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We fall into measuring our place with God by how much Scripture we know or how “spiritual” we sound. Paul tells us the real measure is somewhere else: “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” What changes when we remember that the Christian journey began by hearing what God has done not what we do?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor says we often forget how we became Christians—that we “heard” the gospel through someone else’s faithfulness. Who was the person or people whose faithful teaching or witness brought you to faith, and what do you remember about that encounter?
Paul reminds the Ephesians they’re “fully in”—not halfway members or second-class believers. What tempts you to think of yourself as a “lesser” Christian, or to feel like someone else has more of God’s favor than you do? How does Ephesians 1:13–14 challenge that thinking?
The sermon emphasizes that “faith comes by hearing.” In your own life, where do you actually encounter God’s Word during the week—and where might you be missing opportunities to hear it or share it with others?
If faith comes through hearing and continues through the Holy Spirit’s work, what would it look like this week to both share the gospel with someone and show the fruit of the Spirit while doing it? Who is God putting on your heart?
How does being sealed with the Holy Spirit change the way you face uncertainty, suffering, or doubts about your standing with God? And how does the promise of that seal keep you from “leaving before the credits”—settling for a decent life rather than living toward the full glory God has promised?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Doesn’t it seem like everywhere we go, we get a survey? You go and order some food, would you please complete the survey and let us know how your experience was? You call to haggle about your utility bill, your cable bill perhaps, not that I was doing that this week or anything, but you call up and you do that and what do they say? Would you stay on the line to complete a short survey after the call is completed? And I have to say, sometimes I wonder, I used to fill out more of those and I’ve kind of come to wonder, does anyone actually ever even read them? I know my car dealer, I found out that they expected, the manufacturer expected, five-star reviews and if you said, for example, the waiting room was not the most amazing waiting room ever, and it wasn’t, they got the service manager in trouble. It was sort of, well, no, it’s just because it’s a little square with some tile and a TV blaring daytime TV, it’s not amazing, but it’s just what you expect at the car dealer. So lots of things like that.
And one of the questions that you see on there almost every time is, where did you hear about us? They want to know where you came from. And that one, I can understand as a pastor at a church, we’ve run advertising online and we’ve done postcards, we do these different things, we’d like to know if someone comes, well, where’d you hear about us? What worked? How did that happen? So I understand the question. It’s important if you own a small business to understand where the people that come to your business came from. They want to understand the journey so they can encourage it.
Well, that’s important if you’re a shopkeeper, it’s also important as Christians that we understand where we came from. How did we end up here? Because God knows, He doesn’t need to give us a survey and say, well, how’d you find me? He doesn’t need to do that, because the answer is, I found you, but sometimes we need to actually answer that question anyway so we remember that He found us and what He’s doing with us. And so that’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight, because we forget the full journey of where we are in the Christian life, where we came from and where we’re going.
And Paul, as we wrap up this first section of Ephesians 1, he’s going to challenge us to think about the full journey, and we need that reminder, we need that challenge. So let’s pray tonight that we would be receptive to it, and as we hear that challenge, we’d be better prepared for everything ahead.
Let’s pray.
Father, we do pray that you would help us to be those who are ready for the challenges ahead, and we’re ready because we understand how we heard about you, where we came from. We serve a God who doesn’t need to ask survey questions, you’re not trying to get a five-star review. You’re the God who saves us, and He wants to rest in that, and to respond to that. And Lord, would you help us to do that. We pray that you’d guide us even this night as we reflect on the wonder of what you do. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Okay, first thing, Ephesians 1, verse 13, we’re going to look at the second part of this verse first. We looked at the first part last week. Faith comes from hearing. Now last week we looked at, in Him you also, that’s the Ephesians, there, the also. But then He goes on and says, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him. We’re going to hang on to that other part for later tonight. But this is the first part that Paul wants them to understand.
