All who believe in Christ are chosen, redeemed, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. This is because before the foundation of the world, God lovingly purposed that we should be adopted as His children through Jesus Christ and made holy and blameless in Him. Through His blood we have redemption and forgiveness, and our inheritance is assured by the Spirit’s seal. Life with Christ continually transforms us, moving us from striving in our own strength to resting in His grace, peace, and faithful guidance and power!

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Okay, well, welcome to this afternoon, this evening, and my name is Andrew Ashton, and I’m bringing the message for this afternoon, and I’m one of the elders of our church, and sorry that I was a bit late, so that’s not a great thing to do. Anyway, this evening’s message follows on from a message that Jim preached on August 24, which was talking all about Peter and John, common men called to preach the word of God with boldness, and with this message, Jim actually encouraged us to read the book of Ephesians a bit further. And so I did that, and I got to Ephesians 1, and I sort of stopped there, so Ephesians 1’s it.

[00:01:00] I do read the Bible. No, it’s all good. I actually have a little, what I do is I read Mondays and Tuesdays, I go over the sermons, and well, usually just one sermon, because that’s about all I can manage. But, and then Wednesday is whatever I fancy, and then Thursday and Friday is try to get ready for our Friday night Bible study, so we’re learning numbers, which has been a really great study. So, Ephesians 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, so I’m just going to go through these, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Well, first of all, we see that Paul was commissioned by the Lord to carry the name of the Lord to the Gentiles, and to the children of Israel.

[00:01:57] And so, in Acts 9, 15 and 16, we see that Ananias is called to go and to talk to the Gentiles, well, to talk to Saul, and tell Saul, in verse 17, that, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me, so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And to tell him about, that he is going to bring the message of Jesus to the Gentiles and the Jews, and that he’s going to also suffer for it as well, which has been a pretty daunting thing to try and go and tell someone like Saul, who, or Paul, who’d been persecuting everyone. But, the book of Ephesians is addressed to the saints in Jesus Christ, who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ. They are the believers in Christ, separated to God.

[00:03:03] And, in William MacDonald’s commentary, it says that in Christ, all believers are saints, even though they and themselves are not always saintly, which I like that. The faithful in Christ are those who acknowledge Jesus to be their only Lord and Saviour. So, that’s the faithful in Christ are the saints. So, we’re all saints, we’re acknowledging that Jesus is our only Lord and Saviour. I have an application for this. When we first moved into the place where we lived, out at Algester, it had pretty bad drainage down the back and a lot of houses do actually. And so water used to come from our neighbour up in top of us, come down through our yard, go through our yard down to our neighbour down the bottom. And so one Sunday morning we get a knock on the door

[00:03:57] and we’re sort of all getting ready to go to church and he goes, hey Andrew, have you seen our backyard? Not really, sorry. And we go over there, have a look and there’s this water and it’s probably about this far away from getting into his house. And I said, oh wow, that’s pretty bad. So I actually got out that Sunday morning and I got a pickaxe out and a shovel and I spent that whole morning digging out a trench. Nice big trench. I’ve actually discovered after doing that you only need a trench about this big and this deep to take all that water. And I got it out to the front of my house and it was a win. And ever after that he called me St Andrew. So, and he was a bikie. He’s had his Harley Davidson. All his mates come over on a Saturday or a Sunday

[00:04:47] and they’d all just sit there out the front drinking beers. And he’d go, oh St Andrew, come and have a beer with us. I didn’t drink beer with him, but I would sort of have a drink and he’d say, that’s St Andrew. He stopped my house from flooding. No, anyway, and you know, it was good. It was an action. And, but I’m not always saintly, that’s for sure. And if you heard the words, I called my computer some days, you would know. So when we first moved, oh well, I’ve already talked about that. I’ll go on to the next page. There’s eight of them. But they’re back to back. So, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. When I see, this is verse two. When I see the word peace in the Bible, yeah, I think of the scriptures Philippians 4, 6 and 7,

