In Love He Predestined

0:16Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Bible Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Bible Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church and for directions, you can find us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Go ahead and turn to the book of Ephesians. Chapter 1, verses 5 through 10 is where we are this morning. It's a bit of a tough ask for anyone, especially me, to attempt to condense 2,000 years of doctrine and theology of the church on a particular topic into a 30-minute sermon. Impossible even. But I pray that the Lord will have something through this humble message this morning. We were just out of the starting blocks last week on this subject that we're covering this morning. But we're hitting our stride today. And this morning, by the grace of God, we are running right into the depths of God's eternal love and his election. For many of us, some for sure, this may be challenging today. Perhaps even uncomfortable. But by the grace of God, I hope we see the beauty in these words this morning. And the purpose of this doctrine that we will focus on, that is God's predestinating love, is only to place us rightly in humility before an awesome God and to grant us the eternal security that can only be found when we trust in and worship the God who knows all things, who plans all things, and who executes all things. So we are this morning, by God's grace, going to look deeply into election and the purposed redemption we have through the blood of Christ. Admittedly, this is still and will always be for me personally and for the church more broadly a mystery. But I think if we approach this topic with humility, with love, and with a view to the grace of God and his gospel, and with the desire to have our minds renewed by this word and secured by his word, I think we will see the glory in this great mystery. So that's our introduction. Again, stand with me as we read. Chapter 1. Starting in verse 5. 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 lavished upon 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 him, things in heaven and things on earth. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. Those were those two words in love. In love. And those two words in love are placed in a very interesting place in the Greek. And I'm not a Greek scholar. Y'all know that I'm not a Greek scholar, but I do read just enough to make me sound like perhaps I know what I'm talking about. But the Greek doesn't have punctuation like English does. And these words in love in your text, right before the start of verse 5, they sit right in between these two sections of the text. And to put it with one thought or the other, meaning to say that we are holy and blameless before him in love, or to say in love he predestined us, is to make an interpretive decision about where to put it. Did Paul mean to say, again, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love? Or did Paul mean to say, in love, he predestined us for adoption? And just for your notes, the King James Version, for instance, puts that in love with verse 4, as does the CSB and the LSB, there's other translations, and then other translations like the RSV stick it with the second half with start of verse 5, emphasizing that it was God's love that he brought forth, his act of predestination. So these are interpretive choices, whichever you decide there. The NSV, or the ESV and the NASV, which I think most of us use, there are other translations, I'm sure, desire to render the Greek as literally as possible, and they preserve the ambiguity by confusingly keeping in love in the middle, as you see. This is why it is after the period of verse 4, but before the start of verse 5, in this weird in-between place. This is the English's attempt to follow the Greek, which I appreciate. The question then is, does it really belong in verse 4? Or does it belong in our text this morning in verse 5? And to that we answer yes. Yes. Certainly, we could take this too far, and we could say that God's love, we could see God's love as standing in the middle between his desire to bless and to make holy, which we talked about last week, and his adopting and saving. We could say that God's love stands in the middle of that. It was love that he sent forth his son, right? It was love that compelled him to create. It is love that sums up the whole of the moral law. We know that to be true, his standards and his reflection of his character, his love for God and love for another. So it is rich and it is fitting to leave his love in the middle between those two ideas. So connecting last week, we can say that it is God's love that motivates our transformation into holiness and to blamelessness. That was what we talked about last week. We are blessed and transformed in and through the love of God. And the church father origin on this topic says that love, quote, love is the environment in which holiness and transformation exists. End quote. Much like what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, this chapter on love, which is all familiar to you. If we have all these spiritual powers, if we can do all these things for God, but we have not love, we have nothing and have done nothing, right? So love is the grounding for blessing and transformation. We are holy and blameless before Him in love. That was last week. Also, though, love is the motivation for God electing, that is, predestining, a people for himself. In love, the text says, He predestined us. And this addresses really the common objection to this deep and mysterious doctrine of election that some would say that such a doctrine and such a basis of his eternal salvation and his sovereign act and election to everlasting life means that this makes God mean, it makes him arbitrary, and perhaps even evil, some would say. I do sympathize with their all of our inabilities to wrap our minds around the unsearchable and the inscrutable ways of God. Really. I do. But the question is not whether I can figure it out, whether you can figure it out, but rather will we submit to the word of God and what it says? Will I, will you, receive with thanksgiving the word of God given to us? His word does not say that he is mean. His word does not say that he is arbitrary. His word certainly does not imply that such a choice on God's part is mechanical or evil. Rather, at the very heart, that is the beginning of the Father's purposes in election is love, not evil. In love, he predestines us. I think it would be and is a bit silly to think that what is meant here in this passage, because we have to do something with it, is that God looked down through the quarter of time and saw all who would choose him on the basis of their own free will, and then from that he would predestine those who are going to ultimately choose him anyway. In effect, that would make God say, I will, in love, choose those who choose to love me. But I ask you, is that love? Think about that. Is that love, is that the gospel? That God loves only those