The REAL Reason Why Jesus Died For You!

Brothers and sisters, I just want to stop here. Are you impressed so far? Are you impressed? Say amen then, would you? And here’s the funny part: all I’m doing is revealing. Now I’m going to start the message. Are you with me? This cannot be unraveled, but we’re getting close. I started at age 17. I ought to be somewhere by now, but I never do this without finding…just getting stunned.

I’m going to start with verse four, and I’m just going to read. He chose you, the church in Constance; you, the church in Colossae, but we’re going to just make it you. This is a very personal letter to a church. He chose you, the church in Constance, before the foundation of the world, that you should be holy and blameless before Him. Now, it’s no small thing that Paul wrote “before Him.” Where’s the last place on earth you ever want to be…or in heaven? In the presence of a holy God, when those fiery, burning, blazing eyes, Ida, look straight into you and see every ulterior motive of your heart. Yes, sister, tremble. Well, think about it. To stand before the all-knowing eyes of God, who has watched every dirty thing you’ve ever done, thought, or said. And when you stand before the blazing, burning eyes of God, He will find you blameless. Amen. Holy. To the praise of His glory. To the praise of His grace. Well, let’s say “to the praise of the glory of His grace,” would you? To the praise of the glory of His grace. You, a body of believers, will stand before the Lord, and you, a body of believers, in the presence of the burning, searing, all-knowing, blazing eyes of God, shall be found holy and blameless—to the praise of His glory. To the praise of His grace. Praise the Lord.

Then He also predestined you to be adopted as sons and daughters through the works of Jesus Christ. And here we go – according to this, it works out just exactly, parallels and perfectly belongs – it’s right in the center of what He counseled Himself that He would do. This is working out according to the kind intention of His will. That you were adopted as sons and daughters, that you’re holy and blameless and will be before…when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, you, when that happens, that’s just part of the working out of His will, which He counseled Himself to do. That’s one part of this great drama. You following me? If you’re following me and this makes sense, this will be a miraculous night because it is really not possible to understand all this.

Well, let’s keep going. …to the praise of the glory of His grace. That’s verse 6. Let’s do it again – To the praise of the glory of His grace. Do it again – To the praise of the glory of His grace. Out of His grace, He made you; He predestined you. Out of His grace, He chose you. Out of His grace, He calls you. He did it before the foundation of the world. He made sure you would be holy and blameless when you stand in His presence, and He would make you sons and daughters, and all of that would just be working out…that’s just the kind will that He has brought forth in this universe. This will of His is that all of those things happen to you, a body of believers, and you can’t do anything but stop and say: to the praise of His glory, of His grace. And Paul, you just really ought to stop and let us rest a minute, would you? These things He just told you that you are. And, by the way, the subject is your present state. Not God in the past, nor your second state, nor your first state, but your present state. Can you keep that in mind, please? Would you? This is your present state.

And so, Paul goes on and says He freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved. What did He bestow on the believers in Colossae and Constance? He freely bestowed predestining you, the blamelessness, the holiness, being in His presence, being sons and daughters, and that this was His kind will, and there is His grace, and all of this was without your efforts, bestowed on you…in the Beloved. We have to stop again. With our tongues hanging out. Why did we stop? Because He didn’t say “through the Beloved. He said in the Beloved. Do you know where “in the Beloved” is? That’s inside of Jesus Christ. This great outpouring of His—of that which He freely bestowed on you—I’m not going to repeat them again—happened inside of Jesus Christ. Not through Christ but in Christ.

So, I would like to take the church in Constance and put it where it belongs. Do you know where the church in Constance belongs? Inside of Jesus Christ. He did so many things in God and in Christ, but we’re just going to stop and look at one of them and then be reminded for the rest of the evening. I can promise you that right now, as I look at you through these blurred and unfocused eyes of mine, I’m looking at you; you’re not in Christ. I see you, you, and you. Did Regina get back in here yet? Has she arrived? But these are the wrong eyes. Boy, I tell you, the right eyes always see you in Christ. And when you were a stranger and an alien and foreign to the commonwealth of Israel and without God and without hope in the world and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, He saw you in Christ. Why did He see you there? And why are you there? Because He puts you there before the foundation of the world—to the praise of His grace. Again, if you had worked out a plan, would it have looked like this? Saints, is this not awesome? Alright, we’ll keep on going.

