St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 8 – July 31^st and August 3^rd

Dear Chosen people of God,

This past week we were on vacation. To reach our travel destination we had to fly on a couple of different airplanes. As we were flying on these airplanes, I marveled at the technology and physics which are involved to get an object of the size of a very large jet off the ground and to keep it off the ground for such a long period of time. On one of our flights I was seated near the wing and got to get a closer look at the engine and how the wing worked. The engine was very large and yet it looked so small when you consider that it would have to get this plane off the ground and keep it in the air. The wings with their little flaps and things worked to get the plane off the ground and to slow the plane down when you landed. Flying is something I will never truly understand, but it is something that is so wonderful and so beneficial.

As we gather this morning we are going to look at a portion of God’s Word that we may not truly understand. We are going to talk about God choosing us or predestining us to be a part of his holy family. This is one of those teachings that seems to cause lots of questions or confusion, but as we look further at this teaching in these words from the apostle Paul we will realize that this teaching is so wonderful because it is so firmly rooted in God’s grace. For this reason we will mediate on the theme:

Today is the first of eight straight weeks that our Epistle reading will be from the book of Ephesians. Ephesians belongs to that group of Paul’s letters known as the Prison Epistles. It shares this distinction with the books of Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. The Prison Epistles get their name from the fact that they were written while Paul was under house arrest in Rome, awaiting the outcome of his appeal to Caesar. In the book of Ephesians, Paul clearly wants to teach the readers of this letter to look beneath the surface of life and understand its true nature. Life’s true nature is known only to God, summed up in Christ, and revealed to us through God’s Word. The impressive depth and breathtaking vision of the letter is all the more remarkable in view of Paul’s confinement while writing it. Only faith in the promised love of God can lead us to truly appreciate how great and wonderful God’s grace is.

Paul wastes no time as he jumps in with the first verse of our text to remind us that God in his grace has been very good to us. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." In Christ, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. There is absolutely nothing outside Christ’s gift, and nothing to gain by looking for another giver. The blessings he gives are spiritual, which means they are grasped by faith and not by sight.

Now he goes on to talk about some of these spiritual blessings. "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and his will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." Before the world was born, God set his heart on having me as his own forever. Not only did he determine to embrace every human being by the redeeming death of his Son, he also selected me personally and individually in Christ before time began. He chose me, not because I was holy and blameless, but that I might be holy and blameless before him. The entire world can condemn me, the devil may accuse me, and my own conscience convict me. But God has determined that in Christ I am holy and blameless before him.

God’s choice can be approached from several directions for better understanding. We can consider the attitude in God’s heart that prompted his choosing. Paul says he did it "in love" and "in accordance with his pleasure and will." In other words, it was a free act of love on God’s part. It was not prompted by anything God saw in me, but a loving resolve in which God’s will alone was active.

This means the act of choosing itself was one of pure grace. What makes God’s grace so amazing is just this that we can detect no cause for it in ourselves. The fact that the choosing occurred "before the foundation of the world" underscores the same truth, since it tells me that I was chosen before I existed, before I was someone who could choose, or think, or do anything. Overwhelmed by God’s unconditional love for me, I can only "praise his glorious grace".

God did not choose us to be saved in some arbitrary way, but in connection with the redeeming work Christ would do. God chose us "in him." Adoption is "through Jesus Christ." His grace is given to us "in the One he loves." Look at Jesus living and dying for you in history, and you will understand the nature of God’s election in eternity. It was not the act of a god soft on sin, but the act of God by which he determined to deal with sin completely in Christ. It was not the act of a bored, disinterested god casually deciding our fate. It was the act of God who loved all the lost. He resolved to send his Son to become one of us and die for us.

The content of election, as far as we are concerned, is seen in the phrase "to be adopted as his sons." Adoption was a common practice during this time in history. The literal meaning of the Greek is "setting into sonship." It was a legal procedure by which someone with no claim of membership in a family or clan was taken into the family or clan as a son. Afterwards, the one adopted had the full legal status of a son, and full inheritance rights.

Adoption includes the gift of the Spirit, by whom we call out to God in the complete freedom of faith, "Abba, Father!" The full blessings of our adoption will reach fulfillment when our bodies are raised free from sin and death at the return of Christ. Then we will inherit the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world. From all this it is clear that God chose us in eternity to be his children, determined that we would receive the gift of faith and the Spirit in time and resolved to bring us safely through every trial—including death—to our inheritance in heaven. From eternity to eternity we have every reason to praise his glorious grace!

Our election was not some abstract process that began and ended in the clean white halls of heaven on that eternal morning. It included redemption in blood, the cost of the forgiveness of sins. Redemption is the act of securing the release of someone who is enslaved or whose life is forfeit. Redemption sets the person free from the slavery and the punishment by the payment he made as our Substitute. Listen as Paul talks about the work of Jesus, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment."

As objects of wrath, our lives were worth nothing. We deserved nothing but the consuming fire of God’s anger. We lived out our lives as slaves to our wretched desires for wretched things. By giving his Son over into the utter poverty of death, God lavished the riches of his grace on us—all undeserving.

Paul praises the "wisdom and understanding" of God’s will to save us. Our Almighty God knows things as they truly are, and plans accordingly. His wisdom and understanding for us as his children is clearly seen in that he comes to us not as he is in his unclothed majesty, but clothed in the humanity of Jesus. He hides his wisdom deep in the apparent foolishness of the cross and the proclamation of the cross. This "mystery" of his will has been made known to us through the Holy Word. The Word is the delivery system by which God gives to us in time what he planned for us in eternity.

The question that many people ask is how do we know if we are elected or chosen? Paul clearly points out that when the Holy Spirit has worked faith in our hearts through the hearing of God’s Word, then we know that we are chosen, because the seal of the Holy Spirit is in our heart. He writes, "Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory."

Paul reminds us of the point in time at which God’s eternal plan intersected with our personal histories by the words, "You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth". God delivered our salvation to us in time by calling us to faith through the gospel. By means of the same gospel he will preserve us in faith until we reach our glorious goal. To assure us that the inheritance of heaven will be truly ours, he sealed us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Just as a seal serves to mark out an object as belonging to an individual, so the Holy Spirit is God’s "seal of ownership on us".

Paul further characterizes the Holy Spirit as God’s "deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. The words used are meant to talk about a first installment, down payment, or pledge. It is a payment that obligates the contracting party to make further payments. Here it serves once again to emphasize the absolute certainty of our salvation in Christ. By giving us the Holy Spirit, God has obligated himself to release the complete inheritance to us on the last day. All this is ours by God’s free grace and favor. The only words that can flow from our mouths are the thoughts contained in the final words of our text -- Praise his glorious grace!