Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Our dear Heavenly Father, you have done incredible things so that we can call you Father, and you have incredible work yet to do.
[00:00:20] I pray that you would open our hearts this morning to accept your electing love.
[00:00:30] I pray that our human egos would not obstruct the good work you want to do in our hearts.
[00:00:41] And I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[00:00:48] Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul spent three years in the city of Ephesus.
[00:01:00] And then he was thinking about them and wrote them a letter and were studying the first chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.
[00:01:14] While Paul was in Ephesus, there was a riot. I mean, there was a full fledged riot.
[00:01:25] The silversmith guild got together and the head of the guild said, we make most of our profit by selling these Artemis shrines.
[00:01:41] So people would come to the temple of Artemis and do festivals and celebrations there, and then they would buy these little silver shrines and take them home and that they would worship Artemis at home with their little silver shrine.
[00:02:04] And the silversmith guild said, paul is convincing everybody that Artemis isn't a deity and she's losing respect all over Asia.
[00:02:20] He said, in fact, I hope you've noticed our profits are all down. We're not selling as many shrines as we used to.
[00:02:31] And the guild started shouting, great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
[00:02:40] They marched out into the street and everybody is attracted by something strange happening. So people started following the silversmiths and they ended up marching into the amphitheater I showed you last week. And for two hours they rioted until finally the city administrator could calm them down.
[00:03:10] And several years after that happened, Paul wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus.
[00:03:18] And the very first thing he said to them was, the blessed God blesses.
[00:03:26] Artemis is not a deity.
[00:03:30] She is. She is the creation of human mythology, and she isn't capable of blessing you.
[00:03:40] But there is a great God who is infinitely blessed in himself, and it is his passion to bless you.
[00:03:52] And then he said, I'm going to list for you some of the blessings that the blessed God gives us. And that gets us to Ephesians 1:4, even as he elected us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his presence in love, the blessed God elected us.
[00:04:24] This word elect in the original language means to choose for oneself, even as the blessed God chose you for himself.
[00:04:39] It means to select someone for yourself, even as the blessed God said, I picked you and I do it for myself.
[00:04:53] It means to elect out of a Group, there is a choice. And the blessed God out of the group says, I choose you.
[00:05:08] That makes some people uncomfortable.
[00:05:11] In fact, I've had people raging mad at me because I teach this. But Paul wrote it. Church, I did not invent this. The Apostle Paul wrote this.
[00:05:28] I want you to hear this morning that out of the riches of his heart, God said, I pick you.
[00:05:40] Now, some of you believe that you're a Christian today because you picked God.
[00:05:47] But that's not what Paul says.
[00:05:50] Paul says, we're Christians not because of what we do, but because of what God did.
[00:05:59] Listen, what Jesus himself said. These are the words of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:05] You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.
[00:06:14] Okay? These are the words of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:18] Jesus said, you're not a Christian today because you picked me. You're a Christian today because I picked you.
[00:06:28] Some people say, well, this is how it worked.
[00:06:31] God looked out into the future and he saw that we would pick him, so he picked us.
[00:06:44] First of all, that's not what Jesus said.
[00:06:50] Jesus didn't say, I choose you because you first chose me. He said, you didn't choose me first. I chose you first.
[00:07:00] We are Christians today not because Christ peaked at the future. We are Christians today because Christ created the future.
[00:07:12] Listen, what Jesus once taught.
[00:07:16] If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love him. Love them.
[00:07:28] Okay, if the only reason God picked me is because he saw that I would pick him, that falls under this teaching of Jesus Christ. What honor does God get if he picks me because I picked Him?
[00:07:49] Even pagans do that.
[00:07:53] The argument is just the opposite. The reason we pick him is because he first picked us.
[00:08:01] Paul said to Timothy in second Timothy 1:9, who saved us and called us to a holy calling. Now listen to this.
[00:08:11] Not because of our works, but because of his own purpose in grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
[00:08:26] Based on what did God choose you? He chose you based on his purpose and on his grace.
