Sermon Series: Ephesians

Sermon Title:  “The Best Guarantee”

Pastor Chris O’Brien

The Best Guarantee

I want to quickly review, because this unit tightly fits together, and we’ve just been taking it a little bit at a time.

You know, if you’re at a fancy restaurant — or maybe not a fancy restaurant, maybe you’re at Green Olive, whether it’s Millville or Bridgeton — they both have pretty special desserts. I’ve never eaten dessert, but I’ve heard it’s a really cool thing to do. Now, I love dessert. But you know, some desserts are so rich that if you just gobble it down — like, I don’t know, ice cream, something like that — you’re not really enjoying it the way you should.

And in a sense, when we come to a passage like this — and really it’s the whole letter, Paul’s whole letter — there’s a richness there. And we need to take our time and work through it and see why God inspired the Apostle Paul to, if you will, write this hymn of praise to God.

First, he praises the Father, because the Father sovereignly planned all things and planned the salvation of his people. I’ve said it the last few weeks — sorry, I’ll keep saying it. If that offends your human will, I’m sorry.

If you’re a Christian now, trusting in Christ, you weren’t always that. Paul says in Ephesians 2, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead people don’t do anything. God had to make you alive first, before you could come to Christ. But the Father set his love on us before the foundation of the world through Christ.

And then the Lord Jesus Christ, two thousand years ago, paid for our sin. And while that has many implications, Paul focuses on one — forgiveness, freedom. That’s the one thing he highlights.

And now he’s transitioning. In one sense, he’s transitioning to the role of the Holy Spirit. And in another sense, he’s transitioning from eternity past to the present. We’re staying in the present for a bit, but then we’re going to the future. And we’re looking at the role of the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s Pronouns Are Significant

Now, my first point is Paul’s pronouns are significant. Who comes up with such a point in a sermon outline? What in the world? Well, just call this housekeeping, okay?

You know, sometimes there’s just certain things you’ve got to do first. You’ve got a big project, but before you work on that big project, you’ve got to get the tools out, you’ve got to get ready. Well, in a sense, we have to understand that Paul’s making a transition in this passage — subtly, you might say — with these pronouns.

Throughout this section, he’s been talking about us and we. He’s talking to the Christians at Ephesus, and he’s speaking to all of us who would become Christians that would read this letter. And as Paul describes that in Christ we have all these blessings, he means not only the Christians at Ephesus, he means all Christians everywhere, through all the ages. And that applies to us.

But then in verse 12, he starts to talk about we. And then in verse 13, he talks about you. And then in verse 14, he talks again about us. What’s going on there? He’s sort of foreshadowing what he’s going to say in Ephesians 2.

What was the big tension point, the big conflict, in the first century — not just in Jerusalem or Judea, but you might say around that whole world? We get consumed in our culture with our problems, and we see everything through our lens. Obviously, racism was a terrible thing in our country. It’ll never be conquered, in the sense that there’ll always be people that hate each other, and they don’t have to use your skin color to hate you — you might part your hair on the wrong side of your head or whatever.

Well, in this context, it wasn’t so much race, it was ethnicity and it was religion. The Jews hated the Gentiles and the Gentiles hated the Jews, but Paul’s writing to a predominantly Gentile church. And so he’s sort of foreshadowing what he’s going to talk about in Ephesians 2 — how Jesus brought reconciliation to those that would trust in Christ, both from the Jewish background and from the Gentile background.

But in a sense, it all applies to us. He does that change in pronouns, and I just wanted to mention that to us, because it might sound odd if you’re really paying attention to the pronouns. That’s the reason.

Our Inheritance

Okay, the theme here in verses 11 through 14 is our inheritance in Christ — our inheritance. I don’t know that that’s a common way for us to think about the great benefits we have in Christ in eternity, that we think about it in terms of an inheritance. We might talk about eternal life. We might talk about heaven and future glory when Christ returns. Those are all good things. But here Paul talks about that future glory, and all the blessings we will have in Christ as believers in the future, when Christ returns and glorifies us body and soul. He calls that our inheritance.

