— Brother Phil Enlow: It’s amazing how many times I come to a men’s meeting and what I have on my heart is already there and it’s being expressed. I think it was more so today than usual. But I’m trusting the Lord this morning, more than usual, I think. And that’s a good thing. Because I believe the Lord is wanting His people to be set free, to be able to live for Him and serve Him in this time.
You know, last week we talked about Satan’s dream and God’s purpose. And kind of toward the end, we got to a point where I was saying something to the effect that God has allowed us, He has ordained that you and I live now. We weren’t assigned to the 1800s or to some other period of history. God has us alive now and it’s for a reason. And I believe we are, coming closer and closer to the end of the age. I don’t have any dates for you. God told us just to be ready, didn’t He?
( congregational amens ).
He didn’t say we’re going know the time. We will know the times and seasons. And I believe we can see the way things are shaping up. But I don’t know what all God has. But I do know that He wants a people who are alive and awake…
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…able to, as we’ve heard in the past, make the midnight cry and say, He’s coming, be ready. But also, He’s not done…He’s not done sharing the Gospel with people and reaching out and changing hearts and lives.
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There will come a time when that voice will cease, people will have made up their mind, and the scripture in Revelation will be fulfilled where the voice said, let him that is sinful, be sinful still. I’m paraphrasing. Let him that’s righteous, be righteous still. There’s gonna come a time when everybody will be in one camp or the other. But I believe with all my heart, God is reaching out.
And I believe the things that Brother Steven shared, and shared downstairs, and others did as well, are very, very central to that. There’s a scripture that I’m going to get to, that I thought about last week and I realized after I sat down, hey, I meant to use that scripture. Well, that’s kind of the one that comes back now, because it has to do with this very thing, about God’s people being here for a purpose and a reason…this is not just happenstance.
And the Kingdom of God does not consist of ‘the ministry’ and ‘the people.’ as though you’re just digits sitting there listening. God wants…God has a place in His Kingdom for every single believer.
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And He wants us to learn how to enter into that. Christianity has been institutionalized. It’s been turned into man-made traditions and organizations, where we have this structure and everybody just learns how to fit into the structure and do the stuff, believe the doctrines. God wants to set His people free, not just to run here and there, but to be free to follow Him.
You know, I’ve said many times, Jesus didn’t do things the same way twice. We tend to do them in the same way a thousand times. But I believe the Lord’s helping us, don’t you?
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Because we don’t want to jump in the other ditch, and everybody run off doing their own thing and it’s just us doing it. That’s the other side of it. But I believe with all my heart there has to be a foundation. And, I guess the scriptures that we’ve used so many times, but they’re needful…there’s not a person here who knows the Lord, who doesn’t fight the battles that Steven describes. Every single one of us fights. And whether it’s a particular thing in our past, or a thing we’re dealing with today, we are in need of salvation in some fashion, every single day.
( congregational amens ).
Now, being born again, that’s a one-time thing, but I’m talking about the growing and the changing and the things that God needs to do in our lives. I don’t know anybody here that’s arrived. I certainly haven’t. And I discover things more and more that the Lord has to deal with. But the thing is, if we ever forget the foundation, man, it’s a rough battle!
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How many know what I’m talking about? If you forget who you really are in Christ and what He has done, and that begins to be compromised in the slightest in your mind, then there’s an issue. There is room for the devil to work. And the way he typically does that, is not to say, oh, that’s not true. He just says, that’s not true of you…because, and then he will enumerate his arguments.
And God wants a people to come to the place where we put all of our hope in Jesus, period! End of story! That stain ain’t coming back! Once the bleach goes in, the stain is gone! God has thrown it into the sea of forgetfulness.
And you know you’ve heard the expression, ‘don’t go fishing in the sea of forgetfulness.’ God has forgotten the things that are a part…that He has cleansed. And thank God, He did it! Anyway, I’m just gonna go ahead and read some of this scripture that we’re so familiar with in Ephesians. How many times have we heard this? But how many times do we need to hear this? I need this this morning, do you? Anybody here?
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Yeah. Verse 3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us…” (NIV). Now I want to stop and say, don’t you have this “gospel for everybody else but not for me” in your mind when you read words like this. ‘Us’ means ‘us.’
Paul is talking…now think about for a minute who Paul is that’s writing this. Think about his past. Now he declared by the inspiration of the Spirit that he was the worst sinner ever. So, don’t you think of yourself that way. That title has already been taken and God saved him, and turned him into a mighty servant of God. God can do anything, because it’s not our power, it’s not our virtue, it’s not anything that’s in us.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will….” Everything comes out of…do you see that? Do you get the sense of that? That everything comes out of His heart. Not one part depends upon us.
