Sermon Cloud

Eph 1:4-6, 11-14. Godly people disagree with each other on the meaning of the terms Paul lays out in this passage. It is important to remember that how we understand election and predestination is not a test of fellowship. But, it is in the Bible, cover to cover, and we can’t ignore those parts of scripture because they are difficult, challenge presuppositions or make us uncomfortable. And if you come to a different conclusion we can still rally around this, “Christ died for sinners and all who come to him will be received as Sons and Daughters of God,” and we can live in community with one another, and still share the message and mercy of Christ with our city.

Everyone is invited to come to Jesus and personally responsible for responding to the Gospel (v13). The Gospel is Good news and the command of it is to Repent and Believe in Jesus; come to him; place faith in Him. To have faith in Jesus is to see him as your greatest treasure the object of your greatest trust. We are called to respond to this invitation and for those who respond with saving faith, they are forgiven, restored to God, given his Holy Spirit, made God’s sons and daughters and given a place and promised inheritance in the new heaven and new earth. For those who reject this invitation, they remain in their sins, separated from God, under His just displeasure, and eternally excluded from his new heavens and new earth. How you respond to that invitation is your responsibility.  Some reject Jesus. The damaging effects of sin upon the human heart cause this rejection. Scriptures gives several angles on this rejection. They see the Gospel as foolish (1Cor 1.18 ESV “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1Cor 1.21-24 ESV “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22) For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23) but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24) but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” They resist God and can’t find it in themselves to submit to Him. Rom 8.7 ESV “For the mind that is set on the flesh (life independent of God – natural condition of humanity) is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” There is a natural resistance to God and insufficient will power to change the heart’s posture toward God. They are spiritually dead in their sins. Eph 2.1 ESV “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins…” They Love their Sin. John 3.19-20 ESV “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20) For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” This is what the Scriptures mean when it says that we are slaves of sin. Sin has captured our heart and we are willing slaves to it because we love the darkness. They simply refuse to come to Jesus. For all the above reasons, they just refuse to come to Jesus. John 5.39-40 ESV “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40) yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
Some Receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. The question is “Why?” Is it because they are just better, able to understand, more moral, more virtuous, more religiously inclined? Is there something inherent in them that makes them willing to embrace this message? The Scripture gives us this answer: God does something decisive in their hearts to bring about this positive response. Reveals the Gospel to be true and Christ to be desirable. 2Cor 4.4-6 ESV “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5) For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6) For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God shone in our hearts to give us light, understanding and see Christ as glorious. Now Christ is desirable. Where before they loved the dark, now light has shone in their hearts. They see Christ for who he is, find him to be the greatest thing they could live for (glorious) and respond with faith. Overcomes their resistance and their unwillingness.  John 6.44, 65 ESV “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 65) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”” The Father draws us, graciously, melting our resistance and granting us a desire to come to Jesus. Makes us alive to Himself. Eph 2.4-5 ESV “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5) even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—” God raises us from our spiritual death so that we can respond to him. So, the clear testimony in Scripture is that the reason people come to Jesus in saving faith is because of a decisive work of God on the heart, revealing Christ, making them alive to him, overcoming their resistance and unwillingness to come to him by drawing them to Christ. Left to themselves they would never do any of this.  Illus: This is why we thank God for our salvation and pray for non-Christians. So, we have seen that everyone is responsible for their response to Jesus and his Gospel. But, those who respond positively do so because God did a decisive work in their heart to bring about that response. It is all his doing not ours.

