What we have been given here
in scripture is sufficient for not only knowing what God has
done from the beginning of time, but knowing everything that God
has done to secure our salvation, and further, knowing what God
is going to do at the end of all things. We know from scripture
that the inheritance that Paul speaks of in verses 11 through
14 is a guarantee. It is secured for us on the cross
of Christ. It is promised to us in the word
of God and we know that God cannot go back on his promises. And
I talked last week about the difference between sort of having
a sort of mental understanding, a cognitive ascent to this idea,
and seeing how that plays out in our lives, what that looks
like for us in practice. And the way I wanted us to do
that was to sort of relate to the Apostle Peter. I wanted us
to be able to sort of see ourselves in Peter and the silly things
that he said and to see Peter in ourselves when we say and
think and do silly things. And so I'm going to begin by
sort of reviewing some of the things that Peter had to say. Remember at one point Jesus was
sort of explaining the entire purpose for the incarnation,
the entire reason that he was here. He said that there's an
appointed time for me to die. He was foretelling his own death
and resurrection. And Peter thought it wise to
say, far be it from you, Lord. He says, you can't die, surely
not. And of course, Jesus rebukes
him. Later on, the fulfillment of
this particular prophecy of Jesus is at hand and the Jewish leaders
and their guards are coming to take Jesus away. so that he would
stand trial and execution. And what does Peter do? He tries
to kill one of them. It's in some sense admirable
that he is defending his friend, but he is trying to get in the
way of Christ doing what Christ came to do. And one of the important
points that I wanted you to get out of that related to how we
as elders and teachers are to relate to you, the sheep. Yes,
a shepherd is charged with defending his sheep. When the wolves come
into the flock and try to eat you, the shepherd is responsible
for protecting you. But, it is of course possible
for us to sin in our anger, and we as teachers, we as elders,
in defense of you, may sin in our anger. just as Peter, trying
to defend Jesus, tried to kill a man. We also saw that there
was a storm, right? The disciples and Jesus are on
a boat, there's a storm, Jesus is asleep, and while the scripture
does not tell us that this is Peter, it is very much like Peter
to insist that Jesus has forgotten about us, that Jesus doesn't
care that we are dying. Whichever disciple it was, he
says, do you even care that we are perishing? What I wanted
us to understand from that is that God is looking out for us. We are a part of God's plan. God has promised to keep us secure. He has not promised to bless
us gratuitously with material possessions. He has not promised
that we would not suffer In fact, we have been promised that we
will suffer for our faith. But through that, we have been
given a promise that he is faithful to keep us secure in our faith,
right? Our salvation that is given to
us in Christ cannot be questioned. That much cannot be shaken. Jesus was teaching a rich man
what he must do to be saved. And this man was very rich and
he claimed, I have followed the whole law. And Jesus said, okay,
go sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And the
man went away very sad because he was very rich. And Peter walks up to Jesus and
says, we got rid of everything we had, what do we get? I want us to understand that
if we ever find ourselves pointing out to God how good we were,
we've made a mistake somewhere, right? We need to understand
that our salvation, our regeneration, is on account of Christ. It's
on account of God and His sovereign decree to save us for His glory,
not because of something we have done, not because of anything
that God has foreseen in us, right? pleased God to save us
because we were pleasing to him, but it pleased God to save us
because Christ was pleasing to him. Jesus takes Peter, James, and
John up on a mountain and starts shining like the sun, right? Radiant light beaming from his
face, and then Moses and Elijah, the real ones, are sitting there
speaking with him. And Peter says, it's a good thing
I am here, because I can build some tents with you, and we can
camp out and have our little Jesus Christian superstar party
in my tent. And of course, you remember that
the voice of the Father booms from heaven rebuking Peter, telling
him to shut up and listen to Jesus. And I feel strongly about this
particular text, Matthew 17, because it was the first sermon
I ever preached. And it was the first time I realized,
I'm Peter. This was the text from which
I first saw Peter in myself. It's because I thought I had
a lot to offer God, right? I was going to be one of God's
all-stars. My skills, my talents, my faith,
they were so very useful to God. God didn't need me to be useful.
