, 3 to 14, is be, which isn't even in the

Greek text. It's implied. And that's why you see, probably in your

NAS, the italics be. It's implied. And so if we really had to focus on what the implications of this would be, it is to be blessed.

God, you're to be blessed. The whole focus here is Paul blessing

God's name, praising God's name. Blessed be the God and Father ever

Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about this is Paul modeling praise. I don't know about you, but sometimes my praise can fall into the same rut over and over.

I praise God for the same things, the same way, the same manner. And here's a good model. Paul isn't saying, you praise

God this way, but Paul is saying, I'm going to praise God this way. And as the apostle does something,

I think it'd be good for us to follow apostolic praise. Don't you? And so this whole passage is talking about praising

God. It's to make you more thankful. So that you would say good things about Paul.

Now let's think about this a little bit further. How long ago did Paul meet Jesus on the

Damascus road? Five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years or higher.

Good. You're good. You're good. Paul is saying, I'm still praising this great

God, even though it has been almost 25 years since I met him on the Damascus road and he changed my life.

Remember in Acts, several times in the book of Acts, here, Jesus himself shows himself to Paul.

By the way, where's Paul writing this epistle from? Where is he? Jail. Paul is praising

God, it's 25 years later and he's doing it from jail.

It's almost like this. If you had some kind of, let's use one of these. Let's say this is a hot plate right here and then

I've got a teapot and I put the teapot on the top of that hot plate. What happens within about four or five minutes with that teapot?

Sorry? It starts to boil and then what happens to the teapot if it's one of those things that notifies you by sound?

It's almost like you can hear Paul. He's on this hot plate of who God is and then it just comes out, he can't stop it.

Now, I've heard a lot of people praise in my life, but not many praise people enthusiastically.

Excuse me, let me rephrase that. Not many people praise God enthusiastically like they do other things.

When I used to watch Michael Jordan on TV, when I got front row seats, one seat behind Bobby Knight and the

Olympic team in 1984 and I watched Michael Jordan. By the way, I snuck out of work.

It was the Olympics in 1984 in Los Angeles. I ordered a seat and I got the seat behind Bobby Knight.

There I was. Bad news is, after the game,

I watched the TV news at night, the sports, CBS, NBC and ABC and there they were showing

Michael Jordan and Bobby Knight and there I was sitting there. It was a noon game. I thought my boss was going to watch and go, what's he doing?

I'm sure stupid. But you could see me, I'm sitting there and Michael Jordan steals the ball and he goes up for a dunk and you can watch me behind the coach stand up and go like this.

Man, I was into it. Have you ever, remember when you first got freeze -framed, VCR, slow down.

Hey, everybody come in here. You've got to check this out. You've got to see this Brady pass. You've got to see, all right,

I won't talk about the Lakers, I'll talk about the Celtics. You've got to see Red Auerbach chew on this cigar again.

One last time, did you notice Cedric Maxwell? Did you see what Nate Archibald did?

Did you watch Bird when DJ stole the ball or whatever happened? I don't know what happened.

Did you watch Lambeer hit Bird and you slow it down and you replay it and you watch it and what do you do?

Well, there's nothing wrong with saying that was a great play, but we get so enthusiastic when it comes to praising things and sports people.

How about concerts? You go to a concert, I mean, it is,

I don't know who started this, you go, I want to so show these people that they're great singers and great guitarists.

Let's see, what can I do? I've clapped, I've screamed, maybe if I get my lighter and just light my butane lighter saying you are great, you just think of things to somehow praise these people.

And so I'm going to challenge you as you study this passage tonight and memorize it that you say to yourself,

Lord, I'd like to praise you more than I praise anything else. I'd like to even praise you more than how happy I was on the day

I was married, how happy I was on the day that I had children. And here he says in verse 3, blessed be the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Literally means to celebrate with praises.

This is the way the Jews would do it. It's called the Barakah and it means to just start off at the beginning and give a litany of praises.

God, I praise you. I praise you for who you are, what you've done, your intrinsic character, all your faithfulness, your worth.

I'm going to praise you. I'm going to extol you. And he says,

I'm going to praise you because everything I have is found in you. Now, it's almost like three stanzas to this praise song.

