In the dry, unsatisfying desert of life, we try many things to quench our soul’s thirst. But when God makes us realize the living water we thirst for is in only one place, we find true wisdom. As Jesus said, “Whoever thirsts, let him come to me, I will give him living water.” In the entire universe, the only place living water is available is with Jesus Christ. Realizing that alone is great wisdom. Once we realize that, we will stop running after countless other things and instead focus on Christ Jesus regularly. A true believer is one who has deeply realized that. Rejoicing and boasting in Jesus Christ is a great mark of a true, born-again believer.

Today, as we come to communion, that is what we are attempting to do through our study, “Looking Unto Jesus Till Glory Shines.” It’s not a fleeting, superficial glance, but a deep, intense meditation on Christ—realizing the grace I seek is only in Him, so I will look and look and look until glory shines, until grace and virtue flow to us through faith from Him to my heart to face my situation.

We saw Jesus’s glory in His pre-creation state. First, we saw His glorious state of being. John 1 says He was in the beginning, with God, and was God. Before the world was created, He had the glory of His eternal deity; He had the glory of all the attributes of God. Second, we saw His relationship with God the Father. He was with God with the closest intimacy in the bosom of God. If God is the source of all joy, blessedness, and love, and that God was letting out all His fullness so directly and fully and everlastingly upon this only begotten darling of His soul, judge what a state of transcendent bliss that was. This also tells us of the infinite glory of Christ’s personhood. We don’t know how many past billions of ages there were, if the infinite God’s greatest delight, the only entertainment of the great infinite God the Father, that He always enjoyed without a wink of an eye was this Son of God, Jesus, what a glorious, adorable, desirable, wonderful, valuable, amazing person Jesus must be.

Third, scripture reveals that in that past eternity, there was a covenant made between the Father and the Son. In that, certain individuals were elected, and their names were written in the book of life. The Father agreed to do some things: He plans redemption, the Son covenants to accomplish it, and the Holy Spirit applies it. This is called the Covenant of Redemption. This is a very important topic. It is one concept that runs through and unites the entire Bible. The Bible itself is a covenant book; the Old Testament and the New Testament are nothing but a covenant.

If you understand the covenant, you will not see the Bible as a book of many different stories, but as one whole story of God fulfilling His covenant promise through Jesus Christ. Today, as we come to communion, let us try to grasp the depth of Jesus’s words as He lifts this cup and says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Oh, how loaded that phrase is.

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Jesus’s Glory in the Old Testament

After seeing Jesus’s pre-creation glory, today we will start looking at His glory in the Old Testament. Where do we start? Luke starts Jesus’s story from Adam’s genealogy. If we were to start looking at Jesus from Genesis to Malachi in detail, I feel like I would be holding an umbrella over a sea, trying to cover it. This would again take a one-year series, but my aim is to give a brief overview for communion. A very brief one.

We will look at Jesus in the Old Testament in five parts:

1. From Adam until Abraham.
2. From Abraham until Moses.
3. From Moses until David.
4. From David to the time of the Babylonian captivity.
5. From the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Christ, in the promises made through the prophets.

In all these periods, God progressively revealed the Covenant of Grace, made with Jesus Christ, through various covenants.

• In Adam, it was revealed He would be a seed.
• In Abraham, He would come through a nation.
• In Moses, He would fulfill the law.
• In David, He would establish an eternal kingdom.
• Through the prophets, He would bring a new covenant.

If you don’t want this to be a long lecture, let’s fast-climb and get into our time-travel machine of imagination and go to those times to experience this.

From Adam until Abraham

First, let us go back to creation and stand there when nothing was created, neither heaven nor earth. This God, who eternally enjoyed His Son without needing anything, created the world in six days out of nothing by the power of His Word. Let’s stand five minutes before the world was created, in a vast vacuum. Where do we see Christ in creation? John 1:3 says, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” All you see in Genesis—sky, earth, sea, sun, moon, stars, trees, animals, birds, and man—were all made through Him. Colossians 1:15 says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Have you deeply realized that Jesus Christ is the Creator of the universe? Every atom was created by Him. He is not only the creator but also the preserver. He formed every part of your being; He holds you and preserves this universe by the power of His word. We owe all our worship to Him as our Creator and Sustainer. If you don’t realize that now, you will one day, when He comes to end this creation. In a way, He is not only the creator, He is also the preserver and the destroyer. The Bible shows He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Today, the sinful world is blind to His glory. When the Holy Spirit opens a man’s eyes and makes him a new creature, he realizes all creation was created and sustained by this Jesus Christ.

Then, very soon after man was created, what a tragedy happened. Can you imagine the horror of man after sin? We have to know and feel this because we were all in Adam. What he did, we also did in him, and we bear the guilt and consequences of his sin. So put yourself in Adam’s and Eve’s bodies. You are the first husband and wife. What have you done? This was the saddest act that ever was; it was the undoing of man. Created in the image of God with an eternal soul, in a very short time, he sinned and lost all the glory of God. Now they are standing as guilty sinners against an eternal holy God, to be damned eternally, with infinite justice to be satisfied. What a horrible, helpless state. Imagine the trembling. God comes to the Garden and says, “Where are you?” He calls out to you by name. “Come to judgment; the law is irrevocable.” “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” There is nothing to be looked for but temporal death, spiritual death, and eternal death. Oh, what a fearful condition this is, no sooner to come into the world but presently to be turned over into eternal hell! For only a few days in Eden and then for all eternity in hell fire, tormented with the devil and his angels! We may beat our breasts, “Oh rocks and mountains, fall upon me and crush me, hide me from the face of this just, holy wrath of God.” What fear and horror!

At the very instant when all should have been damned, praise God we had the promise of salvation. By whom? Even at that early stage, Christ came to our rescue in the Garden of Eden through the Covenant of Grace. God was pronouncing judgment on all involved in the first sin. In Genesis 3, before He gives temporary curses to Adam and Eve, He gives the first gospel promise: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” This is the first revelation of the Covenant of Grace. That Seed who will bruise the devil and reverse all the effects of the fall is Jesus Christ. This is the first, sweetest early sound of the Gospel. “The Seed will crush the serpent’s head.” In this promise, my soul, is wrapped up your salvation; your hope, your heaven, and therefore you should view it over and over. What a precious treasure! There is in it a Savior, a Redeemer, a Deliverer from sin, death, Satan, and hell.

So this is an ancient promise, and not much was revealed, but it was the first revelation of Christ in a promise that raised the hearts of the patriarchs to an earnest desire of Christ’s coming in the flesh. The first Adam revealed that Jesus Christ is the promised Seed.

Imagine after the horrible experience, when the promise came to rescue us, how we would have praised Christ and highly esteemed Him, “Oh, the only Savior, it is only because of you, not only did our race continue, but we escaped the eternal wrath of God.” Think if Christ was not there, where would all the world have been at this day? God allowed mankind to continue only because of Christ. Every man and woman, you sitting here breathing God’s air, the world continues for 6,000 years because of Christ. In that way, He is truly the Savior of the whole world.

After that promise, from Adam to Abraham, the Seed was revealed in different types. Next to Adam, Abel was a type of Christ who suffered for righteousness and was killed by Cain. Seth was a type of Christ who took the place of Abel and created in the seed line. Enoch, walking with God in exceptional righteousness and being taken to heaven with his body, was a type of Christ’s life and ascension. Think of the time of Noah when all men corrupted themselves, the whole world should have perished, and we wouldn’t have had a world today. Your family and children would have all perished at that time. The only reason eight were saved is the promise of Christ. Noah was a type of Christ who found favor with God. God did make a covenant again with Noah, again an expression of the Covenant of Grace, and the world is still not destroyed because of this. He was the federal head of a new world. The ark was a type of Christ who alone saves us from the coming wrath of the flood. The Lord preserved mankind after the flood in order to fulfill His promise.

From Abraham until Moses

When the whole world was still horribly rebellious after the flood, expressed by building Babel, instead of destroying them fully, God scattered them with languages to the four corners of the earth. Men went to different places, and tribes, languages, and nations were formed. God had to do it to preserve mankind; otherwise, together they would have sinned more terribly, and a stricter judgment than the flood would have destroyed them. But all lived in darkness. Oh, think of the terrible state. How will the covenant promise be fulfilled when there are so many nations and families on earth? What about you and me in different corners of the world?

God called one man, Abraham, and revealed His covenant to him. In Genesis 17:19 and 28:14, what a wonderful covenant: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generation. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, like the stars of the sky. All families and peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your seed. I will make you a big nation. They will be in slavery for 400 years, and I will bring them out and give you a promised land.” The seal of that covenant was circumcision. So, step by step, the covenant promise is revealed. Earlier, it was just the seed. Now, the seed will come through a nation from Abraham. Although He will come from one nation, He will bless all the families of the earth.

What a comfort and joy we should have from the Abrahamic covenant! We, as Gentiles sitting here, have come to faith because of that promise, or we would have been lost when scattered by Babel. God kept this promise and sent the Gospel through apostles and missionaries, and we heard the Gospel. We are all now the seed of Abraham. Abraham is called the father of all those who have faith, the children of Abraham. Galatians 3:29 says, “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Put yourself in Abraham’s shoes. God said, “I make a covenant with you, and with all your children.” Just like the Adamic covenant, the blessings of Abraham’s covenant affect all believers. Consider what a mercy this is, that God should enter into a covenant with you and me in the loins of Abraham thousands of years ago, promising that through whichever family, tribe, caste, or nation you are born, through believing the Gospel, you will be blessed by this Seed.

Be amazed at the concept of a covenant! What! That the great and glorious God of heaven and earth should make Himself a debtor to us! What are we, or what is your father’s house? What filth and gutter we were living in, worshiping stones and trees, living in darkness, following blind traditions and superstitions for thousands of years. We should have been shaving our heads and rolling before a stone, thinking it is God. But you and I are called and saved by the Gospel and lifted to such a height, to have a relationship with a living God through Christ, and that promise about our salvation and blessing was made 4,000 years ago. The reason you were born somewhere, raised somewhere, and are in Christ today, sitting in a church, taking part in this covenant meal, is because of this ancient promise. Wow!

Christ in the Abrahamic covenant was revealed in so many types from Abraham’s time to Moses. Melchizedek was a type of Christ in that he was the King and Priest who blessed Abraham. Isaac, the promised son, and Abraham taking him to sacrifice were all types of Christ’s work on the cross. Jacob was a type of Christ in that he gave birth to a nation. Christ gave birth to a new generation, the church. Joseph, the favorite of his father, but hated and sold by his brothers, was a slave, but just like Pharaoh lifted him up as the supreme ruler of Egypt, God raised Jesus Christ as supreme ruler, though He was hated by His own brothers, the Jews. All of these were types of the promised Christ.

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The Mosaic Covenant

From Moses until David As we come to Exodus, God delivers them from slavery. Why? To fulfill the ancient promise again. He renews His covenant with the people of Israel at Sinai by giving them the law. Exodus 20 says, “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

Adam: Jesus Christ will be the Seed. Abraham: Jesus Christ will come through a nation, who will bless all families of the earth. Now, Moses: He reveals that Jesus will come to fulfill the law. The Mosaic covenant involved three forms of law: the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law.

Just get into the spirit of those Jews who received the 10 Commandments. You are standing there before a burning mountain, hearing lightning, thunder, and a loud trumpet sound, increasing in volume. They heard the voice of God, and it was given with all the threatening of curses and blessings. That 10 Commandments is nothing but a law written in the conscience of every man. How many times, when we sin as guilty, convicted sinners, does our conscience burn like Mount Sinai? We see the holiness of the law and say, “Oh, I want to obey,” but we end up sinning against the law, and the curse of the law is upon our heads.

Think of the ceremonial law. Just reading the hundreds of ceremonial laws makes us so tired. Imagine how for a Jew, the only way revealed to him to have a relationship with God was through ritual access to God. He had to come through many sacrifices, offerings, and many rituals—tabernacle and temple worship—covering everything from what to eat and not eat to what clothes to wear and how to live. And then there were so many civil laws as a nation. Peter said in Acts 15 that all the ceremonial law was a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear.

How marvelous to know that all the Mosaic covenant laws were given to show there is one coming to fulfill all this. Today, you and I stand in the fulfillment of the promise. If we have to come to God, we don’t have to bear the yoke of the ceremonial ritual law. Why? All the ceremonies, sacrifices, scapegoat, and festivals, so many rituals—which we will study in Leviticus—were perfectly fulfilled by Christ and done away with. Look unto Jesus. How precious Christ must be for us.

Yes, moral law is forever binding on us as a rule of righteousness, but do we realize we cannot perfectly fulfill it? So we cannot be perfectly justified by law. But for justification, Lord Jesus perfectly fulfilled it for us. One of the goals of God giving the 10 Commandments was to reveal the depth of the depravity of our hearts, to give us a sense of our impossibility to keep it and of our danger of breaking it. When we realize our heart disease through the law, how precious and absolutely essential Christ becomes for us. We should desire earnestly and diligently seek out Jesus Christ. That is why Paul says, “The law is our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The entire law shows us our diseases and shows that the healing, power, and help for all our diseases is only in Lord Jesus Christ.

If you have understood the first five books of the Old Testament properly, it will lead to greatly prizing, esteeming, and desiring Christ, having very high thoughts of Christ. Do you see the glory of Christ in the Old Testament?

It was He that all the Old Testament pointed to. What did all those thousands of sacrifices and the Passover lamb point to? The immaculate Lamb of God, “which taketh away the sins of the world.” Moses is also a type of Christ as the mediator of the Old Covenant. All the rituals, the high priest, the priesthood, the tabernacle, the manna, the rock, the bronze serpent, the festivals, the Ark of the Covenant, the cities of refuge, the nation of Israel—all pointed to the coming Messiah’s life, suffering, death, resurrection, and His ministry as priest, prophet, and king, which were all prefigured. How precious Christ is! Moses said, “God will raise up a prophet greater than me; you will hear Him.” Godly spiritual Jews understood this very well and knew that these things did not rest in outward sacrifices or sacraments but that by faith they did really enjoy Christ in them.

He confirmed the covenant with many types. Further, the book of Joshua, the commander of Israel leading them to the promised land and conquering enemies, is a type of Christ, our Captain, who leads us to the true promised land, heaven, by conquering our enemies. All the Judges as deliverers were types of the final Judge. The failure of all the judges shows the need for the great Judge. The kinsman redeemer, Boaz, in Ruth is a type of Christ.

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The Davidic Covenant

From David until the Babylonian captivity God made a covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7. He says three glorious things to David. These are the greatest yearnings of every man. First, “You are nobody, taking care of sheep. I will make a great name for you.” Second, “I will give my wandering people a permanent place.” Third, “I will make an eternal kingdom.” David, hearing this covenant, is unable to control himself. He runs to God’s tabernacle and sits there in a burst of astonished and submerged gratitude. How much more grateful should we be when we know what blessings we have in our covenant. David also realized Christ is not just a man but a God-man in one person; though He is David’s son, He is also David’s Lord. “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.”

Put yourself in David’s shoes. God said, “You are nothing, I will make you great.” All of us have a deep desire for our names to last, not just to be one in a million and forgotten. The greatest people today—politicians, actors, sports stars—will be forgotten tomorrow. But God, in this covenant, takes a guilty, hell-deserving person and lifts us, giving us eternal honor to our name. Our names are written in the Book of Life. We are made kings and priests and given a crown and a kingdom in heaven itself. He will announce our name in a great way universally before the Father and before all angels and make our name eternally great, and we will be famous with an eternal inheritance.

He promises a permanent place for Israel. We all have a longing for permanence, expressed in owning our own house. For a people who yearn for a permanent place, God in His Covenant of Grace promises a house for us, a permanent place for us. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Hebrews 11 says Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our patriarchs, were living in tents by faith, knowing their inheritance was not in this world. Revelation 21:4 says, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”

David got a promise of a kingdom. It will be an eternal kingdom, which means it is certain, sure, and eternal. Everything will be ready. Christ has built and prepared a kingdom that shall never fade; a spiritual and heavenly kingdom which shall never cease. It is a prepared kingdom in the covenant. We have so many doubts and objections: “Oh, I cannot do that and this, I am a dead, depraved sinner. Alas! I cannot even do anything; I have failed repeatedly.” But this is a prepared and purchased kingdom. Nothing needs to be done. In this covenant, we receive the high honor of kings and priests, not because of anything we do, but because everything is purchased for us by Christ. His forgiveness, justification, adoption, our sanctification, and eternal inheritance are all purchased by the king. The Lord promises to do everything in this kingdom. To be the forefather of the Messiah in the flesh was an inconceivably high honor, yet to be united to the Messiah even as members of His mystical body, and made fellow-heirs with Him of all the glory and happiness of heaven, is an infinitely higher honor.

In David’s time, he himself was a type of Christ. Solomon and the temple were all pointing to Christ.

• In Adam—He will be a seed.
• In Abraham—He will come through a nation who will bless all families of the earth.
• In Moses—He will fulfill the law.
• In David—He will establish an eternal kingdom.

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The New Covenant Prophecies

From the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Christ Because of the terrible captivity of Babylon, when the nation of Israel thought they were almost destroyed, God gave them hope of a new covenant. The prophets revealed that it is a new covenant. Jeremiah 31:31 says, “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.'” He says this is new and different from the old, “not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke.” It is a new covenant.

When He says new, it is not something altogether changed from the ancient promise. The promise of the Seed, Christ, is the same. But it is a new way of dealing with His people, different from the earlier manner of God’s making a covenant. The substance is the same, but there is a new worship, a new mediator, a new form of the church, new tablets, and new ordinances. This is an eternal covenant. This will never be canceled. It is far more excellent than the old covenant. There is freedom from the yoke of external rituals, and a more spiritual reality, with more freedom and measures of the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah goes on and says, “In this covenant, I will not give law in tablets; ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.'”

Ezekiel 36:26-27 also talks about the New Covenant. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Ezekiel lists several aspects of the New Covenant here: a new heart, a new spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and true holiness. Blessings of justification, sanctification, and glorification are wonderfully displayed. Oh, the sweet and orderly way of this covenant! God will not only promise good things but helps us by His Spirit to perform the conditions.

He works our hearts to believe in God and to believe in Christ. All is of grace, and all tends to the praise of the glory of His grace; therefore, it is called the Covenant of Grace. It is “the sure mercies of David,” meaning it is all certain and established, not because of what David or we do, but because of what Christ will do. The stability of God’s covenant is compared to the firmness and immovability of the mighty mountains. Indeed, “Mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, by a miracle; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord, that hath mercy on thee.” This is all different from the old, the Mosaic covenant, which could provide none of these things (see Romans 3:20).

Many things are revealed during the prophets’ covenant time about Christ.

1. Time of His coming: “Seventy weeks” in Daniel were decreed to “make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy.”
2. Place of His birth: Micah 5:2 says, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
3. His name: Isaiah 9:6 says, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace.”
4. Sign of His coming: Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
5. Many things about His ministry and teaching: We can quote all the prophecies Matthew and other gospel writers say were fulfilled.
6. Prophecies about His intense suffering, death, and resurrection: Isaiah 53 says so clearly, “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” One would think this were a history rather than a prophecy of Christ’s sufferings.
7. Many other prophecies and promises about His ascension, eternal kingdom, and His second coming and judgment were all prophesied.

When we take this journey, we see that in Adam, He would be a seed; in Abraham, He would come through a nation who will bless all families of the earth; in Moses, He would fulfill the Law; in David, He would establish an eternal Kingdom; and through the Prophets, He would establish a New Covenant.

Like the sunrise, the promise in Genesis 3 was the first ray, and slowly through redemptive history, the revelation of Christ grew more and more, becoming clearer at the time of Abraham, Moses, and David. In the time of the prophets, as the coming of the Messiah approached nearer and nearer, it became even clearer. Even to John the Baptist as the last prophet, the sun came out in full, blazing light when Christ came in the New Testament.

People, do we realize when we come to partake in communion, what a glorious fulfillment it is of all these covenants through redemptive history? Oh, the ancient promise of eternity, a mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to the saints. Here lies the firm foundation of a Christian’s comfort.

When the disciples were going to the Road to Emmaus, they were all discouraged. Jesus had been crucified. Luke 24:25 says, “Then He said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Then later, He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.

Oh, may it be the same way as we come to communion today and hear Jesus speak, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” May the Holy Spirit open our eyes to see the infinite glory of Christ. He is the fulfillment of all those covenant promises. The covenant of promise was that covenant which God made with Adam, Abraham, Moses, and David, and all Israel, in Jesus Christ, who would be incarnate, crucified, and rise from the dead. And it was right that the promise should go before the Gospel and be fulfilled in the Gospel.

Three applications: as a response to this truth, we should practice three signs of a true Christian, as we studied in Philippians 3:3. What are they?

We should worship God in spirit. If your worship is low, let me add some fuel. See if these are enough to worship God in spirit. The very concept of a covenant is a wonder as it relates to God and us. When we can do nothing, the sovereign, independent God binds Himself in an unbreakable agreement. The summary and promise of His covenant is: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” When people make a covenant with one another, all I have is yours. This is a glorious promise.

This is a mother-promise that carries all other promises in its womb. Here is the greatest promise that was ever made. Someone said, “If we had a promise of a hundred worlds, or of ten heavens, this is more than all.” This is because God is not giving His creation as a gift; here He gives Himself, the main source, as a portion to us in His covenant. This is a promise of infinite worth. In this covenant, all God is and all God has becomes ours. All His attributes are mine. His strength is our strength, His power is our power, His armies are our armies, His attributes are our attributes; we have an interest in all. God said to Abram, “I am your exceeding great reward.” We can look at this great being with infinite attributes and say, “All these are mine. All will work for my good.” The phrase “the Lord thy God” is so sweet. What! That the great and mighty, infinite, all-sufficient God, should be called your God! If God is our wealth and property, what lack do I have? “God is not ashamed to be called their God.” He should be very much ashamed, but in covenant love, He is not. God promises to be our God, to provide everything for our body and soul for all eternity. This is a wealth that not a hundred generations, but eternity, cannot exhaust. As God has given you not only His Son, so He has given you Himself in covenant love. Christians, stand amazed. Oh, what love is this to the children of men! How we should worship God in spirit for this covenant.

This covenant is so comprehensive and promises everything. He has made a covenant with you of temporal mercies. Your bread is by covenant; your sleep is by covenant; your safety from all dangers and health are by the covenant. He has made a covenant with you of spiritual mercies, even a covenant of peace, and grace, and blessing, and life forevermore. He has made a covenant to forgive all your sins, to justify, to sanctify, to give His Spirit to lead you, to sanctify you, to uphold you in all situations of life, and at last, He will bring you to a full enjoyment of Himself in glory. In David’s words, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” His mercy and goodness will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. When I pray, I can boldly plead the covenant promises. We regularly see in the Bible, “Remember your covenant.” We remind God of His covenant promises and plead, and God always answers. God is called the covenant-keeping God.

Write it in letters of gold that your God is in a covenant with you, to love you, to bless you, and to save you. Yes, you may have some problems in providence, but His covenant promise is that all things work for your good. Yet, in a little while, He who will come will come and receive you to Himself, and then you shall fully know what it is to have a God be your God.

God so loves you that He has entered into a covenant with you. Oh, what a love this is! Tell me, my soul, is there not an infinite distance between God and you? He is God above, and you are a worm below. He is the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, and you are less than the least creature, a sinful creature. Oh, wonder at such a condescension! That such a Potter should come on terms of bargaining with such clay as is guilty before Him! Why, sovereign God, what need do You have? Behold, God so loves you that in the covenant, He gives you all His promises. Rise up, my soul, and set before you all these reasons for God’s love in Christ. Are not these strong attractions to gain your love? Oh, how we should worship God in spirit. Shall not all this love of God in Christ for you constrain your love?

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Rejoice in Christ Jesus

What is one reason for God treating me with such grace and kindness? On what basis did God shower such covenant blessings on me? Not for anything in me or anything that I did. It is all because of Christ Jesus. The center, mediator, and surety of this whole covenant is Christ. His work on the cross and His death made the covenant effective. That is what the bread and cup remind us of. Today’s cup is the New Covenant in His blood. He shed His blood and sealed the promises of the covenant so it can never be broken. If we understand Christ of the covenants, our greatest rejoicing will be in Jesus Christ. Christ, and none but Christ; Christ is all that is needed, and Christ is enough.

