Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I want to tell Katie thank you for the awesome job she did last week on reminding us that God is the God of hope.
[00:00:15] And it is his great desire to bless us with the riches of his hope. A hope that's better than anything we can produce ourselves.
[00:00:28] Our dear Heavenly Father, I thank you that you have chosen to be the blessed God who blesses us.
[00:00:40] I'm grateful that every good thing in my life comes from you.
[00:00:45] And I pray that I could speak about you in the kind of way today that people's hearts are drawn nearer to you.
[00:00:55] People understand you better and have a deeper longing in their soul to know you and to experience your goodness.
[00:01:06] And I ask this all in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:11] We've been studying through Ephesians, chapter one.
[00:01:15] Paul wrote this letter to the church of Ephesus when he was in prison in Rome.
[00:01:23] And the very first thing he does when he starts his letter to them is he says the blessed God blesses.
[00:01:34] It's the most important thing he says in the whole book.
[00:01:38] If you want to think right about God, you begin to think God is blessed in and of himself.
[00:01:47] God is at peace and has well being. God enjoys living.
[00:01:55] He's not traumatized by creation.
[00:01:59] And out of the riches of his own blessedness, he blesses us.
[00:02:06] But he said to the church at Ephesus, you might not really understand the riches of his blessing. Ephesus was a very, very wealthy town. It was an international port.
[00:02:22] A people thrived there. It was, it was, it was a place that movers and shakers wanted to be.
[00:02:31] And just like many Americans, they began to equate blessings with stuff.
[00:02:40] So you're blessed if you have the right house in the right neighborhood. You're blessed if your car has the right name on it.
[00:02:49] You're blessed if your clothes are designer clothes. And they began to associate divine blessings with cultural things.
[00:03:01] And Paul says, if you do that, you're going to miss the whole point.
[00:03:09] Any blessing you have that is stuff, you have it temporarily.
[00:03:18] We don't really own anything. We just get to call it ours for a little while in life.
[00:03:27] And the odds are your kids won't value it nearly as much as you do. All you have to do is walk through a flea market to prove that grandma's stuff all right. So Paul said, the very best blessings aren't stuff.
[00:03:49] The very best blessings, they are relational and they have eternal value.
[00:03:57] He said, the blessed God blesses us and he elects us to be holy and faultless before him in love.
[00:04:09] The blessed God blesses us and he predestines us to be his own eternally.
[00:04:17] The blessed God blesses us and he redeems us from all of the ugly things we know and all the ugly things we know and don't like about ourselves. God redeems us from that.
[00:04:32] The blessed God blesses us and he makes known to us the mystery of his will.
[00:04:38] The blessed God blesses us and gives us an inheritance that is unique to each one of us as an individual soul.
[00:04:48] The blessed God blesses us and gives us hope. And this morning we're going to look at the the blessed God blesses us and seals us with His Holy Spirit.
[00:05:04] This is what Paul said Ephesians 1:13 In Christ you when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom you believed, you were sealed by the Spirit of promise, the Holy One who is the guarantee of your inheritance, unto the redemption of the possession, unto the praise of his glory.
[00:05:38] Now that sounds convoluted, but we're going to do it in a very, very plain way.
[00:05:46] The first thing Paul says is it is a blessing to even hear the gospel.
[00:05:56] I want to remind you there are people around the world who will never hear the gospel one time.
[00:06:04] There are people around the world who will never hear that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life. There are people around the world who will never hear that a single time.
[00:06:22] And we take it for granted. But it is an incredible blessing of God because until we hear the gospel, we don't have a chance of believing the gospel. And what a blessing it is that God in His goodness ordained that we should be born in a place where you can hear the gospel every single day.
[00:06:49] He says it is a blessing to hear the gospel. Jesus was once teaching and he said to the people he was teaching, seeing you see, but you don't really perceive.
[00:07:08] Hearing you hear, but you don't really understand.
[00:07:13] It's one thing to hear the gospel, it's another thing to hear the gospel and the Holy Spirit makes it understandable.
[00:07:21] It's one thing to hear, for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son. It's a very, very different thing to feel in your inner soul. God loved me so much he gave his only begotten Son. There is a world of difference from hearing the idea to experiencing the truth and the wonder of God loving you as an individual.
[00:07:50] We hear the gospel through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ John wrote in his gospel, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.
[00:08:04] Jesus Christ is God's way of making the gospel powerful to us.
