THE WORLD’S GREATEST MYSTERY
EPHESIANS 3:1-6
(1) For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – (2) if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you; (3) that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. (4) By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, (5) which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; (6) to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
· This morning I want to talk about a mystery. The greatest mystery of all time. The greatest mystery writer of all time was the Apostle Paul, at least he got to write the last chapter of God’s great mystery. In Chapter 3 Paul begins to describe in detail God’s great mystery.
· WE LOVE MYSTERYS: something in the human nature that is fascinated by something hidden in secret waiting to be discovered.
1) Kid at dentist’s office. Look for the HIGHLIGHT magazine and turn to one page. Hidden Pictures(find things hidden in the larger picture)
2) Everything that surrounds us in life is pretty much a mystery. We don’t really know anything fully.
a) How to lose weight(protein diet? Grapefruit? Subway?)
b) Creation is a mystery/finding love/joy/women/
c) Medicine: finding cures and vaccines
d) Geraldo: ‘Capone’s Vault, Miss America, Superbowl, March Madness’ Can’t wait to find out what happens.
In 1925 the only written copy of the formula for Coca Cola was finally removed from a safety deposit box in a NY bank where it had been held as collateral for a loan and moved to a safety deposit box at Woodruff’s bank in Atlanta.
Policy was set that no one could view the formula without written permission from the Board and then only in the presence of the President, Chairman, or Corporate Secretary.
Further policy was set that only two officials would know the recipe at any one given time and that those two were not allowed to fly on the same plane together.
In 1993 came across in the papers of John Pemberton what he believed to be Coke’s original formula. And I have it. A 107 year old mystery, a guarded secret in my safety deposit box. Never would have guessed this to be that.
Prov 25:2 ‘It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the glory of kings is to search it out’.
· Want us to think about three things this morning as we consider this great secret which God unfolded before us in the pages of the New Testament.
THE MESSENGER (3:1-2) For this reason I, Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you;
Notice that Paul begins with the phrase ‘for this reason’ and then gets exicited about one truth after another before finally coming to verses 13 & 14 and telling us the reason. He finished chapter 2 telling the Ephesian church who they were and now before he shares his prayer for them in the last verses of this chapter he gets excited about God’s work in his life.
1. We have a MESSENGER who is very excited about his message which is interesting since the first thing he says about himself is that he is a PRISONER.
Two descriptions Paul gives himself.
a. PRISONER: Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus.
1) Notice he does not say he is a prisoner of Rome or Caesar, the Jews but of CHRIST JESUS.
Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem after the Jews rioted. He was held for years and finally brought before Festus and Felix and then sent to Rome to appeal to Caesar.
He lives in a hired house and is chained day and night to a Roman soldier as he awaits his trial before Nero.
Paul understood, despite all the outer evidence, he was a prisoner of Jesus. The duration of confinement was in God’s hands. When it no longer served God purpose then God would release Paul from his present circumstances.
You need to recognize God’s hands in your present circumstances and that when God’s purpose is served then they will change.
ACTS 12: Peter in Prison – Time to open the door and leave
1) Herod needed to see God’s power and so did those praying for Peter.
Man who had recently experienced a series of difficult events had fallen into a state of depression.
He was walking past some men who were building a stone church when he saw a man chiseling a triangular piece of rock. ‘What are you going to do with that? ‘DO YOU SEE THAT LITTLE OPENING UP THERE NEAR THE SPIRE? I AM SHAPING THIS DOWN HERE SO THAT IT WILL FIT UP THERE.
Tears filled the eyes of this heart broken man as he walked away. God had spoken through that workman to explain the mystery of his own circumstances.
2) PAUL was also a prisoner ‘for the sake of you’. I might add for the sake of us also.
Because Paul was confined in prison and not free to go to Ephesus and preach to them he had to take all the time and write to them and ultimately us. Many lives have been effected because Paul was a prisoner and wrote Ephesians, Phillippians, Colossians and other books of the Bible.
Possibly Luke and Acts were written because he and Luke took advantage of the time and collected together the truths learned.
WATCHMAN NEE: Rarely wrote but messages were written down that he gave.
MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST: Not written by Oswald Chambers but dictated by his wife as he ministered among the soldiers in North Africa.
Of all that Paul did what Paul wrote was of greatest effect.
b. STEWARD: (2) the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you. Important to understand that we also are stewards.
May have the word DISPENSATION or ADMINSTRATION: The term Paul uses comes from two Greek words: ‘house’ & ‘Law’. Our English word ‘economy’ comes from this. It is the ‘law of the house. House management’.
God gives each one of us talents, abilities, opportunities, spiritual gifts, relationships over which we have a sacred stewardship for the kingdom of God.
PARABLE of the TALENTS: Two used while one buried away what he had been given. WHY? Afraid of failure: might put it at risk and come up short and be in trouble. Reason many of us don’t serve God, witness, step out in faith. OBEDIENCE NEVER PLACES US AT RISK!
