Transcript
We've been doing a series of messages here at Maranatha on how the Holy Spirit applies
to us the benefits that we have in Christ, and particularly of late we have been looking
at how He applies to us our identity in Christ.
There is nothing more important for the Christian believer than knowing who in Christ we are
and what that looks like.
So our scripture reading this morning, as we set the stage for this, is back to Ephesians,
the first chapter, and we're going to read the first ten verses.
There is an insert in your bulletin with that scripture reading.
Want you to take that out.
It'll be on the screen, but we're going to go through portions of this in some detail
so if you have a pen, I want you to underline the phrase "in Him" or "in Christ" because
that's where we're going this morning.
So Ephesians, the first chapter, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God,
to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Please be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly
realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
For He chose us in Him," notice, "in Christ, in Him.
He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His
sight.
In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ in accordance
with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace which He had freely
given us in the one He loves.
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with
the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us."
Notice that word, "lavished," God is never stingy, "with all wisdom and understanding.
And He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which
He purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment
to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ."
Join me in prayer.
There's nothing more foundational to the human being than to know who we are.
Our Father, You define who we are.
And it's our responsibility to try to lay hold of that and to live that out.
And we can't do that on our own, but we can surely do that by Your Holy Spirit.
And so as we take these moments now and reflect on what Your Word teaches us about what it
is to be in Christ, what it is to experience that reality in our hearts and in our lives,
I pray, Lord, that You help me to explain clearly the biblical truths that we're dealing
with, and I pray that Your Holy Spirit will apply that in each of our lives in the places
where we need it so that we may know that we know that we know that You're our Father
in heaven, that we are Your children, and that You have laid up for us blessings beyond
compare.
So bless us in these moments together, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations
of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.
We pray it together in Jesus' name, Amen.
I've mentioned this to you previously, but I want to repeat it, one of Paul's common
phrases in his epistles is the phrase "in Christ."
He repeats it 85 times in the 13 or 14 New Testament letters that he is said to have
written.
In the book of Ephesians alone, you will find the expression 14 times, add to that the number
of times in his writings he refers to "in Him," meaning in Christ, and you have more
than a hundred instances in Paul's letters where he is talking about what it is to be
in Christ.
And the reason he does that is that for the Christian, being in Christ shapes his or her
identity more than anything else, and I've mentioned this before too, but it bears repeating.
For Paul, the phrase "in Christ" stands in contrast to being in Adam.
To be in Adam is to share Adam's sinful nature.
It's to be alienated from God.
It's to be in bondage to Satan.
It is to struggle with the selfish passions and desires of our lives, and it's to be under
God's wrath heading for judgment.
That's the condition of every natural son and daughter of Adam.
In contrast to that, to be in Christ is to share all that Christ is and all that Christ
has received from God the Father.
Listen again to how Paul puts it in Ephesians 1 verse 3, "Praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual
blessing in Christ."
Again what that means is that whatever God has given to Jesus at his right hand, by faith
in him when we are joined to him, belongs to you and to me.
And the job of the Holy Spirit is to help us experience the reality of that.
And in the time that we have this morning, we're going to try to look at some ways in
which the Holy Spirit does that.
We'll see how far we get.
The first way in which the Holy Spirit does that is that he helps us to know and to experience
our riches in Christ.
He helps us to understand and experience the riches that we have in Christ.
And one of the reasons I asked you to take out the insert with the scripture reading
on it is because in the opening verses in this passage, Paul in rapid succession goes
through three situations, three qualities that are ours by virtue of being in Christ.
Let me walk you through those very quickly.
The first thing that Paul says is that in Christ we are chosen.
Verse four, if you've got a pen, underline it.
For he chose us in him, there you have that phrase again, before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless in his sight.
Now think about that.
He chose us in Christ before the creation of the world.
That's the doctrine of election.
The doctrine of election is very confusing to a lot of people.
And one of the reasons for that is that you and I live in time and space.
God lives outside of time and space.
And so Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, but he is both of those at the same time.
You and I live in time and space, and so we don't understand this very well.
But in biblical language, long before the world was even created, if you're a believer
in Christ today, you were in the heart of God.
God decided when you were going to be born, close your mind, who you were going to be
born to, what your character, personality, giftedness would be like, what your job or
task would be in the world, in the kingdom.
