Sunday Sermon: Before the Foundation of the World (Ephesians 1:3-10)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Ephesians. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Ephesians 1, and starting in verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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 before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love 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 he has blessed us in the beloved.

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.

Let us pray. Our great God, we come before you again as we open up your word and desire to be taught according to your spirit and whatever we have known or have understood about the doctrine of election or the doctrine of adoption or even understanding redemption,

I pray that our understanding comes from your word, that we are shaped and guided by this and this above all other words.

For it is by this word that we have come to faith and have even been gathered here today with a desire to hear the word of God preached and proclaimed.

So may it rest upon our hearts and continue to shape us in the image of Christ as we go throughout our day and our week.

It's in the name of Jesus we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Asher, would you bring me down just a touch?

It's kind of ringing a little bit. Thank you. There is a pastor that I am aware of from a few years ago who was about to teach to his congregation on the subject of the doctrine of God's sovereign election.

He was excited about being able to teach this despite how controversial a topic it was.

He had known and had even seen from a young age how different opinions on the doctrine of election could even sometimes divide a church.

He had witnessed it before and from his pastor friends, they have even told him about some of their stories and some had even warned him about it.

Be careful about talking about this doctrine because it tends to be pretty divisive doctrine and different opinions that people have.

But this pastor thought that, you know what, I'm going to do this the right way. Maybe my other pastor friends or maybe my predecessors did not do this the right way.

I'm going to do it right. I'm going to preach it right from the scriptures. And how could anybody disagree with this if it comes right from the

Bible? At the time, he was starting the book of Titus. And right there at the start of Titus 1 .1,

it says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, for the sake of the faith of God's elect.

And he said, that's where I'm going to teach about election.

Because it's the gospel that Paul preached that brought people to faith and showed that God had elected them from before the foundation of the world.

It says it right there in Titus 1 .1. That was the whole reason why Paul preached. So I'm going to preach it from Titus 1 .1.

There's not going to be any controversy. There won't be any division in my church. In fact, revival will break out.

Quite the opposite happened. And everything that he thought would not take place in his own church body where everybody was friends with one another and there was such good fellowship within that congregation, yet they did become split over exactly that doctrine in just one sermon when he tried to teach it.

And frustrated and flummoxed, he called his father after actually months of this saga had unfolded.

He called his dad, who was still alive at that time, and shared with him all of his woes of everything that had taken place over the course of this teaching on the doctrine of election.

And he shared with him about how even some of his trusted friends had betrayed him. He had been stabbed in the back by some.

There was gossip and slander floating around the church. Others had even yelled at him right to his face and pointed a finger right at him.

And some said, you're following the doctrines of man and not following the doctrines of God. And he just spilled out all of the things that were happening in his church at that time.

And while he was talking with his father, he relayed this story to me, said that his dad was on the other end of the phone eating potato chips.

And he said it was really distracting because while he was trying to talk to his dad and spilling his heart out, he's just hearing this constant, it's like, and he's going, my dad just doesn't care.

I am vexed in my heart and he just, he doesn't empathize with me at all.

And he got to the end of his story and he just kind of found a place to stop and stop talking. And his dad finished his bite of chips, swallowed, and went, so what?

And the son was so beside himself, what do you mean, so what? Did you listen to what it was that I just said?

And his dad said, son, did you listen to what it was you preached? He said, do you believe in the doctrine of God's sovereign election?

And the son said, yes, I do. And his dad said, has the Bible changed since you preached that? The son said, no, it hasn't.

And the father said, do you believe that God has predestined you from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him?

And the son said, yes, I do. And the father said, then rejoice, son, for this happened to you because God predestined it.

This is a very controversial doctrine, and it's probably spelled out nowhere else as clearly in Scripture than it is here in Ephesians chapter 1.

Whenever we come to understand election, predestination, whenever we talk about these things, almost always, universally, this is the chapter that we either come to or reference in some way, shape, or form, particularly

Ephesians 1, 4, and 5. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, start of verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace.

