Ephesians 1, 11, in him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory. In him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory." This is the Word of God. If you'll recall, if you've been here the last couple of Sundays, you'll know that we're considering these spiritual blessings as we look at this essentially an outburst from the Apostle Paul of praise. Verse 3, this section began with these words, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And so as we've worked our way through this passage, we saw there in verses 4-6, the Father's choosing, how that God the Father in eternity past, in His own providence and sovereignty, chose to set His affection upon us. If you have been born again, if you have come to faith in Jesus Christ, it is because God the Father chose you. You were chosen in Him, as He says, before the foundation of the world, not only to be His child, though to be adopted as His sons, indeed, but to be holy and blameless before Him in love. That's what God has called you to. So we explored the Father's choosing, and then last week we looked at the Son's redeeming. In verse 7-10, that redemption, it consists of forgiveness of sins, the abundance of His rich grace that He's poured out on us, and even in that He revealed this mystery of His will that redemption isn't just for this life, but it's that He will bring us to the next life, and we will be His, and He will rule over us and all creation for all eternity. And that's the redemption that we saw in the Son. And so today as we work our way through the rest of this section, verse 11 through 14, we consider the Spirit's assuring. The Spirit's assuring. Now in verse 11, Paul speaks of an inheritance that we have as believers. He says just there, in Him also we have obtained an inheritance. And now to Paul, this idea of an inheritance isn't anything new. In fact, when he tells in Acts 26 of his conversion, when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Jesus came and he spoke to him and Paul was converted, but he also told him what he intended for him to do. He said that He would send him to the Gentiles to preach to the Gentiles to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me. So this idea of an inheritance has been with Paul since the day of his conversion. In fact, he taught the church at Rome that we are children of God. And if we are children, then we're what? Heirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. That is, everything that God the Father has promised to bestow on His Son, Jesus Christ, because we are now joint heirs with Him, He promises to give it to us also. That inheritance that we have in Him. Now, what is that inheritance? Well, we can kind of piece it together from a couple of passages. At least Titus 3, he says, "...but when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us. Through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." So what is this inheritance? Well, at least to some degree, it pertains to our hope of eternal life. We remember studying 1 Peter. Peter began with a similar outburst in chapter 1 of that letter. He said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." So this inheritance that we have in Christ, this inheritance that belongs to every believer, doesn't just pertain to the blessings that we receive in this life, but it is something that is stored up, laid up for us in heaven when we go to the next life. Our inheritance as Christians is the full experience of the riches of every spiritual blessing enjoyed as we bask in the glory of God's unveiled presence for all eternity in heaven. Praise God for that inheritance. Now, as he discusses this inheritance in verse 11, he reiterates a few things that we've already seen in previous verses. Like all other spiritual blessings, our inheritance is experienced, those first two words there, in Him. In Him. That is, in Jesus. And in Jesus alone. Just a few weeks ago, I was on the Greenway and had the opportunity to witness to some people who were standing around, and this lady, she had a book, and it was by a Christian author, and sort of struck up a conversation about spiritual things, and she described herself as being on a journey to try to find God, to find out who God is. And she didn't really believe that any one religion had it exactly right, that there's probably some truth in all of them, and it's our job to explore and to find out where it is exactly that God is and what He's like. And I was sure to tell her that day that, you know, I appreciate the fact that she wanted to know God, at least she said that she did, and that she was on this journey to try to find out who He is, but I wanted to let her know that if she thinks that they're all compatible and there's a little bit of truth in all of them, she better steer away from the Bible, because Jesus said, the truth, and the life, and no one, no one, no one comes to the Father but by Me." So the truth is, Christianity cannot be compatible, it cannot mix with any other religion of the world because Jesus was very clear. There is no getting around that verse. There is no saying Jesus is a good teacher, he taught some nice things, I think you can follow Jesus or follow somebody else and still get to the same place. No, you can't have Jesus with anybody else because Jesus said he's the only one. And so this inheritance that we have in Christ, just