Chosen Before the Foundation of the World? What It Really Means

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, there we are. Good to have everybody again, and last couple half hours we just started right out without any announcements, so I guess we better let our television audience understand that all the past programs are available on videotape, and the videos have been transcribed into little books as you see on the screen. And my little wife Iris just reminded me, for those of you who ask so often for the timeline, we have a simplified timeline in the front of every one of our little books. So for folks who have already ordered the books and you want a timeline, just check it out in the front of the little book. Secondly, we of course send out a newsletter every quarterly, but we can't send them out if we don't have your name and address. So if you've never contributed or written us a line and you would like to get our quarterly newsletter free of charge, you call us and give us your name and address or drop us a note. And I think that's all the announcements. We're not here to sell anything. We just simply want to spend every moment that we can in the Word. All right, now before we actually start Ephesians, I had one more segment of this unfolding of the church epistles of Paul, and that is the first and second Thessalonian letters. Now again, remember we came through Paul's original ministry amongst the area of especially Asia Minor and Greece and Corinth, then the letter to the Romans, the letters to the Corinthians, the letter to the Galatians, and then we saw that beginning with Acts 28. From his time in prison, he writes what we call the prison letters or the prison epistles of Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, which are just a jump up doctrinally in depth and understanding from what you have back here. Then as we finish those three letters, then we come to the earlier letters that were written, but they're really final in their content, and those are the first and second Thessalonians, which can now follow the format of doctrine, reproof, correction, and now we go to instruction in righteousness, and again it's up to a higher plane even than what we have in the prison epistles, because in first and second Thessalonians, where does the Word take us? Up to glory. Up to glory. First Thessalonians chapter 4, we shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Second Thessalonians chapter 2, and after the departure of the church, then shall that wicked one be revealed. And so those two letters then take us on up to that which we are all waiting for, and that is the fruition of everything, when we will finally be in glory with our Crucified, Resurrected, and Ascended Lord. All right, so much for that. Now let's get right into the meat then of Ephesians chapter 1, and we'll begin with verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by what? The will of God. See, Paul didn't just all of a sudden one day say, hmm, I think I'll just become an apostle. I like the way people look up to Peter, James, and John. I just think I'll become an apostle. No, that's not the way it was. You want to remember he was the one who hated Jesus of Nazareth. He hated anything associated with the Christ of Calvary, and he thought that he was destroying his pet religion, Judaism. But God in grace saved him on the road to Damascus, and immediately gave instructions that this man would be going to the Gentiles, and with a whole new format, not based on Judaism, not based on the Law, not based on the Old Testament, but on a whole new revelation of new truths that had never been mooted before, and sent him out amongst those pagan Gentiles, and of those who were with us on our Mediterranean cruise last spring, trying to follow as much as we could in the steps of the apostle Paul, and how the poor man was constantly confronted with the abject immorality of his day. Unbelievable! And yet out of that wickedness, and out of that gross pagan immorality, the man turned the Roman Empire upside down by simply preaching the Gospel. He wasn't a crusader, he wasn't a great politician, he wasn't a great moralist, but he preached the Gospel of the grace of God. Now then, as he ends up in prison because of his apostleship, he's going to be writing these next three letters. So he's an apostle, not of his own volition, but by the will of God. Now then, this apostle is writing this particular letter to the saints. And how many times haven't you heard me say, over all the years that you've been hearing me teach, to whom does Paul always write? The believer, the Christian. He doesn't write to the unsaved world, not that he didn't have a heart for them, but Paul knew, which too many people today do not understand, you do not just simply win the loss by screaming at them, and preaching at them. You win the loss by discipling the believer. And when the believer is discipled and can go out there amongst an ungodly world, and reflect the righteousness of Christ, he's going to have an impact on lost people. And then they're going to say, hey what must I do to have what you've got? And there's your opportunity. Oh you believe that Christ died for you. You believe with all your heart that He rose from the dead, and you will be saved. The Bible promises it. Now I have to be