Blessed with All (Non-Abstractable) Blessings in Christ

The title of my message today,
as you may have noticed in the bulletin, contains a large word
that is probably not that advisable to use in most cases, because
most of us may struggle with it. But I couldn’t find a really
suitable synonym, so there we are. But I’ll try to explain
it at the outset here. abstractable, it is something
that can be considered apart from or can be separated from
something else. In this case, we’re talking about
the idea that the blessings of Christ cannot be separated from
Christ or properly considered as though we could look at them
apart from Christ and who he is and what he’s done. I want
to make the point in this message that because Christ’s benefits
are non-abstractable, or perhaps we may want to say inseparable
from Christ, we must always seek to ultimately focus upon Christ
himself and point people to Christ himself so that the person who
hears us speak about Christ might be able to see their need for
him as the one in whom everything they need indeed resides. And since all spiritual blessings
are found in Christ, That includes the blessing of being more and
more willing and able to cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work of
sanctification in our lives. And the more we see that blessing,
the blessing of sanctification as non-abstractable from Christ,
the more we will experience freedom from the power of sin because
we’ll be more focused on the gospel of Christ and on our union
with him. It has always helped me if I
can look at a simple example Algebra comes to mind. I don’t
know how many of you like algebra or are good at it. But if you
can look at the simple example, then you can start to understand
that which is more difficult. So that’s what I want to try
to do in helping us understand what we’re talking about. The blessings of Christ being
non-abstractable. Consider the person who is naturally
interested in the benefits that are truly only found in Christ,
but is not really interested in the benefactor himself. He
or she is trying, perhaps unconsciously, to separate or consider the blessings
of Christ apart from Christ. Much of what is commonly proclaimed
by churches today, which seem to be working very hard to be
relevant and or secret sensitive or whatever else has lately come
along down the faddish pipeline, very often falls into the trap
of trying to appeal to unconverted people’s wants. As one pragmatic
practitioner put it, they don’t want truth, they want relief. So you better give them what
they want. And we can easily end up presenting
a gospel where Jesus is merely the means to a desired end. Do
you lack purpose or peace or relational stability or Even
do you want to be forgiven and go to heaven when you die? Jesus
can give you what you want, right? But is that really the gospel
faithfully proclaimed? For the most part, we, I trust,
are able to see that that is not the gospel of the grace and
the glory of God. I think we know that it’s not
the gospel faithfully proclaimed, and we try to appeal to people
that way. We know we can’t abstract the blessings of Christ from
Christ himself. So can we take that simple example
and apply it to what is perhaps harder for us to recognize? We
see that Christ proclaimed as being inseparable from the blessings
he gives is very important when we’re trying to explain to people
their need for justification by grace alone through faith
alone. But what about when it comes to the process of sanctification
in our lives, the lives of those we know who are in Christ? Are
we able to see with increasing clarity that the willingness
and the ability to do those things we should be doing is something
that is found only in Christ and not in ourselves? It is hard
for us to see the strong connection between the personal work of
Christ and our own need to be growing in the area of sanctification,
oftentimes, I find. If so, why is it the case? Could
it be that we have a tendency to revert to ways of thinking
that are more in line with our natural tendency, either to be
legalistic on the one side or way too permissive on the other
side? Ways of thinking that distort our view of God’s character and
His grace. Perhaps part of what makes this a hard subject for
us is that on the one hand, we rightly realize that the process
of sanctification, and it is a process, is different than
the forensic or legal declaration of justification before God.
In the process of sanctification, we know we must learn to cooperate
with the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives in order
to make progress in Christlikeness. But on the other hand, knowing
that our cooperation is required, are we tempted to think that
the willingness and the ability to do the work of cooperation
somehow falls outside the scope of blessings that are found in
Christ himself? Do we have a tendency to look
at the blessings related to sanctification as something that we can separate
from Christ? And do we consequently see in
our lives, as Sinclair Ferguson says in his book, The Whole Christ,
a decreasing stress upon the person and work of Christ, an
increasing stress on our experience of salvation, rather, that on
the grace, majesty, and glory of Christ. That is what we want
to explore in the sermon today, and I hope it will be a blessing
to you as it has been to me. So let’s pray. Lord, as we come
to this feast of your revelation and your plan for the ages, we
pray that you would give us eyes to see and a heart to understand
more and more the truth you’ve given us. to set us free to do
your will. Cause us to be transformed by
the movement of our minds through this study today, and in the
weeks and months to come. Give us the spirit of wisdom,
revelation, and knowledge of you, that we might know the hope
to which you have called us, and the glory of your inheritance
in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of your power towards
us who believe. Amen and amen. So let’s begin
by reading our passage for today. We’re in Ephesians chapter one.
