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Bro. Otis Fisher
Brother David and I decided to take the book of Ephesians.
He'll teach from it next Sunday, and I teach this Sunday.
Ephesus was a great city.
It was here that they had the temple to Diana.
A marvelous thing.
Some 200 columns around it.
How they built it, I don't know.
But it was eventually destroyed and built back.
Then destroyed again.
And some of the marble columns moved to other places.
And it lays in ruins today.
We take up the reading now, as Paul addresses these people.
He says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of
God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ.
He tells us his name very first thing.
I like that.
I wish everybody would do that.
We get letters at home from family, and I don't know who they're from unless I look at the last.
B can tell by their writing, but I can't.
He is an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of
God.
John, what does that mean, by the will of God?
All right.
Each one of us do things.
You did things yesterday that prepared you for today.
You'll do things today that'll prepare you for tomorrow.
And it seems like we decide, and rightly so, because we have to answer
for our deeds.
Here, Paul knows that he is an apostle by the will of God.
He is writing to the saints at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ
Jesus.
Now Clarence, that would include who, the last phrase?
And to the faithful in Christ Jesus.
All right, all believers of all ages, wherever you are,
this is written to you.
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Now, he makes a distinction between the two.
God the Father and Lord Jesus Christ.
He is Lord of who, Debbie?
Of us.
He's our Lord.
Grace always comes first.
It's hard to have peace without grace.
It's impossible to have peace without grace.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.
I want you to notice the little word, hath.
H -A -T -H.
Roger, what does that word mean?
All right, it's done.
Fred?
All
right.
Fred, do you see that?
Have you realized that?
He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
That means it's already done.
John, you're not going to get any more blessing.
You'll learn how to use what you have, perhaps what you haven't used, but you have it.
We have all blessings and spiritual blessings in
the heavenly places in Christ.
Now, we have this, Greg, but only in Christ.
So who's he talking to?
He's directly talking to the Ephesians, but it includes us.
We have right now all the blessings we will ever have.
How do we know that?
There's things that will happen tomorrow that I haven't experienced yet, but I have the blessing.
It's already passed.
God's done it all.
Everything's finished, complete.
It boggles my mind when I think of he has gone into eternity, future, and past
and has prepared everything for us.
Now, Jesus used the same term,
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Turn to John 20, 17,
and Greg, will you read that, please?
Thank you, my Father and your Father.
All right, why did he say my Father and your Father?
To my God and your God.
The God in whom we are called upon to trust and to whom we're able to look as a source of
all good is not the absolute Jehovah, nor the God who
stood in a special relation to the Israelites, but the God of
redemption, the God whom the Lord Jesus revealed,
whose will he came to accomplish, and who was his Father.
It is this relationship which is the ground of our confidence.
It is because Christ has sent the Lord Jesus into the world
because, did I
say Christ? I meant God.
It is because God has sent the Lord Jesus into the world because he spared not
his own Son that he is our God and Father, or that we
may have access by him to such a one.
What does the word access mean?
Craig?
Well, what does the word mean?
Debbie?
It may mean more than that.
Joy?
All right, but it means more than that.
Diane, what does the word access mean?
Dewa?
We have access, let's take an earthly term, access to
the President by someone that knows the President and knows you.
We have access to the Queen of England by someone that knows her and knows you.
So we have access to the God Father by Jesus Christ
because he knows you and he knows the Father.
Do you understand?
Access.
It is therefore in Christ, as united to him in the covenant of redemption,
that the people of God are elected to eternal life and to all the blessings
therewith connected.
All of the blessings.
Election.
This election is from eternity.
Now, how can it be from eternity?
All right, you have been alive in him from eternity
to eternity forever.
You can't escape it.
You are in him.
Now, you didn't know it for a while after you were born, but you are in him.
According, this is according now, as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world
that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.
According, according to what, Greg?
According to his will, he has chosen us in him.
Now, Jesse, he's chosen us.
What does the word chosen bring to mind?
This is a choice that was never made.
It's presented to us that way because there is other people in the world.
But if you go back to eternity, well,
let's come a little bit further.
Come to the Garden of Eden.
There were in him, if Adam had not sinned,
the only people that would have been born were Christians,
children of God.
Genesis 3 .15, Satan come with his crowd, so it
has to seem as though God chose us rather than choose someone else.
But he didn't.
We've always been with him.
The word chosen is an earthly term that we understand.
He did not pick you out and not pick him and picked him and him and not them.
It wasn't like that.
That's the way man chooses.
That's the way you used to choose when you were in school.
You'd choose upsides.
But here, it's not told that we come
from him in Genesis.
It is told that the seed of Satan started at the point
in 3 .15.
So according as he has chosen us in him, Greg, we've always
been in him.
He chose us in him.
We're not outside of him.
We're not along with him, beside him.
We're in him.
Now, the Bible tells us
that you must be born again.
Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again.
Well, Nicodemus could see only the earthly side of that because he wasn't
responding to spiritual.
If he was able to be born again of a woman, he would carry the same characteristics
of his parents.
So this is not a rebirth.
It's a new birth.
It carries the characteristics of God.
This took place before and before men taught?
Before?
David, what does before mean?
Alright?
In front of?
Prior to?
Before.
And it took place before the foundations of the world.
Now, the foundation was what part of the world?
Before there was ever any of that.
When can you say the foundation of the world took place?
Charlie?
I can't.
You're not supposed to ask the teacher a question.
