Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Let's turn our attention to Ephesians chapter
one. Ephesians one, I'll read verses
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one through fourteen. Tonight I'll do
my best to focus on verses thirteen and
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fourteen. I have a feeling will
be dipping a little bit back into where
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we came from. So let's hear
God's word tonight. Ephesians chapter one,
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versus one through fourteen. Paul an
Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will
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of God, to the saints who
are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ
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Jesus, grace to you and peace
from God, our father and the Lord
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Jesus Christ. 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 holy and blameless before
him. In love, he predestined us
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for adoption as sons through Christ or
through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose
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of his will, to the praise
of his glorious grace with which he has
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blessed us in the beloved. In
Him, we have redemption through his blood
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the forgiveness of our trespasses, according
to the riches of His grace which he
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lavished upon us in all wisdom and
insight, making known to us the mystery
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of his will, according to his
purpose, which he set forth in Christ
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as a plan for the fullness of
time to unite all things in him,
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things in heaven and things on earth. In Him, we have obtained an
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inheritance, having been predestined according to
the purpose of him who works all things
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according to the counsel of his will, so that we, who were the
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first to hope in Christ, might
be to the praise of his glory.
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In Him. You also, when
you heard the word of truth, the
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Gospel of your salvation and believed in
him, were sealed with the promised Holy
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Spirit, who is the guarantee of
our inheritance until we require possession of it,
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to the praise of his glory.
Amen. Maybe seated. A great
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question to ask whenever you come to
a passage in the Bible is to ask
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yourself, to better understand it and
apply it, what's God's objective in this
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passage? What's God accomplishing? What's
he wanting to accomplish? And here that
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objective and verses a, one through
fourteen, three through fourteen in particular,
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is very clear. His glory,
the praise of his glory. It begins
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and it ends that way, with
the glory of God, doesn't it?
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Blessed be the God and father of
our Lord, Jesus Christ, and several
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times throughout, three times, I
think, ending at the end with to
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the praise of his glory. Over
and over we have this, this this
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call to praise God. But it's
more than a call, it is a
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praise of God. Right, Paul
is not merely telling us something we should
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do. He is doing the thing
right. He is praising God, he
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is blessing God, even even as
he writes this. They glories that come
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to us in this passage come to
us through this. This is the not
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a great way of putting it,
but a rich set of doctrines. They
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are doctrines, but it's not a
checklist of things right. It's not a
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diagram of the Ur, a map
and of the things that God has done.
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We could certainly create that from this
and that would be a helpful exercise
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to really understand the particular things that
are here, to go through and maybe
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list out the doctrines that are taught, the things that are taught here.
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But I just want you to note
that we don't have a list, right,
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we have a doxology, we have
a praising of God as he gives
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us of these things. There is
this intimate connection, a connection that can't
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be broken, between the stating of
the glory of God, that it is
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and is in such and such a
way, and the glorifying of God.
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All right, those two things are
totally they're not, I don't even want
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to say they're woven together. They
are the same thing here in this passage,
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and I know for myself that's how
I want my life to be.
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It is a good example of the
of what Christian living is ultimately all about,
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isn't it? It's not having a
head full of knowledge, a list
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of doctrines, though that's a good
thing right, nothing wrong with that,
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but it's about something much more than
that. It's about these doctrines coming to
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life, not just in this and
that practical application, but the doctrines themselves
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living in a way, not just
causing life, but being alive in us,
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a glorifying of God, of not
an abstract God, a god of
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our own imagination, but the God
who is right here, the God who
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exist, is explained in these scriptures. But I know for me, and
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I suspect no for you, that
there is a disconnect between those things,
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right, a disconnect between the things
that we know and the ways that we
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live, our sense and knowledge,
or at least some kind of knowledge,
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of who God is and what he's
done, and our ability, our desire
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to praise him and his glory.
