Sola Gratia #7 - Glorified by Grace
Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund concludes the Sola Gratia series focusing on the doctrine of grace. He focuses on the topic of glorification showing how believers have an eternal inheritance through God's grace that, unlike earthly possessions, will never perish, spoil, or fade, offering hope and strength during life's trials.
Summary and Application
In a world filled with uncertainty, the concept of inheritance often brings mixed emotions. Some of us have received meaningful legacies from family members, while others may have experienced disappointment or complications. But what if there's an inheritance that transcends earthly possessions—one that's completely secure, eternally glorious, and genuinely life-changing?
The Balance Between Present and Future
In this sermon, Kurt explores how believers can sometimes become unbalanced in their perspective. Some Christians focus exclusively on the future inheritance, enduring present difficulties with little joy, as if clutching a ticket to a distant event while suffering through terrible circumstances. Others swing to the opposite extreme, becoming so absorbed in present blessings that they lose sight of the eternal inheritance awaiting them.
The beauty of the Christian faith, however, is that it offers both present hope and future glory. Our inheritance isn't merely a distant promise—it begins transforming our lives the moment we accept it.
An Inheritance That Cannot Fail
Unlike earthly inheritances that can be contested, diminished, or even lost, the inheritance God offers through Christ is completely secure. It will never "perish, spoil, or fade," as described in 1 Peter. This inheritance is kept in heaven, beyond the reach of market crashes, legal disputes, or any earthly threat.
This security comes not from our own efforts but entirely through God's grace. As Romans 8:29-30 reminds us, "For those whom God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified."
A Living Hope That Changes Everything
The sermon emphasizes that this inheritance gives us a "living hope"—not a passive wishful thinking, but an active force that transforms how we navigate life's challenges. When we truly grasp the reality of our eternal inheritance, it changes how we respond to both joys and sorrows in the present.
Kurt shares a personal moment of joy—becoming a grandparent for the first time—while acknowledging that life contains both celebrations and challenges. The church community provides spaces to share both through prayer emails and small groups, recognizing that our earthly journey includes valleys and mountaintops.
Sharing Our Inheritance
Perhaps most powerfully, this inheritance isn't meant to be hoarded but shared. As Kurt puts it, believers are simply "one beggar showing another beggar where we found bread." If we truly believe in this glorious inheritance and care about others, we'll naturally want to invite friends and family to receive it too.
The sermon concludes with an encouragement for believers to be prayerful during Holy Week, recognizing it as a time when many who don't normally attend church might come and discover this inheritance for themselves.
Practical Application Questions
Examine your balance: Are you living too much for the future inheritance while missing God's present blessings, or are you so focused on present circumstances that you've lost sight of your eternal hope? What specific adjustment might help you find better balance?
Consider your security: What areas of your life feel most uncertain or threatened right now? How might the truth of your secure, imperishable inheritance in Christ change your perspective on these situations?
Share your inheritance: Dr. Bjorklund suggests that if we truly believe the message and care about others, we'll invite them to experience this inheritance too. Who in your life needs to hear about this hope, and what's one step you could take this week to share it with them?
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Let's pray together. God, we do say Hosanna or praise to you, not just for what has been, but in the midst of what all of us here are experiencing, the highs, the lows, the good, the things that don't seem so good. And we ask that in these next few moments that you would help all of us just to be able to say that more fully as we acknowledge your greatness. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.
One of the things, around Orchard Hill is with a larger church, sometimes there's a lot of life events that we don't talk about from stage. And so there's an email that goes out, a prayer email that if you want to have, people know about, pray about something in your life, you can contact the church office. You can get on that receiving end of that email by contacting the church office. And there's a lot of challenges, but a lot of celebrations there. And and a lot of that is done in our small groups as well, but we don't often do it here because it would just be difficult to, to do that on on the scale of the church that exists here.
But I do have the microphone. And so I just wanted to let you know about a little life event in my life, my wife's life, this last week, and that is we became grandparents for the first time. And, it's kinda fun. And, here's a picture of, our grandson. He is adorable.
I believe on good authority that he's in the ninety ninth percentile of all children ever born. And he'll be starting, first grade in the fall. Is where I'm at. My son and daughter-in-law live here locally, are part of our Strip District campus. My daughter in law's mom and stepdad have been a part of Orchard Hill.
