02 Ephesians 1:3-14 The Dividing Line

Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, how a Bible study applied to real life. Today is Wednesday, January 15, 2014. Our passage is Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. This is the second message in our series on the book of Ephesians. Speaker 1: Well, welcome back. It is so good to see you. Thank you for making the effort to be here. I know we could all study on our own, but it wouldn't be half as much fun and we wouldn't learn half as much. So it's just great to be able to study together. And we are going to begin our study of Ephesians in earnest this week. Last week we talked about the background and the introduction to the letter. So we talked about who was Paul and who was his relationship, what was his relationship to Ephesus. So I'm just going to review that briefly. Remember, the Apostle Paul is the author of our letter. He claims to have been given this unique authority to speak for God and to teach the things that Jesus taught him. That's what he means by he's an apostle. He's writing this letter from a Roman prison cell to the church at Ephesus, which is a church he knows well. He lived there for a couple of years teaching and preaching. And then Ephesus is a large commercial city heavily influenced by the Temple of Artemis, which was its major employer, its major trade. And most of the industry evolved around supporting the temple, which included a widespread practice of magic and idolatry. So after his initial greeting, Paul launches into the body of his letter with this yet another one big long sentence. So we're going to look at verses 3 through 5 through 14 today, and it too is one sentence. He never pauses to break it. And it's full of theology. We would expect his readers to know this because he spent so much time with them. So he can launch into this huge one-long sentence with all this just packed with content because he's taught them and he's reminding them what he knows. Now, just to remind you, in your homework, you're breaking it up in pieces. So for your homework, all you had to look at was three through six. And next week you'll look at, I think, seven through ten, or I can't remember exactly what it is. I'm going to cover the whole thing today. And then next week and the week after, we're going to, I'm going to, you're going to keep going through Ephesians 1 in your homework. And what I'm going to do in lecture is talk about the issues that raises, primarily predestination. So just we're going to be a little out of sync for the next two weeks, and then we'll come back together when we get to his prayer that Beth read this morning. So don't get confused. I'm giving you a preview of your homework today. So you can just keep taking it in manageable chunks, but we're going to kind of go through the big picture today and then look at the issues in the next two weeks. So what I'd like to do to read it is to start by reading the whole sentence just so you can get the flow, the idea of it's, you know, how this kind of cascades one idea into the other. I think when we break it up in sections, we lose that flow and we we kind of miss some of the passion behind the words. So let me read for us. This is Ephesians 1. We're going to read from 3 to 14. Blessed be the God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will according to the kind intention which he purposed in him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory. It's like, wow. He starts, Blessed be the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and then he goes on to say he chose us, he predestined us, he gave us redemption, he made known the mystery of his will, he gave us an inheritance, and he sealed us with him. It's this one big cascade of incredible blessings. So before we can talk about each one individually, let me kind of go over them, uh kind of in general, what we can learn about them, the flow of these. So first thing you know is he says bless you. He says, These are spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. So what is it, why would he say spiritual blessings and then give us this cryptic phrase in the heavenly places in Christ? And I I think he is contrasting these blessings with what they would have been familiar with from the Old Testament. So, for instance, if you look at Deuteronomy 28, 1 through 14, you'll see a whole list of blessings there, and they involve prosperity, abundance, and peace. Let me just give you a flavor of it. This is Deuteronomy 28, 2 through 6. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flocks. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall be when you're blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out, and it goes on. And all the blessings are for here and now. They're for this lifetime. They're wonderful blessings. They're abundance, peace, prosperity, calm, confidence, but they're for now. So Paul, I think, is contrasting now with the coming of Jesus, the nature of the blessings has changed. We have something infinitely better and infinitely more valuable. Now they're spiritual blessings. They take, they affect us just as much, but in uh eternity, in the next age. So in the heavenly places is the phrase he adds to kind of clarify that, and that's a difficult phrase to pin down. It is occurs five times in Ephesians and nowhere else in the New Testament. So that doesn't give us a whole lot of help. But he uses it in 1.3 and then he uses it again in 120 when he says um when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. He uses again in 2.6, um, he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Then again in 3.10, so that the manifold wisdom of God may be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. And then finally he uses it in 6.12. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, or in the heavenlies, is another way to translate it. So it's like, hmm. Alright, so it's clear he's talking about some other realm. And I think he basically means the unseen world of spiritual reality. So there's the temporal world that we can look and see and touch and we experience in a very tangible way, but there is another reality that is just as real, and it's the spiritual world. And I think that's the idea he's got here. So he's contrasting these blessings relate primarily to our relationship with God. They relate to our ultimate destiny, and that makes them infinitely more valuable than the uh blessings in Deuteronomy, which secure peace, abundance, and prosperity, but these blessings secure our eternal destiny. Okay, so first they're spiritual. Second, they span all of time. Notice in verse 4 he says election is before the foundation of the world, so that's the past. In verse 7, he gives us adoption, which is what we have now in Christ. And then in verse 12, he talks about when all things will be united with Christ or the fullness of time, so that's in the future. So we've got these blessings that span all of history and beyond, really, past, present, and future. And they come from four relationships. You know this they come from the work of the Father who chose us, that's in four through six, and seven and eight. They're based on the Son who redeemed us, and nine and ten, they come from the apostles who teach us, and then in thirteen and fourteen, we the Holy Spirit seals us. So we have the Father choosing, the Son redeeming, the Apostles teaching us, and the Holy Spirit sealing us. So we get these four relationships. And then finally, and kind of the most important, I think, is notice all the modifiers he used. He uses modifier after modifier to say these blessings come from God's grace, based on his mercy, nothing we've done. So if you remember from the Deuteronomy passage I read, it starts, if you obey the Lord your God. And it's very conditional on what we do. And Paul's saying, now all these blessings are not based on anything we've done, they come from God Himself. So the most obvious one is the repetition of the phrase in Christ, in the beloved, through Jesus Christ. He says that ten times in 14 verses. Or actually maybe it's 11. It's at least it's over ten. So he doesn't want you to miss the fact that all these things are made possible by what Jesus did for us, not by how well we keep the covenant, not by how well we listen or obey. That they come through what God has done for us. But then notice the rest of them. He says, God chose you in Christ, so again, not through our merit, but because of what Christ did before the foundation of the world, so lest we think we had anything to do with it, uh, he chose us before we'd even been born, that we should be holy and blameless before him. So not that we were holy and therefore he chose us. We were not holy, and he chose us in order to make us holy. So again, it's not based on our character or anything about us. Uh He predestined us to adoption as his son through Jesus Christ, again through Jesus' work, not our own, according to the kind intention of his will, based on his grace, his choice, his will, not us, which he freely bestowed. He didn't have to, we didn't do anything to make him bless us and so on. So if you just walk through all those modifiers, notice again and again he's saying, these came from God because he loves you, because he's gracious, because he's kind. And that theme gets continued over and over. So God did this because he wanted to, because it was his choice, his plan, his purpose. Not that we deserved it or earned it, but because of his grace. All right, so that's kind of the overview. Let's look at each one. So we're going to start with the choice in three through six. Blessed be the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us to adoptions as his sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. So the first one is God chose us to be holy and blameless and to be adopted as his sons. And the Greek word for choose means to select out, so it's to uh to make a choice, to segregate, to separate one some from another. And notice all the modifiers he chose i in relation to Jesus Christ before time began to make us uh like Jesus, to give us his character because of his love for us, to have this personal adopted son-child type relationship with him because it pleased him and it brings praise to his name. Now that's a lot of theology packed into there, and there's a lot of implications. And we're gonna talk more about this specifically next week. What does it mean to be predestined and before the foundation of the world? So I know you probably have a lot of questions about that, but hang on to them for next week because we're gonna get into that. But let me focus on one thing I think he's this ought to teach us now, is there's a whole lot of security in this. That God chose you. And that ought to bring this incredible confidence and security because it means our relationship with God is not based on a whim, it's not based on emotion, it's not based on our good behavior or our past actions or our future potential, it's not based on our looks or our weight or our personality or how intelligent we are or where we rate on the scale of popularity. He's saying God chose you because of what Jesus did and because he is a gracious God. So he acted before we were born, before we had a chance to do, um, to earn it in any way. And if we didn't earn it, then we can't unearn it. We can't jeopardize it. There's nothing we can do or say or feel that will cause God to stop loving us or to unchoose us. And in Romans, Paul amplifies this and he says, While you were sinful, while you were rebellious, so even when you were at your worst, God chose you. So now that we've been chosen and we're adopted as his child, don't you think he's gonna love us enough to get us the rest of the way home? So he paid this