[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       Today we're continuing our study on Ephesians. Last time we went over an introduction to this epistle from the Apostle Paul. We talked about various introductory aspects of it as far as the date it was written, who wrote it, where it was written, the situation, some of the stuff in the book, things of that nature. So today we're continuing. We did get through verses 1 through 6 last time. We even dived into the predestination concept and how that kind of works.

       One thing I do want to note is that if we look at Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 to 14, Paul mentions all three persons of the Trinity in them . So we've got God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit each mentioned. This passage as a whole, taking the verses we covered last week and the ones we're covering this week, completes the picture of the Godhead. And that's an important thing to note because there are some, even in our day and age, who deny the Godhead, who believe that it's just God the Father and God the Son, and deny the Holy Spirit. I've seen that. There are obviously people who deny God the Son. So there's that bad theology out there, I guess we would say, or demonic-inspired teaching. We want to note that, yeah, all three persons of the Trinity are mentioned in this passage by the Apostle Paul. It's just something that can strengthen our faith as we consider this and as we remember that doctrine of the Triune God.

       Without further ado, let's go ahead and start reading. I will read, let’s see, starting in verse 7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, and all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ” (ESV). I'm going to stop there. I don't want to bite off too much to start.

       What are some things we can note as we look at this passage? We did discuss last time the whole concept of grace and how what God accomplished on the cross through Jesus Christ gives us grace. And Paul is talking about the Gospel. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” So all the things we've done wrong up until the moment we believe are forgiven. And the Evangelical perspective is that even the present and future sins are forgiven. That's a perspective of many. This is “according to the riches of this grace.” And Paul even adds, “which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.” So he really gave us a lot of grace because we know that we had a lot of sin in our lives, in our past, no matter really what background we come from, whether we even lived an outwardly, seemingly perfect life or good life, we know internally that we had sin. No matter if we're coming from a really vile background or a background of doing a lot of outwardly bad things, or whether we didn't, we had sin and we needed grace, through Jesus' action on the cross to remove that sin. And that happened for us when we believed in what Christ accomplished. That's the gospel.

       But it's gracious because God, through Jesus Christ, presented this action of having, really the action as a whole, having Jesus come to the earth and die on the cross when humanity was in a predicament. And we discussed how God had this plan in place before the foundation of the world. God had a procedure that if sin entered into the world, he had a way, a plan, to rectify that situation, and that's what he's done in Christ. It also shows God's wisdom and insight, and that ties in to what I just said. He is wise. He knew there was a possibility that all of us would fall into sin, or some of us. It could have been that Adam and Eve didn't, but maybe some after them did. He knew that that was a possibility. And in his wisdom, he planned for that. And so he provided this whole package that anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ comes into God's family.

       It's not, as we talked about last time, that God pre-selects or pre-elects or pre-determines those who will believe in him. He predetermined the ‘plan,’ that that would be in place if sin entered the world, but he did not predetermine those who would accept that. That's freely open to all. Anyone by their free will choice can make that decision of their own volition, of their own free will. And again, this shows God's wisdom and insight. Think of it this way. If God had to foreordain those who would believe in him, then there's not much wisdom and insight into that, is there? I mean, to me, it's more powerful to say that God created this plan so that anybody can come into it. It wasn't that God created this plan so that only those he pre-selected could come into it. That doesn't seem super following into the line of Paul's wisdom and insight there. That seems more limited (no pun intended). That just doesn't seem to me like a logical conclusion.

       Verse 9 tells us again, “making known to us the mystery of his will” (ESV).

       Again, it was God's will that he would have a plan in place that anyone could believe in Jesus Christ and receive the forgiveness of their sins. Now, there are three different wills, really kind of four, but I want to focus on three different wills that we can discuss when it comes to the Bible, when it comes to reality, what we believe as Christians, and then from my viewpoint as an Evangelical Christian. So there's God's will. That's what Jesus talked about in the Lord's Prayer. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” You're praying that God's will actually happens on the earth because why? It might not. And why is that? Well, it's the two other factors. Satan's will. Satan, as we talked about, fell from heaven. And that was after the creation, apparently. He fell from heaven to the earth. Maybe he saw the creation and thought, “Wow, I want that for myself. I want to be God.” Whatever that went through his head, he got banished from heaven, became totally depraved, if you will. And now he seeks to accomplish things that God, God the Father, God in his entirety, does not want to be accomplished. He tempted Eve. Adam and Eve fell into sin. Bad things happen in this world that God does not want to happen, even to this day.
       The third factor is man's will. And because we do have depravity in us, because we have all fallen short of the glory of God, as Romans chapter 3 tells us, we too can make good decisions and we can make incorrect decisions. And those incorrect decisions are called sin. So, when we do things that God doesn't want us to do—and it's not that God doesn't want us to do those things because it's arbitrary and he just wants to wield his power—it’s not that—it’s that he doesn't want us to do those things because they're harmful to us. They don't produce the best life that we could possibly have, they don't produce the most Christian happiness or even life happiness that we could have. Remember Thomas Jefferson talked about in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, if we're sinning, that hinders our happiness. I know that was kind of random, but it ties into what we're talking about.

