Before the world was ever established, God knew you and He loved you. There has never been a time in eternity. that God did not know you. and did not love you. For as long as you have been in existence from eternity past, he's known about you, he has cherished you, and he has planned to redeem you and to save you.
Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with J.D. Greer. At Summit Life, you'll often hear the phrase deep and wide. What does that actually mean? Going deep means the gospel isn't just something we hear, it reshapes how we see God, how we understand ourselves, and how we live each day.
The gospel moves from information to transformation. But when the gospel truly goes deep, it never stays there. It naturally goes wide into our relationships, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and ultimately to the world. God's design has always been that changed lives would lead to changed communities.
So whether you're new to faith or have followed Jesus for years, this same mission is for you too. If you want to grow deeper in the gospel and be part of advancing it wider, we invite you to come explore Summit Lights by visiting jdgreer.com. Today, Pastor J.D. kicks off a new teaching series through the book of Ephesians called Love Incorruptible. He begins by looking at the concept of predestination and he's helping us see that while some things are not meant to be fully understood, we can know this for certain.
We were chosen for the glory of God. Today, we start a study on the book of Ephesians. I do want to give you a little theological, a little warning this weekend. I hope that you brought your theological big boy pants with you because in this chapter, we are going to wrestle with one of the most difficult, one of the most difficult, but perhaps most precious of all biblical truths. This is so important and so difficult and so just mind-blowing that I've actually tried to commit it to memory.
Do you mind if I try it out on you? I'm only like 80% sure I can do this, but can we do that? Paul's prayer beginning in chapter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. which He has lavished upon us with all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in Himself, things in heaven or things in earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, According to the purpose of him, and Jesus loves you. And so, um, Hold on, man. Here we go.
Having been predestined, hold on, not yet, not yet. In Him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to trust in Christ might be, first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of the inheritance until we acquire possession of it. Amen and amen. That is the verse.
There we go.
So. Not quite, but I'm working on it. That is, by the way, one long sentence in the Greek language, 202 words, a sentence that theologians love and English teachers hate. One long, spirit-inspired, run-on sentence. But I love it, which is why it's been so awesome to have it bouncing around in my heart.
In fact, here's my challenge for you, and it's a big one. What if, over the course of this eight-week study through the book of Ephesians, what if you memorized that one long sentence? Not memorize it in Greek, but memorize it in English. I think it's two sentences in English. These 11 verses, verses 3 through 14, all right, starting right now.
Go.
Okay? A few things that you should know about the book of Ephesians. First, the book of Ephesians is considered to be Paul's theological masterpiece because Paul packs everything essential for you to know about the Christian life into six short chapters. If you understand, if you understand, let me see here. If you understand these three pages of the Bible right here, if you understand those, you will be a theological ninja master.
Okay, you really will. If you just master those three pages, and dudes, by the way, chicks totally dig that. If you get to be a theological Zen master, you should do that if you're single. The first three chapters are filled with truth about who God is and what He has done in the gospel. The last three chapters offer some of the most practical instruction you're going to find anywhere in the Bible on things relating from marriage to forgiveness to conflict management to family to workplace relationships, even dating, and a host of other day-to-day issues.
But that is partially where people begin to read the book of Ephesians wrongly. They treat it primarily as a book of doctrine, part one, and then a practical guide for living, part two. But Ephesians was written first and foremost as a letter, a survival manual to a church that was trying to exist in a very hostile environment. You see, Ephesus was one of the most impressive and most intimidating cities in the ancient world. It was on a seaport right at the intersection of Europe and Asia, which made it one of the primary trade hubs of the Roman Empire.
It was cosmopolitan and multicultural. It boasted one of the largest libraries in the world, actually ever in history. And so a lot of the most prestigious scholars in the world at the time lived there. Religiously, it was all over the map. The city housed 50 different temples, including the largest temple in the ancient world dedicated to Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Sexual immorality there was literally an industry. Most of the temples offered some kind of prostitution as a part of the worship ritual.
So people would always say, what happened in Ephesus stays in Ephesus, unless it's contagious, and then you carry it around with you for the rest of your life. But that's what the city was known for. All this to say is it was not a Christian-friendly environment, which is what makes the letter so timely and so. Irrelevant for us because I know that many of us feel like we are in environments that are not friendly to Christianity. For some of you, that is your school.
