Since the summer of 2014, in our evening sermons, we've been exploring several aspects of who we are as a local church. As I've reflected upon the years God has given us together, God has given us opportunities to have frequent and extensive studies on the subject of ecclesiology. And I've wondered why that is. It's because we were born as a church out of attempts to bring Reformation to the then already existing church, and we discovered in God's providence that we were to be a church plant. And so in order to understand ourselves in the light of the Word of God, to generate unity, definition, identity, We took a lot of time in our years together to lay foundational definitions and understand practices and tasks assigned to us as a church. Also, we live in a cultural climate that during most of our lifetime has been one of an imbalance toward individualism. And therefore, it's incumbent upon us to elevate the place of the church in terms of the tendencies that are prevalent in our own day, and to give place to the individual, but the individual within the context of the community. Interestingly, social analysts tell us that postmodernism is veering back to an emphasis on community, almost to a loss of individual accountability. And the idea of church membership is no longer popular, just whoever happens to be present happens to be the church. It's interesting how the same error can be achieved from coming at two different directions, where an individual says, I'm not accountable to the community, and where the community says, we're not going to hold any individual accountable because of the imbalances on both sides. We also have emphasized churchmanship because of the non-negotiable necessity of churchmanship. Scripture is written to the people of God as a company, as a corporate entity, as a church. Historical precedent and experience All agree that Christians who are careless and negligent in their churchmanship do not mature, and they do not produce fruit of service, and they often deteriorate into gross sin or outright apostasy. We trivialize the church at the peril of our own eternal lives. And then also, we're looking at the matter of ecclesiology because we are being providentially tested in ways that are pressing upon us as a local church, and we're asking questions relative to our identity and the prospects of what providence has before us. And so these messages has been an attempt to fortify your convictions and your commitments to Christ in the context of the church, regardless of how providence unfolds for our particular assembly. No matter where we are, as long as you live, I pray and hope that you will be committed to follow Christ as biblical churchmen. So our present focus is on Ephesians chapter 3, and we're entering into the middle of the flow of Paul's argument and into a sentence that's rather weighty and substantive. We pick up our reading at the end of verse 6. Our focus is on verse 8 to verse 12. At the end of verse 6, Paul speaks of the promise of Christ through the gospel, of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have bold boldness and confident access through faith in him. Now we're looking at this sentence because we're building up to that most wonderful description of the task of the church in verse 10. of all of the studies and examinations of the church that we've done over the years together, we've never really considered this text, that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church. to the rulers and the authorities in heavenly places. As was referenced when we first started the examination of this sentence, several commentators made note of the fact that this is a most elevated and grandiose assignment and profile that Paul gives to the church of Jesus Christ. But we plunge into the middle of this epistle to the Ephesians, into the middle of arguments that have been built up over the first three chapters and the use of some vocabulary and phrases that are somewhat unusual and challenging to understand. Paul is telling us that he's absolutely astonished at the privilege that has been given to him to be an apostle of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to realize that he is given an assignment that is so pivotal in the unfolding of redemptive history that it is incumbent upon him as the Apostle sent to the Gentiles, to himself be the personal fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy that speaks of the age of the Messiah when the Gospel will go to the nations. Even as we read in Jeremiah tonight, an assignment given to Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations and to speak to those even outside of the theocratic community of Old Testament Israel. And Paul is overwhelmed, as we saw in verse 7. It's according to God, the gift of God's grace, which was given to me. It's an emphasis, a redundant emphasis on this grace that was given to me, again in verse 8, this repeated sense that Paul has that he's been given a privilege in redemptive history to be the bearer of this gospel to the Gentiles. And this grace, Paul says, is not only given to him as his need of salvation, but also in order to sustain him in his ministry, which he describes in two ways, the preaching of the unfathomable riches of Christ, as he proclaims the gospel, seeing the Holy Spirit bring life to sinners and give them the grace of faith and repentance, and then to bring to light, to make visible God's eternal purposes of redemptive grace. And we looked at that and believe that what Paul is alluding to there is the fact that the church becomes the manifestation of what God is doing