Ephesians 1 3 to 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the

heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and

blameless before him.

He destined us and loved to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

Three weeks ago, some of you will remember we were in Hebrews, chapter 6, and in passing I alluded to a possible

series of messages that I would like to give and I am

Lord willing now going to give those, but let me take you back to that verse and just read

it to show you the and it went like this

this morning. It was Hebrew 611 and it went like this.

We desire each one of you to show the earnestness, the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance

of hope unto the end.

In other words, it's God's will for you to have the full assurance of hope unto the end.

Or to say it another way, it's God's will for you according to scripture that you know

you are heaven-bound and that you will not fail to get there.

God does not want a question mark to be written over your lives.

He doesn't want you to waver and to wonder, am I really

going to make it? Or have I really been saved? Or will I really get to heaven? Will I really fall

in the judgment? He doesn't want you to labor under the weight of that kind of uncertainty.

Labor to have full assurance of hope. And in passing I said, there are grounds for hope that we need to attend to as a church

and the point of the messages that are about to begin is this text. But before I jump in to Ephesians, let me say a couple of words about two ways of pursuing assurance.

There are two ways.

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