To the Praise of His Glory

If you have your Bible with you this morning, I hope you do. Join me in Ephesians
chapter 1 as we continue this study through this wonderful book.
We are continuing to go through the opening verses in the first chapter where the
Apostle Paul begins this letter with an extended outpouring of praise to God for all
of the blessings that are ours in Christ. Actually,
Paul is praising God in this prayer for the spillover blessings that are coming as
a result of God carrying out the plan that he has had for us and for all creation
since before the world was established. The plan that was put into motion by all
three persons of the Trinity before the universe even existed. Now Now think about
that for just a moment. Ephesians 1 is telling us that God the Father, God the
Son, God the Spirit, established a divine plan that we are part of.
When they were making this plan, they were thinking specifically of those who would
be in Christ in this room in this moment. This is a plan that was designed
ultimately to bring them great glory and praise. That's the ultimate purpose of this
plan. We've already seen in this chapter that this plan was for
and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the plan in its fullness is
revealed to us. The mystery has been revealed. And along with the revealing of this
mystery, the Apostle Paul says, we are now seeing for the first time not only how
God's plan will bring great glory and honor and blessing to him, but how his plan
involves us being blessed in Christ. That's what's being revealed, and Paul is
praising God for this revelation. It's important for us to know that the blessings
we receive are not the main goal of God's plan. The main goal of God's plan is
glory for himself. The blessings we receive are a part of how he gets glory. So
it's less that the plan is about what God is going to do for you. It's more about
what God is going to do for his own glory, and blessing
an amazing plan. How great is our God? That's what Paul is doing in the beginning
of this letter, he wants all of us to join him in this praise. So this opening
prayer of praise is just what Paul is doing. He's saying God is great.
The unfolding plan is wise. He's letting us see the blessings that are ours, the
blessings of being chosen in Christ before the world was created, being predestined
to be adopted as his children, being blessed individually through redemption and
forgiveness of sins and being blessed corporately through the revealing of his will
that he is bringing us together, giving us the wisdom and insight to see him
bringing us together to form a new body, a new purpose, a new union,
and that in the fullness of time he will bring all things together, and he will
redeem not just us, but the whole creation will be redeemed, a new heavens and a
new earth. And all of these blessings that are ours are elements of this plan of
God, his purpose for all creation that has been revealed in Christ. We are blessed
in him in all of these ways, chosen in him to be a part of this eternal plan and
for His creation. And so this morning we're going to look at how Paul is wrapping
up this hymn of praise at the beginning of Ephesians chapter 1.
Verses 3 through 14 are this hymn of praise. It's a prayer of praise. And it's
followed by a prayer of petition. Once Paul has praised God for his wisdom and his
plan and having his eye, he wants us to have our eyes opened to see it more
clearly, to see it more fully. So we praise God for what he's done and then Paul
turns and says, "Lord, help us to see this more fully and more completely. Help us
grow in our understanding of your purposes and our plan. Because you have opened the
eyes of our heart, help us to be increasingly enlightened by what we see here. Let
me just point out that as we look at this chapter as a whole, this pattern of
petition following praise is a good pattern for us to follow in our own prayers.
I often, maybe you too, I often go to prayer and go right to petition. Lord,
here's what I need. Lord, here's the burden of my heart. Lord, would you do this
for me? Would you do this in our world without pausing to praise first? And Paul
is saying, here's an extended time of praise before he ever gets to what he's
praying for in terms of petition. It's good for us to pause and praise first,
to remind ourselves of who it is we're talking to, to remember what he's done for
us. In fact, this is interesting. Pastor Liggin Duncan points out that the act of
praising God helps us grow in our understanding of His goodness and His greatness.
He says, when we are faithful to thank God for His mercies, what we find is that
His mercies begin to dawn in our hearts because by nature, we are ungrateful people.
And the very act of thanking God for His mercies is often the instrument that His
Spirit uses to awaken our heart to His greatness and goodness for us. Praising Him
and remembering His greatness and His goodness will cause your heart to deepen in
your understanding of His greatness and goodness. And so Paul's pattern here, by
beginning with praise, is a good one for us to follow. We don't praise God because
He has an ego issue and he just says, you must praise me because I need to be
praised. We praise him because the act of praising him will cause our love for him
to grow and our understanding of him to grow, and it's good for us to praise him.
