Inheritance
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am a pastor in training here with Mill City. We're going to be in Ephesians 1, verses 11 through 14. So you can go ahead and turn there.
If you do not have a Bible, there should be a white Bible around you somewhere. If you do not have a Bible, we want you to take that home. That is our gift to you. So Ephesians 1, 11 through 14, I am going to read a quote. It's a rather lengthy quote, so stay with me. It comes from a story.
Down to the last day, even the last hour now, I am an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting, and tired of living. I am ready for the hereafter. It has to be better than this. I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97% of the company housed in it, below me, and the land around it a half mile in three directions. And the 2,000 people who work here and the other 20,000 who do not. And I own the pipeline under the land that brings the gas from my building to my fields in Texas.
And I own the utility lines that deliver electricity. And I lease the satellite unseen miles above me, which I once barked my commands to my empire flung around the world. My assets exceed 11 billion dollars. I own silver in Nevada, and copper in Montana, and coffee in Kenya, coal in Angola, rubber in Malaysia, natural gas in Texas, crude oil in Indonesia, and steel in China. My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find.
I once owned all the appropriate toys, the yachts, the jets, the blondes, the homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery. I had three families, three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive and doing all they can to torment me. To the best of my knowledge, I followed all seven and buried one. I should say his mother buried them.
I was out of the country. I am estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathered here today because I'm dying, and it's time to divide the spoils. So that is the first page of a John Grisham novel that I've been reading called The Testament. And it's a brilliant hook. Like the first page, you read that right there, and you want to read more of the story.
So what John Grisham does there is brilliant. He hooks you in. But what is really, really cool about what John Grisham does in this first part is he had the whole point of the Testament. It's his last will and testament. It's how his inheritance is going to be divided. And by all accounts from what our culture would say is if you've built your businesses from the ground up and you've accumulated $11 billion in assets, like you crushed the American dream.
You owned it. Like that's it. That's what our culture upholds is saying that is what you would aspire to be. And what John Grisham does here is he says that this is the root of his misery, that money is the root of his misery. In fact, you get a little taste here that his kids and his family hates him. And you find out in the chapters that fall, they really hate him.
He has nothing left. He is left empty, and he's on his deathbed. And then a few pages later, he actually kills himself. And I love what John Grisham does here is because he hooks you in and he shows you how fleeting the pursuits of this world are. And in the same way, Paul begins Ephesians with a hook. We've been taking the last three weeks to walk through Ephesians 1, 3 through 14.
It's one long sentence in the Greek. We've been walking through it because that is the hook that reels you into Ephesians in which you read the rest of the book. And what I love what Paul does is the end of this hook, he talks about an inheritance. An inheritance that is so much better than what this world has to offer. So that's what we're going to be walking through today.
We're going to take a look at this inheritance that he's talking about. We're going to see who he's talking to. And then we're going to see what he promises. And here's one clear truth that we'll walk away with. That we have a guaranteed inheritance through faith in Christ that is eternally secured by the Holy Spirit. That we have a guaranteed inheritance through faith in Christ that is eternally secured by the Holy Spirit.
All right, so I'm going to read the passage. I'm going to pray. And then we're going to dive in. Verse 11. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. God, I thank you for this picture that you give us here. I pray that you would help us be present, that you would clear out any of the distractions, any thoughts, and that you would show us how good your inheritance is. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so he starts out verse 11.
In him we have obtained an inheritance. So this word inheritance is jam-packed with meaning. On the surface, it simply just means all the good things that come with believing in Jesus. This is what is awaiting. This is what you get to take part in. But inheritance here also, in the original word that it was written in, links back to the Old Testament, to the Hebrew word for allotment.
Specifically, an allotment of land. And as people who are familiar with the Old Testament, the Jewish Christians who are in this church, and others who might be familiar with how the Old Testament is read, they would hear allotment of land and they would go back to the book of Joshua. And the book of Joshua follows the event of Exodus. God brings the people of Israel out of Egypt. He brings them into the promised land. And Joshua is their leader who brings them in.
He clears out the wicked nations that were controlling it. And then he secures land for his people. And there's six chapters in the book of Joshua. They're about allotments of land. He gives this tribe this allotment and this tribe this allotment. Think counties almost.
