Heaven Guaranteed Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Computer users know that read-only documents cannot be changed.

That's because their contents are sealed by the writer. In Ephesians, Paul tells believers that they are sealed by the Holy Spirit, guaranteeing their eternal futures. Today, why runners in life's race can be sure of crossing the goal line. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, some would say that a believer might fail at the finish line. Can we really know where we're going?

Well, Dave, you know, your question was asked in a very interesting way. First of all, falling at the finish line. As long as we are at the finish line and if we don't quite make it there, I believe that Jesus Christ will pick up a believer, so to speak, to use your imagery, and carry him or her all the way across the finish line. Yes, indeed, it is possible for someone to stumble in the Christian life, but at the end of the day, we'd like to emphasize that it's all about the promises of God and not our promises to follow through.

Once we are sealed all the way to the day of redemption, as you have mentioned, I believe that we will make it into the heavenly kingdom. Well, I'm very excited to let you know that we are beginning our matching challenge. To be specific, we have friends of the ministry who have said that they are willing to match gifts that are given to running to win dollar for dollar up to $90,000.

Of course, you can do the math very easily, but what that means is we have an opportunity to invite you to contribute to become a partner of the Moody Media Ministry, specifically, Running to Win. Here is what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337 or rtwoffer.com. My friend today, thanks to people just like you, this ministry is expanding, and I'll even tell you more about that at the end of this message. Let me begin by asking you a question today. How much are you worth? How much are you worth? Do you really matter?

Do you matter? You know, our first idea of how valuable we are comes to us from our parents, and if we have parents that affirmed us and taught us that we were valuable, we grow up with that good sense of that self-image that says, I like the fact about who I am and where I fit in the family, and there's a good feeling that I have about myself. Now, if your parents devalued you, then you have some other struggles that you have to overcome. And then later on as we grow up, it's not just our parents, it's our teachers and it's our friends, and soon it becomes our church and it becomes our Sunday school class and it becomes our co-workers, and all of these people are giving us input as to whether or not we are really valuable. And if you've ever been devalued, you know how much that value really is appreciated. Today I'm not going to talk to you about the value that other people put upon you and its importance, however important that may be in a different context. I'm going to be talking about something that is much, much more important than that.

Shall I say it clearly and say that it might even be said that it is of infinite more importance? And that is the question as to whether or not you really matter to God. Does God value you, and if so, how much?

That's the text that we're going to be looking at today. Because you see, the real issue is your relationship to him, and we're going to discover today that if you are a believer in Jesus, and the book of Ephesians was written to Christians, and those of you who do not know Christ is your savior but you're listening to these messages, first of all we want to tell you how welcome you are, but we're also going to tell you that there are going to be things that you aren't going to understand because this is in a sense for the family, and we hope that you become a member of the family, but it's important for us to understand that God values us more than we feel he does. He values us more than we can imagine that he does, and he values us most assuredly more than we could ever possibly deserve.

He really does value us. Now you know Ephesians chapter 1 is something like God just deciding to take and to open the curtain, and yes you can turn to that in your Bibles, Ephesians 1, it's as if God says I'm going to pull back the curtain and I'm going to let you in on some of my eternal secrets. What a book this is. There's information here that you could not possibly pick up in speculative philosophy or the ideas that people have because there'd be no way that you could know what God was up to unless he told us, and in the book of Ephesians he tells us, he tells us what in the world he's doing and what in heaven he's doing.

It's an amazing, amazing story. You don't think that you're valuable as a child of God? Listen, you remember we emphasize that God the Father chose you from before the foundation of the world. He made the choice and he made it before creation and he knew your name and you were in God's mind as long as God existed which is from eternity past.

So God the Father chose you. We learned last time God the Son redeemed you. He went into the slavehouse of sin.

People who serve themselves think that they are free and we learned that they aren't at all. They're serving themselves and they're serving sin and it's terrible bondage. Jesus goes in there and he redeems us. The Son redeems us.

Today we discover that the Holy Spirit who brings all of this to our hearts through his indwelling power and by coming into our lives when we receive Christ as our very own, that this Holy Spirit now, he seals us until the day of redemption. I want you to notice and I'm reading from the NIV today and I pick it up at verse 11. Listen to every single phrase. Listen to every phrase because this is God's word and this is powerful. In fact, so much so that I cannot even comment on every phrase by no means because of lack of time. Notice it says in verse 11, in him we also were chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Oh, I have to make one comment. Is there anything going on here that God's not noticing? Is there some things happening in the universe and God is saying, well, you know, it's the devil's territory.

I'm just turning my back. No, he's watching and he is working all things in conformity with his purpose of his will in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. The phrase that I want us to look at is the Holy Spirit is a seal, a deposit guaranteeing us all the way to heaven actually. When the Bible talks about the fact that the Holy Spirit is a seal, what is the imagery that's going on there? Well, one way to understand it is that in those days they would take a document that a king might want to send from one part of his territory to another and he would take the document and roll it up and then hot wax would be poured on the document and his signature, his ring would go into the hot wax and then it would be allowed to dry and you can see then that this document was sealed at the place where the paper met and in this way no one could open it unless it became known that it was opened because there would be no way to duplicate the seal. You couldn't do it over again, so you had better just carry it the way it is and make sure that it arrives at its intended destination. It's sealed.

