The book of Ephesians, even though it's not the book of Ephesians, it's a general epistle, in Ephesus wasn't written in the early manuscripts at all. It was just left out for whatever church ever received this letter when it was sent out. Basically, they copied it mostly at Ephesus and sent it out all over. We're going to read this from the Amplified Bible to just about four verses here. And I'll see if I can cover them. The whole first chapter of the book of Ephesians is on election and predestination. And you can't hardly read that without covering some of that. Verse number 11, in him also we have received an inheritance, a destiny. We were claimed by God as his own, having been predestined, chosen, appointed beforehand according to the purpose of him, who works everything in agreement with the counsel and design of his will, so that we who were first to hope in Christ, who first put our confidence in him as our Lord and Savior, would exist to the praise of his glory in him also when you heard the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, as a result believed in him were stamped with the seal of the promise of the Holy Spirit, the one promised by Christ, as owned and practiced and protected by God. The Spirit is the guarantee, the first installment, the pledge, the foretaste of our inheritance until the redemption of God's own purchase, possession, His believers to the praise of His glory. fantastic statement. The book of Ephesians is a heavenly letter. It is a letter that just brings you from earth to heaven. It lifts you up from the world we live in today all the way up to the heavens. Now we're going to read this from the Greek language. Greek language is the Bible was written in Greek. It wasn't written in English. It's been translated into English. It's been Translated in many languages, but it's inspired in the original language There's where the inspiration of the Bible comes in the plenary complete inspiration complete inspiration of God In the whole Chi a clay roll face and Damon Pros restantes, cata, prothesin, tu ta panta inergontes, cata tene bulle, tu thelamatos auto. Romans 8, 28 through 30, this is all in here. It's just Acts 17, 4, Ephesians 3 and 11. These are all things in the book of Revelation, where it talks about He wrote our names in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world, and that's way back yonder in eternity past, where heaven and earth was created in eternity past, not in space and time. The earth is not 6,000 years old. The earth was created in eternity past, and then it was destroyed in eternity past by Satan. Now, Romans 8, 28 through 30. Let's look at that for just a moment. Because that's a beautiful statement also. If I can find it here in this Bible, I haven't used this one as much. Romans 8, 28, and this is the Amplified Bible, and we know with great confidence that God, who is deeply concerned about us, causes all things to work together as a plan for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and His purpose. Those whom He foreknew and He loved, who chose beforehand, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. and ultimately share in his complete sanctification so that he would be the firstborn of the most beloved and honored among many believers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified, declared free from guilt and sin. And those whom he justified, he also glorified, raising them to a heavenly dignity. What shall we then say to all of these things? If God is for us, who can be successfully against us? Beautiful, beautiful. This is just everything we read here in Paul's writing about this beautiful choice of God, the choice of God. We talked about superlapsarian, infralapsarian, and sublapsarian Calvinism. I am a Calvinist. I'm a modified sublapsarian. I, uh, Baptists were, were believed in the security of believer predestination for nation and all that before Calvin was ever born. Period. But because Calvin did so much writing and everything, the world classifies us as Calvinist or Armenian. And then I've talked about sub, superlapsarian, infralapsarian, sublapsarian. I am a Reldians. I'm a Reldian. and Lutheranism and Wesleyanism. These are all the gamut of God's purpose from one end to the other, from very conservative to radical left, so to speak. God created man. He declared, his decrees were, God created man. We're going to do it just from the biblical standpoint, okay? He decreed to create man. He decreed to permit the fall of man. He decreed to provide the ransom prize for all mankind. He decreed to elect those he foreknew to believe to election. He decreed to convict the world of sin through the Holy Spirit. He decreed to regenerate those who believe. Those are some of the degrees. We are all when we're born into this world, whether you're the elect or not, whether you, and I believe the election of God depends on how you respond to God, too. There is a response that you, how you respond to God. The Bible says that God will convict all man of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come, and the Holy Spirit works upon all