Morning. So I would like to say that I think the best way to make the introduction is just to tell you briefly. In 1984 is when I met Buster Conrad and he came into my city. Having just graduated from the University of Zambia as the mining engineer, I lived in a town where there was copper mining. And in fact, the town where I lived is the largest copper mining underground workings in Africa. So he came in 1984. And I still remember those early days when he came. He came with a little blue book, which I later learned was the 1689. And he came with a real desire for ministry, which is what happened three years later. He assumed the pastorate in Lusaka at Kabwatha Baptist Church, where he is even now. But he also had something that I still recall and has remained constant. He introduced to me at least the word expository preaching. And that is what he believed would be the best sort of type of preaching in the church today. And, you know, having listened to him, There was an undeniable evidence that he was a gifted preacher, and we were not surprised when three years later, in 1987, the church in Lusaka called him to become pastor. The other thing that has remained a real constant in his life was his passion for evangelism. He was very, very committed to personal evangelism, as well as encouraging the church to engage in evangelism. Now, I think that if there is any fruit that you can see from those God-given desires, you can see right now that God has been working in his life And God has been working in the life of the church that he's been pastoring at Kawata, because since he has been pastor there, they have planted across Zambia 25 churches. And they have planted a church in Botswana. They have planted a church in Namibia. They have planted a church in Malawi. They have planted a church in Zimbabwe. They have planted a church in Nigeria. And they have planted a church in Sierra Leone. And the latest church plant, which he was telling me about, is in Rwanda. And so you can see how God has graciously been working in the life of Pastor Conrad in his pastorate at Kawata, they have really been taking the gospel, as it were, to the world. You may have heard about African Christian University. That's a very important project that is very close to his heart. I'm sure when there's time for questions, you can ask him more questions, but right now, the work of African Christian University is steadily growing. And when you get to asking questions about it, he has a lot more to share with you about that. So those three things have remained constant. His doctrinal from the day I met him in 1984, he has still remained true. to that little blue book, which I didn't like the first time I saw it. The 1689. And he has consistently believed in expository preaching, and he has consistently believed in the great commission to take the gospel to the world. And so it is my pleasure this morning to introduce to you Brother Dr. Conrad Mbewe to come and speak to us. Thank you. Thank you very much. While I was sitting there, I was praying. and praying and praying that he stops talking. Finally, the Lord answered prayer. Thank you, Alan. Well, it's a real pleasure for me to be with you on this occasion to come and participate in this conference, Building Tomorrow's Church. It's a theme that in itself is very close to my own heart. As Alan has spoken about the church planting efforts, it's all in an effort to finally go to glory knowing that there is a stronger, more vibrant church across Zambia and across Africa as well. So to come and participate in a conference that's particularly thinking about tomorrow's church is truly a great joy. The topics that I have been given to deal with, I have felt that perhaps the best way for me to handle them will be through the letter of Paul to the Ephesians. So if you've got your Bibles with you, please do tender the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. And we're thinking about being immovable. And I'm looking at this particular book or epistle from that angle, that the Apostle Paul would have been one of those that expressed concern about the church in Ephesus remaining stable and never losing that which he himself had established there. If you go through the book of Acts, you will see that the Apostle Paul may not have been the first person to preach in Ephesus, Ephesus being the capital at that time of the province of Asia in the Roman Empire. And individuals like Apollos would have been there, but he would have taught a truncated gospel. a gospel that was largely related to the dispensation prior to Jesus' atoning work at Calvary, one which was more closely related to John the Baptist. He was corrected later on through the ministry of Aquila and Priscilla, that is Apollos. And so when Paul got to Ephesus, he found a situation there that he needed to rectify, which no doubt he did. and then went on to minister evangelistically. The church in Ephesus grew, they were kicked out of the synagogue where he was initially ministering, and Paul spent quite a bit of time building the church in Ephesus. Later on we are told, especially when you read the first epistle of Paul to Timothy, that Paul left Timothy in Ephesus primarily because wrong teaching had begun to infiltrate the church. And he was concerned, to borrow the theme of this conference, that the brethren there should remain immovable, that they should stand firm on that which he had been seeking to establish the church in. There's no doubt that this same letter also is meant to, as it were, secure the pigs more in