[00:08:14] The gospel we hear is a gospel of grace and truth. What does that mean? Grace means God treats me better than what I deserve.
[00:08:24] The gospel says, no matter where you have been in life and no matter what you have done, God is committed to treating you better than what you deserve.
[00:08:35] God does not treat you the way you treat him.
[00:08:40] He treats you with a grace.
[00:08:43] And it is a grace that is not dependent on what I do or don't do.
[00:08:50] Would you hear this?
[00:08:53] Paul said, where sin increased, grace did super increase.
[00:09:03] So wherever you have been in life and whatever haunts you, the gospel of grace says, God is not going to treat you the way you deserve. He's going to treat you better than what you deserve.
[00:09:18] And he's going to do that because he is the blessed God in and that is his nature. That is what he wants to do.
[00:09:28] The gospel is also called the word of truth.
[00:09:32] And the word of truth is in contrast to human religions. I believe I told you that in Ephesus there was the largest temple to the Greek God, the Greek goddess Diana in the world.
[00:09:49] She's called Artemis in Greek and Diana in Latin. The largest temple to Diana in the world was in Ephesus. And people came from all over the Mediterranean to festivals they had there. And the people in Ephesus, their whole life had grown up with stories about the goddess Diana. I believe I told you one a couple of weeks ago.
[00:10:17] For them, until Paul preached the gospel to them, the human religion of worshiping Diana was all they knew.
[00:10:29] They had grown up with it. Their city was famous for it. It was, it was, it was the. It was part of the city's identity.
[00:10:39] And Paul comes along and says, you've got a religion, but it isn't a religion of truth. It's a religion of myth.
[00:10:50] It is a blessing of God when we understand the word of truth and we can distinguish what is just the religion of man and what is the truth of God. Can you hear this now? Some of you, your strongest religious ideas, they're not the word of truth. There's something you learned as a kid, and it's the religion that the church made up and it's not the truth of Jesus Christ.
[00:11:20] Let me give you a couple examples.
[00:11:23] For a long time in my life, I was absolutely sure that God was angry with me because that's what I heard week after week after week.
[00:11:35] You're messing up And God is angry with you. And one of these days it's all going to catch up with you. That's what I grew up with. I mean, and I see some of you nodding your heads. All right, that's not the word of truth.
[00:11:53] This Paul didn't say the angry God punishes you. This is what he said. The blessed God blesses you.
[00:12:04] Do you see the difference? The word of truth is God is blessed and he blesses you. Human religion says God is angry and one of these days you're going to take it in the teeth. So you might as well get ready.
[00:12:19] That is the religion of man. Church. Can you hear this?
[00:12:23] And Paul wants to say, if you can think right about God, it's going to help you understand the word of truth.
[00:12:33] If you can't think right about God, you're never going to be able to understand the word of truth. That God really cares, that he has a good plan, that he loves you, that he's working in your lives in ways you can recognize, in ways you can't recognize.
[00:12:52] In fact, this. This gospel of truth is also the gospel of salvation.
[00:13:01] And Paul in Ephesians chapter one tells us the plan of salvation. What does salvation mean? It means I go from being unacceptable to God to completely acceptable with God.
[00:13:15] And that starts where Paul started. He started and said, the blessed God blesses us and he elects us to be holy and faultless before him in love.
[00:13:28] Your salvation didn't begin with your own good ideas. Your salvation began with a blessed God who said, I choose you and I'm going to work in your life and you're going to end up holy and you're going to end up faultless before me in love.
[00:13:50] Would you hear this again? Would you open your heart to this one more time? God made a commitment to stand you up at the judgment. Faultless.
[00:14:05] Many of you have heard judgment stories and you're afraid to be judged by God. You have nothing to fear. The blessed God made an electing commitment to you to stand you up. Faultless.
[00:14:21] The second part of salvation is predestined. That's this idea that God creates boundaries in our lives and these boundaries keep leading us to Him. And these boundaries end up when we slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God. These boundaries end up in the presence of God.
[00:14:46] I'm saved not because I am a good man. Every day of my life I'm saved because every day of my life in some way the blessed God is working on my soul to make me exactly what he wants me to be when I stand before him on that great day.
[00:15:05] And then we had to be redeemed.
[00:15:08] We ruined ourselves with sin and Christ buys us back.
[00:15:15] And then he says, I want you to understand the big picture. I. As part of your salvation, I'm going to. I'm going to share with you the mystery of my will.
