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to Ephesians chapter number 1.
Ephesians chapter number 1. I'm glad that one of the great
treasures that I have is a Bible. Aren't you glad you have a Bible?
What a blessing that is. You're turning there. I just
want to let you in on something. There's something better than
the Super Bowl happening tonight. It's right here at Calvary Baptist
Church. It is. It's better. I can promise. Even
if the Cowboys were playing, and they never will again. It's
better. That's how you stop Tom Brady.
Of course, he retired before Jerry Jones could get him and
end the Super Bowl streak. But anyway, however it works.
You all know I'm a Cowboys fan, but anyway, I say that in shame
sometimes. No, I don't. I've been faithful,
but this time of year, I'm always a little down. So I don't care.
I'm excited about here, but I would be anyway. And tonight, we're
going to learn how to be God's friend over the next several
weeks. You don't want to miss the start of where we're going
on Sunday nights here for the next little while, and I trust
you'll be a part of it. And I want to be God's friend,
don't you? And God called a man to be His friend. And God tells
me He's my friend and He wants me to be His friend. And we're
going to learn how from a man by the name of Abraham. Trust
you'll be back tonight for that. There is a search going on in
our world. Did you know that? It is a frantic
search. It is. It's going on all around
us. You may even be a part of it.
You might be. You say, preacher, what kind
of search is it? It's a search for significance. It's a search
for meaning. It's a search for satisfaction
and purpose. Something to bring some kind
of fulfillment in our lives. People are frantically searching,
and they want that significance and meaning, and so they accumulate
stuff. And the more stuff that I get,
then hopefully somewhere in all of that stuff I'm going to find
some kind of significance, I'm going to find some kind of lasting
meaning and purpose for my life, some reason why I'm here. Another
person may search for it in people. If I can just have this relationship,
if I can have that man, if I can have that woman, if I can have
this or that in this relationship, if I can have all kinds of friends,
whatever it might be, then I'm going to be significant because
I've got friends or I've got 5,000 friends. I've maxed out
my friends on Facebook. But yet you still feel friendless
and alone. Some people, it's pleasures.
They move from pleasure that they indulge in, and the greater
the pleasure, then supposedly the greater the significance
and meaning and purpose and satisfaction and all of that. And people go
through life with stuff and people and places and pleasures and
all of these things, only to come up empty every time. Over
time, people become disillusioned with life. You know, that's one
of the reasons why, among young adults, the suicide rate in America
is the highest it's ever been. We're at epidemic levels right
now with drug addictions, overdoses. I mean, folks, we are in a crisis. in our land. Right here in Stokes
County, Forsyth County, Surrey County, we're in a crisis in
the lives of our young people that are looking for some type
of pleasure or escape or drugs or whatever it might be. That
if I can get this, then somehow or another, if I can't find significance,
I can escape from it. And it winds up killing them.
Ecclesiastes is God's test case. Now we're not going to go there,
we're in Ephesians, but it's God's test case. King Solomon had wealth,
he had women, he had wine, luxury, pleasure. I mean, he said, whatever
my heart desired, I went after it. Come to the end of his life
and he summed it all up because he's an old man and he's writing
about it and he said, I hated life. I bet you if we went out
right here and maybe went down to Walmart and we'd been in one
of those interviews on the street that we would find more than
one person that if they really were honest with us, here would
be their view of life. I hate life. Wouldn't you agree
with that? There might be some of you here
today and that's how you're feeling. I hate life. He goes on to say,
"...Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity." You
know what he's saying? It's like chasing the wind. You
know, when I was a little boy, the wind would blow and you'd
try to chase the wind. And here's what you can find.
You can chase it, but you'll never catch it. And that's true
of this world. You can go for all the stuff
and all the pleasure and all the position and all the stuff
the world has to offer in so many ways. And in this world,
you will forever chase it. but you'll always come up empty.
