Who You Say I Am | I Am Sealed (May 19th, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

Father God, as we've been working through these verses here in Ephesians chapter 1, Lord, it's amazing to just think about who we are in you.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Lord, it's so important that we understand that.

We that we don't run to idols, that we don't run to these false identities and all these other voices that we hear, whether it's the world, whether it's other people, whether it's even our own fallen flesh, trying to get us to buy into something that is is created, something that is is weak, something that does not fulfill, something that does not bring us hope, all of these things, Lord.

I pray that you would continue to teach us and continue to help us to hold and cling firm to the identity that you have given us, Lord.

And so as we look at how our salvation is sealed by the Holy Spirit, Lord, I pray that we would again just be filled with a sense of assurance as to what you have have done in us through Jesus.

I pray, Lord, that this would tra would transform our lives going from here.

Lord, I pray that we would desire to experience your glory, Lord, as we've even sung about here this morning.

Lord, I pray that in all of these things we would make much of you, Lord, and not be self-centered and not be self-focused, and not just be about us, but be about you.

So Lord, as we are weak and as we are frail, and as we struggle, and we all do, Lord, I pray that we would bring all of that before you and ask you to make us strong.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, well, in Christ I am sealed.

You see it right there.

That's our uh one point for today.

And uh, if you would look at me now, uh with me now, in uh at verse 13, we're gonna start to kind of walk through this uh here and unpack it.

But it says there, in him uh you also.

Okay, so you remember last week how he actually talked specifically to the uh about the Jews, right?

Jewish believers, and now he's here, he's zooming in on Gentile believers, you also.

In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, all right.

So, so they, these are the believers, the Jews and the Gentiles here, and and us, we believe that that salvation from sin, from the wrath of God against our sin, we believe that that's an entirely a work of Jesus.

All right, it's not like 90% what Christ did on the cross and then 10% us and our morality and our good works.

It's it's all Him, right?

That's what that's what we believe.

It was simply and lovingly given to us and received by us by faith, right?

It's given by grace, received by faith.

Okay, so when we believed in him, it says, when we humbled ourselves and repented of our sins, when we did this, it says, keep going, that we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

It was the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

That's pointing ahead to heaven now.

Again, our full glorification.

And then it says to the praise of his glory.

Now, again, we went through that, we read that somewhat quickly here, so let's kind of zoom in on it, slow down a little bit, unpack this so we understand uh really what's being said here and what this means for you and I.

When it says there that in him we are sealed with the with the promised Holy Spirit, it's it's really crucial that you and I understand or recognize, realize the significance of what a seal is or what a seal was.

Okay, when the Ephesian church would have heard this or read you know Paul's letter to them, they would have naturally thought about uh a binding uh legal document or a decree, a mandate issued by a ruler uh or a king.

Okay, now this would have been you know written out on a scroll or on a letter.

I mean, you see the picture there, right?

It's it's it would have been enclosed or stamped uh with with a seal, all right?

Before, of course, being delivered and read or or spoken, read aloud even to whoever it was to.

Now the seal itself was something that let everyone know that this decree, this command was from the king or from the the government ruler or or the person of nobility himself, right?

It let us know that.

Now, John MacArthur throw this quote out here, uh, up there.

He points out that a seal signif uh signified four primary or or major things there, and so you see it.

Uh the first one we'll go through, kind of go through those words there a little bit.

You see the first one there is security.

Okay, the first one is security.

So sealing a document involved pouring hot wax, right?

We saw that picture there just a second ago.

Involved pouring hot wax on an enclosure of the document, and and then what would happen was the king's own signet, it was sometimes his you know his ring or a or a or a stamp, his his mark was was used to make an imprint in the hot wax, so that when the wax hardened, you couldn't you couldn't open the document without first breaking that that seal.

Okay, this was to secure the information that the decree contained until it could be opened and and and read by the right person or by the right uh people.

All right, and there's even a security element when you think to uh how Christ's tomb was sealed, right?

It was sealed with the stone.

There's a security element there.

We didn't want anybody coming in to just take out what was what was there, and so it was actually, we know, God Himself that that moved the stone and and unsealed it.

Okay, so again, a security element here as we think about what a seal is.

Secondly, and you see the word there, okay, the seal signified authenticity.

Okay, authenticity.

So wax being imprinted and and and stamped and sealed by the king's own seal told the the reader, told the the listener at the time that you know exactly who the letter or the message was from.

Right?

That that that's what it that's what it said, that's what it was.

It it authenticated the the document as being genuine, as being official.

Okay, so you may maybe before you've received you know a wedding invite in the mail, and sometimes you've seen it get kind of fancy, and it's got that seal on it.