We have exactly God's predestined plan and the reason for it given in just those two and a half verses.

But despite the fact that the Bible states this so plainly, it has nonetheless been a doctrine of contention for hundreds of years.

So as we consider this today, I understand that there's going to be some differences of opinion.

So while I will give you what I believe this passage is saying, there is somebody within my congregation who might believe something different about what this passage is saying, and I'll tell you what, that's okay because we still agree on the mains that Jesus Christ is

God who died for us so that all who believe in him will not perish under the judgment of God, but will have everlasting life.

If we believe the gospel, we can disagree on the secondaries as long as we all agree on the mains.

So you may disagree with the perspective that I am going to give you on this, which I believe is being spoken from plainly from scripture.

You may believe that it says something else. You know, folks, sometimes we have an interpretation of scripture, and we will think that, well, that's what the scripture says, and that's what

I'm telling you that it says, so that's true, and I believe it because this, and really what we're saying is not what the scripture says, but our own interpretation of the scripture.

And so we must be careful about that. And I am not above correction, and everyone must test. It is, in fact, your responsibility to test everything even that I say according to what the word of God says.

So let us in these things be charitable with one another even if we should so disagree and not cause division over this particular doctrine.

Last week in Ephesians 1, we looked primarily at verses 1 and 2 in doing our introduction to Ephesians, but I don't want to overlook the fact, even as we come into understanding election this morning, that Paul states in Ephesians 1, 1, that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus by what?

The will of God. It is by God's will, not

Paul's will, that he became an apostle of Christ.

If Paul had it by his will, what would have happened? He would have made his way to Damascus and killed a bunch of Christians.

That's what would have happened. But it was God's will that this man's heart would be changed to be a follower of Christ instead of an opposer of Christ.

And when we read about the will of God, what I want you to see, what

I would desire for you to know is the love of God when you read about the will of God.

Don't feel enslaved. Don't feel oppressed.

Don't feel like I have no control over anything anymore. It's just the will of God. It's just whatever he wants, whatever he's doing.

Don't feel that way about this. Be relieved. Feel set free, that you are loved in Christ because by his will, you have become a child of God.

As I said in our introduction of Ephesians last week, Paul has written to his friends, and he wants to make the gospel big to his friends.

So what I have to share with you today is not the gospel of Gabe or the philosophy of Pastor Hughes. What I hope speaks loud and clear to your heart is the word of God, that you may know the gospel more deeply and rejoice in it more today than you did yesterday.

And that should be the desire for all of us as Christians. Let none of us ever just settle. Well, I got what

I got. All my doctrines set in place. I can even write them out for you on a piece of paper, nothing left for me to do.

No, we need to grow and mature in those things. I will tell you that since I became a pastor, none of my doctrine has changed.

It's all exactly the same as it was on day one. But I have grown in those things, and I have matured in them.

So be careful about, well, you used to say this, but now you say this. Are you sure you're hearing me say anything different than what

I've said before? Maybe it's just matured from where it was when

I preached on this the first time. Ephesians 1, beginning in verse 3.

We have eight verses that we're looking at primarily here, verses 3 through 10. And each one of these verses is going to make a loud and clear point regarding election.

Now, I want to qualify that word clear first before I continue on.

There are certain doctrines in Scripture that are more theoretical sometimes to us than they are going to be plainly stated in black and white from A to Z.

Like, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity. How do you understand that God is one

God in three persons? How do you even quantify that? Like, we as physical human beings, we can't make any sense of that.

I'm one person, Dave's another person, Jerry's another person. We're three people. We can't be one.

We're three people occupying three respective spaces physically. So how can we fathom

God being one God in three persons? We must understand it because the

Bible talks about it. So it is important for us to study, but you'll never come to the end of it.

You won't understand it until we see God as He is. 1 John 3, 2, on that day, we will see

God as He is because we will be made to be like Him. On that day, you will go, oh,

Trinity. But for now, there are some things that are theoretical to us when it comes to understanding

Trinity. Some things plainly stated, other things that become theory. I believe that the doctrine of predestination is the same way.