And he gives each of these tribes allotments of land. And then in those tribes, he gives individual families parcels of land. So when they hear that, that's their thinking. And land for them, this land was really, really special and important for them. Firstly, it helped them remember that this piece of land that our family owns, that our tribe owns, was secured for us by God. The God came in.
He cleared out the nations. He gave us this land. And we are amongst his presence. So it ties them back into their national identity. We are the people of Israel. It had strong family ties.
Like their family would own this land for generations and generations that followed. Even if they sold off a piece of it, maybe to pay off debts, there was a whole system in place called the year of Jubilee that eventually, about once a generation, the land would come back into the family. That your family would still have this land. Land was, this allotment, this inheritance for them was a means of providing. You used your land to make money, whether it was farming, whether it was tending the sheep. That was how God provided for you.
So the picture of allotment, the picture of inheritance here that Paul is drawing off of, is that you, Christian, have an allotment in the kingdom. Like you have a place in God's kingdom, in God's presence. And there are riches that come with that. So this picture here, it builds off of verse 5. In verse 5 we read, you're adopted as sons. This picture of adoption is linked right here at the end to inheritance.
With the adoption comes an inheritance. It might be similar to if Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, adopted a kid, an impoverished kid from one of the poorest countries in the world. And I want you to picture this. Like what it would have been like for this kid. Never has seen anything remotely rich. Has never even seen a plane.
Then Bill Gates brings in a private plane. This kid boards the plane. Flies to America. Gets out. Sees America for the first time. Then sees a private car that comes, picks him up.
And then he goes to Bill Gates' estate. The gates open. Think Richie Rich style. Gates open. You are coming in. This kid has the abundance of riches he's never even seen before.
Gets out of the car. Sees the huge mansion. Sees the Gates family. Bill Gates comes up to him and says, You are now my child. And this, you take part in all this. This is yours.
This is your life. This is your inheritance. Think about how that kid would feel. Think about all the riches he would have seen for the first time. And that illustration pales in comparison to the riches that we get in Christ. Those riches are material.
They're temporary. And this inheritance is eternal. So the word inheritance here, it's in packed with meaning. He goes in verse 11. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. Now what Paul's doing here, he's making a little bit of a shift.
He's starting to address individual parts of the church. So Ephesus, the church of Ephesus, like many churches in the New Testament, were divided or were made up of both Gentiles and Jews. All right? So Jews, Jewish background, Jewish Christians were tied to Judaism. Gentiles is everyone else. So that included Africans.
That included Greeks. That included Romans. That included Asians. And we're going to see some tension is happening. And we're going to see that in chapter 2. But he specifically here is addressing Jewish Christians.
So he says, this is how it should be written. Paul says, in him, he says, in him, he means we Jewish Christians. We Jewish Christians have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we Jewish Christians, hear this, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of his glory. That phrase, first to hope in Christ, in the language of we, what he's doing is, is Paul, a fellow Jewish Christian, is saying, we, the first to hope in Christ. He's talking to them. He's really illustrating the order of God's redemption.
God chose the nation of Israel to be a light amongst the nations. When they failed, Jesus came. And after Jesus ascends into heaven, the church begins, the church begins in Jerusalem. The church explodes with thousands of people professing Jesus and placing their faith in him and being changed by him. And all of them are Jews. And then later on, keep reading throughout Acts, you see Africans and you see Asians and you see Greeks and you see Romans.
You see Gentiles also being brought into the church. So this part right here is he's illustrating the order of God's redemption. And then he addresses the entire church. He gets to Gentiles in verse 13. He says, in him, you also, so meaning you also, everyone else. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him.
So he's opening it back up, the whole church. In him, you also. He echoes the same sentiment that Peter does in 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, when Peter says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, which is kind of strong Jewish language. He says that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light. And then you see who he's talking to. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. He's saying, once you were not the people of God, you were not a part of this, and now you've been brought into this family. We are all one big family now. And then he shows how he rescues them. He goes, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him. So last week, we walked through how God chooses the church, how he chooses the church for salvation.
And as I've walked through this before, myself with other people, the question comes up, wait, really? Like God chooses us for salvation? God chooses the church? The answer that we walked through last week was, yeah, the Bible absolutely teaches that. But here it says, and we have to believe the gospel to be saved?
