Robby Sermon Series - Ephesians 1:5 - CHOSEN

Like, oh man, James, thank you so much.

I'm so grateful for the church in Wilmington choosing Jeffrey and James to minister there and give us this opportunity to be together again, which is so precious to me. And then even, like, the message that God gave me, sorry, I'll get here where I should be. The message God gave me to share is always, like, beyond, oh my goodness. And so as I was driving this week down here this morning, I was thinking, God, if they could only see what you've shown me through my eyes.

And then I thought, well, even better than that, how about, like, Alicia, that they would get a double look at what you've shown me this week, that they would understand how chosen we really, really are. And along those lines, I know that James has a love for the book, The Pilgrim's Progress, and you all studied that book at one point in time at great length. And in that book, you know, again, I get to do that through Christian Car Guy Theater, which we're doing right now.

It's always been one of my all-time favorite books. But when Christian himself is on the hill of difficulty, you might recall, he reaches into his bosom and he pulls out his testimony in order to comfort himself for the difficult hill that he's on. And the wisdom of that is absolutely phenomenal in that each and every one of us know our individual story, how God came after us, how he spoke into our life, and the different things he's done for us. And that is, in fact, our testimony, and we keep it in our bosom. And when we're on the hill of difficulty, wherever that may be, it's a great time to pull that thing out and go over how many times God has come through for me time and time and time again.

And so it is definitely my prayer and my hope. And what I've been praying for is that through what we share today, you will add to your testimony that you will hear in my words something that goes, oh yeah, God did do that. God did this. God did this. And so as you add to that precious testimony in your heart that you'll be able sometime when you're on the hill of difficulty to pull that out and recall, oh yes, he did.

Oh yes, he did. He chose me. So with that, let's pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for John Bunyan's genius, but you're guiding him with the Holy Spirit in prison there to share something that has become so precious to me over the years, just that concept of my testimony. And I pray that you would give us each a clearer picture of how you chose us before the beginning of time to be in the Beloved, that you would be our Father, and that we would be your favorite.

And I ask this in Jesus' name. So you guys, I just am beyond thrilled that you were studying Ephesians 1 through 6 this week, because that meant I got to do this. And there are some of my favorite passages in there, which the full armor which comes at the end was real tempting to go there, because I absolutely love those passages. But I couldn't get past the one that really is probably the most significant one in my life, which is Ephesians 1-5, which we will get to in a minute.

But before we get there, because I always like to start at the beginning. God does that. Ephesians 1-5 or Ephesians, period, is understood almost under the heading of grace. Like, if I can understand grace, good luck with that, but if I could, then Ephesians is going to become a great deal more clear to me. And so in order to get a look at grace, it's always a good biblical process to go back to the first place if you find it and see what you can find there, because in doing that, you can begin to understand what God is getting at. And in the case of grace, it's just like unbelievable what God shows us here. So if you look in Genesis chapter 1, excuse me, Genesis chapter 6, if you've got a Bible with you, turn to Genesis chapter 6, and then look at verse 8 and just circle that thing.

Like, here it is. Here is the key that unlocks all sorts of mysteries in the Bible. It's a real simple verse. It says, but Noah. You know, because the rest of Genesis chapter 6 is talking shenanigans, okay? Things have not gone well, and so it goes through all the stuff, the shenanigans that go on, and then it says, but Noah.

Somebody is not muted, but that's okay. But Noah found grace. It may say favor in your translation, but the word is grace. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now, there's some things that just paint this picture so beautifully.

It's unbelievable to me. Like, number one, grace spelled backwards in Hebrew is Noah. A little Hebrew lesson for you. Like, if you took the word Noah and you spell it backwards, right, which is hint, hint, none, but anyway, if you just spell it backwards, you get Noah. So if you spell Noah forwards, you get essentially the seed of life. So they're almost interchangeable.

They certainly are numerically because you may know that in Hebrew all letters have numbers, and so the numbers that would be this way and that way, you get the same math equation. So the idea of Noah and grace go together and they're married because think about this. It's so clear.

It couldn't be more clear. Noah was God's favorite in his generation, okay? He picked. You're the guy. I mean, you couldn't be more clear of somebody that got picked, right, because he's the only one that got to survive, and oh, by the way, he is the seed of life and grace is the seed of life.

