I've enjoyed the service so far. It's been a blessing to just enjoy the presence of the Lord, the intimacy that we have with Him. I appreciate Brother Derek and Sister Tiffany's hospitality. And one of my goals, I've met a few goals today already. We went and ate some Mexican prior to service, and one of my goals was not to spill any salsa on my shirt. And I succeeded. I got here on time. That's success number two. And Sister Betty told me this afternoon, you sure do not talk like a Tennessean. And so I was hoping I would fit in while I was up here and so it's been a successful day and I'm trusting the Lord to continue to make it a success. I want to share with you tonight one of the most important sentences that I've ever read in my entire life. It's radically changed how I see myself. how I see what God has done. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? How do you identify yourself? What are some of the first things that come to your mind? When I was in my early twenties and somebody were to ask me, who are you? I'm a basketball player. Maybe my late teens. Who are you? I'm a basketball player. I'm a baseball player. I'm so-and-so's son. I'm from this area. Those things identified me. But you know what? When I broke my wrist playing baseball, you know what happened? When I looked in the mirror and I saw myself, you're a baseball player, and you can't play baseball anymore, where do I find my purpose and meaning in life? There's got to be something greater, something more. When I got into my early 20s and I graduated college, I became a basketball player in college. I got a job and started a career and I started making money. And I looked in the mirror This is prior to being saved. I can look in the mirror and I can say that I'm the sum of my accomplishments. That's who I am. That's who I am. That's who I'm going to be. And I'm going to keep building on that because I want to build and create my own identity. But that is so wrong. And how we should answer that question. How do we see ourselves? Last night we saw the Apostle Paul going into the city of Ephesus. He began to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of God was being revealed. People were being saved. People in that city who had no hope whatsoever. They were without God. They were separated from God. They were serving some type of spirituality through those magical books that they had, and they heard about the glory of God, and they saw it shining in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they turned from their idols, and they turned to Christ. They got out of the crowd. You see, in the city of Ephesus, in Acts chapter 19, it tells us that that city was a very prominent city. The scholars would tell us there were about 250,000 people that lived in that town. It was a city of civics. It was a city of commercialism. There was a lot going on. It was a political town. It was a lot of things going on in that city. one of the things that was really going on for that city, it hosted one of the seven wonders of the world, and that was the temple to the goddess Diana, or Artemis. And in that temple, they were so known and identified as a people that they began to shout. They said, this man, Paul, is coming up, and he's stirring people up about the way, the Christian way, that you need to turn from your idols. In particular, Demetrius was one of them. He's saying that I'm here making these widgets and I'm selling them, and if people turn and listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say, then we're going to lose our business, we're going to lose our economy. But Paul said, hey, those things that you're building and you're worshiping and idolizing are worthless. And people were turning away from that in a town where for two solid hours in that city, as they were stirred up, they cried out, Great is the goddess Diana over and over and over and over. It says for two whole hours. And one of the town clerks came and said, why are y'all making such a big deal? There's no one that's going to be able to change. Everybody knows in the whole world, all of Asia and everybody else knows they're all worshipers of the goddess Diana. And nothing's going to change that. That's what one of the town clerks had said during that statement. You read it there in Acts chapter 19. So what I want you to see was that idolatry was so rooted into the fabric of their culture that they did not believe that people could be identified outside of that type of idolatry. And so Paul, 10 years later, sitting in a prison cell, writes a letter back to them. And He says, this is who you are. I want to begin reading if you want to follow along in Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. The sermon can begin. I want to read down to verse 14. I began to think and meditate as I was praying about what should I share with the church. And the Lord just reminded me of the city of Ephesus. And if Paul had anything that he wanted to share with a church, he composed it here in this letter. He said, this is who I want you to know. This is who you are. And I want to unravel one of the greatest sentences in all the world. Because from verse 3 down to verse 14 is one sentence in the original language. The Apostle Paul is bursting forth in praise to the glory of God and His glorious salvation. And that's going to be the title of this message tonight. The glory of God and His glorious salvation. Let's begin reading. 