a foundational way so that they might never come unstuck. And that's what you see in this epistle that he wrote. You also know that he wrote it from prison It's one of his prison letters. And yet, as I've often reflected, if Paul had not said that he was writing from prison and sending Tychicus and others to share the contents of this letter, we may have never guessed. And that's because what occupied his mind is the triumph that we already have in the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than the temporal situation that was there around him, which ties in pretty well with the theme for this conference. Because often what causes us to come unstuck It's the temporal, immediate context in which we are. And it's because we lose sight of the immensity, the grandeur of our great spiritual inheritance as God's people. I mean, the very first words of the Apostle Paul, which we find in Ephesians chapter one, the words are in verse three. And basically, he is saying the blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To put it simply, he's simply saying, Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Those are the first words coming as it were out of his mouth, in this case out of his pen. Surely there must be something he's thinking about now that is other than the conditions he's going through in prison. There must be. And that's what I want us to think about in our very first session as we speak about our secure salvation. Our secure salvation. I want to make it abundantly clear as we commence that if you are going to be immovable with respect to the doctrines of grace that you stand on, with respect to your Christian life as a whole in the midst of the difficult environment that no doubt you go through here in the United States, slightly differently from what we go through back home in Zambia, in Africa, the one thing that you must securely have in place is the nature of the salvation that you are a partaker of. Now the amount of material I will go through takes us from the first chapter to the second and up to about verse 10. So you will have to sort of hold your heart as we are galloping along because it might be blown off your head along the way. First of all, the very first section, which is Ephesians 1 verse 3. down to verse 14, deals with God's salvation from eternity to eternity. It's a kind of bird's eye view that enables you to see the salvation you are a partaker of from before the world began. And that in itself explains why you can say you are secure in this salvation. Therefore, this salvation must definitely be secure, because it is one that is pinned to the two ends of history. And how does the Apostle Paul bring that out? Well, he begins with the role of the Father, he comes to the role of the Son, and he ends up with the role of the Holy Spirit in our salvation. Let me quickly enable us to see that. We won't read everything that is there because time is not with us. But I'm hoping we'll see enough of that for us to begin to realize this salvation can only be eternally secure. He begins there in verse three with the role of the Father, God the Father in salvation. And you can't miss the fact that it's to do largely with eternity before the period of time. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Okay, that's glorious enough, but listen to this. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. In verse five he says, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. The point there that he's making is one that we need to be convinced about. If we are Christians today, it's not because God simply thought about us the moment we cried out to him to save us. No. He already had us in mind individually, by name, even before creation came into being, which is thousands of years before you were born. And that's where the Apostle Paul begins from. And then he comes to what happened not on the day of your salvation, but on the day when Jesus Christ died on the cross. And again, he's making the point there that when he was dying on the cross, he was purchasing with his blood your individual salvation. Let's quickly see that in verse seven. Ephesians 1 verse 7, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. There it is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and is referring to us being redeemed through His blood. An actual payment was made that secures our pardon, secures our forgiveness. And therefore, again, our salvation did not begin on the day we cried out to Christ to save us. We are already seeing that apart from what God the Father did in eternity, there is what God the Son did in time some 2,000 years ago. Let me try and put it this way. Jesus did not die for a few empty seats in heaven and then sort of say, okay, whoever comes in first, that's all right. At least I have paid the tickets for this number of chairs. That's not what happened. Jesus had us in mind. The father gave us to his son and said, for these you go and you pay the price for their sin. Jesus is very clear about that when he speaks in what we refer to as the high priestly prayer. When he speaks again and again about the fact that they were yours, You gave them to me. In fact, there he is speaking primarily about his intercessory work, and he is saying, look, I'm not praying for the world. I am praying for those you gave me. For they were yours, and now they are truly mine. And being mine, they are still yours. So it's a fairly deliberate group of people that we cannot number. that will feel heaven that Jesus Christ paid the price for their sins. There is