All Sermons

God's Grace in the Plan of Redemption By Murray Capill

Well, if you would turn back to Ephesians 1, we're going to look at verses 1 to 14.
A little while ago I had a flight in New Zealand that took me from Wellington to Dunedin.
I don't know how your New Zealand geography is.
Maybe it's as bad as my New South Wales geography.
So I'll explain that that flight from Wellington to Dunedin takes you down the full east coast
of South Island and I had deliberately booked a seat on the right-hand side of the plane
knowing that on this perfectly clear day I would get magnificent views of the Southern
Alps and it was just a splendid flight.
Mountain range after mountain range of snow-lading peaks.
Some of them I recognised from my climbing days and some of them I didn't.
Every single one of those peaks would have been an adventure in itself but for that flight
I just sat back and enjoyed.
I didn't pull out a book, I didn't pull out the laptop, I just had a coffee and I looked
out the window and just soaked in this magnificent panorama.
And friends that's really what I'd like you to do as we look at verses 1 to 14 of Ephesians.
In a sense I want you to just sit back and enjoy and look at this marvellous vista of
God's grace.
There are no commands here.
Isn't that delightful?
Just enjoy.
Every phrase here is like a peak, a great mountain and we could explore each phrase
in detail but we're not going to, we're going to just look at the great mountain range as
a whole and I want you to enjoy it.
But enjoy it with your brain turned on because Paul goes into depth and Paul thinks and Paul
wants Christians to be people who think.
In fact verses 3 to 14 are actually in the original language just one long sentence,
one great complicated unfolding sentence as he piles phrase upon phrase to depict this
marvel of God's work and salvation.
And as we look at this great long sentence, notice that there's a refrain.
If you like there's a chorus.
It first appears in verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace.
And then it comes back in verse 12, for the praise of his glory.
And then again at the end of verse 14, to the praise of his glory.
Everything here that we're going to look at as we take in this beautiful scene is to
that end that God and his glorious grace may be glorified.
That we will come away from this with a heart that wants to exalt and magnify the glorious
grace of God.
Everything that we observe here is to be to that end that we praise him.
In fact that's where the whole passage begins, verse 3, praise be to the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ who's blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing.
You could more literally translate that with the word blessing occurring three times.
Blessed be the God who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
That's the theme tune of this passage and it's really the theme tune of the whole letter
of Ephesians.
One of the things that I think is quite lovely about the letter to the Ephesians is that
it doesn't deal with any particular problem.
There's no particular heresy in view.
There are no particular controversies being addressed.
Paul's writing to at least one church, probably more than just the church in Ephesus.
It's probably a circular letter that would be taken to other churches in the area as
well and he's reminding them of things that he's taught them in the past and things that
they've already come to experience and he just wants to broaden their horizons as they
understand what God has done in them and for them and what God is actually doing through
them because of Christ.
Well what are these spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms that we're to be so thankful
for, that we're to praise God for?
The first is this, we have been chosen by the Father.
We've been chosen by the Father.
That's the very first spiritual blessing that any of us can experience.
Verse 4 tells us that before the creation of the world, God determined to save a people
for himself.
Out of the entire human race that he had preplanned and out of that race that he knew would rebel
against him and ignore him and reject him and disobey him, he already predetermined
in advance to save some out of the human race for himself, to be his own people, a people
that he loved anyway despite their rebellion and their wickedness.
He chose them in advance.
A people whom he'd bless, though they didn't deserve it any more than any of the rest,
he chose a people to bless.
And if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have faith in Christ and you know him
as your Saviour and your Lord, then I'm talking about you.
When I talk about this first spiritual blessing, you were chosen.
And Paul says you were chosen for two things.
First you were chosen for holiness.
Verse 4, he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his
sight.
Chosen for holiness.
That means that when we speak of God choosing us, when we speak of the doctrine of election,
we cannot ever reason in our minds, okay, I've been chosen, it doesn't matter now how
I live.
That's rubbish, that's nonsense because you've been chosen for holiness.
You've been chosen to become blameless in his sight, both through Christ's once for
all work for you in which you've been set aside and made holy and through the ongoing
work of the Holy Spirit in which you increasingly become what you already are.
You have been chosen to be holy and to progressively become holy.
Therefore the doctrine of election can never make us lax about how we live.
