Predestination

Turning your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1 Hold your place there You pray God will Declare his gospel to us tonight. I want to talk Talk to you tonight about predestination God's predestinated Election and predestination can't separate. There is a God. The God. Not a God. Not the God of our imagination. But the God. The only God. The one who was in the beginning who separates the end from the beginning. The Almighty God. The one in three, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

He's sovereign. He does exactly as he pleases. He's holy. He's other. Brother Todd tells us that. I like how he puts it. God is other. He's not like you and me. He's righteous. Everything he does is right. He created all things. He's the creator of everything. And He needs absolutely nothing. Nothing from us. Nothing from His creation. Self-sufficient. Omnipotent. Omnipresent.

Who does God say He is? In Isaiah 45 verse 7 he says, I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and I create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. Aren't you glad God is over evil? He has the power over everything, even evil. Everything's in its limit. There is no opposing God. Satan is not his equal. The demons can do nothing without asking him. He's in control of everything.

He didn't need to create. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, He delighted in His Son. He's happy. He didn't need to create. Yet He created all things by Himself because it pleased Him. It pleased Him to do so. Of Himself, through Himself, to himself. He doesn't need the praise and the worship of our lips. He doesn't need it.

Isaiah 57, 19 tells us, I create the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near saith the Lord and I will heal him. Anything we give God is given to us by God. Even the praise of our lips, He has made us willing and able to do it. Without Him, we couldn't. Yet it pleased Him to choose a people to worship Him and praise Him. He gets glory from it. God's happy. He's a blessed God. He loves himself. He loves his son. And he loves his creation. And he loves a people that he chose in his son.

So this self-sufficient God It hath pleased him to make us his people. In 1 Samuel 12, 22, it tells us, for the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake. Because it hath pleased the Lord to make you his people. It pleased God to elect, choose a people for the foundation of the world. that He created.

It pleased Him. This God who doesn't need anything or anybody. It made Him happy. Made Him happy to elect a people in His Son. Give them to His Son. He made a covenant with His Son. With Himself. It pleased God to predestinate those chosen ones. unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself. Think about that. God didn't need anybody or anything. It pleased Him to give Himself, His Son, a people. That ought to comfort your soul, brother. He made that covenant with his son. And he says, because I am the Lord, I change not.

Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. That's in Malachi 3. It's not for our sakes. It's for Christ's sake. He gave a people to his son, to himself. It's for Christ's sake. It's for God's glory. That's the most important thing is for God's glory. It's for his son's glory that Christ be the firstborn among many brethren and have preeminence because he is before all things. He's the only begotten son of God. The delight of the father. Christ said, I was his delight, and my delights were in the sons of man.

God's got a purpose. He purposed to love a people and his son before the foundation of the world. Those are the ones that he chose to save. There's salvation in God. There's salvation in Christ. 1 Samuel 12, 22. Don't we just read that? It pleased Him to choose a people. Salvation is all of the Lord.

It's the eternal purpose. The eternal purpose of God and His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Purposed in Him before the foundation of the world. God elected a people in his son before the world was, he predestinated those unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to his good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glory, of his grace.

So now in Ephesians one, let's read in verse three. It says, blessed, blessed, Be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ. According as he has 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, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. We're gonna take our text from verse five tonight.

Predestination, here in the Bible. It is God being God. God being sovereign over all His creation and His purpose, His providence, His decree. God's eternal purpose and His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Predestination, it is God determining beforehand, ordaining beforehand His will and good pleasure. He's a sovereign God, he does as he pleases. Not that he needed, but because it pleased him to get his glory, his grace shown to us, manifest in Christ Jesus.

Predestination, we all determine, we all predestinate, we all determine to do things, don't we? We do, we determine to get up and go to work, Go to school, wherever we go, we're determined to get there on time and do whatever it is we intended to do. But we change our minds, don't we? We change our minds. Sometimes our minds get changed for us, don't they? Because why? We don't have any power to see it through. We're powerless. We can predestinate all we want, but we don't have that power. But God, who is sovereign, he's not like us. His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts.

