Be Sure of Who You Are
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
The Bible tells us in the book of Ephesians that we have been made to “abound in the riches of God’s grace.”
Yet, many Christian are not confident of who they are in Christ, and despite all the wealth that has been given to them, they live like they are poor. They live like they aren’t worth anything to anybody, but the Christian is the richer than the richest person on the face of this planet.
There was a woman who died in 1916, and her name was Hetty Green. In 1916, she was worth $100 million.
But this woman ate cold oat meal because it cost money to heat it.
And when she died, it was discovered that she was so vastly wealthy, but she lived like she had nothing.
This is how so many Christians live today. Exceedingly rich, but they refuse to use it. Today that is called “scarcity mentality.” That if we use it, we will lose it. But, in the eyes of Heaven, the only thing that you lose is what you do not use.
“But his lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.
So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest.
So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.
‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.
The Bible says in v. 7, “In Him we have redemption, according to the riches of His grace.” v. 8 says, “which He made to abound toward us.”
That means that all of the riches of Heaven belong to the Christian, and the riches of Heaven never run out.
If you want to appropriately use your God-given riches, you must Be Sure of Who You Are.
I. We Are In Christ
I. We Are In Christ
Justification is a legal term that declares us not guilty based upon blood payment of Jesus Christ.
That is, we were guilty of sin, but our sin was paid for by Jesus on the cross, and now we are not guilty.
What the book of Ephesians does, is it tells us that justification is more than just a cold judgement handed down, but that it is a warm embrace of fellowship.
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.
Paul calls them saints and then tells them that they are “in Christ Jesus.”
To be “in Christ” means that we are in fellowship with Him. To be in fellowship with Him, we must be free from the verdict of guilt.
Guilt is not a feeling, guilt is a position. So, when we feel guilty, it doesn’t mean that we are. Someone can make you feel guilty for something that you never did if you’ll let them! We call that being toxic. We call that emotional manipulation. But we must remember that we are not guilty before God, but that we are justified and back in right fellowship.
When we are in Christ, we are…
A. Born Again
A. Born Again
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
The imagery of the new birth signifies your innocence in Christ.
No officer stands guard at the hospital waiting to handcuff a new-born baby.
Yet, if we aren’t careful, we will ignore the riches that God has given us, and we will stay trapped by feelings of guilt for our past life.
A baby doesn’t have a past life, and a baby doesn’t cry over spilt-milk. They cry when they’re hungry, and they cry when they’re tired, and they cry when they need a change, but they don’t cry because they feel any shame or remorse for what they’ve done.
B. Spiritual
B. Spiritual
If you are “in Christ” then you are also “in the Spirit”.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
We serve the Triune God. He is One. And when we have the Son, we have the Spirit, and when we have the Spirit, we have the Father, and that makes us the people of God.
1. Union With Christ
1. Union With Christ
Because we are spiritual people, that means that the Holy Spirit lives in us. The Holy Spirit can only live in us, when we are free from the charges and stain of sin, which means to be justified.
Those who are justified by faith in the Lord Jesus, are also unified with Christ by His Spirit.
So justification doesn’t just mean that we are legally free. In an even greater sense it tells us that we are legally His…that we now have a union with Christ, and we are in Him, and He is in us.
“If you love Me, keep My commandments.
And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also.
At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
Once we are justified by faith in the Lord Jesus, He is in us, and we are in Him, and we are no longer poor orphans, but we are exceedingly rich sons.
C. Homeward-Bound
C. Homeward-Bound
Homeward-Bound the Movie
When I said homeward bound, I hope you thought of the movie with the two dogs and the cat that get left behind when they’re family goes on vacation.
The plot of the movie is that the family goes on vacation. But those animals didn’t know that, so they run 200-miles to find their family.
It didn’t matter what happened, those animals weren’t going to stop until they reached their family, because they wanted to go home.
When you are in Christ, you are born again, you are spiritual, and you are headed for home. There is no obstacle, there is no sin, there is no difficulty that can stop you from getting there, you’re going home!
But, unlike the movie, you won’t get there by your own will, by your own strength, or even by a long-fought journey. The Bible says that our Brother, the Lord Jesus, is going to come get us.
Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
II. We Are Spiritually Blessed
II. We Are Spiritually Blessed
To be spiritually blessed is a greater honor than to be materially blessed, because the Bible says that Heaven and Earth will pass away.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be materially blessed, so long as we know what the Scripture says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to forfeit his soul?”
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So, when the Bible says that we have been given great riches, it means to tell us that we have riches that will never go away, that will never be tarnished, and can never be stolen.
It is also telling us that we have been given riches, that we have been given those riches by the Holy Spirit who is now in us, as we are in Him. So it is not a matter of physical versus spiritual, but what the spiritual produces in us.
What are these spiritual riches?
A. We Are Chosen
A. We Are Chosen
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,
So many take this to say that God chooses certain people for Heaven and certain people for Hell. But that doesn’t align with how the Bible uses the word “chosen.”
God tells Israel that they are a “chosen” nation, and yet God saved Nineveh and He saved the harlot Rahab, and He would have saved anyone who turned to Him just as Rahab did.
God tells Esau that He is hated and Jacob that He is loved. This doesn’t mean that Esau had no chance for redemption, it simply means that Esau was not selected to birth the nation of Israel as Jacob was.