[00:08:34] The blessed God declared His purpose for us. Before he created the universe, the blessed God began to give us grace to. Before he created the universe.
[00:08:48] Do you see what it says in Timothy? Before the ages began, God.
[00:09:00] Before God created anything, he planned everything.
[00:09:05] I want. I want you to hear this. God did not create randomly. Before he created anything, he mentally planned everything.
[00:09:18] And listen at this. This is very interesting. God didn't plan to create the world and then put you on it.
[00:09:27] God planned to create you. And created a world for you to live on in the decrees of God. God thought of mankind first.
[00:09:40] When God was planning everything, his first thoughts weren't about the Great Horse Nebula. It wasn't about our solar system, it wasn't about galaxies that God first thought of you.
[00:10:00] And then he created a plan for you to live somewhere in the. In the mind of God. You came before everything else.
[00:10:13] That's how God feels about you.
[00:10:16] That's the blessed God's attitude about you.
[00:10:20] God said, I'm going to imagine every single life that will ever be.
[00:10:32] You are who you are because God imagined you in his creative imagination before he made anything.
[00:10:41] You are not a random biological function. You are an expression of the creative image of God.
[00:10:49] And then after God imagined you, you should appreciate yourself some more. Some of you are too hard on yourself.
[00:10:58] Don't insult God's imagination. He thought you were pretty wonderful when he imagined you.
[00:11:04] God said, I can imagine this life.
[00:11:14] I can imagine when it would be the perfect time for them to come into the world.
[00:11:21] I can imagine their potential and their qualities.
[00:11:26] But God could also imagine us at our worst.
[00:11:30] God's imagination just didn't include everything that's beautiful and good. God's imagination said, I imagine that Doc is capable of some pretty ugly stuff.
[00:11:46] And in his plan, he chose me and said, no matter what ugly thing that guy figures out to do, I'm going to meet him with grace after grace, after grace.
[00:12:03] The almighty God, the blessed God, said, I'm going to bless that soul until it is thoroughly prepared to abide with me forever. Do you hear this election? Is God choosing you to show you all the grace that you need to be prepared to abide with him forever? Can you hear this now for some of you who have made pretty bad mistakes, listen to this.
[00:12:33] Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound.
[00:12:39] Your sin doesn't surprise the blessed God.
[00:12:48] My ugliness has surprised me from time to time.
[00:12:52] I've been surprised that I could be such an ugly person.
[00:12:56] But that never surprised the blessed God. Once in his perfect plan, in his absolute commitment, he says, I'm going to. I'm going to give you all the grace you need to become the soul I always imagined you to be.
[00:13:21] Ah, let's remind ourselves of the Westminster Confession. I want to read you a portion from all eternity.
[00:13:31] God did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.
[00:13:46] Yet so as thereby, neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures.
[00:13:57] Nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
[00:14:04] Although God knows whatever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it in the future. I can tell you this an easier way.
[00:14:20] I can reduce this to five statements that you can understand. Number one.
[00:14:26] God made a perfect plan through his wise, free and holy will.
[00:14:34] History is not random. Mankind is not stumbling through history.
[00:14:41] There was an infinitely brilliant God, and he contemplated reality. And out of that contemplation he produced a perfect plan to this plan did not make God the cause of sin in the world.
[00:15:00] I have people say to me sometimes, well, if God planned everything, then sin is his fault.
[00:15:09] That's another sermon. But I am gonna say this.
[00:15:13] When I was raising teenagers, I knew they were going to make some mistakes. I asked them not to do some things because I didn't think was good for them. And guess what?
[00:15:26] They did it anyway.
[00:15:29] Okay? I didn't want them to. I asked them not to. It wasn't my will for them to do that, but they did it anyway. Well, the same thing happens with our Heavenly Father. Sin is not his fault. He's done everything to warn us about it. I mean, he's gone out of his way to say, you won't be as happy as you think you will be.
[00:15:54] And if we choose to disobey him, it doesn't make him the author of our sin.
[00:16:02] 3.