There are going to be some things that I believe are clearly stated. There are some other things that I believe are going to be theoretical.

And that's the point where we will come to a difference of opinion on what it is that the text is saying about those things.

So looking again at verse 3, each one of these verses, all eight verses that we look at here today, will have a particular point to make to us about election.

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.

I'm going to split this verse in two. The first half, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember what we talked about regarding Ephesus last week. Ephesus was a place that was very polytheistic.

They worshiped multiple gods, lots of gods. There was a God for everything, a God of the sea, a

God of the air, a God of the rain, a God of vegetation. Okay, whatever somebody wanted, they prayed to the

God of that thing, hoping that they could appease that God somehow, and that false God would give them favor.

And so Paul is talking to a group of believers from a very pagan area, and all of these folks, mostly

Gentile, have come from that pagan culture, that Ephesian culture that they are surrounded with, with multiple gods, polytheism.

And so when he starts talking about God the Father and God the Son, he wants to be clear to them that this is not two different gods that we're talking about here.

It is one God. Grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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.

He is demonstrating here a oneness and a congruency that is happening from the

Father to the Son to us in this work of redemption that God is doing. It is not the

Father operating opposite or differently than the Son. The Father is not the

God of the air and the Son is not the God of the land, but they are one God who are working in one divine will to bring about the salvation of his elect to the praise of his glorious grace.

That is what Paul is stating plainly to the Ephesians here. And we give praise to that God because he is worthy of our praise.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, lest anybody be confused,

Lord is a title and claim of divinity. And if Christ was not

God, then for Paul to call Jesus Christ Lord would be blasphemous.

But we know that Jesus is God. Even that name Jesus Christ we can be confused about sometimes.

It's not the first and last name of God. Look him up in the phone book under Christ, comma, there he is,

Jesus. Okay, does anybody know what a phone book is anymore? White pages on Google, we'll do it that way.

You're looking up Jesus Christ. It's not the first name and last name of Christ.

The name Jesus is really not that unusual. As a matter of fact, it was one of the most common names among the

Hebrews. Jesus is the transliteration of the name, anybody know? Joshua, his name was

Joshua. So when Jesus was a little boy playing with his other friends, right, and his mom comes out and says,

Jesus, it's time for dinner, what did Mary say? Joshua, that's what she's calling, calling the name

Joshua. And like 10 other little boys heads turn around at me, it's a very common name.

So what is it that sets that name apart from all the other

Joshuas? He's the one who is called Christ and only he is called Christ and no one else has that name

Christ. Christ means Messiah. It means anointed one, blessed one.

He is the one who is holy and greater and above all others.

Philippians 2, verses 10 and 11. God has given him the name that is above every name.

So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord. To the glory of God the Father, it's stated even there, to the praise of his glorious grace, even

Christ himself did all things to the glory of his Father in heaven. So Paul identifies whom we are worshiping, who gets the credit here for the salvation that we have, our

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

So point number one, we're going to take away from verse three is that in Christ, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

How beautiful is that? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?

As Paul said to the Colossians in Colossians 3, you have died and you are seated with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

And so Paul is saying to the Colossians, seek the things that are above where Christ is.

For that's where you are. As Jesus had taught in the

Sermon on the Mount, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. If your treasure is in heaven with God, that is where you are.

And so we live as kingdom people in this world, knowing that we have received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Now, usually I wait to the end of the sermon to give practical application or to tell you what the implications are of this.

But let me go ahead and spill the beans on this now. What would be the implications of knowing that you are adopted in Christ, that you are his child now, that you have been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?

What would be the spiritual implications of that? That you would live as one who has received those blessings now.

That you would live as a person of the kingdom of God, even as you continue in the fallen kingdom of this world.

Paul Washer was listening to him preach on Ephesians 1, and he told a story of one of the queens of England.

I don't remember which one this was now, may have been Elizabeth II. But when Elizabeth was a little girl, she did not want people to look at her as a future queen of England.

Didn't want it. I want everybody to treat me normal, just treat me like one of the other kids.

