Before we start the preaching,
let's have a word of prayer. Our Lord Jesus, thank you for
this gathering this morning. Thank you for each that you've
brought out and we pray that those who are unable to make
it this morning would be able to watch via the live stream
and that you would bless them. Lord, if you don't bless us,
how shall we be blessed? What or who can do us any good
other than you? Lord, we thank you for your word,
for the scriptures which you saw fit to inspire men to write
so that we are never left to the devices of sinful men who
would distort and twist your word. But we have a measure by
which we can judge everyone's word. It is written that the Bereans
went home and searched the scriptures to determine whether or not the
things that the Apostle Paul had told them were true. And we thank you for this book
by which we can measure the messages that men preach. And that we
have this book so that we who desire to be faithful in the
declaration of your truth can read it and know of a certainty
that this is your truth and that we're not venturing upon our
own opinions. We thank you, Lord, for your
Holy Spirit whom you send among us when we meet in the name of
Christ, for he is Christ among us. Our Lord said to us that
he would not leave us as orphans, but he would come to us. And
he said that within the context of promising the Spirit to us.
Oh, Lord Jesus, come. By your Spirit, make yourself
known. Take the preached word and make it the living word in
the hearts of everyone who have gathered here, who are listening.
Lord, your word has power when your spirit is pleased to apply
it. Lord, forgive our sins. Do not
allow the remembrance of them to enter in and disturb our worship
or distract us from the glorious truth that you have for us. And we pray all these things
in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. All right, if you'll open
your Bibles to Ephesians chapter one, Ephesians chapter one. Now we have preached from this
chapter so many times that you might think, how could we squeeze
anything more out of it? But such is the nature of the
word of God, that there is an endless supply of fresh truth. I consider that in the early days of the church,
even in those days after all the scriptures had been written,
there was probably scarcely a church that had a full copy of the scriptures. Remember, they had no internet
to download them on. They had no printing press to
print them on. Every copy of the scripture was
meticulously handwritten. And you can imagine how long
it would take you to handwrite the entire Bible. And yet, that's
the only way that a copy could be made. And so, I am sure in
the early church that there were often churches that had just
a little bit of the Bible. And maybe having heard some sermons
from other preachers, they had heard other portions of the scriptures.
But they did not live in a day as blessed as the day you and
I live in, when we can have a library full of Bibles and Bible helps.
And if we don't have them in printed form, we can go right
to the internet anytime we want, find the scriptures translated
in various ways into our own language. We can open this book,
see the entire thing and hear from God. What a great blessing
that is. And yet here we are back in Ephesians
chapter one looking to extract from this chapter even more than
we have already received. It is one of those chapters of
the scriptures that if that was the only chapter you had, you
would have enough to get you through life. Paul lays out, virtually the
entirety of divine truth in this chapter. Now I was drawn to this particular
point that I want to make this morning. I was just drawn to
it this morning. I had intentions on preaching
from the first part of chapter two. It had already kind of formulated
in my mind how I was going to approach it, but I was looking on the internet for some music to listen to. I like
to listen to music when I'm studying. And I came upon a YouTube video
of, it said, Praise to the Lord the almighty, the king of creation.
