Sealed With The Spirit

Tom Shrader examines Ephesians 1:13-14 within the context of Paul's long sentence about spiritual blessings in verses 3-14. He emphasizes that when believers hear the gospel and believe, they are sealed by the Holy Spirit as God's guarantee that every spiritual blessing is theirs forever. This sealing represents security, authenticity, ownership, and authority - a divine down payment ensuring that what God has begun in salvation He will complete.

“You have every spiritual blessing and you cannot, will not, ever lose it.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Ephesians

Recorded: 2018

Duration: 42 min

Themes: salvation, security, assurance, blessing, faith, gospel, authenticity, ownership, new believer, doubting salvation, seeking assurance, young christian, questioning faith, spiritual insecurity, new convert, struggling with doubt

Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-14, Ephesians 1:13-14, Ephesians 2:1, Ephesians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, John 6:44, 2 Corinthians 4, Philippians 1:6, Hebrews 13:5, Colossians 2:10

Theological Themes: pneumatology, holy spirit, sealing of the spirit, eternal security, perseverance of saints, sanctification, spiritual blessings, soteriology

Full Transcript

Well, good morning. Great to see you this morning. You can always tell when I'm teaching because it looks like a living room up here. I said this is a new deal, a padded chair. Next time, a little recliner, TV, and we'll doze off. So it's good to see you and be with you.

I have a specific assignment. I have Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13 and 14. What I typically do when I'm coming into a book - I haven't taught any of the book of Ephesians this time through - what I typically do is go back and revisit some of the introduction. I came across a quote from Dr. Kent Hughes, and I thought I'd put it up there and just kind of let your eyes drift across it. What he's saying is this book of Ephesians is pretty special. It's pretty significant. It's all of Scripture obviously significant, but in some ways, this and probably the book of Romans, the crown of Paul's writing.

The Crown of Paul's Writing

I was doing an interview in the spring with a young guy who's planting a church. He was asking - they always ask the same questions. What mistakes did you make? They never ask, what did you do right? What mistakes did you make? What would you do differently? But this guy had an interesting question. He said, I'd like to get our doctrine, our culture, I'd like to get it in the water. I think that's driven from the pulpit. What would you teach?

I had not given that any thought. What came out was I'd teach Genesis chapter 3, because that's the fall. Give me an opportunity to touch on creation a little bit. Then I would teach a gospel, probably just for sake of time, Mark, because it's quicker and I can hit most of the stuff. Then I'd teach the book of Ephesians. Then I would teach the book of Ecclesiastes. I just think that gives you a beautiful picture of what the scripture has to say, what God has to say about man.

So this is a significant work. It's a work that divides easily into two sections. Chapter 1, 2, 3, very doctrinal in their nature. Chapter 4 verse 1, Paul says, therefore, I, a prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

Doctrine Leading to Transformation

So He talks about these incredible truths, and we've been looking at them in Ephesians chapter 1, especially focused verse 3 through 14, all these truths. He says, now, because those are true, I want you to live a transformed life. I ought to see your faith. Then He talks about the church and the body. He talks about marriage. He talks about children. He talks about spiritual warfare. Wherever we have this doctrine, it's never just race through the doctrine and get a cold. It makes a practical application in our life. Our life has to be changed.

We've been looking at this first 12 verses of the book of Ephesians. Murray Stedman writes this, verse 3 of chapter 1 is in many ways the theme of the letter: in Christ. That's the key. Here's what Paul wrote in chapter 1, verse 3, "Blessed be the God and father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in Christ."

So He's already said these people are geographically, verse 1, geographically in Ephesus. They're spiritually in Christ. We would say the same thing about us. We're geographically in Gilbert. We're spiritually in Christ.

Grace and Peace

He extends to us this somewhat standard greeting: grace and peace to you. That grace and peace are from God, from our father, from the Lord. Paul will couple those terms together, grace and peace, but He'll never change the order. Grace and peace to you. Grace, unmerited favor, the work that God's done in your life. The result of that is I have peace with God. Now I have the peace of God.

He says in verse 3, if you don't know anything - I guess that's the same as saying if you graduated from the U of A. Might be a basketball coach opening down there. That could get ugly. If you don't know anything, it certainly sounds special that He's blessed me with every spiritual blessing. I might not even know what it is, but I want all of that.