God didn't need me or any of my talents. He needed me to be
humbled. He needed me to realize that
he was everything I needed, that he would equip me to do the work
of the ministry. And of course you remember that
Jesus tells Peter, you will deny me before tomorrow morning, three
times. And Peter just says, no, no I
won't. If you ever find yourself just flat contradicting God,
you've probably made a mistake. What I want us to understand
from this is that sometimes we will fail, right? We have not
yet been perfected in our bodies. We are still working to destroy
the flesh in us, right? We are still working to grow
and to mature in our faith, and sometimes We mess up. It's going
to happen. It has happened today probably,
right? And then Jesus tells Peter also that he was going to wash
his feet, right? The disciples are getting ready
for dinner and Jesus starts washing their feet. And when Jesus gets
to Peter, Peter says, no, you're not going to wash my feet. And
Jesus says, if I don't, you have no share with me. And then we
saw Peter sort of overcorrect and say, okay, wash my hands,
wash my head, wash my hands. And Jesus says, no, just your
feet. Your head's clean, your hands are clean. And ultimately, what we need
to see from all these things that Peter says is that scripture
is sufficient. Right? Each of these things that
Peter says and does are born out of Peter not trusting in
the words of Christ. Right? At each turn, Peter contradicts
the words of Christ in some way. And yet we are given these things
so that we can, one, see ourselves in them, so that we can recognize
when we are doing this. And two, that we can see that
despite Peter, God used Peter, right? Despite Peter's hard-headedness,
his zealotry at inappropriate times, God still used Peter. And just as God used Peter, God
is going to use us for something, right? Each of us has a place
in God's kingdom. Each of us has a place in the
church. Each of you has some job to do,
and that might look different for every person. In some seasons
of your life, that might look like just showing up and being
here, right? One of the things that I emphasized
back when I was teaching on the local church is that not everyone
actually is charged, is called with doing something great. For some people, for some time,
it may just be that God has called you to be here, to learn, to
grow, and to love your brothers and sisters, to fellowship with
us. Not everyone is called to teach.
Not everyone is called to serve in the same way, but everyone
is called to be part of the assembly. Everyone is called to be here.
Everyone is called to love their brothers and sisters. So while your calling may not
be as so great or magnificent as
what the apostles did, You are called to be here, be one of
us, be part of the assembly. So we're going to move into finally
the last part of verse 10, where Paul says that this plan for
the fullness of time was to unite all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth. And so before we get there, I'm
going to sort of take a side tangent to lead us into it by
talking about how we read the Bible and how we understand the
Bible. And it'll be clear why I'm doing that. So first, turn
to 2 Timothy chapter 3. We're just going to read this,
starting in verse 16. 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 competent,
equipped for every good work. So first we need to understand
that this is the Word of God. This is not someone's interpretation
of what God said. These are the words of God. This
is what God has breathed out, given to the apostles to write
down and deliver to us. All of it, the whole thing, even
the black letters. A few weeks ago, I was giving
red letter Bibles a hard time. The black letters and the red
letters have the same authority. There are some churches out there
that sort of take the red letters, the actual words spoken by Christ
when he was on earth, and they put them up here and sort of
take all the other black letters and they're sort of secondary.