People say, do you like praise songs? Yeah, I like praise songs, especially this one. Stanza 1 is found in verses 4, 5, and 6.

And that is a praise to the Father for election. Stanza 2 is found in verses 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

And that is praising the Father for the Son's redemption. And then the last stanza to this praise song, if you will, is found in verses 13 and 14.

And that is praising the Father for the Spirit's work.

Now, before we get into it any farther, I want you to notice that the praise goes to the Father.

The praise does not go to the Son, although He's worthy of praise. The praise does not go to the Spirit, although He would be worthy of praise.

Just like when we pray, Jesus taught us to pray, Dear Holy Spirit, right in Matthew 6?

No, He says, when you pray, you pray what? Dear Father. And so the

Father is the one who receives the blessings. And so the Son, He is not somehow wanting the praise.

The Spirit is not somehow wanting the praise. Here is praise the Father for His electing work, the

Son's redemption, and the Spirit's work. Show me a church that praises a

Spirit. Excuse me, that praises the Spirit. I'll show you some church that doesn't really quite understand this.

By the way, I don't think this praise is in some kind of minor key. I think it's in a major key.

And we'll learn tonight, probably just the first hymn, the first stanza, if you will, the

Father's electing love. 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.

Now let's look at this first praise. And that is praising the Father for His choosing.

Praising the Father for sovereign election. Let's read the first three verses, the next three verses, and then we'll talk about it.

By the way, before I do that, do you notice what's at the end of verse 6, 12, and 14?

To the praise of the glory of His grace, verse 6. Verse 12, to the praise of His glory.

And verse 14, to the praise of His glory. Everything is talking about praise, speaking well of God.

Back to sovereign election. Look at verse 4. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him, in love

He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.

To the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

If you are a Christian, God has chosen you. God has selected you.

You put an S in front of the word elect, and what do you get? Select.

If I had a whole big thing of Bing cherries here, and you walked over, and you said,

I'd like to take those three out, and you pick the three out of many, you would be doing what? You would be selecting.

You would be electing some of those Bing cherries out. That's the language here, to choose.

God, if you're a Christian, has predestined you. He has willed you by His own free will to be saved.

You can't run from the doctrine of election. Everybody believes in it, because it's in the

Scripture. Is it an election where God alone chooses, based on His own good will, which would result in the most praise?

Or is it some kind of election that is God looking down the corridors of time, sees if you're holy, sees if you choose

Jesus? Well, let's find out which one is really true. We want to make sure we think properly about God.

Let's work through this a little bit. When James Boyce was going to teach Bible study fellowship, lots of people were going to be in shock about the doctrine of election.

And so James Boyce said to the leaders at Bible study fellowship, to the ladies, he said, now, when you have a Methodist, or when you have a

Lutheran, or you have a Roman Catholic, or someone else at your Bible study, and they start recoiling at the doctrine of election,

I want you to take your Bible and then say to the person, with your finger underneath the words,

I want you to start reading Ephesians 1 -4 out loud. Because the text doesn't lie.

Look at the text. Just as He chose us in Him. And when did

He choose us? Before the foundation of the world.

That is an amazing thing. Not that we were holy. Not that we were blameless.

But that we would be. God chooses all the time.

And by the way, I think you're an image bearer of God. Are you an image bearer of God?

Does God say, well, because of the fall, men and women don't bear God's image anymore?

No. It's the face, but still there. Do you like to choose? Do you like to pick and choose?

Do you like to call the shots? I do when I pick teams on basketball teams, football teams.

I'll never forget when I was a kid, we did something, kids, I don't know if you ever do, Peter, maybe you've never done this, because this is a different generation.

We used to do what? We used to play in the sandbox. Who used to play in the sandbox when they were a kid?

We always did. Peter, have you ever played in the sandbox? You did. We'd get these huge tractor tires.

And you'd roll the tractor tire into your backyard and just lay it down and then pour the whole thing full of sand.

And then we'd bring the buckets in and the water. And then I had my Civil War guys,

Yankees and Confederates. I couldn't preach this sermon in Texas, but I'll try here. And guess what?

I'm an image bearer of God, and I pick and choose. I pick who the good guys are, the

Yankees. I pick who the bad guys are. I also pick which guy's me. And which guy's the best shot?

