Our Ransom (Part 1)

Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Tim Keller

Timothy Keller explores Ephesians 1:3–14, revealing salvation as God’s sovereign grace from His eternal perspective. He emphasizes election, predestination, and the transformative power of seeing life through God's viewp

Key takeaways

• Salvation is entirely by God's grace, not human effort

Transcript preview

Welcome to Gospel and Life. Modern culture often says that our beliefs are secondary as long as we live like decent people. But the Bible insists that what we believe shapes our day-to-day lives. All summer long, we are sharing a series from Tim Keller which unpacks the core beliefs of the Christian faith. Dr. Keller looks at how the truths that shape our understanding of God, ourselves and our salvation can transform us and us in every part of our lives. I'd like to read to you again from this first chapter of Ephesians and we'll elaborate and spread our thoughts out a little bit more on the subject. We said last week that Ephesians one which we're beginning to look at is Ephesians 1 verse 3 to 14 in the Greek original. We said last week that Ephes 1, which we're beginning to look at is Ephes 1, 1 verse 3 to 14 in the Greek original was one long sentence. Boy, now what am I doing wrong. It was one long sentence and therefore it's a massive buildup. It's a statement in which Paul is trying to give us the entire scheme of how God saves us. And I'd like to read just verses 3 to 14. We're only going to look at verse 3, 4, and 5 here tonight for a minute. Paul says 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 to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the blood. of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head even Christ. In him, we also were chosen. Having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything. in conformity with his purpose, the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having 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 the praise of his glory. This is God's word. Again, this is only the second week, we just started looking at the early chapter of Ephesians and let me remind you of something. This is about being saved. Are you saved? Now the way you can tell how long you lived in New York City is the longer you've been in New York City, the more irritated you are with that question. that makes people very upset with people who talk like that. To talk about being saved or to ask you if you're saved or to say that I'm saved, at least in this particular culture, is seen to be very shallow, narrow-minded, superficial. And yet the Bible will tell us that being saved is actually the richest, the deepest, the broadest reality that's possible for a human mind to conceive of. this entire sentence that I just read to you is the gospel of our salvation. In verse 13, Paul says, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and that's what he's giving us in verse 3 to 14. But he's giving it to us in a particular way. He's giving it to us from God's point of view. Last week I spent four or five days with a, at a conference full of church planters and many of them were were... planting churches in cultures that weren't native to them. That is, they were doing cross-cultural missionary work. And many of the people spent time saying that there is almost nothing more transforming and more revolutionizing than to have to live in a culture that you weren't raised in. Plenty of you here in New York know something about that, but plenty of you don't really. We were at one of the meals a number of people who had lived in Africa for 10 years. They were Americans, they had gone there. and they planted churches, they were saying there is nothing more transforming than to live in another culture because you don't realize how ethnocentric you are. Now, what is ethnocentric? It means you have a whole series of shared assumptions that you share with your ethnic group. Lots and lots of assumptions about what is flexible and what is not flexible, what is not flexible, what is not flexible, what is rude and what is courteous, what is respectful, what's decent and what's not decent and what's not decent and so on. And there's nothing more transforming than to go into another culture where nobody shares those same assumptions. And it means every day you get confronted and you have to examine what you've always taken for granted. And what you've always taken for granted is that your ethnic group's point of view is the right one in every area. It's not until you go cross-cultural, they say, that you really begun for the first time a thinking person. This is frightening for some of us who have not. They made a very good case. So you really don't know what it's like to be a reflective thoughtful person until you go a place where all of your assumptions are assumed. Now some of them, all of your assumptions are confronted and challenged. Now some of them are funny, but they're little things. You remember Elizabeth Elliot, our friend who was a missionary jungle of Ecuador says, gives the perfect illustration of this sort of thing on the small scale. And she thought it was pretty interesting to see that the Alka Indians that she worked with, what they did when they had a cold, what they did with the, when they blew their nose, what did they do with it? And what they did is they would put two, you know, two fingers right here beneath their nostrils and they'd blow their nose onto their fingers. And then they would go, and then they would go, into a bush. she had a little bit of a discussion with some of them and she explained that where she came from the idea of blowing that stuff that that particular secretion onto your own skin and fingers and hand was just really appalling and they said well what do you do? I said well we don't we don't even touch our fingers with it. Well they were excited they said well this is maybe a new breakthrough in civilization tell us about it. So she showed she showed a modern invention called a handkerchief. She got the handkerchief out and she showed you you blow your nose into it and you never doesn't touch your your fingers and they said well well okay what do you do with your handkerchief then well you put it back in your purse or your pocket she says you mean you don't touch your fingers with it but then you save it oh you know that's really civilized that's great what do you do with it you know You know and there's a such she never thought of that now you to go cross cultural means that you become a reflective person you think about everything you have to think about everything you begin to realize There's a lot of things I always assume that are stupid and that's the reason why you live in another culture And then you come back to your own culture and you find that you really don't belong in either one why because you've become thoughtful You're not into reflex reactions anymore to look at life or what's happened to us from the human point of view. It doesn't deal so much with ethnocentrism, it deals with, you might say, the ultimate ethnocentrism, it deals with anthropocentrism. In other words, it deals with the fact that we always, always insist on the human point of view. We try to understand everything from the human point of view. We have all sorts of assumptions that make us the center of the universe. And so many of you struggle because you only, center everything around yourself. So for example if God is not working things out in the way that seems logical to you, if he's not giving you the things that you feel that you really need, if he's not doing things in accordance with a plan, if he appears cruel to you by human standards, by your standards, if he seems unfair by human standards, by your standards, you're ready to say well he doesn't know what he's doing. And Ephes won't allow that. instead of looking at things from your point of view, is continually saying this is the real perspective from God's point of view and is continually challenging your man-centered, your anthropocentric