[00:05:45] which says, you know, don’t be anxious about anything, but just take everything to the Lord in prayer and let the peace of God, which surpasses all your understanding, guard your heart and mind in Christ. Oh, application. I’m a teacher. I teach in a distant education environment. And it’s surprisingly good. Two-dimensional, but it’s still good. And so we actually have a prayer group. We met at one o’clock on Mondays. And I’m in two clubs. I come along to the prayer group and I have a science club with another staff member. Guess how many come to the science club? Five. And guess how many come to the prayer club? Come on, guess. No. No. No. Go up. One. These are spiritual people. Ten. Go up higher. Twenty. Thirty. Thirty. Yeah. Forty. Forty. Forty-five. We get about forty-five regularly in this prayer group

[00:07:00] from little kids up to probably grade 12. And they just come along and we pray for everything. It’s like a rapid-fire thing because this chaplain reads it and it’s like pray for the dogs, pray for the cats, pray for my sick aunt, my sick uncle, I’m sick, schoolwork is harassing me, I’ve got an exam, I’ve got assignments, my cat ate the parrot next door. We pray for the whole lot. And one of the things I do is, you know, some of the kids are actually anxious about things. So I say, well, you know, let’s pray Philippians 4, 6 and 7. Don’t be anxious about anything. Let the, you know, love of God guard your heart, soul and mind. And, you know, kids actually appreciate these things and, yeah, it’s really good. So, anyway, this leads into, that was my introduction. So this leads into the verse 3.

[00:08:00] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who’s blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Well, the spiritual blessings we’re going to go through in the next 10 verses. But, the heavenly places, I always wondered where that was. Thankfully, Jim put me right in one of his sermons. But, here it is here in Ephesians 2, verses 4 to 6. It says, But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he’s loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you’ve been saved, and raised up with him, and seated with him in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. So wherever Jesus is, that’s our heavenly place. And, when you’re sitting in a classroom, and it’s all falling to pieces,

[00:08:55] which I know there’s a few people here that have had that happen, you can go to your, one of my colleagues used to say, I go to my happy place. And he had some sort of a vision he would imagine, and you know, it was nice. But I guess, you can just ask the Lord to give you a hand, because at the heavenly place, we’re seated with Jesus in heavenly places. Amen. On to verse four and five. Chosen and adoption. Chosen and adoption. Oh, so these are my points. I’m talking, the, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. So we, we are chosen and adopted. We have redemption and riches of grace. And I didn’t, I used to wonder all about the riches of grace, but it’s really talking about Jesus saving us from sin. That’s the riches of his grace. Inheritance. And we are sealed with the spirit.

[00:09:51] So they’re the four points we’re going to talk about. So we’ll go through those. Verses four, five, and six is our next little bit. So let’s read those. Even as he chose us in him. So even as he chose us in him, God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, before God, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he blessed us in the beloved. God has chosen us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless through Jesus. This tells us that Jesus was there before the foundation of the world, that in the Lord we are holy and blameless. We are predestined to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ himself,

[00:10:54] according to the good pleasure of his will. Now, a further scripture on this is from Romans 8, 15 to 17. So if we can have a look at that on the screen, maybe is that possible to get up there? Romans 8, 15 to 17. Oh, nice. Okay. Romans 8, 15 to 17. This confirms that we have the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father, the spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So reading that, we are heirs in Christ or with Christ, both now and into the future. But we also actually, that last little bit was a bit of a shock. It says, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified. I don’t know how keen I am about that.

[00:12:00] But I guess when you do actually take Jesus out to people, you can suffer persecution in some ways, and no doubt people have met some challenge from that, or even with family members, definitely we can cover that. So, but we are chosen and we are adopted in Christ. All right, so that’s our first spiritual blessing. Second spiritual blessing is redemption and riches of Christ being redeemed. Number seven, verses seven and eight. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, doing the wrong thing, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. We have redemption through the blood of Jesus. To redeem something means to get it back. Often there is a price on our head, and the price is on our head, the price of sin.