Me. Which guy that has the most valor? Me. Which guy's the last guy standing? Me. Who gets the most honor?

Me. Who's the one that all the other guys kind of come around and say, we need to take your orders from you? Me. And I pick and I choose.

And at the end of the day, the Confederates are slaughtered mercilessly. And I, with my men, are there, kind of Alexander the

Great, just drinking grog at the end of the day in my sandbox. And you say, well, it's a funny story, but what we sometimes hate in God, the right to choose freely, we love in ourselves.

That is to say, we like to choose, but we don't want God choosing. And we go back to this thing, well, you know, that makes me a robot.

That makes me some kind of puppet. Turn with me, if you would, over to Romans 9, just for a second.

If you ever hear that, I would tell people that you're not quite thinking about election properly.

It's not robot. It's not, if you're in England, a robot. It is not somehow anything else.

You're using the wrong metaphor. Here's the figurative language you should use, Romans 9 .21.

And it should be clay and it should be pottery language. Romans 9 .21.

Or does not the potter have a right over the clay? We're not talking about robots here. We're talking about potter and the clay.

To make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, china like we talked about this morning, and another for common use, maybe for a little garbage bin or something.

That's the language. And if you go back to Ephesians chapter 1, the text in the Greek is God chose us for himself.

It's a middle voice. He chose us for himself. True or false? God chose

Israel, but He didn't choose the other countries. True. True or false?

God chose some angels, but He didn't choose all the angels. True. God chose the

Levitical priests to do His priestly work, but He didn't choose everyone else. True.

True. God chose certain prophets to be His prophets like Jeremiah. You know where we're going.

Actually, Paul was chosen by God Himself. The definition of election comes from Moody.

It says, to gather or to pick out and describes God's sovereign act of choosing some individuals for salvation.

Did you know Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick as a reaction to this doctrine? I've got to kill that great white whale,

God, any way I can because I don't like this omnipresent, omniscient chooser.

Did you know the fall of the House of Usher book was a metaphor for the fall of this doctrine?

Professor James Dane said, sermons on election are so rare that even a regular churchgoer may never hear one. No other doctrine has been so central in theology and so ignored in the pulpit.

Because here's what we do. When you first get saved, you're a sinner.

Jesus died on the cross. He came back. You need to repent and believe in Him. When you go to Bible college, it's a family secret.

But we're not going to talk about election now because it's only a family secret or you learn when you're older.

When you get really mature in the faith, then we'll give you election. What does Paul do with the church at Ephesus?

Out of the get -go, Paul says, you need to know this doctrine. You are chosen.

I mean, did the Holy Spirit put it in here in error, somehow putting in here election when it's just going to cause a lot of confusion?

If I got paid a dollar for every time I've been told, well, we believe in election, but we don't really talk about it until people grow in their faith.

Do you know how you make somebody grow in their faith? Teach them about election. You know what I want you to do? I want you to go out to the lake and sit there one night and go,

I can't believe that even though I was a total sinner, even though I was a total rebel, even though I would have killed

Jesus if my arms were long enough to go back into time to do it, God put his love on me.

Even though I deserve to be damned, God chose me. And I want you to sit there for so long to think about it that you finally start doing this thing.

I can't figure it out. It's sovereign grace. Who could do this? God chose the text.

You see it before the foundation of the world. That's Revelation 13, whose names were written from the foundation of the world.

Second Timothy chapter 1 verse 9, holy calling granted to us in Christ from all eternity.

And look at how he chooses. He chooses in spite of. I choose because of. You choose because of.

God chooses in spite of. Verse 4, that we should be holy and blameless before him. Okay, class, what's the opposite of holy and what's the opposite of blameless?

Unholy. He chose us when we were unholy and he chose us when we were guilty, our blame full.

God knew all about you. The good, the bad, the ugly. I don't know about you, but I have a skeleton.

I have a closet full of skeletons, sin skeletons in my closet that I would never want anybody in this world to know.

And I realized that God knows all my skeletons. He knew all the sins I'd commit. And he says,

I still choose you. That's amazing. You know,

I always joke around and say I got engaged on May 6th and married on June 6th of the same year.

