We cannot go farther into this study until I have explained my position concerning the wording and sentence divisions found in the New American Standard Version of the Bible.
I should begin by saying that I am not a student of the biblical languages, and I do not presume to be a bible translator, by any stretch of the imagination. I research my sermons to the best of my ability, using materials made available by those who have studied the languages, spent years in their own study, and have written books on the subject. I cross-reference materials to be sure I’ve gotten all sides of any conflict on any given issue, and I teach according to what I can glean as best or most closely concurring with the rest of scripture.
In other words, if there is some point of scripture that is debated, I compare each argument to what I know of scriptural truth as revealed elsewhere in scripture, and lean that way.
Now the NASB has long been lauded as the most accurate translation available, in that it adheres most closely to a literal translation of the oldest transcripts available.
I have read and heard more than once that when large portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls were translated, then compared to the already existing NASB, only two differences were found; both punctuations and neither significant. I have not documented that assertion myself, but I have seen it written and heard it preached on more than one occasion.
Further, when I have listened to preachers who preferred the KJV of the Bible in their study and their teaching, more times than I can count, I have heard them say, “This particular word in the original language actually means...” then they fill in the blank; and when I look down at my New American Standard Translation, that is the word I find there ~ which causes me to wonder why they don’t just use the more literal translation. However, it is not my point or my purpose to criticize them. I know full well that old habits are difficult to break.
My point in all this is to say that as we go through Ephesians, when we come to places such as chapter 1 verses 8 and 9, you will notice that the NASB ends sentences and begins others, where other widely used translations do not. My suggestion to you, would be to have a New American Standard Bible to use at least in this study to avoid confusion; but even if you do not, please be aware that I have researched works of various men who have commented on Ephesians, and I have not found at any point that I disagree with them on any small point of doctrine. The difference between the translations causes us to approach the epistle in a slightly different way, but fundamental truth and teaching of Paul’s letter does not change with the alteration of a few points of punctuation.
Now having said all of that, I have to point out that in the NASB one sentence ends in the middle of verse 8 of chapter 1, when Paul says that God has lavished His grace on us. Then a new sentence begins when he says, “In all wisdom and insight...” and then goes into verse 9.
So, adhering to the structure of this translation, we gather that what Paul wants to tell us here is that God made known to us the mystery of His will, and that revelation was done in ‘all wisdom and insight’. So let’s talk first about that last phrase of verse 8; “in all wisdom and insight”.
There is some difference of opinion between commentators as to whether this refers to God’s wisdom and insight, or whether it is saying that God gave us wisdom and insight to discern the mystery of His will.
Putting the phrase into context though, I can only conclude that Paul is referring to God’s wisdom and insight. One reason is that all that is being said is focused on Him, and what He has done, not on men.
He blessed. He chose. He made holy and blameless. He predestined. He adopted. He bestowed His grace. He shed His blood. He bought redemption. He provided the way of forgiveness of our sins. And now, He made known to us the mystery of His will...
..and this was done in all Godly wisdom and insight.
Men sometimes exercise wisdom given them from above. And sometimes men demonstrate insight, or prudence in the practice of that wisdom from above; but only after, by His Holy Spirit, he has opened the eyes of our understanding into spiritual matters. Paul prays for just that, for his readers, in verses 17 and 18 of this chapter.
“...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints...”
But God acts always, out of His own wisdom and perfect insight. In fact, He cannot do other, for He is Wisdom and Prudence. Man acts contrary to his nature when he exercises these virtues; God acts only according to His nature.
So Paul is not necessarily applauding God’s use of wisdom and insight in His dealings toward us. He is simply assuring the reader that all that God has done toward His creation is wise and prudent and therefore perfect and just and eternal.
Please bear that in mind as we go on to discuss this ‘mystery’ that has been made known to us ~ and why it was made known to us, but hidden from others.
The best analogy I could think of to explain the situation was of an army of commandoes behind the lines of the evil enemy.
Use your imagination for a moment and put yourself into this picture.
An entire land has been taken over by a malicious and malevolent despot. Every citizen of that land is completely under the thumb of his rule, and there is no escape, nor relief from the suffering he inflicts.