no way that God would demand payment from two individuals for the same crime. Jesus paid the price. That's what redemption is. It is to buy back that which is lost. He has paid the price. He has secured our salvation. But that's only the second step. Let's again cross over to the day now when under conviction of sin, You cried to the Lord Jesus Christ that he might save you. And that moves us to the work of the Holy Spirit, which begins from verse 11. And notice, it again begins with the phrase, in him, in him. But this time, it is in him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Now sometimes, because the sentences in the Bible are so long, we tend to sort of get lost in between the words. We remain behind wondering, okay, what on earth is being talked about here, and so forth. So let me just break it down for you, for you to see what he's really talking about. It's fairly simple. He's talking about us now entering into this inheritance that he's been speaking about. what the father did in eternity and what the son did in time. Okay, so in him, that is in Christ, we have now obtained an inheritance. That's the first thing. The second is simply talking about the basis on which we have entered into that which is ours. In other words, our salvation in Christ. What is the basis of it? Well, it's having been predestined. So it is based on that eternal work that we began with, our election and our predestination. But it is also dependent on God's providence, which is what he goes on to say when he says, having been predestined, according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will. He's done it in eternity, then in time, as he is outworking history, he is working it out in such a way that you are finally brought to that point where you hear the gospel, you repent and believe. All according to plan. There's no chance here. It is all according to Him who works all things according to the counsel, the wisdom, the plan of His will. Okay? So that's what he's talking about here. And that work now is the work of the Holy Spirit in terms of working in our hearts. Notice the way he puts it in verse 13 and 14. In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. So there is that which we have obtained in coming to repentance and faith, But there is the final outworking of our salvation, which is ultimately our glorification, which we are yet to enter into in eternity. And that is guaranteed. Guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, who has already come to take residence in us. Let's pause for a moment there, because we have just traveled 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 years from eternity to eternity, depending on how you have calculated so far the age of planet Earth and the universe. We've just gone from one end of history to the other. And what we have seen is a God who is at work. choosing us, redeeming us, regenerating, and justifying us, and finally glorifying us. And in the midst of that journey from eternity to eternity, he does not lose a single one of them, not even one. That's the golden chain that we have in the book of Romans, don't we? In Romans and chapter eight, the Bible puts it this way. Those whom, that's verse 28, and those whom he predestined, that's in eternity, he also called in time. So he has skipped over the redemption through Christ. He reaches the work of the Spirit called. And those whom he called, he also justified. So we're still at the point of your immediate coming into the kingdom. And listen to this, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. No leakage whatsoever. That's how secure our salvation is. Let's get back to our text. Because from verse 15 to the end of chapter one, again we won't read all of it, the apostle Paul primarily prays. What is he praying for? He is praying that the Ephesians may be able to perceive with your spiritual eyes, this reality. Because it's one thing for you to know this intellectually, as a mere teaching and doctrine, and maybe even sitting there, you are busy sort of arguing with it, thinking, ah, come on, are you sure? And so on. It's too good to be true. But it's quite another for you to join in the hallelujah, praise the Lord. moment. And what Paul is saying here is that I'm praying for you that you may be overwhelmed by this reality. Look at the way he puts it. Verse 15. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, here it is, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the sense and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ and on and on and on he goes in great eloquence. Bottom line is this, that you may know this experientially. We're speaking about our secure salvation. And it's true that unless it becomes part of your spiritual realization, you will have this great gift of God before you, and you still live as though you don't. We often hear or read of these illustrations from Samoans, don't we? About an individual who is given an envelope by some rich, rich, rich uncle that he sort of puts away somewhere and never looks at. for quite some time and not knowing that in that envelope that rich, rich uncle had bequeathed to him perhaps a quarter of his huge estate. And so here he is living in poverty until finally he dies. and then the individuals that are now putting his few possessions together stumble across this envelope that is in his book on that day when he was given, and they open it and they find that this person actually possessed a fortune, but lived like a beggar. We can often be like that. that even when this truth is opened