He’s confirmed last week, you’re a part of this, you’re a part of this story, your state is secure in Christ, so let’s think about how you got there. How did they get there? They heard the word of God. They heard the gospel. They heard it, and through that God transformed them. And it sounds so elementary, but don’t we forget it? Don’t we forget the fact that the reason that you’re here, that I’m here, that all of us are here, is because God’s word’s been preached, and that word does something. God uses His word. We heard, and then we are a part.
Now if you’ve grown up in the church, you may have heard all your life, but imagine for a moment, you strip away every detail of your Christian walk, everything you know about the Bible, everything you know about our God, you strip all that away and you have the same upbringing, it doesn’t matter if you still went to a building every Sunday, if you didn’t have any of that stuff, there wouldn’t be anything, right? Oh, we go to a building and we sit there for an hour. No, we go there and we sing songs that are songs inspired by God’s word, so we’re singing biblical truth. We hear messages of biblical truth. We go through other aspects of the service with the Bible being read and biblical truth being given to us, and so in all that then, that is where God takes us and molds us and shapes us and prepares us.
And Paul says to the Ephesians, okay, you’re believers, you’re inside the group, right, you are part of this, but remember how you became a part of this. You didn’t become a part of this because you paid an entrance fee. You didn’t become a part of this because you completed the survey. Even though sometimes at Taco Bell, if you complete the survey, you could win $1,000. Has anyone done that? I’ve completed them, I’ve never won. Someone must, I guess, maybe. But it’s not because you completed the survey and won. It’s not because you’re Ephesian or St. Charleston. It’s not because you speak a certain language, whether that’s English or Greek or Aramaic or Latin, not even German.
Why is it that they’re here, that Paul can write them as the church, and why is it that we’re here? It’s because God has chosen us and used His Word to sow the seeds of faith in us. And it transforms. And here’s the beautiful thing about how His Word works. It doesn’t matter if you were born, and the very day you were born, your parents took you into the church building, or if the first time you darkened the door of a church was when you were 75 and thought, what are all those weirdos? I’ve driven by there all my life, and I have no idea why, but I don’t have anything to do for the next hour. It doesn’t matter. If you hear the good news and you respond, you’re in. Not lesser, not partway there, there.
And it’s really key that Paul’s saying, it seems sort of subtle, but if you look at the part we were looking at last week, where he was affirming those who first believed, and then were able to pass that on, we had that relay going on. If you think about that, well, now they’ve relayed it, and now the ones that have received the baton, they’re just as in as those who passed it. They’re not secondary.
The other week, I had to charge my car battery. The car wouldn’t start, so my grandpa had this little charger you can plug in and hook it up to the battery, and it works great. It’s ancient, and it still charges the battery. It does a great job if you give it a few hours. But after I’ve done that, I’m a little nervous. Is it really going to start again after the first time, right? Is it just that it sat there too long, because I haven’t been driving as much since I hurt my back, and so the battery just went dead? Or is the battery bad, and I’m going to get charged, I’m going to get someplace, and I’m going to get stuck? That makes me a little nervous, and so I charged the battery, but that’s always the sort of situation where I remember, oh, and I didn’t renew my AAA membership.
I know I got 10 reminders and 10 different offers of different gifts I could get if I would renew it for only $25 a year, and that was $35 a year, and I thought, I’ll wait a little longer and see if it goes back to $25 a year, but I didn’t bother to renew it, and I thought, okay, I need to drive this freshly charged battery tomorrow. I think it’s high time I am going to renew my AAA membership, and I renewed it, and on the last page before I made the payment, it said, just so you know, when you renew an expired AAA membership, for the first two days, there’s a $125 service fee if you call the towing. I thought, yeah, I should have renewed it sooner. I’m not a full member those first two days, right? I’m a halfway member. Sure, I have my card, and I can go get a discount at the mechanic shop, but if I call up and say, my car won’t start, they’ll say, well, come for $125. Yes, that’s five years membership, but you didn’t pay, so.
