By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Epiphany Sunday, January 6th, 2019
(1-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)
Today we begin the new year, 2019. Happy New Year, everyone!
This new year will be anything but ordinary. There is no such thing as ordinary when you are alive. Because you are alive, this Year will be filled with many ‘new’ things, experiences, adventures, along with some heart breaks, and disappointments too. We can be ‘happy’ to make it to this day, but the days will not always be ‘happy’. Of course, this is our ‘wish’, but we don’t always get exactly what we wish for.
The good news is that, because we have faith in Jesus Christ, we may not, probably will not get what we wish for, but because we put our faith in Jesus Christ, we will always have more, not less. If you put your faith in your life, your money, your resources, or your desires, you may get some, but eventually, you will always get less. But with Jesus, you will always have ‘more’.
Do you remember the TV commercials that speak about ‘more’? I can’t recall what it was, it occurs in many different ways from ‘more saving to more doing’, to more ‘cashback’, to just ‘more’. More of this and more of that.
That’s one kind of more, but the kind of ‘more’ the gospel of Jesus Christ promises is not ‘more’ that will clutter or confuse your life, but ‘more’ that will bless, assure, or bring ‘peace’ to your life, no matter what happens or what doesn’t happen in the year ahead. Would you like to know about this ‘more’? This is the ‘more’ he calls ‘every spiritual blessing in Christ’ which has come to us from God.
HE CHOSE US… (4)
The first great ‘more’ from God, Paul says, is the more of being ‘chosen’. Paul says, ‘he chose us from before the creation of the world’ (1:4). Now, that a very specific, intentional, and deliberate choice, isn’t it? What Paul means is that God has plans, intentions, and purposes for his people. Before the world was ever created, God thought about us. He wasn’t thinking about us from a sentimental standpoint, but God was thinking of us from a very practical, personal, and purposeful standpoint. He says God chose us to be ‘holy and blameless in his sight’ (4).
That kind of old, archaic language seems light years away from our world filled with so much incivility and ugliness. How in the world could God have ever thought about having a ‘holy and blameless’ people in a world that can become as messy and dirty as this?
The answer, I think, come from one of the most dramatic stories of all the Bible, when a woman named Esther was challenged by her times to become a redemptive, saving, and holy person for her own people—the Jews. Times where bad, and this King was thinking about annihilating a whole race of people, who were living in his midst. But what does Esther do, she did what she could do, had to do, chose to do, she realize that she was ‘born for such a time as this’!
Here, I can’t help, but think about some of the chosen people during the Nazi times. Now, I’m not speaking of the Jews who were senselessly murdered, but I’m thinking of some of those people who took risks to save them, help them, and hide them. These people made choses in those times, not to look after themselves, but to do the right thing, the needed thing, and the necessary things. They also realize they were ‘born for such a time as that’.
What time are we born for? I heard a deacon say, last year, “My grandparents did things for this church, but this is our time, my time, and this is your time.” We were born for ‘such a time as this’.
Could you understand this kind of being ‘chosen’ as exactly this kind of ‘spiritual blessing’? It is the kind of spiritual sense that you are ‘chosen’ ‘called’ and ‘blessed’ to be someone in this world, at this time, and for what is right, needed, and necessary, in this moment.
HE PREDESTINED US… (5-6)
Paul continues by elevating this idea even more, saying that you are not only ‘chosen’, but you are ‘predestined’. Now, of course, some of us know that this word ‘predestined’ is a loaded word, that has caused many theological arguments about whether God decides what happens to us, whether we want it to happen or not. But that’s not what exactly what the word ‘predestined’ means in the Bible.
In the Bible, like right here, when the word ‘predestined’ is used, it refers to what God ‘wants’, ‘intends’ or ‘desires’ to happen, more than what God ‘makes’ happen. When Paul says ‘he predestined us’ he also speaks of what this ‘predestination’ means in the most positive terms, saying that in Christ, God has ‘predestined us for adoption’, to be his own children, which is ‘according to his pleasure and will’. Do you see? What ‘predestined’ means is what God ‘wills’ or ‘wants’ to happen, not necessarily what God ‘makes’ happen. It is what God wills or wants or wishes for us. It is why we are chosen, not just to ‘be holy’, but to be his own children, adopted through ‘love’.