Why? People ask. That seems kind of fast because there's a lot of skeleton fingers trying to climb out of that closet that I don't want

Kim to know about. And I needed her to have in front of her foster father, the pastor to say till death do you part.

And for her to say, I do sealed, you're trapped.

He didn't foresee our holiness. There was none. He didn't look down the quarters of time and see our blamelessness because we were not.

By the way, if God did look down the course of time and saw your holiness and saw your righteousness, then the praise doesn't belong to God.

The praise would belong to you. God looked down the quarters of time and saw this people dead in their trespasses and sins, blinded to the truth, slaves to sin, slaves to unrighteousness.

John Newton said, it is well for me that God chose me for his own before I was born. For if he had not, he would never have seen any reason for doing so afterwards.

You say, you know, this is like the most unloving thing in the world. Choosing really.

Verse four, last two words in NAS combined with the first part of verse five.

Remember, it's all one sentence in love. He predestined us. If I was at a secret sensitive church,

I'd make you all say that out loud in love. He predestined us. You want to know if predestination is loving.

You look at the text. Can you imagine that before all eternity,

God said, I love you. I pick you. Spurgeon said, what amazes me is not that God does not choose everybody, but rather he chose me.

It's not arbitrary. It's not random. It is with a purposeful love.

God chooses people. Michael Horton said, he is more love than you are sin.

Would you like that? He is more love than you are sin. He loves us.

You know, there are five solas of the reformation, right? What are the five solas of the reformation? Sola means only.

Sola scriptura, right? Scripture alone. Not some kind of traditions or magisterium. Scripture alone.

Next one. Sola fide, which means what? Faith alone. We don't add faith plus works, faith plus sacraments.

Our response to salvation is faith alone. Good. Two for two. Brian. Grace. Can you say that Latin word?

Gratia. Good. Grace alone. It's not anything except God's demerited favor, as Sinclair Ferguson would say.

Good. Next. Christ alone, right? Sola Christus.

It's Christ alone. Nobody else. Not Christ and us. Not Moses. Not some kind of sacrifice.

And then the last one. Sola scriptura. It is the Bible alone. Well, some people think there's the sixth sola of the

Reformation, and that would be sola homeschula, but that's another one. But I thought if I was going to add another one, you should add sola amore, sola love,

God's love. You want to know why he chose you? Because love alone. Not earned, not merited.

When I used to play hockey, I never played hockey until I moved to New England, and you're going to choose teams. And so they said, everybody throw your stick in the middle, and then somebody goes over there and just randomly throws the sticks, bunch to that side, bunch to that side, and wherever your stick is, that's the team that you're on.

Some kind of random arbitrary thing. No, there's no randomness with love. There's no arbitrary thing in love.

God says, I love you. Now, we have some adopted people here tonight, and look at how much he loves us.

Verse 5. In love he predestined us to. You understand this? You understand

Christianity. Adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself. You know that song,

I'm a Child of the King? Russell Moore from Southern Seminary, who was Moeller's right -hand man, said that he went to Russia to adopt a couple children.

Had to go there, had to come back, went there again, had to do all the forms, he said, when he went in to adopt the children in this home in Russia, this orphanage, he said he could barely stand it because it smelled so bad he thought he was going to vomit because of the smells.

And he adopted two boys who now are his own.

Does anybody look at Russell Moore and say, Russell Moore is unloving because he didn't adopt everybody?

Would anybody think that? What would you say about Russell Moore? He set his love on two of those children.

He rescued those kids out of that filthy place and you go, that's a wonderful thing for a person to do.

Nobody says, I can't believe he didn't rescue more of them. Well, then why do we do that with God?

Some people say, well, God chose some and not the all, therefore what a horrible God He is.

May it never be. The word to predestine means to pre -encircle, to decide ahead of time.

And by the way, this is to decide ahead of time, pre, it's not decide afterwards, post.

Post -destination, we don't believe in. God marks out some for salvation, for adoption.

And why does He do it? Verse 5, according to the kind intention of the person's free will cooperating with God's will.

Is that what the text says? Well, there's no praise then, there's no grace then, for the kind intention of His will.