And so, I’m partway there. Well, now it’s been a little while. I’m fully there now.
But here’s the thing we need to understand about being a Christian. There isn’t a partway there. If you believe in Jesus tonight, you’re already there. If you believe in Jesus tonight, and you walk out this door, and someone’s careening through this parking lot and hits you, and this is the last parking lot you ever see in your life, God’s not going to say, I’ll get you partway to heaven because, you know, you have to pay the fee for the whole way if you didn’t have your membership up to date. He’s not going to do that.
And the fact that the Ephesians believed after the others, they’re not partway there. They don’t get part of the benefits of being a Christian, right? They’re not going to say, God’s not going to say, well, I’ll tow you halfway to heaven, and if you can get the rest of the way, great. If only you’d signed up when the introductory offer was going, you’d get all the way there. He’s not going to do that. They’re fully in.
Here’s the first truth we need to get out of this passage. If you’ve heard and you’ve believed, then you’re in. And again, it sounds awfully simple, but how often do we forget that?
We run into a believer who’s been a believer longer, who prays better-sounding prayers, who knows where the passage is in Scripture, can get to that passage in Scripture faster, could recite it without even opening the Bible. We run into that person, we think, well, there’s someone who God’s really going to listen to. There’s someone who really has God’s favor.
If you’ve believed in Jesus, you have God’s favor. There’s only one type of Christian. Galatians 3, verse 27, Paul writes, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That’s it.
There is no premium Christian status or basic Christian status. God isn’t like AAA where the base membership, you think, that really isn’t so good, I guess I should pay the $10 a year to upgrade and get the gold card, right? If you believe, you’re in.
Now, here’s a second truth that follows up in that, though, that we shouldn’t lose sight of. If we’ve heard and been brought in, then what does it say about what we should do? It means that we need to help others to hear as well. And I don’t think the fact that Paul’s calling them back to how they became a Christian, he’s not doing that just because he wants them to reminisce about how nice it was when they first heard the gospel and believed. He wants them to remember that so they remember that it would be really nice if other people did too.
If we know that what was crucial for us is that people faithfully taught the scriptures and that we could interact with it and we could hear it, whether it was as a little kid or as an adult, whether it was eagerly at first or with great resistance but somehow we had to, our parents made us listen to it and it was the worst thing ever and we were going to die before the church service ever ended, but we heard it, that faithful teaching is how we got here, that faithful communication of God’s Word, that’s what God used to call us here.
And if that’s the case, then what should each of us do? What is it that should drive us? What should we want to be the words that people hear coming out of our mouths that should be words that bring that same life to others? Romans 10 verse 14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Faith comes by hearing.
We see that over and over again in the New Testament, how did people come to faith? They heard preaching of God’s Word and it doesn’t mean that the only way someone comes to faith is if they’re standing, they’re sitting in a church and they’re hearing someone behind a pulpit or a music stand pulpit or whatever it might be and they hear God’s Word being preached there. It can be the preaching that we do when we live a faithful life and people know that we’re believers and they know the reason that we’re faithful is because we believe in Jesus and they say, I want to know more about that. It can be the encouraging word we say to someone who’s hurting. It can be the fact that we get away with something at the store, the cashier rings it up wrong and we don’t walk away and take the deal, we say, wait a second. And somehow the conversation’s struck and they find out we’re a Christian and it’s not living the way the world does.
There are all kinds of little ways and big ways, very formal ways like preaching in a church, informal ways like how we live in our neighborhood and in the stores and in the workplace, all kinds of different ways, but the key thing is that every moment we have the opportunity to live, and the question should be, one, are we living in a way that represents Jesus well in that? And two, are we living in such a way that people know it has anything to do with Jesus? Because we can live as really good people that no one has any idea, believe in Jesus and isn’t it nice and it makes someone smile, but it doesn’t actually do any good because it doesn’t point them to Jesus. Or we can live in really horrible, rotten ways, but talk about Jesus all the time and that’s maybe even worse, right, because people say, well, I know about Jesus and I don’t want to know anything about it.
