Sealed, Eph, 1:13-14

Good morning. We'll be taking a look at this Ephesians passage, chapter 1, 13 and 14. Before we dive into it, though, one of the things that I think would be good for us to take a look at, I've had people comment, boy, you guys sure studied intensely. What are you doing studying the Bible so intensely? It's not because we want to just know more stuff. It's not just that we're aiming at the precise, correct interpretation, as important as that is.

It is that we want, through the Word and our understanding of what we're seeing, to behold the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Isn't that the key? Isn't that important? That is pivotal. Our intent is not to just get lost in detail or get so enamored with all the little parts and pieces. Our intent is to behold the Lord, to behold the Lord of glory, the one with whom we will spend eternity. That's the point. That's why we're doing this, okay?

One of the things to point out here, New American Standard has in him a couple times in there, and actually the King James has it a little closer. to the Greek text is really in whom. Sometimes the translators struggle with, you know, how do I get this across in English? And so one point to make there.

Another thing is just to look at what Paul is doing as he's writing. He will write something and then sometimes insert things that are kind of in parentheses. And he's done that here this morning, especially in verse 13. What you see there highlighted in blue and in the parentheses is really kind of a parenthetical statement, isn't it? It's kind of some further explanation of what took place and so we'll be looking at that in detail, but I think it's important to see how he's putting this thought together. How is he laying it out for these people?

We also have to ask another question. He, twice here in verse 13, brings home this idea of in Him, in whom, in Christ. You notice we've seen that again and again, and it seems like he can't put that in there enough. And so we need to ask a very important question. How does one get to be in Christ?

As we do that, there's a couple of things to point out. What we have here is kind of broken down in about four bullets, the content of the first part of verse 13. And in doing so, we've underscored some of the definite articles that are there in the Greek text.

So it comes across this way. After listening to the message of the truth, it's specific and singular. The specific truth. It has a definition and it is that one. It's not just something that's sort of true-ish. Not something that has the vague shape of kind of true. Not something that feels true. But instead, you've listened to the message that is the truth.

And he explains, what is that? That is the gospel of the salvation of you. He is specific about that too. The definite article there, before the salvation. It is the specific salvation of you. That's what he's pointing out. Also having also believed. We'll take a look at that in a minute. One question is, if you ever had somebody come up to you and they'd say, well, what is the gospel? What is it that I have to believe in order to be saved? You boil it down to that. You ask that question. What is the gospel? Bottom line, what is it?

Tell me. And a good question is, could we tell them? Could we tell them? Paul spells it out here in 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 3. For I delivered to you as of first importance... What's that telling us? Top priority, number one. This is not an incidental in life. It's top priority. As a first importance, what I also received, and where did he receive it?

From the Lord. That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. This has a factual, recorded basis. And that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. Do you believe it? That's the gospel. That's it. I put that in the bullet, and even though I'm sure you can all look it up on it, because I think it's important for us to remember, you know, we look and we get involved in lots of, the Greek means this and it says that, but hey folks, this is the bottom line. This is the gospel. It's that simple. Do you believe it? That's what he asks.

It's put real concisely in Acts 16, 30 and 31. Here's the jailer at Philippi. And what we don't have in the context here is the jailer sitting there with a sword ready to plunge it through himself. And at moments like that, you kind of get to the point, don't you? Okay? Moments like that, you get to the point. Sirs, what must I do to be saved? He's on the brink of just going and running himself through. The jailer at Philippi is asking this sort of last-ditch question. Paul and Silas are saying, well, let me tell you, the Greek root of the fifth... No. See, it doesn't go off in all the sentence diagramming, as nice as that is.

He says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. That simple. If you want the bottom line, if you want exactly what's minimum here, but what really counts, what's first priority, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Bottom line. And that's exactly the message that he's communicating to the people at Ephesus here. He knows they're believers, but he's writing, this is at the core. This is the bottom line gospel. And that's what he's spelling out in verse 13. So being in Christ is not from being in a church building. It doesn't matter what size, how big, how small, what the name is out front.

A church building itself isn't going to do it. And it doesn't matter how often you go in it. It's not going to do it. It doesn't matter at what age, or in what place, or who did the baptizing. That does not save you. It doesn't matter, you know, we have the Lord's table here and we'll have it this next Sunday, but it's done in remembrance. It doesn't matter how many times you have it. It doesn't matter what form it is, what shape it is, whether you do it in bread or wafers or, you know, large cup, big cup, brass cup, none of that is going to matter. We do that in remembrance. That's what the scriptures say.

