March 15, 2026 | God’s Treasured Possession

Ephesians 1:11-14, Pastor Jason Lancaster

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

A portion of this passage is my favorite portion in the entire Bible. It means so much to me. You know, something means a lot to you, and you want to share it with others, and you hope they are as excited about it as you are. I feel almost as if uh my words will fail what I want to say today and conveying what's been very precious to me. So I'm gonna ask the Lord for help. Let's pray. Lord, please help me to preach your word today in a way that will encourage your people, your body, and the way that you have taken this portion and radically changed my life and altered me in several areas where I just don't know what to do, don't know where to turn, and you've given me your truth. I ask you to do the same to say. And when we do prayer and healing, Lord, just ask that you would move and do all these things for your glory in Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

What I'm about to say, I don't mean for it to be confrontive, but relatable, okay? So it goes something like this. Who owns you? Who owns you? Now, if you're a believer, the right answer is God owns you, right? You know, you think about the passage that you were not your own. You were bought at a price, right? So you would agree theologically that God owns you. But something tends to happen to us overnight. We fall asleep, we wake up in the morning, and there's something in us that wants to just attempt this silent coup against God to take our life back. And we act like we own ourselves. We spend money like it's ours to spend. We waste our time like it's ours to waste. We treat other people sometimes not so good, like it's our prerogative to do things. Sometimes we make career decisions or retirement decisions, relationship decisions, as if they are ours to make. And when life doesn't go our way, what do we do? We complain like it was our life in the first place, and so we complain about it. And this is not confrontive, but sometimes we treat God like a consultant. We hire Him when things go wrong to fix our lives that we don't own in the first place. Think about it this way: When I was in high school, I'm not kidding, I had seven different cars in high school because they were all junkers, they kept breaking down. I had to get a new one. But the ultimate junker was a Mustang that looked like a great car, but we bought it from Enterprise, which is a rental car company. So the car was a previous rental car. So if you don't buy rental cars, by the way. But we but I think about the way you treat rental cars. You don't care. You just fly over speed bumps, you leave crumbs and trash in the car, you treat it like a rental car because it's not yours. But when you finally get the car you've been saving up for years and you're really pumped about that dream car, I don't know, you treat it with care. You take it in, actually get an oil change. It matters to you. Here's the reality. Too many times we treat our own lives like a cheap rental car. And God treats us like his most valued possession. We just make decisions and treat our lives like we're just this we're just a rental car. And God's like, no, no, no, no. I own you, you're valuable to me. And since you're valuable to me, there's a certain way I want you to think and act and live and worship. And that's what we're gonna see this morning in Ephesians chapter one. If you want to look at Ephesians 1, we've been going to the book of Ephesians, and starting in verse 3, we have this super long sentence where there are a variety of praises going up to God, and that's why I wanted Adam to sing that song this morning, Come Thou Found of Many Blessings. Paul is just a leashing, unleashing this explosive praise of blessings. We've been blessed with election and predestination and adoption and redemption and forgiveness, and everything's gonna be summed up in Christ. We're gonna be with Christ one day, so he's just bursting forth with praise. And this morning we're gonna pick it up again, and this morning we're gonna start in verse 11. Look at Ephesians 1, verse 11. Also, we have obtained an inheritance. Okay, stop right there. There's many, uh, there's two primary ways this has been understood, and it's like, okay, is it talking about we're getting an inheritance or we are God's inheritance? And you'll you'll see commentators talk about this and go back and forth all the time. And then some argue from the Greek that it is both. And so I'm gonna kind of present that to you right now. That the reality is, is that not only are you going to obtain an inheritance, but you are an inheritance. You have an inheritance now in Christ, and you'll obtain one in the future, but at the same time, you are God's inheritance. Think about the reality of an inheritance you are going to claim one day. You get part of it now to now, not yet. You are kings, the king. You are his heirs. H-E-I-R. You got the idea? When I was uh a senior at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, I was a kind of a new believer and I formed a softball team. And I guess if what you do, if you're a believer, you you want to name it something Christian. And so I picked the name King's Heirs. That was the name on our uniform, King's Heirs. Like we are heirs of the king, but people had no idea what that meant. Being in Arkansas, we would play other teams and they would say we're playing King's Heirs. We laugh, but how many of you sometimes act like you're the king's hairs rather than the king's heirs? Yeah? We inherit everything in Christ. We get redemption, right? We get adoption. Glorification's