The Real Blessings of Adoption (Ephesians 1:5-7)

Father in heaven, we give you praise for all that you've given

us already this day. Thank you for causing us to

rise, for the grace to breathe, for the grace to think and to

feel. Thank you for opening our ears

and our eyes. And we pray, Holy Spirit, that

you would continue to illuminate these words, that we would

receive them, be fed by them, be transformed by them all for your

glory. And by your grace, we pray in

the name of Jesus. Amen.

This morning I'm going to continue preaching through the

early parts of Ephesians this very long, beautiful, majestic

sentence that Paul was carried along to write.

I'm going to begin at verse 5 and read through verse 7.

Paul writes in love. He predestined us for adoption

to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose

of His will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he

has blessed us and the beloved in Him.

We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our

trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Please be seated if you have not been here the last couple of

weeks. We have been studying the

doctrine of Election, the doctrine of predestination, that

complex, beautiful, encouraging reality some of you were exposed

to for the first time. Others of you have been in this

a long time. There are many different

questions that come for just a couple of minutes.

I want to address some of them before we move into the meat of

this particular sermon. One of the questions that comes

from those who are having a hard time understanding the doctrine

of predestination and election is then, if that's true, if God

already knows, why would we do evangelism?

Why would we share our faith? Well, two reasons come to mind

quickly. Number one, we should always do

what God commands us to do, and he clearly commands us to do it.

The reason he commands us to do it is the God who ordains all

things. All things, the primary cause of

everything, also ordains the means by which they happen.

He ordains the secondary causes in God's normative way of having

his good news. His gospel extended is by using

his Saints in places of work and recreation, in our homes, in our

neighborhoods, in our schools, praying for those who we don't

think know the Lord, telling them the truth of Jesus, and

then the gospel goes forth. Those who really cling to these

truth, these biblical doctrines of election and predecessor,

should be the most zealous for evangelism and the most

confident. Another question is, if God

already knows and he's already chosen me, then why would I need

to live a certain way? If it doesn't really matter, why

don't I just live any way I want?

Well, if that's the way you're thinking and it's actually the

way you're living, I would not have great confidence that you

truly are one of his, at least not yet.

That hasn't been revealed because those who have been

saved, those whose names are in the book of life, those to whom

He's revealed His grace, and you've received Christ, your

heart was changed. That which you could not have

wanted to bring Him glory, that which you could not have desired

to bring Him play praise, that which you would never have

wanted to live a life of holiness for His glory wouldn't

be true. All who are in Christ this side

of heaven still fight the flesh, still have temptations like the

rest of the world, but our desire is to mortify the flesh,

to mortify sin, to live for his glory.

That's why Paul in Ephesians 5 is going to say, But among you,

those are the Saints, the followers of Christ.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality

or of impurity or of greed, for these are improper for God's

holy people. We're going to talk about being

holy and blameless in a moment. Another one, which I addressed

last week is, are we not just puppets and pawns?

I'll encourage you to go back and listen to last week's sermon

and then one final one. We'll be answering more as we

move through the letter. It doesn't seem fair if God

chooses some and passes over others.

It just doesn't seem fair. I understand that.

I wrestled with that and felt that a long time.

Here's the truth. God showing grace to some

doesn't ever show grace or owe grace to all.

Grace is never to be something that's required of God.

It wouldn't be grace. And so God, in His wisdom and by

His design, when He chose to share grace with some, that was

not something He had to do. In fact, if we want to talk

about being fair, none of us would have received it.

We all would receive what we deserve.

That is to be separated from Him forever.

I know these questions are complex and they're real.

That's why we go back to the Word.

We stay in the Word, and we surrender to the Word.

The way we surrender is by actually listening to what Paul

says, particularly in verses 5 and 6.

Listen to this, the second part of verse 5.

He says according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of

His glorious grace. Every time we look at God's

Word, everything that God ever has done and is doing and will

do, it is always to the purpose of His will, it is always to the

purpose of His glory. We don't always understand it.

