It's just because I live near
the beach. You're not fooling me one minute. I am delighted one more time,
God's grace, to be back in this place and
to be back with so many of you that I've known
so many years. have such fond memories of God's
grace to us all. I want you to open your Bibles
tonight to the book of Ephesians. If the Lord will be my helper, I want to try to talk to you
in these three messages about God our Savior. God our Savior. The prophet Isaiah was used of
God to make this statement. He said, tell ye and bring them
near. Yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient
time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? And there is no God else beside
me. a just God and a Savior, there
is none beside me." And then the Apostle Jude, closing
out that little epistle, he uses this language, to the only wise God, our Savior,
be glory. and majesty, dominion, and power,
both now and ever. Amen. Amen. He is God our Savior. And it is very clear from these
verses and from many others that God, the triune God, in all his
glorious sacred persons has engaged himself in the salvation of sinners. He is God our Savior. John said, for there are three
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Spirit, and these three are one." Somebody says, preacher, I just
don't understand that. Well, join the club. And it would
be a pitiful God if I could understand him in all his greatness and
glory. When the Apostle Paul, if you
want to turn over in the book of Acts, hold your place and
turn over in the book of Acts. Because in the book of Acts,
the Apostle Paul says something that I think is very interesting. In Acts chapter 20, in verse
24, He said, but none of these things
move me. Meaning those things that appear
outwardly dangerous, threatening to his life, his health, dangers
that come through and by just simply preaching the gospel. I don't know if you know it,
but there are people who would literally love to see your pastor
dead. You dead, Tim. You dead, Jim. Those who preach the gospel.
And I know that because Christ said if a person hates someone,
they're guilty of murder. But the Apostle Paul says, but
none of these things move me. Neither count I my life dear
unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry
which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel
of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that
ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom shall see
my face no more. Wherefore, I take you to record
this day that I am pure from the blood of all men. My hands are clean. because I have not shunned to
declare unto you all the counsel of God. You are clear of the blood of
all who have heard you because you have not shunned or failed
to declare unto them all the counsel of God. Does that mean
you've said everything about God that can be said? Absolutely
not. But all that can be said about
God concerning what He has said about Himself. That's all the true preacher
of the gospel is. We rehearse before men what God
has said about himself. But the Apostle Paul, since God
has given us this book of Ephesians, We know what Paul preached to
these people concerning God, not in some generic sense, not
in some wild, mystical words. But what we have here in this
first half or more of the first chapter of Ephesians is Paul
attributing the salvation of all these Ephesian believers
and all who believe to the triune God. And as he moves through the statements
here in this letter, he attributes to each one of the persons of
the Godhead their acts in the salvation of sinners. And tonight I want us to look
at the first one. Because Paul is not like so many
who say they're kind of keeping all the good stuff on the top
shelf and just giving cookies to the people. He gets about
two statements into this letter to the Ephesians, and he kind
of erupts with praise and glory that is given to God the Father. I thought about it as I was driving
up this day. I thought about how you really
don't hear a lot about what the Father has done in our salvation. And it dawned on me the reason
for that and the reason why men do not have much to say about
it is because it is painfully obvious that what the Bible says
that the Father has done takes everything out of our hands and
makes it to be something He has done before the foundation of
the world. And preachers don't like anything
left in the hands of God alone. So the Apostle Paul here, he
begins in these verses by acknowledging God the Father as being essential. That is, having some understanding
of God the Father in order to Assure that God gets all the
glory. In other words, when we begin
to talk about what God the Father did and when He did it, then
that automatically takes it out of our hands and shows the one
in whose hands it is. He begins by saying in verse
3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed. That word bless means
something like to adore. It's one of those words that
is connected to that word that has become our word eulogize. So what he says is that God the
Father is to be praised, He's to be honored, He's to be adored
because of His acts in our salvation. He says, blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Now I, in a former day, what
now seems to be a former life almost, But I came to understand
some of the things that were called the doctrines of grace
or Calvinism. But what I failed to see, what
