Revelation to Proclamation - Ephesians 3:1-13 — A Christian Growth Message

Transcript

Our loving Father, we thank you for this day and that you are a speaking God. We pray that you would make us a hearing people. And then we pray that this word which has been recorded for us would do good in us. And that we would be pleasing to you.

We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So friends, we’re following the New Testament letter called Ephesians on the Sunday mornings. This is a letter which describes how God is doing for the world – what the world is not capable of doing for itself.

So the world is not able to fix itself.

The world is not able to reinvent itself. The world is not even able to escape itself.

And we come to a section of the letter this morning which also describes a parade or a demonstration. And this parade is so huge and so wholesome and so honouring to God. A very, very wonderful parade.

I think I’ve told you before that I once walked into a shop and the lady recognising that I was a minister, immediately blurted out to me, why is the world in such a mess? And I think I remember telling you that it occurred to me to say to her – it’s very hard to get the horizontal right – if you don’t get the vertical right.

And this letter of Ephesians is announcing that God has successfully got the vertical rights. In other words, he’s made peace from heaven to earth.

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

And that he’s capable also of getting the horizontal right, of bringing people into his family and into fellowship together, and he’s also capable of giving people new hearts. Which the world is not capable of doing.

Now of course the world can’t do this and the world has no interest in the vertical relationship with God and therefore it has no success with horizontal troubles. And we can see in our own country of Australia that as the vertical becomes more and more unwanted, the horizontal problems are becoming more and more problematic.

Paul Kelly yesterday in one of the newspapers said this, Australia is now fragmented and unsettled. He went on in the article to say there is the loss of values. The rise of mental illness. People are trying to live by their feelings, standards are in decline, there is no fixed truth. There’s the erosion of free debate. History, and all that history stands for is being demolished. There is disrespect in discussion. And leadership without morals, and then he made this killer comment, if you knock out the Christian foundations, he said, you’ll knock out the bonds that hold us together.

And so that’s why there is the constant call in our country and in the west for more laws, more police, more education, as if this is going to fix it, but it doesn’t.

Jesus taught 2000 years ago that if you miss the diagnosis of the human heart where the problem lies, you’ll miss a remedy as well.

Now God is capable of doing the upward fix, and he’s capable of doing the horizontal fix, and he’s capable of putting new life into the heart, and he’s capable of living the new life out in his people.

Now Paul, who wrote this letter, has spent the first two chapters describing how God has done this, how God has begun the process, and the apostle Paul, my friends, is quite excited about this.

He’s quite animated, he’s interested, he’s stirred up.

And if you look at chapter 3 verse 1, he gets ready to pray that this whole plan of God would make progress. But then he stops before he prays. Because he’s realised something.

He realises that his readers will be asking the question, well, if God is so great, how come you’re in prison?

Is it that you’ve been sacked?

Has God decided to punish you?

Or is God not interested in you?

Is he incapable of looking after you?

And so Paul stops in the section we have this morning to make an announcement.

And the announcement has 3 small parts.

The first is what I’ve called special information, verses 1 to 6, special information. He says in verse 1, 1st of all, I want you to know that my imprisonment is not an accident and it’s not a tragedy, in fact, I’m not even the prisoner of Rome.

He says, I’m the prisoner of Jesus Christ.

He’s completely in control.

Second thing he says in verse 2, surely you have heard that God has revealed something to me.

Which was not revealed before to anybody.

That is, God gave me a mission to the nations. Now the word in the original language is nations, a mission to the nations. We tend to translate the word in our Bible, Gentiles, because it’s the non-Jews, the people around the world who are not the Jewish people. But actually the word is really the nations. Paul was given a mission to the nations of the world.

Now this is, my friends, just a historical fact. The apostle Paul was turned around 180 degrees, you remember, when he was on the road to Damascus, going off to basically persecute and imprison Christians, and God confronted him and turned him round and turned him from being a persecutor of the church to a preacher of Christ.

But the apostle Paul’s point in these verses is that God gave him some special information about the nations. This was information that had never been revealed before.

And Paul calls this special information – revelation.

The Greek word is apocalypse, the unveiling of something unique.

And this kind of information is not possible to be grasped with the human brain.

I don’t know if you like cricket or not, I’m a moderate fan of cricket, but I was reading recently that during a test between Australia and Pakistan. And it was the 3rd day of the test, and there was 1 ball still to bowl. And the Pakistani batsmen, of course, did not want to get out on the last ball of the day because they wanted to be there for the next morning to keep batting.

