Open your Bibles, if you would, to Ephesians chapter 1. The name of the message today is Accepted in Christ. Wonderful topic. We may even end up doing two messages on it. Accepted in Christ. Let's read verses 3 to 7. This is amazing. To think that sinners such as we, born sinners, sinners by nature, sinners by choice, are accepted in Christ. This is just incredible. The God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at this, Ephesians 1, verses 3 to 7. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us, look it's all past tense here, with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.

That's just an incredible statement right there, isn't it? To the praise of the glory of his grace. That's why we praise him now. And even if we didn't praise him, it's to the praise of the glory of his grace. The angels would praise him. Oh my, but we praise him. to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath, look at this, it's past tense, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

It's already done. Now this was done in eternity and it was also done in time and space when Christ became a man. But it was ultimately done in eternity. We were accepted in Christ before the world ever was. That's amazing. That's amazing. And then in time and space, Christ redeemed us. And then in time and space, we are born again. Isn't that amazing? Look at this. In whom we have redemption, that's salvation and that's eternal life. Our souls have been purchased, how? Through the blood, through His blood. And then look what's the result of that. The forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. My! So again, let's look at this verse. Verse 6 is where we're going to be again. Look at this.

To the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved. Now Paul's writing to the saints at Ephesus. And he tells them, that you are accepted in the beloved. Accepted by who? Accepted by God. Accepted by God the Father, that's who he's been writing about, right? Who blessed us, who chose us in Christ. And then he's telling us here, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Now you hear a lot of people say, just go and accept Jesus, right? It's kind of reversed here, isn't it? Now, do we flee to Christ? Absolutely.

Because we're made will in the day of his power. He gives us faith to believe. But if we're not accepted in the beloved, we're never his. Oh my. Look at this. Rejoice. Rejoice, beloved of God, we who are the born-again, blood-washed saints of God. We are accepted in the Beloved. Now, who's the Beloved? That's Christ. That's Christ.

Christ cried out, it's finished, didn't he? Right? He cried, it's finished. You know what happened then? Righteousness was perfected. His righteousness, which was given to us, was perfected. The divine justice against us was satisfied. Because God's law has to be satisfied, right? Instead of falling upon us, it fell upon Christ.

My. This is amazing. The redemption price for our eternal souls was paid for. the precious blood of christ look at verse 7 in whom that being the beloved right that being christ we have redemption we've been saved beloved our eternal souls are purchased brother brian it's already done in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of his sins. How?

According to the riches of his grace. God is so full of grace. His grace is just of such riches and such magnitude that you know you can never exhaust it. Do you know you can never exhaust God's grace? Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Think of that with us. Where sin abounded, God's grace abounded even more. Isn't that beautiful? It's wondrous.

So our salvation is finished. Our Lord Jesus Christ finished the work of salvation. We are fully forgiven and we are fully reconciled back to God. Through Christ Jesus our Lord. Our salvation is being accomplished 2,000 years ago. And marvel here, beloved of God, that our Lord Jesus Christ died in our room and place. The sinless one died for sinners. Death was conquered when he died. Now we're going to die, but it doesn't have the sting that it once had, does it? We're going to glory.

All because of the grace and mercy of God. And you know that at the cross, our salvation was secured. We talk about security, right? And I love what Peter wrote, because it's a testimony of all of us, or what the scripture says about Peter. Lord, help my unbelief. Because it's a testimony of all of us. But you know that as far as our salvation is, it's absolutely secure. Because it doesn't depend upon us, does it? And that wonderful brother, Jim, it's totally secure. It's not based on us or our doings.

It's glorious. It's glorious. Because we've been secured, we've been purchased with the blood of Christ, the blood of God, the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And look at verse six. Because of Christ Jesus, our Lord's death upon the cross in our own place, we are accepted by God. Now, this is precious truth. God can't be in the midst of sinners. Right? He can't have sinners in his holy presence. So Christ makes us accepted in him. And it's to the praise of the glory of his grace. And think of the great grace that moved God the Father to send his own son. It's incredible. This love is incredible. That God has for his people.

And we don't know who they are, like I say, so we preach the gospel to everyone. We're all a bunch of sinners, aren't we? People get caught up in people doing this and people doing that. And even those people pointing out those people are a bunch of sinners just like the other ones. We need Christ. We need Christ.

And in these verses, verses three to seven, the apostle Paul, written by divine inspiration, remember, the true author is the Holy Spirit of God, tells us that God Almighty has from all eternity chosen, predestinated, adopted, and blessed us in Christ. Look at this. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. My. And we see here set before us with these words that God the Holy Spirit reveals and declares to us, one of the most comforting and delightful truths of the Holy Scriptures.

It's the fact that there is an everlasting, indissolvable, immutable union between the Lord Jesus Christ and his people. We cannot be divided from Christ. He's the head, we're the body. You can't dissolve that union. Remember when Paul was out slaughtering Christians and the Lord Jesus Christ said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? See the union? It's indissolvable. It cannot be separated.