I did not see until someone came and preached the gospel to me,
that these things in and of themselves are as damning as anything else
if they are separated from Christ. That what we find even here that
the Father is said to have done, He has done them. It says in
that last part of verse 3, He has done them in Christ. So when we talk about the acts
of the Father, we're not separating that from Christ himself, but
we're talking about that which God has done that the apostle
says he's to be adored for, he's to be praised for. And if you
notice there in that verse, when he says, blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he says, who hath blessed us? In other words, this is not some
impersonal being. It is this one who's the first
person of the Godhead. He is the one who, and it says
here, hath blessed us. I like all the haths in the Bible. I like the fact that even the
love of God, rather than being spoken of as it is mostly in
our day, when they say, God loves you, What the Bible says is that
he loved you, past tense. And these things that we read
about here in Ephesians 1, they are the acts of God. They are
spoken of as a thing that is accomplished. They are accomplished
by God, who never changes. So it is utter foolishness, as
our brother has just shown us so clearly, it is utter foolishness
to seek to debate it or to do something whereby we imagine
that we can undo that which the unchangeable God, He says He's
already done. I hear preachers saying, well if
you do this, God will bless you. No, this says He has blessed
somebody. Like he said, God's going to
save some people. So he says here that the Father,
blessed be the God and Father, this one who changes not, he
hath saved us, and it cannot be in any way based on something
he foresaw that we would do or be. He said he just hath blessed
us. In other words, what blessings
that men and women talk about in our day. They are not really
blessings at all, but the real blessings are the things that
God, the Father, in an act of His grace, He blessed us with
by Himself, based on Himself. I like what the Apostle Paul
writes to Timothy. Speaking of God the Father, He
says, Who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not
according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace,
which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. Now men say, God calls us, and
if we answer His call, He'll save us. But that's not what
the gospel says. That's not what's attributed
to God the Father in this business of our salvation. He plainly
tells us that according to his own purpose and grace that was
given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, he saved us
and called us. He blessed us. I want to bless Him. And the
greatest blessing that I ever had from God, the greatest blessing
I ever had in my life, was when He revealed to me that He blessed
me in Christ Jesus. That word blessed us, or words
blessed us, it means something like what was said concerning
the father himself. But here it means to speak well
of. How in the world? Could the thrice
holy God, how could the blessed father of our Lord Jesus Christ
ever have blessed us or have ever spoke well of us? Because he would. I think of it. as being set forth
in this way, just in some of the verses that have already
been read, that when God could not find any reason in us, and
surely would not have had advice to do so by all the enemies of
our soul, He simply retreated into his own sovereignty and
he simply blessed a people in Christ because he would. Because he would. And I have
a feeling that the Lord's people are going to spend eternity in
awe of that fact, in awe of that truth, in awe of that grace and
mercy for all eternity. He blessed us. We're not so much
waiting to be blessed, although we will be, but the glory of
it is He blessed us. And the things He speaks of are
God's blessing. Those sinners that are blind
spiritually, they see them as a curse. When the Lord first began to
confront me with the truths of those doctrines and those issues
that really strike to the core of proud human, blind, self-righteous,
religious flesh, I hated it. I hated it. I remember writing something.
I had an old red Bible cover. You know, you had to have a red
Bible cover because that represented the blood. How, I don't know. But I had that old Bible, and
I'd written down right beside Mr. Scofield's notes. I'd written down these words
by verse. I can't even remember which one it was right now. I
wrote down, this kills the full predestination theory. Is that ignorance? Is that blindness? That a sinner on earth can stand
in the face of God the Father and renounce what he's already
done. When we read these things to
people, we say this is what God says, this is what Paul said
that the Father is to be praised and adored for. They say, God
can't do that. He already has. We're talking
about what God the Father has already done. And what it says
here is that he blessed us with all spiritual blessings. That
throws the whole charismatic movement right out the door.
No, we want this blessing and then we want a greater blessing,
we want a higher blessing, a deeper blessing, all this kind of stuff.
It says that He blessed us, He spoke well of us, He did this
for us, He blessed us with all spiritual blessings. That's the way grace works. That's
why it's in Christ Jesus. It's in one outside of ourselves.
