In Him: Chosen

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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We stand for the scripture reading today, the Old Testament, reading is Deuteronomy 7, 6 -11.

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For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your

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God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

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It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

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But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the

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Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

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Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.

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He will not be slack with one who hates him, he will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.

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New Testament reading is 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 -12 found on page 1014 in your pew

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Bibles. This is the word of the Lord. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the

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Lord is good. As you come to him a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices to accept acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

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For it stands in Scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

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They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

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Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

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Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

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God on the day of visitation. Please remain standing. Open your

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Bibles to Ephesians 1, please. Ephesians chapter 1. It's such a delight to be here worshiping with the saints.

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There's a myriad of different things you could be doing right now. You could be mowing your lawn. You could be sleeping in.

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But you chose the better thing, and that is to gather with the saints and worship our God. May we tell ourselves that even in the mornings in which we want so bad to convince ourselves we should be doing other things.

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It is good to be with the saints. It's good to be with the people of the Lord and to thank

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Christ for what he's done in the world, in his kingdom. So, it is a delight of mine to be with you and to worship with you.

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It really is. And I appreciate singing with you. Hearing your voices sing up to the

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Lord is refreshing to my heart. Congregational singing is a delight. So, I thank you for that.

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And it's a pleasure of mine to ask you to open up to Ephesians 1. As we look at this beautiful epistle of Paul.

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Last week, if you remember, we explored the main point of Ephesians.

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Before we look at the book itself, it's good to keep in the back of our mind the main point of Ephesians.

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What is Paul getting at? If you remember, it's not as easy to track as perhaps some of his other epistles.

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But nevertheless, I think we can safely conclude, as we did last week, that the main point that he has is that you would understand the spiritual blessings that's found in Jesus.

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And you would understand that more, as you remember. That we would praise God for it, for blessing us.

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That we would bless God as he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. And so now, as we look at that, the main point of Paul, as we look at that, we're going to look, what does it mean that we are spiritually blessed in Jesus?

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What does that mean that we have all the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies through him or in him?

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And the way we're going to look at that in the next several verses, and really the whole book, but especially these next several verses, is really,

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I'm going to break it off into four in hymns. I think that's a good way to kind of dissect verses 3 through 14 are the four in hymns.

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Because if we get all spiritual blessings in Christ, he then lays it out with four in hymns in these verses.

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And so let us read them. The first one that we'll cover today is in him chosen, we're chosen.

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The second in hymn is we're redeemed. The third one, we have an inheritance in Jesus.

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And the fourth in hymn is we're sealed. And so let us read that. And then we'll go to the

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Lord in prayer. Verse 3, chapter 1 of Ephesians. And here's the first in hymn.

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And here's the second in hymn. And 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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And 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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The final in hymn, 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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Father in heaven, we truly do have every spiritual blessing in Jesus, those who are the saints of Jesus.

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Lord, the unbeliever cannot comprehend it, to be told that we have every spiritual blessing and Jesus bores them because all they are enamored with is physical blessings.

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But you have called us to a higher throne, to a higher calling, for our eyes to look upon Jesus and all the blessings he's given us to be united together with Christ to you.

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Father, this is the greatest of all existence, to be near you, for our whole life to be orchestrated to glorify you and to enjoy you forever.

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And so I'm thankful that we can proclaim this Lord's Day morning that we have every spiritual blessing in Jesus.

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And we can dissect that over the coming weeks and live a life in light of that, that Jesus Christ has came to save his people.

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And although we were the most wicked of sinners, we have been brought conformed to the image of Jesus by his great work on the cross.

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Oh Lord, what a blessing it is to be able to understand that more and more.

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And so God, help us to do so. May the saints before me, may you work in their hearts and minds so they listen and they listen to understand and they understand to worship.

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And the people who are not believers before me, and I know that they are there, may you open their minds even now that the boring words of the blessings of Christ would go forth from that lie in their hearts to the beauties of Jesus in their hearts.

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Lord, only the Spirit can do this work and so we rely upon him in all these things. So I thank you for the blessings in him.