But not so for the child of God. No, when you come to Ephesians
chapter 1, you're going to find that our significance is in Christ. All of my meaning is bound up
in Him. I'm significant in Him. I'm somebody
in Him. I'm worthy in Him. I'm not in
any of myself. And if I look into myself, I'm
going to come up empty. But when I come to Him, because
in Him are found all the treasures in the companion book to Ephesians
in the book of Colossians in whom are found all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge. You're going to find it all right
there. You are. When you come to Ephesians chapter
1 where we're at this morning in verse number 3, it's God's
run-on sentence. It's the longest sentence in
all the Bible. I call it God's treasure chest. Because you're
going to find, according to verse number 3, it's filled with all
spiritual blessings. Look what he says. Let's begin
reading verse number 3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul gets so caught up in all
that he has in Christ, he can't help but bless the blesser. Can
I tell you, let's not come to church just to be blessed, let's
come to church to bless. Not just everybody else, but
let's bless Him. And let's bless His name and
worship His name. Because it's not about us, it's
about Him. It's for His glory, right? And He's saying, God,
it's all about You. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us. You're already
blessed, dear child. It's already yours. blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,
according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."
Look at verse 6, "...to the praise of the glory of His grace." wherein
He hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Do you know what I
believe Paul is saying right here? I am so blessed. And last Sunday, out of this
long sentence, we began to unpack the blessings. Let's keep unpacking
and see what God has for us today. Let's pray together. Lord, we
love You. We thank You for Your goodness, Your mercy in our lives.
I pray, Lord, that You'll enlighten our minds and our hearts to Your
truth today. Speak to us individually, Lord,
from this passage. Bring life change. Lord, we don't
want to stay the same. We want to be changed. We want
to grow up in You. Lord, help us to see Your treasured
chest of blessings. throughout the book of Ephesians
as we work our way through it in the coming weeks and months.
Lord, help us to learn of You and love You and bless Your holy
name. Lord, if there's someone here today that they're chasing
the wind, Lord, their life's empty. Help them to know, Lord,
that when they come to You, when they know You, Lord, that they've
found life's greatest treasure and they'll never have to search
again. And I'll thank You for it. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Well, we've come to this place
and Paul says, I am so blessed. He's saying, let me tell you
what we have in Christ. Let's open God's treasure chest. And the first thing, the truth
that we saw was that there is a source to our blessings. We
see that in verse number 3 when he says, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us. We are so
blessed. And God's saying that it's not
something that I'm going to do for you in the future, it's something
I've already done for you as my child. I have blessed you. And we bless God in turn, and
it's bountiful. He has loaded us with His blessings. Isn't that wonderful? I'm going
to get ahead of myself. I'm going to take an illustration
I gave at the end of my message at 8.30, and I'm going to put
it at the beginning of the message. When my daughter was young, she
had to go to the orthodontist, and I told everybody my first
four-wheeler and bass boat was in her mouth. And so anyway, we go there and
her orthodontist, I believe if I'm not mistaken, had a little
treasure chest. If you were good at the orthodontist,
I believe I'm right, it's either there or somewhere that they
would go and they could dig in the treasure chest and they could
get something. Okay? And they would go in and
they'd dig in the treasure chest and they'd come out with something
in that, and it was either the doctor or the orthodontist, one
or the other, and they'd come out with that little treasure
out of that treasure chest. Well, here's the good news, okay?
When it comes to God's treasure chest, God doesn't send every
one of His children up there to dig and you get one blessing.
Oh no, He gave us the whole treasure chest. Listen, I have a treasure
chest and you have a treasure chest. We have it all, the total
package. And what we need to do is just
unpack it in our lives and possess our possessions and live out
all that we are and all that we have in Christ. Because dear
child of God, we may have nothing in this world, but we are rich
in Him. with blessings that money cannot buy. He is the source
of every blessing in our life. And we ought to bless His holy
name. And then we began to see some substance of it. What is
in the treasure chest? And we began to look into it
and we found that God as a loving Father has great plans and desires. You have desires for your children
and God has desires for His children and He's telling us about it
right here in this passage. And we find that God as a loving
heavenly Our Father has great desires for us. And so He begins
with lavishing His love upon us. Look at verse 4. He lavished
us with love. Look at verse 4. According as
He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. God
made a decision about you and about me, dear child of God.
