Called Before Creation (Eph. 1:4)

Ephesians 1:4

Introduction

· Please turn with me in your Bible to the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians.

· The title of today’s message is “Called before Creation.”

· We come today to one of the most mysterious and yet profound truths of the gospel. It is a truth that none of us would invent on our own, nor would we be able discern it from experience. It is a doctrine we can only come to grasp because God reveals it to us. It is the doctrine of election.

· The term “election” today may conjure up images of the democratic process -- finding your polling station, casting your ballot for a political candidate. Our nation has a very important election in just 7 weeks and I strongly urge you to register to vote. It is one of our great duties and privileges as Americans to vote. Pray for wisdom, compare the two party platforms, and then decide which more closely resembles biblical values. Every Christian needs to vote.

· But we are talking about a different kind of election here today. The doctrine of election is the simple truth that God has chosen certain people for eternal salvation.

· Let’s begin by getting Paul’s larger in vv. 3-6, where he begins and ends with blessing.

· Read vv. 3-6.

· In verse 4, Paul says that all of God’s blessings come to us through God’s calling and election. He answers three basic questions. When Did God Choose Us? Why Did God Choose us? For What Did God Choose Us?

When Did God Choose Us?

· Paul says simply “Before the foundation of the world” (1:4)

· For billions of years, there was no universe. There was no earth. There was no sun. There was no matter. There was no energy. Absolute blackness, and nothingness. There was only God, who has existed forever. He has no beginning. Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

· Then at a certain moment in time, there was a voice, and God said, “Let there be light.” And light came into being. Over the course of six days, God put in place all the building blocks of nature, all the forces and processes that we see today like gravity, and photosynthesis, and reproduction, and the water cycle, and genetics.

· But before any of that happened, God did something else. He decided he would set apart certain people for himself.

· How astounding to think that even before God made man, he had already chosen he would save man. Even before man had fallen from grace, God had already set in motion a plan to rescue him from sin and death. This rescue plan would come at a high cost. It would be carried out at the expense of his own Son.

· 1 Peter 1:18–20 says … you were ransomed … with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world … It was already pre-determined that he would be the sacrificial lamb and offer himself as a substitutionary atonement.

· Revelation 13:8 refers to the book of the Lamb of God who was slain – In this book are written the names of every child of God. There must be millions of names in this book. And it was all written down before the foundation of the world. Again, God had already pre-determined that His Son would be a lamb, it was already decreed that he would be slain, even before the foundation of the earth and the dawn of human history.

· The doctrine of election teaches that God chose you even before time itself. He thought of you by name, and had already decided to set his love on you. He thought of you Anita, Matt, Charles, and Eileen, Karl and Jerry, Wanda and Michelle. He thought, I am going to set them apart from everyone else. I am going to spare them my divine judgment, I am going to send my Son for them, and I am going to save them.

· >>But this leads to a second question…Why? Why would God chose some for salvation?

Why Did God Choose You?

· Three basic options.

· 1) He chose you because of something good that he saw in you. This is after all, how we usually make choices. One study estimates the average adult makes 35,000 choices per day. That’s over 2,000 decisions per hour or one decision every two seconds. (PsychologyToday). Suppose you go to the grocery store to buy some apples. Why do you pick one apple over another? Perhaps price is the deciding factor. Or maybe you enjoy the flavor of a certain variety. Maybe one has a bruise, and so you pass it by. In any case, you choose one apple and not another because there is some inherent quality that makes one more desirable than another. Is this how God’s election works? Did he choose you because there was something in you that he liked -- some virtue or quality that caused him to pick you over someone else? Certainly not. Rom. 3:10 there is none righteous, no not one. Rom. 3:23 All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Eph. 2 you were dead in your trespasses and sins…by nature children of wrath.