Friends, this universe is big enough for only one person with free will. Okay, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

One being God. To the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed, because He has free will on us in the beloved.

Why did God choose you? Because He loved you, and because He decided to. It pleased

Him of His own free, benevolent will and purpose. And by the way, if you remember our series from about eight months ago, if God has only one eternal decree, of course that decree has to include election.

True or false? It's God's nature to choose. If you could take some kind of element, when we were in chemistry class in college, they'd give us a little beaker full of something, and they'd say, figure out what it is.

Great, titration analysis, and what's the thing called? Centripetal, centrifugal,

I don't know what it's called, but it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. Spun around and adding things.

You have to boil it down or something. If you could somehow take God's attributes and boil it down, and have some kind of gooey essence at the bottom, you'd pick up that essence and say it was what?

At the very root of God, at His nature, God is what? At the essence. The answer is going to be,

He chooses. You say, well, I don't know if I believe that. Why don't you turn to Exodus 33.

Exodus 33. When the nation rebelled against God and worshipped the calf,

God could have killed everyone, true? All you rebels, you're dead. But God only decided to kill 3 ,000.

He could have slain everyone. Why did He do that?

And so, if you look at Exodus 33 .17, it's amazing, because this passage teaches that, without being blasphemous, that part of God's essence and nature is to choose.

Exodus 33 .17. The Lord said to Moses, I will also do this thing of which you have spoken, for you have found favor in My sight, and I have known you by name.

Exodus 33 .18. Then Moses said, I pray you, show me your glory. So, what do you think is going to come?

God's omniscience, God's omnipresence, God's goodness, God's holiness, God's power,

God's compassion. Show me your glory. Show me your name. Who you are, God.

Show me. So what does God do? Read carefully. Show me your glory.

Verse 19. I Myself, God said, will make all My goodness pass before you.

You want glory? I'll show you My glory boiled down in its essence, as it were. It's going to be goodness.

And how does God's goodness manifest itself? In a way that you'd never guess in a million years without this text.

And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. And here's how I show My goodness.

By sovereign election. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.

And will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. God, show me who you are.

Okay, I'll have My goodness pass by. And here's My goodness at its core. I choose freely.

Isn't that amazing? That's fascinating to me. Piper said, this is the essence of what it means to be

God. To pick and to choose. To say yes to all, to yes to some.

It's an amazing thing. Now let's go back to Ephesians chapter 1.

Just a couple side note things here, some kind of implications. If God chooses people before time began, what does this do for your evangelism?

Does it make it harder or easier for you to go evangelize? Easier, right?

Because you don't have to save anybody. I just like knocking on doors and talking to people, and I think eventually,

I'm going to run into somebody who is an unregenerate elect person. Piper said, when he was talking about being a disciple for all the nations, the 12 apostles, that assignment was nothing short of overwhelming.

It was a case of 11 men against the world. Of 11 relatively ignorant men of the most despised nation under the sun.

So you got Jesus says, I want you 11 guys to go out and make disciples out of all the nations. Go. 11 against the world.

That feeble, by human standards, utterly negligible band was given orders to conquer the glory that was

Greece and the grandeur and might of the world spanning the Roman Empire, together with whatever wild tribes might be dwelling upon Caesar's domain.

You 11, you go get them. Impossible. Except God had chosen His people.

I like it that it makes my job simple as an evangelist. I just preach the word. I don't talk post -modern stuff.

I don't do anything else except preach the word. Alright, number 2.

Well, time is zooming by as it always does. That's alright.

Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 1. You've got God the Father to be praised for choosing you.

Number 2. God the Father is to be praised found in verses 7 through 12 for having

Jesus die in your place. Jesus to die in your place.

There's a book by Rabbi Jack Bemperald and he kind of gets the

Jews and the Christians to dialogue. And he has a book written. Here's the name of the book. Stupid ways and smart ways to think about God.

Well, that's interesting. I think any way to think about God that's not in the Bible is stupid. Don't you?

And it's going to be very stupid for us to look at this passage and have this passage talk about redemption as accomplished and then turn around in our evangelism and then talk about God has done all

He can to make salvation for you possible and now you have to fill in the blanks. You're going to see words in this text that don't talk about what

God has done to make it possible or probable but you're going to see past tense language that talk about having redemption.