It is not accomplishing something in the way of salvation. You don't accumulate anything from it. Having some church membership isn't going to get you there. You will not be in Christ as a result of having this piece of paper. God does not sit down and weigh out the bad and the good and say, well, the good outweighs the bad and therefore you're in. That's not it.

He spells it out. You also, after listening to the message of the truth, the specific one, the gospel of the salvation of you, it's that one, that specific one, having also believed. What does it take, folks? Believed. That's it. Bottom line. That simple. Nothing more, and most certainly, nothing less. Then he goes on here, in the middle of verse 13, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. So we want to take a look at this word, sealed.

Okay? The key that we understand that. So just to make sure things are clear, it's not this kind of seal. Okay? That's not what we're talking about. Okay? It's not this kind of seal either. Okay? So it's not the arf arf arf or the rat-tat-tat-tat kind. Okay? None of those. Okay? And you might say, Vern, I know that. I wasn't born yesterday. Okay? Fine. But nonetheless, we need to cover this stuff. OK, this is the kind of seal we're talking about. All right.

This is a seal that is on a ring, more so than this one here, but it's on a ring and it has the goddess Athena and it would be the goddess of soldiers. We don't know exactly, but it very likely was owned by a Roman soldier who would use that seal also for all the purposes that we'll see in a minute. All the purposes that a seal would be used for, he would have that seal, and because he had a ring, he had it with him, all the time readily available. He also knew that if he had it, somebody else didn't. So there was security and safety in it.

Here's another one. This is the seal impression from the seal of Augustus, who was the emperor in power at the time of our Lord's birth. And so that was one, his seal shows up on a number of documents from his era. What's real interesting is I've never been able to figure out how that shows Augustus on it, so don't ask me. Here's something interesting.

Oh, by the way, have you ever heard anybody tell you that the Bible is just full of stories and myths? How many of you have heard that? Have you heard that? Okay, now, somebody tells you that, okay? You need to very gently, very lovingly tell them they don't know what they're talking about, okay? Because, okay, these seals here, These seals here, there's a number of them, and I'm just giving you some samples. Here's case in point.

The Bible says in 2 Kings that there was this guy named Manasseh, and at the age of 12, he was made king, and he was king for over half a century. There it is recorded. It's even recorded in the book of Matthew again. Well, here's the guy's ring, and the ring on it, says that it was his when he was the crown prince, not yet king.

So here's, you know, is this a guy real? Is he for real? Yeah, there it is. There's his ring right there. And we have it. Here's one. This scroll here has seal imprints from some of the names given in Jeremiah chapter 36. And so there's several of those names. They're right there in Jeremiah. Those are the imprints of the guys.

By the way, if somebody says, well, how sure are you of this? On the very opening slide, what I put on there is very likely. And here's why I'll say that. The opening slide had, for example, the seal imprint from Baruch, who was the personal scribe of Jeremiah. And the Bible says, Baruch, son of Nariah, the scribe. The seal imprint says, Baruch, son of Nariah, the scribe. Now, did we find it on his hand?

No. But how likely is it that an imprint would have all the right information to connect everything up, and be found in the same age layer that it would fit. So do we know with absolute certainty? No. Do we know with a very high degree of certainty? Yes.

So you can put that confidence level on it. So anyway, one of the things to point out here, there's some terminology. The seal imprint, because I've used that term, the seal imprint, once they put the mark on, usually a piece of clay, they take a piece of clay and then let it harden. In the plural, those are called bullae. So we've got, for example, four of them. So those would be bullae. Singular, it would be bulla. So you need to have this real clear. This is no bulla. And this isn't either.

This bulla, the third one over here, is from the seal of Baruch, who is the personal scribe of Jeremiah. That's the one that we showed right at the opening. Sorry about that. Anyway, his name shows up in four different chapters, and it keeps calling him Baruch, son of Neriah the scribe. And that's what we see here inscribed on the seal in print. Oh, by the way, another one of these has been found with the exact same imprint, only it has a fingerprint on the edge. We don't know that it's his, you know, we can't be certain, but real interesting when we actually have the fingerprint of the guy who wrote down for Jeremiah the contents of the book. How about that? So anyway, if somebody tells you the Bible is just full of stories and fables, they need to learn something. Anyway, all right.