O my soul, exercise this joy. All these covenant blessings are because of Him. Because of what He did, is doing, and will do. Oh, what fuel is here to set our desires on fire! Come, my soul, and bend your desires toward Christ. When we had undone ourselves in sin, Christ entered into a covenant with God as a surety and mediator. Every time throughout history, when the justice of God and the destroyer angel would have eternally damned us in our lives, Christ flew with the covenant in His hand and saved us. Oh, then rejoice in the Lord. Is it not a Gospel-duty to rejoice in the Lord, and again to rejoice! “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” said David, “and all that is within me, bless His holy name.”

Do you know the word “covenant” is the strongest word in the Bible? Abraham asks the Lord how he will know He will fulfill the covenant. God tells Abraham to cut some animals in two, place them next to each other, and walk in between, so firmly taking an oath that if God breaks it, He will become cut like those animals. It is so sure. Listen, as if heaven opened, and the voice came from God in heaven: “I will be a God to thee, I am the Lord thy God; and I will be thy God.” God, your Lord. What! Doesn’t your heart leap in your bosom at this sound?

Oh, wonder! Some can delight themselves in sin, and is not God better than sin? If there is any rejoicing faculty in you, now awake and stir it up. Hear your duty, as the Lord commands you: “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1). Oh, that name Jesus! That name that bound God into such an unbreakable relationship must be praised.

Behold the love of this Christ. All covenant promises may be free to us, but what a price He had to pay. “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” He loved you before the world was made. Do you see His love in eternity when He agreed to the covenant conditions? Do you hear echoes of His love in all those Old Testament stories? He loved you in the Garden of Eden; was not the promise expressed to Adam intended for you? Since you sinned in Adam in his loins, you received this promise in him. When God established His covenant with Abraham, and all families of the earth would be blessed, you, a Gentile, were you not in the heart of Jesus? He cut a covenant with Christ, with Adam, and with Abraham on your behalf, but particularly and personally with yourself.

And oh, what love is this! If a woman lately conceiving loves her future fruit, how much more does she love it when it is born and embraced in her arms? So, if Christ loved you before you had a being, yes, before the world or any creature in it had a being, how much more now? Oh, the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of this immeasurable love! Oh! My thirst is insatiable; my bowels are hot within me; my desire for Jesus is as greedy as the grave.

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Put No Confidence in the Flesh and Examine Your Hearts

We should come with examination. Is my name in the covenant? What basis can I say it is? How do we need to be assured of this? Someone said, “If we had the glory of all the world; if I had ten thousand worlds, and ten thousand lives, I would lay them all down, to have this poor, trembling soul of mine assured of this.”

What are the signs of those with whom the Lord enters into a covenant? The first thing God does as a sign of this covenant is He creates in that person a true and lively faith. This is such a sure way of testing that the apostle himself directs us to it: “Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.” Is my faith in Christ alone, not in my acts or righteousness? True faith makes you sensible of your sinful depravity, of what a vile person you are. Men are naturally blind, like a leprous person covered with makeup, but the law shows them a true mirror. True faith makes you realize your spiritual sickness, so you, like a cancer or leper patient, realize it and keep running to the doctor. That makes you run to Christ always. “They that be whole, need not a physician,” said Christ, “but they that are sick.” It makes you love, esteem, and value Christ. Do I love Christ?

If you are in a covenant with God, then God has fulfilled in some part the promises of this covenant to your soul. Do you see God writing His laws in your heart and making you grow in holiness, not outwardly, but inwardly? As you look into the mirror of God’s word, do you see more conformity of your heart to the law of God? You obey God’s will and delight in that obedience. You say with David, “I delight to do thy will, O God; yea, thy law is within my heart.”

Be not content with confidence in the flesh and outward things. God gives assurance of faith to all those who are part of the covenant. It is a promise of the covenant. Seek to get that strong assurance. If God has made such a covenant with you, how strongly you should hold to that assurance in the midst of trials, strong temptations, and doubts. But alas! How weak is your faith! Your hold is so weak that you scarcely know or have assurance of this covenant. Desire a continuance of the covenant-state.

“O Lord, you have begun to show grace to your servant, but oh, manifest to me all your goodness. You have given me a drop, and I feel it so sweet that now I thirst, and long to enjoy the fountain. You have given me a taste, but my desire is not thereby diminished, but enlarged, and for good reason, for what are these drops and tastes but only the first-fruits and a foretaste of the Spirit? Oh, then, what are those harvests of joy? What are those treasures of wisdom and free grace hidden in God? I have indeed beheld ‘a feast of fat things, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees, of wines on the lees well refined,’ but oh, what a famine is yet in my spirit! O Lord, I have longed for your salvation. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

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A Word to Those Outside the Covenant

Those who are outside of this covenant, you are wondering why life is so terrible. It is because you are under the curse of the covenant of works. You are born as a serpent seed, and all the desires and lusts of the devil are running your body, which is why your soul is feverish and tossing. He is dragging you to hell daily.

See what God has done to save you from the curse. See how eager God is to save you. He became a man, suffered for sins, and shed His blood to cleanse you from all sins. Here are symbols of His body and blood. All this tells you not only what Jesus did but also how eagerly Jesus wants to pardon all your sins and save you. He is so intensely earnest that I feel ashamed I cannot express it with tears.

How graciously He calls you, welcomes you, and even begs you! Think of those offers of Christ, those entreaties and beseechings to accept Christ. How many times has He called you? He still calls. That is His Gospel. “Come to Christ and be saved.” Listen to your heart. Hark at the door! Who is it that knocks there? Who is it that calls now, even now?

His suffering says to you, “Soul, consider what price I have given to save you. This my body was crucified, my hands and feet nailed, my heart pierced, and through anguish I was forced to cry, ‘My soul is heavy, heavy unto death!’ And now what remains for you but only to believe? See, all things are ready on my part: all forgiveness, justification, adoption, sanctification, and complete salvation. I will be your God, and you shall be of the number of my people. I offer now Myself and the merits and benefits flowing from it, and I entreat you to accept this offer. Oh, take Christ, and life and salvation in Christ. Why will you perish one more day and be a prey to the devil?”

Talk to your soul. “O my soul, will you not believe this Christ and will you believe the devil and the lies of the world?” Surely His love and joy are bigger than all the fleeting pleasures of the flesh, Satan, and all the world, which only bring shame and sorrow. Do not allow the devil to deceive you more. Say “Amen” to His offer: “I believe. Lord, help my unbelief.” Oh, believe in Jesus, and the covenant is established, and all doubts are removed. Oh, may He effectually call you and raise many of you who are dead in your sins and give you life and do the great miracle of regeneration in your souls even now.

“O! Why not I, Lord? Why can I not be saved? Why not my sins be pardoned? Why not my corruptions be subdued? Why not the law be written in my heart and put into my inward parts? Why may I not say, ‘My Lord, my God!’ Or, ‘Why not this covenant be established between God and me?'”

Last month, we started a series called “Looking Unto Jesus Till Glory Shines.” I spoke about this as an important biblical duty for spiritual progress from Hebrews 12. This isn’t a mystical yoga exercise. The Bible clearly talks about a type of spiritual looking, not through our physical eyes. We saw that Hebrews 12 clearly commands us to look to Jesus. In Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.”

It is a biblical spiritual exercise: through faith and through the eyes of our mind, we are to have a persevering look unto Jesus. This is not a glance, a quick turn, or a “Jesus save me” once in a while before you sleep. It’s an intense, persevering focus of the mind that continues until it stirs up affections in the heart, and the effects are felt in my soul, reviving our dull spirit. It is “looking unto Jesus till glory shines from Him, till the virtue and grace flows from Him to me to strengthen me to run the race set before me.” I spoke about the wonderful blessings we can receive if we learn this practice.

Now, with that goal in mind, if we are to make this a regular spiritual practice, we have to learn deeply about Jesus. Only when we have a deep understanding of who Jesus is will we be able to turn our thoughts to deeply focus on Him. So, as a continuation of the same theme, we are going to look at Jesus starting from pre-creation, before creation, and then Jesus in the history of the Old Testament. We will then look at Jesus at His birth, life, and ministry; His death, resurrection, ascension, and session; and His present ministry as prophet, priest, and king, including His intercession. Finally, yes, we will look at Jesus at His second coming. From the right to the left spectrum, it will be like watching a film where all we see is Jesus. If I try to preach on all of that today, the next communion in July will come before we finish, because we will need more than a month to cover it all. So we’ll focus our attention part by part, starting with pre-creation, then the Old Testament, and then the New Testament.

The goal of this devotional practice, as we look at Jesus in the mirror of the scriptures, is to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened by the Holy Spirit so that we can see Christ’s glory, admire Him, increase our esteem of His worth and value in our thoughts, and through faith receive grace upon grace as we worship. You can see this is a very apt study for communion meditation. How did our Lord command us to observe it? “In remembrance.” In remembering Him in all His glory, by looking unto Him, communion becomes a wonderful means of grace. So, are you ready for an exciting lifetime journey? We’re starting our travels with Jesus from past eternity to future eternity, with our focus on Him. You should be, because in Paul’s words, compared to the excellency of knowing Christ, everything else is garbage.

Today, in the first part, we will look at Jesus at His pre-creation state—not before He became a man in the Old Testament, but Jesus even before the world was created. I thought it might be very experiential if we sense ourselves being in that place and look at Jesus with our imagination, with our mind’s eyes. We will probably have to get into a time travel machine from June 2024 and go back 2,000 years to see Christ crucified. You keep going back to the silent 400 years, the 70 years of Israel’s captivity, the time of the Old Testament prophets and kings, David, Moses, Abraham, and then Adam and the six days of the creation of the world. Then, go into eternity before any day started. If you go as far as your mind can go, you will find no heaven, no earth, no universe, no man or angels created yet. But there was only one: God, with all His divine fullness. For infinite ages upon ages, He was God. That God was the Trinitarian God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—perfectly happy and independent within themselves.

Our focus will be to look at Jesus in this state. Oh, if the Holy Spirit can open our eyes and just show us a glimpse of the glory of the eternal Son of God in that past glorious state, it will blow us away to know how high, how glorious, how great, and how worthy He is. It will be so ravishing and sanctifying for us. One person said, “Oh, one view of the glorified Savior will make me joyfully die ten thousand deaths on flames of stakes for Him. One sight is worth 10,000 deaths.” We can only see dimly in this sinful body and babble for a while. We may have to die and go to heaven to behold it fully with a pure soul and body.

But I think with the Holy Spirit’s help, we can get a glimpse of that because you know Jesus prayed for this. John 17:24 says, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me before the creation of the world.” Yes, this is talking about when we go to heaven, but the great Puritan John Owen says this also has an application of seeing His glory by faith now.

When we look at Jesus at pre-creation, let us understand it under three headings: First, His glorious state. Second, His relationship with the Father. Thirdly, the eternal covenant they both made at that time.

First, Jesus’ Glorious State Pre-Creation

What does the Bible reveal to us about Jesus in that pre-creation state? John introduces his Gospel with a majestic tone and a sense of ecstasy, with the air of a man who is conscious of the sublime glory of Jesus. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

“In the beginning was the Word.” The eternity of Christ is here emphatically declared. “The Word was with God.” Not with angels, not with men; but before men and angels were created, Jesus was with God essentially, and then amazingly, he says the “Word was God.” This was His glorious state. John 17:5 says, “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” What is this glory? In Philippians 2, we studied that He was equal with God with all the attributes of God. Think of the essence of Jesus’ state before creation. He was God. What does that mean?

The glory of the supreme being. Before the world was created, He had the glory of His eternal deity, of His majesty and greatness, the glory of infinity, the glory of eternity, the glory of immutability, the glory of sovereignty, the glory of being almighty, the glory of holiness, and the glory of justice. He was filled with the majesty, splendor, worthiness, and greatness of His deity. He was ever blessed, infinite in love and happiness in the fellowship of the Trinity, existing absolutely, self-existent, and forever, never having come into being! He was, and is, and always will be: “I am who I am.” He is the only eternal reality, complete and perfect and without any defect or any need, not dependent on anyone.

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” He is infinite in greatness, beauty, and value. There is no comparison. “I am God. To whom will you compare me?” The lowest comparison we can make is to this universe. He is greater than all the universe in the way a man is greater than a small speck of dust. He is more beautiful than all the beauty of the universe, just as the reality of Niagara Falls is more beautiful than a painting of the falls. He is real beauty. He is more valuable than the universe, which is less than nothing before Him.

It is good to be still and know that Jesus is God and let this sink in. The universe, by comparison with God’s greatness, beauty, and worth, is insignificant. Jesus is equal to God, having all the glory. And in 2 Corinthians 8:9, it says He was rich. His riches were no less than all that God the Father has. John 16:14 says, “All that the Father has is mine.” He was in a glorious state, a state of being equal to God, to have all the glory and symbols of the majesty of God.

Until this pre-creation glory of Jesus sinks in, virtually everything the Bible says about Jesus will be wrongly and inadequately understood. This is where we start to look at who Jesus is. If we fail to grasp this, we won’t be able to grasp biblical doctrines in their proper proportions and relations. We have an imbalanced view of Jesus, with an over-focus on the humiliation state of Jesus. Look at Him in His pre-creation glory; fix this in your mind. Here, He is not a man. He is not called “Jesus”—that was a human name. He was the eternal Son of God, with no weakness or humiliation of manhood, but fully God. He did not empty Himself, but was with complete divine fullness and glory. He is not under law, but He is the lawgiver for all. He was in such glory, dwelling in a light no man can approach. Any creature coming near would turn to ashes. He did not know any sorrow, pain, or shame. He had no temptation from the devil for all eternity. He was never for a split second away from the Father’s communion. He never knew anything about His Father’s anger or wrath because He was perfectly holy. All these things were very new to Christ; He was above them all until, for our sakes, He voluntarily subjected Himself to them.

Second, His Relationship With the Father

John says He was with God. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” “Bosom.” What does it mean? It is not talking about Jesus sleeping as a baby. It is a human expression of the greatest dearness and intimacy between two humans that we know and understand, like a baby coming out of its mother’s womb and lying on her bosom. It is such a strong bond. So it talks about the intimate, close union between the Father and the Son. Think of the joyful state of Jesus. Allow this to sink in.

He was with God in such a close relationship. Do we know what it means to be with God? God, you know, is the fountain; He is an infinite, inexhaustible ocean of all delights and joys. Psalm 16:11 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This great fountain and source of all happiness, blessedness, and love was letting out all its fullness so directly and fully, and everlastingly, upon this only begotten darling of His soul, as it never did communicate itself to any. Judge what a state of transcendent happiness this must be. Great persons have great delights. Oh, what intimate dearness, nearness, and oneness of those great persons with one another! What joy and bliss!

Proverbs 8:30 shows us a glimpse. It is taking about wisdom, which is a personification of Jesus. “I was day by day His delight, rejoicing always before Him.” The original is strong. “I was fullness of delight, the perfection. I was all His delights. I was His delight itself.” Imagine. Now Jesus Christ was not only near and dear to God but one with Him. He was God. Can you imagine what a blissful state of happiness it was to be the only loved object of the eternal God, to be one with that God, and to be God!

Oh, what matchless delights and bliss must necessarily flow from such a blessed union! We can never imagine such fellowship. All fellowship and closeness in this world are tainted with sin and selfishness, but a pure, holy Father embracing a holy, pure Son with a most holy delight and love! Oh, what bliss! A sea of bliss. Think of the duration of this delight. It was from everlasting, from eternity; it never suffered one moment’s interruption. These two great and glorious persons of the Trinity with infinite essence were delighting in one another, letting forth their fullest pleasure and delight each into the heart of the other. Their delight knew not a moment’s interruption or diminution. They were enjoying pleasures of fellowship unspeakable and inconceivable. A dim reflection is what we see when sometimes parents delight to see their children playing before them, or a lover sees her love. So did the Father delight in beholding this darling of His bosom. Oh, what can we understand of the joy of the immortals!

Try to look at Jesus in your mind in this glorious state, in His person equal with God, and in His relationship as the eternal delight of the Father for all eternity. The truth we have to fix in our mind is this doctrine: Jesus was in a state of the highest and most unspeakable delight and pleasure, in the enjoyment of His Father. We always look at Him in a manly, humiliated state. Let your thoughts rise today. The world was created 6,000 years ago. No mind can estimate how many past eternity years there were. All billions upon billions of eons, when God was there. There is no beginning. From a period we cannot imagine, if the infinite God’s greatest delight, supreme affection, adoring love, and entertainment, which He always enjoyed without a single blink, was this Son of God, Jesus, He was the greatest darling and delight of God’s heart. If so, can you imagine how glorious, adorable, desirable, wonderful, valuable, and amazing a person Jesus would be? What a treasure! What a pearl of great price He must be! Does your estimate of Jesus go up? The infinite God needed nothing but His Son for all eternity. His infinite measure, infinite capacity, and infinite abilities were fully satisfied and found a suitable object in the perfection of the divine Being, His begotten Son. He was fully satisfying the great God’s heart from eons. He was the darling, the sweetheart of God, making Him eternally happy. Oh, what a person Christ must be! We don’t know anything about Him. Even when He came to earth, the Father tore the sky and spoke with a loud voice, testifying three times, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Thirdly, The Covenant Between Father and Son

At that time, scripture says there is something the Father, the Son, and the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, did. This self-existent God, for no other reason than for His pleasure and glory, decided to create heaven and earth. And as they saw in their all-knowing knowledge the fall of man and how that would affect all men, how they would become depraved sinners, God decided to permit that fall for His own glory. Scripture and our confession reveal that there was a covenant that was made between the Father and the Son in eternity. This is called the Covenant of Redemption, an eternal covenant.

This is a very important topic. Spurgeon said all false teaching and wrong understanding of the Bible comes because we fail to understand the concept of a covenant. It is one concept that runs through the entire Bible and unites the entire Bible. The Bible itself is a covenant book; the Old Testament and the New Testament are nothing but a covenant. All the covenants we see in the Bible had their cause in the covenant that was made between the Father and the Son and even the Holy Spirit before the world began. A covenant, in our terms, is an agreement, like a rental agreement we make. God is so big and sovereign that He can do anything He wants and is not bound to anyone, but He humbles Himself and binds and promises to do some things in the form of a covenant.

Theologians differentiate the covenant between God and man as two covenants: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace made with humans. But this covenant that was done between the Father and the Son is called the Covenant of Redemption. All the covenants God makes after the fall of Adam, with Adam, Noah, Moses, David, and then the New Testament covenant, are all the fruit or consequence of the Covenant of Redemption that happened between the Father and the Son. New people may not understand this now, but maybe you will slowly. Make a note that the covenant is very important.

The Bible says this covenant was made in eternity between the Father and the Son and even the Holy Spirit. Where does the Bible say this covenant? We know only about the covenants with Abraham, Moses, and the New Testament. Many verses in the Old Testament allude to this. Let us look at two verses. Second Timothy 1:9 says, “who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus… before time began.” Titus 1:2 says, “in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.” To whom was this promise made? “but has in due time manifested His word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior.”

Okay, what were the terms and conditions of this covenant? We make a rental agreement where the owner will give this house with so many rooms, and the tenant will pay so much rent. What were the conditions of this covenant?

1. The glorious doctrine of election was part of this covenant. That God, out of all the children of Adam who would be born as fallen, depraved sinners, eternally sets His love on them and chooses to redeem them from their sins, calls them, justifies them, sanctifies them, transforms them to the image of His beloved Son Jesus, and glorifies them eternally to be His children. Their names were listed in the book of life. This is called the great doctrine of election or predestination. The people who are chosen by God as the elect. This was done in eternity before creation. To do this in a way that doesn’t bring any dishonor to God’s justice and righteousness, God decreed a redemptive plan.
2. In this redemptive plan, the Father planned and architected redemption, the Son has the work to accomplish the redemption, and the Holy Spirit will apply that redemption.
3. God lays down certain conditions to redeem the elect sinners. Once the Son fulfills that, the Father gives certain promises. We saw in Isaiah 53:10, “if thou wilt make thy soul a sinner offering,”
4. Since the first man, Adam, sinned and failed, the Son has to become man, as a second Adam, a representative of man, a federal head of this covenant for His people. He has to live a perfect life and purchase righteousness and bear all the sins of all the elect on His body, and atone for their sins on the cross and pour out His soul as a guilt offering. When the Son fulfills this condition by making the full payment for all sins and satisfying God’s justice,
5. Then the Father promises to redeem all those for whom Christ will die and pour out blessings such as justification, sanctification, adoption, glorification, and eternal life, as we saw in Isaiah 53.
6. This is a tremendous work for the Son to do in His humanity and requires the greatest sacrifice. So, as part of the covenant, in passages like Isaiah 42:6, a lot of details are given, like the Father promises that He will “uphold and support your humanity, when it is overweighted with the burden and ready to sink down under it,” and keep Him in this most difficult work.
7. God also promises the full success of this work. Isaiah 53:10 says, “He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” His suffering and work will not go in vain.
8. God promises to restore His Son’s glory with His humanity with additional mediatorial glory as an eternal priest, prophet, and king.

So this transaction happened in eternity. One Puritan beautifully writes this as a conversation between the Father and the Son. The Father says, “My Son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them or will satisfy itself in their eternal ruin. What shall be done for these souls?” And thus Christ returns, “O my Father, such is my love for and pity for them that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their surety. Bring in all your bills, that I may see what they owe you; Lord, bring them all in, so that there may be no after-reckonings with them. You shall require it at my hand. I will rather choose to suffer your wrath than they should suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.”

The Father says, “But, my Son, if you undertake for them, you must reckon to pay the last mite; expect no abatements. If I spare them, I will not spare you.” The Son responds, “I am content, Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me. I am able to discharge it, and though it prove a kind of undoing for me, though it impoverish all my riches and empty all my treasures (for so indeed it did, as 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, ‘Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor’), yet I am content to undertake it.”

Blush, ungrateful believers! Oh, let shame cover your faces. Ask your consciences, how you shrink in serving such a worthy Lord. Judge in yourselves now what honor and service Christ deserves from you, that you should shrink at a few petty difficulties and complain, “This is hard,” and “That is harsh.” Oh, if you knew the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in this His wonderful condescension for you, you could not do it.

So as we travel back and went to pre-creation and “L2J,” we looked at: first, His glorious state pre-creation; second, His relationship to the Father; and third, the covenant between the Father and the Son.

Now let us come back and see what graces and applications we can receive from this vision for today’s life. As we intently look at this pre-creation glory of Christ,

1. As we come to the communion table, let us think about why we are gathered here. All of you who have believed in Jesus Christ, from different cultures, different religions, why did someone come and tell you about Jesus when many of our friends and relatives did not believe? Why did you believe? When so many come to church and stop, why did you come regularly, hear God’s voice here, and grow joyfully in truth, and become a member, and today take communion? How wonderful to think this is not an accident or chance, or your own decision, but all this is an effect of something that happened in eternity. Why did you alone come? Not others? Not because you are smarter or wiser, but can you imagine that even before you were born, before the world was created, there was an eternal covenant made on your behalf. At that time, you were particularly in the mind of God, and He loved you and chose you.

Can I say we are here as a result of election? We are expecting our national election results this week. Once the results are out, what a celebration! I will tell you that the greatest celebration for those who believe in Christ is that we are elected by God not in time but in eternity, not for five years but for all eternity, not on the basis of what we did or how good we are, but on the basis of God’s sovereign grace. Chosen for what? To be part of this joyful, blissful eternal family, to be made like Jesus and become children of God, and to enjoy eternal bliss with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for all coming eternity.

Have you thought about what a glorious honor and privilege it is to be the elect of God? One lottery for 100 crore is a huge jump, but the most blessed lottery is to be elected by God. We will jump if we know the joy. The worth, honor, and excellency of a “chosen generation, a peculiar people,” a “peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” Out of billions upon billions of people who lived before us, and who live now, and who will live after us, we are the elect of God in Jesus Christ. Out of all of them, God set His love upon me. And His love is like Himself: causeless, changeless, and endless. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” The great God, the blessed and only potentate, that He should choose such poor, contemptible, worthless, and vile creatures as we are, surpasses all knowledge.