How do we overcome that disconnection? Well,
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there's a number of ways in which
you can answer that question. I
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think there's two main things. One
thing that causes a disconnect between what we
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know and and who we are is
a knowledge problem. Our knowledge of the
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things of God is really shallow sometimes. In other words, the faith,
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and this is the other problem for
the disconnect, a lack of faith in
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God is weak sometimes because the god
that we're putting our faith in is a
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god we just don't know very well, right. It's a God that we
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don't fully or we don't understand very
well, a god that we haven't had
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a lot of experience with. You
know, if I give you some directions
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to a place that you've never gone
before and the map looks confusing and you've
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never quite you haven't quite studied it
yet. You might be a little nervous
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about going that way, about trusting, about trusting the path. It's hard
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to it's hard to just enjoy the
journey right if you're constantly looking at your
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GPS making sure it's right, testing
it, checking it out. On the
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other hand, sometimes we know very
well and we we have a sense of
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everything that are we have everything that
we need, and yet we simply don't
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trust it's like, let's going back
to the GPS example. Let's say you
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were given a GPS. You're given
it by someone who is used at a
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thousand times without fail. It has
the certification of every kind of mapping company
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you would ever want, and yet, just because you are the way you
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are, you're just not going to
trust that thing right, and so you
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you don't look at it, you
don't pay attention to it. It's like
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that with the things of God.
Sometimes our problem is that we don't know
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very much. We're simply unfamiliar with
him, unfamiliar with the things he said.
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Other Times it's that we're familiar with
them, but we simply don't believe
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them and we don't trust them.
Sometimes it's both. So how do we
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overcome that disconnect right between knowing the
things that make God Glorious and actually glorifying
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him in our lives? Well,
there are, as I said, are
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a number of things we can say, but I want to focus on these
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to and perhaps even help with these
two things tonight, our knowledge and our
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faith. And I think the way
we can approach it and help with this
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problem is by receiving the word of
God as it comes to us, hearing
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Paul lifting up his soul in this
glorious doxology as he is receiving the God
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who speaks, of course, knowing
that it's not just the Apostle Paul who's
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writing to us, a holy,
godly man who is very knowledgeable and understanding
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of the things of the faith,
but this is an apostle who has been
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sent by Jesus Christ, by the
will of God, to communicate these things
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to us. In other words,
it's not just Paul Who's speaking to us
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this evening, it is God himself, and so we can come to to
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him. We don't solve this disconnection
problem by heading to some other thing and
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then fixing that and then coming back
to God right our disconnection with God is
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solved by being in God, going
to God, receiving the things of God.
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So I want to think now in
verses thirteen and fourteen in particular,
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what we're told here. Relate that
back to the what we've heard before and
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and and hopefully tie some things together
in a helpful way. So we read
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in verse thirteen that in him that's
referring to Christ and has been referring to
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him throughout this passage. In him
you also, when you heard the word
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of truth, the Gospel of your
salvation and believed in him, were sealed
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with the promised Holy Spirit. Just
a little bit of exposition here. In
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him refers to Christ. You also
refers to these ephesian Christians and, by
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extension, US. Paul has in
mind the the EPHESIAN church and the churches
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in the in in in that at
that time, which by and large were
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gentile. There's a distinction that we
talked a little bit about last time,
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between the Jews and the gentiles.
He's saying we, as these first,
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these people who first believe, these
believing Jews, have received these things,
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and now you also, you gentiles, as the Gospel is going forth,
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are receiving these things as well.
So in Him, in Christ, you
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also, when you heard the word
of truth, the Gospel, the good
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news of your salvation, and believed
in him. We're sealed with the promised
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Holy Spirit. We were seeing yield, with the promised Holy Spirhirit. And
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then he explains a little bit about
that. He says, who is the
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guarantee of our inheritance until we would
acquire possession of it? To the praise
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of his glory, in these verses
and in this whole chapter, up to
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this point, God has been presenting
himself to us as a triune God.
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This is so important because we are
not trusting in merely a divine power,
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a force of fate. We are
trusting in the tried personal though be three
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person God, Father, son and
Holy Spirit. Now that's not something that
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I'm making up or pulling out of
Christian tradition or theology somewhere. That is
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the explicit teaching of this passage from
the very beginning. Grace to you and
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peace to you from God, our
father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Then
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verse three, 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 attributed to the Holy
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Spirit there in the heavenly places.
The God whom we serve is a God
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who has revealed himself to US and
bought us in the sun and applied those
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benefits to us by the spirit.
This father in Christ, through the spirit,
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is the God we serve. There's
no other there's no other God.
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This is who he is. Right, you don't have mother right as as
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a parent or father. You have
your mom, your dad, who has
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a particular set of traits and characteristics. Right, you were not born of
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motherhood, you were not born out
of fatherhood. You were born of two
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people who had names and identities and
all the rest. It's like that with
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God. We are not born of
a God, we are not born of
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a power of force or whatever.
We are born of the father, through
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the son, by the spirit.
There is no other God than this one.
