HE HATH CHOSEN US

THE SIXTH IN A SERIES OF MESSAGES ON EPHESIANS FOR BBCMP, DELIVERED 2/17/13 PM

HE HATH CHOSEN US

EPHESIANS 1:1-14

INTRODUCTION

I heard a sermon this week[1] entitled “Prayer, the Highest Form of Worship.”  In that message, the preacher took on the Prosperity Gospel and Word Faith heresies, and the blasphemous error of supposing that prayer is a way to direct God to do what we want Him to do. 

Make no mistake about it, prayer, in the Prosperity Gospel / Word-of-Faith way of thinking is nothing short of commanding God to do what you want Him to do.  It is to

•          Imagine what you want
•          Declare that you have it “In Jesus’ name”
•          Receive it

One might wonder how anyone indwelt by the Spirit of God, or even taught the Christian faith and yet not even regenerated, could be deceived by such obvious heresies.  And yet we are seeing a great amalgamation going on, in which a large segment of the professing Church, many of which were raised in Fundamentalist or very conservative Evangelical homes and Churches are getting cozy with Word of Faith heretics.  The American Evangelicals are having the Prosperity Gospel heretics preach for them, they are accepting invitations to Word of Faith events, and sharing the platform in conferences that should have some kind of theological fencing. 

But the fence has been moved out so far that as long as there is some pretense of using the Bible, and some use of the name of Jesus, that’s good enough.  And I don’t think it will be long before those things are gone.  Consider Oprah’s “Life Class” and some of the people that Rick Warren brought in for his “Daniel Plan”

Now I’m not going to hold any one person responsible for this – or any single cause.  But this preacher happened to challenge an erroneous view of prayer that would be more familiar to you and I.  In fact, he actually referred to one particular book[2], one that I read many years ago, and quoted part of it that reads;

Prayer is not praise, adoration, meditation, humiliation, nor confession, but asking.  Again let me press upon your heart and mind that prayer is asking, and not anything else. .. Prayer is not praise and praise is not prayer, prayer is asking.  Adoration is not prayer and prayer is not adoration.  Prayer is always asking.  It is not anything else but asking.[3]    

He goes on to say basically the same thing about meditation, humiliation and confession.  And that idea was not just in that one chapter.  It was repeated again and again throughout the book. 

When I was a baby Christian, and knew that I should pray, and wanted to learn how to pray, I really couldn’t get anyone to take the time to teach me to pray.  The best I could get was a book recommendation, and the book that everyone recommended to me was that book.  I think it’s because it’s the only book that they knew about. 

It didn’t help my prayer life.  Looking back, I’m convinced it did me more harm than good, because it did not teach me anything I needed to learn about prayer.  It just repeatedly came back around to that same premise.  Ask, ask, ask, receive, receive, receive.

I had a hard time accepting it, but I figured I must, because he was a great man of God and I was a babe in Christ, and a wicked sinner, and still trying to get the flesh on some kind of a leash.

I was too uninformed at the time to know that he was disagreeing with the overwhelming testimony and practice of the church for the previous 19 centuries.  All I knew was that he was a big name preacher in the movement in which I had found Christ, so I figured he must know what he was talking about.  And he undoubtedly had a prayer life.  But he didn’t teach anything helpful in that book, or if he did, it was offset by his repeated insistence that nothing but asking is praying.

He successfully convinced me, and it stuck for a couple of decades, that I wasn’t praying unless I was asking for something, and,  by extension, that my prayers weren’t being heard unless I was getting specific answers to specific requests.

In other words, unless you have a list of “answered prayers”, you aren’t a good Christian.  Well, over time, I began to realize I wasn’t a very good Christian, and that my prayers weren’t very effective at all.

Now maybe you can see the link here.  It would not be a very long stretch to go from thinking that prayer is only and always asking God for something, and that the test of the effectiveness of your prayer would be measured by your answers, to full tilt boogie Word of Faith teaching.  It isn’t much different.  Both take out the element of real worship and submission from prayer, and replace it with some kind of intense assertion of the human will in order to move God to action in giving the mortal sinner what the mortal sinner wants.

Certainly the writer of that book would not have intended for his readers to be made more susceptible to the Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospel messages.  But intentionally or not he did.

I thank God that Gordon Trammell saw the handwriting on the wall with me, and used what influence he had on me to try and steer me toward something a little deeper.  He’s the friend that took me to that little Christian book room somewhere in an office building in downtown D.C., operated by a Chinese man, where they had all the works of Watchman Nee, and that I bought and read much of that.  It helped to offset the other semi-Pelagian nonsense I was also taking in. 