Here's an ISAV container seal like that, you know, for the ISAV that was made in Laodicea. And in Revelation 3.18, remember the Lord tells the church at Laodicea, you need to buy ISAV for your eyes so that you can see. And it's because Laodicea was famous for its ISAV. Well, they would take the ISAV that they made at Laodicea, and the container then would be sealed up and they would use something like this to seal it up and to indicate not only what's in it, but also indicate that when you got that, that the seal wouldn't be broken.

We kind of have similar practice now, only it's usually a piece of foil or plastic or something. This was a seal put on medical containers. We have various kinds of purposes for seals. One of the purposes that comes out several times in the New Testament and Old Testament both, is this protection from tampering.

If there was something that was ordered done by an official, it would be common for them to have something about it set in place with a seal. For example, when the Lord's body was put in the tomb, they wanted to make certain nobody would take the body out of the tomb. So they put the Roman governor's seal on the tomb, and it was death penalty if you touched it. Death penalty if you took it out unauthorized.

That was protection from tampering. When we say protection, we're not talking about, what's this little piece of clay going to do? It's the authority of that symbol made in the seal. That's one of the purposes. Protection from disclosure. Don't reveal this yet. Don't reveal it yet.

One of the things that was typical of both the Roman wills, and the Jewish laws where they had people who were in debt and then could buy the property back. Both those documents were sealed up with seven seals and it was capital punishment if you opened them unauthorized and disclosed them outside of the time when they're supposed to be disclosed. There's protection from judgment, and you see that a couple of times in the book of Revelation and elsewhere in Ezekiel. They put the seal, like on their forehead, as a specific protection from judgment that would otherwise be carried out.

Again, authorization. Boy, that comes all the way from Genesis through much of the Old Testament especially. And we have here the seal, King Hezekiah. How about that? King of Judah. And he's also mentioned not only in 2 Kings, but in Chronicles, Isaiah. In addition to that, certification of contents. We don't have an explicit instance of that from scripture, but we know from the time that that was one of the purposes that seals were used for.

Sort of an inference of it in Revelation 3.18 with the mention of the ISAV. The other is ownership or possession. That comes from Song of Solomon. And in the very passage we're looking at here, And then finally, authentication. Several instances of that in the New Testament. This is authentic.

So the various generally legal purposes that the seal had. Notice here, you've got the seal impression or bulla from Ahaz, son of Jotham. And off to the side, the seal of Jezebel. That's about all that's left of Jezebel too, by the way. But anyway, the seal of Jezebel right there. And interestingly enough, rather than having the language markers, it's got a bunch of hieroglyphics on it that fit the foreign background that she had. So it shows, again, more indications of his genuineness.

Okay. The point to make here is it's that ownership or possession that Ephesians 1, 13, and 14 are pointing to that we're looking at today. And the reason we know that, it says so, as we'll see before long here. By the way, seals had value for thousands of years. Before the time of Moses, into the time of Abraham, lots of use of seals. So this is a longstanding practice and legal tradition. But the thing that we're pointing out in this passage, out of all the various purposes, Seal of ownership. That was the key. And he makes a point there explicitly.

This is part of what the ministries of the Holy Spirit at the time of belief. And we'll look at one of them here, indwelling of the believer. We see that in a couple of different passages, Romans 1 John. The other one is baptizing by the Spirit into the body of Christ.

By the way, that word baptize, we tend to think of, okay, we're going to dunk somebody in water. The first and primary meaning of that word baptize means to place into. So when we look at baptizing into the body of Christ, what's happening, the Holy Spirit is placing that person into the body of Christ. It's a ministry of placement. So it's not having to do essentially with baptizing somebody per se. What we do when we baptize someone symbolizes what the Holy Spirit has already done at the point of belief. It's belief that is the point here and not the actual water baptism. And the final one we're looking at here is sealing. And Paul mentions it here in this passage.

We're going to see it again. in Ephesians 4.30, where he also ties in sealing with redemption.

And then you can see it also in 2 Corinthians 1.22. Now, you are sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. With the Holy Spirit of promise. Promise? What promise? You've got to ask that question.