like every other spiritual blessing, is found, verse 11, the first two words, in Him. In Jesus alone. But he also says that we obtain this as a result of God's sovereign choice. He says, "...in Him we've obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will." Hold on a second. I just want to make sure y'all caught what I just said there. Having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works what? All things according to the counsel of His will. Now what kind of things does God work to the counsel of His will? Okay, I just want to make sure we're all there on the same page. Anything that ever comes up that stresses you out, just remember, God works all things according to the counsel of His will. His hand is in everything. The late R.C. Sproul used to say, there is no maverick molecule in this universe. Everything is under His control. And we receive this inheritance in Jesus just like we receive all other spiritual blessings because of the choosing of the Father. Not because of anything good that you've done, any way that you could ever earn God's favor, but simply because God chose to set His affection on you. Well, I don't deserve that. Join the club!" He just chose to do it, and we say, praise God. And that's the third thing. This third thing he reiterates is he does it to the praise of His glory. Verse 12, he says that we who first trusted in Christ, and at that point he may be referring to the Jews who had trusted in Jesus first, but he says that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. So this inheritance comes to us just like every other spiritual blessing, only in Jesus, only because the Father has chosen to give it to us, and He does it for the express purpose of the praise of His glory. And what in the world does this have to do with the Spirit's assuring? What does this have to do with the Holy Spirit's assuring? This is the big idea here, that the blessing of the Holy Spirit assures us of all other spiritual blessings in Jesus Christ. The blessing of the Holy Spirit assures us of all other spiritual blessings in Christ. And that's what we see in the last two verses of this passage here. So how does the Holy Spirit bless us with assurance? This is what we want to look at the rest of our time. Let me give you three things, because it wouldn't be a Baptist sermon otherwise. Three points. Number one, He seals us when we believe. He seals us when we believe. Verse 13, in him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. I just want you to notice a few things in that verse there. Notice the necessity of hearing. The necessity of hearing. What does Romans 10 say? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. It is necessary that in order for one to believe, they must hear the Word of God. They must hear the truth. Thus, there's not only a necessity of hearing, but a necessity of speaking. Friends, if we're going to reach anybody with the Gospel of Jesus, if anybody's going to be saved and affected by the ministry of your life or of this church, we're going to have to open our mouths and tell them this good news. So there's the necessity of hearing, but there's also the necessity of gospel truth. He says, in him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, and he equates truth with the gospel of your salvation. Alright, we did this all the way up to Vacation Bible School and through it. Ten words. What's the gospel? Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. Alright, every kid in this room could quote that by the end of the week. That's the good news. That's the gospel we preach. Don't let it get old to you. Indeed, Jesus died for your sins. No one else has ever died for you. He laid down His life, willingly took upon Himself your sin and mine, and paid the penalty of it, so that we could be forgiven. He laid down His life, and then He rose from the dead on the third day, proving that He was who He said He was, and assuring us that He has the power to forgive sins and to grant new life. Jesus died for our sins and He rose from the dead. So that's the necessity of gospel truth. We don't need to just talk about anything and everything and just invite people to church. You can invite people to church, that's just fine, but that's not going to save anybody. It's the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. So there's the necessity of hearing, there's the necessity of gospel truth, there's the necessity of believing. the necessity of believing. He says, "...in Him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." What is believing? Is it I believe in the tooth fairy? No. It's not that. It's believe in the sense of transferring your trust from whatever your hope is to be right with God to Jesus. So if right now you're thinking, well, yes, I've sinned, but if I do enough good and if I try to live a decent life, when I stand before God, He'll let me in anyway, you're trusting in yourself. And so believing for you is to transfer that trust away from yourself and into Jesus who lived that perfect life for you. Because you never will. If when I say, how do you know that you're going to make it to heaven? How do you know that you're right with God? You say, well, I was baptized on this day. Hold on. Wrong answer. Your trust is in baptism. You need to transfer your trust, not from baptism, but into the faith in Jesus Christ who died for you and