We’re going to start in verse 1. It’s Ephesians 1, verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and the faithful
in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he
chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be
holy and without blame before him in love. Having predestinated
us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to
the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of
his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches
of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom
and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will
according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself,
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 in him. Amen. So upon our initial reading,
we noticed that the apostle Paul points out that we are blessed
with every spiritual blessing in Christ. And that we are chosen
in Christ that we should be what? Holy, right? And without blame
before him in love. I would like to examine this
message, three aspects of the blessedness and of the holiness
of which Paul writes. Number one, we are counted holy
and without blame before God by faith in Christ alone. We can say that we are delivered
from the penalty of sin. Number two, we are in the process
of being made holy and without blame through the sanctifying
work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We are being set free
from the power of sin. Number three, we will fully and
finally be made holy and without blame. When we are glorified
in God’s presence, we will be set free from the presence of
sin. So the penalty of sin, the power
of sin and the presence of sin are something that we’re dealing
with today in this message. We are, as the apostle wrote
in the second chapter of this letter to the Ephesians. Saved
by grace through faith and that not of ourselves. It’s the gift
of God, not of works listening. What should boast for? We are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them. God’s people are chosen to be
holy and without blame before God or, as Peter wrote, You are
a chosen race, right? You are a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim
the excellence of him who has called you out of darkness into
his marvelous light. The power and the beauty and
the life-changing implications of that truth are what we’re
going to be studying in these first 10 verses of this amazing
letter penned by the Apostle Paul. And I want to focus largely on
the second aspect of our blessedness in Christ and our being chosen
in Him that we should be holy, this process of being made more
Christ-like. But we’ll start first with the
first point, that of being set free from the penalty of sin
through the blessedness of imputed righteousness. But just before
we do that, I want to look briefly at some of the basic background
information of this book that we know as Paul’s Epistle to
the Ephesians. This letter was in all likelihood written during
Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome that lasted for about two
years from about AD 60 to 62. He refers at the beginning of
chapters 3 and 4 to the fact that he was in chains as he wrote
this epistle, both this letter and the letter to the Colossians
were delivered by Tychicus, who Paul calls a beloved brother
and faithful minister in the Lord in chapter 6. Tychicus evidently
had been visiting Paul during his captivity in Rome, and upon
returning to his native country was called upon Paul to carry
these letters to their destination in Asia. A number of well-respected
scholars believe that This letter most likely was actually kind
of encyclical, meaning that it was not sent specifically to
the church in Ephesus, but rather it was a letter intended for
all the churches in the area to which it would eventually
be delivered. So this was a very important letter that the Apostle
Paul probably wanted to see quickly distributed among all the churches
in that area. So let’s return to our first
point. freedom from the penalty of sin through faith alone. Let’s
begin again at verse one. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful
in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace, from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. The first phrase, Paul, an apostle
of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, is identical to the citation
of the letter to Colossians. By using this phrase, Paul emphasizes
that it was God that chose him to be an apostle. If you remember
Luke’s account of Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord on the road
to Damascus in Acts chapter nine, there is no doubt that Paul was
chosen by God. The disciple that was commissioned
to go and lay hands on him balked, saying, Lord, I have heard from
many about this man how much evil he has done to your saints
at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest
to bind all who call upon his name. But the Lord said to him,
go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before
the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will
show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. Not
too surprising that Ananias was more than a little hesitant to
believe that Paul, the persecutor, was no longer a danger to those
who were in Christ at Damascus. But rather, he was being called
to proclaim the gospel of the good news of the glory of Christ.
