Scripture. And so I'm going to go over it
again, much as I did back when we were in Ephesians 1 verse
5, which was several months ago. I don't remember exactly when
it was. I started this Ephesians series back in the summer. But we're going to jump into
it. First, we're going to review starting in verse 15. Remember, we took a break from
Ephesians last week and read through Titus chapter 3. So this
will be two weeks ago. We were at Ephesians 1.15. And
Paul says for this Reason, and the reason he is
referring to here, when he says, for this reason, is what he starts
talking about back in verse 11. In him, we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works
all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we, who
are the first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of his
glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed
the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory
and for this reason and because I have heard of your faith in
Jesus. So when we were in verse 15,
one of the things I wanted us to observe was that Paul identifies
the Ephesian church by their collective faith. He does not
identify them by any individual. He does not identify them by
Timothy, their elder, or by any other elder in the churches there.
He identifies them by the faith that they have in Jesus, because
Paul had heard about it. It's not just that he knew the
Ephesians, knew some of the people there, and knew that some of
them were faithful saints, but Paul had heard about the Ephesian
church. and their collective faith. This
faith is something that sets us apart as God's people. This
collective faith is something that identifies us as an assembly
to the community that we live in. And we also talked about
the teaching to the local church, and we're going to get into that
more today as we get towards the end. Because in verse 17,
Paul talks about the spirit of wisdom and the revelation of
knowledge. And so we're going to talk a bit about the teaching
in the local church. We talked about this some last
week in Titus. These letters in the New Testament
are written to the church. They're meant to be understood
and applied in the context of the church. And so, if you're not a part
of the church, there's some of this context that is missing.
There's some of these instructions that do not and cannot apply
to you. I talked about how sort of watching
preaching online is not an adequate substitute. There's a place for
it. It can be an encouragement. You
can learn from preaching from all over the place. But there
is something different about the teaching of the local church. There's something different about
hearing the word taught in the assembly. And that difference
is that God has established that particular thing for the maturing
of the faith of his people. God has established the church
for your good, for your benefit. There's more to being part of
an assembly than hearing the preaching, right? We've had people
come here because that's what they wanted. They heard the preaching. They miss that there's more to
this than good, faithful preaching. Because you can get that online,
can't you? You can stay away from Claxton
and listen to me and James on the computer. Paul identifies this when he
says that, I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and,
and this is the other thing that establishes the foundation of
the assembly of the saints, your love toward all the saints. The way I framed this idea for
us when we went through verse 15 is by looking at how we might
fail to love one another as we relate to one another in the
assembly. In particular, I talked about
causing our brothers and sisters to fear. If we cause our brothers and
sisters to fear or to doubt than we have failed to love them. There were two things that I
focused on. We talked about legalism, right? We talked about putting
expectations and burdens upon our brothers and sisters that
scripture does not. We talked about putting fear
on the hearts of our brothers and sisters based on some sort
of performance or standard of good working and behavior. This
destroys what Jesus talks about in Matthew 18 about this childlike
faith, right? But we also talked about suspicion
and doctrine. We talked about how when we get
on to these, I think James likes to call it a hobby horse doctrine,
right? These things, pet doctrines,
that we're so very interested in and we feel so very passionately
about, but we take it too far. And we begin to doubt the profession
of our brothers and sisters based on this doctrine that we have
decided to overemphasize. When we do that, we cause our
brothers and sisters to fear. And so moving on from this, because
Paul has heard of the faith of the Ephesians and their love
towards their brothers and sisters. He says, I do not cease to give
thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. And then Paul
prays this about them. He gives them this encouragement
and tells them that he has been praying for this thing. He says
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge
of him. And so I want to make some observations
here. about what Christ, how Christ
relates to his Father and what Paul says about it. He says,
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I adjusted the title on the
video here. The title of this sermon is officially,
The God of Our God. Paul calls God the Father. the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And what I want us to see there
is that in the Incarnation, God the Son becomes a human in such
a manner that God the Father is not only His Father in the
way He relates to Him as a Son, but God the Father is the God
of God the Son in the Incarnation. In John chapter 20, Jesus says
to Mary Magdalene, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended
to the Father, but to go to my brothers and say to them, I am
ascending to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your
God. And so Jesus relates to God the
Father both as a father and as his God. And the reason we're
going over the adoption described in Ephesians 1.5 again is because
the way we relate to God the Father as a father and as our
God is through our adoption by him, through our marriage to
Christ. So let's turn to John chapter
eight. And we are going to reestablish
the doctrine of adoption that we worked through back in Ephesians
1, 5. First, I'm gonna start by reading John 8, 37 through
47, a fairly large section here. I know that, this is Jesus speaking
to the Pharisees now. He says, I know that you are
offspring of Abraham. He acknowledges their main contention,
right? They claimed that we are the sons of Abraham by blood.
