All righty. So today we're going to be starting in Ephesians 3. So you can open up your Bibles there, get that ready. Before we start, let's pray. Father, thank you for this Sunday, this Lord's Day, where we commemorate you and you rising from the dead for our sake, for our justification. Lord, that you rose without our sins and you died to put our sins to death so that we might rise with you one day without our sins, holy and blameless before you. We pray that we would think of these heavenly things, that they would be on our minds. Lord, as we go through this passage, that you would enlighten our understandings through your spirit, whatever I say today that you would not have me say. I wouldn't say, whenever you would have me say, you would put it on my mind and on my heart, that we would really unpack your word as your spirit would have us. So we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Alrighty, so Ephesians chapter 3. This is a chapter that's going to restate a lot of what we've already seen, but it's going to go into greater depth. And so the structure of this chapter is slightly difficult to get at first glance, so we'll try to unpack that a bit before getting into the meat of the subject. So first I'm going to read it so you guys can follow along. I'll read the whole chapter so you can get a picture of Paul's argument. So Ephesians chapter 3. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. All right, Ephesians chapter 3, starting off, for this reason, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, and then break. assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace. It seems like Paul sort of interrupts himself in the middle of his idea, and that's exactly what's happening. It's called, the technical term is, anacolethon. You don't need to remember that word, but what it means is that, like, imagine I'm talking to you, I'm saying, well, I really think you should do, well, actually do what you want. Like, if you interrupt in the middle of your sentence, and you sort of change what you're going to say. It's technically bad style, but that's what Paul is doing here. He's interrupting himself in the middle of what he's saying. He says, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles. And then from verse 2 to 13, he just has this giant parenthesis. that has seemingly nothing to do with what he's saying before. And so we're going to try to unpack that. So he says, for this reason. What is this reason? He says, this reason is what we saw in chapter 2. Since you, the Gentiles of Ephesus, are no more strangers, no longer strangers and foreigners, but are united to Christ, I, Paul, pray the following things. And you have to skip all the way to verse 14. You see in verse 14, it says again, for this reason. I bow my knees in prayer." So he has, for this reason, I Paul, verse 1, and then verse 14, for this reason. So he's continuing, he's picking it back up, right? He starts off and then he's almost like, wait, I have this parenthesis I need to make. There's some points that I need to include before I get to the prayer. And so that's what's happening in this passage. Does everybody see that? Does that make sense? You see the for this reason repeated twice? That's Paul making a parenthesis and then he's continuing his idea afterwards. That's not the important word of the passage, but yeah, if you remember that, bonus points. What was that? Also known as a digression. Very true. Alright, so he begins a prayer in verse 14 that his Gentile readers would be filled with the presence of Christ and know his love and power. But he interrupts this by explaining his call to preach to the Gentiles and the insight he has been delivered into this union of Jew and Gentile. Why does he do this? Well, I think the primary reason in this passage that we can see is the pastoral concern that Paul has. Paul is currently under house arrest, he's in prison, and the Ephesians are worried about that. They're like, look, this great man of God who's preaching the word of God is in prison. What are we to do with that? Does that nullify his message? Does that mean that God is not with him? What are we going to do about this? We're worried about Paul. And Paul is saying, hold up. Instead of thinking about me in prison, think about the message that I'm preaching. Think about the glory of the gospel and the uniting of Jew and Gentile. That's what he's doing. And then he's going to pray for them. So it's a really pastoral concern that Paul has here. He's not just going off on some systematic theology that has nothing to do with the real concerns of the Ephesian church. So he says that he's a prisoner of Christ here. He's under house arrest in Rome. It seems like he would say, I'm a prisoner of the Romans, but that's not what he says. He says, I'm a prisoner of Christ. He's a prisoner of Christ since he suffers for Christ's sake, and he will not renounce Christ's cause. He is Christ's servant. He is Christ's slave. If they come to be prisoners, they are Christ's prisoners because they are suffering for his name, and they cannot deny him. They also belong to him and Christ will never let them go. So that's what it means to be a prisoner of Christ. That Christ is the one who has ordained that you wouldn't be in that position and yet will not let you go. He will remain faithful to you even where you are. And we'll come back to that perhaps next week when we get to verse 13. So I think also an important point, just thinking about the structure of this passage and the position that Paul's in, Matthew Henry picks up on this quite well in his commentary. He says that no particular sufferings of our own should make us so solicitous or so anxious about ourselves as to neglect the cases of others in our supplications and addresses to God. So he's saying, no matter what you're going through, even if you're in jail, even if you're going to eventually be beheaded, like Paul was going to be, At the end of the day, that doesn't give you an excuse for not praying for your Christian brothers and sisters. That's still something you need to do, and that's still something you should desire to do. And that's exactly what we see Paul doing here. He could be bewailing his fate, he could just be going on and on about how oppressed he is by the Romans, but no, he takes the time to stop, to explain his ministry, and then he goes on and he prays for them. A beautiful prayer, starting in verse 14. So now we get to this parenthesis, starting in verse 2. Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me on behalf of the Gentiles. It was given to me for you. Why is he on behalf of the Gentiles? Well, Paul says, let me explain. Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of the, the word is really authorization, the commission. I've been commissioned from God. I've been given almost like a letter saying, this is your duty. This is what you are to do. A commission, a stewardship of God's grace. What is the stewardship of God's grace that Paul is talking about here? This is not a trick question. Yeah, what's the message called? The gospel, yeah. There we go. So the stewardship of God's grace, that's the gospel. That's the message that Paul is going to preach. I'm just trying to get you guys awake, and then we'll get some harder questions as we go along. So yeah, that's a summary statement of what the gospel is. It's the stewardship, it's a commission of God's grace. It's something that itself is given. The message of grace is given, and then we go and spread that message ourselves. The gospel is not invented by man or sought out by man, but it's given by God to man. The gospel is grace and the giving of the gospel is gracious. The gospel in and of itself is an item of grace, but God also delivers it as a commission in a gracious way to his apostles first and then to us. And he says he's giving this gospel of grace for you, for the Gentiles. He says, I've been commissioned, I've been given this grace to deliver to you. I'm suffering for your sake. And he goes on, he's saying, you've heard of this stewardship. And what is the stewardship? He says, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, verse three, as I have written briefly. So we've seen this term mystery before. It's a very important. Yeah, so in the Greek it's not just if, it's if a gay, it's if indeed or at any rate. It's really, yeah, the word assuming is a great translation. It really means given the fact that you have, this is the following. No. Yeah. You have heard of this. I'm just reiterating it, essentially. It's not really conditional. And we ought not to take it that way. That's a good question. Yeah, please fire any questions you guys have. These are hard verses. So I definitely don't want to leave you asking what the heck it means. All right. So, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation. How the mystery. We've seen this word before, mystery, in the book of Ephesians. What does the word mystery mean? Not exactly. It's close to that. It's not exactly that. Anybody else? What is a mystery for Paul? Yeah, that's the main point, that's the main point. It's something that was partially hidden, something that had, you were gonna say something, Brittany? Yeah, so that's the main mystery in this passage, but there are other mysteries that Paul talks about throughout his epistles, and there are actually two different mysteries in this passage that he talks about, one more general and one more specific. But yes, mystery is not, It's not a conundrum impenetrable to finite human reason. It's not really a paradox that we can't understand. But it's a truth that was previously and partially hidden that is now fully revealed through the coming of Christ. So it's something that was revealed in the Old Testament, but really in shadows and types. We didn't get the full picture yet. It was there, right? It was still there, and that's important that it was there, because if it wasn't there, then you sort of get into a dispensationalist mind view, where stuff just begins anew every time, and God has no continuous plan. So the ideas that we're going to unpack are in the Old Testament, but they're there in a shadow form. They're not fully expounded as they have been now since Christ has come. And he says the mystery was made known to him by revelation, by divine inspiration, by direct divine communication to the mind and to the heart of Paul. God literally spoke to Paul and said, in propositional words, this is true. He gave him statements that were true that he needed to write down in the Bible. So it's not some mystery. It's not some vague thing. It's not mystical, right? We're not looking to hear voices. This is direct propositional truth that God gave to Paul with a very specific content. And he's going to unpack it later. So we shouldn't be looking for some deeper truth, except for the ones that Paul's actually giving us. Because he says, this is the mystery, and here it is. He gives us a literal sentence with the mystery, so we shouldn't be going any further than that. Some people often take this passage as a justification for a sort of Christian mysticism. That's not what's being said here. He's not following his imagination or his reasonings, but the direct work of the Spirit in his mind, revealing the work and the meaning of God through history. And he says also right here, as I have briefly written, as I have written briefly, whereas Paul talked about this before, do you guys remember in the book of Ephesians where the word, what was that? Yeah, in the first chapter, yeah, verses 9 and 10, he says there's a mystery of Christ. He's recapitulating, he's summing up all things in himself, right, that also is related to this mystery. And chapter 2, verses 18 and 19 also talk about the mystery that Paul is going to discuss in chapter 3. So Paul's saying— No, no, no, he's talking about the two chapters. So chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, and chapter 2, verses 18 and 19. So Paul's saying, as I've written briefly before. So he's saying, actually look back. Go and study what I said before, and then come back to what I'm saying now. So this is actually a principle for reading scripture that Paul is giving us. He's saying, if you're not understanding what I'm saying now, it's probably because you didn't understand what I was saying before. So go back, read it over. I've written about it briefly. I'm going to write more about it now. So he's saying, get this. This is an important point. This is central. This is a key point of my letter to you, Ephesians. As I've written briefly, and I'm now going to expand on it. So once again, this is the definition that the Reformation Study Bible gives. Mystery is not a conundrum impenetrable to finite human reason, but a truth previously and partially hidden that is now fully revealed through the coming of Christ. It's not nebulous, it's revealed. It's propositional truth. And that's important to remember. All right, any questions so far? I'm gonna move on to verse four. Awesome, okay. Verses four through six. When you read this, when you read what I'm writing, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." So this is where he really unpacks that mystery. He says what it is very clearly. He's saying, I have insight into this. He's saying, when you're reading what I'm saying, you can see this insight that I have. We are to perceive something by reading what Paul is saying. We're actually supposed to get something out of it. We're supposed to get a truth, a statement, something that we can remember. And he's saying that he has something new, something unexpected, and yet something somehow expected, something that changes everything, and yet is in total consonance with the character and revelation of God from the beginning. And he says that it's the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the Messiah. He says there's something extraordinary in the coming of this king, the anointed ruler of Israel. And the world is bringing something marvelous and not fully revealed in the Old Testament through the coming of Christ. So there's really two mysteries talked about in this passage. There's the mystery of Christ, and then there's the mystery of Jews and Gentiles. The mystery of Christ is a very broad mystery. It's the mystery of the incarnation. It's the mystery of the babe in the manger being the savior of the world. That's the mystery that he talks about as the mystery of Christ. And there's lots to unpack there. How the God-man, how can Jesus be fully God and fully man? That's the mystery of Christ. And those things do include some conundrums impenetrable to human reason, but not because they're irrational, but because we are finite and God is infinite. And so the mystery of Christ is that overarching mystery of the Christian story. But it's also a very specific mystery in verse six that we'll talk about in a few minutes. He says that this heavenly insight is confirming his calling and appointment as an apostle of God. He says, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. He's not bragging. He's not saying, I'm such a great guy that I've perceived this mystery. He just said that it was revealed to him and given to him by grace. So this is not him with his reason. He's just searching out the scriptures and finding it. He couldn't find it on his own. It was revealed to him. But he's saying, look, I have this insight, and I want you to pay close attention to the scriptures. And then he says, this is a mystery which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. Often people, especially those of a dispensationalist bent, will take this verse and stop it before the word as, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, period. The church, Jew and Gentile, was not made known to previous generations. The church is totally new. It was a totally new idea in the history of redemption, and there was no inkling of it in the Old Testament. And it's just sort of a dot on the timetable of God's redemption. It's not that important. It's like this parenthesis. It's not that big a deal. That's not at all what Paul is saying here, and that's a misinterpretation of the passage. Because if you actually read, it says, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles. So it's a matter of degree, not a matter of absolute negation and absolute positivity. It's not revealed at all. and now totally revealed, it's partially hidden and now totally revealed. And so that's important to bring out because the silence, as another note from Reformation Study Bible says, the silence of the Old Testament is relative, not absolute. Many Old Testament prophecies speak of the bringing together of Jews and Gentiles into one people of God. Can you guys think of such passages off the top of your head? What was that? Hosea, yeah. People who are not my people will be called my people. People from other nations. There's tons of texts, you can just shoot them out. If you can think of them. Texts that show that the Gentiles are going to be included into the family of God. There's a lot, yeah, there's lots in Isaiah. Isaiah 9 has stuff about it. Isaiah 19, blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance. What? Ruth, yeah, has stuff about that. Yeah, Moabites being included. So Jeremiah, yeah. So there's tons of passages in the Old Testament. Think of the covenant with Abraham, and you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Well, at that point, there's not even a Jewish nation, and all the nations are pagan, right? You also have Isaiah 56, verses 3 through 7. Isaiah 66, 18. I'll read that one. For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and shall see my glory. All nations, all tongues. Another good one to remember is Psalm 22. Psalm 22. verses 27 and 28. Psalm 22 is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's