I don't want to be thought of as a future queen of England. And so she tried to live her life that way as well.

I want to live my life like all the rest of the kids live. I don't want to be thought of as higher or above all or that I'm somehow privileged over anyone else.

At the age of 12, that changed. When she was 12 years old, she started living her life in a completely proper and upstanding way.

As humble as she could have been for a 12 -year -old. Wasn't trying to lord it over anybody else, but her demeanor certainly changed.

And one of her teachers one time asked her, what is it that has changed about you? Why are you living at age 12 differently than you were living at age 11?

And Elizabeth said to her teacher, because I realize I'm going to be the queen of England someday, so I better start living like a queen now.

To every church that Jesus addressed in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, he said to the one who conquers, to the one who conquers, to the one who manages to remain steadfast in this world, which praise

God we don't do that on our own. We have the Holy Spirit of God to help us remain steadfast. But to the one who conquers, who withstands the enemy in the present day,

Jesus says, I will give a place for you to sit with me on my throne. That is the promise that we have in Christ, the blessings in the heavenly places.

Paul had said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, we are even going to judge angels one day.

We will sit in the seat of judgment with God and judge the angels.

So how much should that impress upon us? An understanding, a calling to live as kings and queens, even now in this fallen world.

Would that not change your behavior if you knew 40 years from now, you're going to be elected president of the

United States? Some of you probably don't have 40 years left. Amen, Jim. But just kidding, my brother.

I hope you're with us for much longer. What if four decades from now, someone told you you're going to be elected the president of the

United States? Would you not want to try and be presidential even now?

And so that would be for us who have been blessed with every blessing in the spiritual places.

May we live as though we have those blessings now, as kingdom people, even here in this world.

Verse 4, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Here we have the statement and the reason. God chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

There's the declaration. There's the doctrine laid down right there in that half a verse. And then we have the reason for it or the mission, you might say, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Why has God chosen us? He has chosen us that we would become

Christ -like. He has called us out from the rest of the world that we would live set apart.

My friends, when it comes to the doctrine of the election of God having chosen us, this doctrine is all the way through the scriptures,

Genesis to Revelation. There is not a book in the Bible that doesn't talk about it, that doesn't talk about God having chosen for himself a people.

Even to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 14, verse 2, for you are a people holy to the

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

Now, my friends, God said that specifically to Israel through Moses in Deuteronomy 14. But Paul is using that same language to say that to the church of God today.

You have been called out from the world. You have been chosen of all the other people on earth to be a follower of God and to be holy and blameless before him.

Now, anytime we start talking about holiness and spotlessness, righteousness, living in the manner in which

God has called us to, almost inevitably the conversation goes in the direction of, but we're not really going to be sinless, right?

I mean, we're all going to sin. We're all going to stumble and fall along the way, right?

I will let you say that as long as you don't use it as an excuse for sin. Yes, we still inhabit corruptible bodies, and we are going to be tempted by the things of this world in the flesh in which we inhabit.

Absolutely that's going to happen. But understand what is being said of us when we are called saints, which has already been said of us at the start of the letter,

Ephesians 1, 1, to the saints who are in Ephesus. What does saint mean?

It comes from the same word that we use to come up with the word sanctified, to the sanctified, to those who are called out, to those who are being made holy.

We stand before God justified when we come to faith. We heard the gospel of Christ proclaimed.

We repented of our sin. We became followers of Christ. We're justified. If you're a follower of Jesus, you are sinless in the eyes of God now.

That's the way he receives you, as innocent of all your faults.

That doesn't mean we're not going to sin, and we're not going to struggle with sin as we go.

But the difference here now as Christians is that before we were Christians, you were probably perfectly comfortable with your sin.

But now as a Christian pursuing holiness, before you weren't pursuing holiness, you were pursuing your own way.

Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have turned astray. We've gone every one of us to his own way. That's what you were doing before you came to Christ.

You were doing your own thing instead of the will of God. But now that you have been reoriented, the

Holy Spirit has changed your heart, has reoriented your desires. Instead of being opposed to God, you are now for God.