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 has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. 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, 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. in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He has purposed, in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him, who works all things after the counsel of His own will." that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ, in whom you also trusted, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after that you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory. What an amazing statement the Apostle Paul makes. What I want us to see in this passage tonight, a few things I want to point out. Number one, I want us to see that believers are in union with Jesus Christ. If you have been saved by God's grace that has been wrought by the Holy Spirit in your soul, He has reconciled you and He has brought you into union with God and with Christ and with the Holy Spirit and with every other believer in the world today because you have the same Spirit inside of you as every other believer in the world. He has done something spectacular. He has brought us to a place of spiritual intimacy. If we look at the opposite side of that tonight, if you are unsaved, if you have not been born again by God's Holy Spirit, you are separated from the greatest relationship that you could ever have in your life. We just sang the song, it is well with my soul. My sin not in part, but the whole has been nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. He has given me a glorious salvation that nothing can ever separate me again from the love of God because Jesus nailed my sin to the cross. Believers are in union with Jesus Christ. Secondly, I want you to see this very important thing. The Apostle Paul wanted to root these new believers. Perhaps some of them were new believers. They were less than 10 years old in the faith. He wanted to root them in their new identity or their new position in Christ so that when they went to look in the mirror, instead of looking in their past and seeing themselves as guilty and as idolaters and as people who were dirty and shameful and nasty and filthy because of their sin or their past, that they had a brand new position in the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I, believers, have a new identity in Jesus. Yes, every one of us in this room, no matter how pretty you've painted yourself up, no matter how nice we have dressed in here, every single one of us in this church has a past. And if we allowed everybody to shine the light on our past, the dark things that we have done and said, every one of us would want to hide under these pews. But tonight, if you've been saved, we have been clothed in the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. And there is no more guilt. There is no more condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. God has done a marvelous work in this great salvation. And I want to close tonight with this thought. Believers are waiting for Christ. As he closed this in verse 14, and we'll walk through this in just a minute, as he began to close this, he began to tell us, and I don't want to jump too far ahead, but he said that the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. When you go to buy a house, you might buy a large house and you put a little bit of earnest money to show the sincerity of the full purchase, And I'll tell you here that you and I as believers are awaiting the full redemption, the full salvation, the full final package that God is going to deliver to His people. Do you believe that? Do you believe it when Jesus comes and he splits the eastern sky that you've got just a little bit of taste and we go from glory to glory. We get a little taste of heaven here and a little taste of heaven there. But I tell you one of these days we're going to get a big taste of heaven and we're going to be so full of the Holy Spirit and the thing is it's never going to end. That's what He's purchased for us. He's already saved us in our soul, but one of these days He's going to give us a resurrected body so that both in body and in spirit we will be able to stand in the presence of the glory of God and look upon His face and allow Him to wipe every tear from our eye because of the sorrow and the pain and the suffering of this life. We're going to get really close to Him. But we can get really close to Him here, so don't you wait. Some of you are kind of tiptoeing. You've got one foot in the church and you've got one foot in the world. I tell you, you need to quit tiptoeing. You need to get on in the church and the place where the Lord will bless. His blessings are on His church. You can find nowhere else in the world that you can go to get what you need to get from the Lord except in the house of the Lord. And so if you want revival, I'll tell you, get close to Christ and get in the church and get to work. Don't sit back. Don't say, hey, I'm old and I'm about to check out. The older you get, the more you need to be serving. You should be more mature the older you get to say, hey, I've got limited time. I've only got so long to leave a legacy behind. I've got to get busy. And when the Lord