She grew up here, and so, the grandbaby gets grandparents around on both sides, and we're just, really overjoyed, with what that is. So, today, we are finishing our series, called Sola Gratia. And the idea has been today, as Palm Sunday typically marks the beginning of Holy Week, and so you typically think of the passion of Jesus and His crucifixion, His resurrection. But what we've tried to do this year is from the beginning of Lent is to study in the Scriptures what has been known as the doctrine of salvation. We called it Sola Gratia, which is the Latin phrase from the reformation that means by grace alone.
And we've tried to look at some of the classic ideas about how God has worked, and the idea was that as we came up to this week, that hopefully those of us who have been long time believers, long time believers, would be able to say, we worship God for who he is, what he's done. And that for those who maybe are newer to the faith, it would lay a foundation for that worship, For those who are maybe exploring faith, that it would be the kind of a thing that would crystallize what God has done and why it's important. And the idea of talking about these different facets of our salvation or of God's work in our lives is in part from Romans chapter eight verse twenty nine and thirty.
Here's what it says. For those whom God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.
And so over the weeks, we've talked about being surprised by God's grace, about regeneration, conversion, sanctification. We've talked about justification. We've talked about perseverance. And today we're going to talk about that word that comes at the end of the chain that's in Romans eight twenty nine and thirty, to be glorified.
And this is the idea that the grave is not the end, That God has worked in order to make a way for people, for you, for me, to come into a relationship with Him and to be able to say we have an inheritance that is ahead, and that God has kept that for us. And what I'd like to do using first Peter chapter one is talk about three aspects of that inheritance, that it is a secure inheritance, It is a glorious inheritance, and it is a life changing inheritance. And so let's begin just with this idea that it's a secure inheritance. And it begins in verse three by just simply saying this. It says, praise be, which is again this exaltation of who God is, to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In his great mercy, he's given us the new birth. So what is it that that begins this sense of securing it? Well, when something is born, when someone's born, they can't be unborn. The new birth from John three and other portions of the Bible is when somebody comes to a point where they acknowledge their sinfulness before God, acknowledge their need for Jesus to be their savior, and call on Jesus to be their savior, they are born again, regenerated in that moment, and as a result, they have a secure inheritance. But that isn't all that he says here.
He says this, he's given us this new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If Jesus rose from the dead, then the inheritance that he gives is as certain as the resurrection narratives themselves. And then it says this, verse four, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. And then he says this, that this inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. So he says this inheritance is kept in heaven, and the word in the original language has a form that that shows that it's being kept by somebody else.
So, here it's being kept by God, and that this is something that is kept in a perpetual state. In other words, it's kept, but it keeps on being kept, meaning this is something that God does and God is doing. And if that wasn't enough, it says through faith, so so so it says your faith is important in this process, but it says that God has shielded it by his power. So God's keeping it, God shields it, and it is the same certainty as the resurrection, and because of the new birth that you have through faith that you have this sense of a secure inheritance. Now, I realize when I kinda run through that that that sounds a little churchy.
And what I mean by that is I say that and you go, okay, yeah, God's keeping my inheritance, God's resurrection. Like, okay. But here's the reality, so many things in our lives are uncertain. In fact, I would say that everything in our life has an air of uncertainty to it. And this is something that is indeed secure, because it isn't based on anything around us.
And here's how you can kind of just see the uncertainty of our life. Think about if you have money in the stock market, and you thought that that somehow was securing your future, well-being. The last couple weeks have kind of rocked that notion, because you realize there are things beyond you that no matter how well you've planned and secured it, there are some forces that can take away what you thought you had secured for your future. Now even if you're not somebody who's invested in the market, the global forces right now of a trade war could could could bring the economy of the world to a grinding halt and change everything that you think is secure. And my point isn't to say that this is some scary time that we live in as much as to say, it's not secure.
And when we live as if it's secure, what we do is we diminish the security that's in the future. But it isn't just economic things. Most people I know don't really believe that their economic well-being secures their future. Most people I know tend to place it in relationships, saying it's my romantic relationship, my marriage, my kids, even my grandkids. Did I mention I had a grandson?
You knew this had to come back somewhere. So I'm holding my grandson this week for the first time, first grandchild. Hopefully the first of many. And I'm holding him here and it is. It's a it's a incredible moment because you're holding this baby that that kinda is an extension of your kids and you're thinking this is amazing.
