How God's Sovereignty Motivates Godly Sincerity

Jeremy Menicucci

Wednesday Nights • Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago

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This message is intended as a comfort and encouragement to Christians as we look at answering some pretty big questions on why God chose to save us and why God chose to freely express His sovereignty over us. The beautiful blessing and benefit of this passage of Scripture is the revelation of God's kindness and good pleasure towards our good and our salvation. These concepts, of course, are huge motivations for us to walk in the good works that God prepared beforehand for us

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

I think, one of the greatest struggles that Christians can have relates to motivation.

When it comes to salvation when it comes to God’s control over all things in the universe, that’s normally the question that comes.

Motivation to serve, motivation to worship, motivation to live according to God’s purpose.

And bear in mind that’s a question that normally comes from those who object to the degree of God’s sovereignty that many hold to.

Motivation is a struggle. Especially when the struggles hinder the motivations that we have to live so as to be pleasing to God.

Paul reveals to us some pretty heavy truths about God and His sovereignty in Ephesians.

He also reveals some pretty significant issues relating to us before God saved us.

Another way that we can put it, is what reason do I have to be or do what God wants me to be or do?

A mystery, Biblically, is something that cannot be known or comprehended outside of divinely, special revelation.

And those are really two huge points of Ephesians, what God is like and what we’re like.

Motivation is a struggle, and when there are other struggles that add to the struggle of being motivated, then it’s likely that we can be immobilized, stagnant, and indifferent to the things of God.

What God was doing prior to our conversion and what we were doing prior to our conversion.

We may be caught in a position of auto-pilot with Christianity. We may not be as excited as we have been in the past,

or maybe we haven’t been as excited about being a Christian at all as we should be.

And that what the point of our conversion is from God’s standpoint and from our standpoint.

There are two aspects of Ephesians: Doctrinal & Practical or Doctrine and Action.

And Doctrine and Action are the goal of what I’m hoping to accomplish this evening.

God wants us to recognize how His sovereignty motivates godly sincerity. That’s the point of our message tonight is understanding, “How God’s Sovereignty Motivates Godly Sincerity.”

In other words Paul answers the “why?” God chose to be God in creation and salvation. He answered why God decided to be so sovereign, keeping in line with His own character, in our salvation.

Ephesians is saturated in doctrine and intended as motivation. And the action portion is doctrine in action.

Chapter one gives us the motivation with respect to what God purposed to do with us.

Why is God so Sovereign?

God purposed to save us, He promised to save us, and sealed us with His Holy Spirit.

And notice how motivation comes out from God’s sovereignty in

There are motivations given in the doctrine that is given:

Verse 5, In love… and according to the good pleasure, kind intention of God’s will.

God purposed to save us, predestination, adoption, in love. According to the kind intention of His will.

Why did God predestine us to salvation? It’s because He was being kind.

The good pleasure of His will. Why did God sovereignly, without any reason that we gave Him, predestined us unto adoption?

The kindness of God and the love of God are revealed to us in His is sovereign predestination of His people unto salvation.

It’s because He was being kind to us and that He would be pleased in His being kind to us.

And notice how

Now notice in verse 6 what happens once we know that: “To the praise of His glorious grace”.

God’s sovereignty is the motivation for Godly, sincere worship.

For the sake of time, jumping down to , the doctrine is knowing our inheritance, our predestination again,

And that everything is worked out according to the counsel of God’s will.

That will was just revealed as God’s kindness towards us. Wrap your brain around the fact that everything that happens in our lives is because God wants to be self-pleasing by being kind to us.

Everything is worked out according to that.

So that, verse 12, we hope and exist for praise His glory.

(ESV)

18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

And then in chapter 2 the content switches from the purpose of God, the promise of final salvation, and the perfect powerful successful work of Christ in securing our salvation

To our state and status before this is applied.

The

So hold on the fact, this is doctrine for motivation when Paul talks to us about our fallen condition.

That’s why he wants to teach us about our depravity is so that we can have the motivation from God’s sovereignty unto Godly sincerity in worship and in deed.

Now, I actually want to keep in mind.

How much of a possibility to do think it is that if God works everything after the counsel of His will that that means God purposed your spiritual deadness?

It was precisely in the plan of God. And it precisely had a purpose.

It’s purpose extends into verse 7, “In order that, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”.

Why did God predestine us unto adoption in ? Because God was being kind to us.

What was the purpose of our Spiritual deadness? So that God can be kind to you.

How much can you measure immeasurable? You can’t, it’s too large to be measured.

God purposed to show you His immeasurable riches of grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

And he does so in the coming ages. He mentioned “this age and the age to come” in , now he expands upon coming ages, plural.

In other words, Paul is saying that you spend each age, essentially for eternity, being shown the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in His kindness towards us in Christ.