You are seeking God. You want God. And since your desire is to live in holiness, you now hate the sin that you previously loved.

Even when in the weakness of your flesh you fall into it, you hate it.

And even this past week I had a prayer before God in which I said to him, God, take this from me.

I don't want it anymore. I don't want to be this way in my flesh.

I want to be holy and blameless before you. As holy ones means that God has called you out of the world to pursue his holiness.

If you, when you came to Christ, heard about the grace of God and decided to fall into apathy and pursue your sin, like, well, there it is,

God has forgiven me, so now I can go do whatever it is that I want. No, I tell you, you're not a saint because you're not being sanctified.

If that's your attitude, I can go do whatever I want and God's just going to forgive me for it.

No. And Paul addressed that plainly in Romans 6. How can we who are dead to sin still live in it?

If you're still living to sin, then you're still a slave to sin. You have not been set free from it. And understand that I say here

I'm talking about living in sin. I'm not talking about you were going along fine today and all of a sudden you cursed at the driver in front of you because he wasn't going fast enough.

I'm not talking about something like that. Don't do that. But at that moment that you did something like that, it's not like, oh, well, there it goes.

I'm not a Christian anymore. Time to go get rebaptized. You're pursuing holiness.

You're trying to stop being that person and be someone who is more Christlike.

So you are pursuing that sanctification and pursuing that holiness. That's what sets you apart from the rest of the world.

The rest of the world's not pursuing those things. They're still going after their own way and will do so to their own destruction if they don't repent and follow

Christ. It's by the hearing of the gospel that we turn from a worldly way to a godly way.

And He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We have been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

So God had decided before anything was made, before He said, let there be light and brought all things into existence,

He had decided that you were going to be His follower and that as His follower you were going to be pursuing holiness and blamelessness before Him.

Not that you would hear the gospel preached and you would pray a prayer one day and then go and live the rest of your life in sinlessness.

That's not what God predestined you for. God predestined you to hear the gospel, repent, and follow

Him. And He decided this for you before the foundation of the world. Now why is it that people hate this doctrine so much?

That should make us rejoice. God loved me before I was even born and had done something stupid?

He loved me. As Charles Spurgeon said, I'm so glad that God set

His affection on me from before the foundation of the world because He certainly wouldn't have after I was born.

So that should make us rejoice to know that God had placed His affections on us before time had even come into existence.

Why is it that people hate that concept? Well, two reasons.

One is our own autonomy. We want to think that we're in control and we're not having to submit to somebody else's will.

It's my will, not God's will. He can reach His hand down halfway, but I get to be the one to decide whether or not

I'm going to reach up the rest of the way and grab it. That's the way people are. So it's in love with their own autonomy.

That's one reason. A second reason, though, and maybe the bigger reason that's debatable, but a second reason is because we think that people are better than they really are.

You think that you're gooder than you are. And I can make this decision.

We have this idea. The Southern Baptist Convention itself, our own denomination, is just saturated with this idea that people are all seekers.

They're all just kind of walking around seeking something. You know that very word to describe people who are looking for a religion?

That was a pagan word. That was the word the pagans used. It's what they used in the first century

Ephesus, a person who is seeking religion, seekers. So the philosophers would speak in such a way to try to grab hold of the seekers.

But we have stated plainly for us in Romans 3, no one seeks for God.

Why? Because we're bad. Because we hate

God. We don't want him. If God were to have left human beings to their own devices to travel their own way, as I said earlier, everybody going their own way and doing their own thing, if God had just left us in that state, no one ever would have become a

Christian. Ever. Because no one's seeking God. You became a

Christian because God sought you. And he chose you from before the foundation of the world.

And as I said, you know, preaching from my story at the beginning, Titus 1 .1, Paul preaching that he was an apostle by the will of God for the sake of the faith of God's elect.

Paul did what he did so that those whom God had elected from before the foundation of the world would become realized through the hearing of the gospel and come to salvation.

My friends, everybody becomes a Christian the exact same way. We became a Christian because you heard the gospel and believed it.