careful because I had someone else write the other day. Well Les, what do you mean when you say only believe? Well I don't mean just a superficial mental assent to these things. I mean that when you honestly with all your being say, I believe this with all my heart, without a doubt. I believe from cover to cover, but I believe especially that when Christ died, He died for me. And I believe that when He rose from the dead, He rose to give me that same resurrection power. And that of course is what we call faith. And it's by that and that alone of course that we enter in then to this relationship that Paul is always expounding. So he writes to the saints, and to those who are faithful. Now then those last three words of the verse are key to the whole letter, in Christ Jesus. Now those of you who remember your 8th and 9th grade grammar, what kind of a phrase is that? It's a prepositional phrase. Thank you. A prepositional phrase. Now I think there are 93 or 96. I don't remember exactly. I counted them more than once, but there are 90 some prepositional phrases in this 6 chapters that always denote our position in Christ, in whom, in Him, in this or in that. The whole 6 chapters are constantly driving that that we are now in a peculiar position as believers. Now you see back here in Romans, the whole idea of the letter Romans was to show that we were nothing but hell bound, filthy, wicked sinners. Every one of us. Whether we actually did any of the things that are listed, or whether we didn't. Potentially we were all capable of going to the very depths of sin. That's what Romans shows us. And then the remedy for it? The Gospel. That Christ has already forgiven us. He's already died for us. His blood has already paid the payment. And all we have to do to appropriate it is what? Believe it. That's the book of Romans. Oh, it's so doctrinal. It's so basic, see. And then in Corinthians, all of the problems that had to be reproved. And then the Galatians, going back into legalism and how that had to be corrected. But oh, here in this little book of Ephesians we're not going to deal with any of those things. Here we're going to deal with hammering home the fact that you are now positioned in Christ, in the body, and to find the roots of that position, we're going to see it in verse 3. And where are we now positioned? In the heavenlies. See? We're not an earthly people. We're a heavenly people. But we're on the earth. But everything that we constantly think about, everything that makes up our whole being, even as we live and work and move in this old sin-cursed world, is what? Our position in the heavenlies. That should be uppermost in our thinking. Alright? So let's go back. I don't want to skip a verse. Verse 2. So now he says to those believers in the area of Ephesus, and of course the letter probably went out to the other cities in that area of the world. I'm sure it got to Colossae, it probably got up to Troas, and it may even gotten inland as far as Antioch and Derbe. But as Winnie and I were talking at break time, isn't it amazing that as these various letters of Paul went out to these various congregations back there in the ancient world, where there were no copy machines, and there was no instant communication, that they didn't get lost. Somebody was providentially aware that, hey, these letters are important. We better protect them. Somehow or other they were kept intact for three hundred and some years before the Church Fathers put them together and put them into what we call the Scripture. Now that in itself is miraculous. These were just simple letters that were sent out to a congregation. And like I said, they didn't have copy machines, and they said, well let's run off ten copies and send one here and there and everywhere. No, they only had the one copy, and I doubt if they took the trouble to laboriously handwrite each one of these for a church, but whatever. This letter especially was sent to be circled amongst all the churches in the area around Ephesus, and yet it never got lost. Amazing! Winnie, I'm glad you brought it up, because this is little tidbits that too often we forget that makes this book the supernatural book that it is. All right, now then, grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And now verse 3, "...blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all..." Not material blessings, not a Cadillac in everybody's garage, not a seven bedroom home for everybody, but where are we already blessed? In the heavenlies. Spiritual blessings. Spiritual. Now you want to remember, all our earthly blessings, material blessings, how long are they going to last? Oh, if we're fortunate we might get past 90. A few people, I've had a couple in my class, 102, but most of us are going to come to the end of the road somewhere after 70 or 80 and so on and so forth, assuming that the Lord doesn't come, and we trust He will. But nevertheless, these material blessings are just for such a little while. How did the psalmist put it? A blade of grass that shoots up in the morning, in the afternoon it's withered and gone. A vapor, now you people down here don't see it as often as they did up north, but boy you get a 30 below zero morning up north and every breath just becomes a cloud of vapor. But how long does it last? Poof, and it's gone. All right, that's what