the psalm about the suffering servant. It's about Jesus suffering on the cross. And after the end of the song, it says, that he will be resurrected, he will come to life again. And then this is what's written, So this is a theme that is definitely in the Old Testament. The Gentiles will come in at one point, But the idea that they were going to be completely on equal footing, that we'd all have the same status, that they would not even have to get circumcised to join the people, those things were not fully revealed. Those were not really unpacked yet. We have to wait until we get to the coming of Christ to get those themes fully elaborated. So this is definitely in the Old Testament, right? It's not a theological novum. It's something that's there. The membership of Jews and Gentiles in the Church on fully equal terms was not fully articulated in the Old Testament, nor was it fully implemented in history until Christ's death and exaltation inaugurated the New Covenant. That is, the precise mystery that was not fully revealed is that Gentiles can become part of the true Israel by identification with Christ. They do not need to travel to geographical Israel and become Jews, obeying the kosher laws, being circumcised, and so forth. Christ is now the only identifier for a true Israelite. So that's the mystery. I'll read it once again. Gentiles can become part of the true Israel by identification with Christ. They do not need to travel to geographical Israel and become Jews, obeying kosher laws, being circumcised, and so forth. Christ is now the only identifier for a true Israelite. So that's the mystery that's being revealed that Paul talks about in this passage. And he says it was not made known to these previous generations, but that the apostles and the prophets have now received this revelation by the Holy Spirit. Apostles and prophets. We went briefly over this in chapter 2, but I want to come back to it because I think it's so important, especially as we interact with our Roman Catholic friends in the city. If you come and do evangelism, you'll talk to Roman Catholics. And if they know their stuff about their apostles and the prophets, we can sometimes feel really lost when they talk about stuff like apostolic succession. I'm like, well, I don't know early church history. How can I argue against this? Well, if we just come back to the scriptures and to passages like this, we don't need to know that early church history stuff. It can be very useful, don't get me wrong, and we should know our church history, but if we understand the concept of apostleship and of the prophets here, that can be an argument in and of itself. So these prophets, as he said in chapter 2, Verse 20, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. These are foundational offices. He literally uses the word foundation. So they're foundational offices. These are what begin the church. Once you've laid a foundation, do you need to lay another one? No? Yeah. It's kind of like a one-time thing. You lay a foundation, and then you build on top of it. If you keep laying foundations on top of another, you're actually never building a building. You've just got foundation after foundation after foundation. It doesn't actually build God's church. These are foundational offices that have been laid once for all for the reception of the revelation of the previously undisclosed mystery of Christ and of the Gentile inclusion among the people of God. So they have passed away. There are no longer any apostles, no longer any prophets, because those were foundational offices of the early church that received the revelation of God to build the church. But once that foundation is laid, you don't need any more. That's a direct contradiction to the meaning of the word foundation. It's a direct contradiction to what the scripture is saying. And the problem is, if you're going to have new foundations, what else is going to be new? A new revelation, yeah? So it says the apostles were the foundation and Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. So if you have a new foundation, you're also going to have a new cornerstone. The problem is, you're going to have a new and a different Christ that cannot save. If you keep adding apostles, and you keep adding prophets, and you keep building a new building of the church of God, you're going to need a new cornerstone. The Jesus that was revealed in the scripture is not going to be enough. And so the problem with adding this new revelation is that you end up with a different Christ, necessarily. So when we say that the church is apostolic, we do believe that our church is apostolic. What does that mean? some sense, that's not the primary meaning of the term, apostolic. What does it mean that we're an apostolic church? Yeah, it primarily means that we are succeeding the apostles in their teaching and that the authority that Pastor Andy has and the elders will eventually have is derived from the Word of God revealed by the apostles. So there is a concept of apostolic succession, if you would, in the Protestant faith. It's simply that the succession is the succession of the teaching of the apostles, which is only contained in the scriptures. We do not have any repository of apostolic teaching just floating out there in the void that we can call tradition. It doesn't exist. No Roman Catholic can define it for us. They can't point to it. It's just not there. There's no oral tradition floating around. The only inspired words of the Apostles that we have are contained in Holy Scripture. So it's not as the Catholics understand it. They understand apostolic succession as, one, not only do you have the succession of Peter in the sense that the Pope is the successor of the Apostle Peter, and that's why you get all these Popes, and you have this line of authority that The Pope is the head of the church. Jesus Christ is not the head of the church. So that goes off really quickly. And then you also