Father, you are—you're all the same. You're wonderful, and you're merciful, and you're gracious, and we thank you. We thank you for a chance to get together. Father, we thank you for this chance of ministry. I thank you for these students. Father, I pray that you will bless them as they come back and as they get started. They face all their anxieties and all the fun, all the opportunities, all the freedoms that come with college and all the expectations. I know there's a lot of different things in the room. There are people who have come back and they're going to try to make a new start of it. They're not going to let this semester be like the last one was. I pray for them that you give them grace, that you will show them that your love and your gospel is not about their second chances, but it's about the work that you've done for them, and I pray that you'd make them you. And Father, there are some of you who are here who are not sure what college is going to be like. They kind of want to try everything. Father, I pray that you will give them good friends, and I pray that you will show them that you alone are the Word of life, and all the other paths lead to death. And I pray that you'll protect them and should bless them. And Father, I thank you for this group. I pray now that you'll bless us as we turn to your Word. Father, it's always exciting. Father, I confess that I'm afraid, and I am unsure. Father, I pray that You would not hinder Your Spirit working because of me. I pray that You would speak, and that we would hear You. In Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. So come on in. If you have empty seats, kind of, if you could move over so the folks in the hallway could get in and can't get in. Greg, if you like, move away from the aisles, wherever you are. If you can move away from the aisles, we can grab some people out of the hallway and into their seats. That'd be great. It's not like there's thousands out there. Oh, there you go. But, you know, enough people are out there. That's good. I think enough people are moved. That's good. Thank you. My name is Ricky Jones. Welcome to RUF. Especially if it's your first time here, the chances are the person next to you is your first time here, too, so don't get mad at us and think that's a rude crowd that doesn't speak well unless I talk to you. But I am glad you found us. We meet here every Thursday night, 7.45-ish. We try to start at 7.45, you know how that goes. But we get out around 8.45, and usually we'll go to LJ's or some coffeehouse and hang out if you want to come. Other people bowl, which is a good crowd, too. You know, do one of those things. If you don't, then there's a lot of options out there. We're going to have a party tomorrow night. There's a huge announcement about it on your LSU paper, so I don't mean to say anything else about that, but please come and hang out with us. I'd love to get to know you better. And I do want to highlight one other announcement. On Mondays, I meet with a freshman. He didn't go to freshman only. It's good to get to know each other. It's important to us, it's important to me. One of the things I've seen in my 10 years of doing this, seems like a long time, is that the people who really get the most out of the ministry are the people who have their friends here. If that's why I like to get y'all together. and get y'all to know each other and to be friends over the next four years and learn a lot from each other. And we're going to study fellowship for a few weeks and then we're going to look at the term on the mound for the rest of the semester. But we're going to meet Monday night at 8 o'clock. It's going to be in the YMCA building, which is where my office is. And over, like my office is a landmark on campus. Everybody knows where my office is now. It's also where the post office is if you've ever been there. It's right above that. So come on up there Monday and we'll get started. This semester we're going to be looking at Ephesians, studying Ephesians. We're going to be reading from Ephesians chapter 1 tonight. If you brought a Bible, I'd invite you to open up to Ephesians chapter 1. We're going to study it for a couple of reasons. We're going to have a Bible study this semester. It's going to be broken in two halves. The first half, which is like Ephesians, which is broken in two halves. The first half, we're going to study God's relationship with us, what He has done to initiate that relationship, the love that He's shown for us, and in the second half of the study, we're going to focus on our relationship with each other. We're going to look at unity within the Church, we're going to look at racism and that kind of thing, we're going to look at dating and sex and good stuff like that. So, you know, if you get bored first half of the semester, come back to the second half. We'll have a good time together. I'm excited about it. I hope you enjoy it. I think we're going to get a lot to teach us. We're going to read now from Ephesians, chapter one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Great to teach to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His Son. And, Lord, we predestine us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace which He has freely given us in the one He loves." In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, and according to the wishes of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ to be put into effect from the times that will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." Even in Him, we also are chosen, having been projected, according to the plan of Him, who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of His glory. All men are as grass, and all of our glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, and the flowers fall. The Word of God stands forever, and the Lord has His blessing for the reading of this Word. This summer, we had our boys. I've got three, four boys, three of them on the website. The reason we have the website up there is because all the announcements we made