That means we can't be separated from our Savior. Oh, what security that gives our souls. Even when we doubt, even when we have times of unbelief, even when our faith may be shaken, He will ever keep us. Isn't that wonderful? It's absolutely glorious. My. And take note here, take note. that our acceptance in Christ is spoken of as something already accomplished. It's already accomplished by the Lord God from eternity. It's not something accomplished by us in time. I'll just accept Jesus.

Exercise your will We can't unless we're born again But when we're born again, we sure do run don't we brothers Charlie? Oh, yeah So this is something that's done by God the Father for maternity for the believer Therefore it cannot in any way be dependent upon us.

I Right, brother? Oh, my. Salvation's of the Lord. It's wonderful. Ecclesiastes says this. I looked this up for this. 314, it says, I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever. Has he saved us? It's forever. Have we been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world? It's forever. Have we been accepted in the Beloved in Christ? It's forever. I know that whatsoever God...

This is Ecclesiastes 3.14 if you want to write it down. I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever. Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken away from it. And God doeth it that man should fear before him. My! Now let's look at this verse. Let's look at the latter part of this verse. Wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Look at this. Note the words he.

God the father. God the father. And it says, hath made. That's from all eternity. That's from before the foundation of the world. And then we see the word us. That's God's elect. We don't know who they are, so we preach the gospel to everyone. And God does the saving. All the elect, us, vile though we were and vile though we can be, my, hell-deserving, hell-bent sinners by nature, but chosen, redeemed, and called by his grace, look at this, accepted. Accepted. That's highly favored. It means honored, pleasing, and delightful to God.

My, in the beloved, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, that's, that's our Savior. That's God incarnate in the flesh. Oh, and note the beloved person, our great Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We see here He's revealed as the Beloved. The Beloved. My, turn if you would to John 17, but keep your finger in Ephesians chapter 1. But turn if you would to John 17.

Do you know, we can't even imagine the kind of love that the Father has for the Son. We can't even enter into that, can we, with our earthly minds? But here's something even more remarkable, too. Not more remarkable than the love of God for the Father, but here's something remarkable for us to consider. Because that love that God the Father has for the Son, you can't, you can't plumb it, you can't measure it, you can't, there's no depth to it. It's, it's everlasting love. It's everlasting love.

Now, here's something for us. Listen to this. John 17, look at verse 23. John 17, verse 23. This is the words of Christ Himself, and He's talking about His people, and He says this, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me." Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. God has loved me as He loves Christ? That's overwhelming, isn't it? And he proved it, didn't he? He proved it by sending his son to die for us. And he accomplished our salvation.

And he's risen. Seated at the right hand of the Father. And we are saved through his blood and righteousness. We are accepted in the beloved. My, this is amazing. The Lord Jesus Christ is the beloved of the Father's heart. And yet it says here in John 17, 23, and has loved them as thou has loved me. God's eternal love, beloved, has been set upon us from eternity. That's amazing. Hence the scripture in 1st John, where John says, we love him because he first loved us.

But we can't even imagine what this love is, can we? We have a humanistic love. Now we have the love of God in our hearts. But we still can't fathom the depths of God's love for his people in Christ. Because He loves us as He loves the Son. I've sinned against Him so much. This is amazing love. This is amazing grace to be forgiven. In whom we have redemption. Verse 7, the forgiveness of sins. Even though we sinned against Him much, and we still do, we're still sinners. It's all forgiven, beloved. There's no love in the world that can even match this. So marvel in the covenant of grace, all the blessings of the grace of God and the mercy of God is bestowed upon chosen sinners in the beloved, in Christ.

2 Timothy 1.9 says this, who has saved us, that's God, Christ has saved us, and called us with a holy calling. That's why we don't go crazy after the Lord saves us. We have a holy calling. Not according to our works, not according to anything we do, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. accepted in Christ before the world even began, beloved.

What a Savior. Everything that God the Father has done and decided or decreed to be done has been done to glorify his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, one who gave his life for us. Why? That in all things he might have the preeminence. He gets it all. He gets all the glory. And God, remember God the Son lived as a man, submitted himself to the Father's will, fully, to save us from our sins. And he was a real man. Fully man and fully God. And he died. As a man, he could die. God can't die. But as a man, he can die. So God becomes a man to save us from our sins by dying for us.

Our substitute. And you know what, though? He lives again. He's risen. The tomb's empty. He's gone. Oh my, he's gone. All the other religions of the world, you can trace them back to a man in a grave. But Christ rose from the grave. The tomb's empty. He's gone. Where? To sit at his father's side.

And we have the forgiveness of all our sins. through his blood and righteousness. It's amazing. He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let's read Ephesians 1, 6 once again. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Now God's people are scattered all over, aren't they?

All from every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. but everyone for whom Christ died for, he will get, he will bring them to himself. Note our everlasting union with the Son of God. This is the basis of our safety and our assurance. Why do we doubt? Because we're flesh. But we have a union that cannot be broken. Remember Christ's grip on us and the Father's grip on us? My, what security we have here.