The key thing is we remember how we got here and God says, now go and do the same for others. Go and do what has been done for you. Because just as someone was an instrument of the Holy Spirit in your life, so too each of us has the opportunity and the calling to be an instrument in someone else’s life to know the gospel.
And if hearing is so important, what are we doing, what am I doing, what are you doing, what is it this very week that God’s calling us to do, not as a church, but more than as a church, as individuals? As we go out and we’re all doing our separate things for the week, what is it he’s calling you to do specifically to share a little bit of the hope of the gospel with somebody? Every week we have those opportunities. We shouldn’t think, well, other people get those opportunities. Other people can stitch together the eloquent words. I have a friend, I need to reach out to him, I haven’t talked to him in ages, but he can go up to someone and ask the most controversial question because it’s a gift of confrontational evangelism. He can do that. He can go and confront them, they don’t know him from Adam, and they’re going to listen to him. There’s just something about him. That’s how God’s wired him. That’s great. That’s not me. And it’s probably not most of you, right? That’s okay.
But God’s wired you the way He intended you to be wired. He’s given you the gifts, the way you communicate, the people around you that He intends you to be around. And He wants you to use those places that He places you and the way that you are. If I go up and I try to do the so-called confrontational evangelism and I say, what’s wrong with you, sinner? I might next be looking up from the ground at the person as they’re towering over me having smacked me and knocked me on the ground. It’s not going to work. It’s not going to come across well. It’s certainly not going to represent Jesus well. That doesn’t mean that I’m not called to share the gospel.
We’ve all heard, we’ve all had the experience that other people need, and God’s calling each and every one of us to help bring along that experience, recognizing that God’s the one doing the work. He’s the one using us as an instrument. He’s the one that’s going to get us to where we’re going.
Look at the end of verse 13. In Him also, that’s what we had above, what? They were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit. They’re sealed. And if you believed in Jesus, you’re sealed with the Holy Spirit.
Some people try to divide up the beginning of faith and the sealing of the Holy Spirit. The two are together. If you are saved, how are you saved? Because the Holy Spirit’s working in you. That’s really, really important. Because salvation comes by hearing. Salvation continues by the work of the Spirit. It never gets off the ground without the Spirit, but neither will it last without the Spirit.
We’ve been having problems with our little flower garden, the soil. Boy, we are living the parable of the soils right now, because that soil is not good soil right now after some things got dumped in there. And so you have the plants coming up, but they’re not staying, right? Because they don’t have the power on their own. I mean, we are living that parable, friends. Everyone that’s contributing to the Water Brigade out there, we’re experiencing it at the moment.
But then I look out there, and like today, there are little seedlings pushing up that are actually holding firm, and it’s through what? It’s through finding some bits of the soil that are okay, and the dedicated work that all of you have been bringing water up here, you’re flushing that soil out of its impurities. God’s flushing it out with the rain as well, of course, but it’s not the flower flushing it out. Because you know those seeds, they’ve gone in the ground multiple different years, and by now, in years past, we’ve had flowers that are several feet tall, and since it’s raised a little bit, I mean, it’s up to my head when you come into the church. For those of you that are online, if you’re wondering when you see the picture how high the flowers are, I mean, they get really tall, and they’re beautiful, and they bring in butterflies and bees, and I mean, they’re great flowers, friendly for pollinators. And last year, those seeds fell into the ground, and those seeds tried to come up, and those seeds didn’t take, because the seed couldn’t do it, it needed something more.
And we, on our own power, we can find some neat things in Scripture, some good trivia. You could meet someone who could ace whatever Jeopardy would throw at them about the Bible, or get invited to a church trivia night, and get every single question in the Bible category right. Who isn’t going anywhere in faith, because nothing’s happening, and a bunch of seeds are going to wither and die. So we hear, but we hear in the Spirit.