He did. It's the great doctrine of election. God's not choosing
who's going to be saved and who's not going to be saved. God's
not choosing anybody to salvation in this passage. When you look
at it, God has chosen that we should be holy before Him. that
when I believed on Jesus Christ, God determined way before the
world was ever created that those who would trust God's Son, He
made an elective choice in His sovereign will, that all of them
would have a position of standing before Him holy and without blame. And you know what? In simple
country fashion, that's just saying that we stand before God
with all of our sins gone and we're blameless and God doesn't
see me in who I am and who I was. He sees me, who I am in Jesus,
and He receives me because He received His Son. I am holy in
Him and without blame before God. And that's what the Bible's
telling me. And if God's chosen me to be
holy, you're going to find in the whole last part of the book
of Ephesians, He's going to teach me how to be holy. One's my position,
this is who I am, that every day of my life I may not live
holy, but my position before God is holy. Now that doesn't
mean that God's not going to chasten me for wrongdoing. Doesn't
mean that God's not going to get my attention and let things
go by in my life in a very practical and real way. But positionally
speaking, before Him, I am in His sight, holy and without blame. And God said, I want that to
translate in how you live on Monday. You see, if God says,
I am holy, I ought to live holy. The Bible says, Be holy, for
I am holy, saith the Lord. Isn't that what He says? Holy
in what we say, holy in what we see, holy in what we wear,
holy in where we go, what we do, how we conduct our lives,
how we transact in our world. They're all to be about us, a
pursuit of holiness. The Bible said, Without which
no man shall see the Lord. Now that doesn't mean that if
you don't live the way you ought to live, that if you're saved you won't
go to heaven. What He's saying is that I'm not going to see Him
clearly and I'm not going to be in fellowship with Him. I'm going
to be out of fellowship with God. And He's going to tell us as
we get into chapter 4 on what holiness looks like. Dear child
of God, one of the greatest treasures you can have or have is that
right now, as His child, you stand before Him without sin
in His sight. I am righteous in Jesus Christ. It's not my righteousness. It's
His righteousness. And thank God my sins are gone.
I have no record in heaven of my sins. Isn't that a blessing? And the Bible says, if you look
in verse 4, that it's in love. That God has lavished his love
upon me as his child. What a joy that is. And we're
going to see it even deeper as we work our way through the passage
and unpack some more blessings. But let's look at the next blessing
that we're going to unpack. And we're going to find it in
verse number 5. Not only have I been lavished with love, but
I have been lifted as a son. We've been lifted as sons. Look
what he says in verse 5. Having predestinated us under the adoption
of children, by Jesus Christ Himself. Now, what does that
mean? Well, let's unpack that and let's start with the word
predestinated. Let's start there. It's a Bible word. We don't have
to be afraid of it. Okay? And it means to mark out
beforehand. It has the idea of determining
a destiny beforehand. But again, God's not choosing
to predestine or the destiny of some people's heaven and some
people's hell and there's nothing they can do about it. No, that's
our choice. If anybody in this room perishes
in hell, God didn't put you there and God didn't plan for you to
go there. That's a choice you're going to make in your own life. God did make a choice about us,
but it's not about unsaved people. It's about saved people. Predestination,
every time you study it in the Bible, has nothing to do with
the destiny of the unsaved, has nothing to do with heaven or
hell, has everything to do with God's marked out destination
and goal for every person who becomes His child through Jesus
Christ. And we're going to see that. It's a sovereign choice
or act of God whereby He has set a goal for every one of those
who belong to Him. Let's establish it. Let's see
what the destination is of your salvation. When God saves you,
you think, boy, I'm saved and I'm going to heaven. Can I tell
you that that's just part of it. God's more interested in
a person than He is a place. You're going to see that. And
heaven's the by-product. That's what we're thinking. Boy,
heaven's my home. Praise God! But God said, I've
got bigger goals than that. Let's see it. Look over at Romans
chapter 8. Would you do that? Look at Romans chapter 8. Write
Romans 8, 29 in the margin of your Bible, right there beside
Ephesians 1 and verse number 5. That word predestinator in
your margin or in your notes. I want you to notice what he's
going to say in verse number 29. He tells us in verse 28 that
all things are going to work together for good to them that
love God who are the called according to His purpose. There's predestination. God has a purpose, a goal, a
plan for every one of His children. Look at verse 29. Here it is.
