I'd like to read now the text for today's sermon and then a section of the Confession of Faith that comments on it. In verse 25 of Colossians 1 we read, I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations. but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." In chapter 25 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, on page 685, We read about the Church. The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. The visible Church, which is Catholic also, or universal under the Gospel, not confined to one nation as before under the law, consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Now in this passage, congregation, we are looking at Paul's own assessment of his calling as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 23, he speaks of the fact that he became a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we were looking last time that we were in this passage together at the first characteristic of that ministry, which was not only the suffering of affliction for the sake of the body of Christ, which is the Church, but a willingness. Indeed, he even says he rejoiced in the privilege of suffering the afflictions of Christ for the sake of the Church. And that's something that you find all the way through the Bible in all of the great servants of God. The first prophet in the great line of prophets in the Old Testament was Moses. And in Hebrews chapter 11 we read, and I quote, By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." Did you get that? The affliction that he suffered is called the reproach of Christ. And that's not all. It is said to be greater riches The affliction is, then, all of the treasures of Egypt. So all the way down through history, all of the great prophets of God, and then later on the apostles, and then later on after that, the great reformers of the Church, right up to the modern age, and we think right away of Professor Machen of Princeton. There has always been a sharing in the afflictions of Jesus Christ on the part of faithful shepherds of the people of God. False shepherds, on the other hand, are not like that, and they are not about to suffer affliction for the cause of the Lord Jesus. As we read in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the false shepherds look out for number one, And they always find ways to avoid any suffering or affliction, tribulation or trial that arises because of loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. And if ever there was a time in which this has become patently evident, it is the modern age in America when our ungodly media preachers have again and again, from their nose, even at the discipline of the Church, in order to continue their self-serving ministries. But now today we come to a second mark of the faithful ministry of the Apostle Paul, for that ministry was, as he says, a stewardship of the mystery of God among the Gentiles. For he says, concerning the church, of which he says, I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God." Now, to understand this, we need to try to think our way back to the first century and the time of the Apostle Paul and to the mindset that he constantly encountered among the Jewish people who often became the nucleus of these early churches. And I will say that the mindset of the Jews, and even the apostles themselves manifested the effects of this mindset, was to the idea that the Jews were to receive a Messiah and that the Messiah was to liberate them from bondage to such alien powers as the Roman dominion which then existed in Palestine, and that that Messiah was to exalt Israel among the nations to a place of utmost supremacy, and then through his messianic powers, he was to bring all other nations into submission to the messianic nation of the Jews. And in this expectation, they were not entirely wrong. This morning we sang together from the Second Psalm. And it says there that he who sits in the heavens will laugh. Laugh at what? The nations that take counsel together against the Lord's anointed. And we read that he will take a rod of iron and he will smash them and he will subdue them and he will bring them under his dominion. And there is a lot of that not only in Psalm 2, but in other psalms and in the prophets. So we cannot say that the Jewish expectation was in every respect mistaken, for they were right in assuming that the Messiah would come, and that when the Messiah did come, he would exalt his name and his people in all the earth. But there was one thing that God did not reveal Under the old covenant, he did not reveal until the fullness of the time had come, and he did not reveal it through any other than his holy apostles, how he was going to accomplish this great worldwide dominion and exaltation of his people. The how, the manner in which he would do this, was hidden in the secret counsels of God. Now you can easily see how the disciples of Christ themselves had the mindset of the age, and the Lord Christ had to work in opposition to that mindset. For after his resurrection from the dead, when he was with his disciples before his ascension to heaven, As we read in Acts 1, verse 6, the disciples said, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Their thoughts ran along the lines of the kingdom in the days of David and Solomon, when Israel was exalted above the other nations in riches and power. And they could hardly imagine any other manner or means or