And if you want to know, if you want to know what proof of God’s favor really is, the Spirit’s with us. I think sometimes, sometimes, I think we’re looking for the proof of God’s favor, the fact that He’s working our lives in the wrong way. We’re looking at what brand of seeds were put in the ground, or did we plant it on the right week, and was the moon at the right place? And I know there’s like farmers, I mean, you go by some of the stuff to get the right time for potatoes or whatever else, and it matters. But here’s the thing. We need the gardener. We need the gardener. And what really matters, ultimately, is, is the gardener there?
Thank you. Thank you. Sometimes we need to be watered. Oh, thanks. We need to be watered. That’s quenching, and it’s wonderful. That’s quenching, and it’s wonderful. And God’s the only one who can water us, right? We try to get a bottle of water, and you know what, when we get a bottle of spiritual water, what happens? It’s not like this water. It doesn’t taste wonderful and quench us, it’s an empty bottle. But God’s water does quench. It’s living water.
So if that’s the case, then how do we know God’s favor? Is He watering us? Is He the one there or not? And what Paul wants them to understand when he says that they’re sealed is, do you have that refrigerator full of God’s water there in your life? Is God pouring into you? Is He with you? If He is, then you don’t need to question whether you have God’s favor or you’re paid up on your membership dues and you’re going to get a tow if you need it or not. You don’t have to ask any of those questions because if you have the living water, you’re good. You’re ready to go. God’s with you.
We don’t think about sealing in necessarily all the same ways they did in the ancient world. We just kind of take things for granted perhaps a little bit. But the key thing is, He says they were sealed in the Holy Spirit, is that He wanted them to understand what it was that verified whether they were a believer or not, and it’s only Him. It’s not how much of the Bible you know, although it’s great to know as much as possible. It’s not how many times you come to church, although it’s great to come. It’s not whether you have the latest trendy Christian t-shirt or not. I guess trendy Christian t-shirts are still a thing, right? Maybe if you don’t, I don’t know. But it’s whether you have the sealing of the Holy Spirit.
What does sealing mean? It means it’s not been tampered with. If you were sending a letter in the ancient world, how did you make sure that people knew whom it came from, right? We have interesting ways to do that nowadays, but in the ancient world, what you would do if you were important, at least, you had a signet ring, and you’d take your letter, you’d seal it, you’d put wax on it, and you’d stick the ring on it, and only you were supposed to have that exact pattern, and what did it tell? It told who it was by the pattern, and the fact that the wax wasn’t broken said it hadn’t been tampered with.
Well, nowadays we do that electronically, right? If you send messages on Signal like we use for the church communication, you can see the little check go, and it means that the proof of identity of the person sending and receiving matched up, and it’s all eventually been sealed. We still have it, we just don’t think about it as much.
And one of the things that Paul wants them to understand is that, and He wants us to understand too, if you have been sealed, if the Holy Spirit’s in your life, then you have been sealed, and if you’ve been sealed, then the direction God has you in is secure. It’s protected. What did a seal do? A seal guaranteed something. They put a seal as a security, as a guarantee of payment, and so when Paul here, he’s reflecting on this, and he says that they’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit, he goes on, verse 14, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.
So you look at that sealed thing, you know it hasn’t been tampered with, and you know the king has written what’s true inside of it, and you know no one else can get into it. What’s Paul say in Romans 8? Verse 28, he says, “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” One of my very favorite verses in Scripture.
You know what’s so encouraging to me in it? You have this chain reaction that’s unbreakable. The seal is there. And from the moment God foreknew you, we talked about this at the beginning of this series, God foreknew you before the foundation of the world, and when He foreknew you, He already put an unbreakable seal in motion, an order, an invitation to be in His kingdom.