One of my favorite hymns. So I clicked on it and was watching
it. And it was done over in whatever's the chief cathedral over there
in London. And there was the queen and her
husband and Prince Charles and his wife. And then you could
see, this was back in 2013, I believe. And then you could see Prince
Harry and then in the pew behind him was Prince William and his
wife. There's the whole royal outfit up there. And I look down
at the title and it, you know, as I'm listening to this music,
which I dearly love, and it said, In Celebration of the Queen's
60th Year of Reign. I thought, why'd they bring her
into this? Isn't worship supposed to be
about God? And I know one of the things that they say about
the king or queen of England is that they are the head of
the church. And I remember sitting there
thinking, I wish I could take the pulpit. I really do. And even take it as a loyal British
citizen and say, I highly regard our Queen, but I am thankful
that the church has a better head than that. For it is written
here In verse 22, and God placed all things under his feet and
appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which
is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every
way. Now the Lord God, Jehovah, is
his name. He subsists, at least that's
the kind of word that theologians like to use, but I don't even
know what it means. But they, you know, you just, there's not
good enough human words when you're trying to describe the
essence of who God is. But he exists, if you will, in
three persons. There's only one God, but there's
three persons. And you say, I can't make sense
of that. And that's true, I can't make sense of it either, it's
just so. But the father, who throughout the New Testament
is often just referred to as God, but the father gave his
son to the church. Now, he gave his son for the
church, we understand that, but that's speaking of giving him
as a sacrifice. But it's also written that he
gave his son to the church. But he did not give the Lord
Jesus to the church as a possession for us to use him as we please. Christ was not given to us to
be whatever it is we think we need. Now, one way you can determine
whether or not a person truly understands the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ is if you ask them their testimony. That is, tell me what God has
done for you. That's what he told that demoniac
out of whom legion demons were cast out. That demoniac said,
let me follow you and eat. And the Lord said, no, you go
home and you tell your family and your neighbors what great
things the Lord has done for you. And so if you wanna know
whether or not a person understands God's gospel, one thing you can
ask him is, well, what's God done for you? And you can get all kinds of
answers. I remember hearing one fellow
in our church. He was rather wealthy, but, um,
he would give his testimony. I heard him give it a couple
of times and he was a big enough shot that he could, he didn't
just stand up in the auditorium and give it. He would go up to
pulpit and give it, you know, and he would tell his story about
how there was a day he couldn't even rub two nickels together
in his pocket. You know, and yet he decided
to begin this clothing factory. And how the Lord blessed it,
and today he's a wealthy man. Is that what great things the
Lord had done for him? Well, that's what he talked about.
So I must assume that that's what he thinks constitutes the
great things that God had done for him, which tells me he doesn't
understand the gospel. I hear people speak of things
which might be more worthy than that. They'll talk about they
were maybe in a pit of depression and God pulled them out. Well,
I know what that is. And I'll tell you, it's a great
thing if God pulls you out of that. But if you were to ask me what
great things the Lord has done for me, that wouldn't be what
I would start with. Others will say, well, you know,
I was an addict. I was an alcoholic, or I was
a drug addict, or I was an addict to this or that, and I just,
I came to the end of myself, and I'd ruined my life, and I'd
messed everything up, and then God came and helped me get clean,
helped me get sober, and helped restore all my family relationships
that I had destroyed through my addiction. Well, that's wonderful.
I don't doubt that that's a wonderful thing. And I'm glad when I hear
that that has happened. I'll make a confession. It's
not good for a grownup to make this confession, but I like TikTok,
if you all are familiar with TikTok. But it's just a bunch
of little short videos that people make. And I'm not just a kid,
and it'll be time to go to bed. And I'll say to myself, I'm going
to watch a couple of TikTok videos. And about 100 videos later, I'm
looking up, and it's 1 o'clock in the morning. But I go by and
I'll see there's a lot of them where people will, you know,
there's these common themes. And one of them, I will rise
up or something like that. But anyway, they'll put up their
sign, you know, 345 days clean. Well, I always hit like on those
and sometimes will put a word of encouragement. I think that's
marvelous. You might say, well, they shouldn't
have gotten sober in the first place. I mean, shouldn't have
gotten hooked in first. That's right, but aren't you
glad they're out? Isn't that wonderful news? But
if that is what great things the Lord has done for you, and
if that's happened, no doubt, the Lord did it for you. I don't
care whether you're lost or saved. That's a work of God. But that's not the greatest thing. that God has done for his people.