For whom He did foreknow. That means to know beforehand.
God knew me before I knew Him. You say, Preacher, how do you
know that? Because He knows everything and I don't. He knew me before I was born.
He knew me before I was saved. God foreknew. And we understand
that just because God foreknows someone doesn't mean that God
caused them to be saved. It just means He knew they would
be saved because God knows everything. And He knew who would trust His
Son, and God made a decision about them. He predestinated
all those who trust His Son. Look what He said. For whom He
did foreknow, He also did predestinate. to mark out beforehand, to be
conformed to the image of His Son. That is God's goal and God's
destiny for every child. Do you know what God's doing
in your life right now? He is working in your life through
the process of sanctification to make you like Jesus Christ. Hey, you know what? I'm tired
of me. I want to be less and less of who I am by nature and
more and more of who He is in my life. And that is God's goal
for you, and it will be accomplished. I can either cooperate and it
go easier, or God does it the hard way. But either way, you're
going to get there. And you're going to be, when
we get to heaven, dear friend, God's goal and purpose for us will
become a reality, and every one of us will be perfectly, morally
like Jesus Christ. Friend, can I tell you, I don't
want to be like me. I pray, God, help me not to be
who I am in myself. Make me like Jesus. Oh, friend,
Paul prayed that Christ might be formed in us. Oh, friend,
what a joy that is. What a goal that God's going
to make us like Jesus. What a destiny for every child
of God. And that's the destiny beforehand.
But here's the process by which He does it. It's called adoption.
Go back to chapter 1 in verse number 5. Now, many of you know
that when I was a little boy, that my dad, that my dad right
now adopted me. He gave me his name, okay? He's not my biological father,
alright? But he's my father. You know,
can I tell you it takes more than just being a dad by fathering
a child. It takes a whole lot more than
that. There's a whole lot of people that can father a child,
but they're not a father. Don't let that be true of us Christian
men. Amen? And my dad loved me enough that
he gave me his name and he adopted me. I became his son." That's
not Bible adoption. I know we hear that preached
many times, we sing it in songs, but that's not Bible adoption.
You've got to understand that what we do, if we're not careful,
is we impress our culture on the Bible rather than understanding
the culture of that day, which is totally different from our
culture. And I know that there are instances where a Roman,
wealthy Roman autocrat or whatever, didn't have a son and he took
one of his slaves and adopted him and made him his son and
all of that. And that's preached that way, but that's still not
Bible adoption. Okay? And we want to understand
that it meant something. Everybody in Paul's day knew
exactly what it meant. And so this word adoption doesn't
mean to be son-made. You can jot that down. It's not
son-made. We are son-placed. we are placed
in the family as a son. Whether it was a slave or a natural
born son, that Roman father could place him publicly as a son. But not just any son, an adult
son who has great privileges and right and equality within
the family. Because before they come of age
in a Roman home, that child was no different than the slaves.
Oh, he may have come from a wealthy family. His dad may have had
great wealth and stature in Roman culture, but the child had no
rights. We hear so much today about that,
don't we? Had no rights, and it was no different than a slave.
Matter of fact, they played with the slaves' kids. They were under
tutors and governors that trained and taught them. But there was
a day, as time went on, where that little boy would come of
age. It was in that culture, 21 years of age, and then a great,
great event would take place, whether it was in a small town,
or whether it was in Rome itself, the large city in that culture.
There would be family, there would be friends, magistrates,
they would come to this, and they would go to the public square,
and that Roman father would take his son up before them, and he
would say, My son has now come of age. He's no longer a child. I am placing him in my family. as a son. He now has status of
equality with my other adult sons and he can draw on my wealth.
He has the family ring and he bears the family name and he
can carry out the family business. He is son place. I have adopted
him today. and I've given him status and
wealth and importance in the family. That is the picture.
As a child, he couldn't inherit anything, but as an adult son,
he could inherit everything. You see the difference? Everybody
with me? Okay? And that is Bible adoption. You say, preacher, why is that
important? Because here's the case. Look
back if you would, Ephesians chapter 1 verse 5. God has predestinated
us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ. If you're a
child in that culture, in that day, if you thought of inheritance,
you couldn't get it. You're a child. You have no rights.