[00:16:04] This plan does not rob humanity of the responsibility of choices.
[00:16:10] So I will have people say to me, well, if God planned everything, then we don't make any choices. That's not true. We make choices every day. You are consciously aware that you make choices every day.
[00:16:25] Is it possible that God is wise enough to say, ah, your choices are pretty predictable to me.
[00:16:36] We can be predictable to each other. Well, don't you think we're predictable to God? When God imagined who you would be, your strengths and your weaknesses, when God imagined how you would respond to his teaching, he didn't take away from you the responsibility for choosing.
[00:16:59] In fact, he said, because I know what you'll choose and I know you'll make mistakes, I've got a plan to take care of that church.
[00:17:11] 4.
[00:17:13] God knows because he planned and purposed, not because he peaked at the future.
[00:17:20] This idea of peeking at the future seems odd to me.
[00:17:24] Do you realize there was no future to peek at when God was planning all this?
[00:17:31] Some people kind of treat history like it's a movie that God can sit down and watch. When this all happened before creation, when all there was was God himself, there was no future to peek at. If there was any future, it was coming out of his creative imagination. Do you understand this? So to say that somehow or another God peaked at the future is to misunderstand. There was no future. In eternity past, there was only God. And he spoke to himself, Father, son and Holy Spirit.
[00:18:10] 5.
[00:18:13] The blessed God acts in history to accomplish his eternal plan and purpose. What he planned before he created anything, he acts in history to make happen in our lives. All right, I'm losing you. Come home to me.
[00:18:33] All right. You got to get up tomorrow morning, and you gotta. You got things you have to do. You gotta go to work. You gotta take care of kids. There's a million things you have to do tomorrow. All right?
[00:18:50] I wonder if it would change your day tomorrow if when you got up, you said to yourself, I have been chosen by God.
[00:19:04] He knows my day where I get it right. I'm going to delight him where I don't get it right. He's so committed to me that he's going to give me grace to correct my way and help me get back on track.
[00:19:23] Church.
[00:19:25] I wonder if tomorrow, when the day gets hard and you start feeling grouchy, you might just take a moment and whisper a prayer and say, I believe I am chosen by you.
[00:19:40] I believe I am chosen by you. And that you're going to do something in my heart today. And that you're going to use everything that happens to me today to make me more of the person you want me to be.
[00:19:54] I was actually reading Herman Bavink's theology this week, and Bavink has this incredible argument that God even uses sin to develop us into the people he wants us to be.
[00:20:15] He can use your worst mistake to make you a better person.
[00:20:20] That's how committed he is to you. Do you understand that what you think is ruining your life, God may be at work in that very thing to change your mind and change your heart and make you more of the person he wants you to be. Church.
[00:20:41] There's one proof of this.
[00:20:44] Have you ever sinned so much you hated your own sin?
[00:20:50] No, man. We got to get Billy Graham in this church. I'm not good enough for you people.
[00:21:00] There have been times in my life where I just got sick of being a loser.
[00:21:07] You see, that was the goodness of God.
[00:21:11] That was the goodness of God. That was God saying to me, you argue with me about this all the time, but look where you are now.
[00:21:19] How's it working for you, Hoss?
[00:21:23] Ah.
[00:21:24] The blessed God blesses us and he chooses to walk with us day by day by day and meet us in our great triumphs and in our great defeats because he has an eternal purpose that he wants to fulfill.
[00:21:47] There is a reason why he chose us.
[00:21:51] He chose us to be holy and blameless.
[00:22:00] The blessed God elected us so that he could share his holiness with us.
[00:22:09] Let's remind ourselves that holiness means moral perfection.
[00:22:13] God is morally perfect.
[00:22:17] And God said, I'm choosing you and I'm going to work in your life, and in the end, you're going to be morally perfect, just like I am.
[00:22:28] Church now, surely you've lived long enough to know that you can't. It's hard to be morally good, let alone perfect.
[00:22:40] Church none of us are living with the myth that we can make ourself morally perfect.