Will we ever get through this? Inside Jesus Christ, we have our redemption through His blood and the forgiveness of our trespasses. And this also, when He was counseled by His own will, and He agreed with His own opinion, was working out exactly as it was planned. And right here we stop as we move toward an end: the fact that you were saved, that you were saved inside of Jesus Christ, that you were saved by the blood of God, that you have forgiveness of your trespasses, that just exactly fits with His plan. It’s just working out according to all of those riches He had in Him before He ever listened to the counsel of His own will and enacted. You were saved, washed, forgiven in Jesus Christ through His blood, your trespasses and sins forgiven, because that just happened to fit perfectly, with lavish, boundless, unfathomable riches in the Lord. If we really understood this, we’d all be jumping up on our chairs and shouting until we were hoarse. Just happened exactly the way He planned it to.

Now, when you go home tonight, and someone says to you, “What did you hear this evening?” I want you to be able to tell them everything you heard, alright? Can you see this brother talking to us, stopping, and then probably running around the room shouting praises? He says, “To the riches of His grace…” Paul, why not stop there? And then he says, “Which God lavishly poured on you.” He took rich grace and drowned you in it. And this is exactly what He planned to do, working out exactly as He planned. He then drowned you in the riches of His grace.

Margaret, am I making any progress at all? Am I? When are you going to lose all this? The first time Darlene treats you mean? And so, we need stewards of His grace to remind us of these things. So may God give brothers and sisters in the church in Chicago to be stewards of His grace, and you are going to be stewards of His grace, or I’m going to come back to Germany and lay the law down on you. You’re going to know grace, and you’re going to drown in it; that’s an order. (laughter)

Oh man, then a new paragraph starts, and it never lets up. “Which He lavished upon us….” Now, to me, the word “in” should be capitalized. “In all wisdom and insight, He made known to us the mystery of His will.” So, right at this moment, we don’t know what the mystery is, but let me explain what this is saying: here is the course of His plan, here is the course of His opinion, the counsel of His will; all of these things that are happening. These riches are strewn like diamonds all along the way. Before He predestined you, God decided to keep what He was doing hidden. Are you following me? He did not decide to just announce this publicly. He hid it. And I want you to know something else: He’s still hiding it. But, to the brothers and sisters in Chicago, and the brothers and sisters who gather in Constance and who will grow, He let you know what His will was. You ready? You know something God kept secret from everybody else. You don’t know it, and you don’t know it, and you don’t know it, and you don’t know it. But you (corporately) know it. If you’re listening to this on tape, I’m talking to each individual who doesn’t know it, but it is given to the church. It is given to the church, and it is given to the church, and it is given to the church, and it is given to the church, and it is given to the church.

This throws a spear, a sword, right through evangelical Christianity. It is given to the church. It cannot possibly mean people sitting on pews listening to a sermon on Sunday morning. It is given to the church to know His will, which He has hidden, has been made known unto you, the church. And what is that mystery? And this is why I thought Paul should just stop right here. That in the working out of His plan, do you see the word “administration”? Are you with me? To the administering, to the working out, to the dispensing, to the carrying out of His will. Man. There will come a moment of pregnancy. When time, pregnant, will burst forth in the pregnancy of time; in the fullness of time, some moment out there time issues forth. Time finds its highest moment, time finds its place and purpose, time finds its purpose and issues forth in the fullness of time, in the fullness of the pregnancy of time…When is that? Right here, I would like to gather all the scholars in the world together and ask them, “When is the fullness of time? I don’t think I can improve on that, brother. In the fullness of time: in the birth of the church.

Now, I have to confess that I need something right now. I need to be there at the fullness of time. I am just going to cut through everything else and say, I’m not willing for that to have happened in the first century, because I don’t care what they learned in the first century. I didn’t learn it in the first century. There had to come a moment of pregnancy, of time, for me.