way by which God would accomplish this. So they were asking him, Lord, is the time now come to deliver us from the yoke of the Romans and to exalt Israel as a nation again? And Christ answered them, it's not given for you to know the times and the seasons. But God never did say anywhere in his word that he was going to do this in the way they expected. No, the manner and means and way in which God would accomplish this worldwide dominion of his kingdom was hidden in the secret counsels of God until the fullness of the times. And then it was revealed to his servants. I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to the saints." And his method, which was now revealed, was not by removing the yoke of Rome and exalting a political entity called Israel again as the greatest nation on earth, and then conquering the nations one by one through military force and might. No, it was not to be such a conquest by which Israel would be exalted. To the contrary, it was to be the very opposite of that, for all the way through the apostolic writings we read that it has pleased God to use the weak and the foolish things to confound the mighty. It has pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And so he sends out his apostles, one of which was Paul himself. right into the middle of enemy territory, the Roman Empire, to cast down all of the strongholds of the kingdom of darkness, not with military might, not with guided missiles and H-bombs, but with the mighty word of the living God. He would overthrow by the wisdom and power of God in weakness all of the strength and might and dominion of man." And that is what he means when he speaks here of the mystery which had been hidden from ages and from generations, the mystery which had now been revealed You see, a mystery in biblical terminology means something hidden in the inner recesses of the infinite wisdom of God. Things that we cannot even imagine are a part of the hidden wisdom of the living God. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. That's a mystery. We don't know what the final and eternal glory of the saints will be. It does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when we see Him, we will be like Him when we see Him as He is. That's a mystery. God has not yet revealed that to us. The Bible speaks of the mystery of iniquity. What is the mystery of iniquity? Do you know that the whole world ponders the problem of evil? And every time we have a great war, all over the world people ponder the problem of evil. But do you know it's only God's people to whom God has revealed the mystery of iniquity. Where did it come from? What's behind it all? Who is the mastermind of all the evil and wickedness we see in the world? Well, God has revealed the mystery of iniquity. We know it is Satan. And we know that that serpent that came to tempt our first parents, and that's a historical fact that really happened in space-time history, folks. Behind it was the mastermind of the evil one, Satan, a great and mighty angel who rebelled against God even before our first parents rebelled against God. So wherever you find mystery in the Bible, you're dealing with that which is hidden in the infinite mind of God until such time as it pleases Him to reveal that and disclose it to people. And the mystery which had been hidden down through the ages, which now it pleased God to reveal, was the manner in which he was going to bring all the other nations of the earth into the inheritance of his people Israel." And he says, now this has been revealed to the saints. Now there's a lot of things in the Bible before this that hinted at this great thing happening. It began to come out very clearly in the teaching of Christ. If you go back and read of some of the parables of Christ, like the keeper of the vineyard, you read there that Christ talked to these people about the owner of the vineyard. He was an absentee landlord. And he kept sending his servants down there, and every time his servants came, they killed them. Finally, he sends his son and they kill him also. Well then, the owner of the vineyard is angry and he's full of wrath and he comes and destroys those unworthy servants and gives the vineyard to somebody else. So there's the parable of the king who's going to have a wedding feast. And he invites all these people who had already been invited earlier to come when the time came, and they're too busy, they don't want to come. And he's angry, he's really angry, so he says, go out into the highways and the byways and get anybody you can find and bring them in. All of that was more than a little bit of a hint as to what God was going to do, but it remained for the apostles of Christ, after his ascension to heaven, to receive the revelation of the mystery of how God was going to do that. And the revelation of that mystery was to the effect that God was going to engraft the Gentiles. While they remained Gentiles, into his covenant people that they might become co-equal partakers of the benefits of the Messiah. And to the Jews of that day, that was so mind-boggling, so shocking, that it aroused within them a furious opposition. That is why Paul the Apostle was always in controversy throughout all of his ministry with those Judaizers from Jerusalem who wanted on the one hand to have a foot in Christ's camp by saying he is the Messiah, and on the other hand they wanted a foot in the Jewish camp by insisting that