rose from the dead. If I say, how do you know you're going to make it to heaven? How do you know God's going to let you in? And you say, well, I've been to church my whole life. My parents always took me. They loved the Lord. My daddy, my grandpa was a preacher. You got it wrong. You're trusting in the wrong thing. What is believing? It's what you're trusting. And whatever it is that you're trusting in to get you there, to get you right with God, stop trusting in that and say, Jesus, you are my only hope. Nothing else is good enough. That's believing. It's trusting, putting your faith in Jesus alone, and it's necessary for salvation. And he says that when we did that, those of you who have been born again, when you believed, you were what? You were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. That word sealed is the main verb here in verse 13. It's the hinge that everything else in the verse swings on. It's the kind of seal that was used then for something like jars or sacks of fruit or grain. And the seal really showed two things. One, it showed ownership, who it belonged to. It had their seal on it, their mark. But it also showed that the contents of that package or that jar, whatever it is, were correct. So it showed ownership and it showed that the contents were right. And so that's the word that Paul uses here when he describes our relationship to the Holy Spirit. When you became a Christian, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. That is, God set His mark on you. by giving you the Holy Spirit. God put His mark on you, He owns you, you belong to Him, you are His treasured possession. Listen, whenever we read in the Bible about us belonging to God and we talk about being slaves to God, don't think about a life of torment. When you think, I belong to God, you think that prized possession that gets locked up in the safe at night. That thing that gets put on display on the mantle. You belong to Him. You are His treasured inheritance. His own possession. That's who you are in Christ. And that's what you became when He set His seal upon you by giving you the Holy Spirit. You belong to Him. He owns you. And you have assurance in the Gospel, that is, that the contents are right. You can be assured that the gospel you have believed, that Jesus did die for your sins, that He rose from the dead, is the true gospel because the Holy Spirit within you bears witness to that. You have Him with you. He told the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 1, He said, Now he who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who has also sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. You know you got it right because you got the Holy Spirit. Romans 8, he says, for you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself, Paul says, bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. I don't know how to explain that, okay? Because it's not just an emotion, it's not a feeling. It's something else that the Holy Spirit, when you got it, you just got it, you know. God gave you the Holy Spirit to bear witness with your spirit to assure you that you are a child of God. If you know what I mean, just say Amen. Some of you got it, you know. Some of you don't have a clue. And you need to be born again so the Lord can give you this assurance. blesses us with assurance when he seals us when we believe. The second thing is this, he fulfills promises made by the Father and the Son. He fulfills promises made by the Father and the Son. Just a couple of words there at the end of verse 13, he says, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of what? Of promise. Or the promised Holy Spirit. You see, God the Father promised the Holy Spirit to Israel. Ezekiel 36, this is what he told them. He said, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them." He said in Joel 2, "...and it shall come to pass afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh." See, Israel had the law. Could they keep it? No. We just went through Ezra and Nehemiah. We saw how consistently they obeyed God, just in those two books alone. Not very. They might do okay for a little while, they'd honor the Lord and keep His commandments, and then plunge right back into sin. They'd get themselves in a mess, call on God to pull them out, and he'd do it, and they'd follow him for a little while, and they'd plunge right back down into sin. They couldn't keep the law. And God comes along and makes this promise and says, guess what? One day, I'm going to take that hard heart out of you, and I'm going to give you a heart of flesh. I'm not just going to give you my law, but I'm going to give you my spirit. I'm going to put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. Have you as a Christian experienced any of that blessing? Has God put the Holy Spirit within you? With His help, can you walk in the statutes that God has given? Can you obey Him? Yes! Oh yeah, you have your days where you goof up and you plunge right down into sin. But you have the Holy Spirit within you, and in dependence on His power, God enables you to walk with Him and to obey Him. It's not a hopeless Christian life of this standard, this way up here that we'll never meet. No, God has given you His Spirit. If He commanded it, He'll enable you and equip you to do it. So the Father had promised the Holy Spirit to Israel, and then Jesus comes along