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Thank God! It comes from Him, doesn’t it?
( congregational amens ).
All right. “…To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have…” That’s a present tense possession, folks. “…We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance…” or agreement with, “…the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”
Wow! Paul’s just struggling for words there, isn’t he? If you look in the original, this is a run-on sentence if there ever was one. He just doesn’t know how to end the sentence!
“With all wisdom and understanding….” Boy, I’m glad He understands, don’t you…aren’t you? And He knows how to figure out every problem, the ones that cause us such trouble. “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will…” again, based upon His good pleasure, “…according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”
Wow! I don’t see anything in there that depends on some virtue in me, or some knowledge, some ability, some anything. This comes from the heart of our Creator! God help us to reckon on that and remember and include ourselves in all the us’s of this passage. I’m preaching to me, as well as to you. Praise God!
“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we…” Where’s he going with this, in other words? “…In order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” It’s certainly not for ours. We have nothing to boast about, do we?
( congregational amens ).
“And you also were included in Christ….” Now this is the experiential side of it. You know, we see the heart of God before time, but there has to come a point in history when this becomes personal. And I’ll ask, has it become personal with you? If it hasn’t this needs to be the one thing you’re concerned about. Praise God!
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel…” or the Good News, “…of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”
Praise God! Simply put, that means if you’re His, if you’ve really been born of His Spirit, God put a mark on you, that no devil can counter! That mark says, that one’s mine! Devil, you can’t have him. You can’t have her.
( congregational amens ).
I’m guaranteeing, not only their present, where they’re at right now, but I’m guaranteeing how this is turning out.
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See, that’s…we’ve got to see this through God’s eyes. That’s why Paul’s expressing this. He longs to see the Ephesian church share the vision of the reality of what God had given to him. Praise God! All right? “…To the praise of his glory.”
And then of course, his prayer…I’m not going to read all of this, but the prayer that he has, that God would open their wisdom and give them the understanding that they needed to really appreciate the power of God that is available to be at work in us.
What is that power? How do you…what do you compare it to? How do you see it in action? Well, what Paul says, is we see the power of God in action by what happened when Jesus was in that tomb, and all hell meant to keep him there! And all hell couldn’t do it!
Folks, all hell can’t steal you from Jesus if you belong to Him! Do you belong to Him? Have you given Him your heart and your life? That’s the key. But oh, the power that God expressed, not just to bring him out of a tomb, give Him a new life, a life that cannot die, but He didn’t leave him there! He has caused Him to ascend into the heavens, and to sit on a throne.
I’m sure that…I don’t think it’s a chair sitting in heaven somewhere, but whatever it is, it’s a place of authority! Jesus…we’ve quoted this so many times, where Jesus said, all power, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And that’s where he says, go therefore. So, everything flows from the heart and the purpose of God, accomplished at the cross, and made known to us.
Folks, if you are building your life on anything else, you’re building on sinking sand. If we are sort of acknowledging this in a vague sense, but not really embracing it as, this applies to me. I was one of the ones God was thinking about all back there. Oh my!
If we’re going to be the people of God in this hour, we’ve got to get the foundation right, because God said in the prophets, he was laying a foundation in Zion. And this was a sure foundation! This was not like the religion that was prevalent in the day, that was just a bunch of man-made rules. This was God’s foundation and those who put their trust in that would never come to ruin, never be ashamed, never come to the place and say, boy, I was a fool to trust in that.
Man, we’re gonna have our eyes so opened one day that we will just fall down in amazement at the mercy and the grace of God, and what He’s done for us! So anyway, but the thing that always gets me out of this particular passage…I’m gonna get to the next one. But the thing that always gets me, he comes down to the end and he talks about the power that he expressed through Christ and what He’s done and then he says basically, He did all that for you!
He wants you to know that that power that’s in Him is available to us. May God help us to avail ourselves of it and believe it! I’ll guarantee, there’s not a person here who knows the Lord, who isn’t struggling with something in your life.
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Yeah. Let’s just be honest. We need the Lord!
( congregational amens ).
And I pray that the Scripture that Brother Steven read, in Romans 6…God has given us a place where we can walk in newness of life. But we need to get this! God needs to reveal it to our hearts in a deeper way so we can actively believe it, and receive it.
You know, it is a process, isn’t it? We know that. But…we need to see the foundation, so we constantly go back to that and realize, hey, I’m on a foundation. I don’t care, the winds and waves are blowing, the doubts are coming, the Devil’s trying to flood my mind with this and with that, but my foundation stands sure because I didn’t place it, I didn’t build this foundation!
This isn’t something…this isn’t philosophy that I came up with to make me feel better. This is something God did! The greatest power in the universe! The only real power in the universe.