[00:15:29] You can meet millions of people today, and if you ask them what is life all about, they don't have a clue.
[00:15:38] You can meet millions of people today who live there and whole their whole life thinking everything is random. The earth is random, you are random. Everything in your life happens in a random way. And none of this means anything. We get a few days in the sun and then we're into the dirt and that's it. They don't understand the mystery of God's will.
[00:16:02] The mystery of God's will is we live this single lifetime for God to do what he needs to do in our hearts so we can live with him eternally. That is the mystery of his will.
[00:16:16] God is at work in you. And the more spiritually aware you are, the more sensitive you are of how he's working in you, the more spiritually dull you are, the hard it is to understand that God is at work in you every day.
[00:16:32] Then he says, I don't want you to think that this place is better than the place I'm calling you to.
[00:16:42] I've known Christians who don't.
[00:16:46] They refuse to get ready to leave all this behind and go to somewhere better because they really don't believe heaven is better.
[00:16:57] They look around, hey, how can heaven be any better than my living room?
[00:17:03] I'm not sure. They have a giant screen TV like I have in my living room.
[00:17:08] And I don't know what will be in my garage when I go to heaven.
[00:17:12] And I've had some pretty good vacations and I don't know anything about vacation in heaven. And so they develop this pattern of life that subconsciously says, everything here is probably better than there. So I want to hold on to this as long as I can.
[00:17:34] And Paul says, you have an inheritance that is beyond description and it is personally designed by your Creator for you. Because God knows your soul perfectly. He knows what the perfect inheritance is for you.
[00:17:53] Not only does he have a perfect inheritance for you, he's perfecting you for your inheritance.
[00:18:00] And then part of our salvation is hope. We have this hope that the blessed God really, really loves us and really cares for us and really has our best interest.
[00:18:12] And then finally, the plan of salvation includes God seals us with his spirit.
[00:18:20] What does this seal mean?
[00:18:26] It means several things, and we're going to look at each one of them. But listen what Paul said to Timothy.
[00:18:34] God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal.
[00:18:40] The Lord knows those who are his.
[00:18:44] You are sealed with the knowledge that God knows you belong to Him.
[00:18:53] Church have you ever been in a big crowd and you're looking for maybe somebody in your family? You got separated, you go to an Indians game, you can't find them. You're looking around and you see all these people, and you're just really looking for one or two people. And there are people everywhere. And your eye is searching and searching. And when you see the person you're looking for, you recognize them. Out of the thousands of other faces around you, you recognize them. Can I tell you? Out of the thousands of souls that has ever lived, God recognizes you.
[00:19:30] He doesn't see you as. He doesn't see you as just another number. He doesn't see you as just another. Another brick in the wall.
[00:19:41] He sees you as an individual soul. He recognizes you. The seal of God is that when he sees your soul, he knows you.
[00:19:56] Historically, when Paul used this term, a seal was something that secures.
[00:20:02] It seals something in or it seals something out.
[00:20:08] You've all seen amphoras in from their clay jars, the big clay jars from the time of Paul.
[00:20:18] These amphoras all had seals in them, and it kept the wine inside clean and keep from getting dirt and stuff in it. But the wax that sealed that amphora, it also. It also had a stamp on it. And that stamp said one of two things, where it came from or who owned it. So when Paul is thinking of a seal, the first thing he's thinking of is a cork in a bottle. It keeps the wine in the bottle good and it keeps the. The stuff that shouldn't be out bad. I'm sealed by the Holy Spirit as part of my salvation. The Holy Spirit is at work to keep the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. Church have you ever heard the Holy Spirit whisper to you and say, this isn't good for you?
[00:21:16] Church he's trying to keep the bad stuff out.
[00:21:22] Ah. Have you ever heard the Holy Spirit say, you need to say you're sorry?
[00:21:31] Anyone?
[00:21:32] All right, Good. I don't want to be the last sinner left here.
[00:21:38] The Holy Spirit seals us. He is God working in our souls to. To turn us away from evil and turn us toward good. The second thing a seal does is it certifies that something is authentic.
[00:21:57] When you. When you look at.
[00:22:01] When you look at some wine bottles, they have a seal on them that says, this is from Italy, and it certifies that that bottle is from Italy. Well, the seal of the Holy Spirit on us certifies that we belong to God.
[00:22:20] The seal of the Holy Spirit says to us, and it says to God, and it says to the world, these people belong to God.