in this present age. The church is the visible testimony of what the gospel accomplishes in the nations as the Spirit regenerates sinners, as he brings both Jew and Gentile to faith in Jesus Christ, so that as we learned, or would have learned had we studied in chapter two, where Paul tells us that there is now, in verse 15, the forming of one new man. And that is the word, anthropos, it's the word of a new humanity that is formed, and that brought to light. in the framework of the preaching of the gospel. And this, Paul tells us, is what God has eternally purposed and now is being unveiled at this particular time in redemptive history. We studied the mysterious word mystery, and we learned that it is something that we cannot discover by way of man's reason or by way of scientific inquiry, but that a mystery has to be unveiled through the means of revelation. And mystery and the unveiling of the content of the mystery is not to say that the subject matter of that mystery was never known before. It has been hidden. It has been kept from ages past. And it has been indicated and pointed to in previous times in redemptive history. But now, in this time, in the fullness of time, There is an unfolding, there is an implementation, there is a fulfillment of God's purposes that have come in the work and person of Jesus Christ and in the grace of new covenant salvation. So what has been purposed from eternity past, what has been prefigured in Old Testament types and prophecies and history. All of that now is the unfolding of God's purpose. And that's at the essence of what mystery is. It's the bringing forth into time that which has previously not been implemented and not been brought to pass in history as it now is being brought to pass. This, as we learned, is all being done in keeping with what is called the administration. It's a word that we would, we get the concept economy from this administration of the mystery. The administration is also translated in some places in our Bible as stewardship. It's the practical discharge of a responsibility to organize and to make sure that everything functions according to its proper purpose so that it can be brought to its intended goal. And what Paul is saying is that God has organized and administered the unfolding of this mystery over the course of redemptive history so that now it comes to a new administration, a new organizational structuring, a new economy of grace in which all of its parts are properly functioning and working together according to God's sovereign plans. And all of that, brethren, has to do with who we are as the church of Christ, which is the manifestation of this administration of God's grace. In the New Covenant, God's salvation is not communicated as a nice idea. It's not communicated as a Hallmark card. It's not some philosophical notion to be debated in the ivory towers of academia. It is the transformation of the lives of people, and it is the formation of a community that is so in love with Jesus Christ that they're willing to obey him in their relations one with another and make demonstration of something that the world has never seen before, a new man, a new community, a new people, where all of the social and racial and economic and educational and all of the things that otherwise divide and stratify and separate people are no longer pertinent to this community because they are one in Christ and alive with an eschatological life that marks them out as citizens of the age to come. And Paul is astonished that God has given to him this message and to bring this truth to unconverted Gentiles and to see them being brought out of paganism and to be formed as one new man even with converted Jews so that together they might constitute a dwelling of God and a place where the glory of Christ is not only declared but demonstrated in the life of this new community. Now in our exposition, We've worked our way through verse 8, and we've come to the word hidden in verse 9. And we've worked our way through to the issues of these things being in the administration of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden, and now our focus comes to the phrase in God who created all things. So we're going to look tonight at God, our wise creator. And you should ascertain a double meaning in this word creator, because God is the creator not only in terms of the first and original order of creation in which we presently live. He is also the creator of the new creation, which has been commenced in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we look at verse 9, God who created all things. Perhaps you've been in an airplane and had the opportunity to sit at the window seat. and you've looked up into space above you. Looking down is interesting, but looking up is also interesting as well. And you realize, as you look up into the heavens above you, that you're just this little speck of dust on the shore of this immense ocean called the universe. Maybe the same sensation has been experienced if you've been in a boat that has gone several miles out into the ocean and the land disappears and you see no land in a 360 degree circumference round about you and you can think of those scenes perhaps that you've seen in a movie where the camera is above your little boat and it moves higher and higher and higher and the boat becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and you get lost in this vast immense ocean that's surrounding you. Well, this is something of what Paul is doing as he attempts to bring us into these immensities of God's purpose and the eternal character of what is being accomplished