That is the way God chose to glorify himself among the nations
through the Apostle Paul. When he wrote Paul an apostle
of Jesus Christ by the will of God, he wrote something that
probably was so astonishing, not only to Paul, but to many
who heard of it, that I doubt that Paul or they ever began
to lose a sense of the wonder of it. Paul was a voracious persecutor
of the church, turned creature of Christ. Amazing grace, amen? The addressees of this letter
are the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. As you probably
know, the term saints literally means holy ones. It means to
be set apart or separate. Everyone who has been chosen
by God is a saint in the sense that they are set apart to God.
The people of God are God’s possession and God’s inheritance. Nowhere
in the Bible is the term saint intended to mean people who are
especially pious compared to other members of the body of
Christ in the way that is used by Roman Catholics and others. All of God’s people are holy
and blameless before him in the sense that they are justified
before God by faith alone. This is something that Paul and
all the apostles knew and preached consistently. And though this
understanding was lost, upon many during the Middle Ages,
God’s people have always embraced the truth that we are set free
from the penalty of sin through the person and work of Christ
alone. The late R.C. Sproul has pointed
out that the seminal moment that in large part sparked the Protestant
Reformation happened as Martin Luther, I was glad to hear we
read and sung some Martin Luther this morning, Martin Luther was
reading in the Black Cloister Tower of Wittenberg, an obscure
essay from the pen of Augustine, or Augustine, whichever you want
to say it. I guess British is Augustine,
Augustine is American. I like Augustine, sounds better
to me. He was reading this essay from
the pen of Augustine. Luther was an Augustinian monk,
and so not surprisingly, he was reading part of a commentary
written by his order’s namesake. And as he studied, he came across
a note on the passage in Romans chapter one, verse 17, wherein
Augustine argued that the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel
is not the righteousness by which God himself is righteous. It
is not the righteousness of God that requires that God condemn
those who are guilty of breaching that law at even one singular
point. Rather, he was talking about the righteousness of God
that God freely gives to those who have no righteousness. This is just another way of saying
that we are set free from the penalty of sin through faith
alone. So the righteousness of God revealed
in the gospel is the righteousness that God gives freely. to those
who trust in him. This is what Martin Luther came
to realize. And he said the gates of heaven are open to him, that
he was so intent on, we mentioned that he prayed that he would
be forgiven for coveting brother so-and-so’s toast or whatever. And he was so, intent on the
truth of the righteousness of God in the law, that he missed
the truth of the righteousness of God in the gospel. But God
revealed it to him. So we are free from the penalty
of sin through faith alone in Christ alone. God’s righteousness
is imputed to us through faith. Number two, we are in the process
of being made holy without blame through the sanctifying work
of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We are being set free from the
power of sin. This is a very important aspect
as well. Sanctification is a process. Justification is not. Sanctification
is something that you will continue to be involved in for the rest
of your life as a believer in Christ. Let’s go back to verse three
in Ephesians chapter one. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us
in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy without blame before him in love. Paul was writing
to saints that had, for the most part, been either converted under
his preaching or under preaching of others that were closely associated
with Paul. These saints were well aware
of the good news that Jesus had come and humbled himself, coming
to the world and took upon himself the form of a servant in order
that he might, through his perfect life and sacrificial death and
triumphant resurrection, redeem them to God by his blood out
of every tribe and tongue and kindred and nation. They knew
that his work of redemption was a perfect and complete work.
Imagine being taught by the Apostle Paul personally. A lot of it
didn’t, and we don’t have his sermons exactly, but you can
imagine that they were very well aware that Christ’s work was
a perfect work, a complete work. Because when it comes to the
salvation of his people, there is nothing left undone. There
was nothing left undone when he cried out upon the cross,
it is finished. Amen. Jesus came into the world to
save rebellious sinners who neither deserved nor desired to be rescued.
But thanks be to God, the problem that we started at the fall of
mankind, God himself resolved at the cross. The problem of
mankind’s rebellion against God required a solution that mankind
could not provide because We must never imagine that mankind
was not really and truly responsible for the choice that was made
by our perfect representative, Adam. The decision to rebel against
the one who is the source of all good and the basis for the
ability to even begin to understand concepts like justice and equity
and truth was Adam’s choice. And as those that are born in
Adam, it is our choice to continue to commit treason against God.
unless and until God graciously intervenes in our lives. The
good news is that God, in sending his son, did freely choose to
intervene on our behalf. He was not required to do it.