He's all powerful. He's all powerful and he's perfect. He doesn't lie and he doesn't change. Acts 15, 18 says, known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. He decreed all this before he created everything to take place that he had decreed. Everything in the universe that he created, everybody has a purpose. We may not know what it is, but God does, and that's all that matters.

And he does it, what does he say? How many times we're gonna read Romans 8, 28? Because it needs to be read. Did all things work together for the good? Those that love God according to his purpose? Huh? Ezekiel 24, 14 tells us, I, the Lord, have spoken it. It shall come to pass, and I will do it. God is the God of purpose.

God is the God who has all power. He's the only power. You and I are powerless over Satan. Satan has got power. He sifts us. He has to ask God if he can do it. God tells him. Have you considered my servant, Joe? Peter, Peter, he gonna sift you like wheat. But I prayed for your faith to be strong. Huh?

That God-given faith, that assurance. Romans 13 one says, for there is no power but God. The powers that be are ordained of God. If you're an elect child of God, predestined to the adoption of His children by Jesus Christ, He's your Father. All power over everything. Don't ever think for a minute, these demons, this evil that goes on in the world, what did God say? I created it. I will get my glory from it. And it'll work. for my children's good. Huh? What a God.

No one counsels him. No one ever counseled him. No one ever taught him anything. He does as he pleases. Therefore, brethren, if God chose you to love you before the foundation of the world, he loves you now and he always will love you. There ain't never been a time he has not loved you.

And if he chose you to be his son, his children, predestinated you to be his adopted child, nothing's going to stop that from happening. You're going to be his child. He going to be your father. By Jesus Christ, you shall be his son. And nothing can stop it. Nothing can stay his hand. His will, his decree, his purpose, nothing can stop, change his providence.

Philippians 1.6 says, being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He got nothing to do. He's done it all. We had no part. in God's electing grace. We have no part in God's predestinating us to be his children. Romans 11, if you'll turn there to Romans 11. In verse 33.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who had known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? God owes you nothing. you have nothing to give him.

For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever, amen. All powerful God, we only give God what we have received from God's hand. We do not know who God's elect are, and we didn't even know we were the children of God until he revealed it to us in Christ Jesus by his Holy Spirit coming to us through the gospel which God sent to be preached. And he made it effectual to our hearts, called us out of our darkness into his light, because we were born in sin, born captive to Satan.

Adam fell. Our first representative head fell in the garden. He sinned against God. And we fell in him, in a substitute. When he sinned against God in the garden, we sinned in Adam. And we're all born totally depraved. There is no good in us whatsoever. Born in trespasses and sin, spiritually dead.

You can't understand spiritual things and God is spirit. God is spirit. Thank God for the God man. But he is spirit. We're helpless to save ourselves. All we do by our nature that we got from Adam is sin against God. Our works, our best works are sin. Our righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. We can't come to God. We can't approach God. He's holy. We're unclean. We're unholy. We don't even know who he is. We have nothing to offer him. Nothing in our natural state do we have. But there's hope. There's hope.

Because before God created the universe and the world and all the things in it, before he created Adam, before sin entered, By Adam sinning against God, God chose a people in His Son. Not according to their works, not according to anything He saw in them. Before they did anything good or evil, turn to Romans 9. Turn to Romans 9. Romans 9 verse 11. For the children, being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, God is right to love who he will, and he's also right to hate who he will. And he says, but Esau have I hated. He didn't love Esau any less. He hated Esau. He loved Jacob.

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Oh, God forbid. We're talking about the sovereign God who can do as he pleases. For he said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. God didn't need us. God didn't need to create anything. Because it pleased Him to do so. It made Him happy to choose a people in His Son. Oh, thank God. God chose a people in Christ and God predestinated them to be His adopted children by Jesus Christ. God chose His Son. God chose His Son to be the Redeemer of those people.

To take their sins away. The very thing that stands between you and God, your sin. He chose a sacrifice to please himself. He chose his son. God chose Christ to be the sacrifice, that one time sacrifice, to shed his blood, his precious atoning blood, and redeem his elect people. Not all people. Only those that he gave his son in the beginning, who he chose and elected and predestinated to be his children, he sent him to die for them, shed his blood for them. God chose his sacrifice.

