You Are Secure

Well, your true self is our Current Message series based in the New Testament book of Ephesians. Hello and good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Hello balcony. I see you. My name is Mark, one of the pastors. I want to welcome all of you both here live and joining us on our live stream. Last night we had people from Victoria, British Columbia that are on our live stream every week and they were here in the service. I said it was really cool. We got to have fun meeting them and so wherever you are watching elsewhere, we're just glad that you're with us and we appreciate you. We love you.

And two weeks ago we started this series with the truth that you are wanted by God. Last weekend we talked about how you are valuable to God and today we're going to talk about how you are secure in God. So let me ask you this question. How secure do you feel today? How secure do you feel? In fact, if you look at your notes, it begins with a question at the top saying, "Which statement best describes me?" So I want you to think about this. I feel secure most of the time or I feel secure some of the time or honestly I rarely ever feel secure. Which box do you check?

Usually the answer is going to come down to how things are going when it comes to security in one of the following areas: our relationships, whether they're going well or not, our family, finances, job, health, housing. If all these ducks are lined up, most of us are going to feel pretty secure about things. But if one of them were to go sideways or even more, look out because then you may feel like your world is starting to cave in. And so, of course, it's natural. It's just human nature that we would want to build as much security into our lives as we possibly could.

And it's also human nature to do that with things or stuff or wealth or whatever the case may be to the point where I think as far as the world's concerned, you know, the ultimate picture of security would look probably something like this. This is Almelek Castle in England. It's the location of Hogwarts in Harry Potter movies. It's been in all sorts of other movies and TV shows like Downton Abbey. Almelek Castle is 950 years old and it has over 150 rooms, second in size only to Windsor Castle, home of the British monarchy. And it's belonged to one family, the Percy family, for the past 700 years.

I mean, can you imagine an estate passing from generation to generation to generation for 700 years? I have no idea what my ancestors were doing, you know, 200 years ago, let alone 700. And if you happen to own this estate, that also makes you the Duke of North Umberland, which I have to say is way better than being one of the Dukes of Hazzard. Like a lot better, okay? No comparison. Yeah, and if you, by the way, if you remember that show, you know, you're kind of getting old, all right?

But in 1995, the current Duke of North Umberland died unexpectedly and he didn't have any children. And so his inheritance, castle and all, went to his younger brother, Ralph Percy, and his wife, Jane. And that's why they're smiling right here because man, I mean, and it's not like these two were struggling. They were already part of one of Britain's noble families. But suddenly, overnight, their lives are forever changed. Owners of a priceless estate. Now, if that's not security, what is?

Hmm. Did I mention the castle was 950 years old? So you have to know something needs fixing all the time, like 24/7. And did I also mention that it has over 150 rooms? Yeah, not for storage, okay? These things are golden and gilded and polished and furnished. And my goodness, how do you keep the dust off of all that? Not to mention, you know, mice and moths and who knows what else. How do you keep up with all of that upkeep? I mean, seriously.

Well, of course, you hire a lot of people, lots of them. And since the estate also includes 100,000 acres, yeah, you rent out parcels to 100 different farms and for other commercial uses. But even this does not pay all the bills. So there's also a small college that rents space at Alton Wick. And tourists who pay good money to see just parts of it, over 800,000 tourists every single year, movie and TV crews, tons of taxes. And so it leaves me wondering, do the duke and the duchess own the castle, or does the castle own them?

You know what I mean? How can you be truly secure, no matter what your circumstances, despite your hurts and habits, or when a key relationship is on the rocks, or perhaps you live with guilt and shame from your past and you honestly wonder, does God really love me? I mean, really? And maybe you allow yourself to think, "Well, yeah, of course, I guess He has to love me, that's part of the job description of being God. But I seriously doubt if He actually likes me." That may be you.

