Ephesians, 1:8-11
Bradley W. Maston · Jan 25, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492612243878

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I've spent quite a bit of time in Ephesians over the past four or five years. It was the course that I taught in Korea and spent a lot of time preparing that material and then getting to redo it again. Obviously, I took the course with Verm when we did it in the main service.

So anyway, I've dug pretty deep into this, and it's really hard to just say, oh, we'll just cut that out. Oh, we'll leave this bit out. We'll leave that bit out. So rather than do that, I gave you in your handout something that you can look over later, and we'll probably just hit the high points. We'll just have to fly. But we'll see how it goes. Just know that we're probably not going to be following your handout. exactly except for in terms of its um what's that oh right well that would be fun yeah so there you go all right so we're going to start off this is talking about our identity in Christ right so what are we told from the world should make up our sense of identity these are our warm-up questions what do people in the world use to make up their sense of identity It's a job. Job.

Huge, right? Who are you? I'm a computer programmer. Who are you? Your name. Name. Yes, and your looks. That's huge, right? How much education do you have? Big one. It's a big one. Yeah, huge, right? I'm not just Brad, I'm Dr. Brad. Right? You gotta make sure everybody knows. Had people like in conversation start to name drop. Well, when I was going to Harvard. I'm sorry. Good for you. Do you need a high five for that? What else?

All kinds of demographics, income, the neighborhood you live in. you know on social networking websites than I have mine cards. How many people's identity is rooted in Facebook? You know, mine is increasingly every day. I feel like I live more there than I do out in the real world.

Cool. Yeah, I mean, obviously, the type of music you listen to, I mean, there's any number of things that we can choose to identify. Our hobbies, our activities, there's lots of different ways we can choose to identify ourselves or make up our sense of identity. What should really make up our identity? We are.

Pretty, pretty easy, right? Or pretty simple, maybe not very easy. It seems like the need for the repetition of going over these, if you're just this three through fourteen, just these first, you know, these first few verses seems incredibly important, which is why it doesn't seem redundant to see all of us who've probably been through an Ephesians class or two or twelve, depending on how long you've been around. and yet still find it worth going through again. So, because there's an element of, at which we still need to bring it home.

As believers, is it possible for us to continue to get our sense of identity from the world's standards? Is it possible for us to, even though we, our true identity isn't correct, is it possible for us to live in the lie? We live in the world, we're not of the world. Talk about that a little more. Well, our home is not here. This is just our business address. I mean, that's a cliche that we can say, but that's really true. But we're of the world. I mean, we do live here. So we have to abide by the laws and we have to use money to buy things. So that's the kind of the standard of barter or whatever you want to say. True enough? True enough?

So is it possible for us as believers, maybe this is just kind of a dumb question because it's so simple, is it possible for us as believers to continue to derive our identity, either through ignorance or something else, from something besides the Lord? Or what the Lord set us to be?

Yeah. Certainly, right? We run a risk if you want to call it that, as believers of instead of going to God's word and saying, okay, Lord, who do you say that I am? And kind of making it up on our own and living that way, right? So that's why, that's why hopefully we're here. That's why we're, that's what we're meant to, we're looking to find, right? To find out who we are in Christ. So that choice is obviously before us each day.

Just if you're curious, this is a picture kind of blown up and centered in at my coffee pot. So if you're tired, just keep looking at the screen and it will eventually, the caffeine will get to your brain. All right, so we've noted it before, but 3-14 is one big sentence.

When you're writing good news or bad news, how does that affect the length of the letter you're writing or the thing you're talking about? I suppose bad news would be longer. because you're trying to explain it away. Actually, this is why it's not bad news. I know when I'm talking to people, I usually try to get through the bad news really quick. Tell someone the bad news right up front so then you can get to the good news, even if you made the good news up. Talk about that a lot. That's kind of what's happening here. Paul starts in verse 3 talking about the believer's position in Christ, talking about who the believer is in Christ, and he just, it's like he can't stop. I mean, we're going to look at, here we go, here's 3214. That's one sentence.