What else would a seal do in the ancient world? Well, if you were being sent by the king, say, to go do some business in a faraway place, and the people knew that they were subjects to the king, but they didn’t know you, the king would give you a paper with his signet on it, all nice and sealed up, and he’d send you off, and that paper gave you the authority to do whatever it was that you needed to do, and everyone could check it and see that you actually had the authority from the only one who could give it.
Well, every one of us, if the Spirit is working in you, guess what? You have the authority to be an ambassador of Jesus. And if you have the authority, if God’s given that to you, it also means we have the obligation to be an ambassador of Jesus.
So there’s so much loaded in here. When the Holy Spirit is our seal and our guarantee, it assures us nothing’s going to go wrong with what the Holy Spirit’s doing in our lives. He’s with us, He’s sending us someplace, and He’s sending us someplace to go do something. And both of those are true. And we can have confidence because of that seal.
If God’s working in your life, it might seem like it’s not very much. It doesn’t matter how much you sense God working in your life. If God’s working in your life, you’ve believed in Jesus, then know that you’re sealed.
And I think it’s more important to us today than we might think about this whole sealing thing. Because, again, we don’t think about it in the same way. I’ve never gotten a letter that was sealed with wax and authenticated like that. But I do worry about seals on other things. I remember a few years ago I got an order of groceries and it was right before Thanksgiving and the shopper that delivered it, it had the very last pumpkin pie in the store. And it was a beautiful pumpkin pie. And it’s getting close enough to fall, actually pumpkin pie sounds really pretty good right now. But anyway, it was this beautiful pumpkin pie. And on top of it was a not very thoughtfully laid out bottle of juice. And that juice was leaking. And I remember pulling it out and there’s like all this liquid in the bag and then there’s this pie. And I pull out the pie and thought, well, it didn’t get crushed, the pie’s okay. And then you look and you can see the juice inside of the pie container. I realized the pie container wasn’t properly sealed.
And I tried to figure out, well, can you salvage this pie or not? But you know what, what exactly has happened here, right? Has that pie been opened multiple times? Did someone tamper with it? Did whatever dirt and filth was around on the bottle of juice wash down into the pie? And the animals got a really nice Thanksgiving treat. I guess it was, boy, that sounds kind of mean now, I’ll give them the unsealed dangerous pie. But the trash cans, right, the raccoons, this is better than that. But the fact that there wasn’t a clear seal, right, it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be worried me.
And certainly in our lives, if God didn’t seal us, if you don’t have that seal, you should be worried because you might have some goodness in you. You might look like that beautiful pie, but there’s an awful lot of polluted juices of the world leaking in.
But here’s the thing that Paul wants us to know, that if you believe in Jesus, you’ve already been sealed. Those juices are going to try to come in, but they’re not going to get to your heart. They’re not going to actually take you from Him.
Every time we open a package and you open something that says, Sealed for Purity, you pull that off. And then you know that the inside contents are better for it. You know that God has put that seal on you, and it’s not getting peeled off because the only one that’s worried about it, the only one that’s ever going to take that seal off is God Himself when He brings you into His presence and the work is done.
So what are we to do? Well, if faith comes from hearing and it continues through the work of the Spirit, well then we should want to show the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And over the years as Christians have reflected on Scripture and said, well, how can I know if I really had the Spirit working in my life? How can I know if I have the sealing of the Spirit? The best way we can do that is go into Galatians 5 and look at the fruit of the Spirit.
Are those things coming out in our lives? Are we showing love and kindness and peace and patience? Are we going through these beautiful, beautiful aspects of what the Spirit brings out in our lives? And again, not perfectly. We’re not talking about being a perfect Christian in this moment. It’d be lovely if we were, but we’re not. But are those coming out in our lives? Something worth pausing on.
