Favorably Disposed to Us #1

What we're going to do is use the first two chapters of Ephesians to see all that God has done to reconcile us to Himself.

All of the love, grace, mercy, kindness, patience that He has shown to us despite our sinful condition. Hello, and welcome back to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and today as Don continues teaching God's people God's Word, he'll look at how sin can bubble up in the heart of even the most devout Christian, and what our response, when this happens, says about our relationship with God.

If you're ready, let's get started. Here's part one of a message called, Favorably Dispose to Us, here on the Truth Pulpit. Whenever we come to the table here at Truth Community Church, there's always this nagging sense that I have inside of the temptation to take it for granted, to take it as something that is routine, to lose sight of the majesty of what it is that we are remembering here. We are remembering the fact that a holy God, at His own expense, intervened on behalf of guilty sinners like us in order to show grace to us that we did not deserve, that we could never deserve.

If we had lived 10,000 lifetimes, we couldn't have earned a drop of the mercy that was showered upon us at the cross of Jesus Christ. At our church, we try to take communion seriously, remembering that the symbol is pointing us to a greater spiritual reality of which none of us are worthy. I have a wonderful passage of Scripture to bring us to as we kind of pivot now, and I want to take you to a familiar Scripture to prepare your hearts for communion. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians with me. Turn to Ephesians, and having addressed the rebellious hearts that might be in our midst here, I now turn to humble Christians to give you a word of encouragement as you come to the table and to realize that for those who have been born again, for those that the Lord has done a work and you are responding to Christ even without perfection, we understand that we don't respond to Him perfectly, but the deep longings of your heart are to love Christ, to serve Him, to honor Him.

You love and appreciate Him, and you grieve over your sin, you don't boast in it, you don't settle down in hardness in it, but you grieve over it and repent and confess your sins. This message is for you in preparing your heart for the Lord's table as an act of appreciation and gratitude for all of the kindness that the Lord has shown to you. For you, I'm here to remind you today that our Lord God, that this holy God, this wonderful Lord Jesus Christ, He is favorably disposed to us.

He is favorably disposed to His people. He saved us in order to sanctify us, to set us apart, that we might be a people that are devoted to His worship and praise. And what better time to be gathered together, devoted to His worship and praise, than when we remember how He laid down His righteous life in order to redeem us. And for earnest Christians, for repentant Christians, I understand because it's true for me too, it is easy to get discouraged as we see the remaining sin in our lives. We see how easily we stumble.

You know, the book of James says we all stumble in many ways, and we don't want it to be like that, and yet we do. Just yesterday, I was out for the briefest of walks in our neighborhood, and I noticed a house that I hadn't seen before, hadn't noticed it. There's this really big house in our neighborhood.

You know what I did in response to that? I coveted after that house. Sincerely, it broke my heart to realize it.

I said, man, I wish I had that house. And I had just completed the preparation for the tenth commandment, which says you shall not covet many things, seven things that are listed there, and it says you shall not covet your neighbor's house. And the impulse of my heart, as soon as I saw something like that, was to covet it, to covet that which the Lord has not given to me, to covet after that and to forget the gratitude that I should have for all of the many blessings that He has given to me.

That struck me. So I spent the rest of my walk in a spirit of confession, realizing how quickly sin can bubble up in my own heart. And we're all in that boat. And so we struggle with so many things. We struggle with so many things in our heart.

Discontentment, anxiety, and resentment, and greed, as well as what the apostle John describes in his first letter, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. If we had not the mercy of Christ, if we had not the gospel set before us, you know, we would be miserable men, because we are so unworthy of Him. And yet, as Scripture says, Ephesians 2.4, but God, but God, for reasons known only to Him, for reasons prompted only within His own holy essence, and nothing about us, not even our faith prompted God to love us, God, for His own reasons, has set His love on us in the Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that we can come and enjoy fellowship with Him, that we can find joy in Him, that we can find rest and forgiveness and a cleansed conscience in Him in a way that is totally undeserved, but which we receive gratefully as a gift. And so what we're going to do is use the first two chapters of Ephesians, obviously in very much a panorama sense, the first two chapters of Ephesians to see all that God has done to reconcile us to Himself, all of the love, grace, mercy, kindness, patience that He has shown to us, despite our sinful condition. What He has done in Christ shows us that He is favorably disposed to His people, that He designs our blessing, and our response to that is to praise Him and to serve Him and to repent of sin and to look to Christ alone for our righteousness.