As insane as that is, and as poor as my background choice was that you can't read it. But, as insane as that, I mean, we usually write a lot one breath to a sentence. Good luck. Try it. I mean, if somebody can make it through all that in one breath, you are a stronger human than I am. No doubt. Or more athletic, perhaps. But anyway, so that's our context.

Paul's just going and going and bubbling over with this. He just can't seem to stop. He just can't find a place to put a period, because he's so excited about what's done in Christ for us. So, would someone volunteer? Someone just love to read 3-14 in your own Bible, because there's no way you're going to give it up.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons of Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will. To the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved which he lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his kind intention which he purposed in him, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the time, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth. In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who are the first to hope in Christ will be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you are sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory.

So there you go, now we have some context. Obviously we're starting with verse 8 today, but that kind of picks us up, or leaves us off, picks us up in the middle of a sentence. So we'll go back to 7 and 8a, which reads, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. And then obviously that's just 8a. So we'll just pick up with lavished on us.

What do you suppose this witch And by which, I think I've got, do I have a laser on this thing? Ooh, rockin'. Okay, which, what do you suppose the which refers back to? Is it the redemption, the blood, the forgiveness? Anybody have a guess on that? The grace? The riches of his grace. The riches of his grace. That's exactly right.

So the witch is referring back. So what's being lavished on us is the riches. I'm going to go overboard with that laser if I'm not careful. I'm lasering people. So the witch is referring back to the grace. So we know that From the term riches of his grace, which we looked at last week, we know that God's grace is plentiful, that he has enough of it, right? But that doesn't necessarily tell us how it is applied to us. It doesn't necessarily tell us how he takes his riches of grace. I mean, look, great example. Bill Gates has tons and tons of money. He's not applying any of it to me. You can't say that Bill Gates is lavishing money on me. But he does have riches. He has a lot of riches. So God has a lot of riches.

So the question then becomes, how does he apply it to us? So the word that he used here is lavish in your handout. You've got, I took from a handful of translations, ways that people chose to translate this word lavish. So we've got showered in the new living, overflowed, in the Phillips, lavished in the NASB, abounded in the King James Version, superabundabit in the Vulgate, and some Greek, which is also cool. So, I think as a translator, it's kind of one of those tough things that you get to take these really huge words and try to find an English counterpart to them without using 12 words. He super ultra abounded His grace to us. And yet it's kind of what's left to do.

So the word, the word in Greek means to far exceed the needed or set amount. Far exceed the needed or set amount. So as believers, yes. What the practical means of handling things in chemistry is if you're going to make something out of two components, you add an excess of at least one of those components to make it go all the way forward, and then you get the maximum yield. There you go. I have insight from chemistry. I never would have known that. That's phenomenal.

So that's the way that the Lord chose to deal with our sin. or with us, probably more so, is that he chose to super abound his grace towards us. I just think this is something that we couldn't spend enough time talking about, and I think that's why we had a whole course, or how many semesters was it, of the grace class? Like a million? And probably could go another million. A couple of years. It was a couple of years of studying grace, and rightly so, and it super abounded to us, right?

That's the way that God chose to apply it to our lives. I don't think we can hammer away enough at this, because we're so worldly, and even the believers around us are so caught up in the human way of thinking, like, well, you know, maybe the Lord used enough grace to cover my sin, but I don't know about tomorrow's sin. Or how many of us have met a believer who hasn't spent enough time in the Word and just winds up saying, I'm pretty sure I've sinned myself, I've fallen from grace, I'm done. Has anybody ever met a believer?

They need this word. They need this verse. They need to know that God superabounded the riches of His grace. He lavished it upon us. It's really important. It's really important to us so that we don't despair as we continue to walk through our lives and continue to have trials and difficulties and deal with sin.