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May you work in all of us so we can know it more and worship you in light of it. In Jesus' name, amen. When I was a child,

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I watched more TV than I should have. And when my favorite shows on Nickelodeon were on,

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I would resort to, the last resort would be to watch a little bit of Bob Ross do his painting show.

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And it's always fascinating to see the beginning of it. I almost always wanted to, if I could, fast forward it.

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I didn't have, what do you call it, a DVR at the time. But it would have been great to fast forward it because as he's making certain strokes, beginning strokes, you're like, what is that going to be?

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You have no idea what it's going to be until the end. You're like, oh, of course it was going to be a mountain with trees and smoke and everything.

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It was wonderful to see the beginning strokes. They're beautiful of themselves, but then to see it develop over and over again across the canvas as a whole makes something just profoundly beautiful on that canvas.

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And really, if you ever watch Bob Ross, I think you can share in that delight it was to see him create something beautiful on that canvas, starting with just simple strokes of the paintbrush, but then turning into this masterpiece of a beautiful cabin in the woods or a mountaintop or whatever it may be.

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It was beautiful. And I think here, what we see going on with Ephesians in these verses,

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Paul's going beyond just a few beautiful brush strokes of our own experience in salvation.

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He's going to a deeper understanding of salvation, a deeper understanding of salvation that goes even beyond our own experience in the salvation.

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Surely, as we experience our own salvation, there are beautiful strokes that we see, but we don't understand.

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And as we mature in Christ, there is something even more beautiful going on behind it all. There is a greater picture that God has created on this canvas that as you consider your own beautiful stroke of salvation, it's in light of this great thing that he's doing on this canvas.

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He focuses here especially in this first in him in eternity past, before any of us were around, before there was ever any creation.

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And our salvation goes back even to that. We see here, says in verse four, even as he chose us, this is the spiritual blessing we have in Jesus, even as he chose us in Jesus, in Christ, before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.

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Now, I want to start with that. This is a deep doctrine. If you follow along, we're talking about the fact that God chose a people before time began.

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God elected a people before time began. And before we even get to the beauties, the largeness, the canvas of it,

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I want to highlight the fact that we chose God. And saying that God chose us, we don't deny the fact that we chose

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God. If you are in Christ right now, that's because at some time in your life, you have understood your sin and you have said,

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I need a savior and your eyes were opened to the beauties of Jesus and you said,

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I shall go to him now. You had to choose Christ. And so as we look at the fact that God chose us, we cannot lose the fact that we, that you, we all need to choose

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God. And when you see someone turn from their sin, when you see someone turn from their sin, the deadness of it, the brokenness of it, the thing that promises them everything, but gives them nothing, in fact, it kills them, when you see someone say,

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I'm no longer gonna live in that, I'm going to live for the Lord now, that is a beautiful stroke of the paintbrush.

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It is a beautiful stroke of the paintbrush. In fact, I recently saw this in someone that was close to me that I love dearly.

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I've seen this person now turn from those sins and live in obediently from the heart to the

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Lord and it is a beautiful stroke of the paintbrush. And so we don't want to lose sight of the fact that that needs to happen, right?

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In fact, we in Sunday school this morning in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith and the confession, it talks about free will, right?

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And it talks about the need for us to make choices. God created us to be choice makers.

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And so we're not robots. We have our wills that we are to make choices from. And we are not robots in which we just do whatever we're forced to do.

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Instead, we do what we desire to do. So we talked about that. And that's why we see all throughout Scripture God calling people to make choices, right?

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Deuteronomy 30, 19, choose life, he tells Israel. Do not choose death. And of course, in our evangelism, what are we calling people to do?

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Choose Christ. Be awakened to the fact that you are on your way to destruction. You are living a life of death.

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Choose Christ. He is the Savior of the world. And so we call people to choose

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God. We need to choose God. And in the doctrine of God choosing us, we do not deny the fact that we need to choose

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God. But beloved, Paul is painting a bigger picture here. That's a beautiful stroke on the canvas.

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But there is a greater masterpiece that God is doing on the canvas that as we come to Christ and as we choose him, we are then told that by the way, you are part of a far vast larger thing that's going on here.

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As you mature in Christ, you realize that God is doing something amazing and you're just one part of it here.

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And what's that amazing thing that's happening? Well, look at the fact that God first chose you.