And if that's what you consider to be the essential good thing
that God did for you, you haven't yet laid hold of the grace of
God and the gospel. Because the grace of God and
the gospel has done something much more wonderful than anything
that he could do for you with regard to this life. You can imagine if you were Lazarus
and God raised you from the dead and somebody said, well, what
great things the Lord done for you? Well, I'm going to tell him how
I was dead and he made me alive. I'll bet you Lazarus had something
else to talk about. And when he'd be done talking
about that and say, well, didn't he raise you from the dead? Well,
yeah, he did that too. But there's something yet greater that God
has done. We don't use Christ. for what
we think he is good for. We lay hold of Christ for the
purpose that God sent him, and what is that? You shall call
his name Jesus, for he shall rescue his people from their
sins. Now, we're not gonna act as though
the other things God does through Christ is nothing, but until
we've laid hold of that one, None of the rest of it is of
any eternal value. He was given to us to be the
treasury of all of God's blessings. We read this, I'm just gonna
list them, but these are things you find in the earlier part
of the chapter. He was given to us to be the treasury or depository
of all of God's blessings. He is given to us as the reason
and foundation of our election. He is given to us as the goal
of our predestination, being predestinated to the adoption
of sons through Jesus Christ. Paul puts it this way, we're
predestined, that is, he puts it in the book of Romans, I believe
it is, we are predestined to be conformed to the image of
God's Son. You say, well, is that two different
things? Not really. What would it be to be conformed
to the image of his dear son? It would be to be made a son,
wouldn't it? And so Paul says we've been predestined
to the adoption of sons, not merely that God has pulled us
within his family. Adoption carried some legal aspects
to it back in these days. And it meant that we had been
brought into his family and declared to be his heirs. It's the goal. He is the goal
and pattern of our predestination. He is the channel of God's grace
to us. Every grace that God gives to
the sinner comes to the sinner through Jesus Christ. There is
no grace anywhere else. John said that grace that he
was full of grace and truth and from his overflow we receive
grace upon grace and I just imagine this is the only thing I can
the way I can visualize what John says but our Lord It says
that he grew in grace. Most English version says he
grew in favor, but it's the exact same word as is normally translated
grace. But it speaks of all of God's
good attitudes and good works and blessings. And it said that
Christ grew in these things. He was filled with these things.
In fact, so worthy was the Lord Jesus Christ that God poured
all grace, all favor into him and it overflowed him and you
and I are standing around getting showered with the overflow of
the grace that God gives to the Lord Jesus Christ. God never
did look at one of us and say, well now, there's a guy I ought
to bless. He looked at the Lord Jesus and
he said, now there's somebody I ought to bless. And he poured
out blessing on him more than a man can hold. And from his
overflow, his abundance, we receive grace upon grace upon grace. Grace that abounds beyond, that
abounds more than our sins abound. And I don't know about you, that's
a lot of grace. That's a lot of grace, isn't
it? How much do your sins abound? Well, I've done some, no wonder
you don't understand grace. If that's the entirety of your
sin, well, I've done some bad things. People don't understand
or appreciate the grace of God because they don't have any conception
of just how wicked they are in the sight of God. We sang amazing grace. I listened
to a version of that. Those of you my age will remember
this version from 1970 when Judy Collins sang it. Absolutely beautiful
version of it. Starts out as just her singing.