The Holy Spirit was promised Several times and by the way this this you know list of a few different passages mostly in John is not exhaustive Okay, there's more but but just so you got several the Holy Spirit was promised numerous times and so They came to understand, you know, this is something that the Lord very definitely intended, and it wasn't a last-minute, boy, we better do something. But this is something that the Lord had well in mind long before, and he wanted them to know in advance the Holy Spirit, you know, is going to come on those who believe within the church. It's interesting in the Acts 1 passage, they begin asking questions that make it very apparent they still don't quite understand what's going on. But nonetheless, it's really clear from the passage, no, the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

One of the reasons, think about this, one of the reasons why I had to make it clear here what was going on and to differentiate what they probably had in their mind is their thinking of the new covenant promise to the Jews. The new covenant promise to the Jews. from the Old Testament, and the Jews would all be familiar with it, is the Holy Spirit will be given to the Jews, okay, and so that they will have the law written on their hearts. And no Jew would have to teach another the law, okay? That's the new covenant to the Jews. They're likely thinking that, because in Acts 1, 6, they're asking the Lord, is now the time you're going to restore the kingdom? That is, you've been promising the Holy Spirit. Doesn't this fit? He's saying no. We're not there yet, but you will receive the Holy Spirit.

And when that happens, you'll be my witnesses and it'll be an entirely different thing. Okay. Let's look at the events. I think it's helpful because we're looking at a bunch of words here. Let's get the sequence and what we do diagrammatically here. After listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. So he starts off with that. This is leading up to a point, isn't it? So then the question of what point?

That point then is this, having also believed you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. That sealing with the Holy Spirit is contemporaneous, same time as having believed. But that's the sequence that he puts up. First, you've got this listening going on, leading up to a point of belief. At that time of belief, then you are sealed with the Holy Spirit, with the Holy Spirit of promise.

Now, it says, in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance. Now, with the mention of the name pledge, some of you might be just shuddering in horror, okay?

We're not talking about dusting here, okay? All right. What this is about, this word pledge here is that King James has an earnest, and that's probably a good way to translate it here, the Greek word is arabon. This is a borrowed word, we call it. It's a word that the Greeks didn't come up with themselves.

It's from the Hebrew. As a matter of fact, you find it three times in Genesis 38. It's the exact same word in Hebrew. Interestingly, that's close to 2,000 years earlier. Here's the word showing up. But the word seems to have been carried there by the Phoenicians who traveled the seas and lived right nearby where the Jews were and would have taken it to the Greeks. Nonetheless, that's where it comes from. And it was a word used in commerce.

As a matter of fact, we have similar ideas. The idea of a down payment. You put money down that says you're serious about paying the rest of it, right? That's the idea. In other words, it's given as an initial deposit guaranteeing the rest of what is going to be paid. Saying, I'm serious about paying the rest.

It's a guarantee. And then it's interesting, we have just a kind of case in point. There's a record in Greek, for example, of a woman who sold her cow and she received a thousand drachmas, and it uses this word, as an Erebon, a down payment. So that's the idea. You paid a substantial partial sum, the idea that the rest of it will come. It's promised. The rest of it will come based on this guarantee, this initial down payment that's made. Okay.

It's interesting, in modern Greek, this word has been brought forward in the Greek language. The modern Greek word for an engagement ring is an Erebona. Isn't that interesting? So what is it? It's a ring promising a fulfillment of the rest. Yes, we're going to be married and everything that goes with it. So the engagement ring is kind of the down payment. It's the guarantee of the rest of what will be fulfilled. As we always do here, we want to be abundantly clear, so I want you to know this right now. This is not Erebona. It was given as a pledge of our inheritance.

Inheritance is the word that comes through there. And this is chloronomia. You can name your kids after that if you want. is the alphachloronemia. This noun is here in Ephesians 1.14, and we also are going to see it in just a few verses later in 1.18, and then later on, several decades from now, in Ephesians 5.5. And as we go through here, 1.14, where we've seen that the believers have been made an inheritance, this, and in verse 18, we're God's inheritance, this says we receive an inheritance. Now, isn't that interesting? The Lord looks at us, we've been made an inheritance, we're His inheritance, and we have an inheritance too. Isn't that amazing?

The Lord has made it, it's almost like there's more than the sum of the parts. The Lord has made this, He looks at it as an immense benefit to Him, and He says, and I want it to be an immense benefit to the believers as well. The Lord has just said, I want to bless them abundantly, and doing so will bless me abundantly. So he wants to spell that out there. We have both an inheritance to claim and look forward to here, as well as the amazing thing that we also are God's inheritance, which is absolutely mind-boggling.