decides to call me home, I'll go home, but I'm not going to retire and sit back and lay low on the Lord. I'm going to be about His business. Why would I do such a thing? Because if you hear what the Apostle Paul said right here, God gave His people a gift that is unspeakable. He said it's joy unspeakable and this gift of salvation is so full of glory that you and I will not be able to comprehend it to the fullest degree. We won't even be able to comprehend it in heaven. We'll just keep on saying to the praise of His glory and God will have to give us a new song to sing and we'll just keep on singing that song because it will never wear out. Every gift I've ever been given, I'll tell you, it either rusts, falls apart, it ends up in the dump, it ends up in goodwill. Some of you, if you haven't gotten rid of half your stuff, you might as well go ahead and take it to goodwill and get rid of it because other people are not going to want it. Just clean that house up. But most importantly, I pray that you'll clean up the house of your life and say, Lord, I have got to get the distractions out of my way and get back to business and realize who I am in You. Some of us are too identified by our house and our money and our possessions and our career and the things that we love. And we have forgotten who we are in Jesus. And so Paul here, he says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, he's not coming, he's not saying that this is advice. The Word of God is not coming to offer you advice. The Word of God is coming with a commandment. The Word of God is coming with authority from God Himself. And if you don't like what he says here, then we need to do some business with the Lord. But he said, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God. It was the will of God. Who in here has lived a really bad life? Who in here, you don't have to raise your hand, you don't have to try to embarrass yourself, because some of you say, man, I hid a lot of my stuff, and some of you say, I got called out in public for a lot of my stuff. Every one of us have been right, but I tell you, the Apostle Paul was a persecutor of the church, and it says that God, by His own will, by His delightful desire, He brought him out of being a persecutor and a harasser of the church, and He made him an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. How many of you raised your hand when it came time for Christians to live or die and said, I hate those Christians and I hate Jesus. I tell you, God took that Jesus-hating, church-hating man and He did a spin on him and turned him loose and set his soul on fire. for the glory of God." And he said, by the will of God. I didn't choose this. He chose me and He put me into this ministry. He displayed His patience and I praise God for His goodness that He would save a persecutor like me. That's the Apostle Paul. But look at what he says here. Who is he writing to? To the saints which are at Ephesus. Saints are those that have been called out by God. The word there, saint, means set apart ones. Set apart ones. God has touched you. You sing that old Bill Gaither song? He touched me. He touched me. Oh, He touched me. And all the joy that floods my soul. Something happened, I'll tell you. It did happen. If you've been saved by the grace of God, God touched you that you might be set apart from this world. As Paul went into that city of Ephesus, there were those that were in the crowd singing, Great is the goddess Diana! Great is the goddess Diana! But something came over them. The Holy Spirit of God, through the gospel that was preached by the Apostle Paul, they realized, hey, what we're saying is wrong. What we're believing is wrong. The way we're living is wrong. And God did a work in their hearts. He humbled their hearts. And they began to sing some old early Christian hymns. They begin to say, hey, the way everybody else is living around me is not the right way. And they realize God has touched me and He set them apart. And notice what He said, He said He called them to be faithful, to those that were faithful in Christ. I want to encourage you, every member, I don't know who all's members are not, I want to encourage you. Be faithful to Christ and be faithful to the church. How do we know that you're truly His if you're just in one Sunday and out the other? And I know I guess I can preach this because I'll get to go home to my own church next week, and Brother Derek will have to clean up whatever I made a mess of. But I'll tell you, I want to call you out, and I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you. We only got a short life to live. This life is but a vapor. It's here one day and gone the next. And if you live to be 70, by reason of strength, you might reach 80 years old. I've only got, if I make it to 70, I've only got 36 years left. If I'm making this, actually, less than that, 26 years left. if I make it to 70. You add yours up and think about how I need to get back in line and need to be where I need to be with the Lord. He said, Be faithful in Christ Jesus. He said, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And He said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul here is telling us that we have, by our salvation, by the work that He's done with us, He has brought us in union with Him, so much so that you and I, in our new position in