mankind, everywhere. Everybody in the world, originally, except if you teach them to be atheists, all believe in God. From the darkest parts of Africa and even in the Amazon jungles and whatever, people believe in God. That's just something you do, because there's something in mankind that draws this intuition that draws you to God. All man. Biblical, basically, systematic theology teaches you that. God's revelation is that God reveals himself to all mankind from his innermost parts. Number two, that God reveals himself to mankind through his creation. That God reveals mankind through special revelation and through the prophets. Not anything this side of the New Testament, by the way. There are no prophets today. There hasn't been since the final book of the Bible was written. The revelation, we don't need it anymore. And also, God revealed himself to mankind through his prophets, and then through his specific revelations through the prophets, and that's where we get the word of God. And God does all this to reach all man. Now, in eternity past, God knew who would believe. And he wrote their names in the Lamb's Book of Life. And he elected every man, all men, for only one way of salvation, and that was through his son. That all men, through his son, the price of salvation would be paid. But it's only efficacious to those that respond and believe. And that's not Arminianism. That's the Bible. 1st John 2 and 2, as we said last time. In whom, in preposition, page 137, whom, locative, singular, masculine, relative, pronoun, there, ho, chi, also here now, it's a cumulative particle, not a conjunction, page 208, ek-lay-ro-the-man, first person plural, first person, indicative, passive, voice. We were calls to be picked out. That's it. We were called to be picked up. I want you to picture this. Now, mankind, from the very beginning, has been a herder. He's been a herder. H-E-R-D-E-R, okay? Herder. He herds things. Now, Marilyn, you used to herd sheep around, didn't you? Yeah, she doctored sheep. She herded them all over. Well, there's shepherds, and the Bible talks about a boker. A voker in the Bible is an animal that can pull a plow, that can break the ground, because voker means to break. It means an animal big enough like a horse, a mule, an ox, whatever, big enough. In some places they even used to use elephants to build farm implements with, camels. An animal big enough to break the ground, and then all the other ones are sheep and goats, little ones. You know, they, you can't get a sheep or a goat to do much, even though they used to take, when I was young, they'd have goats pulling little carts around. It's, remember that, Maryland. They have them, and you take your picture in the, sitting in the cart with a goat. Well, mankind has been a herder. These are herding terms here. It talks about this. Marilyn, if you wanted to doctor a lamb or a goat, you had some goats, too, for a while. We had some goats. You had to go pick them out, didn't you? You had to pick the one out. You're going to doctor this animal, so you go pick him out and herd him over in the corner. And that's what it's talking about here. In whom also we were picked, calls to be picked out. That comes from ek and clero. And then here's another word now. Pro-o-ri-stentes. This is nomine plural masculine, first hours participle passive voice. We were calls to be branded. We were being appointed, branded. This word means to mark off, to corral. So here we're picked out and we're corralled. You had to do this, didn't you? When the sheep herder or the sheep shearer used to come and shear your sheep, you had to corral them, didn't you? Get them in the corral, and the shearer said, how did you do that? You worked with them so easy. Because they were used to working with you. You're used to corralling them. There were calls to be corralled, marked off. And this happened in eternity past. because God knew who would believe. He's omniscient, isn't He? Isn't He omniscient? If He knows everything, that's simple. The churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, the family of God, all that would be saved, all that would reject God, were all in the mind of God in eternity past before He ever created anything. Simple as that. According to Kata, little preposition on page 144, He, uh, it means placed beforehand, predestined. It's praised, uh, page 344 in the Analects of Pro Thasin. It means to place beforehand. It comes from pro antithemine. Pro means before, antithemine means to place. He placed beforehand. Now, this is another word here for the showbread in the Septuagint also. The showbread was placed placed in the tabernacle so that God will always, always be looking upon his people. Let me show you that in this little map here. Here is the tabernacle. Right here is a table of showbread. It was always in the presence of God. Always in the presence of God. Always in his light. Here's the table of showbread there. And the same word in the Septuagint is used for that. According to the predetermined purpose of the things, all, of all things, and then in their guntes, that's present