And we say the same thing, yes. Both are true. The Bible teaches both. If you want to take part in this inheritance, you have to believe the gospel. Now, I think part of the problem here, well, firstly, is the misunderstanding of the gospel. I mean, the fact that we were dead in sin, that we had no hope, and that God looks upon us in our sin and says, I'm not going to leave them there.
That I'm sending Jesus. I'm going to send, that the God of the universe comes himself and lives a perfect life of obedience. The life of obedience that we could never live. He loves God and loves others in ways that we never could. He lives a perfect life of obedience. He dies on the cross.
His blood is shed for us. His blood covers us through belief in him. And then he conquers death at the resurrection, loosening its power on us, so that we can have a new life in Christ and take part in this inheritance. Part of it's misunderstanding that message completely. But I think another real part of it is our understanding of belief.
I think for many, especially down here in the South, many people that profess Christianity, I think it is a head knowledge belief. Like belief is, I know things about Jesus. Or maybe it's, I align myself with Jesus. I'm a Christian, or they just asked, I'm a Christian, I was born in the church, or I was, you know, it's just a simple, a head knowledge and aligning yourself with Jesus. I see this on a practical level when it comes to sports. I'll ask people, who do you pull for?
Especially the NFL. And they'll say, every now and then I'll meet somebody and they'll go, well, I'm a Patriots fan. And when they say that, like I immediately get triggered. Like I immediately just get, like it just, this stirs like anxiety in my soul. And the reason why is because I'm a Colts fan. I've been a Colts fan since the 90s when Peyton got drafted.
And there's been some, a few good years, there's been some really bad years, especially right now. And when I hear that, the reason why it triggers me is because my first game as a Colts fan, my Christmas present, was the 04 Divisional Playoff Series game in Foxborough. Get off the plane, I've got a thermal and a Peyton Manning jersey and jeans. I roll up into Foxborough, it's a blizzard, it's freezing cold. I'm freezing cold because I wasn't prepared when I got off the plane. And we got our teeth kicked in.
I watched my hero get destroyed. Like it was, it was terrible. And I was surrounded by Patriots fans who were like, just absolutely giving it to me. And I was like, this is the moment. This is the moment from now on. I hate you people.
I hate it. So, and then from years that followed, we just kept getting beaten. So when someone says they're a Patriots fan, I get a little triggered. I'm like, well, what do you mean by that? And they're like, well, sometimes they'll go, well, I mean, I don't really care about football. Like I, it's not really my thing, but, but I do watch the Super Bowl because I like the commercials.
And, and it seems like the Patriots play in it once every two or three years. So I just pull for them. I hear that and I'm like, it's all good. Like you, you are not a part of the axis of evil. You think you are. You think that you're a Patriots fan, but you're not.
Because when you heard when I was a Colts fan, we had immediately gotten into the flight gate and there would have been a huge debate. You're not actually a Patriots fan. You just kind of align yourself with them and you know a little bit about them, but you don't embody what it means to be a Patriots fan. And in the same way, I meet people down here, in our culture, that say I'm a Christian. And as I press into it, there's a lot of different understandings that aren't the gospel. And what really has happened is they've believed in their head, they've aligned themselves with, but that belief has never sunk into their heart.
And their heart has actually been changed by the gospel. Because the misunderstanding with the word belief is that belief, when it's used in the New Testament, implies trust. It implies faith. And that faith and that trust is life-changing. It's not just surface level. And that's going to be important for us as we walk through the rest of this passage to have a right understanding of what belief is.
So verse 13, he says, in him, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. So when you believe the gospel, you've put your faith solely in the finished work of Jesus, it says here, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. you're sealed. Now that word sealed has a few, like there's commentators debate over what that is implying, what that image is. Some say that that was when a king or an emperor, like if Rome, had made an official royal order that he sealed it.
And that order meant, it was not sealed, meant it was not going to be broken. That order would be followed. There are other commentators that think, no, no, no, this is more like when someone would purchase property back then, they would put their family or their official seal on it and that meant they possessed that property. Some think this just simply means certifying the validity of the guarantee. And really, each of those understandings applies here. That God, the king of the universe, when he saves you, has marked you.