Then one day a hero comes on the scene. He looks just like the citizens of the oppressed country, but there is more to him than meets the eye.
He has a plan that is sure and perfect, but slowly and meticulously implemented.
He could take over immediately by force, and by himself if he chose to do so; but our hero does not only want to rule. He wants the people of this nation delivered from their sufferings, and choosing in their own heart to follow him.
He doesn’t want puppets. He is not like the evil despot. He wants subjects that serve him out of love.
So, one at a time he begins to win them to himself.
The officers under the evil despot, of which there are many, are watching him all the time. They know something is up. They know there is something special about our hero, but they’re not sure just what that something special is.
They only know that he seems to be a threat to their cushy, pampered lives.
In addition, they see the common subjects of the land beginning to change, and it threatens them. They see hope in people’s eyes. They see them walking a little taller and smiling a lot more often. They are certain that these changes are being wrought by this stranger, but they don’t know how he’s doing it.
They listen to him talk and teach, but they can’t make sense of his words. He seems to be talking in riddles sometimes.
Other times, he seems to be exercising authority that no one has given to him. As though he brought his authority with him from his own land, and assumes he can impose his will here in the evil despot’s domain.
This makes them angrier and angrier, until one day they come to the conclusion that if our hero is allowed to continue, everyone in the land will follow him and they will no longer have any clout; therefore their cushy jobs will no longer be valid and they will lose all.
So they kill him.
A short time later, the people who had been following him, instead of being downcast and discouraged and doubtful and defeated, are shouting from the rooftops that our hero is not dead, but alive!
Their numbers seem to have suddenly grown to unmanageable proportions.
They have become like an army of commandoes, slowly and successfully undermining all the efforts of the evil despot.
The officers of the evil despot do everything in their power to stop this growth; to stamp out this new movement, but there’s just no stopping it.
What’s worse, the movement seems to have a language and culture of its own, that they cannot fathom.
They talk of things happening that the evil officers cannot understand. They talk of future events that seem to be fanciful and ridiculous, but the evil officers can see that those in this new movement are quite serious about their expectations.
In the meantime, as these joyful people go about talking to other oppressed subjects, their numbers grow and grow...
...and although they are still within this oppressed and enemy-occupied land, they live as though they are not of it. They are not effected by its evil and they seem to be free in mind and spirit, no matter what affliction is set against them.
The evil despot and his officers fight harder and harder, but they cannot understand what gives these ‘new’ people their strength and determination and unquenchable joy.
They just don’t understand!
“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory;...”
Said Paul to the Corinthians. (I Cor 2:6,7)
And to His chosen ones in Matthew 13:11 when they asked Him why He spoke in parables, Jesus said,
“To you, it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.”
Now the first question that might come to mind here I suppose, is; why is this mystery hidden from some and revealed to others? And again; if this mystery was revealed to everyone, then wouldn’t everyone believe? Or at least a lot more people than do now?
This brings us back, inevitably, to the topic of predestination.
I said in a previous sermon that God, who exists from eternity to eternity at once and sees all of time from beginning to end at a glance, knew who would respond to His call; knew who would repent and believe His gospel, and planned their lives accordingly.
But here I have to go slightly farther than that, and tell you that there are also those whom God has prepared for destruction.
The clearest statement I have found in scripture on this subject, is in Romans chapter 9. Let me read verses 14 through 24 for you:
“What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be!
For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion”. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth”. So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?”
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this”, will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among gentiles.”
So Paul has established here, a doctrine that flies in the face of the liberal theologian who would assert that a loving God would not send anyone to such a place as Hell; and certainly would not leave them there eternally. Or the one who would say that while sin must be punished, God will let each one be purged in some purgatory ~ some place between Earth and Hell or between Earth and Heaven ~ until he is clean enough to enter Heaven, then take him home like a returning prodigal.
The Holy Spirit inspires the Apostle with terms such as: “He hardens” and “willing to demonstrate His wrath” and “prepared for destruction”.
There is something that I am very confident of, hearer, and I will share it with you now and let you contemplate it yourself in days to come.
I don’t know how much detail we will finally know when we are glorified, concerning God’s complete plan of the ages. I don’t know if we’ll even really care once all things are in perspective for us.