are there, so you can go back and get those if you miss them. But this summer we played baseball, and in some ways it was a horrible experience, but in other ways it was good. And one thing I learned this summer, I learned a very theological principle from baseball, and it comes from this question. What do you say? when your kid is standing up to bat. I mean, think about this, okay? Baseball, in our family, is not a huge deal. My kid's got my genes. That's kind of what happens when you're the daddy. And I was a horrible, I thought that was funny. I was a horrible athlete growing up. Pathetic. You'll hear me say it a million times. I was short and I was skinny, but I made up for it by being slow and clumsy. And so, they're not, I mean, I have no King Rookie Juniors in my family. But we're playing, and she's not that big a deal to us, but to the other kids out there, who knows? It might be the biggest thing going for them. It might be the basis of their fellowship with their father. And some kids, it wasn't like the only time they got to see their grandparents was these baseball games. And for me to cheer for my son is, in effect, to cheer against their children. If my son doesn't play, that means somebody's going to be mad. And so, I don't want to make anybody mad, I don't want to cheer against them, I don't want to cheer for them to fail. So what do you say when your kid steps up to bat? I prayed, I fought very long and hard. And I said, HIT IT! RUN! And then when the ball was going to the other kid, I said, let me take it. I know that there are other kids out there, you know, and I know, and I care about them, and I don't want them to do anything bad. I wouldn't want anything bad to ever happen to them. But I'm not talking to them right now. I'm talking to my son. And I want him to know that I'm here for him. Now this first day tonight, you know, I guess I could have started, sorry? I could have started in Ephesians 2, I guess. You know, we could have just skipped the whole procrastination word. But, you know, for somebody who can call me weird, I like to start in number 1 and then go to 2. And the word's there, okay? And then before you get all reclusive about that, why does that keep happening? Before you get all perplexed about it, and freak out, and get all nervous, and... What are you going to say? Listen, let me just lay out a few ground rules. And the first thing is this. God's got a lot of things in the Bible to say to unbelievers. He's got a lot. He does not, in any place, come to unbelievers and say, sorry, you're not awake, bam, you're out. Never. As a matter of fact, when he talks to unbelievers, he says things like, if anyone is thirsty, come to me and let them drink. If anyone is tired and weary and heavy laden, let them come to me and find rest. He even pleads with them. Why will you die? Why will you perish? Why will you not come to me and live? But he's not talking to them right now. Look at the very first verse. He's talking to his children, and he's not talking to them right now. He's saying, you, I want you to know how much I love you. That's what this letter is about. I want you to get that. Yeah, we got all the other stuff that I'm willing to work out. We're going to work that out. But right now, I want to talk to you. I want you to know. the depth and the height and the width and the breadth of my love for you. In order for you to know that, I've got to show you when it started. Now, to some of you, the honest few, I don't know who you are, but you're thinking, well, if this letter is for unbelievers, then it's not for me. I ain't one of them. Well, I appreciate your honesty for thinking that. I'm glad you're thinking that. It shows that you're more self-aware than most of the people I meet. I want you to keep coming if you want to. If you don't, I don't want you to come. I want you to report. We've had people report to come before. It's never worked out. I want you to come for two reasons. because it's very likely, I don't know this for sure, since I don't know you, but it's very likely that the reason why you've rejected Christianity and the gospel is because of Christians. If that is the case, I understand, okay? But I want you to come and see what Christians are supposed to be. And I want you to come and see Jesus. Don't reject Jesus. Don't reject God because you've seen bad Christians. You need to deal with Him. You need to deal with Him, and I want you to see Him. There's another group of you in here, and you're Christians and you come because you like the fellowship and you like the thing, but you're not doing the whole reform thing. and you're thinking to yourself, and it's very likely that some of you here have already closed your ears off and you're going, I don't do the whole predestination bit. And I want you to listen for two reasons. Let me tell you this. If the reason why you don't believe in predestination is because of Calvinists, I understand. Okay? I have come out of churches where they were preaching on predestination before, and thought to myself, I thought I believed it, but after hearing that, I'm not so sure. Okay? Think of it like this. We, I'm assuming, pretty much everybody here is from America, or at least a fan of America, because you're in it right now. And so, I think we can honestly say here that everybody in here is at some level a fan of democracy. Democracy is a good form of government. It's not perfect. Winston Churchill said it's the worst form of government known to man, with the exception of everything else that's ever been tried. You know, it's pretty good. I think we always say that we're fans of democracy. We like democracy. I don't want to dare say that you're not all Democrats. And probably there are times when Democrats say things you don't like. But you still want democracy. If you're a Democrat, fine, I'm a Democrat, that's another issue. I want you to understand there's a vast difference between the principle of God's electing law and the party of people who kind of define themselves by that. Don't exclude this