       Some of you are probably wondering, “What's that fourth one?” The fourth will, if you will. Well, it's kind of that the Earth has a will. So the Earth does things in its own accord. And remember, it's in a fallen state. Sometimes the Earth can beget bad events, hence an earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, because the Earth is just being the Earth. So while the Earth isn't consciously doing that, that's kind of the fourth area.

       There is also the area is a little asterisk here of angelic will. That is the good angels, not just Satan and the fallen angels (which I kind of blanketed under Satan). But the good angels, we could blanket that under God's will, because we would not say that angelic beings act outside of God's will if they're good angels. That's a little extension there of that.

       But to bring this back around, what it would be is we, with our human free will, have the ability to resist Satan's will and choose God's will, which is in our best interest. It's not that God's trying to domineer over us, but it's in our best interest. This is lavished upon us. It's in our best interest to choose that will and become part of God's plan, part of God's package, that he predetermined before the foundation of the world.

       Let's go ahead and read verse 10, and I think I'll re-read verse 9 to just set up the context again, “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (ESV).

       What I want to do is break out my King James Bible. I don't want to go to this passage because there's a specific word that's important that's not in the ESV translation exactly. Verse 10 says from the King James Version, “that in the dispensation of the fullness of times.” So that word dispensation there—that’s the focus. And the reason I bring this up is because Paul said, as the ESV says, “as a plan for the fullness of time.” It uses the word “plan.” Well, the point is that God did this at the right time. This was the time that worked right in human history for God to bring this about. Now, we don't know exactly why that is. All we know is what the Bible tells us, but we don't know the things that God knows that aren't recorded for us. And I think this whole concept definitely ties into that idea of thought.

       We know—just to provide a brief overview of human history—we know God created the world, there was Adam and Eve, there was that time, the fall occurred, there’s the time from Adam and Eve to the great flood, the flood of Noah. During that time, the Earth actually had a different makeup. It was all one continent, I think we would say. There were dinosaurs, most likely, probably during that time. The dinos died in the flood (Of course, this is just me stating it this way.) Noah and his family boarded the ark. They're saying everyone else on the Earth perished. That was not pretty. God didn't like that. He regretted that he even made man, he tells us. And everyone died except those who poured the ark, which is basically nine people.

       If we go to the next period, God has the Israelites, his chosen people, and Abraham is their father. God creates the nation of Israel through Abraham and then Isaac and Jacob and so on and so forth. And we have this period of the animal sacrifices, which actually appeared to be in play before the flood of Noah even, but we're not going to get into that. And so we have this period up until Jesus's time, when Jesus shows up on the scene. The Jewish law has run its course. God is making a true transition into the New Covenant. The Old Covenant is passing away. Jesus is the fulfillment of that old covenant, but now we have the new covenant. And that's basically, that's a very high flyover. But for whatever reason, God chose to wait until this particular time in human history to come to the Earth. And we could speculate probably all day long about why that's the case.

       But I guess to bring it back around to why I brought out the King James Version, is that word dispensation means that God acts differently in different times. So we have that first period of human history where there was no sin. Up until Adam and Eve sinned, God would actually come down to the earth and walk in the garden. He actually was here on the earth. Whether that was God the Father, God as the Lord Jesus Christ—we don't know for sure. But then there's that second period between the fall and the flood, and that is a period of some kind of animal sacrifices, though those don't appear to have been mandated by God. We don't know for sure. There was some type of system in play, perhaps—maybe not. And then the flood happens, and we get the Jewish law, Moses, Ten Commandments, all the law. We remember that. So that period goes up until the Cross , so Jesus dies on the cross. Basically, we have these different dispensations, these different time periods, where the rules are different, if you will. The way to salvation perhaps is different. Some people think that during this Old Testament time that people had to do faith plus works to get into heaven. Some don't believe that. Probably more don't believe that in the Evangelical community. They think it was faith all along. However you approach that.