the Bible compares life to, like a vapor that is here one second and gone the next. But these spiritual blessings, how long will they last? All eternity, forever, forever. And you know I've said it on this program so often, the world scoffs and they think we're a bunch of nuts, and they think that we have to give up all the good times, and we have to shun these things, and no, we just are almost living a life of sacrifice. No, that's not the case at all. We don't even have an appetite for those things. Like I told one fellow one night, he said, why don't I ever see you in this particular saloon on Saturday night? And I said, look, for the same reason I don't see you in church on Sunday morning. I said, I'd be just as miserable in your saloon on Saturday night as you would be in church on Sunday morning. And that says it all, doesn't it? I mean that is no longer our appetite. Our appetite is now on things spiritual, because the Lord has given us enough insight that these things are going to last forever, forever. Not just for 70 years, in fact it won't be that long. All you have to do is watch some of your entertainers and some of your wealthy athletes. How long can they enjoy the fast lane? Not very long. The body can't take it, and then there they are. They reach 50, and they're old, and their health is shot, and what for? Whereas you and I, oh, we may shun those things, not because we're missing them, but the world thinks we are, but we're not. But then the end result is our heavenly position comes to the fore. Spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, and how are we seated in the heavenlies? In Christ, see? Our position in Christ. Now of course I have to take you back to I Corinthians chapter 12, where Paul of course is back here in the area of the rudiments, the elementaries, but nevertheless it's still all part of our Christian experience. I Corinthians chapter 12, starting at verse 12. I Corinthians chapter 12. And all the members of that one body, being many, are still one body. So also is Christ. In other words, He's made up of all of these believers that have come into the body of Christ ever since the beginning of the Church Age. And here we are, in Christ. How did we get there? Verse 13. For by one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, are we all, not just a few of the most spiritual, not just the clergy, not just a few priests, but every believer, all have been baptized. Now I always have to stop and identify what does the word baptized really mean? To be inundated, to be completely inundated. Homer or Plato, I don't remember which one, but one of the Greek classical writers spoke of a ship being baptized at sea. Well, if a ship gets baptized at sea, and that was before submarines of course, what happened to it? It was sunk. It went down. But it was baptized. Why? Because that ocean water filled every little crook and cranny of that ship as it went down. And that's what a baptism does. It just simply inundates the person. But now this isn't water. This is the invisible person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. And He has inundated us in Christ. That's how we get there. And how does the Holy Spirit, or when does the Holy Spirit inundate us? The moment we believe the Gospel. You don't feel a thing. I mean, you're not going to shake your head and get water out of your eyes. You're not going to somehow say, Oh, something has happened to me. No, it's a silent, unfeeling work of the Holy Spirit. And how do I know it happened? By faith. See now again, you come back to all these writings of Paul. I should have put on it. Every one of these, coming up through doctrine, reproof, correction, doctrine, reproof, every one of them was based on Paul's premise of faith plus nothing. They were reproved because they had lost sight of what God had instructed. In other words, they had gotten blinded by a lack of faith. And the same way going back into legalism. Why were they leaving Paul's doctrine of faith plus nothing? Because their faith grew weak. And you come on up into the Ephesian letters, it's the same way. How are we going to even come close to the comprehension that we are already seated in the heavenlies? By faith. I can sit on that tractor on a 110 degree day, and I don't feel like I'm in heaven. Like someone said the other day, I bet you almost think you're in the other direction. Well, it's true. But yet I can sit there in that 110 degree heat, and I can reflect on this, and by faith, where do I know I really am? In the heavenlies. See? In the heavenlies. That's what faith does. Now then, we are all baptized into one body. Not a body of Jews and a body of Gentiles. It's one body. Now this is what we're going to see really come to fruition when we get on a little further into the book of Ephesians. This is one of the great parts of the mystery now revealed to the Apostle Paul in this particular letter, is that the Jew loses his identity when he comes into the Body of Christ. I think I've shared in this program, and the lady is going to hear of it when she watches the program. The very first time I went up to Minnesota for one of those all day seminars, at the very first break time, mid four noon, she came up and said, Now Les, I'm a Jew, but I'm a believer. If the Lord comes tonight, since I'm a Jew, will I be