This week — well, three years ago now — my mom went to glory. She was 94. Hard to believe it’s been three years. My sister is taking care of all the administrative stuff. But one thing she neglected to take care of was the house. So she had to get a lawyer to write up papers, because you see, I have an inheritance now. I own 25% of my mom’s house.

Why only 25%? Well, because there’s four kids. And if I remember anything about division, I think four goes into 100%, 25% times, right? Did I do that right? So if I didn’t, just ignore me — you know the point of the illustration.

So I’m not going to fly to Mississippi to sign this paperwork. Our wonderful secretary, Ms. Lisa, is a notary. She notarizes for me free — well, she only charges you 10 bucks, but I’ll cover it for you. No, she doesn’t charge anything. But she had to notarize that stuff. Well, you see, that’s mine. That’s my inheritance.

We all as Christians have a greater inheritance. Tornadoes rip through Mississippi sometimes. A couple of weeks ago it was a blizzard on the coast — that doesn’t happen very often, but tornadoes do. A tornado could come through and destroy the house. My two brothers and my sister could decide they don’t like me anymore, and they could somehow — I don’t know — get me out of the inheritance. I don’t know how that would work. It’d probably make a good movie. But not our eternal inheritance.

See, Paul’s already alluded to it in verse 5, where he talked about God predestining that we would be sons — and daughters are implied, sons and daughters. In verse 4, he said he chose us to be holy. In verse 5, he chose us to be sons and daughters.

Well, our first response might be, but I thought we are already sons and daughters. We are. We are now — if we’re in Christ, we’re justified, we’re right with God, and we are sons and daughters of the living God. But we’re so incomplete, right? Y’all are still sinners, those saved by grace? I’m a sinner saved by grace. But the sonship and daughtership that we long for is when Christ returns, and we’re sons and daughters of the living God with glorified bodies and souls, worshiping and serving him forever. You see, that is our inheritance. That’s what we’re looking for. And that’s what Paul speaks of here.

And in verse 11, he gives this assurance he’s already given us. Verse 11 is sort of like a Romans 8:28. We all know Romans 8:28 — for those that love God, all things work together for good. Those that are truly trusting in Christ love God. Paul says, for those that love God — in other words, I’m not talking to you people that say you’re a Christian, I’m talking to you people that live like a Christian. For those who love God, all things work together for good, to conform us to the image of his Son, the Lord Jesus.

Well, that’s basically what we have in verse 11. In Christ, we have this inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of the Father, who works out all things according to his will. How do you know, and how do I know, if we’re in Christ today, that we’re going to make it? How do we know?

Ultimately, our trust is not in how hard we strive — although we need to strive to live holy lives. But ultimately, our hope is in our sovereign God who’s good to his people. Our hope is in Jesus, who says my sheep are in my hand, and they’re in my Father’s hand, and no one can snatch them out. That’s our assurance.

The Gospel We Believed

But in a sense, Paul says that’s not enough. I don’t want to stop there. I want to tell you more. So then we get to verse 13. In Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

So Paul is saying to the Ephesians, look, we all have an inheritance. But because he’s going to talk about where the Ephesian Christians used to be — next chapter, they used to be Gentiles without God and without hope in this world — but now they’re just like Jewish believers, they have an inheritance. And he just reminds them here, doesn’t explain it, but just reminds them, how did you become that? Well, you heard the gospel and you believed the gospel.

What’s the gospel? We all know, but it’s worth reminding ourselves, isn’t it? In the Bible, the word gospel simply means good news, but the word gospel in the New Testament has a specific meaning, a specific content. We can summarize it different ways. We confessed it in 1 Corinthians 15: Christ died for our sins, and he was raised on the third day, and he appeared to all these various apostles and other disciples.

Christ died for our sins. Well, are you a sinner? Do you believe you’re a sinner, and that you’re a hopeless sinner outside of Christ’s kindness and grace? Now, you may have come to Christ 40 years ago. But do you still recognize today, were it not for Christ — were it not for the Holy Spirit intervening when you heard the gospel, convicting you of sin, so that you then received a new heart, new birth, and then you turned from your sin and trusted in Christ — that without God sovereignly doing that work, you would still be dead in your sins? That’s the gospel.

