Two Journeys

In his classic allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, Christian life depicted by John Bunyan, he captures various aspects of the Christian pilgrimage from the City of Destruction, unregenerate, being lost, with a burden of guilt and unforgiven sin pressing on his back through the narrow gate, to the cross where at last that burden falls away into the empty tomb, and then many adventures and dangers that follow until at last, Christian and his companion, Hopeful, reach the River of Death, and they cross the River of Death, and go up finally at last to the celestial city, Heaven. And so every aspect of the allegory captures some aspect of the pilgrimage from being lost, dead in your transgressions and sins, beyond death into Heaven. But at one point, very fascinating point of this, allegory Christian and Hopeful come on this side of the River of Death, and that's the key, to a place called “Beulah Land.” The Hebrew word Beulah means beautiful, comes from the Book of Isaiah.

And Bunyan describes an experience that these pilgrims have in Beulah Land. I want to read that to you, "The Pilgrims were entering Beulah Land, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it. And they solaced themselves there for a season. Yeah, here they heard continually the singing of birds and heard the voice of the turtle dove in the land. And in this country, the sun shines night and day. Therefore, this was beyond the valley of the shadow of death, it was out of the reach of giant despair, and neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here, they were within sight of the city they were going to. Also here, met them some of the inhabitants thereof, for in this land, the shining ones commonly walked because it was on the borders of Heaven. Now, as they walked in this land, Christian and Hopeful, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound, and drawing near to the city, they had a yet more perfect view thereof. It was built of pearls, and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold, so that by in reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sun beams upon it, Christian, with desire, fell sick. Hopeful, also had a fit or two of the same disease. But being a little strengthened and better able to bear their sickness, they walked on their way and came yet nearer and nearer, where were orchards, vineyards, gardens, and their gates opened into the highway. Now, as they came up to these places, behold the Gardner stood in the way to whom the pilgrims said, 'Whose beautiful vineyards and gardens are these?' The answer, 'They are the king's, and they are planted here for his own delights and also for the solace of pilgrims.' So the gardener had them into the vineyards and bid them refresh themselves with delicious fruit. After that they fell into a rich sleep, and they talked in their sleep about the celestial city to which they were going, and after they woke up, they saw the reflections of the sun upon the city, for the city was pure gold, and the reflections were so glorious that they could not as yet with open face behold it but only through an instrument made for that purpose. After that Christian and Hopeful resumed their pilgrimage to the city." Now this is on this side of the River of Death. An experience, a foretaste of heavenly glory.

What in the world is Bunyan talking about? Everything in Christian's journey in Pilgrim's Progress connects with some aspect of the pilgrimage from being lost ultimately to Heaven. All this foretaste of heavenly glory before they've crossed the River of Death, something that happened ahead of time. And a vision of the celestial city, clearer than they had ever had before, so glorious, they couldn't look on it full on, but only, as Bunyan says, through an instrument made for that purpose. You know how it says in 1 Corinthians 13, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face." Also how it says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." And how it says in Timothy, that God dwells in, “unapproachable light.” So they couldn't look full on at the glory of the city, but just through an instrument, I think the scripture, prayer appointed for that purpose, they had a glimpse of Heaven.

Is there a Beulah Land experience in the Christian life? Is that even possible?  Can we have such a vigorous, overwhelming foretaste of heavenly glory, that our hearts are overflowing with it, peace and love capturing our hearts at that moment, something we can experience now, and that we'll never forget the rest of our lives? Is that even possible? If so, should we seek it, what should we do about it? Is there something we can do to pursue such a foretaste of heavenly joy? I think that Ephesians 3:14-21, at least in part, addresses these questions. That Paul is actually praying for the Ephesian Christians to have precisely that kind of an encounter with God. I believe it's part of our birthright as Christians, to have a lively, vigorous sense of Christ's love for us poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and that that pouring, that sense, that experience can be so great that we can hardly know if we're awake, or asleep, alive or dead. I also believe that most Christians never experience 1/100th part of this, that it's possible to go to Heaven, never having had anything like this at all. That the ordinary ministrations, the workings of the spirit in our lives are amply sufficient to bring us through a fruitful wonderful prayer life, Bible study life, Christian life, using our spiritual gifts right up until we cross the river of death and go into Heaven. I believe all of that's true, but I think the language of Ephesians Chapter 3:14-21, seems to go far beyond any of those things.

Look again, this time, beginning of verse 16, Paul prays for these Ephesian Christians, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen."

Ascending the Mountain of Christian Experience

So we've been working our way through this incredible prayer and we've reached this point of seeking to know the unknowable, some kind of a mystic connection with Christ, far beyond anything that we have experienced. To some degree, as you read this, we're ascending the mountain of Christian experience, of sensing, of feeling that Christ loves us. Most Christians, I believe, live most of their Christian lives down on the smog-covered plains. They're alive, they're not “dead in their transgressions and sins,” they are serving God, but they are with heads down, breathing in noxious fumes from the world, becoming increasingly sickly in some sense spiritually, barely able to be mindful of such a mountain of Christian experience that's even possible, perhaps questioning whether it's even possible. Most Christians I think, live there.

But Ephesians 3:14-21 speaks of Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Christians. He gets on his knees before the Heavenly Father, and he prays for them and he prays that God, through the Spirit, would strengthen their hearts. The focus is on the inner man, on the inner being, the heart, the soul, and a strengthening work, a buttressing work going on through the Spirit because something massive could come upon you. And I think that that strengthening is necessary in two senses, for the journey up the mountain above the haze through the self-denial, the prayer, the turning away from worldliness, the turning away from sin, it's hard. Christ suffered when he was tempted. And so, we suffer when we resist temptation and say no to the things of the flesh. And nothing's come back yet, there's been no feedback loop, no elevation yet. And we wonder if there's even anything in all this and you have to be strong to persevere and not give up as you seek Christ in new ways, ways you haven't before.

And so he prays that there might be a strengthening through the Spirit, according to the riches of God's glory, in the inner man, in the inner being. To the end, and we talked about this last week, that Christ would settle down and dwell in your hearts through faith, that you would be able to have, in some sense a continual feast with Christ. We talked about those meals that Jesus continually was eating with his disciples and the conversations he would have and the fellowship. It just seemed to be one meal after another with Jesus, from beginning to the end of His ministry, and how we can have a continual feast through the Spirit with Christ, a sense of Christ's love for us in fellowship with us, which is really, the consummation of the whole Immanuel, God with us, Christ dwelling with us, making his tabernacle with us, walking with us through the day, that “Christ would dwell in your hearts through faith.”

Christian Mysticism: A Supernatural Experience

But more than that, based on certain testimonies from saints, from Christians that have had overwhelming experiences, overwhelming foretaste of Heaven, that you're going to need strength just to survive it, that it's so massive, so overwhelming that like D.L. Moody said, "Alright, that's enough. I can't take any more. I'm only flesh and blood. There's only so much of this I can take, I’ve reached the limit." So there's that dual sense of strengthening necessary in all of this, through the Holy Spirit. Now, I know that Christians are leery of these kinds of things, some leery ones have talked to me in the last couple of weeks, that's fine. I love those discussions, "All right, where are we going, what are we doing? Are we going to become charismatic?" Is that what's going to happen here at First Baptist Durham? Is that what we're talking about?  Friends, I am trying my best to be faithful to Ephesians 3:14-21, and I read extreme language here. Extreme. Far beyond things that most of us, that I myself have experienced. And I yearn for that. I yearn to have that happen at our church, I yearn for that in my life. I would like to have an encounter with God that I would never forget. Something that would happen to me that I would say years later, "That was one of the days of Heaven, something happened to me that day, I don't know if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead, whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know, God knows, but I saw things, heard things, experienced things that I can scarcely put into words." And as I look at Ephesians 3, at this prayer, I think it lines up with a healthy Christian mysticism, if you want to use that language. A healthy experience of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, a triune working of a sense of His love that is so great and so empowering that it will have a great impact on you in terms of your own personal holiness, your internal journey and our church's external journey, evangelism and missions in this community unto the ends of the earth. And I yearn for that. I'd love to see God do that in this church. So that's what I've been praying for.

Evidence in the Text: Not a Common Experience

So look at the language. Look at verses 17-19, "I pray that you're being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints," he says, "to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." So we're grasping at the infinite dimensions of Christ's love as though your soul is just soaring over the vast expanse of the infinite universe of Christ's love and you're probing the dimensions, and you're probing the limits of the universe and you soon come to realize there's no boundary to this. There's no limit to Christ's love for me, I never realized how great it was. He's praying in paradoxical language of you knowing something that transcends knowledge. To know the unknowable. And you need power in order to do it, and you need to know love, to know, to sense love. That's what he's talking about. To experience it more fully, more deeply than you've ever done before. And the end of all of that is that you would be filled, so filled that you could be said to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That something like that could happen to you. Not the emptiness of Eastern mysticism or Buddhism or any of those kinds of things or the weird kind of some of the medieval Catholic mystics that focused over-much on odd aspects of theology, and were not well-grounded in truth, who focused on the Virgin Mary and did some other things, not talking about those things. I'm actually talking about a more orthodox experience than you've ever had in your life, saturated with truth flowing from scripture, to the point where you didn't realize there was all that there. That's what I'm talking about: Fullness, not emptiness.

And then in the doxology, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably infinitely more than all you ask or think." Seems like extreme language don't you think? Something far beyond anything you ever thought was possible. Talk about that more next week. It's not a common place feeling, not an everyday occurrence. And if you think so, then you just haven't read the words of Ephesians 3 carefully, and that's why I'm trying to go through it carefully, going through these phrases, so you realize there is far more in terms of your sense of Christ's love for you than you have ever known before, and that it's a good thing for you to have that, for you to know that Jesus loves you, far more than you ever did before. John Owen put it this way, "There is a light that cometh and overpowerth a man's soul, and assureth him, that God is his and he is God's. And that God loveth him from everlasting. It is a light,” listen to this, this is John Owen, “a light beyond the light of ordinary faith."

These Ephesians Were Already Converted

Did you hear that? It's beyond saving faith, it's beyond that and that's the very thing we get, as we've been saying, Paul is praying this for Ephesian Christians. They're already converted, they've already heard the “word of truth, the Gospel of their salvation, having believed they were already marked in Him with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,” that's already happened, and yet here he is praying. Not "and yet", because of that he's praying that they would go far beyond what they've already experienced in their Christian lives. And this isn't just for some specialist Christians.

These Experiences Are For Every Christian

This is for anybody, this is for ordinary people, so he prays for all the saints. See that in verse 18? "That you may have power together with all the saints." And we talked about that last time. Saints is not like the Catholics say. The special ones, the Hall of Fame ones. This is anybody that God could do this to, “pouring out His love into your heart by the Holy Spirit.” And in the doxology, to Him be glory in the church, he's praying for the whole church, for everybody to glow radiantly with glory. That's the sense of it. This is for everybody.

Now, many Christians are going to beg out, they're going to opt out. They’re going to say a lot of things, "Too hard, don't really think it can happen, don't really need it, don't really want it." What? "I don't really want a foretaste of Heaven." Well, "Do you want Heaven?" Let's start there. "Yes, I want Heaven." "Would you like a foretaste of it?" "No, I have no interest in that." "Huh, explain that to me, help me with that." "I want heaven but no foretastes." "Okay, I like a little foretaste." "How about a bigger one?" "Well, that's... No, I don't want a big one, I want just a medium foretaste." See, the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you want Heaven, I would think a foretaste would be good. If you want a little foretaste, why not a big one? God is able to do immeasurably more than you ever thought was possible in this whole area, talk about that more next week.

Now, toward the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, there was an American congregational minister, named Edward Pason, and he talks about Beulah Land. He talks about the experience that I began this sermon with. Pason had been a Christian for many years, he'd lived out a very fruitful ministry for Christ as a pastor, but then God took him to a whole new level of experience of Christ's love for him. And he wrote to a fellow pastor, he said, "When I read Bunyan's description of the Land of Beulah where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night, I used to doubt whether there even is such a place on this side of the River of Death. Does it even exist?" But then he said this, "Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter that I'm writing from the Land of Beulah of which I have been for some weeks now a happy inhabitant."

Wow, I wouldn't mind spending weeks in Beulah Land, but Edward Payson was spending weeks. He said this, "The celestial city is full to my view. Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odors waft to me. He fills the whole hemisphere pouring in a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze upon this almost excessive brightness and wondering with unutterable wonder why God would deign to shine upon a sinful world as this. A single heart and a single tongue seem altogether inadequate to my wants. I want a whole heart for every separate emotion I'm feeling and I want a whole tongue to express that emotion." 

Four Concentric Circles of Christian Experience

Wow! What in the world is he experiencing? And could there be some of that for me? Could I experience something like that? Well Payson, who's a pastor, started to diagnose Christians and their experiences in his shepherding, in his ministry. And he came up with what he would call, four concentric circles of professors of faith in Christ, people who claim to be Christians; Christians.

He said this, "Suppose people who claim to be Christians arranged in different concentric circles around Christ as their common center. Some value the presence of their Savior so highly they cannot bear to have even a moment's separation from Him. Even their daily chores and their employment. They will bring up and do as best they can constantly in the light of His countenance, and while engaged in it will be seen constantly raising their eyes to Him as they're fearful of losing even a single beam of his light." Continually focused. I don't want anything to come between me and the Savior. That's how they live, all the time. Circle number two: "Others, who to be sure would not be content to live out of His presence, are yet less wholly absorbed by it than these, and may be seen a little further off, engaged here and there in their various callings, their eyes generally upon their work, but often looking up for more of that light that they love." Circle two. Circle three: "A third class beyond these, but yet still within the life giving rays, includes a doubtful multitude, many of whom are so much engaged in their worldly schemes that they may be seen in some way standing sideways to Christ, looking most of the time away from Him to their tasks and their employments, but then, occasionally looking back to Jesus and being refreshed." And then circle four: "Yet further out among the last dimly scattered rays, so distant that it's often doubtful whether they come at all within their influence, is a mixed assemblage of busy ones, some with their backs wholly turned to Him, wholly turned upon the Son, and most of them so worried and troubled about their many things as to spend, but little time for their Savior." All of these claiming to be Christians. 

So… Where Are You?

So where are you? Where are you? Are you able to find yourself in there somewhere? It has to do with a sense of continual focus on the love of Christ, a sense of dependence on Him, reliance on Him, and of feeding back from Him through the Spirit of sense of His love for you. Do you live your life in continual focus on Jesus, sensing His presence, knowing His love, filled with his peace? Or are you further? Or further and further? Or further and further and further away from a warm, vigorous sense of Christ's love for you? Now, Payson said, "It's not hard for any of these to be reclaimed or strengthened. All you have to do is turn and face Christ." That's it, and how do you do that? Well, by the means He's ordained, by the scripture, by prayer. And the turning is two-fold. You're turning away from worldly pursuits, away from the “sin that so easily entangles you,” away from an over-focus of God's good gifts in the world that can become idols, a turning away from that to Christ in the scripture and in prayer, until you feel your heart warmed and empowered by the Spirit and a sense of joy and love filling you. That's what it takes. And then, once that starts to come, you become zealous and jealous of that and protect it from anything that would encroach. That's how you become one of those inner circle people. They're not intrinsically different than anyone else. It just has to do with how they're living.

Paul Continues His Prayer

Now, I've been following the text; Payson's insights are helpful, but let's look a little more carefully at Ephesians 3. Look at Verse 17. That's where we're at as we move through this. He says, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Rooted and established in love. I have a strong kind of dual image here; one of them living, one of them not. Rooted in love, I picture a huge maple tree, let's say, or some oak, some mighty tree, with this deep root system. And you've got these roots subterranean and probing down, and you're able to find subterranean rivers of water, and it doesn't matter what the conditions are above ground, you have a continual sense of the love of God for you in your heart, a sense of right doctrine, you're rooted in the scripture, established and living like a vibrant tree that's rooted in love. And then, established in love, more of a building image, like a building with its foundation upon the rock and it's unshakable, and there's a depth to that foundation, and it's not going to be “blown and tossed by every wind of doctrine,” like it says in the next chapter. But you're rooted in truth, rooted and established, but it says, "In Love."

Going beyond that, he then prays for power to comprehend, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp the dimensions of Christ's love." So again, we have power language. Some of the translation just have, “may be able,” but it really does speak of power, and since Paul earlier mentioned power just a moment ago, let's stick with the power theme, that you would be empowered to understand, empowered to grasp; empowered to grasp. To comprehend. So, it begins as mental, it begins as intellectual. So, there's a thought aspect, but it's going to go beyond that. I know, but I know. I started out just knowing, but now I know. "What are you doing with your voice there?" I don't know, I can't put it into words. I'm knowing what's beyond knowledge, but it started with knowledge. It always starts with knowledge, as every love relationship does.

Necessities: Knowledge and Emotion

I mean, think about a couple that's working their way toward maybe engagement and toward marriage, and they're trying to figure it out, and there's an attraction there and they're spending some time, and they start giving tokens to one another of increasing feelings, right? It could be notes, it could be little gifts, they go out on a date together, spend some time, and then they each go back and ponder the events of the evening; ponder the events. And they're thinking about what happened and what was said and what it meant. And so, that's what I mean, there's a truth behind the things that were said, the notes that were written, the gifts that were given. But then there is something beyond that. There's feelings that go with it. And so, in every love relationship, there's a knowledge aspect, and then there's a feeling that goes beyond it. And you can't sever the two. You can't say, "I just want the feelings. I don't want knowledge. So, I'm going to tell you what, I will just buy for you a precious note from someone and you can take it home and read it. You won't know who it's from, but it's for you." Completely severed from anything. It has no meaning. It's a precious love note. You can buy them at Hallmark.

I often wonder about the card people. I mean, can you imagine spending your whole day writing love notes to people you don't know? I often think about the work week. I should just change this subject quickly, but I'm going to say one thing. Ever read a card that you think was written late on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend? Like, "Didn't put a lot into this one, I guess." Alright, back on topic.

There is a knowledge that then flows into emotion, and the two can't be disconnected. So, you're going to know Christ's love doctrinally. You're going to know who He is who loves you. Who are we talking about? This is the long-expected Jesus. This is the one that was predicted through the prophets. This is the Son of God and the Son of Man, fully God, fully man, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who lived a sinless life, who did all these incredible miracles, who walked on water, fed the 5,000, who raised the dead, Lazarus after he'd been in the tomb four days raised to life! That's who we're talking about. The one who died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me. This one who died, who was our substitute, who was raised to life on the third day in a resurrection body and ascended to Heaven and now sits, we're told in the Bible, “at the right hand of Almighty God and rules over Heaven and Earth.” This Jesus loves you. That's incredible. Think about that. So there's a doctrinal base. 