The concept that Paul has set up is the motivation that we have to live in Godly sincerity because God purposed us to know what it’s

like to be Spiritually dead so that we can know eternally what it’s like for God to be kind to us and take us out of spiritual deadness into spiritual life.

Now. Let’s notice what it’s like to be dead in trespasses and sins. Spiritual deadness, total depravity is the ultimate, rock bottom, worse possible way to experience life as a human being.

Which means its the fullest possible display of mercy and kindness for God to save us from that.

Paul says in we were dead in trespasses and sins. We walked following the universal depravity of the world.

We were enslaved to the Devil and his power, we lived in impulses or passions of our flesh, ruled by our bodies instead of the other way around.

Ruled by the desires of our minds so that our thoughts were not immune to sinful desires.

And we were children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Notice we’re talking about spiritual deadness and inability in this passage:

(ESV)

10 To whom shall I speak and give warning,

that they may hear?

Behold, their ears are uncircumcised,

they cannot listen;

behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn;

they take no pleasure in it.

11 Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;

I am weary of holding it in.

“Pour it out upon the children in the street,

and upon the gatherings of young men, also;

both husband and wife shall be taken,

the elderly and the very aged.

But the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to obey my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths. ¶ “Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness.

So children of wrath this is known as a genitive of destination. They are children destined for God’s wrath.

That’s where they’re headed, that’s where we were headed.

Our final destination was wrath and our current experience was horrific as well.

We dwelled in slavery to Satan and we end up in God’s wrath. It’s ruin and misery now and it’s ultimate ruin and misery forever.

When you know what it is that God saved you from, and you focus on what that was like and would’ve been like in the future,

Motivation to Godly Sincerity in worship and service to God regardless of anything is a given.

If you don’t know or don’t focus on what God saved you from, then you’re nothing better than the child who has no idea what it would be like outside of their Father’s goodness.

If you think your experiences with God are bad, imagine your experiences without God.

Cancer and Christ plus God’s grace is a far better life than sin and Satan plus God’s wrath.

Many have rightly pointed out the force and the emphasis of the conjunction, “But” in verse 4, “But God”.

Because the force of verses 1-3 are astronomical. The weight of the riches of God’s grace and kindness is overwhelming should one recognize what their life without God is like.

Now we have the focus of our passage in verse 7, the purpose that everything is driving towards.

Notice God’s riches again, you inherit things as Christians that are not materialistic, and that are not things that you spend but that are spend on you eternally.

Paul even revealed to us in that God lavished the riches of his grace upon us.

So we can recognize what verses 4-9 are about. They are for the purpose of God showing us his immeasurable riches of grace in kindness in Christ in the coming ages.

It was out of the kindness of God that He saved us from our horrible state and our horrible destination.

God wanted to show and keep on showing us for eternity how kind He is to us.

Notice God’s riches again, you inherit things as Christians that are not materialistic, and that are not things that you spend but that are spend on you eternally.

And I have to wonder. If God purposed for us to be dead in our trespasses and sins in order to maximize the impact of His grace and kindness.

What can we say about anything additional that we suffer or struggle with?

What we can say is, “Wow. What a eternity future God has planned for those who suffer”.

What we experience now is fuel for our enjoyment of God forever.

But God, rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even while we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved,

and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ.

The same power that raised and seated Christ on the throne is the power that raises us to spiritual life and seats us with Christ on His throne,

Ruling and reigning with Him as a present, spiritual reality.

Our union with Christ is a union to life and all siting with Christ as He rules and reigns.

So that. For the purpose, for the reason that God might continue to show in ages to come his immeasurable riches of grace in His kindness towards you.

Eternity future isn’t just about us worshipping and glorifying God, it’s about the deeds of God and God Himself showing us kindness.

And you might rightly ask at this point, if I was dead how did I become alive?

How did I become a Christian? What is the doctrinal template for my testimony?

(ESV)

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The gift of God is grace, faith, and salvation. That’s a single package gift that contains those three elements.

In order for the riches of God’s grace in kindness to be shown for ages, God must be the one solely responsible for your spiritual resurrection.

If you were not totally dead in your sins and if God didn’t solely raise you from the dead spiritually, God wouldn’t be nearly as kind.

God wouldn’t have maximized the impact of His kindness and there would be room for us to boast about our contribution to salvation.

Which means, there actually is a decrease or possibly an elimination of our motivation to Godly sincerity.

Not preaching the sovereignty means that someone has another motivation for the living, worship, and service.

Because everything that we’ve just talked about results in verse 10:

(ESV)

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So not only would there be a different motivation but there would also be different works that a person who denies sovereignty would be walking in.

Paul’s whole point is to motivate Christians from God’s sovereignty to walk in the works God has prepared.

God’s sovereignty and preaching on sovereignty are the means that God uses to motivate people into the works that He has called them to.