Ephesians 1:3-14, Mr. Andrew Cartledge

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Ephesians 1:3-14 God’s Blessings in Christ

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Ephesians chapter 1, we've been reading from verses 3 to verse 14, here are the word of the
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Lord. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him for the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
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In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
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In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised
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Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.
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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Sin is deceptive and often presents itself with its many desires as being pleasurable and satisfying.
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But we know from our experience that our sin does not often provide the pleasures and the satisfaction that it proclaims that it offers.
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We see this from the very beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where Satan tempts Adam and Eve, promising them to be like God, promising them satisfaction, promising them contentment and promising them glory.
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And what happens? Does that glory come? Does that satisfaction come?
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It may have come from a moment in the tasting of the fruit, but the moment they tasted of that fruit, they were under a curse.
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There was separation from God. And so we know from our lives, we know from the story of Scripture, that we are all too influenced by the power and the consequences of our sin.
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We know that it lies to us, and yet we continue to sin.
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We continue to look to our broken cisterns for satisfaction rather than trusting in God, rather than trusting in His plans,
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His timing, His promises, His character and His revelation. So this morning
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I want to address our contentment in our Father. So often we struggle with the things that we don't have, and sometimes we struggle to hold on too tightly to the things that we do have.
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And so this morning, what is the solution to our contentment? What is the solution to our problem of sin?
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Yet even though we are under a curse because of our sin, God has not left us to despair.
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In this morning's passage, we will expound God's gracious blessing to us in Christ, and give us the tools that we need to combat the sin and temptation that we face in our daily lives.
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The temptation to covet, the temptation to lust, to boast. The temptation to desire what we don't have, and the desire to keep what we do.
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You see, as we will look at in Christ, we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
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We have blessings beyond our imagination and beyond this world. And so our contentment in our
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God is beyond this world, ourselves, and our time.
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So as we look at Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 4 together, we must understand that this is a tapestry passage.
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And what do I mean by that? A tapestry is a huge piece of cloth that has this intricate picture with lots of different threads and needlework.
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That is this passage this morning. And we do not have time to look at all of the different threads, which
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I would be pleased to do, but for sake of time, unless we stay here for a very long time, we will not have that privilege.
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But I want to trace some of the threads through this morning, and so we're going to start off with three observations, and then we're going to break the text into three different sections and look at each.
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So three observations for the text. The first is a doxological observation.
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What do I mean by doxological? I mean there is a praise element that, as Pastor John read through the text, if you were paying attention, you would have seen that over and over again, in the beginning of the passage and throughout the passage,
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Paul is lifting our hearts up into praise. So the passage starts off with, Blessed be the God and Father of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be blessed? To be blessed is to be happy. It means to be full and content after a good meal, after our fellowship lunch.
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You sit back after having all the foods you can have, and your stomach is full and you're around your friends and your church family, and you are blessed.
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There is a contentment and a satisfaction. And so what is the contentment and the satisfaction that the
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Lord receives? The Lord receives blessing by blessing
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His children through salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ. So the passage starts off with this doxological declarative praise to God, Blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But it also continues out through the passage. Through the passage it says,
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To the praise of His glorious grace, as a plan to unite all things in Christ. Again, in verse 12 it says,
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To the praise of His glory, and 14, To the praise of His glory. And so as we expound our salvation this morning, we must recognize that our salvation is to the praise of God's glory.
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Our salvation is what God finds pleasure in. God finds pleasure in saving
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His children. And our salvation provides a new element and a new aspect to His glory.
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As it says, To the praise of His glory. God already has all glory. Our salvation only serves to further that glory that God deserves as the creator and sustainer.
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So there's a doxological purpose, and there's a doxological salvation. Our salvation is not primarily for our contentment.
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It's not primarily for our satisfaction, for the blessings that we receive, but our salvation is for the glory of God.
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And as we glorify God with our salvation, those blessings are ours. So God is glorified in our salvation, and our salvation is for His glory.
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We have been redeemed to bring praise and glory to our Father. So there's a doxological element to this passage.
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There is also a Christological element to this passage. Christological, the study of Christ.
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There is an element of Christ throughout this passage, and if you read through, you will see a repeated phrase.
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That phrase is, In Him. And that in Him is referring to Christ.
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And so all of these elements that we're going to look at through our sanctification, our glorification, and our justification are only found in Christ.
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You see, we receive the abundance of blessings as it starts off, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, how?