But one Chinese “Deeper-Lifer” was working against “the world’s greatest Soul-winning Evangelist" and "The 20th Centuries mightiest pen”, and the preaching I was hearing that was in full agreement with what that author had to say, and the culture that accepted that idea. 

Apparently, nobody I was rubbing elbows with had read Luther, or Ryle, or Spurgeon, or Andrewes, or MacDuff or Nee or anyone else on the subject of prayer.  IFB provincialism had been at work for a while in that culture, and they had a very narrow field to choose from when it came to spiritual reading.  Not only did they not know of any Christian authors outside a couple of very small publishing outlets, they viewed them with suspicion. 

Now if I was saying this on my own, against a great Christian leader, it would be audacious of me.  But I’m not on my own in this opinion.  In fact, historically speaking, I’m with the overwhelming majority – as long as you are willing to accept that there could be real Christians outside of the IFB movement in the 20^th Century. 

In point of fact, prayer is much more than just asking God for things.  It IS adoration, confession, profession, humiliation, creedal affirmation – in a word, prayer IS worship – the highest form of worship that anyone can participate in, because that is the sort of praying that denies self-will and affirms the three things we pressed home last time

·        God is the Ultimate Being in all of reality.

·         God’s glory is therefore the ultimate objective and outcome of all things that happen

·         God’s glory ought to be the ultimate goal of all that we do, and all that we ask of Him. 

I absolutely cannot fathom how insisting that God give us what we desire because we have convinced ourselves that we have it coming gives Him any glory at all.

One of the most Christ-like things a Christian can say is, “not my will but thine.”

Exercising yourself under the load of “Not my will, but Thine” is every Christian’s calling, and prayer is the place we work through that.  Later in this epistle, Paul is going to admonish the saints in Ephesus to “be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is (5:17), and “as the servants of Christ” to do “the will of God from the heart” (6:6). 

And it’s wrong, and thoughtless, and misleading and actually harmful to teach people that they are not praying when they do that.

I bring that up because we now enter into this outburst of praise to God which may or may not technically be part of Paul’s praying, and his teaching about prayer in the book of Ephesians.  That, I think, is still debatable.

But what isn’t debatable is that understanding these things, in the way Paul presents them to us, will enable the believer to pray much more easily, and honestly, “not my will, but Thine.”  The actual prayer requests may not start till v. 15.  But the theological foundation upon which the requests depend is given starting here.  And these things are not handled just as dry dogma.  They are the occasion of praise. 

Paul praised God for God’s actual work, not for what it meant to him, or his own feelings about it, or as a result of it.  After pronouncing the benediction of v. 3 that we looked at last week, beginning in v. 4, he then reaches back beyond time, space and matter, and recalls God’s eternal purpose in the salvation of men.

And there is a clear three-fold division to it wherein each person of the Godhead is singled out for praise and glory.

·        THE FATHER:  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath … according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace,  wherein he hath made us accepted in…

·        THE SON:  …the beloved.   In whom we have redemption … That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation:

·         THE HOLY SPIRIT:  in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance… unto the praise of his glory.

I like answered prayer as much as anybody, I guess.  But if it’s all about me getting the answer I want because I was able to conjour up enough faith to force God to make it so, who gets the glory in that equation?  Where’s the servant’s attitude (6:6) of humble submission to the greater will of the greater Being?

Have you ever considered just how small and insignificant you are in comparison to God?  He’s greater than His own creation (the greater cannot proceed from the lesser), and we are immeasurably small in comparison with that.  Someone named Irwin Moon (I can’t remember where I found it) wrote, 

“All of us have looked up, on a clear night, and seen the sparkling, twinkling stars.  But, how many of us have realized that we cannot see the stars as they are now?  Every time we look, we are looking into the past, seeing them as they were.  The most distant naked-eye star, Alpha Centauri, is about four light years away.  The most distant naked-eye object, the Andromeda Galaxy, is about a million-and-half light years away.  This means that the light has been traveling four light years or over a million years to reach us.  As a result, we are looking into the past.  But this works both ways.  If you were on one of the stars you would - assuming an adequate telescope - see the earth as it was sometime in the past.  From the star Sirius, you could see what you are doing nine years ago, because, in a profoundly scientific sense, you are still doing it.  Yes, everything you have ever done, you are still doing.  The ghost of your past haunts the universe.  But remember . . .  God is omnipresent.  This means that, for God, every sin you have ever committed, every evil thing you have ever done, you are still doing, and will continue to do forever, apart from God’s forgiveness.  Only the omnipotent, eternal God who controls the factors of time, space and matter, could ever remove sin.”