She got a pretty voice. Just singing and then others
join in. And in the middle, it's just this beautiful acapella
version of Amazing Grace. And I was just amazed at how
people can sing that song. with such beauty, and doubtless
they're emotionally moved by it, but they don't really know
what it means. They don't know how wretched
John Newton perceived himself when he wrote that thing. He says, amazing grace, how sweet
the sound that saved a wretch like me. I tell you, the more
you can own the name Wretch, the more amazing God's grace
will be to you. But the more you try to cleanse
yourself from the title Wretch, the less you will be able to
perceive of the amazing wonder of the grace of God that would
look with pity upon a person like you and save you for Christ's
sake. He is the channel of all God's
grace. It's he whose blood is the source
of our redemption, the one in whom we gain the forgiveness
of all our sins. John wrote in his first letter,
if we confess our sins, not meaning that we give out a detailed accounting
of all the sins we've committed, we wouldn't have time for anything
else if that's what was required. If we confess that we are sinners
and that we haven't done anything else, and not just confessing
with our mouth, but truly acknowledge it in our heart. If we confess
it, confess our sins, He is faithful. And He is just to forgive us
our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We tend to organize sins according
to how serious they are. and there's sins that we don't
think are so bad and, you know, it's not difficult for us to
believe that God would save us from that, but probably all of
us have some on our minds that, boy, when that gets brought up,
it gives us pause, particularly when we find that those same
sinful principles move within us and often cause us to fall. And we say, well, 20 years ago
I had confidence he forgave me of that sin, but here I am again. Here I am drawing near the end
of my life and I haven't quit that one yet. In fact, I haven't
quit any of them. Does he really still forgive?
He cleanses from all unrighteousness. He doesn't forgive us and say,
now, all right, I'll let you get by with it this time. No. But if you do it again, it's going to be a price to pay. Christ's blood cleanses. When was that blood
shed? before I ever drew a breath,
before I ever committed my first sin, and God laid all of them I would
ever commit on Him, and the blood washed them away. They were washed
away before I existed. They were washed away before
I did them. They were washed away before I was aware of them. And though I will do them again,
and I don't say that flippantly, I say that to my shame, I will
do them again. But before I've done them, they've
been washed away. Is that unbelievable to you?
In your flesh, it should be unbelievable because you don't know anybody
else who'd treat you that way. And much less to our natural
conceptions of God, much less would they make us think that
God would treat us that way. That he would forgive our sins
today, knowing full well we're going to do them again tomorrow,
and already have taken them away before we ever did them. Under the law it is written,
your sins have separated you from your God. But under the
gospel, it's not our sins that separate us from God, it's our
righteousness. If we'll come to Him as nothing
but sinners, confessing nothing other than
sin, we will have no sin. It'll be washed away. He is the one given or given
to us as the one who will accomplish God's purpose for us. Boy, that's a relief. Aren't you glad he did not purpose
salvation for you and then say, well, I've done my part. The rest is up to you. Well, then he may as well have
done nothing. If He doesn't do the whole thing, there was no
use Him even starting it. If He was not going to be the
active energy and agent in all the work of salvation until we
are like Christ, there was no reason for Him to even choose
us in the first place. There was no reason to send His
Son. There was no reason to send His
Spirit. If at any point in this process of of taking a sinner
from his wretchedness and making him like the Lord Jesus. If anywhere
in that process something is required of the sinner himself,
then God may as well not have started anything. But it's he
that works in you to will and do of his good pleasure, and
he that began that good work in you will continue it until
it is perfected on the day of Christ. That's good news. I'm glad that the purpose of
God's not founded upon my will or my strength or my wisdom. It is founded entirely upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. And never do you and I enter
into it, except as Donnie Bell said, I didn't do anything. in
salvation, he said, well, I did the sin and he did the saving. The only thing we provide is
the sin from which we need to be saved. Everything else is
provided by God. And in him, we are assigned an
inheritance. And then lastly, and this is
what I want to spend the remainder of our time on, he has been given
to us. as the head over everything for
our benefit. The Lord Jesus Christ among his
last words to his disciples as he was about to ascend to the
right hand of the father, it was not now I love everybody
and you go out there and see how many of them you can get
to love me. That's not what he said. He didn't say, I died for
everybody, now you go out there and make sure I didn't shed my
blood in vain. He didn't say that. He said,
all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of all
nations. The beginning of the declaration
of the gospel of Jesus Christ is this, He's the boss. He's the king. There is not any
authority in heaven, earth, or hell that doesn't belong to Jesus
Christ. And that's good news for those
whose trust is in Him. Every four years we go to the
polls and we pull the lever for whatever man or woman is running
that we think that we can trust them with the power assigned
to them, and that they'll use it for our benefit. And quite
frankly, every time, we're disappointed, aren't we? They never do what
they promise because, quite frankly, they can't. They get so tickled,
you know, well, I'll fix this economy. You will? You can fix
what it took 330 million people to mess up? No, you're not going to get that
done. I will stop this. I will ensure that. No, they
can't. Why? They don't have enough authority.