incredible price while we were in darkness, while we were sinful and rebellious, and that ought to give us this great security that now we're part of the family. We're there, we're his, and that's it. So I always when I think about this, like think about your deepest, darkest secret. So, you know, everybody has one. So the ugliest thing you know about yourself, maybe it's something you said or did or didn't do, or hurt someone, or lost some, or you know, something, whatever it is that you don't you would just die if any of your friends find out, found out that you actually said or did that. God knows that, and he knew it before he chose you, and he chose you anyway. So you don't have to worry about that. That's security. In addition to security, it gives it implies choice implies forethought, purpose, commitment, and intimacy. Think about that. Forethought. It was planned before the foundation of the world. He thought about it in advance, he had a purpose and a plan. He knows what he's doing. There's a commitment. He chose us, he dedicated himself to making us holy and blameless. And he did all this so that we could have this intimate personal relationship with him. Now, probably the closest thing we have to analogy is the choice to marry someone. And that's a for us, and at least in modern America, that's usually a choice we have. We can make it freely, it's a deliberate choice, and we're choosing to commit to a relationship that seeks intimacy, that seeks specialness, that should be a cherishing, nurturing relationship. And that's what's going on here. I think that's why the marriage relationship is most often used as the analogy between Christ and his church. The idea is that we were chosen to have this intimate, um, special, committed relationship. And why? According to the kind intention of his will. So the motive was his good pleasure, basically. It's a really powerful expression, this kind intention of his will. It means the inner longing and delight of God. And it was so great it it um this inner delight or inner desire is strong enough, it's the driving force that makes him choose us. So we are chosen to be adopted as his sons and to be made holy. And then the second um that brings us to the payments, which is redemption in seven and eight. So God redeemed us by Christ's blood, forgiving our sins. So in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of grace which he lavished on us. So this word redemption, you've probably heard it, comes from the slave trade, and it means to buy someone back or to buy them out of slavery, so to pay a ransom for someone to make them free. And specifically, what God's done for us is buy us out of the power of sin and death by the death of his son. So the price of our redemption is Christ's blood, and the the result of it is forgiveness, the forgiveness of our sins, the canceling, the pardoning of our debt to sin. So redemption involves a price to be paid, a restoration of the relationship, and then usually this intense joy of newfound freedom. So the payment or the purchase price is the buyback to redeem someone out of slavery. The restoration, then, is our restoration to freedom from sin and a relationship with God, and then it ought to be followed by this ecstatic joy that now we have freedom. So the no this would have had great impact in Ephesus. If you think about it, slaves made up a really large proportion, proportion of the Roman Empire. So historians estimate that one-third of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. So this would have been a very real concept to them. And they were considered non-persons. So Aristotle wrote, a slave is a living tool just as a tool is an inanimate slave. And Cato said, sell worn-out auction, blemish cattle, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is useless. So slaves were considered non-people, they had no status, and now this message of freedom comes along that says, you can be redeemed. And it would have been very real to them. I think another group it would have been real to was women who were almost as enslaved as slaves. The ancient Greeks thought very little of women, they treated them almost like property. They seldom ventured outside the home, and they only had two places where they could gain independence or uh esteem, and that was as prostitutes, which were basically priestesses of the temple, which were essentially prostitutes, and that was their only avenue to independence, and of course that comes at a great price. So I think for women to be told you have been redeemed would also be a great a great kind of resonating idea. And then it also I think to the Jews, because they're they were a nation born out of slavery in Egypt. So they, you know, endured 400 years of slavery in Egypt, building the buildings and and um cities for Pharaoh, and then God leads them out of that, and that is what uh and their nation is born. So the slaves of the first century, women and Jews, the word redemption would have just rung with great significance. So then that brings us to the question, well, what's the price that was paid? What's the cost of our redemption? And it's through his blood. And again, there's a lot to say here, but I think uh as he goes on to amplify this, one of the things to point out is our pri the price has been paid in full. It's done. There's nothing left to be paid. The full price has been paid, there's nothing you have to add, there's nothing you have to do. Um, the debt's cancelled, you're free, you don't have to work to please God, you don't have to earn your place in his family, you don't have to prove yourself to stay in his good graces. The price has been paid once for all and completely. It's a gift. It's grace, it's what Christ did for you. So sin is no longer your master, and nothing about you is hopeless. So this is so notice too, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. I