And the bowler was Shane Warne, and the wicketkeeper was Ian Healy.

And Shane Warne and Ian Healy had a consultation in the middle of the pitch, and they stood there for one or two minutes just looking around the oval.

And this had a very intimidating effect on the Pakistani batsmen because they thought, what are they planning, what are they plotting? What kind of missile is about to come down the pitch? And Shane Warne bowled the next ball and he bowled the guy out.

And these two guys, this is the mind games that cricketers play, these two guys had come into the middle of the pitch and talked for 2 minutes about the best restaurant to have dinner that evening.

Who would have known except that it was later revealed what they’d been talking about.

Now we need revelation from God. If God doesn’t speak clearly, plainly, in black and white, we don’t know what he thinks.

The Bible is not a silly book, the Bible is a very sensible book arranged by God, so that we will know what he thinks. I mean we wouldn’t know God was a father without the Bible.

You can’t work that out, can you, by looking up into the sky.

We wouldn’t know that Jesus died on the cross for sinners without the Bible, it just looked like a tragedy.

We have these tiny little brains like torches up into the sky that just cannot really work anything out.

But God’s revelation, God’s word, God’s scripture comes down to us like the morning sun. And tells us what’s going on. And God gave special information, you remember to Abraham at the beginning of the Bible, and then he gave special information to Moses, and then he gave special information to David and Isaiah and the prophets, and now he’s given some special information to Paul.

And this is what the special information that Paul was given was, he calls it the mystery now unveiled, verse 3, verse 4, verse 9, the mystery, this is the, this is what was unveiled to Paul, Listen carefully.

The nations would be at the centre of God’s purposes. The nations would be central to the plan of God. You see, for 2000 years the Jews had been central. And they had become world-famous because of the numbers which had grown.

And because of their escape from Egypt and their travel through the wilderness where God preserved them and protected them, and then their taking of the promised land, the Jews had become world-famous and everybody assumed that they were central to God’s plan. And the Old Testament, of course, predicted that the nations would appear eventually, but the nations would be something like friends in the house, they would never really be God’s family.

You know, they might become servants one day, but they would never really be God’s sons and daughters, but Paul says in chapter 3 verse 6,

This is what God revealed to me, that any single person in the nations of the world who puts their trust in Jesus Christ becomes central to the plan of God. They will have the same inheritance as everybody else, they will be part of the body of Christ like everybody else, they will receive everything that God has for his people. Is that not significant for us in this country?

When a man is drawing up his will, and perhaps he’s got a 5 year old son and he decides to leave 98% of what he has to the 5-year-old son, and he’s got a servant who’s been around for 40 years, and the man decides that he’ll leave a couple of small things to the servant.

Because the son takes the priority.

And it would have been very easy for the Jews of the day, especially in Paul’s day, to have said we’re the sons, we get everything.

And the Gentiles might have said we’re the B grade believers, you know, we’re just lucky to be there.

Every Christian is central and privileged, and that when you become a believer in Sydney, Australia, you have no less privileges in God’s plans than Abraham did.

Moses does not outshine you, nor does David, nor do the prophets, nor does Peter, nor does Paul, no, no, you become central to God’s purposes. Now we need this information, don’t we? We need God’s revelation and we need this special information as well because we get so easily led by our feelings and our circumstances.

And I know I’m talking to you and I know you know this is true, that your feelings often, as this is the case for me as well, dominate over the Word of God. Doesn’t matter what God says, this is how I feel.

And my circumstances and your circumstances often take the superior place as well.

That’s why we need to listen very carefully to the Word of God.

Is it not possible that you’ll be listening to a sermon on Ephesians, and God will be speaking through his Word and you’ll say “well this doesn’t really matter because I feel – or my circumstances are so difficult it doesn’t matter what the sermon says.”

John Newton said that when the Bible is being read to us, or when the Bible is being preached to us, God is telling us his will.

He’s dictating the terms of his will, of his inheritance for us. And then John Newton says this, do you normally fall asleep when the will is being read out? Because we’re so easily gripped by feelings and circumstances.

Now the thing that Paul never got over, chapter 3 verse 6, and he never stopped writing about this and he never stopped preaching it, is that every believer becomes part of Christ’s body. We are organically, vitally connected to Christ. His life is put into us. The life that comes to us because he died for us.