It is the eternal purpose of God and his son. That's the reason the world was created. Christ would come and He would lay down His life for those sheep, those that chosen of God gave Him for the foundation of the world and trusted in Him. And He came, manifest in flesh, to be our Redeemer. To shed His blood, lay down His life as the sacrifice that would please God. He put away our sins. That covenant that God made with His Son before the foundation of the world, God chose. Predestination begins with the love of God. Go back to our text in Ephesians 1. We see in verse 4, let's read it again.

According as He had chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. God made the way to remain holy, just and righteous, and make an ungodly wretch like us, like me, and his son holy and without blame.

That's why Christ came, to glorify the Father, to do this. Before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to his good pleasure of his will. In love, he predestinated us. If you look in Jeremiah 31, verse three, The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

He woos us with his word. He woos us with his Son. God draws you to his Son. The only way you're going to see God is through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We see him on that cross, dying, suffering, shedding his blood for the remission of sins of his people.

He didn't come for himself. There was no sin in him. God made him sin. He made him sin. He took our sin and he bore it in his body on that tree. That body that God prepared for him before the foundation of the world to be that sacrifice, that propitiation. The only one that God would be happy and satisfied, appease his holy justice, that we offended. Took your sins away. Made them his own and took them away and imputed to you his righteousness. And his righteousness is not filthy rags. They're not. He's our righteousness.

God draws you to his son. You didn't even know you were a child of God. You didn't even know you were elected. God from fell before the foundation of the world, it already predestinated a time for each of his elect. Though we number, outnumber the grains of sand on the sea, each and every one of us has an appointed time of love.

By the grace of God, He reveals himself to us in the face of his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. That's why it's so important. Christ on the cross crucified, the gospel, him coming as a man, humbling himself as a servant to God. This is God Almighty, the one we just talked about, coming in human flesh.

He didn't need you, but he loved you because he chose you. He gave you to his son. And the son voluntarily said, I'll take them. All the full responsibility for the resalvation will be on me. It'll all rest on me. and I'll make them holy and I'll make them righteous. And I'll present them to you that way. I'm gonna lay down my life for them. Be made a curse for them.

Lord comes to us by his grace and by his power. He sends a man who he don't need to preach his gospel. Because if God don't preach his gospel, you don't want to listen to what that man has to say. And he sends his word, and only he can make it effectual at that appointed time of love. His Holy Spirit quickens you. He has to create a new being, a new creature in you. This flesh profits nothing. He doesn't clean us up. He doesn't make our flesh presentable. He creates a new being in us, a new creation that wasn't there before.

That's why the creation of the world is so beautiful. God took something that wasn't there and he made it something. He made you the child of God in Christ Jesus. Created a new being in you in Christ Jesus. Give you life. He said, live! He calls you out of your darkness, out of your dead, spiritual, dead, depraved self. And he says, come forth and live.

Gives you spiritual life that you can understand spiritual things. It's God's Spirit, His Gospel Spirit. And He gives you faith. Something you didn't have. Believe on His Son. Believing in Him who God sent to save you from your sins. He gives you, that's a gift of God's faith. To believe on His Son. And then you find yourself believing on Him. Not believe on Him. And you want to know more about Him. You want to learn more about Him. You want to grow in His grace. You want to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's the Holy Spirit. That's the spiritual food. His body. His blood. Him on the cross. His gospel. His word. That's the food that that new creation in you needs to live. That's how he preserves you and loves you, keeps you. He says, I am the way and the truth and the life and no man cometh to me or cometh unto the father but by me. We hear his voice and we follow him. Another we won't follow. He's our good shepherd. Oh, what love that he has bestowed upon us. to his elect people predestinated to be his children.

Look in 1 John chapter four. 1 John chapter four, verse nine. In this was manifested, made known the love of God towards us because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. That effectual, perfect sacrifice that God's pleased with. Propitiation. Mercy of God. It's God's love. God's loving his son. Jesus Christ is the successful savior. He is that effectual sacrifice for our sins that God is pleased with the only one. There is no greater love. He laid down his life for us. Says there's no greater love than that. He is love. He bore all our sins. Not only that, He bore our guilt. He bore our shame. He imputed to us His righteousness.