So we're going to see this morning as we look at verses 11 through 14 of chapter
1 a particular aspect of God's plan for his creation,
how after 2 ,000 years of God's focus being on his chosen people,
the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God is now widening the
circle of grace and mercy to include the Gentiles, and how the Gentiles are being
brought into God's family and being brought in with the same status and the same
blessings as the Jews. The Gentiles are not second -class citizens in God's kingdom.
They, we, are equal heirs to the promises of God.
You can see how the Ephesians might have thought that the God that they were now
worshipping, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. People, by the way, they'd never
heard of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If they had it was distant, they didn't know
anything about this. But now they might have thought, those people who are biological
descendants in the line of Abraham,
and as God's people, and now you share, we all share His blessings for us.
And the truth that brings God, and this truth brings God great glory and is a
cause for great praise. Let me pray for our time in God's Word, then we'll read
the passage together. Father, we thank you for the goodness of your word, the truth
of your word, the power of your word, and we pray that it would be powerful in
our lives today that we would not just be hearers of the word but doers of the
word and that you would take your truth and plant it deep in us work in our lives
by your spirit through your word today we pray in your name amen this is the word
of God for the people of God Ephesians chapter 1 beginning at verse 1 the Bible
says Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are in
Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as
sons, through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of
His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the
riches of his grace, which he has lavished on us in all wisdom and insight,
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set
forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ,
things in heaven, and things on earth in Him. In Him, we have obtained an
inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all
things according to the Council of His Will, so that we who were the first to hope
in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also,
when you heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel of Your Salvation, and believed in
him, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our
inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory.
Amen. May God bless this reading of His word. The grass withers and the flower
fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Now, as I said, our focus this
morning is on verses 11 through 14, and we're going to focus on two main questions
as we look at this text this morning, the question first is, how do people become
God's people? How did we become God's people? And the second question is, why do
people become God's people? What's God's purpose behind that? And just so you know,
most of our time is going to be on the first question. So when you're looking and
going, he hasn't gotten to the second one yet, just trust me, we're only going to
take a little time when we get to the end. But to answer that first question of
how we became God's people, we need to start with just imagining what it would have
been like to grow up in first century Ephesus. If you had grown up then,
you would have grown up in a world where most religious thoughts or spiritual
thoughts were ethnic and tribal. You believed what you believed.
You grew up in whatever religious practice you grew up in because
days, okay? We're just getting started with the gods that you worshipped. There are
all of these gods. There were a bunch of them, and they all had temples, and they
all had their own worship practice. And if you were Greek, that's who you grew up
worshipping. That's who your neighbors worshipped. That was the culture. If you were
Roman, you worshipped the Roman gods. If you were a Moabite, you worship the gods
of the Moabites. If you worship Persian, you worship the Persian gods. Worshipping
gods, every tribe, every nation, every
by the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the God who made the
world and everything in it, including you, and he says, this God wants all people
everywhere to be saved. In other words, he's saying, this is a religion that is not
ethnic or tribal. This is the one true God over all the earth who made the earth
and everything in it. He is the one to be worshipped and praised. He's calling you
out.
identity to it. The Eastern religions are tied to ethnic identity. But Christianity
transcends ethnicity and spreads to all the world. And I just have to tell you,
there's only one reason why anybody in Ephesus would have listened to the Apostle
Paul saying, you should come worship the God of the Hebrews. He's the one true God
and he sent his his son to die for you. The only reason anybody would hear that
and go, that makes sense to me, is the Holy Spirit.
That would not make sense to anybody in first century Ephesus. They would go,
I should worship some other tribes God? Why would I do that?
That's for those people. The only reason that it made any sense is because God, the
Holy Spirit, opened the hearts and eyes of the people who were hearing Paul speak
and they came to believe. And by the way, that's true today. The only reason
anybody believes the gospel when you present the gospel to them is because God opens
their hearts and eyes. You come along and say, there was a carpenter in first
century Judea who was God incarnate and he came and lived and died and rose again,
the only reason anyone would believe that is because the Holy Spirit opens their
eyes to believe it. And so the point that Paul is making in verse 10 of Ephesians
1, when he talks about God's plan in the fullness of time to unite all things in
him, his point is the gospel that I'm preaching to you is not an ethnic or tribal
religion. It is for all people. God is bringing together all people in Him,
ultimately he will redeem all of creation in Him. He's explaining now in verses 11
through 14 how this uniting together is actually working out.