You know, this is this is an official wedding uh invite.

Okay, so authenticity is a big part of this.

Thirdly, a seal would show ownership.

Okay, so in the example of uh you know, like a piece of property being sold, a contract would be signed and of course sealed.

Okay and it would signify the transfer of ownership from you know one party to uh to the other.

And so the owner would have this, it would seal, it would show that hey, this is mine, right?

We kind of do something similar whenever we you know you buy a used car or something like that, you buy a car from somebody, or or even when you buy a house.

Our signature often works as that.

Okay, and so it signified ownership.

And then lastly here, fourth, authority.

The authority.

So a king's messenger would bring uh you know a sealed scroll, uh, you know, a decree, a command of some of some kind in the full authority of who it came from.

Right again, often from the the king, let's say, and and then on top of that, what was decreed itself was authoritative, meaning it had to be obeyed, it had to be followed by those who were hearing this read.

Okay, so let's look at our verses here in light of those kind of four things there.

When verse 13 says that we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, what's what's that getting at?

What is this saying?

Well, it's to say that the Holy Spirit, who's who's given to us the moment that we profess faith in Jesus Christ.

If you want to jot down Romans 8, verse 9, you can go take a look at that uh later.

Romans 8:9

But the you know, the moment that the Holy Spirit is given to us, uh, he seals us in that our salvation is, first of all, what's the first word there?

Secure.

Right?

Our salvation is secure.

We've been we've been marked, we've been stamped as believers by the Holy Spirit Himself.

Right?

He is God's strong and secure seal, right?

That that no one can break.

Right?

The Holy Spirit is our salvation's seal of security.

He's been given to us as a promise, okay, that all true Christians will receive, will experience our inheritance of eternal life and future glory in in heaven.

I mean, that's what verse 14 just punctuates.

I mean, take a look at it now, and it says there that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee.

Okay, key word there.

You might want to highlight that.

He's the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, full possession of it.

Now, that word guarantee, we use that all the time.

Obviously, it just means, you know, simply a happening for sure, right?

This is happening.

The word literally means a pledge.

I pledge to you, much like how uh you know a man would give uh an engagement ring to his girlfriend who becomes his fiance as a as a as a pledge, really, you know, a uh to uh a promise, a guarantee that he is going to marry her.

Right?

That a that a wedding is coming, that is happening in the future.

Okay, so that the the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of her inheritance until we acquire possession of it, is God's way really of saying, hey, listen, I I want you, you need to have full assurance that this is your salvation.

It's 100% happening.

The glorification part.

Okay, so here is my Holy Spirit, here it here he is as a down payment, so to speak, as a deposit, as my as my pledge to you, that again you will inherit eternal life.

It will ultimately happen.

It's a sign that you will receive this when you join me in eternity.

And until that day, until that day, it's being preserved, it's being kept safe for you.

Listen, when you and I hear that and we and we start to absorb some of that, we we should, you know, that that's just a shot of confidence, is it not?

To our salvation and to what we have in Christ.

Right?

It's a bolt of strength and confidence and and security in the salvation that we have through the gospel.

It's a seal that that cannot be broken by us, it can't be taken away from anybody.

Our salvation cannot be lost.

Now, listen, I know that that some of us have maybe grown up in churches where we've we've kind of learned that it can be lost.

And I think even I have grown up in some of those churches before, and you know, I've kind of thought that, and I think there are you know scriptures that are maybe coming to mind now where you start to think, well, wait a second, that scripture seems to suggest that you know a person, once they get saved, they could, they, they, they might lose it.

But I, you know, I think that we have to consider really in those moments the the immediate context of those verses, so, so important.

Oftentimes there are there are great answers to these kinds of questions found right in the immediate context, but certainly as you take all of scripture as a whole, the totality of it and what it teaches as a unit, I believe that we see in the scriptures that we can't lose that.

We've been sealed.

I mean, this this verse is one of the strongest evidences in the entire Bible that our salvation can't be lost.

I mean, think about it this way: God would never promise here in this moment, so strongly as He is, that Christians will receive their inheritance.

That is, you know, he uses the word guarantee, it's a pledge, right?

Only to teach us elsewhere that we can lose it.

Right?

That to me feels like a contradiction.

Right?

I know what ends up happening, though, is we end up having you know questions and there's like anecdotal evidence that comes to mind for us.

Like, well, wait, hold on a second, what about that that story I heard or that person that I know?

Right?

And it was that person who you know grew up and and they were a Christian and and and they followed God, and and you know, there's even stories of pastors who who preach for years and years these very messages, only to one day, you know, going through something difficult and challenging and testing and through their doubts, they reject it.