We don't always like it, but it's always to His glory and to

the praise of His glory, fulfilling the purpose of His

will. And the reason that matters is

because we're surrendering to the One who is far greater,

perfectly wise, who knows exactly what is happening.

All for His glory and our good this morning.

The way I would like to look at the verses before us is to

highlight these themes. First His will, His glory and

His grace. Then I want to talk once again

about adoption and then finally redemption as you see those

words in this passage. And here's the way I would like

to do it. Many years ago, in the mid 90s,

I became quite enamoured with studying the Civil War.

I read as many books as I could and then I decided to go to one

of the battlefields. The one I chose was Gettysburg,

and the reason I chose Gettysburg was because

Christina's dad, my wife's dad, lived about 45 minutes from

there. They had a farm.

And so the first time we went, Dave and I drove 45 minutes to

Gettysburg and we spent about 3 hours only going to the museum

and seeing some of the sights. We read the plaques, we read the

things that were written. A few years later we went back

again and this time we got a cassette or tuned to the radio,

I don't remember which one. It was the 90s though.

So the kiss that was possible. And we drove through this

enormous battlefield, stopping where the tape told us to stop

and listening to the narrator. It was a much better way to see

the field. We began to see the scope and

scan of the war, the strategies from both sides.

But we still knew we needed more.

And so the next time what we did was we hired a guide, and this

guide rode with us in the car. We took a little bit longer at

each place. And then the fourth time we

went, we hired a guide who specialized in one particular

part of the battle and one particular part of the war, and

that was the battle of Little Round Top.

For 8 hours we listened to this expert, one on two telling us

what happened and they're standing on that ground where

between July 1st and 3rd in 1860, three 50,000 men lost

their lives. 50,000 you just looked knowing that they were

here. I'm standing where there was

blood. This was amazing for us to see

the depth of which we dug into understanding it was profound.

Well, that's what we do with the Word of God.

We come to saving faith and we know a little bit about the big

picture, but then as we grow in our faith, we begin to

understand more of who He is. We actually began to realize

that the Bible's really not about us.

It's not about our having a book that just guides us through each

day. It's not the best motivational

book that's ever been written on its purpose.

Its purpose is about the glory of God in the glory of God and

redeeming his people. It's the history of redemption.

And as we read it, we begin to understand new things.

Just after the last hour, a woman in her late 70s or early

80s came up to me, a dear sister in Christ, and she said the last

three weeks I have never heard these things.

I did not know they were in the Bible.

Well, she's being exposed to a part of the Bible that is God's

Word and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and

training in righteousness. And in the season, we are

focused on one particular book and we're taking our time to

move through it. Some of you want to go deeper

and there's books available, resources available, and you

can. But it's all for one purpose.

And that one purpose is always ultimately the glory of God, the

glory of God, and the grace of God.

Let me share something about these things for a few minutes.

According to the purpose of His will.

Verse 5, verse 6, to the praise of His glorious grace.

God's grace and God's glory are two remarkable themes that

anchor us as His followers. But what do we mean when we

speak about God's glory? It's one of those words that you

hear all the time, much like the word redemption, which we'll get

to in a moment. Martin Lloyd Jones, speaking

about God's glory, said this. It is almost impossible to say

anything about the glory of God because our language, our

terminology, our words are quite inadequate to convey any true

sense of it. So how can we?

Well, we need to take God at his Word.

God's word reveals his attributes and character.

It reveals his work in creation and care.

It reveals his wisdom and his works.

God's Word tells us of God's beauty.

And as I list these words, every one of these words describe God

in perfection. What that means is when I say

God is beautiful, He's perfectly beautiful.

There is not one aspect of God that is not beautiful.

There's not one aspect of his radiance that isn't perfect.

He's brighter than the sun. Our God is majestic.

