The Blessing of Salvation
Blade Small Group In Home Sermons • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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On September 6th 2010 at around 5:00pm I sent a message to a young lady on Facebook. This was a young lady who I had known and had interactions with in college a few years earlier early 2006. She and I were both on the track team and we hung out a bit so I remembered her personality, how much I enjoyed her company and her beauty.
I left the university and we went our separate ways, however she still came to mind at times. A couple of years passed and in January of 2009 I had a large change happen in my life, I became a follower of Christ. A little later that year I know that it was time for me to go get my wife.
So that September 6th just before 5:00pm I sent a message to the young lady who was still on my mind. She responded and over the next few days we chatted online. Then we spoke on the phone, when we spoke on the phone I knew that she was to be my wife. She was assigned to me, I just had to convince her that she was my wife.
Now I’m not the one who convinced her, that was a God thing. However I knew that she was to be my wife before I brought up the topic of marriage, courted her or even spoke with her again in person. I desired for her to be my wife and I pursued her. By mid October we were engaged and on November 24th of 2010 we were married. That young Lady is now my wife Aigner Blade and we have been married for almost 14 years.
Today we are going to talk about how God knew who the bride of Christ would be before time, and how He works to reconcile believers to himself through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Big Idea- God chose believers to be adopted as children of God before time, this adoption is what He desired and it gives Him pleasure.
Take Aways
God chose the children of God.
Believers are redeemed through Jesus.
Gods divine plan.
Ephesians 1:1–6 (NKJV)
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and 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 should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:3 says
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
When Paul says blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ he is saying a few things. First he is acknowledging the relationship betwen Jesus and God as the first and second persons of the trinity. God is the father and Jesus the Son. God blesses us with spiritual blessings however these blessings are given to us through Christ and can only be given to us if we are in Christ, meaning we are followers of Christ.
So what are these spiritual blessings?
These spiritual blessings are blessings that are eternal, and that are the best kinds of blessings. This includes being chosen and redeemed by God having the gift of salvation and eternal life with Christ.
These blessings also include being adopted by God and having all of the rights and privileges of the inheritance of the children. So God takes us in as his own and we share in the inheritance of Jesus who is the son of God.
He also blesses us with His Spirit, the Holy Spirit that indwells us and connects us to God. The Holy spirit also works to sanctify us to be Holy and it seals our place as citizens of heaven.
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
God Chose those of us who are followers of Christ to be His before time began. He chose us so that we should be pure, dedicated to Him, perfect and worthy of Him.
You may be asking how is that possible? If we have sinned against God, and we sin against God, then how can we be Holy and without blame before Him?
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here we see that God is the one who can make us righteous and blameless before himself. He sanctifies us, or makes us holy so when Jesus returns and the World is Judged those who he has chosen as His will be seen as righteous and will not be condemned to eternal punishment and separation from God.
Psalm 103:11–13 (NKJV)
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
God is not just blind to our sins. He dosent look at sin and dwell with it and just say that he dosent see it. God removes sin from followers of Christ so that they are righteous. This is done by the work that Jesus did on our behalf.
Jesus lived a perfect life, and died as the perfect sacrifice as a payment for our sin and the sins of the world.
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
This verse is describing Jesus as being the sin offering for the sins of the world. So that those who place their faith in Him can be made Holy and be his people.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
We can now have a relationship with God and be adopted into his family because of What Jesus did for us on the Cross.
God chose us to be his people because he loves us.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Back to our main text
having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
To be predestined is to be determined ahead of time.
How many of you have ever planned an event or to go on a trip?
So when you were going on the trip before you left you had to decide which way you would go, where you would stay and or what you would do when you got there right? What you did there was predestined those plans. You determined that these things would be done before you got there and did that.
The difference is What God determines is sure to come to pass and God is sovereign over all. That means God is in control and rules over everything.
So God chose for us to be adopted sons and daughters and he chose to use Jesus to make that happen. We first hear this in Genesis right after the fall of Adam and Eve and we see Him work throughout the Word of God fulfilling his promises and bringing us the savior who is Jesus.
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
It is Gods will and it brings pleasure to Him that his Children are saved. It is Gods desire that we are drawn to Him and that we are changed by His spirit and that we live for Him eventually dwelling in his presence forever.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Eph 1:6 in our main text says
to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Grace is undeserved favor, there is nothing that we could have done to cleanse ourselves from our sin against God. However God set forth his plan to redeem us and give us eternal life and not only that, He adopted us to being his sons and daughters giving an inheritance with Jesus! This is the perfect grace of God that we are blessed to experience.
The beloved that we were accepted in is Jesus. Jesus is the beloved of the Father. We see this when Jesus was baptized
And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Back to the text Eph 1:7-8
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
To redeem is to gain something in exchange for payment of it. For example, if I had a ticket that was worth $1 million dollars I could go in and turn in the ticket and I would get $1 Million dollars in exchange for it.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Because we were born in sin, and we all have sinned we deserve death as the payment for sin. However because of God’s love and grace he sent His son to die in our place.
being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
A propitiation is a sacrifice that satisfies the demand. The demand here is of death and the wrath of God. Jesus took the punishment and died for us so that we could be reconciled or brought back to a right relationship with God.
The work that Jesus did on the Cross paid for our sins, but our sins were also forgiven and washed away.
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,
All of this is given to us because He chose to give it to us through His Grace.
Back to the main text Eph 1:9-12
having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
How many of you have ever seen a marvel movie? Well the marvel movies are a series of movies that have characters that come from the marvel universe. These are characters like iron man, black panther and the hulk.
There are thousands of characters throughout this marvel universe. However the creator of this fictional universe made sure that all of these character's story lines were connected.
The marvel movies are all also connected and they build on to each other reflecting what is going on in the other areas of this marvel universe. For example if Iron man dies in one movie then in the next marvel movie Iron man will still be dead unless they found some way to bring him back to life in that movie.
Going on in the background is always a large connected storyline that the whole movie series are about and a smaller storyline that the movie is about.
Just like how that story is connected in the fictional marvel universe. In the real universe God has a plan and His will is shown in this plan. This plan is the plan of redemption.
When Adam and Eve sinned against God He gave the solution in Genesis 3:15 and that was Jesus. This major line is flows throughout the Word of God until He returns for His people and to judge the rest.
God has shown us the mystery of His will and that is that His Children would be redeemed and reconciled to Him through Christ. 2 Tim 1:9
who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,
This is Gods will that His people are brought to him in a right relationship. And this brings God pleasure, he delights in blessing believers with Salvation.
In Ephesians 1:10
that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.
What this means is that when the time is right, when Gods appointed time has come then God will reconcile all things to himself, Meaning believers will go with him for eternity and all things will be made right and we will dwell with Him forever . Col 1:19-20 also explains this well where it says.
For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
back to the main text.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
Being adopted as sons and daughters of the Lord means that we are also Heirs with Christ.
and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
So here we see that God chooses those of us who are believers and we have been Chosen before time.
We also see that God has a plan that will redeem his elect.
And we see that God has a divine plan.
But what does that mean for us as believers? Should we go out and know that we are saved and sealed by the Holy Spirit and that we have salvation and just live and wait to die so we can go to heaven?
Of course not. We should delight in brothers and sisters coming to Christ as God delights in it. Matthew 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
We must go out and make disciples Spreading the word of God so that the elect can hear it and will be drawn by the Spirit of God and Follow Christ.
Romans 10:14–15 (NKJV)
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:
“How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace,
Who bring glad tidings of good things!”
Take Aways
God chose the children of God.
Believers are redeemed through Jesus.
Gods divine plan.