The Believer's Bank Account

Kind of a picture of that being our bank account, John MacArthur writes this: "Ephesians has been given such titles as the believer's bank, the Christian's checkbook, the treasure house of the Bible. The beautiful letter tells Christians of their great riches, inheritance, fullness in Jesus Christ. It tells them what they possess."

Here's what Paul is saying in verse 3: you have all of these spiritual blessings already. Colossians chapter 2 verse 10, we're complete in Him. These are things we have. Now I just listed a few going from verse 3 down to verse 11. We're blessed in Christ. He chose us. We'll be holy and blameless, predestined. We have redemption. We have wisdom, insight. I mentioned that book of Ecclesiastes. It allows me to see and understand man and the world as He is. We've made known to us the mystery of His will. We have obtained an inheritance.

One Continuous Sentence

So the assignment I have is verse 13 and 14. Well Tim has been hammering home that verses 3 through 14 are a continuous sentence. It's an ongoing, on, just on running sentence. Like that kid that's experienced something, they come home from a party, a little five-year-old, what did you do? They just want to talk, and they want to talk, and they're jumping around, and this leads to this, and this leads to this, and their mind is all over it. It's as though Paul starts this sentence and He can't stop.

Again, John MacArthur: "In the Greek, verses 3 through 14 comprise one sentence encompassing past, present, future of God's eternal purpose for the church. In Paul's outline in God's master plan for salvation." Verses 3 through 6a were shown the past, the election. He chose you before the foundations of the earth. And 6b through 11 were shown the present. He's redeeming you, restoring you. Verses 12, 13, 14 were shown the future aspects, the inheritance. Within God's master plan of salvation is every believer who has or will trust.

The Context of Our Spiritual Blessings

In God and be saved. It is sometimes expressed, history is simply the outpouring of His story, which has already been planned and pre-written in eternity. These verses, Paul begins, and it's as though he starts in verse 3 and just takes off and then catches his breath and comes back down and then begins to unpack what he's been saying.

So we look at it in its simplest form here in chapter 2 verse 1: you were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you formally walked. That's all past tense. If you're a Christian, you just took communion, you declare yourself a follower of Christ. That's what you were. You walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of air, of the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formally lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. That's who you are, not just you, every person.

The Reality of Our Fallen Nature

Every night, I follow about the same routine once I get in bed. I turn on the electric blanket and then I put a blanket over it, so about an hour before I go to bed. I am like a Pop-Tart sliding right in there, the happiest little guy in the world. It's so good. Then I get my phone and I check tomorrow, may pray about a thing or two, and then I always check Facebook.

I've never posted anything ever on Facebook. There were some things that popped up with my name that somebody hacked it or somebody got into it or I pushed a button, I don't know. But I've never posted. But I'm a Facebook voyeur. I love to read what people are doing.

Well, there was one the other day and there's this picture of this baby and it's all tucked in and the baby's two or three days old and the grandmother's posting this. And if you're here today, ma'am, this is not to offend you, though it could. The word that was used was, the baby is perfect. Really? I'm looking at it and it looks like kind of a cross between Churchill and Gandhi and it's not very attractive. And I presume doesn't know anything. Perfect? Seriously? We've stepped over the line at this point.

By nature, we're children of wrath. We're lost. We all need to be found. We need to be redeemed. That's the whole point that Paul's making.

Paul's Racing Mind and Overflowing Gratitude

This sentence, verses 3 to 14, is long and complicated. Not because it's really well-reasoned and logical, but because he's thinking of the gifts he's been given. I'm speaking humanly here. His mind is just racing. I was lost, now I'm found. I've been chosen and delivered. And so, that pen just gets carried away.

Well, my assignment is verse 13 and 14. So, I read verse 13 and 14 and I can't get out of my head the reality that this is one continuous sentence. And all of a sudden, I have this incredible insight. I see something.

Midweek, I ran into somebody and they said, I heard your church teaching at Gilbert on Sunday. I said, that's true. And he said, do you have a point? And I said, yep, I do. And I said, here it is. And he said, oh, and walked away. I thought, well, maybe this is not the earth-shattering point that I saw.