He is full of splendor. He is great, and the psalmist

says his greatness is unsearchable.

I will extol you, my God and King, and praise your name

forever and ever. For great is the Lord, and his

greatness is unsearchable. We can't say that about anyone

or anything else. His might, His power, His power

immeasurable. He's eternal.

The word glory means wait. When we think of God, we leave

an astonishment of who He is. When we come to the doctrines of

salvation presented here, the first and greatest truth

concerning salvation is that it is a revelation of the glory of

God to the praise of His glorious grace.

When we think of God's grace as Christians, we realize His Word

tells us it's all grace from the beginning to the end.

In the middle, it's always God's grace.

RC Sproul says it this way. He says, when I was studying

theology at the doctoral level in Europe at the Free University

of Amsterdam, our professor GC Burkhauer once made this

statement when we were studying systematic theology.

He said, gentlemen, the essence of theology is grace, Sproul

writes. I think he's right.

When we get to the very essence of what our study of theology

is, we are studying the grace of God because it's by God's grace

that we are Christians in the 1st place.

Now we say Amen to that, but do we really go and trace back the

depth of what that means? That it has nothing to do with

us? God did not look into the future

and say they're going to be better than someone else.

It's His grace from beginning to end.

It's by God's grace that we even draw a breath at this very

moment. And it's by God's grace that we

receive every benefit from His hand from the beginning to the

end. The whole Christian life is

grace. And that's why I say that the

more we study grace, the more we see grace and the more we see

the need for grace. I remember being in seminary,

and my closest friend now was the one I despise the most at

the beginning. You're not supposed to despise

people in seminary, but I got to be honest, I did.

I've said this before, his name's Daniel and it was because

during one of the lectures, maybe the 10th lecture on grace,

he literally with great confidence said professor, all

due respect, we get grace. Can we move on to something else

now? What's the professor thinking?

I think we let a non believer into the seminary, He doesn't

get grace. We are never going to fully get

grace, and grace is the thing that should refute the old idea

that those who believe in these doctrines of grace are the

frozen chosen. Friends, I hate that phrase.

It should never be true of us. Those who get grace knowing they

need more grace should be the most humble, the most sober, and

the most on fire for the Lord in their worship, in their work, in

their homes, in their recreation, constantly ready to

give the doxology to the praise of His glorious grace.

Our salvation, which is by grace alone, is also to God's glory

alone. We think it's all about us and

it's not. It's all about Him, but in his

plan to save us, he brings us by grace into this glorious

reality. Richard Phillips says it's not

primarily about us. God saved us with a higher

motive than just our blessing. God has so arranged salvation to

bring us the highest possible blessing and Himself the highest

possible praise, both of which result only through the glory of

His grace. Glory and grace are a big deal.

The essential nature of God is His glory.

It's that which makes God, God. So in this passage we come to

this phrase in verse 5. In love, He predestined us for

adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.

The verse before it, if you remember from last week, Paul

tells us that we were chosen before the foundation of the

world, that we should be holy and blameless.

I want to go back to these two words for a moment as we enter

into the theme of adoption again.

The word holy means to be set apart, and God alone is holy.

He's set apart and He is holy in every part of who He is.

He's holy in His grace and His mercy and His revelation.

He is holy in his wrath and His justice and His love, meaning

there's no imperfection. There's nothing that can be

added or taken away. He's holy.

He's set apart. Jesus, our Savior, God, true

God, is blameless. Paul, early in the letter,

speaking to this young church, says he chose us, and he tells

us why and for what purpose that we should be home, holy and

blameless before Him. How can we be holy and

blameless? Because we're not.

Something has to happen first. There has to be something that

is reduced, there has to be something that is taken away,

something that is not just reduced but entirely removed.

And that is our sin. The word blemish is really where

the word that we get blameless comes from and we are full of

blemishes. So God in his mercy takes that

account of our blemishes, every one of them, and he deletes it.