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If you chose God, it's because God first chose you in eternity past. If you chose

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God, as you need to do, and sinners, as I look to you, have not chosen

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God yet, I say to you, choose Christ, choose life. If you do that, it's because God in eternity past has chosen you.

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And if it was just my words saying that, I get that it's a little offensive to our ears, but this is the clear teaching of scripture as Paul says that the spiritual blessings from Christ come as even as he chose us in him.

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He chose us in him and when was it? It wasn't whenever he saw that we would choose him, but rather it was before the foundation of the world.

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That's when it happened. When did God choose us? It was not whenever we chose him, but it was before at, before the foundation of the world.

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Now, have you ever seen someone, have you ever seen someone make something without its foundations first?

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No, it would not exist. It can't exist. And so what Paul here is saying is before the foundations of the world, before there was ever even a creation,

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God chose you. If you are in Christ. Before the foundations of the world, before there was a creation, before your mother existed, before you realized your sin, before you chose

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Christ, God chose you. He says before the foundation of the world,

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God chose us, he says. So we see that your choosing of God has its foundation and God choosing you first.

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You see that. Your choosing of God has a foundation of the fact that God has chosen you first.

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What did Jesus say to his disciples? He says in John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you.

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And I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. And so as the disciples were chosen first, so we as his disciples are chosen first so we can bear fruit.

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God chose us. That's true of the first disciples. It's true now for all of his disciples.

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But I want to really focus on the fact that in him aspect of it, if you notice again in verse four, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, in him we are chosen.

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What does that mean? That in Jesus, remember, where all spiritual blessings flow, we are chosen before the foundations of the world.

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Well, we gotta understand that salvation and that whole canvas aspect is about the father and the son.

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And the spirit that works through it. And we are recipients of that. But the main players here is the triune

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God. We have an evangelical system in which the main players is all about us, it's all about our emotions, it's all about God being, you know, all about our emotions and feeling good in our worship.

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But no, beloved, the picture of the canvas is that salvation is about God and his glory in which we get to participate in.

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When we see that in Christ means that the father chose us. And I wanna keep on saying that this is, are those who are actually saints, okay?

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And I'll get that to the conclusion, but I wanna keep on saying that. That the father chose the saints, he chose us to be a gift to his son.

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You understand what I'm saying? The father loves the son and the father wanted to give a gift to the son and eternity passed.

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The son would reign over a people given by the father and that reign of the son would come through his work in salvation.

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And so we gotta see that to be chosen in Christ is that the father desired in eternity past to give a gift to his son and that gift are the people of God.

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That he would give the son a kingdom filled with people that are saved by our blessed

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Lord. So that's what I think it means to be chosen in Christ is that we are his bride, that we are a gift to the son.

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And we see language of this. If you really wanna see that, you know, people call it the covenant of redemption, the counsel of peace, this interaction between the father and the son in eternity past, to really see that, you see it throughout scripture, but the gospel of John, you see the language everywhere, right?

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And to see an example of that, let's go to John 17 to see that played out. It's always interesting when my mind is on my next point and I realize

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I'm not even flipping where I'm supposed to be flipping. I'll get there though. We could spend, obviously, you know, all sorts of time discussing the covenant of redemption or the counsel of peace between the father and the son.

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The father would give him a people that was planned in eternity past, but this was the agreement between the father and son that wasn't just in time and space, but it was in eternity past, before there was ever creation.

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And we see Jesus talk this way. If you look at John 17, hear his words. He says, when

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Jesus had spoken these words, of course, this is the high priestly prayer. This was right before he's about to get murdered or put on the cross, his last discussion with his disciples.

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And he says, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes. He finishes it off with prayer to the father.

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And he says, father, the hour has come glorify your son that the son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

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So the question is, when did the father give him these people? And the answer is in eternity past.

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And this eternal life that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

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I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. What's the work?

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When was the work given to Jesus for him to do? In eternity past, the father had a work for the son to do.

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And this was in an agreement or this was a plan in eternity past. And now father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

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I have manifested your name to the people whom you have given me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

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Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. So here is the doctrine clearly.

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The father gave the son a people in eternity past, right? That we would be chosen in him to be given to the son.

