Morning, and welcome to the North Pole. I’m from California. This is freezing.
Father, we do thank You this morning that You have redeemed us and we are Yours. We thank You that heaven is open to us because of what Your Son has done for us. We thank You for the forgiveness of our sins, and we stand in that now.
Lord, we ask that You would open Your Word to us today. I pray that it would not be the little things that I bring out, but that it would be You speaking to us from Your Word. Make Your Word real and applicable to our lives by Your Holy Spirit. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, Scott Miller and David Blanche already said what I was going to say, so I’ll just sit down.
I’m going to continue going through the book of Ephesians. Last time I spoke, I told you that it was on my heart, and it is going to take a few times until I get through it. So, pray for me that the Lord will open the Word, that we will get something out of it, and that the Lord will speak through His Word.
I am not going to review everything I said last time, but I want to say this again about the letter to the Ephesians: it is not a polemic. It is not an argument. Paul is not saying, “You are thinking wrongly here, and I need to correct you.”
He is simply stating what is true. He is saying what is true so that believers might be established in it. Being established in this truth, they can walk in faith according to what they know. Walking in that truth by faith transforms them into what the Lord wants them to be in Christ: His body and His sons.
We also mentioned that Ephesians and Romans can be compared in a sense. Both look at salvation, but Romans views salvation from down here. It brings us to the place where we see that we need salvation; then, once we see how we receive salvation, we are told how to walk because we have it.
Ephesians, on the other hand, begins from the heavenly perspective. It does not begin with our need for salvation, but with our position in salvation. We start saved, and then ask: How should that affect our lives?
I used the example of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. When you wake up and realize, “I am seated in the heavenly places. I am chosen. I am predestined to be a son,” it gives you an entirely different perspective. All of a sudden, it changes your character.
At the end of the book, the boy’s character was changed simply because of the position in which he found himself. I believe the Lord would have us see the same thing here: by seeing where we are in Him and what He has done for us, this should affect our lives.
We are called to a life of faith. It is not merely faith that says, “I believe in Jesus, and my sins are forgiven.” It is faith in the position that we have, faith in what God has done for us, faith in what He has predestined us to be, and faith that He is able to carry these things out.
All the rest of our lives is to be spent in faith. Our faith is to be built up, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That is what we hope to receive from this: that our faith might be increased and strengthened as we hear the Word of God spoken to us.
The section we are going to read this morning is Ephesians 1:7–14. I covered six verses last time, and I will try for another six.
It begins with redemption, and it ends with redemption. It is kind of interesting, isn’t it? Therefore, we are going to consider the full circle of redemption.
Every part of redemption, as we will find by reading these verses, is found in Christ. “In Christ” is a phrase we will hear again and again in this first chapter. No part of our redemption is found outside of Him or is found by our doing something. Our doing does not add anything to our redemption. It is all done in Him and through Him.
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace,
Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
Having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,
That we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in Whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
Verse 7 begins with redemption, and verse 14 closes with redemption. So, we are going to look at redemption.
Verse 7 says:
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.
Redemption is not limited to forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very important element of redemption, but this is not simply a definition of redemption. Forgiveness is the starting place of redemption. This is where God begins His work of redemption.
Before God can do anything with us, as far as our being conformed into His image, He must eliminate the barrier that keeps us from Him.
I remember, as a young man, when I first accepted the Lord. A fellow named Jack Gough—a wonderful Christian and chaplain at the Port of San Pedro in California—asked me, “Jim, if you die tonight, where are you going to go?”
I had some pretty good ideas where I was going to go. But he said it did not have to be that way. I asked, “How can that be?” He told me that there were some things against me. I said, “Well, I know that.” But he said those things could be taken away. I said, “I’d like to know how.” Then he shared Jesus with me.
So, how does God deal with this barrier? How does He deal with our sins? The verse says that He forgives them. But forgiveness is more than what we sometimes mean when we say, “I’ll just forget it ever happened.” We may brush something over unless we are holding a real good grudge. We may say, “It is water under the bridge. No worries.”