Jesus admits this. I know that you are the offspring
of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place
in you. I speak of what I have seen with
my father and you do what you have heard from your father.
They answered him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them,
if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works
that Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me,
a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is
not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your
father did. They said to him, we are not
born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.
Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me,
for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord,
but he sent me. Why do you not understand what
I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are
of your father, the devil. and your will is to do your father's
desires. He was a murderer from the beginning
and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for
he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you
the truth, you do not believe in me. Which one of you convicts
me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you
not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The
reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. So Jesus first acknowledges their
main contention, right? These Pharisees are claiming
that, you know, we are the people of God because we are Jews. And it's not confusing to us
because we know the story, right? But the Pharisees apparently
were confused because they didn't understand what Jesus was talking
about. He makes a distinction between his own father and their
father and they don't understand it. So in verse 39, they claim
Abraham is our father and Jesus speaks about the works of Abraham. Turn to Romans chapter four.
Paul tells us the works of Abraham. Paul tells us how Abraham relates to the father. What then shall
we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to
the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something
to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture
say? Abraham believed God, and it
was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his
wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. To the one who
does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is counted as righteousness. So here in John 8, these Pharisees,
they claim to be sons of Abraham. And Jesus says, you don't do
the works of Abraham. And Paul tells us what those
works of Abraham are. They are to believe on the son. And Jesus goes on here and explains
that he is the son. Believing on him, these are the
works of Abraham. But the Pharisees claimed both
to be children of Abraham and to be the ones who did the works
of the law. They claimed to follow the law
perfectly. But Paul rejects this when he
tells us that it is not through the observation of the law that
salvation is had. Abraham's observation of the
law was not perfect. The Pharisees claimed something
beyond even what Abraham did. If they actually understood their
Old Testaments, they would understand this. Abraham failed to observe the
entire law. As we see in James, to transgress the law once, at
any point, is to transgress the entire law. The law demands justice and that
justice is death. It's impossible, even if you
followed the law perfectly, it's impossible to go beyond the demands
of the duties of the law. Because the law itself is just
a duty, as Paul tells us there in Romans 4. The one who works,
what he gets is his wage. Following the law perfectly just
means you do not suffer the wrath. But God demands true righteousness,
right? God demands absolute perfection,
something that even following the law cannot achieve for us. Instead, Abraham's work was a
work of faith. Abraham's righteousness was the
righteousness of Christ. And so we see that God's adoption
here is the effectual cause of salvation. God's adoption of us, God's election
of us, sets into motion God's plan, God's decree for our lives,
right? Verse 42, Jesus said to them,
if God were your father, you would love me, for I came from
God and I am here. Something to understand here
in verse 41, you're doing the works your father did, and they
said, we're not born of sexual immorality. They still think
he's talking about their earthly dad. They're thinking that Jesus
saying, no, your mother gave birth to you from a different
father, from a Gentile, not of Abraham. And Jesus says, no,
you still don't understand. In verse 42, Jesus establishes
for us that this adoption, this being a son of God by adoption,
according to the promise, this causes something in us. If God were your father, you
would love me. So it's easy to make a mistake
from this statement. and understand it to mean that
we have some duty to prove that we are the children of God. It's not what Jesus is saying.
There's no duty to prove that you are not doing the works of
the devil and that you are instead doing the works of God. Rather, Jesus is making a claim
about the nature of God's adoption and what it does for his children.