They're completely interchangeable. See, Noah was God's favorite in that generation, and so he was chosen clearly to go into the ark and get the ultimate baptism. I mean, he got a baptism unlike anybody, and oh, by the way, the ark was made of wood, so was the cross, and it was covered in pitch, which that word means atonement. So this picture that God is painting here with Noah is unbelievable of what Ephesians is teaching, and of course, this Paul knew, I'm sorry, Paul knew this remarkably, okay?

And one little, because God is painting this masterpiece, he's trying to show you how much you are chosen, trying to show you how much you are God's favorite, that he's showing you this through the very word grace. Noah found favor or grace in God's eyes, and oh, by the way, it's part of when God's painting this masterpiece. The flood came when Noah was 600 years old. God made the world in how many days?

Six, and after that, he rested, so it was finished, and then he rested. Well then, when Noah was 600 years old, it was finished, and he brought redemption. He brought a big-time baptism, okay? And Jesus' sixth word from the cross is it is finished. See the masterpiece that he's painting? And oh, by the way, just for my identification, I just love it, is the sixth anointing of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah chapter 11, is the fear of the Lord. So big things happen there on number six, and the number 666 coming up at the end of the book, no accident, okay? It's no accident. I mean, it's all coming together, right, Bob?

That's the deal. So as we move back to what we're talking about today, Ephesians chapter one, verse four, it says, in fact, it's headed in my Bible, God's glorious grace. It says, blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy, blameless before him. He predestined us as adoption as sons through Christ Jesus in keeping with the good pleasure of his will to the glorious praise of his grace, his favor.

So to know what it's like to be somebody's favorite is to understand grace or to be chosen. So I want you to think back through your life and think, when was I chosen? Well, in my case, in 1991, I actually was the general manager of Crown Dodge in Greensboro. And near the end of the month, we had done what they called spot delivery, which was not the most ethical thing in the world. But back in those days, I was a car salesman.

I was the general manager of Crown Dodge anyway. And the way this worked was this girl wanted to buy this Suzuki. And so in spite of the fact that she had not qualified through the bank yet, we put her in the car before she had qualified for the loan. And that's called a spot delivery. And so she was in the car as if it was hers.

And that particular night, she ran a red light and slammed into a state policeman and put him in the hospital. Yeah. Now, at the time, I worked for the Crown organization, which was, in my view, one of the premier automobile organizations. And it was run by a very godly man by the name of Royce Reynolds, who was a very classy man, a very wonderful man, all sorts of... And God had placed him very uniquely in my life, no doubt, because I would get saved within months of this event. So you can imagine that on Monday morning, when I come into work, I know that big things are afoot because we got to get this thing straightened out with the police and the spot delivery and all this stuff. And I get a call from Royce's secretary. Now Royce has 12 different dealerships across the state.

It's a big deal. His office is like the Taj Mahal. And I get this call from his secretary, Susan Bray. And she says, Robbie, Royce wants to see you in his office right now.

It's like 9 o'clock. So I'm figuring the jigs up here, no doubt. So I make the long trip up the stairway to his office.

And he had $20,000 paneling back in those days in 1991. This was a first class office and he sat up in this desk that's way up there. It was like talking to God to some extent from my standpoint. And I come in there and I'm like, oh man. And when Susan looks at me, she's just shaking her head like this, like something bad's going on. So I sit down at the desk and Royce has got two or three of his lieutenants with him and he says, so Robbie, I guess you know why you're here. And I said, yeah, you mean the Suzuki. And he looks at me and he goes, Suzuki? He says, what about the Suzuki, Robbie? Well, you know the Suzuki that hit the state policeman that ran through the, that we spot delivered on.

What? And you know, he goes from like here to here and he's a very car business volatile man. And he all of a sudden says this, and I can't use because I'm in church, the complete vernacular that he used, but he says, you mean to tell me that I am fixed to promote the stupidest SOB in the crown organization.

And I went, huh? And not only am I fixed to promote him, but I'm fixed to make him in charge of the most profitable dealership in the entire organization, which happened to be Crown Honda Volvo in Chapel Hill. And so there I was thinking that this was the end of my career. And the next thing I know, I'm given this like job that paid maybe three times what I was making and my other job and he literally, we jump in his BMW seven car and drive from Greensboro to Chapel Hill the whole time.