always thought that was a little odd that he's talking about redemption, and then the very next phrase is the forgiveness of our sins. Because we think of, well, there's all kinds of tyrants in our lives that we may want to be released from, but Paul says the tyrant that we were released from is the slavery of our sins. So what you know, what is sl forgiveness got to do with redemption? Because that is our biggest controlling tyrant, is our our slavery to our sins. And it's greater than the tyrant, uh, you know, uh being in Egypt if you were a Jew or uh and being a Roman slave or being oppressed as a as a female who was not given much status. He says those may be struggles that you have to deal with in life, but what's more important is this problem you have with sin, and that's what God has dealt with, and that's what have we been freed from the forgiveness of our sins so that we may be freed from them. Okay. So now we get to 9 through 12, the teachers, and the question here, you'll notice there's pronoun changes as we go through this passage. He starts with he chose us, he redeemed us, and then he talks about we in verse 11, and then in 13 he says, you also. So the question interpreters deal with is who are the we and who are the you's, and what's the shift between, say, 12 and 13 that he shifts from we to you. And there's a lot there are two main options is the we is all the Jews, and the you is the Gentiles, and that's uh Valid possibility. My personal preference is the other main option, and that is the we is the apostles, and the you is everyone they have taught. Because uh the only clue he gives us is we who were first to hope in Christ. So who were those who were first to hope in Christ? Well, it could be the Jews, but they weren't actually the first to hope in Christ. They kind of rejected him more often than not. So it seems to me that we would be those who believed in the gospel, specifically the apostles. And he's saying, we were taught these things, and then we taught them to you, and you also, after listening, believe. So that's what I think is going on, is he saying he made known to us the mystery of his will. In other words, he explained to us what Christ was doing for us, that he came to be to die in our place to pay the price for our sins, and that we have now understood that and we we taught it to you. And he emphasizes they the apostles were chosen by God's will. They didn't aspire to the office, they weren't campaigning for it, they were minding their own business, and Jesus came along and said, Follow me. And he notice he emphasizes that with um the phrases, where'd they go? The counsel of his will, he um the purpose he had. So he it's he emphasizes that God chose them, God had this plan, and they were just part of it. So his will denotes he made a free choice, he wasn't coerced or bound by anything. The counsel of his will indicates he did this with foresight and planning. His choices were deliberate and methodical and they had a purpose, and then they were with a purpose. And what was the purpose? The mystery revealed to them would be that everything would be brought under Christ's dominion. Now that again we think, okay. I understand being chosen and redeemed and being adopted, those are very personal to me. That makes that kind of sense sense because I can see how that directly affects my life, but why is it so exciting that um the mystery of his will with the summing up of all things in Christ in the fullness of the times and that everything will be put under his feet? So why is that included in this list of blessings? So I want to try to answer. So remember, a mystery is something that was formerly hidden and is now revealed, typically in the New Testament. That's what the word means. So it doesn't mean something we can't understand, it means something we can understand because it has now been explained to us. So the mystery of his will, there was something about his plan and his purpose and his redemptive history that we didn't understand, but with the coming of Christ that has been revealed to us and made known to us, and the mystery of his will being talked about here is that eventually the whole creation will bow at Christ's feet and will come to recognize him as Lord, and all will be given to him. So everything in heaven and earth will be perfected and put right in order to be given to Christ. Okay, so now that starts to make sense. Well, what does that have to do with me? Well, we know that we are part of Christ's inheritance. We are his bride, as the New Test uh New Testament describes us, and his church, and we are going to be given to him. And the connection, I think, is that uh all the everything will all the wrongs will be put right, and that includes us. Everything about us is going to be put right. So the final, we will finally be freed from not only the tyranny of sin, but all the effects and consequences, and we will be, as he says in verse, I think it's two, holy and blameless, because we are part of Christ's inheritance. So the prophets prophesied that one day all the wrongs would be right, but they didn't know exactly how it was going to come about. Now what's been revealed is it will come about through the Messiah, and that we can be given back to the Messiah because we will be cleaned, forgiven, holy, perfect, and blameless. So we have an inheritance. We will be part of what is given to Christ, and because God's not going to give Christ something cheap or rebellious or wicked or fallen, we will be made holy and blameless. And that's the picture we see in Revelation of this, the new church, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven clean and righteous. So the I think the promise for us, the promise of putting all things under Christ's feet or summing things up in him, is that we are part of that inheritance and will be made right. And that's pretty