Let's turn to Paul's epistle to the church at Ephesus to Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1 and I'm going to be reading the first six verses from Ephesians 1. Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 through 6. Let me invite you to stand as you are able in reverence for the word that is to be read and received. Ephesians 1, the apostle Paul writes, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath 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, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. May God bless again today the reading and the hearing of His Word, and let us join together again in prayer. Gracious and loving God, as we stand once again before the open Bible and the pages of sacred scripture and the hearing of it read, we ask for the illumination of the Holy Spirit. We know that in the days of creation that thy spirit hovered over the face of the deep, and it was void, it was dark, and yet you brought about light. You said, let there be light. And so, oh God, open our eyes Unstop our ears, loosen our hearts and minds, and let us receive thy word as thy truth. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. It felt really strange to say, turn to Ephesians after so many weeks, so many Lord's days of saying, let's turn to the book of Genesis. And indeed, we're marking a transition today in our Lord's Day morning expositions. We've been in a long series through Genesis. We've sort of broken that into three parts. Remember, we looked at Genesis 1 through 11, and then we took a break, and we went to the Johannine epistles for a while, preached through them. And then we came back to Genesis, went to Genesis 12, till last Sunday, we made it to chapter 36. And in that series, we were looking at the patriarchs, right? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And we came to sort of a resting point there last Lord's Day at Genesis 36. Eventually, we'll come back. We'll pick it up in Chapter 37 through Genesis 50, where the main focus is on Joseph. And that'll take us through the end. Of course, Joseph is important because he, through him, The Israelites go into Egypt, and that sets the stage for the book of Exodus. But we thought it would be a good time to take a little break and return to the New Testament. And we're going to begin a new series today, a series that's going to go through what are sometimes called the prison epistles of the apostle Paul. And since this is a introductory message to this series and particularly this part of the series, which is going to be through the book of Ephesians, there's necessarily going to be some teaching aspects to this sermon as we introduce the book of Ephesians and these prison epistles. It has been said that the church was stronger when its ministers spent more time in prison than they did in television studios, or today we might say, than in podcast recording studios. And so we are looking at letters of the Apostle Paul that he penned under the guidance of the Spirit while he was imprisoned for preaching the gospel. Somewhere on my bookshelf at home, I have a copy of the book, Fragments from Khamun Ting, written by my friend Pobun Singh, long-time pastor in Malaysia, pioneer, reformed Baptist church planter in Malaysia. He went to university in England as a young man who was studying electrical engineering. and went into a church, was invited to go to a church by a fellow Christian fellow in his dorm. And he was converted and his whole life changed. And rather than becoming what he probably would have been, a professor of engineering, he went back to his homeland that is predominantly Muslim. And he planted some of the first Confessional Reformed Baptist Churches in that country. And as part of his ministry there in the late 1980s, he was arrested. There was a crackdown on basic political unrest in the country. And he was accused of breaking the law by evangelizing people who were Malays, who are Muslims. And so he went to prison. for 325 days, late 1987 through 1988. And while he was in prison, he wrote down just some of his various thoughts. And it's an interesting book, intriguing book, called Fragments from Khamunting. And some of you remember, because Pastor Poise visited us here and preached here. And we've met him in person. And in fact, again, this was a more recent work. But we think back in the past. Some of you I know are fans of John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress, that great spiritual classic. Bunyan, as you may know, was a shoemaker. And he was converted and then became a gospel preacher. And because there wasn't freedom given by the government for men who weren't licensed to preach by the Church of England, he ended up going to prison for preaching the gospel. And he was there for 12 years, from 1660 to 1672. And while he was imprisoned, he would make shoelaces to give to his family to sell to try to support them. He had a blind daughter. But those Puritans, they were just lazy. a bunch of lazy bones, while he was doing all of that, he wrote the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress. This man who had very little formal education, certainly no university education, wrote a book that is one of the classics of the English language. Even people who aren't Christians read it and marvel at it. How much more, those of us who are believers. But it was written, the first part of it, the part that people are most familiar with, was written while he was imprisoned for the gospel. Well, the roots of this tradition are, of course, much earlier than Pastor Poe or John Bunyan. The roots of this great tradition of Christian writers writing for the glory of God in prison, we can trace it back to the Apostle Paul. And there are, in fact, four epistles in the New Testament that are typically referred to as his prison epistles. They are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. And we're going to be looking in this series just at the first three that are epistles written to churches, whereas Philemon is a personal letter. We've actually treated that passage, that book, in the past. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul gives a list of his many sufferings for the gospel. And when he goes through that list of all the things he had suffered, shipwrecks and times when he had been beaten with rods and so forth, one of the things he mentions in 2 Corinthians 11.23 is that he had been in prisons more frequent. The Apostle Paul spent a large part of his adult life as an apostle. not necessarily as he was sometimes out in the streets and synagogues preaching and teaching, but many times imprisoned. His ministry was not fettered by that. He just kept going. And in the book of Acts, we have, for example, two descriptions of extended imprisonments that Paul underwent. He was arrested in Jerusalem at the end of what we sometimes call his third missionary journey. And he was tried before the Sanhedrin. His life was threatened. There were a group of people who had said, we're going to fast until we can kill him. And his nephew found out about this and warned the authorities. And he was then taken off in the middle of the night and taken to a place called Caesarea. And we learn in Acts chapter 24 and 27, he was there for two years. And then finally, he appealed to Caesar to have his case heard by the emperor. And as a Roman citizen, he could do that. And then he was carried to Rome. And so he journeyed there. You may know the ship he was traveling on crashed. And he came ashore, was bitten by a snake, and shook that off into the fire. You could not stop the Apostle Paul. in his determination to make Christ known. And even when he was imprisoned, the book of Acts ends. If you ever look at Acts chapter 28, the last chapter of Acts, and look at the last two verses, it says this, and Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house. That's what you had to do when you were in prison in those days. these public facilities. You would sometimes have to pay for your own place under house arrest. And it says, he received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. It's a weird thing to say about someone who's in prison. no man forbidding him to preach Christ. There's a good possibility that Paul wrote these prison epistles while he was undergoing this basically four-year period, the two years in Caesarea, the two years in Rome. And so good chance that during that period of time is when he wrote these epistles. Again, imagine his resourcefulness and his unflappable attitude. We'll see in the book of Ephesians, eventually in Ephesians 5, 16, that Paul will exhort believers, telling them that they should be redeeming the time because the days are evil. And he practiced what he preached. He's in prison, but he redeems the time. I can use this time to write. I can use this time to serve the Lord. I remember a pastor telling, as an illustration, once in a sermon about one of his elderly members in his church, who had been a faithful member of the church. And then his health had failed, and he was in the nursing home. And he said, you know, pastor, I can pray for the church in the nursing home. I can read my Bible. I can pray for you as my pastor. And I won't be fettered by my circumstances, redeeming the time for the days are evil. We can think of that in any of our circumstances. You might be a homeschooling mom. What do I have time to do? Well, you have time to serve the Lord, raise children in the nurture and admonition of Him. But I'm dealing with this health problem. I'm dealing with this problem at work or in my personal life or whatever. Paul was in prison. And he was writing encouraging letters to churches and individuals. Someone could have a, well, in this day, snail mail would be surprising if someone got a letter. But you could have a ministry of texting, ministry of emailing, using social media, redeeming it. positively to send encouraging notes. Well, Paul, that's what he was doing while he was in prison. Again, I said these were the prison epistles, and in part we call them this because there are evidences within these writings where Paul makes reference to the fact that he was in prison. In Ephesians, we'll see later, in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 20, Paul will say, I am an ambassador in bonds, or chains, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. He said, I'm an ambassador in chains. I am a diplomat for the Lord. I'm a representative of the Lord, even while I'm in chains. In Philippians, there are a number of references to him being imprisoned. But in Philippians 1.13, one of those, Paul will write, My bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace. This leads us to think that Philippians was written from Rome. He had some contact with people in the Roman imperial palace. And he said, my chains, my bonds, are manifest or known even among some of the Roman elite. In Colossians 4, verse 3, Paul says, it is upon the charge of speaking the mystery of Christ that I am also in bonds. And at the end of that letter, the very last verse, Colossians 4, verse 18, he gives us a prayer request to the church at Colossae. And he says, remember my bonds. Remember my chains. Pray for me while I am in prison. It has long been said that one of the greatest proofs of the truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of the