coming. We have an inheritance in Jesus Christ. But not only do we get an inheritance, we are also God's inheritance. Another way this uh could be translated is that we are made a heritage. That means we are God's portion. We've been chosen as God's people. If you go in the Old Testament, you will see that his people, Israel, are called his heritage, his inheritance. For example, in Deuteronomy 7.6, this is a wonderful passage. Deuteronomy 7.6 says, For you are a holy people to the Lord, your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his personal possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. So God chose them as his people, as his possession, or as one Christian song says, God's property. They're God's property. Even if we transition to the New Testament, the church is God's inheritance, it's God's property. You can think of someone who's a billionaire or a gajillionaire who owns all the planets, he owns every star, he has every single gold mine. What could possibly be missing in his inheritance? And the answer is you. And I don't mean that in a sentimental sappy type of way, but in a legit biblical way, God wants you as his inheritance. You ever thought about that? It's like, yes, you. Now we won't get into predestination, election again, as we covered it earlier, and there are a variety of beliefs within our congregation. However, I do want you to understand about election and predestination before the foundation of the world, how it all comes together here, that God chose us and predestined us to be elected, to be adopted, to be redeemed. We have been redeemed to be his special people. He has adopted us to be his. And then it comes to the portion of the Bible that is my favorite portion in the entire Bible. It's this right here, once again, verse 11. Having been predestined, right here, according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will. That's the doctrine of providence that God's in control of all things, and he's working all things to the counsel of his will. To me, this is one of the most freeing doctrines in the entire Bible. Not because it removes hardship, because it removes the burden of outcome. You are not the architect, you are the building, and the architect is perfect. And what he's building in your life is according to his plan and his purpose. I like the NIV translation, which I've memorized. It says, In him we've also been chosen, Ephesians 1.11, having been predestined according to the plan of him, who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. This is also one of the most comforting verses in the whole Bible that God is working out everything according to the purpose and counsel of his will. There are a variety of different views on how we think through things that happen to us in our circumstances. Whether sometimes they're biblical, sometimes they're not, but I think there's probably three ways that you would explain what has happened in your life. Some of us would say that God has ordained it. Some of us would say God has caused it. And some of us would say God has allowed it. And depending upon the circumstances, you would say, well, God ordained that, God caused that, God allowed that. And I want you to think about things that happen in your life that you don't particularly like. I went to seminary at Dallas Seminary, which is a very, very long degree. So I'll go to college and then I go to seminary. So after apparently eight years of studying, I go and I pastor my first church, Santa Monica, California. You know, that's the part of Los Angeles that's going to fall into the ocean one day. Santa Monica, pastoring this church, very dysfunctional church, and I was the last pastor there. After 106 years, they finally had a guy that shut it all down. That would be me. And to be honest with you, I felt like a complete failure. Why did it close down? Is it because of what I did or didn't do, other people's decisions? I mean, you could give lots of explanations of why it happened, but I felt like a failure. And God's like, you know, you are mine. This is not a failure. This is just a change in strategy. God had a plan all along. It was no surprise to him. He's not panicking, he's just moving his assets around the way he wants. But I didn't view it that way at the time. I was like, this is this is horrible. This is difficult. And now I'm stuck in a very difficult place. And I want you to think about this. If you're going through a difficult season right now, are you stuck or are you stationed? Are you stuck or are you stationed? And you may be a lot of decisions that brought you to where you're at. There may be things that are not going too right with your health, with your circumstances, and you're in a difficult season. Are you stuck? Or are you right in the place that God wants you? Because He's ordained it? Maybe He caused it, or maybe He allowed it. But part of you may be honest and say, you know what? It's still cruel. It's cruel of Him. Whether He ordained it or whether He caused it or whether he allowed it. We know He could have stopped it. But he chose not to. Is it cruel? I came to this church with seven kids. I now have six kids. Because my seventh kid that many of you knew that we adopted is no longer with us. Well, why did we adopt him in the first place? He's been removed from our home. He's elsewhere now. Why did that happen? Was it his decisions? Was it our decisions? Was it the system's decisions? But why did it have to happen that way? It just seems cruel. Cruel to him, cruel to us, cruel to everybody. You know you ever think these things? Like God, if you ordain, if you cause, you allow, why don't you stop it? Is God cruel?