That's how you came to faith. But God had foreordained that you would hear it and believe it.

And praise God for that because if left to our own human devices, we never would have made the decision.

Never would have decided in our flesh to stop doing our own thing and instead go after God.

The Bible says that we are radically depraved. Another word for that because we like the theological words and we don't have to understand the theological words, but you do understand this word.

The Bible says we're evil. And Jesus said that exactly in the

Sermon on the Mount. It was when he described a son who comes and asks his father for a loaf of bread.

What father is going to give his son a stone? And Jesus said, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, hear that?

And that was all Jesus' disciples because according to Matthew 5 -1, that was exactly who came to listen to Jesus speak there in the

Sermon on the Mount. His disciples came to him and he spoke to them saying, you're evil.

That's what he said to his own disciples. That's who we are. Without Christ, we are opposed to God.

We don't want to have anything to do with God. We want to go our own way. And if left to that, we never would have made the decision to follow

Christ if not for the fact that God intervened in our wickedness and chose us for himself in his son,

Christ Jesus. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

Why did he do this? In love, he predestined us because he had placed his affections on us before the foundation of the world.

You know, it's very common for somebody to say that God chose me because of a future decision that he saw that I was going to make, but he didn't predetermine that decision that I was going to make.

You ever heard anybody say that before? Here's the problem with that statement. If God chose you because of a decision that he saw that you were going to make, how could you have made any other decision?

Like you have just taken away free will. I know the argument gets made to try to defend free will, but no, you've destroyed it.

God saw a decision that I was going to make, and so he chose me because of a future decision. Really?

You tied the hands of God before you were even born? No. It wasn't because of your decision that you came to faith.

It was because of God's decision, and this was all to the praise of his glory.

That's another thing that offends us about this doctrine is because we want God to be all about us. Jesus died for you.

Amen! To the praise of his glory. Wait a minute. I thought

I was the hero. I thought I was the star of this story. I thought God was all for me. God loves you with an everlasting love, and the

Scriptures say so plainly. Psalm 103, 17, the steadfast love of the

Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. Jeremiah 31, 3,

I have loved you with an everlasting love. Here's something to ponder, something to think about.

We don't think about this as much with doctrine of predestination or doctrine of election, but God's love actually doesn't have a beginning.

Now, my love for my wife has a beginning. I can even tell you exactly what day it was that I told her

I loved her the very first time, and it was on Easter Sunday of 2009 that I said to her in a parking lot in the rain,

I love you, Becky, for the first time those words left my lips. So my love for my wife has a starting point.

The love for my wife also has an ending point. You're like, whoa, wait a minute. It's not supposed to love each other forever.

We don't. Even according to the Bible, we don't. According to Scripture, the love that a husband has for his wife has an ending point.

When is it? Till death do us part. But God's love for us has no beginning and no end.

He loved us before time, and he will love us after time is over.

And that is such a blessed promise to behold.

Romans 8, 38, and 39. For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

Lord. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons.

Sons and daughters. You can read the text that way. That's okay. Sons and daughters through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

And then verse 6 goes right along with the statement at the end of verse 5. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

Go back to verse 3. 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.

What kind of blessings are we talking about? The blessings to praise him for his glorious grace which he has given us in his beloved.

The blessing to praise God. Do you consider that a blessing?

That you get to praise God this morning? Or any day? Because remember, you were a person who was fallen in wicked sinfulness.

The fallenness of mankind who was not seeking after God but you were seeking after your own will.

You were not out to worship God. You were out to glorify yourself. And much of this world, very unfortunately, especially in an

American culture who will say that they are Christians are not worshipping God at all. They're worshipping a

God of their own making. The God that they have formulated in their own mind. I just had a comment said to me just this morning online.

Sometimes I try to stay offline before Sunday morning. I didn't succeed at that this morning. Somebody online said to me just today that you're speaking nonsense from an old dusty book.

And when you went and looked at that person's profile online they said that they were a Christ follower. What Jesus do you worship if you don't read the

Bible? How do you even know about Him? He's just some philosopher that this person made up in his mind.