principle because of the people. Okay? Why not? Two reasons. First of all, because you already believe this. You already believe it. You know, all election and predestination means is you didn't do anything to earn God's love, and you already knew that. deep within the recesses of your heart, despite everything you may have been taught, deep in there, you know you didn't do anything to make God like you. He did it first. He knew that. And that's all we're going to teach you. That's it. Whatever else you might have piled on there, erase it, okay? That's it. That's it. It's all it is. And that's the problem, because there's so much stuff said about it from the two parties, and they're fighting, and they're bickering, and they're making up ridiculous statements. A friend of mine was a campus minister. He got a call at one in the morning. Don't do that to me. He got a call at one in the morning. He answered. It was a student. He had just started. It was his first year, so the guy didn't really know what... I can't finish, it was Fred, I didn't really know what Fred believed. Fred answers the phone, hello? Fred, do you believe in predestination? Fred had a moment of clarity. What do you think that means? That means some people are going to heaven no matter how they live, and other people can't get into heaven no matter what they do. I don't believe that. Click. However else you've heard it described, however else, you know, whatever you're pointing, kind of said about it, erase it all. All it means is you didn't do anything to earn God's love, and you know that. You know that. And you've got those pieces somewhere in your heart, and I want to put them together a little bit tonight, because, the second reason why it's important for you to understand this, is because within this doctrine is a theme. of comfort, of a joy, of relaxation, of exhaling, just ahhh, of assurance of salvation, and of faith. And if you don't understand it, and if you don't have it somewhere put together for you, you're missing out. You're like, you know, you're like the person who spent their entire life saving to finally go on that dream cruise vacation. But you don't have any money left to buy the food. And so you're hanging out on the decks, you're going to all the sightseeing, but every time it's meal time, you're going down below deck and you're eating in your room, you're eating cheese and crackers. And you didn't know that there's a free, free buffet for you to feast on 24 hours a day. And I want you tonight, I want you to come and feast from the captain's table. I want you to come. and see the richness of how much God loves you. So first, what election means is that God's love is spontaneous. It's spontaneous. Verses 3-6, "...blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him." In love, He predestines us for adoption for Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. God's love for us is love at first sight. You believe He's love at first sight? Ain't no real thing, not really. Ain't no real thing. I don't know who you are, but I will follow you the rest of my life. Love that says, I don't know anything about you, but I would die for you. Do you do that at first sight? If you have that experience often, we need to play a game. But I have had it. I can tell you exactly when. 4.55 p.m. on October 10th, 1996, when a nurse first laid my firstborn son in my arms. And I just looked at him, and he looked a little bit like a lizard. I had no eyelashes. His head's all mashed. He doesn't know me. He looked at me with the exact same expression he looks at a telephone pole with. And at that point, I loved him. And I would have died to protect him. And everything that I have, from that point on, everything that I have had, everything I hold is his. He has four other kids now. He has three other kids. It was absolute, complete, committed love at first sight. And that is the way God says He loves us. And God's got really good vision. He first looked at you from before the creation of the world. He saw you. And He loved you then. Before you had done anything to make Him like you. Before your parents had done anything to make Him like them. Before mountains were formed, you know that cheesy song, longer than, just got another thing for you, there's no stars up in the heavens, higher than any bird ever flew. I've been in love with you. It's not true for anybody else, but that's how it feels for God. He has always been in love with us. But I want you to see not only did His love is spontaneous at the first time, but look at the people that He loved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the wishes of His grace. You see, He didn't fall in love with a bunch of cute kids. He fell in love with people who hated Him. He fell in love with people that were going to mean the death of His sons. You love them. You know what's the amazing thing about having kids? It's not that surprising if you fall in love with them before seeing them. What is surprising is that you stay in love with them after you get them home. Because you're horribly selfish people, you know that. I don't want to say this, okay? I have outgrown it. But it's amazing, you know? You're so unbelievably just drop-dead tired that first six weeks. You're sleeping an hour and a half increments if you're lucky, and dad's a little bit more than that. So you finally get to bed at night, your head hits the pillow, bang, you're out. Your entire life's been disrupted, you've got all this cash on the kids, your house has been disrupted, and you're dead asleep. The second you close your eyes it feels like, you hear this wah, wah, wah, ping, ping. If he doesn't have a snooze button, he's not going away. Can you see? Lay there. Lay there. All right. Don't look over his back. Get up. It's cold. Go in the middle of the night. And you go and you look at this. What do you want? And you pick him up and you go, hey. What do you need, sweetie? You stay in love with him. And that's what God's love is like. He loves us, so it costs Him greatly. He loves us, so