For some of you, that is your workplace. Maybe even your family. I know that for some of our church planters around the world who listen in each week, they are literally in places where it is illegal to live out your Christian faith.
So, we are going to dive into this book because it's going to show us how we can not only survive, but thrive in those places.
Okay, here we go. Verse 3. Paul opens up the letter with a concept that many of us find difficult. And that concept is predestination. In verse 4, Paul says, God chose us in him before the foundation of the world.
And then throughout the chapter, he repeats, like verse 5, he predestined us for adoption. Verse 11, he predestined us according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Which I know immediately raises all kinds of questions for us, such as questions like, well, what about free will? Or why would God choose some people and not others? And those are great questions, and we're going to deal with them in a minute.
But first, let's just ask, what exactly is Paul teaching here? And then, why is he teaching it? Because see, let me give you a little ground rule for approaching your Bible. This doesn't just apply to this text, it applies any time you're studying the Bible. There are some things about God that you're never going to quite fully understand.
The Bible tells us that in a verse that really helped me personally when I was struggling with a lot of the questions that get raised in passages like this one. The verse was Deuteronomy 29, 29. The verse says this: The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. that we may do all the words of this law.
Now, notice that there is a distinction. The first thing that you got to acknowledge is that there are some secret things. There's secret things and there's revealed things. There's a distinction between them and our responsibility. Moses, who wrote Deuteronomy, tells us our responsibility is to believe and obey what is revealed.
Not to try to figure out all that is hidden. And by the way, that there are some things that remain hidden really aggravates a lot of theologians who insist on having it all figured out. But I would just remind you that we're talking about God.
So it shouldn't surprise you that there remains a realm which your mind can scarcely understand, much less explain. I mean, imagine trying to explain quantum physics for a four-year-old. Or imagine somebody trying to explain it to you.
Okay. Just because you can't explain it fully or comprehend it fully doesn't mean it's not true. Right? And then the question I often ask you is: well, which do you think is greater? What do you think is greater?
The gap between a four-year-old's understanding and yours as an adult. or the gap between yours and God's. Take whoever's the smartest person here in the summit church, whoever, we got at least probably two people in here that score perfectly in the SAT. Take that person and compare their understanding to that of the Almighty God. Of course, the gap is greater between theirs and God's, between ours and a four-year-old.
So, of course, there's things that we're not really going to be able to comprehend.
So, we approach this subject understanding that we are delving into realities that our minds can barely grasp.
Sometimes we read passages like this one and we think, wow, that is really, really deep. But I feel like when we say that, we're like the 10-year-old boy who runs out into the ocean and as far as he can get, he gets about 20 yards out there and a wave comes over his head and he's in six and a half feet in water and he's like, oh, it's so deep out here. And you're like, man, just like a couple miles out that direction, it's going to go from seven feet to several miles deep. That's what happens when we get into passages like this one. We think how deep it is, but just keep in mind our subject matter is God.
So again, here's the questions I want to focus on. What exactly are the scriptures saying here? And then secondly, I want to ask, why does God tell us these things? What exactly are they saying, and then why does he tell us these things? First, verse 4, notice when it says that we are chosen.
Verse 4, we are chosen in him. When? before the foundation of the world. That is an awesome thought. Before the world was ever established, God knew you.
And he loved you. There has never been a time in eternity. that God did not know you. and did not love you. For as long as you have been in existence from eternity past, he's known about you, he has cherished you, and he has planned to redeem you and to save you.
Sometimes people think that this verse means that God simply just knew beforehand who would choose him, as if he looked down the corridors of the future and he said, oh, I see, J.D.'s going to choose me and I know the future, so I'll choose him back. But that is not what this verse says. It says, he set his love on us and chose us before we were even a twinkle in our daddy's eye. From verse 3 onward, when the process of our salvation begins, to verse 14, when it's over, God is the one taking all the action. Remember, I told you it was one long 202-word sentence?
That sentence has 48 pronouns. Two-thirds of them belong to God. There are 24 verbs or action sequences in that sentence. God does 20 of them, and only four of them we do. Verse 3, God blesses.