He's pouring into me the stuff that he wants me to do and to be in order to run his flagship store. I'll never ever forget that day. What it felt like to be chosen when you are totally unqualified.

Okay. Just like, like this, this is just, but if you look back into your own life, I think that you will discover as all of us that God chose us. In other words, in grace before the foundations of the world. And he didn't just choose us, but he chose us to be his father. Now, the first time I read this, I hadn't really no concept of wait predestined to be sons. What exactly does that mean?

How could we be? How could that exactly work? And I went to a boot camp and they give this talk fathered by God and it was really, really helpful.

The person pointed out to me something that had never really crossed my mind and I think is really, really helpful. He said, you know, most of us think that God is the backup plan for fatherhood. Like if your father dies, then God will step in and be the father. He's the backup plan. Or if the father leaves the house and there's a divorce, God's going to step in and be the father. He's the backup plan.

He goes, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. From the before time began, just like God picked Noah. He didn't pick Noah on that day when he was 599 in our vermont.

He picked him before the foundation of the earth. Right? And same with you. You know, before you spot delivered the Suzuki, we were chosen.

Okay? And so there could not be a better example in this in all the world than my wife. If you were to know my wife's family, and I say this not wanting to cast any aspersions, but there is not a single member of her direct family that has not spent a significant amount of time in jail. And several of them in prison.

And for not minor crimes and not for crimes they were innocent of. There was no, you would be hard pressed to look into Tammy's genealogy and find a Christian. When Tammy was seven years old, her father was an alcoholic.

He was half the Indian and right off the reservation his mother was a Choctaw. He married Nelda in sort of a pressured situation. Don't even know exactly how that went on, but Nelda too was an alcoholic and they were both alcoholics.

Neither one of them ever stepped foot in the church. And you know, it wasn't unusual for Elvin literally to have a knife at Tammy's throat. And when she was seven years old, her father died of cancer. And all of a sudden, some people by the name of the Boofers, they saw this young girl that didn't have a father anymore. And so they took Tammy in to live with them during the time of the transition after her father passed away. And guess what they did? They went to church every Sunday. Right? And so God is painting this picture and he puts these godly people in Tammy's life and they start taking her to church.

But he's not done. When Tammy gets in seventh grade, she's just walking to work one day and a man by the name of Mr. Marriott drives up, would appear completely out of the blue and says, would you like to go to church? And he goes, does your family go to church? She goes, no. Would you like to go to church? Yeah. Well, I'm on my way to church right now.

Would you like to go? And so from what I understand from Tammy, he took her to church all through high school despite the fact that he was in the choir and he had to leave early to make Tammy's schedule work for the way her mother wanted her to work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this man went to great personal sacrifice in order for Tammy, right, to be able to attend church where she comes to Christ, right? Do you think it was just an accident? Do you think it was just, or now realize that when Tammy meets me, I'm not even close to a Christian and all I see is this girl that's got this complete faith that God exists.

I'm not buying that stuff hardly at all. But see, between Royce Reynolds and my wife and several other people that God orchestrated into my life, you see, he's painting this picture of the fathers that he has brought into my life. And so when I was later, after I'd given, I mean, gone through the fatherhood talk several times, I got an opportunity to give this talk like fathered by God is to talk. And one of the things that you do when you do the talk is you think through your own life, your own testimony, and you begin to see the men that God put in your life at certain points in order to bring you to where he's trying to get you, right? And so as I looked at it, clearly Royce Reynolds was one of those men that was in my life. I had a basketball coach that spoke into my life volumes. In his own way, Ron Hubbard spoke into my life, okay? All these different people that God orchestrated in this painting that he's picturing that of choosing me before the beginning of the world. You see, he is painting this.

He's painting this picture. And so this week, as I was just thinking about it constantly, because I knew I'd get to share this this week, I do a radio show with Nikita Kolov. You may know he is the championship wrestling Russian nightmare that turned evangelist, right? And if you knew Nikita's story, he too, his father left his mother when he was born, and he was brought up in the projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with no father.

I mean, in the projects. And as it happened, God brought a coach, and God brought these people in his life, and then God brought this Christian family. And here's this guy, he's a world champion wrestler, but he wasn't fulfilled. Then God brought this other people into his life, and they invited him to church, and the next thing you know, Nikita, and he can point out to you, he understands his testimony to say, these are the men, these are the fathers that God has brought in my life that he has been painting this picture the whole time because he knew what I would need when I would need it.

