Secure

 

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

Focus: Security of the believer

Function: to help build our faith in the promises of God

^3-6How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

^7-10Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

^11-12It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

^13-14It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This down payment from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

Good Morning and welcome to a celebration of what it means for us to be secure, to be held in the hand of our God and then to know that we are safe because God loves us.

In theological circles, doctrinally, I have referred to this passage as “The Baptist Passage.”

I am not going to say anything bad about Baptists, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and they too are full of the Holy Spirit and bear the image of Christ to the world.

And there is a lot we owe to them as they worked through the theology of the New Testament and came up with their framework of theology.

One of the tenants of it comes from the way they understand this passage and the use in the King James of Predestined and in the RSV of Destined as if there are a group of people that God has called be the elect and the saved and there is a group of people to whom God has not given that favor.

And I am not going to bore you with the depths of the argument but suffice it to say that it gives us a springboard for lively discussions in theological circles.

About being predestined: It seems that verses 11 and 12 tell us that God knew what choices we would make. The choice is whether or not to allow the Spirit of God to guide us or to go our own way and sever the connection that God has with us through the Spirit of God.

So, to me, it is not predestined but that God knew beforehand what choices we would make and has ordered the circumstances in our lives accordingly.

But the argument is a what came first argument, the chicken or the egg, faith or works and I believe that God looks at the heart and knows whether or not we want to love others or put ourselves first.

I read this from the Message translation in order to get a sense of what God is saying to us in the passage without the color of the word destined or predestined.

I did that because the salient verse comes when in the Revised Standard version it says that “God choose us in love.” Or according to our text, God made us in love.

The translation The Message bears out this concept of love over predestination very well.

And it is important to remember that the author is telling us that God’s motivating value is Love.

In Love, God made us.

God is Love.

And we are and were made in love.

I praise God that the theme of this years Annual Conference was Worthy and Welcome.

Carol and I heard a sermon on Friday night about this very thing, that God created us in love and we are indeed worthy of God’s love regardless of what color, race, religion or gender with which we identify.

And then we were given an opportunity to respond and be anointed with Frankincense as a symbol of how the Holy Spirit has indeed filled us and accepted us into God's family.

And again, as I seem to mention every Sunday because it is in the text, Paul comes back to one of my favorite themes: It is important for us to become spiritual people by focusing on the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives now that we have trusted in Christ to restore us to God and to each other.

He reminds them of the importance of this in the last verses of our passage: “...delivered by the Holy Spirit. This down payment from God is the first installment on what’s coming….”

He calls the Holy Spirit the Down Payment from God. He reminds us that this Christian life is a journey with God through this earth and is a gift to us from God for us to get to know God and God’s creation.

As I was praying over the text through the week and preparing to write my sermon on Saturday, my thoughts kept coming back to the experiences I had during the late 70’s through the 90’s in what was known as the Charismatic movement.

We certainly experienced a level of joy and a sense of belonging as we worshiped God together with our eyes closed and our hands raised in worship.

The feeling of closeness to God at times was a real blessing.

There were a few times when just as this passage describes, while in worship we focused on the Cross of Christ and the demonstration of his love for us and Christ’s willingness to live for us by dying for us, and then raising from the dead that I too experienced an overwhelming sense of God’s love and power that filled me with hope.

I must admit that it has almost always been tied to my willingness to forgive others with the Holy Spirit’s help.

And I don’t want to base my Christian faith solely on feelings because they can be misleading.

But Paul is talking about the sense of forgiveness and acceptance that we feel from God when we believe that good news, the gospel, that Jesus does love us and has provided the way for all of creation to be reconciled to God.

I guess the I call it being saved. It is the experience I had when I felt forgiven and restored to God. It happened for me when I prayed “Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and restore me to you.” I used the words “forgive me,’” but I think God understood the meaning. I wanted to be delivered from my shame and be free.

And God did it.

Paul calls it the down payment of God to us. And I believe it is there to remind us that God loves us and is with us. We belong to God now.

As I was thinking about those days when the Spirit moved during our praise and worship, I was asking God how to make the Spirit move in our midst again.

And then I believe God answered with the subtle reminder that the Holy Spirit moves like the wind and we cannot manipulate God.

God reminded me that moving in our midst is the result of His Spirit’s power, not mine.

So as we close remember that in Love God chose You. God is love and God created you to be loved by God. Let the freedom of that understanding bless you and fill you and deliver you from all shame.