There is Nothing More Secure Than Being in the Grip of My Strong, Loving Father
Ephesians 1:3-14 e of (a-e)
Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church
Please turn to Ephesians 1:3. Ephesians 1:3-14. Several months ago, we finished up a series that took a year and a half to accomplish. It was a sermon series that I preached to ground us in the fact that we who have faith in Christ for salvation, are eternally secure in Christ. Or, as I coined the phrase throughout the series, we who are truly saved are Once Saved In Eternal Spiritual Salvation (OSIESS). The main approach I used in that sermon series was primarily defensive. What I was doing was refuting and correcting wrong interpretations of Bible passages that are often used to suggest that there is no security in Christ. It is the philosophy of the Not Eternally Saved Theory (NEST). Now those sermons are a book, which is currently titled Biblically Defending Salvation. It can be found on our website. It is free. My point is that eternal security in salvation is a fact. I think that most of us, if not all of us, here would probably agree with that statement. At least, you should agree with that statement. But, even though we agree with that statement, I have found that people who recognize the doctrine of eternal security, sometimes go through brief periods of doubt. I mean Christians can be pretty self assassinating at times. There is nothing wrong with some serious introspection now and then, where we check ourselves with scripture. In fact, God wants us to check ourselves with scripture. But, there are times when Christians go one step further and build an alter, so to speak, to slaughter themselves upon. The reason they do this is because doubts come. The doubt comes from looking at themselves and realizing that they are a real mess. They look at themselves at some point of utter failure, and think;
Does God really love me?
Am I really saved?
How can I be saved, and be such a failure?
How can I be saved and have such sinful thoughts all the time?
How can I be saved and do the things I do that I know are not pleasing to God?
How can I be saved and be such a jerk?
If you were able to tune in, and listen to the thoughts of huge numbers of Christians, you would hear the voices of pain; the voice of doubt, and self condemnation echoing in the background. You would hear voices like,
I hate myself; maybe God hates me too.
Maybe you have these same thoughts. I would not be surprised to find out that such a voice has been echoing in the minds of many of us who are here this morning. Sometimes the thought comes;
I know God does not hate me. God loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, but, I wonder if God really likes me?
In the recesses of our soul, where pride lays down to rest its ugly head for a while, self condemnation rises up, and runs ahead of humility, and tells us we are not very likable, so why would God like what is not very likable. There are Christians who have thoughts like these who know the doctrine of eternal security by heart, but with thoughts like these, they get off the doctrine, and they get onto themselves and they wonder whether they are the exception. Do you get this way too? You have all of this Bible knowledge stored up in the front of your brain, right there above that Christian smile you put on every Sunday morning, and you are Johnny and Jainey on the spot, with the verse on your lips as you tell people what God has to say about it. You know a lot, and you have a great spiritual routine going on. But you also know what others don't know. And that is that there are times that come way too often where you don't feel very secure in your relationship with God. There are times when you wonder what God is thinking about you. This sermon is for you this morning. This sermon is for all of us who need God to speak to us about something that perhaps we thought we knew already up there in the front of our brains above our smiles, but we need God to speak to us about it again. We are going to listen this morning to the word of God as we continue to examine Paul's outburst of praise in glorifying God in a doctrinal fireworks display that ignites one amazing report after another of God's greatness to us whom He saves. We are going to look at what God says about His relationship with us. We are going to base our faith on what God thinks about us, and not how we feel when we are ashamed of being alive, or are beaten down by the world because we don't live up to every one else's expectations. Please prepare yourself to receive the sacred preaching of God's word in reverence and willingness to learn from this sermon titled,
"There is Nothing More Secure Than Being in the Grip of My Strong, Loving Father" [prayer]
Please read through our primary text with me this morning. It is that joyful expression of praise, worship, encouragement, and blessing, where we read, starting in Ephesians 1:3,
"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, 4 just as He elected us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be set apart and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His determination,
[OK, that is the grip of the Father. Keep that in mind this morning. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His determination,]
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His determination, according to His kind intention which He set forth in Christ 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His determination, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
[Paul has been saying "we" and "us," now he is going to say "you" and "your," where you ALSO experienced the same blessings verse 13]
13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory." Ephesians 1:3-14
I want to ask you;
What do you think of when you think of a kind loving father?
Do you think of your own father?