in this present time in which we live in redemptive history. Paul is trying to set us as a church in the context of God's glorious purposes as they extend from eternity past into eternity future. Now, we've considered the mystery. It's been administrated through the course of redemptive history for ages. Its full disclosure is in Christ. But these things have been hidden in God. And we've had opportunity to look back at the ages and to review and rehearse redemptive history from creation and onward through the testimony of the Old Testament leading into the epoch in which we presently live in the New Testament. But now, when Paul says, hidden in God who created all things, he's taking us back even further than creation itself. And he's pointing us now to a period, and you can't even really legitimately call it a period of time because time itself is a created phenomenon, but he's pointing us to God who created all things, the God who in the beginning was there. and through whom all things have come into being. So we did a word study in our series on this little word mystery. And by seeing it defined and then attempting to find it used in scripture to get a sense of what it means as Paul uses it here in our text, we're gonna do another, not so much word study, but phrase study. And the phrase isn't even in the verse, but the concept is. And the phrase is, before the foundation of the world. It is used earlier in Ephesians in chapter 1, verse 3 and verse 4. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 would be holy and blameless before him in love. When someone asks you the question, why are you a Christian? The taproot reason for why you've been saved is because of the love of the Father that has been expressed to the Son. and extended to you as one who has been chosen before the foundation of the world and given to the Son as the reward of his obedience and the accomplishment of the work of redemption." Now notice God's choice of us is not without purpose. It is not arbitrary. It is not some rolling of the cosmic dice. When the unconverted listen and hear us talk about the doctrine of predestination, they immediately indict us of unfairness, and God is arbitrary, and this is just some sort of chance randomness of God that he somehow just chooses, as it were. God's choice always has intentionality to it. It always has purpose to it. What did He choose us for? Look at the text, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. God's choice is not abstracted from our living and from our destiny. So a man or a woman, a boy or a girl who is not intentionally pursuing holiness, for intentionally living with integrity of life before God, such a person has no biblical reason to claim that they've been elected or predestined or chosen by God. Because what God purposes before creation transpires in creation. And if He has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, He has done so with purpose in view, that we would be holy. that we would be blameless before Him in love. And if we're not intentionally, actively pursuing that holiness and integrity of life, then we cannot make any claim to having some special insight on the doctrines of grace and Calvinism. Calvinism is nothing unless it's lived out in the life of the Calvinist. Likewise, we have the testimony of John in Revelation chapter 13. Revelation chapter 13, reading at verse 8. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. And likewise, chapter 17 and verse 8. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will wonder when they see the beast that he was and is not and will come. So this apocalyptic language of having your name written down before the foundation of the world in the book of life is a description of God having chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world. The electing choice of God affects those or identifies those who will be in Christ, and they are a distinct people, and they're distinct because they are not the people of the beast. and their lives demonstrate that they are those living in allegiance to Christ. Jesus prays in John chapter 17 with this matter of before the foundation of the world in view as he understands those for whom he is about to die and those for whom he is praying as high priest of the new covenant. In John chapter 17, reading in verse 24, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. And as I've already suggested, the expression of that love of the father to the son is the gift that the father gives the son of the people of God's choice. O righteous Father, although the world has not known you, yet I have known you, and these have known that you sent me. And I have made your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. Here Jesus prays for the entire church, all of the people that the Father has given to the Son, all of the people given from ages past through the various epochs of Old Testament history, all of the people presently given to Christ in the day in which He lived, and all of the people from that point in history in the future, which would include you, me. And Jesus looks and hopes and expects in the future where he will share his glory with his church because he's confident of the Father's love for him given before the foundation of the world that in pre-creation eternity in which Paul says we were chosen in Christ. That is the expression of the Father's love. And Jesus, although He's sitting in the midst of but now eleven men, one of whom has just betrayed Him and left the room, having been filled by Satan, And although he knows that tomorrow he will experience the most excruciating