He said, "I want you to know what is beyond knowledge." Far more than just mental but it begins intellectual. And then he goes into this dimensional language, "To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." So, one of my fellow scientific, geeky people, came up to me a few weeks ago and said, "Why do you think four dimensions? Wide, long, high, deep." I said, "I don't know. Usually we think in terms of three dimensions. I said, "I think of it maybe in terms of perspective. You stand and you're looking at something beautiful. And you look left and right, and you look as far as the eye can see, and look in the foreground, and you look up and you look down. It's your perspective maybe. I don't know." But he talks about the dimensions, a sense of Christ's love for us. Like it says in John 15:9, "As the Father has loved me even so have I loved you." Now, ponder that. And we could never fully comprehend the amount of love the Father has for the Son, but Jesus says, "That's how I love you." To love that surpasses knowledge. And so, I want you to ponder. I want you to have a sense of the dimensions of this.

How Wide?

So I pictured this, and I thought about one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, along the coast, the rocky coastline of Maine. The highest mountain there on Mount Desert Island is called, Cadillac Mountain. You can drive up to the top. So I imagine taking a friend who's never been out of the city, like we talked about C.S. Lewis, he's used to making mud pies in the slum. So you're bringing him out and you're taking him through the night; through the dark of night. And it's a very dark night, and you drive and you get to Cadillac Mountain and you go all the way to the top, but it's still pitch black. And you get out of the car and you just stand there. And it's about an hour before sunrise, and then little by little, some of the light starts coming over the Atlantic Ocean and you start to see what there is in the foreground and in the distance. And as more and more light starts to spread, you start to see what there is up the rocky coastline, and you start to see Bar Harbor, the fishing boats down in the bay, the trees that come right up, the trees that are close are huge right in your face and then there's some that are further away.

You see rocky cliffs. You see Eagle Lake, and other things behind you. You're looking behind you. There's the inland area of Maine, and more and more and more light as the orange and the reddish light of the dawn and the sunrise comes until it's full light of day. And I have a feeling that that's what Paul wants you to do in terms of the dimensions of Christ's love for you. Now, I don't know that he meant for us to parse it out, but I'm going to just do a little biblical meditation in front of you. This is what you do on your knees. You get the Bible and you say, "Okay, how wide is your love for me, Christ?" And I don't know that we could do this, but I think of it in terms of the breadth of Christ's saving purpose around the world, that we have been adopted into a royal family of brothers and sisters “from every tribe and language and people and nation;” the diversity being staggering. It's a broad work of Christ that He's done here.

How Long?

And then, how long? I think of the time axis there, that if you look back behind you, you're looking as far as your eye see and even farther to eternity past, before the creation of the world, God the Father set His love on you by name and chose you “before you were born or had done anything good or bad, chose you in Christ.” As it says in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." And so, he set an everlasting love on you, knowing full well you would sin and what sins you would commit, and how Jesus at that point in eternity past covenanted to shed His blood for you, in effect, dying for you convenantally and in the mind of God, before you were even born, or before the world was even created. As it says in Revelation 13:8, "Our names have been written in the Book of Life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." And how it says in Ephesians 1:4-5, "For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted." So, you're looking behind you, and that's as far as the eye can see, Jesus has been loving you by name, right up until the time you were converted. Now, when you look forward you say, "Okay, for the rest of my life, He's going to keep loving me. He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. He's going to filter all of my temptations. He won't let the Devil have at me. No temptation will seize me, except what is common to man, and He will be faithful and will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can bear. And if I should fall into sin, He will restore me. “He will, when I confess my sin, cleanse me from all unrighteousness” and restore me and make me strong, firm and steadfast. And I'm going to continue running this race until I die. And after that, then things get really awesome because after I die He's going to raise me up. He's going to give me a resurrection body and He's going to put me in a resurrected world surrounded by other resurrected people and it's going to be awesome. That's how long is the love of Christ for me."

How Deep?

Let me switch it and talked about how deep is His love. How far down would He go to save you? Picture that. How deep the descent? I was reading a story about a American submarine, the Squalus, that sank off the coast of New Hampshire. And it was in 243 feet of water on the seafloor. And a diver dove down with a cable, 243 feet down, and fixed it to the submarine so that a diving bell could go down and rescue those people. I'm thinking, "That's a lot of commitment. That's a lot of courage." How deep would Jesus go down to save you? And I think about that in terms of Philippians 2, "Jesus being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness,” down. Born of the Virgin Mary, and being “found in human likeness he humbled himself and became obedient, a life of a servant even to death, even death on a cross.” And even that's not enough, because two others were crucified with Him. We have to see in the spiritual realm how He was our substitute and the wrath of God was poured out on Him. That's how deep He went to save you and me. How deep were you? How far down were you in degradation and wickedness and sin? He went that far down to save you.

How High?

And then, how high? How high will you bring you? How exalted are His purposes for you? Well, we've already seen that somewhat in Ephesians 2:6-7, "God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." So much more exaltation yet to show you. You underestimate how high He wants to bring you and how glorious is that going to be for you, how wide and long and deep and high is the love of Christ. "That," verse 19, "you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." We're going to talk more about that next week. But just foretaste, a little bit of foretaste, that you would be, in some sense mysteriously, as full as God is, filled with God, filled with all the fullness of God. That's what we'll ponder next week. 

Seeking Christ’s Love

 So applications. What do we do about all of this? Well, for two weeks now, this is the third week, I've been making a very simple plan appeal to you, and that is that you would turn away from the entices of this world into extraordinary prayer. By extraordinary I mean something different than you've been doing, and that you would be seeking in God, through God, through Christ, a sense of Christ's love for you. You would be asking for it directly. Say, "Lord, I'm not satisfied with my mediocre Christian experience. I'm not satisfied with what's been happening in my soul. I want to know your love more than I've ever known before, and I'm willing to run a race here. I'm willing to deny myself. I'm willing to fast, not just from food, but maybe from electronic entertainment, fast from worldly things. I'm willing to turn my back on the world until you will pour out in my heart a sense of the love of God. I want that. And I don't just want it for myself, I want it for this person or that person." You name them. Somebody, a spouse, a friend, a church member. That you would do that, and that you would be willing to think deeply about these things and "gird up the loins of your mind." 1 Peter 1:13 KJV says it that way. That you'd be willing to think about these things and ponder and go over, and assess yourself and say, "Where am I in that concentric circle? Am I like Pluto? Am I like in the orbit? I'm a Christian, but it's just so cold and dark out here." Or are you closer and closer? Where are you?  Meditate on these verses and don't make excuses. Don't be satisfied with less, and don't make excuses. Don't come up short of all the fullness of what God intends for you. Don't live like a pauper when you could live like a prince, and don't make excuses.

Don't say, "I'm too busy to spend time doing that." I've thought about, let's say, a 30-year-old businessman who is an entrepreneur, successful business, single, but his business consumes his life and all that, but he feels lonely. He goes home to a darkened place, and lots of material possessions, but he's just alone. And he feels like maybe it's about time that he might find a wife. And you look at, what is he willing to do for that? And if the answer is nothing, he probably won't find one. But as he continues increasingly to acutely feel that loneliness, he's going to start making time in his life. He's going to do what's necessary. Well, I just want to say, how much more could you make time for Christ? Say, "I feel cold. I feel distant and I need to make time to seek Him." And don't think it'll be simple. He's not a vending machine. You pour in two or three quarters and then you get it. He tests us. He's jealous. He's a person. And if you're doing things that offend him, He won't pour out that blessing. And even if you're not, he will stretch you and test you and make you persevere. So persevere. Be single-minded. Remember, it's not impersonal. It's not a thing we're seeking. We're not seeking a thing. We're seeking a person.

Turn Away From Sin

And be willing to turn aside from sin. It says in James chapter 4, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that scripture says without reason that the Spirit,” I think the Holy Spirit, “that He caused to live in us envies intensely?” Is jealous over us? That's why Scripture says, “He gives us more grace. That's why scripture says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ Submit yourself then to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.” Now listen to this, "Come near to God and He will come near to you." So that's what I'm urging. “Wash your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded.” Don't be double-minded. Be single-minded after Christ, and persevere as it says in Jeremiah 29:13, "You will seek me, and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart.”  

Praying for the Spirit of God

Now, I want to give an invitation to the church. For the last two months I've been praying here at 6.00 AM, praying for God to pour out His Spirit on our church, specifically praying for evangelistic fruit, but also praying for these things, these themes. Recently, some people have heard about this and have joined me in praying, and I'd like to invite the whole church. I come here, so if it were at my house I would not invite the whole church. But I'm inviting any of you that would be willing to make a sacrifice, who would have time to come 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM this Wednesday. And I'm planning on doing this through the end of January next year 2016, so I don't know, for about eight weeks. And if the Lord wants to extend it, He can do that. But I just feel called on by God to call on you to join me in praying. If you're not able to come, then pray on your own during that time for God to pour out His Spirit on our church. Pray specifically for evangelistic fruit. Wouldn't you love to see in 2016 a river of baptisms, of outreach here in the community and really to the ends of the Earth to hear about that as an answer to extraordinary prayer. That's what I'm praying for. But I'm also praying internal journey for extreme experiences with God resulting in holiness; yearning for both of those things. So, if you're able to come, join. If you can't do it this week, God willing, I'll be doing it next week and just come. Start in my office, and if there's too many we'll come in here and we'll pray.

So, close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the things that we've been learning in Ephesians and we pray that you would pour out your Spirit on this church, pray that you would oh Lord work in this church, give us fruit, oh Lord, give us a sense of your love for us in Christ greater than we've ever had before. And then Lord, give us powerful inducements toward evangelism and outreach. Help us to reach out with the Gospel and to see lost people come to faith in Christ. Help us to know you and to follow you better than ever before through the power of the Spirit in Jesus' name, Amen.

So, as we've continued to look at Ephesians, we come to an amazingly rich section of this incredible epistle, and Daniel was mentioning how I'm kind of in the middle of four weeks of looking at Ephesians 3:14-21, and the larger unfolding of Ephesians. And these are verses that have captivated my mind and heart for literally decades. I've thought about these verses, and have been meditating on them and yearned to know even more the truths that are poured out here. Now, this week obviously is a special week for us in this country. We celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, which is one of my favorite holidays, I just love it. I think it's just so healthy, isn't it? To be thankful. It's just so richly healthy for us to give thanks to God for all of his many blessings, and I love history, I like thinking about the Plymouth Plantation, and the Pilgrims and all, it's my home State of Massachusetts. Some good things happen in Massachusetts. Please don't quote me on that. But anyway, it was a historical moment. And I've been there to Plymouth Plantation. And we think about the incredibly difficult winter they went through, where 50% of their people died of disease, and how thankful they were just to be alive, and to have a crop come in, a harvest come in. And how they shared together with the Native Americans that were there, the Indians that were there that came, and just the three days of feasting. They would think we were feasting wimps. I mean we have just that one afternoon and we ate a little turkey and were wiped out, totally exhausted laying on the couch. They were at it for three days, they were eating venison. They were eating sweet eels, and freshwater mussels and other things that we probably wouldn't have enjoyed as much. And of course, wild Turkey and other things, a lavish chance for a feast.

An Infinitely Rich Relationship with Christ

And I want to just establish that kind of image in your mind as we look this morning at Ephesians chapter 3, because what I want to commend to you from Ephesians 3:14-21 is a sense of a spiritual feast in Christ, and actually a continual feast, a lavish feast of enjoying the love that Christ has for each one of us. Far greater than anything that we have experienced before. I want to just set that image of feasting in front of you. At the men's retreat, I was asking what's the difference between a feast and a meal? And they're not essentially different, but it's a difference of quantity and quality, and that we would have a far greater sense of Christ's love for us, and a far deeper and richer sense, that's the sense of feast that I have. And maybe you've just been eating meals through the Spirit, but the Lord has so much more that He could give to each one of us, a sense of assurance, and like in that hymn, Blessed Assurance, “a foretaste of glory divine,” that's what I have in mind. That you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, specifically on the issue of Christ immeasurable, infinite love for you individually. And that we would experience that together.

Paul’s Glorious Prayer for the Ephesian Christians

And so I want you to look again at Ephesians 3:14-21, but I'm going to zero in on a couple of verses in the middle of it, but it's just so good. Paul there prays, he says, "For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family,” His whole family in Heaven and Earth, “derives its name, I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ. And that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, so that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen."

Now, that is a prayer. And it just has such a sense of a brushing against infinitude, a sense of the dimensions of God's love for us, that so far beyond anything that we've ever experienced. This is a prayer but it also has become for us scripture as well. This prayer is the Word of God, and it is also a prayer, and so this points to the means of grace by which we can experience this lavish blessing. It is by the ministry of the Word of God and by prayer that we are going to step into a higher realm, or higher experience of the love of God in Christ than ever before. By these means.

Now, as I'm talking about this unusual, extraordinary, perhaps even ecstatic experience of God's love for us in Christ, I know that in some people's minds, warning lights go off, warning flags, you're worried about it. "Okay, have we become a cult? Things were going really, really good. And then we got to Ephesians 3, and then it got really, really weird." And Southern Baptists in particular, are afraid of these kind of things, afraid of charismatic things, afraid of other things. And I'm not talking here about an unhealthy unbiblical empty-headed mysticism. I'm not talking about Eastern Mysticism, where the desire is to become empty to become nothing, a drop in an endless sea. I'm not talking about that, or even in church history, even in recent history, some that have pursued experiences severed from doctrine, severed from the text of scripture. I'm not talking about a severing at all. What I'm talking about is that you're so immersed in the Word of God and you start to see the truths that are in it, like even in this text, that they start to spiral higher and higher, and like the circuit breakers of your brain starts going off, because the truth is so overwhelming, you're so filled with it. 

That there's a sense here of filling, not emptiness, of being filled with the measure of all the fullness of God. That's what I'm talking about. A healthy, I think, biblical Christian spiritual mysticism, that's one ecstatic experiences. The unusual working of the Holy Spirit that is possible beyond that. I want to say this, and this is something I'm going to develop this more in future weeks, but I believe that the ordinary working of the Spirit in a healthy Christian life is sufficient for a rich life, of blessing of fruitfulness, and getting you to Heaven. And we need to celebrate and study and embrace what the Holy Spirit ordinarily does in a Christian life. And I'm going to talk more about that in subsequent weeks. But the Holy Spirit can do extraordinary things, has done extraordinary things, and those should be welcomed and embraced, and even sought as well. And that's what I'm talking about here.

So the desire here is a prayer, Paul's praying for the Ephesians Christians that they would have a far greater experience of the love of Christ, and of God than they've ever had before. Now, the key insight here, and I'm going to make it every week that we study these verses, is that Paul is praying for Christians to have this experience. They are already Christians. He's not praying for outsiders to come to an initial faith in Christ, he's praying for Christians. This is very important. And now today, we're going to focus on one phrase in the middle of this beautiful flowing prayer, and that's in verse 17. Look at it if you would. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." You see it there in verse 17, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."

Now, many Evangelists Zero in on this concept. Rightly so, I think. And they say things like, "You have to ask Jesus into your heart." And that's fine, it's not a Biblical expression you won’t to see that, but I understand it and I'm not against it, but what I want you to understand is this isn't evangelism, you're not praying for lost people to come to faith in Christ, he's praying for people who are already believers, they're already Christian. Then you could say, "Wait a minute now, isn't Jesus already in my heart? Why are you praying this, that Christ would dwell in my heart? Are you saying I'm not a Christian?" No, no, not at all. He's already said, they are. And he said it very plainly. If you look at the beginning of the book in Ephesians 1:1, who is he writing to? "Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus." They're already Christians. He also talks about their history of being brought into Christ, in Ephesians 1:13. He says, "You also were included in Christ, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance."

So he said that's already happened to you. You've already heard the Gospel, the words of the Gospel, how God sent His son into the world, who lived a sinless life, who died an atoning death, you already heard this in the baptism, Sam’s baptism, how Jesus shed His blood as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me, and how He died in our place, and how God raised Him physically from the dead. And if we sinners simply repent and believe in Jesus, will have full forgiveness of sin. Well, Ephesians 1:13, that already happened for these Ephesians. They had already heard the Gospel, they already believed it, they had already been “sealed with the Spirit,” they had already had some experiences with the Spirit. The “sealing of the Spirit” has already happened, but he's praying for more. He's praying for something vastly more than they've experienced before. Now, if they are Christians, we believe the doctrine is that they already have the Holy Spirit living inside them.

Jesus said in John 14:16-17, "I will ask the Father and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever. The Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him for He lives with you and will be in you." You see that, the doctrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God taught there in John 14, and then in Romans 8:9, Paul goes right to the nth degree on this, and he says "You however, are controlled not by the flesh, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ." That's very plain, isn't it? If you are a Christian, you have the Spirit of Christ already living within you. That's plainly taught.

So, why then is Paul praying for these Ephesians Christians in this way, that Christ would “dwell in their hearts by faith?” What does he mean? We would imagine that if he were alive today, he would pray for First Baptist Durham, for us, the same way. And we wouldn't come to him saying, "Now Paul, don't you know that I'm a Christian, I already have the indwelling... " He knows, he wrote it, he wrote Romans 8:9! He knows the doctrine. But still, he's praying for these Ephesians that Christ would “dwell in their hearts by faith.” So this is a prayer for Christians, not for non-Christians. And I want to go beyond this to say, this is a prayer for all Christians, not just a special category of Christians. This isn't for the super spiritual alone, you know, the special ones. It's so easy for us to think that this kind of astounding vastly deep infinitely rich ecstatic experience of the love of God poured into our hearts. Something like that is, it's something so overpowering that it takes your breath away, that it's unforgettable, supernatural a foretaste of heavenly joy, far above the normal Christian experience, as the normal Christian experience is far above the non-Christian experience. It's just that much higher above anything you've ever experienced before, with all of that is only for the All-Stars, the super Christians, the super spiritual ones, the specialists, the monks, the mystics, the weird ones. I don't know, the ones that go live in caves and sit on pillars for years, and they give them food through a bucket and that's all they do is focus and fast and pray and wear hair shirts, and are weird, and then have these mystical experiences. I am not advocating that friends, not at all.

Who Are the Saints?

And frankly, the word “saints” can throw us off a little bit here. Saints. Look at verse 17 through 19, he says, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints." See that? "To grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Well, the Roman Catholic error on this word saints is pervasive, it's actually pretty famous in our culture. We're actually pretty familiar with that. I grew up as a Roman Catholic in eastern Massachusetts, I was an altar boy, I was trained in the sacraments, I was baptized as an infant. I took holy communion, the Eucharist, the Mass, the confessional confirmation, all of the sacraments. I was Roman Catholic. And I attended two different churches in my childhood growing up, St. Jeremiah in Framingham, and St. Anselm's, in Sabre.

But you know what I'm talking about, “Saint this,” “Saint that,” “Saint the other,” these are Catholic churches, many if not most Catholic churches are named after saints, or after the Virgin Mary. So, that's a wrong use of the word Saint. The word literally means set apart unto God as holy, holy ones, and it's used consistently of all Christians. I mean right away in Ephesians 1:1, Paul wrote the epistle to the “saints in Ephesus, the ones that are faithful in Christ Jesus,” that's what it is. So what ends up happening is if you start arguing that these kinds of experiences are not for every Christian but just for some special people, then you're going to start acting like you believe that whole dichotomy of saints and regular Christians that is unbiblical. But it's interesting how Evangelicals can start behaving like that when they talk about these kinds of things.