This is the God with Whom we have to do.  This is the God to Whom we have to answer.  This is the God Who occupies the Eternal now and is everywhere present in time as well as in Space, and therefor knows everything from the beginning in the sense of actually being there, always having been there, and always shall have been there.

How could He NOT have chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world?  If you understand this about God, then nothing else would make sense.  It could only be this way, and not be any other way.

People worry when I speak about salvation being of Him, and His work, and not by our will or our work or of ourselves.  But do they really think that somehow they have the controlling interest in the salvation of their souls?  That it ultimately rests upon them?  That’s a mighty audacious thing to think.

I have never denied that the sinner must choose Christ over all competitors, that he must decide for the gospel, and intentionally turn to God.  That is clear in Scripture.

For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; (1 Thessalonians 1:9)

And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: (Acts 14:15)

Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. (Acts 26:17-18)

But you can affirm that without denying what we have here.  We did chose Him, we did turn to Him, without a doubt.  Many of us remember the date.  But He chose us before the foundation of the world.   And I can’t imagine that our choosing of Him at our particular point in time carries more weight than His choosing of us before time.

I know that God’s divine choosing and the free offer of the gospel don’t seem completely compatible.  But do you want to know something wonderful?  It’s not your problem!   Nor is it mine.  I didn’t write the Bible, and I’m not commanded to be able to explain everything in it.  But I am commanded to believe everything in it, proclaim what it says, and not tamper with it or twist it.  I’m not obligated, nor am I able to unravel the mysteries of divine foreknowledge.  

But on any time line you could come up with, His choosing came first.  And we should accept that, to the praise of the glory of His grace.

And let me tell you something else that’s wonderful.  You may struggle with the order of salvation (ordo salutis) – John Bunyan created a pretty amazing chart – one that Clarence Larkin would be proud of – to try and map it all out.  But if you understand what Paul is saying here, what you won’t struggle with is assurance of salvation. 

This is radical teaching from Paul.  This is not just saving grace, it’s initiating grace.  It’s God reaching out to us before we’re ever able to reach back to Him.  Just as He has blessed you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, so also, from before the foundations of the world, He set His love on you.   

Before you existed – before your parents, before the first parents of the entire human race – before the planet you live on,  before space,  time or matter, He set His love on you – not because of anything you had done, because you didn’t exist.  Not because of anything you would do.  But simply because He chose to.

How’s that for a place to stake your eternal security?  Way better than thinking that you’re pretty sure you were sincere enough, or based on whether or not you really have that besetting sin under control yet.  That’s even better than having the time and the date and the address of the place you prayed the sinner’s prayer written in the front of one of your Bibles.

And finally, we have here something of God’s purpose in choosing us; “That we should be holy and without blame before him in love”.  John (1Jn. 4:19) says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”  Both John and Paul are talking about a cause and an effect.  God’s love for us cannot but eventuate in our loving Him in return.  And God’s choosing of us cannot but eventuate in our becoming holy and without blame before Him, in love. 

This isn’t teaching Holiness Perfectionism in this life, but it is teaching something about practical sanctification and eventual glorification, both as benefits of God’s love toward us.

God didn’t choose us because we were holy, or because we would become holy.  He chose us in order that we could become holy.  We are blessed by God to be holy; we do not pursue holiness in order to be blessed by God.  We are chosen of God, and blessed of God, to become holy in a two-fold sense – set apart to God now, and sinlessly perfect in the presence of God someday out there.  And those things will be because God loves us. 

If you are pursuing holiness to get God to love you, or to be assured that God loves you, then you aren’t going to get very far.  You’ll be about like the Pharisees, lookin good on the outside and rotten on the inside. 

But if you ever just give in to the truth that God loved you and  saved you simply because He to, because of His love in Jesus Christ, that will change everything.  Once you get that, then you will begin to pursue holiness because you realize that God has made you for that holiness, and ordained for you to become holy, and that He delights in the glory that He conveys upon Himself by the holiness He forms in you, well that will make all the difference in the world.

 

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[1] by John MacArthur

[2] Prayer, Asking and Receiving by John R. Rice

[3] Ch. 3, Prayer is Asking.