[00:22:31] The one that's. The one I like the most, though, is, have you seen wax seals where they press the signet into the wax seal, they put an impression into the seal. I'm sealed by the Holy Spirit because he puts the impression of God on me. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit because day by day, he's conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:22:58] The blessed God blesses us and he shares his Holy Spirit with us, who secures us, who certifies us, and who impresses the image of God on us.
[00:23:11] Paul made a big deal about this, this sealing. He said, we're sealed by the Spirit.
[00:23:19] This is a spiritual ceiling.
[00:23:22] If you've read the Book of Revelation, you know, on several occasions, there is.
[00:23:30] There is an image of being sealed on your forehead and on your hand. So if you've read it, the. The. The mark of the beast on your forehand and on your hand. All right, I don't believe that's a literal tattoo.
[00:23:48] I believe it represents you think a certain way and you act a certain way.
[00:23:56] It represents. Are you acting like the Roman culture? Do. Do you have their seal on your thinking and do you have their seal on your hand? Or are you acting like God? Do you have his seal on your thinking and his seal on your hand? The sealing of the Holy Spirit is not an external thing. It's an internal thing.
[00:24:20] He's called the Spirit of Promise.
[00:24:24] Because God elected you, because God predestined you, because God redeemed you, because God did all these things for you. He said, I promise that I'm going to seal everything I've done for you with my own Spirit.
[00:24:41] And there is nothing greater than the Spirit of God.
[00:24:45] Everything God does to you is sealed by his Spirit.
[00:24:51] And he's called the Holy Spirit. It is a divine ceiling.
[00:24:56] Paul said the same thing in a little bit different in his letter to Corinth. Listen what he said. It is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us. Now here it is.
[00:25:10] Who has also put his seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. He's saying the very same thing to the church at Corinth. That he said, at the Church of Ephesus. It is a beautiful thing when God says, I'm. My mark is on you. My image is on you. My security is on you.
[00:25:42] When are we sealed? Paul said, when we believe.
[00:25:47] This is the idea that in every Christian life there has to be a moment of faith, which this is real important. Could I please have your whole attention?
[00:26:00] Nothing good on TV today anyway. All right.
[00:26:05] In every Christian life, there has to be a moment of faith.
[00:26:11] God has done all of this for us.
[00:26:14] But there has to be a moment of faith when we say to God, I accept everything you've done for me. Do you see? There has to be that moment where it all gets personal. And you don't say, God elected other people. You say, God elected me. You don't say, God predestined other people. You say, God predestined me. You don't say, God redeemed other people. You say, God redeemed me. It all becomes personal. It is a moment of faith when we say to Christ, and we say to the Father, and we say to the Holy Spirit, I accept everything you've done for me, Church.
[00:26:55] And in that moment of faith, that's when you're sealed by the Holy Spirit. Do you get it?
[00:27:02] I want to ask you, have you ever had your moment of faith?
[00:27:07] I'm not asking you how religious are you? I'm not asking you how good you were last week. I'm asking you a simple question. Has there ever been a moment in your life where it all felt very personal and in your inner self? You said to God, I accept everything you've done for me, receive you, because it's in that moment that you're sealed by the Holy Spirit.
[00:27:38] If you haven't done that, what are you waiting for?
[00:27:43] What's holding you up?
[00:27:46] What's keeping you from letting God bless you in all the ways he wants to bless you?
[00:27:56] We are sealed by the Spirit, but we are sealed in Christ.
[00:28:02] The Holy Spirit seals me in Christ.
[00:28:06] I know some of you heard when you were growing up that if you did certain wrong things or if you got mad at God, you could lose your relationship to God. That you could lose your salvation. Okay? I want to tell you that isn't true. And this is why.
[00:28:23] Because the Holy Spirit seals you. You don't keep yourself there. The Holy Spirit keeps you there.
[00:28:32] You're not sealed in yourself. You are sealed in Christ.
[00:28:38] Christ, put it this way. You are in his hand and he is in the Father's hand and nothing and no one can pluck you out.
[00:28:50] If you've gone through a bad time in your life and you haven't been living your faith and you've done some things that you feel bad about, you need to repent. But you didn't lose the love of God because of that. You lost your awareness of his love, but you didn't lose his love. You didn't lose the care of God for that. It is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.
[00:29:16] That desire to say to God, I'm sorry, I want to be a better man. That is a gift of God. Obvious. Pure kindness.
[00:29:25] And then Paul uses this word, guarantee, which is the guarantee of your inheritance.