I wonder whether the apostle Paul, who was very interested in this picture of the church as a body, picked it up when he was himself on the road to Damascus, and the Lord confronted him, and do you remember the question to Paul, why are you persecuting me, and the apostle Paul might have said, well I’m not persecuting you, whoever you are.

I persecute Christians, and the Lord said, yes, you persecute me. Because my people. Adjoined to me.

That’s what Paul was given by way of special information.

Now secondly, unique communication.

Chapter 3 verses 7 to 9, what was revealed to Paul was to be revealed through Paul, verse 8. Now that seems like a joke, doesn’t it? Paul apparently was a weedy little man, and God said to him, I want you to preach to the nations, and he must have said to himself, well that’s just ridiculous. It’s just not gonna happen.

Who’s gonna care if I start talking?

Marcello and I have been quoting from a commentary by Eugene Peterson on the book of Ephesians, and Eugene Peterson was an American pastor who died a few years ago, but he says in the commentary that when he became a minister, he was really very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he thought this was gonna be great.

And he went to a city called Baltimore in the United States, and he said, when I get to Baltimore, he said, I’m gonna start telling people about how to be united to God and how they can come together into a fellowship. And he got to Baltimore and the people were not interested in either.

They had no sense of need for God and they had no interest or love for their neighbour.

And Eugene Peterson has said it was a very difficult and sobering time. And it took years for the change in the people.

And some of them never ever believed.

And he describes in the book a man called Reuben, who sat in the church for 27 years and refused to believe, Sunday by Sunday, refused to believe until he died, he refused to believe right to the end.

And then Eugene Peterson took his funeral.

It’s impossible, isn’t it? It’s beyond us.

How’s the apostle Paul going to reach the nations, he’s unfit, he’s a sinful man, he’s weak.

How’s he gonna reach the nations, and the answer comes in chapter 3, verses 7 to 8, it’s going to be by the grace of God. Twice he says the grace of God and the power of God.

And Paul himself had no power to reach the nations, but God had power to reach the nations, and Paul was not worthy to reach the nations, but God had grace. Paul describes himself as the least or the lowest of God’s people.

That God specialises in ordinary people. God specialises in ordinary people. The great evangelist DL Moody, who was preaching on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1900s, was asked once, he was a very bright boy. But he had no education, he couldn’t even pronounce words properly.

And he went to Cambridge, which was at that stage the centre of learning, and God used him to bring hundreds of Cambridge students to Christ.

Many of them went to the mission field and into the ministry, and somebody said to Moody on one occasion, I cannot see any connection between you and what’s happening. And Moody said that’s exactly how we like it. It has to be God.

I remember hearing John Piper, the great American preacher, interviewed once and somebody said to him, what do you do when people come up to you in the street and they thank you for your ministry and they tell you how wonderful you are and they’re so appreciative of what you’ve done. He said, you know what he said? I’m always amazed.

He said it’s it comes sometimes after I’ve just had a fight with my wife or I’ve been looking at a pretty girl in the street for too long.

And somebody comes up and says, God has greatly used you, and I think, how did you do that?

And brothers and sisters, when we’re in our right mind, that’s exactly how we think, isn’t it? We know ourselves. How could God use us? Well, of course he does.

And Paul began to preach and God added weight to his preaching, and the preaching changed people and it changed places. I mean one city that he went into, the sorcerers of the city came and burned their books in the face of the preaching of the apostle Paul.

Just imagine in Sydney, the people who’ve been involved in some industry of depravity. Coming and burning all their stuff.

And then the people who were making the idols in the city, the little trinkets that were being sold, idolatrous trinkets, they were being run out of business.

Because of the apostle Paul preaching.

And the city where this took place was Ephesus. Because God made a decision that Paul would preach to the nations. And God gave him the grace. And God gave him the power. Now the, the topic of the apostles preaching is in verse 8.

He preached on the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The word is in the original is untrackable riches, that is you cannot explore properly the riches.

Christ is like a galaxy, you cannot explore him fully. He’s like 1000 oceans, you cannot get to the bottom of his greatness in your lifetime.

That doesn’t mean he’s hard to know, he’s as easy to get to know as it is for the children who came to the front to put their trust in him. But it means that we should never get bored with Christ. You can study Matthew, Mark, Luke or John for the whole of your life and you’ll just scratch the surface.

Sometimes when I’m watching singers, not in this church, but in some churches, have you seen this before, you’re watching singers in a church service and they’re in a kind of a rapture.

They’re in a kind of an ecstasy.

And sometimes I cynically wonder whether it’s real or just a show.

