His Good Pleasure
Notes
Transcript
Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. Please take your Bibles and turn with me to the majestic epistle known as Ephesians. We started this magnificent book a few weeks ago as we saw Paul greet the Ephesian believers reminding them of the unity that all those who are found in Christ Jesus share.
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.
For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him.
He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.
Heavenly Blessings
Heavenly Blessings
Blessed, blessed and blessings - God is blessed. We are blessed and we receive blessings.
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Eulogeo - where we get our word eulogy. There are not usually bad things said in a eulogy. Paul is lifting worship to God here right at the outset of this letter. This is praise of the highest magnitude.
Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?
And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,
and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
How often do we lift our voices in praise to God in this manner? How often do we extol His glorious goodness and bless Him for His beauty?
Old Testament blessings were temporal in nature.
“Now if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all his commands I am giving you today, the Lord your God will put you far above all the nations of the earth.
All these blessings will come and overtake you, because you obey the Lord your God:
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
Your offspring will be blessed, and your land’s produce, and the offspring of your livestock, including the young of your herds and the newborn of your flocks.
Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
“The Lord will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you from one direction but flee from you in seven directions.
These were promises for obedience - a quid pro quo if you would - that would only happen if the Old Testament believers kept the Law
We are often tricked by the same mindset
Behavior modification
Parking spot at the Mall, a good day because we read our Bible, etc.
New Testament shift from the temporal blessings - that couldn’t deliver salvation - to spiritual blessings that are the benefit of salvation.
We’re so distracted, worried about temporal blessings that we have completely missed the spiritual blessings that we have in Christ
These blessings are in the heavenly places - but they are not something we have to wait on. They are blessings that have already been given to us and are available to us now.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.
Do you recognize how much you have already been given? Or are we focused on the more mundane, temporary things of life and we miss the spiritual blessing that are already ours?
Ephesians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary The Blessings—Everything Spiritual
God cannot give us more than He has already given us in His Son. There is nothing more to receive. The believer’s need, therefore, is not to receive something more but to do something more with what he has.
We’re good with this - even if we’re not as adept as we should be at looking for our blessings in the spiritual places we’re comfortable with what Paul has said so far. It is this next section that causes us so much pause - yet the truths here are among the most beautiful in all of Scripture.
Chosen
Chosen
Three types of election is Scripture and we’re good with the first two…it is the third that causes all sorts of trouble
Theocratic election
Election of the nation of Israel
For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
“The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
We’re comfortable with this - even to the point that it was a popular notion in the latter stages of the 20th Century that America was a blessed, a chosen nation of God’s
and when they come to their senses in the land where they were deported and repent and petition you in their captors’ land, saying, “We have sinned and done wrong; we have been wicked,”
and when they return to you with all their mind and all their heart in the land of their captivity where they were taken captive, and when they pray in the direction of their land that you gave their ancestors, and the city you have chosen, and toward the temple I have built for your name,
Vocational election
Election of certain people to certain tasks
Levitical Priests
Paul set apart for the mission to the Gentiles
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
As they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off.
So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
We have no problem with these ideas - the one we have a huge problem with is the concept of election in salvation
Salvific election
Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.
In fact the sixth chapter of John is a great chapter for you to look at if you want to see these two principles - God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility weaved right alongside one another
The problem is our approach - we are very negative in our approach towards this doctrine
“There is no indication of any dislike towards those not chosen. It is not a rejection with disdain. The choice of Levi for the priesthood does not imply anything negative about the other tribes. Furthermore, nowhere is election contrasted with reprobation. It speaks only of those who are chosen and nothing of those not chosen.” (Harold Hoener)
God is not standing at the door keeping people out
Instead He is redeeming this one and that one
Ephesians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary The Method—Election
It is not that God’s sovereign election, or predestination, eliminates man’s choice in faith. Divine sovereignty and human response are integral and inseparable parts of salvation—though exactly how they operate together only the infinite mind of God knows.
Ephesians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary The Method—Election
We should let the antimony remain, believing both truths completely and leaving the harmonizing of them to God.