Verse 4, He chooses. Verse 5, He predestines and adopts. Verse 6, He bestows grace. Verse 7, He redeems and forgives. Verse 8, He lavishes.
Verse 9, He makes known and He purposes. Verse 10, He unites together in Christ. Verse 11, He works. Verse 13, He seals. Listen to the four that we do.
We listen, we receive, we believe, and we hope. Isn't that beautiful? You say, what part of salvation are we responsible for? You did all the sinning, and Jesus did all the saving. That's how it breaks down.
You say, Well, why did he choose me? What was it about me that made him choose me? Was it my potential? Did God look it down and say, Oh, hey, he's going to make such a great Christian? Man, he's got such good debating skills, or she's got such crazy leadership skills.
I got to have them on my team, and so I'm going to draft them on my team. Was it our potential? Not at all. In one of the most beautiful and mystifying passages of the Old Testament, when God begins to explain to Israel why he chose them instead of other nations, this is what he says: 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.
It is because the Lord loves you. In other words, it wasn't your potential. I didn't choose you because you were great, Israel. The only reason you became great is because I chose you. You say, well, I know.
Maybe it was that deep down I wasn't as sinful as other people. God saw deep down that I had a good and teachable heart.
Well, that's not true either. Again, look at Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 9, verse 6. Know therefore that the Lord your God is not giving you this land, good land, because of your righteousness. Because you were a stubborn people. In other words, yeah, it wasn't really your good heart either.
Actually, your heart was harder than most people's. God didn't look down and say, you know, I know there's still some good in that one. I'm going to save them. That's a scene from Star Wars. That's not the gospel.
No, you had no good in you at all. In chapter 2, Paul explains, You were dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead means dead, they're not levels of dead. There's a scene in a great 1980s movie called The Princess Bride, one of the great 1980s movies where Indigo Montoya, Indigo Montoya, and Andre the Giant. are distraught because their hero Wesley is dead.
And so they remember this: they take Wesley's dead body to the wizard, and the wizard says, Oh, no reason to fear, boys. He's only mostly dead. And then he works some kind of magic on him and revives him.
Now that might be good entertainment, but it's bad science and bad theology. There's no such thing as mostly dead. You're either dead or you're not. Jesus didn't go around Jerusalem, you know, kind of looking around graves and thinking, hey, there's still some life left in that one. I'm going to raise him from the dead.
No, when he showed up to raise Lazarus from the dead, he made sure he waited four days. Jews believed, by the way, that on the third day is when your spirit, they thought your spirit would hover around your dead body for about three days just to see if a miracle happened. And if not, then he'd go to heaven.
So he waited four days just so there would be no question at all that the man was dead. That is the kind of people Jesus raised from the dead, people that were really and totally actually dead. God didn't choose us because we had spiritual life in us. He didn't choose us because we were lovable. In fact, chapter 2, Paul's going to tell us that our sin had made us God's enemies.
We were sons of disobedience and objects of his wrath. And I know that people say, well, yeah, I've made some mistakes like everybody, but I'm still mostly lovable. What you are underestimating is the sinfulness, the disgustingness, the hideousness of sin. Jonathan Edwards, the old Puritan theologian used to say that the slightest sin has an infinite amount of hatefulness in it.
So that sin, that sinfulness of sin, outweighs whatever loveliness the creature possessed.
So, yes, there are lovable things about us, but the hideousness of our rebellion against God so outweighs those things that we are classified as God's enemies.
So what was it then about you that caused him to choose you? That's the mystifying part. I mean, did you see that phrase back in Deuteronomy 7:8? We kind of went right over it. He said, it was just because the Lord loved you.
It was because the Lord loved you. Love doesn't really have an explanation. Why did God love you? It's just because he loved you. I think of it the way that I often explain my love for my kids to my kids.
I think I've told you before, all three of my girls used to stay in the same room. And so I'd go in at night, and as I was kissing them goodnight, and. Levin, I would say, hey, girls, why does daddy love you? Uh does daddy love you 'cause you're beautiful? And one of them would say no.
I train them this, so they'd say, no, but we are beautiful. And I'm like, that's exactly right. And does that love you because you're smart? No, no, but we are smart, that's right. Does daddy love you because you're gonna make great leaders one day?