Right? If we don't realize it, if we don't know that God lavished it on us, we're going to wind up somewhere where we shouldn't be. So, cool. Alright, so who's the subject of this short phrase and who's the object? God and us. God and us, yeah. Who's doing what to whom? He's lavishing on us. He's lavishing on us. And we do what? to earn this grace.

Pretty simple, right? Believe. So we're not doing it at this point, right? Okay, so moving on, moving forward. What do you think the difference is between wisdom and insight? Not that far back. Yeah. So we're moving on to verse 9, I believe. Or no, we're still on verse 8. I understand now. I forgot to put in a slide for 8B, and I apologize. So, what's the difference between wisdom and insight? Anybody have, like, an intuition? I didn't have an idea until I studied it the other week.

Okay. All wisdom and insight was kind of a Greek kind of. It was a Greek term. It was an ideal. It was something that they were shooting for, that all the philosophers shoot for. I want to have all wisdom inside. But they didn't believe it was something that, as humans, you could ever fully attain or fully achieve.

So wisdom translates to the Greek word Sophia, and what it means is the ethereal, the knowledge that's bigger, the how it all works, the understanding of love and all the ideas and all the the non-visible world, if you like, the big picture. Insight is, and other translations put it as prudence, but insight is the idea of the practical knowledge, the how you get it done.

So maybe if you imagine in a construction situation, the GC has the wisdom of the whole project going together. right? But then he brings in a flooring guy because he has the insight of how to actually put in the floor. So the GC may or may not have the insight of how to put in the floor, the actual muscles to hammer to nail gun feeling. But the GC is the one with the wisdom.

Well, God's decision to super abound grace towards us is in all wisdom and insight. Why is that so terribly important. This is all, by the way, this is locational, so it's kind of, scripture gives us a picture of wisdom being this outward circle. I like concentric circles, you'll notice that about me. Wisdom being the outward circle, and then insight kind of being within the course of wisdom. And then here's God's decision to superabound His grace towards us. Why would it be important to say this? Why would it be important to say that God did this in all wisdom and insight? Because you don't have to know all the nuts and bolts to receive this grace.

It's there for you to enjoy. Go for it. Awesome. Absolutely. In the philosophical culture of the time, the idea of wisdom, philosophy is the love of wisdom. And they love philosophy. They love to talk about the ethereal. didn't necessarily translate to something practical, which inside is definitely a practical, pragmatic sort of a thing. So God was bringing it outside of just a philosophical, highfalutin sort of a theory to their real lives in a practical way.

I think that would impact them substantially. Just on a human level, imagine you're Kmart. How wise would you say it was if they said, hey, we're forgiving all shoplifters backwards, current, and going forward. All shoplifting at Kmart is now allowed or forgiven. How wise would that be from a human standpoint?

Not terribly wise, right? In fact, they probably had some substantial cutbacks, and they would have more substantial cutbacks if they adopted that. But isn't that at some level what God's grace can look like, right? Isn't that why Paul had to deal with it when he was talking to Romans?

Shouldn't we just sin all the more? The idea that God would come to us, or that the gospel would come and say, hey, you're forgiven. Past, present, and future, you're forgiven. On a human level, what do we immediately jump to? We say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, yeah, you're forgiven, but we need to start, let's put in some ground rules, right? Let's make a little, nice little box of law that will go around our not law and then set that on top of the grace and, right? That's where we end up, right?

Who's ever heard the term antinomianism or antinomian? What does it mean? Against the law. Against the law, right? Anybody ever been accused of that? Once or twice, maybe? If you're maybe running some other theological circles, someone will say, you can't say that the law is done with. Paul could, and Galatians, but you can't say it!

Right? We still need the law, we still need a little bit of law, right? There are a lot of churches, too, that still, I mean, I've had very animated conversations with people who are believers. And, you know, we talk about this topic, and they get so animated about, well, how can you, you know, stay in the rules? I mean, how would you do what Christ does? I mean, how can we live that way without, if we don't have the law there to tell us The Holy Spirit is not big enough. It's going to be bedlam. Exactly. That is really, you know, very animated. Yeah.