And when He calls you out of your darkness, you predestinated child of God, He imparts His righteousness to you. That's the only righteousness you've got is Christ. It's His righteousness. It's His obedience unto death. Perfectly obeying the will of God. unto death, never murmured, never sinned.

But yet he was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. He's going to keep us for eternity. He loves his son, he loves himself, and he loves those he died for. As water and blood flowed from our Savior's side, on that cross. He sanctified us. He made us holy. You'll never be any more holy. He washed us in his blood. He justified us. That blood cleansed us from all unrighteousness and of all sin. Only his blood can do that.

There is no other name by which you shall be saved. He alone, by himself, offered, he was offered for our offenses and he was raised again for our justification. We were in him, chosen in him before the foundation of the world. There's never been a time that we ain't been in him. We didn't know it. And then He comes to us and makes His abode in us.

At that appointed time of love when He reveals Himself to you. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The only hope, the only hope of glory that you have. Christ in you. Makes it known. Only to His elect, only to those that Christ, that God gave Him and He died for and shed His precious blood for. He didn't shed His precious blood for everyone. Only his elect. And God makes him our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our holiness, our redemption.

We say it so easily it flows off our lips. But when you say God is my all, Christ is my all, there's a lot to that. There's a lot to that. Keep looking to that cross, keep looking to him on that cross. God made himself known in his son on that cross.

All his attributes, all his character, all his goodness. All his love, all his grace, all his mercy. The blessings, all the blessings in Christ Jesus, they're all in him. That inheritance, now that you are a child of God predestinated, unto the adoption of men by Jesus Christ, you have an inheritance. It says all the blessings of God in heavenly places are in Christ Jesus.

He's our inheritance. And we're his. He said, ask for the heathen, and I'll give them to you for your inheritance. Oh, he's our inheritance. You see, he didn't need us. Oh, we need him. How we need him. He's the one. He's made us. Give us that unity.

That unity, that spirit he puts in us, the Holy Spirit comes and he's the comforter. He convicts us and reproves us of sin, our sin, and righteousness, God's, Christ's righteousness that put those sins away, of judgment. God bore the justice of God, the wrath of God for us. God's justice was satisfied. There's no condemnation for us now. Who can condemn us?

It was Christ that died. Yeah, but lives again. He rose again. He is a living sacrifice. That blood is fresh. It never gets old. It don't congeal. It don't dry up and flake away. It's an ever flowing crimson tide to wash you because now you've got access.

You have access with your father through the Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten son. You can come to the throne of grace at the feet of Christ. God's going to draw you there. And you can ask God to forgive you of your sin. Yes, they're already forgiven. That's the wonderful thing about it, isn't it?

He lets you see your sin. If He didn't let us see our sin, we'd think we was pretty good people and we'd be like, well, we need to go to Christ for Him. But He lets us see our sin, doesn't He? He doesn't punish us for it. That'd be blasphemy. Christ was punished for your sins. He put them away. God was satisfied with his sacrifice in doing that. He saw the travail of his soul and was satisfied. He punished his son. When he saw your sins, my sins on his son, he killed him. He punished him until he was satisfied. That means your sins are gone. They're no more. That was what God promised in that covenant with his son. That's what he promised he would come and do.

I'll make them holy and blameless for you. I'll take their sins away. I'll take their punishment. Whatever they have done, I will take it. And I will suffer the wrath for it. I will pay the price. I will pay the price to redeem them. When you redeem something, you pay the price in full. He redeemed you.

He paid that sin debt in full. What you can never pay for one of your little sins for eternity. He took on all of God's elect, all God's predestined children. He took every one of your sins and he paid the ransom price for it with his own blood, with his own body.

You see how much you're loved? Do you see how much you're loved? Oh, there's no greater love. There is no greater love. He gives us that faith that works by love. It's all grace. It's all the grace of God. Look out, how are you saved? Come here. We can never read it enough. Look over in Ephesians two, in verse eight. Look here.