And what he says here is this, he says, he has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings. You think that might be why we're
not interested in them? We'd rather hear about the health
and wealth and happiness and prosperity gospel. We'd rather
hear about a fire escape from hell. We'd rather hear about
physical property. This is all spiritual blessings. You can't see him. You can't
count him. You can't elevate yourself above
somebody else with him because he's given to all his people
the same thing. It's called an eternal inheritance. And in this eternal inheritance,
the amazing thing is that the children, one won't get more
than the other because it's always in Christ.
He blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. He blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ according. That's a
good word in Scripture. I remember when those deacons
were trying their dead level best to get me out of that Southern
Baptist church. And one night, one of them said
to me in a meeting, he said, What you're preaching, it's not
really according to Hall, is it? I think he was an authority on
the game of bridge. This is according to God. That's
what the gospel is. It isn't about what this denomination
says, or this person says, or this preacher says and all that.
It's according to God. The gospel is according to God.
This blessing, these blessings, he says, he blessed us according
as something that he did. And I'm going to tell you something
right now. I can know and tell you from experience. If God saves
us, we're going to find out by one trip to the whale's belly
or another that salvation's of the Lord. That's easy to say, isn't it?
Salvation's of the Lord. Salvation's by grace. But when you find out what that
really involves, that it began outside of you, it began before
you, and it was done in spite of you, it's of the Lord. It is according to God. He determines, as was said, who
will be saved. He declares what a spiritual
blessing is. And then He goes on immediately
to tell us what some of those spiritual blessings are. He says, according as He hath
chosen us. He chose us. Tis not that I did choose thee? For Lord, that could not be. This soul, this heart would else
have refused thee, had you not chosen me." He chose us. Like Brother Tim said, that's
not real hard to understand. Who chose your wife? Who chose your husband? You go out to eat tomorrow. Who
will choose what you eat? This says the Father chose us. He chose us. And absolutely,
it was not that He chose us in order to give us an opportunity,
or chose us to give us a chance, or chose us to make something
available to us. What the Bible says about election,
first of all, is that He chose us. Somebody said, who's us? Those that aren't them. He chose us. Not for any good
in us. Not for anything done by us.
Not in response to something He knew we'd do. Somebody says,
well, God foresees all things. He sure does. You know why He
foresees them? Because He foreordains them. He chose us. I remember when
I was in elementary school and they would choose up for the
baseball team. Do you know anything about that? Well, I didn't really expect
to be chosen first. But it sure would have been nice
to be chosen. I couldn't even get them to choose
me for the water boy. That's exactly right. You know, if somebody in a high
government place or a king or something, if they were looking
for somebody really special to do something, would they choose
you? They don't even know who you
are. But the God of glory chose us. That's amazing. That's a blessing. Because we would never have had
any blessing of any kind had He not given us this blessing. He hath chosen us. Somebody said,
God can't do it. Hate to tell you He already has.