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Notice salvation is highlighting the father and the son and the spirit that works in that.

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But nevertheless, it's about their glory, about what they're doing and we get to participate therein.

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And of course, in verse 20, in verse 20 of that same chapter, he says,

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I do not ask only for these only, meaning his disciples around him now, but also for those who would believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

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So again, he's saying, I'm asking for all those who would come and believe based off of the apostolic word of the gospel, that is us beloved.

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The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one.

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And he goes on to say, I in them and you in me that they may have become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and I love them even as you loved me.

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Father, I desire they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

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So we can see there there's this plan before the foundation of the world, the father loved the son and he's given him a people.

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And so the people who have come to believe upon Jesus are those who have been chosen in him before the foundation of the world because of that agreement between the father and the son.

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This is probably belaboring the point, but let's just go there. Revelation 13, 6 through 8.

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We see the beast and we see the beast makes war on the church. And the apostle

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John said, it opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is those who dwell in heaven.

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Also, the beast was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer the saints. And authority was given over to it over every tribe and people, language and nation.

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And all who dwell on the earth will worship this beast. That's what the world is doing now, beloved. Everyone whose name has not been written, who, when, before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the lamb who was slain.

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So that's another example. Of course, there's a lot, but of this notion that there is a people set apart from the world who worship the beast, that worship the lamb instead.

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And that is before the foundation of the world, they are written in the book of life, okay? So we are chosen in him.

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We're chosen in Christ. Again, it's a beautiful stroke of the brush to consider the fact that someone chose

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Christ. Again, it's wonderful to see when someone leaves their sin and goes to Jesus.

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But the canvas gets more beautiful as you take a step back and see what those strokes are interwoven to make.

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And it is the beautiful doctrine that God chose a people before time began to be a bride for his son.

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Understand that. The beauties are on that canvas. So think of the love that the father had with the son to give him a bride.

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And we get to participate that in our belief in Jesus. I remember when

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I realized this as a young Christian myself, right? I was so excited as a young Christian that I no longer was living in the sin that I was once living in.

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And I was so excited to be changed by the gospel, to be changed by his word, to be excited to read it and to be changed and excited to be with God's people.

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I was so excited about this new life I had in Christ. But as I read the scripture and as I had faithful people teaching me that it's not even, it's about something bigger that's happening beyond you.

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That God the father has chosen a people for his son and I get to be part of that greater canvas picture.

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The beauties of salvation got even more wonderful. Paul here is showing you the beauties of salvation that goes beyond your experience to eternity past how

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God the father chose a people to be the bride for his son. Now, I want to label another aspect of being chosen before the foundation of the world.

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And that is, because I think there's another shade of beauty here on the canvas that we need to highlight, that we need to see, that gets more offensive to people, especially if you've never heard this doctrine of God's choosing.

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This can get even more offensive to you as you consider the fact that if God had a choice of one group of people, what does that say about the other group of people?

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Do you know where I'm getting at? If God chose one people for salvation, that means that he did not choose another people for salvation.

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Now, if that offends you and you all of a sudden want to get up, just bear with me. Just bear with me for a moment. I ask you.

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In reform talk, these people are called the reprobate.

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But I think there's another shade of beauty that we need to see here in order to enjoy that canvas. God choosing a people denotes that he had more than one option.

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Okay? That's the nature of whenever someone says you choose something, what does that denote?

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That you have more than one option. If when I go to my local party store you guys don't call it party store here,

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I don't think, like a store where there's, you know, alcohol, candy, you know, all that stuff.

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And my mom tells me as a kid, you know, choose which candy you want. What does that denote?

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That there's going to be all sorts of different candies. I get to choose one, right? It'd be insane. It wouldn't make sense for there to be only one candy.

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You know, maybe all Reese's peanut butter cups. And she says to choose which candy you want.

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That doesn't make any sense. She would say pick one, get one, right? But the fact is, is if there's an option, I get to pick what candy.

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I get to choose what candy I want. I choose one and I don't choose the other, right? So the point is, is that when we see the doctrine that God has chosen a people before the foundation of the world, that means he did not choose another group.

