Mystery #1: We are Chosen, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Why was it God chose you? Was it because you had a better heart or more natural strength and God thought you'd make a great Christian so He had to have you?

No. You were chosen so that God could glorify His grace in you. If anything, Scripture says, God chooses you because you are weak. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Now, I don't know about you, but I often find myself slipping back into a pattern of trying to please God. There's so many good things to do and so many needs to meet. We're plagued by guilt when we miss church or fall back into an old sin or don't give money to that person we saw in need. And we feel like we've got to make it up to God. But today, Pastor J.D. Greer reveals that thankfully that's not how salvation works. It's part of our new teaching series called Mystery and Clarity.

And if you've missed any of the last few programs, you can find them right now at jdgreer.com. Now here's Pastor J.D. in Ephesians, Chapter 1. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, and all wisdom and insight. Let's focus really quick on that word redemption in verse 7 for just a minute. You see, here's where Jesus takes over. The Father planned our salvation. Now Jesus comes and accomplishes it. Jesus came to earth and redeemed us.

Now I'm not going to go real deep here because in two weeks we'll do a whole message on this. But what Paul is trying to show you is that Jesus came and purchased your salvation in its entirety all at once. You see, a lot of people think that salvation is basically forgiveness. You say, God, I'm sorry for my sin.

And he says, okay, okay. And then God forgives you. But it is so much more than forgiveness. Imagine if when you became a Christian, God only forgave you. That would last until you sinned again. And then you would need to be forgiven again. Your relationship with God would always be hanging by a thread. And the only times you would be sure that you were going to heaven would be when you were at the moment sinless, which for me would last in about 15 second intervals. And then I would need to be saved again.

If that were the case, none of us would ever make it to heaven. But see, that's not what Jesus did. Jesus did not forgive us. He redeemed us. He paid the full price in its entirety and settled the score for our salvation. Keep reading, verse 9, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ, 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 hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. Here's what else God is doing, Paul says. God is now working everything for his good plan in our lives, which he has purposed for all eternity. He works all things. Could you say that?

Because I don't think most of you believe me on that. He works, say, all. All things according to the purpose of his will. Every molecule in the universe God is employing now for his great purpose in you. Remember, these Ephesians are people who are consumed with questions about fate. They're always wondering if the gods are displeased with them or if they're unlucky. And Paul says, for you, there's no faith. God has a good purpose for you since time began.

He's at work in everything now, accomplishing it. He said, well, what about bad luck? I've been really unlucky in my life. I didn't get this break.

I got overlooked here. Paul says all things for his purpose. All things include bad luck. See, here's a very intriguing verse for me, Proverbs 16, 33.

The lot is cast into the lap. The dice are thrown, in other words, but it's every decision is from the Lord. That means that God exercises a certain amount of control even over what looks to us like dumb luck.

You say, well, what about where others have mistreated me? Surely God wasn't behind that. Sure, I'm not saying God was in the person mistreating you or that God was happy with it, but I'm saying this verse assures you that God controls everything and employs everything, even bad things, for his good purpose.

In the Old Testament, Joseph was a guy who really suffered at the hands of others. Yet at the end of his life, he recognizes that God was using even his victimization, unjust victimization, to accomplish his good purposes. You say, well, what about my own stupid bad decisions? I've really screwed myself up, and now I'm suffering for my own bad decisions. Sure, there are consequences for our choices, but see, if you were walking with God, listen, God works all things, even your mistakes, for his good purpose. Jacob was a guy who made some really dumb decisions in the Bible. You know his story, some of which greatly displeased God, and some of which really caused some hardship in his life, but God used even those dumb choices to establish his good purpose, all things.

Listen, this does not mean that God calls evil things good or that God takes delight in them happening, simply that God sovereignly uses all things good and bad for his good purposes in your life. Think of it like this. My watch here, I know you can't see this from where you are, but my watch, the back of it is open, it's clear, and you can look through and see the different machinations of the watch. What's intriguing to me is that I can look in there and see all these wheels turning, and some of them are turning backwards, but I look at what's happening on the front, and it's all progressing perfectly, keeping time, and so even the backwards motion of the wheels somehow work together to produce the forward motion of keeping time.