And Paul says to these Gentile, Ephesian Christians, now you heard the gospel and you believed it. Again, for all of us — but maybe for those that haven’t been with us that often, the Bible here, when it uses the word believe, does not mean you just affirm the content.

There’s a few young people here in the room today — not many, we want many, many more, but we’ll use them as an example today. How many times do you young people — and we had to do it too — fill out information on an exam to get a good grade, and you write down hopefully what you remembered, what you studied, what the question asks. Do you necessarily believe it? If it’s 2 plus 2 equals 4, hopefully you do. But if it’s a history exam or whatever, you’re just regurgitating what you were taught. That’s okay, sometimes we have to do that. But that’s not the Christian faith.

The Christian faith is: I’ve heard the gospel, and by hearing that I live and move and have my being before the God who made me. And he’s a holy, holy God. And I’ve come to see my sin because of his law that reminds me of my sin — the Ten Commandments. I’ve acknowledged my sin, I’ve confessed it to God, I’ve turned from it, I’ve trusted in Christ — not simply believed the facts of the gospel.

Well, that’s what these Ephesian Christians have done. They believed the gospel. And now Paul, having said that, he wants to focus on the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives as Christians.

Now again, keep in mind that Paul has a method, right? He first highlighted the Father’s role. Then he highlighted the Son’s role, Jesus’s role, and in particular his death on the cross. Now he’s going to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Is Our Seal

But he really only tells us one primary thing about the Holy Spirit here. I made reference to the fact that the Holy Spirit is the one — as Jesus said in John 16, as is illustrated in Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 1 — that the Holy Spirit has to convict us and convince us of sin. That’s the Holy Spirit’s work. Then the Holy Spirit has to give us new birth. Jesus said, you must — it’s necessary — to be born again. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

But Paul doesn’t mention those here. He’ll get to them later in the letter. But here, his primary interest is to highlight the role of the Holy Spirit being a seal and being a guarantee of our salvation.

Paul could have talked about all these wonderful things about the Holy Spirit as he’s giving this survey of our salvation — from the perspective of eternity past, then Christ’s death on the cross, then the present-day work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and then the future. In that survey, Paul could have said a lot of things. But he brings it down to one important truth. The Holy Spirit has been given to you and me. If you are in Christ this day, the Holy Spirit lives in you. Paul says in Romans 8, if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not his.

Now, our Pentecostal friends have a little different understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. And so that might make us Presbyterians a little leery, and think, oh, I don’t know if I want to emphasize the Holy Spirit like that — I might do things in worship Presbyterians aren’t supposed to do. John Michael does that — he opens his hand when he sings and praises God, but that’s not Pentecostal. I’m just having fun there, John Michael.

But you see, sometimes Presbyterians — any of us — can overreact to a different tradition and not emphasize something because it makes us nervous. But the role of the Holy Spirit is critical to our understanding of the faith, of salvation, and of living the Christian life. And Paul wants to highlight just two things about the Holy Spirit. He’s our seal, and he’s our guarantee.

Now again, when Lisa notarized those important legal documents, what she was doing is — when I sign my name on that document, and then she puts her seal on there, and then she puts a little stamp on there, and then she squiggles something on it, I don’t know what it was — but anyway, when that gets to the lawyer’s office in Jackson, Mississippi, that notary seal says it was actually Chris O’Brien that signed this document. It’s just like I was there in person. It’s proof. It wasn’t Todd, it wasn’t Doug — no, it was me, you see.

And that’s what the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit lives and abides within us, all Christians, to authenticate us. It means we’re real. How do you know that you’re a real, genuine Christian? Well, John says in 1 John, we have these assurance tests. Are you confessing your sins? Are you loving the brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you obeying God’s law, walking as Jesus walked — essentially the same thing? Do you know the true Christ, who’s fully God, fully man?

You see, those tests are very practical, and we can all do those tests on ourselves and one another, to the degree we want to encourage each other in our faith. But who ultimately gives us that assurance, if we are walking with Christ, and we are confessing our sins, and we are loving the brothers and sisters, so that our faith is genuine? It’s the Holy Spirit, who’s in us, giving us that assurance.

