Episode Transcript
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Well, please turn in your bibles
to Phesians chapter four or one one.
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I'll be preaching on verse four.
That's why that's looked out. Phesians one,
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as I mentioned to you a last
time. This on passage of verses
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three through fourteen are broken up into
nine what the Greeks called periods, and
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I'm going to do my best in
English to read breaking those periods up.
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And one thing I want you to
notice, which will be relevant for a
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later as we look at the text, is how each one ends with an
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emphasis on the work of God.
Each period ends strongly in that way,
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if I do a good job at
reading it anyway, ends with an emphasis
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on the initiative of God in our
salvation. So let's give attention to God's
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word. Blessed be the God and
father of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
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who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
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even as he chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that
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we should be holly and blameless before
him. In love, he predestined us
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for adoption to himself as sons through
Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of
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his will, to the praise of
his glorious grace with which he has blessed
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us. In the below of it. In Him we have redemption through his
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blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace
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which he has lavished upon us,
and all wisdom and insight, making known
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to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he
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set forth in Christ as a plan
for the fullness of time to unite all
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things in him, things in heaven
and things on earth. In Him,
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we have obtained an inheritance, having
been predestined according to the purpose of him
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who works all things according to the
counsel of his will, so that we
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who were first born, or so
that we, who were the first to
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hope in Christ, might be to
the praise of his glory. In Him,
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you also, when you heard the
word of truth, the Gospel of
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your salvation and believed in him,
we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
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who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it, to
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the praise of his glory. Amen, you may be seated. So our
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focus this evening. Our focus this
evening is on verse, for these words
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even as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
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that we should be wholly and blameless
before him. You'll notice that verse for
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has these two words at the end
of it, in love. Perhaps that
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seems a little odd, the way
that verse five begins after the sentence starts.
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So I want to deal with the
text first and just think a little
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bit about what it is we're exactly
talking about. It reminds me a little
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bit of a cooking class my my
wife once took, and this she was
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told by this professional chef that before
you cook, you should get all your
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ingredients out on the counter right,
everything's measured, everything's ready to go,
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and then the cooking is really fun
because you just put it all together.
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We're going to try to do that. We're going to get everything out out
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of the counter first so that we
can then know what we're dealing with and
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how to deal with that. Or, to put it another way, these
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questions that we've talked about over the
last a year or so, how we
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study the Bible. What does it
say? What does it mean? How
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it does it apply? We're going
to deal with that first question first.
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What does it say? What are
the actual words that we're dealing with and
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thinking about. Well, tonight it's
these words, even as he chose us
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in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and
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blameless before him. But what about
these two words in love? Well,
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we're going to, as the ESV
translates it here, a deal with it
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in that way, and I think
that's best. The words in love do
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connect with the next sentence. In
love, he predestined us for adoption.
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Now it is possible to read this
other ways, and perhaps in your Bible's
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it's it's written another way. So
one way this sometimes happened is that in
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love those two words are attached to
the end of verse, to the end
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of the sentence that you see in
verse, for the idea being that he
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chose us in love, right,
he, even as he chose us in
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him before the foundation of the world, that we should be wholly and blameless
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before him in love. The problem
with that option, although there's nothing sort
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of theologically wrong with it, is
that those words in love are really,
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really far away from that main verb, and that usually doesn't happen. You
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even sinse that in the English,
don't you? As I read it,
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even as he chose us in him, but Dadadada DA, Dadada, DA,
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Dadada, Da Dada in love.
If they are really modifying that,
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then it's pretty far it's pretty far
away. It would be very unusual.
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So second option is that in love
doesn't refer or doesn't modify that choosing,
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but instead modifies us and our actions, so in other words, that we
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should be wholly and blameless before him. In love, in other words,
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it's describing our actions or our loving
rather than his. That would it works
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grammatically and and not theologically wrong.
The problem is is, as I mentioned
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before, Paul has this very highly
crafted section and perhaps up you see it's
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somewhat in English. It's a specially
true in Greek. Every single one of
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these periods ends in a very strong
way about his glory, in Christ,
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in him, and this would be
the if this, what if we read
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it this way with this would be
the one exception and it would be a
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focus on us. Again, not
theologically wrong, but it would be odd.