I ask lots of questions.
I don't know the answer to until you answer it.
The foundation, I don't know when it started.
Nobody knows when it started, but it came out of God.
All things came out of God before the foundation
of the world.
I have some scripture I'd like for you to look up.
Greg, go to Luke 1 .75.
Bea, go to Romans 8 .28.
Debbie, Ephesians 2 .10.
John, Ephesians 5 .27.
Joy, 1 Corinthians 1 .22.
Bill, 1 Thessalonians 4 .7.
June, 2 Thessalonians 2 .13.
Clarence, 2 Timothy 1 .9.
Diane, 2
Thessalonians 2 .12.
No, that's Titus 2 .12.
George F., James 2 .5.
Marianne, 1 Peter 5 .2.
Brandon, 1 Peter 2 .9.
All right, Greg.
All right, that's where we are and who we are.
Romans 8 .28.
My goodness.
Boy, that's something that's just basic.
We know that.
Everything's working together.
He works everything together.
Now, Ephesians 2 .10.
He ordained our very work.
Did you realize that you could have no work to do, that you would never
see the benefits of work if
it were not given to you?
Everything's been given to us.
2 Timothy 1 .9.
What?
Yes.
Who read that?
I turned two pages.
Excuse me.
All right, Ephesians 5 .27.
That she might be holy and follow him.
He.
I've been under a hot iron today.
1 Corinthians 1 .22.
Now, 1 Corinthians 1 .22.
I had to get this from two places and I may be wrong.
In the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable
and unreprovable in his sight.
Unreprovable.
What in the world does that mean, David?
Unreprovable in his sight.
Now, 1 Thessalonians 4 .7.
So he's called us unto holiness, not uncleanness.
2 Thessalonians 2 .13.
Debbie, what did you have?
Did you read it?
No, I only can't hear, I can't see.
Now, 2 Timothy 1 .9.
Is that what you read?
Who has saved us?
Called us on purpose.
Given to us.
He has called us with what kind of calling?
A holy calling.
It's got to be holy if it's from him.
Not according to whose works.
Ours.
Not according to what we are.
He sees no man's face.
He gives nothing, no weight to what you are in the world.
But according to his own purpose.
Not our purpose, his purpose.
Grace was given to us in Christ Jesus.
So the grace was given to us in who?
When?
Before the world began.
Can you grasp that?
Titus 2 .12.
Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldliness.
I hope we do that.
Oh, I hope we do.
We should live soberly or righteously.
James 2 .5.
It's a promise made to us.
Does God make promises lightly?
No.
God's promises are the same as what?
Same as done.
1 Peter 2 .2.
Did I get it?
Is
that 2 .2?
I don't want 2 .2.
I got another one wrong.
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
Through sanctification of the Spirit.
Unto obedience and sprinkling of blood of Jesus Christ.
Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.
According to the foreknowledge of God.
Does God have foreknowledge?
But he doesn't have foreknowledge or he'd have to have afterknowledge.
He's all knowledge.
But it's foreknowledge according from our viewpoint.
Because he knew ahead of time David was going to be here.
Now, one more.
See if I got this right.
1 Peter 2 .9.
But you are a chosen generation.
According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.
That we should be holy and without blame before him in love.
The purpose of election is very
comprehensive.
It is the purpose of God to bring his people to holiness.
Is that what you understand the purpose of God is?
To bring his people to holiness.
Sonship.
And eternal glory.
He never intended to do this irrespective of Christ.
He always intended to use Christ.
On the contrary it was his purpose as revealed in scripture.
To bring his people to these exalted privileges.
Through a redeemer.
It was in Christ as their head and representative they were chosen
to holiness and eternal life.
And therefore in virtue of what he was to do in their behalf.
Everything he has ever done has been for what purpose?
His glory.
Now involved in that is us.
Bringing us.
We have to be holy.
We have to come.
All these blessings have their source in the election of love of God.
The election.
That's not a bad word.
Say it.
Say it louder.
That's it.
There seems to be two things involved.
By the reference to eternity of divine purpose.
To represent God as doing everything in time according to a
preconceived plan.
Or as working all things after the counsel of his own will.
We have scripture that will support that.
From eternity the whole scheme of redemption with all of its details.
And in all of its results lay nurtured in the divine mind.
Hence everything is certain.
There is no possibility either of failure or of any change in purpose.
Can you pray and change God's mind?
Can you pray and get him to do something?
The eternity of God's purpose is therefore a strong ground of confidence and
comfort.
A strong ground of confidence and comfort.
The other is to express the sovereignty of the divine purpose.
The grace was given to us before we existed.
Do you believe that?
And of course before we had done any good or evil.
Have to be, wouldn't it?
Therefore, not for works of righteousness which we have done.
But according to his mercy he saved us.
Not according to your works, Verge.
Whether good or bad.
But he saved you according to his own purpose.
If the one aspect of the truth that God chose us before the foundation of the
world is adapted to produce confidence.
The other aspect is no less adapted to produce humility.
We should be so thankful.
We must be so thankful.
We ought to, every one, get down on their knees and thank God
that I was included in the chosen.
I think we'll stop there.
To be included in the redeemed.
Having predestinated.
David, we'll start with that for you.
Well, let me read it.
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself according to the good pleasure of his will.
It's the only reason he did it.
According to the good pleasure of his will.
Alright.
Any questions?
To be dismissed.
Verge, would you dismiss us please?