Maybe you don't. When a lot of people think of their own father, they think of hurt and pain, or they think of someone who was never there. The last thing they think about is love. Maybe when you think of a kind loving father, you think of someone else's dad. Or maybe you just think of an idea, like an ideal dad that you can kind of dream of as being the type of dad that makes you feel good about yourself. He makes you feel secure. A lot of people wish that they had that kind of dad growing up, but they didn't have that kind of dad. Many of us here were blessed to have kind, loving fathers, so it is easy to think of a kind loving dad when we think of our own fathers.
How many of us (when we think of a kind loving father) think of God?
Do you realize that this is what God wants you to do?
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at all the beautiful, kind, and loving ways that God our Father has treated us. We have seen that we have been elected since before the foundation of the world, and so you have been in your Father's mind's eye, so to speak, since before the beginning of time. He has you in His thoughts and plans as part of what He wanted to do before He created it all. You were elected in the sphere of the Messiah. The election is in the sphere of God's only begotten Son, who in the Trinity, is the eternal Son. Your election is to be blessed with every spiritual blessing that exists in the heavenly places, in the Son. God elected you to be set apart and not able to be blamed, accused, and found guilty, before Him. Then, in continuing to be impacted by Ephesians, we saw the Fatherhood connection of all of this love, where while you were completely at blame, God adopted you according to His kind intention. Your adoption was created in Christ. It was all done so that His grace, with all of its unsurpassed glory, would be praised, verse 6, which also expresses praise to our Father's glory verse 14. Our Father's kindness is even more magnified in our understanding as we contemplate that it was instituted in the great purchase on the cross. The redemption had to occur in the Son's blood. It hurt, and the Father knew it would hurt, but it had to happen that way. The Father's hurt; the Holy Spirit's hurt; the Sons' hurt, brought the forgiveness of your sins and trespasses according to the treasure of God's favor He has on you who are undeserving. He made it all known to us, though it was once a mystery. It was all to take place in the rejected Son, and it did. It happened at the fullness of times. It happened at the right time. These are all wonderful truths that we have explored so far in Ephesians, but listen to me people--none of these facts give us any hope if our Father's unmerited favor and infinite love is something that He has on us one day, but then changes His mind and He withholds it on the next day. This is why I want to encourage you this morning with the fact that there is nothing more secure than being in the grip of your strong, loving Father, who is God--not your job, not your guns, not your country, not your money, not your health; nothing is more secure than the eternal grip of God as He hugs your soul my dear Christian, and yes, He is hugging all of us at this very moment.
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To really cement us into this realization of our security, the first thing that we need to know is that we who are eternally spiritually saved, are actually there in the loving arms of our Father. You are embraced in the big everlasting hug of your God right now. If you don't know that you're already there, then how are you going to know how secure you are while you are there? Paul says that we have been predestined to adoption. We were orphans once. Now we are sons. But there was a special way we were adopted. We were adopted in the Son. This mean a lot, but primarily what I want to focus on now in respect to being there in the loving arms of our Father, is that God loves us because God loves Himself. The New Covenant revelation of this is further magnified in the statement that Father-God loves us because God loves the Son. For us to understand this secure, loving relationship, we must understand that it all exists for us right now, and forever, because of Christ in our salvation. In other words, it is not because of you at all; it is because of Christ the only begotten child, that you are a child of God. You don't have anything to offer to God to get His favor, so you might as well just give it up right now. The sooner you give up trying to make yourself likable to God, then the sooner you can rest where He wants you to rest--which is in the grace and favor He already bestows upon you in the Son, where He likes you already. Now let us focus on the last verses of our section under study. Reading from verse 11 through verse 14, I want to bring your attention to a pronoun shift in Paul's language. He says,
"11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His determination, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory." Ephesians 1:11-12
Up to this point Paul has been referencing "us," and "we," and what Paul is talking about is we the Israelite apostles in respect to himself writing this letter. The Israelite apostles, as we saw last week, were the first to have the initial aspects of the mystery of Messiah revealed to them. Two verses earlier Paul says,
"8... In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His determination, according to His kind intention which He set forth in Messiah" Ephesians 1:8-9
What Paul writes later in chapter 3, helps us to understand the pronoun distinction of we and us in the first 14 verses of chapter 1;
"1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles--2 if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you; 3 that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. [As Paul wrote in 1:8-9] 4 By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;" Ephesians 3:1-5