Let me give you another example, different kind. I'm told that when the lumbermen cut down trees in certain parts of the forest and then they float them all down the river, the various companies, they will put a stamp on each of the trees and they'll stamp the tree so that after they floated down the river and they get to the bottom of where they get all sorted out, they know which tree belongs to whom. They know which is which. Now just take some of those ideas and that will help us to understand that the Holy Spirit of God seals us, and the Bible says this in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30, right until the day of redemption, namely that we belong to God. We are stamped gods.

Now, three signs that become very important to understand this. First of all, the Spirit's sealing is a sign of ownership, a sign of ownership. You'll notice there it's in the last part of verse 14 actually, for those who are God's possession, it is a sign of ownership. We're God's property, God's property. You say, well, doesn't everybody belong to God? Well, by virtue of creation, yes, because he created everybody, but not by virtue of redemption. Now I know that this is going to be misunderstood, but when you believe in Christ, there's no question about the fact that you are special to God in a way that the unconverted aren't.

Some of you will be offended at that remark, but it is entirely true. God does not love everybody the same. He loves the whole world. He loves everyone in the world, but he loves his people in a special way.

You can prove that from scripture and, you know, I might love many, many different children, but I love my children in a special way. We are special to God. We are God's property. Therefore, don't misuse somebody because you're messing with somebody that belongs to God. You'd better watch it.

Take care. And furthermore, not only does it mean that we're God's property, but it means that we are valuable. We're valuable. Some people balk at this and say, well, you know, we're not valuable at all.

Well, help us think through this, Lord, as we talk about it because we need to get clear about it. Let me ask you this question. Would you think of how much money there is in the loop? And then you take all the money that's in the loop and you think of all the money in Atlanta and the money that used to be in L.A.

I'm just kidding. And some of the other cities of the world and New York and all the wealth of the world. I mean, if you had it all, wouldn't that be wonderful?

No worry about bills, no worry about your future. You could vacation wherever you wanted to. You could spend as much as you liked.

I mean, what if you owned all that? Now let me ask you a question. Those of you who are parents now, I'm speaking to you. Would you sacrifice your child for all that?

Somebody said you can earn it all. All that you have to do is sacrifice your child and it's yours. Absolutely unthinkable. Unthinkable. You would not even give it one second of thought. How could you? Of course not.

I know how much I love my daughters. Let me ask you something. God sacrificed his son. Would he have done it for all the wealth in the world, et cetera, et cetera? No, no, no. Would he have given all the wealth in the world for us?

Yes, if that would have worked, but it wouldn't. Listen to the text of scripture. For we have been redeemed not with corruptible things such as silver and gold and all that stuff that's perishing in the loop, but rather with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot who was preordained from before the foundation of the world.

Now listen to this very carefully. You know what that really means? That means that God says I am willing to sacrifice my son for you. Now if I'd be willing to sacrifice one of my daughters for all the children in an orphanage, if there were an arrangement whereby that would be required, that the children in the orphanage would say, well, you know, we must be valuable to Mr. Lutzer. We must have some value to him. He gave his child for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and therefore he conferred upon us value.

Value. Listen to this carefully because there are some folks who say, well, you shouldn't talk about us like that. We are just miserable sinners. You'd better believe we're miserable sinners.

And that's the shock as to why God redeemed us. I tend to think personally that he overpaid. He overpaid, knowing some of the Christians. Well, never mind. I mean, let me change that.

Let me change that. Knowing myself, I think that he overpaid. He paid too much.

That's where grace comes in. We weren't worth that. And if he had not redeemed us, that would have been just and right. But he chose to do it not because of who we were, but because of what he decided to make of us.

Why? To the praise of his own glory. But at the end of the day, my friends, it says in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9 that we are God's own possession. You're a Christian. You've come to saving faith in Christ. You are born of the Spirit. God stamps you with the Holy Spirit and says, God's possession.

You are mine. It's a sign of ownership. Now, how does this help you? Well, you know that there are so many people around you maybe who want to devalue you. They want to kick the wind out of your sails.

That's what gossip does. It devalues people for a very important reason because the person who is participating in it needs it because his own ego is sagging. His own sense of value is so shriveled that he thinks, if I can devalue everyone else, then everyone will be at my level and that'll make me look kind of good. But people around you devalue you. Will you remember that you are valuable to God?

You're God's. You know, when I was growing up in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, some of you find it a little difficult to pronounce that word Saskatchewan, but it does exist in space and time. There is a place like that. We used to play softball during recess. I've learned since coming to Chicago that there are kids who do other things during recess occasionally, but that's what we used to do. Now, you have to understand, I attended a one-room schoolhouse where all the grades were present.