It can't make us laid back morally or spiritually.
Rather we realise we have been chosen, I've been chosen to be set apart for God.
I've been chosen to be part of his distinct and his different people.
I've been chosen to be set apart from sin and depravity and wickedness and rebellion
and all those things that characterise those who have not been chosen.
I've been chosen to reflect the holiness of God himself.
That's the first thing and the second thing he says about choosing a people is that we've
been chosen for sonship.
Verse 5, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons.
That is a remarkable blessing that God should choose out of those who would rebel against
him people that he would adopt into his own family and make his own children.
You imagine a judge who doesn't only declare the person in the dock not guilty but then
afterwards takes that same person home and embraces them into his own family and starts
to share good things with them and includes them in his inheritance, embraces them just
as one of his own children.
This passage says that's what God chose to do.
He chose to set us aside to be his sons and daughters, to share in all the privileges
of his one and only son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to make us heirs of God and co-heirs with
Christ.
So we've not just been chosen to be nice, you haven't just been chosen to be moral,
you haven't just been chosen to be churchy, just Christian even.
You've been chosen to be a son, a child of the living God.
The Bible is abundantly clear that that's where our salvation began, in the mind of
God in eternity.
Long before we were created, long before we had ever thought of God or knew him, he set
us electing love on us and chose us to be his.
This passage stresses repeatedly that our salvation is God's work, his initiative from
beginning to end.
Verse 4, he chose us.
Verse 5, he predestined us.
Also in verse 5, he did so in accordance with his pleasure and will, not ours, his pleasure
and will.
Verse 11, we also were chosen and have been predestined.
In conformity with the purpose of his will.
And verse 14 calls us God's possession.
You can't escape the doctrine of election when you read Ephesians.
The doctrine of election is not just some strange quirk of Calvinism, just some odd
little historical hangover from the Reformers.
The Bible is very plain, God chose us.
He elect us, elected us, he predestined us.
Now people often struggle with that of course and maybe you struggle with it.
Maybe you say, but didn't I choose God?
Didn't I give my life to Christ and place faith in him and repent of sin?
Didn't I come to God?
Well yes you did.
You did.
But you only did so because God had first chosen you.
I know a family that had a holiday a little while ago in the United States and they went
freely.
I mean I don't know why but they chose to holiday in the United States.
And they went to Disneyland and they did all the American sort of things.
They went gladly and freely and had a marvellous time.
But they went because they had been chosen to go.
As it turns out this family have two boys, both of whom have an extremely rare and complicated
medical condition.
And because of all the trial of that condition and all that they go through with these boys,
they were chosen for this special treat, for this holiday to the states.
So they went freely.
They were not under duress.
There was no gun at their heads saying you must take this holiday, you go.
No they went freely, gladly.
They thoroughly enjoyed it but they went because they were chosen.
And that's kind of how it is with our salvation.
We come to Christ freely.
We come to Him gladly or maybe with struggles but we come to Him.
There's no gun to our head, it's not under duress.
But we come only because God chose us.
God worked in us.
God drew us.
God set His love on us.
If He hadn't chosen us we would never have come.
So we might struggle to understand it but we shouldn't resent it.
It's truly wonderful to have been chosen of God.
But then people also object of course, but isn't it unfair?
Isn't it unfair for God to choose some and not others?
Not unfair on those who are chosen, isn't this unfair on those who are not chosen?
But of course it's only unfair on those who are not chosen if they deserved to be chosen.
It's only unfair if there are people in this world who are so good, so right in themselves
that they deserve to be part of God's holy people.
It's only unfair if there are people who deserve to be the sons and daughters of God and they're
not allowed to be.
It's only unfair if there are people who desperately want to be part of God's people because they
say no, no, no, no, I didn't choose you, out.
That would be unfair, but is that the case?
Is it the case that there are people walking around for whom it would be their just desserts,
it would be absolutely righteous that they were included in God's people and marked out
as holy?
In the testimony of the Bible it's the very opposite, that we've all sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God, that we are rebels by nature, that left to ourselves we always
reject God and walk away from Him.
So election is not about God being unfair to anyone, it's just about Him being unbelievably
merciful to some.
It's not that some people don't get what they deserve, it's that some people do get what
they don't deserve and that's not unfair, it's ridiculously merciful.