participle, active, genitive, singular, operating all things, there we got a word energy from this word right here energy from this word according to the bule bule bule that means uh to thank to wish it means to purpose according to the council of the Thelematos, the spiritual Thelematos, I always translate this as the spiritual activating force of him. Redeeming us. Redeeming us. Saving us. This is all in this predetermined counsel of God. this inheritance number one and twelve now a stole a nay he moss a's upon all don't say how to tools pro l pico toss in toll crystal some of this is a are some of this is a Hebrew isms here on that to be Ace, extension and limitation of the thought of verbal action. It introduces this clause of purpose here. In reference to, for the purpose of, our lives will cause the Lord to be praised when we're saved. Our lives will cause the Lord to be saved. The end result is to cause the Lord to be saved. or to be praised. Commendation there is what that word Eponim means. It means like we sing praises to God. Epi and Einos. The glory, Gdotsos, that means the glory. It is the idea of the afterglow of God. In the book of Exodus in the 34th chapter and the first few verses there, Moses asked God, he tells him, first of all, he tells him, he said, now I'm going down there to Israel now, you know, they've been away from you for a long time, they've been down there for 400 years, et cetera, et cetera, and who, they don't know who you are. They've been exposed to all these gods of Egypt, now if they won't know who you are, who should I say sent me? What is your name? And he said, Asher, Hayah, Asher. He said, I am that I am. I am the eternal, ever-existing one. The eternal, ever-existing one. And then he said, after all of this was settled, then he said, show me your glory. And then God explained to him, you know, Moses, you cannot see my glory. You have to be protected from my glory. My glory will destroy you. It is powerful. It is pure holiness. It is pure light. It's like trying to stand in the very presence of the sun. You will dissolve. And so God said, stand over there. I'm going to make a cut in that rock. You stand in that cut place in that rock, that split place in that rock. And he said, after I go by, you can see my afterglory. You can't see my glory. He said, you can't see my prosepolis right face to face. It'll kill you. But you can see the comet, the tail of the comet as I go by. And that's what he's talking about, the glory. Now, in the Lord's churches today, guess what? We get to see the glory of God. We can take it, because we have been redeemed. We can see the glory of God in people's lives. How God saves people. The glory belonging to Him. Alto, genitive, singular, masculine, third person pronoun. And then it says, and to the ones having been previously marked off beforehand. Pro el pique cotas. Accused a plural masculine, perfect participle and active voice. Having been previously beforehand hoped or looked into, into the Christ Now this is this word here this pro-l pico toss That's an that is a Hebraism because this is like a future perfect and here Wow consecutive perfect in Greek Wow consecutive perfect it may be future God speaks in the Old Testament as if things were future and He said, you're gonna go up on this mountain, you will have gone up on this mountain, and you will have done this and you will have done that. That's future perfect, okay? It's a completed action, but it's future perfect. You will have done it. And now, we are going to be marked off beforehand, we're gonna be branded, we're gonna be corralled and kept in Christ, in the anointed one. An old future perfect. Jews and Gentiles, both. All mankind that have trusted in Jesus Christ for their salvation and for God's dealing with your life. When you surrender your life to God, you surrender your life to God. Simple as that. You can go the wrong way, but God's never going to let you be peaceful with it. You're going to be trouble until you go the right way. Verse number 13, now this is a very beautiful verse also. En ho kai himes. Akuosontes ton logon teis aletheos. To yongleon teis soterios. Himon en ho kai pisiontes. Es phragiste te. Now this is something. In whom, preposition, a little locative singular relative pronoun whole there, page 444 in the lexicon. Also another Chi here is not a conjunction, but it is also it's a human different particle here page 208 and then you all it says you all Gentiles is what he's talking about here. You all Gentiles nominee plural second-person pronoun Having heard Nominee plural masculine first airs participle active having heard the word of the truth Aletheia's what does truth mean Aletheia's mean Aletheia and No shadow. You got light from every side. I was in a few movies. Not very many, but a few real movies. Hollywood type. And I was so astounded. The last one that I was in was down here in Chalifont Valley. I pulled in there. Doug DiGrazio was the director, and Rip Torn was the main actor, and there's other people in there. And I was an Indian, of course. I had long hair then. And I had a coat on, I