So, so Brad, you know, if we turn back to 1 Corinthians 1 here, I mean, you know, the Jews sought a sign, right? Which is more of the insight component and the Greeks sought after wisdom, right? But then we're told that The wisdom of God is foolishness. I mean, in other words, it's a whole different class of wisdom and insight that God portrays. So the world system is caught up in, I think Randy alluded to this, but today it's tied up in the earthly wisdom. And insight is based on earthly experience. God is a whole different quality. And Winnie, you alluded to it, but the reality is, right, that God didn't leave us without any controls, right? He put Christ in us. The life of Christ is living out His way in us. So can we go and absolutely have a sin heyday and still be forgiven? Uh-huh, sure. Will Christ in us allow it? Probably not.

So the wisdom is who God is and what he's done. The insight is to how we're transformed day in and day out to the image of the sun. The particulars of a day to day existence. Yeah. I mean to me it just alludes to the how big God's view or God's vision, dream, whatever for us.

It's the difference between maturity and immaturity. We're going to look at spiritual maturity in Ephesians 4, 11-16, which I'm sure we'll also have to do in one class period, so buckle your pugots, because we're going through this so fast. But, to me, that's held in counter distinction with the weakness and the immaturity that ask for a law.

Someone tell me what to do. Someone tell me how to make God happy. Someone tell me what I'm supposed to do. Just tell me how to fix it. Give me instructions, give me a list, just give me something that I can stick on my fridge and get God all taken care of and squared away so I can go live my life for myself, right?

That's immaturity. God wants something way more. Just let me tithe and have it all done with. No, I'm sorry, it all belongs to God. Deal with it. We're so wrapped up in, I'm not speaking for everyone, in trying, that God isn't in the business of fixing up the old man. He's condemned, he's dead.

And so many people are looking for that fix. Well, why am I still feeling this way or whatever? Because they're looking at themselves and that's the old man. It's like, It's like when you go to a funeral and they have the open casket there and you look at, oh, doesn't he look nice? No, he looks dead. He's not there. That's the old man.

And we're still trying to fix up that so he looks nice to all these people. and that's what we do. Yeah, that's exactly it. I know, just kind of fun that the Lord is taking us to that maturity. Or maybe not fun points, but there it is. Alright, let's go to verse 9. He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him. So, obviously starts off with this phrase, he made known. How could we have known it otherwise, if he hadn't made it known?

Jeremy, you're shaking your head. We couldn't. Why not? Because it's so contrary to the world system, which is a way we're accustomed to thinking. I mean, it's something totally different. Like Bob was saying, it's a totally way we would have arrived at this through our own efforts. Exactly.

It's kind of like Chester McKellie's series on grace. He said, never in a million years would humans conceive of grace. Theologians are people, the smartest people in the world and the dumbest people in the world, all around a big table, and they can think of a million different ways that God would interact with man, but grace would never be the one that we would think of. You could never imagine it.

And the same is true of this, our identity, our person in Christ. You're not going to be able to sit around and gaze at your navel or meditate this through. It's not going to come. We need to be in the revelation. We need to be in the Word, right? There's no fake, there's no fast path, there's no quick track, there's no other way that we would know this, that we would contrive with this, outside of the Word, right? To me, that's really important because it's in the circles I run in. So, the revelation that God made it known, the Bible, is so much His gift to us and so vital and necessary for our existence as believers. How else would we know? Could we live? Well, sure. I mean, could you live your whole life?

Did anybody ever see the cartoon Lambert the Sheepish Lion? finest cartoon in the world. It's about a lion who gets, like, dropped off in the wrong area and gets raised by lambs. So he thinks he's a lamb. So he's this huge, roaring lion, but he's gentle and soft and he's running from wolves. And then one day he realizes, like, he's a lion.