He knew what He was getting. You understand that? He knew what He was getting when He bought you. And you're not that good of a deal. Seth Lewis, as he always does, says it best, God who needs nothing, love and to exist as wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already seeing the buzzing cloud of flies around the clock, the flayed back pressed against the uneven state, the nails driven through the menstrual nerve, the repeated insipid suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time for breath-safe hitch-top If I may dare the biological image, God is a host who deliberately creates His own paradigm, causes us to be that we may exploit and take advantage of Him. Herein is love. This is a diagram of love Himself, the inventor of all loves. He loves us at first sight. He loves us at great cost. He loves us for no reason. Paul, in this passage, right in this passage, he tells us why he does it in verse 6, "...to the praise of His glorious grace." Why did God love us? It's the most important doctrine of the Bible. Why did God love you? Was it because He foresaw some great potential you had? Was it because you did something right? Was it because you were smart? Listen to the text. Some great text in the Old Testament. After your birth and the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No one had pitted you to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out in the open field, for you were a cord on the day you were born." There you go. "'And when I passed by you, I saw you wallowing in your blood, and I set you in your blood What did we do to earn it? We wallowed. Deuteronomy 7 is even more explicit. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the people who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you. For you are the fewest of all people. The Lord said His love was upon you and chose you, not because you were great people. The actual question is, so why did the Lord love us? Next verse. But it is because the Lord loves you. He did that often. He said the same thing. You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God, in His wish and mercy, because of the great love of which He loves you, made you alive together in Christ. What did you do? Why did He love you? Because He loves you. It's almost as if you can imagine this conversation, a child to his parent. Daddy, why don't you pick me up at a nursery? Because you were mine. Because I loved you. Why did you love me? Was it because I was the smartest kid in the nursery? No, you just weren't there. Was I the cutest kid in the nursery? No, you kind of looked like a lizard. Was I the biggest kid in the nursery? Oh no. You were mine. You were mine. That question changed my life. I was in my captain's minister's office one day, and I was complaining to him about all the bad things that were going on, and my lack of friends, and about my dad who kind of votes on the family, and all these bad things. And he said, well, if you could fix one thing, what would it be? I said, well, I guess, you know, the problem I have the longest is why am I getting fixed first? I want to get this whole family thing worked out. And he said, well, let me ask you a question. When your dad left, why didn't you go with him? I stopped, that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. You know, let me ask you another way. When you were growing up, you said you didn't have any Christian friends. Did you have any friends in church? Yeah, all my friends were in church. Were any of their churches better than yours? Well, pretty much all of their churches were better than mine. Were their families better than yours? Yeah, a lot of them had better families than mine. And none of them were Christians? No. Then why were you a Christian? Don't you hate those questions where you know the answer, but you don't want to give it? You see, I have about ten answers come to my mind at that point. Well, I was smarter than them. Oh, that can't be it. I was better than them. Oh, that can't be it. I was more spiritual than them. That can't be it. And I knew, I knew enough of my Bible for days, and I was saved by grace. Right? I've heard that. I just kept my mouth shut. That's what you do when you don't know the answer. The answer to that isn't anything. I lay there. God loves me because He loves me. That's what God's love is like. God's love is spontaneous. God's love is sanctifying. It is sanctifying, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. Now, some people will argue that if you teach this, God's love is based upon election, that it is not armed. If you teach that, then people are just going to go off and sin all they want. If you teach people that they can't lose God's love when they sin, now they're going to go sin all they want. And my personal thought to that is, well, you see, there's a problem with that. Because it doesn't say, it does not say God is elected up to heaven, no matter how we live. It says He has elected us to be holy and blameless. The same thing Romans 8.29 says, those who before knew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. He didn't predestine us to come to heaven no matter what we're like. He predestined us to be like Jesus. Verse Peter 1 and 2, Peter and Apostle Jesus Christ, to those who are elect, exiled from the dispersion and Pontius and all the other towns, according to the full knowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit. to those who are waxed exiles in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ." See, God has erected us to be holy, to be obedient. Therefore, I guess the person could be out there—I've never met him—but the person could be out there who's saying, well, I don't have to be worried about that holiness junk because I'm just kind of waxed and I'm just going to heaven. But if I ever meet him, I'll know what to say. I'll say, buddy, I don't know what you think you're elected to, but the Bible says it's to holiness. So if you're not holy, then you didn't win that election, I guess. It's not for you. Why not? Because