have the idea of apostolic succession in terms of doctrine, which is that you have this oral tradition that the apostles transmitted to their disciples and on and on and on, and somehow they got to the perpetual virginity of Mary, and that was defined dogmatically. Somehow the apostles were teaching about that. Somehow they were teaching about the bodily assumption of Mary. We just never heard of it for the first 1,000 years of church history, but somehow it was there. Somehow it just kept going from one person to the next and never being written down by anybody because it was just the universal knowledge of the church. I'm acting a bit facetious here, but it's important that we know these things, because these are the claims that Rome makes. They say that the bodily assumption of Mary and papal infallibility were the universal belief of the early church. And that's laughable, historically. It's just not true. And we need to press in on those things, especially with more conservative Roman Catholic friends, because they actually believe what Rome teaches. The more liberal ones sort of have to teach them what they know first and then unteach it. So it's complicated. But yeah, it's important. So the church is apostolic. We do believe that our church is apostolic. That means that the governance of our church is only by the teaching of the word revealed by the apostles. It has to do with the teaching found in scripture alone, giving us the authority by which the church is governed. Not a pope, but the word of God. All right, so this mystery, this mystery, what is this mystery that we've been talking about? Verse 6, if you see in your Bibles, there might be a little asterisk above, this mystery is, and it says this is not included in the Greek, this is just like an extrapolation. That's true. It's a good translation because it helps understand what Paul is doing. In the passage, that's really what's meant to be understood. He's giving an infinitive verb that explains, all right, this is it. This is the mystery. This is the conclusion of the sentence that I'm giving. The mystery is that Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So although the Old Testament gives occasional glimpses of a unified and redeemed people, only in the light of Christ's sacrifice does God's plan become clear. In one magnificent act, he removed the enmity between himself and humanity and also took away the division that fractures humanity itself. So he talks about this also in Romans. It's a wild branch being grafted in. He says that the Gentiles now have three things, three things. What are the three things he says that the Gentiles have? Heirs, yeah. Members of the same body and partakers of the promise, yeah. So the word fellow there, fellow heirs, there's no word fellow, the word is, it's a prefix before the verb that means soon, with, fellow, companion to, and all the verbs in this passage have that. So if they're going to be consistent really in the translation, they should have fellow heirs, fellow members of the same body, and fellow partakers of the promise. So it's all together. That word is there all three times, that prefix. So fellow, fellow, fellow. That's really the emphasis of the passage. So what are they? They're fellow heirs. They are fellow heirs with the believing Jews of the kingdom and the promises. They will inherit eternal life and dominion under the sun. It's the magnificent inheritance that we really talked about a lot in chapter one. That inheritance is also given to the Gentiles. So if you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago, that's the inheritance. So I won't linger on it too long here. They are also fellow members of the same mystical body of Christ, and they are received into the church. So they actually, they're not some distant member, they're not like I think Jaron was talking about this. They're not like a hair poking out from the body of Christ just like standing there. They're actually full members. They're part of the body of Christ in the same respect that the Jews are on equal footing. They don't have a lesser status and it's not like there's going to be a point in the future where you have Gentile Christians who have a lesser status. They are on equal footing. And if somehow your view of the end times forces you to have Jews on a higher state than the Gentiles, you're contradicting what Paul is saying here. He's saying they're fellow heirs. They're fellow members of the body. Same footing, equal footing. There's no difference between the two. That wall has been broken down. They are one man. If you then separate them off into two men later on in history, you're contradicting what Paul is saying here, and you're making void the blood of Christ, because the blood of Christ was supposed to unite the two men into one. So we're members of the same mystical body of Christ received into the church. And three, like the Jews, Gentiles have an interest in the gospel promises, especially in the spirit here, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. They are united in Christ with him in vital spiritual union and faith. And it's in Christ in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen. Christ has made us one, and what God has joined together, let no man tear us under. So why is this important for us? It seems like this is a mystery that's pretty far removed. Okay, Paul, that's great. I'm glad that the Gentiles have been brought in. I guess I'm a Gentile, so that sounds pretty cool. I can be part of that. But it seems like it's a mystery that's really, eh, it's sort of a first century thing, doesn't really matter to us today. Well, that actually really means we don't understand what's happened in here, what's happened in the world, and what's happened to us if we're thinking that way about what Paul is saying here. Matthew Henry writes, who would have imagined that those who had been so long in the dark and at so great a distance would be enlightened with the marvelous light and be made nigh, be made close? Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canaanites, the pagan, wicked, godless, hopeless tribes and nations of the world are brought on equal footing with the chosen people of God. Literally, nations and peoples like Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by the fiery wrath of God in the Old Testament. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about your innocent pagan just doing his own thing. We're talking about rebellious people that want to tear down God and are worshiping Satan. That's the people that are grafted in into the family of God. You go from a bird and a wood worshiper to worshipping the God of the Bible. This is a massive truth that Paul is unpacking here. You're playing in the muck and in filth, and you're brought into a royal palace. From worshipping without hope or life, as we said in chapter 2, or anything valuable in this world, you're worshipping an inert object, a piece of timber, And then you're worshipping the God, who I'm now going to read in our Confession, Chapter 2, Part 1. This is the God that you're worshipping. You're going from worshipping wood to this God. The Lord our God is one, the only living and true God, who is self-existent and infinite in being and perfection. His essence cannot be understood by anyone but Him. He is a perfectly pure spirit. He is invisible and has no body, parts, or changeable emotions. He alone has immortality, dwelling in light that no one can approach. He is unchangeable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, in every way infinite, absolutely holy, perfectly wise, wholly free, completely absolute. He works all things according to the counsel of his own unchangeable and completely righteous will for his own glory. He is most loving, gracious, merciful, and patient. He overflows with goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. He rewards those who seek him diligently. At the same time, he is perfectly just and terrifying in his judgments. He hates all sin and will certainly not clear the guilty." So this is the God that you come to worship, this magnificent, holy God, this absolute God that is beyond our comprehension. You go from worshiping a statue, from worshiping gold made by hands with men, to worshiping this magnificent God. and what a God it is, from wooden stone to the absolute personality and radiant glory of God. I would give a comparison for what this is, but there really is no comparison with the glory of God. There's no comparison from going from no hope and no God to the God of the Bible. He's unique. So we live in a time where this mystery is revealed. For those of us who are not Jews, which is the majority of us here today, We are taken from this pagan and depraved ignorance, worshiping created things and ourselves, and made into a holy people of God." By the way, if there were any terms in that definition that were confusing, please ask, because there were some for me. I was like, what does God being immense mean? Does anybody know what God being immense means? What does it mean that God is immense? Yeah, it has to do with his omnipresence, mostly, that he is not bound by physical space, right? Think of John 4, the woman at the well, people worship in spirit and truth. The whole point of that passage is that the spirit is not bound by physical location. So it's the immensity of God. Yeah, I just thought that was a cool point. So we are part of these nations which in times past were foreigners and strangers and lived in gross idolatry. You think of America, you think of the European countries, they were barbarians, they were Native Americans, they had nothing going on in terms of hope, right? They were worshiping idols, they were worshiping wood, they were killing each other, enslaving each other, no hope in the world. We have a great interest in this. This is vitally important. This is important just as much in the first century as it is now. We have a great interest. Without this expansion, without this promise of God, we are doomed. The gospel is for the nations, and we are part of the nations, and that includes us. We can be sure that God intended for us to be part of the plan, because this is precisely the mystery that is being revealed. We're part of the plan. Paul's saying, this is the point. Gentiles are coming in. That's us. That's great. That's the point. We need to be happy about that. We need to rejoice in that. Paul isn't just making a theological point for the sake of church unity, but obviously he's doing that in some sense, but he's doing this because he's marveling at it. He's taking this parentheses because he's saying, he's already talked about this mystery. Why are you returning to it, Paul? Because it's marvelous. Because this is the expansion of the grace of God to the people of the entire earth. Unmerited, the Gentiles didn't deserve this, but God decided to do it anyway, and to unite the most fundamental division in humanity into one man. Also, in terms of practical applications, this teaches us that we shouldn't despair of any nation or of any person. that has not yet come to the knowledge of God. There was a lot of reason to despair for all the pagan nations for thousands of years that they did not have God, because they had nothing. but God still grafted them in. And if God can do that, if he can take nations and peoples on the level of Sodom and Gomorrah and bring them in to the fold, bring them and make them children of God by giving them a new heart, then we should not despair of any of our relatives, of any of our friends, and of any countries or places or people groups that we have a heart for and that we long to see come to Christ. Because God is able to do that, especially using us as means. The worst of nations and the worst of people Because such were some of us. That's the whole point. Such were some of us. We were part of these nations. We were no better. We were not wiser. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he's taken what was not to make not the things that are. But we were washed by the blood of the Lamb. That's the point. Such were some of us, but we were washed. OK, I'll get a bit into verse 7 and 8, and then I'll stop. Any questions before on verses 1 through 6? I saw you starting to need another question. All right. Verses 7 and 8. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. So he says, of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. He was made a minister. He did not make himself a minister. There's no self-calling. There's no, oh, I determined that I'm now going to be a minister of Christ and an apostle. No, he was made it. He was God-called, not self-called. And all people that are called to ministry then and now, they're God-called. If they're self-called, they're self-deceived. according to the gift of God's grace." What is the gift of God's grace? I just said it. The gospel! Yes, once again, the gift of God's grace. These are all paraphrases for the gospel, for the good news of salvation. So according to the gift of God's grace, the gospel was given to Paul to preach to the Gentiles, and he's given all the power and the ability that he needed to be an apostle in the early church. He didn't just happen to be, I mean, he was educated, he had a great education, but he didn't just happen to be this most courageous man, brilliant orator, writing the most profound theological treatises ever to be written, right? He was given this grace by God. This was something he was equipped to do by the Spirit of God. He was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the work of his power. So the principle here is what God calls men to, he fits them for. what God calls men to, He fits them for. He equips them. God does not call us into ministry or into our ministries in our lives without the working of His power according to His grace. Now, this doesn't mean that He won't stretch us and challenge us and discipline us, because He most certainly will do those things. And we shouldn't forget that. But it means that all throughout, His grace will reign through His power, that whether it be a layperson or a minister, we all have a divine calling. And His grace is sufficient to complete that calling in this world. What God calls men to, He fits them for. That's verse 7. Verse 8, there's a stress on the unworthiness of Paul. He says, to me, though I am the very least of all the saints. Why does he say this? Why does he say, I'm the very least of all the saints? Yeah, he's a murderer. He's a persecutor. Yeah, Paul was, he says in 1 Timothy 1, he says, though formerly I was a blasphemy persecutor and insolent opponent, right? He says, this is who I was without Christ, an insolent opponent of God and of his church. And right here, he's not just paying lip service to humility. He's not saying, oh, I'm just this poor guy. I'm really low. I'm just going to pretend that I'm not that great. This is Paul. I mean, this is the guy who wrote the most important pieces in the entire Western canon. I mean, this guy is incredible. The evangelist of evangelists, the missionary of missionaries, the theologian of theologians, the apologist of apologists. We want to say, no, Paul, stop your nonsense. You're awesome. You're not the least of the apostles. But no, that's precisely the point. He's saying, me? Me, God? You chose me? That's the wonder that he's trying to capture in this passage, and we need to capture. He's saying, me? Why was I a guest? Why did you choose me? That I should be invited to the table of the Lamb to sit down and feast with the saints forever and ever. Who was I that you should die for me? And who am I that I have an interest in the Savior's blood? That I should sit down with the saints forever and ever, world without end. Who am I, this is a song that goes, who am I that the highest king should die for me? That's the point that Paul is making. I was this lowly, blasphemer, persecutor, murderer of Christians. Who am I? Who am I? Matthew Henry says, in connection with the humility here, that those whom God advances to honorable employments, he humbles in their own eyes. And where God gives grace to be humble, there he gives all other grace. So Paul can magnify his office as he did before. He's saying, verse 4, remember, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. He's magnifying his ministry. He's saying, I have this insight that I'm delivering to you. But at the same time, he's saying, and humility, I am the lowest of the apostles." And those two things are not contradictory, right? A minister of Christ can make much of his office while making little of himself. And that's actually what he ought to do. Because to make little of himself, he needs to realize the gravity of his preaching, the gravity of his role, of his calling. Yeah, I can repeat that. Those whom God advances to honorable employments he humbles in their own eyes. And where God gives grace to be humble, there he gives all other grace. I'm your son. You can also ask for this when I get home. OK. Those whom God advances to honorable employments, he humbles in their own eyes. And where God gives grace to be humble, there he gives all other grace. Yeah, I mean, I think humility is a necessary component. I think we were talking about this yesterday, if you've been coming to the cross in the first place, coming to the end of your righteousness and saying, I've got nothing to bring, nothing in my hands. That humility, that place where we've come to an end, both of our sin, we've seen the depths of our sin and the depths of the sin of our righteousness. Even our righteousness is as filthy rags before him. So coming in complete humility, being broken down before the cross, is something that ought to happen at our conversion, and happens through the grace of the Spirit, but also should happen daily as we humble ourselves before Christ. So