It's accomplished. It's done. Why should we be impressed with this? Let's find out.

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 7. In Him we have redemption through His blood.

Can I say right from the get -go? When God the Father is to be praised, it is only through Christ.

In Him. It doesn't say in Mary Baker, Eddie Glover, Patterson Frye. It doesn't say in Buddha.

It doesn't say in self. It doesn't say in Moses. It doesn't say in the Pope. It doesn't say in Sung Young Moon, in MacArthur, in education, in society, in Joseph Smith but in Christ.

Every blessing that you ever receive in the world is in Christ alone.

There's no plan B. There's no Savior B. The Father chooses for the elect, and now the

Son is going to go get them and redeem them. If it was in Him with my good works, the praise decreases.

In Him with my sacraments, the praise decreases. In Him plus whatever good I can offer

God, indulgences, the praise decreases. Here is solo Christus right here.

And what we're going to see in this passage is, and I talk about this enough that you've heard it, but whenever I hear

MacArthur, he repeats himself all the time too, so here's my repetition. Sometime on Sunday nights, they have the home improvement show.

What's that when they go in? It's kind of the feel -good show. Extreme home makeover.

Do you think they'd ever go to Patty Hearst's castle in Southern California and say, we're going to give the

Hearst castle an extreme makeover? Do you think that would sell? Let's talk about extreme makeover for people.

You say, all right, we're going to pick some people. We're going to have some crack makeup artists, and they do the hair and they do everything else, and we're going to pick those people and redo them all.

I have a question for you. When the makeup artist and the hairstylist pick people for extreme makeovers, do they pick ugly people or pretty people?

If they pick pretty people, you go, well, she started off pretty and now she's still pretty.

But if they pick an ugly person and now she looks pretty, who gets praised? You know, this whole idea of, well, you know,

God don't die for no junk. God don't make no junk. Well, God didn't make junk.

He made men upright. But in Adam, they fell. And so you can't say, well, you know,

I really get good self -esteem because I'm worthy of somebody dying for me.

You've got a telescope, and you've got the telescope the wrong way with the big lens here, and you take a telescope and turn it the wrong way, and I'll tell you the thing that you see.

What's the thing that you see? You see your own eye that looks huge. You're like, the telescope's the wrong way.

It's on me. You have to turn it around the other way. And so God takes a sinner and he makes him a saint, and who gets the glory?

He takes ugly people and he turns them into his children. Who gets the glory? And that's what this passage is going to talk about, what the

Son has done. And look at the passage, verse 7, we have redemption in him.

Technically, and you'll like this if you're a Bible student, we have the redemption. It's a definite article.

We have the redemption. If you're an American and I say redemption, what comes to your mind?

Shawshank Redemption, cans and bottles, five cents. If you're a little older, S &H

Green Stamps. Who's done S &H Green Stamps? What does S &H stand for, by the way?

I was trying to think of that the other day. I don't know. Maybe you'll say, well, redeeming slaves during the

Civil War. But if you say to a Jew, I'm going to say a word and do word association, redemption, you're going to go what?

Huh? Kinsmen Redeemer, that's exactly what you're going to think.

And you're going to think this. God goes and rescues Israel out of Egypt.

You're going to think Kinsmen Redeemer where Boaz redeemed the land belonging to Naomi's husband.

Did you know by Jewish law, a slave could not free himself unless he was freed by a relative.

No wonder Jesus has to be our relative to free us. Take a look at the passage again.

In him we have the redemption. Redemption means emancipation. It means to free from slavery.

Don't you ever let anybody tell you, well, unbelievers, they have free will. Friends, they are a slave to their own sin.

They think they're free, but that is Satan blinding their mind. They are a slave to sin. Show me somebody who's a slave to sin, and I'll show you somebody who's not free.

It's a vice grip of sin wrapped around their throat. And the text says, we have redemption. We currently have it.

It's accomplished and it's applied. It's not potential. It's not possible. It's not kinetic.

It is done. Bondage to the law and its demands are over. We can't free ourselves.

We can't redeem ourselves. He redeems us, and therefore, we should be thanking God. That's why they're singing in heaven.

