Alright, let's open our Bibles
now to the book of Ephesians. I titled the lesson this morning
in the form of a question. Is God earnest to save? The inheritance of the saints,
according to the scripture, is to be conformed to the image
of Christ. That's what God has predestinated. That's the end. To be conformed
to the image of Christ. It's to be like Him in spirit,
in attitude, and like Him in heart and mind. It's to love
as He loved. And to give as He gave. To be
gracious as He was gracious. It's to be as he is. And I'm
not talking about his Godhead. I'm not talking about that. But
I'm talking about his spirit and attitude. I'm talking about
God's character manifested in a man. That's God's image in
him. Holy, just, and righteous, yet
loving, kind, and merciful, and gracious. It says in Romans 8,
verse 29, whom he did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren. He is the firstborn. If you want
to know what the rest of the lot is going to be like, you
look at the firstborn. Whatever the first, whatever
Adam is, is what we are. I don't remember who was preaching,
if it was Scott or Henry or one of them was preaching one night,
and a fellow said they were talking about Adam. Adam did this, and
Adam did that, and Adam did this, and Christ did this. He said,
yeah, but I'm not Adam. I said, yes, you are. Oh, yes,
you are. You're exactly as Adam is. One
day we'll be exactly what Christ is. And we are that now by faith,
but in that day we'll have the reality of it. That's the inheritance
of the saints, is to be conformed to His image. And God has predestinated
everything to accomplish that. Let me read you something over
here. You can turn with me if you want to, to Philippians chapter
2. Philippians chapter 2. Beginning up in verse 1, he said,
if there be therefore any consolation of Christ, if any comfort of
love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any vows and mercies,
fulfill ye my joy that you may be like-minded, having the same
love, being of one accord and of one mind. Let nothing be done
through strife or vainglory. He's talking about striving about
words, worldly reasoning, outward evidences, disciplinary thinking,
and rule, setting and demanding standards of their own ideas.
That's strife and vainglory. Look not every man on his own
things, but on the things of others. Verse 4. Verse 5, let
this mind be in you. Let this attitude, let this spirit
be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now listen to this. Who being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself
of no reputation. Made himself. of no reputation,
took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men. And being found in passion as
a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross. Wherefore, God also hath highly
exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that
at the name," that is His character, that's God's name is His character,
that at His name, this character that He manifested, this character
that was in Him, that He manifested to us and God approved of and
raised Him up and exalted Him and seated Him at His right hand.
And that name, in Him, He said, God has exalted, He's highly
exalted Him, giving Him a name which is above every name, that
at the name, of Jesus. Every knee should bow to things
in heaven, things in earth, and things under the earth. And that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory
of God. That is, to the harmony of God's
character. Everything, heaven, earth, and
hell are going to bow to that. Wherefore, my beloved, as you
have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more
in my absence, work out your own salvation in fear and trembling,
for it's God that worketh in you. God has imparted to us a
holy nature. It's God that worketh in you,
both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And it's the mind
of Christ, His spirit and attitude that's seen and received and
hoped for in believers. This is what we hope for. Natural man, if he makes a profession
of faith, you're going to have to give him laws and rules. Because
he doesn't desire to be made like these things. These things
are totally contrary to his desire. If God doesn't give you a desire,
you're not going to want to be made like Christ. The only way
you're going to be made like Christ is if God pins you up
in a corner. That's the only way. He has to
beat you to death with whips and laws. That's what He told
Israel. He said, I've blasted your corn,
I've sent your famine, I've killed your people, I've rained fiery
serpents down on you, I've done all of these things, and yet
you will not turn to Me. But what God does is impart in
us His Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit comes in, takes
up a bode, and gives us the mind of Christ, the desires of Christ.