Isn't it? Absolutely mind-boggling. So the Holy Spirit is the first part of our inheritance. You got it, folks. It's the down payment. You have the Holy Spirit. You've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. That's the down payment guaranteeing the rest of what's to come. You have it. Right now. You've got the down payment. It's the promise of what's to come. The other word here is redemption. We've looked at this word before, it showed up just a few verses back. So we see that in verse 7, now we see it here in verse 14.

And again, redemption has the idea of from redeem, or to buy back from, or away from. And the idea, just to reiterate here, someone might have been taken captive maybe in an illegal way or in a military invasion. The idea is this person is on the edge of death and you're buying them back from that death that they're on the edge of, on the brink of. And so we're going to see this word again. Interestingly, this word is also tied in with 430, and we'll see it connected to the Holy Spirit's sealing again towards the end of the book, where it says, we've been sealed unto the day of redemption.

And that brings up a key point here. As we've looked in this first chapter, there are two redemptions. It uses the same word, apolutrosis. That's not a disease, okay? It uses the same word, but there's two different redemptions. The first one is the redemption, which actually says right there in Ephesians 1-7, the forgiveness of sins. The Lord paid the price there, and it is at the point of belief that we have received that redemption, that buying back. When we were at the precipice, when we were on the brink, we've been bought back.

I was talking with Brad and Judy before the service here and just thinking of the movie that's currently out and has everybody's attention and their money too. But anyway, the movie that has everybody's attention and that's this Mel Gibson movie, The Passion.

It's interesting, I haven't seen the movie yet. I understand my brother has and I haven't talked to him about it yet. but I'm told it's very impacting. You probably don't want to take little kids to see it. It's unrelentingly violent and apparently the intent is to convey things as they were. What the movie cannot tell you is what it means. The movie can't tell you what it means. This does. Redemption, that is the forgiveness of sins. The movie can't tell you have been identified with Christ. The movie can't convey that. It's not set up that way. It communicates a kind of a historical event before your eyes, but it doesn't tell you what's the spiritual event.

And it's at this point of believing that this becomes effective for each person who believes. The other redemption is the one we're seeing here in Ephesians 1.14. And that's the redemption of God's own possession. This is from the point of belief, that's the first redemption. And then what are we doing?

We've been sealed, as Ephesians 4.30 says, we've been sealed as a guarantee until the day of redemption. This is the day we're looking forward to, isn't it? This is the day when we are redeemed out of this world, okay? We're brought back.

It's the second stage, if you will, of this redemption. In order that we fully understand what this is talking about, and you have this way in your handout, this first point of belief, we are justified before the Lord. In that first redemption, the Lord has a legal declaration in which He says, we are justified, declared righteous. At this second redemption, we are glorified. That's the redeeming of God's own possession. Isn't it interesting? That will be the point where God will say, now, I've really got them, they're mine. He will claim what is rightfully His, us, in Christ. We will be a valuable inheritance in Christ.

And it's in between. It's between that first redemption and the second redemption that we're waiting for, that we're being sanctified. It's a process. So that's interesting. The first redemption is an event, isn't it? The second redemption, where we're glorified, is an event. It's what's happening between justified and glorified.

It's a process. That's the process that we're in now. Being sanctified, let's bring that down to the bottom line, being made holy. Being made holy. Something else to bring up here, one of the things you may have noted, and some have even asked about it already, There's these pronouns in here, and we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose. He works all things after the council's will, his will.

And these, we who were the first to hope, and then you also, and then you, you see that? So we, you. Now, so we got to ask the question, why is all the we's and you's? We, you, who? The thing we've got to look at, some have suggested that the we refers to the Jews who first believed, Acts 2-9, and the you refers to the Gentiles who followed afterwards. That may be, there's some things I think to look at that may kind of... temper that thought.

First thing we want to make real sure, Paul is not intending that the Jews or the Gentiles have any different position in Christ. Every spiritual blessing applies to the Jews and the Gentiles that are in the church. Those who believe, Jew or Gentile, will be blessed 100%. Okay? In the heavenlies, in Christ, completely. So no distinction there at all.