You have no access to the wealth. But if you're a son, you have
access to all the wealth. Do you see the difference? Alright,
so I was born into God's family as a child. But friend, at the
same moment, God placed me in His family as a son. I was a
child that needed to grow. But friend, listen, I was a son
that could draw on all the wealth of my father. It's all mine,
and I can possess it right now. Hey, I don't care if you've been
saved one second or a hundred years. You're a son in the family,
a daughter in the family, and it's all yours, friend, every
blessing in Jesus Christ. And you can have it. That's the
adoption. I've been lifted as a son. He
took us out of the pit of sin and placed us as sons in the
family. Oh, what a blessing that is.
And friend, what a joy that all the wealth of the Father is at
my disposal. Friend, I can draw on mercy,
and I can draw on His grace, and I can draw on His strength,
and I can draw on His wealth because my Father owns it all. Look at verse 11, I have an inheritance.
in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will." These are decisions that God
has made about His children that are in Christ that we would obtain
an inheritance. But if you're a child, a baby,
you can't have the inheritance all. But if you're an adult son
or daughter, you can have it all. Do you see the difference?
That's what God's given us. Jot down Romans 8.15 in the margin
of your notes. We're heirs, heirs of God and
joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Oh, we don't have it all now.
We may not inherit it all now, but we will. There's coming a
day it's all ours. Listen to what he says, Romans
8.15, For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear. Children were thought of as in bondage. They were under
tutors and governors. You have not received the spirit
of bondage, but you have received the spirit of adoption whereby
we cry, I once was an outcast stranger
on earth, a sinner by choice and an alien by birth, but I
have been adopted, my name is written down, an heir to a mansion,
a robe and a crown. Oh, friend, we've been lavished
with love. We've been lifted as sons. But listen, we're still
unpacking the treasure chest. We've been led into His presence. Look at verse number 6. To the
praise of the glory of His grace. Now watch this next phrase. Wherein
He hath made us accepted in the beloved. Oh, I'm accepted. Not
only have I been adopted, friend, I've been accepted! Wow! That word accepted is next of
kin is the word grace. It means to welcome, to show
favor. It means to welcome. Grace and
peace. You're accepted. You're accepted. I've never accepted
in myself. Oh friend, we're accepted in
the blood. There's a story told of a little
boy in London. And he wanted to see the king.
Oh, he wanted to see the king so bad. And he was standing at
the gates of Buckingham Palace, peering through the gates, and
he said, Oh, I want to see the king, and I want to talk to the
king, and I want to know the king. And there were those stoic
guards staring and barring the way, and the gates barring the
way, and the little boy couldn't get inside. And oh, he was crying,
I want to see the king. And suddenly a handsome, well-dressed
man walked up and he said, son, what's the matter? And he said,
I just want to see the king and these men won't let me in and
the gates won't open up and I can't see the king and I just want
to see. He said, take my hand. Oh, when he took that man's hand,
the soldier snapped and the gates opened, and again to walk through
the doors, and the mansion opened up, the doors of the palace,
and they walk in and they see the tapestry, and the beauty,
and the images, and the art, and all of the things, and they
walk down corridors, long corridors, and they found servants bowing,
and soldiers saluting, and they make their way to two great big
doors, and they open up of their own accord, and they walk into
this great big room, and there's the king. And the little boy
walks up to the king, and the king begins to speak to the little
boy. And what made the difference?
He didn't know it, but he had taken hold of the hand of the
prince of Wales, the king's son. And he couldn't get it on his
own. But when he took the hand of the king's son, he was welcomed,
he was accepted, he was brought right on in. And friend, there
was a night when I was 17 years old, I took hold of the king's
son. and when He led me right into the presence of God, the
King of the universe, and I can come in any time I want to, and
now He's my Heavenly Father, and I can speak to Him, and I
can call on Him, and I can look to Him, and I can lean on Him,
and He says, Son! You've been blessed. You don't
put a price tag on that, that the God of the universe accepts
me into His presence through His Son. When was the last time
you visited? When was the last time you went
into His presence? When was the last time you talked
to the King? I can talk to Him anytime, anywhere, about anything,
because that King is now my Father. I've been accepted in the Beloved.