The blessedness of election appears in the comparative fewness of the elect. “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” His design was to show eternal, greater mercy to a few, while all others have only material and temporal things as their portion. The Old Testament types showed that the elect are few. In Noah’s ark, only eight were saved, while the whole world perished!

As we look at Jesus in His pre-incarnate glory, remember that it is only through Christ and what He will do for us, not through anything in us, that we were chosen. The Covenant of Redemption fixed it so that all of the blessings we receive from God come to us “in Christ.”

Do you see what a great salvation this is? This is something beyond you, something beyond the world, time, and history. It has its roots in eternity and a decree between the Father and the Son.

Dear believer, may the truth of election give you all the grace you need today. It gives us grace in every step of the Christian’s progress to Heaven. God not only decreed Christ’s work, but He decreed that Christ will call you, justify you, sanctify you, transform you to the image of His Son, and glorify you. When we are discouraged and backslidden, tossed to and fro by worldly trials and remaining sin, what truth revives us? It is the confidence that my salvation is not based on my works but on God, who chose me in eternity. It fills us with the precious assurance that “He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). There was nothing in us that moved God to choose us, so there is nothing I will do that will reverse that election. “Whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Romans 8:30). Predestination guarantees glorification and therefore guarantees the supply of the elect’s every need between the two.

Election should be a great motivator for holiness. According to the divine decree, God chose us to be holy. God writes His law upon our hearts, and we are made partakers of the divine nature. The Bible calls us to make our election and calling sure by holy living. Child of God, as you look unto Jesus, whatever situation or difficulties you may be facing, realize now that one of the greatest spiritual blessings that God has given to us is that He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him.

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The Love of the Father and the Son

Secondly, this vision of the Father and the Son teaches us about their love for us. Here we are in time, in June 2024. According to this eternal covenant, Jesus did come into the world 2,000 years ago, atoned for all our sins, and went to heaven. The Son accomplished redemption. Through the Holy Spirit, God made us hear the Gospel, brought us to church, and now we are gathered here, and the Father is fulfilling His promise before our eyes today. We are here today because of that.

Do you doubt whether the Father loves you? What an astonishing act of love this was for the Father to give the delight, the darling of His soul, out of His very bosom, for poor sinners! All tongues will falter and pause when attempting to express this love. Jesus Himself couldn’t fully express it, saying, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).

Which of us would deliver our child, no matter how rebellious, to the greatest inheritance in the world? What tender parent can endure a parting pull with such a child? Jesus was the only child of the Father’s delights. He didn’t give Him up for the greatest wealth, but to a horrible, shameful, and cursed death.

How Hagar couldn’t bear to see her child dying. She sat over against him far off and lifted up her voice and wept. What an outcry did David make, even for a rebellious Absalom, wishing he had died for him. Oh, it was hard to part! What a hole the death of some children has made in the hearts of some parents, which will never be closed up in this world! Yet all the love we have is but a reflection of the Father’s love.

How difficult it was for Him to give up a child like His only one, the Son of His delights, and that to a cursed death for sinners, for the worst of sinners. Oh, the admirable love of God to men! Matchless love! A love past finding out! Let all people, therefore, in the business of their redemption, give equal glory to the Father with the Son (John 5:23). If the Father had not loved you, He would never have parted with such a Son for you.

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Inferences from God’s Love

Corollary 1: If God has given His own Son for the world, then it follows that those for whom God gave His own Son may warrantably expect any other temporal mercies from Him. This is the apostle’s inference in Romans 8:32: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how shall he not, with him, freely give us all things?” And so in 1 Corinthians 3:21-22: “All is yours, for you are Christ’s.” That is, they hold all other things in Christ, who is the principal and most comprehensive mercy.

1. No other mercy you need or desire is, or can be, so dear to God as Jesus Christ is. He never laid any other thing in His bosom as He did His Son. As for the world and the comforts of it, it is the dust of His feet; He values it not. Ten thousand worlds and the glory of them all are but the dust of the balance if weighed with Christ. If God has so freely given the greater, how can you suppose He should deny the lesser mercies?
2. If God has given you this nearer, greater, and all-encompassing mercy when you were His enemies and alienated from Him, it is not imaginable that He should deny you any inferior mercy when you are in a state of reconciliation and have become His child.

Inference 2: On one side, the Father’s love is a wonder. What do we say about the Son? As we look to Jesus, we are forever astonished at the love of Jesus Christ for poor sinners; that He should ever consent to leave such a bosom and the unspeakable and ineffable delights that were there, humbling Himself and taking the form of a slave for such poor worms as we are. What will we return?

Which of us, if we get into a comfortable, best position in the world, would leave that place for anyone? If you ever found by experience what it is to be in the bosom of God by divine communion, you would never be persuaded to leave such a bosom for all the good that is in the world. And yet Jesus Christ, who was embraced in that bosom in a way we can never imagine, freely left it and laid down the glory and riches He enjoyed there for your sakes. And as the Father loved Him, even so, believers, has He loved you (John 17:22). What manner of love is this! Who ever loved as Christ loves? Who ever denied himself for Christ, as Christ denied himself for us? Oh, the heights, depths, lengths, and breadths of unmeasurable love!

Inference 3: If we understand this vision, I hope it gives a vision of how high Christ is. He was the only delight for the Father for all past eternity. This should teach us that believing, loving, obeying, and worshiping Christ is the true way to heaven and the Father. Do you desire God’s blessing, favor in your life, and pleasure? Do you want God’s presence? Do you want God to welcome you into heaven and bless you eternally?

Be careful how you treat Christ. Oh, believe, love, and worship Christ! Think much of Christ. Give Him the highest place in your heart. Look to Jesus. If the Father’s all delight is in Jesus Christ in past eternity, now, and for all future eternity, do you understand why Jesus said, “I am the way to the Father, no one can come to the Father but through me”?

We understand in the world that many things happen through recommendation and networking. People rise in this world as they are befriended; preference goes by favor. Joseph’s brothers, though they were shepherds abhorred by Pharaoh, were raised to a high level because of Joseph. So it is in heaven. People are preferred according to their interest in the beloved (Ephesians 1:9). Christ is the great favorite in heaven. His image upon your souls and His name in your prayers makes both accepted with God.

Do you understand? The only reason God accepts us sinners, forgives, and adopts us is because of Christ. We are accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). He is beloved, and accepted for Himself. Everything we do is accepted, and God delights in us not for ourselves but because of His delight in Christ.

Inference 4: If Christ be the beloved darling of the Father’s soul, think what a grievous and unbearable thing it is to the heart of God to see His dear Son despised, slighted, and rejected by sinners. Truly, there is no such thing that cuts to the heart of God and angers His heart in the whole world than the act of rejecting and not believing Christ.

Those of you who still do not believe Christ, realize what a horror it is to reject God’s only beloved Son. Heaven itself raises against you; the wrath of heaven is on your head. This is why God will throw you into eternal hell. He who does not believe the only Son is already condemned. It is written on your forehead, like Cain: cursed and condemned. What a horror not to believe Jesus Christ.

Unbelievers, imagine how much more punishment will come upon you. When He is preached in the Gospel, He came from heaven to bear your sins, and what did He do? You hear all that, yet you trample upon God’s darling, you tread underfoot Him who eternally lay in God’s bosom, and you reject Him. Do you realize what this means? Hebrews 10:28-29 says, “Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing?”

When you smite the apple of His eye, how will God bear this? In all the parables, in Matthew 21:37-40, about the vineyard and the marriage supper, the king was patient for all they did. But when they touched his son, he immediately and miserably destroyed such wretched sinners.

If you would want the worst punishment in hell, worse punishment than the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah, worse than all the terrible sins in central jail today, to anger God in the biggest way, the only thing you have to do is reject the Father’s only Son. What a dismal word is that in 1 Corinthians 16:22: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha,” which means, “Let the worst great curse of God lie upon that man until the Lord comes.”

Oh, you know it says, let the worst great curse of God lie upon that man until the Lord comes. Imagine what will happen to him when Jesus comes. O sinners! Unbelievers! You shall one day know the big price of this sin; you shall feel what it is to despise and reject Jesus. Oh, that you would slight Him no more! Oh, that this day your hearts might fall in love with Him! There is nobody who loves you like Jesus, who did what He did for you. It is the basest ingratitude to reject Him.

See what He has done for you in the Gospel. Whatever you are, however worst sins you have done, whatever guilt is in your conscience, if you can just believe Him, you shall be as dear to God as the holiest and most eminent believer in the world. But if you still continue to despise and neglect such a Savior, sorer wrath is treasured up for you than for other sinners. Oh, that these discoveries and offers of Christ may speak to your heart and bring you to Christ.

Inference 5: Believers, as we come to communion, remember Christ. If Christ lay eternally in this bosom of love and yet was content to forsake and leave it for your sakes, then (1) be ready to leave the comforts you have on earth for serving Christ if required. We see all great men doing this, achieving big things for Christ. Moses left all the glory of Egypt; Peter and the other apostles left all (Luke 18:28); Paul counted all as garbage. Tim left his family and native land and went on a missionary journey. Eph risked his life for the Gospel work. But what have we to leave for Christ in comparison to what He left for us? Surely Christ is the highest pattern of self-denial in the world.

(2) Let this confirm your faith in prayer. If He, who has such an interest in the heart of God, intercedes with the Father for you, then never doubt of an audience and acceptance with Him. Surely you shall be “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Christ was never denied anything that He asked (John 11:42). The Father hears Him always. Though you are not worthy, Christ is, and He ever lives to make intercession for you (Hebrews 7:25).

Recently, while teaching “Christ the Mediator” in a confession class, I was deeply impressed by the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. After that, whenever I face temptation, trials, upsets, frustration, or discouragement, there’s an inner voice telling me, “Look unto Jesus, look unto Jesus.” I take that as a clue from the Holy Spirit for us to deeply study this subject called “Looking Unto Jesus.”

What do we know about this? This is a great duty for every Christian and a command from God. It’s the art of the Gospel. I have observed many Puritans using this phrase and have seen it in many old songs. We will sing one today: “Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine. Moment by moment I have life from above, moment by moment I am kept in His love.” This is an intense, determined looking to Jesus until His glory shines from Him into my soul. This is a precious Gospel duty, a high Gospel-ordinance. I was so ashamed and convicted by how little I know and how little I practice this.

When I, as a pastor, go through some experience in providence, it inevitably comes out as a sermon. That’s how God leads pastors for the benefit of the church. So, as part of a communion meditation, with God’s help, I plan to start a series called “Looking Unto Jesus Till Glory Shines.” Pray that as we look more deeply at our Lord’s glory in this study, the Holy Spirit will open our eyes to understand Paul’s words: “I count all things but loss, garbage, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Oh, the excellency of the knowledge of Christ! There is an excellency above all other knowledge in the world. No worldly knowledge will transform a man, but this will.

Christ is the sum and center of all divine truths. He is the center of the Old and New Testaments, the hero of the Bible. The more deeply we know and see Him, the more our minds and hearts will be transformed. There is nothing that pleases the Father and nothing that makes the Holy Spirit happy more than revealing the glory of Christ to us. There is nothing more strengthening to our faith, more increasing of our peace and comfort, more renewing of our spirits, and nothing that makes us happier than knowing Christ. Looking unto Jesus is the epitome, the height of a Christian’s happiness, the quintessence, the sum of evangelical duties.

Today, as an introduction to help you realize the importance of this duty, we will look at three things:

1. An indispensable biblical duty for spiritual progress.
2. The sin of neglecting this duty.
3. The blessings of obeying this duty. All this is to make you understand how important this Gospel duty is.

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1. An Indispensable Biblical Duty for Spiritual Progress

Where in the Bible does it say we have to look to Jesus? What does it mean?

Turn to Hebrews 12: “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews was written to Jewish people who believed in Christ and became Christians. We know that in Acts, the most terrible opponents of Christianity were the Jews. So, these believers faced terrible opposition from their Jewish religion. Many false teachers also attacked them, saying that Jewish culture, worship, customs, and the temple were the highest. They would say, “How old is our religion, our culture? What is this new Christianity? Nothing is visible, there’s no temple, no ritual, just worship in the air. See our ancient customs.”

So these people were slowly backsliding to their old Jewish religious customs. It’s easy for new Christians to fall back when attacked, because Christianity is a religion of faith in the invisible. Faith needs to grow to overcome attacks. New to the faith, they can be easily deceived by the devil and worldly religions with all their external pomp and ritual. We hear of this in our country, where many Christians convert back to Hinduism.

So the general purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to convince them not to fall back to their old Jewish religious practices by showing them the higher glory of Christ, the supremacy of Christ over all the Old Testament practices and worship. Christ was better and higher than all religions, all Old Testament prophets, all priests, all kings. He is the fulfillment of all temple rituals and all priesthood. Jesus’ sacrificial death was superior to all external temple sacrificial rituals. The covenant of Christ is better than all other covenants.

The writer encourages them not to fall for the visible big temple, rituals, and external devotion, because a truly higher religion and devotion is a spiritual religion. He calls them to persevere in faith, to a life of persevering faith. To encourage them, in the previous chapter (11), he lists the marvelous display of great men and women who manifested such persevering faith, starting with the patriarchs Abel, Noah, Abraham, and moving on to men who lived in their own time. After giving that list, in chapter 12, he presents the life of faith as a running race. He encourages us to enter and run the race of persevering faith. In verses 1-3, he says four things.

First, he says, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” our life is like a running race in a stadium. We are encouraged by all these witnesses, men who have lived a life of faith until the end and who bear witness that persevering faith indeed brings a glorious, great reward. They are cheering, “Yes, run! Come, run!”

Second, there is a call to make the necessary preparation to run well. We are to “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us.”

Third, there is the summons to “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” to run with perseverance, determined to finish.

Fourth, the last and greatest encouragement to run this race. Everything leads up to this. The highest motivation to run this race of faith is where we have our command. Look at verse 2: “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” If you have to run this race successfully, if you have to live a Christian life of faith without slowing, backsliding, or even falling, this is a great command and duty: looking unto Jesus.

If you want to run this race in a steady way, there needs to be a determined fixation of your eyes throughout the entire race on Jesus. The command is so strong and indispensable. The moment you turn your eyes, you remember Peter walking on water, looking at the Lord Jesus. He was able to walk in the midst of the storm because he fixed his eyes on Jesus, but when he looked away, like Peter, you will sink or fall back.

So we see clearly in this context the great biblical command of looking unto Jesus, an indispensable biblical duty for spiritual progress.

Now, what does this mean? It has two things: an act and an object. The act is looking, and the object we should look at is Jesus. The act of looking in the original language is very strong. English doesn’t fully capture it. There are two things in the original: first, you have to turn your eyes from all other things, take your eyes away from all those things that you are seeing; and second, with determined, fast, fixed, and full attention, focus your eyes on one thing, look only at that thing, and look at it continuously. Don’t play games, deceiving yourself by saying you are living a Christian life of faith and running the race. If you are truly determined to complete the race and seize the prize, you must do two things.

Negatively, we must take our minds off everything that might divert us in our Christian race from looking unto Jesus. It may be good things; our focus can be on family, worldly things, worldly fame, glory, or the pleasures of the world. The main problem for many of us is that all our focus can be on ourselves. We’re always looking unto me: “How do I feel? How good am I? Why am I like this?” Or we focus on even bad things, on the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, or whatever. Take your mind from that. Whatever hinders our sight of Christ.

Why should we look away from those things? Unless we do that, we cannot look fixedly with steady attention on Jesus. Secondly, if you focus too much on all other things, they can blind the eyes of your soul and not allow you to see the infinite value and beauty that is in Christ. In fact, other things can deceitfully blind us and even make Christ seem mean, cheap, and contemptible in our eyes. So the first act is to turn your eyes from those things. The second is to look unto Jesus. This is the command. This is a great duty. It’s the fixation of our spiritual eyes upon Jesus Himself.

Now, what does this mean practically? How do we do this? This is not some physical, sentimental seeing of a picture of Jesus always, or imagining something. Remember, this is a looking of faith to Jesus as the author or finisher/perfector of our faith. We are running a race of Christian faith; we face obstacles, struggles, trials, and temptations. We have to look to Him through the eyes of our soul in faith as the author, meaning He is the one who put us in this race. We would never have come on our own. And not only that, He is the one who has promised to give us all the grace to carry us through and finish the race. He has the fullness of the treasure of grace. He is the author and finisher of the race. All we need to run this race is in Him.

So this looking of faith is an intense, determined, constant mind focus on Christ that is shaped by the scriptures so that it is not a Jesus of our own imagination or our own fantasies. We look at the Jesus of the Bible in our situations. This is not just thinking of a few things about Christ notionally, just a few Bible verses in our head knowledge that we then forget, but this is an intense, determined focus of the mind’s eye on Jesus. It’s an inward, experimental, persevering look unto Jesus until glory shines from Him, until the virtue and grace flow from Him to me to strengthen me to run the race. This is not just a mind exercise that stops there, but an intense focus of the mind that continues until it stirs up affections in the heart and the effects are felt in my soul, reviving my dull spirit and affecting my life. That is why I called this “Looking Unto Jesus Till Glory Shines.” It is an inward, experiential looking to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews says this is the only way you will be able to successfully run the race.

He has grace for every situation in our lives, for patience, suffering, temptations, and trials. Look to Him. Let me give a few real-life examples. I am a very gentle and patient man when I’m in good condition, with good sleep and good food, but when I was traveling hundreds of kilometers, without proper sleep, I couldn’t eat and had a severe headache. All my virtue, my gentleness, disappears. A small irritation is enough to make me angry. I cannot control myself; I get a bubbling haste and don’t even care if it’s right or wrong. Have you noticed Satan usually comes when we are tired and exhausted? At that time, I look to Jesus who was fasting for 40 days. Can you imagine a man’s state after 40 days without food? All gentleness, all faith, gone with the wind. What terrible hunger pangs! All outward fullness gone; the true mettle of the man comes out. Then, at that time, Satan comes to make Him a little impatient with the providence of God, to make this stone bread. At that time, it was not a sin to do that, but even then, He displays full trust in God’s providence, without a small murmur. When I intently look at that Jesus who fasted for 40 days, I receive divine patience in the most terrible situations.

In my faith race, if I’m facing poverty, I look at His poverty: His birth in a manger, living in utter poverty, no place to lay His head. You receive grace to run. Do you suffer the terrible pain of slander? How painful it is, like a scorpion’s sting, when people smirk, insult, and talk behind our backs. It is unbearable sometimes, bitter wormwood. Yes, this is indeed a heavy blow. Look unto Jesus. The Son of God was called the son of the devil. Infinite wisdom dwelt in Him, yet He was called a madman by His own mother and family members. He was most pure and holy, yet called a sinner, a Samaritan, a drunken man. Come! Look unto Jesus, the poor, slandered one; He gives grace to wipe that tear away, gives divine patience!

Or you may be suffering with temptations or the guilt of sin, which is unbearable. Go to the Garden of Gethsemane, see Him rolling in the mud, see great drops of blood falling to the ground. In the midst of that struggle, He comes out victoriously. Look unto Him until grace flows from Him to you. If you think everything is against you, people have done great evil to you, you cannot forgive them, God also seems to have forsaken you, and all is dark clouds, you are filled with doubts about God’s love. Then come to Calvary’s mountain, the summit of that little hill outside Jerusalem, where the worst criminals were put to death. Here stand three crosses; the center one is reserved for one who is the greatest of criminals. See there! They have nailed Him to the cross. It is the Lord of life and King of glory, before whose feet archangels melt in praise. They have nailed Him to the cross: He hangs there in mid-heaven, bleeding, suffering, with the hot sun beating down. He is thirsty. His scourged body, His face full of spit and punched, is swollen. He is in the worst suffering, and He needs all sympathy, but they mock at Him, shake their heads, and say, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save.” What does He do? His lips are moving. Does He murmur or curse them? He prays for their forgiveness. Look unto Jesus. If you have problems forgiving people who harm you, if you need forgiving grace, look to Jesus. Don’t just glance; keep looking intently at that situation until virtue and grace flow from Him, until glory shines from Him to your soul.

Then, the God of wrath and justice comes to Calvary, as if to do a major operation. He draws a veil; no one can see. The sun is eclipsed, refusing to behold Him! He will go through agony that no eye can see. Maybe just that sight would kill people with a heart attack. Can you imagine when He drank the eternal hell of all hells? Imagine how His face must have been. Was ever a face marred like that face? Isaiah said it was not at all like a human face; it was so ugly. We speak of tension. Was there ever a heart so filled with tension and pressure with agony when the fire of eternal suffering poured on Him? Come and behold Him. The wonder of wonders is so sad on one side, but this is a sight that can give all grace and strength for us. He victoriously cries out, “It is finished,” and gives His spirit to the Father with a smiling face.

What are your doubts this morning? Whatever your soul struggles, challenges, or problems, if you see this sight with the eye of faith, such glory will shine from this, you will find a solution to all that by looking at Christ on the cross. You have come here, perhaps, with a backslidden, cold heart, doubting God’s love. Look to Christ upon the cross, and can you doubt it then? If God were not full of love and mercy, would He have given His Son to bleed and die like this? Do you think that a Father would rend His darling from His heart and nail Him to a tree, that He might suffer an ignominious death for our sakes, and yet be hard, merciless, and without pity? God forbid the impious thought! He who didn’t spare His son but gave Him, how will He not give all things? Doubt your mother’s, wives’, and children’s love, but not God’s love. There must be infinite love in the heart of God for you, or else there had never been a cross on Calvary.

But do you doubt God’s power to save? Are you saying to yourself this morning, “How can He forgive so great a sinner as I am?” Oh, look there, sinner, look there, to the great atonement made, to the utmost ransom paid. Do you think that that blood has not an efficacy to pardon and to justify? How dare you think or question the efficiency and power of Jesus’ blood? It can forgive all sins and all sinners. It has all power to enable God to vindicate His justice and yet have mercy upon sinners.

So do you see this inward, experimental seeing makes us think of Jesus more, know Christ more, believe in Him more, love Him more, and enjoy Him more? A constant practice of this conforms us to the image of Christ. Looking unto Jesus is that great means of grace appointed by God for our most especial good. How many souls have been blessed by using this means! Christ has communicated virtue to them by this means.

The soul’s intense view of Christ, His person, who He is—God and man—with all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Him—He is the only source of infinite grace. For “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” What has He done? His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession, His second coming. All are given to us so we can look intently and receive grace for our lives. He is “able to save them to the uttermost.” Then, to know He is all mine. I possess Him; He is my wealth. He is mine to enjoy, to draw virtue from Him for all my needs. It will make us most happy and joyful to look upon Him.

In fact, the Old Testament says that if a believer looks at God with such a look, he will be saved. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” “They looked unto Him, and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.” Second Corinthians 3:17: “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This is how it happens.

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2. The Sin of Neglecting This Command

Is your conscience and mine convinced of the great importance of this command? Unless we are convinced, we will just hear a nice sermon and then leave. If the Holy Spirit says this is a high command to run the race of faith, if this is the great Gospel art of the ages, if this is the grand duty of every Christian, do we realize how each of us has failed and neglected this duty? Instead of looking to this glorious treasure where we can find all we need for life, our minds and hearts are looking to vanity, filled with vanity. The main failure is always looking at ourselves. We can never run the race. The Lord’s regular rebuke to the Old Testament people was, “They have eyes, and see not. My people have forgotten me for days without number, and they don’t look to me.”

We have two or three basic problems in this exercise, all because of unbelief.

1. The first is mental laziness. It requires the mental exercise of looking. Oh, we hear a sermon, then our mind’s focus to look unto Christ, our faith and determination is so weak that, like an arrow shot from a weakly bent bow, it does not reach the mark. We try once or twice to look, but we are too mentally lazy to persevere, so we give up. Oh, may God deliver us from dull, lazy attempts in this important spiritual work! But this is not the case with worldly things. We focus, we look until it affects our hearts and emotions. You see in what generous, large streams your thoughts fly forth to other worldly things, and yet you are only languishing, weak, and feeble in this great spiritual work.
2. Second, we do not persevere in faith. This is a constant, abiding, persevering look until glory shines, until virtue flows. We don’t believe that if we persevere, our needs will be met in Christ. We may give a glance or two at Christ in feeble faith and don’t persevere. We don’t abide in this exercise.
3. It may be that now and then we are awakened by deep distress, and we look to Christ and are comforted, but we don’t make this a daily practice, not a daily exercising of this blessed duty. We have been invited by God to be His children, but we live like guests, going once in a while. How sad when children act as strangers at home.