in the New Testament and promises the Holy Spirit to His own disciples. John 14, he says, if you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever. Well, who's this Helper? He says, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him. For He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. You ever thought it was kind of funny that Jesus makes this promise. He says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will go with you all the way, even to the end of the age. And then he's gone. He makes those promises to his disciples and then he ascends back into heaven. Hasn't been seen for 2000 years. How does he keep his promise? Because he sent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit being the Spirit of Jesus. He will not leave you an orphan. He said, I'll come to you. And if you're a believer, he has. He told him two chapters later in John 16, he said, nevertheless, I'll tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. And I can just imagine Peter saying, you're full of it, Jesus. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you." Are you living the kind of Christian life right now? Just think about this. Jesus said, if I go away and the Holy Spirit comes, that's actually to your advantage. It's better than me being here in person. Do you live the kind of Christian life where your fellowship with God by the Holy Spirit is better than what the disciples experienced with Jesus in person? I'll just go ahead and say most of us aren't. But that's what God has given us. That is the spiritual blessings that we have in Him. That we can have fellowship with Him so intimately, so closely, that it's actually better than when Jesus was in the room with Sharon and with 12 guys. You have the Holy Spirit within you. He said in Acts 1.8, he said, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses to me in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. He said, you're going to go be my witnesses. And when the Holy Spirit comes, you're going to receive power to do that. Do you have the Holy Spirit? Then you have power to be his witness. You might feel weak in yourself. You might feel unequipped to do that. But if you have the Holy Spirit, you have what you need to be Christ's witness. He says, I will be with you, I will give you power, and you can do exactly what has been commanded of you when you depend on his strength. These promises that were awaited by Israel and by the disciples are present realities in the lives of all who are in Christ. Friends, listen, you have been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. All right, third thing, He guarantees our inheritance. He seals us when we believe, He fulfills promises made by the Father and the Son, and He guarantees our inheritance. Verse 14, continues the sentence, the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory. The word guarantee there, it just means a down payment or a pledge. It's a deposit that guarantees that the full payment will be made. Y'all might think I'm crazy for this being where my mind goes, but just bear with me for a second. I imagine this black and white scene. The guy comes in to see a private investigator and he wants to hire him for his services and the guy goes, hey, I'm expensive, you can't afford me. And he pulls out a wad of cash from his coat and he hands it to him and says, there's more where that came from. You know where I'm going, right? That's crazy, but it's what I think of when I think of the Holy Spirit being our guarantee, right? There's more where that came from. Now some people make the analogy of an engagement ring, that you receive that ring at the proposal and you put it on your finger and it's there, it's with you, it's that constant reminder of what's to come, the promise that will be fulfilled in the marriage. And that's an okay analogy, but really a better one that goes with the text here is that of a down payment on a house or earnest money. How many knows what earnest money is? I thought I knew what it was, but I googled it to make sure. You know, I'm not an expert in every field. But you know what it is, right? You want a house, it's for sale. You see the price on it. You think, OK, I want that house. You bid on it. You fill out the paperwork. You don't just send the paperwork, though. You put some money with it, right? It's one of those there's more where that came from statements. You put some money in it, and you send it. And it's kind of scary sending money to somebody when you're not guaranteed you're going to get the house, right? You really hope that money comes back if they say no. But what's happened at that point? You've made a deposit. You've made a pledge. Now, if somebody's got a house for sale for a million dollars, it's easy for anybody to fill out a paper that says, yeah, I want to buy that. But when somebody fills out the paper that says, yeah, I want to buy that, and they put a check for $200,000 in there with it, they've got some skin in the game. It becomes real at that point. And should that person accept the offer and cash that check, then what's expected? That the rest of that money is going to follow in the purchase of that home. Friends, you have received the Holy Spirit as earnest money. God has given you the Holy Spirit the moment you received the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. When you believed in the