Do you realize that God loves you like He loves His Son, Jesus?
That's what it means, in the Beloved. Jesus is the beloved. This is my beloved Son in whom
I am well pleased. But now He says, I'm accepting
you just like I accept Him. Isn't that amazing? I don't barge into His presence. Oh no, we come humbly into His
presence, but yet we come boldly because we come in the name of
His Son, Jesus Christ. Aren't you glad you took hold
of the King's Son? Let's finish up quickly. Not only see the
source of our blessings and the substance of our blessings, we've
been lavished with love, lifted as sons and led into His presence.
I don't know about you, but you can soak in this for a while,
if you will. Oh, don't let this message just
be one you heard and blessed and walked out the door. Why
don't you take a few moments this week and soak in what God's
given you? Just open the treasure chest
this week and say, God, let me look at this thing about being
your son or your daughter. I'm adopted and placed and all
the wealth of heaven is mine. Friend, I don't know how we get
over all that, do you? Let's notice very quickly the
sphere of His blessings. Notice, if you would, verse number
3 again. Would you look at that? They're spiritual. He said, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings. You see, if I look in this verse,
the Blesser is God, my gracious, loving, heavenly Father, who
is infinitely wealthy. The blessed are us, blessed us. And notice
the blessings, all spiritual blessings. Now when you and I
think of an inheritance, we think of material wealth, money, houses,
lands. You know there's some things
we've already learned. Money can't buy. Isn't that right? And if
you had what money could buy, we've already learned. It's not
going to give me significance and meaning. I'm going to be chasing the wind
and I'm going to come up empty. Oh, but what I have in Christ
is very real. It's very tangible. It's spiritual,
not material in nature. Money can't buy it. It's of inestimable
worth. You can't put a price tag on
it. Notice the Bible calls it all spiritual blessings. A newspaper
once held a contest, offered a prize for the best definition
of money, and here was the answer. They wrote this, money is an
instrument that can buy you everything but happiness and pay your way
to every place but heaven. Money can just do about anything
but two things, give you happiness and take you to heaven. Isn't
that amazing? But Frank, can I tell you, God
can do both. And what the treasure chest of the Lord has done all
of that and more. And God said they're all. That
means it's all inclusive. When you were saved, as I said
earlier, you got the total package. And I just need to unpack the
treasure chest and see what all God's given me. And they're not
just all inclusive, they're all encompassing. That word all means
of every kind of blessing. All that we need and they're
for all time. Chapter 2 and verse 7 that says, in the ages to come,
He's going to show us the exceeding riches of His glory by Christ
Jesus. And so they're going to stretch
into eternity. See, I can only get blessings now. I'm going
to get blessings later. And they're already all mine. I just hadn't
entered into all of them yet. And God said they're mine. And
God has given us blessings without end. And He tells us where they're
at. They're in heavenly places. It reminds us of the world we're
truly living for. If you're chasing this world, it's like chasing
the wind. But friend, when I live for the world to come, God said
I'm laying up treasure in heaven. That moth and rust and all this
is not going to corrupt. I'm living for something. It's
going to last. It matters. Notice they're in Christ. He
said, in heavenly places, in Christ. We have a life in Christ. We have a life that can never
be forfeited. Did you know that? We have a
righteousness that can never be tarnished. We have an acceptance
that will never be questioned. We have a title that will never
be clouded. We have a position that can never
be invalidated. We have a standing that will
never be disputed. If God be for us, who can be
against us? Justification that will never be reversed. We have
a seal that will never be violated. We'll see that later on in our
verses. We have an inheritance that will
never be alienated. A wealth that will never be depleted.