He chose you.
He wanted you, and he made sure you would get to be here.
That's huge, because your being here or my being here is not simply a product of biology.
It's not simply parents getting carried away, making love and conceiving a child.
Hard as it is to believe, we were chosen by God before the foundation of the world.
And the reason the Bible tells us this is not for us to try to speculate about things
that we can't understand.
The doctrine of election was never meant in scripture to say, "Well, I'm chosen, I'm not
chosen, so therefore there's nothing that I can do.
It's all in God's hands."
It was never intended that way.
The doctrine of election in scripture is that when you and I are struggling in life, when
we're wondering, "Does God love me?
Do I have what it takes?
Do I have what it takes to lead a godly life?"
God says, "Don't you worry about it.
In Christ you were chosen to be holy and blameless.
What I've begun in you, I'm going to bring to completion."
So we're chosen, but we're not only chosen in generalities, we're chosen, we're predestined
to be His sons.
Listen to verse four and five, underlying that next.
In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ in accordance
with His pleasure and will.
Now to be a son of God in biblical language means two things.
It means we share His character, we share His nature.
Adam and Eve, when they were created, were created in the image and the likeness of God.
It also means that we share His authority.
I've talked about this before, but that's why the Bible always talks about sons and
not about daughters.
Very seldom, a couple of times the Bible talks about daughters of God, but it uses the term
sons of God to apply to both male and female because it is a legal term of inheritance.
And so to be destined to be the sons of God is not only to be destined to share His character
and His nature to be like Him, but it's to be entrusted with His authority, the authority
that Jesus received at the Father's right hand as a son of God, you and I are destined
to share in part in this life, but fully and more abundantly in the life that is to come.
We are heirs of God, says the Bible, and co-heirs with Christ.
You'll see in a few moments why it's so important for the Holy Spirit to make this real in our
lives because as long as that is only intellectual theory, it leaves us cold.
Grab hold of that in the places where it matters and it transforms your life from one end to
the other.
So we're chosen, we're destined to be His sons, heirs of His Kingdom, and we are reconciled
to God.
Verse seven and verse eight underline that in Him, there you have it again, in Christ.
We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the
riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Two things there I want you to note.
The first is the word redemption.
We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
To be redeemed is to be bought back.
When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they came under the legal authority of Satan.
Why is the world such a mess?
Why are so many people following so many stupid ideas and they have no ability to see how
ridiculously foolish they are?
It's because we've been sold out to Satan.
Later on in chapter two, he talks, you will remember, about people following the principalities
and the powers, the spirit of the air.
There is a spirit in the air, a spirit in the air that tells people how they ought to
live, that alienates them from God, that keeps them in bondage, that keeps them in sin, that
takes us downward to destruction.
That is the natural place where we find ourselves and Satan has that power because we are guilty
of sin.
We're guilty of sharing in Adam's sin and we're guilty of sharing in our own sin.
But what happens when you come to Jesus?
Why do we come to Jesus?
Because we know that we are under the wrath of God.
We know that we're separated from God.
We know that he wants nothing to do with us in the natural and we understand that Jesus
died on the cross, shed his blood, why?
So that our sins could be forgiven.
So one of the benefits of being in Christ is that God is no longer angry with me.
I don't need to hide.
He isn't down on me.
He doesn't hold my sins against me.
He throws them in the sea of forgetfulness.
He is reconciled to me.
Not only are my sins forgiven, I am declared righteous before him through the person of
Jesus Christ.
God looks at me in Christ, doesn't see any of my sin.
All he sees is the righteousness of Jesus.
Not only that, but beyond that, notice how the passage goes on.
God has lavished upon us the riches of his grace in all wisdom and understanding.
Grace means God's riches at Christ's expense.
It's a good way to remember what the word means.
It's unmerited favor in Christ.
Not only are my sins forgiven, but in Christ, God is no longer angry with me and because
he is no longer angry with me, he loves me.
He wants to share good things with me.
His intention is that I would share the fullness of his glory, experience some of it in the
here and now, but fully in the age that is to come.
So Paul says, we are chosen in Christ, we are destined in Christ to be the children
of God, and in Christ, we are reconciled to God.
God is no longer angry.
He no longer closes the door on us.
In fact, he says, come on in.
The Bible talks about with confidence drawing near to God and experiencing his presence.