All this we may call personal weakness, but this is sinful unbelief. How this shows the low, little value we give to Jesus in our thoughts and hearts! Ask yourself, “Why then are your thoughts no more upon Him? Why are not your hearts continually with Him?” Oh, He deserves maybe a serious thought once in a while when I have troubles. He doesn’t deserve such constant attention, the strongest desires, and looking unto Him.

God sees this as a great sin of unbelief. We always blame the Jews for treating Him so cheaply, for being so blind, but do we truly see? How are we treating Christ? Christ rebuked that generation for their unbelief, so He couldn’t do much. You talk of David; one greater than David is here. The queen of Sheba traveled from her nation to hear Solomon’s wisdom and said, “Blessed are those thy servants, that always stand before thee, and hear thy wisdom.” If she was so taken with Solomon, remember that “a greater than Solomon is here.” And shall we deprive ourselves of that blessedness, which we might enjoy by looking unto His wisdom daily by God-ordained means of faith?

Today, as we come to the Lord’s table, how does He tell us to come? He tells us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” In a way, “Look to Me.” It is so difficult and strange for you to turn your heart because your hearts are magnetized to worldly things. Ah, vile hearts! How delightfully and unweariedly can we think of vanity! How freely and how frequently can we think of our pleasures, friends, worldly worries, and things, and how little value we give to Christ in all our thoughts! We should rebuke our own hearts for their willful strangeness to Christ!

The sin of neglecting this command is a great reason for all spiritual poverty in grace and a lack of spiritual progress. Christ is the soul’s light; without Him, life will be without light, full of darkness. There is no guidance or leading in life. If He is wisdom, there is no wisdom in life, no knowledge. Christ is the source of all grace, so without Him, life is graceless. He is the source of sanctification, so there is no inclination for holiness. He alone can satisfy the soul; without Him, the soul will feel emptiness and vanity. He is the Prince of Peace, so without Him, there is no peace.

If God has ordained graces to flow and progress in grace by looking, what do you think you are doing? You are not only not progressing but going backward. As we come to the table, pray, “Lord, turn our thoughts from all earthly vanities to look unto You, to habituate ourselves to such thinking. Let not those thoughts be rare, seldom, or superficial, but regularly, intently, abiding. Let us abide in these thoughts. Have our eyes continually set on Christ.”

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3. The Blessings of Obeying This Command

If we are lively in this duty, oh, the blessed incomes to such souls!

1. See this, our problem is that we are always looking at ourselves and others. Look at yourself and what do you see? A mass of accumulated massive weakness, emptiness, sin, and corruption. And then you look to others and you will see that which will often disappoint you, anger you, and discourage you. Look out into the world and you’ll despair, but looking unto Jesus, what will you see? There is a fullness of the Godhead to meet all your needs. When you stop looking at everything else and start intently living life looking unto Jesus, you realize that divine virtue and grace are flowing from Him to you to meet so many of your soul’s daily needs. You will find all fullness in Him. Christ gives grace upon grace. “Of his fullness we receive grace upon grace.” Imagine what fullness He has. As I said, you need patience, strength to overcome temptation, peace, and the blessed peace of conscience. It is the testimony of all souls who practice this to say, “Jesus is enough.” Complete satisfaction. Blessed assurance. Perfect submission. Delight. They that rightly look unto Jesus may say, as Jacob did, “I have enough.”
2. This is the secret of all transfiguration to the image of Christ. All we have been studying in Philippians—unity, working out salvation with fear and trembling, living without grumbling—what is Paul’s direction for all this? “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” How will we get that mind? Look unto Jesus, how, though He was equal to God, He humbled Himself. See how He directs us to look at Christ. That look alone will transform your proud and grumbling heart and mine.
3. It is this looking that fills believers’ hearts with joy and their mouths with song, even in trials. This exercise makes Christ’s presence very real to them. They see Him loving and embracing their humble souls, bearing them in the bosom of His love. He comforts their wounded spirits with the promises of His word, and they rejoice. Filled with the Spirit, instead of always worrying and grumbling, they sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and make melody in their hearts unto the Lord, like the apostles even when they were in prison. This exercise enables us to enjoy Christ and taste of His goodness, making them joyful so they break out into psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. This is a joy the world never gave and never can take away.
4. As they grow in this exercise and joy, Christ gives them the sense of His own worth and excellency. They see now that in Christ is wisdom and treasure surpassing anything in the world. In Christ is power above all powers in the universe. In Christ is honor transcending all the kings of the earth, for He is “King of kings and Lord of lords.” In Christ is beauty excelling the greatest beauty; He is altogether beautiful; He is fairer than ten thousand, more precious than all the precious stones of the earth. That is why men like Moses, who experienced this through faith (Hebrews previous chapter 11 says “rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, for he looked to the reward. He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt”).

Oh, if every man realizes this! Who would not look unto Jesus? Come, let the proud man boast in his honor, and the mighty man in his valor, and the rich man in his wealth, but let the Christian pronounce himself happy, only happy, truly happy, fully happy in looking unto Jesus. He enjoys everything in Jesus.

Those of you who are not saved, Scripture says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Just one look of faith in Jesus Christ, through the means of faith, and salvation and grace can flow to you. Will you look at Him in faith today?

Today, as we come to communion, these are means given to us. For what? Just to see bread and wine, drink, and go home? These are means given to our faith to look to Christ. That bread signifies and symbolizes the body in which He carried all our sins up to the cross and made them null. The wine in the cups signifies His violent death, His blood poured out as a sacrifice for sin. All to ratify a covenant. This is a symbol that Christ has given Himself, all His fullness, for us. This is a sign of a sure and certain covenant in all of its provisions for all of those for whom that covenant was made. May God help us to look at Him afresh and keep the eyes of our souls fixed upon Him.

Death is so unnatural to us, so confusing, so unsettling. It is not easy to handle. When we face the death of loved ones, we do not even know how to react or what to say. When I heard of the death of Brother Vasudevan, everything stopped for a moment. It is a shocking and strange experience.

Different cultures react differently. Worldly people, who want everything to be a celebration, make loud noises, dance, and drink to manage the shock, to suppress their conscience, and to suppress important questions of life. They fill their minds with rituals at this time. We can give some answers to everything in life, but when we face death, we do not have answers until we open God’s Word.

It is at such times that the light of the Bible shines very brightly. Firstly, the Bible makes us realize our unnatural, confusing, and strange feelings are correct. That is the right way to react to death, because when the Lord made the world, the experience of death was not a natural design of his creation. He made the world very good; death—the unnatural separation of body and soul—is completely against his original creation. That is why we feel such conflict inside us. The small letter we take so lightly, sin, is what brought this death. The wages of sin is death.

Death is a divinely appointed punishment for mankind’s disobedience. The separation of body and soul is unnatural and, therefore, is only a temporary state until the second coming of Christ, when all who are in the grave will hear his voice and come out, and their body and soul will be reunited forever.

I have known Vasudevan for close to eight years; he was a member of our church, a godly man, and a very, very faithful member. I want to praise God for the grace that we saw in this elderly brother. He would sit in the front chair and enjoy the exposition of truth for close to an hour. After the service, he would always come and encourage me, telling me he had never heard such truth in his life, and how it touched his heart and did something to him. He would not just talk to me; he would talk to my shy children. He would tell John, “You should be an Indian cricketer.” He would call my daughter, “Dr. Jerusha.” He would encourage my wife for supporting me in ministry. If I allowed our church members to speak, most would come and say how they were encouraged and inspired by his life. His simply coming to church in his old age, with all his pain, was a great service and ministry he did for our church. He never complained, grumbled, or shared any of his pains with us but greeted and encouraged everyone with his childlike smile.

In his last few months, whenever he was feeling a little okay and could walk, he would want to come to church. When he fell sick and was admitted, he would say, “I want to get well so I can go to church; I want to come to church. I’m missing it.” The last time I met him, his legs were painful with infection; it was very, very difficult for him. I was wondering what words of comfort I could tell him. In fact, I was discouraged when I saw him, but after he spoke to me for a few hours, I was so encouraged. I did not feel like leaving him; I wanted to continue talking. He kept telling me about Bible truths, saying, “You said that in Matthew, Ephesians, Leviticus, and Psalms,” and about Bible stories like Job. One thing he kept repeating was, “I am ready. I am ready. I am waiting for the Lord to come and take me. I am ready.”

It is easy to talk about faith and being faithful until the end when you are young and in good health, but when your body becomes weak and full of all kinds of pains, it is so difficult to hold on to faith. But Vasudevan was faithful until the end, kept his faith, and fought a good fight. Ours is a young church; we want to thank God today that he brought a marvelous, elderly man of faith to us and displayed such grace among us. Even in his old age with so much pain, his faith stood strong. His faith shined even in the midst of terrible physical suffering.

Today, I want to share two crucial Bible lessons we can learn from Vasudevan’s life.

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Lesson One: Death is an Inescapable Certainty

We may generally know this, but according to the Bible, if we want to live a meaningful and wise life (Psalm 90:12), we should live with this consciousness. We saw our brother fall sick and be admitted repeatedly, and sometimes we thought it would be difficult for him to make it, but he repeatedly escaped death and came out miraculously. Even last week, he could not get up, but his daughter said he started walking. But he finally passed away last week. Why? Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man once to die.” A divine appointment has been made in God’s calendar.

How did he make this appointment? Not like a dentist appointment we make, where the doctor and we discuss a convenient date and time and fix an appointment. That is a bilateral appointment. But God, unilaterally by himself, has fixed a death appointment for every man and woman in this world.

Firstly, I want to give comfort to the family and church people not to trouble yourselves, saying, “Oh, if we would have taken him there, if we had done this or that.” Beyond all our efforts, death happens by divine appointment.

Secondly, we should all learn to live with the consciousness that death is an inescapable certainty. The wise man, Solomon, says that it is this consciousness that makes us live wisely. James even says your life is just a vapor, like the smoke that comes when you boil water. That is how the Bible wants us to view our lives. To make it personal, you should learn to look in the mirror sometimes and say this unpleasant thing to yourself: “One day you will die. Your heart will stop beating.” So the first lesson is the certainty of death. The appointment is fixed.

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Lesson Two: We Must Be Ready

The second lesson is that since this appointment is certain, and we do not know the appointment date—it can happen when we are old, or when we are young or middle-aged—no one knows the time. If that is the case, the wisest thing you can do is to be ready at any time. In Luke 16, through a parable, our Lord says that he who does not think about death and does not prepare for his death is a fool. Brother Vasudevan repeatedly kept telling us, “I am ready. I am waiting for my Lord to come and take me. I am ready.” How many of you can say you are ready? I have seen many, many old people die; they all died as if they were sheep forcefully dragged to slaughter. But he was ready.

How could he say he was ready? Two things made him ready:

• He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he repented for his sins and turned to God.
• This faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what would happen after death.

Only these two things can make any man ready for death.

First—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance towards God. Many years ago, he heard the gospel. The gospel taught him that there is one living God who created and provides for him and who is a holy and just God. Then he realized he was a fallen sinner, that he had broken God’s laws, and that he had so much covetousness, envy, lust, and anger. And he knew that this God would judge him one day. He realized the good news is that this God has sent his only begotten Son as an atoning sacrifice for his sins. Christ took his sins upon him on the cross and died, and he lived a righteous life that he could never live. He died for his sins and lived to make him righteous before God. So he heard the gospel, believed Christ, repented for his sins, and was saved. As the Bible promises: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.”

Second—this faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what will happen after death. Because John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” So, because he believed, he received eternal life. This gift wonderfully takes away the fear of death by giving a clear, true knowledge of what happens after death.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 37 asks, “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?” It lists three blessings:

1. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.
2. And they do immediately pass into glory.
3. And their bodies, being still united to Christ, rest in their graves until the resurrection.

The catechism says three things: what happens to our souls, where our souls go, and what happens to our body. We believe that Vasudevan, as soon as he left this world, had his soul made perfect in holiness—a glorious, blessed state. Not only is he without sin, but his spirit has become so perfect, reflecting God’s holy law and reflecting Jesus Christ. Imagine “perfect” means no more growth is needed; he has reached the height of holiness. Holiness is the essence of all happiness. Heaven is happy because they are holy. So he is in a perfectly happy and holy state.

Secondly, you know this perfect holiness is preparation for him to go to a glorious place. Where do our souls go? Our souls immediately pass into glory. Because the purity of the heavenly glory admits no sin or imperfection, he is made perfectly holy so he can immediately pass into glory. Glory, yes, it will be a wonderful place. Revelation 21 says, “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

But more than the absence of negative things, there are blessed positive things. In his perfect state, he will be able to stand before God with joy. No one was able to stand here; John and Isaiah fell like dead men. Jude 24 says, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” He will see God face to face. Our forefathers called it the beatific vision. The very essence of happiness for us, created in his image, is the enjoyment of God. Psalm 16:7 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” God is an infinite, inexhaustible fountain of joy, and to have him is to have all.

We shall corporally behold the glorified body of Jesus Christ. I often say, “He did so much, and yet I have not seen his face,” but then we will see it. Then he will be with the glorious family of angels and all the saints. So what happens to his soul? Perfected holiness, and it immediately passes to glory.

Third, what happens to their bodies? “Their bodies, being still united to Christ, rest in their graves until the resurrection.” We see his body here, but Christ not only redeemed our soul but even our body. He united our body to himself; it is a member of his body. His body will rest until the resurrection. The last time I met him, he was saying, “I cannot sleep because of the pain. I cannot rest.” Now, this body will rest painlessly until the resurrection. Although we will bury it, we are actually sowing it as a seed. This same body will rise with a glorious, deathless resurrection body and be united to a sinless soul at the second coming of Christ. Then he will experience the full blessing of eternal life in the new heavens and new earth.

We can have full comfort not just because our dear one’s soul went to heaven to live forever. We do not weep because our loved ones have gone to heaven; it is a joy. But we weep because their body will go into the grave—because those eyes can no longer smile at us, because those hands cannot touch us with love, and because those lips cannot speak, as the body is cold and dead and will be buried in the dust.

But the whole Christian burial service is meant to give us comfort in the promised resurrection for the body. The comfort of the Christian faith is that the very body we bury in the grave will rise again; you shall see that body once more. First Corinthians 15 uses the example of a seed and says this body is sown in the grave as a small seed, but what grows is a big tree from that seed. In the same way, this body will rise with a glorious, deathless body. Paul says in 15:42-43: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”

See that this should give us hope. “He is not dead, but sleepeth.” We are not burying him permanently; we are sowing him, like a “seed sown to ripen at harvest time.” This body is buried for a glorious metamorphosis, to be prepared to live in glory in the presence of God.

The writer to the Hebrews says all the Old Testament saints, including Abraham, believed in the resurrection of the dead. The Bible says that is why he had the faith to sacrifice his son. Joseph believed, and that is why he carefully told his people not to bury his bones in Egypt but to take them and bury them in the promised land. Moses, David, and even old Job endured many things, believing that thereby they would “attain to a better resurrection.” How much more should we have that resurrection hope?

Do you know that angels will guard his body? The Book of Jude says that Michael the Archangel contended with the devil about the body of Moses. Why were two big archangels and the devil contending? Was this war only for the food of worms? The body of Moses was watched over by a great archangel. From this, we learn that an angel watches over every tomb. We may bury it, but God will guard every atom of his body. Whatever metamorphosis it may go through, God will gather it and raise him from the dead with more glory to dwell forever with the Lord. This body is buried for a glorious metamorphosis, to be prepared to live in glory in the presence of God.

So death is an inescapable certainty, and we do not know the time, so we have to be ready. The only way to be ready, as Vasudevan’s life taught us, is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to repent of your sins and turn to God. This faith gave him the assurance of eternal life and knowledge of what would happen after death. May those of you who have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ believe him today and experience the blessing of eternal life.

Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.

The entirety of Ephesians chapter 1 can be divided into two sections: Praise and Petition. The first fourteen verses are Paul’s praise for grand salvation blessings. Verse fifteen onward to the end of the chapter is a petition. After seeing the glorious praise of Paul, we enter his earnest, unceasing petition. What is his prayer? Verse 17: for the gift of the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. Second, the sphere or extent in which this gift is to be given is “in the knowledge of Him.” Third, the manner in which this gift is operative is described in verse 18: “the eyes of your understanding/heart being enlightened; that you may know.” The second part of verse 19, which translates to “I pray that He would give you enlightened eyes of the heart so that you may know,” further emphasizes this.

God has given us objective revelation in His Word, and it is a perfect, sufficient, and complete revelation. Although we are saved, we still have remaining sin within us, which produces a dullness and dimness of spiritual vision. Remaining sin creates an effect like a cataract across the spiritual eye, so we don’t see things clearly. Therefore, we need the spirit of revelation and wisdom to enlighten and illuminate us. The Holy Spirit takes the objective revelation of God’s Word, makes it real, and gives us a true sense of the superlative excellence of divine things.

I tried to emphasize the great importance of this petition for illumination so that Paul’s prayer becomes our regular prayer. This enlightening work of the Spirit saves us from a subtle, false Christian experience. Secondly, this enlightenment is the primary means for all Christian growth and fruitfulness. Thirdly, we saw a few desirable blessings of this enlightenment—things like the highest education, highest joy, and peace. A taste of divine pleasure weans us from the addictive pleasures of the world, empowers us to mortify our lusts, and transforms our soul.

This enlightening, illuminating work of the Spirit is progressive. It’s not like we pray, and boom 💥, one day the Holy Spirit fully opens our eyes, and we can see everything clearly all at once. No, it is a process; it develops and expands. That is why we see this prayer repeated again and again, as we do in Psalm 119. As we study the Word of God or listen to preaching, we must cultivate an attitude of constant dependence on the Holy Spirit and continually cry out to God that He would enlighten our eyes.

We saw that Paul prays that our eyes should be enlightened to see what? While we will be able to see many divine things, verse 18 onward shows that Paul specifically prays that we know three things by the Spirit’s illumination.

1. The hope of His calling.
2. The riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
3. The exceeding greatness of His power.

If you want head theology, I can cover all this in one week. But we want to dig into Ephesians until we find gold, until we are illuminated and get a transforming sense of these realities. So we will thoroughly meditate on each of these in the coming weeks.

Today, we will see the first thing that God, through Paul, wants us to know with enlightened eyes: the hope of His calling.

The Calling of God

There are five headings for this topic:

• Nature of the calling
• Author of the calling
• Origin of the calling
• Hope of the calling
• Means of the calling

Nature of the Calling

When Paul prays that the Ephesians might know “what is the hope of His calling,” we must first understand what the calling is. When you look at the biblical meaning of the word “calling,” the Bible speaks about two kinds of calling: the general call and the effectual call of the gospel.

The general gospel call goes forth to all people in the world, offering salvation blessings and commanding them to repent and believe the gospel. It is an open, universal call, extended indiscriminately, without restriction or qualification. We can refer to many verses in the Old Testament prophecies and the gospels: all the verses that say “whosoever believes,” “whosoever comes,” “whoever thirsts,” and “all who believe will receive mercy, forgiveness, salvation, eternal life.” John 3:16 and Romans 10:13, which says, “For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,'” are examples. Mark 16:15 says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” This is the general, universal gospel call.

This call emphasizes invitation. It’s like when someone invites us to a grand feast. They call us with a nice invitation card. In our culture, close relatives will call us with a plateful of fruits, sweets, clothes, and even betel leaf and areca nuts. They say, “Betel leaf and areca nuts are here to invite you!” For what? For a grand marriage feast or a housewarming feast. In the same way, God calls sinners through the gospel to come to Christ and enjoy His salvation feast. That is why in Matthew, this call is compared to a grand marriage feast invitation, and He promises infinite blessings, from forgiveness and cleansing to eternal life.

Now, this general call can be ignored and rejected. Remember how many rejected the marriage feast invitation, giving lame excuses like, “I have bought a cow,” “I have a field,” or “I just got married.” But it goes to everyone, so this call on one side shows the magnitude of the grace of God, which is freely extended to all people, and on the other side, it shows the responsibility of people if they reject this call. John 3:36 declares, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him.” If this was the only call God gave to dead sinners, no one would be saved. Praise God.

There is a second kind of call, and it is the effectual call of God. It is a powerful, efficacious call that always accomplishes its purpose. It is so powerful that it cannot be resisted by the person being called; that’s why it is also called irresistible grace. It is an internal, powerful, heavenly call of God that goes out with power to break impossible hindrances and brings men and women into the blessings of the Gospel. It goes beyond an invitation; it has the emphasis of a summons. I may invite someone to a place, and they may either ignore it or respond to it. But when I send a legal summons from the High Court, they must come. They will come. An effectual call is such a call that it will ensure that whoever receives it will come. That is the difference between a mere invitation and a summons.

Which call is Paul talking about here? Interestingly, you will find the general gospel call mostly in the gospels, but not in the epistles. Almost all words used for “call” in the epistles refer to the effectual call. So much so that the verb is changed to a noun, and believers are known as “the called” or “the called ones,” referring to the successful call of God.

The clearest example of this effectual call is Romans 8:30: “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” Many heard the gospel in Ephesus, but many rejected it. However, it was this effectual call that brought a few in Ephesus to faith and repentance, which resulted in their justification. “Whom He called, He justified.” So when Paul says you have to understand the hope of “His” calling, the nature of this call is the powerful, efficacious call of God that brought them out of the darkness of Ephesian pagan idolatry to the light of truth, and from bondage to Satan and sin to freedom in Christ. So we see the nature of the call.

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Author of the Calling

Do you see the small pronoun in verse 18? Whose call is this? It’s “the hope of His calling,” not “your” calling. Oh, what an illuminating door opens when we grasp such small words in the Bible. When you realize who has called you, this call will appear so glorious. Who does “His” refer to? The closest proper noun goes back to the previous verse, verse 17: “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” It is the living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. He is the author of this calling.

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If you want to grasp the glory of this calling, whenever we think of a calling, we should never look at outward circumstances or inward causes, but upward to Him. It is a heavenly calling. That’s the pervasive emphasis of the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “But God is faithful by whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son.”

This is the hope that Paul prays our eyes may be enlightened to see. Oh, see the nature of the call. Not a general call, but an effectual call. That call has all the power to accomplish its goals. Secondly, see the author of the call. This is the Father of Glory; all His attributes are reflected in the glory of His call. He is an immutable God; His calling never changes. The immutability of His call means He doesn’t call someone and leave them halfway or change His mind. Whatever He called you for, He will ensure He accomplishes it. Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and the callings of God are without repentance.” His whole character is staked in His call. All who are called will be justified, and all who are justified will be glorified. So we see the nature of the call and the author of the call.

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Origin of the Calling

What is the origin or source of this call? Again, from Romans 8:30: “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called.” Oh, the origin of this call didn’t start in time, but goes back to the eons of eternity to the electing love and sovereign purpose of God. God’s plan of predestination is a great plan done outside of time and space. Nothing of space and time can ever alter a single millimeter of that great plan. There, He predestined us to adoption, and this calling is an effect of that plan. Calling is always traced back to eternal election, love, and predestination. You can dread 2 Timothy 1:9 and 2 Thessalonians 2:13.

Look at the golden chain, the unbreakable golden chain. It started with eternal predestination, which resulted in God calling out of millions of people. It doesn’t stop with the calling; the chain continues. Notice the middle of Romans 8:30: “whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” This is the unbreakable framework of His calling. The calling never comes in isolation. The effectual call has an eternal past story of electing love, predestination, and redemption, and then a future of glorification. This golden chain goes back from past eternity to future eternity, and in between, God is calling a people and keeping them by His power and grace until He glorifies them.

I hope the Holy Spirit enlightens our heart’s eyes to start seeing the hope of this calling. When I understand the nature of this call, the author of this call, and the origin of this call, I am prepared to understand the hope of this call. The nature of this call is not a general call. Why did the gospel have no effect on so many who heard it, but it had such a life-changing impact on me? Because it was an effectual call. That call has all the power to accomplish all its glorious goals. Secondly, see the author of the call. This is the Father of Glory, and all His attributes are reflected in the glory of His call. He is an immutable God; His calling never changes. The immutability of His call means this is an eternal, sovereign, omnipotent, gracious, and merciful call. See the origin of the call. It began in predestination and will infallibly accomplish its goal of glorification.