We sing songs about redemption, don't we? Give me a song about redemption. Redeemed How I Love to Proclaim It.

Good. There's a Redeemer. Newer song. Good. B .B.

Warfield said, there is no one of the titles of Christ which is more precious to the Christian heart than Redeemer.

Redeemer is the name specifically of the Christ on the cross. Whenever we pronounce it, the cross is placarded before our eyes and our hearts are filled with loving remembrance, not only that Christ has given us salvation, but that he has paid a mighty price for it.

You redeem somebody by paying a ransom price, and Jesus was the ransom price.

You see it in verse 7, through his blood. Cost him.

It was a vicious death. You don't want to say to yourself, this has something to do with red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the red blood cells of Jesus. What can wash my soul again?

Nothing but the red corpuscles of Jesus. Somebody's listening.

By the way, I love it in the morning when kids come to me and they make some joke about the peas or carrots or all that, and I thought, I'll see you in 10 years and you're going to pass your

Bible college entrance exam without studying. Because your parents had some notion that I think we better go to Sunday morning,

Sunday night, and Sunday school and teach my kid about the Bible, and you're right. Washed in the blood, there's power, power, wonder -working power.

Power in the blood? How can there be power in the blood? Because blood is a word that is theological shorthand for a vicious death.

I'll give you another example. Cross. When I say cross, what do you think of? Wood. There's the cross.

I think of wood. When I say cross, you might think of wood, but what do you think about? Jesus died on the cross for me.

There's all kinds of theology packed into that little word cross. Same thing with the word blood. By the way,

I read someplace that the Roman Catholics have thought that they've got all the different pieces of cross throughout the whole world that the cross that Jesus died on, and I heard it's got enough wood now to make a new ark, practically, because they think there's so much of that around.

When people were beating Jesus on the face, hitting him, beating his face to a pulp, and the blood was flying out, if some of that blood flew on one of those soldiers, was he saved?

No. Jesus had to bleed, yes. But the way to think about this is

Hebrews 9, and without the shedding of blood, there is what? No forgiveness. And when you cut the throat of a lamb, you cut the throat so it bleeds out to death.

There's death involved. You don't strangle a sacrifice. You bleed it. Sin costs.

You sin, you're going to die. Blood is a theological shorthand term for Christ's sacrificial, substitutionary, penal death.

It means violent death. When you see blood, you ought to say to yourself, two out of three times in the

New Testament, sometimes it is used for regular blood, but most of the time it is vicious death.

Barnhouse said, I do not look upon the blood of Christ when I taught concerning the doctrine, and use it primarily as a matter of biochemistry.

Now, we're out of time, so I'm going to leave you this last quote from Charnock. Had it been the blood of a sinful creature, it had been so far from expiation that it would rather have been from pollution.

If we had to have somebody die for our sins and they were a sinner, they wouldn't have cleansed us. They would have polluted us.

Had it been the blood of an angel, though holy, supposing they had any to shed, yet it had been the blood of a creature, and therefore incapable of mounting to an infinite value.

So, so far what Charnock has said is this. If a sinner dies for you, he's going to pollute you.

If an angel could die for you, he doesn't have enough merit for everybody who would believe. But since it is the blood of the

Son of God, it is both the blood of a holy and of an uncreated, infinite person.

So God says, you want to praise the Father? Then you just watch Paul, and Paul says, God, you chose me, and you had your

Son die for me, and there's nothing I did in either of those. Where's Waldo? God choosing you?

You're not there. You're a recipient. Jesus dying for you? You're not there. You're a recipient. And so the praise goes up.

Next week we'll talk about how can we have a Jesus who dies for more people than the

Father chooses. And then we'll look at the Spirit's work as well. Let's go ahead and pray. Thank you,

Father, for our night tonight. Thank you that these dear folks have come out to hear the Word of God proclaimed and to sing your goodness.

And I would ask a special blessing upon them. I would ask that you would be pleased to illumine their minds, to help them to be more, singing more of your praises.

Father, we can try hard, and we can set our alarms early, and we can work, but we know it has to be an internal thing.

So help us to honor you and to glorify you and to think well of you, certainly with sweat, but Holy Spirit -inspired sweat.