[00:29:33] Guarantee is another legal word, and it means a pledge.
[00:29:39] So it kind of works like this.
[00:29:42] I've never pawned anything. I've never bought anything at a pawn shop, but I know how it works. I watch it on tv.
[00:29:52] You can go to a pawn shop and you give them something that's valuable, and then they hold it for the loan until you pay the loan back.
[00:30:03] It's a pledge. You say, I'm giving you this thing. It's more valuable than what I'm borrowing from you. And it is a pledge that I'll pay this loan back because if I don't, you get the more valuable thing. All right, listen. The guarantee is a pledge.
[00:30:23] God pledges to us to be the blessed God and do everything that he's committed himself to do.
[00:30:35] And the guarantee of that pledge is he gives us something that is more valuable than anything else. The Holy Spirit.
[00:30:44] The Holy Spirit is the divine pledge to fulfill all the promises he made.
[00:30:53] It's a security.
[00:30:57] Sometimes when.
[00:31:01] I guess all the time. When you. When you get a loan, you got to have a certain percent of what you want to borrow.
[00:31:09] So when we. When we built this church, we had half of what we needed.
[00:31:20] And when we got the loan, we gave the bank our half. It went into the bank and they loaned us the other half.
[00:31:32] That down payment, that. That 50% down, that was the security.
[00:31:41] So if you want to think about this, you can think about it as a down payment. God makes a down payment on everything he's going to do in the future in my life by sharing His Holy Spirit with me.
[00:31:54] The Holy Spirit is more valuable than our inheritance, and he's already shared us. The Holy Spirit.
[00:32:04] Paul said to the Corinthians Church, for while we are still in this tent, we groan. He's talking about life while I'm living in this body. I groan being burdened. Not that I would be unclothed, but. But that we would be further clothed so that what is mortal will be swallowed up in life. Now here it is. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
[00:32:36] Someday I have to let go of all of this. Someday I have to leave it behind. But I have a guarantee that things are good for me on the other side. He's already given me His Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit himself is better than anything you can have in heaven. Church relationships are more valuable than stuff. I hope you've learned that by now. I hope you've learned that stuff gets pretty. Gets pretty empty when you don't have anybody to share it with.
[00:33:12] The wonder of heaven is less than the wonder of God himself.
[00:33:23] How do I know that I. How do I know that I've been sealed by the Spirit? Paul said, his spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
[00:33:34] That inner place that is the true you.
[00:33:38] That quiet inner place that is the true you.
[00:33:42] The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
[00:33:57] This ceiling is God's pledge that results in the praise of his glory.
[00:34:11] We talked about the praise of his glory before.
[00:34:15] Listen at this.
[00:34:18] The Holy Spirit seals us and guarantees that someday you and I will stand up in heaven and say, I. I am a witness to how good and beautiful and gracious and kind and loving God really is.
[00:34:39] If you are a Christian, someday we will all have the opportunity to say, I am a personal witness that God is gracious. He was gracious to me. I am a personal witness that God is loving. He. He was loving to me. I am a personal witness that God is faithful. He was faithful to me. We will, we will. We will take great honor in being among those who say, I can speak of the praise of his glory. I have experienced it.
[00:35:17] I can't preach a sermon series like this without asking everyone to examine yourself to see whether you be in the faith.
[00:35:27] Paul said, let a person examine themselves to see whether they be in the faith.
[00:35:34] This morning the band is going to play and when they do, I would like you to do a little self examination.
[00:35:44] I'd like you to search in your inner self.
[00:35:48] Have you had a moment of faith?
[00:35:51] Do you have a sense that God is blessed and that it is his greatest desire to bless you?
[00:35:59] Do you have faith that says, I believe that God elected me. I believe that he predestined me. I believe that he redeems me. I believe he shares with me the knowledge of his will. I believe I have an inheritance. I believe the God of hope is with me, and I believe I'm sealed to that great day. Examine yourself to see with you're in the faith. Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray this morning that your Holy Spirit would do the work that Paul described in Ephesians, chapter one.
[00:36:34] And I pray that there are some here this morning that will have their moment of faith.
[00:36:40] I pray that there are some here this morning that will simply say to you, today, I am willing to receive all that you've done for me. I accept all you've done for me, and my expectation is that you will seal me with your Spirit and you will complete the good work until the day of Jesus Christ.
[00:37:05] I pray that your Spirit would do what only he can do, and I ask it in Christ's name. Amen.