Now, that's what we are in Christ.
We're eligible for the favor of God, and let's be very clear.
This is true whether you and I feel it or not, whether or not we experience it, or whether
or not it is not at all part of our life.
It is a legal reality before God.
If this morning you have come to faith in Christ and given your life to him, then however
much or however little you understand about that, what God has given to Jesus now belongs
to you.
And the job of the Holy Spirit is twofold.
The job of the Holy Spirit is first of all to help us understand this.
We can put that up, we'll backtrack one.
The job of the Holy Spirit is to help me understand that what God has given to me in Christ is
mine, and then his job is to help me experience it, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
Think of it this way, unbeknownst to you, you are a crown prince or a crown princess
of some distant principality.
Let's say that you have royal blood flowing through your veins, and you are next in line
to the throne, but nobody's told you about that.
And so you're working for less than minimal wage, your car is 20 years old and dying,
your kids don't have enough to eat, you're struggling along, and life is just simply
really tough.
But then along comes somebody, and you get a letter in the mail that says, "Dear sir
or dear madam, unbeknownst to you," I mean, this sounds like a Nigerian scam, doesn't
it?
"Unbeknownst to you, this is who you are.
These are the riches that are yours, and it totally and forever will change your life."
Because all of a sudden, you're no longer just Joe Blow groveling in the dirt to make
a living.
You are King Joe, and you have authority and majesty and glory, and people instead of looking
down on you begin to respect you and love you and cater to you because you are somebody.
That's who we are in Christ.
So along comes the Holy Spirit, and He does those two things, He helps me understand,
He helps me understand who I am in Christ.
That's why the Bible talks about with all wisdom and understanding, and then He helps
me to experience that because the job of the Holy Spirit is to make real in our lives what
it is that we are in Christ.
How does He do that?
A lot of different ways, but the Bible talks about God pouring into our lives the love
of God.
Listen to this verse, Romans 5 verse 5, "God has poured out His love into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit whom He has given us."
God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us.
And what that verse means is that when we come to Christ and God blesses us with the
Holy Spirit, then it's the job of the Holy Spirit to help us experience the reality of
being chosen, the reality of being a son or a daughter of God, and the reality of having
had our sins forgiven.
It's no longer just an intellectual knowledge, it's no longer just a theory that is out there.
I know and I feel in my heart the reality that God loves me, that I am His child, that
my sins are forgiven, that I have access to His throne of grace, that He cares about me
intensely, that He is present in my life, that He hears my prayers, and that I know,
that I know, that I know that He is my Father and I'm His child.
This is not just reserved for some elite Christian.
This is the heritage of every Christian when by faith they're joined to Jesus.
Fear is how the Apostle Paul puts it brilliantly in Romans chapter 8, the verses 15 and 16.
He says, "You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive
the spirit of sonship, and by Him we cry, 'Abba, Father.'"
The word "Abba" is the most intimate expression of fatherhood.
It's the equivalent of our phrase "Daddy."
The Spirit of God bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God.
Let me say it again.
The job of the Holy Spirit is to help me know but also experience the fact that I'm chosen,
the fact that I belong to God, I am a son of the kingdom, and there is nothing but nothing
that separates me from the love of God.
The job of the Holy Spirit is to bring this home to me in a way that I can live out of
and find security in.
While somebody says, "What does that look like?"
I've been thinking about that a little bit because it's a little bit like falling in
love.
If I have to explain to you what falling in love looks like, you've probably never fallen
in love.
And if you have fallen in love, you don't need me to explain it to you because you already
know what it's like.
Nevertheless, I'm going to try.
I'm saying that it will register somewhere in terms of our lives.
See, I don't want to give the impression that a Christian is always going to live in a high
or that a Christian is always going to feel like God is right there or that a Christian
doesn't go through valleys or deep times of testing.
That's all part of the journey.
In fact, that's part of God applying to us through the Holy Spirit what it is to be joined
to Jesus because we're joined to Him in His death as well as His resurrection.
But I want us to understand that every last one of us is privileged in Christ to at least
have moments where our eyes are opened and we know that we know that we belong to God,
that He's not mad at me, that He loves me and that He is actively involved in my life.
How does He do that?
Well, He does that in a lot of different ways.