He chose us. He exercised His will. He chose us. And as we said,
there's nothing we can do about it. And when we find out the
glory of it and the grace of it and the mercy of it, there's
not anything we want to do with it. Except thank Him for us. He chose us. He chose us. Individuals. He chose us in Christ
Jesus. That's the only way He could
choose us. He couldn't even look upon us
outside of Christ. He couldn't do anything in a
positive way, as we might say, toward us outside of our being
united in that union of grace and mercy whereby he could look
upon us in Christ and choose us in Christ. The old hymn writer said something
like, Christ be my first elect, God said, then chose us in Christ
our head. He chose us. Well, if you throw out election,
you throw out Christ. Because he says we were chosen
in Christ Jesus. And we find that the apostle
Paul, this same apostle, when he writes to the Thessalonians,
he makes sure that this is stated clear enough that there can be
no question about it. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2,
in verse 13, he says, in a contrast, these Thessalonians were contrasted
to some people. You know who they were? Those
that God sent strong delusion upon that they should believe
a lie rather than the truth. Now the flesh really says, would
God do that? He did it. But contrasted to them, the apostle
says, but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you. you. Brethren, beloved of the
Lord, because God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation, not to just a blessing, not just
to an opportunity Not just God giving everybody a chance. No. He said He chose you from the
beginning to salvation. Through sanctification of the
spirit and belief of the truth. You see, if you throw out election,
number one, you throw out Christ. Number two, you throw out the
love of God. Number three, you throw out faith,
belief, in the truth. Number four, you throw out the
gospel. Through sanctification of the
spirit and belief of the truth, where unto he called you by our
gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And rather than that producing
what these lying preachers say must surely be the effect of
such doctrine as that, look at what he says in verse 4. He says, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him. The end of election is not God
choosing us just so you and I can strut around like peacocks in
proud flesh. The end goal of election is God
choosing us in Jesus Christ that we might be holy and without
blame before him. Nobody has looked at me lately
and said, Well, I can see you're holy and without blame. But it doesn't matter. In Christ,
through Christ crucified, we're holy and without blame in His
sight. You know, that's a really liberating
thing. For a preacher, it really is,
isn't it? He'll get blamed for everything. He's the cause of
everything. He's the divider. He's the stir-upper. He's the antagonist and what
have you. Yes, but he's holy and without
blaming God's side. That's a blessing. You see, there's only one way
we can be holy and without blaming God's side. And that's in Christ
crucified. And that's why He's called the
way. That's why He's called the Lord our righteousness. That's
the only way. Absolutely the only way. And
the truth is that these very things He's talking about, these
acts of the Father, they're acts of love. As a matter of fact,
I believe a lot of Bible scholars and commentators, they believe
that those last two words in verse 4, in love, are really
the beginning of the statement in verse 5. In love. What follows is something that
God did as an act of love. You see, there's more than one
blessing. There's more than one acts of the Father. He not only
chose us, but He predetermined some things for us. In love, having predestinated
us. That word just simply means something
like to mark out or determine beforehand. It's like Tim said,
that's not hard to understand at all. But only when God comes in power,
revealing the truth to our soul and enabling us to believe what
he says, do we ever find out that predestination is an act
of the Father's love. He did this in love. If ever there's a doctrine in
the Bible that's been vilified and been the boogeyman to so
many people and preachers and say it's predestination, it's
an act of love. It's an act of God's love. And
many imagine that they love their children more than God loves
His people. Now I'll tell you this is the
fact. If you want to find out how helpless you are and how
weak you are and how powerless you are, have kids. Is this right? Those of you who don't have any,
you can't shake your head. You don't know anything about it.
But those of you that have, You'll find out just how weak, how helpless,
how powerful, and how many times you'll say to yourself, from
almost day one till the time, well, I've not reached that time
yet. My kids are in their 40s. You say, if I could, if I could
just make this right for them, if I could just turn them from
this direction, if I could just show them this and that and the
other. You say you love your children so much that if you
had the power to do it, you'd determine things for them. You think God loves His children
less than you love yours? And He does have the power to
do it. I got a little, almost five-year-old
granddaughter and she's beginning to be quite a child of Adam. And just imagine if I saw her
one day out in front of our church building, on a kind of a busy
road, and I saw her walking toward that middle of that highway,
and all these big trucks and stuff passing by, and I say something
like this, you know, I love her, and it looks like she's getting
in real danger, but I just love her too much to interfere. I certainly would, of all the
things I wouldn't want to do, I wouldn't want to violate her
free will and stop her from going the way she wants to go. Ain't going to happen. I've got
breath in my body, Gerald. If I can run a step, if I can
