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God's Plan for Believers Part 2 by Cooper Abrams |
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God's Plan for Believers Part 2 by Cooper Abrams |
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This is not a very optimistic view of the future is it, but it is the result of America having little or no real vision for a productive and peaceful future. The future of America is bleak because Americans are ignoring God and His principles. They do not believe in God and therefore no nothing of His plans for this world in which we are in.
Yet, the Bible gives us a clear picture of God plans for the world down to and including each of us. His plans are plainly revealed in His word the Bible.
I. God has made known to us the mystery of His will. Eph.. 1:9.
2. Therefore a "mystery" in the Bible is a truth that was not previously revealed. It is a truth that God when it was the proper time revealed .
2. In Colossians Paul addresses the truth that was revealed in New Testament times which was that God would call Gentiles to salvation and establish His work through them. God reaching out to the Gentiles was unknown to the Jews. The Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah and God then sent Paul to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. The Jews in less than a hundred years fades off the scene and since it has been Gentiles who have spread the Gospel.
3. So we since Acts 2 and Pentecost have lived in a different dispensation. This dispensation is of God not working with the nation of Israel, but rather believers individually and through local churches. This was God's plan, from the beginning. For example, God told Abraham, specking of the Messiah that "in his seed, all the families of earth would be blessed." This meant not only Abraham's seed as the nation of Israel...but the whole world.
4. The dispensation that Paul is speaking of here refers to the completion of time of God's plan. So it refers to the time from the beginning of the Creation until believers are in eternity.
5. It makes it clear that God will complete His plan and time will continue until all that God has planned it finished. That means the resurrection and eternity for believers. Sadly, it also means eternal damnation for those who reject Jesus Christ.
6. God will in the future gather together saved believers, who are alive and those who have died and are in heaven. God says He will gather them "in Him." That means Christ. The gathering will be through Jesus' sacrifice for our sins...the atonement He made possible for us.
As a note....that also means that there is no other way. God plan is the only plan. The pagan religions, cults and false religions will not save anyone. Only in Christ is their salvation. That is God's plan and there is no other.
The New Testament makes this clear:
"That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians 2:10)
"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)
2. It says we should be to the praise of God.
2. If you see an obedient child that shows respect...that reflects on the parents as well. It is to their credit and they are to be praised.
3. This principle applies in all walks of life. An employee's attribute and how they do their job reflects on their employer. It reflects good or bad.
4. How church members live their lives reflects on their church as well. It can be good or bad.
5. How a professing Christian lives their life reflects on the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation He suffered and died to give us.
6. 1 Corinthians 11:29 instructing in taking the Lord's supper, refers to believers who do not discern the Lord's body. That means the way they live, meaning continually living in sin, show that Christ's suffering on the cross for their sins means little or nothing to them. They know every sin that commit Jesus had to suffer for...but without regard or discerning His suffering they sin anyway.
This is a part of salvation. God indwells the believer and is their always aiding him as he fights sin in his life. The moment of temptation God provides the means of escape....every time without fail. So believers do not have to sin.
2. The believer who shuns sin, who prayerfully lives in the strength that God gives him bring honor to our God and Creator. The Christian then is a "praise to His glory."
2. God is absolutely righteous and holy. He can do no wrong. He cannot break and promise and being our Creator who spoke the universe into being...He has the power to make good His promise.
3. Therefore God has promised all who would believe in Jesus Christ that He would forgive their sins and give them eternal life. Yet, we are still in our moral bodies and on earth. Although "born again" we have not seen the promise actually fulfilled. But God promise is the "earnest", guarantee or His pledge that what He promise will be completed.
2. When a believer believes God and puts his faith in God's promises he can be assured , that as God's adopted son or daughter, his sins are all forgiven, forgotten, and he has received eternal life.
3. To the Christian...this is shouting ground! What a wonderful thing we who have believed have received.
4. To the unsaved....this is a wonderful promise that God is personally making to you. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. You can put the matter of your eternal destination to rest...right now, but believing and accepting God's grace.
Introduction: In 1989, Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of the State said, "More than at any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads--one path leading to despair and utter hopelessness, the other leading to total destruction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." (Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, U. S. News and World Report, Jan. 9, 1989)
A. What is the mystery? The word is "musterion" (moos-tay'-ree-on) It means "something that is primarily known to the initiated." In the New Testament it means something that "is outside the unassisted natural apprehension, that can only be known by divine revelation." Normally, the ordinary sense of the word means knowledge withheld, but Scripturally it implies knowledge that is revealed. (Vines)
II. What did God predestinate? Eph.. 1:12
1. Note what God says in Colossians 1:26-29 "Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily." (Colossians 1:25-29)
B. What is the "dispensation of the fulness of times."
1. A "dispensation" literally means a "management of a household of affairs." In other words it denotes a stewardship of something. We live in what is called the dispensation called the Church Age. Before the New Testament times, God worked in the dispensation of the Old Testament. He worked differently with the nation of Israel than He does Christians today who gather in "ekklesia" or churches. Israel was under the Moses Law, called the Mosaic Law which was their constitution and civil law that government then as a nation of people. Assemblies of Christians today are not a nation. Thus we live in a period of time in which God is working differently than He did in the period of the Old Testament.
D. God plan gives the believer an inheritance. Eph.. 1:11
The verse specifically says what God predestinated was that believers would have an inheritance. Further the verse says this plan God predestinated was His will.
A. Verse 12 makes it plan, believers should be to the "praise of his glory."
Conclusion.
1. It says nothing about predestination of who would be saved, but what salvation would accomplish.
B. Earlier in verse 5, God said He predestinated believers to the adoption of sons. Verse 12, says that the adopted sons should be to the praise of God and Jesus Christ.
1. A child's behavior reflects how he is raised. Modern psychology my want to disagree with that, but for the most part that is true. If a child is taught love in the home, they will show that in their lives. There are incidences where that is not 100% true, because sometimes children mature and as adult who learn better reject their negative upbringing.
C. Believers are given a new nature that they do not have to sin.
1. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." (1 Corinthians 10:13).
D. Belief in Jesus Christ assures one of salvation and the absolute confidence that when they die they will go to heaven and that God will keep His promise. Eph.. 1:13-14
1. Verse 14, says this the "earnest" of our inheritance. When someone offers to purchase something often they give "earnest money" to seal the deal. The earnest of one's salvation is the "seal" of verse 13. It is God's absolute promise.
1. God plan is clear and His promise is infrangible, which means it cannot be broken.
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