Right?

And they say, I'm no longer a Christian, and none of this is real, and I'm an agnostic now, or I'm an atheist.

And I think so many of us, we take those kinds of those those those examples, and we're like, oh well, he was a Christian, now he's not.

It means you can lose it.

I don't think the scriptures teach that at all.

I believe in these kinds of scenarios here.

A person who claims to be a Christian and then later rejects Christ and walks away from it.

It's not that they're lost their salvation, it's like they were never truly saved in the first place.

I think that's really what the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13 is getting to.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

Right?

And it says, you know, the different seeds and they fall on different kinds of soil and ground, and they're, you know, some of them are choked out by the thorns, and some of them are, you know, scattered, and you know, some of them produce, you know, a certain kind of fruit, but then it kind of withers and dies.

I think there are you know a lot of people out there that at first they look like Christians and they're kind of behaving like Christians, and they come to church and they learn kind of some theology, and they're even serving in the church, and and all of those things, but their salvation, their justification, that it was never genuine.

Because real, lasting fruit isn't there.

It flashes up for a moment, but maybe it's the cares of the world, as Matthew 13 talks about.

It's the testing of their faith that goes to prove that it was never genuine in the first place.

Listen, as we look at our verses here and think about this, the security of our salvation is really the driving emphasis of verse 13 and 14.

Which, if you if you think about that and you're confident in your salvation, it's like it's like putting a bulletproof vest on your face.

Right?

It's like putting a bulletproof vest on your identity, right?

This is who I am, man.

I am I am sealed.

That ain't going away, that ain't leaking out, I am marked, I'm stamped by God.

Listen, that's just the first word, that's the security part.

On top of that, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit in the sense that our salvation is authentic.

Right?

It's authentic.

The the Holy Spirit authenticates our salvation as being genuine.

You know, it's it's it's not a forgery, it's the real deal.

And again, he acts as the official stamp, the mark of our uh of our authentication for us.

And as Christ gives us a new heart and he transforms us, and we start to grow, we start to change through sanctification, the the fruit that we begin to bear, which comes through the Holy Spirit in us, again, that is the authenticating mark as well.

It's an outward sign to ourselves, which would give us great confidence.

Oh, the Lord is changing me, he's making me new.

This is very hard, but he's actually doing it over time.

It becomes a sign to us and confidence to us.

It becomes a sign to other people as well in the church, which which encourages us.

And I mean, as you see people grow in the church, as you see them transform, it's it's an encouragement to you that the Lord is at work in our midst.

And it shows us that our salvation here it's it's real.

Which again just brings such joy to all of us and gives us further confidence in him and and and further confidence in the identity that he has given us as his children.

That we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, also signifies ownership.

Again, that third word that we belong to God.

How great is that?

Okay, 1 Peter 2, verse 9.

1 Peter 2:9

You can write it down if you like.

I'll read it to you.

It says this, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

Possession, right?

The Holy Spirit is is given to us as a seal, which means that God owns us now.

That shouldn't be a scary thing to us.

That should be that's a wonderful thing, especially when we consider the type the kind of God that He is, right?

His love and His grace and His mercy that we've just been singing about, and and how we belong to that God now, and the Holy Spirit acts as kind of like a like like a brand, like much how you've seen you know, cattle on a ranch or you know, sometimes marked with a brand to signify they belong to a certain farmer or rancher.

Okay, we belong to God, He is our Lord, we are His servants.

The Holy Spirit makes that so amazing, awesome, awesome thing.

And lastly, okay, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit that we are indicates authority.

Meaning that going forward from here, as we live life each and every day, we do so in the full authority of God Himself.

Well, I'm not really sure how to, you know, or what the gospel is.

Yes, you are.

We have the Bible.

Not only that, but you go in the full authority of God to proclaim that, to share that, to proclaim that truth.

We believe what's true, and then we live that out in the in the power, the authority of the Lord.

So, hey, when you put all of this together, the various you know, meanings and and and components of you know what a seal is and and and what that signifies, and you kind of you know start to kind of press it all into one thing, and you know, and what it means that we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who who is the guarantee of our inheritance, and and you start to, again, I like the word absorb, right?

When we start to absorb that, I mean man, what a joy, right?

What what gratitude should be welling up in us?

Again, confidence in our Lord and who he is and and who he says that we are, right?

Our identity.

Now maybe you're thinking, man, that joy and that gratitude and that confidence and that stability, like you know, all of that sounds great.

And man, I would I would love to have that be my experience, and I would love to you know to grow in these things.