yeah, definitely, Jared. Let's see. Okay, yeah, we can get through the end of this. What grace was given here? What is the grace that is given to Paul? What does he say in verse 8? This grace was given to preach. This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. So that's the task of every minister, to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. If they're preaching about politics, if they're preaching about something else, if they're preaching about what they ate for lunch last Thursday, they're not preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ. And Andy does a terrific job at this, but let's say he goes astray and starts preaching about something else, we need to call him back to the unsearchable riches of Christ. That's the role of the minister. That's what he needs to unpack and present to his audience, right? There's no power in and of himself. There's only power in the Word and in Christ who is being revealed. He's to preach to the Gentiles, Paul is saying here. He's been giving this grace. I'm preaching to the Gentiles to bring them into the fold, the unsearchable riches of Christ. So it's a grace to preach, and the message that he preaches is grace. What does he mean by unsearchable here? Anybody have any idea? The unsearchable riches of Christ. Yeah, limitless, riches that are impossible to track. We can't plumb their depths, the riches of Christ, meaning he is our treasure, he is our love. He is our highest, our most desired possession. The riches can never be exhausted and will never be exhausted. And I think Jared and I were also talking about this after evangelism when we were debriefing. When we present the gospel, yes, we want to talk about the blackness of sin and the depth of sin and all that is involved in that and our rebellion against God. But when we present Christ, do we present the unsearchable riches of Christ? Do we present his beauty, his glory, his magnificence, his call to sinners, his loveliness, his meekness? Because those are things that the Spirit can work to bring somebody to Christ in presenting the glory of his character. So we can't forget it's important and we dare not forget the importance of sin and a conviction of sin and bringing somebody face to face with the law. But once we've done that, we show them Christ and how he saves them from that condemnation in a glorious way. the unsearchable riches of Christ. Indeed, sometimes we don't show forth the beauty of the riches of Christ enough in our gospel presentation. The riches here talked about, we've talked about that word before, plutos, plutocracy, riches. This is something that abounds. They shine and they will ever shine. They are riches of love, they are riches of mercy, of kindness, of friendship, and of comfort for all whom Christ loves. And these are riches that are never ending. The image here is of one, it's really unsearchable, untrackable. You can't track them. The idea is as tracking game, tracking something you're hunting, right? You're looking at the tracks, you're trying to find the animal, but you can't quite get it, right? You're searching after the tracks. It's an unending hunt and search after the footprints of our Savior. We're to search, we're to seek after Him with diligence. I haven't gone hunting before, I know Josh has, but it's something that takes, I mean, especially in olden days when you didn't have guns and you had a bow and arrow, this is something that took days. This is something that you needed to do because it was your sustenance for your family, but it was something that you could delight in doing. You searched for the tracks, you looked for the animal and tried to catch it. We are to preach and search after riches that are sought, they are tracked down. And then as soon as we found Christ and we've captured His beauty and His glory, He evades us again. And there's still more. There's still more to be found. There's still more to be tracked. And that's not just something in this life. That's something also in the life to come. Granted, we will understand much, much more in the life to come than we ever understood in this life. We see through a mirror dimly lit here. But even in eternity, we'll be constantly seeking out those unsearchable riches of Christ. the thrill of the inscrutable riches of Christ. We thirst, and then Christ satisfies, and then we thirst more, and he satisfies more. He will always meet and over-meet the desire that we have for him, and so we should increase thirst more and be satisfied more, to know Jesus and then to know him more. We are to seek, we're to wrestle him as Jacob, wrestle with God, seek him while he can yet be found. As a deer pants for water, that's also an image that the psalmist uses. We are panting, we are desiring for God. We're out of breath because we've been running so long to find him. I find that this isn't where my heart is naturally inclined. This is something that I need to work on. I need to desire God more. I need to want him, to love him, to want to love him. As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you. All right, let's pray. Unless there are any questions? Anybody? All right. Father, thank you for this passage, for the unsearchable riches of Christ, Lord, that we fail so often to admire, to to ponder in our minds, to meditate on, and to simply enjoy, Lord. I pray that today, as we hear your word preached, as we sing songs, and all throughout this week, that we would rest in the unsearchable riches of your gospel, Lord, that you have reconciled us to yourself and us to one another, Jews and Gentiles, in one body. Though you revealed this partially in the Old Testament, Christ has come and is now fullness of grace, the fullness of deity in bodily form, and he has made us one. through his indestructible life. We pray that we would search him out and seek him as a deer pants for water, that it would be the first desire of our souls. We pray this in his holy name. Amen.