If we don’t like this doctrine - it should drive us to an even greater fervency for evangelism. It is as Charles Spurgeon says - I’m paraphrasing - since you can’t readily identify them then you should work to save all of them and let those who are appointed to salvation come to Christ.
Reasons we’re not fond of this doctrine
Our attitudes will change
And just to remind us that God is not fickle Paul tells us that we were chosen in eternity past
Before the Foundation of the World
The Law was not plan A and the Cross plan B
Holy and Blameless points to our condition, our position before Christ
Holy - sinless, pure able to stand before God - speaks to our present condition
Blameless - what once could have been held against us has been removed.
We are not simply clean from this point onward - we are pronounced as clean from all time and for all time.
He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Do you recognize that you are even now considered, seen to be holy and blameless by God? Do you strive to live you life in such a way that that holiness and blamelessness is reflected?
Out of the great abundance of His love for us God has provided us from before the foundation of the world spiritual blessings, He has chosen us for salvation through His Son Christ
He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?
300 Quotations for Preachers from the Early Church God Loved before the Foundation of the World
The love … with which God loves is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto Him by the blood of His Son that He began to love us; but He did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be His sons along with His Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own.
But there’s even more beauty here for us.
Predestined
Predestined
300 Quotations for Preachers God Never Would Have Chosen Me Afterwards
I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards.
CHARLES SPURGEON
We are not redeemed as slaves - that is what we deserve
The Prodigal Son - was a son and yet he recognized that the only position he was worthy of is a slave
We must recognize that before salvation we are not trying to find our way back to God
We are His mortal enemies
We are trying to stay as far away from Him as possible
The Lightlings - summarize.
Yet we are not treated as slaves
But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name,
who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
Rather we are predestined to be adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High God
He who is the first principle and pattern of all things came to be the beginning and pattern of humankind, the firstborn of the whole creation. He, who is the everlasting Light became the Light of men. He, who is the Life from eternity, became the Life of a race dead in sin. He, who is the Word of God, came to be a spiritual Word, “dwelling richly in our hearts,” an “engrafted Word, which is able to save our souls.” He, who is the co-equal Son of the Father, came to be the Son of God in our flesh, that He might raise us also to the adoption of sons, and might be first among many brothers.
John Henry Newman
And we are redeemed through Jesus Christ
God has already given so much for us - how could we expect any more?
We’re so worried about what we don’t have rather than recognizing what we do have.
We have the Son
We have access to the throne
We have the promise of eternal life
And we have the spiritual blessings that are available to us now
Why?
The good pleasure of His will
nothing good within any one of us that determines that He would or should choose us
Spurgeon quote
so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
Do you recognize that He, through no compulsion or obligation, has offered an olive branch of salvation to you? That He has offered you not simply the cessation of hostilities but sonship in His family?
His Glorious Grace
His Glorious Grace
And all of this is simply to demonstrate His glorious grace…His grace. His unmerited favor that is placed on the least deserving. That is given freely to the most egregious of sinners.
Who put Jesus on the cross? Question from camp.
You did.
And yet look what Paul writes - He freely, unreservedly and violently bestowed upon us in the Beloved.
How many times does Paul reference the position of the believer as “in Christ” in just these four short verses?
We are blessed in the Heavenly places in Christ
We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world
We are holy and blameless before Him (really in Him)
He freely bestowed His grace on us in Christ
If you are a believer you are in Christ, you are a son or daughter of the Most High God and you are welcome at this table - a commemoration of the event that ushered you into adoption, that presents you as holy and blameless before God, that opens up the coffers of Heaven to you and provides you access to every spiritual blessing. We take this as a commemoration of the death of Christ on the cross as He took the bread and blessing it told His disciples that it represented His body which would be broken for them. Then taking the cup He told them to drink as the juice represents the blood that He would shed for the forgiveness of their sins. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:28 admonishes us to examine ourselves before coming to this table, giving opportunity to confess any outstanding sin that may be between us and our Lord and to come with a pure heart.
Unbelievers should abstain.