exciting. Okay, and then the seal. Let's look at this. After hearing and believed, he says, You also were marked as gods by the Holy Spirit, which fulfills a past promise and a future pledge. So in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory. So notice the prerequisites hearing and believing. So it's after hearing and believing the message that all these blessings come to us. We hear the truth that we are sinful, that we cannot save ourselves from our sin, that God owes us nothing, he's not obligated to give us anything, we haven't earned anything from him, but because of the blood of Jesus Christ, he will in fact give us this grace and this peace. And that Jesus died to take our place and to pay the penalty for our sins. We hear, we believe, it's more than doctrine, it's more than you know how I'd vote on a theology quiz. It becomes the driving uh kind of course of my life that changes me, so that we are no longer slaves to sin. So after hearing and believing, you're sealed with the Holy Spirit. And the idea here is you're marked for identification purposes. So the seal, the image of that is like when you have a wax ring and you press a seal into it, you have marked it and indelibly stamped it as to who he it belongs to. And notice he says it's a past promise and a future inheritance. It's uh the Holy Spirit of promise. Well, what was the promise? Let me give you a couple of examples. And this is from Numbers 11. This is actually one of my favorite passages. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon 70 elders in the camp, and they are prophesizing. This is during the time of Moses, and Joshua sees them and he gets all jealous, and he runs to Moses and he says, Moses, you've got to stop them because they're all prophesizing, but we know you're the prophet, you've got to stop them. And Moses replies, this is number 11, 29, Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit upon them. And Moses is longing for the day when the Spirit will be given to everyone, and he will get his wish. And this is from Jeremiah 31. This is probably a familiar passage to you. It's Jeremiah 31 through 34. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers, and the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land in Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. So Jeremiah is looking for the day when everyone will have the spirit, when everyone will know God and have no need of teachers. And then Joel 2, it will come about after this that I will pour out my spirit on all mankind, all your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, even on the male and female servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days. So the Old Testament looked to a time when the Spirit would be given without measure and without distinction, that everyone who believes, men, women, grown-ups, children alike, slave free, would be given this full measure of the Spirit. So without distinction, without measure. And then the prophets took it one step further and said that blessing would go beyond Israel to all the nations. And I think what Paul's saying is this is it. This is all those promises have been fulfilled. So what was promised to Abraham, what Moses was longing for, what the prophets envisioned, it has now come to pass after Pentecost. That the at Pentecost we see the Jews filled with the Spirit without measure, as we're Samaritans, the Ethiopian eunuch, the Gentiles, and us. So he's saying, You've been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. This was envisioned, this was part of the plan, this is what the prophets were looking for, and now it's here, and you are part of that fulfillment. Because now the law is being written on our hearts. Now he's making us new in a way that we didn't have before, so that we become people who not only want to keep the law but do, in fact, keep it. And sealed is the verb he used to describe it. The noun form of this is used as the of the signet ring of the king, which was used to seal important documents, and that seal had three purposes. It guaranteed authenticity, it named the rightful owner, and it protected them against tampering. Now think about that in terms of us. It guarantees authenticity, it names the rightful owner, and it protects the documents from being hampered with or harmed. And that's what he's saying God did with you. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit. It guarantees authenticity, ownership, and protection. So how do you know you're a Christian? Not because you maybe have an official document like maybe a letter of church membership or baptismal certificates. That's not it. That's not what actually seals you. There's no external right whether it's circumcision or baptism or church membership that guarantees authenticity. What guarantees authenticity is the Spirit of God changing you. And all those things we talked about last fall in 1 John of making you the kind of person who longs to be holy, who grieves over sin, who wants to know God and cries out to Him. So your spirit now crying out, Father, save me, Father, forgive me, or whatever, is part of, is evidence of the seal. It brings that authenticity. But it's also ownership. It lets you know who your father is and who you belong to. Last week we talked about Paul dividing the world into two groups, those who know God and those who don't, and he says that's the only dividing line that matters, and you know that you are in the family of God because of the Holy Spirit working in your life. And then more importantly, this is the one that, at least for me, makes the most, kind of resonates the most, the king's seal prevented the documents from being tampered with. One of the places we see this is in the story of Esther, when King Ahazarus has made the decree that will kill all the the Jews, he says, but it's been sealed with the ring. I can't revoke it. We have what