Christ, we are already seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We have been identified Him just as He was buried there in death. You and I have been buried in baptism. We have been raised to walk in the newness of life. And just as Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father and He took a seat, we're seated with Him in that seat tonight. And one of these days we're going to be right there in that house that He's preparing for His people. It's all going to catch up, brothers and sisters. We're going to get there one of these days. And so He wanted to remind us that we have this sweetness of this salvation. We have been brought into union with Christ and nothing can ever separate us from His love. Isn't that amazing? Paul's fired up. He's excited about this glorious salvation. If you knew where Paul was going prior to meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, and you see what he did in his heart there on the road to Damascus, and changed his whole future, his whole life, I'll tell you, he had a moment with the Lord and he realized, oh my goodness, look at what I was living for, but now look at what I have the privilege of living for now. And so his whole life was radically changed. If you have met Jesus and your life has not been changed, if you say you have met Jesus and your life has not been radically changed, then I wonder if you ever met Jesus. I've often said if a GeoMetro, any of you old enough to know what a GeoMetro is? It's kind of like a modern day Prius or a Pinto or something like that, old Pinto. If a Pinto or a Prius ran into a Mack truck, which one of them would be altered? I tell you, if you come into the presence of God, you're going to be altered. You're going to be changed for good. Who in here likes Christmas? I know you kids like Christmas, don't you? I want to ask you, what is it, June? It's June. Where's all your Christmas toys that you got last year? People just throwing their eyebrows out. You probably had a really good Christmas, didn't you? I bet you had a really good Christmas, and we're about six months away from the next Christmas. But I tell you, you got those gifts, and you unwrapped them, and you enjoyed them for a week or two, and now they're stuffed away in some closet, they're lost under your bed, or they've been crushed. or something, or some Lego. One Lego has been lost from a Lego set and it's no good anymore unless you buy that specific piece on Amazon and have it shipped to your door. And more than likely, that's not going to happen. It's going to end up in Goodwill. And so all those gifts that you got, the glory of them, all the anticipation and the desire of having them, it's all faded away. But I'll tell you, the Apostle Paul, he begins to describe this glorious salvation, it is a gift that does not fade away. It just keeps it getting more glorious, and more glorious, and more glorious, and more glorious, the closer I get to the Lord, and the closer I get to home. And so just for a minute, I want to try to unpack this gift that He has given to us. He gives us a few things, and I don't know how long I have to share with you tonight, but I'm going to try to give you a few of them. Look at what He says. Here's this glorious salvation that He has gifted us with. He says in verse 4, backing up to verse 3, He says, Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. If I look in the mirror when I wake up in the morning and the first thing that I say to myself, not all the thoughts that I want to say to myself, but I want to think God's thoughts toward me. And this is what the Apostle Paul wanted these new people in Ephesus who had become believers to think about themselves, that this is who I am today. I know who I used to be. I know what my flesh wants to tell me I am. And I know how the adversary wants to beat me down because he's come to steal, kill and destroy. But when I look in the mirror and I read God's Word and He says, Brother Brian, you're blessed. Why am I blessed? because of God's divine favor on my life. Do I deserve it? Absolutely not. Did I earn it? Absolutely not. I earned something different from that. But because of Jesus, because of what He did on the cross, God blessed me. God blessed me. Have you ever thought about His divine favor on you? His loving kindness? David wrote about it all the time. Some translations say steadfast love, loyal love. I'll tell you, His loyal love, He has loved you. He has demonstrated His affection toward you. He has blessed you. even on days when you wake up and you're grumpy and you're irritable and nobody else can put up with you, God's love remains towards you. And it's that kind of love that transforms us. Why would I act this kind of way when you love me to this degree? That you're not loving me because I have earned it or I've done something. You love me because you love me because God is love. And wave after wave of God's love just pursues me daily, even when I'm grumpy, even when I don't have my coffee, even when I don't sleep very well at night, and everybody else sees that I'm wrapped in barbed wire, and if they get close to me, they're gonna get cut up. God's love takes down the fences and the protected devices and lets me know that, hey, I can trust you. You are good. Why would you put up with somebody like me? Because He's good. You need to thank God