God doesn't just elect us and pass us by and move on. He changes those whom He chooses and gets involved with their lives. He does something to them. He gives us His Spirit. It's as if we're being put in Christ. You can imagine a transplant. I needed a new arm, which I don't, but if I did, if someone put an arm to me and it worked, it would be my blood running through it, but it would be more than that, right? My life would be in there. I would be animating it. And that's what it's like if we're elected into Christ. He animates us. His spirit runs through us. It's called being born again, being regenerated, being made alive in Christ. He doesn't just elect us and walk and leave us. He changes us, and we'll talk a lot about that. God's love not only is spontaneous, and is sanctified, but finally God's love brings sonship. He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will. John Warren says it like this, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him, but through all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So let's go back to that earlier complaint about election and predestination. Somebody comes up to me and says, well, you teach us that people aren't going to be holy when we're going to deal with the first thing and we're being elected to all this. Then I'm going to say this, if you mean by that, that teaching election means that we don't have to worry about whether or not God stops loving us when we sin, you're right. You are absolutely right. Because he didn't elect us to some potential place, some probationary period. He made us his children. And I'm just going to be his children. Child. I want you to understand that. If you're in crimes, you're there to stay. And if you really understand it, if you really believe that you didn't do anything to earn God's love, therefore you can't do anything to ruin it. You're just there. And that's going to let you exhale. That's going to let you rest and draw great joy and comfort from the gospel. Because it's free. What do you have to do? What do my boys have to do to save my son? They get us a lot. They get us a lot of dinner every now and then, you know, and I have to... You gonna listen to me, my kid? Yes, Dad. We can rob a bank. Yes, Dad, you'll still rob us. We can rob a bank and kill somebody. Yes, I'm gonna rob you still. You're my son. If you understand that, you're gonna get off your back. I don't want you to be afraid of that. I've had two or three people in the last few weeks tell me how afraid they were that they were going to do something wrong, that the fear they lived in, that they were sinning. I want to get that out of your vocabulary. I want you to live in fear. That's not what the gospel is about. It's not about condemnation and fear. Get away. You understood that, that when you failed, you wouldn't be afraid to come to God. You would realize that he kind of expected it. He knew who you were when he got you. I told you how bad the baseball season started out. I wasn't kidding. My two sons combined, I think the first three games, they started out like 1 for 40. So we were striking out every time. It was getting bad. And I got to the point, I finally got to that point, I started begging the Lord, okay God, you've let everybody else hit it. Before we finally started hitting, I stopped, took my boys in one night, and I wasn't sure if they were going to go back anymore. And I got up, I was taking my older kids on the top bunk now, so I can get close to them. You know what? I'll tell you a secret, I promise you I'll tell you, Mike. I kind of like it when you strike out. What? When you strike out and I tell you that I'm proud of you, you know that I'm just proud of you because you're my son. Not because of what field you fit in or not. I don't care about that, John. I want you to know that I'm just trying to make sure I'm not. I feel that way towards you. When you fail, you're not looking at you going, Damn it! I put all that money on you? Of course. And your weakness and your failing just draws out of pity. It draws out of kindness. He's begun to write to show mercy. And of course, if I ask him this question, I don't even have a valid question. Well, if it's based upon election, if it's not based upon what I did, how do I know if I'm a liar? It's a valid question, don't you see? Valid is kind of dumb. Let me tell you why. See, we believe that God works everything in sex, doesn't He? He works everything according to His will. Everything is worked according to His will. There's nothing that's outside of it. So, therefore, if everything's worked according to His will, then God's will be in the BLRUF tonight. I'm here. Yeah. How do you know if God's will be in the BLRUF tonight? Because you're here. Okay? You wouldn't be here if you weren't. That's one of the questions. I just want to be in God's will a little bit. So, you're in God's will. You can't get out. It's a big thing. You know, people always want to ask me, I don't know who God wants me to marry. Well, I'll tell you how I found out who God wants me to marry. When Bianca said, I do, I do. Yeah. Because she did. Are you a blessing, son? Have you said, I do? Have you come to Him? Have you put faith in Him? All who put faith in Him? All the ones who believe in Him are made sons of God, not by the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but by the will of the Father. They were born of the Spirit. He is what faith and Christ and He are. So we can move on to the next question. Chris, pray with me. Father, we come before You and we kneel and we bow. And we pray that out of your glorious wishes, out of all that you have, will you strengthen us with power. Will you send your Spirit in our inner being, Lord? And by your Spirit, will you allow Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith? Will you root and establish us in love? And will you do all that for one reason? I pray for these students. that they would be able to grasp how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love you have for them in Christ Jesus. Amen. you