the Gentiles had to abandon their Gentile character and become Jews. And in every one of Paul's great letters, you find him hammering away at that prejudice and clearly testifying the mystery that God had given to him. For example, in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, he says to the Gentiles quite boldly, you once upon a time were, and I quote, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenant of promise, without God and without hope in the world. And then he turns right around and says, But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been made near by the blood of Christ, so that, and I quote him again, You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's own household. And to the Galatians he writes, if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Don't have to be circumcised. Don't have to go down and live in Jerusalem. Don't have to obey all of the civil and ceremonial laws that were given to the Jews. If you are Christ, you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. And in his great letter to the Romans, he writes, God has a great olive tree. And down through history, he's been cutting branches out of that olive tree. Ishmael was one of them. Then Esau was another one. And the ten apostate tribes under Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel sin, there are more dead branches. All the way down through history God has been tearing out these dead branches and burning them up. And you, he says, have been engrafted into that olive tree of God. What a magnificent picture of the ongoing one and only church, covenant people of God to which we have the privilege of belonging, now that the mystery of God has been revealed. For the mystery was God's plan. Nobody realized this until it was revealed through the apostles. It was God's plan to remove the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, so as, and I'm quoting Paul, to make of the two One new man, and that new man is the genuine Christian believer who has Christ in him as the hope of glory. To them, I read from verse 27, God willed to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you. the hope of glory, so that whoever believes in Jesus Christ with a saving faith, trusting in him alone for salvation, already is a part of God's worldwide conquest in the kingdom of the reigning Messiah. Now Paul says he has received a stewardship of this mystery from the Lord Jesus. And do you know what a steward was in the ancient times? I remember when we crossed the Pacific Ocean on a P&O Orient Line ship, we had stewards. Most of them were Portuguese Goanese people, and they were virtually slaves in that system. They had to live 24 hours a day on board that ship at the behest of the customers, and I can well remember talking to some of them about their life. They had to do that to earn enough to feed their families back in their homeland. Well, in biblical times, a steward was a slave who had a job to do given to him by his master. And God gave Paul, his slave, the task of making known the mystery which had been hidden. That is why wherever Paul went, this was a central part of his preaching. And brothers and sisters, that's why he always had trials and afflictions. Because it was this truth more than any other truth. that the false teachers of the apostolic age avoided. The Judaizers were willing to say many nice things about Jesus. They were willing to proclaim day and night the great promise of God that the seed of Abraham would have worldwide dominion, but they were not prepared to say the Gentiles could be Abraham's seed, even as Gentiles, and heirs of the promise. That they would not say, because the moment they said it, they would have the hostility of the whole Jewish establishment. And yet that's exactly the central message that God gave His apostles. Now you might be saying, well, what does that have to do with me? Well, a lot of the problems in our modern America are due to false teachers who have been saying the same thing. You may not realize it, but dispensationalism has been one of the great evils in American Protestant Christianity. And one of the products of that dispensationalism has been a concept of the nation of Israel that is far from that of the scriptures. It is almost to the effect that God has two peoples. One, the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, as is, and the other, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ purchased with his own precious blood. And you know, the Jews are very delighted to hear this. Because the thing that really infuriates the Jews right now, today, in modern America, or anywhere else in the world, is to be told that they're not alright as is. And that they are not God's people as is. And yet this message, strongly upheld by some of the fundamentalist Protestant leaders in America, has encouraged the Jews, supported them almost blindly, and harmed them instead of helping them. Now, of course, it makes the Jews angry to be told that they are not God's people, apart from Jesus Christ, but that is the truth. That's what Paul preached. That is exactly what Paul preached everywhere, in every synagogue. That's why he was thrown out of them. That's why he had trouble everywhere he went. He was not going to soft-pedal that teaching. You see, congregation and unbelieving Jew is a great tragedy. He's a tragedy because he thinks he is one of God's people just because