But it is not that way with God. For Him to forgive must be consistent with His character. He cannot simply say, “I’ll let it slide,” because His character is holy, and He cannot dwell with sin.
Forgiveness is not merely covering. We sing about being covered by the blood, but forgiveness is not covering something up.
I painted my mother’s house before I was married. She wanted it blue, and I painted it blue with a friend and my younger brother. We painted blue over gray, and it looked nice.
A couple of years later, I came back for a barbecue or something, and I noticed a few holidays. Do you know what holidays are? No painters in here?
Holidays are spots you missed, or spots that did not cover. You can see the gray right through them. In other words, the gray is still there. It has not been taken care of; it has only been covered.
Or think of potato peels. When I peel potatoes, the peels go into a trash can. I can shut the lid, but if I do not empty that trash, the next day I come downstairs and smell those potato peels. They are worse than when I first cut them up because now they are rotting and decaying.
When we speak about forgiveness, we are not speaking about covering something. It cannot simply be covered, moved out of sight, or swept under the rug. It is still there. That is not the concept of forgiveness that God gives us.
What, then, is God’s method of forgiveness? It is this: sin has to be judged. That is the only way it can be forgiven. It must be judged.
Remember Joshua, when Israel went into the land and attacked Ai? They were defeated, and they asked, “What is the deal, God? What is happening?” The Lord said, “Somebody has sinned.”
They went by lot and found the man who had sinned. Before Israel could go on and conquer the land, that sin had to be judged. It cost the death of that man and his family. Only then could God be with the Israelites and give them the land.
Our sins are judged through the death of His Son. This is really, really important: our sins are judged. They are not simply forgiven in the sense of saying, “Oh, it is okay.” They are judged. They are punished. The punishment fell on Someone else.
In Roman times, when a criminal was crucified, the charge against him was hung above him. People passing by, or those who came to watch the gruesomeness, would know what that man had done.
It was not merely to identify his crime. It showed how Rome dealt with lawbreakers and those who rebelled against the authority of Rome. Roman law was a big thing. They were very legal about it.
God is very legal about this also, in the sense that sin has to be judged. It cannot live in His presence. It cannot remain in His presence. It must be judged.
But the good news is that it has been judged.
Let us look at Colossians 2:13–14:
And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
You, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses;
Having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us:
And He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.
When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, they hung a placard over Him. The charge read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” But God is saying, “That is not the crime. The crime was your sin.”
God took everything that was against us and judged it in Christ. He put that placard on the cross so that all our sin—past, present, and future—was there and was judged in Jesus Christ.
Romans 6 says that our old man was crucified with Christ. We were in Christ on the cross. Therefore, our sin was judged.
Because the judgment has been paid, there is no longer a penalty for us to pay. We are free from the penalty because the penalty has been paid. It is not that God was in a good mood one day and said, “I’ll let it slide.” He judged it.
Brothers and sisters, that is a wonderful thing: our sins have been judged. We do not have to face God and say, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do with these things?” God says, “I have judged them. I have judged them in Christ.”
Romans 8:3 says:
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
He condemned sin. He judged it. Therefore, we are free of its penalty.
The Greek word used for forgiveness in the Septuagint has to do with the year of Jubilee. Jubilee was the time when anyone in debt, who had sold himself to another as a slave, was set free.
That is the whole meaning of it. We have been set free because what was against us has been paid and judged. Judgment for us has passed. Hallelujah.
What was the cost of forgiveness? What would you give to forgive me?
Most of you do not know me very well. The people who know me really well are my daughter Katie, my wife, and my daughter Jamie. I am not going to ask Katie what she would give, because she would tell the truth about what I may be worth.
But to bring me back and put me in a place where I can be of service, what would you give? What would God give?
God has the cattle on a thousand hills, does He not? Surely He could give some cattle for me. But Hebrews 10 tells us that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.
What about gold and silver? Surely God, who has all the wealth of gold and silver everywhere, could pass out a few ducats for me. But 1 Peter 1:18 says that we were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from our aimless conduct received by tradition from our fathers.