But the fact of the matter is that if we saw Christ clearly, we would be in a rapture or an ecstasy.

But our eyes are dim.

We just don’t understand him as we should. So Paul preached the treasures of Christ with the grace of God and the power of God.

And it made an impact on the world of his day. Why is this announcement important for us this morning that the apostle Paul preached or communicated? The, the reason it’s relevant to us is because the spread of the gospel was a miracle.

And the news has reached my friends, you. Somebody put a messenger on the first fleet that came to this country. Somebody has made sure that there are messengers in this country for the last 246 years. And somebody brought the message of Christ to you. God has made sure that the nations are reached.

And the thing that you worship, my friends, if it’s less than Christ. Will shrivel your soul. You become what you worship.

If you’re addicted or worshipping or committed or involved or obsessed with something that’s less than Christ, it will shrivel your soul.

But Christ, when he is properly appreciated, honoured, worshipped, loved. He will enhance your soul. Now that’s 1st and 2nd thing this morning, special information came down to Paul.

The nations are central.

And the information was uniquely communicated by Paul around the world.

Thirdly and quickly, cosmic demonstration verses 10 to 13. This is the kind of the parade, or the display, which I was talking about before.

And I don’t really know how to explain these last few verses to you, verses 10 to 13.

They may be very familiar, you may be able to tell me what they’re all about, but when I first grasped these verses, I suddenly realised that the church around the world has a role to play, which is bigger and better than we ever imagined it to be.

Look at verse 10

God’s plan was that his church would be a demonstration of his wisdom, not just to the local suburb, not just to the city, not just to the country, but to the heavens.

The information came down to Paul by revelation, the information went out through Paul by communication, and when the church is brought together, it is a demonstration up to the heavens. It’s a cosmic demonstration.

Now how possibly does the church show anything to the heavens, and the answer according to these verses is that the church is a demonstration of God’s wisdom because he cuts across all human divisions.

He is capable of collecting anybody and everybody around the world in every day of every century, anytime he wants.

Last Sunday, Cathy and I couldn’t stay for the morning tea because we’d been invited to go to a house church, and we went to a house church in one of the suburbs half an half an hour away from here, and it was meant to start at 10 but we said that we could get there at 11.

And we went into the room and I would say to you as carefully as I can – that there wasn’t anybody in the room who would impress virtually anybody, anywhere.

It was a very ordinary gathering of people, but wonderful people.

And they’d begun meeting at 10 and they went right through till 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and they sang and they prayed and they talked. But it was a very ordinary little group.

And Paul says that little group, that little house church that’s gathered that is not impressive to the world.

Is a display to the heavens that God is a genius.

That he can bring together people.

Of all different types.

And create a fellowship which loves him.

And praise to him.

And is a witness to the heavens, so God does, you see, what nobody else can do.

He builds a bridge from heaven to earth through the cross of Christ. He gathers sinners like us to himself who is sinless. He brings us all together into a body, whether we feel it or not, whether we think it or not. And he provides every one of us with exactly the same access to him. And exactly the same spiritual privileges and exactly the same inheritance to come.

Why is this significant? Because God, you see, has won a victory over division.

God has won a victory over division.

There’s no more separation between us and him thanks to the cross.

And there’s no more real separation between believer and believer thanks to the cross. He’s begun it, he’ll finish it.

And that’s why I think Paul finishes in chapter 3 verse 12 by going back to prayer because he says we can approach him with great freedom and great confidence. God is the God who is able to bring an end to division.

The world can’t do it. God can do it.

Paul Kelly says in his article, Australia is a fractured society.

And the answer is not politics.

And the answer is not money.

And the answer is not human.

The answer is Christ.

So God, you see, is the remover of division and separation, and he’s the bringer of peace and reunion, and these are the three things that we learn in Ephesians 3 today. God revealed to Paul something unique and wonderful, which is that all the people of the world through Christ can be at the centre of his love and purposes.

And then he amazingly and miraculously got that message communicated around the world and it’s reached us.

And then he causes this church, yes, even this little gathering, to be a message to the heavens that he can do what nobody else can do.

Because through Christ, if you believe you are without division before God and you are as far as God is concerned, without division with his people.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God of great mercy and power.

And that you can do what we’re not able to do.

We thank you for the huge privilege of being reconciled with you through Christ. We thank you for the huge privilege of being caught up in your family with all the privileges because of Christ.

We pray that this message would speed on and triumph and that you would be greatly honoured in Jesus’ name. Amen.