No, but we are gonna make great leaders one day. I was like, right. Why does daddy love you? And one of them would say, because we're your daughters. Love doesn't really have an explanation.
It's probably one of the only relationships in my life. Where I've understood a little bit of what it means to love like God's love. It's just a taste. I don't love them because they're lovely, I just love them. You see, most areas of love in our life we love because of the loveliness of somebody.
Right, I mean, I see that when I do weddings sometimes, every bride looks awesome on her wedding day. I've never seen a bride in all the weddings I've ever done, I've never seen one that didn't look awesome. I've never been standing up at the altar and the back door open and going like. Bro, you're seeing that? I'm not sure you want to know.
They all look awesome, and you can tell why he chose her. That's how we love. We we see loveliness and we attract to it, but There's something you get and a taste of parental love that goes beyond that. I don't love my daughters because they're beautiful. If they cease to be beautiful, it would not lessen my love for them one bit.
There's a love that we get a taste of, and how God loves us. Before we had ever done good or bad, before the foundation of the world, God set his love on us. I love Charles Spurgeon, who's the British pastor in the 1800s. You love how he said it. I have no questions that God chose me because I'm quite sure that if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen him.
And I'm sure that he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards. He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.
So I feel like I'm forced to accept this doctrine. I love my seven-year-olds, or my, she's not seven anymore. A couple years ago, she was seven, her understanding of this. I can't remember how this subject came up in family devotions. It's not what we sit around and talk about all the time.
But it came up, and I was explaining it.
Well, we just the night before watched together as a family like The Voice. Remember this, you know, that show? And you know, in The Voice, when you got these judges that have their, they're in these chairs with their backs to you, and you start singing, and if they like what they hear, then they'll hit the little thing and the chair will spin around. And in big letters under the chair, it says, I want you, I want you on my team. And my seven-year-old says, Dad, you know what it's like?
It's like we were on the voice show and God spun his chair around before we ever started singing. He said, I want you before I even hear your voice. I choose you, not because of something in you, I just choose you because I choose you. You say, well, doesn't that violate my free will? No, the Bible says his choice is never against our will, but it's always in concert with it.
In some places, God says, I chose you before the foundation of the world. But in other places, Jesus would say, Whosoever will may come. Jesus explained how it works in John 6:44 when he says, Nobody comes to me unless the Father draws him. Our choice and the Father's drawing go hand in hand. The word for draw there in the Greek is helkuo.
It carries the idea of a desperately hungry man that is being drawn to food. That is what God does with us. He creates a hunger in us to know Jesus. And that hunger draws us to Jesus of our own free will. Just like if you were starving, you're going to be drawn to food.
You see, our problem was not that we wanted to choose God and we couldn't. Our problem was that deep down, none of us wanted to choose God. We preferred to rule ourselves and be the center of our own universe. Our wanter was all out of whack. That's what it means to be spiritually dead.
So, what God does through the preaching of the gospel and then the power of the Spirit, what He does is He changes our hearts so that we begin to hunger after God. You say, well, why didn't God choose everybody? That's a big question, but let me just say two things. First, keep in mind that God is not obligated to extend salvation to anybody. What's fair is that we all perish.
That any of us have a chance to receive forgiveness is a free gift of undeserved grace. But second, listen to this: this is the part of this discussion where a certain amount of mystery sets in. Listen, because scripture never presents, never. Never presents a lack of God's choosing as the reason why somebody didn't come. Not once.
It's always back on that person. For example, Matthew 23, 37, Jesus talking, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? And he didn't say, but you know, I just didn't sorrowfully choose that, so tough cookies. No, he said but you weren't willing I wanted to you didn't 2 Peter 3:9. The Lord is not willing that any should perish.
He's not willing that any should perish. But he wants all to come to repentance. The last verse of our Bibles, or the last section of our Bibles, ends with this truth: whosoever will may come. I've told you it's entirely your choice, the last voice you'll hear. As you step off of the earth in rejection of God into hell, it's his voice saying you don't have to do that, you can choose.
Then I realized that there's a mystery there, but here is what we know is revealed. If you're a Christian, it's because God chose you. If you're not, it's because you have chosen to reject God. And the Lord is not willing that you should perish. He wants you to come to repentance.