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Right? Right? And we see this, we read it earlier, but look at 1 Peter. Peter talks about this.

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In 1 Peter. And there's a reason why I'm highlighting this, because it does add beauty to the canvas.

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I promise you, it does. 1 Peter chapter two. Did you notice that when we read it earlier? 1

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Peter chapter two, he says, so the honor is for you who believe. For the saints. But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected, that is

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Christ, he's become the cornerstone. And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to these people who do not believe.

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And he says something very interesting. He says they stumble because they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do.

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And does that mean that God forces them to disobey the word? They would have obeyed the word, but God says, oh, nope, you're gonna disobey the word.

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No. But it does mean that they naturally did that because that was their desire, and God did not choose to change their desires.

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But, in verse nine, but you are a what? You're a chosen race.

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God has chosen you, the saints, to be different. Not destined to disobey the word, but instead, you are destined for a different end.

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That is to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, right? He goes on and on and on. And so we see it there in Scripture, and it's quite a few other places where God chooses a people for salvation, but he doesn't choose another group.

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So the question has to be, why not? Why doesn't God choose everyone?

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I think it's a good question. In fact, that question, why doesn't God choose everyone, haunts people. And it haunts people so much that they deny the clear teaching of the word, and they deny the fact that God elects or chooses because they're so haunted by that question.

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But we don't need to be in fear. We just need to look to God's word and let that inform us. God has chosen a people, and by that, he has not chosen another people.

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And why is that? And I think we can, and of course, there's mystery there in which we can grapple with, but I don't think it's very unclear.

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And the answer to why he didn't choose a certain people, I think, adds beauty to that canvas. Look at Romans 9.

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Look at Romans 9. Look how

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Paul explains it. He says in verse 21, and he's talking about divine election.

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He's talking about God choosing to have mercy and whom he chooses to have mercy and chooses to not have mercy and whom he chooses not to have mercy.

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And then in answering this, he says, in verse 21, has the potter, that is God, you know, the potter is one who makes pottery, has he had no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use?

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Think of the saints. Think of those he's chosen for salvation. And to make another one for dishonorable use, the ones he leaves to their sin?

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So what he's saying is, the creator has every right to do what he wants with his creation. And you can't tell him otherwise.

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He has a purpose for what he does. And this purpose, he says, this one part of his clay is for honorable use, for the saints, for those who are not destined to disobey the word.

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And another part of that lump is for dishonorable use, the ones he leaves in their sin. But he shows the reason why though.

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He says, God doesn't like to see sin.

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He hates it. But he endures it for a while because it serves his purpose to glorify his name. So read that again.

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What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power in his wrath, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction, in order, why?

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To make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

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What is Paul saying there? You really got to meditate on it there. But it's really not difficult to understand.

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Is that the reason why God allows sin to exist and he puts up with it, is because he wants to display to those who would receive his mercy, the beauties of his mercy.

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And we can know the beauties of his mercy because we see a group of people who are not receiving his mercy. So what

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I'm saying here is that the canvas becomes even more beautiful in the fact that we see there is a people who do not receive the mercy.

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And thank God that he showed mercy to me. Because that's a terrible existence. I don't want to be anything like that.

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So he puts up with it, in part, because he's revealing his wrath and that further reveals his grace to his people.

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A hard teaching, but nevertheless, that is the purpose of God. Now some of those strokes on the canvas might have an ugly color to it at first.

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You know, if you don't know the greater thing that's going on, a few of those strokes might look kind of ugly, but then as you have the whole canvas come, you see that, oh,

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I had a purpose and it actually looks beautiful overall. But a few of those early strokes look kind of gross.

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You know, the color was maybe off, a weird brown color because of the forest or whatever. All of a sudden it looks beautiful in light of the whole thing.

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And God, in his canvas of salvation, he allows for a few strokes to be pretty ugly. Sin, a people who reject him and continue in rejecting him even though he gives them the call of the gospel.

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He allows some of those ugly strokes. But do you know that overall it serves the beauty of his glory so that we could see those ugly strokes?

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We could see the ugliness of sin and say, thank God he's chosen me for salvation. We see that and we are amazed by salvation.

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Even further, he uses it. Now that's hard to swallow, right?