And here's where you need to take note of the pronouns in the passage we're looking
at this morning. So look at verse 11 and verse 12, and the pronouns that are there
are the pronouns we. Look at it. In him, we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things
according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in
Christ might be to the praise of his glory. The we he's talking about there in
verses 11 and 12 are those who were the first to hope in Christ. That means the
Jewish believers in Paul's Day. The first to hope in Christ were those who were in
Jerusalem when the resurrection was declared on the day of Pentecost when it was
announced, those were the first, that's the first fruit. It's the church in
Jerusalem. In fact, the gospel didn't spread beyond Jerusalem for a couple of years
until Paul began his missionary journeys. You have to Keep in mind that most of the
Jews in Jesus Day rejected him as Messiah, even after his resurrection, most of the
Jews clung to their Judaism and rejected that Jesus was the Messiah. They continued
to pursue their religious practices, their religious customs and traditions,
hoping that they would find favor with God by keeping the customs and the
traditions. They did not believe in the Messiah, but Paul says there are some who
did believe, and they were the first to believe, and that was all a part of God's
plan. That from among the Jews, God was calling out some who would believe in
Christ to be a part of this new community, this new family that he's creating.
So the we in verses 11 and 12 are those Jews who are the first to hope in
Christ. But it changes in verse 13, where he says, in him, you also,
when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in
him, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. So we've gone from we now to you. He's
saying, we, my group, we believed early, you, Ephesians, you are now believing
because you've heard the gospel and you've believed it.
And then in verse 14, he brings the two groups together. He says that the Holy
Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we, all we, acquire possession of
it to the praise of his glory. So he starts with the believing Jews, talks about
the believing Gentiles, and he says God's going to bring them together in the Holy
Spirit. God's plan in verse 10 is to unite all people, both the believing Jews and
believing Gentiles, one people who will belong to Him. So with that in mind, now go
back to verse 11, and here's what he says about the believing Jews. He says, in
Him we have obtained an inheritance. I want to stop there because this is a tricky
Greek phrase to translate. And I'm not a Greek scholar, but the Greek Scholars tell
me it's a tricky Greek phrase to translate. It's a question of whether Paul is
talking about receiving an inheritance or being an inheritance.
There are two different ways this could be understood. Both of them are biblically
true. As believers, we will receive an inheritance. We will inherit eternal life.
You remember that that's what Nicodemus asked Jesus, when he came to him in the
dark of night, said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? So there's an
inheritance for those who believe, but in the Old Testament, well,
there's another way to translate the verse. Let me just show you this. If you have
an NIV, the NIV says, in him we also were chosen.
Not we will receive an inheritance, but we were chosen. The American standard version
says, in whom also we were made a heritage. The legacy standard version says,
in him, we also have been made an inheritance. And the New English translation says,
in Christ we too have been claimed as God's own possession. I think this way of
understanding this verse is better than what's in the English standard version. Rather
than saying we will receive an inheritance, I think that what Paul is saying here
is the first to believe have become God's inheritance. God has inherited us as his
own. We are now his belonging, his possession, because this fits with what we read
in the Old Testament. So you jump back to Deuteronomy 4 and the Bible there,
this is Moses, the Lord speaking,
delivering God's people.
of all people, according to the numbers of the sons of God. The Lord's portion is
his people. Jacob is his inheritance.
So what Paul is saying in verse 11 is that God in Christ is doing what he said
he would do in the Old Testament. He is inheriting those Jews who are the first to
believe. They belong to him. They are his new chosen people.
Now let me say here, I don't think that means that God is done with ethnic Israel.
I think God has a future plan for ethnic Jews. I think there will be a reviving
work among the ethnic Jews at the end of time. They will look on him whom they
have pierced. They will mourn for him as for an only son and they will come into
the kingdom as redeemed believing Jews. But here Paul
So all who are in Christ are his own possession, and knowing that should make a
difference in your life. I like this from David Wells, the the theologian who says,
it is the inextinguishable knowledge of being owned by the transcendent God that
forms our character. Think about that. It is knowing that God owns you that remakes
your character. Knowing that you are his possession begins to reshape your character.
He goes on to say his ownership challenges every other contender so that we know we
belong to God and that changes everything.
