We'll take your Bibles and turn
with me to Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians
chapter 6 and this morning we'll be looking at the last verse
of Ephesians chapter 6 verse 24. The title of the Sunday School
lesson this morning is Love of Christ's Person. the love of
Christ's person. Let's read our text here in verse
24. Grace be with all them that love
our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen. Paul here in the conclusion
of this letter to Ephesians. We've been studying this for
a year now. We've been going through the
book of Ephesians. We've made it to the last verse
of the last chapter. And Paul, in this last verse,
concludes this book in the same manner he began this book. Grace. Grace. Look at that in chapter
1 and verse 2 of Ephesians. Paul says this to the believers
in Ephesus, Grace be to you. Grace. He bestows the benediction
of grace to them. He bids them the blessing of
divine unmerited favor from the sovereign hand and will of God. Now, most of you have noticed
that in some gospel churches there are differences, aren't
there? We have churches that are small, and we have churches
that are large, and yet when the preachers stand up and preach
the gospel, they preach the same message. You have two sovereign
grace pastors, two pastors who love the doctrines of grace,
and yet one church may be larger than the other, and one church
may be more spiritual than the other. You may see a church that's
really zealous for the gospel, and you may see some churches
that are kind of hanging on the fringe. Why is that? If both
pastors are faithful to preach the gospel of God's sovereign
grace, why the differences in all the churches? Grace, my friends. Grace. God sheds His grace on
us at His own time and leisure. It is His good pleasure that
we are who we are. I pray for God's special grace
upon us. Any differences in the church,
and like I said, size of the church doesn't really matter.
Because we know that some churches may be large, but they're dead.
So it doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is
God's grace. Jesus Christ our Lord in Revelation,
we read of Him walking among the candlesticks. He walks in
among His churches. Every time the gospel of God's
grace is preached, every time Christ is exalted, He is walking
in the middle of His churches. He's here with us today. We believe
in a risen Lord. We believe in a risen, sovereign
Christ that walks among His churches. And you know what He does to
us as His church? He bestows His grace upon us
as He wills. As He wills. Grace. Now this grace that Paul is talking
about is not saving grace. It's not to be saved because
he is talking to believers in Christ already. Yet we as believers,
the only reason that we are still believing is because of grace. The only reason we are still
believing and coming and worshiping and longing to love Christ is
because of grace. Grace. It's all of grace. Do
you need grace? Do you need the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ this morning? I do. When I was asleep, I needed
the grace of Christ. When I woke up, I needed the
grace of Christ. And when I'm standing here before
you preaching the gospel, I need the grace of Christ. And you
know what? You need the grace of Christ
to hear. Because I could preach a message,
and if you say, well, I didn't get nothing out of that. Maybe
it was me. Then again, maybe. You need grace. I need grace. We all need it.
It's something we need every day. It's a good request, isn't
it? Grace unto you. Grace from our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is talking about spiritual
fruits of grace. What are the fruits of grace
mentioned, as I mentioned in my prayer? The fruits of the
Spirit. This is love, joy, peace, temperance,
meekness, faith, long-suffering. These are graces. These are graces. We don't have faith because of
anything in us. We have faith because of the
grace of God. We have faith and we have love
for Christ because of the grace of God. I long for these blessings
of grace to be upon you and me here in this place. May God shed
His grace upon us. Pour out His Spirit upon us.
I read a booklet, The Greatest Need of the Church, And the Spirit
of God was His answer. The Spirit of God. We need the
Spirit of God to bless us. We need the Spirit of God to
bestow the blessings of grace upon us. We need those blessings. We must have them. Therefore,
Paul says, I pray for them for you. I pray for them that God
would give you the blessings of His grace. His blessings that
we might be faithful to Him in prayer, in study, and in worship,
and faithful to Him in love. In love. Because look at our
text. Paul says, Grace be unto all them that love our Lord Jesus
Christ. Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?
Do you love Him? I know when I mention His name,
many of you, you light up. It's love. It's love. Do you love Him? This love is
a grace. You that love the Lord Jesus
Christ, grace be unto you. Grace, God's grace and mercy
be on you. May He pour out His Spirit of
love upon us who once were saved by God's grace, who came from
a carnal mind and heart and enmity against God and against His Christ. That's where we came from, wasn't
it? We came from a heart like that. We came from a heart that
hated Christ, that longed nothing more than to dethrone our God.