Can you still be secure when the bills are piling up and the cost of living isn't going down? And you have so many worries that as soon as one ends, there's just one there to take its place and it just goes on and on. And you are plagued by anxiety and have to say, if you find yourself suffering from just obsessive, anxious thoughts, there may be more going on. And so I would encourage you to seek out professional help or allow us to help connect you with that kind of help.

But no matter how we think, how we feel, whether our brains are working for us or sometimes against us, no matter how hard or uncertain life can be, and it often is, there is a larger, unchanging, unshakable truth that you are secure in Christ. Do you believe that today? Okay. Then are you ready to hear what God's Word has to say for us, church? Then let's dive in.

Our text is Ephesians 1:11–14. But in the original writing, this is fascinating, starting at verse 3, Paul begins a sentence that goes all the way to verse 14, 257 words long. And I have to imagine that in part that he begins by praising God and very quickly he just is caught up and he's overwhelmed and so he launches into this stunning wide angle view of all of the life altering ways God has blessed us in Christ.

And before we go into our text today, just for perspective and context, I want to just back up to verse 10 because this reminds us of the big picture, the grand sweep of what God is doing in this passage. And he says, "This is the plan. At the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth." So why are we secure? Well it's not because we are fortunate to be living where we are that we're blessed and frankly better off than most people in the world. And it's not because we just happen to live several thousand miles away from the nearest war.

We are secure today, tomorrow and forever because God is in control. Plain and simple. And at the right time, He will bring everything, not just some things, everything together under the authority of Christ in heaven and earth. That means He's not going to just scrap this creation that He calls good. No, far from it. He's going to make it right again, new, perfect.

Now show of hands, how many of you are inspired by the beauty and wonder of nature? It's just, you know, probably all of us. How could you not be? You go to a place like Yosemite, right? Or you find yourself in the midst of giant redwoods. Or you have an opportunity to peer into this, the mystery and wonder of the deep blue sea. And it's just so breathtaking. And even so, this is creation under the curse of sin. Okay? It's still groaning for the day when it will be liberated from its bondage to decay and death because the day is coming when Jesus will say, "Behold, I am making all things new."

Now think of this the most beautiful place you've ever seen. Does something come to mind? For me, one of those places is Banff National Park in Canada. My wife and I got to go there a couple years ago and it's just absolutely stunning. It's the kind of place where you can close your eyes, take a camera and just shoot in any direction you want. You can't take a bad picture because it's just so majestic. And yet it is just a faint glimpse of what this world will be when Jesus makes all things new, including you. Including you.

Now, will there be some twists and turns between now and then? Of course, absolutely. But don't forget how the story ends because actually it doesn't. It just gets immeasurably better and that's security right there. And in today's text, Paul is going to give us three reasons why we can take this to the bank. And I'm not talking about the banks that kind of go, you know, belly up like we've seen recently. I'm talking about things that God secures, that God backs up. And so write these down. Three reasons you are secure today.

First of all, you are secure because you have God's inheritance. You have His inheritance. Now your parents may or may not leave you somewhat of an inheritance but God has. And I've got to say, it's a whole lot better than some old castle. Okay, stick with me here. Because in verse 11, Paul says, "Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance and makes everything work out according to His plan." The plan we just saw in verse 10.

And this word "inheritance" right here, this is huge because this is referring to something that God has been doing since the very beginning in the ancient world and especially the ancient Jewish world. And inheritance had to do with much more than money. The main thing involved was land and family. But land, what was it that God promised to Abraham? Land, very good. That's why it's still called the promised land because it was promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But then what happens with Jacob's kids, that generation there? They, there's a famine, right? And so they have to go to Egypt where Brother Joseph has gone ahead and he can provide for them. He can take care of them. They settle there and after a couple generations, everyone kind of forgets the relationships and the Egyptians eventually enslave them. And you saw the movie 400 years later, whether it was in the Ten Commandments, right, or Prince of Egypt. You know how the story goes? God says through Moses, "Let my people," what? "Go." And Pharaoh says, "No."

