Today's scripture reading is from Ephesians 3, one through three, and six through 12. This is the word of God. For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard 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. And now continuing with verse six, 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. as we pray together. Our Father, we are grateful for our time, chance to study your word together, chance, Lord, to be together. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. It was just last month that Sandy and I were lying in hammocks down in Costa Rica. looking up at palm trees, 90 degrees, a couple afternoons in a row, as we put in our AirPods and listened to a medical mystery novel. And as you can imagine, several times something happened that we just didn't see coming. And we both had the same expression as our heads would pop up over the hammock and look at each other. Didn't see that coming. Well, the scriptures have more than a few occasions, don't they? That we would say as we're reading it through, especially if we're reading it through for the first time, I just didn't see that coming. Israelites backed up against the Red Sea. Just make a way through the water on dry land. Didn't see that coming. Baby God himself, a Messiah, showing up as a baby in a stable? Didn't see that coming. And if you were a first century Jewish convert to Christianity, or if you were a Gentile convert to Christianity and were familiar even a little bit with Judaism and the Jewish people, you'd look at chapter three of Ephesians and say, I did not see that coming. I didn't see that Paul would have news for his first century audience that he would say, I got from God that Jew and Gentile believers are one in Christ Jesus, that they're equal, that they are no VIPs in heaven. There's no stepchildren in heaven. and perhaps just as intriguing, the message is this was God's plan all along. So I want you to look in your Bibles as we begin looking at Ephesians 3, and my first question actually in the outline is this question, why a mystery? Why a mystery? Because that is what Paul calls this new news that he says God is asking me to deliver to you. Now we have to, first of all, just recognize we use the word mystery somewhat differently. For us, the word mystery is much more likely to be something that's just unknown. You know, it's a mystery to me. Can you see yourself saying that? That happens in our house, especially the closer you get to the refrigerator. Because in the refrigerator when you got a family and especially teenagers or those in their 20s, there's takeout that's in one of those white boxes. And once you get past about age 4 in a family, you start realizing the main purpose of that white box is basically to scribble threats to your family if they touch your food. It was just a week ago, Jackson was home for a couple of days, and chicken fingers and some fried pickles were in one of those little cases. The usual death threats were scratched on the top of it as it went in, and sure enough, by noon the next day, the text went out. Who ate my food? And of course, there were some vague, non-incriminating admissions of partial guilt. When I texted back, I even consulted my dear lawyer friend, Rick, to make sure nothing would hold up in court if I wrote it back. So by the time it got back to him, the message was, Jackson is just kind of a mystery. I don't know. After he left town, we powwowed and we realized, well, maybe we were kind of guilty. One admitted, I didn't think he really wanted those fried pickles. Another admitted, I thought I cut off a piece small enough of the chicken tender he wouldn't notice. Between us, sin had been committed. But the message he got was, it's a mystery. We just don't know. Now Paul, in the first century, used the word very much inconsistent with how the Greek word would have been used back then. Not just something unknown in some vague way that helps you get out of admitting guilt. A mystery back then was used to describe something that was unknown that could only be known if it was revealed to someone, and most of the time, just revealed to a few. But the key part is something that's unknowable, that is unknown until it is revealed. And that's exactly what Paul said happened to him. God showed me knowledge about His eternal plan that no one had before. God's inclusion of the Gentiles in his plans. Now, we know Paul, he would refer to himself a number of different times as an apostle to the Gentiles, with a message of, to the Gentiles, you are not outsiders to God's plan. And that was absolutely unacceptable to first century Jews. unacceptable, especially to those outside of a faith commitment to Christ. But even for those within it, it was a hard pill to swallow. Think of Peter heading up north from Joppa to visit Cornelius. And Paul, right there in his prison cell, had time to reflect on the reminders of that truth, that in his culture, as a Jew, this was an unacceptable message, that God was opening up an interest in the Gentiles. In that prison cell, he certainly had time to think. He had time to think back to his childhood, time to think back to as a Jew how he would have been taught at a young age, not only the Gentiles are outsiders, but we have nothing to do with them as best we can. We'll never eat with them. Peter was hesitant to even eat up with Cornelius, much less the food they'd serve. Paul would have, as a future rabbi-in-training, probably heard the prayer of some of those rabbis in the first century. It's said that some of them would pray a prayer every day that began like this, Can you imagine waking up You're Hispanic and you wake up every day and you say, thank you, oh Lord, for not making me African-American, not making me Eastern European. I mean, that was the kind of sentiment that Paul grew up in and heard from the highest spiritual leaders in his