And it's really cool. But at the end of the day, he could have lived his life happily as the sheepish lion, right? And no one would have ever been the wiser. And then he realized at the end of the film, realized, that he didn't need to be scared of that wolf anymore. Because he was a lion. He didn't need to be. But it took that step from not running from the wolf anymore.

He said, no. Something's different between me and the sheep. So anyway. Yeah. Sounds like a genetics environment argument. I'd be lost in that one too though. All right. So mystery. You've all probably heard this word once or twice. What does mystery mean in a biblical context? Something not before pre-field, but now is being pre-field. Right. So not Nancy Drew, right? But rather... Hardy Force. Hardy Force. Way better. Sorry, I chose the feminine alternative.

Anyway, yeah, so mystery is something, the mystery in the biblical sense, the way Paul uses it, is something that was not before seen, not before revealed, that is now in turn being revealed, that is being let out, which is fantastic. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that, but it sure seems like kind of the way of Christianity today to latch onto this.

It's a mystery. It's mysterious. Live in the mystery. You know, and it's like, it's not really at all what Paul was getting at. It's that it's unclear, or that it's impossible to understand, or don't even bother trying to understand what the Word says, because it's a mystery. It's not that kind of mystery.

So we're staying. All right, so we move forward to his will. Hopefully we've all seen this before. The cool thing about concentric circles, using them for every diagram, is that I don't have to make a new diagram. As you can tell, I just changed the words. So you've got three circles of God's will, as we've seen. If you're looking for a really...

Actually, I think we've done one course just on His will that you can get on the internet, and you also can find a couple sessions on this in the biblical counseling elective. So if you're looking for a little bit more than this, but for today's purposes, on the outer ring here you've got God's sovereign will. which is unviolatable, involves our salvation, our position in Christ, our God's plan for the ages. God's moral will here. Can we violate God's moral will?

Yeah, huh? Okay. And then God's individual will for our lives, which we define as decisions based on godly wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit as we are abiding in Him and paying attention to Christ in us. Romans 12, 1 and 2. So where does what we're talking about today fit in? Which circle? The outer one, right? Yeah. The unbreakable, the unchangeable sovereign will of God.

That's what He's revealed to us. It was always that way, but he finally chose to reveal. This was his plan all along. God sent Jesus down, and he goes, oh, it's a church. Oh, no. It was always part of it as well. But he chose to reveal it to us with Paul after that.

So cool. Kind intention is, I think, what we have in the NASB. And then most of the other major translations hold it as, Oh, there we go. Good pleasure. Thank you. It's a good pleasure. So, there's like a really long, greeky argument that I could hardly follow as to why it should be kind intention over good pleasure. I had a lot of trouble following it. I'm just not going to deceive you at all. At the end of the day, though, the people I liked most liked good pleasure more. Does that make sense? So that's where I'm going with this. It gave God pleasure to save us. It was according to his pleasure. I think it's so funny.

I worked in young life camps for years and years and years and you get to the cross and you're telling kids about the cross and the fact that they just put their faith in Christ and they're saved. And never really questioned, why would God do that? Why would God do that? Why would God do that?

What gave him pleasure to? That's it. It was according to his pleasures, according to his glory. The joy that was before him, right? The joy that was before him. Unbelievable. And then people think that they can please God by their actions. How does that even add up? It doesn't even come close. Yeah, it's on the verge of ridiculous, isn't it? Well, I think one of the things that's interesting, and I'll be careful not to be too philosophical about it, but we know so little. Our minds know so little in the grand scheme of things. But here, looking at 8 and 9, it's in all wisdom and insight. God is the source of all wisdom and insight that is truth. And he knows that, and only from that context Could you have God being full of pleasure with that?

He knows, hey, I'm pleased to see this happening, because He knows. In our minds, we like there to be a judge and a jury, and we like the guilt, because then we can own some kind of responsibility. He goes, no, no, no. I want to have a relationship with you, please. And it breaks outside of our context. It asks us to let go of the tininess of our thinking, and instead Trust is all wisdom and all insight, and is pleasure in that. It breaks down our own wisdom and lack of insight.