They're still authority, but the red letters are the best
letters. We should be careful not to make that mistake. Even
the words that Christ spoke and the words that Christ didn't
speak that were given to the apostles to deliver to us have
the same authority. It is all breathed out by God. Second, Scripture equips us for
every good work, right? It's not most good works, right? This is sort of one of the things
that the Roman Catholic Church misses, right? In Rome, the Bishop
of Rome, the Pope, he has the same authority as the Bible,
according to Rome. And by giving the Pope that authority,
they are saying that the Pope can equip us for good works that
Scripture has not, right? The Pope is necessary to complete
the Word of God for us. Of course, this cannot be. Scripture
is complete. It is sufficient for equipping
us for every good work. And the reason I'm telling you
about this is that scripture itself equips us to understand
it. Scripture is the highest authority
for interpreting scripture. When you read the Bible and you
find something you don't understand, the first place you go to should
be other places in the Bible that you do understand. I've often made the mistake of
reading something in Scripture and thinking, you know, I need
to go check a couple commentaries, make sure I'm getting this right. No. Check Scripture. Our Statement of Faith even says
that, you know, Scripture interprets Scripture. When you don't understand
this, go somewhere else that you do understand and start there.
And that's actually what we are going to do today. Remember what
Peter's problem was. He doubted the sufficiency of
the words of Christ, right? And so my sermon today is built
upon the fact that I don't know what Paul is talking about at
the end of verse 10. What I mean by that is I'm not
entirely sure exactly what Paul is pointing to when he says to
unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth. I don't know what he means. I
know what he could mean. So I don't want to stand up here
and pretend to know everything and just tell you this is what
Paul is talking about when I'm not actually sure. So instead
of making some assertion about what Paul actually means, what
we're going to do is we're going to explore other things that
scripture more clearly teaches that Paul is probably talking
about here. And this is what I do when I read scripture. When I find things I don't understand,
I say, okay, what could he be talking about based on what I
am sure about what Scripture teaches. So, at the end of the
day, I'm not going to make a claim about which of these exactly
Paul is talking about. And so, I can't be wrong in that sense.
But we will hear things that Scripture does, in fact, teach.
So Paul says, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and
things on earth. What we're going to do is look
at four things that are taught elsewhere in scripture that Paul
is probably referring to in some way. And at the end of the day,
Paul's probably referring to all four of these things in some
sense, in some way at the same time. I just can't point to one
of them and say, this is exactly it. So first, A plan to unite all things in
him, things in heaven and things on earth. The first observation
I want to make is that when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden,
creation becomes disordered in some way. Turn to Genesis 1. Right at the end of Genesis 1,
verse 31, God saw everything that he had made, and behold,
it was very good. And there was evening and morning
the sixth day. All right, so God looks upon
what he has created, everything that he has made, and he determines
that it is very good. And we hear about Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden and how perfect it was, right? Their
relationship with God was in order. Their relationship with
creation was in order. All they had to do was what?
Not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But of course,
God had a plan for the fullness of time that Adam would sin and that
through Christ Adam would be redeemed. Verse 14 of chapter
3, this is the Lord speaking after Adam and Eve have eaten
of the fruit of the tree, after they've been deceived by the
serpent. The Lord God said to the serpent,
Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and
above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and
dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity
between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To
the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.
In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be
for your husband, and he shall rule over you. To Adam he said,
because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have
eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat
of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall
bring forth for you. You shall eat the plants of the
field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you
return to the ground. For out of it you were taken,
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name
Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God
made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed
them. And the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like
one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest you reach out
his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live
forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent
him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which
he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden
of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned
every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So Adam's sin
creates separation. It creates disorder. The relationship
between man and God is severed. The relationship between man
and creation is ruined. And so it may be that Paul is
talking about here when he speaks of uniting all things in heaven
and earth is the reconciliation of these relationships. Turn
to Romans 5. Paul gives us some commentary
on what happened there in Romans chapter 3. Verse 12, he says, therefore
just as sin came into the world through one man, right, that
one man is Adam, and death through sin, so death came through that
sin, right, that was the promise. Do not eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for on that day that you eat, you
shall surely die. And so death spread to all men
because all sinned. We all suffer because of Adam's
sin. We are all guilty because of Adam's sin. This death, this sin spreads
to all men because of Adam. And so we see that creation,
the world, everything around us is totally out of order compared
to how it was in Eden. Right, if you're still in 2 Timothy,
gonna back up just a little bit there in chapter three. Understand this, that in the
last days there will come times of difficulty. People will be
lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient
to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable,
slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its
power. Avoid such people, for among
them are those who creep into households and capture weak women,
burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning
and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as John Ace
and John Brace opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the
truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified
regarding the faith. They will not get very far, for
their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two
men. If you didn't think we were in
the last days, you should after we read that first bit of chapter
3. When you look out into the world
and we see this. But we've been able to see this.