SPEAKER_00 15:31

There's a lot of passages I can share in the Bible with you. But the one I want to share with you is probably one of the most famous passages that you know that we got to keep coming back to. Romans 8, 28. Can we see it? And we know that God causes all things, not some things.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. We know that our God is a good God. We know that our God is not a cruel God. We know that our God loves us. Can we explain why I brought a kid to this country and this kid is no longer with me? Can I explain all the intricacies and reasons why I have no idea? And I know there's been stuff that's happened in your life. You go, why did that have to happen? All I know is this God is working for your good. God loves you, He's not abandoned you, you're not stuck. God has you right where He wants you. Yes, sin may be involved, other people's decisions may be involved, but God has a plan for you. And in all the things He ordains, causes, or allows, it is for your good and his glory. Do you believe that? We want to say, yes, we believe it up here, but we want to believe it right here. Let's continue on. Let's continue on. Why did he set it up this way? Verse 12. Why did he set it up? To the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ will be to the praise of his glory. So the goal of God's redeeming us, predestining, becoming his heritage is so that we may praise him. Praise him for his salvation. Praise him that he's conforming us to Christ. Praise him that we have to be with him one day. Just praise him that he's ordaining every single detail. He's got a plan for everything. It's supposed to be because we're supposed to praise him. That's the goal. My wife and I have a standing date each week. It's on Wednesday. Pretty much every Wednesday we go out to eat. We go out to eat with the early crowd, let's say the older crowd, around 4:15. I see some of you there. No, we go out to eat at a Mexican restaurant called Don Juan on Malvern. It's super cheap. And this past week I said to my wife, this is when we get a chance to really talk. There's no kids around us. And uh and I and I told her, I said, I didn't think when I reached this point in my life, that this is the way my life would look. You ever said that before about your own life? Like I never imagined it would have looked the way it looked. And when I said that, I was not complaining. I wasn't saying to my wife, it is worse than I ever imagined. But it also wasn't a happy comment. I wasn't saying, it's so much better than I've ever imagined. I wasn't doing that either. But I was saying it in such a way, panning out big picture, God, this is the way you worked it out. And I praise you. Can you say that in your life? God, this is the way you worked it out. I mean, can you imagine the apostle Paul is like, yeah, I love being beaten and thrown in a prison and shipwrecked? No, God, he Paul's like, praise God. This is the way you worked it out. It's not worse than I imagined, it's not better than I imagined. It is what it is, it's in your sovereign hand. Praise you for saving me, praise you for controlling my life. No matter what's going on, praise you. I think that's where we want to be. And I think it's the purpose of God and this sovereign ordination of your salvation and also every detail of your life is to praise Him. I could say amen. We can just wrap it up right there. Man, that that's that's amazing. Well, let's let's not wrap it up here. Let's let's keep going. In verse 13. In him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. I love this. You see right there. You're listening to the message of truth, believing in the gospel, believing in Jesus is true. All I want to know is what's true. I I don't care what else people are saying. I just want to know what's true. You ever watch the news? You say, I hear you, I see the talking heads, but just tell me what's true. I want to know what's really going on. And in the age of AI and seeing stuff online, I don't even know what's true anymore. Like, I don't even know what to believe. Like, what is that? Is that person really dead? Are they really alive? I don't know. AI shows them dead, they must be dead. You just don't know. But the Bible is true. I can trust the Bible. And when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, that you can be saved and go to heaven through faith in Jesus Christ, Paul says to the Ephesians, you believed it. You trusted it. When you in your life believed and trusted in Jesus Christ, that you're saved by grace through faith and not by works. You go, what? I thought I had to be a good person to go to heaven. I thought I had to do a lot of works to go to heaven. Let me just say something. You are saved by works, just not your own. You're saved by the works of Jesus. Do you get that? You get that? So you hear that, you're like, what? I don't have to do anything, I don't have to do jump through hoops to get no. You heard the word of truth and you believed. And you believed. And when that happened, it says specifically right here you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Wow. Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Like, what does that mean? Sealed? We don't use that word much. Well, the idea is like a branding, where uh you think about a cattle being branded. The mark, seal you, you're my cattle, you're my cattle, you're my cattle, right? Well, the idea is that the Holy Spirit took up residence in us. And God's like, mine, mine, mine, third person of the Trinity, gonna now live inside of you. Sealed you to be His. And I just want to say, as an aside, I know a lot of us have wondered, like, what's going on with the Holy Spirit? Do I need to have this second or third experience with the Holy Spirit? Do I need to be speaking in tongues? How do I what am I doing? What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? What does it mean to quench the Spirit? We got a lot of questions about the Spirit, but I just want to tell you this right here, okay? Okay, look, look, look. You have all of God that you're ever gonna get. The question is, does he have all of you? Do you get the idea? Is that you don't get more of the Holy Spirit as you grow? He gets more of you. You have all of God. You don't need to have any certain experiences, second, third, and those can be great. Don't get me wrong, those can be great, sure. But as a believer, you are sealed on the day of salvation. Sealed. You were his. So what comes next? Well, verse 14. The Holy Spirit, who is a first installment, who is a first installment, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory. I told you God owned you. God's own possession. He puts the Holy Spirit in us. He says, Mine, it is a deposit, it is a doubt payment of more to come. So what we're experiencing in Christ now, we're gonna have full-blown experience with the now and not yet will no longer exist. We'll have all of God in person, face to face forever. But until then, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, which guarantees that those that he started a good work in, he'll finish the good work in. Okay? There's none of this. Well, I did believe it one time, but I think I lost my salvation. No, you can't lose anything you didn't gain in the first place. Put his spirit in you, he's going to finish the work that he started. And if you don't see him working in your life, maybe he never started. For those he saved who believed in the truth, he's filled with the spirit. And the rest of our lives are going to be like, God, take more of me. I have all of you take more of me, please. May this come into more and more submission of you, fill me with the spirit to walk in the spirit, to walk in your ways until I'm with you forever. I hope you're convinced that you don't own you, but God owns you. And that's good news. So you might say, well, are you saying let go and let God? Absolutely not. No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying more along the lines of trust and obey. With a heavy reliance on trust this sermon. This is a trust sermon this morning. Trust him and obey him. So, what does this actually mean? What's your next move? I rarely give you some talking points at the end, but I'm going to do it just for just for fun today. So listen to this. Number one, you are not stuck. Too many times I talk to college students in my last church. I talked to many of my kids who are college age. They feel like I don't know what God's will is for my life. I don't know what's going on. I want to say, look, you're living in it right now. You're not stuck. You have God who has strategically stationed you in your life right now. You're not stuck, you're stationed by God. Second thing I want you to think about is this is this is for all you control freaks out there, this is a good one. Uh that you don't have to force to make your life work to your advantage. Everything doesn't have to go your way. And that's okay. Everything doesn't have to go your way. You don't have to manipulate life for your advantage. It's not your life in the first place. You need to fire yourself. Fire yourself as a CEO of your own life. If you made a contract with yourself, you must break it. It's time to fire yourself. And the next one is uh now that you're fired, live like it. Don't just say, I just ripped up the contract on Sunday and on Monday, you're signing another one to yourself. Live like it. And just want to head heads up, uh, just as an aside, there is a huge signing bonus with God right now. Huge. It's a reverse signing bonus when you sign it with yourself, it costs you. Right? When you sign with the Lord, huge signing bonus. But this can all be fun and games and talk until we hit sufferings and trials. And it's in the midst of that. Can