Now, I don't necessarily say that there are direct promises to every Christian that you'll have ecstatic experiences. Think about this, Jesus had 12 apostles, and He took three with Him up on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John. The other nine stayed down on the lower ground. I'm not saying God does this equally to everyone, etcetera. What I'm saying is don't rule yourself out because you look at yourself and say, "I'm not special, I'm not one of those ones and so I'm not going to seek God in prayer." The saints, I said to the men at the men's retreat, it's like the Roman Catholic Hall of Fame. You get voted in by the College of Cardinals, you get canonized and those are the special ones. Friends, these are just ordinary brothers and sisters who are in Ephesus. And Paul's praying for them to have it and all the saints. To have this experience of God's love. So don't check out, don't disqualify yourself as you listen to this sermon, in the next two weeks, don't say "This isn't for me. This is just weird or different, maybe it's for other people, but it's just not for me."

It's for you, I'm praying for you, I'm praying for each of you that's hearing my voice, that you would have an infinitely greater sense of Christ's love for you than you've ever had before. And it's the kind of thing we can pray for each other. Husbands can pray for wives, wives for husbands. The kind of thing we can pray for our children, who are believers, as they're growing, that they would have this kind of experience that God would do this, that we can pray for other people in our home fellowship.

Paul’s Prayer: Christ Dwelling in Our Hearts By Faith

Now, let's look at what he actually prays for here. Now, let's look at it, what does he pray for? Well, I'm going to zero in on verse 17, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Now, what does that mean, the word dwell? Other synonym will be abide or live, and it's got a prefix “down” in the Greek. So the idea here is of settling down, that Jesus would settle down in your heart, take up residence in your heart. Well, what is the heart? The heart is the inner person, the inside of you, it's your inner being in verse 16, it's the center of your personality, the core of you're being, it's biblically, the part of you that thinks, and reasons, and loves, and hates, and decides chooses feels emotions. That inner core of your being, that Jesus would come and settle down in that, like a sense of permanent residency, that He's going to come live with you in your heart. That's what he's praying for. And he says, it happens by faith, it happens only by trust in the Word of God. As you hear the word and you trust it, as you believe it, this can happen, a sense of Christ settling down in your heart by faith. And it's by faith alone, that this could ever happen, it's not by works. Now, I'm going to advocate a pattern of increasing holiness and obedience as necessary to the feast that Christ is going to spread in your heart, but you should not misunderstand that, it's necessary. I'm going to talk about that, but it's not something that God is going to reward all of that labor with this blessing. It's not by works this happens, but the works are necessary to be ready for God to pour out His blessing. Friends, we are justified by faith alone, apart from works. Isn't that good news? It's just like Daniel was saying before that, that song, there's nothing we can do to earn our forgiveness, ever. And one of the dangers of pursuing this, and when you see the necessity of spiritual exertion is you're going to forget justification by faith, and you start becoming works-oriented, don't do that. But it's by faith alone that Christ would settle down in your heart by faith.

Now, I want to give you this image of a feast, a meal with Jesus again and again. Jesus wants to have a meal with you. He wants to eat with you. Do you realize what a big theme eating is in the New Testament, especially with Jesus in the Gospels? It just seems like He did nothing apart from a dinner, or He's just eating all the time. And I want to bring to you in your mind, you can look there if you want to. I actually urge you, if you're willing, to turn to Revelation chapter 3. And I want to zero in on one of the most misunderstood, and misquoted, and misapplied verses you're going to find in the New Testament, Revelation 3:20. It goes like this. This is Jesus speaking, "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me."

Meals with Jesus Again and Again and Again!

Now, I was trained in evangelism through Campus Crusade for Christ, now called CRU. They use the four spiritual laws. This Revelation 3:20 is at the end. This is right before the sinner's prayer. And this is the training that you get, and it's used in an evangelistic context. Again, I don't think there's anything wrong and I think there's everything right with asking sinners to repent and trust in Christ and giving the image of Christ dwelling in their hearts by faith. That's fine. But Revelation 3:20, you need to look at it in context. This is one of the seven letters to the churches. This is a church. This is the church of Laodicea. And this church of Laodicea is described as lukewarm by Jesus, “neither hot nor cold.” And He wishes that they were either hot or cold, and he wants to “spew them out of his mouth.” He yearns for them to be hot or cold. Is lukewarmness for a local church a danger to that local church? Oh it is. Can any local church say, "I know for a fact that this church will never become lukewarm." I say you cannot make that kind of assertion. This is the danger, but what does he specifically say?  Well, they are self-satisfied with this lukewarm condition. If you look at Revelation 3:17, "You say I am rich. I've acquired wealth and I do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked." Well, these are strong words for Jesus to be speaking to a church. Now, don't misunderstand me. I don't believe that First Baptist Durham is a Laodicean church. It's really that I yearned that it not be a Laodicean church 20 years from now that I'm preaching this right now, that's all. But do you not see in Revelation 3:17 our danger? Material prosperity leads to spiritual lethargy. You say, “I'm rich, everything's, all my needs are met, live in a nice comfortable home, I drive a nice car, I have plenty of clothes, and I don't need anything from Jesus.” But you don't see yourself properly, Jesus is saying. You don't realize spiritually you're wretched. I think of a bedraggled person without a raincoat or umbrella in a downpour ringing your doorbell. That's a wretched individual. "Come on in, I know you're freezing, and you're wet and let me get you out of those clothes, and you need some hot soup." That's a wretched individual. Many of us are like that even in the midst of material prosperity, living the Walmart life. You know what I'm talking about? We're going to buy our happiness somewhere, and we're just so glutted with things and we don't realize just how bad things are spiritually. And so, then He invites them to have a meal with him. "Behold I stand at the door." And the image that I think is of the inner being door of your heart is fine, and He's knocking, and notice how individual it is. At this point He's speaking to individuals. If any individual person, anyone, “will hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me." Jesus wants an experiential meal with you. That's what He wants.

John’s Gospel: With Whom Do We Share This Meal

Another image of this is in John chapter 1. Go over to John chapter 1. John's Gospel is an amazing Gospel. I think it was written years, if not decades, after Matthew, Mark and Luke were finished. So it just comes out at a different angle, different stories, tells different stories, tells the biography of Jesus differently. It doesn't need to cover the same ground that Matthew and Mark and Luke covered. So it's very selective. John is very, very selective, and it's really interesting, all the incredible things that Jesus said and did that he never even mentions. But in the middle of Chapter 1, he talks about something so, seems like pedantic or insignificant. You wonder, how did it make the cut? How did it make it into John's Gospel? Now, in John 1, one of the great chapters, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In John 1:14, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us,” He tabernacled with us, “and we have seen His glory. Glory the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." The prologue. And then we get the ministry of John the Baptist, who identifies Jesus and points to Jesus who comes to be baptized by him, and points to Him says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God." It's an incredible statement.

And then you get this account. And this is just, it's like, "What is this in here for?" I don't want to question God's Word. But John, Apostle John, who wrote this Gospel, why did you include this? Look at verse 35 through 39. "The next day John," that's John the Baptist, "was there again with two of His disciples." Two unnamed disciples. "When he saw Jesus passing by he said, 'Behold the Lamb of God.' When the two disciples heard him say this they followed Jesus. Turning around Jesus saw them following and asked, 'What do you want?' They said, 'Rabbi' Which means teacher, "Where are you staying?' 'Come,' He replied, 'and you will see.' So they went and saw where He was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour."

I mean, don't you wonder how that made the cut? How did he get on the team? Well, I have a theory about this, not my own. It came from AB Bruce in, The Training of the Twelve. He believed that that was the first time the Apostle John ever saw Jesus and talked to him. And that's the kind of thing that years later as an old man, you're going to start crying when you remember the first time you ever talked to Jesus. And what went on that day? You know what went on? They're just walking, and you get the picture, just walking along and stop and Jesus turns, right? And they're a little embarrassed that, I don't know if they were stalking Jesus, or what their plan was. But turns around and says, "What do you want?" Jesus is always doing that. And if I can just say in the basis of Ephesians 3, He's standing before you in light of this text Ephesians 3 and saying, "What do you want from me? I'll give you what you want, just ask me." He's always making us ask. "So what do you want?" And they didn't know what they wanted. So, this is like us. We're always like that. So they ask Him a question, "Where are you staying?" You know what is implied, is, "I want to know you. I want to be with you. John said some amazing things about you. I'd like to get to know you." And Jesus said, "Come and see." What are the words? Hang out with Jesus? Wouldn't you love to just hang out with Jesus? And how sweet was that? Now, you're saying, "Oh, Pastor it doesn't say they had a meal." I know you kind of technical people in here. But it says it was about the tenth hour. It was about four in the afternoon. Any chance they might have had dinner together? And then at the end of his life. Go back to Ephesians 3 now if you would. But at the end of his life, we have the Last Supper and Jesus says, "I've earnestly desired to have this feast with you before my time comes." He says, it's a very intensive, "With deepest desire I have desired to eat with you." Jesus yearns to have this Last Supper. And then the institutes the Last Supper, the ordinance, so that we're going to forever remember that someday we're going to feast with Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven. We're going to sit at a table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and many from the east and from the west and we're going to sit at a table and feast with Jesus. So every time we sit down and take the bread and the juice we're thinking feast, feast, feast someday. And we can have a foretaste of that feast through the power of the Holy Spirit, that sense of a continual feasting.

Or how about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? Wouldn't you love to have been one of those two? And they're having that conversation with Jesus on resurrection morning. And Jesus is the ignorant stranger who has no idea about current events. Remember that, just walking around? What happened? It's like, "Are you the only stranger here or only a stranger who doesn't know what's happened?" "About what?" "About Jesus of Nazareth. He was powerful. He was attested to by signs and wonders, and we had hoped that He was going to be the one, and then He died. But meanwhile, some of our women have astounded us with a story about an empty tomb and we just can't make hide nor hair of it, can't figure it out." "How foolish you are." Jesus said, "And how slow of spirit to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into His glory?” And then, beginning right there on the road, He showed them everything that was written about the Christ in the Law and the Prophets and Psalms. And then, they had a meal together. They sat down and they had a meal together, and they didn't know who He was until He broke bread, and then their eyes are open and he disappeared. And then they said, "Were not our hearts burning within us when He opened the Scriptures to us?" I'm after the burn in your heart. That's what I yearn for. I yearn for your heart to be burning within you through the scripture as you feast with Jesus. That's my desire.

The Hall is Your Heart: Christ is Coming to You

So now, I want you to have a sense of the banquet hall. The banquet hall is getting prepared, alright? Where is this feast going to be? Well, we've already said. It's going to be in your inner being. It's going to be in your heart. You're not going to Jesus' palace. He's coming to you. He's going to have the feast inside of you. You think about Esther 1, where King Xerxes had this incredible 180 day festival culminating in this huge feast, and all of the decorations were up, right? And all of the banquet tables are spread, and the goblets are there, and the plates are out and everything's ready; meticulous. Everything's ready. Well, Jesus is going to send an advanced team to your heart and get things ready, and He's going to strengthen your heart, and He's going to purify your heart, and He's going to get everything ready, like He sent the disciples ahead to get the upper room ready for the Last Supper. He's going to send the advanced team. The advanced team is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit's going to come and He's going to get you ready.

Look again at Verses 16 and 17, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." So the Holy Spirit's going to come and He's going to get you ready. Now, He's going to clean you up. It's a matter of dealing with sin and a matter of personal holiness. Sinlessness is not required for this feast. Then no one would partake. But if we are in willful patterns of sin, violating our conscience, you will not experience this feast, and the Holy Spirit has come to convict us, and to get us ready. John 14:21, Jesus said this, "Whoever has my commandments and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me. And whoever loves me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and manifest” or disclose “myself to him." So the revelation of Jesus to our hearts is in proportion to obedience. It's not by works, it's by faith, but the more disobedient we are, the less we're going to feast with Jesus. 

And so, He's going to get us ready. He's going to strengthen us, and He's going to get us ready. And He's going to give us a yearning for this feast. That's the first thing He does. He's like, "I want it. I admit that I'm like the Laodiceans. I admit that I'm lukewarm spiritually, that I've been lazy spiritually, that I've been materialistic, that I've lived for stuff I can buy at Walmart; the material lifestyle. I'm saying effectively, "I'm rich, I have acquired wealth and don't need a thing. And Jesus, I know is saying to me, 'You don't realize that you're wretched spiritually, pitiful, poor and blind and naked. I want to feast with you, but we've got to clean you up. And we've got to get you ready and yearning for the feast.'" A lot of that comes because, like C.S. Lewis said, we're far too easily pleased. This quote that was used in, Desiring God. C.S. Lewis said this, "If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We're half-hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what's meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." We're far too easily pleased.

Believers Have Testified to this Feast

Alright, I think Ephesians 3:14 through 21, is offering you a holiday at the sea. So many people act like they want to keep on making the mud pies in the slum. It's like, "No, there's something better for you." Now, historically, there have been testimonies of these kinds of experiences. And I'm going to share just one today and more in the coming weeks. You just need to know what kind of things your brothers and sisters have experienced. Foretaste of Heaven. This one is Richard Robarts. He was a minister of God in the 19th century. He died of consumption, very hard death, at age 36, and over the months that he was dying he had multiple ecstatic experiences; foretastes of heavenly joy. As a matter of fact, they were so overwhelming that people standing around his bed would have been glad, they told him, would have been glad to trade places and have his disease if they could also have his joy. Like, "Oh my, have I ever had anything like that happen to me?"

This account about him [Richard Robarts] writes, "In the course of this day he experienced an ecstasy of Heavenly joy, His eyes were bathed in tears. He uttered words of praise, consolation and triumph. It appeared as if he were already transported into Paradise. It was evident that he experienced a foretaste of Heaven. He said, 'Oh I am happy in my God in His love. I'm going to possess Him forever. I shall enter into that city whose streets are of fine gold. Yes, the New Jerusalem, from above the city of the living God.'"

The final entry in his journal, he wrote this, "Since my last attack three weeks ago, the Lord has been near, and has manifested His love to my soul to an uncommon degree. I have been deeply humbled under a sense of my unworthiness and past unfaithfulness, but I have felt myself firmly fixed upon the rock of ages and have been enabled to anticipate my departure from the body with unspeakable delight." Now listen to these words. "One thing has much occupied my mind, namely the proneness I have ever felt to rest short of all the fullness of God. Often, it seemed within my grasp. Often my soul has seemed about ready to take possession of it, but never did I enjoy a constant sense of it of all the great salvation of God. However, I never gave up the hope of possessing it fully, and I trust that even now I shall obtain my heart's desire." That's all of us. We tend to be short of the fullness of God, short of that experience. We kick out before it comes.

How to Feast with Jesus

So how do we pursue it? And how do we go after this? Well, we pursue it by meditation on God's Word, not by empty-headed meditations, like, what's the sound of one hand clapping? That's Buddhism friends, I'm not preaching Buddhism. Take the word of God and meditate on it. Take a passage that describes the glories of Christ. Take Revelation 1. Take any passage of an account of a miracle or extended teaching from Jesus, and just work through it in meditation, Take Ephesians 3:14-21 and meditate on it. Do it in prayer. Ask God to “pour out His love into your heart by the Holy Spirit.” Let Him pour that out, say what Paul writes about here, "Do it for me." And extend it horizontally to pray for other brothers and sisters. Pray for your spouse, pray for your parents, your kids, pray for your friends, your roommates, your co-workers that you know are Christians, and ask God to give this to you. And as I've hinted at, and I'll talk more about in the next two weeks, ask God to show you your sin. Ask him to show you your worldliness, to show you the way that you have been feeding on lesser blessings and missing out on the real blessing. 

If I could just say a word to you, who will not be active in preparing the feast on Thursday, men, kids, alright? For the most part. Imagine though, if you're a man and your wife's getting a lavish feast ready, and you're on your way home and you swing in at the drive-through at McDonald's and pick up a double quarter pounder with cheese and a large order of fries and a chocolate shake, and you pound all that down. And you come in and there's all these aromas and these different pots and all that. And it's like, "I'm full. I couldn't eat another bite." Your wife looks at you with horror, and probably anger. And so, what in the world did you do? What did you do? And you're there with the bag, the McDonald's bag, and it's like, "Okay, I had something to eat on the way home. I'm really not hungry right now." That's us going after worldly things when something infinitely greater is offered, a feast far better than that is offered to us.

Heavenly Experiences Captured in Song

We're going to close in a minute with one of my favorite hymns. A lot of hymn writers had these experiences. I think Blessed Assurance, maybe I've never really looked at those lyrics. I don't know how to read the lyrics of Blessed Assurance without thinking about an ecstatic experience. I mean, if you just are fair to the language, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His Spirit, washed in His blood, a perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst in my sight." Now, that's either poetic or something happened to her, and she was blind. And I wonder if she just had an ecstatic vision of God, that the angels were bringing her. "Angels descending bringing from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love." Third verse "Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my savior am happy and blessed." Don't you want that? Don't you want to just be happy in Jesus? Assured of forgiveness, knowing you're going to Heaven, happy and blessed “watching and waiting, looking above filled, with His goodness, lost in His love.” Just say, "I want that. Whatever Fanny was going through, do that for me."

And in a few moments, we're going to sing Jean Pigott's Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting. Hudson Taylor's favorite hymn. And Daniel and his team have been working on it. I can't wait to hear it. It's just beautiful. But I have a hard time reading these lyrics without being moved to tears. "Jesus I am resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art. I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart. Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee and thy beauty fills my soul, for, by thy transforming power, thou hast made me whole. Oh, how great Thy loving kindness, vaster, broader than the sea. Oh, how marvelous thy goodness, lavished all on me! Yes, I rest in thee Beloved, know what wealth of grace is thine. Know Thy certainty of promise and have made it mine. Simply trusting thee, Lord Jesus, I behold thee as thou art. And thy love, so pure, so changeless, satisfies my heart, satisfies its deepest longings, meets, supplies its every need. Compasseth me round with blessing, thine is love indeed. Ever lift thy face upon me, as I work and wait for thee, resting 'neath thy smile, Lord Jesus, Earth's dark shadows flee. Brightness of my Father's glory, sunshine of my Father's face, keep me ever trusting, resting, fill me with thy grace." I'm urging you church seek that. Seek it, and don't rest short of having received its fullness. Let's close in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the chance we've had today to study these rich words and this concept of Jesus settling down in our hearts by faith. And I pray that we would have an experience of Christ in our hearts, in our hearts continually, Help us to learn to feast on Jesus. And Lord I pray that even now as these brothers and sisters lead us in this song, I pray that your Spirit would move in this place, and we would realize how much rich blessing still awaits us if we would just seek it, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, as we come this morning to Ephesians 3:14 through 21, the text that you just heard Chris read for us, we're coming to, I think, the loftiest theme that can ever occupy the human mind. Here, we are truly walking on the highest of high places in the experience that we can have with Almighty God through faith in Christ. In 2011, I went on an unforgettable mission trip. We were trekking in the mountains of Nepal and we hiked through some of the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayan Mountain range, and we landed in the capital city of Kathmandu, and I had Mark put a slide up there, a picture of the city of Kathmandu, and I want you to fix this picture in your mind. Nepal ranks as the second most polluted nation on Earth with Kathmandu leading the way in air pollution. Kathmandu is situated in a bowl-shaped valley, surrounded by stunning mountains, which you can see in that picture there, but because of the smog of the increasing population, of industry, and of automobiles and because of various other things, that people can hardly see those peaks at certain seasons of the year. So you can see in that picture, there's like a three-fold layer. There's the city of Kathmandu, and then there's this layer of fog, and smog, and darkness, and then above it, these majestic mountains. And I want to use that picture and kind of fix it in your mind, to create somewhat of a parable of Christian experience based on Ephesians 3:14-21.