gospel itself can be found in the way in which the earliest followers of the Lord Jesus were willing to go to prison and even to lay down their lives for his cause. Why would they do such if they had not seen the risen Lord? Well, again, today we begin this exposition of the first three of these prison epistles, the churchly ones, we might call them. And we begin by looking to Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. This letter is filled with some of the most profound and the most practical teaching in all the holy scriptures. There is doctrinal teaching. There is pastoral teaching within this. A book, sometimes people dismiss some of the pastoral aspects of it. It's not just a theological writing, it's a pastoral writing, a practical writing for God's people. The great Welsh preacher, David Martin Lloyd-Jones, who preached through this book over the course of some eight years from his pulpit in London from the Westminster Chapel or church there from 1954 to 1962 published those sermons. They're still in print, eight volumes. You can get them from Banner of Truth. And in the introductory volume, he said, the epistle to the Ephesians is the most mystical of Paul's epistles. And nowhere does his inspired mind soar to greater heights. Mystical, spiritual, Paul's mind guided by the spirit soaring to great heights. Let me sample. I know we're going to get to our passage, but let's sample to whet our appetite a bit some of what is to come. Well, within this little book of Ephesians, we have that passage that Christians, particularly we who are Reformed and ones that we memorize, it's well-worn. Our Bibles almost fall. We open them up and they just fall to Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. This magna carta of the sovereignty of God and salvation, The amazing doctrines of grace unfold from Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And also, verse 10, we mustn't forget that. The place of good works in the Christian life, not the root of our faith, but the fruit of it. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Later on, we'll get to Ephesians chapter five that lays out the household code. We actually read part of it in Colossians, didn't we also this morning from our passage of Colossians three and on into that first verse of chapter four. But we'll have this wonderful extended teaching, very practical, again, very pastoral. If you're married or aspire to be married, Ephesians 5, verse 22, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. And likewise, verse 25, husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Speaking of practical, experiential teaching. Ephesians is also a place we find in Ephesians 6, where Paul takes up a great metaphor, a great figure to describe the militancy that we are to have in the Christian life, as he exhorts Christians to, in Ephesians 6.11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand able to stand rather against the wiles of the devil. And he goes through and breaks through it. It takes a very common scene. They would have seen Roman soldiers carrying all the panoply of their weapons. And he says, well, being a Christian is like putting on the helmet of salvation. It's like lifting up the shield of faith. It's taking the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So this little book, has wonderful doctoral teaching, wonderful pastoral teaching. There's some of the most foundational teaching in the whole New Testament, in the whole Bible, in Ephesians. And guess what? We get to study it together in the coming weeks and months. Won't that be a blessing that the Lord is pleased to help us go through this passage together. And today we're going to start with chapter 1, verses 1 through 6. And this opening, as is common in books or letters, it provides for us something like an introduction to this letter as a whole. It gives us the basic practical information or orientation that we need to know. It tells us who is writing this letter. It tells us to whom this letter is being sent. It tells us in, again, the very beginning, what is going to be the heart of the Apostle Paul in writing this. What does he want to address? It gives us some orientation. From the very beginning, alongside those practical matters of describing, defining the writer and the recipients, it is teaching us the foundational, mystical, Lloyd-Jones might say, doctrinal truths about what God has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is teaching us that as believers, we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that a sovereign God has predestinated us that a sovereign God has given to us spiritual adoption. He has made us to be his sons, to be co-heirs with Christ. And so again, very important foundational things that we have to understand as Christians. As we turn to our passage now, we can divide it into two parts. First of all, in verses 1 through 3, I'd suggest there is found there some of the practical orientation to this book as a Christian letter. And then secondly, verses 4 through 6, there is a doctrinal orientation for understanding the salvation of believers. A practical orientation, verses 1 through 3, fitting of a letter. and then a doctrinal orientation, verses 4 through 6. So let's look at these two parts, if we can, together. We start with verses 1 through 3, the practical orientation. Early Christians communicated to each other by letters. We look at our New Testament, the 27 books in the New Testament. We've got the 13 letters of Paul. We've got the seven so-called general epistles. There are lots of letters in the New Testament. and the early Christians communicated by letters. We're now living in this age, aren't