Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: We find our greatest joy when we pursue God's greatest glory.

Guest (Male): Not to us, but to your name be the glory. Yeah!

Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled "Glorified." Let's listen in as JP reminds us that it's not about you.

JP Jones: Well, if you've turned on the radio, watched TV, or picked up a newspaper, you are aware that this past week has been impacted by two lives and two deaths: Pope John Paul and Terry Schiavo. There is discussion and controversy about both of these lives and about both of these deaths.

What's the meaning? What's the purpose? Is there some standard that we can push their statements and their life values up against to be able to make some sense or to answer some questions that both of these people have raised by their lives and by their deaths?

I think the answer is yes, and I think the answer is in the Scriptures because I believe, as I shared with you as we were just doing some family talk here, that we find our greatest joy when we pursue God's greatest glory. I believe that the Scriptures tell us that the ultimate purpose for all that God has created and ordained, and the ultimate purpose for each of our lives, is that we bring God glory.

Until we come to grasp that truth, we're just going to be searching and questioning and scratching out to find answers for so many things that happen in life that just don't seem to make sense, so many things that happen in life that we're just particularly not very excited about.

But when we can come to a place where we truly embrace with our heads and with our hearts why God has created us and we can align our lives with that with passion, that's when life takes on a whole new meaning, and there's adventure and there's joy.

Jesus said this: "I've spoken these things to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full." When you pursue your own joy, you are not running counter to God's purposes for your life. In fact, you're stepping in the direction that God wants you to go. The problem with most people is not that they don't seek their own joy; they don't seek it all the way to its fullest. Because if we seek it all the way to its fullest, we will seek it in living a life to glorify God.

I want to unpack that thought a little bit. This morning, I want us to talk about the fact that it's not about you. It's not about me either, but it's not about you. If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn to Ephesians chapter 1. I want us to walk through this pivotal passage of Scripture to lay a foundation for what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks.

Now, don't be fooled with the direction that we start off in. It's not about you, but it's going to sound like it for a while. Listen to what this passage says in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 to 14: "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 forgiveness 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 will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

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, 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 praise of His glory." Now, in the original language, in the Greek language, this is one run-on sentence.

It's as if the apostle Paul started talking about God and how awesome God is and how God has blessed us, and he couldn't stop. And he just keeps laying one line after another after another in terms of how God has blessed us. That's the way he starts this off, saying, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing."

And it's as if he couldn't just stop there, so he has to tell us what some of those blessings are. He doesn't even tell us all of them because we've been blessed with every one of them. This passage is a passage that lays out what is truly about us. Here is my first observation, and you've heard me say it before; you'll hear me say it many times in the future, I'm sure: The truest thing about us is what God says is true.

It's truer than anything other people say. It's truer than what we heard as children, as adolescents, as young people. It's truer than anything we feel. It's truer than any lie of the enemy. The truest thing about us is what God says is true. God sees us through the lens of His spiritual blessings on our lives.

God sees us through what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us on the cross and in His resurrection. God sees us in light of the new creation that's been formed within us through the work of the Holy Spirit. You see, this passage is describing what happens that very moment someone comes to faith in Jesus Christ.

In the course of our spiritual journeys, when we take that step over the line and we cross the line into a new relationship with Christ, we become brand new people, and God now sees us in the light of what's true about us. And He's declaring for us here in this passage what's true about us. Well, think about it. He's said all these neat things.

They're true. But if we don't understand it, if we don't comprehend it, and if we don't put our faith in it, the truth doesn't change us or impact us. And Jesus said this in John chapter 8: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." But if you don't know the truth, it's not setting you free.

It's like someone who's living in poverty because they're poor. And I come up to them and I say, "You know what? I just deposited a million dollars into your bank account." And they say, "Well, great," and they keep living in poverty. No, you don't get it. Here's the deposit slip. You now have a million dollars in your bank account to live off of.

"Wow, thank you very much," and they keep living in poverty. And I go to the bank manager. I get the bank manager, and the bank manager says, "Really, there's a million dollars in your bank account right now." And they say, "Really? Really? Great!" and they keep living in poverty. That's the way a lot of Christians are.

