202 Words of Unbroken Praise #1

God had an eternal purpose for every believer, including you, already established before he said, let there be life. That right there would be enough for us to just stop and be overwhelmed. Sometimes we take salvation for granted.

We consider it on an individual level, which is magnificent enough, but God's purposes are even bigger. And as Pastor Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word, he'll explain what we mean on this edition of the Truth Pulpit. Hello there, I'm Bill Wright. Today we begin a series titled Secure in Christ Forever, with part one of Don's message, 202 words of unbroken praise. And Don, what is meant by that? Well, Bill, it's a reflection of the Greek text in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 14. It is one single sentence that goes on for 202 words.

Now it's broken up in the English translation, but the point is this. When Paul starts praising God for his work and our salvation, he goes on and on and on because there's so much to bless the name of God for. We'll unpack that for you today as you stay with us on the Truth Pulpit.

Thanks Don. Friend, have your Bible at the ready as we join our teacher now in the Truth Pulpit. There are three things that I want you to see as we go through this passage. There are three aspects of the nature of salvation that I want you to see that are right there on the surface and yet we read it and we miss it. We read it and we don't see everything that it is saying.

And so here's where we're going to begin. What can we say about the nature of Christian salvation that makes us realize how great it is? So much from another realm that salvation is not from this earth, it must be from heaven. First of all, what I want you to see from this passage, I want you to see the triune nature of salvation. The triune nature of salvation by which we mean this, all three members of the Godhead participated in our redemption. You are a Christian today because God the Father did something, because God the Son did something, because God the Holy Spirit did something.

This passage brings us into the ineffable glory of the very nature of the Godhead and it's all plain to see. The triune nature of salvation. One God working to accomplish our redemption, three persons each equally God, one God in three persons acting to secure your redemption. Let us forever put aside the thought that we saved our own soul. Let us put aside forever the thought that somehow what I did with my hands or things that I thought in my mind brought me into this realm of salvation.

Beloved, what you must see, what you must begin to grasp if you're going to understand the message of Ephesians, is that there was a great power of a triune God that was set into operation before time began and you enjoyed the benefits of Christian salvation. You stand in a position secured by the blood of Christ because of a great work of a triune God that you could not possibly have ignited by your own power. That's why when Paul opens up after his greeting in the first two verses, that's why when Paul opens up his passage here, the first words off his lips are blessed be God. He is directing us immediately to the focus of salvation and he's not saying let's congratulate ourselves for what we have done to save our souls.

He's saying blessed be God. All three members of the Godhead participate in our redemption and I want to walk through that one by one with you. Let's start with God the Father. God the Father has established an unspeakably great salvation for Christians as he accomplishes his will in creation. God the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Look at verse three and notice who the actor is in this verse. 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. God the Father designed to bless you. You are a Christian today because it was the intention of God the Father to do that and if you are a Christian now, you have already received every spiritual blessing that there is to receive. God has deposited in your life the fullness of redemption, the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

He has withheld nothing from you. That alone is reason enough to reject the idea that we must receive the Holy Spirit after our conversion. That would suggest that you could be saved and still be missing out on the best of the blessings. The blessed person of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. That's not true!

That's not true! For the saved, for every single believer, for all the redeemed, God has blessed us past tense with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ and that was a result of the purpose of God the Father to be good to children that he would one day redeem in Christ. You are on the receiving end of an intentional blessing from God that you didn't stumble into that he designed for you and scripture says that he designed that for you before the foundation of the world. Before Genesis 1-1, God the Father did something on your behalf.

Before creation, when there was nothing but the perfections of God, when there was nothing except the blessed communion of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit with one another, at that pre-temporal time, if you can say it, you don't have the words and language to express it. Look at verse 4, just as he, meaning God the Father, just as God the Father chose us in him, that is in Christ, God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him. That's what God the Father did. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. God the Father chose us in Christ. He purposed to secure our salvation before he created the world. Before you and I had done anything good or bad, God had already determined before he spoke the worlds into existence, he said, I will save these by my power. I will include these in the redemption which I purpose in Christ. God had an eternal purpose for every believer, including you, already established before he said, let there be light. That right there would be enough for us to just stop and be overwhelmed at the grace and the magnificent purpose of which you and I are on the receiving end.