And then extending the question I asked earlier. I asked earlier, whom is it that we’re supposed to share God’s Word with this week, right? And I think a second follow-up question we should ask ourselves is, whom is it that I’m supposed to share the fruit of the Spirit with this week? Because the two of those go together beautifully. It’s a fruit salad, and it’s so much better together than apart. Because when we hand someone God’s Word while we’re impatient and unkind and unloving, it actually is like pouring the contaminated juices of whatever is in the bag on top of the pie. It just makes it distasteful. But when we’re showing the fruit of the Spirit, God’s actually using us as the wax that protects the message. Not because we can, but because He can.
The candle can’t make a seal, but the one melting the candle can. And God can take our lives, and we can drip that pure guarantee on people’s lives through the work of the Spirit.
Why is that so important? Well, it’s the third thing that Paul covers here. Verse 14. “Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory?”
Salvation isn’t complete yet. It’s complete in the sense that you’re saved. You don’t have to wonder if God’s going to get enough salvation generation going to save you or something. I wonder if the meter’s going to run out too fast. Don’t worry about that.
But we all know that we haven’t experienced the fullness of salvation in the sense that we look at this world and it’s still very broken, it’s still very imperfect. We haven’t experienced everything God’s promised yet. We haven’t experienced the fullness of peace and joy and love. We haven’t experienced that yet.
What’s the guarantee for? Turn to verse 14. Until we acquire the possession of it, to the praise of His glory. Someday we will acquire the fullness of it. We’ll stand in God’s presence and as we do, what do we see? What do we know? We know that there can’t be anything better than that. There can’t be anything more perfect than that.
Now sometimes I think when we’re looking for a guarantee of our faith, we’re looking to know if we have that seal and we say, but I’m not yet experiencing pure joy. I’m not yet experiencing pure peace. I’m not yet experiencing bountiful blessing. It feels like everything is going wrong and so maybe that means that God isn’t with me. Now what we do is we look to the Spirit, but as we look to the Spirit, He says, and I’m still working. And I’m going to take you with that guarantee, with that sealed promise to experience the fullness of everything I promised.
You see, we’ve gotten the two reversed. We’ve gotten who’s doing the guaranteeing and what it is that is guaranteed reversed and we think the things, the success, the blessings, those are the things that are the guarantee and that it’s leading us to our God, but our God’s with us and He’s leading us to the blessing. We may not experience all of it in this life.
Paul wasn’t writing to the Ephesians and saying, you know, in a few years even, you’re going to look back on this letter and say, yeah, I have it all now, right here on this earth. I have it all. We’re the most blessed church. Everything’s good. It’s not that, but there’s more to come and the Holy Spirit’s the one that carries the promise of that, to say it is going to come, that the living water is there for us and if it’s there, that we’re going to get there.
And why has God sealed us? Why is He doing this? Because of His glory. Everything that’s been listed out in these first verses of Ephesians, it all culminates in this, in His glory and someday we’ll be in His glory and we will experience the fullness of His glory.
Did anyone go and see the new Superman movie this week? Did anyone see it? I didn’t. No one did. Apparently, a lot of people did. It’s supposed to be doing quite well. I don’t know if it was glorious or not, but the ratings are coming in very well, right? It’s past Rotten Tomatoes. It’s certified fresh.
And so lots of people have been saying, okay, it’s not the most profound movie you’ll ever see. I can’t spoil it, don’t worry, because I haven’t seen it. Not the most profound movie you’ll ever see, but it was fun for two hours.
Now, I haven’t seen it, but I know something about the formula of a superhero movie. I’ve seen enough of them, I do know that, and I know this. If you don’t understand the format of a superhero movie, or you’re too impatient, you won’t experience the full glory of the superhero movie. Because inevitably, the thing that pulls it all together and makes it the most satisfying is going to be tucked somewhere in the credits. You have to watch those credits, because you’re going to get the teaser of the next movie, or you’re going to get the thing that was left unresolved right before the credits. You’re going to get that in the credits, and the people that watch the credits are going to walk out of that movie a lot happier, inevitably, than the people who say, oh, movie’s over, out I go, and they miss that hidden end credit scene.