That is what is happening here. There are some backwards things going in your life, but somehow in God's incredible plan, he's working even those backwards motions so that every movement is progressing the work of God in your life. You say, why did God allow me to be divorced? Why did I get overlooked?

Why didn't my parents help me out more? I can't answer every question, and I'm not trying to minimize your pain. God weeps with you, but I can tell you if you're walking with God, God has a goal he is pursuing in you, and every movement in your life is working toward that goal. He has predestined you to be someone who brings him glory, and every molecule in the universe is harnessed to bring that end about in you. Verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and 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. You see, here's where the Holy Spirit takes over.

He's the one who brings salvation about in your heart, and that investment by God of himself in you is the guarantee that what God has started in you, he will finish. So Christian, you are chosen, and here's why I share it with you. You see, what is important about this is not that you figure out how choosing works, what's important is that you embrace what it means for you. This great truth should produce five emotions and five spiritual fruits in your heart. Let me give them to you briefly. Here's the first thing this ought to produce in you.

Number one, assurance. Because salvation begins in God and is accomplished by God, you can be sure that what God starts, he will finish. You see, sometimes when I'm most discouraged about where I am spiritually or how bad my heart still is, I think about the things I still struggle with, temptations I'm still weak to, my just pitiful lack of self-control, these thoughts and emotions that I have that I'm like, if anybody knew that, if anybody knew that I thought that, if anybody knew I felt like that, and I look at my heart and I think, how could I possibly be saved? You see, then I think about the fact that God started this great saving work in me.

He sought me when I wasn't seeking him, and what he started, he'll finish. Thank God, God has always been more committed to my salvation than I have been. Every God-seeking Christian I have ever known struggles at some point with their salvation. Because see what happens, the closer you get to God, the more you start to see into your heart, the more you see in your heart, you see what a pitiful wreck it is. And you're like, well, maybe I'm just one of those people the Bible talks about that's religious on the outside, but on the inside, I've never really been touched by or really been transformed. Every God-seeking Christian I know thinks that at some point.

I have. It is this understanding that delivers me from that fear. What God started, he'll finish. See, I used to think when I first became a Christian, I thought that I was the one doing everything. I got interested in God, I made a decision for Christ, I started to really seek God and growing in my faith. The farther I get away from that decision, some 20 years now, the more I recognize God was the one who was seeking me.

And when God started, he will finish. Jesus explained it this way, John 6 37, all that the Father gives to me, Jesus said, will come to me. And this is the will of the one who sent me that I should lose.

You see that next word? Nothing. I'm not going to lose a thing of all that he has given me. Here's a question. What would you think of a shepherd who lost a few sheep during the day? He leaves in the morning with 100, he comes back with 98.

You're like, you're missing two. He's like, yeah, I understand, but you don't understand how stubborn those sheep were. They got free will, you know, and I'm not going to intervene with that.

So I just, you know, they wanted to play on the cliff edge and I warned them, but they didn't want to listen, so I just had to let them go. No, no, a good shepherd brings his sheep back and saves those sheep even from themselves. If a good shepherd starts with 100 in the morning, he ends with 100 in the evening. Jesus, John 6 says, is a good shepherd.

He loses none. All he starts with, he ends with. You see, the fact that you keep yearning to be free of sin and the fact that you keep coming back to God is proof that Jesus is seeking you.

Here is number two. This puts power into your life. What I mean by this is that this truth gives me power to get back up again after failure. You see, if I know that what God starts he'll finish, I can be sure that even though today was consumed by defeat, God's decree for my tomorrow is victory. Ephesians 2 10 says it this way, God predestined us for good works. He predestined that I would be someone whose life would be filled with good works and that I would be to the praise of his glory, not an embarrassment to his kingdom. Listen, that means, I don't know if you get this, I'm pretty sure you don't, so I'm going to say it. That means that the burden of fixing your life is not on you.