He empties it. He removes it so that if we were

looking at a statement, an accounting statement where it

said blemishes, where it said sins, they're removed.

But something is added. He doesn't just leave it at

neutral. And what is added and received

is the righteousness of Christ. Why does that matter?

Well, the only way we could become those who are holy and

blameless before Him is through Christ.

And this is where we move into the theme of adoption.

Last week in our profession of faith, we quoted from the

Westminster Confession, chapter 12.

What speaks of our adoption? It speaks of the privileges we

have. It speaks of the protection we

receive, the provision from the Lord, and that we're going to

never be cast off. Adoption is a big theme.

If you weren't here for Winter Grace, I would encourage you to

go onto our website and listen to David Gibson.

One of the themes of his message was be who you are.

But in order to be who you are, you have to know who you are.

Couple of weeks ago, my daughter was in a musical called Mary

Poppins. You've heard of it.

And she was Mary Poppins. And it was fantastic.

Six shows, watching your own daughter perform.

And she was remarkable. After the shows, as we would

greet her and the other cast members, people would come up to

give her encouragement. And then they would look at me

and say, are you her father sometimes?

Are you her grandfather? And I would simply say, yes,

that's my daughter. Where did she learn to sing?

Did she get that from you? What about her, her acting?

No, no, no, not from me. I peeked in 3rd grade, 3rd

grade. I was Santa Claus in the

Christmas play, and then in the spring play, I was an owl.

I have no idea what my lines were as Santa Claus, but I

remember my lines as the owl. Who, who, Who are you?

That was it, over and over again.

But you know what? That is the most important

question next to who is God? And who does God say you are in

Christ? And who does God say you are

apart from Christ? David Gibson said over and over

again. Be who you are, but who are you?

Are you in Christ? Well, if you're in Christ, that

means you are his adopted child. The passage says in verse 5.

He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus

Christ. You are His.

That same year, third grade, I met for the first time, an

orphan. His name was Michael Garcia.

He was in foster care in Oklahoma City at that time.

On Wednesday night, the ABC affiliate, the news station had

something called Wednesday's Child.

And Wednesday's child was always a three to five minute video of

a boy or girl who was in the system who needed someone to

adopt them. Michael was my friend.

I begged my parents to adopt him.

We were one small house, 5 energetic children, three small

bedrooms, 1 bathroom and my parents had huge hearts, but

they also had wisdom. They knew it would not be good

for him. But I wanted my mom and dad to

adopt him so much. One day he was adopted.

I never knew what became of him, but that was my first exposure

to adoption. Friends, this adoption by God is

what establishes your primary and permanent identity.

It's the one identity that you have forever.

If you're in Christ, you're a beloved child.

You're adopted by him. And what that means is that when

the Father sees you, because you've been adopted and Christ

is in you and you are in Christ, you are seen the same way the

Father sees the Son. It's remarkable.

The Son is blameless. The Son is holy because you're

his adopted son. You're the same friends.

This is what God's word is teaching us.

In November, someone in some part of the country reached out

to one of my children, my oldest daughter, Kara, and said, I

think we might have a family connection.

This is an older man who said, I'm just trying to put things in

order and I want to understand where my relatives are.

Would your dad be willing to take the DNA test so we could

just see? So I did it.

I took the Q-tip. I swabbed each cheek and I sent

it in. Don't know what's going to

happen, but I know this much. It's not going to say I was

adopted and I was. All who are in Christ are

adopted. It's going to tell me wonderful

things about our history. I can't wait to see it, but it's

not going to go far back, not like this.

And whatever is on there is neat is it will be.

It's not going to be permanent and it's not going to be

primary. That's already been decided.

But the cost of being before him is blameless and holy.

The cost of being adopted as one of his children was that

redemption had to take place. So it's been the last remaining

time in this word redemption. The word redemption is a

biblical word that runs through Scripture, but it's also one of

those words like glory, that if we're not careful, it loses its

meaning. And significant, whenever we see

the word redemption, are we seeing the word redemption?

