Mm-hmm. Security can be hard to come by in our ever-changing world. That's a good reason not to look for security in worldly things. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah returns to the book of Ephesians and shares wisdom on how you can experience true security both now and for all eternity.
To introduce the conclusion of his eye-opening message, Eight Spiritual Blessings, here's David. And we return today to Ephesians chapter 1, where we camped out yesterday. listing the spiritual blessings that Paul gave in his letter to the Ephesian believers. And if you get through this list and you don't feel buoyed up in your spirit and excited about what it means to be a Christian, you're not reading the same Bible that I am. God has done some wonderful things for us.
We forget them, we take them for granted, and sometimes we let the personal grievances and difficulties of today rob us of the truth of these wonderful blessings.
So it's good to review them. Most of all, it's good to know where they're found in the Bible, and I'm happy to be able to share them with you in this broadcast today. The Book of Jonah has been our discussion up until this point. We finished it just a few days ago, but you can still get the study guide and the CD package that goes with that series. And I hope many of you will do that and teach that in your small groups.
It's a great study. Also, during this month, we're featuring the calendar, the light of the world. It is a 14-month calendar begins in November. That's why we offer it in September to get it to you in time. You can start listing all of your.
All of your scheduled events in the little blocks for each day. There's a Bible reading schedule embedded in the calendar, and many other things that you will want to have. And it's just so beautiful. You hang it any place in your home, and it will be a focal point for people who come to see you because it represents the light of the world who is Jesus Christ. This calendar is yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point during the month of September, and we say thank you with this gift and with these words.
Here is part two of eight spiritual blessings. Yeah. Yeah. Verse 5. The second blessing Paul revealed to us is that not only are we chosen, but we are also adopted.
Verse 5 says, having predestined to us to adoption as sons of Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. And there's another one of those dangerous words, predestined. You've probably heard of that word before. Paul doesn't use that word in the way many people use it today. He was not saying that in eternity past God predestined the entire outcome of your life so that you don't have free will and don't have the ability to make any real choices.
No, the word predestined just means to set boundaries around something so that it stays on a certain course. Here's what the Bible says: God chose you in eternity past, and then He predestined or predetermined in His sovereignty that you would be adopted as a son or daughter in His household. This is a critical truth because adoption in the ancient world was way different than it is now. We have an adopted child, and we've been through the adoption process, and we know what that's all about. But in Paul's day, children didn't really have any legal rights or status until they reached a certain age.
Till they became mature, and when that time came, the child would be brought forth and officially recognized as an adult. Which meant they were granted all the rights and all the privileges they deserved as an adult within that family.
So, what God communicated through this passage of Scripture is that when He chose us in the past, He determined that we should be adopted into his family as mature sons and mature daughters. We would have all the rights and privileges associated. with a member of his family. That's news, of course, but here is the really astounding thing. The Bible says that because we have been adopted as mature sons and daughters in the family of God, we have the same status with Almighty God as Jesus Christ.
We are co-heirs with him, the Bible says. which means everything Christ has with the Father. we have with the Father. Try to let that reality sink in for a moment. You have been chosen by God.
You have been blessed not just with inclusion in His household, but full adoption as a son or daughter. You are legally and spiritually a child of God. And then Paul says, and this one I like about as much as any of them: we are accepted. I recently came across a video featuring a young man named Kurt Kinley from Normal, Illinois. At the time of filming, Kurt was 20 years old and working two jobs.
He also had Down syndrome. And the video captured the moment that Kurt opened an acceptance letter from a local community college. As he takes the letter out of the envelope, you can see the anticipation on his face. As well as the fear. His head swivels from side to side as he reads the first few sentences, and then he raises his arms in triumph and says, I'm in, I've been accepted.
Kurt's laughter and shouts of joy are quickly drowned out by his family and friends gathered around him. And after a moment of filming, he literally bounces with joy. His mom asks him to read the letter out loud. He started. To do that, he stands with his father and he dutifully reads the first sentence.
And here's what the sentence said: We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted. And he couldn't go any further, he just fell apart. Oh, what it means to be accepted. Oh, and college is important. But to be accepted in life.
As you look around the world today, men and women, what you see is. Kurt Kinley's not the only person looking for acceptance. That's the case for all of us, acceptance from our parents. I've heard so many stories from guys who grew up in my generation who never really ever felt accepted by their father. And they say, well, that was a different generation.