Well, Brad, I just think it's amazing that God has revealed this to us. And, you know, so you look back at Christianity and you had those, the reformers that seem to think it was through this intense study and all this philosophical knowledge that we can arrive at what God has for us. Then you have the other end of the spectrum, the aesthetics that think it's by whipping yourself or depriving yourself and mysteriously God's going to go, well God has revealed it to us. Everything, like you said earlier, everything we need to know, God has told us and just like in this whole process here, our heart in it is to simply trust Him.

I know for me that's difficult sometimes because I want to understand it, I want to know it now. That's not always God's intention that we understand all of this right at the moment. He's revealing it to us, He has revealed it to us, and it's His job to help us understand. By studying His Word, by fellowshipping with one another, by trusting Him, He's going to show us it. And that is just so amazing that we can know this. It's not a mystery that we think of, but it's knowledge that God is giving to us and He intends for us to have. And that's the teaching responsibility of the Holy Spirit within us.

All we have to do is rely on Him to teach us. So that makes it pretty easy. You have to struggle with it. Isn't that kind of funny? It's so much, I almost want to say it's so much in deeper truth. It's simple, but not easy. Or however you want to look at it. Easy, but not easy. It's so simple. Just believe what God said. Just rest in it. Just trust. Not so easy day-to-day, at least for me. Sure, you're all much better at it than I am.

That's one reason why it's one long big silence. Because he's constantly answering all these questions we bring up. Before we ask them almost. He intertwines everything that we would have an argument against with who Christ is and what God has done so that you can't argue anymore.

You can't say, oh, well, what about this? It's like, no, the sufficiency is there. You're forced to either rest or abandon it and ignore it and continue on in a carnal pattern. That's good. OK, so now we got a fun word that I will threaten to take up the rest of our time. And if you try really hard, it won't. All right. So we've got this.

Sorry, 10 for the view of the administration. So administration, any any old King James or King old James. He's a nice man. Any other ways that we know that this administration word gets translated? Dispensation. Dispensation. This church word, dispensational. This should be fun. Okay, so administration, dispensation all translates words meaning stewardship. Let me tell you about my stewardship. For a couple of years before I went to Korea, I was the maintenance engineer, that's what they called me.

But I cleaned up vomit, which makes me a janitor. But anyway, at a middle school. So what I did, I was in charge of making sure the lights were on, making sure the heat was going, making sure that that the building was in shape, that no one was graffitiing or anything like that, making sure that if a kid vomited, it got cleaned up fast enough and with the right materials that it wouldn't spread disease or something to this effect. Evidently, if you put kitty litter on vomit, it doesn't spread disease. Anyway, that was my job. So... Thanks for that. Yeah, exactly. In case you need it, keep some kitty litter around in case you throw up on something. Unless it's a person, in which case, just rinse it. Don't bother kitty littering the person. They've had enough humiliation already.

In the future, describe this a little less specifically. Okay. So I was not as good looking as this, but I was the steward. Okay. I was the guy who was given the assignment. The domain of my stewardship was the middle school. So if someone threw up in someone else's middle school, it wasn't my job. It was outside of the domain of my stewardship, even though it was part of my stewardship, it was part of my list of duties, part of the things that were assigned to me or entrusted to me. So, the domain, again, is the building. The stewardship was the lights and the kitchen, making sure things were clean, making sure things were working properly, making sure there was heat in the building, all those things. And then there was me, the steward.

If a teacher were to behave badly or use foul language in front of a kid or beat a child or something like that, it wasn't my job to discipline them. It was in my domain, but it was outside of my stewardship, right? So there's three things that we need to understand as we look at what scripture teaches about dispensationalism. One, there's a domain to every stewardship, to every dispensation. Two, there's a stewardship, there's an entrusted list of duties, and there's a steward, a person who's given the ability to do it.