community. That kind of sentiment. But he would not just have had to think back to his childhood and reminisce about the training, about the environment that he grew in. He simply could look around the enclosed walls of his prison cell, smell the dank smell, because there was no bathroom that he could walk to. And the air was stuffy, freezing cold, I'm sure, in the winter of Rome, and blistering hot in the summer with no air movement. He could look down, he'd say in Ephesians 6, I'm an ambassador in chains. He could look down at the chains on his hand and say, I have reminders every day that Jews hate Gentiles. Because he was in that prison cell, in chains, because Jews hated Gentiles. It's in Acts, the Bible tells you. It's in Acts 21 that Paul heads up to Jerusalem. He had already become known as one who is taking a message from God to Gentiles. He shows up at Jerusalem and he's accused of not only being one who's preaching and taking a message to everyone, but also even bringing some Gentiles into the temple place. That second accusation hadn't even got the facts right. He hadn't brought Gentiles in the way he was accused. But that didn't matter, because the Jews right there in Acts 21 drag him out from the temple, drag him out with an intent to kill him. I'm gonna kill him within the temple grounds, drag him out, start beating on him. And if it wasn't for some Roman soldiers seeing the ruckus and approaching and rescuing Paul, he likely would have died right outside the temple grounds in Acts 21. It says in the scriptures, I had to hoist him up, carry him to the Roman barracks so people would stop beating on him, stop attempting to take his life. And as they assemble the steps of the Roman barracks in Acts 22, Paul says to the centurion, the man in charge, can I make it a defense to my people who are accusing me? I guess it was a slow day in Jerusalem, not as much paperwork to get to. He says, okay. So Paul, standing on the steps of the Roman barracks, it says in Acts 22, makes a defense. He makes a defense that begins with reminding them, you know how zealous I was, how I was a persecutor of this new way, these Christians, these followers of Jesus. He reminds them about Stephen, that you all stoned. And I stood by agreeing with it. He reminds them of the story that had gotten out that on the way to Damascus to persecute these Jews that were converting to Jesus' way, a light shone from heaven. And he actually says to the crowd, and this Jesus of Nazareth spoke to me from the heavens. And you know what they did? They listened. Acts 22 verse 21, they listened until It says in Acts 22, Paul says, And the Lord said to me, Go, for I will send you away to the Gentiles. Referring to how he would carry a message from God to the Gentiles. And everything changed. They went from listening, the scriptures say, to yelling for his life. This man doesn't deserve to live. Let's rid the earth of this fellow, it says in Acts 22, verse 22. He's imprisoned in Rome and in Jerusalem. When his life is threatened, he's sent up to Caesarea, 80, 90 miles to the north on the coast. When he appeals to Caesar, he ends up in a Roman prison. Paul could look at his chains, look at the wall, look at the bars above him, the bars on the wall, the bars on the door, and say, I am here in prison because Jews hate Gentiles. Overcoming that kind of religious hatred Overcoming that kind of hostility would seem to require a miracle. But God introduced a mystery. He introduces into this kind of animosity, He introduces a mystery. a mystery in the sense of a plan that he had from before the beginning of time, is now told to Paul, special revelation, meaning direct divine revelation, and Paul is sharing it with them. The translation, the message, says it this way. I'm exerting a few of the key verses between 1 and 6. Listen to it. This is why I, Paul, am a in jail for Christ. I've taken up the cause of you so-called outsiders. I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made known and made clear by God's Spirit through His holy apostles and prophets of this new order. This mystery is that people who have never heard of God and people who have heard of Him all their lives, outsiders and insiders, stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, the same help, the same promises in Christ Jesus. The message, the gospel is accessible and welcoming to everyone across the board. That's what Ephesians chapter 3 verses 1 to 6 says. So Paul is clear, God showed me knowledge about His eternal plan that no one has had before. Abraham didn't know this. Moses, whom God spoke to like a man speaks to his friend, didn't know this. David didn't know this, the man whose heart was after God. Solomon, in all his wisdom, did not know what Paul is telling the Ephesians. The plan is stated succinctly in verse 6. The news might be new. I put in your outline here, Roman numeral two. The mystery is new news of the wide reach of God's plan. And to understand why we need to use the word mystery is that the news is new. The plan is ancient. The knowledge has always been there, but until this time, it has been in the mind of God. Now, this ancient plan is new news to them because God, in His providence, had chosen this point in time, not before now, but in the days after Jesus ascends, to reveal to Paul this new news. Here it is, verse 6. The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. All, every Jew, every Gentile, has access to this inheritance. A connection to one another, it says. Promises that once only seemed to be made to the Jews are now open to all. What is the emphasis of verse six? Really, it's, I think, the summit of this thread of thought of what God has revealed, this mystery. It'd be easy to focus on some wonderful and key words like heirs, like members of the same body, of partners and promises. But it seems that you would miss the