But let’s just say that the moment all things have been fulfilled, and we are all gathered together in what the Scripture calls ’the age to come’, and everyone is where they are going to spend eternity, and God has created His new Heaven and new Earth, He reveals all things to our now glorified minds.
He lets us see the front of the tapestry, so to speak, and every single detail is made clear to us.
If that is to happen, I am very confident that one thing we will be impressed with and amazed at, even if not entirely surprised, will be when we see that every single person who entered into this world from the beginning of time until the end ~ whether the great names of evil, such as the Hitlers and the Ivan the Terribles and the Jeffrey Dahmers and the Jack the Rippers, or the most obscure, unknowns who lived their lives anonymously and homelessly and died quietly under a bridge somewhere of a robber’s knife or a winter fever...or even the still-born babe...
...everyone who played even the most insignificant role in the thought or emotional processes of any other person, I believe we will discover, had a part in God’s overall plan and purpose, in the summing up of all things in Christ, and to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy. His chosen ones. Us.
So on the one hand we can accurately say that God would not reveal His mysteries to these vessels prepared for destruction, any more than a General going to battle would send a dispatch to the enemy with his plans for the coming day.
But on the other hand is the simple truth that the dead cannot comprehend life.
Going back to I Corinthians 2 for a moment, hear verse 14:
“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”
This is the truth Jesus was sharing in His discourse with Nicodemus, when He said, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” He didn’t only mean a natural man cannot go to Heaven, the statement encompasses the fact that the natural man cannot understand with the natural mind, the things of God
Now I have to make something very clear here.
There may be some listening to this sermon, or reading it later on, whose minds are reeling with confusion. “Why,... if there are those predestined to adoption as children of God ... and those predestined for wrath ... what is the point of making a decision for Christ? We’re either destined for Hell, or destined for Heaven. What’s the use?”
It is this. “In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will...”
In all wisdom and insight, and according to His kind intention which He purposed in Christ, He decreed that the only vehicle of entrance into His grace would be faith.
Not knowledge, not power, not wealth, not steely determination; but faith.
Simple, childlike faith.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Heb 11:6
He made it simple for us, hearer, but as my dad used to be fond of saying, it’s so simple that people miss it.
Jesus prayed, “I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes.”
Matt 11:25
Whatever God has planned for each individual is according to His foreknowledge. But we do not have that foreknowledge, and in all wisdom and insight He has laid out a plan that allows for all who will, to come to Him in faith and enter into grace.
If you are one who has never come to Him by faith and surrendered your will to Him and believed in His good news for salvation, then the one and only way you can be assured that you are not a vessel destined for destruction, is to take that step today.
Look up from where you are to the cross of Christ. See Him hanging there for you; pouring out His blood for you; dying for you; and believe. And finally understand the mystery. Someday will be your last opportunity. You do not know when.
Now we need to talk about just what this mystery is.
Believers in Christ, and you who love a good mystery, I don’t want to disappoint you, but you already know the mystery.
From ages past God has had His plan. He revealed pieces of it... small clues... to the prophets, which they wrote down for us.
I Peter 1:10-12 tells us that the prophets “made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow”.
However the time had not come to reveal the mystery.
We’re told even that angels themselves longed to look into these things.
But the time was not yet.
Then, quietly, God entered enemy territory in the unassuming, unthreatening form of a baby. I Timothy 3:16 says:
“He...was revealed in the flesh; Was vindicated in the Spirit, Beheld by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory”
The time had come to reveal the mystery.
“According to His kind intention which He purposed in Him (Christ)” It was finally revealed that Redemption was available, forgiveness of sins offered, heirship with God and His Christ, through faith in the shed blood and acceptance of His marvelous grace!
It’s not a mystery any longer, except to those who will not hear. But to those who come to him in faith, believing, comes the privilege of knowing “what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe”.
Rejoice in this, believer. You are chosen, you are made holy and blameless, you are adopted, you are redeemed, you are forgiven... you are the beneficiary of the revelation of the mystery of the ages...according to God’s kind intention toward you.
It was for you and me, that godly men and women of old had to wait to see the mystery revealed. (Heb 11:39-40)
I’ll send you out with these words of Paul’s:
“Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.”
Rom 16:25 - 27