for those that put up with you here. You've got some folks in here that people are putting up with. The Bible says, "...forbear one another..." Why? "...in love." Put up with one another in love. So keep on doing it. You may say, don't say a preacher said quit putting up with one another. I said keep putting up with one another because that's what the Lord calls us to do. But he said, we're blessed in Him. And then he goes on, he says, we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. I want you to try to wrap your mind around that scripture. The word chosen means to be selected. I can't even fathom it, but as I read this and I realize I have been saved by the grace of God, I realize I am a part of something that even when I wasn't thinking about God, even before I was born, that God was setting everything in place in my life. He was planning my salvation a lot longer than I could ever fathom or imagine. All the way to eternity past. Jesus said there in John 17 and 24, Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world. And somehow in this glorious work of salvation, He has wrapped me up into His plan. He has brought me into Christ. And He said, I chose you before the foundation of the world. You imagine those people in Ephesus? that they're in a bigger city. They're in the city of God. They're among God's people. They're part of the body of Christ. They're a local body of baptized believers that are showing forth a glorious salvation. And some of them would say, why did God choose me? And there's a lot of people out here that are still out here crying out, great is the goddess Diana. Many of them are still confused by these magical books and these false spiritualities out here. And I'll tell you, if we look around Indianapolis, There's a lot of people that are confused. They may even talk about Jesus, but they don't know Him. But you, if you've been saved by God's grace, He chose you in Him before the foundation of the world. He has you at this right moment, at this right time, at this right church, or wherever church you're coming from. He's got a big purpose for you. If that's not enough, I could probably stop there. I'm going to keep unraveling because that's what the Apostle Paul did. I mean, they're just coming out of him so fast. He is excited. He is fired up. He said he adopted us. He adopted us. Look at what he says, "...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, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children." I want you to consider this for a moment because this gives us a big picture about God. Oftentimes, when somebody goes to adopt someone, it's not about the child. It's partly about the child, but it's really about the parents that have the love in their hearts to adopt a child and bring them into their home. Adoption is just bathed in love. It's bathed in the fact that This child has not earned or deserved the rights and privileges of legally being my child, but I have such a love welling up in my heart. I thank God for those parents that adopt children. I thank God for them because I know some folks that have been out there and they've had bad family lives. And there's a lot of work to be done in the work of adoption. There's a lot of kids that need to be adopted into good homes all around us. But it takes a lot of love and it takes a lot of sacrifice. And I'll tell you, is that not what God demonstrated? It took a lot of love that God would adopt us and it took a mighty big sacrifice. Because there's no way that we could be brought into God's family without a price being paid. Someone laying down their lives for a sinner like you and me. He would lay down His life and He would adopt us into His everlasting family. Paul said, I was born of the tribe of Benjamin. My name is Saul. I was named after the first king. So what? Those are good things, but it's not about what family you came from. It needs to be about the family that you're a part of right now. And if you've been adopted by God, you need to be a part of a local family of believers. And it needs to be something that you're active in. You need to be a good brother or a good sister in the Lord to those that are in your family, and even those that are in other churches that are in your family. We need to begin to develop harmonious relationships because He told us here, grace to you and peace. God wants us to be a peaceful people. He wants us to be peacemakers anytime there's not peace. We need to be fighting for peace, not fighting with one another. Why? Because we've been adopted to the same family. We need to demonstrate the glorious love of God. He goes on and says, I just keep going on, He says, why would He do such a thing? Verse 6. Notice in verse 6 and verse 12 and verse 14, he says, "...to the praise of the glory of His grace." Verse 12, why would God save someone like you and me? "...to the praise of the glory of His grace." It's not about you and it's not about me. It's about Christ. It's about giving Him the glory. It's about being a part of His people. The reward, you and I, are the reward of His sufferings on the cross. God the Father is going to give to God the Son, the Bride, as a reward for the sufferings of laying down His life on the cross. That's who you and I are a part of. And so we are made to be unto the praise and the glory of God. So those are some of the