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In Christ. So we have every spiritual blessing in Christ.
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Before the foundations of the world, we have been chosen in Christ. We are holy and blameless in Christ.
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We receive our adoption in Christ. We receive redemption and forgiveness in Christ. And according to the riches of His grace in Christ, He has lavished on us our inheritance in Christ.
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We are sealed with the Holy Spirit in Christ. So there's a doxological element that we need to recognize.
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There is a Christological element we need to recognize. And there is also an eschatological element we need to recognize.
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Eschatological, end times, the study of things to come. I don't want to get lost in the weeds of postmill, of amill, of dispensational.
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I just want to point us to what the Scripture has plain and clear in verses 9 and 10.
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It says, We must recognize that our salvation is part of a bigger plan that God has for all of creation.
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There is a cosmological plan of redemption, a plan that He has for the entire universe, that He will redeem all things and unite all things in heaven and earth in Christ.
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And so God's plan from the beginning was that His creatures would worship Him in perfect unity with Him, glorifying
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Him forever. That was ruined by the fall. And yet though it was ruined in the fall, it was restored in Jesus Christ.
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And you and I, as believers, are part of this great plan that God has to unite everything to Himself in perfect unity to worship and glorify
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Him for all eternity. So there's a doxological element, a
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Christological element, and an eschatological element that we need to keep in mind as we jump into our text this morning.
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And so as we start breaking apart the passage, we want to break it into three different sections. And there are three different illustrations that Paul uses to describe our salvation and these blessings that we have in Christ that I want to look at this morning.
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So our three points are God plans our adoption. God plans
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God's activity. He plans our adoption. Second point, God accomplishes our redemption.
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He accomplishes God's action. He accomplishes our redemption. And the third is
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God completes our inheritance. So God plans our adoption.
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He accomplishes our redemption, and He completes our inheritance. So the first point,
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God plans our adoption. Verse 3 says, Blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love.
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He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will to the praise of His glorious grace with which
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He has blessed us in the beloved. So first we see that God is the
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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and throughout this passage, He is the one who is the main subject. He is the one who is causing all of these actions to come to His people.
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And what is the action that God has given to His people? We find out in verse 3.
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It says, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.
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And so this is the overarching theme of the passage.
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As Paul is expounding, what are the blessings that we have in Jesus Christ?
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What are the blessings that God has given to His people, His believers? And the first is that He has chosen us for adoption.
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It says that He has chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless, and then it says that He has predestined us for adoption.
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What does it mean that God has predestined us? Not that God has looked down the corridor of time to choose those who would choose
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Him, because we know that God's election is clear from His Word that is not based upon our merits. We look at the examples of Abraham.
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God chose him out of the Chaldeans, not because Abraham was worth anything, but because God chose to put
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His grace and mercy on Abraham. We look at Jacob, Abraham's grandson.
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God chose Jacob in the womb. Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.
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God had chosen Jacob. Even though Jacob was a deceiver, he was one who struggled with his own pride throughout the majority of his life.
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God has chosen Israel not because they were worth anything. God says that they were a small and worthless nation, which is why
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He chose them so He could show His glory. And so we see that there is nothing good and attractive in us that God would choose us, but it is purely based upon God's merit and God's grace.
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So I want to, instead of expounding on the doctrine of our predestination, I want to call us to mind our appropriate response to God's choosing and God's election.
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If you're familiar with the hymn, How Sweet and Awful is the
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Place has an appropriate response. It says, How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores.
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While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast, each one of us cries with thankful tongues,
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Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear
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Thy voice and enter while there's room while thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?
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T 'was the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in, else we had still refused to taste and perish in our sin.
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Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come, send Thy victorious word abroad and bring the strangers home.
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We long to see Thy churches full, that all the chosen race may with one voice and heart and soul sing
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Thy redeeming grace. You see, the purpose of Paul bringing up our predestination is not to get in the weeds with what that means, but just to draw our hearts up into worship, to praise and bless our
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God and Father. So God has chosen us in Christ, and when has he chosen us?
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We see the timing of God's choosing us is before the foundations of the world.
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We see that God has planned and purposed our election before the foundation of the world, and God is the one who is the cause of our salvation.
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And so we see before he even started his creative work that you and me as believers were already in his mind.
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Should that not bring us hope and encouragement to fall down and worship our
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God, who would choose sinners like us from before the foundations of the world, that we should receive every spiritual blessing in Christ, not just some spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing in Christ.