We wanted to set in place our own God. We had a God of our
imagination. We wanted Him up there. Until
one day, grace came. And when God in grace came, He
gave us a heart, a new heart. And that heart that you have
now that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, that heart, is a heart
given by grace. That's a heart given by the Lord
Jesus Christ, by His Spirit. We once loathed Christ because we were blind to His
beauty. Do you realize that? We were once blind to His beauty. What does it say in Isaiah chapter
53? It says, He had no form or comeliness that we should desire
Him. Isn't that right? Before we came to Christ, before
by the grace of God we believed on Christ, we saw Christ as of
no value. We saw Him of no value. There
was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. We esteemed
Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. All we knew about
Him. We knew when we were brought
to church and the preacher preached of God's grace, and you saw the
preacher from the Scriptures, you saw the joy in his heart
when he mentioned Christ. And then we had no interest. None. But then, when we heard the gospel
of God's grace, we saw something different in
Christ, didn't we? We saw something different in
Him that we didn't see before. We, by the grace of God, were
given faith to see the Lord Jesus Christ was not stricken and smitten
for His own sin. Oh, but He was wounded for our
transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed. In that we see
the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't He beautiful? Isn't the marks in His hands
beautiful? Aren't the marks in His feet
glorious? Isn't the hole in His side most
precious? It is to me. It is to me. Because He was wounded for me. Wounded for me. Dying for me. Pleading for me. And the eyes
of our understanding being opened, we now see the Lord Jesus Christ
with eyes of love. And to us, His wounds are altogether
lovely. Like it says in Song of Solomon
5 verse 2, His mouth is most sweet, yea, He is altogether
lovely. Altogether lovely. Peter in 1
Peter chapter 2 and verse 7 says, Unto you therefore that believe,
He is what? He is precious. Is there anything
of more value to you than Christ? Is there anything more precious
in all the world than Christ? Not to us that have been saved
by His blood and righteousness. Not to us who have seen Him.
Not to us that have seen Him. The rest of the world, He is
a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. when the lost here of the sovereign
Christ, who is made the Head of the Corner, King over all
flesh and is moving all things after the counsel of His own
will, saving whom He will, this is an offense. This is offensive
to the world. This Christ whom we see as sovereign
and love Him, this is offensive. Tell somebody about it. See what
happens. Tell someone that God saved you
by His grace and His sovereign grace and see what they say.
This is an offense to them, but to us, it's precious. His person
is precious. His character is precious. His
attributes are precious. His providences are precious. Everything He does is good, is
good and right. Gil said this, Jesus is our object
of love. And a lovely object He is. And
a lovely object He is. I want to deal with one thing.
I had a whole bunch of things. I had a whole bunch of things,
but I've got like ten minutes. I'm going to give you just one
thing. And this thing, you can either step your ankles in it
and kind of splash around in it, or you can go out and drown
in it. The Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want us to see
the loveliness of the Person. of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know some of you that are more
mature in the faith, you understand that this in the volumes could
not be written. To understand the person of Christ. Look now by the eye of faith
and see this lovely person, Jesus Christ. Do you know that there
is none like Him anywhere? He is all together in a class
all by Himself. Think about it, even in the Godhead,
even in the Deity, the Trinity of our God, He stands in uniqueness. He stands in uniqueness. He alone
is the God-man. The God-man. He is one of a kind. He is one of a kind. Go to Colossians
chapter 2. Flip over there a couple of pages.
Colossians chapter 2 and verses 2 and 3. Colossians 2 verse 2 and 3. Scripture says that their hearts
might be comforted being knit together in love and unto all
riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement
of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Would you like full assurance
today? Do you like that? When the Lord
God, by His grace, gives us fullness of assurance, you know where
that's found? In the person of Christ. If you do not see the
person of Christ, you cannot see the full assurance of our
salvation. For it's in the person of Christ
that all the knowledge of salvation, all of the wisdom of salvation
is found. It's found in His person. It's
found in Him. And Him alone. None like Him.
There's none like Him. He's altogether different. This
same Jesus is none other than the Son of God, the second person
of the blessed Trinity. And as such, He is worthy of
all praise, honor, and glory for being such a person. Just
His person demands praise. Just His person demands praise.