had a little beadwork around the edge of the collar and stuff that I had done. And I walked in there and I said, I need to get some gasoline. What's going on here? They had the place all covered up, but they had that light. There wasn't a shadow in that place, not a shadow. Nowhere, no shadows. If they want shadows in something, they're gonna put it there. But there was no shadows in that place. The whole place was completely covered up and there was probably 20 or 30,000 watts of lights in there. all over the place. They said, we want you to go in there and we want you to stand behind Rip Torn and you have to sign this big paper here and all this kind of stuff. And the name of the movie was Stallions. Well anyway, I walked in there and I stood in there and I didn't do anything. Rip Torn was going up there and he was going, making noises like that and he was going to buy something. Out there in the front was his car that he had with a hole in the radiator. and out of oil and all this kind of stuff. And I was supposed to stand behind him. And I didn't know what I was doing there, except that Doug told me later on that I was the star of that scene. He said, you were the star of that scene. I said, how was I star of that scene? You had everything together. You're out there in your Jeep pickup. And you got it all together. You're ready to go into the wilderness. There is nothing that's going to stop you. And he's here. And he's helpless. And he don't know how to even check his oil. Had to get somebody to do that for him. hardly knows how to put gas in his car. He said, you got it all together, and he doesn't have it together. That was the story, and I was the hero of that little scene there. At Aletheia, there was no shadow anywhere. No shadows. They had lights everywhere. And even when I used to watch some of the old movies out here, and it's down the road about 100 miles, is the Alabama Hills. And we've been all over those Alabama Hills. Sharon and Marilyn and I, we've been over the Alabama Hills out there. And even in the sunshine, when the Roy Rogers or Gene Autry or whoever was out there, Hopalong, Kathy, or whatever, they had reflectors shining where there was no shadows. No shadows. Aletheia. It says, in whom also ye, having heard the word of the truth, no shadows. There's no hidden words. There's no fine print of the gospel. Yon-ga-le-on. Comes from you, epsilon. Oops-a-lon there, epsilon. And then on-ga-los. On-ga-los means message. The upon, the good message. The good message is that I want you to think about All the other gods of the cults and isms now. The Catholic, you got a god up there that is, he's going to send you to hell, and the only way you can get out of hell is to pray to Mary, because Mary is Jesus, the mother of God, and so she's going to tell Jesus, hey, take it easy on this guy, you know, and he's going to listen to his mama. You can't go to him yourself, you've got to talk to mama first. Now, that's just not so. That's not the God of the Bible. That's not the God of the Bible. He's not made up that way. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. That's the God of the Bible. And you've got the Mormons. You've got the Mormons up there that think God is so far away up here. He is so far ahead of you. Well, see, you're a God, an embryo. Now, you can never catch up to him because he's too far ahead of you, but you can start your own world. You can create an atom and put there, and you can bring yourself into this human race and et cetera, et cetera. And Joseph Smith said he was a descendant of Jesus Christ who married Magdalene. Of course, Da Vinci Code and all that kind of stuff, boy, that made them all excited because here, boy, we told you this all the time. Well, that's not what happened. That's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible comes to you. You've always got to struggle to get to Him. Your Jehovah Witnesses are struggling and working, working, trying to get into the Kingdom. But God comes to you. It says, when the fullness of time had come, Galatians 4 and 4, that God sent forth His Son, made of womb and made under the law, that He might redeem those that were under the curse of the law. God came to us. He wants to love you. God wants to love you. For God to love the world, that means the whole cosmos. He loved the whole world that he had created. He's going to redeem it all back to himself. And the truth is in the gospel. The gospel of the salvation of you all. The solterios. The salvation. The buying back. We already saw where he bought us out. He paid our ransom costs. the rat he ransomed us by his own blood in whom also having believed now look at this nominee pearl mask and first errors part of simple acting by the way salvation is not a gradual thing it is punctilious action extreme punctilious that's first errors not second errors it happens at a moment it happens when the Holy Spirit comes into your life You cling to God with all your might. You know, I think God lets bad things happen to us just to remind us we're living in a bad world. And that we need him. We need God. We need