They read in Scripture they've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. They read in Scripture that the Holy Spirit lives inside of them. They read in Scripture they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them. They read in Scripture that they're accepted perfectly in Jesus Christ.

They read in Scripture that God has plans for them to prosper them and to give them a future and a hope. And they say, "Really?" and God says, "Really," and then they continue to live in spiritual poverty. They kind of know it, but they aren't gripped by it. What do you believe to be true about you?

Are you believing kind of just what you've heard your whole life? Are you believing how you feel? If I lived every day based on how I feel, you'd be visiting me on death row right now. I can guarantee that. But if we live our lives always based on our feelings, do you understand how up and down that can be?

Well, is there something solid that's true that can be the standard that we live our lives by? Yes, what God says is true. The truest thing about us is what God says is true. And this passage is filled with all these truth statements. Here's a second observation from Ephesians 1: We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

Say that with me: "I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing." Think about that. What God has done for us in Jesus Christ is that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. I love this story that Bill Bright, who was the founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ, used to tell over and over again about how, at the turn of the century, there was a man whose life passion was to go to Europe.

And he'd saved every penny he could to board a steamship to go to Europe. He went into the ticket office in New York, put all of his money out there, pulled it all out of his pocket, broke his piggy bank, and just had enough money to buy the ticket and a few coins left over. And he went over and bought some bread, bought some cheese, bought some crackers to eat on the trip to go across the passage to Europe.

And now he's on board and he's so excited. This is a dream come true. And he sits down at mealtime and he eats his cheese and crackers. He's looking out through the window and he sees everybody walking in, and he goes out and sees people walking to the restaurant. He goes, "Oh, it must be nice to eat in the restaurant on the ship. But you know what? I got cheese and crackers. I'm fine because I'm living my dream."

The next morning, he wakes up and he's conscious and he smells bacon frying and sausage and eggs and pancakes. And he says, "That's okay. I got cheese and crackers. I'm going to Europe. This is my life dream." About lunchtime, he sees this big buffet out there, and everybody's going over and eating at the buffet. And he goes back to his room and starts looking at those cheese and crackers and starts to get a little disgusted.

Come dinner time, he's feeling desperate. Come the next morning, he finds the captain, pulls him by the collar, and says, "I'll do anything. I'll scrub the deck, I'll wash dishes, I'll work in the boiler room. I'm tired of eating cheese and crackers. I want to go eat the buffet like everybody else." And the captain kind of disengages himself from the passenger and said, "Sir, can I see your ticket?"

And he pulled the ticket out, and he looked at it and said, "Well, sir, all the meals come with the price of the ticket." The guy's eating cheese and crackers when he could be eating all these buffet meals on the ship because it all came with the price of the ticket. What does God's word say? We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

It all comes with the price of the ticket. The very moment we give our lives to Jesus Christ, every spiritual blessing is ours. And many of us are cheese and cracker Christians. That's the way we live. We think, "God, if You'll just give me a crumb, I'm okay," and we think we're martyrs for the faith. And God says, "I've given you everything."

In fact, this passage lays out these unbelievable spiritual blessings. I mean, these are fifty-dollar words here. It says that He chose us in Him before the foundation or creation of the world. We've been chosen. We've been elected. It's the biblical doctrine of election. Wow. Before we were even a gleam in our daddy's eyes, before we were even on the scene, before there was even a world, when it was just God living in the blessed glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God decreed, God elected, God chose to create a world.

And He chose to populate it with people. And He chose that Jesus Christ would be the Savior of all mankind. And He chose us to be holy and blameless. And He predestined us, it says. The Greek word is *proorizō*, and it means to mark out beforehand. God marked out beforehand us. And He did it with a purpose. He says He predestined us to adoption as sons.

He predestined us to be brought into His family, even though we had no claim, right, or legitimacy. He predestined to adopt us into His family. It says that in verse 7, "We have redemption through Christ's blood." It's the Greek word *lytroō*. The *lytron* in Greek was the purchase price. So you go down to the local mall and you're buying something, and they put it through the scanner and it pops up.

The price that popped up, the Greek word for that is *lytron*. *Lytroō* means to pay the purchase price. Well, there's a purchase price on every person's life because of sin, and the purchase price is the blood of Jesus Christ, and God paid it. Our sin has been paid for. It's been fully taken care of. We aren't going to be held accountable for our sin because Jesus Christ paid for it.