As an adopted child, my mother always told me that I was different, preparing me for the negative words that might be said about me at school. She told me that while other children were born because of the love of their parents, I was chosen because of the love of my parents. I wasn’t better than other children, but I was loved just like other children. She wanted me to know that it was all about love. This is the same kind of reality we wanted our own adopted daughter to understand, when we went a step further, and had an ‘adoption’ day, which we celebrated with a small gift, similar to a birthday. We wanted her to know what she was ‘chosen’, and being chosen, she was chosen because our love for her in our hearts. Predestined does not mean God makes life happen this way, or that way, but it means that no matter what happens, nothing that happens will change God’s love.
HE LAVISHED ON US… (7-8)
This ‘love’ that choses and predestines, is a love that based upon the ‘riches of God’s grace’ which, we are told, God ‘lavishes’ upon us in the ‘redemption’ we have ‘in Jesus Christ’. It is a costly redemption, which cost his ‘blood’; his whole life.
It is also a redemption that has accomplished God’s forgiveness for all our sins and shortcomings, so that we need not fear anything being done to us by God’s wrath, now or in the life to come. Paul goes on to clarify that we also need to fear anything that happens in all of life, because eventually, finally, and ultimately, ‘everything’ will turn out, that is conform, or be transformed into his will (11).
This means that in the end, everything will be determined is already predetermined by God’s goodness and ‘grace’ (7). This is what God ‘lavishes’ on us, according to Paul, that no matter what happens in the short run, it will all work itself out, according to God’s will, in the long run.
But this doesn’t call for complacency. There will be suffering, blood, pain, and hurt and hard work all the way, but in the end, it will all be healing, goodness, grace, and purpose. This is the ‘goodness’ and the ‘grace’ that only Jesus Christ can ‘lavish’ upon us, because this is how God ‘lavished’ it on him, after Christ’s death, with resurrection, promise, and with power for life that will never end.
Pastor Ed Markquart tells of taking a cruise ship and having all kinds of ‘good things’ being ‘lavished’ upon the guests. When he entered the dining hall, he said ‘lobsters were two feet long’ and the ‘cakes were like wedding cakes going all the way to the ceilings’. A cruise ship wouldn’t be fun to me, but I get the picture, don’t you? I understand that in this life, when we really understand what life is about, it is a lavishing of God’s love on us, getting us ready for the fulness of love and life that is still to come. This life, and the blessings we receive, are just a foretaste, a preparation, of the life that is still too come.
HE MADE KNOWN TO US… (9-10)
Of course, there is a ‘mystery’ to all this. The ‘mystery’ is that sometimes the purposes of life are hidden and hard to decipher. But this is exactly whey Paul wants us to know that in ‘the heavenlies’ or from ‘heaven’s perspective’, everything is already predetermined, is already accomplished for us, and we are now, chosen to live in and toward God’s final accomplishment.
Even in the ‘mystery’ to how, when, or why everything happens, the ‘mystery’ of life is still a mystery, but it is a ‘mystery made known’, because we already know everything will finally work out, for this life, for the world, and in and for us, for those who love him. Some will say the ‘mystery’ means that God has already worked it all out, but it might be that the real mystery resides in this God who is ‘still working’ his glorious purpose out in this world, and in us, when we love him. God is not just at work in the world, but God works in the world because he is working in and through us.
“He’s still working on me”, a song says, ‘to make me who I ought to be.’ ‘It took him just a week to make the moon and stars…but he’s still working on me.’ What this song reminds us, is that the ‘mystery’ is not just ‘out there’, but the mystery is also in us.
AND YOU WERE ALSO INCLUDED… (11-15)
This is where the ‘spiritual blessings are aimed, not toward the heavens, or out toward the world, but the blessings are aimed toward you, and toward me, and toward us. Paul says to the Ephesians: “YOU WERE INCLUDED….” “We were also chosen’.
This is the mystery of love, that love and life only becomes all that God intends for it to be, when we answer love with our own lives, our own hearts, our own faith in God, and our own willingness answer God’s love and blessing in ‘such a time as this.’
How will God’s blessing become real in your life in the year ahead? That is part of the ‘mystery’. Who knows what will happen? ‘We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.’ That’s a heart-warming saying, but another way of saying it is that ‘we only two things you know already, is one thing by faith, and the other by fact.’ You know by faith that God wants to bless you. You will know by fact, that you are blessed, because you love God, just as through Christ, God has lavished his grace and love on you. Amen.
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