For by grace, that is God's unmerited favor to his elect, his predestinated adopted children by Jesus Christ. You didn't merit anything. You didn't deserve it. And if you work for it and try to pay for it, you can't have it. God will not accept it. He accepts his son, his sacrifice, his blood. For by grace, you are saved through faith. And that is not of yourselves. You didn't muster up this faith, it is the gift of God. It's not of your works, lest any man should boast. This flesh, flesh doesn't please God. His son pleases him. For we are his, look here, for we are his workmanship. We're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. He created a new being in us. Unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Before he ever created anything, when he chose those people, when he predestinated them, it was done when God decreed it. Christ is called the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Because when God decreed it to be, He doesn't lie and He doesn't change.

It's going to happen. He purposed it to happen. Christ had to come. He had to come as a man, in flesh, under the law, without sin. to redeem man, those that God chose, those men God chose, those men and women God chose in His Son before the foundation of the world predestinated them to be the adopted children of God by Him.

It's all done in eternity. It was accomplished on the cross by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and our righteousness. when he came and he suffered. He was tempted, he bled, he died. He was buried. And on the third day, according to scripture, rose again, victorious over the grave, victorious over all his enemies. And he justified, he sanctified his people. It's finished. When God said it's finished, when Christ said it's finished, predestination was accomplished. Your adoption was accomplished. You didn't know it yet, but your adoption was accomplished.

In Christ, that's why it's by Christ there. And he's coming again. He said he's gonna raise us up at the last day. That's the will. I come to do thy will, O God. And I will raise them up again at the last day. John 6, 37 through 40. He's coming again. He's coming again to make this adoption complete. Because right now, we're not what we were going to be. But God has decreed it before the foundation of the world. He's purposed it. Christ came and accomplished it. And He has the power to make it happen. He says, whatever I say, it will be done. I will do it. So He's coming back. He's coming back.

And we wait for Him. We wait for Him by that God-given faith that He gives us that looks to the object and the author and the finisher of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's His faithfulness that keeps us. Keeps us looking to Him. God keeps drawing you to His Son. Look to Him. Look to my Son. There's only salvation in Him. Nobody or nothing else. God purposed it that way. It was His purpose.

So by faith, we wait for Him. For that predestinated adoption to be wit. Romans 8, 23, God says, and not only they but ourselves also which have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our bodies.

He's going to gather all. He's going to come in his power and his glory again. He's going to gather all that are in heaven and on earth. All that God gave him is going to be together in him. And our bodies are going to be changed like unto his body. And he's going to carry us to glory. He's going to separate us from sin for eternity. And we're going to praise Him for who He is, who Christ Jesus is, and what He has done, all what He's done for us. Aren't you glad that God doesn't change? So in conclusion, oh, In conclusion, you know, you can't say it any better. Let's look over here in verse seven of Ephesians one. Read this real quick here.

In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will. according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, so when the last of his elect, he calls out of their darkness, this earth has served its purpose, and God's gonna destroy it.

All that's gonna remain are what is Christ. If He chose you in Him before the foundation of the world predestinated you to be His child, you've been in Christ for eternity. You're in Him now and you're going to be in Christ for eternity. Huh? That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him. in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. It just pleased him that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ. He trusted his son with his elect people. in whom ye also trusted. After that ye heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed, there's that God-given faith, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.

I'll put their sins away and I will see them no more. which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, unto the praise of his glory. God says it perfectly. There's no way to say that any better. It pleased God to make his chosen elect, his children, in the Lord Jesus Christ. predestinated to be conformed to his image. Salvation is of the Lord. There's no other name, no other name under heaven given that you must be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you have eternal life. May God bless this work. Let's go to Lord in prayer.

Predestination

Sermon Transcript

Comments

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Music

Recent Comments

About

Legal

Subscribe

Account

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Recent Comments

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Collections

Music

About

Legal

Subscribe

Predestination

Sermon Transcript

Comments

More from Billy Eldridge

Related Sermons

Same Scripture

Where this book stands in the tradition

Plato

Augustine

The Western Christian Tradition

This Book