he's Jewish. And the truth is that he is hopeless apart from Jesus Christ, the only true Messiah. He is also wrong because he thinks the Gentile can never possess anything but a second-class place in God's kingdom. And Christ said no. They are going to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They're going to have a completely equal part in the kingdom of God. So the truth is, you see, that if you stand for this biblical principle taught here by the Apostle Paul, you're going to have affliction. And if you don't stand for it, you avoid it, As many of our fundamentalist leaders have, then you're going to be popular with the Jews, but you're not going to be true to the mystery revealed to the apostles of Christ. Well then, Paul says it was this tremendous vision, this great revelation of the mystery of God that he was preaching. And he says, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, and that means Jew and Gentile alike, the one as much as the other, that we may present every man perfect in Christ. You see, congregation, you can't have anything to do with the true gospel of Jesus Christ, with what today I would call a feel-good religion, where you say things that are like a spiritual tranquilizer that comforts complacent people. The cults, the isms, and to a great extent even the old line and even the established fundamentalist churches do that. They teach things designed to fascinate their hearers and make them feel good as is. And I believe that has contributed markedly to the present crisis. In 1948, the nations of the West, led by the USA, decided to take land away from the Palestinian people. They just went in there and seized it. How would you like that? Yourself. How would you like somebody to just march into North Dakota and seize your land and take it away from you? Period. Would you ever get over that? They gave that land to the Jewish people so they could reestablish themselves as a nation, and I have no doubt at all that that is a part of God's predestined plan. I've got no quarrel with God, but a lot of things that God predestined were wrong morally and ethically. God predestined the death of Christ, but it was wicked hands that took him and killed him, and it was wicked hands that took that land away from the Palestinians in 1948. Now, the reason why a lot of people in this country supported that was the idea that the Jews are God's people, as is, and therefore have a right to that land. But they were wrong. That is not true. And the foundation of the bitter hatred in the Gulf area today, and even in the nations that are allied with us for the moment, there's a lot of hatred against us because of our blind support of the Jews. is because they see this as a double standard. And are they not right? Is it not a double standard? One standard when dealing with the Jews and another when dealing with the Arabs? You see, what the world needs to hear today, what everybody out there in the Gulf area needs to hear today is that God has one plan of salvation. And it's not a bit different for the Jew than it is for the Gentile. That they are both absolutely lost without God and without hope in the world until and unless they bow the knee to Christ, God's only Messiah, and make peace with God through them. The plan that insists, whoever you are, that you must Kiss the son lest he be angry is what Paul the Apostle preached and for which he was persecuted and afflicted all the years of his ministry. That's what the world needs to hear today. Can you imagine what a difference it would make if that message could be heard loud and clear out there in the Persian Gulf on both sides of that controversy? that both are totally without God and without hope in the world until they turn to Christ, the Messiah. The basic problem today is exactly the same as it was in Paul's day. It is the tendency to prefer the false, tranquilizing, comforting answers of man to the truth of the gospel of Christ. That was the danger to the Talaysian church And that is the danger to the Church today. We must not blindly support that which is clearly against the ethical righteousness of Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. By all means, let us pray for our men. Let us pray for a speedy conclusion of that conflict. But let us not be so foolish as to regard the political entity called Israel in the land of Palestine as the people of God. They are not the people of God and will never be the people of God again until they are backed into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. who is the only Messiah and, as our catechism says, the only Redeemer of God's elect, whether Jew or Gentile, for this is the mystery of God. May God grant that we may believe it and stand by it. Amen. Father in heaven, we pray today for the wisdom to understand the mystery and the grace to be faithful to that revelation, as was your servant Paul, who constantly received persecution and affliction from Jew and Gentile alike because he would not be silent concerning the awesome claims of Jesus, the only Savior of men, help us to do the same. And, O God, we pray that the truth of the matter might become known to the leaders of our nation, that we might not be one-sided having any double standard of equity and righteousness, for we know that it is this kind of righteousness that exalts a nation. O God, we can only implore you for this through our Savior's dear name. Amen.