There were Jews among the Gentiles at Ephesus. We know that from Acts 19, first 10 verses. And the ones who were ministering with Paul, both while he was at Ephesus, we know that, and later while he was writing from prison, where this letter came from, included both Jews and Gentiles. So there may be some wondering about the we and the you there. It's possible that it's just a literary device in order to make it interesting. There's a few other things to take a look at too.

You remember Paul made a few missionary journeys and his first missionary journey didn't take him to Ephesus, did it? He took off from Antioch and went into kind of southern and central what is now Turkey. and then kind of looped back around through the same churches. The second time around he appointed elders in each of the churches. But he didn't go to Ephesus that time. So it wasn't until the second missionary journey later that he went to Ephesus and then there began to be believers there. So in the second journey, then he goes through Ephesus after he's gone through a number of other places.

So some time has gone by. So the we and you may refer to different groups in terms of time as well. There's one other possibility I'd like to suggest. Notice that the we, he says, would be the praise of his glory, right? The U would also be to the praise of his glory.

Now that we know that there was a practice among the Jews, and it may well have been practiced by the early church, indications are that it may have been similar in their case, when they would travel, especially as they're traveling back to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the Jews would sing alternately different verses.

As a matter of fact, specifically, they would sing the Hallel, which would be Psalm 113 through 118, and they would alternate between the groups. And so one group would sing the praises of the Lord, and then the other group would respond, and they'd go back and forth between the groups. And so this may be some indication of a responsive praising the Lord, because the Hallel, Psalm 113 through 18, is a series of psalms that praise the Lord. And it was those psalms that were sung, for example, on what's typically called the Lord's triumphal entry, when they would alternate between the groups, singing back and forth between the groups.

Now we look to this last phrase there, to the praise of his glory. And it's interesting, the structure of the Greek there, unto the praise of the glory of Him. It's specific. The glory of Him. There's a focus upon the Lord's glory in this last part of the verse there. And you think about this, why is there the focus upon the Lord's glory?

If you think about all of what he's spelled out in verse 3, all through down to 14, how much of it is what we did? If you look down that whole thing, suppose you took on the page and you looked at it and you said, I'm going to highlight what we did. What did we do in that whole 3 through 14? We've studied it over this last month. What did we do?

Believed. That's it, folks. That's it. And it's not a work. You don't get credit for it. It's work. You believed. It's not a work. That's all you did. How did the rest of it happen? Who gets all the verbs? The Lord. It's to the praise of His glory, not ours. It's not what we did, it's not what we earned, it's not what we're worth.

It's amazing in our advertising. Have you noticed the advertising pitch, and you hear it all the time, you deserve it. If I deserve it, give it to me free, right? But what happens is we have that mentality, you know, kind of, I deserve this, I deserve that. We don't deserve any of this stuff, folks. We believe, and that's not a work, we didn't earn it. It's all the Lord's doing. It's 100% His blessing. It's all His doing. It's to the praise of His glory, to Him.

Something else about this, you look at this seal. What's the seal? The seal is a guarantee. Who's doing the guaranteeing? Who's doing the guarantee? It's God. God's the one doing the guarantee. He's the one that put the down payment, right? It's His pledge. It's His promise. And I'll ask you a question. How good is God's guarantee? When somebody makes a guarantee, it's only worth the person behind it, right? Or the company or whatever it is. How good is God's guarantee?

If the end result of this, as he brings out in Ephesians 4.30, is it's his guarantee unto the day of redemption, what part do you and I have in making sure that that guarantee gets fulfilled? Is that your job? Is that my job? No. It's God's guarantee.

It depends on His character and not ours. It depends on what He has done and not what we've done. The only thing out of all those, that one sentence, because remember 3 through 14 is all one sentence in the Greek. That one sentence, we can highlight one word, believed.

The rest of it's all God's doing. He guarantees the work. He guarantees the work. That's cool. This is God's doing. We can look to Him to be the one. to carry it out and to be true to what he's promised based on his eternal unchangeable character. That's neat stuff.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, boy, what marvelous ways you have blessed us. What marvelous ways, Lord, you have provided for us and it will be eternity for us to understand the depth and the width and the height and the length of it. but how marvelous it is, how marvelous Your grace. And Lord, as we look at this, we just pray that we would learn of heart to cease trying to be somehow worthy of what You've blessed us with, to somehow try to catch up to how You have given and You have graced. We cannot do it. All we can do is be to the praise of Your glory. And it's Your praise, in Jesus' name, Amen.