Picture a city, a Christian city, inhabited by Christians, lying in a low, low lying flat valley area covered by smog and low gloomy clouds, and the people who live in that city scarcely ever see anything other than the pale filtered light of the sun through that layer of smog, and fog, and drizzle. I know, you think I'm describing Seattle, but I'm not, but you picture that and you can see that middle layer there, and just picture it as a parable. It's overcast most of the time, and there's a drizzle most of the time, and the people just have their heads down and just live their daily lives under this cloud cover, under this drizzle. That's their constant experience. Now, they have heard that beyond the city limits, there is a lofty mountain, it's towering over the city, but it's barely visible from the city because of the cloud cover. Occasionally, there are breaks in the cloud cover, and they can see the mountain from afar but it scarcely has anything to do with their daily lives. As a matter of fact, some people don't look up at those key times enough so that they actually wonder, if such a place even exists. They never get out of the city, they never are able to look up beyond the smog, and they actually wonder if a mountain like that ever even exists.

But one day a Sherpa, a mountain guide comes, breathless, to tell the citizens of that Christian city that there is a mountain, and he's climbed it, does exist, and he's breathed the sweet mountain air, and he's seen sights that are almost beyond the ability to capture in words. He's so filled with joy, and peace, and power, and energy, and he's trying to persuade citizens of that city to leave the low-lying area, and to go on a rigorous climb with him. And if they do, though it may be arduous, and though it may be a time before they break above the cloud cover, they will be rewarded with some of the sweetest mountain air they can imagine, and some of the most scenic vistas beyond their wildest dreams. If they will exert themselves and leave their daily experience in that head down, drizzle-covered Christian existence, they will be rewarded with fresh mountain air and scenic vistas. It's well worth the climb. So this is a parable. You can turn the slide off now.

It's a parable I think, of what Ephesians 3:14 through 21 is all about. A mountain of Christian experience, of the love of Christ for you. Christian brother and sister, do you understand how much Christ loves you? Do you have a sense of it? Can you savor it? Do you have a sense of it? Say, "Well, I know Christ loves... " No, no. Do you understand how much Christ loves you? That's what's happening in this prayer. It's like the apostle Paul is gripping us by the shoulders and looking us in the eye and saying, "I yearn for you to know how great is the love of Christ for each one of you.” And my prayer for you has been simple. I don't think you can do any better than the actual words of Paul's prayer. “I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, so that you could be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Has that ever happened to you? Be honest. Have you ever been able to say, "I mean there was a day, there was a time, I was filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." I think that many Christians go through their whole lives, never having had anything like that experience. I think you can do that. I think most Christians do that, actually, but I don't think it's necessary. Paul is praying for all Christians, and because it's in the scripture, God intends for all Christians of every nation, every generation, every realm, every phase of church history, every individual Christian, could have this kind of mountain top experience of Christ's love for them. And that it goes so far beyond language is the challenge of my preaching today. Paul says in verse 20 and 21, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine," it says in NIV, "Ask or think," in other translations, "He can go infinitely beyond anything you can possibly think. To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus both now and forever more, Amen."

So I have been staring at this text for seven weeks, eight weeks, more really since 1986. This is my favorite part of Ephesians right here. So we're going to be looking at it for 40 weeks. No, I'm just kidding. We're going to go letter by letter. No, we're not going to do that, but we're sure not going to do it in just one week. There is too much here. This is a glorious, a majestic payer. And what I want to do today is give you a brief overview of it, I want you to get a sense of the lay of the land and I want to just begin to move through it, and little by little, I'm going to kind of unfold what I think is happening here over the next few weeks.

Context: Paul’s Greatest Prayer

So let's get a little bit of a context. This is Paul's greatest prayer. He prays a lot of prayers in the New Testament. We have a record of many in his epistles. Even in this epistle there's two different prayers. One in chapter 1, one in chapter 3, so there's a number of them, but I think this is the greatest of all of Paul's prayers. Second greatest prayer in the Bible behind only Jesus is high priestly prayer. And he begins with these words in verse 14, "For this reason," you see that? He also began the whole chapter with the same words. Verse 1, "For this reason." So I preach verses 1 through 13 as an interruption. Paul interrupts himself, very gloriously and explains his own ministry as apostle to the Gentiles. Who he is, who's praying these things, and why he's praying them. And so, we've had that, but let's get a sense of the lay of the land of the whole Book of Ephesians and where we've been.

Ephesians soars so far above the low-lying areas of everyday Christian life. It's almost like you're looking at it down from 35,000 feet or maybe even from the satellite looking down, you can see the whole thing. And then he's come down now and inviting us to climb this mountain of Christian experience, laying aside wickedness, and sin, and idolatry, and worldly desires, so that we can find ourselves fully satisfied with God. That's the nature of the climb. But before we even got there, he's given us an eternal perspective on the saving work of God in Christ. So in Ephesians Chapter 1, he says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." The lavish blessings of the Gospel, “for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in His sight.” “Before the foundation of the world He chose us” “in love He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” So through faith in Christ, we have now having heard the Gospel in Ephesians 1, “having heard the Gospel of Christ shedding his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, we have been included in Christ, we have been marked by Him with the Holy Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our full inheritance.” And so that's what he talks about, he gives us a sense of that and then he prays at the end of Ephesians 1, that the “eyes of their heart would be enlightened” so that they would have a sense of the power that's at work in their lives, and the riches that are waiting for them in Christ, in Heaven, and all of these things, and he prays for them. And he says, "That power is like the working of God's power on Christ when He raised Him from the dead, physically, and He's now seated Him in the heavenly realms, far above all things." That's Ephesians 1. And the same thing that happened to Christ physically, oh Christian brother and sister, has happened to you spiritually. “You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of the flesh following it to the desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” That's who we were. We were enslaved by Satan to sin into the worldly ways, and we couldn't have saved ourselves. But God in his infinite mercy, and kindness, and grace, to us in Christ, God “made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ, spiritually, and He seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms,” spiritually. And forever, “He's going to be showing us how kind and generous He was to all of us in Christ forever." Ephesians 2:7, "For it is by grace, each one of us has been saved through faith and this is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works so that no one could boast." So that's how we were included in the Gospel.

And then he stops and says, "Now I want you Gentiles to know you were at one point aliens, strangers, you were outsiders. There was a “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” between you and the Jews that was set up in the Old Covenant, but now in Christ by His death on the cross, that barrier has been removed. Circumcision, dietary regulations, Old Covenant regulations. It's been removed. And now, God is doing a new work here. He's making one “new man” out of the two Jew and Gentile. The one “new man” is a Christian person, a believer in Christ. And He's joining us together in a vast building project. This majestic, glorious temple of God, temple of the living God, that's rising and getting bigger, and more ornate, and more glorious with every generation. It's getting bigger and more glorious with every new person who comes to faith in Christ, the spread of the Gospel, and it is a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”

Borrowing Peter's language, in 1 Peter 2, we were “living stones,” quarried out of Satan's dark kingdom and brought over and put in the walls of this rising spiritual temple. “For this reason," Paul says, "I pray." For the reason of this glorious building project, this glorious temple that's rising. Now, what does he mean by, "For this reason?" He's praying because there's more to be done. There's still more to be done. Even in your lives. He's not praying here for evangelism, that more lost people will be saved. He's talking about existing Christians. There's more to be done in your hearts. There's more to be done in your lives. So the image I have here is of translucent, kind of opaque bricks, like glass bricks, living stones. And they're dark, and they shouldn't be. They should be radiantly shining with this glowing glory from inside. Shining radiantly brightly as this temple is rising, and he's praying that they would be. That these living stones would be shining radiantly with a sense of the love of God for them, in Christ. That just is a light shining in a dark place, and it just radiates to the glory of God. So that's what, "For this reason," means. "For this reason I pray for you."

Looking Up to the Summit: Where We Are Going

So that's context. You're like, "Pastor if that's just the context, and we haven't even started, how far are we going to get?" I don't know, but we're going to have a glorious journey as we travel. The idea is, you know, how James says, in James 2, "As the body without the spirit is dead." Let me just take that and say, "So, this rising temple is dark and unattractive, until the Christians glow with the Spirit of God," and so we need to radiate from inside, with the Spirit of God. That's what he's praying for. Let's look up to the summit, and let's try to see where we're going in this prayer. Let's just kind of trace out the contours. I was watching a documentary recently on a team that went up to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world in that same country of Nepal, and what they did was they traveled for a long time, and moved a lot of equipment and supplies to something called the base camp. 17,000 feet up and they stayed there for like, three days, and they just hung out and just breathe the air. It's called getting “acclimatized.” Because if they just go right up they might end up having altitude sickness, they might have problems, because the air is so thin up there, so they just have to get used to the rarefied atmosphere of Mount Everest.

And so that's kind of like today, for us in this sermon series. We're going to get acclimatized to the rarefied air of Ephesians 3:14 through 21. We're going to just go over the words, briefly and get a sense of how lofty and glorious this prayer is, and then the time will be up and then, God willing, next week will come back and look at it more in detail and start to ask the question, how can something like this happened to me? I mean, how could God do something like this in my life? So we're going to get acclimatized. So just look, Paul begins in verse 14, he kneels and prays for the Ephesian Christians. And that's a key insight, I'm going to make it every week, Paul is praying for Christians not for non-Christians. He's praying for people who are already believers, in Christ, and not just for some of them, or a special category of them, but for all of them. "Together with all the saints," he says. He's got everyone in mind. And he's praying for these Ephesian Christians to have power, strength. Where does that power come from? It comes through the Holy Spirit, that they would have power through the Holy Spirit. And what is the measure of that? It's according to the riches of God's glory, or His glorious riches. That's how much he wants this power to be filling through the Holy Spirit. And what is the locus or the focus of this power? It is the “inner being,” or the “inner man.” Some translations give us, the “inner being,” the “heart,” “inner person,” and to what end does he pray? That Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith. And what does that mean, you say? "Well, I'm already Christian. Isn't Christ already in my heart," and we're going to talk about that, not today, but a sense of settling down. Christ, settling down in the heart by faith. A sense of the presence of ongoing, consistent fellowship with God, with Christ, from the inside out, that you're glowing with that. And Paul goes beyond that. He prays that, "We having been rooted and established in love," there's a sense of rootedness here. We'll talk about a little bit today. So that this tree has a vast root system, this building has a solid foundation, “rooted and established in love, may have power," there's that word again, "power together with all the saints to grasp” or comprehend.

He wants you stable, strong, strengthened inside to think about something. To comprehend it. To understand. To understand what? The dimensions. How “wide and long and high and deep,” he says. And it doesn't say what, but it's very clear he's talking about the love of Christ. How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ. NIV just puts it in there, others don't, other translations, but that's what he's talking about. Couldn't be anything else, a sense of the dimensions, the greatness of Christ's love for you. That's the fundamental goal. I'm praying for you Ephesian Christians, that you be strengthened so that you would know how much Christ loves you. And for you to just say, "Paul, don't waste your time. I'm good, I'm a believer. I know Jesus loves me." No, you don't. Not like I mean. I want to take you on a cosmic tour of the dimensions of infinity. That's what I want to do. The language's source. To know something that's beyond knowledge. And then it kind of caps off for me. The peak or the summit moment is that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That you would have a sense that you are as full as God is. Not that you are gods, and goddesses. I'm not saying that, and we'll get to all of that but you are completely filled as God is filled. Unless we think that this is something we should not ask, this is too extreme, it's too excessive, it's ridiculous, nobody ever has this, so why should we even be thinking about that? Paul says, "Wherever you think that peak is. However high the level of Christian experience you think I'm talking about, wherever you set that bar, God is able to do immeasurably more than that, in Christian experience."

He's actually able to do immeasurably more than anything you could ever ask Him to do in your life and He's actually able to do immeasurably more than anything you could even think He would do in your life. That's what this prayer is like. I'm thinking, do you pray like this? Do you have an experience like this? Do you even know what Paul's talking about here? Now, if I can just be honest with you, it's a dangerous thing for a pastor to preach an experience, or an activity, or behavior, and enjoin it on the people that he has not experienced. Now, I've started the climb, and slid back down a few times, but the kind of things, the testimonies from church history, that we're going to see over the next few weeks, it's not happened to me. And if I can say this honestly, it's not the kind of thing that you have to take by faith. Okay, if I can just share with you? This is not something that we take by faith. What do I mean by that? Well, in the Campus Crusade for Christ, four spiritual laws. They've got this little booklet at the back after you pray the sinner’s prayer they want you to know, “don't trust your feelings.” I get all that, I understand that.

It's like, what if somebody prays the prayer and says, “I don't feel any different”? Well, then you give them the train diagram, least you used to, I don't know, they still use the train diagram. You have fact, biblical fact, faith and feeling. So you've got the engine, you're driven by facts, you've got the coal car of faith, and then you've got the caboose of feelings that's trailed on behind. It's like the feelings are not really that important. Don't trust them, they'll come along in time, but you've got the biblical facts and you've trusted. Friends, this experience that I'm preaching here is not something you take by faith. If you're not sure whether this has ever happened to you. It hasn't. We're like, "Well, if it's so rare and unusual aren't you leading us astray to say, pursue it?'" Not at all. I'm urging you to pursue it and I'm pursuing it too. I'm going to pursue it with you, and I'm going to talk about how we pursue it, and what benefits there are to pursuing it, and what dangers there are from not pursuing it. That's where we're going in the next few weeks.

Now this is an incredible prayer. I want you to have a sense of Christ's love for you. It says in Song of Solomon 8:6, "Love is as strong as death." Isn't that a strong statement? “Love is as strong as death.” Christ's love for you is stronger. Stronger than death. Stronger than His own death, stronger than your death. It is an infinitely strong thing that Jesus loves you, and I want you to have a sense of that. That's what we're talking about here.

The Vital Role of Prayer

So let's look at it and let's start at verse 14. We're going to start with the vital role of prayer itself. Paul was fundamentally a teacher and a preacher of the Gospel. The Word of God. He poured out the Word of God faithfully. He had full confidence in the Gospel message to be, “the power of God for salvation to anyone who believed its words.” He believed in these words, and he preached them, and taught them, but he wasn't merely a preacher and teacher of the words of God. He also prayed them into the people he taught and preached to. So it was a combination of prayer, and the ministry of the word that's being commended here. And what's amazing is, this is Paul's prayer, but there's so much doctrine in it. It's a teaching prayer. Have you ever been in the presence of an incredible saint to brother-sister in Christ, and they're just pouring out prayer, and you're just learning by listening? Well, how much more than the Apostle Paul, and as we just listen to him pray, we're learning things. So there's a combination here of doctrine and of prayer.

Prayer Cannot Be Chained

And now, prayer is essential to the spread of the Gospel, it's essential to the work of the Kingdom, and prayer cannot be chained. Paul's in chains. He said, "I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you gentiles," verse 1. So he's in chains, but his spirit isn't chained. Here's a brother who's like if you were to go to him that day and say, "So what's your day look like? It's Tuesday, I like Tuesdays. What's your Tuesday like?” “I'm going to be here, I'm going to stay here in prison. I'll be here in person, I'll eat whatever it is they serve me." But here, his spirit is soaring like an eagle higher than yours ever has. He is just a free man though incarcerated. His prayer is not chained. Are we being faithful in prayer? Are we praying? Are you giving yourselves to prayer? What's your prayer life like? Let's take the words of this magnificent prayer, and start praying them for ourselves and for each other. It's not that hard. Just say, "Alright, I'm going to pray this prayer every day this week for myself, and for one other Christian brother or sister. I'm going to choose somebody and pray for them.” By the way, not limited to one, but let it be at least one other person. Because it's just beautiful to pray this for someone else, “I pray oh Lord that you would strengthen so-and-so with power through his or her spirit and their inner being so that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith,” and do that for yourself too, just do this. It's an application right in the middle of the sermon. We see also here the boldness of prayer and also the humility of prayer. We have astonishing access to God. Look at verse 12. Ephesians 3:12. He says, "In Him,” Christ, “and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence” or “boldness and access." It's another translation. Because of our relationship with Christ, because we are Christians, we may approach God with “boldness and access.” It's just amazing.

The Boldness of Prayer

I came across a verse recently that struck me powerfully. Jeremiah 30:21. You can look it up later. There are different translations, but this is a good translation. Just toward the end of the verse, it says, "Who would... " This is God speaking to us, "Who would dare of himself to approach me, declares the Lord." Ponder that. “Who would dare of himself to approach me.”  You remember the story of Queen Esther? Remember she was a Jewish woman, who was the queen of the Persian empire, and she found out through her caretaker, kind of adoptive father, uncle or cousin, I think, Mordecai, what edict had gone forth for the genocide of the Jews, and he was urging her to use her position of influence to influence King Xerxes, to save the Jews. And she said, "Do you understand that in the Persian empire, if anyone ever approaches the throne room of the king uninvited there is only one penalty. Death. The only exception is if he extends the golden scepter." Well, whatever you think about the might of the Persian emperor, God is infinitely more powerful and infinitely holier, and we are infinitely less welcome than God, apart from Christ’s atoning work. We were at one point, aliens and strangers. “We were by nature vessels or objects of wrath.”

Who of ourselves, would ever dare to approach such a God? But now, in Christ, in Him, and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. There has been open for us, a new and living way through the body of Christ, by His death on the cross. We have that. And so we have not only an invitation, but actually a command to come into the “throne room of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16. So, we are commanded to come into this throne room. Now, Paul's actual requests here are stunningly bold. You look at the prayer, we've been over already, but just what is he asking for? He's asking for just astonishing things culminating in that the Ephesian Christians would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. So he's asking for bold things, but God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or think, it's not too bold. You can't out-ask God.

