JUL 12, 2009  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen.

Our meditation for today is based upon the Epistle of the Day, from Ephesians chapter 1. Listen carefully to these first verses:

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will" (Ephesians 1:3-5).

In the name of Jesus Christ, AMEN

Whenever a student applies to college, he is well advised to apply more than one place. "Go ahead and send out an application to Yale or Notre Dame or Princeton, but apply also to less rigorous and less prestigious schools-schools that are more likely to admit you. That way you have a back-up plan." The second school may not be as ideal as the first, but it gets the gets the job done.

Dear Christians, your Lord Jesus is not His Father's "back-up plan."

Whenever the space shuttle prepares for a voyage, all the equipment on board is checked and re-checked, so that NASA can be reasonably sure nothing will go wrong during the flight. If something should malfunction, replacement equipment is immediately employed. The astronauts go to "Plan B." It may not be as ideal as the original equipment, but it will get the job done and return the shuttle to earth.

Dear friends in Christ, Jesus is not His Father's "Plan B."

Do not think that, when Adam and Eve sinned, God looked down upon His creation in shock and wondered how this ever happened. It is not as if things got ruined by sin and God said, "What am I going to do now? I hadn't anticipated this! Son, go to earth and see if You can straighten this mess out."

I repeat: Jesus is not His Father's "back-up plan."

Redemption in Jesus' blood is not "Plan B."

Christ is not someone the Father seized upon and threw into action because the first idea did not work out.

What does St. Paul say here? "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world" (Ephesians 1:3-4).

I don't know about you, but I can barely fit this thought into my head, that God "chose us", God chose you, God chose me, in [Christ] before the creation of the world."

This means that before He called light into existence, before there was any land or water, before the animals had appeared, God intended for you to share in Jesus' blood. Before He shaped Adam from the dust and Eve from the rib, your heavenly Father saw and understood and anticipated the whole scope of human history. Before that first creative Word was spoken, God planned on sacrificing His Son.

It is a marvelous thing to consider, but it is also most certainly true. Even though Jesus died around 33 AD, many generations after the creation, the book of Revelation calls Him "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).

Understand this: the plan for your redemption is so certain that Jesus is referred to as having been crucified before the world was even created. He was as good as dead centuries before He was even born! Jesus isn't "Plan B." Before the very beginning of the world, the Father knew how He would save you. This is what today's Epistle wants you to hear and to know! "He chose us in Him-in Christ-before the creation of the world" (Ephesians 1:3-4).

Realize from this the depth of God's love for you! He was not surprised by mankind’s corruption. He was not surprised by Adam's sin and He is by no means surprised at yours. Just as He knew that He would sacrifice His Son, so also has He known from the very beginning-even before you were created-that you would need the sacrifice! It is almost as if God paused for a moment before He began to create and He said to Himself, "This creation is gonna hurt Me, but my love compels Me to create anyway."

Maybe you are wondering right now, "If God knew beforehand that His creation would turn against Him, why did He go ahead and create?" In this regard, your God is like a mother-a mother who knows the great pain of childbirth, yet desires to conceive a child anyway. Her love for her future children impels her to act. She knows the child will bring her pain and suffering. She knows that she could in fact loose the child; that the child may despise her and turn away from her. But she conceives anyway. It is part of who she is, to desire and to create and to love.

So it is with your heavenly Father. It is part of who He is, to desire and to create and to love. It is part of who He is, to suffer willingly at the hands of His own creation, to know ahead of time that His creation will inflict upon Him pain and sorrow, and yet His love impels Him to create anyway. This is how deeply God loves you, that He would know all this before the creation of the world and still create.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight" (Eph 1:3-4).

If for some reason you have not yet found in this epistle a reason to praise God, as St. Paul does, give ear again to these three words from verse 4: "He chose us." And again from verse 5: "He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will" (Ephesians 1:5). You should not praise God because you have finally found Him. You should praise Him because He has come to you and found you.

Jesus does not say, "The Son of Man came so that men might find Him." But He says, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). Praise God, not because you made some "personal decision" to follow Jesus, but because of the words written here: "He chose us." Jesus says the same in John 15, "You did not chose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16). And again, St. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:13: "from the beginning God chose you to be saved"

"He predestined us to be adopted as His sons." Some people find the idea of predestination to be a scourge and a curse. They think that if God predestined some to go to heaven, then He surely must have predestined others to go to hell. And after all, what kind of loving God creates people only to send them to hell?

Dear friends, when you understand what it means to be predestined, it is a glorious thing, an understanding that deepens faith, strengthens hope, and further leads to praise of God. Predestination does not apply to all people, but only to Christians. That is to say, even though God has predestined you to faith and salvation, that does not mean He has predestined others to hell and damnation.

One way to think of God's predestination is to picture a schoolyard game of kick ball or baseball. All the children line up along the fence, and the captain chooses who will be on his team. In the same way, God has chosen those whom He desires to save. Except that He wants everyone in the whole schoolyard, the students and those inside the school, the teachers and principals to be on His team! He calls each person by name, drawing them with promises, warning them not to go with the other team, assuring him of victory.

Those who come are predestined. They are a part of God's team and no one in all heaven and earth can remove them from that team. Only those who refuse to be on God's team lose out. He has not overlooked them-He has begged them to come, too. They have refused.

"[God] predestined us to be adopted as His sons."

Now picture predestination in another way, in the way St. Paul describes it here today. "[God] predestined us to be adopted as His sons." Where you were once orphaned children by reason of your sin-in a ens fatherless, penniless, homeless and hopeless, God came to the orphanage, so to speak.

He signed adoption papers for each and every one of you, paying whatever fee was necessary to remove you from your life of homelessness. By His Word of grace and forgiveness in Christ, He has said to each of you, "You are My Son. You are my daughter. Today I have become your Father" (Hebrews 5:4).

Amazingly enough, some people do not want such a loving and gracious Father as this. Some would rather go it alone. They and they alone are responsible for rejecting the Father's adoption. But, bu the grace of God alone, you have not refused this gift that God has given through Christ. As a gift of God’s never ending love, you did not turn away from the redemption that is yours in Christ's blood. You are predestined "to be adopted as His sons" (Ephesians 1:5).

And, as I said before, all this happened "before the creation of the world" (Ephesians 1:3). These are two immeasurably great teachings, that God would predestine us to be His Sons, and that this would be part of His will and plan from long before the beginning.

What can the Church do, what can you and I do, what should we do but shout with St. Paul, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."

Dear friends, Christ is Risen.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding will guard you hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.