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Given every other thing. That leads
us with option three, which the
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translators here of the ESV took,
which I think is right. Instead of
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connecting in love with either of those
two things, it ought to be connected
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with the next sentence, and it's
it's in other words, it's not the
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end of verse four, it's the
beginning of verse five, as you see
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here. In love he predestined us, and here we get the best of
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all possible worlds. It's grammatically close
to the word. In fact, the
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new placement of the way it is
set here it's actually emphasizing love. It's
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sort of pushes it to the foreground
by saying, instead of a as a
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final thought, it's a first thought, that predestination, his choosing, as
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we consider in this verse, is
not a kind of cold, artificial mechanical
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thing that God is doing, but
he is emphasizing that it is happening in
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love, and this also makes it
maintains the parallelism that we see throughout.
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So all three our possibilities sort of
legitimate options to read it. You may
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see it in your bibles in different
ways, but I do take it for
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these reasons to connect with verse five
instead of verse four, as the SV
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does here. So that's our those
are our ingredients. In other words,
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these are the things were working with
tonight and and next time we will consider
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the the loving way in particular in
which God has predestined us for adoption.
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An amazing thing. So, with
that that on the counter, so to
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speak, let's do some cooking.
So a verse for says, even as
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he chose us before the foundation of
the world. That's part one, and
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then part two, that we should
be holly and blameless before him. I
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want to focus on the first part. First. What does this mean?
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That he chose us before the foundation
of the world. This is an amazing
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thing. It means that before there
were bees, before there were trees,
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before they were mountains, before there
was light, before the world had been
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made, there was God worthy to
receive all glory and honor and powers.
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Revelation for eleven, says, the
beginning, the end, the Alpha and
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the Omega, a God Tryun God
father, son and Holy Spirit. I
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am that, I am God,
says to Moses. From everlasting to everlasting,
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he is God and in himself,
according to his will, he chose
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us. That's difficult to talk about
this in a way, because how do
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you talk about before before there is
time, because that language of before is
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a time word right. How can
you say what's next or before there really
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isn't a next to happen when God
is simply existing for all eternity. I'm
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all simply say with David and Psalm
one hundred and thirty one the Lord.
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My heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high.
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I do not occupy myself with things
too great and marvelous for me. Mean,
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how do we talk about the eternality
of God? How do we think
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of before? Before you even have
a category of before? You can't.
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We are creatures that are bound by
time, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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It's our creaturely nature. We exist
this in time and in space.
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So God speaks to us in a
way that we can understand, but certainly
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he is not the same as us. So perhaps one good way to express
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this is to use the language of
our shorter catechism. Question Twenty, that
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God, having out of his mere
good pleasure from all eternity, elected some
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to have everlasting life reminds me of
what Paul says in Romans nine about Jacob
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and Esaw. Before these brothers were
born, before they had done anything good
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or evil, in order that the
purpose of election might stand, God chose
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one and not the other. There's
this sovereignty of God that's expressed there of
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this way in which he stands out
far above us. If we forget God
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who he is as God, it's
much easier for us to want to micro
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manage his decisions, if we think
of God as being like us, according
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to our ways, according to our
thoughts, according to our nature, especially
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if we sort of filter that all
through the Lens of sin, that it's
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very easy for us to impude all
kinds of bad motives to God, utter
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or evil things, to stand over
him and say, well, why have
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you done such and such a thing? But if we remember that God is
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so different from us, so high
and so marvelous, so sovereign, so
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God, then it, least for
me, pushes me into a state of
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much more humility than I tend to
have otherwise, and I think that's right,
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Paul says. And ask this question
rhetorically. Who are you, Oh
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man, to ask these kinds of
things? Who is a potter or who
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is the clay? To say to
the Potter, why did you make me
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such in such a way? These
are the questions of impertinent people, which
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we are. But God speaks to
us here not to chastise us, but
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to lift our hearts up in the
praise of his name. Notice how it
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starts in verse three. Blessed be
the God and father of our Lord Jesus
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Christ. Why? Because he has
blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing
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in the heavenly places, even as
he chose us in him before the foundation
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of the world, that we should
be wholly and blameless in him. These
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are the reasons that blessed be our
God, these are the reasons that we
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lift up his name and praise,
because he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing
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in Christ, even having chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world.
