Chosen by God

Intro: Choose someone randomly and then don’t do anything with them.

Ephesians 1:3-14.

All of this passage is really about one thing: you were chosen for a purpose, and then the rest of the section spells out what we were chosen for.

Chosen: 3-6

Before time began, God chose you.

He chose you to be with Him, and to be made holy by Him.

He chose you to be adopted as His son or daughter

So, He knows you!

If you were chosen for adoption, that means that God wasn’t expecting perfection from you. He was planning from before the foundation of the world to bring you into the family of God!

What this whole topic is typically called is election. It’s the idea that God chose you, which can be kind of difficult to deal with.

People might say things like,

It feels like I don’t get to make any choices

That’s not the point of election. The point is not that you can’t do anything, it’s that God chose you to be in His family. you can eat breakfast without worrying if that’s what you were made to do, you’ll be okay!

What about people who don’t believe?

This deals with if people who don’t believe go to hell. The biblical answer is yes, but that God is acting with justice in doing so. He offers the free gift of salvation, and those who deny it are not in the family of God.

Here’s the benefit of election.

Salvation is on God’s character, not mine.

Christ is not waiting for you to mess up enough for you to be out! He’s not watching to see if you’re really a good enough Christian to deserve love, because then none of us would make it!

He loves you because He chose you. I don’t get the chance to screw up my faith because God loves me for me.

It’s also not up to me to try hard enough to get God to love me. He loves you unconditionally because you’re His, and that’s really good!

God wants you

He doesn’t just want people, He wants HIS people, and He called you into that!

And it’s Good! It’s “According to His good pleasure,” that He brought you in!

What’s really cool though, is we weren’t just called into adoption just to be there. God has called you into something, not just out of something.

Redemption: 7-10

Redemption is a word that means to clear a debt. The word in Greek is the word that you would use for freeing a slave.

You have been set free by the gift of Jesus.

God freed you from sin by the blood of Jesus.

Jesus died on a cross so that you and I can be forgiven of our sin and we can the chosen people that we were made to be!

This was His plan!

When vs. 9 talks about a “mystery” it’s nothing new or unknown to us, the mystery is God’s plan in the universe!

Everyone wants to know, “what’s the point? Why does all of this exist?”

Christ answers that on the cross: to bring all of everything to God!

We are here to love and be loved by God.

Westminster shorter

Inheritance and Sealing: 11-14

If you and I were chosen to be children of God, then we can receive an inheritance by being His children.

What is that inheritance?

I think it’s the ‘redemption of possession” in 14, which is that we will be made perfect by God’s grace at the end of time.

Sealed

In the meantime though, we are told that we receive a down payment in that we are sealed by God the Holy Spirit

Seals were like brands history

So, you were stamped by the Holy Spirit because of the blood of Jesus and brought into the Father’s family.

All of God is interested in all of you!!!!

I’m His, and I can’t change that, thank God!

In Christ

All of this, being chosen, redemption, the inheritance and sealing of the Spirit, all are IN Christ!

It’s the most common phrase in this section because all of this happens when we belong to Jesus!

When we make Jesus our all in all, when He becomes not just a guy or even a god, but your God, we can be in Christ and finally have an identity that matters!