[00:13:11] And the price was paid for with the blood of Jesus. And as a result, we have the forgiveness of sins. In the fullness of time, God will unite all things in Christ in heaven and things on earth. So I’m thinking about this and how we are redeemed through the blood of Jesus and that he has paid for the price of sin and he offers forgiveness to us and I’m applying this to my life and I think well when I first became a Christian I was in like grade 10 well actually I was maybe 8 years old or 7 years old and I wanted to be like that guy that walked into heaven who was it? Enoch yeah Enoch I wanted to be like him you know he walked straight to heaven he didn’t sort of have to die he just kept going but I didn’t know how that worked and so in year 10 I did make a public commitment and I got baptized

[00:14:14] and so I thought well my sin levels my sin levels must be up here somewhere because I’m pretty young and don’t know much so that’s probably where it is but I thought by the time I get to 60 which is not far away now they’re going to be down here somewhere I won’t have to deal with too much of it but um that’s not the point that’s not what happened um so while while it may be well true that over the years I’ve managed to live a more Christ-like life the sin nature is still in my life I will struggle with it all my life I found out I am on a lifelong journey of becoming more Christ-like this is called sanctification I am being saved I’ve been saved but I am being saved still and the Holy Spirit plays a major role in helping me to overcome the temptation of sin

[00:15:12] examples of sin some common sins that might tie us down gossiping lying losing one’s temper I would not know about that lust I didn’t have any broken tv screens because of my bad temper not at all so um when I was a teenager the sin that was at work um thoughts from the devil bombard your mind for a teenage boy these are often sex related I found and uh well that was like it for me and the rest of the boys that I hung out with in my group this is state school and that was just a lot of conversation about sex really and of course as um as a saint you have the Holy Spirit and it may well pull you back from pursuing those thoughts um so you don’t sin but to be honest I didn’t really know much about how to control all that stuff so but if you choose to choose to pursue them further then it can

[00:16:15] lead to sin that’s pretty obvious we can always bring our sins before the Lord and ask for forgiveness and in turn Jesus will represent us before God as holy and blameless and always found that you know if there was things in my life that weren’t right I would bring it to the Lord just say sorry and move it on he wants us to be able to grow sin for me is now more subtle I now have less testosterone so sexual thoughts are not like the teenage years they can be inappropriate thoughts all the same you know you watch tv programs if it’s inappropriate those thoughts will get in your head and so I choose to shut them out immediately this seems to work pretty well for me for me though the biggest sin is that of idolatry what do i idolize so much that it replaces my love for the lord the idol of status

[00:17:12] is it is there a status that you desire it’s become so important to you and to me you won’t let it go sometimes we all readily carry these goals past their use by dates and in so doing pierce ourselves with troubles or some people have mental breakdowns or they simply quit now i don’t have my glass here no yeah here it is but i need water in it sorry my glass i knew i get thirsty um yeah so for me i guess the status symbol for me was um my role in teaching senior biology it was who i was and what i did and uh thanks honey beautiful i even have um a glass to prove it this one it um it says all men are created equal just some evolved to become biology teachers yeah nicholas saduke grosso gave me this and uh he

[00:18:21] he says have no fear the biology teacher is here and uh the influence of a good teacher can never be erased very nice so um that was i’m not doing that for effect i’m very nervous so um so really um when i first started teaching biology i did not realize that i did not know anything And you know how they always say there’s stuff you know you don’t know. Then there’s the stuff you don’t know that you don’t know, and all that sort of thing. Well, there was stuff I didn’t know that I didn’t know. And so I was just, sometimes I would just tell people totally the wrong thing, and my students would pull me up. But I got into biology, and over many years, because I taught it for a long time, So I got really good knowledge of it and skills in it and I got good at it. So, and it’s such a complex topic now.

[00:19:25] It’s just so broad. It was pretty narrow when I first started, but now it’s just like it’s environmental science, it’s cell biology, it’s physiology, it’s feedback systems, it’s in fieldwork things in environmental science, It’s statistics in that and statistics in your experiment investigations with doing confidence intervals. And it’s just so big. DNA, genetics, evolution, biotechnology. And, you know, you’ve just got to try and figure out what’s the truth of all this. And not even all the textbooks agree sometimes. And you think, well, what’s this? Should I do this one, this book, that book? And, you know, and then you’ve got to try and figure out what’s the curriculum want from all this. It was pretty stressful, actually.