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So, when God tells us of
this great mystery, that we were
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chosen by him even in love,
as the next verse says, why would
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in the world would we bring before
our minds and our hearts all these sad
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things that people do and treat this
aspect of our salvation with hatred or disdain
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or simply ignore it, when God
has given this marvelous truth to us here
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that we might bless his name.
Even before the foundation of the world,
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I chose you. This ought to
be one of the many things that we
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put up as placards in our mind
among the many other amazing works of God.
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When we think about his creation,
in the ways that he is created,
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the blue whale or the mighty mountains
or sunsets or gravity or time or
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any number of things. Here is
an aspect of new creation as well,
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plan from the very beginning to be
holy and blameless. Before him, before
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the foundation of the world, the
new creation was already being put into place.
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People chosen to be wholly and blameless, adopted into the great family of
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God. And, like the old
creation, God was purposing to bring something
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out of nothing, where there was
no life, no godliness, no faith,
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nothing good, no righteousness. God
would take this formless, emptied,
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deathly void of our souls and bring
forth something that could be called Holy,
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pure, blameless or innocent, not
guilty of anything. Now, for that
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doctrine, we have to go to
Ephesians chapter two, where we read that
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you were dead and your trespasses and
sins in which you once Walt An,
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the wind in which you once walked, following the course of this world,
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following the Prince of the power of
the air, the spirit that is now
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at work, and the sons of
disobedience, among whom we also once lived
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in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body and
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the mind, and were by nature
children of Wrath, like the rest of
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mankind, but God, being rich
in mercy because of the great love with
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which he loved us even before the
foundation of the world, adding that from
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verse four, even when we were
dead in our trespasses, made us alive
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together with Christ. By grace,
you have been saved and raised us up
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with him and seated us with him
in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus,
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so that in the coming ages he
might show to us the immeasurable riches
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of his grace in kindness toward us
in Christ Jesus. For by grace you
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have been saved through faith, and
this is not your own doing. It
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is the gift of God, not
a result of work. So that no
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one may boast, for we are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
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good works which God prepared beforehand that
we should walk in them. So when
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we read a passage like this,
we see how impossible it is to enter
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into this state of election, this
state of being chosen and loved, from
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a state of sin and death.
Impossible for US anyway. The consequence of
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our being dead in our trespasses and
sins is it is given to us in
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verse twelve. Remember that you were
at that time separated from Christ, alienated
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from the Commonwealth of Israel, strangers
to the covenant of promise, having no
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hope and without God in the world. Our State of sin and misery are
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a state of being dead in our
trespasses and sins. Wasn't leading into a
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glorious state of God's Love and and
in choosing us. People that think that
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we were somehow elected on something good
in us or forgetting that we are dead
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in our trespasses and sins. They're
forgetting what Paul says here in Ephesians,
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to that we were chosen because we
are his workmanship. This is a gift,
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he says, that we are not
earning when God chooses us in Christ,
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but for the foundation of the world, he's choosing us who would fall
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into sin, who would be dead
in our trespasses, but who would be
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saved from it. You see how
passage like this makes the idea that God
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shows us on the basis of something
that we have done impossible, because we
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haven't done anything good or evil before
we're born. And second, when he
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did give to us the gift of
faith, he gave it to us not
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as a reward for our righteousness,
not as a reward for our goodness,
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but as a gift to people who
are drowning in their own filth. When
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God gives us the gift of faith
and lifts US up in Christ, he's
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giving it to people who are already
dead, dead in their own unrighteousness.
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And so the purpose of Ephesians three
through fourteen is to lift our hearts up
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to the praise of his name,
of the one who has saved us in
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this way, who chose US sinners
even before the foundation of the world,
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even when he knew the things that
we would do. Notice the emphasis all
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throughout this section on the initiative of
God in our salvation. It is in
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verse five we read the good pleasure
of his will, in verse seven,
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according to the riches of His grace, in verse nine, his Good Pleasure,
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in verses eleven and twelve, according
to his plan, who brings all
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things into effect and accord with the
counsel of his will? This is because
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of God. Your Salvation is because
of God, and so who ought we
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to praise for our salvation God.