We've been accepted in the beloved, when? When we believe? No. In eternity. When we believed it was just manifesting that. Because the Spirit of the Son was sent to us, right? Whereby we now cry, Abba Father, we're born again. Remember we were heirs and we didn't even know it? I don't want nothing to do with that foolishness. It turns out to be the greatest thing we've ever heard in our lives.

The most wonderful proclamation and what's good news, God saves sinners. I'm so thankful he saves sinners. Oh, I love that passage where the Pharisees, and I was there in the self-righteousness, that man sits with sinners. You know, I'm so thankful he sits with sinners. I'm so thankful he sat with sinners. I'm so thankful he still has sinners coming to him.

Aren't you? And you know why we need to hear the gospel? Because we forget these precious truths, and we need to hear them over and over again. That's why. We go out in the world, and the world beats on us for a week, and then we come, and we hear the gospel again, and it's, oh, Lord. That's why it's so important, even through the week, for us to listen to messages and stuff, because we need that. My brother Brian, you were saying you've been listening to Henry in the morning. Do we just need that stuff? We need that. We need that to constantly have the Word of God set before us. And note the union. Note the union here. Note in these first seven verses that we've went through, the fact of the believer's union with Christ.

Long before we believed on him. Look at the union that we had with Christ long before we believed on him. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. We were predestinated to the adoption of sons before the foundation of the world. We were accepted in the beloved because Christ is a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. The union was already complete. In time and space, it's revealed to us what Christ done for us. It becomes a reality for us.

And I marveled, because I remember being a God-hater. I may not have said I hated God, but in my language and my, oh my goodness, and the things I'd done and the places I went to. But I'm so thankful that God took me from a rebel and made me a praiser now. Now I'm a rebel praiser.

Right? We're still rebels as long as we're in this flesh, aren't we? But now we're accepted. We found out we've been accepted by God from eternity. And we didn't even know it. Think of the love that he showed to us. all those years that I just lived however I wanted to live, and we can all relate to this, and said things that I should never have said, and yet grace upon grace upon grace, even before we were saved. My, I think at times we could have died. The Lord spared us.

My, it's truly amazing. And without question, the Lord Jesus Christ is the beloved, and all his people, save sinners everywhere in heaven, above and scattered upon this earth, look upon the Son of God as our beloved. See, our thoughts about him have changed, haven't they? My.

Let's read Ephesians 1, 6 again. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted and a beloved. We see here our everlasting union with the Son of God is the basis of our safety. This can be the basis of our assurance. If we remind ourselves that I'm in Christ.

When the devil assails our minds, and he will, when the flesh comes up and our own heart condemns us. We have assurance, don't we, Sister Barb, that we're in Christ. This union cannot be dissolved. It cannot be dissolved. And we marvel That our faith in Christ is not the cause of our union. It's a manifestation of that union. Because we don't want nothing to do with him before he saves us.

It's beautiful. It's a manifestation of the union that we have. Again, 2 Timothy 1, 9 and 10 brings this truth forth. It says this, This is amazing. but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who had abolished death and brought life and immortality to life through the gospel. This is glorious.

And the subject of Ephesians 1.6 is not our manifest union with Christ in time. but our everlasting union with him from eternity.

We had a union with Christ, Brother Brian, before we were even born. And we didn't know it. My, oh my, oh my. My, Brother Charlie, all those times we were out doing things, he was watching over us the whole time. We didn't even know the Great Shepherd had his eyes on us, loving us with an everlasting love. My. So this verse actually brings forth the everlasting union that the believer has in Christ. My!

Salvation must begin with someone's choice, right? No, yeah, it does. It must begin with someone's choice. Religion says it's you and me. Right? That's what religion says. Just choose Jesus. Well, we see here, the Bible declares that it begins with God. God chose us in Christ. We are accepted in Christ because of God's choice.

Is it any wonder, Brian, why we praise Him? Is it any wonder why we give Him all the glory and all the honor? And all the praise. Oh, my. And those who God's chosen is called an election according to the remnant of grace or a remnant according to the election of grace. And we didn't even know we were that number. That's what makes it incredible.

And that's why the believer says, well, I know how God could hate Esau, because by nature we're God-haters. But the amazing thing is that he loved Jacob. Amazing thing is that he loved us, Brother Charlie. So much so. that He went to Calvary's cross and gave His life for us. That's amazing, isn't it? That's amazing.

When the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed the law of God and made it honorable, we were in Him. When He died on that cross, we were crucified with Him. When he rose from the grave, we rose with him. He's the second Adam, right? We were in the first Adam when he fell. He is the second Adam.

Justice looks upon the chosen as though they themselves had suffered all that Christ suffered, as though they had drank the wormwood and the gall and had descended into the lowest depths. See, it's Spurgeon. Even though Christ did it all. Amen and amen.