I want to be like Him. I'm not like Him. I'm not what
I'm going to be, but thank God, I'm not what I was. And whatever
it is I am, I am what I am by the grace of God. That's what
Paul said it does. And John said it don't yet appear
what we shall be. He said, but we know this. When
He shall appear, we'll be like Him. We'll be like Him. The Lord Jesus Christ is not
a get-out-of-jail-free card. He's not a fire escape. This whole generation believes
that. That's what they believe. You say something to them, well,
I remember the time and the place, and they jerk out that get-out-of-jail-free
card. They pull it out on you. Here
it is. They can't tell you what they believe. They can't tell
you who Christ is, and they don't know who God is. Best of heart,
all they got is a get-out-of-jail-free card that some preacher gave
them, or a fire escape. Christ is the very head and beginning
of the Church of God, and we are, according to James 1.18,
a kind of firstfruits of His own will, James said, begat he
us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits
of His creatures, being born of God. We've got the earnest. The earnest. Paul said, God made him a minister according
to the dispensation of God which was given to him for the Gentiles. A great mystery, he said, hidden
from generations, but now by God's decree made known to all
the saints what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is, now listen, Christ in you, the
hope of glory. You see that? That's the hope.
That's the hope. It's not God's intention to save
a bunch of rebels by dragging them into glory against their
will and making them live in a place they can't stand. I heard
Brother Henry say one time, if most men knew what heaven was
all about, they wouldn't want to go there. They wouldn't want
to go there. Most people can't stand to attend
church three times a week. It just wires them out. They
can't stand it. My boss asked me one time, he
said, what do y'all do at these Bible conferences? And I said,
well, we got men who preach. I said, we have, you know, two
or three in the morning and a couple at night. Five times? Yeah. He said, I don't see how you
do it. Well, I said, a lot of times
we listen to those five preachers and listen to a tape coming and
going. He just shook his head. Salvation is a new creation. It's an appetite for Christ. We have a new nature. There's
a new man. And this new man loves Christ.
He loves God. He loves the Word of God. Is
it laborsome for you to read the Word of God? Doesn't it just
feed your soul when you open it up and you read and the Lord
opens things to you and you see them? Salvation is a new creation. It's a new man created within. Totally separate. Totally contrary
to that man born of Adam. And this new man is our inheritance. That's what this is. It's the
earnest of God. It's God in earnest to say, Not linked to the fallen sons
of Adam except in his appearance. A new man manifested in the flesh. This is the first begotten of
God. A man occupying human flesh without sin. That's the first
part. Oh, he was begotten of God in
eternity when God gave the decree, this day have I begotten thee.
He was begotten of God when His holy seed was put in the womb
of Mary. And He was begotten of God when
He came forth into the world, grew up as a root out of dry
ground, as a tender plant. He was begotten of God when He
was raised from the dead, released from the obligations of our sins
and iniquities. And He's begotten in us through
the Gospel by the Holy Spirit of God. He's begotten in us. God's earnest Christ in you. Christ in you. He's a living
hope. That's what Peter called Him.
A living hope that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you
who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time. Election's not my hope. Do I rejoice in election? Well,
sure I do. Sure I do. But that's not my
hope. Christ is my hope. What would
I do without Christ? Because all God's elect were
chosen in Him. You see what I'm saying? I can
only rejoice in election if that election is in Christ. Predestination is not my hope.
But the one in whose image God has predestinated me to be conformed. The law is not my hope. Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And
the end of faith is Christ, isn't it? Isn't that what faith hopes
for, lays hold of? Faith hopes in, trusts in, rests
in the redemption accomplished by Christ. But it doesn't stop
there. It sees in His holy person what
that redemption has secured. It sees itself one with Him. One with Him. Married to Him. Giving herself to Him as a wife
gives herself to her husband. They join together and become
one flesh. We become one with Him. One with
Him. Married to Him. Desiring to serve
Him. Laboring to bear His children.
we serve Him, we're one with Him. Paul said, for me to live
is Christ. That's what he called living.
Christ. Christ. He wasn't concerned with
what the Jews were going to do, and he wasn't concerned with
the second coming, and he wasn't all that concerned about baptism. His main concern, the thing that
motivated him, the thing that pushed him, the thing he desired
that changed him and turned him was Christ. For me to live is
Christ. He said, if I can find one word
to describe my whole heart as concerned in this world, it's
Christ. And to die is gain. Why? Because I can go be with Him.
I can go be with Him. It's to be like Christ. That's
our inheritance. It's not mansions and titles
and earthly rewards. streets of gold and gates of
pearl and glassy seas and all the things that men talk about.
1 John, listen to this. 1 John 3, verse 1. Listen to
how these old apostles talked about their faith and talked
about their life in this world. He said, Behold, what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. You can't wrap your mind around
that, can you? Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore, the world knoweth
us not, because it knew him not." The world finds nothing in you
to justify you being a son of God. And they found nothing in
him. Ain't that what he said? They
looked at me and they saw me. He was a perfect man. This was
God in the flesh. God. God Himself. The Judge of
all. God over all. Blessed forever.