get there in any way, get my hands on that young'un, she's
going to be snatched from the path of those deadly vehicles. God knowing our awful state,
knowing the great enemy of our souls, in love he predestinated
us unto the adoption of children. Now adoption is a little bit
different in the Bible than it is in modern day thinking. When Paul talks about the spirit
of adoption being sent forth, adoption in that hour was not
so much the deciding upon someone as your child, it was more the
showing of them and sending them forth publicly as your child. Paul says, when God sends forth
the spirit of adoption, into our souls. What do we say? We cry, Abba, Father. Abba, Father. That is, He predestinated us. In Romans 8, He says, for whom
He did foreknow, He also did predestinate And you can just think about
this a little bit if you want to. The next two words are those
italicized words that were added by the translator so that it
actually reads something like this. For whom he did foreknow,
he also did predestinate, conformed to the image of his son. He saw us in Christ. He determined
to make us like Christ. He determined to save us by Christ. He determined to conform us to
Christ. And He did it as an act of everlasting
love. He did it before we were born. He did it before we fell in Adam. He did it before we had a will, and it's done. I've always said there are two
kinds of gospels. One is God's gospel, which is
done. The other is man's gospel, which
is doo-doo. Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. In love, He predestinated us,
past tense, to the adoption of children. I was riding along coming over
here and I got to thinking about how that word father signifies
a relationship. He's our God. I'm glad he is. He's high. He's holy. He's just. He's righteous. He's more things
than you and I could ever imagine or could ever describe. But how's he pleased to reveal himself
to us as our father? Our father. Don't mess with me. God is my father. And he says he did all this according
to the good pleasure of his will. There's only one will that this
book talks about. If you ain't scared to, get your
concordance out and find out whose it is. It's the will of
God. He works all things after the
counsel of His own will. We know in the very, very details
of what's going on right now. We know God's will by what's
going on. You'd think that'd do something
for our murmuring. I think we're kind of hopeless on that. It's
the will of God concerning us. And it says in verse 6 that in
this will, according to his own good pleasure, according to his
own predestinating love, he hath made us accepted in the beloved. He hath made us accepted. He didn't say if you'll accept
Jesus. No. He has made us accepted. It means something like He graced
us. The Father made us accepted in
the blood. The issue is not whether or not
you'll accept Him. or his son. The issue is, will
he accept me? Well, in Christ Jesus, he already
has. He accepted us. He graced us. He did it by himself. It says,
he hath made. That is, he accounted us to be
what we are not in ourselves. He laid our sins on the Lord
Jesus Christ. You might say that's not imputation.
Well, if it ain't, what is it? The Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. And the only way for God not
to impute my sins to me is for Him to impute them to somebody
else. And that somebody else has to
be somebody who has no sin. You can't put water in a bucket
that's already full. Paul says that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. It doesn't even say by him. It says in him. If you ever find
a righteousness wherein you can stand by yourself,
you're in trouble. Because the only righteousness
there is, is Christ Himself. And He made us accepted in the
beloved. He made us righteous in Christ
Jesus. So Paul says, of Him, who? The Father. Of Him are you in
Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. And I have a feeling those four
words sum up the whole of salvation, if rightly understood. Loved us with an everlasting
love. Chose us in all in Christ and
blessed us with all spiritual blessings. In love predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according
to the pleasure, the good pleasure of His will. to the praise of the glory of
His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Now, will you hear what Christ
Himself says? You do agree He's the Son of
God, don't you? He said to those believers that
were with him, I go to my father and your father. He said when you pray, this is
how you pray, our father who art in heaven, I don't have a father anymore
on earth. But he was just a temporary earthly
father anyway. My father is in heaven. As a matter of fact, he said,
call no man your father. We have one father, and he's
in heaven. That means we have the Father's
pity. He said, as a father pitieth
his child, so the Lord pities us. He remembers our frame. He
knows that we're just a ball of dirt, dust. Sometimes I'll tell my wife when
things are kind of Heated and bad. I say, have you
got five minutes to feel sorry for me? My father pities me. You may
have no pity on me, but my father, he has pity on me. And he said,
the father, he knows what you have need of before you even
ask him. He knows what you need. You say,
well, I sure wish he'd give it to me. Well, he is. He didn't say what you want or
what you need. Well, I must have needed a lot
of last year, late years. And we'll have the father's chastisement.
You may love your children too much to whip them. You're lying. You love yourself
too much. He loves His children enough
to whip them. And He said, if you have not
the Father's chastisement, then you're just bastards and not
sons. And one day, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes
back, He's going to say, come ye blessed
of my Father. Inherit the Kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. Come ye blessed. You've
been blessed. Blessed of our Father.