And then I had this thought, and this may tell you more about my mind than you want to know. But I'm holding him and I'm thinking to myself, if the actuary tables are correct, I will only see about a quarter of this kid's life. And that's only if I make it to what the actuary tables say I will and he does and everything works, I'll still only have about a quarter of his life. I mean, this is this is what a lot of people live for, to say, I had kids, they had kids, we have a big family, and it is still an uncertainty. It is still something that you and I cannot count on.
And what scripture teaches about the inheritance that God gives to those who are born again is that it is kept in heaven for you by the God of the universe. He's guarding it with his power, the same power he used to raise Jesus from the dead, and you have access to it through the new birth. This is an amazing security that we don't find anywhere else in this world. So the inheritance we have is a secure inheritance, but it's not just secure, it's also a glorious inheritance. And we see this in verses four and five.
It says, and into an inheritance, and then it says that can never, and there's three words here, perish, spoil, or fade. An inheritance that can't perish means that it will last forever. You see, death is the great enemy of our lives because when we die, everything that is here and now ends. And what this is saying is that this will not perish. This inheritance will live on, it will outlive you, it will endure.
There aren't many things that we can say will endure. And then it says, this will not spoil. Well, what spoils? Food spoils all the time. And when food starts to spoil, it's unpleasant, and so you are constantly trying to have fresh food because you want it to be what you intend for it to be for you.
And the same thing with this idea of it doesn't fade. We crave beauty and what happens is you have a house maybe and you try to make it nice and it's nice for a while, but then stuff fades. It's not the shiny new color, the appliances get worn, something doesn't work the right way, and you constantly find this need to say, I want to make it nice again. If you have property, and you try to keep your property nice, you will prune the trees only to have to do it again. You'll mow the lawn only to have to do it again because it fades.
And what he's saying here is the inheritance that God gives, it lasts forever, it will not spoil, it will not fade like everything else in this world tends to do. In first Corinth first Corinthians chapter 15, we see that this isn't just some ethereal future, kind of disembodied experience that people of faith have, but this actually applies to a resurrected body. Because the teaching of the Bible is that one day if you are a follower of Jesus, you have faith in Jesus, you've been born again, that you will receive a resurrected body, and that will never perish, spoil, or fade. Now, I realize if you're in your twenties, you're thinking, I I don't need to worry about this. But if you're in your thirties or forties or beyond, you know that some stuff stops working.
You know that gravity wins. You look in the mirror at some point and you say, how did I come to look like my mom or dad? Listen to what scripture says about this idea of a resurrected body. First Corinthians 15 verse 42. So it will be with the resurrection of the dead.
The body that is sown is perishable. It's raised imperishable. It's sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory. It's sown in weakness and it's raised in power.
It's sown a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body. So what does he say? He says, you have this body, and it has these limitations, and it is decaying over time, but you will one day get a body that will never decay. It'll never be subject to disease. It will never be subject to death.
And then he says this, verse 54. First Corinthians fifteen fifty four fifty five. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true, death has been swallowed up in victory. Do you hear it? Do you hear the tie to first Peter?
The the inheritance is is not just this future ethereal thing, but it is you will have a body if you are in Christ, if you've been born again, that will be resurrected and will be glorious. And not only that, but death will have no victory. Verse 55, where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting? It says there isn't any.
Now, I do want to just take a moment and say this, and that is, it's important to understand that this is not stated in the scriptures as a universal inheritance. Meaning, this isn't just automatic for every person who ever dies. This is for those who are born again, who have this inheritance. Listen to the words of second Thessalonians chapter one verses eight and nine. It says, he will punish those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. Now, you may say, why do you even have to bring that up? You were on a nice positive message. And I bring it up because I wouldn't be faithful to what the Bible teaches about this inheritance if I didn't bring it up and say that it is not automatic. It is for those who have come into a relationship with God through faith, admitted their sin, believed in Jesus Christ, that he was the perfect one, and called on him to be their savior, and then that guarantees this inheritance.
And I realize even in just reading those verses, some of us might say, well, where am I? I don't always obey the gospel. Is that does that mean that I have to worry about this? Let me put it like this. The other day, I realized that, you know, spring is here.