point if you ran to those words and missed, of all things, sorry for the English grammar lesson with a little look back to Greek, a simple prefix. A prefix that is before all three of these ideas. A prefix that, in our words, is just the words S-Y-N, like synonymous, same name, just another name for the same thing, a synonym. Syn, S-Y-N, in our words, just like in Greek, meant together or equal with. And so, A way we could look at it is like J.B. Phillips said 60, 70 years ago in his paraphrase of this verse. Gentiles are equal heirs with His chosen people. Equal members. Equal partners in God's promises. Now, Paul has been beating a steady drumbeat of this since chapter 1. A steady jumbreat of we're in this together, Jews and Gentiles, if we are in Christ Jesus. They began as early as chapter one, verses three and four, when he said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us, Jew, Gentile, all who believe. He chose us in Him, when? Before the foundation of the world. So he begins to hint that we are in this together. and we can look back as far as our human brains can attempt to look back, and then go back further than that, and that's when God chose all of us to be together. In chapter two, we've seen it a few times. Verse 13, now in Christ Jesus, you who once were afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Verse 13. And the context makes it clear. He's not simply saying, Jesus, by His sacrifice, has brought you near to Jesus. That's true. I could point to, you could find a number of verses to simply make that theological point. But the context here is not simply a focus on, you are far off, you've been brought to Jesus. The context here is you are far off and you've been brought to Jesus' family. You've been brought into the family. The circle has widened. A couple of people dropped hands so you could fit in because now you've been brought near in a togetherness kind of a way. And he'll say it just a few verses later, chapter 2, verse 19. You're no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God. Jews didn't think of themselves as being in the same household. They didn't even want to go into the house of a Gentile, much less picture themselves as extended family going into their family. Well, this has gotten a little deep, a little technical. So I want to take a brief break and have us just say some wedding vows together. I got your attention. Well, just at least one little phrase of a wedding vow. Now, I know weddings in Colorado, they've gotten a little casual. So most of you are overdressed to attend. But if you've got some flip-flops in the car and a ball cap, I'll let you go on out and get them on, and you can come back to the ceremony. You say, I'm just 14. I want you to say it. You say, my wife's home sick with a stomach flu. She's probably laying on the bathroom tile right now. Well, points off for the part about in sickness and in health for you, buddy, but nonetheless, I want you to say it. You might say, I've been single all my life, not even dating anybody. I want you to say it, at least this one line. Here's the line, and I'm going to put it on the screen. What God has put together Let no one separate. I know the context that you've heard that, that I've always heard that, is appropriately so, a wedding ceremony. Husband and wife coming together. But I don't know if there's a better way to get a hold of an application from this passage than this simple, very familiar, in a different context saying. Let's say it together. What God has put together, let no one separate. That's the thrust of this passage. that God, since the beginning of time, has intended to put together into his family people that don't see themselves together, people that don't want to be together. That line would be so appropriate to deal with just the issues in the ancient world. William Barclay, a Bible teacher of the last century, he said, one of the biggest sins of the ancient world was contempt. Groups hating one another, not just Jews and Gentiles, but who didn't live in a city and view the people that lived on the other side of the hill as barbarians? I think the word just seems to be used over and over again, just to describe the people that live just a little differently than me over the hillside. think of, and I say this with much more seriousness because I know dear friends are here, Chad Rak and Erica from Burundi, and think what happened right next door to their country in 1993 and 4 that spilled over into their land between April 1994 and July of 1994. And one ethnic group in Rwanda killed nearly a million of another ethnic group in Rwanda. Those might seem like distant times, or for most of us, a distant place. So are we kind of removed from having to worry about treading on this kinds of hatred, of this kinds of separation, of contempt. Well, I wanna have you look at it just a little differently. Because when you think about it, we're talking about what we do with a plan that God has had since the beginning of time. A plan that he says and shares with us in his holy word. A plan that directly affects any of us who have faith in Christ. Because it's not looking to people who lived in a different time. It is looking around in our world and saying, is that other person in God's family someone I want to be with? Be around. I confess my own guilt when I got to thinking yesterday, and I'm not sure why it came to mind. I got to thinking, and I wasn't trying to come up with some example of just how I've failed in this and relate it to you, but it happened. I got to thinking of just a couple I don't really know well. They're not here, they don't go here, and in case any of my family in a distant land is listening, they're not extended family. but they are a couple that I know more in an acquaintance level, that are in God's family as far as I know, profess to be, that when they come to mine