But we've hardly started. Now let me just say one thing to help you as you read your English text. With wisdom, I believe, the editors of the English text have broken up this great passage into different sentences and so you see a period at the end of verse four and that's for the benefit of English readers because we're not used to such long involved complex sentences. We don't think that way and so they've broken it up into individual sentences and that's fine but in the Greek text, as I said, it is one long unfolding sentence and so you have periods in your text to help you break this up and to be able to receive it and access it but in the original language, and it's a well-known fact, this is one long sentence of 202 words. It's one unit of thought and so we break it up for the sake of being able to receive it. You can't receive all of that all at once.

You've got to break it up but here we have it. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. What's more, at the end of verse four, he predestined us because he loves us to adopt us into his family. Look at the end of verse four. 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. This has the picture of God lavishly pouring out his grace.

It has the picture of God seeing us knowing that we would sin, knowing that the human race would fall into rebellion against him and that you would be part of that rebellion and that there for a time in your life you would be separated from him by your own sin, by your own choice, rejecting him, sinning against him with no desire for God in your heart. And here is God the Father purposing to look beyond that to have an eternal plan that he would execute that would bring all of the redeemed in Christ into his family. Those of us who were strangers and aliens outside the realm of the family of God, having no claim on him, having forfeited every single possible claim that we could make by our own righteousness, forfeited it at all, threw it away for the bite of a piece of fruit in the garden, and then you and I ratifying that bite with every sin that we committed and agreeing in spirit with the original sin that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden. Here we are, here we are separated from God, deserving judgment, and God before time began said I'm going to bring them into my family one day. Those who have no claim on me, those who are outside any natural relation and affection with me, those are the ones that I am going to adopt into my family. I'm going to bring them in and make them my own with all of the privileges and rights that belong to my own son. Guilty, vile, and helpless we, here is God bringing us into his family.

Wow. Do you start to see why Paul opens up and says blessed be God, praise be to God the Father. He chose us before the foundation of the world, he has adopted us into his family through Christ, and we are now in a position of such astounding, unspeakable privilege as believers in Christ that we can't begin to fathom the depth of it.

And we enjoy this position now. We have this position that we are walking in, we have this status as sons of God adopted into his family, and here's what we must embrace. Here is what Scripture teaches, here is where our hearts must be humbled. We are in that position because of the purpose and kindness of God, not because of things that we did to deserve it. You didn't exist when God determined this for you. You weren't around when God said I will do this and I will do it for him by name.

I will do it for her individually, I will include her in my plan. This is a lofty God doing a lofty thing by his love and grace and mercy and his sheer goodness and his sheer grace. He has lavished, he has poured out so much undeserved favor on you and me. To be in this position as creatures who once were rebels against his will, and now here we are secured in the family of God, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to him for such undeserved kindness, undeserved favor.

Let's come up to the surface for a moment. Here's the thought that should be getting drilled into deep into our hearts. God the Father is intrinsically great and he is vastly good and he has blessed us beyond measure. There is no counting, there is no calculating the breadth and depth and the height and width of the love of Christ that has been poured out upon us and God the Father determined to do that before time began upon you and me. Blessed be his holy name, blessed be his holy name. That's why Paul praises him and brothers and sisters you should too. You should have deep in your heart at the cornerstone of your very existence a resolved settled worship of God the Father that is so grateful that he's been so good to you. That's the cornerstone of Christian living is to have that straight, to have that anchored, to stand on that foundation. God the Father blessed me, God the Father chose me, God the Father predestined me to adoption before time began.

Little old me, little old speck on the little ball of planet Earth in the whole revolving universe. That great God who did all of that saw me by name and chose me. You know there's a part of you if you're like me right now you just want to you just want to leave right now and run right into the throne room of heaven and say God thank you bless your name this is so great. I can leave this all behind if I could just get to you to say thank you in your presence undistracted by anything else to go into your holy chamber Oh Father and worship you for what you have done. Yes father I see why Paul says blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I echo it from the bottom of my heart right now. We're just getting started with this wonderful sweep through this passage. We said that salvation has a triune nature and we've seen God the Father we've just barely touched on it. But go further and realize that the nature of salvation is centrally connected to the second person of the Blessed Trinity Jesus Christ God the Son. Look at the end of verse 6 with me there where it says that salvation is to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

That's a reference to Christ. God said at Christ baptism and at the transfiguration you are my beloved son in you I am well pleased. Christ is the supreme beloved to God the Father.