It's not for our own boasting. As
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Christians, we don't walk around pridefully
preening ourselves before other people, showing how
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impressive we are. No, we
are those who have been chosen by God's
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sovereign grace, not that we should
boast, but that she should bless he
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his name. As Augustine says,
God therefore chose believers, but in order
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that they might be believers, not
because they already were. He chose us
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in him that we would be holy
and blameless before him. And one last
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thing to note, borrowing from my
friend and this New Testament professor I've mentioned,
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Dr Steve Baugh, he points out
that God chooses not an a nameless
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collective, he says, this sort
of mass of corporate people. When he
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chooses US, as Christ says in
John Ten three, he calls us by
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name. When God chooses us for
our salvation, he chooses us as individuals.
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He knows your heart, your mind, every every inch of you,
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your body, your soul, your
surroundings, your connections, your people,
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everything, all your heart aches,
all your troubles, your birthdate, your
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death date, all of it.
God chooses you. He knows you by
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name and in such a way that
when Jesus speaks to you for the preaching
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of his word, we read in
Hebrews or Romans ten faith comes through hearing
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that, when he preaches that word
to you, and faith is born in
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you. You hear the voice of
Your Shepherd. He says, my sheep
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will hear my voice. That's how
it's going to be. Who could do
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that? God can do that.
And so when he calls us, he
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doesn't call this nameless collective, this
mass of humanity, like each in every
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star, that he knows their names, each and every single one of us.
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He knows if you have put your
faith in Christ, if the Holy
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Spirit is working in your life,
sanctifying you, blessing you, giving you
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the peace of God which surpasses all
understanding, if God is brought you into
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Covenant Communion with others believers, if
he's teaching you the things of his word,
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if he's growing you and promise to
you these things things, then you
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belong to him. You have a
been adopted as one of his children and,
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as it corresponds with our adoptions even
here in the United States, we
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don't go and adopt a nameless collective
of people or even a nameless person.
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When we make an adoption and bring
someone into our families, we do so
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for that particular person, no more, no less. You don't adopt a
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son or a daughter and then wake
up the next day and find a whole
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bedroom full of kids or people missing. Know you. You choose a particular
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one and you say this one will
be mine. In love I choose.
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I'm going to make this my son, make this one my daughter, and
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you are this is what God has
done for us. The reason, as
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we've said, as that would we
would be holy and blameless before him.
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The EPHESIANS knew something about holiness,
even apart from Christ. The temple of
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Artemis, of great pride of the
Effhesians, had various holiness rituals. As
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you might expect of worship of even
false gods, there's evidence that people would
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take office even as some sort of
term of service and and carry out that
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term of service and and maintain a
certain standards of purity during that time.
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Our purity is different than this.
Our God is different than Artemis or any
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other. We are said to be
chosen before the foundation of the world.
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Artemis is said to have been born
herself in time from Leedo and Zeus,
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God who is from everlasting to everlasting, whose worship is far above all gods,
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is truly great and greatly to be
praised. His name is to be
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blessed above all gods. And when
you consider his worship, when you consider
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his temple and compare it to the
pathetic ruins of Artemis that I believe are
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now in some kind of marsh or
bog, our God has established a temple
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that is made of living stones,
each and end, every single individual,
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unchosen by him, ordered in place
by the Holy Spirit, built on the
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foundation of Christ and the apostles to
be his dwelling place forever, the Kingdom,
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he says, that cannot be shaken. This is your God, whose
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chosen you in Christ, before the
foundation of the world, there's no there's
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no salvation, no blessing apart from
this Christ. As we read in verse
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three, every spiritual blessing comes to
us in this savior. So if you
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think that you can know this God, if you think you can have peace
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with God, hope with God,
hope in God, if you think you
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can have this kind of eternal security
apart from Christ, then you're simply not
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reading what he says, because over
and over it says in Christ, in
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Christ, in Christ. There is
only one way to know God in this
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way, there's only one way to
have the salvation that he promises to us,
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and that is through the sun,
whom he gives freely to us and
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offers to all who would put their
faith in him. Go to the Lord
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Jesus. He is being offered to
you and when you accept him and perceive
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and receive him and walk into that
House of salvation through the door that is
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Christ, know that the foundation of
that house is built on something eternal,
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the very will of God in love
for you. So I squeeze a little
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bit of verse five and will come
will consider it more next time. For
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now, let's pray give praise to
God.