The Humility of Prayer

So there, we see the boldness of prayer, but we see also the humility. “For this reason, I kneel” or bow the knee, “before the Father.” And so he kneels before God. Now there is no one set physical posture for prayer. Actually in the Bible of the most common physical posture, mentioned is standing, with arms uplifted. Standing in prayer. You see that again, again, New Testament, Old Testament alike. But here we see in, have a glimpse into Paul's prayer life and and his humility. Why does he kneel? He kneels before his loving tender-hearted Father, out of honor and respect, and a sense of fear and trembling and awe at the greatness of this person that he's about to address. So we need some balance here in our prayer life. We need a sense of freedom and confidence, and access, so we're not too formal, or distant or mechanical in our prayers, but we need not to be flippant as though we forget who it is we're talking to. So the idea of kneeling is attractive to me. I kneel in my quiet times every day. That's what I do. And you don't have to kneel, you can stand, you can sit, you can lie down in prayer, all of these things, but there's something powerful about the physical body. And as Kyle was talking about before, you know, the sense of with my body, I'm saying "You are my Almighty God." And I was very convicted, I was just reading one book written by Martin Lloyd Jones about this, how quickly I blunder into God's presence, all the time and just go right in with a request. Don't do that, don't do that. Guard your steps before you go into God, Ecclesiastes 5 says, "Go near to listen, rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart, to utter anything before God. God is in Heaven and you are on Earth." So that we have a sense of the awe and wonder and majesty of God before you say anything to Him. So it's made me not just blunder into God's presence but to pause and think, "Who am I about to talk to?"

God’s Fatherly Love for His Children

And he zeroes in here on the fatherly love of God. "For this reason. I kneel before the Father," NIV says, “from whom His whole family in Heaven and Earth derives His name.” So I want to start with the fatherly love of God, this Almighty God that you're addressing. He is, if you're a Christian, He is your adoptive Father. He has rescued you from Satan's dominion and has actually adopted you as a son or daughter of his family, and He's put the Holy Spirit inside your heart, “the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” And so we have been born again, we have been rescued out of Satan's kingdom, and we have a loving Father and that Father is saying, "Pray to me and ask me for big things, and I'll give them to you ask me for more than you thought I could possibly ever do and I can actually do more than that. Jesus said in Luke 11, “What father among you, if his son asks for fish will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” It's fascinating. Matthew's Gospel, says “give good gifts.” That's true as well, But that you as a Christian already, have the Father, you actually can get on your knees and say, "God give me of your Holy Spirit. Pour out your Spirit on me pour out the love of God into my heart by the Holy Spirit, whom you have given me. And He'll tell do it. “If you fathers know how to give good gifts to your children, and you’re evil,” God knows how to do that. So he's speaking to his Heavenly Father, and He says the “whole family,” and I think the NIV has actually has it right, His “whole family derives His name.” I think it's the unity of the Fatherhood of God over the entire vast complicated family of God. It's not so much that the whole idea of fatherhood came from this one Father, that's one translation some take that, but no. The family of God, worldwide, has one Father, That's what I think he's getting at. So look at Ephesians 4:4-6. Next page probably. It says, “there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is overall, and through all and in all.” So, that's who we're addressing.

God’s Glory in His Perfections

Well what are we paying for? Well, “ pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” So these are the resources. He speaks of the glorious riches of God or the riches of God's glory. That's the collection of all of God's perfection, His Holiness, His power, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, His self-existence, His sovereignty, all of these things. This is the glory of God. I pray that according to how glorious God is, He would strengthen you. So the idea here is of a radiant sun shining emanating just power and light, and heat, and it's just burning up there in space and the light comes across 93 million miles and comes and just warms the whole earth and it gives strength, and there's nothing that He can do to in any way diminish His own strength, He's not tired out by helping us, so when he prays for God according to His glorious riches, to strengthen you, God isn't dimmed by that. There's not a sagging of it. You think about a house with inadequate wiring, and you turn on the microwave and all the lights dim, have you ever seen that?  God's not like that God isn't going to dimmed when he helps us. I love what it says in Isaiah 40, "Do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, He will not grow tired or weary, His understanding no one can fathom He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” He's not burdened by helping us or strengthening us, it's according to the riches of His glory, that He strengthens us, and that's what he's praying for, he's praying for power for strength.

Now, why does he ask for strength for this? Well, this strength mediated by the Holy Spirit, according to the “Spirit in the inner being,” the Holy Spirit of God in your inner man, strengthens, strengthening you to the end that Christ would dwell in your hearts you face. So we have a picture here of the ministry of the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit of God, He who in Genesis 1:2 was “hovering over the waters,” is hovering over your inner being, your heart. And He has the power to mediate Christ to you. As Jesus said of the Counselor, “when He comes, He will take from what is mine and make it known to you, He will witness to you concerning me.” That's what the Holy Spirit does. He mediates Christ to the human heart Paul's praying that that would happen, that you would have strength in your inner man through the Spirit.

God is a Jealous God

So, why all this need for power? Well, there's two different things I would want to give you a picture of. One is that's going to be an arduous climb to get there. Now, Paul doesn't talk about that much here, but I believe it's true, God is jealous. And if we set our affections, and go after things to make us happy and give us exhilaration and give us ecstasy and excitement that He meant to give us directly here through spiritual means and we go after material physical things, He is jealous over that. And until we put those things to death and lay aside all the weights and the hindrances, it's not likely you're going to have any different experience Christian experience than you ever had before. And so, it's a climb. That's why I gave you the picture at the beginning of the Sermon of an arduous mountain climb. And you actually will end up spending the first section of that climb still under the cloud cover wondering if anything's going to come of it. And you're going to need strength to persevere and believe that there's a good outcome if you only continue to fast and pray, and seek and be diligent, and make sacrifices, and pursue, pursue, pursue to seek the face of God you're going to be tempted to give up. So that's one reason you need strength. 

We Need His Help to Bear His Love

Another is because the thing that God's going to give you will be so massive that it will crush you from the inside out, unless He sustains and strengthens you. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God,” and if He gives you a massive upgrade of your experience of Heaven now, you'll need to be strengthened so you can handle it. So think about Fort Knox, think about gold, think about gold bars, and a third of the treasure at Fort Knox They're going to move into your dining room, okay? They're going to move it, alright back it in the boys, you know the whistle. It's like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” if you do that, my house will be crushed. Well, He knows that better than you do. So, He sends an advanced team of structural engineers to start putting I-beams under the floor and do some stuff with the walls in your inner man to sustain and strengthen you so you can handle what He's about to do in your life. Again and again, men and women of God have had encounters with God, and then left on the ground as though dead when it happened. You know what I'm talking about.

Biblical Encounters: Man and God

Think about when Daniel, in the Book of Daniel, was praying, and God gives them a revelation of a far lesser theme than the one we're looking at here today, the future of Israel under the Greek overlords. Kings of the north, kings of the south, back and forth warfare between them. It's an important detail in redemptive history. God sent an angel to give the message of Daniel 11, to Daniel in Daniel 10. So He sends this angel. And He is so glorious. The angel now, not the second person of the Trinity, the angel, is so glorious that Daniel is knocked to the ground and can't breathe. Daniel 10:17-19. “How can I,” he's talking to the angel, “‘How can I, your servant, talk with you, my Lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.’ Again, the one who looked like a man touched me and gave me strength.” Do you hear that? “Touched me and gave me strength.” “Do not be afraid, O man highly esteemed. He said, ‘Peace, be strong now,’be strong.’ And when he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, “Speak my Lord since you have given me strength.’” It's all about strength in the inner man, to handle the revelation of what God's about to lay on him.

Ezekiel had a similar vision of God, the glory of God. Ezekiel 3:15 after it was over, Ezekiel 1 is the vision, after it was over, he was transported to where the exiles were and it says, “And there, where they were living. I sat among them for seven days, overwhelmed.” He's like in some kind of a catatonic state for a week unable to even talk just there. Or the three apostles who went with Jesus up on the Mount of Transfiguration, and He was transformed before them, transfigured, Jesus, and his face was shining like the sun and His clothes became as white as the light. And then Peter spoke up, you remember that? He said, “Lord, it's good to be here, tell you what, why don't we build some booths and all that, and this bright cloud suddenly enveloped them and God was in the cloud, and he said, ‘This is my beloved Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased, listen to him.’" The implication is stop talking and listen to Him. But when all that happened, the three of them that were on their faces as though dead, and Jesus had to go have touched them and lift them up and give them energy. Or then the apostle John in Revelation, chapter one, had a vision of the resurrected Christ in all of his glory. And it says in Revelation 1:17, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. So that's why you need strength in your inner person, to endure this level of revelation of the love of God.”

D.L. Moody’s Experience

D.L. Moody, the 19th century evangelist 19th, early 20th century evangelist had been a Christian serving God, doing a ministry, then in charge of a mission was seeing people converted, but he wanted more. This is his testimony:

“I began to cry, as never before, for a greater blessing from God. The hunger increased, I felt I really did not want to live any longer. I kept on crying all the time, that God would fill me with His Holy Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York. Oh, what a day. I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for 14 years. I can only say God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love, that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”

What's going on there, what happened to you, God started pouring out His love through the Holy Spirit inside of me, that finally I said, stop, I can't take anymore. That's why strength is needed for this power is needed for this, for the journey, for the climb, but then even more for the experience.

Now, we're going to talk more over the next few weeks about this, we're going to talk more about the verses. I just want to stop and ask, first and foremost, do you know Christ as your Lord and Savior? I mean the things I'm talking about here are for Christians, but I'm aware that God in His providence, every week, brings us people who are outside of the love of God in Christ. I believe God brought you here. If you're like that, you know yourself to be lost, I'm pleading with you, to come into faith in Christ, and to know for the first time the assurance from the Holy Spirit that your sins are forgiven, and that you're going to Heaven when you die. God sent Jesus as a substitutionary atonement. He shed His blood on the cross, that sinners like you and me might have full forgiveness from God, not by works, as we already said, but simply by faith. Trust in Christ.

Now, if you are a Christian, you've already been a Christian, this prayer is for you. There's more work still to be done in your soul. If you can honestly say I've never had anything like what you're talking about here. I've never had something like, "Oh, what a day I can't even talk about it! It's like what Paul experienced, and didn't talk about for 14 years and it was so overwhelming. I had to ask God to stop because I thought I might die. No, actually that's never happened to me Pastor. Never.” Well then what I'm going to do with you over the next three, four, weeks is encourage you to seek that experience of God's love in Christ. I'm going to do it unashamed, I'm going to say seek it, seek it by holiness seek it by laying aside things you're conscious of that are offending God. Seek it by prayer, either alone or with others.

Seek it by meditation on this passage and other passages that talk about the greatness of God in Christ, meditate on those kind of passages. Say, “God I want you to do something in my life that I'll never forget the rest of my life, I want you to work in me an experience of your love that goes so far beyond anything I thought you could do, anything I could ask or imagine. I want you to do that in my life and I want you to do it in this brother, or this sister's life.” So I don't want you to just pray for yourself, I do want you to pray for yourself, but I want you to pray for others that God would do this for you. We'll continue this next week. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for Ephesians 3:14-21, we thank you for what Paul's praying for here and I pray that you'll do it to FBC. I pray that you would call together a group of people who will pray for these things in extraordinary ways. We don't even have to know about it, but maybe in someone's living room, or maybe here at the church, or in some other quiet place individuals can gather together with other brothers and sisters and pray that God would pour out His Holy Spirit on First Baptist Church in Durham to the end that we would be holy and to the end that we would be powerfully fruitful in evangelism and missions. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, three weeks ago, I was right in the middle of a sermon. So, how do you begin a sermon, like that? So I want you to take that outline that I've given you in the back and just forget about it. I'm not doing that. I did a lot of that last time. I want to do something else. And I want to zero in on Ephesians 3, specifically verses 8-10, and make that the centerpiece of what I want to say to you today. I want to focus in on God's purpose in Paul's proclamation.

Let me just lay my cards on the table. My idea in this sermon is that Paul is an utterly unique individual in redemptive history as the Apostle to the Gentiles. That is true, but he is also a paradigm example of an ordinary Christian, “less than the least of all God's people,” who was given a powerful ministry that has eternal ramifications, and in that way, he's an example for us. We, who are also, we should and could say, “less than the least of all God's people,” less than the least of the saints, we can have a powerful ministry of proclamation of the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” as mentioned here in Ephesians 3. We have that power through the Holy Spirit. We have that calling. Kyle talked about that in his sermon in John 20, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." And so I want to heighten awareness of this and this especially comes on the heels of me having been three days in New Orleans as a trustee of the International Mission Board, and these are trying and challenging times for the IMB.

International Mission Board Changes

Many of you may know, many of you may not know that because of financial restrictions the IMB gave out a voluntary retirement initiative, a V.R.I., to missionaries on the field above 50 years and older voluntarily inviting them to retire from missions work. And the numbers are in the range of about 600 missionaries coming off the field. That's obviously a soul-searching time for the IMB, it's a soul-searching time for Southern Baptist churches, and a time for us, I think, as a local church to recommit ourselves as never before to missions to unreached people group missions. And so I want to do some of that through this sermon. I want to zero in on Ephesians 3:8-10, and I want to give you a sense of the grandeur and the glory of what God is doing in the world. I want you to be captivated by it. I want you to be captivated by the work of display that God is doing of His own wisdom and glory in the Church. I want you to see that.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity, I was going to Serbia and I went with my daughter, Caroline, and we stopped at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and they have some of the most astonishing works of art there by the Dutch masters, some of these incredible paintings, and they're just huge. And one of the biggest paintings in the museum is a painting called The Night Watch by Rembrandt, and it's just absolutely massive. 12 feet wide 14 feet high. I'm thinking, “How much paint went into that, how many cans of paint?” You know how you go to Lowe's and it's like, "Well, I'm... " if Rembrandt were hearing this, "Cans of paint, really?" But this was a masterpiece. And you have this picture of this scene from Dutch history, and I'm not going to go into what's being depicted there, but he uses light and darkness very well, and different colors, and he highlights certain individuals and others are more back in the darkness. And it gave me a picture of just the vast complexity of what God is doing in redemptive history, the vast complexity of light and darkness, of successes and apparent failures, of pleasureful moments, and moments of great affliction and suffering that go together to make this master work.

It's an illustration of God's sovereign design in history, and I want to zero in on missionaries and Christ's servants, that's all of us, as somewhat like various ragged different sized paint brushes that the Lord is using to paint this masterpiece. And He's got a plan, it says in verse 11, that He worked out before the foundation of the world. He's got it all figured out in His mind, and we can be in the hands of the master to paint this incredible masterwork, greater than anything that we can possibly imagine, even greater than a 12 by 14 painting.

Now, I was reading recently a sermon by John Piper on this Scripture and I'm indebted to him for the structure. He does a very interesting thing here; he goes right to verse 10 as the centerpiece and then backs out as he often does. Some of you hear this kind of preaching, and it's helpful. He says, "What's the main point of all of this?" And he's going to say in verse 10, the main point is the display of the wisdom of God, that there's a display of the multifaceted various variegated wisdom of God in the Church, to the angels, so the powers and principalities. The means to that, and he backs up one step, is in verse 10, the Church. It is by the Church that the wisdom of God is displayed. The gathering of the people of God, “chosen before the foundation of the world,” elect from before the foundation of the world by sovereign grace completely apart from works, chosen by God, predestined, but then gathered into the Church, the gathering of the people of God, verse 10a, from all Gentile nations. The means to the end of that one step back in verse 9 is the preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ among the nations. And then one step back from that, the means to that is the “least of the saints,” that's you and me being set apart unto God to do that proclamation. Now, the word preaching may not be incredibly helpful because not many of us are called to be public preachers, but we can proclaim “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” to the end that the Church be gathered from all the Gentile nations, to the end that the manifold wisdom of God would be put on display for the angels to see. That's what's going on in Ephesians 3:8-10.

Manifold Wisdom: God’s Children Across the Globe

And so I want to zero in on this masterpiece and just look at it. I want us to see it. And as you look at verse 10, we've got this idea of the “manifold wisdom of God.” Now what does that word “manifold” mean? It's not an easy word; it's not a word that we usually would use in everyday speech. And for that matter in the Greek, it's a one-off, it's only used this one time, and so it's an unusual word. Half of the word Poikilos. I usually don't say Greek words from the pulpit, but that word, it means variegated, wrought in various colors, a sense of variety. We could use the word diversity, a sense of the complexity of the wisdom of God. It's subtle; it's varied, it's intricate. But then Paul puts a prefix, polu, so the much variegated wisdom of God in the Gentile nations that are coming to faith in Christ; that's what he's talking about. And so we have very many colors in this masterpiece painting, different shades, some bright some dark. It's complex, it's astonishing, it's variegated.

There are people groups from all over the world, every continent on the face of the earth, and you think about it, Europeans, so blond Scandinavians, people from Norway or Sweden, or from the lowlands like Netherlands, Holland, Germany, Britain, and Southern Europe. You've got Italians and Greeks, etcetera. Then you have people from Africa, different tribes, and they have various genetic appearances like the Ethiopians, with what Isaiah calls tall and smooth skin. And then you've got the Congolese or Nigerians, different people groups, and that God has elect from each of these groups and it's an astonishingly varied thing that God is doing here. And you've got people from Asia and Latin America and all over the world, and God is doing all of this incredible work, it says to display His wisdom. So look at verse 10b, it says, "So that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known." So this is purpose language. There's a reason why all of this has happened and God has a purpose. What is that purpose? The ultimate purpose of missions and evangelism, the ultimate purpose of the Church is display, that God would be put on display. That everyone might know how great a God He is, how glorious and radiant He is to put Him on display.

God does all things for the display of His glory, that's why He created the universe. That's why God said, "Let there be light," and why God created the heavens and the earth, and all of these things were for the display of His glory. Nothing's more important than that. Missions is not more important than that. Nothing's more important. God does everything for the display of His glory, all things. And not only did God create the world and all of its complexity, and it's amazing, I mean this planet Earth. We saw the movie Martian, and the theme of that movie is “Earth is better than Mars.” That's what I get out of that. If you want to live somewhere definitely live on Earth, not Mars. Things just grow better here and it's just better in every respect. There are other themes in that movie, whatever.

Redeemed for His Glory

But Earth is amazing and it's just beautiful and it's rich and complex, and the people that have grown here created in the image of God and spread out to the distant islands, and all over, and mountains, and valleys and all that; they're all over the earth. God did all of this so that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That's why God made everything. Well that's also why He redeemed the elect in Christ. His purpose is for the display. We're His “sons and daughters,” Isaiah 43 says, “so created for His glory.” And redeemed for His glory. And so, we're redeemed. And so Ephesians 2 talks about all of that in terms of the Gentiles, how "They were dead in their transgressions and sins in which they used to live when they followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature following his desires and thoughts, like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath. But God because of His great mercy, with which He loved us, and showed mercy on us in Christ." God made us alive with Christ, and He redeemed us out of “every tribe, and language, and people, and nation,” and He forgave us all our sins. And we, it says in Ephesians 2, second half of the chapter, we were at one point, “aliens and strangers, and excluded.” Now, mysteriously, according to Ephesians 3, we are “equal heirs with the sons and daughters of Abraham.” We are like “wild olive shoots that have been grafted in now.” We'll get into more of that. Romans 11 uses that language, but we, the Gentiles, we have been redeemed, and we are now deriving life-giving sap from this developed complex tree of Abraham's descendants. And we're just drawing, through Christ, drawing life-giving sap through this incredible work that God's doing in redemptive history.