Fathers back then didn't communicate very much, they just sort of were stoic, you know. I hope you didn't have a stoic father. And if you are a father, don't be a stoic father.
Sometimes acceptance from our friends. We live in a culture right now where the internet rules and so many kids are getting off the track because they don't feel accepted and they go to the internet and they try to find acceptance there and they don't find it. And if they're not careful, they get on the wrong side of somebody and then they get bullied on the internet and sometimes destroyed. More suicides happening in that age group than we have ever had in the history of our country. because of the lack of being accepted.
Acceptance from the world. Acceptance. where you work. It now includes the shadowy specter of social media And then there's acceptance from God. How do I know that God has accepted me?
Those of us who have chosen to follow Jesus can rest assured. on that last count. Paul makes clear in verses 5 and 6: we have already been accepted by our Heavenly Father. Having predestined us to adoption by sons by Jesus Christ to Himself. According to His good pleasure, to the praise and glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted.
In the beloved. Notice the word beloved. It's a term that refers to Jesus Christ. There are three times in Scripture where heaven opens and Almighty God looks down on his Son and says, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Paul was teaching you and me, who were chosen and adopted, that we have also been accepted and because of Jesus Christ, we belong to his family in the same way that Jesus Christ belongs to his family.
Don't you love that gift? Isn't that a blessing worth treasuring? Almighty God accepts you in the same way He accepts His own Son, His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
So when you're having that moment of concern, and maybe sometimes it's a little bit of self-pity too. And you wonder, does anybody accept me? Do I belong to anybody? Does anybody care? Let me ask you to go back and read this again.
Underline it with your pen. Almighty God has accepted you. Listen to me: if you've been accepted by the highest source and power in the universe, you have flat out been accepted. And you belong to God. And you don't have to walk around wondering: do I fit and do I measure up?
You measure up with God because He uses the measuring stick of Jesus Christ. And when he looks to measure you, he measures Jesus Christ in your place. And Jesus Christ always. measures up. We are chosen.
We are adopted. We are accepted. Another Bible says we're redeemed. Look at the next verse in the longest sentence in the Bible. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.
Now that's a word we hear a lot in church, and I'm glad to get off those other more distinguishing terms and talk about redemption. What is that? What does it mean to be redeemed?
Well, in the Greek language, Paul used to write this letter. To redeem something meant to buy it back. and cause it to be set free. We think of redemption primarily as a theological concept, but it carried more of a financial association in the ancient world. My wife, Donna, and I have had the privilege of traveling around the country a lot.
Some years back we stopped in a southern city. and stayed at a hotel. While we were checking in, the concierge said to us, Be sure you go and see the marketplace. I said, why is that so important? I mean, after all, if you're married to my wife, you've been to a lot of marketplaces, right?
I'll never forget his answer. He said, Just about a block from this hotel is one of the old slave markets they used to use to sell and buy slaves. But they've turned it into a kind of flea market. And you ought to go down there and see it.
Well, we did. We went down, and I have to tell you. I had the eeriest feeling while we were there. I was walking through a place that represented one of the worst moments in the history of our nation. A period in which men and women, created in the image of Almighty God, were bought and sold like pieces of property.
Just like the various goods being marketed and purchased at that flea market today. It's a terrible thought. Terrible image. But I want you to keep that image in mind as you read Romans 6, 17 and 18. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, Yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.
and having been set free from sin, You became slaves of righteousness. What a wonderful text that is. The Bible says that you and I used to be slaves on the slave market of sin. What does that mean? Before you come to Christ, But it's impossible for you not to sin.
I mean, you still sin if you become a Christian, but it doesn't have to be that way. But before you have a power within you to help you not to do sinful things, you're a slave to it. You say, well, I'm a good person. Yeah. But you know, the Bible doesn't look at it that way.
The Bible looks at it not only by what you do, but the motives you have by doing it. What is your purpose? Before you become a Christian, you don't have the ability not to sin.
So you become of like a slave. You're caught up in the slave market of sin. But one day Almighty God came down to buy us back. Did you know what he used for collateral? He used his own son, Jesus Christ, in his precious blood.
He bought us by the precious blood of Christ off of the slave market of sin. And that blood was spilled on the altar of the cross. and he bought us back.
so that we could be free not to sin and free to do right. He redeemed us. We are chosen, we are adopted, we are accepted, we are redeemed. And then it says, we are enlightened, verses 8 and 9. This is kind of a wordy text, but we won't get too much into it.