He was not obligated to love us in such an amazingly self-sacrificial
way. God did not owe it to us to fix
the problem that we and Adam created. In fact, the only thing that
God was obligated to give us was justice. And we all know
this, not just believers in Christ, but every person upon earth has
this sense that God is a God of justice. They have a conscience
given to them by God. And the reality that God is a
God of justice is something that is indelibly stamped upon everyone’s
conscience. Everyone that has the capacity
to really understand anything at all knows that God is a God
of justice. The work of the law is written
on their heart. Therefore, the entire world will eventually
be forced to confess that God is righteous and that they, along
with all of fallen mankind, are guilty. As the Apostle Paul wrote
in Romans chapter three, Now we know whatever the law says,
it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may
be stopped and that all the world may become guilty before God.
So we can confidently say that the mouths of those who continue
to insist on proclaiming their own righteousness are going to
be fully and finally silenced on the day that God judges the
world in righteousness. As the psalmist wrote in the
96th chapter, say among the nations, the Lord reigns, the world also
is firmly established, it shall not be moved, he will judge the
peoples righteously. He’s coming to judge the earth.
He shall judge the world with righteousness and the peoples
with this truth. God is just and God is coming to judge the
earth. And for those who in Christ who
are in Christ, that is a good thing. It is something that will
be the cause of cosmic joy. The heavens will rejoice. Earth
will be glad because the world is firmly established upon the
foundational reality that God is the righteous judge of the
world. And whether any of us like it
or not, the fall of mankind and the fact that God is the just
judge of mankind is the backdrop for everything that we read in
both the Old and New Testaments. That is why we cannot really
paint the picture of the Gospel faithfully without the canvas
of God’s law. We can’t talk about God’s mercy
unless we have a proper… We can’t extol the beauty of
the blessings of God unless we first acknowledge as we must
the reality of the curse of God upon all unrighteousness. Or
to put it another way, understanding of the amazing nature of the
creation of a new humanity under the headship of the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, is directly
related to our ability to see the ruinous nature of the fall
of the human race under the headship of the first Adam. And in many
ways, the Apostle Paul was the epitome of this reality. He wrote in the third chapter
of this letter to the Ephesians, to me, whom less than the least
of all saints, this grace was given that I should preach among
the Gentiles the insurgeable riches of Christ. The way Paul
speaks of himself in those verses was not an expression of feigned
humility. He really did have reason to
see himself as less than the least of all saints, and that
he, as we can read in the book of Acts, was at the forefront
of the effort by the Jews of Jerusalem and elsewhere to eradicate
the church in its infancy. In his letter to the Corinthians,
he wrote, I am the least of the apostles who am not worthy to
be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. In his letter to the Galatians,
he wrote that he persecuted the Church of God and tried to destroy
it. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote that he was formerly
a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent man who received
mercy, at least in part, because he did what he did ignorantly
in unbelief. And he went on to write in the
first chapter of the Epistle to Timothy that It is a faithful
saying worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came to the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. However, for this reason, I obtained
mercy that in me first, Jesus Christ might show all long suffering
is a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting
life. On top of all this, much of the
persecution that Paul endured came at the hands of people who,
like him before his extraordinary conversion, were zealous persecutors
of all those who professed faith in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. Paul saw the vivid certainty
of the backdrop of the effects of our fallen Adam, both in his
own life prior to his conversion and the lives of those that sought
so zealously to silence him after Jesus appeared to him in such
dramatic fashion on the roads of Damascus. We’re talking about this second
aspect of becoming holy. This is something the Apostle
Paul dealt with in his own life. He was dramatically changed,
radically changed from persecuted preacher, but that did not mean
that he became sinless. That did not mean he did not
struggle with sin in his life. And if he struggled with it,
hopefully that will give us some encouragement that our struggles
are not out of bounds. They don’t call into question
necessarily our faith in Christ, our commitment to Christ. Paul’s
