Transcript

Let’s go back to Ephesians, Ephesians 1, and let’s talk about “The Riches of Grace.” We’ll probably do this in two installments as we continue to look at Ephesians 1 and dig out some of the glory that God has placed there in the truth of our salvation. Ephesians 1, beginning in verse 7. Let’s go down through verse 12. Paul, continuing in his flow of elaborating on the glory of God in his grace says in verse 7,

7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

Let’s talk about the riches of grace. When we talk about grace as we see it there in verse 7, that we have redemption and forgiveness, end of verse 7, “according to the riches of grace.” Someone organized grace in this context this way: God accepting those who are entirely destitute of merit, provided satisfaction and accepted it on our behalf; he provided for us being one’s welcomed or providing us a place where he is satisfied with us and then accepted us in that satisfaction; then, thirdly, bestowing redemption and all of its benefits without regard to the good of men. I just want to think on that last one a moment: bestowing redemption and all of its benefits without regard to the goodness of men. What a settled, secure place that is, grace.

Now, Paul says in verse 7 here, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,” now notice this phrase, “according to the riches of His grace.” It’s important that you do not interpret this out of the riches of his grace. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s not saying it’s out of the riches, he said, it’s according to the riches. In other words, God does not go to the storehouse of grace and scoop up a shovel full of grace and put it on us as if one would scoop out a measure of grain or something from a storage bin. Likewise, God did not open the safe of grace and select a few choice gems of grace like one might select precious jewels from a collection. God did not reach into the well of grace and dip out a bucket full and pour it on us as if one were drawing from an old fashioned well. As a matter of fact, in verse 8, he amplifies this and says, “which He lavished on us.” According to the riches of grace which he lavished on us.

So when God says, “I want to favor you and bestow divine benefits on you without any regard whatsoever to your merit or goodness and I’m not just going to bestow those out of but according to all that my grace is and I’m just going to lavish it on you.” Let’s let that sink in for a moment. No, what God did in pouring grace on us is more akin to what happens when the water in the lock at Wilson Dam is released, a giant, gushing, swirling monster, if you will, of water comes boiling up below the dam and it billows out and it continues until all the water in the lock is depleted. When God says, “Okay, I’m going to cast my favor and divine benefits on you without any regard to your merit or worthiness,” God didn’t just say, “I’m not just taking a portion, I’m doing it, I’m lavishing it on you.” What love.

Some years ago, we had a tree out in our church yard here and it was struggling so our landscape guy got a garden hose and he propped it up on a little thing so it would just pour water on it. He turned it wide open and just went off and left it there. He didn’t give it a trickle, he gave it the full blast, everything that he could give it. That’s what God does for us. He’s poured it out upon us in the full, the riches of grace. And, you know, God is one who can dump on you, in effect, an infinite grace and never run dry. He’s never going to run out.

Now, first of all, I. Let’s talk about the grace of redemption. He’s lavished on us the grace of redemption. In verse 7, he uses that word, “In Him we have redemption.” Notice, first of all, that everything we have as far as what God’s done for us is through him; it’s in him. Look at it there, “In Him we have redemption.” Verse 4 said we were chosen in him from the foundation of the world. Verse 5 says we are predestined through him. Now here in verse 7, “In Him we have redemption.” Now, you know the redemption is the old word from the old slave world; it means you bought a slave and you set that slave free never to be a slave again. You gave them the right of freedom and that was practiced in Rome. Now, this was a common practice in the world that Paul was living in and the people Paul was writing to. There are about six million slaves living in Rome when Paul wrote this and the buying and selling of slaves was a major business. A slave could be bought and sometimes it happened and granted freedom and he was therefore free of any master of anyone being over him; he was a free man. He was given a written document to state that he was no longer enslaved to anyone but now he was a free man. And that’s the idea of what’s happened to us in our redemption. We were enslaved and by Christ’s merit and purchase we are now free from what formerly enslaved us.