It does change everything. Knowing that you belong to God that he loves you, that
he cares for you, that he will keep you and that he'll bring you safely home.
Knowing that changes everything about your perspective in this life. It's why we need
to praise God that we are his possession and meditate on that and recognize God
will take care of me. He has promised to do that. He does that for his possession.
And the Bible says back in verse 11 in Ephesians 1, the Bible says that this has
been God's plan from eternity past, having been predestined according to the purpose
of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. We already looked
at this word predestination back in verse 5. Paul's point here, when he talks about
being predestined according to God's purpose, is that the coming of Christ and the
remnant of believing Jews who are now being brought into the kingdom and are
bringing the message of salvation to the Gentiles, this is exactly what God had
planned from the beginning, from before the beginning. God's plan is never a plan B
because his plan A didn't work. That's never been an issue for God. He's never had
a plan where he went, well, that didn't work, I'm going to have to try something
different. His plan to open the door of salvation to the Gentiles and to unite Jews
and Gentiles together in one new family, one new kingdom, was his plan from the
beginning.
And this plan, like everything God does, is something that he did according to the
counsel of his own will. What that means is he didn't get input from us or anybody
else on this. God never went to anybody and said, what do you think of my plan?
Do you think I should modify it? The only person that God sought counsel from is
himself. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit got together and in
perfect agreement said, this is our plan. Do we agree? Yes, we agree.
God works all things, it says here, according to the counsel of his will.
All things. Now Specifically here, it's talking about God uniting Jews and Gentiles,
but I want you to know that everything that happens in your life happens according
to the Council of God's will. All things that happen happen according to God's plan.
The fact that we, the believing Jews here, he says, have become God's own
possession. That's in accord with God's perfect plan, but that's true for everything
that happens in our lives, including the hard things you go through. All things
happen in our lives according to the counsel of his will. And as we sang this
morning, they are for His glory and are good.
That's what it says in verse 12. It's for His glory.
And in verse 13, Paul now turns and he says what God has done for believing Jews,
He is also doing for believing Gentiles. He has done for you, Ephesian Gentiles who
have trusted in him and believed in him. You've been brought into the family just
as we were brought into the family. Now, keep in mind the overall point is the
uniting of Jews and Gentiles in one purpose, or in one people of God.
So he's saying what God has done for us, he's doing for you who believe, and I
think it's important to note that while he has just talked in verse 12 about God's
predestining work, he talks in verse 13 about the responsibility that the Ephesians
had to hear and believe the gospel. Those two things fit together. Faith comes by
hearing, salvation comes when our eyes are open and we respond and believe.
That's our responsibility. I've said it before. I'll say it again. The Bible teaches
both God's divine sovereignty and man's responsibility to respond to the work that
God is doing. In fact, I want you to see this in a passage that makes this super
clear. So turn in your Bible to John, the gospel of John chapter 1.
Turn over there with me.
John is the fourth gospel in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And turn to chapter 1.
who were born, not of blood, that is not of a tribal identification,
nor of the will of the flesh, because the flesh wars against the things of God,
nor of the will of man, but they were born of God. Human responsibility in verse
12, verse 13, it's God who does this. How do those things work together,
that's above my pay grade. They do. God does everything according to the counsel of
his will. And so we just have to accept that what we can't fully understand is
true and we believe it, even if we can't wrap our arms completely around it.
Look at, now go back to Ephesians chapter 1. Verse 13, he says, when we believe,
God seals our salvation by giving us the Holy Spirit as a seal,
a down payment on our future salvation. I have to tell you about the first time I
read this verse. Do you remember, do you have any verses where you go, I remember
when I read that verse for the first time? I remember when I read this verse for
the first time. I was dating Mary Ann and we were in a Bible study together.
We were at a leader retreat for our young life group and the guy up front was
talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And in talking about the ministry of
the Holy Spirit, he said one of the things the Holy Spirit does is he seals us
for salvation. Now when the guy said that, he did not say, as it says in Ephesians
1, he seals us for salvation.
I'm sitting next to Mary Ann, and when he says we're sealed for salvation, she
flips in her Bible and finds Ephesians 1 where that verse is underlined. And I
said, he didn't say Ephesians 1. How did you know it was there? And I thought, I
am in way over my head with this woman, right? I'm in big trouble. I better figure
out how she knows some of these things. Because I didn't know that, but I just
looked and she knew where that verse was. So I was pretty overwhelmed.