He is sealed. He said this, that he is, their faith is going to continue. That is a guaranteed order that's going to be followed. The same thing applies is if when the Holy Spirit seals us, we are gods. He is saying, I have taken possession of you. It means that this guarantee is certified.
The word guarantee here, in verse 14, it also has some pretty cool meaning. The way they would use that word at the time of the New Testament, what it meant was, was a down payment. It was a deposit. So the picture that we have here with being sealed and with this deposit, with this guarantee, is that when we place our faith solely in Jesus, that could be in a moment for me, like I can remember back when I realized I was not a Christian and that I needed Jesus. So for some of you, it may have been a moment.
For some of you, it may be a season where you're starting to believe the gospel slowly and then all of a sudden you realize something has changed about me. Whenever that is, whether it's a season or a moment, when you believe the gospel, He seals you. And that is a guarantee so that throughout the rest of your life, whether you are in seasons of trials, you could be facing all kinds of sickness, God is saying, remember the seal? Remember the guarantee? Remember the deposit? The down payment?
I make good of my payments. He's going to be with you no matter what. In disease, in trial, in sickness, when you are struggling with sin and starting to question your identity, God's saying, no, no, no. Remember the deposit? Remember that I sealed you? I'm going to make good until you finish the waste, until you acquire possession of it.
And acquire possession of it is just a euphemism for when you die. When you finish this race, this is guaranteed. That is a picture that we need. And that's a picture that the New Testament says over and over again. Like Jesus, in John 10, 28, He says, He just got done teaching about how He's the Good Shepherd. And then He says, I give them eternal life and they will never perish.
And hear this, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. Like, feel that promise that Jesus, the God of the universe, says, look, I've got you in the palm of My hand. No one is snatching you out of My hand. Like, the devil and his band of demons, they're not going to get you. They're not going to take you. Your flesh is not going to bring you down.
The world's not going to take you. I've got you in the palm of My hand. You're not going anywhere. That's a promise we need. Paul, in Philippians 1, 6, he says, and I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion the day of Jesus Christ. Paul's saying, the work that He began, the grace that He began, He's going to continue it.
He's the one that started it and He's going to carry you all the way home. Peter, in talking about the same inheritance in 1 Peter 1, 5, he says, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Guarded. Like, this inheritance, Fort Knox times a billion. It is guarded. No one's touching that inheritance.
It is yours until you acquire possession of it. And that is one of the most comforting promises we can have in all the scriptures that Jesus has us in the palm of His hand that God is going to protect us and He's going to carry us home. That's what a good father does. I mean, and we need that. Like, I think about my relationship with my daughter and kind of what we're going through right now. We are in the midst of potty training and for me to say it's been an unmitigated disaster is probably a little bit of an understatement.
Like, we're two months in and it's been rough. Like, my wife, she called me a couple weeks ago and she said, hey, by the way, I just want to let you know what your daughter did today. I was like, okay. And she says, well, she walked outside with the dogs. She pulled down her diaper and just started peeing. And I was like, well, that's pretty airtight logic.
The dogs use the bathroom outside. We need to correct that, of course, but, I mean, that makes sense. And then, and then she said, or then she said, I don't know what's going on. Like, she just, like, this even happened yesterday. She's like, hey, she just takes her diaper off outside and I don't even know where the diapers are. They're just gone.
And she just comes in naked. So a couple weeks ago, I found them. She was like hiding in the bushes, but she has a shopping cart, this little toy shopping cart for outside. And I see it from like 20 feet away and I see flies hovering. And I was like, no, no, no. And I walk over towards it and there's a stack of poopy diapers that she's collected and that she's just thrown in there.
And it's been, it's been difficult. What kind of dad would I be if I said, if I took her inside after that event and sat her down and said, look, this has to stop. If this doesn't stop, you're out. You're not, you're not a part of this family anymore. We'll find you a new family, but this, this has got, you have to get your, you have to get your stuff together because if you can't figure this out, you can find a new family. Like what, what kind of dad would I be if that was my response?
That's not all I do with her. What I do with her is we have a song that we sing together. We have a song that we sing together. It's by a singer-songwriter named Drew Holcomb. He wrote this song for his daughter where he says, you'll always be my girl no matter what, whether there's good seasons or bad. I sing with her and she sings with me, you'll always be, you'll always be, you'll always be my girl.