But honestly, Pastor, if I'm you know just kind of you know assessing my own life here a little bit and doing a bit of an inventory, you know, it I it kind of doesn't seem like my experience, to be perfectly honest, and it's not really how I feel and how I operate when it comes to salvation when I think about these things.

In fact, I I don't feel that confident about it at all, and I kind of have doubts and I I struggle to have a strong sense of this security and this confidence that I'm truly saved.

Right?

And if that is true for you, listen, I don't want to minimize that.

I don't want to I don't want us to just breeze over that.

I know that some people are are wired to to kind of doubt more.

Right?

And this is a wrestling match for you, and you question a lot of a lot of things, and maybe you're even a little bit pessimistic in these things.

And maybe you you know you read something, but you have a hard time taking it at face value and and believing it, and and inside you kind of churn and stew about all of these things.

And maybe it's to the point where even you've questioned multiple times, maybe even here today, whether or not you're you're really saved.

Man, I'd love to have that confidence, but that feels so elusive.

Well, I would really encourage you to write this down.

Write down 1 John.

Okay, it's a great little letter in the New Testament, and I would really challenge and encourage you to spend some time in that place on your own.

Read that and look at that and think deeply and think critically about the words that are found in there and all through 1 John, what he does is he goes on to say that if you are a true believer, if your salvation is genuine, here are the specific vital signs that you will see in your life.

Here is the fruit that you will bear.

And then I love uh chapter 5, verse 13.

This is kind of the the linchpin of the entire letter, really.

Uh John says that I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

Being assured of this, being confident of your salvation is something that matters greatly to God.

It was important to John, it should be important to us as a church.

But sometimes we need to kind of think deeply about these things.

And really, you know, take a look at our lives and kind of zoom out and have moments throughout the weeks and months and and maybe it's several times a year where you're kind of looking at this and you're like, am I am I bearing fruit?

Am I outwardly revealing the signs that I am genuinely saved?

Do the things that John talks about in 1 John are those things present in my life?

Do I have a love for God?

Do I have a love for people?

Do I love God's word?

Am I overcoming sin?

These are the things that we should see.

And it might be in kind of grassroots type ways, and maybe you need to fan those flames into a greater fire, and you need to see more growth.

I think we would all say that.

We all need to see more growth, but but we need to look critically at all of this.

The mistake the people make on the other side of things is they automatically assume they're saved when they have really no good reason to assume so.

Right?

I think our churches are full of people who come in, they're like, well, I come, I come here, so therefore I'm a Christian.

Look, I'm behaving properly.

Look, I I've attended some church meetings.

I go to church, I go to a Christian school, I've even done a year of Bible college.

What more proof could you want than that?

Listen, anybody can do those things.

You don't need to be saved to do those things.

Look at what biblical fruit actually looks like.

And if you're not seeing those things and you're starting to sweat a little bit even as I'm talking through that, listen, I'm not trying to scare you.

I'm not trying to do that.

But it is okay if you feel a little bit of angst about that.

Dig into the Lord here, dig into God's word.

Get somebody who you trust and who who understands these things, a mature believer, to talk to and bounce some of these ideas off of.

Have you seen growth in my life?

Would you just based on what you know about me, would you could you say confidently that that that that person's uh that I'm a believer?

Again, what gives us assurance of our salvation and and confidence in that is that we will inevitably bear supernatural fruit.

Meaning that from the heart, from our motives, we will desire the things that God desires, and our lives will start to look different based on those desires.

The way we spend our time will look different, the way we spend our energy, our money, our resources, our attitudes, all of that transforms.

Our relationships transform.

That's supernatural fruit that that Jesus Christ bears in our lives.

Fruit is a huge part of it.

Another huge part of it is that we persevere.

Perseverance of the saints.

That if you are truly saved, you're gonna go through difficult times, you're gonna go through testing, you're gonna go through trial, and you're gonna feel weak and you're gonna be humbled and broken through all of that, and it's gonna be very uncomfortable and all of it.

But if you are truly saved and you have the stamp of the Holy Spirit and He is at work in you, He will bring you through that.

He will transform you and it will bring you such encouragement.

It will authenticate your salvation.

Now, listen, as we, you know, we've talked about a lot of things already.

As we think about all of this, as we consider just the, you know, these two verses, I mean, there's so much in there, right?

I mean, what is really the you know, the intended overarching response for us as we kind of allow these truths to sink in and we think about these awesome realities, right?

What is the kind of the overarching thing that we need to take away here?

Well, at the end of verse 14, I mean, it makes that abundantly clear.

Right?

And listen, we cannot afford to miss this church.

We can't.

Right?