So, contextually in the first 12 verses of Ephesians, Paul keeps referring to the Israelite apostolic band before Paul makes a shift to speaking directly to the Asian Christians in verse 14. What we need to particularly notice about this, is how secure the Israelite apostles are. They have obtained an inheritance. The inheritance is in Messiah and it was something that was not random or arbitrary. It was predestined according to the purpose of a strong, wise, powerful Father who has the ability to work all things after the counsel of His determination. In other words, God does not consult anything or anyone else. God consults Himself in making His own determination about those He elects to bless. In consulting the counsel of His own determination, so to speak, the Father works all things, (as in all the spiritual predestined New Covenant things) according to whatever His purpose is. And the purpose the Father has for these saved men, is that the ultimate end is that they, as saved people in the arms of their strong loving Father, would be to the praise of the Father's glory. This is good. But what about the rest of us?; What about you? Next Paul shifts to saying "you" and "your" in verse 13. Watch and listen for it as I read,
"13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise," Ephesians 1:13
The "you" and "your" here is Paul's intended Gentile audience. This letter is not meant for just the Gentile Christians in Ephesus. It is meant for all the Christians in Asia that would read it. This letter is meant for you too. That is why our Father preserved it for us in the scriptures. God is wanting you and me to know that there is nothing more secure for us than being in the grip of the strong loving Father of fathers. Now I want you to notice that Paul shifts to referencing everyone together in verse 14,
"14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory." Ephesians 1:14
I want to bring to your attention a very important fact that you must realize about yourself. You need to realize that all of these beautiful precious promises are yours in Christ. What Paul is saying here is that what is true of "us" who are the Israelite apostles who have been the first to be blessed with Messiah and His New Covenant work, is also true for "you" who are Gentiles. The simple way that our Father ordained that all of this comes about is that after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation; then you believe. Believing is what God requires in salvation. All who were predestined to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His determination, v. 5, are saved by grace through faith. But, God has ordained that first, the gospel be heard by you, and then believed by you for your salvation to be actualized;
"13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise," Ephesians 1:13
The Gentiles of Paul's day heard all kinds of advice. They lived in the midst of various kinds of bizarre superstitions, pagan customs, philosophies, goals, and ideas. People believed in all those things with all of their heart. We have the same thing today. We are raised up in, and we are immersed in, all the corrupted patterns and philosophies of a dying humanistic pagan society. The hate filled spirit-father of the world has children, who, in each generation, wander and grope around for the meaning of life based completely upon ignorance, temporary survival, and pleasing the flesh. They formulate opinions of business, entertainment, and parenting in accordance to their lost groping. Sometimes science is said to be the answer to the problems of life. Sometimes philosophy is said to be the answer to the problems of life. Sometimes politics, world peace, environmentalism, feminism, and all these kinds of things are said to be the answer to the problems of life. Sometimes the world has no answer to offer anyway--just silence. The point is that the world's goals are thrust upon us anytime we read an article, or turn on a media device, or walk out the door. We hear tidbits of gossip, and sound bytes at work and at school. Most of the time it is all just accepted as fact. This happens in the movie world all the time. The plot of a movie has you getting in there and being involved as a third party by accepting all the moral decisions in the movie, all the political messages, all the attitudes, goals, ambitions and so forth of the main characters of the movies. If the characters are presented as the bad guys, or the antagonists, and the jerks and so forth, then we are supposed to accept that they are the antagonists, the bad guys, the jerks, and so forth. But, often the so-called bad guy is presented as an antagonist, a jerk and so forth simply because he is a Christian; especially a Christian leader, or a father, or someone who is an authority. According to God, all people who are not saved, are bad guys because of the sin nature, but the movies and novels are not telling the story that way. The same thing happens in the news, or in articles we read on the internet. And then there are the songs. The songs of our society are some of the worst. It might be Country, Rock, Jazz, or whatever it is, it is just more talk, but it has a melody in the background that keeps you tuned in. There are so many patterns of thought floating around molding us each and every day, that we, like little children, need to have a way to sift through it all, and get our bearings straight. Our Father provided the way of sifting through it all by giving us the message of truth that Paul is talking about. The Father is talking to you through His word, by His Spirit Who has sealed you. This is His grip, and so we need to pay attention. The Father reminds us. who are saved, that we heard the good news from the Father. He made sure that we did. We, predestined children of God, heard our Father's good news which is the Father's way of salvation. It is the message of truth that described to you, (and continues describing to you) just what your standing is before your Father. The message of truth is what told you how sinful you were. It revealed to us our damning doom without Christ. It gives us the standard of morality that God designed. The message of truth is what condemns us before it convicts us. It slaps us before it saves us. The message of truth is the word of life, and it cuts through all the junk of our lost, hopeless, plastic society like a two edged sword. The message of truth is what tells you that you once were an enemy of God, but now, in Christ you are His friend, and He likes you. So, the first thing that we need to know, according to the message of truth, is that though we are in this world, with all of its voices seeking to mold us, we who are eternally spiritually saved are actually there in the loving arms of our Father.