we, in a digital revolution. But in the first century, they were living in the, we could call it the letter writing revolution. God sovereignly used the means of apostolic letters to give guidance and instructions to Christians who lived all over the Roman world, places where the gospel was coming, and people were becoming Christians, and churches were being formed. And God used these apostolic letters. And the amazing thing is he not only used them in the first century to address issues in these churches, but by the work of the Spirit. These letters, talk about having long-standing usefulness over centuries now. Christians have read these same letters, and we have profited. from the content that is here. In recent weeks, I led a couple of Zoom meetings with some Christians in Nairobi, Kenya. I was asked by the Tranterra Bible Society to do some teaching for a group of pastors who meet once a month. And I met with them on the last Friday of January, I guess it was, and the last Friday of February. And I was marveling at this thing. Here we are. Here I am sitting in Virginia in the morning, and they're gathering at 730 in the evening in Kenya. And we just spent an hour together doing a little bit of teaching and then having some Q&A. And it's an amazing thing. You've all experienced that probably through having a Zoom discussion or using some sort of online platform. As I was thinking about that, I thought letters were the zoom of the first century. Paul, the Apostle Paul, was in prison, perhaps in Rome. But he could be present to people who were hundreds, even thousands of miles away. And he could speak to them with authority. He could speak to their needs. And he could be guided, in his case as an apostle, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And again, the other amazing part of that, it's still being used today. The Lord doesn't waste anything, right? He's still using it today. There are some basic elements in this introduction of what would have been common for people to have found in an ancient letter. We start a letter today, we say, dear recipient. But in ancient letters, they started by identifying the sender. And so we're going to see there's going to be an identification in verse one of the sender, Paul. There's going to be identification of the recipients, which is going to be those who are the saints at Ephesus, the Christians at Ephesus, the church at Ephesus. There is going to be a greeting in verse 2. There's going to be a thanksgiving in verse 3. So there are elements of a letter that are put in here that would have been sort of the normal things that secular people would have written in a letter, although Paul infuses it with a spirit of Christ, even in mundane things like greetings and blessings or thanksgivings that the pagans even would put in their letters. And so he sets up this practical orientation for us. So let's walk through this. Who is the sender? Look at verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. The sender is the apostle Paul. Last Sunday, we were in Genesis 35. We read through the account of Rachel, Jacob's wife, Rachel, giving birth to Benjamin. And sadly, she died while she was giving birth to Benjamin. And I made the comment last week. After Jacob had been at Bethel, he comes down from Bethel, and he has met with God, and his wife dies giving birth to his son. awful, he must have thought. Then just after that, his son Reuben sort of rebels against him. After that, his father Isaac dies. But I noted Rachel gives birth to Benjamin. From Benjamin will come King Saul, the first king of Israel. And then a couple hundred years later, there will be this man born in Tarsus of Cilicia, who comes from a pious Jewish family, circumcised on the eighth day, and his parents name him after the most famous person from his tribe. Let's call him Saul. And he'll also be called Paul. From the death rose of Rachel came Benjamin. From Benjamin came one of the greatest preachers of the gospel. God works all things together for good. And so here's this man, Saul, who is also called Paul. And some of you know his story. It's recorded in Acts, in Acts 9. He was a persecutor of the church. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians. And the risen Lord met with him and said, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Why do you kick against the goads? And he was miraculously converted and he became one of the greatest early preachers of the gospel. His calling was to the Gentiles. He called himself in Romans 11, the apostle to the Gentiles. He wrote, as I already noted, 13 letters in the New Testament that bear his name. And many believe that the book of Hebrews was a sermon or a doctrinal tract that he wrote as well. So perhaps 14 of the 27 letters in the New Testament, works in the New Testament written by Paul. He describes himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. An apostle means one who was sent out. There were 12 original apostles that the Lord chose. Paul was not among them. He was not a follower of Christ before the cross and resurrection. When Judas Iscariot betrayed our Lord and died, In Acts 1, Luke tells us that the apostles cast lots and the lot fell upon a man named Matthias who was added to the 12. But then Paul seems to have been sovereignly added to the number of the apostles by the risen Lord himself. And he becomes something like a 13th apostle. This is the way Paul himself described it. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 8 and following, he said, and last of all, he, meaning Christ, was seen of me also as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, the lesser, but also perhaps the last. I am the least of the apostles, and not meet or fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But he said, by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain. And that's really the testimony of every Christian, isn't it? By the grace of God, I am what I am. I am not what I should be. I am not what I one day will be. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. a person who has been saved by the Lord. Notice, by the way, in verse 1, he says Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, by the will of God. In Galatians 1-2, he says that he received the gospel that he preached not by men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. He had been placed into his office by Christ himself. In the second half of verse 1, we have the recipients. Paul is writing to the saints which are at Ephesus. The word saints here does not mean super-Christians, but it means holy ones, the hagioi, the holy ones, the saints, those who have been set apart for salvation and sanctification by God himself. Saints is a synonym for Christians, disciples, believers, to the saints which are at Ephesus. This letter, by the way, was probably delivered by, Paul gave it to a man named Tychicus, probably who was visiting him in the prison where he was. And if you look at chapter 6, verse 21 of Ephesians, it says, but that ye also may know my affairs and how I do. Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things. So Tychicus brings the letter. to the saints there at Ephesus. Ephesus was a city in what the ancients called Asia Minor. It's in modern-day Turkey, by the way, where there are now very few Christians because of the political circumstances, now an Islamic nation. A couple of years ago, I met a Presbyterian pastor, of all things, in Turkey. There are very few Christian pastors in Turkey. And he is actually working on a translation of the Bible from the traditional text into the Turkish language. And he lives not far from the ruins of ancient Ephesus. He actually lives in a city that's the site of ancient Smyrna. And he was talking about how few Christians there are, few believers there are in Turkey, and some of the risks, dangers to them, the missionaries who served there. But at this time, There was a wildfire growth of Christianity. And we have, and maybe you would be interested sometime, maybe this afternoon, you look for some devotional reading, read Acts chapter 19. It tells you how the church at Ephesus began. It started when Paul went there. He discovered there were about 12 people who were disciples of John the Baptist. And he said, do you know about Christ? Do you know about the baptism of Christ? Not just a baptism of repentance, but a baptism of faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And he explained to them the gospel. They were converted. And so there was a nucleus there. And then it tells us that he went into the synagogue, which he often did. And he talked to his fellow Jews about Christ. He got kicked out of there, as often happened. And he went to a place that is described by Luke in Acts 19 verse 9 as the school of one Tyrannus. He went into a school and taught those who came. And it says he stayed there for two years teaching in that school. And many people were converted, Jews and Gentiles, Jews and non-Jews. There's one striking thing there. I think I noted this last week when we were talking about Jacob saying, put away your strange gods. When the gospel came to Ephesus, Luke tells us in Acts 19 verses 17 through 20 about how many of the people had been involved in the occult and magical arts. And they had, or it's called in the authorized version, curious arts. And when they became Christians, they said, we don't want to be involved with this anymore. So they brought in all their magical books, and they burned them. And the value of it. Luke says, was about 50,000 pieces of silver. And of course, when God is at work, the devil always shows up too to try to cause trouble. And he raised up a man named Demetrius. In Ephesus, there was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the temple to Artemis. And Demetrius said, all these people are becoming Christians. They're not buying my little I don't know, silver back scratchers. I've been to the temple of Diana or whatever, Artemis. And he, there ends up being a near riot and Paul wanted to go and they held him back and said, no, Paul, we've got to keep you alive. And they sent him, they sent him away. And then in Acts 20, you can read about, he went to a place called Miletus and he called for the elders of the church at Ephesus to come and meet with them. So he's still giving them instruction. But he was the father. He was the founder of this church. And so here he is still writing letters to them to attempt to instruct them and help them. He calls them the saints. And there's a nice sort of Hebrew parallel. The saints, Richard Epstein, are also the faithful in Christ Jesus. And then in verse two, there's what is called the greeting. In pagan letters, they would say greeting, and they would use the Greek word karein. Paul and the other Christians said, we'll use the word kareis. It means grace. That's the way we'll greet one another. Grace be to you and peace, the peace of God that comes through faith in Christ. And notice here, he mentions God, our Father. and the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't really understand that unless you understand the Trinity, the God the Father, the person of God the Father, and the person of Jesus Christ, the Son, who is Lord. They are equal in essence, equal in power and glory. And then there is, in verse 3, in ancient letters, they would have a thanksgiving or a