Sometimes He just puts us in these moments where all of a sudden our spiritual eyes are
opened and we know that God's there.
Daryl and I were talking about that last Tuesday on the way back to classes and Daryl was telling
me a little bit again of his journey, how he came to Christ and as God had been working
in his heart, he found himself among the Rockies.
And you can go to the Rockies and it can be a majestic experience and it can be a wonderful
experience but it doesn't have to be a spiritual encounter.
And for Daryl, it was a spiritual encounter, it was like God said, "This is me.
This is me."
And it moved him forward in his journey towards God.
For somebody else, it might be the fact that they find themselves in a difficult situation
and maybe they've never learned to pray.
Daryl was telling me about one of the people that he works with and the Lord's obviously
working in her life and he's been trying to invite her to church and coming into church
is a big step for a lot of people, as you know, but he said, "Why don't you pray?"
And you know, God loves the prayers of seekers, you've noticed that?
And she did.
She's in difficult domestic situation and she prayed something or another.
Now you and I can pray a thousand times over and the heavens may remain like brass and
nothing happens but when God is at work in you and he wants to make himself real to you,
the slightest breath of prayer goes right up into the throne of God and all of a sudden
you get an answer that says, "Wow, I didn't know God was there.
I didn't know that he cared for me like that."
Or you can be reading scripture and you know how that goes with us?
We read scripture and we often just jump over it but every so often there are those moments
when it's like a verse jumps out of the page at you and it's like it's got your name on
it and you know that God is speaking in an intimate way to your heart.
There may be rebuke, it may be comfort, it may be direction, but it's like God is right
there.
That's the Holy Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you're a child of God.
Or you've been into sin and the Lord has convicted you of sin and you wonder how God can ever
forgive you for the stupid things you've done.
Your eyes have been opened, shame covers you and you feel horrific.
And God comes along by his spirit, just like a father would with his child and he wipes
away your tears and he says, "You know, for those tears I died."
And you know that you know that you know that God does not hold your past against you any
longer.
Or you're the kind of person who grows up in a home environment where you've been shamed
and you feel that you have no identity and nobody loves you and nobody ever sees you.
You have no plan and purpose in life and God comes along and he puts a stamp on you and
he says, "You are mine and even if nobody ever takes notice of you, I knew you before
you were even born.
You matter to me."
And everything changes in your life because you hear the call of God and he calls you
forth and he establishes a new sense of identity.
Am I making any sense here?
God makes himself real.
And for some it'll be such a lavished outpouring of God's Holy Spirit that you're electrified
from top to bottom and you say, "I never knew that I could know God this real and this intimate
in my life."
And it totally changes your whole definition of who you are.
And new gifts bubble up and new abilities burst forth and God calls you out and you
know that you know that God has touched your life.
One of the reasons that I like the hymns by Charles Wesley is because he and his brother
John, and I've talked about him before, just experienced that amazing renewal of God's
Holy Spirit where John Wesley and that Aldersgate experience, long after he had been a preacher
and a missionary to Georgia, came back home into this Aldersgate meeting and he said,
"I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and that assurance was given
me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
And out of that, of course, come these great hymns, "And can it be that I should gain an
interest in the Savior's blood?"
Verse four, "Long my imprisoned spirit laid fast bound in sin and nature's night, thine
eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off.
My heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed thee."
The song "Blessed Assurance," Fanny Crosby, same kind of thing, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus
is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of
his spirit, washed in his blood."
This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
There is a place in the Christian life where what we know by faith in our heads settles
into our hearts, and as I said a moment or two ago, this is not some special revelation
only given to the super spiritual.
This is a revelation that God has for each one of his children because the gift of the
Holy Spirit is free.
And again I will repeat, you're not going to feel that all the time, you're not going
to experience that all the time, at least I've never met anybody who does, but there
should be moments, there should be moments when you have a foretaste of glory divine
and you know that you know that God is real, that you're his child, and that it matters.
And if you've never had that experience, then you need to do two things.
First of all, you need to ask yourself, "Have I come to faith in Christ?
Have I surrendered my life to him?
Have I trusted in him for my complete salvation?"
It's interesting to hear the Moravian brothers talk about the Wesley brothers before they
became Christians because, and I wish I had brought that quote along, it's a fantastic
quote where he says, "They make the gospel so complicated that they cannot just trust
in Jesus, they think they have to earn their salvation and therefore they're miserable
because they never know that they're good enough."