What is going to be sung at the end of the ages? Thou art worthy
to receive glory and honor and blessing forever and ever. Amen. That's the song of the
ages and it is sung to this person, Jesus Christ the Lord. And 1 John 5-7 reveals about
His person, there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father,
here He is, the Word. And the Holy Ghost, and these
three are one. Yet this blessed revelation of
the person of the Godhead is manifest only in Christ. To understand
the Trinity, we must look at Christ. We must. To see it, you
must look at Christ. For He alone is the visible image
of the invisible God. He alone is the visible image
of the invisible God. Paul says in Colossians 2, 9,
4, "...in Him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily." John
1, 18 says, "...no man hath seen the Father at any time. The only
begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father hath declared
Him." See, we can't know God the Father or the Spirit save
through Christ. We can't know those. No man can
know them save through the Person of Christ. If you don't know
Christ, you definitely don't know the Father. And you've not
been touched by the Spirit of God if you don't know Christ.
He is the mediator between us and God. It's how we can know
God. You want to know God? You can
only know Him through the Person of Christ. Through the blood
and righteousness of this dear One. None of us could have ever
known God but through the person of Christ. Robert Hawker says
this, as His person is the only visible Jehovah, so His obedience
the only means of recovery from the Adam fall and transgression. Acts 4.12 says, neither is there
salvation in any other, for there is none other name. There is
none other person. There's none other name given
among men whereby we must be saved. There's none other. There's
only one. If you are to be saved, if you are to know God, it is
only through this person, this lovely person, this precious
person, Jesus Christ. He is God, blessed forever. You
look at Christ, you see God. That's it. You see God in Christ. He is the Son of the living God,
equal with the Father and the Spirit, but He is not like that.
He is not like a God. He is the God, eternal and Creator
of all things. That's who Jesus is. We're not
dealing with a prophet that is just a man. We are dealing with
the God. There is no other God. Jesus
Christ Himself is God. Isn't that precious? It is if
you know Him. You know Him. You know God. And my friends, what's more important
than that is He knows you. He knows you. And He has redeemed
you. And second of all, He is man. He is God. But yet, He is man
of very man. He is man of very man. You know
that scripture in 1 Timothy 3.16, without controversy, great is
the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
There was a Unitarian pastor, they don't believe in the Trinity,
God, he had a brother who was a Baptist pastor. And he asked
his brother, he said, would you come visit and preach for me?
I have to be gone and I need somebody to fill in for me. But
I don't want you to preach anything controversial. Don't preach anything
that's going to cause controversy. And his brother said, sure. And
he preached from this text without controversy. Without controversy,
without question. This is not something to be debated.
You know, I wasted about 30 minutes the other day watching a debate.
That's about, I think, the most senseless thing in all of the
world to debate. This is without controversy.
I'm not debating this. God said it without controversy. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. Wow! Wow! God united Himself with flesh. He took upon Him not the form
of angels, but of the seed of Abraham. As it was prophesied,
He should be born of a woman made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law. This is the only way. There was no other way. There
was no other way for Him to redeem us. It was by man that we lost
righteousness. It must be by man that we gain
righteousness. It was man that transgressed
against God. It must be man that suffers under
the weight of God's justice. It must be so. Therefore, God
said, I'll do it. I'll take it. And He took upon
Himself the form of a man and He felt the hurts and He felt
the pains of human life. There was nothing He escaped. The ridicule, the pain, the hurt. If you've ever been hurt, Him
more. If you've ever been betrayed, No one more betrayed than he
was. Even the people that loved him
left him. And he suffered and died alone. Even God the Father forsook him. How could this be unless he became
man? He became man so that we might
have the righteousness of God through His person. The more
I see the person of Christ, the more in love with Him I become.
The beauty of the God-man gives us assurance and peace that the
God who purposed our salvation in eternity is also the same
God that accomplished our salvation in time. He who demanded perfection provided
perfection. Isn't that wonderful? He that
demanded justice bore under his own justice so that we might
go free. Is there anything greater than
that? Is there anything more lovely to the person than the
person of Jesus Christ? Not to us that know Him. There's no one. I tell you, I
love my children, and I love them dearly with all my heart,
but there is no one like Him. I love Him because He first loved
me and gave Himself a ransom for me. Isn't he lovely? I pray the Lord will bless this
to us.