Strangely people don't like that, why not?
People actually love to be chosen for all sorts of things, starts little, kids love
to be chosen for something, teacher says I've got a special message that I need someone
to run, oh me, me, me, me, me, they all want to be chosen.
You apply for a job, you desperately want to be chosen.
There are awards being given out, people want to be chosen for prestigious awards, people
go in beauty contests, they want to be chosen as the most beautiful.
People compete for the Olympic games and want to win, they want to be chosen as the best,
they want to be selected for the team.
People love to be chosen but in all those situations people are chosen on the basis
of merit, on the basis of performance, who's best, who's most beautiful, who's been good.
So choosing in those situations flatters us and that's why we like to be chosen.
The problem with God's choosing is it doesn't flatter us, it humbles us because it reminds
us that we've been chosen not because of who we are but despite who we are.
But frankly friend you were not an irresistible option for God.
He didn't look down and think oh in his eternal mind's eye she's going to be such a sweet
old lady, so good, so prayerful, knitting piggy squares for the needy till her dying
day she's got to be one of them.
And he's going to be such a talented young guy, likeable, committed and irresistible
option, he's one.
You weren't chosen because you were an irresistible option, you were chosen as a rebel, as a person
who left to yourself would reject God and walk away from him and you know enough of
your own heart even as a chosen person, even as one of the holy ones, even as an adopted
son of God, don't you know enough of your own heart that left to yourself you walk away
from God, that left to yourself you chase what's impure and ungodly?
We were not an irresistible option.
And so election humbles us and leaves us singing the chorus, the refrain, verse 6,
to the praise of his glorious grace.
You know how it is when you're singing a song and you go through all these verses and you
keep coming back to the chorus and everyone joins in the chorus and I think we ought to
have that sense as we go through this passage, I've unfolded the doctrine and boy we should
all join in the chorus, that's to the praise of his glorious grace.
But what else can we say?
It's of his marvellous kindness and mercy and so I hope that that is a chorus you sing
often in your life, I hope the theme should have much of what you say when you talk about
the Lord's work, when you talk about your church, when you talk about yourself, when
you talk about your salvation, when you talk about your kids, when you talk about your
job, I hope that you sprinkle that with references to God's kindness and his mercy and his grace
and his love and the fact that you're getting in life what you didn't deserve to the praise
of his glorious grace.
Our salvation planned in eternity but it had to be put into effect in history and so we
come to the second division here, not only have we been chosen by the Father but redeemed
by the Son, we've been redeemed by the Son.
Everything God has done for us he has done through his Son.
Jesus Christ is the mediator of all God's blessings, that is to say he is the channel
through whom all the blessings of God to us flow.
He is the means by whom, through whom God brings these blessings to bear on our lives.
That's what it says in verse 3, we have every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Now if you look through this passage, in Christ is really an in phrase.
He uses it 11 times in these verses.
Let's look at a few of them, back in verse 2, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful
in Christ Jesus.
Verse 3, praise be to the God who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual
blessing in Christ.
Verse 4, he chose us in him before the creation of the world and so it goes on through the
passage.
When it says in Christ, it's speaking of the fact that we have been spiritually united
to Christ in such a way that we now share in his life.
Once we shared in Adam, we were in Adam and we shared in his sin, we shared in his fallenness
and we shared in his condemnation.
But now by grace, we've been taken out of Adam and put in Christ to share in his life
and his victory and his righteousness.
We've been blessed in Christ, verse 3, in the heavenly realms.
How can that be when we're here?
Because Christ is in heaven, seated in heaven above and we are in him.
So we've been lifted up to participate in the heavenly realm already.
And our greatest blessings therefore are not on earth, they're in heaven.
Our greatest blessings are not physical and material blessings, wonderful as they are,
clothes, houses, friends, wonderful physical and material blessings, but our greatest blessings
are in the heavenly realms.
What is our new standing spiritually in Christ?
Paul opens up in the next few verses two blessings in particular.
The first is this, in him, verse 7, we have redemption.
In him, we have redemption.
Redemption was the act of setting a prisoner free or setting a slave free by the payment
of a price, a ransom price, a redemption price, a sum of money paid to secure the freedom
of a person.
We have been redeemed in Christ, that is Christ has paid the price to set us free, to set
us free from sin and death.