increasing awareness of his own sinful, natural sinful tendencies
throughout his own life as a father of Christ were apparent. He recounted
his post-conversion struggles with sin in the seventh chapter
of his letter to the Romans. In verse 24, he said, oh, wretched
man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? And he answered, thanks be to
God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. So then with the mind, I myself
served the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. There’s
this struggle, there’s this conflict in the life of a Christian. It’s
not just easy peasy, peaches and cream. I remember when I
first became a Christian, I thought, man, you know, life is going
to be great from now on. It wasn’t in the way I thought
it would be. The next day, I got in a car
wreck. It wasn’t anything all that serious,
but I kind of was like, oh, OK, maybe this isn’t going to be
what I thought. It isn’t going to be easy, easy peasy life in
the fast lane or on easy street. It’s going to be hard. And the
Apostle Paul found out, as we read, that he would suffer much
for the name of Christ. But nothing compared to the blessings
we have in Christ. I’ve certainly been right there
along with the Apostle Paul in this struggle, this conflict,
this very real conflict that’s within us and continues to be
in us as we seek to move forward in our walk with God. We are
yet looking forward to being like Christ in all the ways that
we should be. We who are so greatly blessed in Christ are yet in
the difficult process of being made Christ-like. And as we mentioned
in the introduction, the gospel of our salvation in Christ is
very much at the center of this process. As the apostle John
wrote in his first letter in chapter three, it does not yet
appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears,
we shall be like him. We shall see him as he is and
everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as
he is pure. The gospel is the power of God
for salvation to everyone who believes and that power does
not begin and end at our conversion. It is the engine rather that
carries us forward down the tracks of God’s law here on earth to
borrow an illustration as well as the power that will eventually
glorify us in God’s presence. But right now, we’re talking
about the blessing of being set free from the power of sin in
our lives. We’re talking about the fact that he chose us in
him before the foundation of the world that we should be what?
Holy and blameless before him. I remember when I was a young
Christian living in a house on Webby Street near Old Town, we
had this neighbor, Mrs. Denning. She was an elderly widow. who believed in Christ and she
lived right next door to us and we used to go over and help her
with yard work and other odd jobs that she couldn’t do herself.
She used to invite us in to talk from time to time and she would
often say, it’s just as my husband Phillip used to say, we live
far below our privileges. And she wasn’t far off, was she?
When you think of what we read in Verse three of Ephesians one,
being blessed with all spiritual blessings and having places in
Christ, we have riches in one sense that cannot really be fully
enumerated because they are spiritual blessings spoken over us by our
Heavenly Father. And we tend to live below our
privileges in that sense. We may not understand the impact
of blessings spoken over us, as much as we should, because
in our time, a father’s blessings may not seem all that important.
Did anyone get a blessing from your father? I didn’t, but you know, we have
our Heavenly Father’s blessing. But in the Near East, and certainly
among the Jews, it was extremely important. Consider the story
in the book of Genesis of the twin brothers, Jacob and Esau.
Esau was the elder, but Jacob was hard on his heels. In fact,
when the two boys were born, Jacob emerged holding on to the
heel of Esau. Therefore, Jacob’s name meant
heel catcher. So as the story goes, Jacob first
induces Esau to sell him his birthright for a bowl of lentil
stew. When Esau came in from a hunting trip feeling so exhausted
that he thought he was going to die, Esau said in effect,
what good is the birthright to me if I’m dead? So, as the text
says, Esau despised his birthright. Then as the time drew near for
Isaac, their father, to die, Jacob asked Esau that his firstborn
son would bring back some wild game to prepare him his favorite
meal so he could give Esau his blessing. But Jacob, at the instigation
of his mother, Rebekah, conspires to steal his father’s blessing
from Esau by pretending to be his brother. And the plan worked,
to a point. Isaac gave his blessing to Jacob
who quickly left the scene just as his brother was returning
from hunting. So when Esau came in and offered his father the
food he had prepared, Isaac says, Who are you? And Esau perhaps
thinks that his father is really slipping because he doesn’t recognize
him and says, I’m your firstborn Esau. So it begins to dawn upon
them that something fishy is going on. And Isaac says in verse
33 of Genesis 27, Where’s the one who hunted a game and brought
it to me? I ate all of it before you came, and I blessed him.