Theses things all happened so that the whole world would be blessed, not just a select few.
I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
It is simply God’s plan for worldwide redemption that He choose certain nations, and certain times, and certain days in which He acts. These are called dispensations.
Defining Dispensations
Defining Dispensations
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.
Dispensation means management or stewardship. In the Biblical framework, a dispensation is a divinely appointed age.
That is, that God works in certain ways at certain times to bring about the highest good. The highest good is love. The highest act of love, was when Jesus died on the cross.
By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
So when we understand that God chose certain people and certain times, we must understand that God chose those people and those times so that all could come to know Christ.
Wuest’s Word Studies in the Greek New Testament Chapter One
These are selected for the purpose of being channels through which the knowledge of salvation might be brought to the rest of mankind, so that those who put their trust in the Lord Jesus as Saviour might be saved.
The second observation I want you to make in v. 4 is that we were chosen before the foundations of the world. God didn’t trip over us and then decide to make us sons and daughters. He knew us, and He loved us before the world was formed.
Put those two truths together and we now know that before time began, God chose the church to be holy and blameless in Him, to spread the news of the Lord Jesus, so that all the nations of the world would be blessed.
B. We Are Predestined
B. We Are Predestined
having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
Predestination also doesn’t mean that some are chosen for heaven and some are chosen for hell. In the Bible, predestination always refers to the Christian being predestined unto something.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
That is, when you are in Christ, you are going to be like Christ.
When it comes to predestination and election, we can be sure that there is both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We can also be sure that we will never bring those two realities to terms while we are here on earth.
but rather than a theological debate, how about an applicable truth? Every Christian is going to be like the Lord Jesus, and we are spiritually blessed in that way.
C. We Are Redeemed
C. We Are Redeemed
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace
Redemption means that we were purchased. Redemption is all three tenses at one time. It is past, present, and future.
The fact that we are purchased means two things for our life.
1. We Are Set Free
1. We Are Set Free
At one time we were slaves to sin and to our flesh.
For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
When sin was our master, the only thing that could free us from sin was death. We had a binding contract with sin, and the debt was too large to pay, and that’s why Jesus paid it with His blood.
When we are “in Christ”, the Bible says that we share in His death, His burial, and His resurrection.
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
The baptism into death is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, where we died to self and were placed in Christ, and we no longer have to walk as dead men or as the poor, but we can walk with confidence knowing that we are set free from sin and death.
2. We Are His Possession
2. We Are His Possession
Even though it sounds like it at first, to be free in Christ and to be possessed by Christ is not a contradictions in terms.
It goes back to those words we learned a few moments ago, “Justification” and “Union”.
We are set free from all penalties and punishments associated with sin (justification), and now Christ lives in us and we in Him, therefore we are possessed by Him (Union).
D. We Are Made Wise
D. We Are Made Wise
We have the answers to the world that the thinkers and politicians wish that they had.
They spend their whole lives trying to unlock the secrets of the universe in the power of man, but because we are adopted as sons and have been given the riches of God, the secrets of the universe were given to us.
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,
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.
Church, we must know that we have been given heaven’s wisdom.
We must know that from the foundation of the world that God chose the church to spread the news about His Son Jesus Christ.
We must know that we are possessed with all the wisdom of God.
Be Sober and Vigilant
Be Sober and Vigilant
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
That is, we cannot be in fear over the future, because we know the end.
It is also that we must not go after our lusts and passions because we now know that sin is death.
Finally, it is that the church is God’s chosen vessel to proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus so that all the nations of the earth might be blessed.
III. We Are Accepted
III. We Are Accepted
to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
This means that we have been placed in His family as adult sons, with all the rights and privileges of His Beloved which is the Lord Jesus.
A. Royalty
A. Royalty
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.
Think about that woman who wouldn’t pay for her oatmeal to get heated.
The Christian who walks around looking like they’ve just eaten cold oatmeal is a Christian that doesn’t understand their royalty.
We get so emotional in our lives and say things about ourselves like, “Does God care for me? Can God use me? Would God employ me?” All the while, you already have the status. You already have the title. You already have the position. For the Bible says, “In Him we have obtained and inheritance.”
This literally means that we are His heritage.
It goes right along with v. 5
having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
B. Certainty
B. Certainty
That is, we will never lose our royal status. We will never be put back on the slave market.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
The word “sealed” means to be marked.
When you have the Holy Spirit in your life then you have the family crest. You have the mark on your life that you are a part of the royal family.
The Holy Spirit is the down-payment that secures your future reality.
Salvation in Three Ways
Salvation in Three Ways
1. Justification
1. Justification
We’ve already heard this term. It is the removal of guilt and penalties. It is also the way we have union with Christ.
2. Sanctification
2. Sanctification
The process of being holy by the work of the Holy Spirit. This means that the Holy Spirit is actively eliminating sin in us.
3. Glorification
3. Glorification
We will have this when we go to heaven, and God changes our present and dying bodies into perfect, sinless, and deathless bodies.
We have both justification and sanctification now, the Holy Spirit makes us certain that we will have that glorification.
Conclusion
Conclusion
I want you to be sure of you are in Christ so that you can live for Him with confidence.
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
The work is hard! The days are long! But we will see it through!