Those who respond, do so because it was God’s design all along to draw them personally to Christ and make them his sons and daughters (v. 4-5). The two words that are used here are chosen and predestined. Chosen - to choose or select something out from among a group. In the Middle voice – meaning to choose for oneself; personal interest involved. In the LXX, the word is used of God choosing individuals and the people of Israel to be his people from among all the people of the world. In the NT, the word used to speak of Jesus choosing his disciples, the first congregation selecting its first ministers (Acts 6:5); the Jerusalem council choosing Paul and Barnabas for a mission (Acts 15). Here it is used to speak of God choosing us for himself to be in Christ and to walk before him in holiness and love. He made this choice of us before the foundation of the world.  Just so you know this is not an obscure idea in the bible: The noun form of the word (eklektos) is used 20x by 5NT authors to speak of believers in Jesus; they are the elect, those chosen by God. So, it is not an obscure theme in the Scripture. God has chosen a people for himself, Christ has died for those people, and the Holy Spirit has been sent to make Christ known to them. Predestined – to decide beforehand. God decided before hand to make us his sons and daughters. This choosing and predestining was not because of anything in us. Before we could do anything, God chose us and predestined all those he would save by grace. None deserved to be saved and God was not obligated to save any. All are rebels who belittle God and seek independence from Him. But, in infinite mercy, he chose to save people. It was not because of anything in them, but solely because of his good purposes and his grace (Eph 1:5-6, 11-12, 14). Not anything in us; not foreseen faith or virtue, but because of something in Him. This has always been the way God works. Deut 7.6-8 ESV ““For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7) It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8) but it is because the LORD loves you” It is because of the Lord’s grace that he chooses people to be his own and to save them, not because of anything in them. This is why this teaching humbles us in the dust because we know that it is all of God and not of us. God saves us single handedly. This brings us to the next thing.

God orchestrates this whole process so as to bring Himself the greatest glory. The text makes it clear that God’s aim in all of this and in everything he does is to magnify, glorify, draw undivided attention to the riches of his grace (to the praise of his glorious grace). He is Free. As Holy Creator, He is not under obligation to the rebellious creature at all. But he saves people. When those who have come to Christ get to heaven, we will have nothing to boast about. We will not boast about our wisdom, our righteousness, our faith, our decisions, our choices. We will only boast in his grace. We will say, “Salvation belongs to our God.”  We were dead and he made us alive by grace. We were enemies and he made his friends; we were blind and he gave us sight; we were unwilling to come to Christ and resistant to him, but he made us willing and removed our resistance so that we gladly came to Jesus. And He chose us for all of this before we could do anything to commend us to him. It was all his doing. For all eternity we will be overwhelmed with His matchless grace.

This is the crux of it all. We bought into the idea that humanity is God’s ultimate passion. That He is all about us (God loves people more than anything). If that is the case then none of this choosing and calling makes any sense. But, God is not all about us. He is all about Him. God must glorify what is most glorious; he must love most what is most lovely; he must value supremely what is supremely valuable. That is what Righteousness is. God does not tell us not to put anything before him and then break his own commandment by putting us before Him. His main goal in all he does is to put his glorious grace on display so that for all eternity we might be overwhelmed at the magnitude of his grace and salvation and have ever increasing joy that we were the undeserved recipients of it . And in the wisdom of God, this is the way he has chosen to do that. We might think he could do it in a better way, but that would presume that we are wiser than God. Review: 1. All are invited to come to Christ and held responsible (accountable) for how they respond to Jesus and the Gospel. 2. Some will reject him. Some will receive Him. 3. The difference is the decisive work God upon particular people’s hearts. 4. Behind the scenes we discover that God has determined all along to make those particular people his sons and daughters. 5. He does things this way because in his wisdom this is the best way to overwhelm us with his grace for all eternity so that he is magnified as savior and we are amazed that we have been the intended recipients of that salvation and spared from the condemnation we deserve. 

Last thing: The first point is not negated by any of the other points. God is Sovereign (v. 11). And, human beings are responsible (v. 13). Divine Will and Human Responsibility are co-existing realities. They appear contradictory to us, but both are presented in Scripture as true and are not contradictory in the mysterious and infinite mind of God. We may not be able to resolve the issue in our heads, but it is not an issue that needs to be resolved in God’s. We believe both because the bible teaches both. God is Sovereign and People are Responsible. So, we share the message and mercy of Christ with everyone everywhere, inviting everyone to turn to Christ and trust him with their lives. And we do that while praying that God would work in their hearts to turn them to himself. Invitation.