Because we, the elect, are adopted by God, God is faithful to work
in us that love that we have for him. This is a promise. This is a promise given to the
elect, to the people of God, that if you are adopted by me,
you will love me. This is a promise that God is
faithful to fulfill in us. John, the one who recorded this
conversation for us, echoes this conversation when he writes his
letter of 1 John. 1 John chapter 4, verse 17, By this is love perfected
with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment,
because as he is also are we in this world. There is no fear
in love. The perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do
with punishment. And whoever fears has not been
perfected in love. We love because He first loved
us. So we do not have to prove that
we are children of God. There's no further duty for us that puts us at risk of damnation. If we are in Christ, we will
love because God is faithful to fulfill that in us. Instead, God proves that we are
the objects of his grace. God proves that we are the objects
of his affection by stirring up for us that love for him,
that love that is part and parcel to the faith that we have in
Christ. So Jesus establishes here that
these Pharisees, they do the work of the devil because they
are not children of God. But instead they are the children
of Satan. They are not adopted by the father,
they are adopted by Satan. Verse 43, why do you not understand
what I say? because you cannot bear to hear
my word. You are of your father, the devil,
and your will is to do your father's desires. It's not that they heard the
words of Christ and just of their own free will chose not to like
them. They could not understand Jesus'
words because God did not ordain for them to be able to hear them
at all. God did not decree before the
foundation of the world that they would hear the words of
Christ and their eyes would be opened. Just as Paul teaches us, here
in Ephesians 1, that before the foundation of the world we are
chosen in Christ to be holy and blameless, before him, just as
the elect are predestined for adoption as sons, these Pharisees
were predestined by God to be objects of wrath. so that God's
justice might be shown in them. But that's not fair, right? First
time I preached this sermon, I began with a joke about a comedian
who was watching late night TV, and this commercial comes on
and says, forget everything you know about slipcovers. And so
he does, and then they tried to sell him slipcovers, and he
doesn't know what they were. When we think about God's justice,
it's almost as though we need to forget everything we understand
about earthly justice. We need to forget about our preconceptions,
our preconceived notions of what fairness and justice look like
in the minds of our flesh and allow scripture to teach us what
God's justice looks like, what God's justice really is. Let
go of your human understanding of justice because it is warped
by your flesh. It is not fair that the wicked
are predestined for destruction. Right? Our human understanding
of justice is that the wicked should be given a chance to apologize. A chance to prove themselves. But why should justice be based
on that if that's not what salvation is based on? Our salvation is based on the
grace of God alone. It's based on God's righteous
decree to save us. And in the same way, God's justice
and judgment are based on God's righteous decree to judge. Just
as salvation is based on God demonstrating his glory by pouring
out his mercy upon a people who didn't deserve it, God's justice
is based on demonstrating his glory by pouring out his wrath
and his judgment upon people who did deserve it. We must allow scripture to shape
our understanding of this divine justice. Right, and this is exactly what
Paul explains for us in Romans chapter 9. Right, that's not fair. You will
say to me then, why does he still find fault? Who can resist the
decree of God? Paul answers the objection. The
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, all scripture breathed out by
God, the word of God, who are you, O man, to answer back to
God? What is molded say to its molder,
why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over
the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable
use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to
show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much
patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make
known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he
has prepared beforehand for glory? I've even seen well-meaning teachers
try to get around how uncomfortable this can make us by saying that God prepares the
honorable vessels for glory. But the dishonorable vessels,
they prepare themselves. God leaves them to it and they
prepare themselves. What if God, desiring to make
his wrath, to make known his power, has endured with much
patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? God has prepared
them for destruction so that the glory of his justice might
be seen. and to make known the riches
of his glory for vessels of mercy, his people, the church, the elect. We also understand that the word
of God never returns void. And this is something that people
often don't understand about the gospel and about gospel preaching. I've seen preachers feel bad
when their sermon isn't effective,
especially in the context of outreach and evangelism. I have