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So when Paul says who is the
to the praise of his glory,
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the Glory of Christ, the Glory
of God, the glory of the spirit,
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this is who we are talking about. And if you are serving any
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other God, if you are glorifying
any other God, your heart, your
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life is not aligned, that is
disconnected from this God who has revealed himself
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to us. Other things we learn
about this God who has revealed himself to
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us is that, as the words
are, there in him. We have
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in him, we have believed,
we have trusted, we have put our
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faith in right. This is important
because it teaches us that Jesus of Nazareth,
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the Christ, the anointed one,
is not some kind of secondary agent,
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a human agent of God who accomplishes
a mere human agents of God who
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accomplishes some mission. He's not a
second class, a divine being. We
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read at the beginning of this chapter
that we were chosen in him before the
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foundation of the world. Jesus didn't
become God here on, in his earthly
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ministry somehow, or at his baptism
or anywhere else. No, he was
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God from the very beginning. Right
when we go to Jesus for our salvation,
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we're not going to anyone apart from
God. We're not going to a
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salvation that is something other than God. When we go to Jesus Christ for
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our salvation, when we believe in
him, as he says in verse thirteen,
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and receive all of these gifts,
including, as will mention in a
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moment the promised Holy Spirit. We
are not going to anything other or anyone
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other than God himself. We see
that in his existence before the foundation of
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the world, in him being the
source of our foundation, of the source
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of our salvation, in him being
the means and mediator of our salvation.
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How are we saved? By whom
is our salvation made possible? Well,
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theologically and biblically and through all the
scriptures, we know that the only one
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who can save a wretched and deplorable
people from their sins is God himself.
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As the people said to Jesus.
Who can forgive sins but God alone?
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Right, who can do this?
But he was and is that mediator.
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When we go to him, we
are going to God. No salvation apart
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from him, all salvation in him, in the Sun. And then we
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see that the spirit, too is
in perfect union with the father and the
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son. This gospel of where our
salvation, this thing that we receive,
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is nothing less than the Holy Spirit. Right when we are saved. Notice
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what he says in Verse Fifteen Fourteen. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee,
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or you could translate that down payment
of our inheritance. Let me stop there
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for a second. You know,
down payment can work in a couple ways.
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Sometimes we make a down payment as
you sort of give the down payment
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and then later on you pay the
thing and then you get your promise back
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in a way. So under that
view, God would sort of give the
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holy spirit and then once he gives
us the inheritance, he would take it
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back, sort of take the holy
spirit away from us. This is obviously
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not the teaching of scripture. The
teaching of Scriptures that the Holy Spirit himself
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is the inheritance. It is the
guarantee, the promise of that inheritance,
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which is a remarkable thing because when
we think about what is it that I
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have been given in Jesus Christ right, they are all kinds of benefits that
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we might a name and list,
including a glorified body, a new heavens
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and a new earth, a perfect
communion with humanity bound up in in Christ.
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But we must never forget that all
of those blessings, as he says
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in the beginning, are from him
and through him, they're in him.
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Remember Verse Three. He has blessed
us in Christ with every spirit virtual blessing.
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So it's not like, okay,
there's this benefit of Christ, and
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there are all these extra spiritual blessings
over here or that. There it's like
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this or like this or just like
this. No, in Christ you have
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everything right there. So you think
back to the very beginnings of the Bible
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when God starts making his covenant promises
to his people. What is the most
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basic way of explaining that covenant?
He says, I will be your God
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and you will be my people.
Right, he says, I will give
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myself to you, I will be
your God in some amazing way which I
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hesitate to say too much about.
God belongs to us. He not because
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we just grab him or steal him
or control him, but he gives himself
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to us in a way that we
are we possess him. I will be
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your God and you will be my
people. Here he says he is the
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guarantee of our inheritance. The thing
that we are given as a result of
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being in Christ is nothing less than
Christ himself. This is you don't want
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to think of this possession like you
might think of a as a pet or
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a, you know, fire truck
on Christmas or something like this. We
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possess God in the way of of
a relationship. My beloved is mine and
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I am his. This kind of
language, it's a love language. I
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will be with you, I will
be for you, I will fight for
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you. This week I read Psalm
Eighteen, salm eighteen, and David is
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just he's flying high. And saalm
eighteen. You know, anything that would
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come at him is no problem.