By his blood, he set us free from the guilt of sin and the grip and power of sin and the
pollution and defilement of sin and the inevitable punishment of sin.
And in paying that price with his own blood in redeeming us, he has secured our forgiveness.
So in the next phrase, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
That is to say our record of sins has been blotted out.
It says in Psalm 130, if you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
How true that is.
Imagine if there was a book that was the record of your sin.
Imagine a book that had been kept throughout your life and it recorded every thought, every
thought that had been impure, selfish, arrogant.
It recorded every wrong motivation.
It recorded every wrong action, every wrong word spoken.
It recorded all the things that you should have done and you failed to do.
It recorded things in secret, things thought on your bed at night.
It recorded every little detail.
What would that book be like to read?
If I had a book like that, I fear for one thing that it would be a long book, way too
many pages, and I fear I know that it would have pages in there, many pages, that I couldn't
bear the thought of you seeing.
You've invited me to be a speaker.
I think if you could read my book, you would have cancelled this well in advance.
And I dare say that we're all in the same boat with a book that we wouldn't want read.
Forgiveness means that that record that is known to God, the one who knows the secret
thoughts of our hearts, that book has had every page and every line and every word blotted
out by the blood of Jesus, that the blood of Jesus has covered it all so that nothing
can be read.
And therefore, when God looks at me, he doesn't see the record of sins, but he sees the atoning
blood of Christ and deals with me, therefore, not in terms of what I've done and who I am
in the most shameful parts of my life, but deals with me in terms of the absolute righteousness
of Christ and the all-sufficiency of his payment.
And that is grace.
That is wonderful to know that the book has been blotted out and that we've been made
right in the sight of God.
It's wonderful grace.
And that's what it goes on to say in that next phrase, in accordance with the riches
of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
And I just love the big terms that Paul uses, riches of grace, lavished on us.
When I think of a word like lavished, I think of dessert being served.
And you're at the home of someone who just doesn't know how to constrain themselves,
and they give you this humongous bowlful of the most exquisite dessert, on top of which
go lashings of whipped cream and copious scoops of ice cream, and it's just this embarrassingly
wonderful looking plate of food.
You conjure up something like that, something excessive, something over the top, something
way beyond what you could possibly have asked for.
That is how God deals out his grace in our lives, in Christ.
He's not stingily, oh, you've sinned again, or here's just a little bit more forgiveness,
I suppose.
He's not just stingily dealing it out little by little, but he's lavishly provided for
all our sins to be pardoned, cleansed, forgiven, removed, as far as the east is from the west,
buried at the bottom of the sea.
The Bible conjures up marvellous phrases to tell us God has dealt with our sin in totality.
We have redemption.
And secondly, in Christ, we have knowledge.
Verse 9, and he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure,
which he purposed in Christ.
That is to say, as those who have been redeemed by Christ, we are now in on what God is doing
in this world.
We have come to know what God's plans and purposes are.
Once it was a mystery, that word is used in verse 9, and we'll come back to that word
later in the weekend when we look at chapter 3.
But it means it was once impossible for us to see, once it was unknown.
But now it's been revealed.
And what is the mystery?
What is God's plan that we now know about?
His plan is to make Christ so central in this universe that every person, every being, every
power, every situation finds its ultimate and true meaning and significance in submission
to him.
God is working for the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ, which means that
in your salvation and in mine, he is not chiefly working for our happiness, but for
Christ's honor, but we are in Christ.
We are caught up in the very person that God is exalting and placing supreme over all things
and all situations.
We are part of his grand plan, and our lives are given supreme purpose and meaning because
we are in Christ and everything is ultimately about him.
So we know where we're going, and we know where history's going, and we have a sense
of purpose, and we have a reason to live.
And I say, what a blessing that is.
What a wonderful thing that is, because so many people, it seems, have no real sense
about what they're here for.
They have no real sense about what they're living for and why life is worth living.
And so they just live for the mundane, and they live for money, they live for pleasure,
they live for sexual excitement, they live for promotion or for a high or for their kids
doing well.
There are a million insignificant secondary tertiary goals that you can set up in your
life.
But when we're in Christ, we've come to know the primary goal, which is his glory.
And so the section ends with the refrain.
