Redeemed For His Glory

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doin’ Alright? Well I’ve just been praying that God might put His truth and His power and most of all His love into every word I say. Lots of you have burdens and needs and hurts and problems and oh how you need some special word from the Lord. Don’t you? And I’ve just been praying that that might be so, as we look into God’s Word again today.

We’re looking at Ephesians 1 and the phrase upon which we had stopped momentarily was, “all spiritual blessings in Christ”. And to illustrate that, I went first to Psalm 103 and then the last time we got together, we were looking at 1 Corinthians 1:30 where Paul says that, “Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” That according as it is written, “He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.” Wisdom and righteousness, Christ is our righteousness. He is the one at whom God looks in considering our matters.

God sees you through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross on Calvary. He looks at you through the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and so Paul says in Philippians 3, “That I maybe found in Christ, not having my own righteousness which is of the law.” All the law can do is condemn you and tell you where you’re wrong. “Not having my own righteousness which is of the law but that which is of faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith”. God gives you, in the Lord Jesus, His perfect righteousness. He counts you righteous, He reckons you righteous. He looks at the spotted page of your ledger of life and He erases all of the spots and He counts you righteous because Jesus has become to you, righteousness. He’s made unto us righteousness.

Then the next word is sanctification. It’s a word that means set apart for God’s special use, with the vessels in the temple were sanctified and the people were at… said… sanctify yourselves against the special day tomorrow. What does that mean? Set your life and all that you do apart for God because the day is holy and you’re to be holy with it. Sanctification means set apart for God’s special use.

Now what is the qualification to be specially used? Go over to 2 Timothy and Paul says, “If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor sanctified and meet for the Master’s use.” He’s talking about a clean life. The Lord Jesus Christ becomes to you the means of cleaning up your life and setting it apart for God to use and making it, by the way, easy for God to use. That phrase ‘meet for the Master’s use’ contains the Greek word, Euchrestos, which means easy for God to use. It’s like every mechanic has a favorite wrench or tool. I use to have a half nine-sixteenth wrench when I was working in the garage as a college student and that was my special pet. I always had it with me in the side pocket down on the pants leg of my coveralls and it was there and I never loaned it to anybody else. It was a little offset kind of a thing. Not just the straight wrench but it had offset jaws to it and it was easy for me to use. That was my pet, the half nine-sixteenth wrench. You mechanics will identify with that. Easy to use; and how does that happen when the blood of Christ cleanses you? For man therefore cleanse himself from these that are these things that grieve the Spirit of God.

When the blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses you through your confession and yielding yourself to the Lord, then you become a vessel that’s easy for God to use, set apart for His special use. There are some things that are special. I remember back in the 1930’s listening to Torrey Johnson preaching on this concept and he would start up by saying, “Now in our house we have cups with handles and cups without handles.” And the people would chuckle and he’d say, “We use the cups without handles sometimes when we’re alone by ourselves but when company comes, we have special dishes that are set aside for special use.” Well of course, special use. Now that’s what God wants to do with you and this is one of the blessings of knowing the Lord Jesus. He has made unto us sanctification. When you yield to the Lord Jesus Christ, He initiates the process of making your life special to God and thus by result to people.

When you yield yourself to Christ, He initiates the process of making you to become special to God and God looks at you as one that He can use. He looks at you as one upon whom He can call to do His special bidding. He looks upon you as a special resource in doing His eternal Will. Sanctified, how does it come about? Through the Lord Jesus Christ, through yielding to Him as your Lord and Savior and letting the indwelling Holy Spirit reduplicate in your nature, the very character and life of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, sanctification. Jesus becomes your sanctification. You don’t have any but when you place your faith in Him and yield to Him, He initiates the process that makes you special for God.