       But then we get into the new period where Jesus dies on the cross. The New Covenant kind of just transitions into effect. And some see a split where water baptism was required for salvation early on. But then that even changed to be not required for salvation during Paul's rising to the Apostle Paul. When he became the Apostle to the Gentiles, when the Jewish people rejected Stephen in Acts chapter 7, then we see the Apostle Paul come on the scene. We see the Gospel go to the Gentiles. We definitely believe that now anyway, water baptism is not required for salvation. So you have these different periods where the rules are perhaps different in each period. We're not following the Jewish law in what we call the Church Age now. We follow the New Testament, this latter part of our Bibles. We don't follow this frontal part, at least as far as the laws go. So just different ways in which things work.

       And we know that, again, from a dispensational mindset, from a premillennial mindset, as far as the end times and the Rapture, we believe the Rapture will occur. The church will exit the earth, and there'll be a seven-year literal tribulation period on the earth. And that's where there's the Antichrist and false prophet. And then after that, there'll be a 1,000-year reign of Christ after the Battle of Armageddon, which ends that seven-year tribulation period. Christ will reign for 1,000 years. So back during the tribulation period, it might be Old Testament style again. Maybe faith plus works. We don't really know for sure. It depends on which interpretation you go with. But different rules, perhaps for different times. Then you have the Millennial Kingdom, which is totally different for the Jewish people. So dispensations of time. And then after the Millennial Kingdom, you have the Eternal State. But we're kind of getting into a rabbit hole. But that's what's going on there.

       Going back to verse 10, another thing that comes up in reading this verse, I'll read it again. “as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (ESV).

       So, “to unite all things in [Christ.]” Does that mean that at the end, that God is going to end up saving everyone in the world? No matter what their background is, no matter what God they worshipped in this world, no matter what, whether they didn't worship a god at all, does God in the end bring everyone to himself? Well, we call that Universalism, that all will be saved. There are actually a few Evangelical Universalists. And I actually have a friend who quietly, kind of ‘hopefully’ holds to that position. He's hoping that that's true, that that's what will come about. As a matter of fact, I read a book, oh, a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, and I think it was more like three or four, and I'll bring it up here, bring up the cover, because I have it on Amazon Kindle, so courtesy of Amazon Kindle. Here's the book, it's called ‘The Evangelical Universalist’ by Gregory McDonald, that's the guy's pen name. And he wrote this defense, if you will, to try to show that the Bible supports that everyone's going to be saved, and obviously this verse in Ephesians is a big verse that they will go to to show their position.

       I personally do not hold that position. I can see why people hold it because John tells us that “God is love” and the hope is that love will overcome it all. And however that works, whether people die, go to hell, come out of hell one by one, or assuming that hell isn't a permanent state, whatever, however you want to frame it. The problem I have, well, there are several problems, but one problem that I will point out is in the book of Revelation, John tells us that those who had received the mark, remember, thrown into the Lake of Fire. And Jesus tells us in, I think, Matthew 24 or 25, in there, that Hell is eternal. In Revelation, it does use the word eternal, or not the word, but it uses the idea of eternal when talking about Satan.

       If we go to Revelation 20, this I think is a pretty hard thing to get around. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but it's talking about the book where people's names are written in it, the book of life. And so, if we look at verse 10 of Revelation 20, it says, “and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (ESV). The beast is a human being. The false prophet is a human being. Satan is an angelic being that fell. So there's an instance of two human beings where John unequivocally says they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. Now the Universalists would say, well, they would probably try to work around that. Maybe they would call the beast and the false prophet spiritual beings like Satan, maybe. Or if we go down to verse 14 of Revelation 20, again, you probably should read both these paragraphs to really get it, but I don't want to take up the time. “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire,” so that would be the old hell, so presumably the inhabitants of that old hell. "This is the second death, the lake of fire,” so somebody's dying, it's not the earth or the physical realm of Hell. “And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (ESV). Now, because John doesn't repeat the phrase that he said up in verse 10, “and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever,” there might be some hope that after the second death, people can come out.

       So there is that book that that guy wrote, Gregory MacDonald, pen name. I was not convinced by it. In all my Bible studying, I just was not fully convinced. He made some interesting arguments, but I just wasn't convinced by it. If you really want to study that Universalism side, I guess that would be... So he thinks how Evangelicals think with citing Scripture, backing things up with Scripture. He tries to use a proper logical framework to create his argument. I just wasn't fully convinced. But there's that.

