Ephesians
2:6-22; 3:1-11
Page 3
Ephesians
3:1-11
Now, "For this cause", now you can go back to chapter 1 & 2 and pick
whatever cause you want to.
We just read a lot of stuff.
'For this cause', all this amazing stuff we've been
coming through, verse
1, "I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles." Now he's the prisoner of Rome presently [when he
penned this]. But
he doesn't see himself that way,
he's the prisoner of Christ and for the Gentiles.
If we trace him back to the book of Acts you'll find
out it was when he was standing on the steps of Jerusalem. He had started a riot, some guys there accused
him of stuff, a riot started and Paul started to speak to
the crowd and they all quieted down, and because they heard
him speaking in the Hebrew tongue--but when he got to the
line where he said "and the Gentiles will receive through
Christ [literally the word he used was "Messiah", Christ
is a Greek word] the riot started up again, they [the Romans]
had to drag him away so that he wasn't killed.
And the idea is, this imprisonment is in relationship
with the Roman government and his appealing [as a citizen
of Rome]
to Caesar, has continued all along.
And he says "I'm a prisoner of Christ for you Gentiles," because he would not back down amongst
his own countrymen on the issue that Jew and Gentile were
now one in Christ. Now, by the way, I think that is an exhortation
to us. I think, you
know, here we are in the last days, we really shouldn't
back down to our families either.
You know, I get a lot of questions, "My aunt and
my Mom are driving me crazy, they want to get the baby Christened
in the Church, should we do it or should we not?" Looking at the issue, my response is "It doesn't
do anything, it doesn't hurt anything
(the kid might get a cold if they sprinkle too much water
on him)." I mean, it doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't hurt anything, but it doesn't do
anything. And what
you have to decide is will you be doing your family a greater
service by standing up to their ideas and challenging them
and freaking them all out, or do you think the Holy Spirit's
saying 'OK, just play along and we'll sink the knife in
a little further down the line.'
I can't tell you that, but I know Paul was not willing
to compromise with his own countrymen, the people he loved
and grew up around, and his fellow-students from the school of Gamalial and so forth. He stood up for what was true. And how we need to stand up in the day we live
in. "For this cause, I Paul the prisoner
of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles."
And he kind of goes in this, takes a break until
verse 13, where he goes off now.
Verses 2-5, "If you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God
which is given to me to youward, how that by revelation
he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby when you read, you
may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)--reread
that a few times, you'll get it--"which
in other ages was not made known."
'You understand
why I'm in this position, God has called me to that' is
what he's saying. ".which
in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as
it is revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the
Spirit"--there's New Testament "prophets",
by the way. Now,
by the way, these are things we take for granted, you know
them. In Paul's day
this theology of the New Testament was developing in an
incredible way, and being safeguarded by the Spirit and
recorded, things that you and I take for granted.
Verse 6, "That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs
and of the same body, partakers of his promise in Christ
by the gospel." Verse 7, "Whereof I was made a
minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given
unto me by the effectual working of his power."
Now he's
reflecting back to what he said as he finished up chapter
2 in the breaking down of this partition wall.
Verse 8, "Unto me, who am less than the least of all the saints, is this
grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ." Doesn't sound like a guy on UHF
does he?
This is a guy who has encountered God.
'I am the least of all saints.'
Isaiah says 'Woe is me,
I am a man of unclean lips' when he encounters the Lord.
Daniel, 'All my comeliness was turned to ashes when
I encountered the Lord.'
John in Revelation, 'I fell down as a dead man before
him when I saw him.' Anybody who's had a real experience with God
has himself in perspective.
That is, you don't believe the press clippings,
you don't take yourself very seriously.
"Unto me" he says "who am
less than the least of all the saints is this grace given"--speaking
about the ministry--"that I should preach among
the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." He uses a word here "unsearchable riches", it
means "unable to track the footprints."