pain and anguish ever experienced by a human being, yet he prays with this confident expectation and assurance of being the object of the Father's love, because He knows that the Father's pre-eternal determinations before the foundation of the world cannot be frustrated. We have the testimony of Paul, the testimony of John, the testimony of Jesus, and now in 1 Peter 1 and verse 20, the testimony of the apostle Peter, 1 Peter 1 and verse 20. For he was foreknown, and that's referring to Jesus Christ, having now just referenced his precious blood as of a lamb unblemished, spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God. So here we understand again the purpose of the Godhead, the triune God, that it was foreknown, before the foundation of the world, set in plan and purpose, that the Son of God would come and spill his spotless blood to be the propitiation of God's wrath, to be the atoning sacrifice that lays the foundation of the kingdom of God, that which is as a lamb, unblemished, and now has appeared in these last times," says Peter. In other words, this is the revelation of this mystery. This is the unfolding of God's purposes. And then that curious author of Hebrews that I've already said today, I think there's good reason to believe it could be Apollos, writing in chapter 9 of Hebrews, verse 24 to verse 26. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor was it that he would offer himself often as high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Now again, notice how the author traffics in this language of redemptive history. that we, as we saw in this morning, where we live at the end of the ages, that Paul reminds the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 10, so too you have this mention of the consummation of the ages. We live in a particular significant time in redemptive history. And that time has been delineated by the fulfillment of God's pre-eternal purposes, which have been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ for the purpose of offering himself as that unblemished lamb of sacrifice and commencing the age to come in that he has risen to the life of the age to come. Not like the widow son of Nain who was resuscitated to the life of this age, or Darius' daughter who was resuscitated to the life of this age, or Lazarus who was resuscitated to the life of this age, but the life of the age to come has already begun. And when Paul was put on trial for preaching this, he asked the Sanhedrin, why is it so difficult for you people to believe that God raises the dead? because it has already begun. And the life of the next age has now been entered by the new Adam, Jesus Christ, who has given us his spirit. And by that same vital living spirit, we now in the inner man are resurrected and alive with the life of the age to come. And it is that life and that love and that light and that truth That is to characterize us as a community of God's people who have been placed to live in this time of redemptive history. And all of this in keeping with God's purposes who created all things. And things that he did, scriptures tell us, before the foundation of the world. In Hebrews chapter four, in verse three. In Hebrews chapter 4 verse 3, for we who have believed enter that rest just as he said, as I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. Here the writer of Hebrews cites Psalm 95. Psalm 95 is a psalm that recounts the failure of Israel to enter into the promised land, a failure due to unbelief and disobedience. Psalm 95, however, was written by David many years after the event that is being recorded in Psalm 95. So having been written by David is to say that in David's generation, the same problem was persistent. the people had not yet entered into God's Sabbath rest. The fact that it's written now again in the New Testament document is once again to say that we now even in the New Covenant have not yet as a people entered into God's consummated eternal Sabbath rest. The land was a type and picture of God's rest. You'll find it described as my rest in the Old Testament. It is associated with God's promised Sabbath blessings. It's the place where God was pleased to dwell with his people, hearkening back to the Garden of Eden and to the first man who was given the hope that were he to complete his mandate, he would enter into God's eternal Sabbath rest. But the writer tells us the Israelites failed to do that, the people in David's day failed to do that, and now we too are living in a time of redemptive history in which we're being called to enter into God's Sabbath rest. So in verse four, he says, he has said somewhere concerning the seventh day, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. Here's the only place where Genesis 2.2 is quoted in the New Testament and reminding us of that original Sabbath blessing that God constituted by his own cessation of activity blessed it, sanctified it, and gave it to the man as the present, as the blessing of his own presence for him, living and dwelling with him in that Edenic temple. That blessing of God dwelling with man in sanctified land was then seen in the Old Testament in the land of Canaan. But We're told that Abraham, later in Hebrews 11, 16, was still looking for a better country. Ah, that's why we sang that hymn, thou blessed country. Okay, there's a method here. Oh sweet and blessed country that we sang earlier. You see, we're still looking for the blessings of God's creation. those blessings that are given in their consummated blessing of Sabbath. So in verse 10, we read, for the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his. Now