That's one of our spiritual blessings. And it goes on to say that we have God's mystery revealed to us, that God's ultimate purpose and plan has been made known to us. We don't have to be people who are kind of just wandering around in the dark trying to figure out what life's all about. God's made it clear to us. He's revealed to us in Scripture, and He's blessed us with this spiritual blessing of an awareness and an insight and understanding into His purpose.

And it goes on to say that He's marked us out and sealed us with the Holy Spirit of promise. It's the idea of when a ruler in the ancient world would press a signet ring into the wax and pull it out. That mark kind of set that document or set that object apart, and it guaranteed the protection and the ownership of the ruler. Nothing could break the seal. We've been sealed with the Holy Spirit, who's been given, it says in verse 14, as a guarantee of our eternal redemption.

This is unbelievable. We could just spend hours unpacking the full significance of each one of these spiritual blessings. God says the truest thing about us is what He says is true, and what He says in this passage is that we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Here's a third observation from this passage: We have a new spiritual identity in Christ.

If you were to break this passage down and circle every time it said "in Him," "in the Beloved," "in my Son," "in Christ," you'd come up with about eleven or twelve times, depending on your translation of the Scriptures. Everything God gives us, He gives us in Christ. What that means is that now, as new people in Christ, we have a brand new spiritual identity, a brand new spiritual heritage, a brand new spiritual position.

Any Matt Damon fans out there? Seen *The Bourne Identity*? In the beginning of *The Bourne Identity*, the guy wakes up and he has no memory of who he is or how he got where he came from. And in a few hours and days that pass, all of a sudden he becomes aware that he can speak several different languages. He has knowledge of all types of scientific and technical data.

He has physical prowess; he knows karate and jujitsu and gets in these fights. He's trying to put together, "Who is he?" because he has a consciousness and he's thinking, "My gosh, I'm a person who speaks all these different languages. I have an awareness of all this scientific and technical data. I have physical skills. Who am I?" You know, people are still asking that question, "Who am I?"

Well, the Bible says that as new believers in Jesus Christ, we have an identity, and that spiritual identity is inseparably linked to Jesus. We are now in Christ. That's who we are. So here in Ephesians 1, the apostle Paul is unpacking some amazing truth. The truest thing about us is what God says is true. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. We have a new spiritual identity in Christ.

And here's a fourth truth, fourth observation: God's grace covers us from eternity past to eternity future. Because it's mentioned in there, I think three times, that He freely gave us grace. He has lavished us with grace. And literally, He's graced us with grace. When God looks at you, He does not look through a lens of condemnation. He looks through a lens of grace.

J.B. Phillips wrote a book several years ago called *Your God is Too Small*. And in his book *Your God is Too Small*, he talks about how we all entertain a certain notion of God. The problem is our God is too small. And he says one of the notions that many people have about God is that He's a cosmic policeman, and He's just kind of waiting and watching and looking for the opportunity to take his billy club out and give us a whack whenever we screw up.

That's the way many of us think about God, that God is always measuring our lives and seeing how we fall short and He's holding that against us. If that's the way you think about God, your God's too small. Because as believers in Jesus Christ, what this passage says is that God lavishes us with grace. He graces us with grace. He sees us in the light of grace.

In fact, in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 7, it's speaking about the fact that not only have we been raised up with Christ, but we've been seated with Christ. And it says that for the ages to come, in all eternity in the future, we will be the objects and recipients of God's grace. Before we were created, God foresaw us, God predestined us on the basis of grace.

In the course of our lives, God treats us with grace and extends His grace to us in Jesus Christ. And in eternity to come, we will continue to be recipients of God's grace. In fact, you can't out-sin the grace of God. You can't out-sin the grace of God. In Romans chapter 5, verses 20 and 21, it says this: "And the law came in that the transgression might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."

In other words, when human sin was at its pinnacle, there was always more grace than there was sin. You see, the grace of God is greater than our sin. The grace of God is greater than my sin. The grace of God is greater than your sin. This is unbelievable. The truest thing about us is what God says is true. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

We have a brand new spiritual identity. God's grace covers us from eternity past to eternity future. My goodness, you read these words and you might think, "It's all about me! Look what God did for me! Look how much God loves me!" And you'd be partly right. You'd be partly right. This is the great mystery: We are the recipients of all of God's saving activity, but we're not the ultimate object.