Indeed, he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of
his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry
and said to his father, Bless me, me also, my father. But he
said, Your brother came with the seed and has taken away your
blessing. And Esau said, Is he not rightly
called Jacob? For he has supplanted me these
two times. He took away my birthright, and
now, look, he’s taken away my blessing. And he said, have you
not reserved a blessing for me? Then Isaac answered and said
to Esau, indeed, I have made him your master, and all his
brethren I have given to him as servants. With grain and wine
I have sustained him. What shall I do now for you,
my son? Now Isaac, after being implored
by Esau, gives him a blessing of sorts. But it wasn’t really
the blessing that Esau wanted. It affirmed that he would live
away from the bounty of the earth and live by his sword and be
the servant of Jacob. So Esau hated Jacob because of
the blessing with which his father had blessed him. Esau said in
his heart, the days of mourning for my father are at hand, then
I will kill my brother Jacob. Now what was Esau’s concern in
the passage we’ve just read? He was so extremely distraught
because as far as he was concerned, he had lost everything. He had
sold his birthright for basically nothing and now the blessing
that he hoped would be his earthly salvation at least was also taken
away from him by deceitful actions of his brother Jacob. But make
no mistake, Esau was not really concerned about anything other
than the benefits. of his father’s blessing. Esau
wanted to be the one that was going to be sustained by oil
and wine. And he wanted to be the one that was going to be
the master of his brothers. And Esau was, as we read, so
bitter that his only consolation was that he would simply do away
with Jacob as soon as his father was dead. As we mentioned in
the introduction to this message, there are many who want the benefits
that only God can provide. But in the end, they don’t want
what they truly need. They can’t see the light of the
good news of the glory of the benefactor. They are like Esau,
who, as it says in Hebrews chapter 12 afterward, when he wanted
to inherit the blessing, was rejected for he found no place
of repentance, so he sought a diligently with tears. And as we know, the
sorrow of the world only produces death, but Godly sorrow produces
repentance that leads to salvation. And it isn’t remarkable that
Jacob, the deceiver, the heel catcher, was the one that found
a place of repentance. So back to Ephesians. First three blessed be the God
and father of Jesus Christ who blessed us with every spiritual
blessing and having places in Christ, just as he chose us in
him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy
and without blame before him in love. God chose Jacob. And God opened his eyes to see
his need for the one in whom those spiritual blessings in
the heavenly places reside. Jacob wasn’t able to see what he needed so much more
than he needed anything else. He ultimately sought Christ. He fought for what he needed
the most. He wrestled with God for the blessings that cannot
be abstracted from God. Read about this in the account
of Genesis. Jacob fled from the wrath of
Esau, but years later he was again faced with meeting Esau
and didn’t know what his estranged brother would do. And as he was
left alone, having sent his wives and children away, hoping to
keep them safe from Esau, the text in Genesis 32 says that
a man wrestled with Jacob until the break of day. Jacob’s hip
was put out of joint by the mere touch of this one with whom he
wrestled. But despite the pain, Jacob said to the man, I will
not let you go until you bless me. He was beginning to realize
that he desperately needed what only God could give him. So in
verse 27 of Genesis, chapter 32, the mysterious man asked
Jacob his name. So he said to him, what is your
name? He said, Jacob. Heel catcher, deceiver. And he
said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.
For you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.
Then Jacob asked, saying, tell me your name, I pray. And he
said, why is it that you ask me about my name? And he blessed
him there. So Jacob called the name of the
place Peniel, for I have seen the face of God, and my life
is preserved. In Hosea, we read concerning this encounter that
Jacob had with the heavenly man. He took his brother by, in Hosea
chapter 12, it says, he took his brother by the heel and the
womb, and in his strength he struggled with God. Yes, he struggled
with the angel and prevailed. He wept and found favor from
him. He found him in Bethel, and there
he spoke to us, that is, the Lord God of hosts. It is not
that Jacob in any sense earned God’s favor. Rather, it is that
God’s love for Jacob resulted in a radical change of heart
for Jacob. The angel who changed his name
to Israel was the one who chose Jacob before the foundation of
the world, that he should be holy without blame before him.
He was the one who loved him with an everlasting love. He
was the one who would come to the world to save Israel. God
chose us in him before the foundation of the world, before time began.