things that the Father has done for us. Let's look at what the Son has done for us. It says, Where it is made us accepted in the Beloved. So I'm blessed, chosen, adopted, accepted. Who in here has been trying to find acceptance? Maybe finding acceptance in a relationship, finding acceptance in your performance. You know, my identity was so wrapped up in basketball as a child that I tried to find my acceptance in my performance. And I've shared this story before. I came home one night. I had scored one of the highest games, totals, that I'd ever had in the history against one of my crosstown rivals. And I came home that night, and my dad made this statement. He didn't mean it bad, but he made this statement. And I was yearning for acceptance. I was yearning for affirmation. And my dad said, if you would have hit two more threes, You would have had almost 40 points. You know what I heard in my ears that was yearning for acceptance? That's not good enough. How many of us have been chasing areas of acceptance because we haven't felt good enough? You know, above my couch at home, I got an old piece of barn wood that I got from my grandmother's barn, and I spray-painted it in red, accepted in the Beloved. You know why? I'll never be good enough to be a part of God's family in my own flesh and my own strength. But what Jesus did on that cross, I got a seat at that table. And I no longer have to chase the approval of everybody around me because I'm already accepted in Him. He goes on, He just keeps on raveling this out for sake of time. I could probably preach this another hour, but I know that you couldn't hear it that long. But he goes on, he's just unraveling. Paul is just throwing out truth after truth after truth. He says, we're accepted and abloved. He says that we are redeemed, in whom we have redemption through His blood. You know, grace tonight is free to us, but it's very costly. You know, for grace to be grace, it meant that you and I could not pay for it, or earn it, or deserve it. But just because we couldn't pay for our salvation, or earn it, or deserve it, doesn't mean that it was not a very costly salvation. The salvation that you and I have been given came by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. His precious blood was shed on Calvary's cross. His beard was plucked. His head was pierced with a crown of thorns. He hung there on that cross for a space of six hours, dying under the wrath of God for you and me that we could be brought into fellowship with the Father. We were redeemed, brought out of bondage. We were forgiven. You know what the joy of forgiveness tonight? Do you remember the man that came in there that was paralyzed? And they opened up the roof and they let this man down in the midst of Jesus. The crowd was so great, the Pharisees were in there, and they were trying to speculate and criticize what Jesus was going to do. And Jesus said, Son, your sins are forgiven. The people couldn't see that, could they? And then they began to whisper behind his back and say, hey, there's only one that can forgive sins, and that is God alone. I'll tell you, that's what Jesus was trying to demonstrate. I am God in the flesh. I have authority in heaven and earth to forgive sins, to release them, to free you from your bondage, to free you from your guilt, to remove that burden off your back. Jesus said, which is easier? For to say your sins be forgiven you, or to say rise up and go home? Jesus said, I'm going to prove I have the power to forgive sins. He rose up. and the man that was let down from the roof. Can you imagine them parting ways as that man walked home? I bet he had a skip in his step, don't you? I bet he did. I bet he said, I don't know what y'all think about that man, but my new life and my new position is, that's my man right there. That man is my man. Whatever he says, that's what I'm gonna do. Because I've never seen anyone do something like this. Raise a paralytic up. He didn't just raise Him up in physical body. He raised Him up by forgiving His soul. He got set free just like those birds that you let loose and they fly away. I'll tell you, our sins are cast as far as the east is from the west. But how do you get this glorious salvation? A thought that just keeps coming to my mind. If you're here tonight, the Apostle Paul is unraveling these things. And he gets through here and he says, the Lord has opened up your eyes and it's really all about Christ. God, one of these days, is going to sum up everything in Jesus Christ. Anything in our lives tonight that's not lined up to Christ, one of these days, is going to find a swift correction when He comes back. And so I'm here tonight to try to remind you, let's go ahead and make those corrections. Because one of these days, He said there in verse 11, "...in whom we also have obtained an inheritance." That's another, we've been made an heir. "...being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will." God is orchestrating history. There is not one single hair on your head that He does not know about. I guess he knows mine is starting to fall out. My boys remind me of that. Dad, what's happened to that patch on the top of your crown? I told my wife I need some Neoxin or whatever that shampoo is. I don't have the discipline to keep putting it in my hair. I guess it's just going to have to let go. And I'm just