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The next thing we need to realize, as we are encouraged with the fact that there is nothing more secure than being in the Grip of our strong loving Father, is that once you had heard the message of truth, and believed, you were sealed in Christ with the Holy Spirit of promise. At this point we really need to understand what it means to be sealed. Hearing the message of truth is something that happens all the time to people who reject the gospel. So, there is a natural way to hear the message of truth. It is a natural way that leaves you open to your sinful inclinations. What I mean, is that a lot of people hear the message of truth and they think it is an interesting story. Sometimes people hear it and they get angry. They have heard the message of truth in the natural way that unsaved people hear it. But there is also a supernatural way to hear the message of truth, and the evidence that you have experienced it is that you supernaturally believe, and in that whole process, you are sealed with the person of the Holy Spirit that was first promised by Christ to the Israelite apostles in John 16:5. Like Paul says, the Israelite students and apostles were the first to hope in Christ. They were the first to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise according to Acts 2:33. And now, you have the Holy Spirit seal that makes you God's adopted child. We read of the Holy Spirit's supernatural sealing work in adoption in Galatians,
"6... God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Daddy! Father!' 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." Galatians 4:6-7
Then in Romans,
"... you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Daddy! Father!' 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" Romans 8:15-17
So, my dear brothers and sisters, you have the Holy Spirit seal that makes you God's child to begin with, and what this means is that you are sealed tightly with nothing of the old you hanging out in your eternal spiritual salvation. The Holy Spirit seal is not based upon what you do. The Holy Spirit seal is based upon what God has done in you. It is the security that makes us into sons of the Father, and you absolutely must know by faith, that there is nothing more secure than being in the grip of your strong, loving Father, which leads us to the next point.
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The next thing we need to realize is what this miracle sealing is all about. Finally, Paul says that the person of the Holy Spirit of our predestined adoption is
"14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory." Ephesians 1:14
What this means is that in your salvation, there are two very encouraging reasons for understanding just how secure the seal of God is. Notice that the Holy Spirit is given as a pledge of something that we are guaranteed to get.
"14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, ..."
This is an encouraging reason our Father gives you for understanding how secure you are in His grip. In Paul's culture, the inheritance is the right given to the first born heir, who is a son. Now, this is not initially your right. It is the the first born heir's right. The first born heir is Christ. Now think about this, because Christ is the inheritor according to His rights as the first born heir. It is Christ's right, but also we need to think about something else. Christ is not a failure. Christ does not have sinful thoughts all the time. Christ always does what is pleasing to God. Christ has perfect self confidence in who He is. There is no self condemnation in Christ's mind. Christ does not hate Himself, and the Father does not hate Christ. God loves Himself, God loves Christ, Christ loves Himself. In fact God likes Himself, and He likes Christ. Christ likes Himself. It is perfect security. Now when we think about this, we must also recognize that this same Christ, who is the author and finisher of your faith, according to Hebrews 12:2, is also the first born of many brothers, as we read in Romans 8:29. This is security because you and I identify with Christ as sons and brothers, in that our sonship is found in the body of Christ where you are the fullness of Him according to Ephesians 1:23. You are, (and all of us who are saved) are in the body of Christ in our adoption and regeneration by grace through faith. So, the very privilege bestowed upon you from the Father becomes your right in salvation in His perfect, spotless, blameless, fully self confident Son that the Father likes. To be in God's grip is to have the mystery, as Paul calls it, which is Christ the Son, who is the first born heir, in you as your hope of glory, Colossians, 1:27. So what this means, is that in the mystery of being positionally seated in the heavenlies at the right hand of God in Christ, according to Ephesians 2:6, we identify with Christ as the first born heir. We are fellow inheritors with Christ. And notice what God has in view in doing this. Just as it has to do with the Son's own personal security, which is imputed to you because you are in Him, it also has to do with God's own interests.