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Hope of the Calling

The word hope is a most important truth in the New Testament. Next to faith and love, hope is set forth as being of equal importance as one of the three dominant graces of the Christian life. The trinity of Christian graces is faith, hope, and love. The classic statement is in 1 Corinthians 13: “Now abideth faith, hope, and love.” We will look in-depth at the concept of hope next week, along with the practical results of having true biblical hope. Just to introduce you today, we will get a full grasp of the phrase “hope of his calling.”

Paul says this calling gave us hope. Here is a simple example: when someone calls you to a special, grand feast at, say, the Leela Palace, what does it do? Well, it creates a certain hope inside of you, doesn’t it? As you travel and go to the function hall, there’s going to be a special, lavish feast waiting for you. It creates a hope that you will enjoy the pleasure of good-tasting food. Marriage food is so special in our culture. When we are conscious of our weight, we might even fast from morning so we can have a nice, big portion at dinner and be “stuffed to the gills” or “fit to burst.” That hope of calling makes you do that.

In the same way, God calls a person, and it creates hope in that person. The hope that the effectual call of God produces is the confidence that the God who called, forgave, and justified us with great, infinite power will continue to exercise the same infinite power until He fully glorifies me. It is the hope that I will enjoy the full and complete redemptive feast of God in eternity. It is that burning hope that drives our Christian life.

You see, when someone calls you to a great, grand dinner, you start to get prepared. You cancel other meetings for that day, select your best special dress or even buy a new one, dress up nicely, and start the journey to the function. Even a long journey is fine. What makes you do all that? Primarily, it’s respect for the person who called, but we also have hope that when we get there, a grand dinner is waiting for us.

In the same way, the effectual call of God does marvelous things now. It presently raises us from the dead, gives us new birth, forgives all our sins, justifies us, and gives us peace and joy. But all that is just a foretaste or a starter for the full blessing He has promised. The effectual call invitation promises the fullness of the eternal grand feast and full salvation. We came to Christ with that hope of the calling. That calling promised something. When God called us, He promised, “I’m calling you to heaven. I’m calling you to glory.” And that created a hope in us that we will experience those things. So we started the journey of Christian life with the hope of that calling, and we are in the process of traveling to that eternal feast of the full experience and enjoyment of what that call promised.

Now, we have not yet experienced all our redemption blessings. We are, as it were, on our way to the heavenly feast. We have started moving on the narrow street leading to heaven. You know what keeps us going? Sometimes, when we just go to the street where a big marriage function is being held, we start smelling the biryani flavors and spices. In the same way, on our road to heaven, we have only smelled the feast; we just had a vaporous foretaste. The more we progress, the more we smell the feast. It creates a fervent yearning and expectation of the full feast. “When will I eat the full biryani?” We can strongly smell the odor of the biryani coming from the window of heaven once in a while. If the smell is like that, what will the fullness be?

If you need my definition of hope, it is a fervent yearning and expectation of the full feast of heaven. It is a biblical definition. I will prove it next week. If now, when our assurance is high, so much joy sometimes overwhelms us, and peace like a river is beyond understanding—so much so that we feel God’s smile, presence, and pleasures—we feel like heaven on earth. All this is just the vaporous foretaste odor coming from the window of heaven. If this is so wonderful, oh, what will it be to sit down at the table with Christ and enjoy the full experience of all that that call promised when it was issued? We have not yet experienced that, but we have hope we will. Because He issued the call, we know that there is a table spread for us at the end of the road. That’s the hope of the calling.

I have explained this hope with the marriage feast example. Let me now demonstrate it from the Scriptures.

2 Timothy 1:9–10: “who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, that is, He didn’t summon us to Himself because we were good people… but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

What is the hope of the calling? For those who believe in God, the power and sting of death will be abolished, and eternal life and immortality will be our personal experience. That’s what we hope for. We came with that hope. Our dear brother Vasudevan lived with that hope until the end, and we can be sure on the basis of the infallible Word of God that God, who never lies, will ensure he experiences eternal life and immortality.

For him and for us, we know death will be abolished. Our souls will go to heaven at death, and at the Second Coming, we will rise with deathless bodies and sinless souls. All the effects of death will be undone. We will not be judged for any of our sins. In our next communion week, we will study how we will receive immortality, eternal glory, and an eternal inheritance. We will be welcomed with open arms and brought into eternal glory.

Let’s see what else was the hope of our calling: Hebrews 9:15. I just want you to see these verses; we can dig deeper next week. “And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” Wow! Jesus Christ, by His death, purchased redemption for our transgressions and became the Mediator of the new covenant for what? So that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. The mighty and able Mediator who is able to save us to the utmost… The primary work of this Mediator is staked on the fact that we should receive our eternal inheritance. The hope of the calling is that we will receive the eternal inheritance.

Let’s turn to 1 Peter 5:10: “But the God of all grace, who has called us… and what has He called us to? He has called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.” Have we experienced eternal glory yet? No. What did our brother Vasudevan experience when he was with us? Nothing. What are we experiencing? Notice what comes next: “after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.”

We are called to eternal glory; but on the way to our destination, we are experiencing suffering. Peter says that God will use all that suffering to perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. But we will ultimately experience that eternal glory, and that is the hope of our calling.

The final verse is Revelation 17:14. “And these shall make war with the Lamb.” Well, who is going to make war with the Lamb? The beast, Satan, and all forces of evil. The forces of evil will make war with the Lamb. “And the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings. And they also shall overcome that are with Him.” How does he describe them? What’s the first word he gives? “Called, chosen, and faithful.”

Here, the hope of our calling is that one day the Lord of lords and King of kings will triumph over evil, and we will be on the Lamb’s side and share his victory. Now we are delivered from the penalty of sin and the dominion of sin, but when he comes, we will be delivered from the presence and all the effects of sin. That is the hope of our calling.

Just a few verses about our hope: We could go on talking about our hope until the cows come home. Very briefly, the hope of our calling is death abolished. We will experience immortality, as it says in 2 Timothy. Hebrews 9 says we will experience an eternal inheritance. 1 Peter says we will experience eternal glory, after a little suffering now. Revelation 17 says we will overcome with the Lamb all powers of evil.

Do you see what a glorious call this is? The nature of the calling, the author of the calling, the origin of the calling, the hope of the calling.

Finally, what is the practical means by which this glorious, effectual call comes? The means of the calling.

Those of you who sleep through sermons and who think we are talking nonsense week after week, children who are forced to come and endure this hour, biting your teeth—you should hear this. What is the means by which this calling comes? 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 says, “But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How does this mighty call of God come? It comes through hearing the gospel. Paul calls it “our gospel,” not one of the 101 false gospels in the world. It is the full apostolic gospel revealed in the scriptures. You can get all kinds of false prosperity gospel calls that don’t have any of these effects. This call always and only comes when you are hearing the true gospel revealed and explained to you.

This call doesn’t come when you climb Mount Everest or the Himalayas or go on all the pilgrimages in the world. No. This call comes when weak men like me are trying to explain the Bible, and you sit and listen to it with open hearts. In the midst of the man’s voice, in the midst of the general outward call, this heavenly calling comes not just to your ears, but you can hear in your heart and know the God of heaven has called you today.

Yes, this always comes through the outward call, the general call, but within that general outward call, there is an inward call in which God not only addresses the ears, he also speaks to the heart, and they hear the heavenly voice of God calling them. This is why Jesus says in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” 2 Timothy calls this a “heavenly calling.”

Here’s a beautiful example: In Acts 16, when Paul went to Philippi, he went to a riverside, where some women were praying. Paul began to preach the gospel. Verse 14 says, “Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.’ So she persuaded us.”

You see, we have here the general call. All the women there heard Paul. Lydia also heard. But what was the difference? She not only heard him with the external, general call falling upon her ear, but we also see here that the Lord opened her heart. And as a result of the inward call, that inward working of God, she heeded the things which were spoken by Paul. Maybe none of the other women responded, but this woman did.

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Application

Exhortation to believers, a warning to nominal Christians, and encouragement to unbelievers.

To Believers

If God has given us these resources, the most worthy thoughts and petitions that should dominate our hearts and minds are not these low-level, worldly, sinful, and selfish thoughts. God has given us such a high calling; we need to set our minds on high things. What better thing than to pray with Paul for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God to enlighten the eyes of our heart so that we may know the hope of his calling?

How we struggle without this! Sometimes we wonder if we’re ever going to make it to heaven, filled with all kinds of doubts. That is when we lose our assurance, joy, and peace. We lose our motivation to live the Christian life and fall into temptations and a worldly mindset. See the glory of this call.

Realize the nature of this call: it is an effectual call. With that summons comes all of the power, all of the protection, and all of the resources that are necessary to ultimately deliver us into the very presence and wedding feast of Jesus Christ, where we may experience all that that call promised.

Realize the author of the call. The call of the immutable God never changes. By his powerful, effectual call, a person is absolutely ensured that one day he shall sit down at the table in heaven with Christ and enjoy eternal bliss.

Remember the origin of this call: he predestined us outside of time and outside of space. Nothing of time and space can change this call. When you and I think of our calling when we heard the gospel, we should learn to see it as a glorious effect of the eternal cause of election and predestination, and then it has a glorious future chain of glorification. From eternity to eternity, and in between, God is calling a people and keeping them by his grace. What a hope! It cannot be frustrated. Almighty God designed it in eternity, and he shall realize it in the world to come.

May the eyes of our heart be enlightened that we may know what is the hope of his calling, that we might rejoice in that hope and know that ultimately, regardless of the suffering we go through now, regardless of the problems that we face, there will come a day when we will sit at the table with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and we shall be filled to the full with redemptive blessings in his presence. May God inflame our hearts with that hope and use it to help us to face the difficult times in this life.

Between the call and the ultimate experience of all the full blessings of the call, we have hope. Hope that will sustain us through all of the stumblings, through all of the stair steps, through all of the molding, windings, and washings that must take place before we get to the table.

We will see next week what marvelous practical effect this hope can have in our life if that hope is burning in our hearts. This is the foundation for our growth and fruitfulness in the Christian life. Let us pray to God that we may grow in this hope, to be strong, to be inflamed, and to be full and steadfast.

Nominal Believers

See the nature of this call: it is effectual and efficacious. This means that when anyone hears the gospel and claims to be saved, it produces results. You become a new creature, old things pass away, and new desires grow. It showed itself in acts of faith and love for the Ephesians. If your faith doesn’t produce any growing results of holiness in your life, it is not an effectual call. Each of us has a great duty to “make your calling and your election sure.” Make sure… “Am I effectually called by God? What results can I say are a result of that calling?”

2 Thessalonians 2:13 says Paul speaks of belief in the truth and the sanctifying power of the Spirit. You say you believe the truth; there needs to be an experiencing of the sanctifying power of the truth. And if you’re not experiencing the sanctifying power of the gospel, don’t talk about believing the truth. God’s effectual call doesn’t stop with the head knowledge of truth; it effectually brings changes and results in your life.

You have to examine yourself and ask yourself: “Have I been called?” I’m not asking you, “Have you made a decision for Christ, raised your hand, had the pastor lay hands on you and pray for you, and say you are saved?” The effectual call produces continuous effects of salvation. That’s why most of the salvation effects are given in the present continuous tense. “He that believeth, continues to believe; he that cometh.” John 3:16, that great gospel text, does not say, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever makes an act of faith.” No, no, it’s “whosoever believeth.” It’s in the present tense in your English Bible and in the Greek.

“Whosoever believeth,” continuously relies and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ, and continues in that state, “he shall not perish.” I’m asking you, has Almighty God called you?

You may say, “I never thought of it that way.” That’s the biblical way of thinking about salvation. Paul describes his salvation as, “God called me by grace,” not “I did this, I, I, I, I, I.” Have you been called through the gospel? This is a gospel that always comes in a context of showing the truth about sin.

Has the truth of your sin really gripped you? Have you seen yourself as the worst sinner in the mirror of God’s 10 commandments? While you may decently cheat people on the outside, have you realized that God sees your heart’s lusting, your heart’s murder, your heart’s robbery of covetousness? That you have offended a holy God? You deserve to be crushed by the wrath and anger of that God. Has that gripped you until you have inwardly trembled at the thought of your sin?

The gospel becomes glorious good news only when you have felt and realized the bad news of your sin. Only when you have felt the pain of sin and the ugliness of sin are your eyes opened to see the beauty of Christ. The gospel shows that Christ and his work on the cross are the only hope for sinners to be brought to God in a way consistent with all of his glorious attributes. Has the gospel become good news?

How about you kids? Every time you punch or hit your brother or sister and lied to mommy and daddy, that’s enough sin to cause God to crush you and send you to hell, even though you may not be ten years old. Has that really gripped you kids? Have you felt guilty, and when praying, you said, “Oh God, forgive my sins.” Do you kids know what that is? Oh, that is how the call of God starts.

So if you realize you have not been called, I plead with you in Christ’s name, “Come to the feast; it’s spread. Come. Come to the Savior. Cry to him for mercy.”

Encouragement to Unbelievers

We have children who tell us, “I have been praying for God to save me. Sometimes I feel, ‘Oh yes, I am a Christian now, I’ve become serious,’ then I drift away in two days. What do I do, Pastor?” The truth of the effectual call must be a big encouragement for you to believe and pray to God to save you.

Pray to God that he may effectually call you and save you, because unless he does that, you will not come. You will be sitting in your sins, indifferent and careless, half asleep. But when this call comes, you will not just hear the preacher’s voice in your ears, but God’s voice in your heart. For some, it happens in a very gradual way. For some, it is very sudden. For some, it happens in a way in which all the inward bells and sirens go off at full pitch. For some, it’s just a whispering.

What happens? The gospel begins to take hold of the mind. They begin to think seriously about God and his law and sin and heaven and hell. And the great facts of the gospel. All of a sudden, your eyes will be opened to see the utter need, beauty, and glory of Christ. Then you repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You experience the joy of forgiveness, a thrill you have never experienced in all the world, peace like a river flows in your heart, and you become a child of God, a true, saved Christian! How glorious!

All this can happen when you attentively hear the gospel. Because this call comes through the gospel, pray every week, “God, I am going to make my best efforts to hear your truth; please call me today, please call me today. May I hear your voice.”

Today, I am preaching the gospel to you. May God call you today through this gospel preaching. Oh, my friend, lay hold of Christ. Cast yourself upon him. Turn from your sin and from your unbelief.

Let us pray that God will not only help us understand the doctrine of effectual calling, but also show us in our church by his power what effectual calling can do for some unsaved people among us.

Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.

A woman wrote to her pastor, saying, “I have a daughter and she is still not saved. I pray for her, but often I can’t. She is sliding down the prodigal son path. I suppose that I’m angry. After hearing the Gospel for many years, she isn’t responding and I feel incapable of helping her. Sometimes, I feel like giving up. At times I feel such sorrow, thinking she might go to hell. What can I pray for on a daily basis so that she will come to Christ?”

That is the cry of many Christian parents, and it must be hard not to get angry when you see your children repeatedly showing no interest in the Gospel and making bad choices. We keep praying, sharing the Gospel, and nothing seems to be happening. It finally becomes overwhelming. What do you do then? Some of us may not have prodigal children, but some have prodigal husbands, wives, parents, or relatives who are rejecting the Gospel. Moreover, we also have prodigal believers—though saved, they are not growing, are backslidden, and are losing their first love. They are busy in the world and have no time for God, church, or the Gospel. If we were to ask them what progress they have made in the last 5 or 10 years, they couldn’t say anything. What do we do? Today, we come to a marvelous prayer of Paul that tells us what their problem is and how to pray, not only for them but even for ourselves.

There has been a gap of three weeks since we looked at Ephesians, which seems like a long gap. After presenting a panoramic view of the amazing salvation blessings from verses 3-14, for which we used the acronym EPRAIS as a memory aid, Paul moves to pray for us. These are infinitely glorious and tremendous blessings—deep things of God that no human mind can fully grasp. So, after listing them, Paul prays that the Holy Spirit may enlighten us to grasp these truths.

In verse 15, we began to see two things about this prayer:

1. What is his prayer? In verse 17, it is for the gift of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.
2. What is the sphere or extent in which the gift is to be given? It is in the knowledge of Him.
3. What is the manner in which this gift is operative? In verse 18, it is the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, so that you may know.

Today, we will see the operation of this gift in three parts.

1. In verse 18, “the eyes of your understanding/heart being enlightened.”
2. That you may know three things.
3. Why should they, or we, know these three things? Okay, so your eyes should be enlightened. Why? So they should know three things. Why should they know these three things? It’s simple.

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The Eyes of Your Heart Being Enlightened

The gift of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God will enlighten the eyes of our heart. This enlightening of the eyes is a prerequisite to knowing these three things. So, let’s understand what “enlightening of the eyes of the heart” means. You can read the phrase in two seconds, but it implies several deep truths of the Bible. What does “heart” mean? Does our heart have eyes? Let’s first understand the word “heart.”

When we take a word from the Bible, we should not assume our own 21st-century meaning. For us today, the heart is primarily about emotional life. We use a heart emoji to show we liked a message or were touched by something; it’s mostly related to emotion. The biblical word for heart is far broader.

Amazingly, when you do a word study, you find the Bible uses “heart” for a person’s mental intellect. For example, in Isaiah 6:10, God says to “make the heart of this people fat, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart.” Here, it refers to mental intellect. The heart is also used for conscience. We see in some places that David’s heart “smote” him or was “pricked” because he did something. It is also used for volitional will. Acts 11:23 says the apostles exhorted the young believers that “with purpose of heart, they should cleave unto the Lord.” Then, as we use it today, it can refer to emotional life.

So, when Paul wrote, “having had the eyes of the heart enlightened,” he wrote the word “heart” not as a 21st-century person but as a Jew, steeped in this rich biblical concept of the heart. The heart stands for the whole soul—all the faculties of a person: their thinking, their conscience, their emotions, and their will. As one person said, the biblical heart is the center of a person’s soul, where their spiritual life pulsates. In this heart, God the Holy Spirit dwells. For unbelievers, this is where the devil himself dwells and controls. It is the central control room of a person. This is why the writer of Proverbs says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Now, picture the heart: that seat of a person’s emotional, intellectual, and volitional life, including the conscience, imaginations, affections, and will. That is the center of a person’s being. We can call it all the senses of a person’s soul.

And Paul says the heart has eyes. It’s a beautiful figure of speech. The eye is an organ whose value we don’t realize until we slowly lose its power. How does the eye help us? It’s only through these small holes in our face that we are enabled to perceive reality in its true shape, color, and quality. Imagine if you were sitting here with no eyes. You would only hear a voice; you would have no idea of the shape, quality, or color of the creature from which the voice came. So, we perceive the reality of things with our eyes.

We need two things to see clearly: healthy eyes and light. A thin film, called a cataract, can grow over the eye, hindering eyesight. If it becomes thick enough, it will even blot out sight. Secondly, you can have a good eye, but if you are in a room after 7 PM and the lights are off, you can’t see anything.

Notice that Paul isn’t praying for their eyes to be opened; he is praying for their eyes to be enlightened. The word “enlightened” simply means to illuminate. If you’re sitting in a dark room and you don’t know what’s there, suddenly a spotlight is switched on, and you can see clearly. That is illuminating the room. So, Paul’s prayer is that God, by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, would enlighten our soul’s senses. That is what the words say.

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Four Implied Biblical Truths

Implied in this phrase are four biblical truths.

1. Every person created in the image of God has a heart with eyes, in other words, a soul with eyes. Notice he does not say, “Let God create new heart or eyes.” You already have heart eyes; Paul is praying that God may give you light.
2. All human soul eyes have been blinded not once, but by a triple blindness: first by the Fall, then by Satan, and then by the love of sin. These are three levels of a “cataract”: the Fall, Satan, and sin. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, it says, “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.” The mind is blinded. The mind and the heart are used interchangeably in Scripture. Not only the Fall and Satan, but the love of sin also blinds the heart’s eyes. John 3:19 says, “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Neither will they come to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved.” Also, notice in this same epistle, Paul talks about this natural blindness in people (Ephesians 4:17-19): “you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” See, the reason people live such a lifestyle without sense is because their soul eyes are darkened. He ties the blindness of the mind with the hardness of the heart. Every person in the world is not once, but triply blinded by the Fall, Satan, and the love of sin. They do not see things as they really are. Let’s say next week you can’t see. If you come to church, and we hang this keyboard up and the pulpit above your head, at any moment to fall on your head, you will have no idea. You will imagine from memory that it’s all in the right place. You cannot see things as they really are. In the same way, a natural person cannot see the glory and beauty of Christ. They can sit in the best church in the world; they can hear the best sermon about Christ; they can see people singing of Christ’s glory with joy in their faces and voices. They will scratch their head and say, “I can’t see why these people are so joyful and excited.” Why? The “god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not.” In the depths of their being, in their heart, out of which all the issues of life flow, what’s the problem? The eye to the heart has a cataract. So they don’t see God as their creator and the glory of what God did through Christ to save them. They don’t see the beauty of God’s law as they ought to, as a way of true happiness and freedom. What will cure that? This triple blindness is cured in steps: first salvation, and then continual illumination.
3. The third truth we see implied here is that such natural people’s eyes are opened when they are born again. Our Lord said, “Unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It’s the same word, “see.” That is why the Bible equates conversion with opening the eyes. The Ephesians were converted, and their eyes were opened. But what do they need now? They need continual enlightenment.
4. Fourthly, we learn that we have to continually pray for the growing enlightenment of our heart’s eyes. The story of Jesus healing the blind man in Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26) illustrates for us the gradual nature of spiritual enlightenment. When Jesus lays his hands on the man a second time, his sight is fully restored. This represents the need for continued spiritual illumination, a journey of progressive revelation. Paul knows these people are saved and their eyes were opened by regeneration, so he prays that God would increasingly enlighten them.

Without our eyes enlightened, we cannot know things as reality. Most of our knowledge is just hearsay, a notional, theoretical, or imaginary conviction. But when our eyes are enlightened, we will know things as never known before. This divine illumination will give us a true sense of the superlative excellence of divine things and the ability to see their reality.

There is a big difference between having an idea that honey is sweet by reading books and knowing how sweet honey is by taste and direct experience. In the same way, you can have the opinion that God is gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that grace by tasting it is different. Similarly, you can have the opinion or rational belief that God is holy and that holiness is a good thing, but it’s different to have a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. You will get a sense of how beautiful and lovely the law of God is, and how it alone can lead us to freedom. You get that kind of sense of excellence when the Holy Spirit illuminates the eyes of our hearts. You will not think of God as speculatively good, but you will have a true sense of how amiable, beautiful, and desirable God is.

That is spiritual illumination. You will know as if you saw it with your own eyes, as a certain, undeniable, infallible, 100% reality and 100% assurance without any doubt. It is far from just theoretical knowledge. Such knowing will inevitably have a transformative impact on our soul. When your soul has a sense of the excellence of divine objects, you will always love to think of God, come to God, meditate on his truths, and dwell upon them with delight. The powers of the soul—the mind, heart, and emotions—are more awakened and enlivened, exerting themselves more fully to think, believe, enjoy, worship, and serve God and his kingdom. The beauty and sweetness of the objects we see will draw on the faculties of the soul and draw forth their exercises. So Paul prays for this.

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Three Things You May Know

When your heart’s eyes are enlightened, you may know three things. Again, the word “know” here means to have a certain, infallible, enlarged, accurate, and spiritually perceptive view of three things.

1. First of all, the hope of his calling.
2. Secondly, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.
3. And thirdly, the exceeding greatness of his power.

All of this prayer for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in His knowledge, and the enlightening of the heart’s eyes, is so that you should know these three things. All three are connected. When God effectually calls people to Himself, one of the things He implants within them is the Christian hope. That hope resides in the heart of the believer. The object of that hope is the inheritance, and the means by which a believer will attain that inheritance is by the power of God that has already been operative in the heart and life of the believer.