[00:20:18] And not only that, there’s the expectations of, you know, students, parents, teachers, and myself. So all up, put all those four together, and I’m never happy. So I was pretty stressed, actually. And so in 2021, I actually said to the Lord, hey, I’ve done enough of this. You can have it. So the following year, I teach, I apply for a job in distance education. And I get this really weird sort of a role, actually. It’s called area teaching. I don’t do it now, but it’s where I started in distance education. Someone would say, all right, you’ve got 40 students. You’re looking after them. Prep to year 12. You’ve got to know something about everything. And I’m sort of asking Andrea, so what do grade twos do? And she’s telling me, and I have 40 kids.

[00:21:22] And it’s like someone had said, oh, look, I’ve got a bucket of 40 balls here. And you just put your hands out like this, and I’ll drop them all. And let’s see how many you can catch. And, of course, a bunch of them just fall down here. And so you’re always going, I’ve got this one. I’ll just put this back up here. But that one fell off down there. I’ll get them all back up here. I was just not used to this style of education. Some of these people loved it. Some of these area teachers have been doing it for ages. They’re just like, oh, so good. You go out and see the parents, and you talk to them. they bake your food and I’m like yeah. I was really used to such a structured environment but my days were just totally free and open it was like wow you just do whatever you want

[00:22:03] you can go and visit some parents or you can yeah email some people. Wow it was really confusing for me. I struggled with it but then over the next couple of years the school totally changed it just went from being fairly free to just really structured and so now I just teach year 7 science. I’m in charge of 130 students and they just attend my classes online. It’s a pretty manageable working load for preparation and probably the most manageable I’ve ever had really and you know and I get to do stuff. I get to meet them as well. This Thursday I’m meeting them and we’re making slime. We got what’s called a fusion fest. Everyone comes to share their things and I’m going to make slime with them. Oh kids mate they’re

[00:22:51] so keen. So you know I love my job but hey I haven’t always loved it. It’s only in the last five years I started to use the word I love my job but it’s true. But I’m living the dream and the dream is not always what you want but I’m enjoying it. So my role in teaching senior biology was it a sin? I don’t believe so. But it was affecting my life, my family, my health. Ultimately I gave that to the Lord and he’s corrected the steering on my ship. Yeah definitely I was a stressed little bunny back then. I definitely I would have stress up to here. I mean people think I’m so calm and casual but you know I was ready to punch a lot of things back then. You just didn’t know. In this application I’ve seen the Lord

[00:23:42] redeem something that seemed to be a challenge that was affecting my life and it did not have a clear path of resolution. But I gave it to the Lord and he redeemed it. Inheritance we’re on to verses 9 through to 12. So 9 to 12. Yep. Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance. So he’s united all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus. In him we have obtained an inheritance. Having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So that we who were the first having Christ

[00:24:38] might be the praise of his glory. Thank you Lord. That’s what I think. That you have a plan this has already happened through Jesus it says in Colossians 1 19 to 20 for in him all things the fullness of God was pleased to dwell for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell so in Jesus I’ve struggled with that for so so long I just didn’t really understand how God could be Jesus and that just didn’t make sense to me often I would talk to Ken about it I would talk to Jim about it but I just understand that Jesus had the fullness of God in him but he was still a man like us and he had to pray to God he had to seek God’s guidance he had to live a life through being empowered like with God for in him all things the fullness

[00:25:40] of god was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of his cross and i think here um this is talking all about coming into his presence and being as i said right at the start um a faithful what was it back at the right at the start here um faithful in christ a saint only uh who acknowledged jesus to be the only lord and saviour and so have you received jesus as your lord and saviour um the romans road to salvation um in it says in god’s word that the father sends people to the lord and that he turns none away so Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God well that’s so true Romans 6 23 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life