Doesn't know what Jesus said. Jesus is who He wants Jesus to be. But you have come to worship

God according to the purpose of His will. And that's a wonderful thing to rejoice in.

Day by day that you get to worship God to the praise of His glorious grace.

Verse 7, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

Once again, in Him we have redemption. We've been redeemed. We had sinned against God and we owed a debt so great that we could not possibly pay it.

It's either Matthew 18 or 19. The chapter escapes me at the present where Jesus gives the parable of the unmerciful servant.

And it says that this unmerciful servant came before his master and he owed a debt of 10 ,000 talents.

That's an insane amount of money. Like talents, we're lost on what kind of currency a talent is in this present day and age.

10 ,000 talents for somebody in first century Palestine at that particular time, it would have been like saying he owed his master a billion dollars.

How could you possibly pay anybody back a billion dollars? Could you do that?

No. Insurmountable. You will never see that amount of money in your lifetime.

Unless God just so blesses you with earthly riches beyond your wildest imagination, all of us in this room combined will not even total a billion dollars.

And yet this guy owed that much money. I don't know what in the world kind of debt that was, but this is a parable, so stay with the parable, okay?

And the man falls on his face before his master and says, there's no way I'm going to be able to pay you back.

And the master was merciful to him and forgave him of a debt that he could not possibly pay back.

But then that man had a servant who owed him a much smaller debt.

And the unmerciful servant went to his servant and beat him up and said, hey, where's the money you owe me?

And some messengers went back to the master and said, hey, that guy that you forgave, we saw him beating up his own servant over money that the servant wouldn't pay him back.

And so the master drags his unmerciful servant back in front of him and says, what does it matter with you? I forgave you.

You couldn't show the same kind of mercy and grace to one of your own servants for a much less debt than the one that I forgave you of?

And Jesus said he was bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

God has forgiven us of a debt so great we couldn't pay it back. We've been redeemed.

We've been purchased by Christ. As it says in Titus 2, verse 14,

Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who would be zealous for good works.

We have redemption through Christ. He has purchased us by his blood and given us the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

It's because God is gracious. Why did he save you? Because God is gracious and merciful.

He saves whom he wants to save. As he said to Moses, as Paul repeated in Romans chapter 9, he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion because he's

God. And he does this to the praise of his glorious grace. We have redemption through the blood of Christ, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

He lavished it upon us. You're not lacking in anything. You have all of the blessings in the heavenly places guaranteed you by faith in Jesus Christ.

In all wisdom and insight. God gave you wisdom and insight into his revealed will when the gospel was preached to you and you believed it because the

Holy Spirit changed your heart from being the natural man to a spiritually minded man so you might understand the spiritual things of God, 1

Corinthians 2 .14. Verse 9, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ.

God purposed in Christ. He has revealed the mystery of his will. Those things that were mysterious even to the prophets in the

Old Testament have since been revealed to us today through the apostles who saw it, who testified about it, and even to us who have come to believe.

Even though the apostles saw the empty tomb, they saw Christ crucified and risen again from the grave. Matthew 28 .17

says they worshipped him, but some doubted. They're looking at a resurrected

Christ right there before them, and yet they still couldn't wrap their minds around this. And then according to Luke 24, it wasn't until they went up on the

Mount of Olives right before Jesus was about to ascend into heaven that he opened the minds of his disciples to understand everything that had been written about the prophets.

The mystery of God's will has been made known to us according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ.

Again, that Christ would give himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness.

In verse 10, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things to him, things in heaven, and things on earth.

God is working out this plan that he had predestined from before the foundation of the world to bring all things reconciled to himself through Christ Jesus.

Reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, reconciling all things to himself means that those who are evil will not be able to dwell with the

Holy God. So what will happen to them? They will be cast from his presence. But God had predestined and chosen you to dwell with him.

Now, how can a person who is evil dwell with the Holy God forever? Well, he has to redeem you somehow.