And so God sends frogs and flies and all sorts of other plagues. It comes to a head at Passover and finally Pharaoh relents and says, "Take your stuff and leave. Just get out of here." But then he changes his mind. He chases them to the edge of the Red Sea which turns out to be another terrible event in the life of Pharaoh and Egypt. But finally the Israelites are free. Okay, now what? They just kind of stumble and grumble. It doesn't go real well at first, right? They're in the wilderness and they are flailing and that's in a pivotal moment.

Moses gets down on his knees and he prays, "Oh Lord, if I have found favor in Your eyes, then let the Lord go with us." Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as Your...what? Your inheritance. Take us as Your people. Go with us into this scary, uncertain future. And so the Lord leads them towards the promised land which took a lot longer than they expected, right? But in order to give them assurance, God would appear to them in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And if the pillar moved forward, then they would follow it. And if it stopped, they would stop.

But all the while they are giving the assurance they have the security that God is with them. And that's what kept them together. Now put a pin in this because a little bit later we're going to take a look at what God's presence and assurance looks like us today. But what Paul's saying back here in Ephesians here is, "Hey, this is much bigger than just the land that God's inheritance actually has to do with His people. God's inheritance are His people and our inheritance is that we belong to God, that we are His family.

Because after all, God created us to be in a secure, loving relationship with Him that's been true since the moment He created us. He's never bailed on that plan. He's just been working through history and through people to bring that about. And so Paul continues, verse 12, "God's purpose was that we Jews who were first to trust in Christ would bring praise to the glory of God. And so God's plan involves Abraham and the nation that would grow out of Him, Israel, and specifically it would be accomplished through Israel's Messiah.

And so that's why virtually all of Jesus' first followers were Jews because Paul's saying, "That's how God was doing it. He was working through this distinct people. Now are you still with me?" Good, because here's where most of us come in. Starting at verse 13, "And now you Gentile have also heard the truth," the good news, "that God saves you," which means God is offering His inheritance to all, to all people from every nation, tribe and tongue because God loves the whole world. In fact, He loves it so much that He does not wish that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance so if you have received His grace in Christ, your family, you're part of the inheritance.

In fact, the promised inheritance that God told to Abraham is being fulfilled in you. It's being fulfilled right here in this moment. And when you think about it, this means that, you know, the boundaries of the promised land much bigger than its current status because Jesus is King of heaven and earth and this is all part of our inheritance. And the day will come when God will flood the cosmos with His love and His power and make it all new. Now this is what we're talking about when we say you are secure.

You're secure in all of this. That's your inheritance. But there's even more. You're secure because secondly, you have God's Spirit as a believer in Christ. Continuing in verse 13 it says, "And when you believed in Christ, He identified you as His own by giving you the Holy Spirit whom He promised long ago." I was thinking this week, reflecting in gratitude because myself, my older brother Paul, our younger sisters Barbara and Jen, we were blessed to have parents who brought us to church from before we even knew what church was.

And I have to say that if you're a parent or you're grandparents and you're doing the same thing right now, God bless you. God bless you because I'm a testimony of the power of that type of early spiritual formation even though it didn't really get off to a great start, okay? Because my sisters, they were very well behaved but Paul and I, not so much. So, you know, we goofed off and we caused trouble and we made the job a lot harder for our Sunday school teachers, lovely as they were and working for free, my goodness.

And so this was the days when you didn't really just check your kids into the Sunday school class. At the car, they would go to big church and they'd say, "Go to Sunday school and you'd meet back at the car afterwards." And so that gave my brother and I an opportunity because sometimes, okay, a lot of the times, we didn't actually make it to the Sunday school class. We would take the offering money that our father had given us and we would go down to a little convenience store and buy candy and gum and make sure we were just back at the car at the right time, right? How was Sunday school this morning? It was delicious.

