The Blessings of God

The Blessings of God

• Here at Celebration Church, we walk through books of the Bible.  We have always taken passages we find difficult and worked through them.  This morning, we come to a passage that some of you find delightful, others find distasteful.  Some of you may feel both.  It is a passage that speaks of God’s predestination in salvation.
• I have seen these verses grow Christians and churches into a wonderful maturity.  I have also seen it split, divide and harm Christians and churches.  We no doubt have both people sitting here in this room this morning.  So what are we to do?  The same thing we have always done.  We will open God’s word, submit to it, and allow it to speak into our lives.  
• In the coming weeks, I am going to encourage us to dive into this difficult subject.  But because of the potential dangers, I need to lay a few ground rules of which I am going to be a real stickler about.  
  • 1. We must love our people more than our doctrines.
    • Both sides of this predestination debate fall squarely within true Christianity. 
  • 2. We will humbly approach the subject.
    • remembering that we are humans with minds corrupted by the world and corrupted by sin.  Only God knows everything.
  • 3. We will allow scripture to speak for itself. 
    • It is our ultimate authority, and we must submit to it.  We will rigorously explore His word for the treasure contained within. 
  • 4. We must be okay with disagreement.  
    • There may be disagreement this morning.  That is okay.  But Disagreement will not lead to division.  Not here.  Not at Celebration Church, not on this.
• I will do my best to hang as closely to the text, and its intended meaning as possible.  This is God’s word.  It is for our education, instruction and blessing.  

Ephesians 1:3-14

In the Greek this is one long, complex, glorious sentence that oozes with God centered worship. It is a 202 word run on sentence. That talks all about THE SUPREMACY OF GOD IN SALVATION

• Who determines our salvation? Us or Him?
  • The 3 stances – Most of them are centered around an attempt to preserve the sovereignty of man in salvation.  To preserve what we know as “freewill”.  And there are certainly passages of scripture that speak to the human responsibility of receiving and following Christ.  But that is not what this passage is about.  This passage is about the supremacy of God in salvation.   

1. Denial of Election – there is no such thing as God calling, electing, predestining people to salvation.  

• This speaks well to our western minds……. But it is not what the Bible teaches.

• Election is based on Foreknowledge

• God chose people based on his foreknowledge of who would choose Him.
  1. This gives us the best of both worlds, we have maximum human freedom, while enjoying the benefits of assurance of salvation.  But is it Biblical?  I personally do not believe so, and we will get into why in a minute.

3.  Predestination is real and fully true, God has, from eternity past, chosen people for salvation, not based on their future choices or merit, but solely on his good pleasure.  Based on God’s loving call, those people will joyfully come to him of their own desire.  This is what I believe the text is telling us.

• The trinitarian nature of the text, 
  • 3-6 – Chosen by the Father
  • 7-12 – Redeemed by the Son 
  • 13-14 – Sealed by the Spirit

God has Chosen You (vs 3-6)

• Vs 3 – Why should we bless God?  Because God has blessed us!
  1. How has he blessed us? By choosing us.  We have been chosen by God. 
• Vs 4 – He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. What does this mean?
  1. It means that He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.  
  2. Predestination – “An outcome or course of events determined in advance by divine will.” 
  3. Foreknowledge – “An awareness of something before it happens or exists”
     • These are radically different definitions in both the English and the Greek.  If God wanted to use the word foreknowledge, he would have.
     • If predestination is based on foreknowledge, God does not in fact predestine anyone, the individual predestines himself.  That is not what this passage is teaching us.
• Vs 5 – In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons. 
  1. Before we get into what this means, I want to note something here.  Sometimes when we think about Election, Calling, Predestination, we think of God like a kid with a magnifying glass.  Mean, Cruel, Fickle.  
  2. Whatever this means, we must recognize that this is an act of love.  God’s choosing is an act of love.  
     • The danger of turning this into a debate is that we miss the very heart of what God is desiring to put forth in this passage. BLESSING, JOY, WORSHIP, GRACE, PEACE, LOVE.  This is the actions of God toward you.  
       1. I.E. gym class, Adoption
• Vs 11 – “According to the purpose of His will”  
  • The basis of our being predestined is not something that we do or will do, but is based solely on God according to His good will and pleasure.  Your salvation was predestined by God before the earth began.
    1. God chose us first, We choose God second.  
       • 1st John 4:19 – We love because he first loved us.
    2. If God had not chosen us, we would not have chosen Him.
       • John 6:44 – No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
       • John 6:65 – And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
• Does this mean that our choices don’t matter? Does predestination make us robots?  Absolutely not.  

Choose God!