And he said, if you will, just come. Are you chosen? In one sense, you're the one that has the power to decide that. If you choose to repent and believe in Jesus, then you're chosen. The choice is entirely yours.
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Become a gospel partner today. Visit jdgreer.com or call 866-335-5220. Together, let's bring God's healing and truth to the world. Paul continues, verse five: In love he predestines us for adoption. through Jesus Christ.
Adoption, what another beautiful concept. Adoption means that we weren't part of his family, but he made us part of his family. We weren't his, you know, mostly good but wayward kids. We were rebels, members of a traitor race. And he said, I'm going to choose to make you mine.
And he does that joyfully. The word translated purposes, purpose in verses five and nine is um. And the Greek language means kind intention. God didn't just plan and execute the process of our salvation. He enjoyed the process.
It cost him everything, cost him the blood of Jesus to accomplish it. But he enjoyed every second of it. I've got several friends of our family who have adopted. And one of the things that they'll tell me is when you walk into that adoption place and you see your child for the first time, sometimes overseas, even if that child has got all kinds of physical or emotional problems, there's this cinch in your heart. No one ever begrudgingly adopts.
I've known a lot of really generous people, but I have never known somebody who was willing to sacrifice one of their own kids. biological kids in order to obtain another. What God is saying is, I chose to adopt you, even though it cost the life of my son. And I didn't begrudgingly adopt. I enjoyed it, the kind intention that was in my heart.
I walked into the orphanage of sin. I went up to the sons and daughters of the enemy race who were deformed and defiled by sin, and love welled up in my heart. And I said, I'm going to make that one mine. Verse 13 and 14, Paul finishes his explanation of what God did when he saved us. Verse 13, in him you also.
When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in him. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory? By the way, did you notice in this chapter we see the whole Trinity involved in the process of our salvation? The Father purposes, the Son redeems, now we see the Holy Spirit seals.
Our salvation is an affair of the entire Godhead. Specifically, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, is the one who ensures to us that God is going to finish what He started. That's why, in verse 14, Paul calls him the guarantee of our inheritance. What he's referring to is the concept of earnest money. When you're trying to give somebody a promise that you're going to follow if you want a deal.
A lot of times you give them what we call earnest money. Which means I'm going to give you this money. That's my assurance to you that I'm going to come back and close this contract. Because if I don't, then you can just keep this money. And it's a sizable enough amount of money that you can be assured that I'm going to come back and not leave it on the table.
So Paul takes that concept and said, what did God give you as earnest money? He put part of himself into you. How do we know he's going to complete his work in us and take us to heaven?
Well, because he's already put the best part of heaven into us. I think of the Holy Spirit in some ways like the moon. The moon that we see, when you go outside at night and you look up, every night virtually the sun virtually disappears.
Now we can't say it. It's obscure from our view. But you can look at the moon, and what you're seeing in the moon is the reflection of the sunlight, which is a promise. that in a few hours that sun's going to come back up. What the Holy Spirit in our hearts, radiating from our hearts, is like.
The presence of God that assures us that Jesus is going to come back and finish what he started. There's one other phrase I want to make sure that we see before I close this section of our message. Because until you learn this truth, a lot of the rest of this is not going to make sense. It's the repeated phrase, verse 6, to the praise of his glory. Why does God do things the way that he does them?
Why did God set up the path of salvation this way? for the praise of his glory. He saved us the way that he did to demonstrate his glory. That's not the only place. By the way, in the Bible, where we're taught that, in fact, not by far, Ezekiel 36, look at this.
God talking to Israel. This is what the sovereign Lord says. It's not for your sake, people of Israel, that I'm going to do these things. It's for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. It wasn't for your sake, it was for my name's sake.
That's what I was really after. Psalm 23:4, a verse that I memorized with my seven-year-old son the other night for his Iwana thing. He leads me in paths of righteousness. For his name's sake, it was for his name's sake that he did it. Handful of really quick thoughts there, and I can't spend a long time here, but First, if I had to pinpoint the primary corruption that sin has had in our thinking, It is our unquestioned assumption that we are the center of the universe, that the whole universe exists for us, and the most important thing is our well-being and our good.