There's a lot we could say about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, but the point
here in this particular passage is that one of the things the Holy Spirit does is
he seals us. He serves as our guarantee for our salvation.
He is the engagement ring that God puts on your hand to say,
I'm going to marry you one day. He's the down payment that you put to say, I'm
going to buy this property one day. Those are the pictures or metaphors that are
being used here. A seal, you would put a seal on a document and close it up and
say, this is my, you can tell this belongs to me because it has my seal on it.
That's what the Holy Spirit is doing when we are sealed with Him. God is
authenticating that you are His child by giving you the Holy Spirit.
Your salvation is secure in Him because the Holy Spirit is the one keeping you in
Him. You're protected from anything that might separate you from the love of God
through the sealing of the Holy Spirit. It is by the Holy Spirit that you became a
child of God, it's by the Holy Spirit that you remain a child of God. And this is
a fitting place for Paul to end this outburst of praise that he's been in since
verse 3, because there is no greater blessing than God that God could give you,
apart from your salvation, than to give you his own presence
himself, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The greatest blessing you have in life is
that God is with you and will not forsake you. We sing it sometimes,
thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope
for tomorrow. The ministry of the Spirit, God's presence with you, is the greatest
blessing we have in him. Over and over, we've been reading about the blessings we
have in him, being chosen.
than to have God himself dwelling with you. Now, you may be asking yourself, okay,
how can I know if I actually have the Holy Spirit? I mean, I prayed,
but sometimes I just wonder, do I really have the Holy Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit
in me? How do I know if this down payment has been made in my life? Well, I'm
going to give you the answer that Jonathan Edwards gave when he wrestled with that
question. You may know Jonathan Edwards, he was a part of what's called the First
Great Awakening. he saw
That manuscript when it came out, presented people with, how can you know whether
the Holy Spirit is really the one doing the work in somebody's life? And he came
up with five characteristics. He said, here's what will happen. If somebody is really
possessing the Holy Spirit, there will be an exaltation of Jesus in their life.
They're going to talk about Jesus a lot. They're going to exalt him. He's become
the new center. He's all they can talk about.
who Jesus is. Here's the second thing. The Holy Spirit will lead to a hate for and
a repentance from sin. If you have the Holy Spirit, your approach towards sin is
going to change. What you used to love, you're not going to love anymore.
Third thing, there will be an interest in and a hunger for the Word of God. The
Holy Spirit will give you a desire to want to know God through His Word.
Fourth thing, there will be a grasp of sound doctrine and a rejection of worldly or
secular ideas or ways of living. You're going to embrace what's true,
the Holy Spirit leads you into truth and you're going to turn away from what the
cultural noise is telling you about how to live your life. And then finally, there's
going to be a new love for others. The Holy Spirit will give you a love for other
people that you didn't have before.
Now at the risk of,
I'm about to add one to Jonathan Edwards list, okay? And it's really risky to say,
I think Jonathan missed one. But if you have the Holy Spirit, what we should see
in your life is the fruit of the Spirit. If you have the Holy Spirit,
what should be coming out of you is love and joy and peace and patience, the whole
list. We should be able to look at your life and say that person's a different
person because they have the fruit of the Spirit in their life. So the question is,
do you have the Holy Spirit? Do you know that you have the Holy Spirit? Are these
things true about you. And I'm guessing that like me, you're looking and saying,
well, they're kind of true.
I wish they were more true, but they're kind of true. I exalt Christ, yeah,
but not as much as I could or should. And I hate sin, but not as much as I
could or should. And yeah, I love God's word, but not as much as I could. If
that's the litany of your life, let me just help you relax a little bit. If these
things are true about you at all, they're true about you because the Holy Spirit
makes them true about you. People without the Holy Spirit don't exalt Jesus at all.
They never have a time when they go, I just want to spend time in God's word.
They never have a time when they go, oh, that sin, I don't want to be doing that.
If these things are true about you at all. If it's incomplete or imperfect, if
you're frail, if you're weak, if you're feeble, join the club. It's the Holy Spirit
who's at work in you if these things are true at all in you. Non -Christians don't
care about these things. If you care, that's the evidence that you have the Holy
Spirit. So if you've trusted Christ for your salvation and you see imperfect but
genuine evidence of these things being true in your life you should not doubt your
salvation because your work is feeble or frail because it's not as perfect as you
wish it could be you should trust that he who began a good work in you is
faithful to complete it that you grow in grace that you will be a different person
a year from now than you are today and five years from now different, some of you
can look back and say, I remember who I was three years ago.