Gospel that Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead, God gave you that earnest money, that down payment, that pledge by giving you the Holy Spirit. And it's a guarantee, it's a promise, that all that will come, all that He said is to follow, will come to pass. He will keep His Word. He will fulfill His promise. The presence of the Holy Spirit in your life as a believer is God's guarantee that He will give you everything else that He's promised to come in the life to come. And you just think about this, if all the blessings that we have right now by the Holy Spirit are this rich? Can we even begin to fathom what the rest of it's gonna be like when we receive our full inheritance in Christ? Our minds cannot comprehend. We can't imagine all that the Lord has in store for us as his people. He says that he's the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. We will possess this guarantee, this deposit of the Holy Spirit until we come into full possession of our redemption. There's folks out there that are fearful that if they displease God and ruin their life, that he's not gonna love them anymore. He's gonna cast them aside. He'll take the Holy Spirit from them and they'll be lost again. That'd be a miserable way to live. I just want to make you one promise right here. If I could lose my salvation, I absolutely would. And so would you. Go ahead and laugh at me if you want to, but you would too. Because none of us are good enough. But we have this promise that we have the Holy Spirit and He has sealed us. He'll say in chapter 4, verse 30, that we are sealed for the day of redemption. that seal, that mark that God has set on you and making you His child will never be removed. You will make it to the day of redemption. When you go to sleep tonight, you don't have to worry that tomorrow you might wake up and not be a Christian anymore. For me, I'm 30 years old. I don't have to look at 70 and think, man, I really, I hope I stick with it. I hope that I'm still faithful at that point. I don't have to worry about that. Why? Because I have the Holy Spirit and He has sealed me. God has set His mark upon me and I am His. I will be His, guaranteed, until the day of redemption. There is no undoing it. He says no one will ever pluck you from my hands. Do you think you could pluck yourself out of God's hand? Absolutely not. You're sealed. This is what it has to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the blessing of the Holy Spirit assures us of all other spiritual blessings in Christ. So what do we do? What's the takeaway from this? Well one, these blessings are given according to verse 14, to the praise of His glory. You think He's said that enough times yet? Everything that God has given us in Christ, every spiritual blessing He's poured out on us, He's given it to us to the praise of His glory. Can everybody just say amen one good time? One, two, three. Amen. There's hope for you yet. Let me ask you though, are you as a Christian experiencing the fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life? Are you actually living your life aware of and enjoying these blessings you have in Jesus? If you're not, what do you do? You just surrender yourself to Him. You give Him complete control of your life. You say, you take me, any remnant that's left in me from my old life, go ahead and rid me of that. Empty me of myself. fill me with the Holy Spirit, renew me day by day, making me more like Jesus. There's nothing you can do. You already have the Holy Spirit if you're saved. So all you have to do is just surrender yourself to Him. Say, do with me what you please. Have your way with me. The song we sing sometimes, have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. There's a verse that says, hold o'er my being absolute sway. fill with thy spirit till all shall see Christ only always living in me." That's a standard you can never reach on your own. But if you surrender yourself to the Holy Spirit and say, you take my life, you teach me, show me how to abide in Jesus. Show me how to rest in Him. Friends, this blessing is yours in Christ already. You just need to lay hold of it by faith. One more question, do you have the Holy Spirit at all? Romans 8, and Paul said, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. You know, we've talked a lot about the Holy Spirit, but if you look at your own life and you say, I don't have that. I don't have the Holy Spirit. I don't know what he's talking about. And friends, you need to be born again. You need to believe the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, that Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead. He'll forgive you, He'll give you eternal life, and He'll put the Holy Spirit inside of you to dwell with you. And you can walk with Him the rest of your days until we receive the fullness of our inheritance. Let's bow our heads together. I think this warrants a time for prayer, examination, Consider your own heart and where you stand with the Lord. Ask Him if you're not sure. Lord, search me, show me where I stand with you. If you're a Christian and you're not walking in the fullness of the Spirit, surrender yourself to Him, yield to His control. If you're lost and you don't have the Spirit at all, Confess your sins and believe in Jesus as your only hope for salvation. As Laura plays, we'll just have a few minutes of prayer.