We join in the chorus of verses 11 and 12, where Paul says, these things are true of
me as well, not just of you Gentiles, but in him we are also chosen, we're also caught
up in this thing, end of verse 12, for the praise of his glory.
Our lives as redeemed people are to be loud proclamations of the glory of Christ.
So we've been chosen by the Father in eternity.
We've been redeemed by the Son in history.
And now we've been sealed by the Spirit in present reality.
Sealed by the Spirit.
Notice that each person of the Trinity is involved in our salvation.
The triune God has worked together to bring us to glory.
And in the last two verses, Paul highlights the work of the Holy Spirit, described with
two great words, seal and deposit.
Firstly, the Holy Spirit is a seal.
A seal is a mark that proves authenticity.
In the old days, a letter that was being sent would have wax dripped on the fold over
the letter, and then the seal, the signet ring of the person would be impressed into
that hot wax.
And you would know that that letter was authentic.
At the college where I teach, as with many other institutions, when we give out degrees
and diplomas, they usually have a big red seal on the bottom.
The seal of the university or the institution that is granting that degree or diploma.
And if it has the seal of that university, you know that it is an authentic degree from
that place.
Paul says, the Holy Spirit is the seal on believers.
He's the mark that we are the authentic, real work of God.
When you see the Holy Spirit at work in someone, you see God's seal on them.
You see the sign and the evidence that they really are a work of grace.
And that same Holy Spirit that is a seal upon us and a mark of authenticity is also a deposit
that guarantees the future.
You know that a deposit is an initial down payment.
You go to buy a house, you have to put down a whopping deposit on that house, and once
you have put down a whopping deposit on a house, do you walk away from the deal?
You'd be mad.
Once you've put down 10 or 20 or 30,000 on a house, do you walk away?
No, you give that deposit because you are guaranteeing I'm going through with this transaction.
And God has given His Holy Spirit to us as a down payment on us, the first installment
of eternity, the first installment of all that He has in store for us when we are truly
seated in the heavenly places with Christ.
That then is how we need to think of the Holy Spirit's work in us and among us.
The Spirit comes and He dwells in your heart and He begins to work in your life and He
begins to change you.
And there's some fruit of the Holy Spirit and there are gifts that the Holy Spirit gives
to you and there's His enabling and there's His comfort.
You become conscious that you're not alone but that your very life is the temple of the
Holy Spirit.
You know His presence.
And when you see and you sense those things, you need to remind yourself, well, this is
God's seal on me.
I really do belong to Christ.
This is God's down payment on me.
This is the first installment of something yet way more glorious in the future.
And so when we see the work of the Holy Spirit within us, we join in the chorus at the end
of verse 14 to the praise of His glory.
We thank God for this wonderful grace of the Spirit within us, of a down payment of eternity
made upon us.
The works of the Spirit aren't for us to just use for selfish indulgence and show off about
how gifted we are.
They're there in order that we might thank God that He's at work within us.
Now friends, there's much more in these verses.
Every phrase is a mountain peak that we could ascend but I wanted to just try and give the
big picture of God's redemption plan chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, sealed
by the Spirit.
It's a great mountain range of truth, isn't it?
It shows us what a wonderful thing it is to be a Christian.
Every Christian can say these three things for him or herself.
I've been chosen by the Father.
I've been redeemed by the Son.
I've been sealed by the Spirit.
But it doesn't only show what a wonderful thing it is to be a Christian.
It shows what a wonderful God God is.
He's not remote.
He's not disinterested.
He's not harsh and distant and judgmental.
He's a God of rich and lavish grace, actively at work in this world, unfolding His plan
in and through His own Son, Jesus Christ.
And He's drawn us into that in order that we will be utterly committed to singing the
chorus to the praise of His glorious grace.
So go away and over a cuppa or whatever you do, sing the chorus and remember that everything
you have in Christ, everything you have through the Spirit is to the praise of glorious grace.
Amen.
Shall we pray?
Father, words are really inadequate to express thanks to you for all that you've done for us.
We stand in awe of the great work of redemption that you planned in eternity, put into effect
in history through your Son, and have applied in our lives by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Oh Father, thank you.
And may these truths be freshly written on our hearts so that we would speak of grace
and rejoice in grace and exalt your grace above all else.
Help us to do that to the praise of your glorious grace.
Amen.