Yes, if you've got a great earthly dad, that's all the better. He knew you needed that. He knew, from the beginning of time, how to set these things in motion. So he set all this stuff in motion, and I get a chance to study this. And so the very first thing that I'm really perplexed about, as I begin to study that this week, is the word foundation of the world.

Like, what does that mean? You know, I want to be like Job in case God asks me, you know, if you know what the foundations of the world are, I'd like to have an answer you know. And so I take off studying that word, as Paul used it in Greek, and then switched over from the Septuagint to Hebrew, and I came up with something that I think is just worth the price of the studied period. Is the word for foundation, and foundation of the world is used throughout the Bible. If you just take that and do a word search of the Bible of foundation of the earth, you'll see that it's throughout the Bible hundreds of times. You know what it is?

It's a zara. It's a seed. The foundation of the world, well think about it. Of course, you know, rocks are good, and we like plants and all that stuff, but what really counts in God's heart?

Right? You know, animals and plants and people. It all comes from seeds, and again, you know, all that seed of faith planted like a mustard seed.

Think of the good soil and all these things that God talks about throughout the Bible, and all of a sudden you begin to think, wow, so if the foundation of the world is a seed, then the foundation is alive. Just let that roll around in your brain a little bit. I mean, that's a pretty cool thing to think.

Like, man. And so he knew as he's making these foundations, like in order for you to show up at the time you showed up, your seed would have to be inside of Adam's DNA somehow, and Eve's, in order for that to take place, and then you, I don't know if you've ever done the math on this, so I used to do tons of genealogy, and what blew my mind is you have two parents, you have four grandparents, you got 16 great-grandparents, and about 10 generations back, 13 generations, I'll bet you 14 generations, there weren't enough people on the earth to cover how many great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents you have. That's how that math works. Right. So for you to come along at exactly the moment that you came out, like, when I was doing my genealogy, I found that I had this grandmother in New York State, like in the early 1700s, that, you know, the Indians used to come in and they killed her husband and they marched her pregnant up into Canada, you know, and they would tomahawk somebody if they didn't keep up when they were marching them up to Canada as a slave. Well, that child inside of that grandmother was my great-great-great-great-grandfather, so if she'd fallen behind on that trail going to that, no Robbie.

Right. Well, that's just one of 80 billion different zillions, I can't even give you the number of what it would take to get you to show up in the time that you showed up. And so before the foundation of the world, you were number one. You were his favorite. He picked you now.

Okay. So as you move on through Ephesians, you go, so what Robbie? So I say, well, in Ephesians chapter 4, he starts to give us some, so what? With starting with verse 4, he says, so there is one body and one spirit just as you were called in the hope of your calling.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and one Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. And so as I'm studying this, just to share a little bit of my prayer life with you, you know, I like to wake up in the morning and I have a series of prayers that I do and then I get to the point when I get through with those regular prayers and I say, okay, Jesus, where do you want to go today? And are we going to go study a word? Do you want to study a passage?

Where do you want to go? And he actually took me to Ephesians 4 the day before, but on Friday he took me, he says, well, I want to look at Romans 828. And I said, I know what Romans 828 is.

God, I don't need, I just made that up in my head. I didn't really hear you say Romans 828. I just made that up because it's just a verse that's on the top of my head.

And he's like, and he was very kind to me. He said, Robbie, look at Romans 828. Take a look.

Okay. Well, God, there's nothing to do. Romans 828 has got nothing whatsoever to do with Ephesians chapter 4 verse 5.

Nothing. Robbie, go look at Romans 828. Now, if you look at Romans 828, it says, we know that all things come together, right, Bob, for good, for those who are loved by God and called according to his purpose. So there's just a couple of words that would seem to be common denominators between Ephesians chapter 4 and Romans 828. And of course, the one that jumps right at you, even if you have my education, is the word all.

Yeah. And I'm like, okay, God, that's where you wanted me to go to Romans 828. You wanted me to discover what the word all means, which, you know, we think we know what these things mean, but we decided to go look. And so, as I told you, the biblical president, as you go to the first place, you find it in the Bible. And not unusually, you'll find the word all in the first book in Genesis, actually, chapter 3, where he tells Adam that you're going to have all these weeds and all this stuff all the days of your life. The word all is very encompassing for poor Adam, as that's the first time that we see that word.