trusting the Lord to keep counting the hairs, because He knows every hair that is on our head. And He is orchestrating history for His glory. And this is the God that I serve. This is the glory of God and His glory of salvation. And He comes to an end here as we wrap this up in verse 12 through 15. He says that we should be to the praise of His glory. He's writing this to the Ephesians. to those who first trusted in Christ. You see, there's a reason that John the Baptist came preaching, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. If your value system is based on things of this world, if how you see yourself is based on things of this world, you've got to turn from it. Even if you're a believer tonight, we look in the mirror and we say things that are ungodly about ourselves. We have self-talk about ourselves that is ungodly. It is opposite to the gospel. That has got to stop. Why does it have to stop? Because this is who God says you are if you are a child of His. And we've got to start believing it because if we don't believe it, our behaviors are going to flow from what we believe. And that's why Paul is writing this Word in the way he does. He spends the first three chapters talking about doctrine. He spends the last three chapters talking about how you live your life. I tell you, if you don't believe what He says about you here, you're not going to live to the fullness of how He wants you to live. I pray you look in the mirror tomorrow morning or tonight before you go to bed and say, I didn't realize, God, all that you did for me. I thought I knew it, but you blessed me, chose me, adopted me, accepted me, forgave me, redeemed me. You made me an heir. a joint heir with Jesus Christ? And how do I know this is true? How do I know that I have believed to the saving of my soul? He goes on to say here in verse 13, in whom you also trust. Who did you trust? You trusted Christ, the only one that can give you this gift. You've got to turn from all the value systems of this world and turn to Christ. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. He says, After that you heard the word of truth. Tonight I've tried to share with you the truth. If you're unsaved, I've tried to tell you the truth. How shall we escape? if you neglect so great a salvation. The Hebrew writer said what I'm trying to tell you tonight is so great a salvation. A salvation that sometimes we minimize, but we actually need to maximize it and realize that what Peter said is true. It's joy, unspeakable, and it's full of glory. He goes on to say here that the gospel of your salvation whom after that you believed, look at here, you were sealed, by the Holy Spirit of promise. Do you know if you've been sealed, you can't be unsealed? This is a security that He's given us. A seal in those days, they would put on a piece of mail, they would put a piece of wax, and they would take their signet ring, and they would take that hot signet ring or whatever, and they'd put it in that wax, and they'd melt it to say that this is the symbol of the king or whoever is in charge. And that's what God has done for us when He has saved us. His Spirit has come into our soul. We enjoy the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because of the work of Jesus Christ in reconciling us back to God. And we have that authentication in us. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. We have that as an anchor in our lives. And He closes here and says, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is just in earnest. You say, I rejoice tonight in this salvation He's given us. But you know what? I have been saved. By God's grace, I was saved 20 years ago. I am being saved today. He's not done working on me. And you know what? One of these days, I'm going to be able to say, He did a full work of salvation. Because He who called me way back then also justified me. And one of these days He's going to glorify us. Because you and I are waiting, as He said there, until the redemption of the purchased possession. Why? The redemption of the purchased possession means what He paid for in full, He's going to receive it all. He's going to get it all. You know why? When He gets it all, you know what's going to happen? He's going to get all the glory. You know what we're going to say? Just like what the Apostle Paul said right here, to the praise of His glory. Unlike Christmas, it comes one time a year. And as I said, those gifts that you get at Christmas, you look so forward to getting all those gifts. Where are they now? God has given us spiritual blessings. How perked up would you be if I said, I just deposited $10,000,000 in every one of your bank accounts? How happy would you be if I put $10,000,000 in every one of your bank accounts? Some of you are like, man, you know all the debt I could pay off on that and all that I could buy? If that gets you more fired up than what I just shared with you, we need to reassess our value system. Because we cannot serve God and money. God has given us a gift that money can't buy. And this salvation, its glory, will never be diminished. It just gets greater and greater. May God help us to see what He's already given us. If you're here tonight and you don't have this gift of salvation, I encourage you to run to Jesus as fast as you can, as we get a song and sing. I appreciate you hearing me tonight.