who love him first. That God determines to love on the basis of one's decision to love him first. I cannot be. We love because he first loved us. Try that argument, just as a thought experiment. Try that argument on your wife, men. And tell her that you love her and that you chose her only because she loved and chose you first. Because you love her only because you knew that she was gonna love you back beforehand. Is that love? Or was it that you saw her and said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh? I don't know how. I gotta figure out how to make that one mine. That's love. That's love. John chapter 10, verse 1, he says, Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way. That man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice. And he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, and they know his voice. And again, Christ says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold, and I must bring them in also. And they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd. I'm so grateful this morning that my shepherd knows me. Why me? I don't know. I wouldn't have chosen me, not a chance. I'm continually unworthy of this. But for some reason, I am sure that in love he saved me. That he has adopted me as his son. To Christ Jesus according to the perfect purpose of his will. The praise of his glorious grace. And if you are in Christ this morning, you are his sheep. Because he loved you. Because you knew his voice when he spoke to you. You listened to his voice when he spoke to you. And there will be one flock with one great shepherd. May our gracious Lord then call his own to his pasture. And may he use us as humble instruments of his voice. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Christ Jesus, according to the purpose of his will. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he blessed us in the beloved. And verse 7: in him we have redemption through his blood, and the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. If you could call anything a mountain, standing in the way of God's predetermined will, to call his people home and to present them holy and blameless before him, that mountain is our sin. Isaiah 59 says this Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that he cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. And your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. No one enters suit justly, no one goes to the law honestly, they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief, and they give birth to iniquity. Isaiah continues on that way for some time. But the point is that in order for God's plan of redemption to take place, he had to do something about your sin. Much like to a lesser degree, a father whose teenage son, not to say I've ever been in this situation, has sinned against him, and there is enity between them. If you have teenage kids, you know this. And as a parent, you are angry, aren't you? You're ashamed, perhaps. There is a barrier between that relationship, and until you, as the parent, do something about that enmity, it will remain. You may lay out consequences for that sin. You may propose the illustrate the ramifications of that sin. You may propose some path for reconciliation. And then what happens? You extend the hand of forgiveness so that the relationship is restored again. This is always how it works. So for us, then, full of iniquities, having transgressed our Heavenly Father, if there is any hope for our restoration, if there is any hope for our relationship with Him to be restored, He and only He must lay out the path of reconciliation for us. He must extend his very long hand of forgiveness to us. Or else we have no hope. I think I did a while back, our uh president, after having done something that he he or maybe we all consider noble, I don't remember exactly what it was. He said that he was did that or was doing that because he was just trying to get to heaven. That's a fundamental misunderstanding and a damning misunderstanding of what it means or the means by which we are saved. There is no trying to get to heaven in the church. You can't get there. How exactly would you in your flesh propose to get to a spiritual reality where you have no clue where it is? No transportation to get there, and no ability to get there, even if you did know the way. Unless the Father shows you the way. Unless He makes the way for you. There is no way you are getting there. Because your iniquities have made an impassable separation between you and your God. So how is this resolved? How is this impassable chasm spanned? Our text tells us this morning. It is resolved by the blood of Christ. Remember that eternal covenant that I mentioned briefly last week? Referred to in theological terms as this covenant of redemption. It's made before the world began by the triune God, and in that we can be sure that the Son purposed to shed his blood for the redemption of his people and to reconcile them back to God. 1 Peter. Knowing that you are ransomed, this might be 2 Peter, actually. I think I might have put that in wrong, but knowing that you are ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. This is at the heart of our understanding of redemption. And that is this that God's appointed time, according to his foreknowledge, he would ransom his people from their sins, not with perishable things. But with the blood of Christ. Our redemption is by the blood of Christ. Our salvation is through his purposed blood. He took the nails. He took the spear that was meant for you. Not in an indiscriminate way, but for you. For those in Christ, he shed his blood for you. You are saved then by Christ. I have no idea if Michael W. Smith intended for his song to support the doctrine of particular atonement. And I'm not saying we should start singing this song in church. The chorus of his song, Above All, I know y'all know the song. Says this crucified, laid behind a stone, you lived to die, rejected and alone, like a rose trampled on the ground. You took the fall and thought of me above all. The prayer of Christ just before his crucifixion, after saying that he is not praying for the world, but he's praying for those whom the Father has given him. He says, This, O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you. And these know that you have sent me. I have made known to them your name, and will continue to make it known that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. If you are in Christ, He is in you. And you have received by His grace through faith that He went to the cross for you. He did not go to the cross, maybe, to die for potentially some people who may one day wake up for their sinful stupor and accept him for what he has done for them. No, he prayed for you. He thought of you. He shed his blood for you. And even now is praying for and making known his love to all of those that the Father has given him, and all those whom for he purposed his blood. That his love would surely be in them and he in them? I'll give you the rebuttal to that. And many