We can read even in the Old Testament that this is what the world was
like apart from Christ. This was the Babylon that took
Israel captive. This was the Egypt that took
Israel captive. And this is the culture that
has the Church of God captive now, right? We live among this. All of creation is set out of
order because of Adam's sin. But it will not always be so. Turn to Revelation 21. One of the very last images that
is given to the Apostle John Revelation 21, starting in verse
1. Then I saw a new heaven and a
new earth. For the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw
the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard
a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling
place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and
they will be his people, and God himself will be with them
as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and
death shall be no more. Neither shall be mourning, nor
crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away. And
he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all
things new. And also he said, write this down, for these words
are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, this is John
saying, he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end, to the thirsty I will give
from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have
his heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. So it is likely that in some
sense, when Paul talks about the uniting of things in heaven
and things on earth, he is referring to this marriage, this new heaven,
this new earth that meet together. The old has passed away and the
new has come. Remember, in the garden, the
relationship between man and God is severed. And then here,
the end of days, behold, the dwelling place of God is with
man. Things on earth have been united
with things in heaven. And so here, Paul is speaking broadly, tying
together all of history. Now, it may be that Paul is speaking
more narrowly, more specifically, particularly about the reconciliation
of God and the elect. Back in Romans 5, verse 12, we saw that sin and death enter
through Adam. And Paul goes on in verse 17,
for if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one
man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace
and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one
man, Jesus Christ. Right, so just as death spreads
to all men through Adam, death spreads, or life spreads to the
people of God through Christ, right? Apart from Christ, we
are separated from God. It's not that we just can't reach
Him. It's that God in His justice
cannot have relationship with us in our wickedness. This is what Paul tells us in
Romans 3. Those apart from Christ are what? None is righteous,
no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks
for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.
No one does good, not even one. The throat is an open grave.
They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of serpents is under
their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their
feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruined in
misery. The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear
of God before their eyes. All right, we can't read this. think to ourselves, yeah, but
everyone's got a little bit of good in them, right? God has done just enough so that
everyone could choose him if they wanted to, right? No, no
one seeks for God. The elect of God have faith in
God because God has granted them faith through the power of his
spirit. Apart from that, we would be
Romans chapter three. Our throats are open graves. So God in his justice is compelled to execute his justice. God cannot
be unjust. And so for the wicked, there
is wrath. But in Christ, we are reconciled
to God, right? God demands righteousness. The
law demands perfection. And so in Christ, there is found
perfection, perfection and righteousness for his people His righteousness
is counted their own. Christ does the work of making
us righteous. And so it may be that when Paul
says, all things united, things in heaven and things on earth,
in Christ, that he is referring to this reconciliation between
his people and God the Father, God the judge. Paul may be referring even more
specifically to the marriage between Christ and his bride. Remember, we've talked about
this idea of this covenant of redemption, right, this heavenly,
eternal transaction between God the Father and God the Son, where
God the Father promises to give to the Son a bride, God the Father
promises to glorify the Son, and in exchange, God the Son
would make her clean. God the Son would redeem his
bride. So when Paul speaks of uniting
things in heaven and things on earth, it may be that he is referring
to this marriage between Christ and his bride. Right? And this is very similar
to this last thing. And this is why I think all of
these things that we're talking about here are probably in some
sense what Paul is talking about. Christ, the bridegroom, has redeemed
his people. He has washed us clean. And so the things in heaven that
are united with the things on earth are Christ, in heaven and
on earth his church. And those on earth are those.