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God didn't choose everyone. He chose a people so that they could understand grace more by looking at those who he didn't choose who's gonna receive his wrath.

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If that is hard to swallow, I get it. It's a hard doctrine. And for you to swallow it and praise him for it, for you to see the beauty of the canvas, you need to change your number one desire in creation to be what

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God's number one desire in creation is. God's number one desire in creation is to be glorified.

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If he desired to save everyone, guess what would happen? Everyone would be saved.

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But his desire is to be glorified. And he is glorified whenever the saints of Jesus behold his wrath and say, praise

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God for his glorious grace. And so I would argue that if you're having a hard time swallowing that, it's because your number one desire in creation is not matching the father's number one desire, for him to be glorified above all things.

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As that becomes aligned in your mind and heart, you see the canvas's beauty unfold. Psalm 76 .10

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says, Okay.

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So as we unpack the beauty of this doctrine, the canvas that is unfolding, we see something else that Paul labels in Ephesians.

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He says in Ephesians 1, that we should be holy and blameless before God.

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So you see that this is an initial end to this doctrine of election. Now, notice

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I say the initial end. It's not the final end. It's the initial end. God's initial end in choosing a people for salvation is that they would be holy and blameless.

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That's his initial end. There's a far -reaching end we'll see in verse six. But here, the initial end is that we would be holy and blameless before him.

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Holy means to be set apart in purity. God is perfectly set apart from his creation, and he is perfectly pure.

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To be blameless means to be without blemish, right? It denotes the sacrifices of old in the

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Old Testament that couldn't have any blemish on it. And so we are called to be blameless or without blemish as our dear

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Lord Jesus Christ was and is. So something is objectively beautiful.

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Something is a true blessing from the Lord as far as it reflects our triune

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God. And so the blessings that come forth from Jesus is that he would grab hold of you, choose you before time began, and bring you on a pathway of holiness and blamelessness.

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A lot of people, they underline this doctrine, they see this Calvinistic doctrine, and they say, you're just encouraging people to live in sin.

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But the fact of the matter is, God's initial end of this doctrine is that you would live in holiness and enjoy the blessings of holiness.

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You know that to live an unholy life, to live a life of not purity, is a curse to you.

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There are many of you right now that are living in sin, and you will agree with me that it is a curse, it is no good, it is emptiness and brokenness.

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You know that the Father, in his love, has called you out of that from eternity past to bring you into holiness.

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There is a justification of God in which he declares you to be holy, he declares you to be righteous, he declares you to be blameless.

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But there's also a sanctification in which you grow after that declaration, you grow after that image of Jesus who has saved you or has enabled you to be declared righteous.

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And so the point that I think Paul is getting at here is that he has chosen you before time began, not to sit there and be like,

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I can live any way I want, I'm chosen or not chosen, but he has chosen you to be sanctified or to grow in this blessed state of righteousness.

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All spiritual blessings come from Jesus. And that is walking after righteousness is a spiritual blessing that he has called you to from before time began.

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So he's not called us to be lazy. He hasn't called us so we can just do whatever we want.

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Doesn't matter, I'm chosen so I can live in any kind of sin. No, he's called you, the spiritual blessings, to walk in righteousness because that is for your good, beloved.

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This is where he's brought you to. Another aspect of this is

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God did not choose a people because they were blameless. You understand what I'm saying? God did not choose a people because they were blameless.

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God chose you to become blameless. God did not look down the corridors of time and said

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I will choose certain people who I know will pick me. But rather God chose a disgusting, sinful people and says

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I'm going to do something beautiful in them and cause them to walk after my righteousness through the new covenant, grace.

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He has chosen you before time began to walk in righteousness, to participate in the blessings of being like God.

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So before we leave this, I can't believe I'm running out of time, that's just this one verse.

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I might have to break this up. There's two major implications here. There's two major implications here.

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You did not prove yourself to God first before he chose you. You did not prove yourself to God first before he chose you.

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Because if you did choose yourself first or you did prove yourself first for God to choose you, that means you could unprove yourself and he would unchoose you in some way.

