Notes of Faith August 5, 2024
God’s Inheritances
[I pray] that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
Ephesians 1:18
In his latter years, a grandfather tells his grandson that in his will he is leaving the young man a piece of property. But then he says something unexpected: “This property is your inheritance, my gift to you. But I also want you to know that you have been my inheritance; you have been God’s gift to me.”
The apostle Paul uses both senses of inheritance in Ephesians 1. In verses 13-14, he says the Holy Spirit is the “guarantee of our inheritance”—our eternal life with God which is His gift to us. But then in verse 18, Paul speaks of “His inheritance in the saints.” In some mysterious way, God sees us, His saints, as His eternal inheritance. Just as the grandfather found pleasure and joy in the life of his beloved grandson, so God “takes pleasure in His people” (Psalm 149:4).
On days when you find it hard to take pleasure in your behavior or potential, know this: You are God’s inheritance, a source of pleasure and joy forevermore
(Psalm 16:11).
An inheritance is not only kept for us, but we are kept for it.
Richard Sibbes
Col 1:9-12
9 For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.
NASU
Some have said that when you die you take nothing with you…but the one who passes on his faith to the generations behind him will be blessed with the inheritance of God’s grace in his children and grandchildren for all eternity. There is no greater gift than to know that your those in your family have been chosen by God, given faith to believe, and will be with you and our Savior Jesus Christ forever!
Pastor Dale