God chose us in Christ before we were born, before the world
was made, before Adam was formed from the dust of the earth. He
chose us. He predestined us. We’ll talk a little more about
this struggle. but let’s go on to point three. Look at verse
five of Ephesians chapter one. Having predestinated us to adoption
of sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure
of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace by which
he has made us accepted in the beloved. You notice how many times in
Ephesians one in those few verses he uses the term in him or in
Christ or in the beloved. comes over and over and over
again. He’s emphasizing our union with Christ. But speaking of predestination,
the question for those who genuinely believe that all scripture is
given by inspiration of God is not whether or not God has predestined
His people to be saved. That fact is obvious. He chose
us in Him before the foundation of the world, having predestined
us to adoption as sons. Some people say, I don’t believe
in predestination. Do you believe the Bible? It can’t be any clearer than
the fact that he did predestine us. The thing in dispute among
those genuinely in Christ is the basis of God’s choice. The
question is, why does God love Jacob and hate Esau? Is God showing
unfair partiality? As Paul says in Romans nine,
certainly not. Rather, God is free. to have mercy upon whom
he will have mercy. God is free to have compassion
upon whom he will have compassion. So that it is not, verse 16 of
Romans 9 says, of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God
who shows mercy. What is the basis of God’s choice?
Some say that God’s choice, God chooses us based on his foreknowledge
of future events. In other words, he looks into
the future to see what Jacob is gonna do. Ah, I see now. or what Esau is going
to do, and based upon what he sees, he chooses. Others say
that God does not actually choose any individuals at all. Rather,
God’s choice involves a group of people who are, at least in
some sense, on their own initiative, willing to do what God has required
to get them into the group that God has determined to bless.
So God doesn’t even choose any individuals. He just chooses
a group, and then you get yourself into the group. You join the
club, or whatever. But these theological systems
ultimately rely upon an idea of prevenient grace. Prevenient
grace is different from the concept of grace in the Bible, one of
which is common grace. Common grace is the teaching
that every aspect of man’s nature is so touched by sin that no
one wants to do what they should do outside of the influence of
God’s restraining grace. Common grace restrains evil in
the hearts of fallen people. Thank God that things aren’t
nearly as bad as they could be. because of God’s common grace.
But prevenient grace, on the other hand, is the idea that
though mankind is totally incapable of coming to God on their own
because of the fall, they’re nevertheless brought to a place
of neutrality through the universal counteracting work of God’s grace
in the hearts of all mankind. So you’re brought to neutral
by prevenient grace, and then you can make a choice. There’s
someone who says, if you’re in neutral, you ain’t going forward,
you ain’t going backward. Unless someone pushes the car.
So it’s more like giving medicine to someone who is sick so they
can have the strength should they choose to do what’s required. This is pretty neat grace. Something
that I think we should reject. In
these types of theological systems, what Jesus accomplished in his
life and death and resurrection did not actually save anyone.
All that he did was make salvation a possibility. All he did, according
to this way of thinking, was to make people savable. God merely
making people savable may sound fairly good to you if you think
that you have what it takes to take advantage of the opportunity
that is supposedly provided. Jesus died to give you a second
chance. Now don’t blow it. Is that the gospel? It’s not,
is it? He didn’t just come to give us
a second chance. He didn’t come just to make us
savable. He came to actually save. Ask some people about their understanding
of the gospel, and they will tell you that the good news is
that you can go to heaven if you die if you keep God’s commands. And God’s grace will help you,
but it’s really up to you to do what God requires. And then
you can go to heaven because No, you’ve got God’s help. They say that God’s grace gives
us the ability to obey, and it’s by that obedience that we are
granted entrance into God’s kingdom. Now this error is even worse
than that embraced by those who have a hard time understanding
the fullness of God’s love and the freeness of his grace. At
least the typical Arminian says that he is saved by grace through
faith alone, but He does not see that God’s grace has to go
much further than really making us savable. Charles Spurgeon,
Prince of Preachers, said this. There are many in hopes that
Christ, when he died, did not die with an intent to save any
particular person. And they teach that Christ’s
death does not in of itself secure beyond doubt the salvation of
any one man living. This is Charles Spurgeon again.