Appearing in human flesh. And He walked among men as God
would walk. With God's character and God's
heart and God's mind and God's ways and all of these things. He walked that way. And they
saw Him. and saw nothing in Him that would
justify Him being the Son of God. He said, Thou being a man
has made Thyself God. That's what they said. They saw
nothing in Him. And it sees nothing in you to
be worthy to be called the sons of God. The disciples of John, they came
and they said to Christ, John sent us down here to ask you
a question. Aren't thou the Christ, or do
we look for another?" You know what he told them? He didn't
say, I'm the Christ. What did he tell them? He said,
now you go tell John this. The blind receive their sight.
You go tell him that. The deaf hear. The lame walk. The lepers are
cleansed. And the dead are raised unto
life. And the poor had the gospel preached
to them. He said, you go tell John that.
That's all he'll need to hear. John knew what he was looking
for. He saw it the first time when he saw him. He said, behold,
the Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world. And he said,
and blessed is he whomsoever is not offended in me. They look
for God in their ceremonial righteousness. They look for God in their bloodlines. They look for God to be like
them, not for a man to be like God. God puts in us a hope to
be like Christ. That's our hope. That's our hope. 1 John 3, 2, Beloved, now are
we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall
be. But we know that when He shall appear, we'll be like Him,
for we'll see Him as He is. Now watch this. Every man that
hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. Now that's a tricky verse. It's
not talking here about purifying ourselves from sin. Purification
from sin is through the blood and righteousness of Christ.
All our righteousnesses or as filthy rags. But this is talking
about the effects of this hope of grace that we have by God's
good pleasure to make us His sons. And it can be understood
in two ways. First of all, it can be understood
in our walk of faith that holy looks to the blood and righteousness
of Christ to purify us before God. We purify ourselves by walking
in that faith. In other words, you can't honor,
John, you can't honor that law any more than it's honored in
Christ. So walk that way. Walk in that righteousness of
Christ and quit trying to work out one of your own. Quit looking
for evidences of one of your own. Putting people into the
kingdom of God and taking them out based on what they do and
don't do. My righteousness is based on Him. This is my righteousness. So walk that way. Talk that way. Live that way. Make your decisions
that way. You see what he's saying? He
that hath this hope in him purifies himself that way. That way. He's my holiness, my godliness. Manifested that godliness before
men. And then secondly, and this is
what I want you to think about, We're purified in the sense when
we see in him what we hope to be. And therefore, we imitate
that character and attitude that we see. You imitate what you
love. That's what you imitate. I used
to imitate Rob Barnard. I just loved his preaching. One
day, Henry sat me down and he said, you're not Rob Barnard.
But it's what you do. You imitate what you love. You imitate that. And I see good
qualities in men. And we have them as examples.
And we're told to follow after those who manifest good examples. Because God's put them there
for that purpose. But our prime example is Christ. And I see in Him what I want
to be. And so I imitate that. I imitate
that. We're sealed, He said, here in
Ephesians. sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise, promising not only deliverance from the punishment
of sin, but from its power and influence over our lives and
of our ignorance and blindness to the Word of God and the purpose
of God. Ephesians 1.14, which is the
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession unto the praise of His glory. Now, earnest is a
covenant term. It's given to show the earnest
intention of him who draws up the covenant. I used to build
houses. And somebody would come to me
and say, I want you to build my house. You've got a good reputation
in the community. We checked around, and we went
and looked at some of your homes. And some of them, it's been there
for a while, and they look good. We want to have you build our
home. And I'd say, OK. I'll agree to
do it and we'd sit down and we'd talk about what all they wanted
and how much I charged and so on. Then I'd make them put down
earnest. Are you in earnest about building
this thing? I'd make them put down some earnest money. And
it was enough that they couldn't afford to lose it. That's what
this term is. It's a covenant term. It means
to put down more than you can afford to lose. I'm telling you,
is God earnest to say He put down more than He can afford
to lose? Now that's what the message of
Ephesians chapter 1 is here, talking about His Holy Spirit
in us. This is the earnest. God has
spared not His only begotten Son, but delivered Him up for
us all. raised Him from the dead, showed
Him to witnesses above 500 brethren at one time. Let His apostles
and faithful witnesses stand there on the hill and watch as
He stepped onto a cloud and the angels escorted Him into glory. And then poured out His Holy
Spirit on men. Just poured it out like taking
You know, we used to have buckets and we grew them from a well
when we drank when we were kids. You had that little dipper. You'd
drink out of that bucket. Well, it's like taking the whole
bucket and pouring it out. He didn't give you a little sip.