Even when we think about God, We think about it in terms of how he can complete us, how he can help us, and how he can take us to heaven. You are not the center of the universe. Even your salvation. was pursued in a way to bring glory to God. Second, until you understand this: that God's glory is the center of everything, nothing that God does is really going to make sense to you.
Your life is not going to make sense. What God does will not make sense, and you're never going to find fulfillment until you live for His glory. Told you, God is like the sun in the middle of our solar system. Our world only thrives with the sun at the center. Our lives only thrive with God at the center.
Third, that means that there's a lot more at stake here in your salvation than just you. God has bound up the glory of his name in your salvation. And so even when you falter, he's gonna pursue his work in you for the sake of his name. That's good news. That's also, by the way, why God sometimes, often, saves who we think are impossible people.
People you would think never could be saved, because God likes to do some things where only he can get the credit. Right? I mean, for some of you, when God saved you, the angels were like.
Well, I didn't see that one coming. Yeah. And God was like, I was just showing off a little bit. That's what God does, believer. Here's what Paul wants to thunder in your soul as you read this first chapter.
You are chosen. according to the purpose of God, by the power of God, for the glory of God. And that is the greatest, most empowering, most life-giving truth in the universe. You see, it's supposed to fill you with four things. This is the why of why he told us.
Number one, it's supposed to give you assurance during struggle. Assurance: If we know salvation began and the purpose of God, then we also know that what God started, He's going to finish. Y'all listen, every God-seeking Christian I have ever known. struggle sometimes whether or not they can actually be saved. You look into your heart and you think, could I really be a Christian and still think that from time to time?
Could I really be a Christian and have those kind of doubts? Could I be really a Christian and struggle with that? I've certainly thought that. If God did not choose you because of your goodness, He's not depending on your goodness to keep you saved. One thing I've learned over and over, my flesh is evil.
Like Paul said, there is nothing good that dwells in my flesh. And if God took his mercy away from me and his spirit for even a second, I would turn away. But see, I've got this assurance that what God started in me, Philippians 1:6, He's going to complete it all the way to the day that He's done. I have a pastor friend who went into just a very terrible moral failure. He wouldn't just embarrass himself, embarrass his church.
I remember he genuinely repented, or at least as far as I can tell. And he told me not too long ago: he said, you know. He said, this idea that God chose me has become the sweetest doctrine in all of my life. He said, after how badly I messed things up, I realized if this whole thing were about me holding on, then I would surely perish. I thank God that when I let go, he didn't.
Now, I know that some of you may say at this point, well, how do you know you're chosen? I mean, maybe my lack of progress in my spiritual life is proof that I'm not chosen. My wife was raised in an environment where they talked about this stuff a lot. She grew up Presbyterian and they knew one thing, it was the five points of Calvinism. And so she said, You know, I just want, she thought the reason that I struggle so much in high school and college is I must not be chosen, and I must be just, you know, kind of somebody who's not saved in the midst of an environment where there's a lot of Christians.
Here's how you know, this is how she came to know. If you recognize that Jesus is Lord. If you recognize that he is Lord and you want to submit to him, that is the evidence of the work of his spirit in you. 1 Corinthians 12, 3, no man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Which means if you understand that he's the Lord and you want to submit to him, that didn't come from you, that came from him.
If you even want to be saved, if you want to be reconciled to God, that is the evidence of God working in you. You just say yes to it. That's all that it takes. I've described it before: like waking up in an ambulance. That's what the Bible does.
It wakes you up in an ambulance. You wake up in an ambulance, and the EMT or the doctor looks at you as you regain consciousness and says, You've been in a terrible accident. You don't remember it. But here you are revived, and you got tubes coming out, and they're sticking, poking you with things. And the doctor says, We saved you.
And all I need you to do is lay there, and we'll take it from here. We'll keep you alive, and we'll restore you back to health. That's essentially what conversion is. You don't wake up, and God says, You better get to fixing yourself. And if you don't do it now, you're going to mess.
No, that's not it. You wake up and he says, Hey, you're in a really bad way. You're all torn up. But I'm saving you. And if you'll just submit to it, if you'll just lay there and let me do it.
then I'm going to transform it and I'm going to bring you healing.
So it gives you assurance during struggle. Number two, it gives you strength after failure. This truth gives us the power to get back up again after we failed. Because again, I know that what God started, He's going to finish. And I can be sure that even if my today was consumed by defeat, I know that God's decree for my tomorrow is victory.