we really believe God is in charge? Does he still love me? Is he still working for my good? And that's when the rubber meets the road. On this day, March 15th, six years ago, in that parlor room back there, after the service, we sat in a circle as elders, and we said, what is going on in our world? People were talking about something called COVID. And we were trying to figure out do we shut down our service? We don't know what's going on. People aren't coming anyway. I mean, what's going on? We don't know what to do. And that was the start of the two-month shutdown for us, and that was the start of a maybe a year or two nightmare for many of you. But as we reflect back on that time of COVID, I want to ask you a question. Was God in charge? Was God in control? Was God still in charge, in control of your life? And I'm pretty sure every single one of you would say yes. You would say, Yeah, it was it was hard, but God was in control. Okay, okay, if that's true, how about this? If that was true, God being control of that whole COVID thing, is he in control of your life right now? With what you're going through right now? Is he in control now? Go, no, no, he can handle the COVID thing, but my thing he can't handle. No, is he in control right now? Does he still care about you right now, or are you still chalking him up as cruel? Does he still love you right now, or do he just love you back then? Is he still working for your good right now, or just back then? Some of us can look back at our past and go, God was so faithful, he's amazing. I just don't know if he can pull that off again. I don't know. And so that brings us to this time that we have now of prayer and healing. A time where we say, okay, if I truly believe that God is good, if I truly believe that God is in control, and here's my need right now, then you would go to God. You would go to God who's absolutely in control of everything, and you would crowd to him and don't say, Well, if God has already ordained everything, it doesn't matter how I pray, none of that stuff matters. You don't have because you don't ask. There's still a human action. There is huge, still human responsibility. There's still crying out to God. You go, yeah, but I don't understand. How does sovereignty and free will, how does it all go together? And I have no idea. But I do know you make decisions, and I do know God's a control. And I do know that somehow plays together in God's ordination of all things. And so this morning, if you have a need, you can come to the one who is good and who loves you. And I need to explain to you where this is happening in the Bible. I'm just gonna read to you uh from James chapter 5. Maybe you've never seen this, maybe you didn't practice this in your church. Um, that's okay. I'm gonna read to you from James 5, starting in verse 13. The question is asked, Is anyone among you suffering? That's a good question. Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He's to sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have elders down here in the front, elders in the back, and we're gonna have oil. It's not holy oil. We didn't do anything hocus pocus to the oil. It represents the presence of God, and when we anoint you with oil, we're saying God is here. God is the one we're calling out to right now. And so if you're sick or you're ill, we'll anoint you with oil. If you want prayer for something else, we'll put the oil back in our pocket and we'll just pray for you. Because I know some of you are going through some stuff right now that has nothing to do with physical ailments. You may have some things going on mental health-wise, depression-wise, circumstance-wise. And I know some of you have your kids that are going off the rail wise, and it's it's you need prayer, you need help. And so the elders will be up here to pray for you. They'll be in the back to pray for you. You say, I'm too embarrassed to come down front, don't come down front, go in the back. They'll be ready to pray for you. This is a time where we come together that we believe that no matter how we got here, bad decisions, others' decisions, bad health, good health, God's ordaining, allowing, call however, we're here now, and we're gonna call to the one who is working for your good. So I'm gonna go ahead and bring the worship team up here. If the worship team wants to go ahead and come up here, they're gonna sing. And what we're gonna do, we're gonna sing two songs. And we're gonna stand, don't stand yet, but we're gonna stand here in those songs so people can get out of the of the pew they're at. And don't worry, if you need to step over someone to come up and get pregnant, they'll let you out. It's okay. This is not making a big show. We're just calling out to the one who is good, who cares, who loves, who cares for you. So let's go ahead and stand. And as we worship and praise God, you're now free to come.