Now, I left this job to go to Korea, and not to do it again. Did the stewardship end? Did they say, all right, no more janitors? Did the domain end? Was it blowing up Liberty Middle School? Brad's gone? No, no. The domain stayed, and kids still go there. And the stewardship stayed. They got another guy to do my job, or to do the job that I had done. So the steward changed, but the stewardship and the domain remained, right?

Okay, so, as we look at these, as we look at this word in scripture, and continue to think about this, just before we move forward, let's look at some other stewardships in scripture. Did Adam have a stewardship? What was the domain of his stewardship? Take care of the garden. Okay, so the garden, the Garden of Eden was his stewardship. What was his, or sorry, it was his domain. What was his stewardship? To take care of that garden, right? And to, what? Not eat the apple, right? Or apple, sorry, don't eat the fruit in the middle of the garden. And then who was the steward?

Adam. What happened? He failed in his stewardship and things changed, right? He blew it. Okay, but we got the domain, we have the stewardship, and we have the steward. What about Joseph? He was given the stewardship, right? What was the domain of his stewardship, depending on which point in his life you're talking about?

Egypt, all of Egypt could. And what was his stewardship? Peace. Tip, take care of the whole thing, second only to Pharaoh. And he was the steward, right? When he died, he didn't shut Egypt down. He said, okay, it was a good experiment. The domain stayed. The stewardship stayed.

Maybe Pharaoh took his job Hey, why don't you get to be Pharaoh? What about Moses? Domain? Israelites. Jews. Yep. Stewardship? That was part of the task, but what was the governing law, right? He brought in the law. And he's the steward, right? And then Moses died. Well, the domain stayed, Israel. The stewardship stayed, right? Who took over as the steward? Joshua. Joshua took over as the steward. Okay, then through Joshua and then even through judges, all of a sudden that stewardship got split up into a couple offices, right?

So we had the priesthood did their peace. That kind of was all under Moses' original stewardship. The prophets did their peace to talk for God. And then the king did their peace, which is why it winds up being so important that Christ is prophet, priest, and king in the Tibetan lineage. So that stewardship got split into three.

OK, now church. Domain? Church. Right. The body of Christ. Stewardship? Principle of stewardship? Grace. Grace. Stewards? Apostles. Apostles. Originally, right, Christ, who handed it off to the apostles, the disciples, right? Gave them a stewardship, which they constantly, the writer of Hebrews, talked about it. And then they gave it to whom? Other shepherds, right? ultimately so much back on to all of us and then we all have stewardships as well right and we you're you have a stewardship over your family or your kids you have a stewardship you have a responsibility over your family of your friends over and so on and so forth ongoing and ongoing so this is the idea that we're coming through so what is this administration let's see did I do this properly or not let's find out That'd be or not.

Yeah, that'll be or not. Come on. OK. So come now. Administration is suitable to the fullness of time. We've got five minutes. Real quick. The traditional all-millennialist interpretation of this phrase is that it's the church, that Christ is slowly summing everything up in the church right now, and then we'll reach this end pinnacle time when everything's all summed up in the church, and then that's great. So this is now. The traditional dispensational teaching is, and I think the right teaching, that the administration suitable to the fullness of times is talking really clearly about the Millennial Kingdom.

So, as humans in this world, are we ever plagued with the idea that things aren't quite like they should be? Maybe? I mean, how does the world deal with that, apart from Christ? Like, we know there's a plan, we know that God's going to make it alright, but how does the world deal with that? want the government to take care of it.

Yeah, we were all there on Tuesday. Change! Right? The government is going to fix it, right? Someone's got to fix it. It better be the government. Oh, stop whining. The government can't fix anything. It's run by sinful, fallen people. Give up. I'm not saying don't vote, although I don't. But at the same time, We as humans are always trying to deal. Maybe it's education. Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that.