A resource that will never be diminished. A bank that will
never be closed. We have possessions that can't
be measured, portions that will never be denied, a peace that
can't be destroyed, a joy that can't be suppressed, a love that
can't be abated. We have a grace that can never
be arrested, a strength that can never be exalted, a salvation
that can never be annulled, a forgiveness that will never be rescinded,
a deliverance that will never be thwarted, and an assurance
that will never be disappointed. We have a nature that can never
be changed, an access that'll never be discontinued, an attraction
that'll never be superseded, living for heaven, a comfort
that'll never be lessened, a service that'll never be unrewarded,
an intercessor that can never be disqualified in Christ. I
have a victor who can never be vanquished. I have a resurrection
that'll never be hindered, a hope that'll never be disappointed,
and a glory that'll never be dimmed. Oh man, listen, all of
that in heaven too. No wonder the psalmist said,
Bless me the Lord who daily loatheth us with his benefits, even the
God of our salvation. Can I give you this one last
thing and we're going to be done? Look down at verse 6 again. They're
undeserved. I don't deserve any of this.
Do you? to the praise of the glory of His grace." It's for
His glory, isn't it? And His grace. Did you notice
that grace is going to be found 12 times in the book of Ephesians?
His undeserved love. The love that God has lavished
on undeserving sinners like you and me. We don't deserve any
of it. Do you realize not one of us deserves one of God's blessing,
much less the whole treasure chest? Yet God says, I've given
it all to you in My Son. Oh, we're rich in grace, aren't
we? Rich in grace. There's an old prospector. Gold
prospector, an old 49er. They found his skeleton where
he died out in the Yukon wilderness. Not too far away, they found
his old mule. Evidently, he had tied his mule, and he was sick,
and he died, and the mule stayed there tied up into that bush
until it died. There in the bones of that old
mule when they found the remains was the prospector's saddlebags
full of ore. I mean, they were just bulging.
Well, they dug into those saddlebags and opened them up and found
a note there. And that little miner had scribbled a note before
he died. He said, I died rich! Ha ha!
I died rich! And then they emptied the saddlebags
and come out on the ground. And here's what they found. That
old 49er, that old miner, what he'd been packing around wasn't
true gold at all. It was pyrite. It was fool's gold. You know,
you think about it. There he was out in the wilderness,
living hard with that old mule. Maybe died in agony and pain.
And all the time he was just carrying around saddlebags full
of worthless dirt. Thought he was rich, but he was
really poor. He didn't have anything. Thought
he had everything, but he didn't have anything. You know, that's the
problem with today. People are living and scraping
and scratching and clawing for everything they can get out of
this. If I can just get a nugget of gold, if I can just get...
To come to the end of life and found out it's just pyrite, it's
fool's gold. It's not true riches at all.
Young person, you can chase the wind, but you'll never catch
it. You can try to dig out and scratch out every nugget of gold
this world has to offer, only to find when you come to the
end of life, all you have is fool's gold. And it'll leave
you right where you started, empty and broken. But friend, I'm glad that in
Christ, I have it all. I have true riches that'll last
forever. I have the significance, I have meaning, I have purpose,
I have everything. Oh, I have a reason to live,
a purpose to live. Dear child of God, listen, if
you chase the world, what I'm saying to you means absolutely
nothing right now. Not a thing. Because you're living
in an illusion. And there are going to be people
who walk right out those doors and you're going to start chasing
the same fool's gold you've been chasing. Until one day you wake
up and realize what you have in Jesus Christ and start living
your life for Him. And start living life on a different
plane for a different purpose. And you start unpacking the treasure
chest of God's blessings and living it out in your everyday
life. And you'll find out what true life and true living really
is. And friend, here's the thing though. You can never have the
treasure chest until first of all, you have the Savior. You
have to have the one who owns the treasure chest. And God wants
to bring you in a right relationship with Him. Say, if He wants you
to know His Son, He wants your sins to be gone and He wants
you to have the joy of heaven, but He's got more than just that
for you. But you'll never have any of it and you'll just chase
the wind till you come to life empty and broken and spend eternity
apart from God in hell. And that's not God's choice for
you. You'll have to choose which one
you're going to live for. Are you going to live for the
fool's gold or are you going to live for the true gold? You'll
have to make the choice. Let's bow our heads in prayer.
I Am So Blessed - Part 2
Series Ephesians Our Riches In Christ
| Sermon ID | 213221356131122 |
| Duration | 36:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 1:3-6 |
| Language | English |
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