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So God has chosen us before the foundation of the world, and why has God chosen us?
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God has chosen us for the purpose, two purposes. One is that we should be holy and blameless.
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We see in verse 4, it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
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First notice that this is before him. There is a relation that God wants to have with his children.
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As we will look at in the next illustration of our adoption, that God is relational in his purpose of choosing us.
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And he chooses us so that we would be holy and blameless. We are not holy and blameless before our choosing him.
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There is nothing that we could do to merit our holiness and our blamelessness. It is purely of God's grace that he would choose sinners like us.
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To make us holy and blameless. So that we can stand before a holy
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God, and we can worship a holy God. So he chose us to make us holy and blameless in the second illustration that God uses for our predestination.
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He is, in verse 5, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.
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Our adoption is being brought into a new family.
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Our adoption is when someone who is in a weak and helpless situation is brought from that weak and helpless situation and brought into a new and better life.
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With a new family and a new father. And a new life.
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And so adoption is being brought from the orphanage of our sin and our despair, and it is being brought into the family of God.
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And how does Paul describe our adoption? First, this adoption is to himself.
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That God, as our father, has adopted us to himself.
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You see, our adoption is more than just God signing our papers of salvation, and we get adopted.
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It is a relationship with our father. That God brought us in his plan, into his family.
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For our instruction, he shows us compassion.
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He knows where we are. He knows our fears, our stresses and our sorrows.
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He knows our desires. God, as our father, doesn't just invite us into his house to stay and never have any interaction with us.
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We are part of the family. He has a relationship with his children, and just as an adopted son or adopted daughter brought into the family eats with the father, they play with their father.
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They are instructed by their father, and the relationship continues to grow. We have that relationship with our father.
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We have been brought into his family, and he cares about his children.
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He knows where we are. He knows what we need. And he provides for his children.
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And so we have been adopted to himself as our father, and we have been adopted as sons.
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So not only do we have the privilege of calling God father, but God our father calls us sons and daughters.
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What a privilege we have to call our father or God our father, the
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God of the eternal universe, that we can call the
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God of the universe our father, and he calls us sons. And not only does he call us sons and daughters, but he wants to know us, and he wants us to know him.
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So we have this adoption to himself as sons, and the means of this adoption is through Jesus Christ.
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You see, there is a cost to our adoption because we are not holy and blameless and cannot be in a holy and blameless house unless we are made holy and blameless, and the cost of our adoption was through the only begotten son of God who would die on a cross to redeem his children.
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You see, our adoption is not through our merit. God cannot look at us and say, you deserve to be adopted, so I will adopt you, rather than being the child in the orphanage who has a happy face and is well obedient when the potential adoptive parents come.
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Rather than being that child who everyone wants, we are the child in the corner who is angry, hiding our faces, and peeking our face out just to stick out our tongue at the visitors.
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We are the rebellious child in the corner because of our sin in our hearts.
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And yet, that very child, who you and I are, in our state of rebellion,
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God would separate his son so that you and I can be adopted, so that you and I can have fellowship with our
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Father, so that we can have an intimate relationship with Him, with a
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Father who cares. And so our adoption is to our
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Father. He calls us sons. It is through our older brother,
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Jesus Christ. And it is according to the purpose of His will.
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And the goal of our adoption is to the praise of His glorious grace.
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You see, it is His glorious grace that has reached out and adopted us.
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Again, it is not anything we merit. It is God's unmerited favor towards us that causes our adoption.
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And it is to God's glory and to the glory of His grace that He would choose to adopt us as sons and daughters.
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And He has done so in the beloved, which He has blessed us in the beloved.
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And so we see this first section coming to a conclusion, coming around again to the idea of blessing and praising
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God, because our adoption is to praise and glorify the
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God who has blessed us in our Savior, Jesus Christ. So God has planned our adoption.
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The next section, from verses 7 to 10, we see that God accomplishes our redemption.
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And here Paul continues to expound his point of our blessings in Christ and expound what does this adoption look like and how does
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God accomplish our adoption? Well, He accomplishes our adoption in the beloved.
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And in the beloved, we read in verse 7, in Him, in Christ, we have redemption through His blood.
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And so here is Paul's second illustration. The first illustration is adoption.
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The second illustration is redemption. And again, what do we see in redemption?