Only the Holy Spirit could have done that work in me. So to recap, we become God's
people because it has always been God's plan for us to be included into his people.
His plan in the fullness of time was to redeem, to forgive, to unite Jew and
Gentile in Christ as the people of God. This was a plan from all time.
It was predestined, was not an afterthought or plan B. And when we heard and
believed the gospel, God the Holy Spirit not only opened our eyes to believe, but
he also sealed us and became the down payment for us on what will ultimately be
ours. That's how all of this happened. And Paul says, that should cause you to
praise God. So that's where we're going to look. We've talked about how we became
God's people. I want us to look at why we became God's people, because that's the
next significant thing to consider here. We became God's people because God intended
to put his plan and his purposes and his greatness on display for our becoming his
people. We saw this back in verses five and six when it says he predestined us for
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the
praise of his glorious grace. God said, I'm going to do something by grace. You're
going to see it and it's going to cause you to erupt in praise. When you see what
God has done graciously in your life and the life of others, there's no response
other than to say, praise the Lord for what He's done. Look at what God has done
here.
And now in verses 12 and 14, He predestined us, verse 12 says, so that we who are
the first to hope in Christ might be the praise of His glory. Your life brings
praise to Him as you praise him for what He's done for His goodness.
Verse 14, He gives us the Holy Spirit is the guarantee to our inheritance until we
acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. The reason Paul's repeating
that phrase over and over again is to say, this is what God's all on about. This
is what he's doing this for, so that he will get glory and that you will praise
him for his goodness in accomplishing these things. The ultimate purpose for God's
plan being executed and carried out is to stir us to praise him for his wisdom,
his greatness, his love, his mercy, his grace, and to bring him glory as a result.
I'm going to quote Liggin Duncan again. He says, to learn to delight in God's
glory, to long that the nations would see him as he is, to want more than anything
to see God glorified by the world,
glorified by the world, by the world knowing him as he is, that's what living for
the glory of God is all about.
Our salvation, our adoption as his children, being found in him, being sealed with
His Holy Spirit, ultimately is about Him, his plan, his purposes, and his glory
being accomplished in us and through us. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven. The blessings we receive
He said, this talk about God's glory, such Christian talk comes into violent
collision with the man -centeredness and self -centeredness of our world.
Fallen man, imprisoned by his own little ego, has an almost boundless confidence in
the power of his own will and an almost insatiable appetite for the praise of his
own glory.
But the people of God have at least begun to be turned inside out. The new society
has new values and new ideals for God's people or God's possession who live by
God's will and for God's glory. If you're in Christ,
whether you began as a biological descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or whether
you're a Gentile like most of us are, we are equal
And when you do, it brings him more glory. When you begin to grasp the mystery of
his plan being revealed to us in Christ, and you recognize the greatness and the
majesty of his plan, that he's bringing all things together in him,
when you see that and you respond with a life of praise and service, that brings
God glory. And next week we'll see how Paul moves from this prayer of praise to a
new prayer, the prayer of petition, where he says, God, will you help us to grasp
this more fully and more deeply so that it will continue to transform our lives?
Let's pray together.
Father, We thank you for the power of your word. We thank you for the blessing of
your word. We thank you that your plan is glorious. We thank you that you are
uniting all people, not because of a tribal identity or an ethnic identity,
but our identity is in you. We are united in Christ, whether Jew or Greek,
slave or free, male or female, people from every tongue, tribe, and nation are being
drawn together in you. And we praise you for that.
Lord, I pray this morning for any here who, as we talked about having the Holy
Spirit, would look at their lives and say, I don't know that I have the Holy
Spirit. I don't know that I'm in Christ.
I pray that these people might come to a place where they understand their need for
you.
They understand the reality of their own sin. They long for forgiveness. They long
to have the hope of those who are in Christ. I pray that they would be made ready
for eternity with you.
That your spirit would be at work in their lives today and that they would cry out
to you and say, Lord Jesus, I submit, I surrender my life to you.
We ask these things in your name. Amen.