In other simple words:

• The hope of calling is what it means to be saved now.
• The riches of the glory of his inheritance are the glorious blessings that await me.
• The exceeding greatness of his power is what brought us to this state and will bring us to that final blessing of inheritance.

He wants our eyes to be opened through spiritual illumination to see these three blessings. Paul prays they might obtain an enlarged, accurate, and spiritually perceptive view of these three things. Your heart’s eyes are enlightened to know the excellence, attractiveness, and real sense of the beauty, glory, and taste of these things. We will take these up one by one next week.

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Why Paul Prays for This

Why does Paul pray for this as a top priority? And why so earnestly? He says, “unceasingly I ask for this.” Having prayed it, why does he write it in a letter? Why are you so earnest, Paul, about this? Aren’t there greater needs than this? Why didn’t he pray for sanctification? That is a great need. Is this greater than that?

Yes, for Paul, there is no greater need for us as believers and as a church than this prayer. In a way, all our needs can be met if this prayer is answered. This is the greatest petition for a Christian and the church. If we don’t see this, this will just be another good sermon and we will move on. We have to understand with Paul why this is such a great need for us, so it becomes the greatest unceasing prayer for ourselves and others.

Let me give you three reasons:

One: Danger of Subtle False Religion ⚠️

Without this illumination, you’re in danger of being drawn into subtle false religion. This is the great difference between all false Christianity, perversion of Christianity, and true Biblical Christianity.

False Christianity preaches a message of self-improvement: “Become something so you can obtain something from God.” It encourages you to seek new things in God, new blessings. “If you do this and that, God will be more pleased with you and give you new blessings.”

Notice that Paul did not pray that they might have some new hope, new or increased inheritance, or get new and more power. He’s saying, “I’m praying that you may know what that hope is that you already have, that you may know what the inheritance is you are already given, and that you may know the exceeding greatness of the power that is already operating in you.”

You see, he is not praying that they get something new. He’s praying that the Spirit may enable them to have enlarged, accurate, and spiritually perceptive views of what they already are.

False Christianity says, “Become something so you can obtain something from God,” which is a performance-based relationship with God. It says, “Seek new things in God.” In contrast, true Biblical Christianity says, “Once you have believed in Christ, your greatest need is to understand the glorious riches of the treasures you have in Christ.” It is only that understanding that will help you to live worthy of it.

See the difference? In one, the direction is, you move up to God and get the reward—a completely wrong direction. The other is, God has moved down to you in grace, and when you understand what he has done in grace, you will respond in love and live properly.

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Second: Foundation of All True Christian Growth and Fruitfulness 🍎

The foundation of all true Christian growth and fruitfulness is discovering and knowing what grace has done for us in Christ. Until the Holy Spirit enlightens you and gives you a real sense of its excellency, you can never live a proper Christian life.

Church after church, preachers will get up and tell people what to do: “Be dedicated, be consecrated.” They give all kinds of pep talks or pressurize people with guilt every Sunday, or whimsically pump people up and down emotionally, but they never teach them why they should live like that. And all of this bypasses the real motive for living the Christian life.

Christians all over the place are frustrated trying to live a life without understanding their identity in Christ and what God has done for them. This is basic to Christianity. You must understand who you are in Christ. That, and that alone, is the foundation upon which you operate. The real heart of it, the real base, the real foundation, the real central thing, the one thing needful to live the Christian life, is simply understanding who you are in Christ.

Our old forefathers would call it “Position and Practice.” The order of “Faith and Practice” is so important. First, understand your position, understand all these resources, without that, you can never have proper practice. The whole direction of Scripture is: Positionally you are in Christ; you are perfect, positionally complete, you have everything you need. Understand your position first, only then will your practice move toward your position.

This is the pattern everywhere in the New Testament. That is why Paul first taught what God has done for you in chapters 1-3. Only when you grasp these truths, all the wheels of faith, love, devotion, and worship will start working in your soul. So, the mature Christian is one who understands his privileges, his possessions, his resources, his identity, and lives consistently with who he is. Only then will you be able to live the kind of life he calls us to in family, work, and society in chapters 4-6. That is why Paul spends three chapters describing the calling, and now he says, “Therefore, here is how you live.” This is the same pattern in all the epistles. Our greatest need is the discovery of what grace has freely given us.

Do you see? Here is the answer for your struggles in Christian life, struggles with sin, struggles in growth, and fruitlessness. Here’s the principle: Obtaining more enlarged, accurate, and spiritually perceptive views of the privileges and a real sense of the excellency of the blessings God has conferred in grace is one of the principal means of growth and fruitfulness in the Christian life.

Now, do you see why Paul is praying, “O God, give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation that they may know what is the hope of their calling, inheritance, and power”? The more they see these things, the more they will believe you, the more they will love you, the more they will obey and serve you.

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Third: Blessings of Illumination 🙏

We should earnestly pray for illumination because of the blessings it brings.

1. It is the Most Excellent and Divine Wisdom: This is the most excellent and divine wisdom that any creature is capable of. It is more excellent than any human learning; it is far more excellent than all the knowledge of the greatest philosophers or statesmen. Yes, the least glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ does more to exalt and ennoble the soul than all the knowledge of those who have the greatest speculative understanding in divinity without grace. We achieve the highest doctorate in divinity when our eyes are enlightened.
2. It is a Most Sweet and Joyful Experience: This knowledge is, above all others, sweet and joyful. Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in the study of natural things, but this is nothing compared to that joy which arises from this divine light shining into the soul. Think of it: if low-level animal pleasures that come from senses give such pleasure—such sweetness—in the world (food, money, drink, sex, drugs), then the excellency of divine things must have much more pleasure and sweetness. This light gives a view of those things that are immensely the most exquisitely beautiful, and capable of delighting our whole being. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support people in affliction and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world.
3. This is Transformative Knowledge: This light is such that it effectually influences the inclination and changes the nature of the soul. It changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld. As 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This knowledge will wean us from the world’s love and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good and lead us to choose him as our only portion. Nothing mortifies the lusts in the heart more than the delights that come from this illumination. This light causes the entire soul to agree with and embrace the truth. It makes the soul trust it completely, love it fully, and willingly give itself entirely to Christ.
4. It Leads to a Life of Holiness: This light, and this only, has its fruit in a universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion will ever bring this about. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart and changes the nature, will effectually dispose one to a universal obedience. It shows God’s worthiness to be obeyed and served. It draws forth the heart in a sincere love for God, which is the only principle of a true, gracious, and universal obedience; and it convinces us of the reality of those glorious rewards that God has promised to those who obey him.

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Application

Do you know God with his divine illumination? Remember, this enlightenment comes in the sphere of an experiential knowledge of God.

Only when we really know how glorious, big, majestic, excellent, and infinite God is do we realize the glory of the calling, inheritance, and power of such a God. So this is all rooted in knowing God. Do you know God by spiritual illumination? An accurate, precise, exact, experimental, immediate, and direct knowledge of God? That we have a real acquaintance with God? Paul is concerned that we should meet with God. We should have a personal and intimate encounter with God.

It’s almost impossible to explain this in words, but it does mean something like this: It means that God should be real to us, and that we should be conscious of him and conscious of his presence. Have you ever known that? Is God real to you? When you get on your knees and pray, do you know that God is there? Do you realize his presence? That’s the thing the apostle is speaking about.

He means, you see, that we know and realize something of the glory of God, in his ineffable glory. To know something of that glory, to be conscious of it, to feel it, to be aware of it. That’s what he means by knowledge. Have you ever felt and sensed something of the glory of God?

Do you know anything of what Jacob said when he said, “This is an awful place”? Eternal life itself is knowing God like this. Anyone who knows anything about this has a sense of privilege, a sense of wonder, a sense of praise, and a sense of glory. Do we realize that this is what Christianity really means, coming to such a knowledge of God?

This knowledge makes you yearn to know more of him. Do you cry like Moses? He was not satisfied with this knowledge. Rising with great daring, he turns to God and says, “Show me thy glory.” That’s it. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever felt that desire? That’s the thing the apostle prays for, that these Ephesians may begin to hunger and thirst for that, that they may see and know the glory of God, this Father of glory. “Show me thy glory.”

The Psalmist expresses it so perfectly in that 42nd Psalm: “As the deer pants after the water brooks, so my heart pants after thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God,” not the head knowledge, a dead textbook, but for the living God, the direct, immediate, personal God.

He says in John: “If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” “We, the Father and the Son.” That’s Christianity, the life of God in the souls of men. The Father and the Son coming and making their abode within us.

That’s the thing for which the apostle prays for these Ephesians: that they may have this spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God. This is a knowledge that is possible to all Christians. He’s not praying for apostles. He’s not praying for elders only. He’s praying for them all, that they all may have this spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

Oh, may we pray for enlightenment.

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Importance of Daily Prayer for Enlightenment 🤲

Since our Christian growth and fruitfulness depend on the Holy Spirit enlightening us and giving us enlarged views of the blessings of salvation, we must learn with Paul to cry to God that he may open the eyes of our hearts. Most Bible examples—Joseph, Daniel, and other passages—reveal that the spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to praying souls. Without the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment, we may know a lot of things from reading and hearing messages, and it will only make us proud Pharisees.

If you come to hear the sermon just believing in the Pastor’s ability to make the message clear to you, without praying for the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment, you may understand the words and letters, but that understanding will not open the eyes of your heart and lead to any spiritual fruitfulness. God is going to send you away empty.

We must carefully learn to cultivate this spirit of dependence upon the Holy Spirit, crying with David in Psalm 119, verse 18: “Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”

Oh, let us learn to cultivate this prayerful dependence not only when we read but also when we hear a sermon. Do you know when a pastor is preaching something with excitement that’s very real to him, and you’re missing it? What should you do? Consciously lift your heart up right there in your seat, saying, “God, light, light, light, light, light, light. Enlighten the eyes of my heart. I am so blind.” Do you know what it is to pray while you’re listening? Learn to have direct dealings with God as I preach his word. “Lord, this is your word. Teach me more. Open my eyes so the wheels of my heart rise in love, worship, faith, and obedience.”

That is a worshipping congregation, having direct dealings with God not only while praying but also when hearing the sermon with a prayerful spirit. This is a great area of weakness for many of you. That’s why you fall asleep, you lose your train of thought in the middle of a message, your mind wanders. You allow Satan to take the word, not just after, but even during the sermon.

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Importance of Regular Scripture Meditation and Reading Christian Books 📚

The wheels of my obedience will run fast in direct proportion to my understanding of the truths of God’s word.

Some of you, we have been telling for years, do you understand why you cannot grow and become fruitful unless you learn the discipline of meditating on God’s word and reading other Christian books? Because your personal Christian life, family, and witness will not change by just coming to church on Sunday. It depends on how much you are growing in your understanding of God’s truths. The Holy Spirit doesn’t open our heart’s eyes in the air. Read how David, always meditating on God’s word, pleads for his eyes to be opened. The Holy Spirit always enlightens people who regularly meditate on God’s word. That is why you see Christians who read and meditate keep growing in grace.

“Oh, I cannot read, no time.” We have 20 years of audio messages, weekly Tuesday 8 p.m. 1689, and Friday prayer meetings. Unless you make use of all that, how are you going to grow? Don’t expect any dramatic change, improvement, or growth in life unless you learn the discipline of growing in God’s truth.

This enlightenment, these enlarged, accurate, and spiritually perceptive views, come to the understanding; we must spare no mental pains to attain them. Think of these: the hope of his calling, the riches of his inheritance, the exceeding greatness of the power that works in us. Those are profound concepts. You don’t understand those biblical words just sitting there doing what comes naturally. You’ve got to gird up the loins of your mind and think, and I mean think hard, until there’s mental sweat. The Holy Ghost was never given to put a premium on mental laziness. The Christian life is predicated on what you know.

One unbeliever observed and said, “I’ve seen the difference between the true Christians and the false Christians. The true Christians are those who are really heavy into studying the Bible.” What he was really seeing was that when somebody is heavy into studying the Bible, they gain the revelation of God that is applied in life as it ought to be, you see?

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Serious Application for Those Who Are Not Saved

If a man who is already sealed by the Spirit needs further illumination to understand these things, what hope is there for you? With cataracts, Satan, and sin over your eyes, no wonder you don’t understand anything. “These things go right over my head.”

Scripture says, “The natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Hope, inheritance, power—these are spiritual truths, and there is no faculty, no capacity in you to understand and receive them.

That is why our Lord said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The same word, “see,” to perceive the kingdom of God. That should, firstly, humble you and, secondly, give you hope. God doesn’t ask you to create your own sight, but to stand with that poor blind beggar and say, “Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me. That I may receive my sight.” The work of the Messiah in this world is primarily to open blind eyes. Plead with him, he will open your eyes, and you will see marvelous things.

An Inner Ally: Your Most Powerful Tool for Sharing the Gospel

When we share the gospel with someone, we often feel the need to start with deep philosophical questions. But what if the most effective starting point isn’t an intellectual argument, but a simple, undeniable fact that resides in every person’s heart?

This truth is rooted in the biblical principle that mankind is created in the image of God, and that God’s law is written on every person’s conscience. As Romans 2:14-15 states, even those who have never heard the Bible do by nature things required by the law, proving that “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” Their consciences bear witness to this truth, sometimes accusing them and at other times defending them.

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Why You Should Start with Conscience, Not Philosophy

When you witness to someone—whether they are from a different faith background or have never heard the gospel—they have an ally for the gospel within their own hearts. That ally is the law of God.

Instead of spending time debating the existence of God or the reality of heaven and hell, you can cut straight to the heart of the matter. You need to appeal to their conscience and their understanding of right and wrong.

Every person, no matter their beliefs, has a set of ethics. While they may try to suppress this moral law, it never truly goes away. Your job is to pierce through their defenses and appeal to what they already know to be true.

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A Simple, Practical Approach

So, how do you do this? Start with a direct question that appeals to their lived experience of guilt:

“Have you ever felt guilty about doing something you knew was wrong?”

If they are honest, they will say yes. At this point, you have an open door to share the gospel. That feeling of guilt is not just a personal emotion; it is God’s conviction of their sin. They have broken His laws, which their own conscience bears witness to.

Because of this, they stand guilty before God and are in need of a remedy—forgiveness for their sins.

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From Guilt to a Need for Jesus Christ

By starting with this approach, you bypass the common intellectual excuses and arguments against Christianity. You are appealing to something they cannot deny, something they know in their own hearts.

Bringing people under the conviction of their own guilt and a conscious awareness that they need a way for that guilt to be cleansed is the core essence of helping them see their need for Jesus Christ. The guilt that arises from violating God’s law makes them see their need for forgiveness.

This powerful principle provides a lever for the gospel in every person’s life. It gets past philosophical distractions and gets to the heart of the issue: we have a moral problem. Our problem is guilt, which arises from violating God’s law, and for that, we need forgiveness. That forgiveness is provided by God in Jesus Christ.

The accusation of conscience is not a dead end; it is the springboard for opening a person to the remedy that is Jesus Christ.

JI Packer wrote a book titled “Knowing God.” I’ve borrowed the title for this message, and I’ll ask his permission when I meet him in heaven! He said that man’s supreme need is to know God. The reason the whole world is perishing under wrath, and the source of all the pain and evil in this world, is an ignorance of God. Romans 1:28 says, “And even as they did not see fit to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind,” which resulted in them worshiping creatures instead of the Creator and being filled with all kinds of sins like covetousness, lust, envy, and hate.

The primary reason a Christian or a church doesn’t grow and lives a pathetic, sad life is that although they start their Christian life with joyful first love, as soon as they stop growing in the knowledge of God, they lose their first love and backslide. Our personal, family, and church prayers and worship can become dull, ritualistically dead, and meaningless if we stop knowing God. So, the greatest need of our world, our families, our church, and us personally as Christians is to know God.

On the other hand, we must realize that even though this is our greatest need, we cannot know God by our own greatest efforts as fallen beings. So what is the solution to this problem? Paul tells us the solution in Ephesians 1:17 in a prayer.

We saw how he prayed and learned the seven traits of prayers God answers, which we can remember by the acronym RACE-SSS. If you forget those, you will never learn how to pray biblically. After seeing how to pray, today we come to the big section on what he prayed for. What do we typically pray for? “Lord, give me prosperity in my job, good health and healing in my body, bless my family and children, protect us, give us peace, joy, and bless us.” There is nothing wrong with such prayers, but they are shallow. If you really want to be blessed and joyful, you have to learn to pray Paul’s prayer from your heart unceasingly. “Lord, give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You. Grant the same for my spouse, my children, and for all of the saints in our church.” That is a great prayer that God answers and brings the fullness of His blessings to us.

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The Structure of Paul’s Prayer

Let’s understand the full structure of his prayer. The central burden of his prayer is found in verse 18, “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” He is praying, “Lord, open the Ephesians’ eyes by increasing their spiritual illumination.” Why open their eyes? So they can see three specific things:

1. “What is the hope of His calling” – what it means to be saved now.
2. “What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” – what glorious blessings await me.
3. “What is the exceeding greatness of His power” – the power that brought us to this state and will bring us to the final blessings of our inheritance.

He wants their eyes to be opened through spiritual illumination to see these three blessings. Why is it so important that God should open our eyes to these three things? If our eyes are not opened to see them, even though we are the richest, most blessed people in the universe, we will live pathetically like beggars. We will never be able to live out the truths he will tell us from chapter 4 onwards. We cannot be proper husbands loving our wives like Christ loved, wives submitting to husbands, children obeying parents, witnesses in our workplace, and live lives glorifying God. So, it was the great burden of Paul’s heart that the Ephesians’ eyes should be opened by spiritual illumination to grasp these three tremendous things that can transform our lives.

Now, before God opens our eyes, we need a gift of God for that to happen. That is what Paul prays for in verse 17. We will see that in three parts:

1. The gift: the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.
2. The sphere or extent in which the gift is given: in the knowledge of Him.
3. The manner in which this gift is operative: “the eyes of your heart being enlightened.”

Today, we will cover the first two things.

First, Paul prays for the gift of the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. Is he asking for the Holy Spirit to be given, but we have already been sealed with the Holy Spirit? So what is this? Sometimes the Holy Spirit is described not in terms of what He is but in terms of what He does. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth and counsel. He gives wisdom and He gives revelation, so Paul is praying for the Holy Spirit’s ministry to grant the work of the spirit of wisdom and revelation in their spirit.

We already saw what wisdom is in verse 8, “grace overflowed in all wisdom and prudence.” We saw wisdom is a penetrating insight into divine realities. So, Paul prays that God would first grant a penetrating insight into divine realities and describes three specific realities: the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power. Those are not just words or religious jargon. Those are tremendous spiritual realities. The Holy Spirit would function in such a way as to give the Ephesians a penetrating insight into those realities. We don’t know the magnitude of these blessings. The Holy Spirit knows the great glory of these blessings; He alone can give penetrating insight into those realities.

Next, the word “revelation.” What is that? The word means to unfold that which is otherwise hidden. Our Lord said to Peter, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father.” Revelation means the disclosure of something that cannot be known in any other way but by the divine disclosure of God. Some things you can know by the exercise of your natural faculties—by reading, efforts, and using your senses. You can gain enough Bible knowledge, but no matter how much you read or use all your senses, you cannot have divine revelation. It is only granted by God through His Spirit as divine revelation.

1 Corinthians says the Spirit of God knows the deep things of God. By nature, we do not know them, but we have received the Spirit that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. “Those things that the human mind could not see nor hear, God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” Revelation comes by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not give us new revelation, but He illuminates us to understand the depth of truths already written in Scripture. So the Holy Spirit operates as the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation. Now put the two things together and you see the close connection: true wisdom comes by revelation and revelation produces true wisdom. Hence, Paul is praying for the Holy Spirit’s ministry of wisdom and revelation in the spirit of the Ephesians.

So, Paul prays for the gift of the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation. Yes, it is the Holy Spirit who always gives wisdom and revelation as an answer to prayer, but He always gives this gift in a specific sphere or extent: in the knowledge of Him. The word “in” talks about the scope, the circle in which this gift comes. It’s pointing to the nearest proper noun, which is “the God of Jesus Christ and the Father of glory.” The objective source of this knowledge is Scripture. This God has revealed Himself in the Bible.

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What it Means to Know God

I want to talk about “knowing God” for a moment, which is why I titled this message this way. This is one of the most profound and most confused concepts in all of Holy Scripture. I want to explain what “knowing God” means. Let me give a word of caution. Someone said, “Pastor, I heard your sermon about prayer last week, and you made me realize I don’t know how to pray biblically at all.” But that is not the goal. I explain the Bible, and you feel that way. At least now you can pray properly according to the Bible. In the same way, maybe if I explain today what “knowing God” means according to the Bible, most of you may realize you don’t know God. That is good, but at least that realization should drive you to know God properly from now on. Our eternal destiny hinges on whether we know God or not. Christ will say to many who thought they knew God, “I never knew you.”

There is so much confusion and deception in “knowing God.” Knowing God is not knowing about God, not knowing some facts about God from the Bible. The word Paul uses here is Epignosis, differentiating it from mere knowledge about something. The word means an exact, certain, and experiential heart knowledge of God that comes with actual, true, direct personal contact or relationship. I can know about the Prime Minister—his age and all the knowledge from Wikipedia—but I don’t have an experiential knowledge through personal contact.

Galatians 4:8 says that a great common trait of all natural men is that they do not know God. That’s the state of every unregenerate man. Many nominal Christians claim to know Him, but they only know about Him. They don’t know God.

So what does it mean to biblically know God? There are two steps: initial knowing God and a growing step in knowing God. The first step of knowing is conversion. When you realize you are far from God, repent, and come to God and believe in Jesus Christ, your journey of knowing God starts. Galatians 4:9 says, “You have come to know God.” Knowing God is a synonym for being saved. Knowing God is defined by our Lord in John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” That is the first step of knowing God.

But you don’t stop with that. Now, you have to grow in knowing God. Knowing God is not a past event; it is a present, continuous, ever-growing experience. We may know God initially and be excited in our first love, but later we may stop knowing God, our first love grows cold, and this creates many problems in our Christian life. Again and again, Scripture points out that all spiritual blessings come to us through the knowledge of God. 2 Peter 1:2 says, “Grace to you, and peace be multiplied.” Oh, isn’t that what you long for? Peace to be multiplied? In what sphere? “In the knowledge of God.” So if you don’t grow in the knowledge of God, grace and peace will not grow in your life. I can go on and say peace beyond understanding, joy unspeakable, true rest, wisdom, guidance, strength, hope, power to serve, God’s presence, and even eternal life is promised in growing in the knowledge of God. That is why Paul, out of all he could pray, first prays for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God. So the great question is, how do I grow in knowing God?

Knowing God involves your mind, your heart, and your will. If you remove any one of these, you are not growing in knowing God.

1. Mind: God’s wisdom has divinely ordained to reveal His knowledge in the written word of the Bible, which our confession calls “special revelation.” If you want to grow in knowing God, you have to expose your mind to Scripture by reading and receive those truths into your mind through meditation. Exposure and reception of Scripture truths in the mind is the first step of knowing God. Exposure happens by direct contact with reading, and reception happens by meditation. It is not enough to just read, hear, and go. Just exposure will not work. Exposure and reception, both mental activities, are the first step. There is no way you can grow in knowing God without this first step of exposing and receiving the truth of God in your mind. Psalm 1 and Joshua 1 emphasize reading and meditating on God’s word.
2. Heart: As your mind is exposed to and receives what is revealed about God, your heart responds in faith and love. This is an authentic, true sign that reveals whether you are truly knowing God or deceiving yourself. A person who knows God has a heart’s response to that revelation that is always faith and love. John 17 gives an excellent commentary on what it means to know God. Verse 8 says, “For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.” You see the progression? He gave them words; they heard it. What did they do? Not merely heard but received them in their understanding, and their heart responded by believing. You know they loved Him more than anything in life. When everyone else left, they said, “To whom else can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” That faith will be a tangible act. Daniel 11:32 says, “They that know their God shall be strong and do exploits.” What exploits? Faith exploits listed in Hebrews 11. So I say, to know God means not only hearing and reading but also the heart’s response of faith and love. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Though it talks about loving brothers, it is implied that it is impossible to know God and not love God. It is a great moral impossibility.
3. Will: Not only does knowing God involve the mind’s exposure and the heart’s response, but the will also responds in obedience to God’s word. 1 John 2:3-4 says, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” He’s saying it’s impossible for the knowledge of God to exist while living in continual disobedience. If you are living in disobedience to God’s word and say you know God, you are living in a lying dream world.