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Redemption is taking someone from a place of helplessness and bringing them into a place of blessing.
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Think of the story of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite woman who had no way to provide for herself.
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Her husband died. Her brother -in -law died. Her father -in -law died.
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She was in a foreign nation of Moab, brought back into another nation, and being a woman in that time had no way to provide for herself.
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And yet God would provide a husband called Boaz. And I'm not going to recount the whole story, but you can read it in the book of Ruth where Boaz would choose
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Ruth. And he would become her redeemer.
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And so redemption is taking someone in a helpless situation like Ruth and bringing them from that helpless situation into a state of blessing where Ruth would go from having to beg and having to pick up glean in the fields after the harvesters to being in the house of the wealthy
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Boaz. And so Paul has this idea in mind again just as we saw in adoption being brought from a helpless situation into a new family.
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We are being brought from a helpless situation and we are being bought and redeemed by God.
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And what was the cost of our redemption? Our redemption in Him, verse 7, is through His blood.
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We need to take a moment to dwell on the seriousness of our sin. Though we may understand this in theological categories, knowing that God is holy and we can't stand before Him as a holy
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God, I think too often we see ourselves and our sin as not so bad.
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That was just a little sin. I just glanced at that computer just a little too long.
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God's not as holy as He says He is. He'll be gracious with me just this one time.
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But you see, that very sin is the sin that our
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Savior was crucified for. Our sin is why
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Jesus died. Jesus died on the cross to redeem you from your sin.
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And so we cannot say, Let us sin that grace may abound. By no means.
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By no means. We need to recognize that it is our sin that drove the nails into Christ's hands.
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That our sin pressed the crown of thorns on His head. And it is only through His blood that we can be adopted.
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It is only through His blood that we can be redeemed. That Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.
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See, our sin is a big deal. But even though our sin is a serious offense before a holy
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God, God would choose to redeem us through the shedding of the blood of His Son.
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And as a result of Christ on the cross, we have the forgiveness of our trespasses.
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The forgiveness of our trespasses. Again, we have a debt that is before God that we cannot pay.
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And in the forgiveness of our trespasses, God takes that debt for Himself.
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You see, a debt must always be paid. And in forgiveness, that debt is absorbed by the one who does the forgiving.
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And that debt that we deserve because of our sin, that debt of sin and despair, that debt of consequences, that debt of death forever separated from the
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God of the universe, that debt was paid by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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And so it is through His blood, through the blood of Jesus Christ, that we have redemption, that we have the forgiveness of sins.
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And as we think about this a little bit further, our forgiveness of our trespasses is according to the riches of His grace, according to the riches of His grace.
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You see, God's forgiveness is abundant. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
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He has no want or need. He has riches beyond our imagination. And it is through these riches of His grace that He has chosen to forgive us.
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And so this morning, if you are weary of repenting of the same sin again and again and again,
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I call you to look to the riches of God's grace that He abundantly gives to His children.
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I call you to look to the blessings that are ours in Christ that He abundantly gives to us.
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So God's grace is according to His riches, and the next phrase it says, which He has lavished upon us.
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So again, we see another word describing God's grace that is the opposite of being stingy.
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It is undeserved abundance. See, not only did
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God forgive our debt and bring us to a net zero, He didn't leave us at net zero, but He gave us abundant of riches beyond that.
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Not only does God forgive our sins, but He gives us life in Jesus Christ.
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Not only does God sign the adoption papers, but He brings us home to be with Him and enjoying a relationship with Him.
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See, God's grace is abundant, and He is willing to lavish that upon us.
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Why would we ever want to pursue our sin when the
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God of this universe would bless us in such a rich way?
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Our perspective on our sin and our material things and possessions must be informed by the blessings that we have in Jesus Christ.
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These blessings of redemption, these blessings of adoption. And so God, through His grace, has lavished upon us, in verse 8, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to the purpose which
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He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in heaven and things on earth.
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And again, God is bringing us into this gracious plan that we would be with Him as His children, rejoicing in His presence, the uniting of all things in heaven and earth, and you and I as believers are part of that unity.
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Through our redemption, we enjoy the presence of God, not just in this very moment, but we enjoy the presence of God for all eternity.
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So we are blessed in Christ. We are blessed because God has planned our adoption.
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We are blessed because God has completed our redemption. And we are blessed in Christ because God accomplishes our redemption.