God's already decreed it and God's already supplied the power for it. You see, many of you feel so defeated. You think, how am I ever going to get over my lust? How am I ever going to be what a Christian ought to be?

How am I ever going to fix my marriage? We feel like God has left us a set of instructions and been like, all right, get to it. We think, I can never do this, but that's the wrong picture of the Christian life. The works that God has for you, the good works, he's already predestined for you and he's already provided the power for you to do them. The burden doesn't lie on me to fix my own life but to yield to God who has promised to do it through me. So when I face a battle, for example, with temptation or being the right kind of husband, I can say God has already declared that I will have victory in this battle and he has already provided the power I need to win it. So I can go into this battle trusting that the power I need to win it is already there. What I'm saying is this, if you feel like I can't win this battle, you are right, but God has predetermined that he will make you victorious in it. So you should not go into the battle feeling like you have to win it but believing he will win it through you because he's already predestined it. Some of you are so discouraged and you feel like you'll never be victorious as a Christian, but do you realize where the yearning to be victorious comes from? It comes from the Spirit of God that is at work inside you. And what God starts, he'll finish. He's already pre-appointed victory for you. That's why he's yearning in you for it and he's calling you forward to a battle he's already won.

Some of you wonder if you have what it takes to be a Christian at all and you think, my life is so scarred by mistakes and failure, I just don't have what it takes to be a child of God. I got an illustration for you. Say you suddenly wake up in an ambulance. You have no idea how you got there, but you notice all these tubes and wires sticking out of you and an EMT standing over you who says, you were in a terrible wreck. But we've got you on life support and we're saving your life and you are going to be just fine. All you have to do at that point is simply consent to their rescue. Now you could be like, no, no, no. Start pulling wires out like, I want off right now. I'm getting out.

Or you could just say, okay, okay, I consent. That's what's happening in your salvation. God is waking you up and saying to you, I'm saving you. You might think that you are beyond hope, but I am mighty to save. Just consent and believe.

And for some of you that's happening right now. That's why you're here. You just have to consent to what God has been doing and is doing in your life right at this moment.

Here's the third thing that produces in you, humility. You see, according to Ephesians 1 here, all we did was wake up in the ambulance. Again, you may think that you became a Christian because you considered and read and studied and pondered and decided to follow Jesus. But according to Ephesians 1, the only reason you did those things is because God was seeking you.

You are a Christian by grace alone and not because of anything you have ever done. Why was it God chose you? Was it because you had a better heart or more natural strength and God thought you'd make a great Christian so he had to have you?

No. You were chosen, Paul says, so that God could glorify his grace in you. If anything, Scripture says, God chooses you because you are weak. Paul said, in fact, 1 Corinthians 1.27, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. In the weaker people, God could most easily put his grace and his power on display. God's preference is to turn fools into Christians. Because when God saves a fool, people don't talk about how good or strong the fool was. They talk about God's power and grace at work in them. So the fact that God chose you demonstrates that you were most likely a bigger fool in his eyes than other people.

You had less potential, not more. Number four, hope. Hope to bravely face your trials. You see, I know that God is working in every area of my life to make me a son to the praise of his glory and he has harnessed literally every molecule in the universe to that end. Even in those things where I feel victimized and hurt and unlucky, God is working for my good. And I don't have to ever do anything to him or for him to make him work for my good like the Ephesians thought they had to do to Artemis and the cacophony of gods and the spirit beings. Christ has already done that and I know that in him God has permanently and irrevocably willed my good. That shatters the idea of fate or karma.

Number five, boldness. In sharing the gospel, people say, well if God has already chosen those who will be saved, why do we witness? That's a good question. For Paul though, the fact that God had chosen some was why, catch this, he had the confidence to witness.

And that's odd, but hang on. Acts 18, 9, Paul is preaching in the city and he was getting a lot of opposition so God appears to him in a vision and says, go on preaching because I've got many people in the city. So Paul kept on preaching knowing that soon they would come. You see, they were so against him that unless Paul knew that God was going to work in their hearts, he would have given up. I heard a missionary say one time that when he first became a missionary, he didn't 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, he said, I don't know how I could go on being a missionary if I didn't believe God chose people.