Let's read it. which he made to abound toward us all in wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself.
Now there's two phrases here that I want you to notice. First, God's riches and grace abound toward us in these ways, through wisdom and prudence. When we become Christians, God gives us a certain kind of wisdom and prudence. And then God makes known to us the mystery of His will. This goes back to the idea that before you become a Christian, You can't understand God.
You can't understand godly things. You just wonder, what is that all about? What are those crazy people doing that think that?
Well, let me give you a verse of scripture that explains it. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him. He cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. What Paul is saying is that before you become a Christian, You can't understand.
I've had so many people that I've talked to over the years telling them about my faith in Jesus Christ and leading them to a relationship with Christ. And they say something like this: one guy once told me, you know, I used to try to read that Bible you have, and it never made any sense. And he said, Then I accepted Christ, and in the meantime, somebody rewrote the Bible. And what he meant was But now that he had the Holy Spirit in his heart, He began to understand the Bible. We can't understand spiritual things in the natural.
We need the spiritual. And the Bible says that when you become a Christian, what happens is... that you become capable Of understanding the mysteries of God. There's a verse in John. Basically, it says this: if you want to know God's will as a Christian, you can know it, and that's a promise of God.
The issue is, sometimes we don't want to know it. We want to know it so we can measure it against our other options. You have to know the will of God so you will do it. You have to say, okay, the Lord tells me what to do, and I promise you, when you tell me what to do, I'll do it. That's how you find the will of God.
We are chosen and adopted and accepted and redeemed and enlightened. And then the Bible says we have an inheritance waiting for us. Ephesians 1:11 and 12. In him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.
Now listen. If you're a follower of Christ, you have an inheritance that is reserved especially for you. Because you are mature sons and daughters in God's family. Because you have been adopted into his family and you have been accepted by the Father. You have all the rights and privileges that come with that legal status.
And one of those rights and privileges is an inheritance that is a special blessing. Each of us will receive one day. Let me give you a little thought. If you are putting all your resources in what you have here today. you are gradually moving away from your treasure.
If you put your resources in the things of God, you are gradually moving toward. your reward. You got to make a choice. What is that inheritance? What does he mean when he says we're going to get an inheritance?
I don't really understand that completely, but the Apostle Peter offered us a little more in terms of a description. He said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope. through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away reserved in heaven for you. In other words, Peter says, You are a Christian, and God has a special Reward a special inheritance for you in heaven. Notice how he describes it: it's incorruptible, it's undefiled, and it doesn't fade away.
It isn't subject to inflation, praise the Lord. I read a sad story about a woman named Kathy. from Astoria, Oregon, who passed away inside a homeless shelter. Much of Kathy's life was difficult and she had Addicted herself to drugs. She was suffering from mental health issues.
She was alone and disconnected. Spent years on the street with no safe place to call home. In other words, she needed a lot of help. But the saddest part of her story is this. Her mom had passed away some years before and left her daughter $884,000 deposited in a state bank.
And people had tried to connect Kathy with the money she was owed. There were newspaper ads and even a private investigator hired to locate her. But unfortunately, Kathy was never found and the money remained unclaimed at the time of her death. I want to tell you that won't happen with your inheritance. God has promised to us it is incorruptible and it is reserved in heaven for you.
Whatever the nature of that may be, it's more wonderful than anything you can imagine. It's more grand than anything you can possibly write down on a sheet of paper. We have an inheritance and then Number seven is, we are sealed. In him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth. the gospel of salvation in whom also Having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
What does that mean? We were sealed. The Bible says this. Would you become a Christian? A number of things happen at that moment.
One of them is that the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. It comes through within your heart, not your heart muscle. but the heart of who you are, the real you. your personality, your Spirit, your soul, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell you. You say, Well, I always thought that you had to do something after you got saved, and then you get to, the Bible says you can't be a Christian without the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. Most people live their whole lives and don't realize the tremendous resource they have living inside of them. the Holy Spirit enabling them to live their lives in a way they could never imagine. And when the Holy Spirit comes to live within you, That Holy Spirit serves as a seal. That you are gods.
He is the guarantee that tells you, no matter what is happening in your life, things are going to be okay because God is with you, He's in you. And the best way I can explain that is what happens when you send a piece of registered mail. When you go to the post office and you fill out a form and give them the letter, and then they stamp a seal on that letter so that nobody can open it without the recipient knowing what happened. That seal provides a guarantee for the authenticity of the letter. The Bible says the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that what God promised from the past, He's going to fulfill in the future.
