This summer our own Nick Krueger has been participating in an internship with the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. In early June, I had the opportunity to sit down with Nick and his boss and work through some long term financial goals. Just for fun, Nick and his boss drew up a plan of how much I would have to save in order to pay for Elayna’s college education in 18 years. I knew it would be frightening, I just did not know how frightening. Assuming that Elayna will go to a Christian Liberal Arts College, Nick and his boss applied the inflation rate of college fees, which is around 7% a year, to today’s tuition, giving them an estimate of how much college will cost in a little less than twenty years. Today, college tuition plus books, fees, room and board is approximately $30,000 for a year of college, before financial aid. Eighteen years from now, Elayna could end up paying as much as $97,000 for her first year of college. Those of you paying for college now are getting off easy! Actually, Elayna’s freshman year is a bargain. By her senior year she could be paying as much as $112,000 a year for school!

The skyrocketing cost of college education demonstrates a fact that we do not like to acknowledge—we cannot control the future. I will admit I did not fully grasp the fact that the future is out of my control until Michelle and I had Elayna. Elayna is a constant reminder of how not in control I really am. I remember putting her to bed that first night home from the hospital and then jumping up and checking on her every four or five minutes just to make sure she was okay. She was the helpless baby, but I was the one who felt absolutely powerless. But that’s real life. We are constantly faced with the uncertainty of a future which is out of our control. We are haunted by the never ending questions. How will we pay for our kids’ college? Will our kids make wise decisions as teenagers? Will my car make it through another winter? Will I pass this next test? Will I lose my job? Even little questions like “Will it rain at the Devil’s Lake Camping Trip” add to the stress.  We try to not to think about our lack of control or else the overwhelming fear would become debilitating. We try not to think about what could happen as we pull out onto highway 83 or driving on the way home. But even though we try not to think about it, the reality is still there—we are definitely not in control.

And yet, in the middle of all of that uncertainty, in the midst of the scary truth that we are not in control, there is hope for the future found in this passage we have before us in Ephesians 1. The Apostle Paul writes

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.  In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

In this passage Paul tells us that while the future is out of our hands, we can confidently face the future because the future is in God’s hands. Paul indicates that we can be confident in the future because God controls all time and God has sealed us with His Holy Spirit. Despite the apparent uncertainty of what lies ahead, we have confidence that the future lies in God’s hands because God controls all time and God has sealed us with the Holy Spirit.

Paul begins these five verses by arguing for God’s control of all time in verses 11-12. He says “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.” Paul does not limit God’s control to what is yet to come. Paul says “he works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Literally, God is “THE one working THE all.” Nothing falls outside of His control. No one tells God what to do. He makes His own decisions according to the counsel of His will. Paul even references the fact that we “have been predestined” reminding of verse 5, to show that God was working in the past to appoint us for adoption in Christ. Nothing forced God to adopt us. No one persuaded God to predestine us. God was in control of His own actions, determining and appointing events beforehand, ordering the past just as he orders the present and future. There is no event, no instance of time which falls outside of God’s control. He is the one working all things, past, present, and future.

Trivia Pursuit is Michelle’s least favorite game, partly because I have a tendency to argue with the answer card if I get it wrong. One question which I still continue to argue with to this day concerns famous swimmer Mark Spitz and the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The question reads “Did Mark Spitz win five gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics?” The answer on the back of the card claims that the correct answer is “no,” that no, Mark Spitz did not win five medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Actually, Mark Spitz won seven gold medals at those Olympics, which is all well and good, except how do you win seven gold medals without winning five first? How can the game claim he did not win five if he won seven? The game did not ask how many medals he won, but if he won five. But he did win five! Did he win one medal? Yes. Did he win two medals? Yes. Did he win six medals? Yes. And Seven? Yes. And five medals. Well, according to Trivial Pursuit the answer to that last one is no. Mark Spitz did not win five medals at the 1972 Olympics. Somehow, he won four gold medals in a row, skipped medal number five, and then won his sixth and seventh medals. He had to have won at least five because he won seven, and you can’t get to a seventh medal without winning a fifth one first.

So, is God in control of the future? He has to be because Paul said that God is in control of all things, working all things according to the counsel of His will, and he could not be in control of all things if he was not in control of the future. You can’t win seven medals without winning five first and you can’t be in control of all things if you aren’t in control of the future. God is in control of all things, which means we can take confidence that he is control of the future as well.

Specifically, Paul says we can have confidence in the fact mentioned at the beginning of verse 11 “We have obtained an inheritance.” Some translations, such as the NIV or New American Standard translate it as “we have been obtained or been chosen as an inheritance.” Both translations are true. God, in Christ Jesus, HAS obtained and chosen us, and because of that we HAVE, in Christ, obtained an inheritance.

But an inheritance lies in the future. We do not have it yet or it would not be an inheritance, it would be a possession. We still wait for what God has promised us, the glorifying and renewing of our bodies and our reigning together with Christ forever, all to the praise of God’s glory. And we can have confidence that while we have not received that inheritance yet, the God who controls all, working all things according the counsel of His will, controls our receiving that promised inheritance.