Animals and money may be considered valuable in this world, but they are not the measure of God’s wealth, nor are they the measure of His love for fallen mankind. None of those things can satisfy.
What, then, is the measure? What is the price of redemption? What God wants is His Son—a Son who is perfect, who does His will in everything and in every way. That is the ransom for me and for you.
Thank God He has what He wants: His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the cost of our redemption and salvation.
Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers;
But with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ:
Who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake,
Who through Him are believers in God, that raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Only His Son can satisfy. His Son willingly gave Himself as a sacrifice that we might be redeemed. That is the measure of God’s grace: His Son.
It is not merely His perfection, but His obedience. He obeyed even unto death, even death on a cross, for people like you and me—for people like that lame man who had nothing to give back at all.
Yet that did not stop God, because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He held nothing back.
When Abraham was asked to offer up his son, God spoke to him in the night, and then we read, “The next morning.” I think Abraham agonized. I think Abraham thought, “That is too much, God,” until he came around to see that, if he slew Isaac, God had to raise him up because Isaac was the promised son.
But God did not spare His Son. He did not hesitate. What satisfies God is that many sons be brought to glory. That is what the Lord Jesus does: He brings many sons to glory.
God knows exactly what His Son is worth. That is why the sacrifice satisfied Him. He knew what His Son was worth to Him, to the world, and to the universe.
Redemption is much more than the saving of men. We are so familiar with Jesus in the Gospels that we love the lowly Jesus, the One who stoops down to lift us up. But we need to know the Jesus of the epistles.
The Jesus of the epistles is awesome, great, and powerful. He is not the One who laid aside those things anymore. Having been raised from the dead, He has been seated and given all authority.
Ephesians 1 says that God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself: that in the administration of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both those in heaven and those on earth.
This can be confusing. One person says one thing, another person says something else, and somebody gives you four choices and tells you to choose. Another person says, “Read the Greek.” Well, it was pretty much all Greek to me.
When we think about the will of God, we usually think in terms of ourselves: “What is God’s will for me? Should I get married? Should I take this job? Where do I fit in the scheme of God’s plans?”
But God’s will goes beyond us as individuals. There is a corporate will of God for us all. There is God’s will for mankind. There is also God’s will for His creation.
All of this is to be summed up in His Son, Jesus. Christ is over all the ages, all things, and all authority.
Colossians 1:20 says:
And through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross—through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.
When man fell, something catastrophic happened to the whole creation. It was not just man. It was not just the earth. It was everything.
You ought to read C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. I admit, I am not a science-fiction man, and the first book is tough sledding. But it gives an interesting picture of the fall and of recovery.
The point is this: everything in heaven and on earth will be brought under one rule, Jesus Christ. That is the mystery of His will.
A mystery in Scripture is not something we must figure out on our own. It is something hidden that God reveals. As we come into Christ, we discover that God reveals things to us, including the mystery of His will.
That will is our being under His headship—not merely as individuals, but corporately and cosmically. That is how great Christ is.
You may say, “That is too big for me to understand.” That is fine, but it is true. He is bigger than you ever thought. He is bigger than you ever dreamed. All things will come under His rule, and He is the One who redeemed us. That is marvelous.
You can look through the church ages and all the movements in church history. Who is the leader? You might say Darby, or Luther. No. Christ. Christ is over everything. In the end, that is what will come out: Christ is over all and in all.
In Him we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will;
To the end that we should be unto the praise of His glory, we who had before hoped in Christ.
This can be viewed in two ways. It can be translated, “In Him we have become an inheritance,” meaning that we have become His inheritance. That is a legitimate translation, and later in the chapter Paul speaks of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
But I think the better translation here is that in Him we have obtained an inheritance. What is the inheritance?
As good Christians, we give the Sunday-school answer: “Jesus.” Jesus is our inheritance. We are all well trained. But what does that mean?