And then came the treasure, because I looked at the word and I went, oh, my goodness, look at this thing in Hebrew. And it is the palm. It starts out with a letter that is literally the palm of God's hand.

Okay. So he's got the whole world in his hand. Well that's phenomenal potential, right? Because if God has a hold of anything, it can be absolutely amazing, right? Apart from me, you can do what?

Nothing. So if you're in the palm of God's hand, I mean, life's good. So all things, including all the days of Adam's life, are all in all.

So as we begin to look at this all in Ephesians, right? He's telling us that all these seeds, all these people in this church, all are in the same beloved one body. One body. And inside of that oneness is this concept of nullification. In other words, oneness requires that I have to accept that I'm not the main character in the play.

Right? Christ is the not my, so I've got to nullify myself and so all the other people that in order to become one, to come into unity, I have got to nullify my own ego in order to come into what now is one body, which is all in God the Father. If that would, if you begin to put this together, you'll go, okay, so I need to do this because as I really begin to walk like Jesus walked, my one of my favorite, favorite, favorite passages is in John chapter one where it said Jesus is full of grace and truth.

Okay? So if grace is favor and so if you're in Jesus's presence, you're like, man, I feel like I'm his favorite. I couldn't feel more like better than Royce Reynolds made me feel or better than even Tammy made me feel when she said I do it. In other words, I couldn't feel more chosen if I'm in God's presence, right? That's grace. Well through nullification, in other words, I've got to lower my own view of myself so I'm no longer the favorite so that whoever is in my presence should feel like I am full of grace, like you are my favorite. I'm no longer my favorite, you're my favorite. You see, and when you think about the truly godly people that you know in your life, the people that you just, man, I'd love to be around that guy.

I could hang around him all day long because you feel like when you're around them, that guy loves me, that guy has chose me, that guy, I'm one of his favorites. You feel this favor and you feel this love and all these things that you feel chosen, you feel accepted, which is exactly what you're gonna feel like when you're around Jesus. And so by being in oneness, you see in grace, a church will go from 211 degrees to 212. 211 degrees is hot but 212 is boiling. See the difference?

It's just one degree. It's just that little bit of change, just that little more nullification of who is Robbie and a whole lot more of who are you, right? To know your story, to make you feel chosen, make you feel wanted, to make you feel like you're part of this, accepted in the beloved one body, you see? So as I apply all these things back to like, oh, God gave me all this, he chose me so that I could share this message with other people and they would feel the same grace that I feel.

They would feel as chosen as I feel. And there you have when it all comes together. So this idea of unity is trying to catch God's vision.

Like if I could get up every morning and see what God had in store, what is the potential of all things work together for good? If they're all in God's hand, then like the second verse of the 16th Psalm, I love it and I can't get it out of my mind. It says, I have said to the Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you. Which is the same thing as saying, you can do nothing apart from me. But here you have David long before Jesus said that saying, my goodness is nothing apart from you. So once you get into and he gets into you and you become part of that body, then all of a sudden you have his goodness and you can love the unlovable. And that's great.

It's one thing to love people that are easy to love, right? That's what Jesus taught Jesus only taught on grace one time. You know that? Look it up. There's only one time Jesus taught on the subject. He's full of it.

But he taught about one thing. If you love people that love you, that's no grace. Love in somebody that is unlovable, right? That's the picture. That person that feels like they're the outsider, that person that feels unchosen, that person that feels like nobody cares about them. Spot that guy.

Go love on that guy. Again, these are the things that Jesus was trying to teach us through. If we're selected and we're chosen and we can have this kind of grace, as much of an outsider as I am, Scientologist, car salesman, right? Pretty strange dude, man. And you're speaking in a church. Are you kidding me? Like James Banks said, you're capable of, or you could be on the radio.

Like what? You know, like how did I get that? It's just, it's but you, you, you have something that reflects God inside of you that he chose from before the foundations of the world. So with that, let me pray. Jesus, thank you for this message. And I pray that we will all look through our lives and see what a masterpiece you've been painting, and that we could be a Mr. Marriott in somebody's life, or Bufors that would take that widow orphan girl, or whoever it is, and bring him to church, or bring him at your feet, whatever that may look like, help us to be one body, and one spirit, and one baptism, all in all in you. Lord, you're our goodness, and we ask that you would flow through us. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.