· 2) A second option. He chose you in eternity past because he knew you would one day choose him. This is a very popular view, held by the majority of Christians today. God in his omniscience, looked down through the corridors of time and saw that you would one day hear the gospel, and believe of your own free will. So he chose that you would be numbered among those who would be saved. It sounds good at surface level, and seems to let God off the hook, so to speak, so he cannot be blamed for saving some while damning others. It even seems to be taught in passages such as 1 Peter 1:1 written to those who are elect…according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. But this argument quickly unravels when we do even a cursory study of the word “knowledge.” Knowledge, in the Bible, speaks of more than just information and awareness. It speaks of relationship and intimacy. “Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived.” To foreknow, is to have a prior relationship, to love beforehand, to set apart and place one’s affection on. Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. Of Israel, God says in Amos 3:2 You only have I known of all the families of the earth. Clearly, this cannot be saying that God only knew about Israel and didn’t know about any other nations. Also, if we truly understand the state of our human condition, we would realize none of us would choose God unless he first chose us.

· 3) A third option. That God chose you long ago, not because of anything good you had done, not even because you would one day choose him, but rather, simply out of his sovereign grace and steadfast love. This must be the case from the larger context of vv. 5-6; 11. “According to the purpose of his will.” It was not because of anything we had done, or any action that he had taken, but simply because he chose in love to do so.

· This unconditional love, this sovereign grace, is the same reason God gave for choosing the nation of Israel. Deuteronomy 7:6–8 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers,... God loved you because…he wanted to love you! This pattern continues throughout Scripture.

· Romans 9:11 teaches that God chose Jacob over Esau though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—

· Jesus says of his disciples in Jn. 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” Our choice of God is not the cause, but rather the result of him choosing of us.

· I’ve had friends say this is a foreign doctrine, an unbiblical one, and not the true Southern Baptist way. But this is in fact what nearly all early Baptists believed.

· Listen to the words of the London Baptist Confession, written back in 1689. “God has decreed in Himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, [that come] to pass… He [has] not decreed anything, because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass... By the decree of God, … some men and angels are predestin[ed], or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ, to the praise of His glorious grace; others [are] left to act in their sin to their just condemnation, to the praise of His glorious justice. … their number [is] so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.” This confession statement served as the doctrinal foundation for the Southern Baptist Convention that would form many years later.

· James P. Boyce – founder of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said, [parentheticals excluded] “God, of his own purpose, has from Eternity, determined to save, a definite number of mankind, as individuals, not for or because of any merit or work of theirs, nor of any value to him of them; but of his own good pleasure (simply because he was pleased so to choose).”

· And then there is the Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, who gives us a helpful word picture. Imagine “There [are] twenty beggars in the street, and I determine to give one of them a shilling; … will any one say that I determined to give that one a shilling, that I elected him to have the shilling, because I foresaw that he would have it? That would be talking nonsense. In like manner to say that God elected men because he foresaw they would have faith… would be too absurd for us to listen to for a moment. Faith is the gift of God. Every virtue comes from him. Therefore it cannot have caused him to elect men, because it is his gift. Election, we are sure, is absolute, and altogether apart from the virtues which the saints have afterwards.”

· So, the doctrine of unconditional election is a rich part of our Baptist heritage. But more important than that, it is biblical.

· Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world…

· Romans 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.

· But perhaps 2 Timothy 1:9 says it most succinctly: [he] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,

· >>When, Why, and…

For What Did God Choose You?

· “that we should be holy and blameless before him” (4)

· Many people think of the doctrine of election as an end in itself. It is something to study and to debate. But God says you were chosen for something.

· If a Calvinist knows all the right verses, and can argue circles around his opponents, but he isn’t battling sin and growing in holiness, then he’s missed the whole point.

· Holy – cf. “saints” (v. 1). Come to see this more in the coming weeks. Titus 2:11–12 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

· Blameless – often used of sacrifices which were “without blemish.” No broken bones, no skin disease, no deformities. A picture of the need for holiness.

· Very similar language in Ephesians 5:27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

· Wouldn’t it be great to put your old life behind you? to live without shame and guilt? Don’t you want to know you are in the will of God, to be one of the first tools he reaches for? God says you were chosen for this purpose, to be holy and blameless.

· Perhaps you are wondering if God chose you. How can you know? Can you roll up your sleeve and find a birthmark with the words, “Chosen by God.” But Paul says, 1 Thessalonians 1:4–5 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction…you became imitators of us and you received the word in much affliction.