Now, the text here emphasizes our redemption from sin but I think that is inseparable to two other concepts of slavery that goes along with being enslaved to sin so I’ll mention sin, then we’ll mention the two others. The Bible tells us that we were enslaved by the cords of sin before our conversion. As a matter of fact, James tells us that if you commit one sin, if you fail God in one point, you’re guilty of all the law of God as if you failed all the law. James 2:10, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” Even Jesus told us that the heart attitude is sin. You can be far short. Now listen folks, it’s good if you can stop your sin in your heart and in your mind. Don’t be one of these that says, “Well, it’s all sin anyway.” No, that’s not true. There are consequences, there are circumstances the further you follow in a sin, so if you can stop it in the mental stage, repent of it there, certainly and that’s where they most should be, but before God, you’re guilty in your hearts and minds as if you had gone ahead and done it. Enslavement. It’s just…we’re enslaved in our hearts, we’re enslaved in our behavior and sin, of course, is our nature, so my behavior exposes my heart condition. I was held in sin, in a sense, I was on sin’s death row, fully accountable to the wages of sin. “For the wages of sin is death,” Romans 3:23 tells us.

So, first of all, our slavery that we had to sin and there was nothing whatsoever we could do about that within ourselves. Think about it in your actuality. Well, let me do that in a moment as we cover the other two. Let’s go to the second one I will mention and that’s your enslavement to Satan’s kingdom. As a matter of fact, in Ephesians 2:2 he alludes to this. He says, “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” That’s a picture of one who is in Satan’s kingdom. You lived according to the prince of the power of the air; his spirit, that spirit of disobedience was in you. We were citizens of the kingdom of darkness. We were citizens of this fallen, temporal, sin-infused, sin-polluted world. We were hopelessly bound in this dark kingdom and we had darkened hearts and darkened minds and we were also hopelessly bound and enslaved to the coming wrath of God. That’s the state we were in. We were bound to Satan’s influence and Satan’s control but God has now redeemed us from that predicament. He has redeemed us out of that state, that is no longer the status we are in. Colossians 1:13, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” So now you are no longer truly a citizen of darkness – now listen – even though in your unredeemed humanity that’s not yet glorified, there is still some darkness. The new true you is not a part of that kingdom. There is a new you in you. Paul talks about putting on the old self and setting aside the old man. There is a new you in you and it’s the new true you. The other you that you have to deal with is not the true you, it’s the old you that’s passing away. But the new you is the true you and it is the one who has at least that seed desire to say, “I want to love God. I love God’s law. I want to honor him. I want to serve him no matter how hard the old man pulls me in the other direction.” That’s because you’ve been redeemed. Your redemption hasn’t come to its fruition as far as actuality, let’s say it that way, but it is truly yours. You do see the seeds of it, you do see the beginnings of it. You are redeemed from sin and correspondingly you are redeemed from Satan’s kingdom.

Then, thirdly, we’ve alluded to this some: you are redeemed from self. You are redeemed from self. At one time, we were enslaved to self and self consumed living. We looked to self’s power. If we joined a church, if we did something religious, we’d find something that fit ourselves. Amen? And that’s what’s going on in the church today. All over the world, all over the United States of America, you go to evangelical church after evangelical church, Baptist church after Baptist church and they’re throwing out every flavor under the rainbow to see what fits you. Do you know why? Because most people are enslaved to themselves. They walk in the doors of the church and say, “Does it fit me? Does it bless me? Does it tickle my fancy?” Instead of saying, “Is this the kind of church Christ wants?” And then I have a desire to be where he wants to be. You see, but when you’re dealing with a Christendom today that’s filled with unregenerate people, they’re still enslaved to self. They have not the capacity to genuinely say, “I don’t want what I would naturally desire. I want to know what the word says and that’s what I want to teach myself to enjoy.” Truth is objective; it’s outside of you. You discover the truth and then condition yourself to love it. And if you’re redeemed, there is something in you that genuinely does begin to love it the more you’re exposed to it and preaching is one primary way to be exposed to truth.

So we are enslaved to self-power. We’re enslaved to self-pleasure. Why do you think our country has devolved to the place where men are embracing and celebrating vile, perverse things? It’s because they can’t do anything else. They either have to condemn themselves or redefine what they’re doing so they have chosen to redefine it. “We’ll just turn on a switch and say, “Ah-ha, at one time this was sin. At one time this was vile. At one time this was perverse. At one time this was dark and dirty. But the switch has been turned and now it’s good and glorious. It is to be celebrated.” Just that quick. As a matter of fact, the American Psychiatric and Psychology Association just one day a few decades ago changed their opinion about homosexuality. It used to be treated to see if you could come out of that lust that would be in your heart and then they just changed one day and said, “Okay, now it’s acceptable.” Just decided. I don’t know, who are these people? They’re not even a Supreme Court. I mean, they’re just some folks who’ve got some degrees by their names.