And we sing that song together because I want her to know that no matter what happens, she's always going to be my child. She's always going to be my girl. I hope my daughter has the most boring testimony imaginable. I hope that she places her faith in Jesus at age six and I just, we disciple her. Like that's what I want for her. I don't want her to walk the same path that I went.
But man, if she goes wayward and she starts acting a fool, I want her to know you will always be my girl. You're always my child. And God looks at us in the midst of our filth, in the midst of our struggle, in the midst of our trials, and he says, no, no, no. You'll always be my child. You will always be my son. You will always be my daughter.
When I sealed you, that guarantee was for eternity. Now that brings up some valid questions. And one of those valid questions that I hear often, it comes from experience. Like what about people that I've been in church with, pastors that I've known, people that baptize me or people that I baptize, people in my community group who were with us for a season for years. And then all of a sudden they just said, I'm out. I'm done.
Like what about them? I feel that. In college, I was part of a college ministry. I was a junior. We invested in two of these guys. They both professed Jesus.
And then I got to spend the summer with one of them. Had a summer beach project with our college ministry. Pouring into this kid. Like he was devouring, like studying the scripture, going out and sharing his faith. He was an aspiring hip-hop artist. And he was actually really good.
He wrote this Christian hip-hop song. I watched him perform that song at a conference to 500 people. And he crushed it. And then like a year later, he went and studied abroad. And when he came back, he said, I'm out. This isn't for me anymore.
And his buddy, who was his best friends, who had professed faith in Jesus at the same time, like he was crushed. We were all shook. Like what happened? I mean his buddy is actually still, he's the college ministry director at Clemson. And I see from time to time the other guy on Facebook and it doesn't look good. And we've had those experiences.
And you're left wondering, like what does the Bible say? I know what you're saying, they're guaranteed, but what does the Bible say about people like that? And 1 John 2.19 kind of gives us the clearest answer to that. In 1 John 2.19, it says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become clear, it might become plain, that they are not all of us.
And what John is saying there, is that they had the appearance of faith, like it looked like they believed, but they had not actually been changed by the gospel. It may have been a head belief, but it had not sunk deep into their heart. Now, after reading that, that may bring up a fear, that may have the same thought, you may be having the same thought still, that this hasn't cleared up in your head, is how do I actually know that I'm saved? Like how do I actually know that I'm sealed? I think part of that tension is resolved by really leaning on the right definition of belief. This doctrine, you can call it eternal security, perseverance of the saints, whatever you want to call it, and this means that when you were, when you were sealed, you're guaranteed to the finish, is sometimes unhelpfully linked to a wrong definition of belief.
And the most common way I see that nowadays, it used to be when people would just walk down an aisle when they were a kid, talk to a pastor, profess Jesus, and there wasn't any real life change. The most common way that I see it now is at churches where it's an exciting event and the lights dim and the smoke machines are going and the music's flowing and it's like everything is awesome and everything is hype and all of a sudden it's like, come, believe in Jesus and people are just going down and scores and they're professing Jesus but they're not actually having their hearts changed. It has not sunk in their heart. And what's happened is is that this has been taught alongside of that and they're thinking back to that moment when I got fired up about Jesus for a moment but it actually wasn't continual.
It didn't keep going. And that's one of the other wrong definitions we have for belief because when belief in the New Testament is used as a verb it does not mean a one-time event. Belief is a continual, it means to continue to believe. Not just believe once but continue to believe the gospel. So how do you know if you are sealed by the Holy Spirit? you keep believing the gospel.
I was about to say you don't stop believing. I'm not going there because that brings it a whole. You keep believing the gospel until we acquire possession of it. Until the race is finished you keep believing. So here are the encouragements that we're left with here as we believe the gospel is if you believed it and you're still believing it you need to remember we have the Holy Spirit.
We have the God of the universe that says I have marked you I have sealed you I have made the deposit I have made the guarantee I am never going to leave you. Like in any season where you might feel like I'm alone no the Spirit is with us He's in us He's working in us You are not alone You have the God of the universe If we have God in our side which is what Paul says in Romans who in the world could be against us?