Look at this, verse 4. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Why? He chose you that you could be holy and blameless before him. That's why he chose you.
He didn't choose you to drag you on up into hell. He chose you because he wanted to do these things in you. We're his workmanship. From Ephesians, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. The word is predestined.
That we should go and walk in them. He predestined that I would be somebody whose life would be filled with good works and my life would resound to the praise of his glory. Listen, that means the burden of fixing my life is not on me. God's already decreed it and he's already supplied the power for it. You see, I know that I'm talking to a lot of people in our church.
You feel so defeated. You think, how am I ever going to get over my lust? How am I ever going to fix my marriage? How can I be bold and fruitful as a witness? You've challenged us this year of disciple-making for each of us to reach somebody.
I just don't see how I'm going to be able to do that. You see, that's the wrong picture of the Christian life. The good works that God has for you. He's already predestined for you. and already provided the power for you to go and walk in it.
And you can be confident in his plan to use you because that's why he said he chose you. I chose you. and ordained you that you would go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit would remain. You just got to say yes and let me do it through you. He saved you to bring other people to Jesus through you.
Let me go back here again, real quick, and make sure you understand. This is why the scriptures teach us that we're chosen. It's not to unravel the mysteries of how God has worked in your past. It's to give you confidence about what he wants to do in your future. You shouldn't sit around pondering why God saved you instead of your non-believing friends.
You should understand that He saved you for the sake of your non-believing friends. He chose you to bless them. That's why he said he did it. Finally, all this means that when you fail miserably as a Christian... And you will sometimes.
It means you got the strength to get back up. I know I've shared this promise with you before, but it's one of my favorite verses from the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 24:11. I love this. The righteous man falls seven times.
And gets back up again. Seven, I've told you. Seven in the Bible is the number of completion in Hebrew. Which means that when somebody does something seven times, it's like they do it continually. I told you like this.
Imagine you're walking in the mall behind somebody who fell. seven times.
So the first time you're walking, they pffn, they fall, you know, like that. And then they get back up, and then they take another few steps, and they fall again. And what do you do? You pull your phone out of your pocket and you're like trying to get it on. Right?
A third time, you're posting it. Fourth time, Fifth time, at this point you're not laughing anymore, you start to get worried. God falls seven times. That's all he does is fall. We talk about righteous people as if they are people who don't fall.
You don't show your righteousness by never falling. You show your righteousness by what you do when you fall. Fallen just demonstrates that you're not perfect. But getting back up again demonstrates that you believe the gospel. and you understand that your righteousness is a gift from Christ.
So, you've messed up, you've failed, you've disappointed yourself again, you've messed up in your marriage, you've fallen flat in your face.
So, what? Get up and believe the gospel. Number three, hope in trials. I know that God's working in every area of my life to make me a son that is to the praise of his glory. And I know, Paul tells me, it blows my mind, but he tells me, literally, God has harnessed every molecule in the universe to that end.
Here's what I chose for you: He works all things according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will. All things. All things. Even in those areas where I feel victimized. Or I feel hurting.
Or I just feel unlucky. Paul tells me that God has been working for my good. I had a test on whether or not I actually believe this, literally, right in the middle of writing this point. Do you want to know what it was? My Mac computer.
Which I was sworn by people who know. that it would never crash. Never. And right in the middle of writing this point, I hadn't saved it in like 25, 30 minutes, right in the middle of it, you see the little wheel of death. And I lost 25 or 30 minutes.
And I was so. angry i cannot tell you come like 25 30 minutes just down the drain And then I had this thought. Is it really all things that God is working? And I was like, I don't really believe that. This was from Satan right here.
This had to be from Satan. But see what this verse tells me is that even in a random computer crash I got a sovereign God who guides every faulty electronic circuit. I can still be mad at Steve Jobs. But my God is sovereign. I have hope in all my trials.
Number four. confidence in disciple making. People say, well, if God's already chosen those who will be saved. And then why do we go share Christ? That's a great question, ironically enough, for Paul.
The fact that God had chosen some. It's going to blow your mind. was why he had the confidence to go and share Christ. And this is the key to understanding. why he puts this truth right here in the beginning of the book of Ephesians.