And so that's what we want to do here. And we're going to start with a sense of the praise of God and then move on to the power of God. The praise to God starts in chapter 1, verse 3, and I'm going to read this long section through verse 14, which in the Greek text is 202 Greek words, and it is one single sentence. It's an amazing piece of Greek literature, and it's divided up in English. They break it up into sentences, but in Greek it's only one sentence, showing that the Apostle Paul, once he started on this topic, he couldn't stop. He had so much that he had to get out that his words just tumble upon one another in recognition of the greatness of God and the greatness of His salvation. It's a passage that is triune in nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a passage that tells us so much about the different works that the Trinity has done on our behalf, and it comes from the full heart of an apostle writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So we'll begin in verse 3, where the Apostle Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him, that is, in Christ, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight, He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention, which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Now, throughout this passage, there's two things that I just want to say by way of overview statements. Throughout this passage, you see the sovereignty of God and salvation being emphasized. Salvation was God's idea, it was God's gift, and it was a gift that He determined to accomplish before the foundation of the world. And He determined before the foundation of the world who the recipients of that gift would be, without regard to anything good or bad that anyone had done.

That's what it means. You know, He did it before the foundation of the world. And so you see the term predestination being used. God determined beforehand what the destiny of men would be.

And this is His sovereign prerogative. God is holy. And those of us that have sinned and violated against Him, we have nothing to say against that. It is a mark of the sinful, rebellious heart of men that they would object to God's sovereign prerogative to save whom He wishes according to His own desires.

And so we need to keep that in mind as we go through this. But secondly, as we consider these matters of salvation, I want to draw out before you, as we've done often here from this pulpit, the fact that all of salvation is to the praise of the glory of the grace of God. And just as there is a reference to the threefold person of the one Godhead, there is a threefold recognition of the praise that is given to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this passage. Look at verse 6.

You must see this to understand this passage at all. Paul opens with praise, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, there in verse 3. Then in verse 6, as he's walking through this majesty, he says, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. He freely bestowed it, meaning that we didn't deserve it.

We had done nothing to prompt it in Him. Verse 12, he says to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. And verse 14, it's a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory. So verse 6, to the praise of His glory. Verse 12, to the praise of His glory.

Verse 14, to the praise of His glory. One of the things that we do here at Truth Community Church is we try to keep things simple. We try to keep things focused on the Word of God, and we don't dilute things with a lot of references to human events or to different things that might be happening in the lives of individuals. We do that for a reason. We do that so that we would not detract from the glory of God as we gather together for corporate worship, that our eyes are looking up vertically as we examine His Word.

There's a reason why we do that. It is because we want everything to be devoted to the praise of the glory of this holy God. Now what this means, what this passage means for us, as we see that God the Father chose us before the foundation of the world, that Christ redeemed us with His own blood, that the Spirit sealed us for salvation, what this means is this, kind of the overarching point that we're making as we come to the communion table is that true Christians, not simply those who profess Christ, but true Christians who have been born again by the Spirit of God, true Christians have no fear of final judgment. We have no fear of going to hell. We certainly have no fear of going to purgatory because that's a place that doesn't even exist.

That's a place that was made up by Catholics that has no basis in Scripture whatsoever. We're not afraid of death. We're not afraid of what comes after death because we understand what God has done for us in Christ and how He has secured us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we want to just walk through a few highlights here, three or four highlights in this first section, verses 3 through 14, of why we praise God, why we come to the table with gratitude, why we come with a sense of serene confidence that it is well with our souls. And why can we be like that? Why do we praise God?

Well, first of all, so this is like a sub-point if you're taking notes. First point, the praise to God, and then some sub-points of the grounds for the praise, the reason for the praise. Why do we praise God as we gather together as believers? We praise Him because He chose us. He chose us for salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He has blessed us in measure that cannot be counted.

Verse 3 through 5, look at it there with me again. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Right there should be the remedy for a covetous heart if you're in Christ. God has given you every spiritual blessing in Him, and so our hearts, if they were right and pure, would be filled with nothing but gratitude and praise to God because He has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

He's been good to us. So on what grounds do we resent not having different things that we might desire after? This is just a mark of the remnants of sin within us that we would be ungrateful for every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ because of something we see that we don't want.

It's convicting to me, as I expressed earlier. So He's blessed us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And then He goes on to say this in verse 4. He says, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him, in love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will. Beloved, God set His purpose of salvation before the beginning of time. And God, having set His purpose and having chosen whom would be saved, the outworking of time since Genesis 1-1 has just been an unfolding of His purpose to redeem a people for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God chose us individually so that we would one day be in His kingdom. If you are a Christian, you have this blessed, this blessed knowledge, this blessed privilege of knowing that before time began, God had you in mind and God created you and appointed your lifespan with a purpose that you would enjoy fellowship with Him forever.