up for us, because the Spirit of God has not, as it were, burned this truth in us, we still live as though tomorrow we can lose our salvation. And therefore, we're spending all our time seeking to be extra careful, and extra careful, and extra careful, instead of us shouting hallelujah, singing the kind of hymns we've just been singing here, and saying, let's share this glorious news with the world that is in desperate need of this salvation. Well, that's the Apostle Paul going from eternity to eternity. In chapter two, still dealing with our secure salvation, he shows how it is secure in us as individuals. And so what it does now is it takes a trip from our unconverted state to our converted state. That's what it does now. So he's gone from eternity to eternity and now he's saying, okay, this is where he found you and he has lifted you to be here. And once we look at it, guess what? We again see how secure this salvation is. Amazing. Let's quickly see it. First of all, we're now in chapter two. The apostle begins with the state in which we were before salvation caught up with us, and it's a state of hopelessness and helplessness. It's a state in which we are under a threefold enslavement. Let's quickly read it in verse one up to verse three, and a little bit further than that. And you, he says, were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Now, before we go further, let's notice his saying you were dead. If there is any time when you are helpless about a situation, it's when the person you've been hoping and praying and medicating, and nursing, and so on, dies. That's it. I've never forgotten, many years ago now, it was in the year 2000 when my dad died, and he died in my home. We were nursing him. And I had told the doctors, since we know that this is terminal, why don't you come and just give the kind of care that reduces on pain with him being in our home rather than us checking the hospital all the time. I mean, we have doctors in the church. So that's what they did. They were taking turns coming through and so on. And there we gave him the opportunity to be with his grandchildren. which they really thrived on later on. But finally, we had to close the doors and just have me and my own wife, I was holding his hand, and slowly, life ebbed away. I called our elders, they came over, and in due season, we took his body to the hospital, and he was certified dead. But that's not where it really hit me. The day it hit me the most was when we were burying his remains. I've never forgotten thinking, there's no way I would have allowed this to happen, for him to be lowered into the ground like that, if I had even just the minutest hope that he could still live. I've never forgotten that moment. As tears flowed freely, I knew this is the end. It's a hopeless and helpless situation. Well, that's the picture that Paul is giving here. That's where we start from. There is no spiritual life. We are dead. And then he gives us three ways in which that death manifests itself. The first, he says, following the course of this world. In other words, enslaved. to a fallen world. Number two, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. In other words, again, enslaved to certain And then thirdly, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body. Again, they enslaved to our own fallen natures. are on sinful natures. And then finally, we are told there that clearly, from that condition, there was only one thing we could expect from God, and it is his wrath, whereby nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. That's where we are found, helpless and hopeless, in a threefold enslavement. Well, what made the change to bring us to where we are now as believers? The Apostle Paul says, but God. That's where the change is. If God doesn't come into the picture, we remain helpless and hopeless. But God, verse four. being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. And he quickly adds, by grace you have been saved. Let's pause for a moment there. Because even just two weeks ago, I was speaking at an evangelistic meeting for men. It was a men's breakfast. And as I was opening up the teaching of salvation, in the process I touched on God's electing love. And someone asked, saying, excuse me, excuse me, from what you've just taught, you seem to be suggesting that if God hadn't chosen us, we would not be saved. What if someone wants to be saved, and then God didn't choose him? My answer was quite simple. dead people don't want to. Don't you understand? The unconverted are dead, dead. It is the Holy Spirit when he comes to bring about salvation who then gives that wanting to. And he does it for those that the father gave the son, and then the son tasked him to bring them to himself. It's crucial that we see that, that the one who is active here is not the dead person. It's the living one, the living God. And that's why it is by grace you have been saved. There are three words of the goodness of God that the Apostle Paul throws into this text one after the other, literally one falling over the other. And it is love, mercy, and grace. And they are all there. Love, mercy, and grace. Benevolence on the part of God. Sympathy on his part, which is what mercy is. And ultimately, it is favor towards those who deserve the opposite. Now, if you want to say something about the secure salvation, it is this. If God, who is now your Father in heaven, could Love you, have mercy upon you, and be gracious towards you. While you were his enemy, dead in your sin, a servant of the devil, and he still