The Main Point: Sealed and Secure

But I just, for a second, here's what's happened. I read verse 3 through 14 over and over and over and over and over again. And I read it in all different translations. So, I want to use the New American Standard and the message and show you what I saw and hopefully, it's a wow for you, too.

Here you go. Verse 3: Blessed be God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. Then only goes all that stuff we've talked about. Tim's talked about it, broken it apart, put it back together.

Verse 13: In Him, so we're picking up the same idea from verse 3. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were, and we're introducing kind of a new concept here, you were sealed. So, we need to figure out what that means. In Him, with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view of the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of His glory.

The Message Translation Makes It Clear

Now, the message, it's a paraphrase, but kind of helps us get this point. How blessed is God? What a blessing He is. He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in Him.

Verse 13: It's in Christ that you once heard the truth and believed this message of salvation, found yourself home free. Now, we're getting it. Signed, sealed, delivered by the Holy Spirit. The signet of God is in the first installment and what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us.

Here's what I got all of a sudden. You have every spiritual blessing and you cannot, will not, ever lose it. It's a done deal. Simple sentence.

This Is About God, Not About Us

The theme of this whole passage is that God is at work. It's so easy to read this and say, well, I have every spiritual blessing. What are those blessings I have? And all of a sudden, you elevate yourself to best supporting actor, best lead actor in a drama.

I'm one of those annoying guys that when the movie's over, I like to sit and watch the credits. And in the old movies, like the Turner movie classics, you'll get a lot of the cast before. I'll say the cast. And you go through and you see like Walter Brennan when he was 15. You see all these bit players.

This is not in any way to hurt your feeling, but this whole thing is about God. You're just a bit player. This is not about how terrific you are. He chose you in spite of you. He brought you into His family.

Ray Steadman writes, before the world was made, we were in the mind and heart of God and He called us and destined us to be His son. We would never come to Him apart from that. John chapter 6 verse 44, no man can come to the father except my father draws Him. That all these blessings,

This relationship, this restoration that takes place—God and sinner reconciled—the amazing grace you sang about is entirely a work performed by God. He did it. He continues it. He continues to restore you. Paul uses the phrase in 2 Corinthians 4, "being renewed day by day." On my own, you see that phrase, no one can come. It speaks to ability. On my own, I don't have the power to come. But God intervened.

That's one of the hot words, you know—disrupted. We disrupt. Well, God disrupts your rebellion against Him and turns you from a sinner into a saint and changes your destination from hell to heaven. It was so interesting to listen to them talk about Billy Graham's passing and how Billy Graham is in the presence of His Savior. I was part and it was a privilege to be part of a group here for a memorial service on Friday and to say Laura's in heaven. Why? Because God guaranteed it. God did the work. That was my aha moment. You got all this and you can never lose it.

The Word and the Spirit Working Together

Back to Ephesians 1:13: "In Him, after you listened to the word of truth, the gospel, and you believed it." When Paul writes this, notice two things which are emphasized here and you always find together in Scripture: the word of God and the Spirit of God. The word of God becomes this extraordinary tool when the Spirit of God applies it to the heart and mind of a man or woman, boy or girl. Both of these are essential. The word and the Spirit. There's no salvation without both of them.

You listen. Why do you listen? You couldn't until they opened your ears. And then all of a sudden the gospel made sense.

A Personal Story About Hearing Without Understanding

I one night had a gentleman who invited Susan and myself to his house, a couple, for dinner. Now, I didn't understand at the time why, but they invited me to dinner and his wife called and said, "What would you like for dinner?" And I said, "Well, what are the choices?" And she said, "Well, I can make anything." I said, "Well, then I'd like meatloaf." She said, "All right."

So we go in and there's a salad. Don't need that. There's meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes, they're mashed, but still the skin is on them and they're, oh my golly. And so he's talking and he's talking about the fact I'm a sinner. Anybody who knows me knows that. So I mean, I said, "Can you pass the corn?" I like the corn in my mashed potatoes. And so he's launching. And apparently I'm not listening. I'm eating.

And he gets up and says, "Well, you know, we'll have dessert. I made a brownie and ice cream." And Susan says, "We're out of here." What are you talking about? They got brownies. "We're gone. I'm not going to listen to this. I don't want to hear this." And we got in the car and she explained what he was saying. And I guess I was appropriately offended at that point in time, but there was the word of God, but not the power of the Spirit of God.