You know, take out a moment and just get this, okay? She'd begin with grade one, our teacher would. There'd be two or three kids in grade one, two or three kids in grade two. She'd begin, and then she'd spend 10 minutes with those, 10 minutes with those, 10 minutes all the way to the eighth grade. Sometimes there were as many as I think our maximum was up to 16 in the school, all of course in one room. And later on when I grew up and discovered that there were actually classrooms where all the kids were in the same grade, I couldn't believe it. I thought, you know, teachers like that, that's just a piece of cake.

I mean, imagine being in a classroom where everybody's in the same grade. Well, anyway, in this school during recess we used to play softball, and we always had captains, Billy, Billy the Bully was always one of the captains. Oh, God have mercy on Billy. And then there was Bobby. Bobby could have a nice side to him, but he could be mean too. And then there was Doug who wasn't a captain but thought he should be, and there was his brother who really did everything that he could to make life difficult. Well, you see, the captains would choose various players to make up the team, and I often was chosen last.

Little shy Irwin, you know, who obviously was going nowhere. You know that that hurts? Why? Why does it hurt? It hurts because you're devalued. And there were other reasons too.

We were religious people, and so we weren't allowed to do some of the things that the other kids did, and so they would mercilessly tease us and talk about us as the religious looters. That hurt. That hurt. You know, what's interesting is to look back now and to see that really it didn't matter.

It didn't matter whether or not I was chosen. You know, you could go through the history of these people, and I have had the privilege of witnessing to some of my old friends, and I won't give you their histories, but most of them are not very pretty. I want to tell you that story for this reason, that it's interesting how different it looks from the standpoint of a few years.

Well, let me change that and say from the standpoint of more than a few years, but it's interesting how time changes the perspective. And there are people around you today who maybe want to devalue you, but remember that you are gods. You're gods. That's the first thing that the Holy Spirit, the sealing of the Spirit means. It is ownership.

Secondly, it is security. Now notice the text. I'm going to read verse 14, who is the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession. He is the deposit. Now if you have a King James, you know that it says he is the earnest. I like that word because I know what earnest money is. It means that there's a down payment, but that there's more to follow. Another word that could be used is a pledge.

I think one of the translations says, all of them good words, all of them meaning the same thing, namely that God is saying that there is more to follow. This is my guarantee that you're going to make it all the way to heaven because you are sealed. You're a letter that has been mailed. You've been sealed and you will arrive at your intended destination. Another way that we can illustrate this is an engagement ring. A young man gives a woman an engagement ring that is a promise of marriage. Now in this instance, the suitor is one who will fulfill his promise. There's no question about it. He won't say, well, you know, actually, as we began to work it out, there are too many problems between us.

And furthermore, I found somebody else who's more attractive. That will not happen in this instance. He will be faithful to you all the way and you're going to end up at the marriage supper of the lamb.

You're going to make it. Now this is sometimes known as eternal security. And there are people who say, oh, you should not preach it even if it's true. Already now that I have referred to it today, there's someone in this congregation who will send me a letter about it. I know that in advance. You know, after you've been here as long as I am, you begin to learn the lay of the land.

I'm to the point now where I don't even get lost in this church anymore. But I can imagine somebody saying, you know, you preach that and people are going to go out and live like the devil. Listen, let's suppose that there's a woman who's in love with a man and he gives her an engagement ring and she knows absolutely that he will follow through. There is nothing that she can do that will prevent him from marrying her. So you know what she does? She says to herself, well, now that means I can sleep with every guy in town because my marriage to this man is guaranteed. Is that the way it works?

No. She's devoted to him. She loves him. She rests in the security of the knowledge that she is his and that she is going to be his forever and that she can depend upon the fact that he is the kind of marrying man.

He will do it. That's what the security of the believer is. My friend today, I'd like to emphasize that when we receive Christ as Savior, he creates within us a brand new nature. There's something within us that wasn't there before. And as a result, we have new desires, new aspirations, and we want to live a different life. Well, at the beginning of this broadcast, I mentioned to you that we are beginning our matching challenge. What does that mean? That means for every dollar that you give to the ministry of running to win, it will be doubled thanks to some friends and supporters of ours. That of course means that $10 becomes 20, 25 becomes 50.

Well, you can do the math. I'm so glad to be able to report that the ministry of running to win continues to expand. Presently, we are in 21 countries in four different languages. And here's some very exciting news.

God willing, we're going to be going into three more languages in the next 12 months. We are so appreciative of the many people who support this ministry. Would you like to help us? Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'd like to think of all those who are listening right now as our partners, as members of the Running to Win family. Would you consider helping us? You can make your gift.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. We consider all gifts as a sacred trust with one goal, to get the gospel to more people each year. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Runners in the race of the Christian life can know that they will cross the finish line.

They will arrive safely. Pastor Erwin Lutzer has brought Part 1 of Heaven Guaranteed, the fourth message in a series on Between Heaven and Earth, taken from the Book of Ephesians. The sealing of the Spirit means ownership, and it means security. Next time, we learn more about what the sealing of the Spirit means. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.