blessing. The pagans would say, blessed be Poseidon or blessed be Zeus. But Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. There's been a lot of thought given to that verse as to what Paul meant by that. Somehow he's saying that if you're a Christian, you may be walking around here on earth, but spiritually speaking, you have been translated into the heavenlies. And you are so joined to Christ, it's as though you are with him as he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in glory. You're there with him. I ran across this past week quotation from one of the English reformers, Thomas Cranmer. And he was debating with the Romanists about the Lord's Supper and against transubstantiation. He was saying, they say that they want to bring the body of Christ down into the elements of the meal. But we believe the Bible says, That not that Christ's body is brought down to us in the meal, but we are lifted up into the heavenlies, spiritually speaking, in Christ. And so I think this is essentially what Paul is saying as well. So that gives us the orientation for this as a letter. Gives us the practical orientation with some theological insights. Let's turn now and look at the last three verses, which provide a doctrinal orientation for understanding the salvation of believers. And there are three great doctrinal truths that are presented in this passage. They are election, which means the divine choosing of the Lord of those who would be saved. Secondly, the doctrine of predestination or foreordination, God's decree of those who would be saved. And then also the doctrine, thirdly, spiritual adoption. Three great doctrines, weighty doctrines in just a handful of verses, election, predestination and Adoption, how in the world are we going to deal with all that in just a few minutes, huh? Well, thankfully, there's going to be a lot more said about it later within the letter, and it's introducing these thoughts to us, but let's see if we can look at them a bit. First of all, we start off with Paul talking about election, right? He's talking about believers having been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Christ is the antecedent now. According as He, referring to Christ, or God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, have chosen us in Him, there the antecedent mean Christ, before the foundation of the world. According as He, God the Father, have chosen us in Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, before the foundation of the world. Again, this is the doctrine of election, of divine choosing. This is the great reality that the mature Christian discovers. It is not I that chose Christ, but God chose me. God chose me. to know Christ. In 1st John 4.19, the Apostle John says, we love him because he first loved us. When did this divine choosing, this election take place? It took place, according to Paul, in prehistory, in eternity past, before the foundation of the world, before Genesis 1.1. according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. And we are chosen to what end? It says in verse four that we should be holy without blame before him in love, that we should be holy, that we would be saints, that we would be like the saints in Ephesus. Of course, he's addressing them. that we would be without blame before Christ. We would share in the blameless life of Christ because our lives are hid in His. We saw that this morning in Colossians 3. And this would all come about in love, by means of God's love for us, as it is stated In that classic verse, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. That we should be holy and without blame before him in love by means of his love for us. That's the first great doctrine, election. The second laid out in verse 5, beginning in verse 5 is predestination. Having predestinated us. having predestinated us. The verb here in Greek is proorizo. The prefix pro- means before. The verb orizo means to ordain, to determine, to decree. The same term proorizo, or to predestinate, is used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 verses 29 and 30 in a passage we sometimes refer to as the golden chain of redemption. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified." There's a little outline of the plan of salvation. God foreknows. in eternity past. He predestinates in eternity past. Then in real time, he calls men by the preaching of the gospel. There's a call going out. When the Bible is open, Christ is spoken of, a call is going out. And then, when by grace through faith men come to believe, they are justified. And then the third and final part of this is in the future. They will be glorified at their deaths and at the coming of Christ. Those whom he foreknew, he predestinated. Those whom he predestinated, he called. Those whom he called, he justified. Those whom he justified, he glorified. That's the golden chain of redemption. If someone were to ask you, hey, I hear you're going to that Reformed Baptist church. Do you believe in predestination? You want to put it in a brown paper bag and just talk about it very carefully. Do you believe in predestination? Well, friends, what can be the only response of a Bible-believing Christian? Do you believe in predestination? Yes, it's taught in the Bible. I believe the Bible. It's there in Ephesians 1.5. It's there in Romans 8, 29 and 30. Of course I believe in it. It's what the Bible teaches. But friends, of course, we must be sure that these great doctrines revealed to us here and elsewhere in the scriptures are to be held with appropriate humility. I love this in our Confession of Faith, the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith as a chapter. called Of the Decrees