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We are blessed in God because He completes our inheritance. The next illustration that Paul brings up for us to keep in mind is that in verse 11 it says, in Him, again in Christ, we have obtained an inheritance.
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We have obtained an inheritance. Not only have we been adopted and forgiven, but we have been given an inheritance.
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And our confidence in this inheritance is found that it is according to the purpose of Him, or having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
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So it is according to a God who predestines, a God who is sovereign, who chooses us from the very beginning and chooses our salvation from its start to its completion.
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But this is also a God who sovereignly works all things according to the counsel of His will.
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So our God is a God who is willing to bless us and willing to give us an inheritance.
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But our God is also a God who is able to bless us with this inheritance.
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Because God has this inheritance and He is sovereign and He is able to give it to us.
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And as we look at this inheritance that we look forward to, we must recognize also that it is an inheritance that we have obtained.
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Meaning that this inheritance is already ours in Christ.
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That though we look forward to in verse 14, until we acquire possession of it, this inheritance is not in its fullest state, yet we have this inheritance today.
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And what is our inheritance? Our inheritance is being blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing.
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Our inheritance is God Himself. And so we as believers, being blessed in Christ, have received a relationship with our
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Father. And He is our inheritance. How do I know that it is
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God Himself who is our inheritance? Look with me in verse 13.
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It says, In Him, in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed in Him, Summarizing that, when we have received our redemption in Jesus Christ, what was
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God's response is that we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory.
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Two descriptive words of the Holy Spirit. One is that He is our sealing.
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In Him, we have been sealed. To be sealed, in Paul's days, someone would write a letter of instruction or a letter of authority, and they would use their signet ring, pour some hot wax on the paper and seal it, showing that this letter is indeed from this individual.
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And so this sealing serves as authority and authenticity, and it also serves as a safely accomplished transaction, meaning that when we are sealed,
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God promises that that letter will end up where it needs to go. We as that letter.
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And it will accomplish its purposes. So God gives us
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His Holy Spirit sealing us as a stamp of approval that, no, this indeed, you indeed are my son.
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You indeed are my daughter. Through the blood of Jesus Christ, we have been sealed with the
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Holy Spirit. And not only are we sealed with the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit, in verse 14, is the guarantee of our inheritance.
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A guarantee is like a down payment on a house. You put a down payment on your house.
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That house is yours. You're able to live in there, but you still have 30 years of debt before that house is yours.
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And so similarly, the Holy Spirit is our down payment.
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We have God Himself living in us.
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And as God is living in us, yet we look forward to the accomplishment and the consummation till we acquire possession of this fullness of our relationship with God.
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But yet in the meantime, we have a foretaste of what is to come through our
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Savior in the Holy Spirit. And so we can enjoy the pleasures of God now.
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Yes, we still face the temptation and the struggles and the sufferings of this life.
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Yet even through that, we have obtained an inheritance in Jesus Christ.
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To quote C .S. Lewis, he says, we are half -hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered.
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Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.
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And so as God offers us this inheritance in Christ, are we too caught up in this world?
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Are we too caught up with our lives here, with the stuff that we have?
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Are we too caught up with our jobs at work, with the way that people view us?
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Are we too caught up with our material things? Are we too caught up in this world?
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Are we looking to this world for our satisfaction and our contentment?
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The solution for this, the solution to the satisfaction that our hearts are so desiring is as this passage has shown for us this morning, is to look to Christ and be satisfied.
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When you are tempted to covet after you scroll through social media, look to Christ and be satisfied.
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When you are tempted at your job to either tell a little lie or be a little dishonest or take a shortcut to get something done a little faster, remember that you have been adopted by the
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Father and may your contentment be in Him and not in receiving that promotion.
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When your car breaks down and you struggle with anger at the fifth time that your car has broken down, remember that that car is not your inheritance.
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Your inheritance is the God of this universe who has given
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His life to redeem you. So remember the blessings in Christ.
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Remember the cost of our redemption. That that very sin that you are struggling with, being content with where God has placed you, remember that it is for that sin that our
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Savior has died. Remember the blessing. Remember the cost. And as you think about these things, may your heart, like Paul, be caught up in worship and may you say, blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because it is a
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God who has reached down into time and space to call us to Himself and to give us, again, not some blessings, but every spiritual blessing
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He has given us every spiritual blessing through our adoption, through our redemption, and through our inheritance.
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And it is in Christ that we have a hope that is beyond ourselves and is beyond our world.