friends who do evangelism on the street, and when you have
a misaligned view of what gospel proclamation is for, it can be
easy to be discouraged when people don't listen, right? Isaiah 55 says, for as the rain
and the snow come down from heaven, do not return there, but water
the earth, making it bring forth the sprout, giving seed to the
sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes
out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed
in the thing for which I sent it. So the gospel of Christ, this
word, has a purpose in all people. We might surmise that it is useless
to preach the gospel to those who are not God's people, those
who will never be God's people. And there are people who take
this idea so far as to think they can identify who those elect
are and those reprobate are. I call it the elector detector. There are people who can tell
you they can detect, they can sense with their powers of discernment
given to them by the Spirit, those who are reprobate, and
that they know that they can withhold the gospel from those
people because it's not for them. No. The gospel is to be preached
indiscriminately to all people. because the gospel has a purpose
in the reprobate as well as the elect. Right? We can hear and judge
a profession, right? You can tell me what your hope is in,
and I can tell you if that is consistent with what the Word
has taught. But to claim that you know with
certainty that a person is forever reprobate, decreed to be an object
of God's wrath, is to claim to know the hidden counsel of the
Father. It is to claim to be the Father himself. So we preach
the gospel to all people without distinction. Because it has a
purpose in both the elect to call them to faith and in the
reprobate to harden their hearts against the voice of the Father. Verse 44, you are of your father
the devil and your will is to do the father's desires. He was
a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth
because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks
out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of
lies. And then Jesus tells them, because I tell you the truth,
you do not believe me. Because I tell you the truth,
you do not believe me. The reason the Pharisees did
not believe Christ is because the things he was saying were
the truth. They could not believe the truth. God works the gospel in their
hearts to further harden their hearts against him. At every
turn, we read through these Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
we read through these Gospels, we see Jesus declaring who he
is to these Pharisees, and at every turn, their hearts get
harder and harder against him to the point that they start
trying to kill him. Several times, they try to kill
him. Until they are ultimately successful,
again, by the decree of God. They heard the truth of the gospel
and they did not believe because they were adopted by Satan. And so, in contrast, who are
the children of God? Those who are adopted by the
Father. Those to whom it is granted to believe in the work of Christ. You hear this all the time in
cultural Christianity and in other pseudo-spiritual lines
of thought. We are all God's children, right? No. The children of God are those
who are adopted by the Father. And who are those who are adopted
by the Father? Those who are found in Christ,
those who are part of the bride, those who are married to Christ. So we, the elect, the people
of God, we have legal claim to sonship under the Father. By virtue of our marriage to
Christ, we claim to be sons and daughters of the Father. And so in that way, Because that
is how we relate to Christ. That is the way in which God
is our Father. That is the way in which God
is our God. By virtue of being one with Christ. Now, in verse 17, Paul refers to the Father as
the Father of Glory. Remembering you in my prayers,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory. Now this phrase, if you break
it apart, Father and Glory, these say different things about God
than they do when you take them together. God the Father is our
Father by virtue of our adoption and our marriage to Christ. And
God is most glorious by virtue of himself, right? But when Paul says the father
of glory, he's speaking of something very specific. Something more
specific than if he had just said God is our father and God
is glorious. God is the father of glory. Here Paul relates God's
fatherhood of us to the method by which he is being glorified. He's not just the Father, and
He's not just glory. He is the Father of glory. God the Father is glorified in
the glorification of His Son in the redemption of His people. Right, that was the plan from
the very beginning, right? That was the purpose of creation,
that ultimately God would be glorified in the redemption of
His people, that God the Father would glorify the Son in his
marriage to the bride, that God the Son would be glorified in
making clean his bride. You might hear that, you know,
Jesus and redemption and his death on the cross and his resurrection
was, you know, that was the plan B. Plan A, you know, Adam and
Eve were supposed to just live forever in the garden and have
children and be fruitful and multiply and live at peace with
creation and with God. And then they messed it up. No. The glorification of Christ and
the redemption of his people was the purpose from the beginning.
