Tabernacle Baptist Church

The book of Ephesians is Paul revealing the mystery of God’s eternal plan of salvation. God gave the Jews everything they needed to decode the mystery of the Messiah in the Old Testament. The resurrected Jesus says as much to the men on the road to Emmaus as He rebukes them for not understanding the Messiah in the Old Testament and then unfolds to them how the prophets testified to Him. 

Paul devoted much of his written ministry to showing Christ in the Old Testament. But like a good mystery, the believing Jews understood Jesus as Messiah, but the twist for them was that it has always been God’s plan to save the Gentiles too and that they would share in the exact same inheritance as the Jews.

This truth is all over the Old Testament, but the believing Jews just didn’t see it because when they read the Scripture, they were using their conformation bias to confirm their racial and spiritual superiority. The mystery God revealed that we will see in the text this morning is God’s eternal plan of salvation that was carried out by Christ so that both Jew and Gentile would be saved and have access to God. 

In Christ, we have been saved to share the Gospel with the lost so they too will have access to God.

“All for One and One for All.” It’s this expressive phrase of unity that Paul is addressing in these verses. The origin of this phrase does not come from the French language or the Three Musketeers book, it was originally found in Latin and from Shakespeare. The original order is “One for All and All for One.” And it's this word order that fits our text perfectly.

Here Paul is discussing how both Jew and Gentile can be brought together in Christ. This was once a mystery but now has been revealed in the Gospel. 

Christ is the One and we are the All. One died for all and All and for the One. Jew or gentile, black or white, male or female. Christ died once for all and all can be one in Christ, hence, One for All and All For One.

Many people treat their salvation like a priceless work of art and place it under lock and key. God’s beauty is displayed when someone does you wrong and you forgive them, even when they are not willing to acknowledge their wrong. This allows the world to experience a glimmer of God’s forgiveness and mercy. God’s beauty is displayed when you confess and apologize to others for your shortcomings.No real artist would ever desire their piece of art to be put in a vault to be experienced by the world. God is an artist and you are His masterpiece that He wants the world to experience Him through. We are to go out and display God’s grace and mercy to the world in our lives. To bring worship to God. Our lives are to be lived in such a way we draw all men to Christ.Art speaks. What are you saying about God?

Have you ever seen God answer your prayer? Prayer is the lifeblood for the believer in his or her communication with God. It is simply talking to God. Prayer is all over the Bible and in today’s passage is no exception. In God’s Word, we have examples on HOW to pray, as we see in the sermon on the mount where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray. He offers a model or outline for all of us in the Lord’s Prayer.The Bible also guides us on WHEN we should pray. In 1 Thes. 5:17 we learn that praying without ceasing is an excellent (and maybe the only) option. To always be in a prayerful spirit, ever seeking the Lord. Finally, the Bible also establishes great reasons WHY we should pray. We should pray because God has made a great effort in moving Heaven and Earth to have a relationship with us. He made a way for us to pray. A way for us to have an intimate relationship with Him, the creator of the universe. He loves you and wants to hear from you every day!

Have you ever seen God answer your prayer? Prayer is the lifeblood for the believer in his or her communication with God. It is simply talking to God. Prayer is all over the Bible and in today’s passage is no exception. In God’s Word, we have examples on HOW to pray, as we see in the sermon on the mount where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray. He offers a model or outline for all of us in the Lord’s Prayer.The Bible also guides us on WHEN we should pray. In 1 Thes. 5:17 we learn that praying without ceasing is an excellent (and maybe the only) option. To always be in a prayerful spirit, ever seeking the Lord. Finally, the Bible also establishes great reasons WHY we should pray. We should pray because God has made a great effort in moving Heaven and Earth to have a relationship with us. He made a way for us to pray. A way for us to have an intimate relationship with Him, the creator of the universe. He loves you and wants to hear from you every day!

Have you ever seen something that you cannot unsee? And when you see it, it changes everything about the way you previously saw life? When you come into the reality of God’s grace made known it will change everything. If you see God’s grace and you are unaffected you should be afraid because that means that it has not changed your reality. When you come into contact with God’s grace you will be changed with the desire to worship and praise God as Paul did in Ephesians chapter 1  and your love will cause you to keep His commandments. We are to praise God for the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our salvation. We can see the grace of God in the work of the Son for purchasing our forgiveness, the grace of God in the Father’s plan of salvation, and the grace of God in the Spirit’s work of bringing us to heaven. 

As Christians, it is our responsibility to not only understand God’s Word but to accept it and in discipleship, to teach the Word of God to others. In this particular passage, we have doctrines mentioned that most people don’t understand and some don’t even believe. Some people might say, “I don’t believe in predestination.” Ok, but well, there is a problem with that, because Paul clearly says in v. 4 that God predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, and in v. 11 he says again that we are predestined according to His plan. Understanding God’s role in your salvation through Christ in election and predestination will produce peace in your heart, and it will cause an eruption of praise and appreciation to flow from your heart to Him.

A couple of years ago, Leonardo Da Vinci painted Monalisa, one of the most famous paintings in entire history. Da Vinci had the ability to take something ordinary and all but worthless and make it priceless. Well, at least for a season, because nothing on Earth lasts forever.But God has the ability to take worthless and make it priceless for eternity. This is exactly what has been done for us in Christ. This is the mystery of God revealed throughout the book of Ephesians, that we who are dead in our trespasses and sins have been made alive in Christ.No matter how worthless you have felt, or how low you have lived. Through faith in Christ, you have been made holy and blameless in the eyes of God.

We have all made massive mistakes, but how we handle those mistakes determines our character in the situation and the outcome for the future.2 Samuel 11 ends by telling that what David did with Uriah and Bathsheba was evil in the sight of the LORD. God was unaware of what David was doing. God is no passive observer. Instead, in 2 Samuel 12, we see God, as an act of mercy, sending Nathan the prophet to David to call out his sin. It was an act of mercy because if God did not pursue David concerning his sin, who knows how long David would have lived in the misery of unconfessed sin. The story would be very bleak and hopeless. Perhaps is that your story? Are you living an unconfessed sin? God sent Nathan and he chose to tell the king a story. At the end of the story, King David is all fired up at the point of declaring death to the person in the story. So Nathan drops a truth bomb on him and says, YOU ARE THE MAN!Whoever you are, wherever you are today, take responsibility for your sin. Confess your sin to God and the people you’ve hurt. So you can be forgiven, restored, and finally live in freedom! 

No one goes from zero to shooting and murdering a friend in the parking lot. No one is just going to get a pin with a grown wild tiger, like Siegfried and Roy. You find a pet sin. What you consider a baby sin. A little sin cub that you can manage and you feel like you are in control of. You allow the sin to grow but you think you are in control.The progression of David’s sinful spiral is the same for us. David was passive to God's call, his passivity leads to compromise, and compromise will always lead to sin. The cost of compromise is destruction, but Christ's compassion calls us out of the darkness. Hallelujah!