He poured it out. He poured out his spirit on his
church. Think about that. Not here a
little and there a little, but poured it out. Buried them. called the baptism of the Spirit. Buried us! Buried us with the
Holy Spirit of promise. Oh! God gave us His Son. He manifested
the end of the building in His Son. And He sends to us His ministers,
arranges His providence, and accompanies His gospel with the
Holy Ghost. And that chosen one is born of
God, and the Holy Spirit of promise floods his heart and mind. And
for him to live now is Christ. That's what it is. It's Christ.
Does that work to be not effectual? Now listen to me. For one believer
for whom Christ died to fail, God would have to cease to be
God. God would have to step down off His throne and hand the keys
to Satan and say, here it is. That's for one believer to follow. That work to be not effectual
would be to ruin the name of God, to make of none effect the
work of Christ, and defeat the omnipotent Spirit of God. I'll
tell you our problem today. We associate the Spirit of God
with all of this business and all this speaking in tongues
and gibberish and all this hitting people on the forehead and knocking
them out and all this kind of silly junk. The Holy Spirit of
God is God, omnipotent. You can't resist His work any
more than the darkness could resist the light. The Holy Spirit
of God, God spoke and it was. That's what the psalmist said
it was. Why? Because nothing can resist His
voice. Oh, we've got the wrong idea
altogether about the Holy Ghost. I'll tell you. Oh, this is the
earnest. This is the earnest. This is
more than God can afford to lose. And He gives it to us. And then
He tells us what He gave us. Huh? That's right. Oh, it's in Christ that we discover
the earnest intention of God to save our worthless souls,
not to overlook our sins or compromise His character, and not merely
for us to escape His wrath, but to deliver us from the curse
of sin and present us in that day, holy, without blame, standing
before Him in love. Huh? That's exactly right. Deliverance from wrath might
bring joy to a guilty conscience, but it's not sufficient to cause
him to hate sin. It takes the Holy Spirit of God
in his heart to make him hate sin. He must be made to see the
exceeding sinfulness of sin. He must come to see himself as
he is, ruined, depraved, wicked to the core, brought to see how
contrary he is to God. God's light, and we're dark.
God's all fullness in God, and we're emptiness. We're just totally
opposite. God's holy, and we're evil. God's
just. We compromise everything we do.
God's love. Man's hateful. God's good, and
we're sinful. There's nothing in us in common
with God. But Satan came to Christ and
tempted Him for 40 days and found nothing in Him. Nothing in him
in common with himself. He found nothing in him in common
with ruined men. And he found nothing in him to
exploit or use to his advantage. And nothing in him but pure God,
pure goodness, pure holiness, pure thoughts, pure motives. He stood toe to toe with our
archenemy and defeated him in the glory of his person and broke
his power. Having died for our sins, God
raised him up to declare our justification. And I love what
this old writer said. He said, standing in the ashes
of Satan's defeated kingdom, he ascended up where he now sits
at the right hand of God, expecting till his enemies be made his
footstool. Christ, you see that? God gave
us the earnest, Paul said. The earnest. This one who the
Father was pleased to give all preeminence to. preeminence in
creation, preeminence in eternity, preeminence in all things. He
gave it to Christ. It pleased the Father to do that. And this won by the sovereign
Spirit of God, He reveals in us. In us. That's the earnest
of our inheritance. Paul said our vessel has an anchor
that goes within the veil. goes clear to the other side.
What a hope! Is God willing in earnest to
save my soul? We talk about this one being
saved and that one being saved. What about my soul? Is God willing
to save my soul? If I can believe in Christ, He
is. If I can believe in Christ, He
is, because only those He is in earnest to save, does He give
the gift of repentance and faith? That's right. To them, gave He the power to
become the sons of God. Not to be counted as the sons
of God, but to become the sons of God.