him every day. I was working on something the other day, and I just couldn't get it together. And I said, Lord, just help me figure this out. You know, he's part of my life all the time. He's always part of my life. He ought to be all part of your life. When you go get a glass of water, he ought to be there because he's providing the water. Every time I go get a glass of water here or down on the farm down there, I thank God that the water's running. Don't you, Marilyn? You know how hard it is to get it to run. We walked out here and paid like $40,000 for a well to be drilled and just hope it doesn't go dry and hope the well doesn't quit. Or something happened. The pipe twist off or something. That happened down on the farm. The pipe twisted off. Holes in the pipe. All kinds of things happen. Every time you turn on the faucet, every time you flush a toilet, every time you turn on the sink, you ought to be thanking God, because he's providing that. Ye were sealed. Es frog geese they tay. You were sealed. You were stamped. You were marked off. You were branded. with the spirit of the promise upon Goliath, the Holy Spirit, the Holy promise. Now, in the next verse it tells us that this is our down payment, the Holy Spirit is our down payment, the Holy Spirit in your life. This is talking about the indwelling of the Spirit of God in each individual that's born again. The Holy Spirit that came upon the church at the day of Pentecost, the church was there, by the way, it didn't begin right there, it was already, it had apostles in it, it had a treasurer in it, it had a clerk, everything else before the day of Pentecost, the church existed, it went out on a, what we call a limited commission. The church had already done that, the church already had a treasurer, the church already had members in it. The church was there on the day of Pentecost. What happened on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and empowered it. They were going to receive the Word of God. They didn't have anything but the Old Testament at that time. He said, we were sealed with the Spirit of promise, the Holy Spirit of promise. And this word, epangelia, intensifies the message. We have the down payment of the Holy Spirit until our complete redemption. God places His existence on the line to redeem us. Now, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, that is the triune God, isn't it? He puts the Holy Spirit in you. Now, if He didn't redeem you, the Spirit would be gone. Simple as that. This is what we call a real estate term. Let's go look at that now. Arabeon, teis, cleronomaios, haemon, eis, apoli, throsin, teis, peri, poi, zeis, teis, eis, epano, teis, doxa. Who, or whom, nomine singular, massum, relative, pronoun, hos, he is, the sincere promise, the Arabon. This is the, what we might call earnest money. When you put down earnest money, if you don't redeem it, you lose your earnest money, huh? That's the way it works. God is using that term right here. The Holy Spirit is our earnest money. He is going to redeem us of the Claironomius, of the inheritance of us until the redemption. of the possession, the enclosed work, unto the praise of the glory of Him. We are circumcised without hands, Paul said. We submit to God in baptism and become members of New Testament churches. We try to serve the Lord the best we can in those churches. Boys in the New Testament times receive the inheritance. Girls receive the dowry. But in Christ, we all receive an inheritance. Even women see girls. Even girls have an inheritance. It's not just a dowry to say goodbye, but it's an inheritance. And this inheritance, the epanos, this inheritance is to the praise of his glory. Every one of us, when we come into the presence of God in the eternal heavens above and beyond time now, if we will be saved by grace, and that grace will praise God. We will praise God always. When you're going to receive an inheritance in the biblical times, they marked it all off. They put a fence around it. God put a fence around us to take us to heaven. Heaven is our inheritance, and it's all fenced off with your name on it. It's got your name on it. It's got a marker, corner markers on it, saying this is yours. It's an inheritance. That salvation gives you an inheritance in heaven forever. God loves you. What makes God tick? That's one of the messages I've done. It's his love. He is accessible always. God comes to you. God comes to you. Every other religion thing is you've got to make yourself suffer to do something to get to God. But the God of the Bible suffered for you. and it came to you to redeem you and give you an inheritance marked off beforehand with your name on it. Our Father, thank you for this message from your word. Thank you for all the blessings you give us. Please forgive me where I failed you and use this message wherever it goes in the world to save people. In this message we have security of the believer, we have the calling of God, we have election, predestination marking us, corralling us, branding us, and we love it all. Please forgive me where I fail you, in Jesus name I pray, amen.