We wild, weird Gentiles grafted into that, and now we're heirs with the Jews. How amazing is that? And that's incredibly complicated and it's varied and diverse and beautiful. And that puts the wisdom of God on display. And the audience, if you're going to have display, you're going to have an audience. And the audience here interestingly are the “powers and principalities.” That's language for the angels, the angelic beings. And so, God is putting His wisdom on display to the angels.

Two Kinds of Angels

Now, there are two categories of angels; there are good angels, and there are bad angels. I don't know which he has in mind here. Well, let's go with both for a minute. That God is putting the Church, or putting His wisdom on display, through the Church, to the good angels, who it says in 1 Peter 1:12, "Even angels long to look into these things." They are really into what God's doing in missions. Angels are fascinated with missions; they're fascinated with everything Christ is doing, and they're leaning forward to look at what is happening. And they care about unreached people groups; they care about the lost. They care about lost people in engineering departments and at hospitals; they care about lost neighbors. They're interested in seeing the elect come to Christ, and they celebrate, and they get excited when it happens. So, good angels are watching the unfolding manifold wisdom of God here. They're excited about it, and they don't know what's going to happen. That's why they're longing to look into these things. Like, "What's going to happen next?" And it's so exciting; it's just crackling with energy up there in Heaven. What's the next thing that's going to happen?

Or we could say it's bad angels, as we're going to get in Ephesians 6:12. We're told to “put on the full armor of God, so we can take our stand against our enemies in the heavenly realms,” who are demonic forces, demons, bad angels. And you could see that too, how God is putting the “manifold wisdom of God,” in the Church, on display to the bad angels. "You can't stop them. I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. You demons can't stop the spread of the Gospel."

And so that's a beautiful thing whether good angels or bad angels doesn't matter; to the “powers and principalities,” God is putting His wisdom on display, and that's an awesome thing. And you should be drawn into that; it should matter to you more than anything else in the world, the glory of God. So, missions exists to put God's variegated wisdom on display to the angels, good and bad, and to us. God has a lot to show to us too. Doesn't He? It's not just to the angels. We got that back in Ephesians 2:7 "That in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of His grace." God shows no grace to the angels, good or bad. The good angels don't need it; they never sin. You think about Amazing Grace. Were they ever wretches? Were they ever lost? No they weren't. They've never been wretches who were lost and saved by grace. And then the demons, there is no Gospel for them. There's never been any hope of their redemption ever. There's no promise of it. But we can sing and forever. In Ephesians 2:7, “we're going to see in the coming ages just how much grace God has shown to all of us;” it's going to be amazing.

And so all of this is for the display. The masterpiece is being painted now; missionaries and messengers of every type we are the messy brushes God is using to paint that painting. Let me just pause and say "Are you involved?" I mean are you a part of this? Are you involved in the external journey of missions and evangelism? Are you making sacrifices to speak the word Jesus to lost people around you?  And if not, I just want to, as winsomely as I can plead with you to come and get involved because this is the work that God iss doing in the world. Alright, so that's the center step, the centerpiece of this, Ephesians 3:8-10.

Divine Wisdom Displayed to Angels

Now, let's take one step further removed. It's like a so that, so that, so that journey. So, the ultimate end is the display of God's wisdom. One step back is the gathering of God's worldwide Church, so that His wisdom can be put on display, so that's in verse 10a, “So that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.” So the Church being gathered from all nations, that's how it's happening. And Paul talks about his own ministry here in seeing that happen. He says, "to me, although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things."

Now, I've already talked about the mystery. It's that Gentiles could be fully heirs with the Jews; that we can be grafted in. It's interesting in Romans 11 when Paul gives us that image of wild olive shoots being grafted into a cultivated olive tree. And then just talks about that and what God's doing with the Jews as well. And at the end of that, he celebrates the same thing. "Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor?" It's just amazing what God's doing, isn't it? It's stunning. God is gathering His global Church; He's gathering elect people, chosen from before the foundation of the world. He knows who they are, He knows what their names are, He knows where they're living, and He will not fail to bring them in, elect from every nation, but they're called by the proclamation of the Gospel. And so, it is as the Church is being built, it is through the Church, believers in Jesus Christ, that the manifold wisdom of God is on display to the angels.

So that's one step back now let's take the next step back. The preaching of Christ's unsearchable riches builds the Church; that's how it happens. It's the proclamation of Jesus Christ, and not as a historical figure but I mean, as one in whom is all the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God in bodily form, Jesus as unsearchable wealth. The proclamation of that. "Although I am less than the least of all God's people this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." That's what missionaries get to do. They get to sell everything they own. Christy and I did that to go to Japan. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that yard sale. I'll never forget. I am not permitted by one of my kids to say that person's name without asking permission first, and I've not asked permission, but that was a hard day for that person as that person saw that person's toys being sold. I will never forget that. I'm not sure if that person has forgotten it. Probably has. But just selling everything. And you go as a missionary, and you go live in a foreign country. And why do you do that? Well, this is what you get to do. What you get to do is proclaim to people who have never heard of Jesus, or have heard of Him, but don't understand who He really is, haven't made a commitment to Him. They get to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. Do you see that right in the text, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Well, what does that mean, unsearchable?

Unsearchable Riches

I think there's another word, like fathomless. Okay, the fathomless depths, you think about it. There's this story about Ferdinand Magellan who was circumnavigating the globe. He got into the Pacific Ocean, and it was just immense, and amazing and all that, and he wanted to find out how deep it was, so he spliced together the rope they found lying around on the deck, attached it to a cannonball, and it's like, didn't hit bottom. So they said, alright, we need more rope. So they went and got more rope and then it didn't hit the bottom, and then they got all the rope they had available and it still didn't hit the bottom; that's fathomless.

So Jesus Christ is so glorious, you can take all the rope you could ever find, in terms of your own mind, and you'll never hit bottom. That's the greatness of Christ. Or the unsearchable riches, another image comes to my mind from my favorite movie Ben Hur. And they're about to have this awesome chariot race, you know what I'm talking about, that's one of the greatest scenes ever in movies. And they're going to have this chariot race. But before that this Arab guy, who owns the team of horses that Charlton Heston is going to drive goes to this Roman enemy and he wants to make a bet; he wants to bet on the race. So he's got a bunch of guys with him carrying heavy boxes of golden coins, and it's really pretty cool because he takes this metal stick, and he opens up the chest and he starts rummaging around and pushing the stick down. Rummage, push, rummage, push, rummage, push. And there's the bottom. And he's got like six boxes like that. And he wants to bet all of this money on Ben Hur. Well you can get, I don't care what size stick you get, you can rummage and push and rummage and push. Jesus' greatness, His infinite glory is immeasurable. It's unsearchable; you're not going to get to the bottom of the gold box. You'll be forever finding out just how great your Savior is, how great He was in saving you, how great He is, how great He always will be.

So perhaps the unsearchable riches of Christ could refer to the infinite mystery of His person, His humanity and deity, fully God fully man. It could refer to that; it's unsearchable. Or the perfection of His life, His sinlessness, that He lived a life “tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin”. Unsearchable. You'll never get done thinking about this. Or you could think about the greatness of the power he displayed in all of the miracles he did; walking on water, changing the water into wine. And raising the dead, Lazarus dead four days, and there was nothing He couldn't do. You could ponder all of the things, speaking to the wind and the waves and it obeyed His voice. “What kind of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him?” The “unsearchable riches of Christ.”

Well you might talk about just the infinite mystery of His substitutionary death, how He died in our place on the cross under the infinite wrath of God we all deserve for violating God's laws. For not “loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and not loving our neighbor as ourself,” or our corruptions and our immoralities and all of that wickedness. Put on Jesus and the fathomless wrath of God, the infinite wrath of God poured out on Jesus our substitute, unsearchable riches of Christ. And then the glory of His resurrection, the fact that God raised Him from the dead on the third day and He appeared in a resurrection body never to die again, and He ascended through the heavens, through the clouds, and sits at the right hand of Almighty God and from that place, he will return some day to judge the living and the dead, the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” You're never going to get done thinking about the greatness of Christ. And we are witnesses of all this.

 A Providential Plane Ride

I had a witnessing opportunity on the plane coming back from New Orleans sitting next to an African-American woman who had a ministry to public defenders. And she talked about some of the problems with the penal system, specifically with African-American men, and what she does, the training she does with public defenders. But as interested as I was in her work, I was more interested in her soul. So at some point, we're going to change the subject a little bit. Talk about Jesus. So I asked her what her spiritual background was. She said, well, she was raised a Muslim. Her mother had converted from being a Baptist to a Muslim to marry a Muslim man, but then he divorced her, so then she converted back to being a Baptist after he left her. But she was kind of raised as a Muslim. She married an atheistic Jew, and now she's kind of in the middle of nothing. I'm thinking, "Alright, God brought her to me." And we had an amazing conversation. She had question after question after question. She said to me, she said, "I swore I would never talk about religion and politics, but here we are talking about religion." I said "It's fine to talk as long as we don't get heated. Treat each other with kindness." And so, she was encouraged and she had questions about Jesus, about substitution, about Islam. There just wasn't enough time on the flight. We get to do that. Brothers and sisters, we get to do that. We get to have conversations like that, and it's a little bumpy to get into those conversations, but once you're in, you may find somebody who really has a lot of questions and who wants to know more about Jesus. We get to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.

God Works With All His Children

One step back and the final one. The people who do this proclamation are “less than the least of all God's people,” that's who they are. That's who Paul is. Now Paul, I don't deny I already said it. He is utterly unique in redemptive history. There will never be another Paul ever. And we're not Paul, we can't be. We won't be. But, Paul talks about himself in verse 8, "To me was given although I am less than the least of all God's people of the saints to preach to the Gentiles." But Paul, I believe, is a role model for us, as he is a role model in redemption and forgiveness. In 1 Timothy 1 he says, "This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst." "But in order to display His unlimited patience and His mercy to sinners like you, He saved the worst, me, so that you'd be encouraged that He can save you too." That's the logic of 1 Timothy 1.

Well, here's the logic. I'm going with Ephesians 3. The logic is if God can use me to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” Paul would say, “He can definitely use you.” That's what he would say, I think. So, do you qualify as less than the least of all God's people. You're like, "No, I think I'm actually better than most of God's people." Alright, well, tell you what, why don't you just go out and do some witnessing and some missions and you'll start getting sanctified and then you'll say, "You know, I really am a sinner saved by grace. I am less than the least of all God's people." But wherever you think you are, God can use you to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ to elect people who haven't been converted yet, so that the Church can be built, so that the manifold wisdom of God can be put on display to the angels. That's what's going on in this text.

Being God’s Paintbrush

Do you want in? I want in. I want to be part of that. I don't want to waste my life on something God's not doing. He's painting a masterpiece. I want to be a brush in His hand. What about you? What about you? I don't think it's shameful that this VRI is going on. I don't think it's shameful that 600 missionaries are coming off the field. God does amazingly complicated things. And how is He going to use those 600 missionaries; He's going to use them wherever they go. And God's going to raise up national partners in those countries to step up into the gap and do some of those ministries. He prunes trees to make them even more fruitful. I'm not in any way discouraged, but I do think it's a time for reflection, a time for prayer, a time for recommitment. And that's true of every local church; it's true of our church.

So where are we at in all of this? Are we committed to missions? Are we committed to evangelism? Are we ready to take the Gospel to people that we know that are lost? Are we willing to bear the burden of their reaction to our witnessing? Put up with that so that we can get over that and talk about Jesus and His unsearchable riches? Are we willing to suffer? Are you involved in evangelism? Do you have five lost people that you're praying for by name that God would raise up someone to witness to them? Someone to share the Gospel with them. Maybe you're ready to say, "Hey, maybe I could be that person." It doesn't have to be you; just you're praying for that person.

Greater Commitment to the Masterpiece

Are we, as a church, ready to be more than ever before committed to unreached people group missions. We're going into our Lottie Moon Christmas offering season; Southern Baptist Churches have a time when we sacrificial give to missions that pays the salary of career missions and missionaries and others that are serving. We set goals and we always seem to meet them. I don't want to set a goal that we wouldn't meet. "We are going to raise $5,000,000." God can do anything, but I think for me, I would love to see us give more money to Lottie Moon than we've ever given before. I would love to see the number go up from generally in the $132,000 range up to something like $150,000. And where is that extra $20,000 going to come from? Well, it's going to come from us. It's going to come from us asking questions about our lifestyle, about what we eat, where we go, what we do for entertainment, what we wear, and say, "What can I sacrifice? Missionaries are sacrificing, what can I sacrifice to give? But that's not enough. I want us to be heart and soul committed, not just financially.

I want us to say, "Maybe God wants me to go." I mean, we have a lot of younger people. There could be people in the youth ministry. I think about the youth retreat. I was praying for you guys, so thrilled at the work Kevin's doing. But there could be some young people, youth, who are going to go as missionaries in the future. I want this to be a sending church, a church where you caught the vision for missions here. There are college students, a lot of you all sit over here in this area, but you could be scattered around, what are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do with your talents and your abilities? What are you called to do vocationally? And there's going to be more and more opportunities for people to go, not as traditional missionaries, but what has been called tent makers, etcetera, where you go use your vocation in a cross-cultural setting to lead people to Christ.

Now, as I close, I want to say one thing, and I've been talking to you as Christians, but I know that God may well have brought unbelievers here today. And for me, I've had the privilege of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ to all of you, but I'm speaking to you, who know yourself to be outsiders. You're lost right now. I want to plead with you to repent and believe in Jesus, just like I pled with Illi, that's her name, that young woman that I talked to and I just wanted her to know Christ. I said to her, I said, "You know, I really believe that God wants to know you in an intimate relationship.” She said, "Oh He knows me." I said, "Well I know He knows all about you, but I want you to know Him through Christ." And she was quiet listening to that, so I'm pleading with you if you know yourself to be an outsider God wants to forgive your sins through faith in Christ, trust in Him.

Now, I'm going to close the sermon and a prayer and then we're going to have a time of celebration of the ordinance, the Lord's supper. So let's close this sermon then we'll go to the table. Father, I thank you for Ephesians 3. We thank you for what you have taught us; thank you for the manifolds, the variegated, the incredibly diverse display of the wisdom of God in the Church. Thank you that you do that through the proclamation of the unsearchable riches of Christ. You can do that through “less than the least of all God's people.” I pray that we would be faithfully involved in evangelism and missions for your glory. And now, Lord, as we turn to the table, we pray that you would just send forth your Spirit in Jesus' name, amen.

Like to invite the deacons to come now. Please hear the words of institution from 1 Corinthians Chapter 11. Apostle Paul writes this: "For I receive from the Lord, what I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'" Please pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord's supper. We thank you for instituting it through your Son. We pray that you would now send the Spirit of Christ in this very place, so that this would not be a bare memorial, O Lord, but it would be an encounter with the living God, by faith in the words of God. We pray in Jesus name, amen.

Well, this morning we're going to be looking at the 13 magnificent verses, as the Apostle Paul presents, in more detail, his own ministry as a steward of mysteries. Truly God is the keeper of mysteries. Our God is a mysterious God. His sovereign plan is an unfolding of mysteries. He really does keep a lot of secrets. And the passage that we're looking at today gives us an indication of that. If you look at Verse 9, Paul talks about this “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” It says in Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever." So God has a whole array of secrets that He's holding to Himself, and He's paying out these secrets little by little, across redemptive history. Again, 1 Corinthians 2:7 speaks of this same thing. Paul says there, "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." So God's been keeping these secrets, hoarding this mystery to Himself from before the creation of the world. Again, Isaiah 45:15, and this verse, "Truly you are a God who hides Himself, oh God and Savior of Israel. A God who hides Himself." God hides Himself, He hides His plans, but then at the right time and in the right way, He unfolds it for His glory, and for our joy, and for our salvation. We have some of that. Now, that includes His people, His names, their specific names, we heard two testimonies today, of how God works specifically in their lives, and we know that God has chosen individuals by name from “before the creation of the world.”

I remember earlier in our family life as our kids were growing up, they would come across photos of Christy and I standing alone somewhere, and the kids would look at the picture, the little one, toddlers, and they say, "Mommy, daddy where was I? Where was I?" And so, I don't know when this phrase came into my head but I began saying it. "You were in the mind of God." That's where you were, you were in the mind of God. God was loving you and having a relationship with you in His own mind, even before He knit you together in your mother's womb. And so God is a keeper of mysteries. We already learned in Ephesians 1:4-5, "He chose us in Him before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will. God is the keeper of mysteries."

Keeping and Sharing Secrets to His Glory

Now, God has woven together a magnificent plan for His glory, and for our joy, and He is skillfully unfolding that plan a little at a time. He's like a skillful storyteller that has all these techniques. For example, foreshadowing. I was talking to my son about literature and foreshadowing, and I gave him some examples. Our God is a great foreshadower. He gives us hints and indications ahead of time of what he's planning on doing. It's called prophecy. But those prophesies are complex and they're mysterious and it's hard to put the whole picture together. Also, God unfolds His plan for our lives gradually and patiently. We don't always know what's just around the corner. I think it'd be very hard to live life that way, if we knew what was immediately going to come. If God told you by a prophet, "You will break your leg sometime this afternoon," how would you live? I'd want to go wrap myself in bubble wrap or something like that. And God would show all the different ways he can break a leg, even if you are completely protected in bubble wrap. But we wouldn't be able to live our lives and so God hides from us what He's about to do to us, and this is openly taught in scripture. 

For example, the call of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees. We have in Genesis 12:1, "The Lord had said to Abram, leave your country and your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." That's future tense. And so the author to Hebrews, in Hebrews 11, makes much of this. In Hebrews 11:8 he says, "By faith, Abraham when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going." So God hides from us, His plan. There are mysteries that He is unfolding. How about the Apostle Paul himself in Acts 20 and verse 22. Paul says this to some concerned brothers and sisters who are very, very worried for Paul's future and for his safety. And he says, "And now compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there." He doesn't know specifically what's going to happen. He knows he's going to suffer, that he knows. So God's glorious redemptive plan unfolds as a mystery, a mystery kept hidden in God and then revealed.

Now, when we come to the word mystery we should not think of it like Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles. You can hear this hideous hound baying in the distance, and your blood starts to curdle and you start to accumulate clues as you read the story and try to figure it out. Or Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express, and if you're a good mystery writer, you're going to put clues, but you gotta do some misdirection, so it's not obvious and all that. I was reading about techniques on writing, I'm not planning on writing a mystery novel, but you've got to put in the clue, so that's fair game and you can put it together. It's not that kind of a mystery, it's not like that. Actually we can't have figured it out. It's not something you can reason out by your intellect. It's something that God glorifies Himself by revealing. Something you could not have known. That's what the mystery means in the New Testament. It's something that God has kept back for His own sovereign purposes, and at the right time, He pays it out into human history, by the prophets, by the apostles, He lets us know.