Those united with him are those who are in him. Now there's one more thing that
I want to talk about, and this is one that just about every
commentator, because I did check the commentaries, right? I did
look to see what different commentators said about this, and this is
the one that most of the commentators, they at least had some element
of this in their understanding of verse 10. And that is that
Paul may be referring to the reuniting of the saints who have
gone before with the saints who are still here on earth. Turn
to Hebrews 12. One of my study Bibles even had
this as a cross-reference for Ephesians 1, 10. In 12, verse
1, probably Paul, says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so
great a cloud of witnesses, in verse 18, he says, you have not
come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness,
and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a
voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages
be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was
given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.
Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble
with fear. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of
the living God and heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels and
festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who
are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to
the spirits of the righteous made perfect. and to Jesus, the
mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks
of a better word of Abel. So in verse 18 there, we see,
for you have not come to, he's speaking about Sinai there, then
in, let's see, verse 22, you have come. So the you there he's
talking about is, the church, right? The you, the addressees
of the letter. He's talking to us, right? The saints on earth. We have
come, and then there in verse 23, to the assembly of the firstborn
who are enrolled in heaven. Now I do want to make a side
tangent here. This is, to my knowledge, the only use of this
word assembly, right? The Greek word is ecclesia. to
refer to this idea of saints who are not those gathered in
the local church. If you do a word search of the
Bible for the word church, the Greek word ekklesia, what we
find is that it's talking about this, what we're doing here.
It's talking about local churches gathered in different places. But here it's not what it's talking
about. It's talking about saints gathered in heaven. And so it is sort of from this
text that comes this idea of the universal or invisible church. You might have heard those words
before. If you've ever read the, was it the Apostles' Creed or
the Nicene Creed, One Holy Catholic Church, you'll see Reformed churches
who will recite this creed and they talk about the Catholic
Church, that just means the universal or invisible church. Now the
simple version of what we're talking about when we say those
words, it just means the elect, right? That's what it's referring
to, right? Universal meaning all of God's
people sort of lumped into one or invisible meaning those people
of God who are gathered together, and with respect to the work
of the Spirit, it's invisible, right? We can't see the work
of the Spirit because the Spirit is invisible. Now, we prefer to avoid this language,
this idea of invisible or universal church, because it is not itself
a biblical category, so to speak, right? Scripture doesn't use
the word Ecclesia to talk about the elect in total, okay? If you want to, it's okay, right?
You're not wrong. It's okay to talk about the church.
I mean, we do it all the time, right? We say the church, just
talking about God's people in general. But one, this isn't even really
what the author of Hebrews is talking about, right? When he
says the assembly of the firstborn, he's talking about the saints
who are in heaven, who have gone before, right? But there's also
this idea that gets abused, this idea of invisible or universal
church that gets abused. I've seen it used as an excuse
for avoiding the assembly. I've seen it used as an excuse
for not gathering, as though All the blessings that are had
here in the assembly could be had apart from, as though I have
my Bible, I'm part of the universal, the invisible church, and that's
good enough. Now, there are those who do not
have access to biblical assembly, right? We have many people who
watch our stream online. You are friends with many of
them. You speak to them on the phone. You message them on Facebook.