I hope I have given a clear biblical definition of knowing God. If someone asks you, “What does it mean to know God?” you can tell them that knowing God involves your mind, heart, and will. Your mind is regularly exposed to and receives what is revealed about God in Scripture. As a response, your heart always responds in believing and loving, and your will responds in obeying God’s word. If you find someone who is not believing, loving, and obeying God, it means that whatever they may say, they do not know God.

So how do I get this knowledge of God, which not only crosses intellectual and emotional boundaries but also transforms me ethically, practically, morally, and spiritually? It comes when God grants the Spirit of wisdom and revelation because He grants this insight into divine realities within the sphere of the knowledge of God. As your mind is exposed to Scripture and receives it with meditation, then the Holy Spirit grants this insight into divine realities. It impacts your heart, brings a response of faith and love, and bends your will to obey God in every area of life. Then you know God experientially, savingly, and sanctifyingly. It is such knowledge that has the power to renew our minds, transform our hearts, and bend our wills to obey God’s commands. All this hearsay, theoretical, and head-knowledge has no power to do that work. God’s goal of revelation doesn’t stop with the intellectual; it is an ethical, moral, and spiritual transformation.

As you grow in this knowledge of God, when you live with your spouse, you are becoming more and more Christ-like. You go to work, and people can see a Christ-like colleague or employee. This knowledge will make you more and more embody the likeness of Christ in all the details of your life. When anyone sees you, they will say, “That man knows God.” “That woman knows God.” This is an old phrase people have forgotten now. It means he lives with the reality of God in every area of practical life. Knowing God should impact where the rubber meets the road; otherwise, you don’t know God.

This knowledge of God doesn’t stop with the intellectual or end with an experience. No. We have to use our mind, heart, and will. If you leave anything out, you can have all kinds of false, deceiving Christian experiences. This knowledge always starts with the intellectual, moves to an experience, and the true test of that knowledge is ethical, moral, and spiritual transformation.

This truth exposes two extremes in Christianity. One group bypasses the mind, doesn’t use the mind, has no theology, no truth, and has direct experiences and feelings with God like charismatics, which welcomes demonic activities. The other extreme stops with the intellectual and doesn’t move to an experiential knowledge of God. And then there is a large group who are dissatisfied with these two extremes and move from charismatic to liberal, fundamentalist to Arminian, to being Calvinist to being hyper-Calvinist to low-Calvinist—their whole lives are wasted dabbling in different schools of ideas without actually truly knowing God. Then they face disappointment when Christ comes and they hear His judgment, “I never knew you, you never knew me.” You wasted your years just in superficial intellectual dabbling.

So I hope you see the great need of Paul’s prayer here. So from now on, our greatest prayer should be, “Lord, give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You.” Think of all the functions of the Holy Spirit that Paul could have prayed for. Is not the Holy Spirit the Spirit of power, the Spirit of love, the Spirit of joy, the Spirit of peace, the Spirit of counsel? Out of all of these, why does Paul zero in on two functions of the Spirit? That He would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Why? Because he understood that the primary means by which the Holy Spirit carries on His sanctifying work in believers is as the Spirit of truth. The health, joy, peace, and blessings of your Christian life all depend on you knowing God by the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and revelation.

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Application

As an application, I want to bring a few lessons from this Paul’s prayer. You can only know God like this when God gives a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the only sphere within which the spirit is given is in the knowledge of God revealed in Scripture. The knowledge of God begins with the mind’s exposure to and reception of what is revealed about God in Scripture. If this is so, oh, do you see our great need for two activities in our Christian life?

1. Unceasing prayer: The knowledge of God comes through the work of the Holy Spirit as He works as the spirit of wisdom and revelation. He alone can give a penetrating insight into divine realities. How does the Holy Spirit give this spirit of wisdom and revelation? It is when we unceasingly pray for ourselves and others. That is why even as a Holy Spirit-inspired apostle, he is not satisfied just writing this letter revealing glorious truths. He doesn’t assume that reading this will open their eyes. He knows that they will not understand these things as truly knowing God unless God Himself performs an operation upon their spiritual eyes. So he says he unceasingly prays. “I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that God may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” A man so busy with all the concerns of planting churches, writing letters, and being a missionary and an apostle, and that too, imprisoned now, why does he discipline his life to pray specifically for each individual with this request? Why does he constantly emphasize his prayer for the people of God? Not because he was trying to appear spiritual, but because he knows the Holy Spirit always works in the atmosphere of prayer; flesh and blood, whatever their efforts, cannot achieve this. He knows he cannot accomplish anything for the kingdom without prayer. God gives this wisdom and revelation by the specific means of unceasing prayer. We don’t earn this by unceasing prayer; it is a blessing already purchased by Christ. But unceasing prayer creates a condition in our soul fit to receive and experience the spirit of wisdom and revelation. We don’t understand it fully, but amazing things are promised to a Christian and a church that learns to pray unceasingly. Most of the gifts Christ purchased are showered on people only through unceasing prayer. James says, “He hath not because ye ask not.” Jesus says, “If ye who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Hence, the apostles’ prayer holds a profound lesson for us. It underscores the specific means by which Christians know increased measures of the Spirit’s work in their hearts and lives. It’s as they pray. The spirit of wisdom and revelation is poured on them. We have been seeing this in Psalm 119 again and again: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” The measure of a church’s true spirituality as a general rule is not its Sunday morning attendance. Even unsaved people who are born into a Christian family may come on Sunday mornings out of habit, but it is the attendance and the spirit of prayer in a weekly prayer meeting that show the growth of a church. Someone said, “Don’t trust the spiritual health of people who only attend on Sundays. Only those who attend prayer meetings are truly growing.” The apostles in Acts 6:4 realized this, which is why they said, “we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word.” They realized prayer is just as important as sermon preaching and good preaching is no substitute for prayer. This should make many of you who neglect prayer meetings and think the church is all about preaching realize you are completely wrong. This is why you are not growing. Church is fellowship. Why do some people come in the evening? Not just to hear messages, but to get a relaxed time to joyfully fellowship and talk. We as a church should always strike a balance between preaching and prayer meetings. If this is the rule, as church members, may your conscience tell you if any of you are not attending church prayer meetings. Whatever truths you hear on Sunday, will God grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation and enlighten you and bless you with these truths?
2. Unceasing scripture reading and meditation: To pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation and not use the means of written revelation is to mock God. This spirit of wisdom and revelation comes in the sphere of the knowledge of God found in Scripture. So believers must settle in Scripture. This is our book for life. “Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of God. I never saw a growing, useful Christian who is not reading his Bible daily,” said D. L. Moody. “When you open your Bible, God opens His mouth.” The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. “The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts,” said George Muller. Whatever your busy life is like, if you don’t set aside time to read Scripture, you cannot have this spirit of wisdom and revelation. It all starts with the regular exposing of the mind to Scripture and receiving it through meditation. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will stop living like a fool. Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
3. Get rid of laziness in Christian life: One Puritan says the great reason why Christians don’t grow in knowing God is laziness. Isn’t that true with most of us? Do you know laziness is a sin? Spiritual laziness is a terrible sin. Pure mental laziness—not reading the Bible, spiritual laziness—not praying unceasingly. It comes from terrible, false contentment in our Christian life. Once saved, we assume a state of salvation is a kind of easy chair in which we may just sit still, lie back, and be happy. “Once saved, always saved.” You are dead wrong; that route can take you to hell. The Christian life is a tireless and persevering journey for a deepened understanding and experience of salvation. Think about this: Paul stated in the first paragraph that the Ephesians were already blessed with every spiritual blessing—they were elected, predestined for sonship, redeemed, under administration, had an inheritance, and had the sealing of the Holy Spirit to experience all that. These are what we call the doctrines of grace. He said these things are all yours in your past experience. Moreover, you are continuing in faith and love as a sign that you are truly recipients of these blessings. There is a present spiritual reality in their lives. Does he say, “Relax and enjoy your blessings. You are blessed.” No. He says, “I unceasingly pray for God to give you more wisdom and revelation in His knowledge.” Why? The great lesson we learn is that no matter how great their past blessings, no matter how real their present expressions of life, Paul longs for a deepened experience of understanding and Christian grace. Why? Because God’s goal for our life is not to just relax in an easy chair and say, “I am saved.” No, God’s goal is stated in Ephesians 5, that the church might be presented to Him without spot or wrinkle. Romans 8 says, “Whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Hebrews 12 says we have to run the race perseveringly. We have to run so that not only our thoughts and feelings but every area of our life reflects the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s glory in our lives hinges on the realization of that goal in redemption. So Paul is expressing God’s great desire for you and me. Yes, you are blessed with amazing blessings, yet there is more to know, more to experience in Jesus Christ. We cannot rest short of anything other than a deepened understanding and experience. This is God’s ambition expressed through Apostle Paul to us. God wants us to make this our ambition. We see people with ambition so restless, pursuing it in studies, wanting to become a doctor, an engineer, a sports star, or to become rich. Oh, how their ambition drives them not to waste time but to achieve things. Shouldn’t they shame our Christian laziness?

This prayer is an answer to extremism. We always love going to extremes, either Arminianism or hyper-Calvinism, legalism or antinomianism. Some of you still don’t know what these are. Here also, we go to extremes. We have to deeply appreciate what God has already done for us in Christ—that we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing”—and with that motivation, long for a greater reality to experience these blessings. People don’t realize this balance. One side goes to the extreme like the charismatics, who minimize the great work of God already done in our lives, denying the first paragraph that we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing.” They say all that is nothing, we need a “second work of grace” or a “baptism of the Holy Spirit.”

The other extreme is when it stops with the intellectual and does not move to the experiential knowledge of God. Then there is a large group of people who are dissatisfied with these two extremes and move from being Pentecostals, liberals, or fundamentalists to Arminians, to being Calvinists, to being hyper-Calvinists, to low-Calvinists, or to four-point or five-point Calvinists. They waste their whole lives dabbling in different schools of ideas without actually truly knowing God, and then face disappointment when Christ comes and they hear his judgment: “I never knew you, you never knew me.” You wasted your years just in superficial intellectual dabbling.

So I hope you see the great need of Paul’s prayer here. From now on, our greatest prayer should be, “Lord, give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing You.”

Think of all the functions of the Holy Spirit that Paul could have prayed for. Is not the Holy Spirit the Spirit of power, the Spirit of love, the Spirit of joy, the Spirit of peace, the Spirit of utterance, the Spirit of counsel? Out of all of these, why does Paul zero in on two functions of the Spirit? That he would give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Why? Because he understood that the primary means by which the Holy Spirit carries on his sanctifying work in believers is as the spirit of truth. Your Christian life, health, joy, peace, and blessing all depend on you knowing God by the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and revelation.

As an application, I want to bring a few lessons from this prayer of Paul’s.

You can only know God like this when God gives a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the only sphere within which the spirit is given is in the knowledge of God revealed in Scripture. That is the only circle where this is given. The knowledge of God begins with the mind’s exposure to and reception of what is revealed about God in Scripture. If this is so, oh, do you see our great need for two activities in our Christian life? First: unceasingly praying for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation on one hand, and meditating on God’s word day and night on the other hand. That is why Scripture points to these two great activities as the primary activities of Christian life.

First: The great need for unceasing prayer. This knowledge of God comes through the work of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of wisdom and revelation. He alone can give penetrating insight into divine realities. How does the Holy Spirit give this spirit of wisdom and revelation? It is when we unceasingly pray for ourselves and others.

That is why even as a Holy Spirit-inspired apostle, he is not satisfied just with writing this epistle revealing glorious truths; he doesn’t assume that reading this will open their eyes. He knows that they will not understand these things as truly knowing God unless God himself performs an operation upon their spiritual eyes. So he says he unceasingly prays. “16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that God may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

Do you say you are too busy to pray unceasingly? Here is a man so busy with all the concerns of planting so many churches, writing epistles, being a missionary and an apostle, and now imprisoned. Why does he discipline his life to pray specifically for each individual with this request? Why does he constantly emphasize his prayer for the people of God? Not because he was trying to appear spiritual, but because he knows the Holy Spirit always works in the atmosphere of prayer. Flesh and blood and whatever efforts they make cannot achieve this. He knows he cannot accomplish anything for the kingdom without prayer.

God gives this wisdom and revelation by the specific means of unceasing prayer. We do not earn this by unceasing prayer; it is a blessing already purchased by Christ. But the means of unceasing prayer creates a condition in our soul that is fit to receive and experience the spirit of wisdom and revelation. We don’t understand it fully, but amazing things are promised to a Christian and a church who learn to pray unceasingly. Most of the gifts Christ purchased are showered on people only through unceasing prayer. James says, “He has not because you what? You ask not.” Jesus says, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how shall you give the Spirit to those who ask him?”

Hence, the apostles’ prayer holds a profound lesson for us. It underscores the specific means by which Christians know increased measures of the Spirit’s work in their hearts and lives. It’s as they pray that the spirit of wisdom and revelation is poured on them. We have been seeing this again and again in Psalm 119: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy love.”

So, the measure of a church’s true spirituality as a general rule is not its Sunday morning attendance, since even the unsaved who are born in a Christian family may come on Sunday morning as a practice. But it is the attendance and the spirit of prayer that comes in a weekly prayer meeting that shows the growth of a church. Someone said, “Don’t trust the spiritual health of people who only attend Sundays. Only those who attend prayer meetings are truly growing.”

In Acts 6:4, the apostles realized this, and that is why they said, “We will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word.” They realized prayer is just as important as sermon preaching, and good preaching is no substitute for prayer. This should make many of you who neglect prayer meetings and think church is all about preaching feel that you are completely wrong. This is why you are not growing. Church is fellowship. Some people come in the evening not just to hear messages, but because we get a relaxed time to joyfully fellowship and talk. We gather on Fridays. I always pray and yearn to gather physically, to pray with one heart. We as a church should always strike a balance between preaching and prayer meetings. If this is the rule, as church members, may your conscience tell you if any of you are not attending church prayer meetings. Whatever truths you hear on Sunday, will God grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation and enlighten you and bless you with these truths?

Second: The great need for Scripture reading and meditation. To pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation and not use the means of written revelation is to mock God. This spirit of wisdom and revelation comes in the sphere of the knowledge of God found in Scripture. So believers should settle in Scripture. This is our book for life. D. L. Moody said, “Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of God. I never saw a growing, useful Christian who is not reading his Bible daily.” Someone else said, “When you open your Bible, God opens His mouth.” The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. George Müller said, “The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.”

Whatever state of busy your life is, if you don’t set aside time to read Scripture, you cannot have this spirit of wisdom and revelation. It all starts with the regular exposing of the mind to Scripture and receiving it through meditation. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will stop living like a fool.

Joshua 1:8-9 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Third: Get rid of laziness in the Christian life. One Puritan says a great reason why Christians don’t grow in knowing God is laziness. Isn’t that true for most of us? Do you know that laziness is a sin? Spiritual laziness is a terrible sin. Pure mental laziness—not reading the Bible—and spiritual laziness—not praying unceasingly—come from a terrible false contentment in Christian life. Once saved, we assume the state of salvation is a kind of easy chair in which they may just sit still, lie back, and be happy, thinking, “once saved, forever saved.” You are dead wrong; that route can take you to hell.

The Christian life is a tireless and persevering journey for a deepened understanding and experience of salvation. Think of this: Paul stated in the first paragraph that these Ephesians were already blessed with every spiritual blessing, with election, predestined sonship, redemption, inheritance, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit to experience all that. These are what we call the doctrines of grace. He said these things are all yours in your past experience. Moreover, you are continuing in faith and love as a sign that you are truly the recipients of these blessings; there is a present spiritual reality in their lives. Does he say, “Relax and enjoy your blessings. Blessed you are”? No, he says, “I unceasingly pray for God to give you more wisdom and revelation in his knowledge.” Why?

A great lesson we learn is that no matter how great their past blessings, no matter how real their present expressions of life, Paul longs for a deepened experience of understanding and Christian grace. Now, why? Because God’s goal for our life is not just to relax in an easy chair and say, “I am saved, once saved forever saved. So relax.” No. God’s goal is stated in Ephesians 5: that the church might be “presented to him without spot or wrinkle.” Romans 8: “Whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Hebrews 12: “We have to run the race perseveringly.” We have to run so not only our thoughts and feelings, but every area of our life, reflects the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s glory in our lives hinges on the realization of that goal in redemption. So Paul is expressing God’s great desire for you and me this morning: Yes, you are blessed with amazing blessings; yet there is more to know, more to experience in Jesus Christ. We cannot rest short of anything other than a deepened understanding and experience.

This is God’s ambition expressed through the apostle Paul to us. God wants us to make this our ambition. We see people with ambition so restless, pursuing it in studies; someone wants to become a doctor, an engineer, a sports star, or to earn money and become rich. Oh, how their ambition drives them not to waste time but to achieve things. Shouldn’t they shame our Christian laziness? It’s like, “Come Sunday, it’s over.”

If you are living in some relaxed, lazy world, you have to examine if these blessings are yours. Laziness is a great curse in our lives. I am appalled at the spiritual laziness in some of your lives. Some of you, I tell you, for years you should have gone somewhere. I didn’t even know how to speak English until I was 20; I went to a government school. All I learned was in church. I would attend a Tamil service word for word and then an English one. “Oh, learn words, read books.” It was a tireless effort and ambition: “I have to grow, grow.”

This prayer is the answer to extremism. We always love going to extremes, either Arminianism or hyper-Calvinism, legalism or Antinomianism. Some of you still don’t know what these are. Here also, we go to extremes. We have to deeply appreciate what God has done for us in Christ, and with that motivation, long for a more realistic experience of these blessings.

People don’t realize this balance. On one side, they go to the extreme, like Pentecostals, who minimize the great work of God already done in our lives, denying the first paragraph where it says we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing.” They say all that is nothing, that we need a second work of grace, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That is one extreme. The other extreme is the “positionalists.” They say, “Yes, I am blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. I am elect, no worries. I will not trouble myself with earnest prayers for the spirit, so I will relax in an easy chair and enjoy life.” My friend, you are in a dream world.

How can you not minimize the salvation Christ has given, like the Pentecostals, and at the same time never become indifferent, lazy, or without earnestness, like the positionalists? Here is the biblical balance: Thanking God for all that we have in Christ, using that to motivate and stir us and to plead with God to open our eyes to experience more and more of these blessings he has already given us.

I’m not looking for some new experience that I didn’t get when I was saved, but I’m longing for an ever-increasing realization and experience of what Christ has already given me. I’m not content to say, “It is all mine in Him,” and sit lazy. No, I stir myself; I want to effectually experience more of what he has already blessed me with. That is the biblical balance.

Some of you sitting here think that the spirit of wisdom and knowing God is something unimportant. That actually shows how much the god of this world has blinded you. Because if there is something of the utmost importance for your life now and for eternity, it is knowing God. God takes it very seriously whether or not you know Him. Romans 1 says God’s anger from heaven is revealed on all those who “did not see fit to retain knowledge of God.” He gave them up to a depraved mind and the desires of their lusts, so they live like animals. It makes God angry every minute when you live not knowing God in this life. Because in his grace, he has revealed himself in his word and in his Son. And he sets the knowledge and calls you to know him.

It will not only impact your life, but all of eternity. Because the Scripture says in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 that Jesus Christ will “come in flaming fire taking vengeance on all those that know not God.” What do you need to do to go to hell and suffer eternal wrath? Just live ignorant of the knowledge of God. Keep your mind far from exposing yourself to the Bible. If you are forced to read a Bible calendar, just read and forget. Hear a sermon and forget it, don’t receive it by meditation, and don’t pray this prayer. You will go to hell because you will not know God, and your heart will not respond in faith, love, and obedience, like I explained. Hence, the tremendous importance of you knowing God.

The Bible calls all unregenerate people “those not knowing God.” How do you know God? First Step: Repent of your sins, turn to God believing in Jesus Christ’s blood and righteousness, and God will suddenly become real. You will realize there is a world you never knew and have lived so blindly. Then, grow in knowing God.

Eph 1:15-23:15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. 22 And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Someone was telling me about the great benefit of praying in tongues. “Brother,” he said, “I used to labor in prayer, but now I can pray for hours.” I asked him, “But what do you pray?” He replied, “I don’t know what I’m praying, but I am praying for one hour in tongues.” I told him to read the marvelous praise of Paul in Ephesians 1. Paul prays, filled with the Holy Spirit, but also with full understanding, knowing what he is praying. His head is so clear and active while his heart is burning. You can decide what kind of prayer will be pleasing to God. I don’t want to learn to pray for hours in tongues and waste my time, not knowing what I am praying. I want to learn from Paul to pray so not only my heart burns with emotions, but my mind burns with enlightenment, because it is by the renewing of our mind that we are transformed and live for God’s glory.

At last, we have come to the end of the praise section of Ephesians. What a glorious, thrilling passage, and I never saw this treasure all my life! My personal praise and worship have been so transformed by this passage. With whatever sadness, I go to prayer and start seeing on the left side: election, predestined to sonship, redemption in time, administration now, and eternal inheritance for the future. To assure that I have all this experientially, I have the sealing of the Holy Spirit inside me. Oh, that lifts my soul immediately in praise and worship, and we experience a foretaste of the bliss of heaven. I sincerely feel sad Paul had to end his glorious praise in just 14 verses, but comforted myself saying it is this praise that will expand infinitely and go on forever and ever endlessly. I think Paul was caught up in the spirit to the heavens in verses 3-14, that is why he wrote that long sentence without any comma or full stop. He ended this section realizing he is still in the world with several burdens and needs. He not only has to praise, but he has to pray for needs.

So far, we have learned to praise God; now let us learn from Paul to pray for our needs. We all need help in prayer. When we praise God like Paul, we are kind of caught up to taste eternal blessings, but when we come back to the world, what do we face? We face only discouragement and disappointment on every side: discouragement at home, at work, in the world, and even in the church.

Discouragements at home: we try to evangelize our unbelieving family members and children. Discouragements of parenting: from childhood, we teach God’s word, but they continue in unbelief and are careless about their souls. As our children grow older, we discover over and over again how little control we have over them. We can compel their outward obedience, but we cannot compel their hearts. We argue, plead, cajole, threaten, and quote Scripture, sometimes even yell, all to no avail. Or you may be struggling with an unbelieving wife, husband, or parents. What is their main problem?

Discouragements at church: you can never imagine the discouragements of a pastor who does spiritual parenting. Childishness not only at home, but even in church after years and years of feeding, but no progress or growth. I still wonder whether some members are truly saved; I cannot see any fruits or signs of saving faith. Will our labors go in vain? Most people think church is like going to a cricket stadium, sitting in the last row, watching the match, and then going home when it’s over. That is all their Christianity—a little religious inconvenience on Sunday. They still don’t realize God has called them to be players, not last-row watchers or Sunday Christians.

There is so much false teaching; the true gospel has to spread, but no one is preaching the true gospel. God has taught us so much. Is this one man’s work? Most of my weeks are continuously busy; I don’t get a few hours or minutes to relax. I have a daily groaning: “Why can I not do more?” I wanted to share the gospel with two people last week, but I couldn’t get the time. I don’t know when I will burn out and fall sick, and I don’t know what will happen after that. With such a burden, sometimes I get so frustrated, “Lord, how long!” When will our church become a vibrant, gospel-participating church, with every member in the body doing their work and using their talents to build the kingdom? Why do we do so little for the gospel and the growth of the church? Why are most of you last-row watchers? I teach, I exhort, I rebuke, but nothing moves… nothing changes. Even leaving a comment “thank you” on YouTube so our truths can reach more people is so difficult. Why? You just hear, grow in knowledge, and go. The days are going by. What is our great problem as a church? What is the great problem in our families, with our unsaved children?

The problem is spiritual blindness. The god of this world has blinded them. The devil is a great beggar’s mafia; his great work is to blind us and make us keep begging in the world. This is a picture from Pilgrim’s Progress: all our eyes are on the sweeping broom, and we never lift up our head to see the great crown and glory God gives. So we stumble blindly through life, making one dumb choice after another, wasting our lifespan without the realization of eternal consequences.