But while that inheritance lies in the future, God is already at work in us now. We may be tempted to think “Well that’s great and wonderful. One day life will be good but how does that help me now?” But Paul said that God was in control of all time, the one who works all things according to the counsel of His will. The God who is in control of our future inheritance is also in control of the here and now.

That has been the whole point of chapter 1. Throughout the first 10 verses of chapter 1, God has been in control of our past, our present, and our future. God was in control in our past, before we event existed, before the world was created, electing and predestining us for adoption and redemption. He is in control of our present, as we are now free from the control of sin, having been redeemed through the death of Christ on the cross. Even now God is repairing the brokenness of our world, reuniting all things in Christ. And in the future God will give us our inheritance with Christ. God is at work in all moments of all time for our salvation, electing, redeeming, purifying, glorifying. God’s plan has been to make us His own and He has worked that plan out over all time because He is in control of all time.

That is even the point the Romans 8:28, a verse which we love to quote for comfort in uncertain times and which we read earlier. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” All things work together for good because of the God who works all things according to the counsel of His will. But what is this good? Look at the context of Romans 8:28, the very next verses say “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those whom he predestined He also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” The context of Romans 8:28 is the same as Ephesians 1:11. The good is our salvation! We have confidence that the God who controls all is at work in every moment in all things for our salvation and ultimately the receiving of our inheritance.

God is in control of all things, working out His plan in all things, for our good and His glory. He controls whether or not my car makes it through the winter or whether or not we can pay for our kids’s college and we can take confidence that He will bring our greatest eternal good out of every situation.

But just because God is in control for our eternal good does not mean it will be painless. We often assume that if God is control my car will make through the winter, I will be able to pay for my kids’ college, I won’t lose my job, and it won’t rain on the Devil’s Lake Camping Trip in September. I once had a friend tell me it was somewhat pointless to pray for God’s protection on the way to a missions trip since we were going to do God’s work. God would never let us die on the way to a mission field since that would not bring about the greatest good. Unfortunately, we often think that way, assuming that we know what our greatest good is.  In 1995, my good friend Matthew Alexander left for Marseille, France to be a missionary. He said goodbye to his parents, and five sisters, and boarded TWA Flight 800 bound for Paris. Less than twenty minutes after take-off, just outside of New York City, Flight 800 exploded in mid-air killing everyone on board, including my friend Matthew. Matthew’s parents were devastated; their only son was gone. Why would God allow someone to die on their way to the mission field? If you asked the Alexander family if they want their son back, I guarantee you they would say “yes.” They understand that God is control, they have faith this was for the greater eternal good, but that does not make it any less painful. They’ve started grief ministries and had the opportunity to minister to other families who lost loved ones on that flight. They understand Matthew’s death was for their good and God’s glory, but it still hurts.

Just because God is in control does not mean that it will all work out the way we think it should. God works all things according the counsel of His will, not according the counsel of our will. Do we always agree with the way God controls our lives? Unfortunately, no. Our friends still die, our children may still make bad decisions, our cars may fail, and we may still lose our jobs. But when we see the bigger picture, the plan that God has for our good and His glory we can be confident He is in control, even when it hurts, even we don’t understand it, even when we don’t like it. We can be confident, confident that He is in control of all things working out His plan for our eternal good and our future inheritance in Christ.

Not only do we have confidence because God is in control of all things, we have confidence because God seals us. Paul writes in verse 13 that when we heard and believed we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance. The Holy Spirit provides a seal, a mark identifying those in Christ. Paul uses the same thought in Ephesians 4:30 when he says we were sealed or marked for the day of redemption. Seeing as this is Wisconsin, the dairy state, you can almost get the picture of branding cows, marking them as belonging to a particular farmer. In this case, Paul pictures the Holy Spirit as a divine branding, marking believers as God’s, as the seal of God saying “This one is mine.” In the present, right now, we are God’s; we belong to Him. We are His children, the sheep of his pasture, the dairy cows of his farm, as it were. In the present, we belong to the Father, purchased through the Son, sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And this seal is a guarantee of our future. The word Paul uses carries the connotation of ‘down payment.’ At the time of Paul, a system of down payment would be used where if the buyer could not complete the purchase he was required to pay twice the down payment. In affect, it worked as a guarantee.

Unfortunately, guarantees in our day have become almost cliché. We use the word “guarantee” but nothing is ever really guaranteed. For instance, have you ever heard “satisfaction guaranteed.” But then it is followed by that little two letter word “or.” Satisfaction guaranteed OR your money back. There is always some escape clause, some way out of the guarantee because companies know that they really cannot guarantee anything. Since we’ve moved into this building we have been ordering tables and chairs for the lower level classrooms. They are all shipped by a fine, upstanding company, which guarantees that all of the products they ship will arrive undamaged. Out of the first shipment of four storage cabinets, two were damaged. Of the first 24 tables, 8 were damaged. They apologized and sent replacement tables. Of the 8 replacement tables, 2 were damaged. Two weeks ago, the final 2 replacement tables were shipped and they too were damaged. It has taken almost three months to get all of the tables which we ordered and each time some still arrive damaged. The guarantee from the shippers was not really that the product would arrive unharmed but that they would cover any damages. They are not really guaranteeing their service but their response should something go wrong. The entire American economy is based on this system of supposed guarantees. The mere presence of that word “OR” shows that companies are painfully aware that they are powerless to guarantee anything. Too many things are out of their control. In reality they do not guarantee their product, they are guaranteeing what they will do should the product fail.