       So no, I would say here in Ephesians, I don't think that Paul is meaning that. What I think he means is what we've been talking about with those who come into the body of believers, "to unite all things in Christ,” that's the hope. The hope from God is that all people will come into the church body. But obviously we know that's not going to happen. John just told us there are two people that ain't going to come in. We just saw that. All right? That's God's hope to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in him and Christ. And that's the thing is that's possible. That is theoretical, or was theoretically possible at that point in time. Really, it was possible at that time that everyone could have made that choice, right? If we look at the future that way, that the future isn't already predetermined and already decided in some aspects. Like let's say the Jews had accepted Stephen's speech in Acts chapter 7, they had accepted Christ, and so Christ came down, remember he was standing up, looking down, that might be because he was ready to come back at that point, let’s say he had returned at that point because they accepted his message, then John would have never written Revelation. All right?

       But now, because people have rejected this plan that Paul talks about in verse 10 in Ephesians, because people have rejected that, Christ didn't return. It's been delayed at least a couple thousand years. So John can then, in Revelation, write, around 90 AD, he can write, well, we already know that's not going to happen. Here are two people that are not because other people haven't. However you want to frame it, it could be that because other people haven't, it's pretty certain now that not everybody's going to do that. And so God, through looking at the infinite possibilities of the future, is able to safely say, (and this is above our pay grade a little bit, we’re trying to understand this) but God can say, yeah, this false prophet, this beast, they're not going to accept me in my true nature through Christ.

       We've got a few more verses to tackle. We kind of got off on a rabbit trail there a little bit. 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” (ESV).

       Wow, that's a big verse. Again, we're presented with the concept of predestined or predestination. Again, “God works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Does that mean that everything that happens in the world is God's will? I would say, no, that's not what that means. What that means is that when God works, ‘he’ works all things in accordance with the counsel of his will, according to the counsel of his will. And again, he wants people to come into this body of believers, but people have to make that free will choice. It's not that whatever happens in the world is God's will, because that's what happened. That's not how I understand it. That's not how a lot of others understand it. It's that God wants the good to happen. He works toward that good. Remember Romans 8:28? That would be a good parallel verse. We know that verse. God works toward the good. He works all things that he is doing according to the counsel of his will. But remember, there are those two other, kind of three-ish, other wills. Satan's fallen angels, human will, and then whatever the earth does. So there are those other things in play.

       But anyway, to continue on, verse 12, “so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory” (ESV).

       Again, we would read this as those early Christians that were the first to hope in Christ, Paul being included for whatever the reason he makes a distinction. The early Christians are to the praise of God's glory. And then if we get to verse 13, “And him you also,” the Ephesians, the body of believers at Ephesus, “when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him.” So he's saying that they also are included in this praise of God's glory. That this whole thing that God has accomplished through Christ, this ability to reconcile people to himself. I mean, it's an incredible thing to the praise of God's glory. That we can be made whole and completely right in Jesus Christ. No sin, no sin debt, growing to be like we should be, following the correct things like the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, the whole nine fruits there, and things like those things, just becoming, we say, more like Jesus, which is like God himself. We're becoming whole and complete, secure, not insecure, not anxious, not all those bad things. We have security in Christ, which interestingly leads to the next point.

       Continuing verse 13, “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” (ESV).

       So there we have it. That's all three persons of the Trinity mentioned in the Godhead. We were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Remember that Jesus promised the disciples in the Gospel of John. Another good book to read, one of my favorites that I read early on in my Christian journey, is Charles Stanley's book called ‘Eternal Security.’ Very, very helpful book. But the point is, because we have been given the Holy Spirit, because we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, Romans talks about that, because we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we know that when we die, there's no fear of any possibility of ending up in hell or being separated from God because God has given us his promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

       So we'll die. Then at some point after we die, we'll get that inheritance. I don't know how long the delay will be there. Probably depending on how long we wait for the end of time to occur. And if we want to look at inheritance there as our being physically with God instead of rewards, we get that right away, right? We see Jesus upon dying. So there you have it. Paul tells us right at the tail end is to the praise of God's glory so Paul ends it by saying we were promised the Holy Spirit those of us who have believed have received that Holy Spirit. We are now part of the body of Christ of God's package that was predetermined from before the foundation of the world. And we know that because the Spirit dwells within us, as John talks about in his epistle of 1 John. Kind of some parallels with John.

       I don't want to get into it any further other than to say that anyone now and this time can accept this free gift of God through Jesus Christ by believing in Christ's accomplishment on the cross, the shedding of his blood for forgiveness of their sins, past, present, and future, and can believe in Christ's resurrection, that he actually rose from the dead, that he's actually with God the Father in heaven today, and gain that personal relationship with God, all the other benefits with that, which includes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us, both as a church and individually.

- Daniel Litton