How do I know? I'm going to get what God has for me. The Bible says the Holy Spirit lives in my heart. How do I know the Holy Spirit lives in my heart? Because the Bible says He witnesses with my Spirit that I am a child of God.
And so the Bible tells us one of the blessings we get when we become a Christian is the guarantee that everything that God promised to us, He will fulfill. We are Christians, the Holy Spirit is the seal. Because we have the Holy Spirit, we know that one day everything he said is true. It's going to happen. As followers of Jesus, we are chosen, adopted, accepted, redeemed, enlightened, given an inheritance, sealed, and now finally we are secure.
Notice again, verse 14: the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. to the praise of his glory.
Some older translations of scripture replaced the word guarantee with the word earnest. Do you ever hear of earnest money? Do you know what earnest money is? We don't use that term very often, but it's a real estate term. And when you go to buy a piece of real estate, you put down some earnest money.
so that you're not just messing with them and they're not wasting their time. Usually it's enough to be painful if you lose it. Earnest money is the idea that you're going to buy this house that you've seen. By making that payment, you are showing the seller that your offer is serious. You are putting your money where your mouth is.
In a similar way, the Holy Spirit is the earnest money for our inheritance. He has provided part of our inheritance so that we can rest assured and rest secured. in his promise. that He is going to take us one day to be with the Father. To say all of that in another way, once we receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit in our lives, our salvation is secured.
The Spirit is proof positive that you and I will be in heaven one day.
Some of you might want to argue over the doctrine of eternal security. You go ahead and argue it, but don't argue with me because I already made up my mind. I've read the Bible, and the Bible says, when the Holy Spirit comes to live within you, God doesn't come and take Him away. And as long as you have the Holy Spirit in your heart, you're on your way to heaven. How are we to say What we need to say to all these blessings.
Ephesians 1, 3 and 14 say it this way: All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. He did this so we would praise and glorify Him. It was a sad day in the Williams household when they learned their neighbor, Ken Watson, had passed away. Ken's death wasn't a surprise. He was 87.
He suffered a lot of setbacks in his health. But Owen Williams and his wife knew that Ken's passing would be especially difficult for their young daughter, Katie. You see, Katie was only two years old at the time. And she had a special connection with Mr. Watson.
In fact, he treated her more like a granddaughter than a neighbor. made special effort to deliver Christmas presents every year. And his passing would leave a really empty place not only within their neighborhood and street. But in little Katie's heart as well. Thankfully, that's not the end of the story.
It turns out Ken Watson had one more trick up his sleeve before he died. or to say it more accurately, one more gift to give. Shortly after Ken's death, his daughter stopped by Williams' home carrying a large bag. She said it was for Katie. Inside were 14 gifts Ken had purchased for his friend.
14 wrapped gifts to bless the young girl for the next 14 Christmases. He said, I kept reaching into the bag and pulling out another gift. Seemed like they would never end, 14 of them in that bag. The gifts that Ken Watson left Katie Williams were something special indeed. But the gifts God has showered on us are infinitely better.
Upon his death, Mr. Watson delivered 14 gifts to last for 14 years. But God the Father has lavished us with every spiritual blessing that spanned the horizon of time from eternity past to the eternity of the future and right into our lives today.
So we have been blessed even more than little Katie. We have been blessed with eternal blessings. chronicle for us in this longest verse. in the Bible. the book of Ephesians.
Aren't you glad you know where that is? That is a place you will turn to often. When you get discouraged or when you begin to wonder what God is up to in your life, here is a very special place for you to spend some time in those days. Tomorrow we're going to talk about salvation pure and simple. Recently we have begun work on the revision of the Jeremiah Study Bible and in that Bible we have some articles that we produce on various subjects and one of them is on what is the nature of salvation.
And it reminded me how easy it is for us to talk all around salvation without really ever dealing with it. As it is in the Bible.
So, tomorrow and Monday, we're going to talk about salvation pure and simple. If you've ever wondered about the real core issues of salvation, don't miss these next two broadcasts. Thank you for listening. I'm David Jeremiah, and I'll be here tomorrow. Hope you will be too.
Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Right to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993.
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Visit TurningPointPlus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for a special message from Dr. David Jeremiah right here on Turning Point.