We're going to fix it. We're going to fix it in some way. And what's the reality of the situation? The only thing that's going to fix it is Christ coming back and ruling as the king on the throne of Israel. That's it. And when is that going to happen? Well, when I work hard enough and when all the Jews obey the law for one day perfectly. No. It's going to happen when he wants it to happen, right?

Nothing I'm going to do It's not my job to bring Jesus back. I hope. I would certainly fail at that. So that's what we're... and then I'm going to shoot through this. Yeah, so the Millennial Kingdom, what's going on? I clicked too fast. I'll explain that sooner or later. Okay. Inheritance. Funny thing. Here, this is going to be distracting.

We've got like three minutes, so let's let's just turn and burn inheritance Greek fun here The NASB and most translations like to bring it across we have obtained an inheritance Hodge agrees with them if you actually look at the Greek the word obtained is not in there reason for that being actually what with the Greek I think is most clearly saying although you can make a case to the opposite of What the Greek is saying is that you are not, not have obtained an inheritance, but you are an inheritance.

Or as a better word maybe is, you are a heritage. God has claimed you as his heritage, his inheritance. It's part of who you are. Part of his family, his heritage. He's claiming you as his own. Not something that you're claiming as our, we're claiming as our own, right? Predestined.

We talked a lot about it last week. I'm gonna blow right over it. Except to say, Take it personally, right? There's not a whole lot in scripture about, in fact, I venture to say there's not anything in scripture about who's not predestined. Or who's predestined to hell.

Right? Not a great point. Okay. That's an important point. That's an important point, right? We don't know much about who's not predestined, but we know that you are. I don't know anything about the guy down the street, but I know that I am a predestined. Isn't that great? Isn't that great news? So stop wasting time trying to figure out who's not predestined. It's not a useful way to spend an hour or a minute or a second of your time. Okay, according to counsel here is the Greek word boule. I want to pronounce it.

This does mean The intelligent, the thought-out counsel of God. I think what we're noticing, and especially with the word inheritance, when we talk about inheritance law, everything about this says that God was careful with you. God was careful with me. God carefully figured out what he was going to do in Jesus Christ.

It wasn't accidental. It wasn't an oops. It wasn't a, oh, they snuck in. It was a very carefully designed plan for his good pleasure. As we go out, you are, one, very carefully carried over, and two, His pleasure. Okay, just because I showed you this, I would have just stopped.

We have a choice, today and every day for the rest of our lives, to believe what God says about us, or believe what the world says about us, or believe what we want to say about ourselves. Completely our choice. A bird can say to himself, I'm a polar bear, I'm a polar bear, I'm a polar bear, I'm a polar bear, I'm a polar bear. He will never become a polar bear. However, he might make some really dangerous decisions based on his belief that he's a polar bear, right? He might try to attack something that a bird ought not attack and wind up in a heap of trouble. Or he might go swimming in ice water. Not good for birds, right?

So it's up to you. It's up to me. It's up to us. At some level, where are you going to put your faith today? In what God said you are, and what you said you are. Or what the world says you are. That's all I got. Because if you don't put your faith here, you look like this. This one's my favorite, because I have a pug at home. Alright, so let's pray and we'll call it a day. Does anyone else have any closing thoughts or have I offended anybody so badly that you need to march up before we pray? Sweet, alright.

Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for this magnificent, magnificent message that you've given us and this magnificent revelation that you've given us. Or we'd never have known that we're adopted as sons. We'd never have known that you chose us before the foundation of the world. We'd never have known that you had us in mind. We'd never have known the position you won for us we never have known that you are at work in us and that the whole power of the trinity is working us at work in us changing us moving us making us sanctifying us more like our position and moving us away from condition where we never have known so we put your faith our faith in you we put our faith in your son we praise you for the gift of this revelation and the holy spirit that makes us able to understand it.

Lord, please guide our steps this week based on who you've made us to be and resting in that. Based on Christ in us, the hope of glory. We praise you and we thank you. We pray that we could go and worship you and hear a message from Mike. Lord, just be blessed because we know you because we're yours. In Jesus' name, amen.