[00:22:49] It's interesting. When God created mankind, he never said we were perfect. He said we were Good.
[00:22:57] Read Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, God looked at his creation and said, this is good. Moral perfection was always intended to be a gift of God to humanity.
[00:23:09] From the very creation, God said, I'm going to give my elect moral perfection.
[00:23:19] It is the passion of the blessed God to be at work in your heart to the very end and then to stand you up on the great day. Morally perfect.
[00:23:33] That's his desire.
[00:23:39] Some of you think it's God's desire to get you before that great throne and humiliate you and embarrass you for everything you ever did wrong and. And expose you.
[00:23:51] It's not in the Bible, Church.
[00:23:54] That's in the book of rumors, and that's a pretty thick book, by the way.
[00:24:03] It is his intention. It was his intention from when he imagined you and chose you to stand you up before him on that great day and glorify his name by saying, this is my man, Dave. He's morally perfect in my sight. Church. That's what you're chosen for. But it's not just. It's not just to be moral. It's not just to be wholly morally perfect. He goes one step farther. God elected us to be faultless, to be blameless.
[00:24:40] Who would ever believe that they could make themselves completely blameless in life?
[00:24:50] It's another thing that has to be a gift of God.
[00:24:54] God chose you and said, someday I'm going to do my perfect work in you and I'm going to look at you and you're going to be without fault. You're going to be without Blame. There's not going to be a blemish to your account.
[00:25:12] And God said, you can't do that for yourself. But I am the blessed God and I can bless you with that.
[00:25:19] The blessed God's heart is not to judge you.
[00:25:25] Christ said, I did not come into the world to condemn the world, but the world through me might be saved. That's his heart.
[00:25:34] Some of you tremble at the thought of facing God with the mistakes you've made in life.
[00:25:41] You worry that, that he'll be angry with you. Are you worried that he'll condemn you? God elected you before he created the world. And he said, when I'm done with you, you're going to be morally perfect and you're going to be faultless and I'm going to be completely content with you.
[00:26:05] Church that's a spiritual blessing.
[00:26:11] Only the blessed God can make us faultless.
[00:26:16] He elected us to bless us with faultlessness.
[00:26:22] And then Paul said, all of this is so we can live forever in the presence of his divine love.
[00:26:35] He ends it by saying, he blessed us so that we can be in his presence in love.
[00:26:46] It was the blessed God's intention from the time he imagined you for you to live forever in his presence.
[00:26:57] I can't live forever in his presence without being holy and faultless.
[00:27:04] And so first he makes me holy and faultless and then he invites me to live in his presence forever.
[00:27:16] I wonder how picky are you about who you invite to stay at your house.
[00:27:27] I don't know about you, but I don't let people walk off the street and have a bedroom.
[00:27:34] Wouldn't be comfortable with that.
[00:27:40] God has prepared a place that where he is, there we may be also.
[00:27:49] And God said, it's my place.
[00:27:52] I get to choose who lives here.
[00:27:56] Is that fair? God said, I prepared this place. I created this place. I created this place with specific people in mind.
[00:28:07] God chose you and he has prepared a place for you.
[00:28:14] He knows you better than you know yourself.
[00:28:17] And there is a coming day when the blessed God will bless us with the privilege of abiding with him forever. Church and it was his plan from the very beginning.
[00:28:33] From the very beginning, it was his plan for us to have these short, temporary lives where, where we, His Spirit works in us and prepares us to abide with him forever. But his eternal purpose and plan was for us to live in the fullness of joy and love in the place that he is uniquely prepared for those that he has chosen.
[00:29:04] You were elect to be the special focus of the blessed God's Infinite love.
[00:29:12] Listen at this. I find this absolutely fascinating.
[00:29:17] God didn't choose you for what you can do for Him. He chose you for what he can do for you.
[00:29:25] You see, because see, that's really what love is.
[00:29:29] Love is not me manipulating you to do what I want you to do.
[00:29:34] Love is me loving you regardless of what you do or don't do. Can you hear this, Church?
[00:29:43] God said you are going to be the one that I focus my special love on.
