TRANSCRIPT What I'm calling today's word is predestination and grace and faith. I'Il read from Ephesians chapter one, verses five to eight, which is the passage we read in our discussion groups a couple of weeks ago. Starting from verse five, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure or good purpose, Eudokia, of his will, according to the riches of his grace, which is made abundant toward us in all wisdom and understanding. So recently in our group discussions, we began to discuss and explore the extravagance of God's love, and his powerful promises to us of what I've just read. Predestination and grace, and being adopted to belong to his family, partakers of his life through Jesus, partakers of the nature of God. The first chapter of Ephesians is a mighty trumpet blast of what God has done through Jesus Christ, and through the work of his unlimited atonement for humanity, never limit the atonement work of God, for everybody. If one died, all were dead. So I've got three questions today. What is predestination? Well, the short answer is, it's God's purpose for our life. What is grace? The divine energy that accomplishes our predestination. What about faith? Predestination and grace only become our reality when we believe. So I've answered the three questions. We can go home now. But really, I want to look at these three questions in greater depth. So we'll look at these three questions. Predestination is purpose driven. It is God's foreordained plan for a person's life or role. It is not a statement about going to heaven or hell, as the Calvinists much later mistakenly interpreted. You've got to search the scriptures to see this, and it's very clear. Through Christ's atoning work, when Jesus brought his divinity into all of humanity, we are also brought into adoption, becoming part of his family. We're then transformed into Christ's likeness to become co-labours with him in his work in the world. There's our journey. Right smack in the middle of it is the grace of God. We try that journey on our own without the grace of God, and we can become very good citizens with a good conscience doing the best we can, but we need God's grace to be able to walk in his will for our lives, empowered by his life. Grace is the divine energy that accomplishes this divine purpose, making this gospel of good news, that's what the gospel is, possible. That is then believed upon by us. And this displays God's wisdom and strategic brilliance. And that was the last verse that we read when we did the discussion group. God thought that through and gave it to us. He wants to express who he is through us. That's his desire. So we'll look at the grace. The plan of being predestined is energized by grace from God's side. All comes from him. The word grace is cardis, which means a gift. It's not primarily about emotionally feeling favored. It is God's favor, but we don't often feel very favored going through tough times. But God's grace is still available. If it weren't, we wouldn't be able to go through them with him and being empowered by his Spirit in faith. It's God's powerful and operative transforming presence that enables the purpose of our predestination to be achieved. What does grace do? Is it like electricity? No, it is a force. Is it just emotion? No, grace creates a relational bond in our hearts. The Bible says, a new heart I will give you, in Ezekiel 36. That's the power of grace. It changes the disposition of our hearts. We desire to do for God and with God. That's his gift, that's his covenant. And that works the transformative change of the new desires that God has willed for us. Look at things relationally, then you're looking at God and what he does, why he does it, and how we can respond. But without faith, if we don't respond by faith and say, I believe that, that grace is there laying idle and fruitless. It's in vain. Don't just think of it as something that may be available. He said, approach the throne of grace, receiving mercy, so that you'll find grace in times of need. We need the mercy because we don't do it very expertly. We bumble our way through. And God says, I don't care how much you bumble your way through. I'm not looking at your human performance index. I'm looking at your heart. Dispose to me, doing the best you can, and this grace is available. But tell yourself that I'm being merciful to you because you're not very merciful to yourself. You're a bit hard on yourself. I've forgiven your sins, you know that. But you're worried about your performance, don't. The work of atonement is operating on about eight and a half billion people on the planet right now. But the problem is that a scarce number of people, including many churchgoers, don't know that or believe it. That work can only become a reality for people who will hear it and believe it and respond to it by faith. And today, we'll look at how we can respond to it by faith. Paul was saved from wasting his pre-destined future when he was struck down on the road to Damascus. He was pretty proud of his performance up till then, as a religious man, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. But then, he was struck down by the Lord Jesus, and he believed, he was baptized, and he received the power of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 1, Paul writes in verse 17, and here's the predestination part. It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and invited me through his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him amongst the Gentiles, or the nations, the unbelievers. Paul knew that this was given by God's grace, but not only given by God's grace, it was to be lived through God's grace. Paul said, his grace towards me was not in vain. Wasn't futile, but it can lie wasted. I've already said, the scripture actually, confidently enter, come to the throne of grace. So we can see that all of this is God's doing. If that's God's doing, what is our belief? It is our doing. It's believing everything that God is doing, and believing that what he's doing is true, and real, and personal for each one of us. It's always doing, the doing. Now, my faith, my personal level, sometimes involves getting out of my own way, and to stop worrying that I'm not fulfilling God's predestined purpose in the ordinary, daily doing of what I'm doing. Do I have enough faith and grace? Am I actually doing just exactly what you want me to do, Lord? I better try and think through this harder. God says, my goodness, I wake up then. I wake up to myself and decide to trust that God knows what He's done. He knows what He's done for me, and what He is now doing for me, and He just wants me to trust Him in that I'm doing for you, in all the things that are happening. And when I trust God, simply, come to my senses, faith floods in. Not faith that I'm going to get what I want, but faith that God can now get what He wants. The moment we start telling ourselves that we don't have enough faith, we stop having faith. It's a bad conversation. Our soul's outward, disordered mindset of what is real has taken over from our God-ordained spiritual reality, what He's ordained. Now, let me explain how God's ordered spiritual reality can turn into a disordered soul reality. That's very important to me. Everything that is spirit desires to be expressed in some outward way. Spirit cannot just exist, isolated, doing nothing. Spirit wants expression, no matter what kind of spirit it is. And you can name hundreds of them. The human spirit, a spirit of fear, God's spirit, a political spirit, a religious spirit. They all want expression in some way, and they manifest themselves through whoever's available to give way to that spirit. But we have our predestined spirit in us. God, as a pure spirit being, lovingly desired to express himself through us. God as spirit wants far more to express who he is than any other spirit would. He is spirit. The Holy Spirit yearns jealously for us. Let us be manifested, expressed through you. So God desired to do that, to express himself through humanity. And that occurred perfectly through the life of Jesus. That was the one, the only one. That happened perfectly. And the atonement of Jesus on the cross allows that expression of the life of Jesus through us by the Holy Spirit in us. That's how it happens. God's predestined purpose for us in Christ is our reality. That's what God and God's spirit wants to express through us. His purpose for us, him, with us, in that. It is our I am reality. God said, I am who I am. In Exodus chapter three, Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. John eight, Paul said, I am what I am by the grace of God. 1 Corinthians 15. Now, this is the key. We can become the expression of who God wants us to be, by the grace of God, if we believe it. We are who we are by the grace of God. God is the source of our true I am spiritual being. He created it before the foundation of the world. But what do we do with that spiritual reality? Well, the Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 15, that we generate a soul, genomai. We create a soul, a faulty expression of our spiritual being, which becomes flawed and damaged throughout our lives because of survival mechanisms that we create, starting from a young age. That's our doing. Our spirit wants to express itself. We are spirit, soul, and body. And we express, through our soul, an I Am that has had to react to everything that's going on around us. We learn, from a young age, to strategise, to defend, or to advance ourselves, through the difficult circumstances of our lives. We create another I Am in our souls. And that becomes the I Am that other people see. They see that as who we are. Oh, there's that cranky person again. There's that angry one. There's that difficult one. There's that one that seems to be always feeling shameful and guilty all the time. Why do they do that? So that soul becomes the expression of who we are, to other people, and absolutely to ourselve