there's different ways to interpret that. It could be an axiomatic statement saying the one who completes his race, remember Hebrews is all about sanctification. It's not about justification, and I've heard some fairly famous and prominent men preach in this text to tell people that the Sabbath is basically satisfied in the doctrine of justification. The writer of the Hebrews is talking about perseverance of faith. He's talking about sanctification. He's talking about running the race. He's talking about coming across the finish line to the end. And so this could be axiomatic to say that upon the completion of our work, we too have the hope of entering into that rest even as God did. But I think there's reason to believe that this is an allusion to Jesus Christ, that he has entered his rest, having rested from his works. Because the writer of Hebrews in chapter eight will say, this is the main point about what I'm saying. That Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father. That he has completed the work that God has given to him. He has entered into this consummated state of Sabbath blessing, into this life of the age to come. And now we too, in Christ, are to run our race. We too, in Christ, are to keep ourselves engaged in the means of grace, verse 11, therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest so that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience. He has said earlier in verse nine, so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. And that word Sabbath rest is not you, if I'm correct, And I did a paper on this for one of the professors recently. That word is not used in the New Testament elsewhere. It's what they call a hapax legomenon. It's a word that's only used once. in our New Testaments, but it is a word that is found in other ancient Greek documents, and in the translations of those documents, it means a Sabbath-keeping, an observance of Sabbath-keeping. There is still, for us, an observance of Sabbath-keeping because it reminds us to keep moving forward. that we're still to enter into God's Sabbath rest, that we still have to run this race and to be diligent to enter into that rest. And that's what he's so afraid of. when he speaks to this congregation that there are some in their midst who are taking their commitments to the church and to the worship of God far too lightly and lackadaisically, and they're entertaining the notion of going back into old covenant worship forms. And he's writing them to basically say that is impossible now. You have moved into the consummation of the ages. We've come to a different time. and it's impossible to go back. So when we come back to Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 8 and verse 9, I hope you can now see when Paul mentions God who created all things, that we can understand. He's talking about, as he does in chapter 1, verse 3 and 4, that which God purposes and accomplishes and sets into motion before the foundation of the world. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things." So that when Paul, and by extension a preacher of Paul, stands to preach these unfathomable riches of Christ, he stands in front of these immense redemptive truths that serve as the backdrop to the message that he is proclaiming. The truth of God's grace in Christ that stretches all the way back through the ages and the pages of our Old Testament, back into the dawn of history itself and goes even further back, if you will, into the imperceptible recesses of the eternal fellowship and love between the Godhead, particularly between the Father and the Son. So the God who is our Creator is also our Savior, and there is no conflict between God's purposes of creation and God's ultimate purposes of redemption, because they are all designed in the Father's purpose to glorify His Son. Before the foundation of the world, He has purpose that everything would transpire to bring glory to His Son who will be glorified in fellowship with His church. That's where it's all going. That's what it's all about. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. That picture of Adam and his wife naked and unashamed against the backdrop of a pristine perfect created order is a picture that gives to us not only a view of the blessings of the original creation, but is a picture of eschatological hope, for that's a depiction of Christ and his church. And that's taught later in Ephesians chapter 5. The God who created all things. Secondly, verse 10. will be saved for next time. Let's be thankful as we consider the God who has created all things and to understand the profound depth and the immensity of what God has done as our Creator. Our Creator is our Savior. and we need to be caught up in the great and grand and glorious things that God is bringing to pass in our time and place in history. A couple of my professors along life's way have said something to this degree, to this extent. Try to teach your people where they live in God's redemptive timetable. Try to make them understand the large story Other than that, they'll start to get too self-centered. And they'll begin to think that all the Bible has to say has to say about their little circle of experience. And it's not. It's very big. And your identity and your purpose and your significance is validated and substantiated when you realize that you've been brought to live for great and glorious purposes. And there you will find your significance and your purpose when you learn to die to yourself and to live for the glory of Christ, a glory that has been purposed by God before the foundation of the world. Amen.