of God. And the seventh paragraph within that chapter begins, the doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care. See, because the point is, we believe in predestination. We believe God knows the elect because he has chosen them. But guess what? We're not God. So what do we do? We promiscuously talk about Christ and those whom he has, we do so with confidence. That's why all the great early missionaries were people who believed in the sovereignty of God and salvation. That's the only way they could go out as Adoniram Judson did to Burma and preach year after year and have no responses because he knew that God had chosen some for salvation, and eventually some would come to here, and they did. And they did. Anyway, we hold it with humility. The third great doctrine that's spoken of here is in verse 5. As well, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself. This is the doctrine of spiritual adoption. We are made sons of God, not through any merit in us, but only through Christ. This doctrine is spoken of, especially in Romans 8, which says in verse 15, for ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And then he adds in verse 17, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, this is Romans 8, 17, we have been made joint heirs with Christ. Paul adds that this has come about in verse 5, according to the good pleasure of his will, according to the good pleasure of God's will. Sometimes people like to talk about the free will of man defending the free will of man. We believe in the free will of man. We have a whole chapter on it in our confession of faith. We just believe like Martin Luther did. That man's will, apart from Christ, is in bondage. And our wills must be renewed by the Holy Spirit. And what should be our focus is not the will of man, but whose will? God's will. The will of God is free. And how has he gone about choosing and predestinating and adopting children to himself? He's done this according to the good pleasure of his will, of God's will. And then finally, To what end has this been done for us in Christ? We see this in verse six. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Why has God done this? So that he would be praised. To the praise of the glory of his grace. Not to the praise of anything we have done, not to the praise of man. but to the praise of the glory of his grace." And notice the language here. It doesn't say, to the praise of his glory, of his grace, because we accepted Christ. No, because he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Shifts the whole emphasis, doesn't it? From the work of man to the work of God. We have been made to be accepted in the beloved. Who is the beloved? The beloved is Christ. The object of a holy and perfect God's love must be holy and perfect. Whom does God the Father love? He loves Christ, the Son, because the Son is perfect and worthy of His love. We are beloved of God when we are in Christ, who is rightly beloved of the Father. The slogan for Christians based on the Bible should not be, Blank God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life But God loves Christ and he loves you if you are in Christ Be joined to him and experience the love of the Father So friends Today we began this little exposition of Ephesians and And we can ask ourselves today, can we not? We are meant to ponder. This is a letter written to Christians. This is not a universal missive written to occupant of the universe. This is written to believers. And the question you might ask is, am I a rightful recipient of this letter? Am I among the saints? Am I among those who are faithful in Christ Jesus? Have I been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ? If this is so, do you grasp that God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world, and that He foreordained that you would be made a son of God and a co-heir with Christ only by the good pleasure of His will? And this would be to the praise of the glory of his grace. If you answer yes to all that, what can you do but worship him and praise him and serve him and give glory to him for all your days? I've heard people talk about making trips to the Grand Canyon. My family went there a few years ago. We didn't arrive at night, but I've heard people say, the best thing to do is get there at night. Get there at night and camp close to the rim. And then get up in the morning and let the first thing that you see be the awe of the sun breaking over that vast wonder. And you will have a feeling of awe. Starting the book of Ephesians should be like, spiritually speaking, waking up from the dark to see and experience something that is bigger and grander than we might ever have imagined. God chose us in Christ before the world was made. He decreed our salvation before we were formed in the womb. And he has, by grace in real time, made us accepted in the beloved. Awesome. A wonder. Let us praise and worship him. Amen. Let me invite you to stand together. Let's do it in prayer. Gracious and loving God, we give thee thanks for thy servants who have been willing to go to prison. Pastor Poe, John Bunyan, most importantly, men like the Apostle Paul. And we give thee thanks for this heritage of the faith and for the living word that we can be addressed just as those saints at Ephesus were. Help us as we take up this task over coming weeks, if it be thy will, and walk through this part of thy scriptures, and use it to draw those who are outside the circle of the faith to thyself, and to edify and to strengthen those who are believers, and help us to become more sure and steady and faithful and appreciative in the faith. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.