left behind, and all the rest of you Gentiles go in the Rapture? And I said, Heavens no! No, if you're a believer, whether you're a Jew or whatever, and you're in the Body of Christ, we all go. Oh, she was so relieved. And every time we go back up, we rehearse that again, of what comfort it gave her that just because she's a Jew, that doesn't make her any different in the Body of Christ. We're all one, and we're going to see that more definitively as we move into this Book of Ephesians. So whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and then I always even take it nationalistically, whether we're black or white, whether we're red or yellow, it makes no difference. We are all one when we come into the Body of Christ. And I was sharing with someone again the other night, and Iris and I get a chance because we love it when people invite us into their home. I'd much rather do that than stay in an old dead motel someplace. But every home we go, it's an exciting experience. We sit down at that dinner table, and I don't have to press the subject, they do. And what do you suppose we talk about? The Book, the Lord. And there's never any feeling, oh, I wish we could get these people to talk about the Lord. It just comes. Why? Because we're members of the Body. And then on occasion we may be in a home where it isn't that way. And you can just almost sense that they do not have that love for the Word that all these others have. You can tell it right away. If it's a strain to talk about the things of God, if it's a strain to talk about Scripture, then you know there's something lacking. But that's not very often the case. So whether we're Jew or Gentile, black or white, rich or poor, bond or free, we have been all. Every last believer has been made to drink or partake of that One Spirit, the One Holy Spirit. And then he goes on throughout the rest of the chapter, and drawing the analogies, and making it as plain as can possibly be made. Ephesians 1.3 "...and so he hath blessed us with spiritual blessings." Now you see there's not a word in here about material blessings. Now we hear a lot the last 20 years about name it and claim it. But listen, Paul never mentions that. Paul never tells us that if we are a believer, whether we're carnal or whether we're spiritual, that we're going to be blessed with millions. Never! All Paul is concerned about is, do you realize how rich you are in grace? And whether we're rich or poor, that's beside the point. We're all one in Christ, and this is what people have to understand. God isn't promising you and I that we're going to become millionaires. Far from it. Many of us are probably going to go all the way through life with just the very necessities, but what have we all got? These spiritual blessings in Christ. Okay, now verse 4. Ephesians 1.3 "...according as he has chosen us in him before anything was ever created." Now that's mind-boggling, and I know it throws a curve at a lot of people. And you had some that take it clear off into the boondocks in a false teaching that God has already determined who's going to be saved and who's going to be lost, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no use trying to evangelize because if God hasn't foreordained them, they don't stand a chance. No, that's not what it means. Now we know that God knew from eternity past that we would be believers, but that does not excuse us from taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth and to make everyone aware of their opportunity for salvation. In other words, when we were teaching Romans chapter 9, I think it's one of the toughest chapters in Scripture, but I think we made a fairly good dent in it. And if you remember how I taught it, that here over on the right hand we have the whosoever will. Whosoever will may come. But over here on this side, we have this verse that says, "...you were chosen before the foundation of the world." All right, now, humanly speaking, can you understand that? Now don't nod your head yes, because then I'll say, Boy, I don't know. Because I can't, and I don't think you can. It is impossible for a human being to understand that over here we have the whosoever will may come, and over here we have chosen before the foundation of the world. The two are counter to the other. But is it a problem for God? No, and that's why I leave it in God's hand. The best I can do is bring the two to the middle. Yes, here we've got the whosoever will. Here we have the chosen from before the foundation of the world, and I bring them to a place where, yes, just as soon as you respond to the whosoever will, and you come to that invitation, the Lord Jesus shouts throughout all of heaven, I chose Him before the foundation of the world. See? And that's the best way I can explain it. But to understand it? No. I've just got to leave it in the hands of God, but this is what the Word says. Whosoever will may come, chosen from before the foundation of the world. And just revel in that, that yes, you exercised your free will when you responded to the Gospel. But on the other hand, God can honestly say, I chose you before anything was ever created. Glorious thought, okay. KENTA OKLAHOMA 74552 Through the Bible is viewer supported and your gift is appreciated. Thank you and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feltick.