Okay, so where were we, from a real experiential standpoint, when the Gospel came to us? Did He go out and look for good people? Yeah, there are no good people, not by God’s standard.
“As for you…” chapter 2, “…you were dead in your transgressions and sins….” Dead is kind of a serious condition, isn’t it? This is not somebody who could help themselves. This isn’t a deal where God says, here are the principles, here are the rules. You follow these, and everything will be good. Your life will be better and you’ll have a purpose in life. This is somebody who is so far gone, so out of…beyond help, they’re dead.
As far as the purposes of God are concerned, “…you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” And that’s what we’re seeing in the world. It’s taken over.
“All of us….” All of us! Now Paul’s including himself, isn’t he? All of us! “All of us also lived among them at one time….” Now, I don’t care if you grew up in this church and you’re a good person. Again, there are no good people, by the true standard. But sometimes that can mask your need.
If you have a real past and you’ve been out there, you know, there’s an appreciation for what God has done for you. I mean, I grew up in the providence of God, I grew up in a preacher’s home. That doesn’t make me any better than anybody else. I have the same nature, the same need.
But you know, sometimes you can grow up and not realize your need. You know, the greatest thing God can do for you is to let you fall in the mud, sometimes, until you see, oh my God, I’m a sinner. I need a Savior!
( congregational amens ).
I pray that if that’s you, if you don’t know your need that God will show you out of His love and mercy, show you that you need what we’re talking about this morning. Because you do! The world is full of people who’ve said, no.
“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh…” That’s one of the biggies that the world is after. Oh, if it feels good, do it, follow it. “…And following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”
That is a pretty good description of the condition of the world. Now I know there’s a time when people who come along in ignorance. But I’ll tell you, there’s a time when God shines the light one way or another upon a heart, and that’s when people begin to be truly responsible. I’m gonna let God sort all of that out.
But I know that there is a…the condition of the human heart is beyond our ability to understand. I don’t think we really get it, particularly if we’ve grown up in a comfortable environment, and we hear the Word of God and we sing the songs, we just don’t have any idea what’s really going on here. But I’ll tell you, this is a desperate, desperate, needy world. And it’s only God that can do anything about it.
“But because…” What is the cause of what He’s doing? “…Because of his great love for us….” Not because He found something good in us, He didn’t. Not because He saw potential in us. Oh, if I recruit that one, they can help Me out in My kingdom. My God! We have nothing but ourselves to give to Him!
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Nothing! There’s nothing I could possibly present and say, Lord, here it is. I’ll trade this for eternal life. “…Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy…” He, “…made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…”
Who did all this? Suppose God had just stood back and let things…let events play out? There is not a single person who’s here or may ever hear this, not one single person who would ever escape the condition that prevails in this world. And the end of that condition is death. That’s it!
And you wouldn’t even know it. You would think you were living for some valid purpose. I’m trying to make myself something. I’m following my desires, I’m trying to be happy! And you have no idea what’s going on. But God intervened!
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Thank God! He’s the one who took the initiative, because without His initiative, we would have nothing! “…Made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” And I’ve got to put this in, because I’ve seen over the years, I feel like grace has been misunderstood. It’s just a kindly, accepting attitude on God’s part. Grace is God’s intervention!
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His grace is what works on my heart to make me aware of my need! It’s the influence and the power of His Spirit at work in my life. You can call it grace because I don’t deserve it! But grace is a real force, that invades my life, convicts me, and then not only convicts me, it gives me the power to believe!
I don’t even have the power to do that! That’s why the scripture says, “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” (KJV). Today is the day of salvation! That’s the only answer, because if God stops dealing with a heart, you don’t have the power to do it. You don’t even want to, let alone would you have the power if you did. I need God’s help!
The only answer that exists is for God to invade my life, show me my need, empower me to believe. Now He doesn’t overpower my will if I’m hard-hearted and resist it! You can do despite to the grace of God! But oh, praise God, that He has the will and the heart and the motive and the love that brings Him to that place of reaching down to me. because I don’t deserve it, and I could never deserve it!
“…It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us…” (NIV). This is past tense, folks. We don’t see ourselves the way God does. God has put us in a place that we don’t see. “…God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…”
But why? Why did He do that? “…In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” And this isn’t going to end. Ages to come.
I don’t have any idea what God’s planned. But I know it’s gonna be good. And I know there won’t be any sin, there won’t be any death, there won’t be any sorrow or sickness or age or anything else. It’s gonna be exactly what God wants.
And we will walk with Him in white because He had done it! He has done it, folks. Are you relying on that in a practical sense? Or is this just doctrine? This has got to get beyond doctrine with every single one of us, that God has laid a foundation that you and I can stand upon, and our sins can be gone!