It says that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee, we've read this, the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

And then this, to the praise of his glory.

To the praise of his glory.

That's how we that's how he ends this section off.

But I don't know if you've noticed it.

This is actually the third time he's mentioned those words or something to that effect in these first 14 verses already.

And we've looked at it in recent messages.

In verse 6, he says, to the praise of his glorious grace.

In verse 12, which we looked at just last week, to the praise of his glory, word for word, what he reiterates here in verse 14.

Okay, meaning that the theme, it's the theme that God has woven, he has baked right into this passage here that he doesn't want you and I to lose sight of.

He doesn't at all.

Listen, as awesome as it is that God has given us this amazing identity in Jesus Christ, and as supremely beneficial as it is for you and I to learn to you know to accept who we truly are, and then to begin functioning in life with all of these things in mind, and these things you know, driving all of that, and and that is so good.

It really is, as we consider things like we're faithful and blessed and chosen and redeemed and enlightened and hopeful and now sealed.

We talked about all of these these topics, as incredible as it all is, and it is.

Listen, it would be a massive shame.

It would be a a swing and a miss to continue on the baseball babe roof theme.

Okay?

It really would.

If we came away from this passage and and this series, thinking that it's really just about me being more confident in life, it's really just about me being more secure internally.

Right?

Those are certainly great benefits, but they're definitely not the driving thrust of any of these verses.

It's not.

The emphasis here is that is that a proper realization and then implementation of this identity will cause you and I to glory in God in God and and praise his name forever.

Right?

That's that's the thrust of it.

It's the emphasis.

That is why you and I exist.

Do you see that there in the text?

Is that is that ringing in your ears?

Again, we don't we don't learn what our identity is, just so that you and I can all go back to you know live living however we want, but just being more self-secure in all of that.

Right?

It's not just about becoming you know secure emotionally, stable inside.

And listen, it's not it's not primarily about us at all, about any of that.

It you know, God give us this identity so that we see who he is, we see what he has done for us through Jesus, so that we become more passionate worshipers, more consumed with his glory, reveling in it, captivated by it, so that we praise his name and his glory from our hearts, enjoying his infinite and supreme worth now and for all eternity.

That's what the Lord is trying to stir up in us.

And so listen, as we close here, I'm gonna pray.

But real quick here, three thoughts, okay, three responses, three takeaways for us.

First one, believe deeply.

Believe deeply.

Do the necessary work as we've been kind of poking at all through this series.

Do the necessary work to dislodge the idols that you want to hope in, that you want to find identity in.

Believe who you are, believe that deeply.

The Lord isn't teaching us all these things so that we can have some surfacey, non-anchored in understanding of our identity.

We understand that, right?

Believe deeply who he says you are.

It's gonna it's gonna be tough.

It's gonna you're gonna have to work towards that.

It's gonna require a lot of prayer.

Guess what?

You can't do that yourself.

You need community, you need the Bible, you need to be in it.

Believe deeply.

Secondly, live confidently.

Live confidently.

Too many believers walk through life so insecure.

It's because we don't believe who we are.

We don't believe who God says we are.

Listen, we we are all of these things because of him.

Let's start to act like it.

Believe deeply, live confidently.

Last thing, worship passionately.

Worship passionately, glory in him.

Give glory to him.

For he is good.

We want to do that right now through song.

So as I pray and the worship team comes up.

If you agree with me as I pray, just pray silently and glory in the Lord and agree in your spirit on those things, and let's praise the Lord for his goodness.

Lord, we look at these amazing 14 verses as we have, and we see so many things there, Lord.

We see that we are faithful because Jesus is faithful.

We see that we are blessed because we have an amazing Savior.

We see that we are chosen before the foundation of the world, which is hard for us to even rightly wrap our minds around, but it's awesome.

Lord, we see that we are redeemed.

I mean, that's the core of the gospel right there.

We've been brought from death to life, Lord.

We see that we are enlightened, we have an understanding of what life is all about.

We have purpose in all of that, Lord.

We see that we are hopeful.

Our hope is attached to Jesus Christ, something that is real, the solid rock and sure foundation of our faith.

And Lord, we see this morning that we are sealed.

And in that, that our salvation is secure.

Lord, we praise you for these things.

And Lord, as we consider our response, not just now, but throughout this week and beyond, Lord, I pray that you would strengthen our hearts in the truth of your word.

Lord, I pray that we would be more blown away by your glory, more taken by it, affection stirred up by it.

Lord, I pray that you would continue to reveal your glory to us as a church.

And so, Lord, as we sing to you now, Lord, I pray that you would show us your glory.

I pray that you would be glorified.

We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus, our Lord.