1) OF GOD’S GRACE - What are you using that God has given you?
2) GIVEN TO ME FOR YOU – Who are you serving with what God has given you?
THE METHOD (3:2-3) the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.
1. The MESSENGER was to carry out his task by God’s METHOD. Neither has changed for us today. Two things are still true.
a. WE ARE EQUIPPED BY GOD: Again we are Steward of God’s grace. Grace makes us able to do what God asks.
b. WE SHARE GOD-REVEALED TRUTH: by revelation there was made known.
1) Bible is God-revealed truth we have to share with the world.
Paul was a special case in that he personally received revelation through the Lord after the Damascus Road experience. He did not receive a second had gospel through the other apostles: ‘I did not receive it from any man, nor was taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ Gal 1:12 It was not until 14 YEARS after Paul’s conversion that he came to Jerusalem and sat down the the other apostles to compare notes and he states that they added nothing to him.
Peter on housetop when taught by a vision about the unity that was supposed to be between the Gentiles and the Jews. ‘What I have made clean do not call unclean’. No difference.
Interesting story about Helen Keller. When _________ was finally able to reach into her blindness, deafness, and inability to speak to tell her about Jesus Helen responded, ‘I knew about Him, I just didn’t know His Name’.
Story of the natives in Africa who were first visited by white missionaries. As the missionaries came near to the village they noticed that trees had been stripped of the bark on the side facing away from the village. Opened up all along the path. When the missionaries arrived and began to speak with the natives they asked about the trees.
‘We understand we are a wicked people, we know that we deserve the wrath of God, when God comes we hope he will see the trees and see that we are sorry for our wickedness and have mercy on us’.
A people ready to hear, God had already spoken here.
(4) By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, (5) which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;
2. Paul begins to share how special this truth he is sharing really is. When we read what Paul and the others write we are introduced to timeless truths about Jesus Christ.
a. Verse 5 states how many other generations were not able to understand God word as we can: Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Jeremiah…none have the fullness of the revelation that we are given through Paul and the other apostles.
THE MESSAGE: (3:6) To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
1. Paul calls the message A MYSTERY, THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST.
Christ is a mystery to a lost world: All the problems that arise: broken marriages, divorce rate, world hunger, crime…trying to analyze what has gone wrong and why we cannot understand what to do.
The key to the mystery is Jesus, He is the great secret, the right answer to all of life’s great questions.
God has set His Son at the heart of all things. He is the final solution. When you never deal with the heart of a problem then you never find any real and lasting solutions.
2. This mystery brings both Jew and Gentile together as one body before God. Seems simple enough.
Imagine if the State of Oklahoma had to save money by having only one major state university. So OU and OSU were merged together as one school on one campus. Compromise by calling them the OKLAHOMA COWBOYS and make their sports teams dress in orange tops and red bottoms.
Do you think there would be a period of adjustment? Nothing compared to putting together Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s days.
Middle east turmoil: Jews & Gentiles trying to live together even today.
3. Paul explains it with three descriptions:
Here Paul does something quite unusual. The truths he is sharing are so unique that he actually has to invent words to share them.
ABS – WEDGIE – DUH
Paul puts words together and makes up three new words found nowhere else in the Greek New Testament. Joint heirs – Joint bodies – joint partakers
a. FELLOW HEIRS – Jews and Gentiles are the same family and receive the same benefits in their relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
b. FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE BODY – God has made the two actually one body. One unit under one head.
c. FELLOW PARTAKERS OF THE PROMISE – The two together shared equally in the promises of God.
Amazing truth of the gospel is that God can take those so radically different in this world and make them one in Christ. So much that made them different and yet God’s power was sufficient to overcome those obstacles.
If Paul saw the church today splintered and split repeatedly it would break his heart. He had written with so much excitement about what the grace of God can do to make us one.
The mystery that the world needs to see unfold is to look at the church and ask, ‘How can they overcome so many obstacles and still love each other and serve God together as one’.
What could make this possible?
Howard Hendricks shares how in their church in Dallas they were in desperate need of a person to teach a junior high boys class. Those will to do it came down to a list with one name on it.
When Howard Hendricks heard the name he said, ‘You have got to be kidding’.
He says now that he could not have been more wrong about that young man. He took the class and accomplished amazing things.
Hendricks was so impressed that he invited the young man to his house for lunch and asked him the secret of his success.
The young man pulled out a little black book. On each page he had a picture of one of the boys and under the name were comments like, ‘having trouble in math, or comes to church alone or would like to be a missionary some day.
I pray over those pages every day and I can hardly wait to come to church to see what God has been doing in their lives.
That is the kind of attitude that makes the people of God all that he has meant us to be. One together now and for eternity.
THAT IS MY PRAYER FOR LIVING OAKS BAPTIST CHURCH