He has to cleanse and purify you, which he does through his Son. With the giving of his perfect Son on the cross for our sins.

And he has chosen the manner in which to transmit all of the blessings of redemption and righteousness and salvation, sanctification, glorification that we're going to receive.

All of these things God has chosen to transmit to you through faith.

By believing. That's all it takes. I say all it takes, but as we've come to understand, a person can't just will themselves to believe.

It has to be according to the will of God. Jesus said in John 6, 28 and 29, the people said to Jesus, what must we do to be doing the works of God?

And Jesus said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. Verse 44, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. Verse 65, this is why

I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.

You know what it says in verse 66? Then many turned away and stopped following him because they could not believe what he was saying.

Hundreds of disciples. Only the 12 were left. Jesus looks at the 12 and says, what about you?

And Peter says, Lord, where else are we gonna go? You have the words of eternal life. And as Jesus would say to them in the upper room, later on in John chapter 16, you have come to believe because it was granted to you by the

Father to believe. That's how we come to faith.

And as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things to him through Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

So those who are evil will be judged. They will be removed when

God reconciles all things to himself. But those whom he has redeemed and chosen to be holy and blameless before him will come to the salvation that he had predestined for them in Christ.

You came to believe in Christ because God chose you from before the foundation of the world.

We were in Galatians, the book we were studying earlier this year, Galatians 1 .15, which we were looking at just a few months ago.

The apostle Paul said, but when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me.

God set me apart before I was born. Very similar to something

Jeremiah said, Jeremiah 1 .5, the Lord says to the prophet Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb,

I knew you and before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Now, oftentimes when we read passages like that, Galatians 1 .15, Jeremiah 1 .5, we say, well, that was for an apostle and that was for a prophet, but that isn't for us.

Oh yeah? 1 Thessalonians 1 .4 and 5, for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know how I can look at you, my brother and sister, and say, I know that God has chosen you from before the foundation of the world because you believe the gospel.

We do not know who the elect are. God knows who they are.

We've been told to preach the gospel so that those whom God had elected would come to faith as a part of his plan in the fullness of time.

As Charles Spurgeon said, if God had done us the favor of putting a big red E on everyone's back to let us know which ones were elect,

I'd just go around lifting up everybody's shirt and go, okay, you're elect. I'll preach the gospel to you so that you may come to faith because God has elected you to believe it.

That's not the way it works. We don't know who the elect are. God knows who they are. So we are told to preach the gospel to everyone.

And those whom God has foreordained will come to faith in Christ according to the purpose of his will.

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

Next week we look at verse 11. 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.

And we'll pick up our understanding of this doctrine again next week. Let me summarize with this and bringing together three points here at the conclusion.

Why has God saved you? Why has God saved you?

We could probably make a list of 10 things. But let's summarize this with three that we have from this particular passage.

Ephesians 1, 3 through 10. Why has God saved you? Number one, to the praise of his glorious grace.

His glory, not your glory. The moment God glorifies you above himself he elevates you to the place of God.

Boy, wouldn't we love that. But that isn't God's purpose. He's holy and we're not.

He's worthy of praise, we're not. So God does this to the praise of his glorious grace.

That's number one. That's why God has saved you. Number two, why has God saved you? Because he loves you.

And he loves you with an everlasting love that he has placed on you from before the foundation of the world.

Why has God saved you? Reason number three, to make you holy and blameless before him.

Why has God saved you? One, to the praise of his glorious grace. Two, because he loves you. Three, to make you holy and blameless before him.

To make you more Christ -like. That's why he saved you. So that you would become more like his son.

So it was not a momentary thing that happened to you once upon a time. But you are still growing in holiness.

You're still pursuing it. You're still seeking after God. Affirming that God had elected you from before time began.

And so, with this understanding, let me bring back in the implication that I went ahead and spoiled earlier in the sermon.

Live as sons and daughters of the kingdom now. And slain by hateful men.

Lives and reigns in resurrection. And can bear his father's children.

All the ages.

Radiant son of heav 'n he stands. Calling home his father's children.

Holding forth his wounds. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.