We're the recipients. We get blessed. We get transformed. But we're not the ultimate object. Here's my fifth observation: It's not about us; it's about God. It's not about us; it's about God. If you have your Bibles, you can see this. In verse 6, it says, "To the praise of His glorious grace." In verse 12, it says, "In order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory."

In verse 14, "To the praise of His glory." Three times in this passage, after summarizing—and by the way, it's beautiful the way this lays out because there are blessings that are from the Father, blessings that are from the Son, and blessings from the Holy Spirit; the whole Trinity is involved in blessing us. But even in that, God's ultimate purpose is to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory.

Everything God does is for His own glory. It's not about us. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's about God. It's about God. God's purpose and plan is to glorify Himself. And He is the only being in the universe that can do that in a way that's holy and pure. If I try to glorify myself, that's unholy. But God glorifying Himself is infinitely pure and infinitely holy because God deserves glory because of who God is.

Listen to what John Piper says in his book *Desiring God*: "God's ultimate goal, therefore, is to preserve and display His infinite and awesome greatness and worth, that is His glory. God has many other goals in what He does, but none of them is more ultimate than this. They are all subordinate. God's overwhelming passion is to exalt the value of His glory. To that end, He seeks to display it, to oppose those who belittle it, and to vindicate it from all contempt. It is clearly the uppermost reality in His affections. He loves His glory infinitely."

And here we have in Ephesians chapter 1: all that God did in eternity past by choosing us and predestining us and blessing us and lavishing grace upon us and forgiving us and revealing the mystery of His will to us and sealing us in Christ into future redemption and glory. All that God purposed to do, all that God has done, all that God will do, is to His own glory.

It's not about us; it's about God. And if we have a life perspective that puts us at the center, we're going to struggle and we're going to be off base. If we have a theology that kind of puts God in the position that what He lives for is to do stuff for us, we're going to run into trouble all the time. We're not the center of the universe. We're not the reason for all that God does.

We're the recipients. We're participants. But God infinitely desires His own glory. God's all-consuming passion is His own glory, and it should be our all-consuming passion as well. And when we align our lives with that, we find our deepest joy. Remember what Jesus said in Mark chapter 8: "If any man would find his life, he must lose it." To find life, you've got to lose it.

To find joy, you've got to seek God's glory. But I don't want us to think somehow we've got to desperately try to purify our motives, to somehow get them all lined up right so that what we do, we do for God's glory and not for our own joy, and then somehow, in a flip of the coin, when we do that, then we find joy. Don't try that; it'll mess you up.

And that's why there's a lot of messed-up Christians. They're so desperately trying to make it about God, and all they're really doing is making it about them. When we try so hard to make it about God, we're really making it about us and how hard we're trying to make it about God. Instead, pursue your own joy.

Pursue your own joy. But don't do it in a wimpy way. Do it with all your might. Do it with everything you've got. Really pursue it. Because if you really pursued your joy, you know what you'd be doing? Glorifying God. God's glory and our joy are not exclusive. In fact, they actually come together in an unbelievable God-designed way so that we find our greatest joy when we pursue God's greatest glory.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just five dollars. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250.

That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of 25 dollars or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653.

Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Despite what popular culture would tell us, it's not about you. In fact, the Bible says it's about God. Everything that God has done from creation to the consummation of this universe will be about His own glory. The Bible says it's to the praise of the glory of His grace.

God has a plan, and His plan is to glorify Himself. That's why it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Today, would you be willing to surrender your life to God's glory? Would you be willing to take your eyes off yourself and put your eyes on Jesus Christ?

It says in Colossians chapter 3, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." Right now, if you want to surrender your life to Christ and to surrender the purpose of your life to God's glory, I invite you to pray with me.

Lord Jesus, I realize that it's not about me; it's about You. And I want to live my life for Your glory. I want to find my joy in pursuing Your glory. I surrender myself to You. Be glorified in my life. In Jesus' name, amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250.

On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.