The Father supremely loves the Son. Christ is the recipient of that that love from the Father and so that's what he's talking about there at the end of verse 6. Now in verse 7 in him in him referring to Christ he's now shifting Paul's moving the focus from God the Father and what he did in terms of the nature of our salvation. Now he's going to talk about what Christ did because there was a unique aspect to the work of Christ that now he's going to draw our attention to that further undergirds our worship and praise to God. Look at verse 7 in him we have redemption through his blood. Christ is the one who shed his blood and so that's how we know that he's talking about Christ now as we move into verse 7. Jesus Christ in this passage in these 14 verses is referred to by name or by personal pronoun at least 15 times in the first 14 verses of Ephesians.

There is a Christological focus there is a call to put our attention on Christ as we read through these opening verses of the letter to the Ephesians. As the second member of the Blessed Trinity he is the focus of our salvation it is his work upon which all of this depended. Look at verse 7 it says in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished on us. Jesus Christ God the Son in fulfillment of to carry out the plan of God the Father which was established before the foundation of the world came to earth in the person of a man and shed his blood as a sacrifice to cover the sins of those who would believe in him for salvation. God the Father chose us predestined us for adoption Christ came and shed his blood to remove the barrier of sin that hindered that plan from coming to fruition. And so we find that in Christ we have the redemption the forgiveness of our trespasses. God the Son became a man in perfect righteousness in perfect sovereignty in veiled majesty in his flesh walked the road to Calvary to spill his own life blood so that you and I could be forgiven of our sins. And beloved let me remind you as we look at this now 2,000 years after the crucifixion he did that before you and I had done anything. He had spilled his blood he had secured our redemption before we were born the act that was necessary to appease God's eventual wrath against our sin was already done. You were born into this world with salvation already charted out for you and the price already fully paid. Before you had a conscious sentiment thought God had planned it all and Christ had paid price.

You didn't know it when you were born you didn't know it when you were walking in darkness you didn't know it when you were enjoying sin. God had done a work and had laid the foundation to secure your ultimate eternal well-being and his presence in your family. Praise be to God blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has done such a work for us. This is magnificent this is unspeakably great human language cannot adequately describe this in its introductory chapter let alone tell the whole volumes of encyclopedias that should be written about it. All we can do all we can do is see it from a distance see it as it were darkly so to speak. We can't understand all of the implications of this or all that was involved in the blessed inter communications of the Trinity before the foundation of the world but we can see what scripture says we can respond in truth even if we don't know the full vastness of it. Scripture tells us that God has blessed us that Christ has died and risen for us and we are the on the receiving end of unmatchable grace and beloved what I trust is sinking into your mind if you're awake and listening to me what I trust is sinking into your mind is the sense that this is something beyond anything that I could have asked or thought this is magnificent and it causes me to pour out my heart in worship and Paul expands it beyond the realm of that act of redemption on the cross look at verse 9 says that 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 look at this look at how it expands into a vast realm of the universe verse 10 the summing up of all things in Christ things in the heavens and things on the earth Christ is going to be the culmination of everything in the universe seen and unseen all of its all of the purposes of human history and the operation of the universe is going to find its ultimate climax in Christ that is part of what Paul is including in his praise here it's not just about our individual salvation it's about the greatness of Christ and that everything is moving so that ultimately all things will contribute to the praise of the Son of God that is the direction of the universe that when God defeats his enemies when sin is finally banished it will all result in the glory of Christ that's Don Green founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati Ohio with part 1 of a message called 202 words of unbroken praise part of the series secure in Christ forever next time Don will look at two more important aspects of Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 14 so join us then here on the truth pulpit right now though Don's back with a special invitation well friend if you are anywhere near the Cincinnati area and you don't have a good church home I invite you to visit us at Truth Community Church I'm in the pulpit almost every Sunday and we have a loving congregation that would simply be thrilled to meet you and welcome you to our body we are striving to manifest the principles that you heard taught today why not come and see us bill will help you find us on our website just visit the truth pulpit calm for directions and service times there you'll also find a link to Don's Facebook page once more that's the truth pulpit calm and thanks for your support of this ministry and now for Don Green I'm Bill Wright inviting you back next time as Don continues to teach God's people God's Word from the truth pulpit