He will crush it, he will destroy
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it. God is for him and
for his people. He will win the
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day. But all of David's confidence
in God is because God has given himself
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to us, to him. But
he does that not in a way that
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we control him, but in a
way that he ultimately controls us and gets
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all the glory, because he says
who is the down payment of our inheritance.
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Until, better translated, as you
might see in a footnote, God
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redeems his possession right so we.
He gives to us the Holy Spirit until
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that day when God takes us as
his prized possession. You will be my
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people. There is this day that
is coming, this adoption day, you
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might think of it, when our
bodies are said to be adopted. He
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talks about this in Effesians, for
well, in effusions one, verse five,
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he predestined us for adoption. As
sons through him, but also in
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Effusians, for Verse Thirty we read
do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
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by whom you were sealed, for
the day of redemption. And if
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you go and you read First Corinthians
fifteen, there's all kinds of language about
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this, that there's this day coming
when we will be raised up and the
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Kingdom of God will be given to
him and there will be this adoption or
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this complete adoption of us that began
there on the cross. God will take
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us up fully and completely in himself
all then, to the praise of his
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glory. We don't stand on top
of the mountain and plant our flag and
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we say look what I did right. We go to the top of the
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mountain and plant our flag and then
look up I aro and say look what
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you did all right. That's the
picture here. That's what God is doing,
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and he does this all through this
through this amazing work of redemption which
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the father sends the son to redeem
us out of transgressions and sins. Is
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Verse Seven says, through his blood, so that we might receive the Holy
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Spirit, so that we might receive
God himself and all of his blessings and
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be united to Christ until one day
the fullness of these things come in to
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the praise of his glory. So
when we think about what we have been
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given, namely God himself, all
the all the spiritual blessings in him,
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salvation forgiveness of sins, we find
that this is our God, Father,
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son and Holy Spirit, the Father
Lovingly predestinating us in Christ for salvation and
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then affecting, making effectual that salvation
by giving us the spirit who unites us
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to Christ and his father, and
all grounded on his will, according to
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the purpose of His grace, according
to his will and the plan and the
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fullness of time. God, God, God, God, God. Why?
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For the praise of his glory,
for the praise of his glil glory,
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for the praise of his glory.
God, God, God. From
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beginning to end, it's all in
him. And when he gives himself to
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us, we don't become these creatures
that are somehow lifted up into divinity above
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him, but we become creatures that
bless him and praise his name and glorify
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him all the more. This is
our story. This is the story of
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everyone who, as Paul says,
have heard the word of truth the gospel
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of our salvation and believed right.
That's that faith part. I can say
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all of these things, but unless
we open our hands and receive the things
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of God, they don't do us
anything. We have a part in this.
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What is our part, as he
says, hearing and believing. But
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note what kind of actions those are? Those verbs are those verbs, those
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actions that are required on our part
are not the kind of words. They're
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not the kind of actions the undermine
the great sovereignty of God and all of
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this. Because what kinds of words
are they? They're receiving words, accepting
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words, taking what is given.
We open our hands to God even as
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he gives himself to us. How
on the basis of the work that he's
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already done in us, even before
the foundation of the world? My brothers
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and sisters, this is the essence
of our faith. It's all right here
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in effusions one, one through fourteen. You should know this, you should
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understand this, you should memorize this, treasure it, hide it in your
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heart. If you think about God
in ways that are different than this,
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abstracted from this, in thin ways
that don't really get at the ways that
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God has explained himself here the not
just might explain the disconnect in your life.
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If you have trouble, trouble glorifying
God, Ask Yourself, is it
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because I don't know who God is? And now, having heard who he
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is and been reminded who he is, glorify him, believe in him,
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trust in him, give him all
the praise. This is the heart of
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our faith, the essence of our
faith. We should know it, and
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it establishes every reason to do everything
that God has ever commanded us to do,
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whether that's loving our neighbors as ourselves, to love as we have been
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loved in this way, or whether
that's fighting the sins that we have been
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redeemed from. Paul say, why
grieve the Holy Spirit by whom, as
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I read, you were sealed?
Right? This is the basis of why
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we fight against sin, why we
love our neighbors and why we hope in
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the coming resurrection, why we hope
in the full possession of the inheritance that
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we have. It's why we do
everything that we do. And so,
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if this is your story, Mike, it's Paul's story here, obviously.
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So if you have heard the word
of truth, the Gospel of salvation,
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and have believed, then let your
heart sing, praise, glorify him who
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has loved you, not by merely
saying so, but by doing so,
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even as Paul gives us an example
right here. Let's pray