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No, instead, this free grace that we're talking about is that before you were, God shows his love for us that when we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. You couldn't prove yourself. You couldn't prove yourself to be choosable. It's that God, when you're unchoosable, chose you anyways because he's driven by, as we'll see maybe today, in love.

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And the second implication is that he did not choose you because you were holy, but he saved you to be holy as he is holy.

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Why do I say that? If pursuing God and holiness is not your major aim in life, you show the marks of someone who is not chosen by God.

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You understand what I'm saying there? Do not use this doctrine of being chosen by God before the foundation of the world to excuse your sin.

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If you are not pursuing holiness, if you're not pursuing to be set apart from the world, purity, if that's not your aim, this is exactly what he has chosen people to do, to be, to walk after.

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So if that's not your purpose at all, don't think for a moment that this doctrine pertains to you.

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Because you are not living any way that's evidencing that. So instead, what you should do is recognize that, that's not my aim in life.

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I need to repent and believe upon Jesus so that promise can be mine. All right.

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This is a terrible way to end the sermon. I gotta stop here. I can't, I can't go to predestine for adoption to himself as sons in just a few minutes.

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I can't. So you know what? We'll stop there. And so now

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I don't have my conclusion as I want it. But nevertheless, isn't there much to be concluded with that? Isn't there much to be concluded with the fact that our

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God, our God in love has chosen you before time began to be holy and blameless in the

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Lord Jesus Christ? The spiritual blessing that it is not determined upon your good works or your ability to do anything right before him, but in love, he has chosen you for those good works.

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Isn't it a blessing to know that Jesus Christ cared so much that even when you were non -choosable, there's no reason for God to choose you.

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He chose you in him. But again, let's carry ourselves wisely with that doctrine. Let us not think for a moment that those of you who are living in sin right now with no desire for the

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Lord can grab hold of this great truth of the spiritual blessing in Jesus. Rather, let you repent and grab hold of this blessing that your choosing of Christ came forth because God first chose you in Christ to be a present to his son.

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What a great picture of salvation that is, that we get to take part of that and sing, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord almighty, the one who has saved us from our sin and so that we will one day be welcomed in to the marriage supper, to the marriage feast, because we are that gift to the son from the father.

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Let's praise our God. Let's pray to him. God in heaven, I thank you for this beautiful truth.

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Lord, again, I remember, Lord, my own life and seeing others who turn from their sin and choose

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Christ. It is a wonderful thing and we ought to celebrate it. We ought to see the beauty of it, that stroke of the paintbrush.

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But Lord, the overall canvas is that before time began, Christ first chose us.

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And Lord, I'm so thankful that the power I have, the power that the people before me who are in Christ have to live in holiness, in righteousness, to walk blamelessly before the

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Lord, both objectively and in our experiences as we grow in sanctification, that comes forth from this great doctrine that your love was upon us even in eternity past.

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Because you desired to give a gift to your son and that gift was that the son would die and raise again for our people and strengthen them for obedience so that we would glorify the son forever for this great work that he's done.

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Lord, there's a people before me right now who do not have this purpose.

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Their motivations and desires, it's not for holiness, but rather it's for the desires of the flesh.

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Oh Lord, would you grant them repentance even now? Based off of this great divine election that you've had in eternity past, may that come beautifully down upon their souls and hearts right now.

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And may they respond to this plea for them to turn from it and to go to the one who has died for sinners.

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And Lord, the suffering or the struggling saints that are before me, the ones who in their mind right now they're thinking of the different ways they disobeyed the

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Lord, may you encourage them with this doctrine that this is God's work of salvation, that he who began a good work will complete it, that he's the one who works in us a renewed will to obey him.

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And so may they grab hold of this promise and say, I hate my sin. Those who say, I hate my sin, I don't want to live in it, but I've fallen into it.

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May they see that the strength to defeat that sin is not in their own strength, but rather it's in the strength of Jesus Christ, his electing love for them.

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So this truth has all sorts of implications. And may the people before me, may they meditate on that.

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May they spend the Lord's day considering that, discussing it with their family. The implications that before we chose you, you chose us in Christ.

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Thank you, Lord, for this great gift. May you be glorified now into eternity for what you have done in salvation.

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Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Jesus Christ who gives us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.