1. Vs -13 – This is the same sentence.  Election and the act of Belief belong in the same sentence! 
   • Charles Spurgeon was once asked how he reconciled God’s sovereignty and human responsibility… He replied, “I never reconcile two friends”  
   • How do I know if I am chosen? How do I know if I am predestined?  Easy, choose God.  Seek God. Call on God. 
     1. Romans 10:13 – For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
   • A man who died was transported to the gates of heaven, and overhead the gates of heaven it read, whosoever will may come.  But as he walked through those gates feeling good about his decision, He turned around and read the backside of the sign.  “Predestined in Him before the foundations of the Earth”
     1. Your choice matters.  Your will matters.  But it does not matter more than God’s Will.

D2 Class – Predestination Vs Free-Will

1. We must be careful not to pick a side at the expense of scripture.  We must take all of holy scripture and seek to reconcile it.  We cannot choose our favorite verses that align with our side and toss out everything else.  
2. There are a host of other verses, doctrines, and questions for us to work through on this topic.  Verses like 2nd Peter 3:9 – 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Doctrines like, “whether or not you can lose your salvation” and Questions like, “if predestination is true, why share the gospel at all?” or “ questions like “Is God a fair God?”.
   • These are all great questions! The bad news is that we do not have time to answer them this morning.  But the good news is that, We have a new D2 class called Predestination vs Free Will, starting on June 6th at 6pm.  It is free, register online or at the table in the lobby.  I will take you as deep as I can into the theology and the history of this doctrine.  Whether you agree with me, or don’t agree with me, I would encourage you to come to this class.  It is going to be a lot of fun.  

Adoption

1. 34% of children in America will go to bed tonight without a father in the home.  
2. Over 50% of children born to women ages thirty and under are born out of wedlock
   • No matter your earthly father, God is your heavenly Father and you can trust that He is always Good.
   • Have you ever witnessed an adoption?  It is beautiful.  That kid didn’t have a family, now they have a family. They didn’t have a father, now they have a father. Nobody was looking after them, now somebody is looking after them. Nobody was loving them, now somebody is loving them.  This is what God does for you.
3. He does it at great cost to himself. What was the cost? His only Son.

Christ has Redeemed You (vs 7-12)

• Explain

READ Vs 7 – Redemption through the Blood

1. Redemption gives us this idea of freedom from bondage or imprisonment.
   • We call it addictions in our culture, they called it slavery.  
     1. Moses and Pharaoh
     2. Jesus – Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

He talks about us being in Christ eleven times in the first fourteen verses.

1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones – “If you leave out the ‘In Christ’ you will not have any of these blessings at all!”
2. if we are in Christ and we have trusted in Christ’s death in our place for our sins, the wrath of God passes over us, and we are redeemed from our addictions and slaveries to worship him in freedom with a new life.  Because Jesus has redeemed us, we can walk with him away from our slavery.

• Apply

I don’t know what enslaves you, but Christ has come to free you from your sins. 

1. Lust, Greed, Anger, Alcohol, any number of idols.  

What is the purpose of this redemption? 

1. 1. Is it because Jesus couldn’t stand the thought of eternity without you? Yes… and No. God did love you enough to shed his own blood.  He did come down to restore us to Himself.  But this passage seems to tell us that Jesus is not only the redeemer, but the reason for the redemption as well.  It is His purpose, His counsel, His Will…His glory.  He reigns supreme. Your salvation is for His glory. 
      • Go outside at night, and look up. The whole creation is designed to scream at you, “You’re not the point!”
        1. The human race is a collection of fragile organisms on a tiny speck of dust in a remote corner of a medium-sized, backwoods galaxy that is but one of billions of such galaxies. God is the center of it all.
        2. It is a good thing that the earth is not the center of the solar system, it doesn’t have the gravitational pull to keep everything where it belongs, and we would all die.
        3. If the sun were a person, the most loving thing it could do is keep itself at the center of the solar system.

• The exaltation of God’s glory is not just the most important thing; it is also the greatest good in the universe.

1. • 1. Give Him glory!  

The Holy Spirit has Sealed You (Vs 12-14) (Conclusion)

• Explain

Seal – Kept safe until the proper time

What is this seal?  The Holy Spirit

GOD GAVE HIMSELF – The greatest Blessing

Wedding Ceremony

• How do you know if you have the Spirit?
  1. Fruit of the Spirit – Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control.

Guarantee – It is a sure thing. It cannot be lost.  It cannot be stolen.

1. Bank account with a guarantee.
2. Your inheritance is assured.  You cannot lose it, it cannot be taken from you.  

If you have the Spirit of God, you have eternal life… Right now.  Not one day… Now.  Spiritually speaking, you will never be dead again.  If you actually have the Spirit of God in you, you will not, and you cannot lose your salvation.