acted in that way to bring you to himself. What is it that's going to make him abandon you now? Now that you are his very child, when your inner being has actually been transformed so that you want to live for him. I leave that to you to answer. We must hurry on. The Apostle Paul works this out of grace, grace, grace. But I'm interested in verse 10. Verse 10. where he puts it this way, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, or in advance, that we should walk in them. That in itself also says that this is, you are in a team that's definitely winning. It's definitely winning. Because this is not just you doing your own thing. He puts it there that we are God's workmanship. We are God's workmanship. It's talking about the fact that what we are is a product of a creator. One who is making something. So what we are is the product of that process of what he is doing. I don't know whether you've ever had this opportunity of seeing someone who's very good at some art. Maybe, let's say he's a musician, and so you are with him when he's telling you, you know, I'm just thinking about this tune, and the way in which it can work out to be a hymn or some song, and you know, certain words that are right now in my mind, and so on. And you leave him just dreaming, just dreaming. And a few weeks later, everybody is excited. about some song that this same chap has produced. And you say to yourself, well, let me listen to it. And when you listen, you say to yourself, you mean that useless dreaming that guy was doing there, this is what he has now produced? It's his workmanship. Or an artist is just beginning to paint, And usually, they begin painting with the background color. It looks terrible, ugly. You even say, well, look, let me go off to town and make better use of my time. And then by the time you're coming back, you're going, wow, how did this happen? And yes, you can make out that initial ugly yellow color. You can see it now in the background. But it's been much, much more than that. I remember, that's not too long ago, actually, one of my visits to the US. I attended a wedding. It was an outdoor wedding. And they had a painter who was sitting there. And he was just beginning to paint as the wedding was beginning. And so we sat, we went through all the vows and so on, and the whole event was over. And when it was over, I had opportunity to come back to say bye to this guy we had chatted a little earlier. Yes, my jaw almost touched the ground when I saw what he had done in that period of the wedding. It was a glorious workmanship. Well, he actually improved on it even further afterwards. I saw it on social media later. I'm pretty sure the guys getting married either paid him a lot at the beginning or paid a lot for it afterwards. Well, that's what we're being taught here. We are created, or better still, recreated in Christ Jesus for good works. The grace of God, to borrow the words of the Apostle Paul to Titus, the grace of God that God himself has caused to invade our lives, trains us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright lives in Christ Jesus. He is recreating a new humanity for himself, zealous for good works, Paul says to Titus. Well, that's what this text is saying. It is God himself at work. Let me hurry on to close by putting it this way, that there is no other salvation that God gives but this. There's no other one. In case you're wondering what I mean, when you're traveling either by train or by plane, we normally end up with different places in that plane, with different conditions. I normally travel economy class. Once or twice, they've backed me up to first class. And I remember whenever that happens, I think to myself, this ain't fair. We are in the same airplane, but some people are having such good conditions. Well, of course, they paid for it, isn't it? There's nothing like that with respect to the train or the plane going to heaven. It's the same salvation. the same work of the Father, the same work of the Son, the same work of the Spirit. We don't have some dropping off along the way because they were not secured properly. The difference often is, have our spiritual eyes been opened? Do we see the profundities, the immensities, of sovereign grace towards us? Have we been overwhelmed by that? That's what makes the difference between those who are immovable and those who are not. Those who are immovable are so overwhelmed by this glorious salvation that you can throw them into a stinking cell of a prison. And like Paul with his friend in the prison, they are singing the praises of God. Singing his praises until all the Philippian jailer and other prisoners are wondering, what's going on? They are immovable because they've drank in the depths of sovereign grace and salvation. Does that describe you today? Or am I looking at somebody who has just put in their toes, perhaps up to their ankles, in this deep ocean? of everlasting love for fallen creatures, dead sinners. Oh, may I invite you to go in deeper, to go in deeper. Drink in these truths. The Apostle Paul refers to them as the unsearchable riches of Christ. Drink deeply and your life will count for him here on earth. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for this so great salvation that you've given us in Christ. We pray that you help each one of us to embrace these truths instead of fighting them so that the sun shining with its healing wings upon our souls that we indeed might rejoice in these truths and hence spend and be spent for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.