Now I know, I know you're thinking, "Wow, you guys are terrible." And we were. But in those days, I just did everything my big brother Paul told me to do. That's my story, I'm sticking to it. But then the day comes, I'm nine years old and we're sitting in big church because two of the girls in my Sunday school class were getting baptized because they actually went to class. And I'm sitting there and the pastor starts talking about how their baptism is a picture of the new life that they have in Jesus. And suddenly the light bulb just came on.

And I'm like, "I get it. All of the things that my parents and my Sunday school teachers had told me about Jesus I believed and I wanted. And I realized that Jesus loved me so much that He took my sins upon Himself on the cross, my sins such as they were as a nine-year-old, but more importantly, what they would become over the course of my life, all of it, in an exchange gave me forgiveness and eternal life.

And in that moment, that moment of faith, I believed and then God identified me as His own by giving me His Holy Spirit just as He did for you the moment you first believed, even if you can't remember exactly when that was. God does. And He gave you His Spirit. And this word identified here, it's translated identified. In the original it means something like this, to stamp with a signet or private mark for security, to deliver something safely to a designation or to seal.

It's what we do with official documents, right? They're stamped or they're sealed. Or back then if it was an important message, it would be, have wax would be dripped on it and maybe the official would press his signet ring into it. And Paul's saying that's what God's Spirit does in us. It marks us, stamps and seals us as God's own possession, which means this is not something that we hold together, you know, through our best efforts or trying to be really, really good people.

Apart from the ongoing power and presence of the Spirit in our lives, we are utterly helpless. In fact, it reminds me of a story you probably recall from just before Thanksgiving this last year. A cruise ship leaves New Orleans bound for Cozumel and somehow a man on that ship falls overboard into the Gulf of Mexico but it's several hours before anyone realizes that he's gone. And so by the time the Coast Guard is called in for the search, many hours have gone by and the search area involves 7,000 square nautical miles. Can you imagine trying to find someone in an area that big?

Well beyond all odds, 15 hours into this ordeal, at night they find him. This is the actual footage right here. Barely able to stay afloat. They airlift him. They rescue him. He and his family go on to have like the best Thanksgiving ever, right? One of those rescuers said shortly after when we saw him, based on their experience, we estimated he had about 30 seconds left before he would go under and never come back up. Just a miracle.

And yet I want you to see this image here, this almost ghostly image of him because this is how helpless we are apart from Christ. This is how much power we have to lift ourselves up our own bootstraps or to even have the desire to follow him. And this is how much power we have to grow in Christ, to have our hearts transformed, to mature in Christ. We don't have the power but God's Spirit does and it is God's Spirit that binds us to Christ and He lives out His purposes within us.

You have His Spirit and this is true of you when your faith is strong and it's true when it's not. It's true when you say, "I believe." And when you say, "Lord, help me in my unbelief," God's Spirit has made His home in you and He will be with you always. You have God's inheritance, you have God's Spirit and third, you are secure because you have God's guarantee.

Earlier I mentioned how God's presence in the wilderness through the pillar of cloud or fire was a guarantee that He was with Moses and with the nation. Well you have that same guarantee and it's not out there, it's in here. Verse 14 says, "The Spirit is God's," what? "Guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify Him." The Spirit is God's guarantee now that we will experience everything God has for us then.

Now think about the implications of your life right now. Do you have hardships? You sure do. Do you have challenges? Absolutely. But God has got your life on a trajectory that is guaranteed. He is going to get you to the destination that He has in store for you, the life. And so when we live in the fullness of that, in the confidence of that, it's not like it just makes all our problems go away, but we see them from a different perspective.

And I have to tell you, if you receive the prayer sheet weekly, you know what I'm talking about. Dozens and dozens of people in our congregation struggling with cancer or some chronic disease or there are things within their relationships that are in disarray, they're loved ones that they're praying for. And yet, when you talk to them, whether it's in the hospital or their treatment center or after they come out of treatment, they will say over and over again, "You know, God was with me in a special way. God sustained me and carried me through in a way I never would have even known existed had I not gone through those very challenges because they're living in the grip of God," you might say.