Today, we usually think of inheritance as money. We cannot wait to inherit money, and we think about all the things we will buy with it. But in the Bible, inheritance was not primarily money. It was land.
When Abraham left, what did God promise him? “I am going to give you this land.” When the Israelites were redeemed, what did God say He would give them? The land He had promised their father Abraham.
The inheritance is the land, and this land is Christ. We all know that. But what does it mean?
In the days of the Homestead Act, you could receive 160 acres of land. You could put fence posts around it and say, “Gee whiz, that is a lot of land. It is all mine, too. That is great.”
You could build a house on it and live there, but you could lose that land unless you farmed it. You had to farm it for five years. If you farmed it for five years, the land was yours, apart from a small registration fee.
Some of us receive an inheritance and think it is like a bond that will mature. So we wait, and wait, and eventually forget it is even there because nothing is happening.
Or we can look at the beauty of the land—the rolling hills—and become enraptured, but never go any further. We see only the surface.
The Homestead Act was used predominantly to settle the Great Plains. When Lewis and Clark explored that region, they called it the Great American Desert. There was hardly any rain, and the grass was so thick, with roots so deep, that you could not farm it.
But it became some of the richest land in the United States. John Deere developed a steel plow that could cut through the root system. When they turned that land over, they found it was rich and that it held moisture well.
They never would have known the richness of that land unless they had done something with it.
When we say, “Oh, yes, the land is Christ,” do we know what we have in Christ? I am not talking about having a list and saying, “I have this, that, and the other thing.” I am asking whether you have experienced what you have in Christ.
Knowing it does not count if we fail to enter into its reality. What it means that we have an inheritance is that God sets this land before us and says, “Do with it as you will. Open it up and find out the richness of it, because it is all yours.”
But you will never know it until you start plumbing its depths, digging into it, and discovering what you have. That is our inheritance.
What are you going to do with your inheritance? This is not like spending your children’s inheritance. This inheritance is eternal. It keeps going. There is too much of it. You will never plumb its depths.
But step by step and little by little, you can discover what you have in Christ and see it come into your daily life.
Christ is my provision. Have you found that? Not merely read it or preached about it, but found in your life that your inheritance—Christ—provides for you?
Redemption and forgiveness of sins: have you found that? Or do you simply say, “I agree with that”? Have you found it to be true?
How many of us sit under a cloud because we think that we have not been forgiven? Perhaps because of some sin, some flaw in our character, or because we keep falling back into something, we think God cannot forgive it.
I am here to tell you that is not true. That is part of our inheritance. Christ is all this to us. He is our redemption. He is our life. He is everything, and we are to find Him as our all in all.
This inheritance has been predestined for us. God purposed it for us. He made it especially for us and said, “This is what I want for you.” Just as He predestined us to be sons, He predestined us to this inheritance.
It cannot be taken away from you. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. You can fall, but the inheritance cannot be taken away.
Is that not the wonderful story of the prodigal? Even though he falls, when he comes back, the father does not say, “Go back and be a servant, and maybe after a few years I will look on you differently.”
No, he says, “Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and make merry.”
“That is my son. He was lost, and now he is found.” The father rejoices to give us His riches. He wants us to have and use the riches He has given us in this inheritance.
Verse 12, which speaks of those who first trusted in Christ, is often understood as referring to the Jews, to whom these things came first. Later, the Gentiles entered in as joint heirs. But those who came beforehand are not more than those who came later. We are fellow heirs and fellow citizens.
Now we come to the final part:
In Whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation—in Whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, unto the praise of His glory.
When you heard and responded in faith, there was no probationary period. God did not say, “We will test you for a year, and if you are still walking with the Lord, we will give you the rest.” No. The transaction took place right there.
How many of you remember when you first trusted Christ? Do you remember how certain that transaction was? How wonderful it was to know that the Lord had not merely forgiven you, but had given you something else?
He sealed you with the Holy Spirit of promise.
Now, sealed does not mean that He made you so you do not leak, like sealing wax keeps something from running out. We are leaky vessels. We leak all the time. That is why we need to be filled over and over again.