It's time to do some outside work. And I have this tree in the back of our property that's been leaning, and it needed to be taken down. So I get out my chainsaw, I go out, I cut the tree down. And when I get to it, it has these big hairy vines on it that I hadn't seen from a distance, so that usually means it's poison ivy, poison oak, something like that. Do not touch.
Right? Tip, if you didn't know that. And I've made that mistake before. So so so I cut it down, and it's laying across the back of my property, and I just said, I'm not going to deal with this today. I'm just I I don't I just don't wanna deal with it.
So I go in the house, and my one son who, has been living with us says to me, and he says, you know, I think I'm pretty immune to that, so I'll help you deal with it. I was like, awesome. Favorite sun today. And so the next day, we go out, we we we take all of the poison ivy vines off the tree, and there are several of them, and we cut them, we dispose of them in, the most proper way we knew how to do. Cut the tree up, decided not to even burn the rest of the tree in case there was poison ivy remnants left on it, so we got rid of it because if you burn poison ivy, if you didn't know that, it aerosolizes and you can breathe it in and can be worse than touching it.
Now here's my point. After we're done, you know, we did the gloves, we did the take everything off, wash it, go take the shower, rub in Tecnu, the whole thing. But for the next few days, do you know what I was doing? Every time I had a little itch, I was like, oh, is this it? Did I get it?
Because I didn't know for sure I was living with fear that I had it wrong. And the idea of this beautiful, glorious, secure inheritance is not that you need to say, well, I don't know, but that if you've come to have faith in Jesus Christ that you can say, I know what awaits me because God's word has declared it, and it isn't on the basis of what I do, it's on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done. So we have a secure and a glorious inheritance, but I also want us to see that it is a life changing inheritance. And I say that because in verse three it says that he has given us this living hope, a new birth into a living hope. A living hope means that isn't just a hope deferred, but it is a present hope.
And what happens for many people when it comes to this idea of an inheritance to the future is we'll get unbalanced one way or another. Either we'll be all about the future saying, I'm living for the future in this life. I don't have any of the benefits, any of the idea, any of the good of it, and so I just have to get through and get there. It's a little bit like saying, I have a ticket to something in the future, but right now I'm in the middle of horrible timing in my life. Or people can so live in the moment of saying God has given me everything here and now that there's no thought about how the future helps them.
And it's a little bit like a kid at a festival, like a fair, something like this, who you give some tickets to and they say, you need to use all the tickets before the festival's done. And they're running around trying to use all their tickets because they don't have any sense that anything will live beyond the moment. And we can end up on either side of this, but there's a theological concept that has been written about broadly that has been called inaugurated eschatology. In more common words, the already and the not yet. And the idea is this, and that is once you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you live in the already sense of His kingdom and what He has provided in His salvation, and yet there's a not yet sense.
It's already, but it's not yet. It's a little bit like being engaged in the sense of you know that it's it's coming, you know that you're living in a reality of something, but you're not fully in the reality of the marriage yet. One example of this is in Romans chapter eight where we learn about adoption, this idea that we're adopted by Christ. Here's what we read, Romans eight verse 15 says this, the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again, rather the spirit you receive brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry Abba father. So you have current sonship and can go to God and say, God, you are my father.
Abba is a a word that basically is like saying daddy, like saying, I just can call you whoever my pet name for you is. And then this word, for adoption in verse 23 is this. It says, not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. So he says on one hand you're adopted, you can cry Abba Father, but on the other hand you're waiting for it. It's already, it's not yet.
Scripture says the same thing about the idea of redemption, the idea of salvation, the idea of sanctification. You have an already, but a not yet sense of this. Now why does this matter? Because without this, you will not have the perspective that is able to say I can withstand the hardships of my life. You will not have the ability to make choices that say, I'm making this choice because of the future inheritance that I know that I have.
Because we live differently if we know we have an inheritance. In fact, the way that it's talked about in first Peter is this, in verse six and seven, he says this, in all this you greatly rejoice, that you have this great inheritance, this glorious, secure inheritance. Though now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. So you can rejoice in the midst of all of the hardship because you have this future inheritance. These have come, verse seven, so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
So what does he say? He says, one of the things that can help you through the hardest valleys of your life is the knowledge that you have an inheritance that's ahead of you in which all things will be made right. You see, some of us live today in the midst of our various trials. Maybe we have lost somebody we loved and we just say, how can I have joy in the midst of my life here? Or maybe we find our career is stunted or we're bored with it and, and we feel the futility of our work, or we're in the midst of an unhappy marriage, or our marriage has ended and, and we say, how can I find joy in the midst of my life?