They do not have assembly near them. We pray for them. We speak with
them. We fellowship with them as we
are able. And I have friends who are in
this position and they want to be in assembly, right? Your soul
cries out for fellowship because we need it. But we know that many of the
blessings promised to us from God are given to us in the assembly. That is the ordinary means by
which God blesses his people. And so when scripture talks about
the church, it's talking about local churches. But here in Hebrews
12, it speaks about the marriage, the union of the saints who are
here on earth and the saints who are in heaven. Through the
gospel of Christ, we are brought together all as one assembly. So in the end, Paul is probably
talking about all of these things in some way. I just haven't been
able to piece it all together. And so what I did when I'm studying
this, I read this, unite all things in him, things on heaven
and things on earth. And I say, I don't know exactly
what you're talking about, Paul, but I know that there are all
these other things that are related to this, that scripture teaches. So I'm gonna go and read and
study those things. And that's what you should do
when you read scripture. you don't know what Paul's talking
about, let scripture teach you what Paul is talking about. And if the thing you read in
scripture wasn't what Paul was talking about, you still read scripture,
you still got taught by scripture, right? And so to close this out, we're
gonna sort of do a broad overview now of Ephesians 1, just sort
of where we have been. Ephesians 1.3, We see that we
have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places. The infallible assurance of faith
is found on the blood and the righteousness of Christ revealed
in the gospel and the testimony of the Holy Spirit to our souls
concerning the promises made to us in God's word. Right, every
blessing in the heavenly places. In verse four we see, even as
he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. What
I wanted you to get there was that God's choice is active,
conscious, deliberate, free, and uncompelled. Before the foundation
of the world proves to us that God's sovereign decree of election
is free and uncompelled. It's not based on what we have
done. We cannot earn the grace of God
because then it wouldn't be grace. would be what is due to us. And
what is due to us is justice and wrath. But in Christ we are
made clean. Christ has redeemed us, his bride,
his people. And in him we are made holy,
that is, we are set apart as his bride, and we are made blameless,
that is, that Christ has satisfied God's wrath on our behalf. And all of this is done in love. There at the end of verse four
of Ephesians one, in love. This love is unique to the elect.
It is unconditional with respect to the elect and it is effectual
for our salvation. Remember in verse five, we talked
about this idea of adoption, right? Remember the Pharisees
claimed to be God's children, right? What proof did they give? We keep the law. Abraham is our
dad. So we are God's children. No. God's children are those who
are given to Christ as a bride. Right? We claim to be God's children
because we have a legal claim to sonship, because we are the
bride of Christ. We are washed clean on account
of Christ. Those who are not married to
Christ have no legal claim to being children of God. Rather, They are children of
their father, the devil, as Jesus would tell the Pharisees, because
they do the works of the devil. We claim to be sons of God in
a way that is independent of who our family is. It is independent
of how good we were. We've been given ears to hear
the promise of Christ, and we've been given faith to believe in
the work of Christ. And we have been given to him
as a bride, and by that we claim to be children of God on account
of Christ. And Paul says that all of this
is done according to the purpose of his will. This is where I
introduce this sort of phrase. It's okay to not be okay. We can find security in the decrees
of God. We can find security in the sufficiency
of Scripture. We can find peace in Christ when
it doesn't make sense to us to have peace in Christ. We have redemption through his
blood. If it sounds like I'm repeating
myself, it's because Paul repeats himself. The law demands justice. When we talked about this, we
talked about the sacrifices of the temple, how each year, each
day, each Sabbath, the priests in the temple would
have to kill animals. And through these sacrifices,
the saints of the Old Testament saw as shadows the promises of
God. But in Christ and through his
word, we see now, not through shadows, but we see the full
radiance of his glory. Glory as of the only Son from
the Father, full of grace and truth. We see the work of Christ. We see the blood of Christ poured
out. And that was the work that those sacrifices pointed to.
The law demands justice and Christ satisfies the demands of the
law once and for all for his people. It was here that we talked about,
sort of strayed into this idea of legalism and causing children
to fear. I've emphasized enough now that
it's not about what you have done. It cannot be about what
you have done. And yet there are those who would
come into the church and demand certain types of works. There are those who would come
into the church and would try to instill fear in you because
you have not met some standard. Be it some standard of works
or some standard of belief, some standard of doctrine. Do not fear and trust in the
sufficiency of Scripture. Then in verse 8, we talked about
the grace of God lavished upon us, right? This grace that is
bountiful, overwhelming, and overflowing, this grace for faith. We talked about the grace of
God given in all wisdom and insight. Again, this idea that God's grace
is not compelled. This idea that God's decree is
given through some foreknowledge that he has to check and make
sure he saves the right people. This idea deprives God of his