But why do we do these? We do these things because we are a Christless culture that has enthroned self and self-pleasure and that’s – look – you’re going to always have a culture that’s working toward chaos and anarchy when people look inside themselves for truth. Do you know what kind of messed up, vile, twisted junk is in men’s hearts? Well, we’re starting to see it, aren’t we? Because no longer are they keeping it in their hearts, they’re splashing it out in front of everybody. But that’s where we all were. That’s why the Bible when Paul’s writing in one of his epistles he lists all these dirty, vile things men do and he says, “And such were some of you.” That’s the enslavement we were in, enslavement to self-power, enslavement to self-pleasures, enslavement to self-gain. Our lives were just centered around us and, again, if we became very religious, it would be a religion that allowed us to be us instead of just serving Jesus.

Luke 9:24, Jesus said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” Now look, it doesn’t mean that when you’re converted you immediately lose everything that you formerly were doing. No, it means that in your heart a new viewpoint begins to rise; a new perspective that is Christ-centered and the old strongholds and lust of what I’m all about may not all be wrong but now they’ve become secondary to whether or not honoring Christ is pleased with them. I mean, you like to deer hunt, you get saved, you don’t quit deer hunting, you just say, “Lord, as I can, as you allow, I want to do this.” And so it is with other things in your life, but self is no longer on the throne. Christ is on the throne.

But we have been redeemed from this slavery to self. The love of self is always the way of temporal misery and of eternal loss and after redemption, we understand something of what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “I die daily.” You know, you say no to self daily as the purpose of your life and the pattern of your life not because you have this desire to beat yourself down and prove your worth before God. As a matter of fact, that’s usually false pride; that’s usually false humility and it attracts attention to you. “Oh, I’m denying myself. No, I can’t do that. You can have a milkshake, I can’t have a milkshake today.” You know, just some of the silliest things people get into, the legalisms. No, denying self and dying daily means that I’m beginning – now listen – I’m beginning to recognize that doing this dishonors God and is going to hurt me and I’m choosing, it is my joy to begin to say no to self so I can say yes to Christ. And I haven’t gotten there perfectly yet, I am being sanctified, but there’s a new me that desires not to live with self on the throne.

Now, some of you may be sitting here before me this evening and you’ve been slacking on God a little bit here and you’ve been in too much of a pattern of just saying yes to self instead of saying, “What saith the Scriptures?” As a matter of fact, you could probably cure 95% of the psychological issues and anxiety issues and depression issues in the church if people would just say, “What has the Lord ordered me to do? And I’m going to get up in the morning and I’m going to do that because I’m going to deny self.” Well, before you’re converted, you don’t have the capacity to even pray that way but we have been redeemed from that position.

Now, what Paul is saying is this glorious redemption is all the product of grace. It’s a grace gift that you get to begin to understand self as your enemy and self being enthroned in your life is going to lead to misery and living for self brings ultimate wrath and judgment. You’ve been redeemed from the blindness to that pattern of life. You’ve been redeemed to have a new view of self, a new view of Satan’s kingdom and the world’s kingdom, a new view of what sin is and what it does so your perspective and we’ll elaborate on that a little bit more a little bit later, your perspective is redeemed. You have a new redeemed outlook and that’s why the people, the world thinks you’re foolish. The world thinks you’ve lost it. But the problem is, they don’t have spiritual receptors. They don’t have the capacity to see the truth of what really matters and what really lasts.

Then he says in verse 7, we’re redeemed, it’s all because of grace and the price he paid is mentioned in the three words, “through His blood. In Him we have redemption through His blood.” His literal, substitutionary death and sacrifice for us is the means, the payment, if you will, for this wondrous redemption. We were slaves and we were bought and sold on the slave market, passed from one cruel master to another. We were helplessly, mercilessly passed between Satan and sin and self, just thrown around all the time. Then one day, this loving stranger came to redeem us and he bid for us as we stood on the slave block and he paid the sufficient price, his own blood, and he set us free from all that slavery, making us not his captive, making us not his slave, but making us his son and Paul is writing, “That’s what he has done for you in grace.”

The riches of grace. He paid our debt in full. My citizenship has been fully and finally transferred from darkness in the world to the kingdom of light and the kingdom of God. Sin now has no lasting hold. Sin still bothers me but it has no final authority and no lasting hold. The next time you sin, just look at that sin and say, “Enjoy it now but you’re not the final authority over me. You don’t have the final word over this life. No longer am I a sinner who sins” – now listen to this – “no longer am I a sinner who sins but I’m a saint whose purpose and pattern is to obey God, though sometimes I sin.” That’s the difference he has made. “I am free now to live for Christ and no longer must I live, no longer am I enslaved to live with a morbid consumption for self. He has done more for me than I could ever do for myself. I now live for him and I want to live beyond and above that former petrified enslavement to serving sin, Satan and self.” Paul says in verse 7, “He has redeemed us through His blood.” What a redemption. What a redemption.