will say, well, what about all of those poor people who desire salvation and just happen to not be of those people whom Christ had shed his blood and purposed for? What about those people? I say to you, such a person does not exist. We create these straw men in our minds that don't actually exist. Opponents would paint a picture of a bunch of people drowning in the ocean, because I've heard this before, drowning in the ocean, begging to be saved, and Christ is sitting on a boat saying, sorry. Wasn't your time, wasn't your call. As though we purport Christ to be vindictive, evil like that. Hear me, church. All who come to Him, all who call upon His name in faith will surely be saved. Those, in fact, are the ones He has saved. We have to stop pretending that there is a group of people who really desire salvation but don't actually get it. Scripture never even hints at such an individual. Not even close. It tells us that there are many who hate him, who reject him, and who will never even consider salvation, those who are utterly repulsed by Christ, and there are those we call Judas. Those who will pretend for personal gain but who will ultimately betray him with a kiss. That's it. Those are the groups. Those who reject him and hate him, sneer at him and his true character, those who pretend for personal gain but betray him ultimately, and those who are his eternally, and who come to him in faith. Those are the groups. So the word for you today is come to Christ. Come to Christ today in faith, crying, Lord, save me. Have mercy on me. Extend your long arm of forgiveness to me today. Would you cry out to him and ask him to bridge that great chasm of separation between us and him that he may lead us home? If that is your heart this morning, then you can be assured that in him you have redemption through his blood, as our text says. The forgiveness of your trespasses according to the riches of his grace, and yet you have been indeed saved by grace through faith. For this very reason, Peter says, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these things you will never fall. Confirm then your calling and election to a life of obedience and godliness. This is what we should do. I will close then in verses 8 through 10, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to the purpose, to his purpose which he set forth in Christ. I've referenced a couple times now this idea of a covenant of redemption, an eternal plan of God to save a people for himself through the sufferings of Christ on the cross. And I want to quote Martin Lloyd Jones just so you know that I am not up here making things up. Okay? Lloyd Jones says this quote, God purposed in himself before the foundation of the world this great scheme of redemption and of salvation. It is something that originated entirely in the mind and heart of God. He purposed it in himself, end quote. It's a great mystery, isn't it? Undeniably a great mystery. The mind and purpose and plans of God and all that is going on his infinite and his unsearchable mind. It's a great mystery. The eternal and secret decrees of God to us are unsearchable and unfathomable mystery. But what a blessing it is that God has revealed to us and given us insight into his mysterious and complex plans. He is lavishing upon us the riches of his grace that he is revealing to us his plan and purpose through Christ. He is giving us wisdom and insight, making known to us the essence of this mysterious will through the person of Christ. Remember Hebrews. In those former days, God spoke to us through the prophets, only hinting at or preparing us for a final word spoken through his incarnate word, who is himself the revelation of this mystery. What has God been up to all these years? What is he scheming? Or what was he scheming before the world began? Why the garden, if you asked that? Why the tree? Why Satan? Why the fall? Why these sacrifices of bulls and goats? What in the world is all this about? Why are we even here? Have you asked these questions? But when you really see it, you can't unsee it. Because it has always been about Christ. Christ is the mystery revealed. Christ is the purpose of God set forth in the fullness of time to unite all things in him. The grand and divine purpose to lavish grace upon a people, rescuing them from their sins, through the sacrificial life and death of His Son in flesh, to ransom a people for Himself, who, having known the terror and the sorrow of sin and death, would spend the rest of eternity praising and serving the God who saved them from the depths of that sin and rescued them from death. This is why I don't need another prophet. I don't need another prophet to tell me anything else. I don't need another dream to give me some additional insight. I don't need another tongue. I don't need another sign to display the power of God. I don't need a burning in my chest or some overly emotional experience to convince me what God is doing. I don't need anything because the perfect has come. The mystery has been revealed. God has spoken to his people, he has given them his son to declare, this is my purpose and I have done it. This is my will, and it is finished. The blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of his people, this is the mystery of his will. What else is there to say? Nothing except repent and believe, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and turn to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Stop running. Stop hiding behind mystery. Stop looking for signs. Stop waiting for something to convince you. He's given you his word. He's given you his final word. Receive and trust in Christ, and you will surely be saved. Trust in Christ alone, and you will have life. You will have life abundantly. For in him alone are all things united, things in heaven and things on earth, as our text closed with. So I'll say then in conclusion, this is a challenging doctrine. Challenging word. By the grace of God, won't you receive his truth? And won't you receive this truth with the same empty hands with which you approached the cross? May the Lord try us this morning. May the Lord teach us and show us all the more the height and the depth and the breadth of His eternal love. The love that loved us first. The love that moves to save. The love that has been since the beginning and forever. This is the love that predestines. Lord, we are under the weight of the mystery of your will. And what you have revealed to us, Lord, is that if we are in Christ, you have saved us, and we thank you. If we have called upon the name of Christ, you have loved us before the foundation of the world. And I don't know why you love me, Lord. I don't know why you love any of us. But we thank you that you do. Lord, would you keep us by your spirit? Would you continue to love us as you've promised to, Lord? Would you continue to forgive us when we fall so far short? Lord, would you use us to bring other sheep to your pasture? Would you use us to lead your sheep home to you? We love you, Lord. Ask all these things in the name of Jesus.