[00:29:54] Church that is the blessed God blesses you for all eternity will be experiencing the unique focus of a God of infinite love.
[00:30:09] Church. It doesn't get any better than that.
[00:30:15] The blessed God created you to love him and to be loved by Him.
[00:30:21] I'm going to tell you what my future looks like.
[00:30:24] My destiny is abiding forever in the unspeakable love of a blessed God.
[00:30:32] That's where my history is going. That's where my course is bending. The route of my life is bending on an ark that will eventually take me into the presence of God where I will abide in his inexplicable love forever.
[00:30:54] The blessed God loved and elected before he created the universe. And listen to this. When the universe passes away, the electing love of God will still be sustaining you.
[00:31:07] The apostle Paul tells us that someday all of this is going to pass away. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. This world was designed to be temporary.
[00:31:21] The world and everything in it is passing away. But listen, because God elected you before he created any of this. He will sustain you when all of this passes away.
[00:31:36] When all of this is a memory and we abide in a new heaven and a new earth. The God who elected us before the foundation of the world. He will be the God who sustains us eternally by his love, grace and beauty. That's our destiny.
[00:31:55] That's what humanity is. That's what the elect of the Lord are destined for.
[00:32:03] I always have to.
[00:32:06] I always have to deal with the question, well, what about the non elect, number one?
[00:32:19] It is for God to decide, it's not for us to decide it.
[00:32:29] God decides what is righteous, good and right.
[00:32:35] And I trust him to do what is righteous, good and right.
[00:32:41] People say to me, well, does it mean that there are some people who never had a chance?
[00:32:48] That doesn't mean that at all.
[00:32:51] God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
[00:32:56] What it means is that God in His electing love is going to show some people more grace than others.
[00:33:04] Some People in the world get more grace than others.
[00:33:08] Let me tell you what that looks like.
[00:33:11] You could have been born. I'm absolutely sure that on November 25, 1953, there was at least one baby boy born in Saudi Arabia.
[00:33:25] Is that a safe guess?
[00:33:28] The very same day I was born in America, there was doubtlessly a boy born in Saudi Arabia.
[00:33:37] It is against the law to preach the gospel in Saudi Arabia.
[00:33:42] That man like me has grown up his whole life. Except I've grown up hearing the gospel my whole life, and that man never heard the gospel one time. It's against the law to preach the gospel there. Okay, it's obvious I got more grace than he got church.
[00:34:01] It's. You can't argue with it now. You can. You can start asking the questions why? But the Bible says, because it's part of God's wise purpose. I don't understand the details of it, but it is an absolute fact that some people get more grace than others. And what should that do? It should humble us. Instead of me looking at other people and thinking I'm better than they are because I made the right choices and they didn't, I. I should look at other people and say, thank you, God, that you have given me grace upon grace.
[00:34:39] Thank you, God, that you've shown your kindness to me in ways way beyond what I deserve.
[00:34:47] Thank you, God, that even though I have not been what you expected me to be, you have been more than I could ever expect you to be. It causes us to be humble, and it causes us to worship the blessed God who blesses us in ways beyond what we can imagine.
[00:35:10] And so I'm saying to you today, there is a blessed God.
[00:35:18] He started blessing you from the moment he imagined you.
[00:35:22] And he chose you to be the recipients of his special grace in this world. And he chose to make you holy and faultless. And he chose to prepare a place for you because it is his desire for you to abide forever.
[00:35:42] The focus of his eternal love. Our dear Heavenly Father.
[00:35:50] I pray that your Holy Spirit would do that work that only you can do.
[00:35:57] I pray that we would honor you for being the blessed God who for no reason other than your. Your own good plan, you chose us.
[00:36:15] Dear Father, thank you for all the grace you've given to us.
[00:36:19] Thank you for day after day you've met us in grace.
[00:36:24] Thank you for the promise that someday, because of your perfect work, we will be holy and blameless and we will live in your presence in love.
[00:36:35] Thank you. In Christ's name, amen.