It was a humbling experience for John Wesley to discover that he was saved by grace through
faith as the free gift of God's salvation.
Ask yourself the question, "Have you been to the cross?
Have you surrendered?"
Because this kind of revelation you can't argue yourself into, you can read the Bible
from morning till night, you can go to church from morning to night, and you will not know
the reality of God, short of coming just as you are a sinner to the cross and saying,
"Lord Jesus, it is only in you that I have been chosen, only in you that I'm destined
to be the son of God, only in you that I have been redeemed, only in you that I can experience
your grace."
Having decided that you have, then ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit.
Because listen to these words of Jesus, you've heard them many times, but they are an incredible
promise that he gives to us.
This is in Luke chapter 11, verses 9-13, "I say to you, ask and it will be given you.
Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will
be opened."
Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
It can get much simpler or plainer than that.
Lay aside your expectations of what's going to happen.
I discovered a long time ago how you experience the Holy Spirit in your life is determined
on the one hand, sovereignly by God, and it more likely than not will be in keeping with
your personality.
If you are a rambunctious, vivacious kind of personality, you might well encounter the
Holy Spirit in that way.
If you're a sober, staid Dutchman, or a Scotsman, or Lord knows whatever else, stiff British,
stiff upper lip, Britain, the Holy Spirit knows what you need.
The real test is not whether you have a liver shiver, or you have a Holy Ghost moment.
No, the real test is, are my eyes open?
Do I see more of Jesus?
Do I understand more of who he is?
Am I more and more convinced that God loves me, that he's got a place for me, and that
he is at work in my heart to change me, to make me more like Jesus?
At the end of the day, that is the test of whether or not you are in Christ, and whether
or not you have received the Holy Spirit.
I think we'll leave it at that.
Second point that I'm going to want to make when we come back to this is that the Holy
Spirit not only helps me to understand and experience the presence of God, he also helps
me to live out my identity in Christ.
He will change me from the inside out to make me worthy of the inheritance that God has
for me.
Because remember, when the curtain falls in history, oh, I wish that we could see this.
When the curtain falls in history, we're going to sit on thrones with Jesus, we're going
to rule the new creation, we're going to do it for all eternity, and I've often said,
"Listen, if you see how we strive for recognition in the here and now, how glad we are when
we have success or when people praise us or when we accomplish, it's nothing compared
to what God has in store for those who love him."
And if you and I could see it, the more we could see it, the more it will change us and
the harder we will strive, as we'll see next time, to put off the old and to put on the
new so that we can be pleasing to our Father who is in heaven and suitable candidates to
be entrusted with God's authority forever and ever and ever.
Amen?
Stand with me.
Lord, we can talk about this forever, but talking alone won't open the eyes of the blind
or the ears of the deaf or make the lame to walk or make streams in the desert or the
desert bloom like a rose, but Father, we know that in Christ that has all been accomplished.
So thank you for choosing us before the foundation of the world.
That makes us feel pretty special.
Thank you for having chosen us and destined us to be sons of God most high, recipients
of all that he is and all that he has.
And thank you, Lord, for redeeming grace, redeeming grace that washes away not only
all our sin, but that presents us before you without spot or wrinkle or blemish or any
such thing and that lavishes upon us everything that we need for life and for godliness, for
time and for eternity.
And Lord, have we pray this morning that first of all you will help us to see who in Christ
we are, help us to get our eyes off who we are in Adam, help us to get past what we didn't
have when you come into the world or how life has treated us and how tough it's been.
Help us to see, Lord, that we're chosen in Christ, destined for glory, redeemed for grace,
and then having understood it even just a little bit, help us by faith to claim our
inheritance in Christ and to reach out to you confidently and boldly and say, Lord,
fill me with your Holy Spirit.
Fill my life from the inside out and establish us, Lord, a security of knowing that we know
that we know that we know that nothing but nothing can ever separate us from the love
of God and then give us a passion, a determination to love you the Lord our God with all of our
heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love our neighbor even as we love ourselves.
Set your church on fire.
Set our hearts on fire.
May the world know that we know that we know you and that you, in turn, know us.
And Lord, we'll be careful to give you the glory through Jesus Christ.
It's in His name that we pray, Amen.
Amen.