The Immediate Focus: Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles

And so Paul here, the apostle, is the revealer of aspects of this mystery. And he is in some ways the secondary focus of this chapter. There's a lot here about Paul, the revealer of the mystery, the prisoner of mystery. And we can begin by looking at Paul the prisoner of this mystery. Look in verse 1, it says, "For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles". So the immediate focus he puts here, the spotlight he puts on himself for this reason, “I, Paul,” he speaks. But what follows is one long glorious interruption. Paul does this from time to time. He'll be going in a certain direction, train of thought, and then just stops and goes off in a different direction and in some ways, never returns. He does this in Romans 5, when he talks about original sin and he interrupts himself and he never comes back, but we get his idea. I find that fascinating.

Now, in this particular case, Paul actually does come back with the same verbal pattern, and that is the language for this reason. So in verse 1, "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ, He is for the sake of you Gentiles," and then verse 14, "For this reason,” like I was saying and then goes on from there. Now Paul's about to pray for these Gentile Christians. That's what he's going to do in verses 14 through 21. The second most glorious prayer in the Bible, that is foreshadowing. So when I get to that you're going to find out what I think is the most glorious prayer in the Bible, we can talk about that. But Paul's about to pray for these Ephesian Christians, and he's going to pray that Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith, and we're going to spend some time richly meditating on that. "And that they would have power together with all the saints to grasp the dimensions of Christ's love for them. How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ." 

One Long, Glorious Interruption

He's going to pray that for them, but before he does that, we have this long, glorious interruption. If you look at verse 1 and 2, "For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles," verse 2, "Surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you." Now between verse 1 and 2, in most translations you have a dash. The editors put a dash in there. Not in every one, but in most translations. And so, they're acknowledging Paul's breaking his train of thought here to go in a different direction.

Deeper Knowledge of Paul Before the Prayer

Now, he's wanting to give them, the Ephesian Christians, deeper knowledge about himself before he prays for them. Now, in verse 1 of chapter 1, he's already introduced himself to them as an Apostle. “Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus.” He's already done that, so he's introduced himself to them, and they know him, some of them, because he ministered there. But he wants them to understand his special role in the unfolding redemptive plan of God. Paul had a unique role in redemptive history.

Other than Jesus Christ, I would say that the Apostle Paul is the most significant figure of the New Testament. I think that's actually easy to prove. God used the Apostle Paul to write at least 13 books of the New Testament, some debate about the Book of Hebrews. And Paul's conversion, is the most significant event other than things directly tied to Christ, the most significant event in the Book of Acts. Three times, we have an account of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, very significant event. And then, once the story of the Book of Acts is unfolded, once you get to Acts 13, it's pretty much the Apostle Paul from then on. From Acts 13 to 21 is Paul's ministry, and planting churches, his missionary journeys, and all that. And from Acts 22 to 28, it's Paul's imprisonment and his various defenses before the Jews in the Romans. And so Paul's life and his ministry is very much the issue of the whole book of Acts.

Now, the Book of Acts itself, the theme of the Book of Acts is the spreading out of the Gospel. Geographically, yes, but also from Jew only in the upper room, to Jew plus Gentile, to the ends of the earth. That's the theme of the Book of Acts, Acts 1:8, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And so, the idea is, we're moving from Jew only to Jew plus Gentile, and there are very significant milestones along the way in the Book of Acts concerning that. The spectacular conversion of Saul of Tarsus, from a church destroying pharisee, to a church building apostle, is a spectacular display of the sovereign power of God and grace. But also it gives us an indication of the mystery that Paul's talking about here in Ephesians 3. Paul would say it's great proof for the power of God in His saving intentions toward the Gentiles. His intention to save the Gentiles. His own conversion is proof of that. “Because of me, you can know how much God wants to save you, Gentiles.”

Big Concern: Understanding Paul, His Ministry, His Imprisonment

His big concern here in these 13 verses, is that the Ephesian Christians would understand him, his ministry, his imprisonment, so that they understand who it is that's praying for them in the second half of the chapter. Paul talks a lot about himself in verses 1 through 13. He begins with, "I Paul," and then he talks about description of his calling, his insights, his ministry, his preaching, his stewardship of the Gospel. Vital for them to understand Paul's role as the apostle to the Gentiles. He was the apostle to the Gentiles.

So he begins in verse 1, "For this reason.” For this reason." For what reason?  Well, when you see a phrase like that, something like therefore, you're going to want to go back and say, "Where were we just now, just a moment ago?" And Ephesians 2, the whole chapter has been about how God raised the Gentiles from the dead spiritually. They were “dead in their transgressions and sins, and how God made them alive in Christ by a miracle of His sovereign grace.” "These Gentiles," he says in verses 11 and following, 11 through 15 or so, "were aliens and strangers, and outsiders and they're excluded by the law of Moses." But how God sent Christ, in Christ and His death on the cross has destroyed the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” and He's brought these Gentiles who were once far away, “He's brought them near through the blood of Christ.” And how together, with Jews, Jews and Gentiles together, now borrowing that image from 1 Peter, now as “living stones” spiritually resurrected, they're built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. He's got this image of a spiritual temple that's rising at the end of Ephesians 2. Rising and becoming more glorious, more magnificent, larger all the time. As more and more unreached people groups are coming to faith in Christ. More and more individuals are being brought into the church, and it's this magnificent living temple, spiritual structure, rising to become a dwelling place in which God lives by His Spirit. "For this reason, I'm going to pray for you that you would know how much God loves you, and you would know how much Christ desires to dwell inside your hearts by faith." He's going to talk about all that. He wants them to understand, he wants to understand his ministry, and he especially wants them to understand his sufferings.

“Prisoner of Christ Jesus,” Not of Man

Look, at the end of this section in verse 13. His great concern is that they not be shocked, or put off by hearing that he's in prison. We've been talking this morning, much about prison ministry, and how the apostle Paul was in prison for the Gospel, and he doesn't want them to be stunned by it. Often, as we've heard this morning, there comes a certain stigma, social stigma, it's reasonable to understand that. And Paul wants them to understand actually, that his imprisonment is for their glory, it actually is their glory. He says in verse 13, he says, "I don't want you to be discouraged when you hear about my imprisonment, or my sufferings for you, my chains which are your glory." Paul's chains, he would say, "Are essential to the spread of the Gospel. They're essential." The messengers of the Gospel must suffer or the Gospel cannot spread.

It's very plain. It's taught again and again. Paul teaches it in a very difficult teaching in Colossians 1:24. And there he says, "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the church." What's lacking? What wasn't finished at the cross. I thought everything was finished. No, no, not everything. Redemption was accomplished at the cross, but it wasn't applied yet. It had to be applied by people, by messengers, by evangelists, and missionaries, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the blood of the Cross is sufficient for redemption, but it had to be applied, and that had to be by suffering. And it's in the exact same pattern of Christ crucified. Jesus said in John 12:24, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself, a single seed, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." You think about that. Image much fruit, and in the center of that fruit there are more seeds aren't there? And those seeds, they need to fall into the ground and die, as well. The blood of martyrs is seed for the church, that's how the church spreads. "Now, I don't want you to be discouraged because of my sufferings. They are your glory. You wouldn't have the glory of eternal life if I hadn't been willing to suffer." He's getting them ready, that they would be willing to suffer too. Let me just pause and ask, are you?

Are you willing to suffer for the spread of the Gospel? Are you willing to suffer to bring the Gospel to co-workers, and fellow students, and neighbors? Are you willing to suffer anything at all for the reaching of unreached people groups? Are you willing to disadvantage yourself at all, financially? Are you willing to suffer at all in terms of the way you spend your life because without suffering those unreached unengaged people groups that people haven't heard of Jesus yet, will not be reached. What's going to happen is, God is going to raise up messengers who are willing like Paul to suffer, and they know that their sufferings will be the glory of those people, and that's what Paul's getting at. So he's introducing them to himself and he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Isn't that a great expression? He's a prisoner of Christ Jesus. “I'm not a prisoner of the Jews, I'm not a prisoner of the Romans, I'm not a prisoner of any human being. Haven't you heard what God did to my brother Peter? How he was in chains and Herod was going to kill him the next day, and God sent one angel, and the chains fell off, the prison door swung open, and Peter walked out.” God could do that for me. Any time, but He doesn't choose to. I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

It's the very thing that the Lord had said to Ananias, when he sent Ananias to go baptize Paul, Saul of Tarsus, that one. Says, "Lord. I don't want to go, send someone else." I love that moment. He says, "Go. This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."” So my sufferings are your glory and I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus. That's why I'm in chains. Christ Jesus wants me in chains. And it's for your benefit, for the sake of you Gentiles,” he's saying that. “So don't be discouraged because of my sufferings.”

“Surely You Have Heard of Me”

In verses 2 through 5, we see Paul the reveal of the mystery. “Surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. That is the mystery made known to be by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this then, you'll be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.” So he begins in verse 2, "Surely, you have heard of me, you've heard a lot of things about me. How God made me a steward of His grace." That's the idea here, administration, a steward of the grace of God. Another word, that idea, is of management, somebody who is entrusted with someone else's possessions. You think about a servant in a household, a wealthy man, a wealthy owner gives to a servant management over his household. Now, the possessions in the household aren't his, they belong to the master. Some day, the master's going to return and ask for an accounting. Paul saw himself that way, as a steward of the mysteries of God. He's administering the grace of God, he's administering God's grace. "It was given to me for you," he says. And so they managed them. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, "So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now," he says in the next verse, 1 Corinthians 4:2, "it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." “So, someday I'm going to give an account to God, for my ministry,” Paul's saying. “Some day I'm going to give an account to God, to Christ, for what I did with the Gospel and these opportunities He's given me, I'm a steward of it. And it was given to me for you, for your benefit so that you might receive”.

Mystery!

Now he gets into mystery language, as we've already seen in verse 3. “That is, the mystery made known to me by Revelation, as I have already written briefly.” That's something we could never have figured out by reason or by science. You can't set up experiments at MIT or any other place, where you can reason out or tease out these mysteries. It's not like that. Paul uses the word mystery again in verse 4, "And reading this then you'll be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ." Paul has special insight into the mystery of Christ. God took the scales off of his eyes, physically so he'd be physically able to see, but then he also showed him things that he had never shown anyone that had ever lived up to that point. And those things he wrote about in the book of Romans and his other epistles, they're just staggering, the kind of things you could spend your whole lifetime studying and not fully grasp. These moments of illumination, these moments of radiant light, of “seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ,” in ways that we can hardly even imagine. “You'll be able to understand my insight, my illumination into the mystery of Christ.”

And this mystery, he says, was not previously revealed. Look at verse five, "It was not made known to men and other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets." This is how we know the mystery. No one discovered it in a cave anywhere, or figured it out by reason. Plato, Aristotle, none of these brilliant men could do it. God revealed it by His holy apostles and prophets, that's what he's saying here. He revealed it by them and it's now been made known. Now, we are told in Romans chapter 1, that people all over the world are able to figure out by looking at creation that there is a God, a creator God. They're able to reason that out that He is powerful, and perhaps that He's loving or compassionate. The attributes of God, “His invisible nature and His eternal power are clearly seen being understood from what has been made,” Romans 1. But you can't do that with Christ. You can't reason Christ out by natural revelation. It has to be revealed by the word, by special revelation, by apostles and prophets, that's what he's saying.

The Mystery Plainly Declared: Full Jew-Gentile Unity

Now, he says a bit of a strange thing here, he's saying now, the Old Testament people didn't know this; they didn't understand. Now, what is this mystery? I'm going to tell you what it is, and I'll show you how amazing this is. The mystery is that the Gentiles are every bit as much a part of the Body of Christ, every bit as much heirs with Abraham, of the promises of God and Abraham as are the Jews. That's the mystery. Is the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the mystery. He said they didn't know it in the past as we know it now. Now, that's strange, because those of you that heard much of the preaching that I did in the Book of Isaiah, you'll see again and again and again, there are missions themes that flow from Isaiah. Again and again, it almost seems like a New Testament book sometimes it's so clear. You remember how in Isaiah 49:6, God the Father speaks to Jesus, to God the son, saying to Him, "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob, and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth." Well, that's seven centuries before the Apostle Paul was doing this ministry. So what do you mean, Paul? What do you mean that people in the old covenant era and previous generations didn't know it? Well, I think it's pretty clear that they didn't put it all together. It's kind of like this, it's like prophecy, Old Testament prophecy, like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Have you ever done one of those really, really big jigsaw puzzles? I bet you don't take the approach I take. You can talk to my wife about what I do with jigsaw puzzles, it's pathetic. My engineer side comes out, and I take all of 1000 or 500 pieces, and I put them in a matrix X by Y, and I just go systematically and find the next piece. That's what I do. And you're saying, where's the art in that? There's no art in that, but it works, alright? And you, by your weird techniques, you're looking at that same piece again and again, trying to make it fit where it didn't fit 20 minutes ago. You know you've done it, alright? I never do that, I pick it up, try it once, doesn't work, put it back.

Now, my kids all say I'm a geek. You figure that out, see if I am. But at any rate, it is clear from the reaction of Jewish Christians to the advance of the Gospel to the Gentiles, how they hadn't put it together. Isn't that obvious? How did Peter react to going to Cornelius' house to preach to him? He did not want to do it. And God had to show him three times a sheet let down from Heaven with unclean animals that Jesus had already declared clean, but Peter hadn't gotten that message yet. And that he was told, "Get up Peter, kill and eat," and he said, "Never, Lord, I've never eaten anything impure or unclean,” “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean!" Three times, like drilling into concrete. And then the Holy Spirit comes powerfully on him, telling him to go to Cornelius the Gentile's house, and he gets there and finds a house full of Gentiles waiting to hear the Gospel. And you can imagine the moment as he gets to the threshold, and he's like, “yeah,” and then steps across. This is the most movement I'll ever do in preaching right here. But at any rate, right across the threshold. And he says right at that moment, Acts 10:28, "You were well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him, but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean." Ah, he made the connection. He wasn't talking about animals, He's talking about people. God can make an impure man, or woman, or child clean. He has the power to do that. And he's thinking about Gentiles. And then while he's preaching, the Holy Spirit comes down on these assembled Gentiles, very much like what happened on the day of Pentecost. And this is what it says in Acts 10:24-25. "While Peter were still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came and all heard the message," verse 45, "the circumcised believers" Jewish believers in Jesus, Jewish Christians, "who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles." They're amazed, they just never thought that would ever happen. That shows they hadn't put it together. It was not revealed to people in previous generations.

And then in chapter 11, the whole first half of the chapter is they have to go back over the same ground again with other Jews, Jewish Christians, who weren't there and who didn't believe it and were upset: "You went into the house of uncircumcised men, and you ate with them!" Then Peter goes through the whole thing again, the whole thing's repeated. He explains it, how the Holy Spirit came down, there were all these witnesses that said, yes, that's exactly what happened. "And when they heard it, they had no further objections, and they praised God, saying, so then God has granted even to the Gentiles repentance unto life."

So, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, all of those profits hadn't figured it out yet. Not the way Paul has. "It is now revealed" verse 5, "now revealed by God's Holy apostles and prophets, now at this time by these specially gifted anointed ones," apostles we know, the 12 that the Lord chose, and then he was replaced at the end of Acts 1, and then along came Paul “as one untimely born,” those are the apostles. Prophets in this context, I think, must be New Testament prophets, like James and Jude who are not apostles and others who are able to speak immediately the Word of God in that apostolic era. There's a lot of debate on whether the gift of prophecy still goes on today, but we know at least then, in local churches, prophets were able to speak immediately and say, "Thus says the Lord." So the apostles and prophets now are able to reveal this mystery, that's what he's saying.

Gentiles Heirs Together with Israel

Now, what is the mystery? I've already told you, but look at it in verse 6, plainly declared, "This mystery is that through the Gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise that is in Christ Jesus." Oh, the riches of those words. We Gentile believers in Jesus, we are heirs of everything God promised to Israel. We're heirs with Israel. We are going to inherit everything promised to the sons of Abraham. That is staggering. Would have been staggering, it was staggering to the Jewish believers, heirs together with Israel. And what was that, what was promised to Abraham? Well, first and foremost, God himself: "Fear not, Abram. I am your shield, I am your very great reward." You'll get me, Abraham at the end of your life. Gentiles are heirs together with that promise.

Well, but not only that, Abraham, we're told in Romans 4:13, was designated to be “heir of the world.” So that means that through Abraham, the blessings of not just the Promised Land, but of the whole world comes to his sons and daughters. So that means that we stand to inherit the whole world, we are heirs of the world through Abraham. That's amazing. We are heirs together with Israel, we are members together of the same body. We're not second-class citizens, we're not going to be licking the dust off the feet of the Jews and kissing the hem of the garment and all of that, these images of total domination that some Jewish patriots might have had, zealots might have had back then. No, no, no, we're equal citizens with Jewish believers in Christ. And we are sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Sharers in that promise.

You know what I think of that? There's this image in Romans 11 of a cultivated olive tree, with the root system in the patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Paul speaks of nourishing sap being drawn through that root system up to the branches. And we, Gentile believers in Christ, were cut out of some wild olive tree, cut out, and we were grafted in, and now are drinking in life-giving, spiritually life-giving sap from the root system of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What is that sap? It's the Word of God, it's the promises made to Israel, the promises of Christ.

 Gentiles Sharers Together of the Promise in Christ

And so in Christ, “all the promises of God are yes and amen,” and that includes too us Gentile believers. So we are able to drink in benefit from the promises made to Israel. Now, you may say, well, give me an example. Alright, here's a good example, how about this? How about Jeremiah 29:11? Some people say, oh, that's my favorite verse. What is it? Well, it goes like this, "I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord. 'Plans for your welfare and not for evil. To give you a future and a hope.'" I know a lot of Christians that say, that's my life verse, I love that verse. Well, how do you know, oh Gentile, that you have anything to do with that verse at all? Read the context, it's all about God restoring the Jews to the Promised Land. You could be accused of ripping it out of context; not so fast. We are able to suck benefit from the promises made to Israel now in the New Covenant. And we're able to see beyond the mere restoration of a small number of Jews to the Promised Land to the big picture of what God is doing in the restoration language. He's giving us a home forever in the New Heaven and New Earth. And we're able to get happy about that as Gentile believers in Jesus. We are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus, that only through the Gospel. Not by the Law of Moses, but through the Gospel.

Paul a Servant of the Gospel

That's the mystery, that's what's being revealed now. Paul is the proclaimer of that mystery. Look at verse 7-9: "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things." So Paul calls himself here a servant of the Gospel. "I am a servant of the Gospel." He said in another place, "I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." So Paul considered his ministry a gift of God's grace, and his ministry also a display of God's power. "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power." 