They believe that Christ died to make the salvation of all
men possible and that by doing something else, any man who pleases
may attain into eternal life. Consequently, they’re obliged
to hold that if man’s will would not give way and voluntary surrender
to grace, then Christ’s atonement would be unavailing. They hold
that there was no secure particularity and speciality in the death of
Christ. Christ died according to them as much for Judas in
hell as for Peter who mounted to heaven. They believe that
for those who were consigned to eternal fire, there was as
real and true a redemption made for those who now stand before
the throne of the Most High God. So this is Charles Spurgeon. great Baptist preacher who was
also convinced that Christ did more
than come to make us savable. He came to actually save a multitude
of people. So, on what basis did God predestine
his people to adoption of sons? According to verse 5 in Ephesians
1, it was by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will
to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us
accepted in the beloved. The grace of God that brings
salvation is poured out abundantly through Jesus Christ according
to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of
his grace. back to the struggle Jacob was
having with God, to the struggle we’re all having at this point
in time to become more and more Christ-like. Jacob wrestled with
God for the blessing of God, and he limped away from the encounter
with the new name. The heel catcher, the deceiver,
the one who sought to supplant his brother, was now called Israel.
And depending on who you read, Israel could either mean God
prevails or he will rule as God. So ultimately, I would say Jacob’s
new name points us to Jacob’s savior who prevailed on our behalf
and to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been
given. So what was the difference between Jacob and Esau? In the
end, Jacob saw his desperate need for the one from whom the
blessings could not be abstracted. And Esau wanted the blessing,
but there is no evidence that he ever saw his need for Christ.
The natural man wants the benefits God alone provides, but the truly
spiritual man realizes that the blessings we have in Christ cannot
be abstracted from Christ. And when we begin to think of
the benefits we have in Christ as abstractable, the question
becomes, as Sinclair Ferguson has said, for the preacher, how
can I offer these benefits? When we look at the benefits
as abstractable, okay, how am I gonna offer the benefits to
the people? Or for the hearer, how can I get these benefits
into my life? But when it is seen that Christ and his benefits
are inseparable, and the latter are not abstractical commodities,
the primary question becomes for the preacher, how do I preach
Christ himself? And for the hearer, how do I
get into Christ? In a quote, this is Sinclair
Ferguson. God is not a means to an end,
instead he is the end. So the converted person should
be growing in understanding that his desperate need is for the
one in whom all spiritual blessings and heavenly places are found.
Verse seven, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness
of sins according to the riches of his grace, which he made to
abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known
to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure
which he purposed in himself. 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 in him.
We can sum this up by saying that God chose us in Christ so
that we might be holy. He predestined us so that we
might eventually be like him in his holy character. He called
us to be saints so that we might be brought to God so that all
his people along with all created things would ultimately be united
in Christ. So again, here are the three
points that hopefully you can take with you and think about
this week and beyond. By God’s grace towards his people,
we have redemption through his blood, number one, the forgiveness
of sins. In other words, we are delivered
from the penalty of sin because Jesus lived perfectly on our
behalf and died perfectly for our sins and rose again to fully
and finally secure our salvation. That’s number one. We’re freed
from the penalty of sin through the grace of God. Number two,
we are being set free from the power of sin because the ability
to overcome sin in our lives comes as we are transformed by
the renewing of our minds. We will never need anything more
than we need the one whose person and work is our salvation. Number three, God’s abundant
wisdom reveals to us the wisdom of his will, that the final goal,
the consummation, is that everything is going to be brought together
under the headship of Christ. Everything in heaven and earth
will be subdued and brought in proper relationship to God. For the innumerable multitude
for which Christ died, that means being glorified. That means that
when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see
him as he is. That means we will be set free from the presence
of sin. So in this passage, we see the ultimate blessing of
freedom in Christ being set forth. We see that the power or the
authority of blessing belongs to God. We see that the blessing
of God is something that involves conflict. Jesus entered into great conflict
on our behalf. And we are called to enter into
conflict as well. What does it mean to be blessed
with all spiritual blessings and having places in Christ?
For one thing, it means that since God gave His Son on our
behalf to rescue us, He will not withhold from us anything
else that we need. In fact, He has given us all
things in Christ. But we have to ask for God’s
wisdom. If anyone lacks wisdom, let him
what? Ask of God, right? We have to be willing to wrestle
with God to see the value of the one in whom are all heavenly
blessings. Not just our justification is
found in Christ, not just our glorification is given to us
in Jesus, but also our sanctification comes to us by faith to faith
by the power of the gospel. As we see to increasing degree
that we are blessed with every non abstractable blessing in
Christ. Amen. I’ll end with one more
verse, Romans 8. What shall we say to these things
if God is for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his
own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with
him graciously give us all things? Amen.