You by name. It's not that God sent Christ into the world on a kind of a blind mission hoping that whoever would respond later would come and now God's kind of anxiously watching to see how it would work out and see who will come or not. No, God knows the end from the beginning. Scripture is very clear about this. And so this means that if you are a Christian, despite all of your sins, God purposed for you to be in Christ and that you would be with Him forever.

God chose you by name before time began. This is transcendent. This is eternal.

This is magnificent. And you say, well, that's a marvelous thing to contemplate. And when you start to think that way, you're starting to enter into the spirit of the passage. You mean I'm a Christian, even though I don't deserve to be, and I'm a Christian because God determined that for me, God determined that for my life before the time began, before He created the earth?

Yes, that is the words of Scripture. That is the teaching of Scripture that He has blessed you like that from eternity past. You were in the mind of God to be redeemed by Christ during the course of your lifetime. And as a result of that, there was never any danger that you would not be in Christ in the end because it's what God had chosen for you before the foundation of the world. He chose us so that one day we would be in Christ. He chose us so that one day we would be in His kingdom. He chose us knowing in advance how sinful and rebellious we would be. He chose us in advance knowing that even after we were saved and walking through this life that we would be sinful and rebellious against Him and that we would not live perfectly. He knew all of that in advance and still chose you anyway to receive an inheritance in His kingdom, to be with the Lord Jesus Christ throughout all of eternity.

Now, beloved, that's glorious. That is unspeakably great, and it is an expression of the great kindness of God toward us that shows us that He must be favorably disposed to us if He chose us before the foundation of time in order to belong to Him. And look there at verse 5 as well.

This is not simply an accounting transaction in the mind of God. At the end of verse 4, He said He did this in love. He did this out of love, seeking the highest good for us. And it goes on, and He says He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. God purposed for you in Christ to be a child of God. He determined to bring you into His family, that you would be adopted in with full rights that the inheritance of all that belonged to Christ would one day belong to you. His deity accepted.

To start to understand something of this is to be staggered at the magnificence of it all. He chose us. He adopted us into His family so that we can say that we are children of God. And for this reason, Scripture says in 1 John 3, for this reason the world does not know us because it did not know Him, but beloved, Scripture says, 1 John 3, 1, Beloved, behold what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God, and we are. And for that we praise His name. And go further, go further and take it and work it out into what it means for your daily life here today as you're walking through difficulties struggling with temptation, dealing with difficult family or different matters that all of us face.

Step back from all of that. You can't begin to understand the purposes of God in those difficulties until you remember the big picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You must view all of that through the lens of the fact that God chose you and saved you in order to deliver you into His heavenly kingdom. And as a result of that, when you see that overarching eternal perspective, you realize that in the midst of your difficulties, it must be true that God is favorably disposed toward you even though it seems like your circumstances are set hard against you. Don't interpret the goodness of God through the lens of the difficulty of your circumstances.

Rather, reverse it. Start with the eternal purpose of God. Understand your security and blessing in Christ, my Christian brother, my Christian sister, and view everything through that prism so that you say, whatever else is happening in these relational or financial or physical reversals that I'm facing, whatever else I might think about them, it has to be that God is favorably disposed to me in the midst of them because He chose me and adopted me into His family, and He had prepared that blessing for me before the beginning of time. And we have to go back to that again and again and again. Paul goes on, and, you know, if you're new to our church, you can go and find, you know, I did a number of sermons on this passage, and so we're just doing a little bit of summary. If this incites your interest, then, you know, go and look for those sermons online to where we discuss them in greater detail. It's not just that God chose us in Christ. Secondly, He redeemed us. He redeemed us in Christ.

Paul opened talking about our God and Father in verse 3, and then he moves and he brings the Lord Jesus Christ into it. That's Don Green, and you're listening to The Truth Pulpit. Our teacher will continue in our series called Reflections on Our Lord next time. Meanwhile, if you'd like to find out more about this ministry, we invite you to visit thetruthpulpit.com. While you're there, you'll find all of Don's teachings along with a host of other great free study resources.

That's all at thetruthpulpit.com. Now before we go, here again is Don with a closing thought. Well, thanks, Bill. And my friend, I just want to encourage you as we close the broadcast today to make your local church a priority in the scheduling of your life. Scripture tells us not to forsake the assembling together of the saints. And I know for some of you it's hard to find a good church but seek out the fellowship of other believers.

They can encourage you, and you can be an encouragement to them. God bless you as you serve him in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thanks, Don. And friend, that's all the time we have for today. I'm Bill Wright. See you next time on The Truth Pulpit where we teach God's people God's Word.