The Ephesians Story (Part 6)

Continued from Part 5 –

In the ultimate consummation, all things are brought back into Him. That’s still going to be grace. And it’s grace, it’s grace, it’s grace. And I wish I could get something and inject this into you so it could never, never leave you. I just want to plead with you. I want to cry. I want to cry out to you and say, “Know grace. Learn grace. Accept grace. Embrace grace. For pity’s sake, believe. Look what marvelous things He has done in you, through you, to you, for you. In Him, by Him, through Him, for Him, that your history is so uniquely His and not your own. If you can’t remember anything else I said, will you please remember that grace existed before the foundation of the world, and you didn’t exist until He caused you to be birthed in the heavens, and He reckons your first birth as a stillborn, born death, to be born from above. Shall I enter my mother’s womb and be born a second time? No, you must be born from above. For if you are not born from above, you cannot see. There was a moment on the day you got saved, what we call salvation, where you actually had a portion of God inseminated into you, out of the heavens, into your spirit, which was still in the heavens, but also located in your body, and you were born in heaven. You were born in heaven, and there’s a part of you that’s never left that place. Say, “Praise the Lord.” You were born in another realm, a spiritual, eternal realm.

Well, do you know what I would do if I were you? I would memorize all this, and I would never forget it as long as I live. So that we can all see it and read it from one another. Our paraclete that hangs between our eyes. What you see is not real. And the old saying, “What you see is what you get,” that’s not true in this case. What you see is not what I am. Praise His name. Yes, sir.

Audience: I’m going to ask a question that I think has got to be true for everybody here. Why can we not accept that that grace is real?

I don’t know why we can’t accept that grace as being real, but I can tell you this, brother, going back to the alcoholic, how do you get an alcoholic to quit being an alcoholic? And that’s to get him to try to help someone else, not to be an alcoholic. And brother, I, in the house of God, have to be because of the fallen nature of my body, of my flesh, I have to be reminded, for my flesh constantly screams condemnation where there is no condemnation, and that’s what the ekklesia does. I wouldn’t say that’s what it’s here for; it’s one of its purposes, and that’s for us to be a paraclete to one another, to remind one another, to encourage one another with these words.

And you know, one of the things that needs to really be restored, brother, is the gift of exhortation. Now, if you want to chase a gift, disagreeing with Paul here for a second, it should be the gift of exhortation for brothers and sisters to remind one another of who they are. Do you have an exhorter in the church? Is that right? This brother can exhort, brother. Stir up the gift. I’m serious. Stir up the gift. I remember a brother who stirred up the gift of exhortation, and man, that brother could send us to heaven, reminding us of who we were. Praise His name. Well, we need exhorters and encouragers. We need sons of encouragement to remind us of these things. And brother, I would only say it is because we’re constantly screamed at, condemnation, by our flesh and Baptist preachers. Well, is it not true? Try five Sundays in the first anybody’s church, and sometimes, within those five Sundays, you’re going to get condemnation thrown at you. Just when is the last time you led somebody to Jesus Christ? And how much time do you pray? And how much time do you spend in the Word? And only $105 came in here in this offering this month.

That was my point. How much have you given? And we get help from our wives, and we get help from our husbands. And you know something, the hardest person in the world to encourage is your spouse. Say amen to that. You get in your fights with one another and tell one another what a buzzard you are and how you failed me, and so on, and then it’s hard to come back and cover all that up and say you’re holy and really mean it and you’re a new creation and you’re blameless. And again, that’s why we need the church, but we need to make a covenant with one another to remind one another, not only that you burned my eggs this morning, and you left me at the train station with the keys in your pocket, and all I had on was a robe and some curlers in my hair and a locked car 30 miles from my home without a penny in my pocket. You know, these are grounds for divorce right here. We do need to remind one another, and we need to be reminded. And it’s not easy.

I haven’t even read the first verse yet. This was what I left out last night. Boy, isn’t the Lord wonderful? Now to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved, now freely. Just take everything you’ve heard so far, and you’ve got it without charge. But Steve, we have to understand that He was in a miserly mood that day and He begrudgingly gave. Just barely was up to giving you that. Now, is that true? No. You’re going to find out in the next verse, brother, that He gave it lavishly. His grace, His pre-selection of you, the sonship was all freely given to you. This is a freely; that is freely freely. This is an unhindered freeness. You know how you have never noticed that when a beggar comes up to you, you suddenly become very poor? And you know that feeling, and a quarter is as big as a wagon sheet. You’re looking for a nickel or a dime, and you finally give him begrudgingly; you give 25 cents. Well, that’s not the way the Lord gave you these graces and mercies. He freely gave these to you, but I want you to look at the rest of this verse, which He freely bestowed on us.

(Speaking to audience member) Are you “in”, or are you the Father? Are you Christ? Which one were you last night up here?

Audience: Father.

You’re the Father. Who was the Son? Who counted the Son? He’s not here? Okay, and the “in”, Who’s in? He’s not here. I got to come back to this. Let’s say that you have more inferiority complexes than anyone else in the whole world. Okay, that’s you. Alright. Let’s say that you have a basement eye view of yourself. Well, then, can you have a high view of Christ? Take a really high view of Christ. I want to come back to this again. Here is the Father and in the center of the Father is the Son. He’s in the Father. Why do you figure the Father put Him there at His center, at the heart of His heart? At the center of His being. Why did He do that? Because He loves Him. Because He loved Him. And Jesus said, “I was loved by the Father before the foundation of the world.” He was the beloved of the Father before the foundation of the world, and I just want you to know the Father loves the Son. All I have to tell you is that the Father loves the Son more than you and I can ever understand. And when He freely gave you all these things that He lavished upon you, where were you? Say it, Gene. Where were you? You were in the one so loved. Well, say, “Praise the Lord.” Where were you? Well, I’ll tell you where you were.