Before the foundation of the world, we were chosen in him
to be holy and blameless. This is what it means that God
is the father of glory. That by the decree of the father,
the son would redeem his people. That the son would be glorified
in his death and in his resurrection. And ultimately in his marriage
to the church. That wedding feast that we read
about in Revelation. So Paul prays that the people of Ephesus would be
blessed by this father of glory, that they would be given a spirit
of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Now this
is a text that I have seen abused, okay? I'll put it this way, there
are no more prophets. The gift of prophecy is not receiving
new revelation from God. But at the same time, the gift
of prophecy is not dead. The gift of prophecy is still
alive in the church. And the gift of prophecy is the
same thing that the gift of prophecy has always been, right? It's
declaring forth the word of God. Hebrews 1, also probably Paul
writes, long ago and at many times and in many ways, God spoke
to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has
spoken to us by his son. whom he appointed the heir of
all things, through whom also he created the world. It's the
radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his
nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. God
no longer speaks through prophets. He no longer delivers his words
through prophets, but instead he delivers his words through
the word, the Christ. And the gift of prophecy is the
declaration of that word. Now, I'm not gonna start calling
myself a prophet. I'm not gonna go on my Facebook page and put
Prophet Trey Mason, because there are people who do that. But there
are people who believe that they have received a word from the
Lord, a new word that I really wish they would let me write
down and staple in the back of my Bible, because if you have
received new revelation from the Father, I should be able
to preach a sermon on it, right? God no longer speaks through
prophets. He speaks through His Son, and He has given us the
Word. All right, Hebrews 1 says the
same thing as John chapter 1. In the beginning was the word, and
the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning
with God, and all things were made through him, and without
him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and
life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness is not overcome it. Christ has chosen to speak
through his words to the apostles. We see in 2 Timothy chapter 3,
all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness
that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work. And so as Paul encourages us
here in verse 17, we ought to grow in wisdom. We ought to grow
in our knowledge of him. Right, this is the very same
encouragement given in Hebrews chapter five, although it was
a bit of a rebuke for the Hebrews. For though by this time you ought
to be teachers, You need someone to teach you again the basic
principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid
food for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word
of righteousness since he is a child. Solid food is for the
mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained
by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. And so it is this spirit of wisdom
that reveals to us the revelation of him. Through the power of the Holy
Spirit, our knowledge grows, not by osmosis, right? You can't
just not do anything and expect your knowledge of Christ to grow,
right? What does Paul say? Solid food
is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment
trained by constant practice. We read, we learn, we grow, both
privately as we read the word and corporately as we hear the
word taught in the assembly. So I figured I would talk about
theology books for a moment because theology books are a thing. Theology
books are out there. And I know many people and have
been one such myself who gleaned knowledge of God primarily through
theology books rather than the Word. It's okay to read Books
about theology, books about God written by people, written by
men. As long as we understand correctly
how that knowledge relates to the knowledge given by the spirit
of wisdom, the knowledge of him found in the scripture. If you are reading John Calvin
or Charles Spurgeon or anyone else, read it with your Bible
open, not your Bible closed. And sometimes you get into philosophy
and the Bible doesn't have anything to say about it. And that's one
of those fun things that we can discuss and disagree upon as
people and still love one another. But when you read about God from
something that is not your Bible, have your Bible there with you.
If the thing you're reading is worth anything, they'll at least
try to tell you where they got it from, if they got it from
Scripture at all, right? So don't go and burn your books.
There's value in that, as long as you understand the way it
relates to Scripture. You understand that Scripture
is the authority. But your growth in knowledge
should come primarily from, one, reading the Scripture, and two,
hearing the teaching of the Scripture. in the assembly, right? This
growing of knowledge, this pouring out of grace for knowledge by
the spirit of wisdom, the Holy Spirit. This is something that
happens corporately. This is something that we do
together, right? And this is something that is
promised to us, right? This assembly is established
for us to grow in that knowledge. And so Paul gives that encouragement.
Do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge
of him. And he goes on, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened
that you may know what is the hope to which he is called, what
are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and
what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe. According to the working of his
great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from
the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above
every name that is named not only in this age but also in
the one to come. So we must grow together, church. You can read and you can listen. but your growth will come when
we do it together. Let's pray. God, continue to teach us.