And then one day in my life, the Spirit of God applied the word of God. And I heard—here's the phrase—the gospel of your salvation. You hear this good news and everything changes and you're redeemed. You're sealed. It's a done deal.

The Gospel Message Defined

Let me take you through this. First Corinthians chapter 15, Paul's laying out in essence, the gospel. He said, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel, which I preached to you, which I also received, in which you also stand." So he's talking to you—you were saved by that word. Saved means rescued or delivered from what? Well, from an empty life, from a godless life, from a life of endless pursuit of love and joy and peace apart from God, which is impossible. And you're rescued from it.

Now he breaks it down. Verse three: "I delivered to you as of first importance, which I received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures." This was God's plan from the very beginning. Jesus didn't just die, but He died for our sins. And then He was buried and then He was raised again.

And so often when we're reading this section, I think we stop there and we miss something important because at this point, all we have is Christ who's died and was buried. And all we have is an empty tomb. An empty tomb doesn't prove anything to us.

The Proof of the Resurrection

Now he gets into it and he says, verse five, "And He appeared to Cephas, to Peter, to the twelve, to more than 500 at one time. Many of those are still alive. Go ask them." And then, "Last of all, to one untimely born, to me," Paul says, "He appeared to me." That's the gospel message.

Back to the verse: you heard it, you believed it. It's not just enough to hear it. It's not even enough to say, "Yeah, I get that." I now have to believe it—to place my faith and trust in Christ. And if I believe it, it will change my life.

One author writes this: we must believe it. And to believe it, we must accept it as truth and act accordingly. You've never believed unless something is changing your experience. Your life begins to be transformed. You think differently, you act differently.

The Seal of the Holy Spirit

He began all that and you were sealed. It's a word that we may not be that familiar with. It has with it four ideas. It communicates security. They would use a signet ring and they'd take hot wax and they'd put that signet ring in there. And that was security. And it was authenticity and ownership and authority. I'm His, I'm a child of the King. And I will be forever because He began that good work. I didn't. He initiated it and He sustains it.

This Holy Spirit who was given as a pledge. The Old Testament idea is the idea of a down payment. And that in our context loses a little, because anybody that's done real estate has been involved in a deal where there's been money in escrow, earnest money, the deal doesn't close. What in essence we're saying is this Holy Spirit is the first payment that guarantees all the other payments—that what happened to you will

This is the security of the believer. Last night I was going through some articles, things I'd read, stuff I'd clipped, and I found really an interesting twist on this idea. It's three paragraphs written by John Piper and the title is, "Why Will You Wake Up a Christian?" So I'm going to try to read it. Like I said, I came across it yesterday so I don't have it on the screen for you.

He writes this: If you go to bed tonight as a believer in Christ, why do you think you'll wake up a Christian tomorrow? The fact that you've been a Christian for a long time? Your own willpower? You feel confident that you're strong enough to keep loving God? If these reasons are enough to stem your fears, you probably haven't considered your circumstances close enough. We have a powerful enemy whose entire campaign is to destroy our faith. You still have sin that lives in you and seeks to eat away your hope. You live in a body that goes bad and every night's sleep brings you closer to a day when your mind might lose its traction and with it your rock-solid hold of God and the gospel.

Now he comes back to close it. Christians should have steel-strong confidence they will remain Christians until the day they die. But it's precisely not because of your strength, not because of your willpower, not because of your determination. Rather, it's because God Himself has sealed us with His Spirit. The only way a Christian can wake up without faith is if God withdraws the down payment, which He will never do.

God's Unbreakable Promises

It's God's promise in Hebrews 13:5: "I'll never desert you. I'll never forsake you." It can't be any more clear to me than Philippians 1:6. Paul says, "I'm confident of this very thing, that He who began the good work"—that is, pre-chose, predestined, adopted, brought you into this relationship—"will continue it."

Now, let's make sure we understand something. We love promises, but a promise is only as good as the one who makes it. If I buy a set of Ginsu knives with a lifetime warranty and three weeks later Joe Ginsu's out of business, the warranty's no good. If somebody says to you, and you've all experienced it, "I promise you I'll be there. I promise you I'll do it." But the person either maliciously or just simply forgets. They didn't have the power to pull it off.