People's hearts are so hard. I certainly felt this when I served as a missionary in a place. I just remember thinking they'll never believe and I can't persuade them. But I knew that God had chosen people of every tribe and tongue to be his children and he would do it. The idea that God chooses some to salvation doesn't discourage sharing Christ. On the contrary, it empowers it.

You say, well, but why share if they're chosen? Again, this is one area where you're just gonna have to lose your mind. I've tried to teach you before to think of it like this. Has God appointed the day that you will die? Yes.

Can anything you do really change that day? No. Why do you eat? Well, to live. What if you what if you don't eat? I will die. If you don't eat and you die, would that be the day that God preordained for you to die? Quit asking stupid questions and just eat.

That's the point. Because eating is the preordained way that God has set for living. Sharing Christ with people and praying for them is the way that God has preordained they are chosen. You see, the more I share Christ, the more people keep getting elected. So why go share the gospel if God has already elected them to salvation? Because prayer and sharing Christ is the means by which God brings his plan about, just like eating for you. You're like, that makes my head hurt.

Of course it does. It's a paradox, but a tension we live with. I share Christ with people like it's all up to me and I pray to God they'll receive Jesus like it's all up to him. Those are the five things that will be true in your life if you believe this doctrine.

Don't just consent to this doctrine, okay? Ask, is the fact that I believe this doctrine reflected in my life? Do you live with the hope that God is working in everything for your good, or do you struggle with depression? Do you fight temptation with the confidence that comes from knowing God has won the battle, or do you feel defeated? Do you share with the boldness of knowing that God is drawing some, or are you a pansy who keeps his mouth shut all the time because you're afraid people will reject you? Don't believe this doctrine. Embrace it and live it.

Now, one last thing. Some of you, the thing I know you've been hearing this whole time is you're like, well, how do I know if I'm chosen? Are you saying I can't get in unless I'm chosen? John 1 says, to as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the children of God. If, while I am talking to you, you have a desire to believe on Jesus, that desire is from him, and I urge you to act on it. You would not have that desire if God were not working in your heart.

You see, here's how God draws. You first develop a conviction of sin where you begin to lose your taste for sin, and then you begin to see the beauty of Christ and to desire him. Before, you were just indifferent to Christ. You didn't care, but all of a sudden you begin to be drawn to him.

You have an appetite for him. If that's happening to you, God is working in you. He's drawing you. The fact that you're here today shows that God is drawing you. The fact that you met a Christian who invited you today, the fact that you have a suite mate who is a Christian, you work with one, that is not an accident. It shows you that God is seeking you.

You are waking up this morning in the ambulance. Just believe and consent to what God is doing. I can say without hesitation that the choice is entirely yours right now, because Jesus said, whosoever will may come. If you will, you may come. You see, whether or not you're chosen is entirely in your court. The irony is you have the opportunity to choose right now whether or not you've been predestined.

Peter's head exploded again, okay. Here's what I want you to get from today. No matter where you are, whatever stage in life you are, God is drawing you. He's waking you up in the ambulance. If you see it and believe it, all you have to do right now is say yes.

Consent. Maybe he's saying to you, believe me that I'm in charge of everything in your life, even though it looks like it's all going wrong. Believe me that I will give you victory over a struggle you're having, or maybe just believe me that I've come to save you and just say yes to what I want to do.

Here's the question, are you willing to say yes to you? You can pray now and declare to the Lord that you will trust He is working in your life, even when things seem out of control. He will lead you to victory if you receive Him as your Savior. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. If you missed any part of the first two messages in this series, you can find them free of charge on our website, along with the message transcripts for further study. Visit jdgreer.com. To help you gain greater clarity into the mystery of God's love, we've created an exclusive new resource based on our current study here on the program. It's a personal Bible study called Mystery and Clarity, the Book of Ephesians.

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Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 27709. I'm Molly Vidovitch. I'm so glad that you joined us today. And be sure to listen tomorrow as Pastor J.D. talks about our prayer lives. We'll learn how to obtain clarity and power to fuel our prayers Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.