The President of the United States is likely the most powerful person
in the world, but they don't have enough authority to really
make a big difference. But our Lord Jesus Christ has
all authority. son or daughter of Adam may sit
on the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office but Jesus
Christ runs the world. There may be senators and congressmen
who think that they have a lot of power and authority and that
they're writing their laws and and some of them think that you
know they're doing us some good by it and all that and they think
themselves wonderful and powerful and yet every one of them is
in the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ and they're doing exactly
what he intends them to do. God assigned him, appointed him
head over everything for the church. Do you know why the world at
this present time is not in an utter state of chaos? Do you
know why man has advanced somewhat over the years? Now, not in the
essence of his person, but he's grown in certain areas of knowledge
and our lives are more comfortable than the lives of our forebears. But do you know why that when
we go to sleep tonight, we do so without much fear? Lord rules the world for His
people. And the only reason that those
who are not His people ever have anything good in this world is
because God makes this place a livable place, or Christ makes
this world a livable place so His people can flourish here
until such time as He moves them on to their permanent home. And
you know once they are out of the way? What do you think happens next?
Do you think the Lord Jesus Christ is then gonna continue letting
this world go on in its rebellion against him while he continues
to feed them, cause the rain to fall and the plants to grow
and all? You think he's gonna keep that up? No, as soon as
he gets his people out of the way, that's the end. The only
reason this world goes on is because of God's people who are
in it. Not that they're making it go
on. Christ makes it go on for their sake. Now we would consider it an act
of injustice if man got in office and then used that office simply
to advance the cause and agenda and prosperity of his own family.
And that is wrong for men to do that among other men, but
the man in Christ Jesus is God and he can do with his world
whatever he wants to. And the only people in this world
that concern him are the ones his father chose and gave to
him. And he's head over, and God has
appointed him to be head over the whole kit and caboodle for
the church. Now that's comforting. Now this isn't what drew me to
this passage, but it sure fits. People are in a panic over the
coronavirus. And it's gonna do some damage,
I know that. It's already killed some people,
I don't know how many more. I don't know if it's as bad as
some people are letting on, or worse, or very nearly nothing. But I do know one thing. Every
little tiny virus that you can't even see with a normal microscope,
our Lord's in control of it. He knows where it is. It's exactly
where he put it. And it's doing exactly what he
intends for it to do for his church. And that includes if
he puts one of them in you. You have enough faith to believe
that? That's not really as easy. I can say that pretty easy, but
if they test me and they come out and say, you got the coronavirus,
I don't think I'm gonna be doing any cartwheels. But we should. He may put it in me and take
me out with it, but he did it for me. Paul said a startling thing,
I can't remember the exact place, but he said, this is yours, that
is yours, and he said, and death is yours. I said, wait a minute,
what do you mean death's mine? I'm not particularly interested
in it, All through Christ, death becomes a gift. Death doesn't
come to you as something against you, death comes to you as something
for you. You go to the doctor one day,
you got some symptoms you can't explain and they put you in some
machines and they find out you got a disease, you got cancer
and they do some testing and they find out it's stage four
or whatever it is, and the doctor comes in and says, I'm sorry,
there's really not anything we can do for you. We can give you some pain medications
to make your passage, your final days bearable. I'm sorry, we just don't have
anything we can do. And you say, yeah, but God's got the power
to heal that. He does, but he probably won't. But you can look,
and I'm, well, I'm just being honest here.
You can look at that and say, look what God has done for me.