"... having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, [now here comes your strong Father's reason] with a view to the redemption of God's own possession,"
The seal and security of the Holy Spirit is given to you with the view that your Father will absolutely redeem your mortal body after death. This is your great hope, right? But what else does it mean? It means that God likes you. God likes you because He likes the body of His Son, (which you are in) and He likes the Holy Spirit (of which you are sealed). God doesn't want you to think that He doesn't like you; but unfortunately, multitudes of Christians think that wrong thought all the time. God has redeemed all of His children where He loves and likes them right now in this life, with a view to the ultimate redemption, which is the great exchange that occurs in death, where God will receive the possession, which is you. You are the possession that He purchased on the cross. In the future, in resurrected glory, God will still love and like you, but you will be changed into something better. You see, Christ already redeemed all those who were predestined to adoption. Christ effectually purchased all whom He elected to eternal spiritual salvation. So, in this sense, we, who are children of the Father, are God's own elected possession that He likes. He seals us with the Spirit, and of course the Holy Spirit is God's own possession as the third person of the trinity. In other words, God possesses Himself. So in this very real sense, with the Holy Spirit seal, we are God's own possession. Positionally Christ is in us as our hope of glory. Christ, the only begotten Son is God's own possession, so in this sense too, we are God's own possession. All these various aspects of your salvation, are part of our adoption process, and of course, to be adopted by the Father is to be the Father's own possession that He likes. The main point is that when the Father does something with a view to get something, then He gets it. God does not fail. We fail, but God never fails. This is how secure you are. The Father absolutely guarantees that He will raise up those He predestined to be adopted to exist in an immortal state in glory forever and ever.
OK, everything I just explained is one very encouraging reason for understanding just how secure you are in the seal of God. Another encouraging reason for understanding just how secure the seal of God is, has to do with why God wants all of this;
"... to the praise of His glory."
Our Father-God absolutely love you, but you must understand that your loving Father also loves His own glory. In saving us whom He loves, in sealing us whom He loves, and in redeeming what is already His, His glory gets praised. Forever and ever, all of God's happy redeemed children will be the family exhibit that brings praise to His glory. This is an absolutely secure thought to have. There is nothing more secure than being in the grip of your strong loving Father. We are his children. But, in being his children we want to please Him. We live in a cursed world, and the cursed world wears on us. Sometimes is envelops us and starts to smother us. Sometimes--maybe oftentimes we go through what a Christian artist wrote in a song. Listen to the lyrics and realize how they echo the feelings and experiences of so many Christians who, in moments of weakness, are in desperate need of being assured that there is nothing more secure than being in the grip of our strong loving Father. He says,
I lay down and I close my eyes, but I won't go to sleep tonight
There's too much on my mind
Holy God, you seem to be twice as far away to me than you have ever been before
Hold me safely in your arms and clear my crowded mind, and whisper words of peace in the dark
Whisper to me, oh whisper
I'm afraid but they don't know it
I feel so weak but I can't show it
So here I lay crying out with tears
Hold me gently in your arms and calm my beating heart, and whisper words of hope in the dark
This song reflects what God's little children need in times of inner turmoil. We want the Father to talk to us; to whisper to us; tell us it is going to be OK; tell us we are His child and He really does love us; tell us that we are really secure; tell us that He likes us. God does this through the Spirit in conjunction with His word, the Bible. That is what this passage we have been studying is all about. God is talking to us through it in an exuberant voice that is much much more than a whisper. He is telling you that He is your strong loving Father, and there is nothing more secure than being in His strong grip. The same grip that elects and predestines you, and seals you, is the same grip that holds you in the dark when the world seems like it is crashing in all around you.
Folks, I encourage you to brand Paul's exuberant message of chapter one of Ephesians on your mind. Be aware that God hates sin, and God wants you to repent from sin on a daily, moment to moment basis, but God loves you, and He really does like you as someone He has loved and liked since before the foundation of the world. God is not surprised by your sin and failure. When you think that nobody else understands, when you think that God doesn't like you, be bringing to mind God's revelation to you from scripture. His revelation is the anchor of your soul. Don't let any other voice fill your mind other than the voice of God's word. Once you realize it, and put your faith in it, then the darkness that you feel is enveloping you, will be replaced by the shadow of your loving Father's wing, where, though you may have not always been aware of it, you have always been pressed against His bosom along with all your other brothers and sisters in Christ. Folks, we are all there--every one of us. As you do this, you can realize that there is even more, where you can go one step further, and you can take this revelation and share it with other brothers and sisters in Christ concerning how loved and liked, and safe and secure, in their Father's everlasting arms they really are. You can be God's minister of the moment; sharing His word, to wipe away their tears with the sure foundation of God's truth. How many of us (when we think of a kind loving father) think of God?
