If you understand the mystery of what it means for God to be God, you will say, I am able to do this work, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Hi, I'm your host, Dan Kruver.

Who's really at work when you obey God?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper turns to Ephesians 1 verses 12 to 14 to show how God's sovereign will fuels both our willing and our doing.

This teaching was originally delivered on a Wednesday night at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 18, 1998.

We're in Ephesians 1, and I'll catch us up to where we are in verse 12.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is verse 3, who has

blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose

us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless

before him.

In love, he predestined us to adoption his sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according

to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. So to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

So to the praise of the glory of His grace we have seen numerous times is the end and goal of all of this.

Unto the praise of the glory of His grace. We're going to see that two more times in this paragraph.

Verse 7, in Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the

riches of his grace which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight he made

known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention which he

purposed in him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of

times that is the summing up of all things in Christ,

things in the heavens and things on the earth.

In him also we were chosen, having been predestined according to his purpose,

who works all things after the counsel of his will,

...