This run-on, continuous, long, complicated sentence is bookended with the idea that I have every spiritual blessing, and this seems to me to be a big deal, and I'll never lose Him. I can't forfeit Him. I can't give Him away. He began the relationship, so He's the one who'll continue it.

Christianity vs. Every Other Religion

Let me close with one of my favorite little three paragraphs from Max Lucado. He writes this: Please note, salvation—and that's what Paul's talking about here in verse 13 and 14. We heard the message of truth, we believe the message of truth, we have the gospel of salvation. Salvation is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, God-originated. The gift is not from man to God, but God to man. Grace is created by God and given to man.

On the basis of that point alone, Christianity is set apart from every other religion in the world. Every other approach to God is a bartering system. If I do this, God'll do that. I'm either saved by works—what I do—emotion—what I experience—or knowledge—what I know. That's religion. Here's biblical Christianity, here's everything else. Everything else has you doing something.

I was born and raised Catholic—Catholic grade school, high school, college. This would be a busy time a year for us, Lent. We would go to Mass, I would go to Mass every morning, 6:45. My dad would wake me up and he'd take us to Mass at 6:45. We'd come back and get a little breakfast. We'd have some special section during school and we did all this without candy. It's religion. I'm going to work at it.

When we hit Easter, we had a candy sugar high you couldn't imagine. We had eggs and chocolate eggs and these yellow bird eggs and all these different things. But I honestly believed that I had to be good. Christ died, I got it, He did His part. But I'm a limited partner, I need to do mine. I need to be good enough.

The Futility of Works-Based Religion

I somehow thought that God had this giant prototype—I wouldn't have known to call it a computer then—but somehow He kept track of everybody. He stacked up your good on a scale with your bad. When you died, if there was more good than bad, you went to heaven. More bad than good, you went to hell. By my sophomore year of college, I had that bad stack up there pretty good that I didn't think we were ever going to catch up. So I figured, well, let's see how high we can get this bad stack. Because I got no chance.

And that's exactly right. I had no chance, but God. I was a child of wrath. What Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4: "But God being rich in His mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive." That's biblical Christianity. That's salvation.

As astounding as that is, it's the verse 14 part. And it's forever. It's done. It's guaranteed. You're not going to out sin His grace. You're not going to outlast His mercy. He doesn't tell you that, by the way, so you'll go, "Eh, if it's done, I can do whatever I want to do. Sin away." No. He tells you that to overwhelm you with God's love for you.

No Room for Negotiation

Closing out Lucado's thought: By contrast, Christianity has no—this is a great word to say—whiff. Christianity has no whiff of negotiation. Man is not the negotiator. Indeed, man has no grounds from which to negotiate. This whole section that we've been looking at since we started our study in the book of Ephesians is about all the blessings that God has dumped on you, His kids. Forever. Unbreakable.

Now, it occurs to me that there could be people here who didn't participate in communion, who wouldn't say, "That's me." Well, I want you to hear that message of hope and love today. You might be here by accident. Maybe a friend said, "Hey, we're going to go to the movie. Let's go—"

to church first. And you said, well, can that hurt? And away you go. Don't know why you're here, but what you've heard is the truth.

In your life, you've been searching for something. You've been searching to see the world put back together again. It's not, but Jesus will put you together again. He will restore the relationship that you have with Him.

And in this, you're not on probation. This is not Jesus going to one day say, "If I knew that about you, I would have never chosen you." No, He knows everything you've ever done, everything you've ever said, everything you'll ever do, everything you'll ever say. Imagine this: in spite of that, He says, "You're my kid, and I love you, and I love you forever and ever and ever."

The Security of God's Love

Today, let's—I mean, that's a good place to stop. I'm smart enough to know that one. We stop right there.

Father, this is about You, Your grace, Your mercy, Your love. God, thank You that You saved us. God, thank You that You sealed us, that You guaranteed the deal, that You closed it, that we're Yours forever. Father, let us live a life that's grateful, thankful for what You've done, and we spend our life not trying to repay You, but to glorify You. Use us, let us glorify You. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.