But sealed means that we are set apart. The seal of a bondservant was his earring. He was taken to the doorpost and marked there. He was set apart as belonging to his master.
We are sealed, not with an earring, but with the Holy Spirit of promise. This is the Spirit promised by Jesus Himself.
In John 14–16, in the Upper Room discourse, Jesus spoke much about the Holy Spirit. He said that He would not leave us orphans. The Spirit would lead us into all truth.
The Holy Spirit is the One who puts the imprint of Christ upon us. In those days, a king would put wax on a document and press his seal into it. The image or symbol of the king was impressed into the wax.
In the same way, we have the image of the Son impressed upon us through the Holy Spirit. When God looks at us, He sees the imprint and says, “That is Mine.”
He is the Holy Spirit. That means He leads us into holiness and sanctification. We do not choose our own little sacrifices, as though we were deciding what to give up for Lent. Most of us would choose candy because we know we can have it again after forty days.
But the Holy Spirit leads and says, “Let us not deal with that anymore. That goes by the wayside.”
The Holy Spirit is the earnest, or guarantee, of our inheritance. He is the pledge that what God has promised will ultimately be fulfilled.
He is the appetizer. When you go to a restaurant, they offer you appetizers because they want to whet your appetite for more. You start eating them and think, “I only wanted the eight-ounce steak, but I will take the twelve-ounce steak now.”
The Holy Spirit is like that. He gives us a taste that makes us say, “I have tasted. I want more. I want the total picture. I want the full meal.” If this is only a taste, then I want the whole thing.
He fills us with anticipation for what is yet to come.
I just took a new teaching job. We signed the contract, so there was the sealing. It was already settled. My name was on it, and they had it.
On Friday, the people at the school called and said, “Jimmy, we want you to come down, meet the people here, and we want to give you something.” They gave me the books I will be teaching with next year.
That is the earnest. That is the down payment. It is a foretaste of what I will be doing. In August, I will bring those books with me, and I will have the whole room, the students, the faculty members—everything.
Right now, I am a little overwhelmed, but when I begin looking through those books, I will start saying, “This is cool. I cannot wait to do this.” By August, I will be ready to go.
It is the same with us in Christ. He has given us something in earnest. He is going to give us the rest at another time.
The redemption of the purchased possession means that it is not merely our spirits that are saved. It is body, soul, and spirit—everything. That is the total package of redemption.
It begins with forgiveness, and it ends with our being totally redeemed. Like the man in Acts 3, we are no longer lame, but walking and leaping and praising God.
How are we to respond in light of these things?
First, let us live as those who have been forgiven. That is of utmost importance.
What are forgiven people supposed to be like? They are thankful. They are full of joy because the debt has been paid. They have a renewed relationship with the One who paid the debt.
They are no longer avoiding Him. They come into His presence because they have access there. Let us live that way. Let us live as forgiven people and come into His presence.
Let us plow up the fallow ground. Fallow ground simply means ground that is unused. We have this inheritance. Is it fallow for us? If it is, the encouragement in Hosea is to plow up the fallow ground.
Finally, in light of the guarantee of our inheritance, let us live in the hope and expectation that, as surely as He has forgiven us, He will complete that which He has begun in us until the day of Christ Jesus.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for Your Word. We ask, Lord, that Your Word would become real to us in such a way that it inspires us to have faith in You.
Bring us to You. Do not let us merely think about what this means or what that means, but bring us right back to You.
Lord, these things that You say are ours—Father, I pray for all of us that we would know them and experience them. Even if it is one thing this week, let us know that one thing You have for us.
As we come back tomorrow to celebrate around Your table, may we come with hearts full of praise.
Even if it is only what we would call kindergarten—the knowledge that our sins are forgiven—Lord, what a wonderful knowledge that is. Our sins are forgiven, and we can come to You, and You have to do with us now.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the treasure in it, and we pray that it will be worked out in our lives. You have told it to us not to hold it over our heads, but that we might have it.
Lord, help us to have it, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.