are what are we going to do? And it um this is Esther 8. Now write to the Jews as you see fit in the king's name and seal it with the king's signet ring, for decree which is written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's signet ring may not be revoked. And that's what Paul is saying here, that God stamps your soul with his signet ring. It's something he cannot and will not revoke. And when we are sealed, he is saying, in effect, this is my child, this is my authentic child whom I am committed to. I will protect and I will love. And it's a past promise and it's a present fulfillment of a um or a pledge of a future inheritance. He's saying that seal points to the fact that you will get your inheritance in full measure. So, and you have no reason to doubt it. So the term pledge he uses in 14 means down payment. It's just like a mortgage down payment. It's some earnest money you put down that says, I will pay this over time. And he's saying the spirit is our first installment of an inheritance to come. So our destiny is sealed. There's no doubt, there's no um, you don't have to worry, will God reject me, will he throw me back or something? But that this is inheritance we look forward to is guaranteed. It's coming. And what is it? It's being made holy and blameless before him, being adopted into the family of God. So that longing that we talked about last fall as being the mark of a believer of longing to be free from sin, of grieving over it, of of wanting to be the kind of person who doesn't even want to sin anymore. That will come to pass. So all those things, I mean, just imagine being the kind of person where everywhere you go, you bring a life and goodness and nurturing, and there's never any strife and never any miscommunication, or or you never let anyone down, um, or never disappoint. You always know the right word to say. It's coming. That's the promise. You will be that kind of person. That's what it means to be holy and blameless, to be totally um freed from sin. That's the picture he's giving us. And he's saying, Blessed be the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has done all this for us because of the work of Jesus. And next week we're gonna dive into predestination. It's gonna be fun. You're gonna love it. Um, I debated a lot about should we do it or not do it, or how do we handle it? And I asked some people, if you were gonna study Ephesians 1, what's the biggest question you have? And I got predestination, predestination. Okay. So um I finally decided if we don't talk about it in a place like Wednesday in the Word, where are you gonna talk about it? You know, so I'm gonna try to give you all the sides of the coin. So I'm gonna say these are the main views and why people believe one or the other. We are not all gonna agree, and that's okay. Remember what saves us is. Not our doctrine. None of us have perfect doctrine. So I will say this again next week, but your goal, uh this is what I'd ask you to, as your goal for as we go into this, is figure out what you believe and why you believe it, and then figure out what the other side is and why you don't believe it. So you don't have to persuade your neighbor, just figure out what you believe and why, and why the other one fails to persuade you. And as we as we get into predestination, keep this picture in mind, because I think these 14 verses, the picture Paul is giving us of all these blessings, including predestination, is that this is a great and wonderful thing. So imagine a wise, loving, gracious, say, grandfather, and he is planning for his children's inheritance. And so maybe he sets up some trust fund or something for his future great-great-grandchildren before they're even born. And he takes care of them so that they are secure and and ta they have nothing to worry about. And we would look at that and say, wow, that's a wonderful thing for a wise and earthly parent to start maybe saving and planning for their children and grandchildren on the day they're born or before they're even born. You know, did those future great children deserve it? No. Did they earn it? No. But it's a reflection of this deep love that their father or grandfather had for them. And that's the picture Paul's giving us. That we have this inheritance and it's secure. So it's a we have the pledge now, we have the first installment of the gift of the Holy Spirit. But what it is a uh is it's pointing to the real thing, the full installment that's yet to come. So the just keep that in mind that Paul thinks this is a wonderful thing, but this inheritance is safe, secure, and paid in full for you by a wise and loving and gracious Father who planned ahead. And that's the picture. So just as we get into you know, kind of heavy theology, try to keep that in mind. That's kind of the offering. All right. Let me pray and then I'll ask for questions. Father, thank you that you did indeed bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And that it doesn't rest on our feeble efforts or our understanding or even our, you know, how well we uh uh uh how how strong our our faith is that even that is a gift from you. We just pray that if anyone has not bel yet believed or has not yet heard the message of how wonderful the gifts of Christ are and the freedom found in him, I just pray that you would make that known to her now, that you would make these truths real, maybe changing from an idea that's been heard to a truth that's embraced. And we just pray that you would um in all of us help us to understand the full riches of your grace um and to uh enjoy and um with gratitude and confidence the gifts that you have given us in Jesus' name. Speaker: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. For more or further questions related to this message, please visit our website, Wednesdayintheword.com. Thank you for being with us, and we hope you'll join us again.