It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t sit on a mountain by yourself and hum and get assurance from the Holy Spirit. It involves his word, it involves prayer, it involves all the means of grace — that will save, in a sense, the best for last, the Lord’s Supper at the end of the message. It’s coming faster than I anticipated.

The Holy Spirit is our seal. He’s our proof.

The Holy Spirit Is Our Guarantee

And then Paul says the Holy Spirit is our guarantee. Here’s the way Paul says it in Romans 8, verses 14 through 17 — although I’ve shortened it. Paul says that we have the Spirit, and I think he means clearly there the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption. We Christians have within us the Holy Spirit, who reminds us that we’ve been adopted by God, so that we’re sons and daughters of the living God. And it’s the Holy Spirit that enables us to cry out, Abba, Father.

Now, Abba is not an exact parallel to Daddy in our English vernacular. In fact, there’s an interesting difference in the way the Jews talked about their Abba, their daddy. You see, I could talk about my daddy. You can’t talk about my daddy — you can talk about my father. But you see, the word Abba is that most personal word. Jesus referred to the heavenly Father often as Abba. And the Holy Spirit enables you and me, through the means of grace — the word, prayer, fellowship, the preaching of the word, the sacraments, and through obedience and living the Christian life — the Holy Spirit enables us to cry out, Abba, Father. In other words, we have the assurance, not only that we’re God’s, but that we’re sons and daughters.

And the guarantee is this. The guarantee, I guess, is like an earnest, or a down payment. Why do you make people put 10% or 20% down on a house? That’s a lot of money. Because the bank wants you, in a sense, to prove you’re not going to pull up to the house and then decide, you know, this house payment — I don’t like it, it’s too much — and you’re just going to pack up and leave and go somewhere else. You’re going to give up all that money. You see, the down payment is supposed to be proof that you’re going to pay off the house.

And the Holy Spirit has been given to us to assure us we’re sons and daughters of the living God. But in a sense, the Holy Spirit says — I say this reverently — you haven’t seen anything yet. Yes, you’re a son and daughter now. You’re justified. You’re right with God. You’re not condemned. You’re forgiven. And that is glorious, and that is good. But there’s a great day coming, when King Jesus returns to glorify us body and soul. No more sin. No more frail bodies that keep breaking. No more wintertime ailments and sicknesses.

Slavic — he can’t wait for the new heavens. He was sick a couple weeks ago, then he got better, and then he turned around and got sick again. I don’t know what his problem is. But I know this — I know he’s looking forward to that glorified body. And we all are.

And the Holy Spirit is there to assure us: number one, that we’re genuine, and number two, you ain’t seen nothing yet. What God has given you in Christ, and the Holy Spirit assures you of, is just the beginning.

Coming to the Table

Now we come to the Lord’s table. It’s a simple thing. There’s no magic potions, there’s no ostentation, there’s no frills. It’s nothing like the Old Testament sacraments and religious activities. It’s simple, and yet profound.

The bread and the cup symbolize the death of our Savior on the cross to pay for our sins. We who believe in Christ this hour, as we eat that, as we drink, as we remember the gospel that I’ve repeated numerous times this morning — and some of you are thinking, he’s going to do that again, really? First 15 minutes of the sermon, he must not have much material — no, I want to remind us of the heart of the Bible, which is the gospel.

And so when we receive these elements by faith in Christ, we’re also assured that the Holy Spirit will assure us, yes, we’re his. We’ll leave those doors and we’ll never sin again — no, you’re going to go out that door and you’re going to sin again. And I am too, especially because I’m teaching the junior highs in a few minutes. Sorry, that was a bad illustration. But hopefully, by God’s grace, we’re making headway. We’re moving in the right direction.

Father, would you be pleased to remind us, your people, that your Spirit lives in us, so that we can cry out, Abba, Father, and we can know that great day is coming, and we will be in your presence, serving you and giving you glory unceasingly, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The Best Guarantee

Fairfield Church, PCA