as they did yesterday, I get frustrated. I think of some decisions they've made that have caused an emotional toll on people that I care about. I don't necessarily get angry, but if I thought long enough, I probably would be. I don't know why, but yesterday, just because this passage has a lot of looking to heaven, that kind of stuff was on my mind. I'm embarrassed to say, maybe we can stop the tape for just 10 seconds, that it came to my mind, how easy is it to avoid somebody in heaven? Duck behind the harps. Hide in the clouds. I shouldn't be silly about it. But I have to say that I think we have before us a choice. When we consider others that we know to be in God's family, we do have a choice, perhaps every Sunday, perhaps most days of the week. Well, I choose to focus on those things in them or in our relationship or in our us that make me want to separate, keep my distance from them. or will I choose to recognize and embrace that God has put us together? Not just now, but for all eternity. Ephesians chapter three, verses one to 13, I look at the last point in this outline, has wisdom that we'll never grasp. The scriptures tell us that, the unsearchable wisdom in Christ. It has riches we'll never discover fully. I think it's, by way of review, I see two main things that God makes clear, seems to be unpackaging for us by way of Paul's teaching. One has taken the better part of my time, I think truthfully is the main idea that's here. That from the start, God's plan was always to make one family of faith from people of every background. One of us, one of our number got a glimpse of that. Now I'm talking, of course, 2,000 years ago when John was on Patmos and he writes down what he saw in Revelation 7, 9. when He says, And I looked, and behold, a great multitude, I could number from every nation, from every tribe and peoples, from every tongue, standing before the throne of the Lord, clothed in white robes. John got a glimpse of how this plan is going to end. How the togetherness of what God intended from the beginning revealed here in Ephesians 3 in the first century, how it's going to end. The togetherness that we will experience fully and experience for all eternity. It's amazing to me in a era of talking so much about inclusivity, that Christianity, as I see in this passage, once seemed so exclusive. Three quarters of the book, the Old Testament, makes it seem that God's invitation is so exclusive. And yet, we see here that it's marvelously inclusive. And it's the strangest thing, the road is narrow. It only goes through Jesus. It only goes through faith in the Son of God, Him paying the price for your sins. And yet the travelers on the road are so diverse. Every tribe, every nation, every language that's spoken are on the narrow road. And we'll see Him in person one day, won't we? But the other point in these last few verses I want to bring out, verses 8 to 12, is another profound truth that I think gets to be unloaded a little bit more on us. It's this truth, that from the start, God's plan for human history is bound up in the church. That human history, as God is writing it, is bound up in His church, the community of faith. Listen to verses 8 to 10 right from the ESV read earlier by Doug. Though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God. So that, and here's this key phrase, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known. Through the church, His wisdom, His intentions for this world, this human race, is now being made known. What a contrast that is to those outside of the faith and the importance of the church they see in human history. They see history as a series of leaders, of empires, They see the future as being about technology. Do we get a handle on climate control? Does this pandemic spin out of control or is it just wind down and life goes on? They would view the future, the past, and the present as wrapped up in things. And the church? People even go there anymore? I couldn't say it better. I can't even say it as good as John Stott. But listen to just a couple of paragraphs of how he compares a secular, a non-biblical view of history with a biblical one. Secular history concentrates its attentions on kings and queens. It concentrates on presidents and generals. History's VIPs. The Bible concentrates on a little group it calls the saints, often insignificant people, little people who are at the same time God's people. Secular history concentrates on wars and battles and peace treaties. The Bible concentrates on a decisive victory won by Jesus Christ over the powers of darkness. A peace treaty that he ratified by his blood. A proclamation of salvation for all of us rebels who believe and repent. Secular history concentrates on a changing map of the world. The rise and fall of empires. The Bible concentrates on a multi-national community called the church, which has no frontiers, which claims nothing less than the whole world for Christ, whose empire will never come to an end. You see, Ephesians 3 is about saying there's no more mystery. Now we know that God always planned to bring together Jews and Gentiles into one family. God always envisioned a future time in which his family would be gathered from every tribe, every tongue, every nation. God always had his church, his people, at the very center of his plans for human history. Everyone else, everything else, is just props and supporting cast. What God has put together, let no one separate. What God has put together, no one can separate. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the longing that should be growing in our hearts, and I pray it would, of being together for all eternity. May the words that were spoken today, if they've been faithful to your word, be an encouragement, a challenge, a message that your Holy Spirit would use in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Have a good Sunday.