And get this, this word for guarantee, it's kind of evolved over time. And so in modern Greek, it means an engagement ring, which is really fitting, isn't it? Because if you know how the Bible ends, it ends with a wedding. It ends with the wedding of Jesus and His bride, the church, all of us. You think our God is the kind of God that would ever break off His engagement? No, not a chance. Not a chance.

And when this age comes to an end, and Jesus makes all things new, it will be to the praise and glory of God. Wow. And make no mistake, that day will surely come. In fact, this is really the big idea of running through this entire passage. Kind of goes like this. God's presence in me is...it guarantees all of His promises to me. And so if you ever wonder, "Lord, I don't know how You're going to work this out, just be reminded, but I know You're inside me, and You're going to do things that I can't even imagine because Your promises are sure, and because His promises are sure, You and I were secure.

Right? Amen? Amen. Now let me ask you something. Where do you need to remember this today? What's that situation that's just really bothering you? It's having...it's making it hard for you to just rest in God's goodness, His provision, or His love. What is that? Maybe it's something external, maybe it's something going on inside of you. Like maybe you're struggling with God's promise to love you and He has you here today to remind you that He will ever and always love you, that He promises never to ever leave nor forsake you.

Or maybe you walked in the doors and you're just so glad that no one can see into your head or they have, you know, video of your last week. And yet you needed to be reminded this morning that God's grace is boundless and that He freely offers His forgiveness and restores and says, "Get back on your feet, let's go." Even if it's...you've had that conversation more times than you can remember, He wants you to remember that today and that's in part why you're here.

And you know, so often our thoughts can kind of sideline us and we start thinking that, "Nah, you know, God uses other people but He doesn't use me." And so I just want to end with the little affirmation cards that we've been using for this series and maybe you've been cutting them out of your notes or you've been making your own cards each week. And before we close in prayer, let's just go over and let the Lord continue to speak to us.

For this week, the misbelief goes like this. "Those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished. Doubt, guilt over past mistakes and condemnation are evidence that I'm a bad person, unworthy of being loved by God or others and there could be a whole past that has made these types of thoughts just particularly real in your own heart and life. Lots of us think this way at times so we need to replace that.

We need to flip the card and remind ourselves of the truth which is, "I am secure in my relationship with Christ, in my daily safety and well-being and in my future outlook." Now not that everything's going to go my way. We know better than that. But whether on earth or in heaven because I have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. And so let's just end with this final Scripture, a promise from Psalm 23:6. Would you read this with me, Out Loud Church? "Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, forever, forever." Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your blessing and Your grace in our life that we could be together today and be reminded of these amazing promises in Your Word. Promises, Lord, that are to us and for us and for all of Your inheritance, all of Your people. And so, Lord, I pray that if there are any here that they feel like they're just kind of sitting on the periphery of that, that they would say, "Lord, I want that too. Would You count me in? I believe that just like You did for Mark and most of the people in this room, You died on the cross from me.

And so, Lord, I want to receive Your forgiveness in the life that You have for me." If that's You and that's the intention of Your heart, you can just say, "Yes, Lord, that's me. Help me to follow You in the power of Your Spirit from this day forward." And, Lord, I pray for every single person here in this room and within the sound of my voice that You would encourage them in whatever area they have need today, whether they're struggling with anxious thoughts, would You give them peace?

Whether they're grieving a loss in their life, would You give them comfort and consolation and remind them of the promise that a resurrection day is coming? And, Lord, for those who maybe that place their security in the wrong places, like stuff and money, Lord, would You remind us all where our ultimate security lies? Is in Christ, our rock, our foundation, our Savior, our Lord. It's in His name we pray, all these things. And all God's people said, "Amen, amen."