So what do we do? Will it continue like this? Will there not be a revival? If we feel that way, can you imagine how much Paul must have been discouraged? It is like going to high heavens and when you come down, what a discouragement to see the state of family, community, and church. Do you know what Paul does? He prays for the most important need of the people. Because he knows all this can change if this prayer is answered, and when we learn his prayer, get into the spirit of his prayer, and pray like him, there will be a great revival in GRBC church.

The central petition of his prayer comes in verse 18, to state simply, “God may open the eyes of their heart.” All this state is because of their blindness. Everything will change if eyes are opened. Oh, this is a great need for each one of us in this place.

He doesn’t ask, “Lord, give us new blessings,” but “Help us to realize the blessings we already have.” Not “Give us new truth,” but “Help us experience the truth we already know.” Most of us have more knowledge; even our children know more Bible than most Old Testament saints. But the eyes of the heart are closed to the truth of God. And until those eyes are opened, all the yelling in the world won’t make much difference. Just knowledge doesn’t transform anyone. But the thing we need is for the Holy Spirit to do what only the Spirit can do—open our eyes, to make the truth come alive in our hearts.

This is the great need of our families, community, and church. Opening blind eyes is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. He and he alone can do it. This is our only hope in the sea of discouragement. But when the Spirit of God comes and opens eyes, and the light floods in, they will never be the same again; there will be a radical change. They will get into the stadium and play for the Lord. We will have an army in the church saying, “Lord, I’m ready to do whatever you say.” But how does the Holy Spirit open eyes? Where does he open eyes?

Though the Holy Spirit works sovereignly, he always works in the context and atmosphere of earnest, acceptable prayer. So if we want to see eyes opened in our families, churches, and communities, we have to get into the spirit of Paul’s prayer and pray like Paul. We need to deeply grasp and personalize this prayer, praying and praying, keep on praying. Pray for each other: husbands for wives, wives for husbands, parents for children, Sunday school teachers for students, pastors for members, new visitors.

Yes, we have seen glorious truths from 3-14, but we have to realize it is not learning these truths that will change people, but after teaching, you’ve got to pray that God will make it alive and energize these truths. That’s why, in Acts 6, the apostles said, “We will give ourselves continually to the ministry of the Word and prayer.” Why? Because the ministry of the Word must be energized by the Spirit of God, and that is sought in intercessory prayer on behalf of the people. So this great prayer of Paul will be the focus of our study for the next few weeks. It is a marvelous, unceasing, earnest prayer.

As an introduction to this prayer, we will study verse 15 today. The second major paragraph in the letter, which begins in verse 15, continues down through to the end of the chapter, 23. Like the first paragraph, this is also one long, complex sentence with the most lofty, most profound, mind-stretching concepts to be found anywhere in the Word of God on petition prayer. So we will go at a pace to not only grasp this, but also allow the Holy Spirit to see the depth of this prayer and fill us with the spirit of prayer.

Verse 15 tells us the news that motivated Paul’s prayer. 15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. This new section starts with the connector word in verse 15: Therefore. This word tells how Paul knew for sure these Ephesians were truly the recipients of these blessings in 3-14. The glorious blessings listed 3-14 are not for everyone. All of you should not deceive yourself into thinking these blessings are all mine. On what basis did Paul know these were loved and elected by God before the foundation of the world, predestined for their adoption? How did he know Christ redeemed them by his blood, forgave all their sins, they had eternal inheritance, and were sealed by the Holy Spirit? Verse 15 starts with the word “therefore” and tells us two signs by which, without a doubt, he knew that they are elect, adopted, sealed, and had received all the blessings from 1-14. How can you know for sure that you are truly saved and not deceived about your salvation like millions today? Here are two indispensable evidences of every elect of God: faith and love.

15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. Notice he says, “I heard of your faith and love.” This church was formed by Paul’s tremendous efforts and tears for three years, publicly as a church and privately house to house, as he says in Acts 20 with tears and humility. If a man built a church with his sweat and blood, he can never forget those people wherever he goes in the world. Leaving them, he will always bear them in his heart and want to know how they are doing spiritually. After many years, he left them, and now though Paul is in prison, he is trying to know how they are doing. He gets a report that the church is growing and they are all continuing in faith. He must have heard many things about them, but interestingly, he specifically points out two important things about them. These two things give Paul assurance they are elect of God and will receive all these blessings.

There are many other signs of salvation, but the supremely indispensable signs are faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love to all the saints. For Paul, if these two are not there, you do not have a basis to say you are a believer. If there is a true work of God in a person’s heart, it always reveals itself in faith and love.

As a church, it is so important to learn and examine ourselves because anyone who comes to us can say 101 things about us. No church is perfect. If they cannot see these two signs of faith and love dominantly in our church, we can never be a true church of Christ. There is no work of God happening in our midst. To make it personal and individual, if you profess to be a Christian, growing in grace, these are the two characteristics that should dominate above all others: faith and love. These are the acid tests of true conversion. Let us look at each of them.

First, Faith. Young people are wonderfully sharing the importance of sola fide, faith alone. You not only have to share, but you have to really believe and exercise faith. Many are not truly saved because they don’t understand this concept of faith. Lots of people say, “Well, I have faith in Christ. I believe in Christ.” They really don’t know what they are saying. Demons also believe and tremble, but they will go to hell. The Bible says many people will be surprised on the day of judgment because they thought they believed, but their faith was false faith. How do we know we have true faith and not false faith? What, then, are the characteristics of true saving faith?

This passage gives us four characteristics of true saving faith. Saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith. T-A-E-C.

The first thing we see about the faith that these Ephesians had is that it was a tangible faith. If something is tangible, it is visible or observable, the opposite of something that cannot be seen. Now, notice what Paul says about the Ephesians’ faith. He says here, “therefore, I also after I heard of your faith.” How can someone hear another’s faith? Does it make a sound? Someone came to Paul in jail and told him about the Ephesians’ faith. How could they tell him about their faith? Because it was something which they had observed. It had outward manifestations that were reportable and describable by a third party. They could tell him about it because there was something to tell, something they observed.

Can I ask you, do you have a faith that people can observe? What tangible evidence do you have? Do you speak of Christ as a real person who is precious to you? Do people see you happily take personal risks and suffer inconvenience for Jesus and his church selflessly, for no human reason, but only because of your faith? Can others report your faith to someone? Hebrews 11 again and again tells us the faith of people by what they did. Their faith was able to be reported by the tangible actions that they did with personal cost and risk, like Abraham, Moses, and even Rahab. It was the visible manifestations that proved the reality of their faith. You can see their faith in their obedience, faithfulness, and commitment. They took risks to obey the commandments of God because they believed the promises of God.

Now let me ask you this question. What could someone report about you as the result of your faith? What could they say was an act of faith that they had observed in your life? If someone were writing Hebrews 11 today, could they mention your name because there was something in your life that could be seen as an act of faith? A time when you took some risk for the sake of obedience to Christ, a time when you took some risk for the sake of ministry to others, a time when you suffered inconvenience to help promote the work of God, or endured some weariness for the advancement, or suffered loss for his name’s sake? Could these things be reported about you? You see, these are the things that make up tangible faith. The people in Hebrews 11 gave their reputations, possessions, family security, and even lives for their faith. And we can’t suffer the inconvenience of coming to church twice on a Sunday. Who can write about our faith? James says faith without works is dead; it is not saving but deceiving faith. If people can’t see our faith in our works, risks, and sacrifices, please don’t deceive yourself. So the first trait of Ephesians’ saving faith, which proves they are elect, is that their faith was a visible, tangible, reportable faith, something that can be talked about to other people.

Secondly, it was accurate faith. Notice in verse 15, Paul says, “I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus.” Many have faith—in what? Faith in faith; that is all. No, saving faith will be accurate faith, with an accurate object. The object of saving faith is the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus is not just a name. The two terms are packed full of theological truth and significance. It points to the uniqueness of his person and the sufficiency of his work. This is where people go wrong.

We live in a time where people view doctrinal precision and theological accuracy with either indifference or outright hostility. No one cares about what we believe; if you just believe, that is more than enough. Someone was telling me, “Oh, I go to all denominations, and we don’t discuss doctrines; we just discuss Christ.” Listen, a Christ who is stripped of doctrinal truth and doctrinal distinctives is no Christ at all. He is merely reduced to a vague, content-less ethical influence and a name used for bringing fighting people together. You cannot talk about the Christ of the Bible for two minutes without talking about doctrinal truths, because John 14 says Jesus Christ is the truth. You can have all kinds of loose faiths in 101 Jesuses in the world; it is not saving faith. There is one true faith of God’s elect. If you ask me, “Is doctrinal accuracy important when it comes to legitimate, true saving faith?” It is indispensable. If your Christ is not the accurate Christ of the Bible, then he is an idol of your own imagination and an idol useless to save your soul. The sooner you throw away that Christ, the sooner you will be closer to the kingdom of God.

Notice the object of the Ephesians’ faith was accurate. Paul says their faith was “in the Lord Jesus.” These two titles, Lord and Jesus, comprehend the two aspects of his unique person and work. Though he is the glorious eternal Son of God, he manifested amongst men in the flesh as Jesus to be a Savior from sin. To save us from our two great problems: I am born in sin, I have a sinful nature. Because I have a sinful heart, I commit sinful acts. Those are the two great problems of every human being: our person with a sinful nature and our sinful acts. This sinful condition separates us from God. Not only have I done bad things, I do them because I am a bad person. I am unfit for heaven not only because of my conduct but because of who I am by nature.

Jesus as Savior not only takes all my guilt and punishment and dies a sinner’s death, solving my problem of actual sins, but also lives a perfect, sinless life, solving my second problem of a depraved nature. Jesus not only died a substitutionary death, he also lived a substitutionary life upon this earth. The word Jesus shows this Savior lived a perfect life and died the sinner’s death. The word Lord covers that he also was raised from the dead, ascended, exalted to the highest glory, and now reigns with all authority in heaven and on earth. You can never have saving faith unless you believe all this about him which is covered in the title “Lord Jesus.” The Ephesians believed in his work as Savior on earth. They believed he is Lord, the sovereign master of their lives. They didn’t just call him “Lord, Lord,” but submitted to his commands.

You see, many people want Jesus, but they don’t want the Lord Jesus. According to their own desires, each one has their own Jesus: a baby Jesus, a superhero Jesus, a friend Jesus, a peace-giver Jesus, a healer Jesus, a prosperity Jesus. Some want him as Lord to solve their political problems separated from his cross, and they never preach his cross. Some want only the cross without his sovereignty. All these are the wrong object of faith. The accurate object of faith is fusing together Lord and Jesus—his sovereignty and his work on the cross.

If you do not have the Lord Jesus of the Bible, your Jesus is an idol. Do you have this saving faith? Ask yourself, “Am I recognizing the rule of Jesus Christ in every area of my life and seeking to submit to that rule?” In every area of your life, the question is, “Lord, what should I do?”

The Ephesians had not only tangible but also this accurate faith. Thirdly, it was exclusive faith.

It was faith in who? In the Lord Jesus, period, full stop. You see, these people believed in the Lord Jesus Christ plus nothing. No plan B. Faith alone in Christ alone. A saved person does not trust in Christ plus something else. He has no faith in himself, in his works, in his church, in his baptism, in his own faithfulness, no faith in anything other than Jesus Christ, in him alone. The essence of saving faith is a wholehearted reliance upon the Lord Jesus as their only ground of acceptance before God. I found an acronym for faith. Forsaking All I Trust Him. Remember, forsaking all, I trust him.

We are continually in danger of moving away from this one exclusive object. God has ordained man to be saved only through faith because faith is an emptying grace. Faith alone gives God all the glory. Faith in Christ alone can give us full assurance of salvation. If we add our works, we destroy our assurance because we will never know if we have done enough; our works are always defective. But when you realize that salvation is grounded entirely and exclusively upon the work of Jesus Christ, he purchased and gives a perfect, finished, and complete salvation. We don’t have to add anything to that. Then you can have the assurance that the work has been done right, the work has been done perfectly, and the salvation is finished and complete.

If I ask on what grounds you believe you are accepted by God, and if those grounds are anything other than the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, I am sorry to say you are not a Christian. Because a Christian is one who has an exclusive faith. It is not enough to believe in Jesus; you have to believe in Jesus alone.

So saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith.

Paul started the Ephesians church several years ago. Now after many years, he says, “I still heard about your continuing faith.” This faith that these Ephesians had was not a temporary, rocky-ground or thorny-ground faith—faith so eager for a few years and then becoming lukewarm. With the same tangible, visible evidences, accuracy, and exclusivity, they continued even after several years. It was an ongoing faith in spite of the difficulty, trials, and satanic opposition in the midst of the evil city of Diana temple worship and the grossest form of idolatry and witchcraft practices. These people persevered in the faith.

You are not like many who start in faith in the Lord Jesus and move on to other things. This was the problem with the Galatians. They began by “forsaking all, I trust Him.” Then they listened to some Judaizers, started trusting in circumcision and ceremonial law, and became Pharisees; their Christianity became dead. He rebukes them, “Foolish Galatians, you have moved away from faith.” When you move away from faith, you move away from grace. Grace and faith are joined together inseparably. Then all kinds of Arminian works come in, with no grace, and life becomes dead.

But Paul is rejoicing that the Ephesians were continuing to have as the object of their faith the Lord Jesus. Some claim they are saved by some experience years ago; they don’t continue with any tangible evidence or accuracy and stop following Christ, yet they believe they are saved. If your faith is not continuing and persevering, it is not saving faith.

Can I ask you why you believe you are saved? If it is because of some experience in the past and you don’t have an active faith now, you may not have saving faith. Conversion without continuance leads to condemnation. We see years after, the Ephesians are still growing in faith.

So the first sign of salvation is faith. Saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith. Now let’s see the second indispensable evidence of salvation.

Notice in verse 15, “your love for all the saints.” Love is the second sign. If there is a word more perverted, more prostituted, more misunderstood in our day, it is the word love. The world mixes infatuation, lust, and family bonds with love. We need to understand that Bible love is different. Just like true faith has some traits, true love also has three traits: Selfless, Tangible, and Impartial. S-T-I.

First: It is selfless love. The word for love is agape; it is selfless love. A good definition of love is that principled divine affection which seeks the good of its object even at personal cost. This agape love doesn’t rise up out of fallen Adam; it comes down from Christ. It is not sentimental, emotional gushes and oozes; it is principled. It acts intelligently and volitionally. Its outstanding characteristic is that it’s selfless. It seeks the good of its objects even at personal cost. It’s 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…it does not seek its own.” Love shows itself by its passiveness sometimes, its ability to take hurt and insult. With its passive graces, it “bears all things.” By its active graces, it “hopes all things,” and “believes all things.” When he says “your love for all saints,” the Ephesians were seeking one another’s well-being volitionally and intelligently, even at personal cost, and practicing the traits of 1 Corinthians 13.

Second, it is always a fruit of saving faith. Notice the order: he first says “faith” and then “love.” This is a beautiful balance in the order. When talking about faith alone, we can go to the extreme of easy, cheap belief: “Yes, pastor, faith alone, nothing in my hands I bring.” That is why anyone who says, “I believe,” we should immediately take them into membership. “Why are you adding anything? You are legalists, adding to Christ.” That is an extreme reaction against “faith plus.” We should not add. No, no, you don’t correct one error by spawning another. You just end up with two errors. On one side, you need to hold tenaciously with a death grip to this fundamental principle: faith alone in the Lord Jesus, don’t add anything. But on the other side, this faith should not be an easy, dead faith; it has to be saving faith that always reveals itself in good works of love. A man cannot have faith in the Lord Jesus without loving those for whom Jesus died and to whom he is joined by the Spirit of Christ.

Scripture is very clear that an inseparable and distinguishing mark of true conversion is love for the brethren. Scripture categorically declares that we are unconverted if we do not have it. 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loves not his brother abides in death. Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him… We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” So this agape love is always a fruit of saving faith.

Thirdly, it is also tangible. Just as we saw faith was reported, here someone can say the Ephesians had love because they saw acts of love. If the Ephesians’ love was all gushy feeling, sentimental words, “Oh, how I love,” and nice greetings and words, they cannot be reported. As 1 John says, “Let us not love in word only, but also in deeds.” The Ephesians displayed their love in deeds that could be seen and reported.

Fourth, it is impartial and universal.

Though we will love everyone, the priority of the objective of love will be for saints, meaning believers in the church. Notice the impartiality of this love. The love which they showed was toward “all the saints.” They loved all members in the church. Like our church, the Ephesians’ church would have had a different set of people. There will be lovable ones, some not so lovable, the mature and the immature, the extroverts and the introverts, some shy, some patient, some short-tempered, some thoughtless, some thoughtful, some irritating, some comforting. They will have all kinds of people in every church. But this agape love loved everyone in the church. You see, Paul not only loved Timothy, but he also loved the Corinthians. One was a great blessing to him, and the other a great irritation to him. And you see, it is the nature of biblical love to love with impartiality everyone in the church.

The four traits of biblical love are Selfless, Tangible, Fruit, and Impartial. S-T-F-I.

Two traits of salvation: Faith and Love.

Application Imagine if some new visitor comes to our church. They have never heard anything about us and don’t know reformed truth, but they are just an impartial observer. They simply sit in the service, and after that, observe all the members for three or four weeks, and then someone asks him, “How is the GRBC church?” As he thinks of words to describe it, he may mention this and that, some weaknesses, but two things stand out above all else. “It is obvious they believe only in the Lord Jesus revealed in Scripture; you can see their faith in acts. Secondly, it is obvious that as a fruit of their faith, they have genuine love for one another.” Oh, my church GRBC, this is what we need to strive to achieve every week. Otherwise, we can call ourselves a church, but we are not. Our Lord himself said, “By this men shall know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The Bible commands us to make our election and calling sure. We all rejoiced when we studied those blessings in 3-14. But this verse calls us to make our election and calling sure. How do we know if we are partakers of all the blessings in 3 through 14? Two great acid tests: Faith and Love. Oh, eternal souls; may God save you from your blood guiltiness. If you don’t display these signs, let me clearly say you will not go to heaven, and don’t dream of any of the Ephesians 1 blessings.

So the great business of our life is to make sure if we have these signs. “Have I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ?” “Ah yes, I am coming to church…” No, no.

Is my faith tangible? Is there something more than just a religion of convenience of coming to church on Sunday? Do my pastor and others see that faith? Can they go somewhere else and report my faith to a third party? Is my faith in the Lord Jesus visible in the way I worship, in the way I hear his word when preached, in the way I meditate on those words and make sure I obey and follow his commandments? Is it visible to people in the way I live my life? Do they see me obey and serve my Lord, whatever the risks, even at personal cost? The only explanation for my service and taking those risks is my faith.

Is it accurate? Is it not satisfied with some old, sentimental, vague Jesus that I dream up in our own minds, but my faith is daily renewed by reading about the Jesus of the scripture, and it is becoming stronger and accurate by a growing knowledge of God’s word?

Is it exclusive and continuing—one that perseveres in good times and in bad, through trials and difficulties? One that no matter how it is beaten upon, continues to rise up and remain faithful to Jesus Christ?

Persevering faith in the Lord Jesus is the offense of the gospel. It is foolishness to the world. Today everyone says “faith in Christ,” that’s just sort of the starting point. Even some of you say, “Oh, it is the same thing, I know. Now we go on to something else.” No, you don’t. You go on in that, not from it. No matter how spiritual it may appear, that was the deceptiveness of the Galatian heresy; it seems spiritual to say, “Look, Christ was enough to get in. Faith was enough to get in. But now if you are to go on, you need Christ plus.” And Paul says the minute you start putting your plus signs, you have gone the wrong way; you’re in the realm of the flesh.  You’ve moved from the principle of grace. 

One preacher very profoundly says your salvation depends upon grasping two principles. The first is that as a sinner, I am accepted by God entirely on the basis of the doings and sufferings of Christ. That’s the first leading doctrine of the Gospel. The second is this: as a saved sinner, I can enjoy and partake of the benefits of the doings and sufferings of Christ entirely on the basis of continuing in that same faith.

Do you see how these two principles are crucial for our salvation and growth in Christian life? We are not only saved entirely by faith but also enjoy the benefits of Christ’s work entirely by continuing in that same faith. These two principles should be engraved in our consciences. The moment you move away from that faith, you become a self-righteous Pharisee and stop enjoying the benefits of Christ’s work. I should not mix my works, my obedience, or my virtue with my faith. As the hymn says, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” This is so very important because most of us fail here. We think we start right, with all Christ, and then we add our own works and become like the Pharisees and the Galatian church.

Many people can start right, seeing nothing good in themselves and placing their faith in Christ, but then they go wrong and start living a Pharisee’s life. Once the spirit of the Pharisee and self-righteousness takes hold, it creates indifference, satiety, a feeling of being used to it, and a distaste for the doings and sufferings of Christ. A Pharisee never runs to Christ; he’ll flee to his own resolutions, his own resolves, and his own determination to make himself better, trusting in an outwardly decent life. Then faith goes away, and we become dead Christians. When faith goes, all graces go away, for faith is the mother of all other graces. You and I must be very careful of anything that will change the object of faith.

But when Paul sees people who started right and continue in the same faith, it is great evidence of the supernatural work of the Spirit being done in their hearts. This is because the Holy Spirit doesn’t just remove all self-righteousness and trust in ourselves and put our faith entirely in Christ once; He continuously works in our hearts to show us how helpless we are and takes away every self-refuge and self-trust, so we continually put our faith only in the doings and sufferings of Jesus Christ. Our own pride, with remaining sin, the world, and the devil, constantly tries to move us from this pivotal resting point of Christ to something else, but the Spirit will continually bring us back to this point, forsaking all and trusting in Him and Him alone. Oh, may God help us to have this trait of saving faith.

Think about the four traits of biblical love. Do you love the saints?

• Selfless: It’s not about what they did to me. Agape is selfless love that seeks the highest good of the other person, regardless of the cost to oneself. This is how Jesus loved us, and this is the standard He holds up for us to follow. He says in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” How? “As I have loved you, that you love one another.”
• Tangible: Does your love go beyond saying hello and shaking hands? Do people see that you love the saints? If you run away as soon as church is over, it actually shows you don’t love the saints at all. When we love the people of God, it shows itself, and then we have an attachment. You love to be with them. You are drawn to them. You see, love is never content to have its object at a distance. If you love your wife or husband, you want to be with them. The more love, the greater your effort to always be with them. If you love the saints, every time the doors are open, every time you have a free evening, you have to be with the people of God.
• A Fruit of Faith: This is a test for some of you to seriously examine: Do you love to be with church people, or do you prefer the company of the world and its entertainments and the ease of Pharaoh’s house rather than to suffer affliction? Do you see meeting as a duty or a delight to be enjoyed? If you don’t enjoy it now, how will you enjoy it for all eternity with the people of God when one or two hours a week is all you want now? Listen, if the seed of the matter is not in you now, the fruit of it will not be born in eternity. David said in Psalm 84:10, “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
• Impartial: “Oh yes, I love, I have two friends who are alike.” Both of them every week discuss what wrong things the pastor did or what wrong clothes others are wearing. Is that love? No. Love is for all the saints. Do people see you love everyone in the church? When you love the people of God, you long for their good growth. You labor for it in ministry. You cry out for it in prayer. You take thoughtful initiative in seeking to help them grow and labor. You are not content to merely be fed yourself. You seek to feed and build up your Christian brothers around you. You say, “But it’s hard to minister to the people of God.” Well, then, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. We weren’t called to a life of ease when we became Christians.

We were called to carry a cross. “If any man will come after me,” Jesus says, “let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” To deny yourself means to get your body off the bed or the sofa in the evening, to switch off the TV, and to come to church on Sunday evening. Don’t keep missing services and say you have faith and love the church. Hebrews says not to make it a habit but to meet as often as you can, lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. May God stir you to obedience in these areas.

If you have these two signs of faith and love, even if not perfectly but faintly, blessed be God! You can have all the confidence that you are elect and partakers of all the blessings of Ephesians 3-14. Otherwise, can I plead with you to work on expressing this faith and love visibly?