You know, it's interesting, he says that's the unsearchable
riches of Christ--you can't track the footprints of the
whole thing, how it works and why he did it, and even though
people spend years trying to do it--as we reach through
chapter 1 & 2, it's obvious, we can't track the footprints
of the whole thing. We
set up camp and say 'Well I believe the footprints mean
this, and I believe'--and I'm an Armenianist, and I'm a
Calvinist--and Paul says 'Hey, I'm the least of all the
guys that he called and amazingly grace has been given to
me that I should proclaim the unsearchable, the untrackable
riches of Christ to the Gentiles--that I should take those
things and try to communicate them--of what he understood
and of what he saw of them.
By the way, that's one of the problems we have as
we speak to our unsaved friends and relatives, we're taking
unsearchable riches that they, because they're dead in trespasses
and sins, have no real capacity to appreciate.
So Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 that the god
of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe.
But James tells us that the effectual fervent prayer
of the righteous man avails much. It means 'On-target prayer.' If you want to know how to pray effectively
for your unsaved friends and relatives, especially in the
Christmas season, the doors might open up to witness to
them, you pray
that God would bind the prince of this world, and that the
blindness would be taken off their minds.
That's an on-target effectual prayer, praying Biblically,
according to Scripture. And that
they would be able to see the light of the glorious gospel
of Christ, and that it would shine in their eyes.
Because what you're trying to communicate to people
is the unsearchable riches of Christ.
What we're trying to communicate to ourselves as
we read the Scripture. Verse
9, "And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the
mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been
hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ."
The mystery
of the fellowship, that Jew & Gentile would be one body,
that this whole plan from Eden to the flood, from the flood
to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and to the Prophets,
and to the Messiah being born in Bethlehem of Judea and
growing there and going down into Egypt and then coming
up and ministering amongst the people and dying on the cross
and being risen again and then calling out of the sea of
humanity one people for himself of Jew and Gentile, he says
this mystery of the fellowship has been hidden in ages past,
he says, verses 10-11, "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers
in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifest
wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." So he's kind of winding this up
and saying 'You know, the remarkable thing is in all of
this, that God has called the church to manifest this truth
to principalities and powers, that the angels don't understand. You know, the angels watched the creation of
the world, wherever they came in at--some day [in the way,
way distant past] they were created, they looked around--here
we are--and then they watched as creation was finished.
Man, then was created [millions of years later, after
the fall of Satan and 1/3 of the angels] in God's image
and likeness, higher than the angels. No angel, cherubim or seraphim is created in
the image and likeness of God.There is greater beauty now
revealed through God's redemptive love, his grace was not
seen in the original creation. The greatest beauty of God is that he would
then take sinning rebellious man, first create him [in front
of Satan, the demons and all the angels], and then purchase
him back to himself with the blood of his own Son.
And the greatest beauty of God was yet to be beheld.
And the angels don't understand that because there
is no angel savior. No angel ever came and died on a cross for other
angels. And it says,
"they desire"--1 Peter 1:10, around there somewhere it says--"they
desire to look into the things concerning the heirs of salvation."
They don't understand. And now it says that God has seen fit that the
mystery of the things he's doing may be made manifest to
principalities and powers through the church--you know,
they're catching on, those angels, as they watch us.
That's hard to believe, man.
That's really amazing, that they're understanding more of God's purpose and God's plan
with the nations and with Israel,
along with the Gentiles, as they observe what God with the
Holy Spirit is doing. How
amazing it must have been for them.
I mean, when they had Jesus in Gethsemane, and Jesus said to Peter "put your sword away!
You know I could call 12 legions [of angels] right
now-and they [the angels] were probably, saying "Yeah! Call
us, call us!" You
know, one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night.
Imagine what 12 legions could have done.
They could have wiped out the globe in about 15 minutes. And they've been on hold for a long time now.
They're [the Romans] are beating him and pulling
out his hair. They
[the angels] don't understand.
But finally God's going to say, "OK, go get 'em!"
and they're going to have a picnic, that's still ahead of
us, that's a great day.
So read ahead in Ephesians.
We'll have to pick up here.
Not a good place to break off, but in Ephesians there's
no good place to break.
End