It’s beautiful. Isn’t it? Then He uses the term redemption. Christ is made unto us redemption. He’s the very essence of our redeemed life. We sing the old song “Redeemed how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the lamb.” Redeemed, the idea of being bought out of the slave market so that you could be free to serve God, Christ has become our redemption, our redeemer. Why? Why Peter says, “You are not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, your vain manner of life received by tradition from your father’s; but by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” He was offered for you. Redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

The Lord Jesus Christ is God’s Passover lamb and just as the Passover lamb was being prepared in Jewish households on the day of the crucifixion, there hung the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. The Lamb of God as John the Baptist called Him, the Lamb of God that beareth the weight of the sin of the world. The Lord Jesus is God’s Passover lamb and now raised from the dead, He’s God’s Messiah and He’s your savior and He is the essence of your redemption.

Knowing Him, you know that you’ve been redeemed because of all that He did, and all that He is, and all that He continues to do. It says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him.” He’s praying for you this minute. A hard concept to imagine if you take all of the billions of people that there are in the world today. How can the Lord Jesus Christ be aware of you? Because He’s God, He’s God and God is great enough to be aware of the most infinite small things and you and I included as well as the great universe in which we exist. He’s a great God and the Bible says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him.”

David Morkan said to me one day, some of you know this dear man, a missionary to missionaries and a great man of God still living some place out there in the West Coast. He said to me one day, “Bob, do you know what the principle job of Christ is now?” And I said, “Well I don’t know. He’s seated at the right hand of God, the Father. He’ll come again in power and glory.” “No,” he said. Then he turned me to that verse in Hebrews that says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them who come unto God by Him.” He said, “His task right now is praying for you.” Well I’ve never seen it quite that way and I was grateful and still am for the concept that I have a savior who is to me, my redemption.

Everything that I have in the package of salvation, every hope that I possess for the tomorrow’s down to eternity, every peace and all of the joy that is mine through sins forgiven and the indwelling Holy Spirit, all of the package of redeemed life here and now and throughout all eternity, wrap it all up and you’ll see the name Jesus written large upon the package. He is, He becomes to us our redemption. See now, that is something of the meaning that you have in Ephesians 1, “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ.”

Now if you want to go on and just break open some of the rest of this passage, we won’t talk about it in detail because time will run out before we can get to it but just let me break it open for you. If you want to see the context in Ephesians 1 that refers to the spiritual blessings, what do you have here? Verse 4: “Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Before God ever set the world spinning in space and before He ever breathed life into Adam and into Eve and the human race began, God had your name and mine.

Chosen us in Him before the foundation and He had your character and mine that we should be holy, and He had your reputation and mine, “without blame before Him” and He had the atmosphere of your life and mine in love. And then He’d made plans about you, “predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself”. He made plans for you before the foundation of the world. This is part of the spiritual blessings in Christ. To the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He had made us accepted in the Beloved One. Part of the blessing of knowing the Lord Jesus is that He becomes the very doorway into heaven and we can come boldly into the throne of grace and obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

As the writer of the Hebrew says, because Ephesians 1:6, we’ve been accepted in the Beloved One. “redemption through His blood,” verse 7. “Forgiveness of sins,” verse 7. “The riches of His grace abounding toward us in wisdom and prudence,” verse 7 and 8. Knowing God’s will, “made known the mystery of His will” and the prospect of the future with Christ, “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him.”

An inheritance in Him,” in Him also we have an inheritance” and then a function throughout all eternity “that we should be to the praise of His glory, we who trusted in Christ” and then the Holy Spirit of God as the down payment of all that God is going to do in the future. The Holy Spirit of promise who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchase possession. Halleluiah, oh how much we owe to our Blessed Savior.

Now we’ll look at these verses in some detail but I want to break them open therefore just to see the listing of what Paul is talking about when he talks about “spiritual blessings in the heavenlies” in Christ. It goes clear back to before the foundation of our universe. God had you in mind and if that boggles your mind, let it. If it’s too much for you to handle, let it be. Just accept by faith that God is a big enough God to make His plans and to work them out in mercy and in love and you are the object of His grace.

Now for those of you who’ve never received Christ as your Lord and thus received Him as your Savior, give thought to that this very day. You can become part of all of these spiritual blessings in Christ including His plans for eternity if you just open your heart to Him and say, “Lord Jesus come in and save me now. Do it will you?”

Precious Father, oh we love you and we thank you for Jesus, our Lord and all the blessings that come to us through Him. Keep us grateful, keep us living for you. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!