Well, what about forgiveness? Let’s touch on this and I’ll just let you go after this right quick. The grace of redemption, now the grace of forgiveness. Look at it there in verse 7, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according,” again, to what? What does that? “The riches of His grace.” This rich and lavishing grace not only includes redemption but it includes forgiveness. Now, we need to remind ourselves that God’s law is just and God’s law is immutable; it changes not. As a matter of fact, his law cannot change. That’s why, say what you want, condemn us as you may, but the moral absolutes of Scripture stand and do not change because God wrote them and the law is the very expression of his nature and for us to redefine morality as our culture does means we put God on the potter’s wheel and we redesign God to fit us and that’s blasphemous idolatry. There are no options for Christians in this present cultural war. We are what we are. We believe what we believe. Period. Because God has ordained it. The law doesn’t change because it’s the expression of who he is and he can’t change. He’s holy and perfect. There is no need for him to change. We should change, he shouldn’t change.

So there is a just punishment that must be measured out to all who transgress this holy, beautiful and perfect law and we are all transgressors. Again, the Bible tells us in James that if we break one commandment, we’re guilty of breaking all of them and Jesus taught us very clearly in the Sermon on the Mount if your heart attitude is anger, then you have committed murder already in your heart. So you’re even answerable for your heart attitudes in what you do as far as breaking the law.

Now, the beautiful thing is God is omniscient and he does not forget anything. Let me say that again: he does not forget anything. But in grace, he fully forgives everything. Now, we, on the other hand, we may forget what someone does and therefore not hold a grudge; we’ve just forgotten it. God can’t forget. He’s omniscient. He remembers every sin, every wrong, every transgression you’ve ever committed yet he chooses in grace to put the punishment for that on his Son and not hold any of that against you for punishment. He doesn’t hold any of it. Though he remembers all of it, he chooses not to remember it against you for punishment.

We are forgiven and this is grace. It’s grace when the sun rises. It’s grace when the rain falls. It’s grace when we enjoy family and friends. It’s grace when we eat a meal, a good meal, a fair meal, whatever it is, it’s still grace. It’s grace when we have adequate clothing. It’s grace when we have adequate shelter. But these are all common graces. The grace Paul is talking about here is different. It’s a special saving grace to those who are God’s own and God gave the full measure of grace to us when his precious Son bled and died to forgive us all of our transgressions. The priceless blood of Christ is the measure of the wealth of God’s unmerited favor toward all who are his. What a forgiveness that is. What a forgiveness and it’s all bound up in the nature of this God who, on the one hand, has this immutable, exacting law that cannot be…you don’t break God’s law, you break yourself against it. It cannot be changed. Immutable. You and I are miserable failures but this God in wisdom, we’re going to talk about the wisdom of this plan next week, in wisdom designed that, “I’m going to put the wrath due to my elect children on my Son and I am so”… let me put it this way, you can’t fathom over here how deeply dissatisfied God is with you. You can’t even begin to comprehend the unfathomable depths of dissatisfaction God has in you, how repulsive and offensive you are to a holy God yet when God elects us, he chooses to look at his Son and when his Son went to the cross and died for us, you can’t fathom how wondrously satisfied God is in Jesus’ death for us on the cross.

So he accepts us, the most unsatisfactory ones, in the great, great joy. Listen, God didn’t do this to be….he didn’t look at Jesus and say, “Well, I shouldn’t do this and, Jesus, well, he died for them. I guess I’m…” No, no, no. When the Father looks at the merits of the Son’s work, he is joyously, with pleasure, satisfied to receive you. Did you get that? When he looks at the work of his Son, he looks at you, the miserable unsatisfying failure, and receives you with the utmost divine joyous satisfaction. God doesn’t take you like this, he rejoices with deep pleasure to welcome you based on the deep satisfaction he has in his Son’s death on your behalf and devising all of that is grace, not just a portion, but lavishing grace he has dumped on you. Now, go home and sleep on that and be thankful and live this next week like you’re grateful for such a God and such grace and such goodness.

Let’s stand together in prayer.