Look what my king has done for my sake. He's not going to make
me live here much longer. I was sitting in my chair the
other day and I thought, oh, wouldn't it be great if he just
said, okay, Joe, you're done. I do this work, and I'm not complaining
here. I've got the best job a guy could
ever want. And I work at it. I do what I
can with it, but I just feel I don't do that good at it. And
the truth is, I don't. Nobody does. Anything that gets
done of value in the church, it's God that did it. I think
I've told you before, I feel like I'm on stage singing and
I'm doing a lousy job and I just wish the song was over so I could
get off the stage. Oh, how wonderful. When the Lord says you're done. You're done. You've been living
in this tent. I got a permanent dwelling for
you. You've been wandering around
in a foreign land. It's time to come home. It's hard to think that way when
you're young. I understand that. I didn't have those thoughts
when I was young. The older I get, the more I think like that. Brother Mahan, in the last couple
of letters he wrote to me, he said every night he and Doris
prayed, Lord, we don't want to wake up. Say, was he suicidal? No. He
didn't have a death wish, he had a life wish. He wanted to
be done with this slow death and enter into life. He rules everything. He rules the politicians. He
rules the weather. He rules the beasts. He rules all men. He rules you. And He does it all for the sake
of His people. Is there anybody else in the
world you know of that acts like that? We give people authority
and they're probably gonna use it for themselves. Our Lord was
given all authority and He uses all of it. for the benefit of
his people. And there is one being, much more intelligent than us,
much stronger than us, much more clever than us, who hates us, and hates us precisely
because we love Christ. And he will do all in his power
to destroy us. But our Lord is head over him
too. He can't wiggle a finger without
the Lord's permission. He can't give you a dirty look
without the Lord's permission. The Lord presented Job to him,
said, have you seen my servant Job? The devil said, well, no wonder
he serves you. You won't let me touch him. You
hear that? You won't let me touch him. Now, the Lord might let him touch
you, and he did give Satan permission first to touch his stuff, and then to touch his body, but
he always put limits on what the devil could do. He said,
you can touch his body, but you can't kill him. Well, first he
said, you can take away everything he has, but you can't touch his
body. And then the devil came back and complained some more.
He said, yeah, but you let me touch his body and he'll curse
you to your face. He said, all right, you can touch his body.
You can make him sick as a dog if you want. You just can't kill
him. And so the devil went all the way to the fence that God
put for him and made Job absolutely miserable. But here's the thing. The glory is not for us to think,
well, look what God allowed the devil to do to him. The glory
is this. He set limits on him. And not even that being is ever
allowed to bring you harm if you are his. He may bring you
pain. He may bring you suffering. He
will not bring you harm. I hear people say, make Jesus
Lord of your life. Too late. Lord already did it. On the day of Pentecost, Peter
stood up and said, let it be known to the whole house of Israel
that this Jesus whom you have crucified, God, has made him
to be Lord. Lord. You can acknowledge him as Lord,
and it's good, you know, you're better. But you can't make him
Lord, he's already that. Well, make him Lord of your life,
he already is. Bow to Him. Bow to Him not as
one who is dominated and forced to bow. There will be some like
that because the Bible says every knee will bow and every tongue
will confess. And I know a lot of those bowing knees and confessing
tongues are going to be unwilling knees and tongues. But they are
going to have to do it because they just can't in the presence
of His glory they just won't be able to do anything else. But you know what thrills me
more than anything else? My Savior's King. He in whom
I trust is head over everything. And it doesn't matter what has
happened in the past. He was in control of that. And
it really doesn't matter what's coming in the future. He's in
control of that too. And there is no way sinner whom
His Father chose and for whom He shed His blood and to whom
He sent His Spirit, no way that I'm going to perish because there's not one thing
outside of His control. Isaiah put it this way, how beautiful
upon the mountains is He the one that brings the Good news,
which you realize the word good news is simply, that's what the
word gospel means, is good news. Who brings good news, who publishes
peace, who says design, your God reigns. Nothing that God
has done or Christ has done means anything. if our Lord is not
in control. But thank God He is. Eric.