But that is not what Paul is saying here. This is not a “future inheritance guaranteed or you get your old sinful nature back” type of deal. God does not guarantee his response should his promise fail; he guarantees his promise. God’s promise cannot, will not ever fail. There is no escape clause, no “I promise to save your “OR.” God has sealed and guaranteed his promise with His Holy Spirit, and if it were possible for us to be “unsealed” God the Father would in effect have to mutiny against a person of the Trinity, denying the sealing marked by God the Holy Spirit, not to mention that this whole situation would make God out to be a liar, changing the unchangeable God, and “undoing” everything that we have covered thus far in Ephesians 1. There is no “OR.” God has promised and He will deliver.
 
But God does not guarantee our satisfaction; He guarantees our good. When tables arrive from the manufacturer we have the opportunity to inspect them and decide if we want them. We can say “no, I don’t like that one. It’s scratched or dented.” But God never guarantees that we will be happy or satisfied with what he does. He does guarantee it is for our best and good. He looks at us as scratched, dented, and broken people and chooses to act for our good. We may not always like it, but God never promised we would. But God does guarantee his promise. He has given us an eternal inheritance and has given us the Holy Spirit as a seal, a guarantee of that promise. He will do it.

It is no coincidence that Paul uses the word “down payment” when describing our seal.  Yes, it means guarantee, but it also means that we have something right now. We have, at this very moment, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. And while He seals us as those who will receive the promised inheritance of eternity, He is active in his sealing of us. Paul is not expecting us to be confident in the future simply by repeating to ourselves over and over again “God is in control” like some Christian mantra. He knows we will be confident in the future because we have the Holy Spirit sealing us. He has marked us and guarantees our future inheritance but it is the Holy Spirit at work in us that gives us confidence in the future.

I’ve studied this passage that I’m preaching on now for months, inside and out. I’ve read commentaries, studied it in Greek, picked it apart. I know that this passage says God is control and I know that this passage should give me confidence in the future but when I put Elayna in her crib at night and close the door, I still have no control over what happens while she sleeps. There is no earthly explanation to why I am able to close that door and go to sleep instead of staying up all night worrying or fretting or standing in her room watching her sleep just in case. Sure, I know God is in control, but it is only the power of the Holy Spirit at work in me which gives me the confidence to believe that knowledge. This is what Paul meant in Philippians when he said we have a “peace that passes all understanding.” The confidence we have in the future does not make sense.

How can you be confident in the future when countries are blowing each other off the face of the map and terrorism is at a constant high? Why would you even get on an airplane? Why do we not keep our children in bubbles to prevent disease or never let them out of the house so they are not influenced by the world? Why would you ever stop on a bridge in heavy traffic again?  How can we possibly have confidence in the future when everything is so uncertain? It can only come through the working of God the Holy Spirit in us, reminding us that God is in control, reminding us that He is at work in our past, present, and future for His glory and our good.

I may be able to save enough for Elayna to go to college, and I may send her off to school finally thinking that I’m in control, but I’m not. In 1887, an earthen dam was built on a lake just northeast of Atlanta. Below the dam, sits Toccoa Falls Bible College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance College. Many parents worked hard to save to send their children to that school. In November of 1977, heavy rains began to place extra pressure on the dam, but it passed inspection on November 5th. The very next morning, November 6, 1977, the dam broke. An immense wall of water, running at over 120 miles an hour, traveled down Toccoa Creek through Toccoa Falls Bible College. Survivors scrambled up the muddy banks on either side of the river valley, but thirty-nine people from the college would lose their lives. As the crowd of survivors stood on the banks, some having lost family members or close friends, they looked down into the valley, now filled with water and the remnants of the college, and realized that they were not in control. They realized how uncertain life was that it was out of their hands. But they realized that all things were in someone else’s hands and they began to sing. Faced with the uncertainty of their imminent future, the catastrophre of their current situation, and what had been lost of their past, they began with confidence to sing the song “God is so Good.” Even despite the fact that they were now more than ever painfully aware of how powerless they were, they were able to sing “God is so good” in full confidence that He was in control.

There is nothing on Earth that can explain that confidence in the face of such tragedy. Sure, they knew God was in control, but how could they believe it? They believed it because the Holy Spirit, the seal guaranteeing their future, was working in them, empowering them and giving the confidence to continue.

While the mighty Fox River in downtown Waukesha is probably not going to flood all of southeast Wisconsin anytime soon, we live in times that are just as uncertain. Every day we realize how powerless we are. Our families, our finances, our future are all uncertain. How then can we face the future? We face the future in confidence, knowing that it is God’s hands. He controls all things and He has sealed us with His Holy Spirit, a guarantee of our future, which empowers us to be confident, which gives a peace that passes all understand. That no matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, we can in full confidence say “God in control; God is so good.”