But this text tells us that when we look ahead and say, I know that there's an inheritance coming, then I can live with joy in the midst of my trials because it's not the end of the story. The end of the story is a glorious secure inheritance. It's not the trial. And then he says, it's more precious than gold. Gold was a prominent metal that people would refine by fire.
He says, your trials are like your life is being refined by fire for the glorious inheritance. You're actually making your inheritance better by the way that you're going through your trial. And then he says this, verse eight, verse nine, He says, though you have not seen him, you love him. Even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. So he says, you've got this joy because of what God has done.
And then he says, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, which is the salvation of your souls. Your inheritance allows you to navigate the highs and the lows of this life saying, I know that God has prepared something for me that is glorious and secure, and it changes the way I live because it gives me hope. It's because of this that you can make choices today to say I can delay gratification because I know that there is something better that's waiting for me, that you can endure pain because you can say I know what's ahead, that you can say I will make choices and sacrifices to invest in something greater because I know what is ahead. There's an old book called Pilgrim's Progress that John Bunyan wrote several generations ago now, And then it's an allegory about a man named Christian who's traveling to the celestial city, and he goes through all of these different things throughout his life. But one of the one of the places he finds himself once is the Palace Of Despair.
And while he's there, he's turning inward with all of these negative thoughts about what will be and how hard his life is and people come by and contribute to it. Until one day that he's there, he realizes that he has the key to the door to get out of the the the the dungeon, the the the palace, the the kind of place he's being held, and the key is the key of promise that opens every door to the prison of despair. You see, it's the hope of the inheritance that gets us out of despair. Jonathan Edwards said it this way about a Christian. He said a Christian is he who has more holy boldness and so he has less self confidence.
He is more sure of his deliverance from hell, but he is a he has a greater sense that he deserves it. He is less apt than others to be shaken in faith, but more apt than others to be moved by solemn warnings and God's frowns and the calamities of others. He has the firmest comfort, but the softest heart. Richer than others, but poorest of all in spirit. He is the tallest and strongest saint, but the tenderest child among them.
You see, if you and I understand this inheritance, it changes the way that we live in the present, and it allows us to say, hallelujah, praise the Lord, whatever is going on around us. So if you're here today and you say, I've had the new birth, I have faith in Jesus Christ, then you have an inheritance that is secure, that is glorious, and it is life changing. And if you're here and you're saying, I'm not sure, then I would just encourage you what we've said throughout this series. Our kids ministry has the ABCs of coming to faith. Admit that you're a sinner, believe that Jesus paid for the cost, and confess him with your mouth or invite him to be your Lord and savior.
And today, you can do that and say, I now have an inheritance that too is secure and glorious and life changing. And really, all we're talking about here is not those of us who have been born again saying, look at what we've done, but the old phrase, we're just one beggar showing another beggar where we found bread. And if you're somebody who says, I've believed this over time, then I just want to encourage you with the week that's ahead, holy week, to be prayerful about what God will do. Because not just at this church, but at churches all over the world. People who don't normally come to church will come to church and ask God to share this inheritance with more and more people.
Get involved by saying I'll serve in some capacity. Be bold enough to invite some friends or family to come. In fact, I would go so far as to say if you won't invite family or friends, you either don't really believe the message, or you really don't care about your family and friends. Because if what we've just talked about is true, there's an inheritance, a glorious inheritance for anyone who believes and there's something different for those who don't, then why wouldn't we want everyone to come? And that's our hope, our prayer over this next week, is that as God fills this place and each of our campuses and beyond, that that that there would be more and more people who would say, I want to have faith in this good God and certainty of an inheritance that is glorious and provided by God to a living hope.
And I don't know the hardships that are represented here today, but my hope today is that whatever trial, whatever hardship you're in right now, that just being able to say there is something ahead that is God preserved for my good, would give you strength to continue in the journey. God, we thank you today that your word speaks to our future, and we ask that you would help us to live in light of the inheritance that you have promised to those who believe. And God, for those who maybe are here and not sure, I pray even in this moment, there would be just a willingness to say, God, I admit my sin. I believe that Jesus paid, and I confess or invite with my mouth him to be my Lord and savior. And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript was auto-generated, please excuse any errors.