It always supposes that there is bondage, captivity and

enslavement present. So immediately in the Old

Testament you think of the people of God, the nation of

Israel. They're held by the nation of

Egypt as slaves. They are in bondage, they are

enslaved and they cannot get themselves out.

They cannot set themselves free. James Montgomery Boyce, Speaking

of how we are in bondage, made this parallel.

He said there's three ways for us to be in bondage, either born

into slavery, to have a military conquest where we're taken away

as slaves are to have debt so great that we can't pay it.

But the key reality is those who are in bondage, those who are

enslaved, those who are in captivity can't get themselves

out. So as it relates to sin, Boyce

says according to Psalm 51, we're all born in iniquity,

we're all born in sin. All of us have sinned and fallen

short of the glory of God in terms of a military conquest.

We are conquered by Satan and his power constantly as we serve

him and slave to sin. And to speak of debts, all of

us, so many debts that we could never repay them.

So how could someone be set free?

There was only one way, and that would be that a ransom would be

paid. And this ransom had to be

according to the law. So it is with God as well.

That's why Jesus says in Mark 10:45 and in the book of

Mark 10:45

Matthew, he says the Son of Man did not come to be served, but

to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The ransom meant in the Old Testament sacrificial system

that there would be a spotless substitute.

The blood of this spotless perfect substitute would be cut

and spilled. When that substitute took place,

then the wrath of God which was holy, the justice of God which

was holy, would be turned away from the Sinner.

The results would be forgiveness.

Jesus Christ, from the Old Testament prophesied and the New

Testament fulfilled, became that one true and final perfect

spotless sacrifice, perfect spotless substitute.

Hebrews 9/12 He Jesus entered once for all into the holy

places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but

by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

And So what that means is that if you're in Christ, your ransom

was Christ. His blood was shed for you, that

you could be His adopted son, His adopted daughter, that you

could stand in Christ before the living God, blameless and holy.

A number of years ago, my family had the opportunity to go with a

few other families from this church to the Holy Land to see

the Sea of Galilee, to see many of the sites where Jesus was

known to walk and perform miracles In many places.

They don't know if this is the exact site, but one of them that

is the exact site is the Garden of Gethsemane.

When I walked into the Garden of Gethsemane, which isn't that

large, and my children were with me, and my dear bride was with

me and other members from this church, we were standing there

on this ground and this was a ground that also received blood.

It was where somewhere in the proximity that we could see our

Savior 2000 years ago, knowing that it was the night for him to

become that ransom, knowing something of the cup that He was

being asked to drink, the cup of His Father's wrath because of

all your blemishes, all your sins and mine, He prayed to the

Father. Father, if you are willing, take

this cup from me. Yet not my will be done, but

yours. Isaiah tells us word for word

that it was the will of the Father to crush Him.

Why? For His glory, For the glory of

redemption. The only way His people could be

redeemed was if this perfect Lamb, His perfect righteous Son,

would drink the cup, which was the death that you and I deserve

to die. I want you to consider that

love, love so amazing, love so divine, demands my life, my

soul, my all. That's why the glory of God and

the grace of God anchor us and why He made us His own.

Think deeply this week on who you are.

Who are you? Are you in Christ?

Then pray God never let's these beautiful doctrines become stale

or your worship to look like you're 1 that barely knows what

you've been saved from. He saved you by grace and

nothing else, for His glory and nothing else.

Jesus, thank you for that gift. Thank you for carrying Paul

along Holy Spirit, to write these words that would encourage

us with the truth thousands of years later.

Thank you above all that those of us who are in Christ.

You're giving us eyes to see, and it was all by grace.

Fill our hearts and minds with Your glory.

May we even leave this day, not just finishing a service, but

walking out rejoicing to the praise of your glorious grace,

with which even this day you have blessed us in the beloved

we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

Please stand.