[00:26:45] in Christ Jesus our Lord amen John 14 6 Jesus said to me I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but by me and Romans 10 9 to 10 if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord believe in your heart God raised him from the dead you’ll be saved for it’s with our heart we believe and are justified and with the mouth that we confess and are saved so upon receiving Jesus as our Lord and Savior we inherit eternal life and we are sealed them with the Holy Spirit which is really exciting so let’s go on and learn about being sealed with the Holy Spirit verses 13 and 14 in him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance

[00:27:47] until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory when we believe in Jesus we are sealed with the Holy Spirit he is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it having the Holy Spirit while it is a guarantee a seal for our inheritance in the Lord is also what makes our life exciting god leaves us in subtle ways i call it the i should i should do this or that the bible says that to do the right thing you know to do and to not do it is sin fortunately doing the right thing is usually rewarding but often challenge i remember um costa who’s with us tonight he’s um had surgery on his neck and it’s going well yeah it’s going well i believe so and um costa has been coming to this church for a while and uh he said to me you know i’ve got to go

[00:28:59] to the pa hospital to have um surgery on my neck and uh they got to sort of do something with the discs put like a disc plate in that sort of thing um sounds nasty and i think you know it it’s a pretty serious operation to do and so i said yeah okay i can drop you there what what time you know oh 6 45 i think so oh okay well uh we go into the hospital and we get into the hospital and i drop costa in there and he goes into the um at that actually that 6 45 is real the door just opens up it’s like some tv thing you know it’s like okay they start talking processing everyone straight away and um so i went in there and dropped costa in and then i went home and got a phone call and it’s oh they don’t want to operate

[00:29:59] on me because it’s some complications after a scan so we’re going to have to come in again oh okay so I come in pick him up next time it’s young young Karen and young young takes him in and so young sort of takes him in and it doesn’t happen so he comes back home and because this time one of the doctors was not there like apparently couldn’t make it in for some reason or couldn’t do the operation but finally we got to the opportunity of the surgery and it went ahead and I was able to obviously it was really good to come in and check up it took a while to recover didn’t it it took a good couple of weeks three weeks or more and and you know what that was a real blessing it was a blessing for me probably more than costa yeah it was and um you know I could

[00:31:02] have not done that and I think God would have found someone else but I would have missed the blessing but you know what if God continually tells us to do something and we refuse to do it then I think that is a sin because we’re being disobedient but the lord is gentle and subtle and persistent in his leading and the seal of the holy spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance and so that’s the holy spirit leading in our lives so i want to come to conclusion here um i’d like to say in conclusion we’ve been chosen in Jesus before the foundation of the world that we are that we can be blameless before God thank the Lord that we are we are predestined with adoption as sons we are fellow heirs through Jesus amen we have redemption and the riches of

[00:32:02] grace we have the price of sin on our head but Jesus paid for it and he has forgiven us of our sin and we can bring that before him and ask for forgiveness time again an inheritance of eternal life and we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and we want to thank the Lord for that so in this concluding segment of the message on spiritual blessings in heavenly places you may have been challenged in some way through the message of the Lord for the body of Christ maybe you’ve been challenged to receive the Lord as your saviour if so come and talk me to me at the end of the message maybe you’ve been challenged about areas of difficulty in your life we’ve been redeemed through the blood of Jesus and have forgiveness of our sins we can also bring our request before

[00:33:00] the Lord and know that he has lavished upon us all wisdom and insight when it comes to our life in him all right well thank you for listening let’s pray before we finish dear Lord Jesus we just want to come before you and we thank you Lord that you have redeemed us through Jesus and that we are seated with Jesus in heavenly places we thank you Lord for Lord that you have have made that sacrifice for us we we pray Lord a prayer of thanks that we are adopted into your kingdom and that we have an inheritance through you and Lord more than that We just thank you that you give us a spirit through which we can live each day and that you are willing to forgive us of our sins. You just need us to come before you and to give that to you. Help us to leave our burdens with you and to receive your grace and to live our lives for you. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.