It’s so, so important to catch that if you’re going to watch a superhero movie. And so I don’t have to see Superman, I can tell you. If you go and see it, you should stay for the credits, because I’m sure there’s something in there, and you don’t want to miss that. That’s what pulls it all together.
Well, a lot of times in the Christian life, we’re like people who leave before the credits. And it seems like it makes sense, right? I’m going to get out before I have to stand in line. I’m going to get out and go on to whatever else I was going to do. I’m hungry. I want to go eat. I’ll just go.
And so we think it’s going to serve us. We won’t have to wait as long, we’ll be eating sooner, it’ll just be better. Don’t have to listen to a bunch of music, there’s a ton of names that we have no idea who they even are, or what they even did. I don’t know all these different technical Hollywood titles of different things. Why watch all that?
We do that with Christian life. Well, maybe I don’t really need to believe in Jesus. I’ll just pick up a little of it, right? I’ll watch part of it. I know that Jesus had this great Sermon on the Mount, and He talked about a lot of great things, and I’ll try to live some of those things. I’ll try to be a good person. I’ll try to be fair. I’ll try to help my neighbor, even.
And it’s not going to bring it all together. We need the sealing of the Holy Spirit.
But here’s the other thing. Sometimes when I’ve talked to someone who’s watched one of those movies and hasn’t seen the end, and they’re complaining, and then they start complaining, I realize they’re complaining about the very thing they would have experienced, they would have understood so much better if they’d just seen that end credit scene.
How often is it, as Christians, that we still are trying to walk out of the movie early? Sometimes we walk out of the movie of life, we just say, well, I’m just trying to try to get through. Again, maybe I’ll be good, but if I’m not constantly helping people understand about Jesus, if I’m not constantly pointing to Him, that’s okay, because the basic thing is I’m not making anyone’s life particularly miserable.
We forget about the glory. And if you go to a superhero movie with me someday, I’m going to nag you to stay so you understand the glory of that. And what we need to do as Christians is be nags. We need to nag people, stay for the glory, understand where we’re going, it’s not just about making it through this life, it’s not about getting some marginal blessings, it’s not about being a good person, it’s about getting to the point where we actually see it all come together, and the Holy Spirit is going to make sure that we actually see that.
We don’t want to miss that key scene. We don’t want to be satisfied for goodness when the only thing that really pulls it all together is God’s grace. It’s all about remembering the journey, the journey of grace. We heard something, and because of the Spirit, we believed. That we’ve lived that something, and we continue because of that continued grace of the Spirit. That someday we’re headed to something so much better, why? Because of the continued grace of the Holy Spirit.
We need to remember that journey. We get earthbound. We think about just getting through, just getting to be acceptable, just making the best of this life. We settle for how things are. We settle for the movie that doesn’t quite resolve. I said, don’t settle for that good, a bunch of good people around us, we’re good people. Don’t settle for that. Settle for people of grace, because that’s not actually settling. Watch the credits.
God reminds us as we pursue that journey that God’s been reaching us and preserving us, and that He isn’t finished with us. Because of that, we shouldn’t be finished with those around us either, because together we’re seeing a journey of God’s grace, a beautiful journey, and it’s only going to get better.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you’d help us not to turn off the credits and miss the key scene. Lord, would you help us to remember that you are taking us someplace and that you’ve sealed us. That seal means that we can count on it. Anyone that might be here tonight or listening tonight who hasn’t yet experienced it, that you offer your seal to that person. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. As we turn to you and as we believe in you, that you are faithful and that your purposes have been unthwarted from before time until the end of time. Because of that, we can go forward knowing that it’s worth nagging about staying for the credits, because it’s something amazing and glorious that we can’t even fathom for ourselves, but also something we should yearn for those around us.
Would you help us to soak that in tonight and to carry that into this week? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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