You see, right about the time Paul went to Ephesus, he stopped in a city on the way where he was getting a lot of opposition. And so God tells him in a vision, Acts 18:9, go on preaching. Listen to this. Go on preaching, Paul. I know everybody's opposing you.
Go on preaching because I have many people in this city. No one's single Christian there. I've already had many people, meetings. I've chosen a bunch of people in this city.
Now, can't you hear Paul?
Well then where are they? I could really use some support right about now. But Paul kept on preaching, knowing that soon they would come. That God had chosen many more people motivated Paul. I heard a missionary one time say that when he first became a missionary, he did not know how he could be a missionary if he believed that God had chosen people.
But after serving on the mission field for many years, working with people who were just completely against the gospel, he said, I don't know how I could go on being a missionary if I didn't believe that God had chosen some. I certainly felt that when I was a missionary. When I was there, it just seemed like after a year and nobody was listening, people's hearts were so hard. Unless I believed that God could change somebody's heart and that He had promised to, I'd be convinced people would never believe, and I would just give up. The idea that God chooses some to salvation doesn't discourage sharing Christ, it empowers it.
You say, well, why share though if they're chosen? That's one of those things where we're not really supposed to try and figure out the secret things. All that I know is that the more that I share Christ, the more people seem to keep getting elected. That's what I know. The best short explanation, and I've shared this with you before, I'm pretty sure, an old theologian named A.
Ahide said this: Does God know the day that you'll die? Yes, he does. Do you think that you think God knows the day you'll die? Yes, he does. Yeah, I'm sure he does.
Has he appointed that day? According to most places in the Bible, he has. Can you do anything to really change that day? Nope. Then why do you eat?
To live. What happens if you don't eat? You die. Then if you don't eat and die. Would that be the day that God had pre-appointed for you to die?
Quit asking stupid questions and just eat. Because eating is the preordained way that God has appointed for living.
Well, if I don't share Christ, does that mean they weren't chosen? Quit asking stupid questions. Quit asking stupid questions and just do what God has told you to do because that is the means by which God brings people to salvation. You said, well, that makes my head hurt. Of course it does.
Of course, it does. You're in the seven feet of water in the ocean, like, oh, how deep it is. I'm like, it's a lot deeper than that. Just swim out a little farther and you won't be able to ever see the bottom. I share Christ with people like it's all up to me, but I pray to God that they'll receive Jesus and do it with confidence like it's all up to Him.
That's the way that Paul wants us to wrestle with this. He doesn't tell us to explain the mysteries of the past. He does it to give us power for the future. Bow your heads with me if you would. Let me talk first to those of you who are Christians, believers.
Christian, listen to me. You're chosen. Can you hear it? Can you hear it from my mouth, but But listen to it is from the Holy Spirit. You are chosen.
Can you feel the confidence that gives you?
Some of you need to get back up right now because you've fallen again. You need with confidence to know that God has appointed you to be fruitful. Where you can say, God, by faith, because I believe in your work in me, I'm going to say, Yes, God. Use me for your purposes. I don't see how I could be fruitful.
I don't see how I could be used, but yes. I'm going to walk in these good works that you've preordained for me.
Well, you just kind of wrestle with that and soak in it for a minute to those who are not Christians. Listen. You can be chosen. The choice is yours. Jesus said, whosoever will may come.
In fact, some of you should realize that the very reason you're sitting at one of our campuses this weekend. is because he's drawing you. That's why there's this curiosity. That invitation you got, it wasn't random. In fact, some of you, sometimes I hear the stories of how you got here.
And it's just crazy. You realize there was a sovereign God that was saying, come. And he's been drawing you. You need to understand this is the voice of the Almighty God, who literally has every member of the Trinity that is involved in drawing you to Himself. And it's time for you to wake up in the ambulance and just say yes.
Yes, receive his offer of forgiveness and submit to him as Lord, and he will save you right now. There's a lot of things you can't understand, but there's one that you can. He saved you and He's drawing you right now, and you can just say yes to Him and let Him go to work in your life. Right now, as I pray for you, maybe you just open your heart and say, Yes, Jesus, will you do what you want to do? I receive your offer of forgiveness and I follow you.
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Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
