Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 1:3-14 [NLTse]

³ All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. ⁴ Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. ⁵ God decided in advance to adopt us into His Own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. ⁶ So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son. ⁷ He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. ⁸ He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

⁹ God has now revealed to us His mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill His Own good pleasure. ¹⁰ And this is the plan: At the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in Heaven and on Earth. ¹¹ Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.

¹² God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. ¹³ And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, He identified you as His Own by giving you the Holy Spirit, Whom He promised long ago. ¹⁴ The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His Own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify Him.

Sermon

The Scriptures make absolutely clear two things that cannot at one and the same time be true: That God has predetermined the ultimate end for human beings and of human history, and yet has given us human beings genuine freedom. The Bible reveals a God Who wants all people to know that He genuinely cares about the choices they are responsible for, while at the same time showing Himself to be a God Who, like a great chess master, is always in control of the board while moving strategically to His predetermined “end-game.” So great is our God and the mystery of His grace that God can honor and be responsive to our will even while remaining in control of the outcome.

In our reading this morning Paul writes to the Ephesians that God loved them and chose them in Christ before He made the world, and that He decided in advance to adopt them into His family through Christ. Then Paul goes on to speak to these saints of when they first began trusting in the Lord and how the Father all His wonders so that they would praise and glorify Him. God has predetermined the circumstances of our lives counting on the choices we will make, and yet He does so while taking a genuine interest in us as individuals and interacting and reacting to what we individually say and do.

It is a wonderful mystery that if we put our trust in Christ that it is counted as God’s work and His glory in us, but that if we reject Him and continue in rebellion against Him that it is our choice, freely made, and we will pay the right and fair penalty for our sin.

In the Book of Acts, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter told a crowd of Jewish listeners, “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). And yet how could Peter’s audience bring about God’s set purpose for Christ and still remain free to exercise and be held accountable for their choices and will? The Bible doesn’t tell us. It only reveals that God has predetermined an outcome for us and for the entire universe that we can barely begin to comprehend. And yet that God does not force anyone to become a believer but works in a person’s heart so that the individual freely chooses to receive Christ as Savior.

Somehow – according to God’s great power – the Bible shows us a God Who is free to be God and Who gives human beings the freedom to be morally responsible beings who live in His presence and genuinely choose belief or unbelief, obedience or disobedience, submission or rebellion.

How can Jesus say, “No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44)? How can we truly have free wills and be held responsible for our decisions and choices while needing God to move in us before we will ever move toward Him?

We know that He bought us through Calvary’s price. We know that He moved in us before we moved to Him. The Bible makes clear that our salvation is always initiated by God: He always is the One Who seeks us out and by His Spirit enables us to believe. Yet the Bible makes equally clear that we are left with the choice and held accountable for accepting or rejecting the undeserved kindness and mercy God the Father offers us in Christ.

The declaration “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2). “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:16-17) So no one ever needs to ask, “Have I been predestined?” The proper question is, “Have you accepted Jesus’ atoning death?” If you have acknowledged your sin; if you have believed that Jesus died for you and rose again; and, if you are living and have committed yourself to living a life of trust in and reliance on Him, then as you continue to trust and live in Him you can have confidence that you are a member of His elect and chosen body, the church (Romans 10:9)

How can the Lord have established all these wonderful things for you because of your faith in Jesus Christ before He even made the world? How could He have chosen you all those thousands of years ago when you only began to believe in Him these past months or years?

People who have not yet accepted the new life we’ve been given in Jesus seem to relate very well to the choice, the battle of the wills, the decision that needs to be made to receive or to reject Jesus’ offer to forgive our sins and make us new. And for those who are relatively new Christians the reality of that struggle may still be fresh in their minds. And yet once someone has admitted their sin and accepted Christ as Savior and committed to Him as Lord, many gain perspective to see the work of God’s Spirit dragging them into His Kingdom almost against their control; bringing us to new life even while we were clinging to our old life…

I have a couple hundred cards here that say:

“PRAYING FOR NEW LIFE

“for

“Anyone who belongs to Christ

“has become a new person. The old life is gone;

“a new life has begun!

“(2 Cor. 5:17)

“I ask committing to pray, share the new life God’s Spirit has begun in me, and live as an example of life in Christ.”

With this wonderful paradox in mind of God’s working for our salvation and our choosing to receive Him, is there anyone whom you would ask Him to receive new life in Christ? Who around you would you like to know the love God the Father has shown us in Christ? Who in your life needs the healing and peace, the hope and the joy that the rebirth into Christ brings? Whether you tend toward predestination or toward freewill, if you have ever prayed for God to help people believe, to convert people to Christ, to bring people into His Kingdom, then you are at least a believer in God’s willingness and ability to influence, sway, and perhaps even overcome a person’s “free” will.

Now some may be more difficult than others, and some may choose to reject Him forever, but as I pass the cards around I’m wondering for whom you would ask the God Who “so loved the world” to save and bring to life in Christ today: And I want to invite us to write their name or names down on this card – one name per card.

We’ll keep printing more cards week after week, but the idea is for us to take as many of these cards as we need and write on each the name of someone we would like God to make new by drawing them to faith in Christ.

We would pray through these cards Sunday after Sunday – maybe only a handful at a time, maybe all of them each time, and we will pray for them at our prayer meetings, and the elders and deacons at their meetings, … whenever the Lord would move us to run up here and grab this basket to pray.

I hope that as different ones we are praying for put their trust in Christ and begin living for Him that we would remove their card from the basket, put the date or the approximate date of their decision on their cards, and make the “prayers answered” cards into something special, or mount them onto something special, that would help us celebrate our loved ones’ putting their faith in Christ and God’s goodness and faithfulness in bringing them into His Kingdom.

Write clearly and legibly… Perhaps we’ll have hundreds of cards in this basket – individual persons whom we are praying for at any given moment. And yet, by God’s grace, perhaps the basket will empty as people come to Jesus, even as we continue to add cards for more people…