Paul’s Ministry: A Display of God’s Power

Now, you know what I mean by that, it's a transforming power. Paul began that day breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, hating Christ; hating him. Hating Christians. Hardened in his heart. And he was nearing Damascus with letters in his hand from the high priest, and he was about to beat up more Christians and arrest them, when suddenly a light came from Heaven and he fell to the ground. “And he heard a voice speaking to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he answered, ‘I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do.’" Somewhere in there came the sovereign power of God through Christ, through the Holy Spirit, transforming Saul and making him a Christian. Somewhere in there he had a vision of the glory of God in the face of the resurrected Christ. Maybe right before he said, "Who are you, Lord?" Somewhere in there in he called Jesus Lord. I think he already knew the answer to the question when he said, "Who are you, Lord?" “Well, just to make it clear, I am Jesus.” 

Paul’s Deep Humility about Himself

Somewhere in there was the power of God for Saul's conversion, and that's when his ministry began. And he had deep humility about himself. He said, "I'm less than the least of all God's people, and this grace was given me. I am nothing. God is everything. God is everything.” Paul often made little of himself, often. He said, "I am less than the least of all God's saints here, less than the least of all God's people. I'm the worst Christian on Earth," that's what he would say. Actually in another place in 1 Timothy 1, we've been studying on Wednesday nights, how Paul says in 1 Timothy 1, he says, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." Not was the worst, I am the worst. "But for that very reason, I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life." And he says in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, "I am the least of the apostles, and I do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am." 

So Paul makes very little of himself. If you came to Paul and said, "Paul, how do you explain your great success? You're an author, you're a successful revival speaker, you're a successful church planner. How do you explain your success? Tell me about yourself." He's like, "It has nothing to do with me. It was in spite of who I am and was, not because of it." Now, we have another 7 or 8 pages to go on this sermon, we're stopping here. I hate doing this, but I'm not going to hurry through all this good material. How do you hurry through the “unspeakable riches of Christ” that's coming in the next phrase? So let me just stop here, and we'll resume in a couple of weeks. I'm going on vacation. So this is a big interruption, an interruption in the middle of an interruption, but it's okay, because I am not going to hurry through the “unspeakable riches of Christ.

Just by way of application, let me begin by just inviting any of you who are here who know yourselves to be outside of Christ, I just believe with all my heart that God sovereignly brought you here today. You've heard two testimonies of men whose lives have been radically changed by the Gospel. And then we've been looking at the Apostle Paul and how his life was radically changed by the Gospel. There's no accident that God brought you here today. I'm just pleading with you to repent and trust in Christ crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of your sins. And if you have any questions about that, any question about the Gospel, come and talk to us, talk to Steve, talk to Mark, talk to Jack, talk to me, talk to any of the elders at the corner or the doors of the church, talk to us.

And then secondly, if I could just urge you to consider the great majesty of God in the unfolding of mysteries. God has more mysteries to show us. It makes life really exciting. Go to Him and say, "Lord, I don't want to miss your purpose for my life. I don't want to live a boring, unexciting life, a life that is not filled with the glory of God and with the work of God. God, am I missing it? Do you have a calling on my life, a ministry for me to do? God, show me what it is. You put a calling on the Apostle Paul's life. I'm not going to be the apostle to the Gentiles, but God what do you have for me to do? It might be prison ministry, as we've already talked about; it fits perfectly. Paul is talking about his being a prisoner. But it might be something else, might be international ministry, it might be others. I'm asking you to assess and see how is God calling you to serve?

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned today, we thank you for Ephesians 3, and we thank you for the joy that we have in studying these words. I thank you for the Apostle Paul, and the way you worked in his life sovereignly. And God, I pray that you would just be taking these words and pressing them to the hearts of all that are hearing today, that they would know the Gospel and that they would find joy in the Gospel and salvation. And Lord, those of us who are already Christians, help us to see the glory of God in the face of Christ and the fact that he has revealed, Lord, you have revealed the mystery of Christ to us already, help us to be thankful. And help us to find our place of service, whatever it may be. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Amen. Well, the world, as I look around, the world is filled with spectacular buildings, and I have an appreciation for the art and science of architecture. I was a mechanical engineer, but I think I esteem architecture more than any of the sciences that were taught at MIT. I’m just kind of an architect, want to be. I know we have some architects in our church and you can come afterwards and say, “Thank you for plugging my profession,” but there's such a combination of science and art in a beautiful building. And I have been in some really beautiful buildings in my time. Recently, I had the opportunity to be in the most spectacular cathedral I'd ever seen in Prague, in the Czech Republic. And my good friend, Preston, is here today. I didn't know you were going to be here, brother, but it was Saint Vitus Cathedral. Have you been in there? Unbelievable, a spectacular cathedral there in Prague, in the Czech Republic. The construction in that building began in the year 1344, went on for centuries. It's over 400 feet long, 200 feet wide, almost 270 feet high. It's a 27-story high building, has amazing flying buttresses, stunning stained glass windows. Some of the stained glass was just spectacular the afternoon that we were there. It was a very hot day. Calvin and I were there, and the light was just streaming in through the stained glass. And there are all these different scenes that you could see as you looked at the stained glass. Biblical scenes, scenes of creation, of the death and resurrection of Christ, the final judgment.

I've also seen some church history as well, especially from that region of the world, Bohemia and different scenes from church history. It's really quite amazing. Many of the people that worship throughout the centuries there were illiterate, and so they just got a lot of education by looking at these stained glass windows, and I can't even imagine all the work and artistry and skill that went into that structure.

Now, from the beginning of time, people, human beings, have thrown themselves into architecture, and they built spectacular buildings, and the work of the architect has been on display throughout the pages of scripture, for good or ill. And we see, for example, the Tower of Babel, which was built with the state-of-the-art technology, and they found ways to build stronger bricks and then higher buildings and they were trying to make a stairway to Heaven, really, and make a name for themselves so they wouldn't be scattered throughout the world, but God interfered with that building project and began the start of nations and language at that point. But it didn't end there. You have, for example, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, which I've never seen with my own eyes, but which is just a marvel of achievement and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And I think, as far as I know, the only one that's still standing.

Ancient building projects have been the fruit of human ingenuity and engineering. They're still on display like the Colosseum in Rome, which I've never seen, the Great Wall of China, which I have seen. The Taj Mahal, which I would love to visit at some point, been to India several times but I've never seen it.

Buildings of the Bible

The Jews were especially proud of the temple of Solomon. They were amazed at its beauty and at its skill, and they really put their faith in it and they trusted in it, that it would protect them from all harm. As a matter of fact, as judgment was looming in the days of Jeremiah, Jeremiah had to warn them not to trust in the temple of the Lord. So do not say "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." In other words, just keep saying that like a mantra, over and over, that God's never going to destroy us, because we have this beautiful temple, but even was going on in the days of Jesus and his disciples. You remember when they went to the temple of Herod, which had been rebuilt and built up over 46 years, and was really pretty spectacular. And as the disciples were leaving, in Mark 13:1, as they were leaving the temple, one of Jesus's disciples said to Him, "Look, teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings," just in awe of the building and the structure.

The Ephesians were that way too, about their own temple, the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the great wonders and also one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And they were fanatically committed to that temple as a holy place and as a place of lucrative business as well. And we know the story about the riot in Ephesus, in Acts 19 in verse 34, where they all shouted in unison for about two hours, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." I think the funniest part about that is most of the people who were there, didn't know why they were there. And so they just joined in. Talk about a mob mentality. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." Why are we here? What's going on?  And that these things are going on and they're just rioting. And then the city clerk quiets the crowd and says, "Men of Ephesus, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the Temple of the great Artemis, and of her image, which fell from Heaven?" They were very proud of that temple, of that holy building, that holy structure. Antipater of Sidon, who compiled the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. That's how we even know what they are, described the temple with these words. "I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots along the top. And I have seen the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids. I've seen all of that and the vast Tomb of Mausolus, but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy. And I said, apart from Olympus, the sun has never looked on anything so great." That was the Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians.

It was easy for the Ephesians to boast about their impressive temple. But Paul, here in the text you just heard read, sets before the eyes of their heart something far more glorious, a structure far more expansive and dramatic, and radiant with the glory of God, and that is the Church of Jesus Christ. Something that will supplant every building project that ever has been, is now, or ever will be. The greatest building project in the history of the world is the Church of Jesus Christ. And I do not mean the cathedrals. I don't mean this building that we assemble in every week. I don't mean any of the church buildings, the Crystal Cathedral, any of these places that have been built for worship.

But I'm talking about the spiritual temple of God, I'm talking about the Church of the living God, the church of Jesus Christ. It's a spiritual temple, that we are told, and we're going to look at it today, made up of “living stones.” “Living stones,” individual believers from every generation in human history. Now, God had the blueprint for that, the plan of it “before the foundation of the world,” before God even said, "Let there be light," He had the whole structure worked out. God is the architect who made the plans and God is also the builder who was executing the plans. And God is the owner who will get all the glory, and God is the dweller who will live there for all eternity in the center of his people. God the Father gave the command, God the Son paid for it in blood, and God the Spirit is now constructing it. It's going on before our spiritual eyes, even as we speak. Look again at verses 18-22, "For through Him, we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit." Those are the verses we're going to look at today.

“Remember What You Were”

Now, we begin by reminding ourselves that we Gentile believers, the Ephesian Gentile believers, were formerly excluded, but now having free access. This whole section in Ephesians 2 has been a lesson of the journey of salvation for the Ephesians. Where they were when the Gospel first came to them and where they are now and will be for all eternity. They began in verses 1-3 of chapter 2 as living dead. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were, by nature, objects of wrath.”That's where the Gentile believers began, spiritually dead, “enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil, could not escape, by nature, objects of wrath.” The wrath of God could have fallen at any moment and God would have been just in condemning them and sending them to Hell.

That's how they began. “But God,” verses 4-6, “but God, because of the great love with which He loved us, God who is rich in mercy, even when we were dead in transgressions and sins, made us alive with Christ. It is by grace you have been saved.” How rich is that? And then verses 8-10, celebrate the richness of God's salvation by grace, “For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast, for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” Now, when I look at Ephesians 2:10 and then I go to the end of the chapter, and I'm finding about a structure, a spiritual temple that's rising, I bring the two together. We are being crafted by God to be a temple, a spiritual temple, and we are actually workers in that temple to enlist, He has enlisted our aid so that that we can help construct it. We are also workers in this temple. We'll talk more about that at the end of the message. That's Ephesians 2:10.

Gentiles Now Brought Near

Now, Paul wanted to be certain that the Ephesian Christians, these Gentile believers, understood how they had formerly been excluded. Look at verses 11 and 12, “Therefore remember, that formally, you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves in circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men. Remember that at that time, you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” That's what you were. All of us were that way. We were excluded. We were outsiders, but now, in verse 13, we have been, “brought near through the blood of Christ.” “We who were once far away, we have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”

And how is that possible? Well, Christ destroyed the barrier, the “dividing wall” that the Law of Moses had set up. God had set up barriers forbidding the Gentiles from inclusion among the people of God. The laws of circumcision, the dietary regulations, the concern for genealogy, all of those things were barriers and dividing walls, the animal sacrificial system, but Jesus came and destroyed it all. Look at verses 14-16. “He himself is our peace, who has made the two, one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the Law, with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and in this one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which He put to death or hostility.”

The Gospel of Peace Proclaimed by Christ

That's the language of reconciliation, the language of blood atonement. Jesus Christ has taken our sins on Himself, and He suffered and died on the cross. He shed his blood, and He received in himself the due penalty for our wickedness and our sin. He was our substitute. And if we simply believe in Him, repenting of our sins, and casting all of our hope and our trust on Christ, we are forgiven. We who were once outsiders, we have now been “brought near through the blood of Christ.” And so, verse 17, he says, “He came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to those who were near.” That's Jesus Christ. So, that's all by way of introduction to bring us up to this point, in verse 18. Jesus Christ has come and preached peace to you through the Gospel.

Isn't that marvelous? Can't you picture in your mind's eye what it says in John 20, on the night of that first day of the week, what we celebrate every year at Easter Sunday, how Jesus came. And though the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and said, "Peace be with you." Isn't that magnificent? He came and preached peace to those who are near at that moment, Jews, and said, God's not at war with you anymore. God is at peace with you now. “Having been justified through faith, we have peace with God,” but also, he came by means of the apostles, by means of the missionaries, by means of evangelists. He came out to the town of the Ephesians to Ephesus, and he preached peace to them, too, those who were once far away. And he said, God is saying, in Christ, peace be with you.

Free Access by Christ in the Spirit

If you repent and believe, there's peace with God. And therefore, we have, according to the text, free access to God. Look at verse 18, "For through Him, we both,” Jewish believer, and Gentile believer in Christ, “we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." So he's expanding now, including Jewish believers. They were all one, Jewish believers and Gentile believers. We are all free in our access to God. We can get into the presence of Almighty God, any time. Actually, in the past, everyone was excluded, not just Gentiles, but Jews as well, excluded. Apart from the redeeming work of Christ, we'd have all been outsiders. The real barrier, the real “dividing wall of hostility” was between us and God and it was our sins. The holiness of God, and he could not be in fellowship with sinners like us without it being atoned for.

The message again and again in the Old Covenant, as we've seen was, "This far, you may come in no further." We saw how God spoke to Moses out of the flames of the burning bush, and there was this bush burning and it was not consumed and Moses went over to see this great sight. And as he drew near, he was immediately told, "Do not come any closer." That's the mediator of the Old Covenant. What is he told? “Do you not come any closer. Take off your shoes, for the ground on which you're standing is holy ground, because of my holiness, because of your sinfulness, you cannot come into my presence.” Even the high priest was excluded. Leviticus 16, "You must tell Aaron and his sons that He may not come into my presence anytime he chooses." Just ponder that from Leviticus 16. He may not come in any time he chooses. No one else may ever come in. But even the sons of Aaron may only come in once a year, and never without blood. We're told in the Book of Hebrews. So tell him he may not come. He does not have free access.

Yes, but we do. We have free access. Look at Verse 18 again. “In him, we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” How sweet is that?  We know that Jesus, when He died on the cross, and when He said, "It is finished." The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and He opened for us, it says, in the Book of Hebrews, “a new and living way into the very presence of God. And he has cleansed our conscience by the blood of Christ,” God has. “And He has washed us with pure water, and we are cleansed, and we are invited, even commanded to come into the very presence of God.” “We have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

So it's the same in the verse I just quoted a moment ago, in Romans 5:1-2. If you'll look at the second verse. Romans 5:1 says, "Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have the peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." All of us, I say, all of us underestimate the privilege of that access. Every single one of us underestimates, and under-uses the access. We don't pray enough. We don't come into the presence of God enough. We are characterized, tragically, by prayerlessness. And this text is in a very sweet way, Ephesians 2:18, beckoning to you to come into the presence of God more than you do, to come in again and again, to “pray without ceasing,” to live your lives in fellowship with God. Having free access into the presence of God. As it says in Hebrews 4:16, “let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” So we can approach the throne of Almighty God any time, bringing any burden, great or small, right into the presence of our heavenly Father. By the power of the Spirit, we have access. We all do.

Spiritual Access, Not Physical Access

This access is spiritual, it's not physical. This is the very thing that the Lord was preparing the human race for. In His amazing conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, you remember that? Remember that conversation He had with her, and He's talking about springs of living water flowing out from within us, from which we can drink any time? We're going to talk about that more at the end of  Ephesians 3, I can't wait. It's such a sweet meditation on how the Lord yearns to have intimate fellowship with us all the time by the power of the Spirit. Jesus brings up, as you remember, her sin. "Go call your husband and come back." You remember? "I have no husband." And Jesus said, "You're right in saying you have no husband, the fact is, you've had five husbands and the man you're now living with is not your husband. What you've said is quite true." A very interesting way of dealing with her statement. She said, "I perceive sir, that you are a prophet. Now our Father said that we ought to worship on this mountain and you Jews claim we should worship on that mountain." So That was very deft of her I think clever. “Alright, let's change the subject and quickly.” She brings up the issue of a place of worship and this is very relevant to the text we're looking at today, And Jesus began to reveal the fullness of the Father's plan to this woman, this Samaritan woman, and He spoke these words, “believe me, woman, a time is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit in truth.”

What is He saying? He's saying there's going to come a time very soon when the Old Covenant will be abolished, destroyed, made obsolete and you will not need to go to one particular geographical location anymore to worship God, you'll be able to worship God by the spirit anywhere in the world. Very thing that the Jews were forbidden to do. “You may not worship God under every spreading tree and on every high mountain, you can't do that, you have to go to the one place I chose.” And they had these pilgrimages to the one place that God chose, Jerusalem. But we are free to worship anywhere. Now, I'm not against buildings, I'm not against the structure, I'm very grateful for them during a downpour, aren't you? I praise God for the air conditioning, which works so well to keep us generally Cool. I find that I preach better to colder people. So the hotter it is the sleepier you all get and me too.

So the structure is needed because we have bodies and I think this is a beautiful building and I'm not against the buildings that people erect to worship God, I'm not against it, I'm just saying He's not confined to that space. And believe me, I'm not saying you don't need to come to church on Sunday, you wouldn't believe how many people kind of quote Jesus, in John 4 and say, “I can worship anywhere, I don't have to be in church on Sunday. “We'll get to that toward the end. That's not what I'm saying, but what I am saying is, there isn't just one locus, one place of worship anymore, it's gone. Now, we can worship God anywhere. Just as Stephen saw or foresaw, so plainly, in Acts 7:48, “the Most High does not live in houses made by men,” and so we are able to worship God anywhere in this spiritual temple.

Now, in Verse 19, he broadens out, to give us a sense of the greatness of the church. The greatness of what has happened to these Ephesian Christians, these Gentiles, what they are now, a part of, they underestimate the church and he wants to help them to see the greatness of the church. Look at verse 19, “Consequently, you Gentiles are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household.” Now, in the New Testament, there are lots of images for the Church but here we have three right in this passage that we're looking at. The Church is a nation of which we are citizens, the church is a family of which we are adopted members, and the church is a building of which we are “living stones.” Now later in Ephesians 4, we'll add a fourth beautiful image, the Church is the body of which we are living members. That just shows the amazing complexity of the Church. We need all of these metaphors. Can I just say to you as an aside the Church is the grandest, glorious work that God has done in history. This is the work of God. This is the greatest display of the glory of God is the Church of Jesus Christ. That's what he's doing. So look at each of these images.

Nation: No Longer Outsiders, Now Citizens

First, nation. We are no longer outsiders now we are citizens, all Christians everywhere are welcome, right into the presence of God. Our status has changed forever, we're no longer aliens, we're no longer outsiders, we are now citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Our citizenship is in Heaven, it says in Philippians 3, we are citizens. Christ is the King and we are His subjects, and Gentile Christians are every bit as much citizens as Jewish Christians. Equal Access, equal privileges.

Family: Adopted Members of God’s Household

Secondly, family. We are all, every one of us, adopted members of God's household. Now, the Greek word household here is a rich and full word, the Ephesians would have understood it well, would have to do with a wealthy man and his family, and his estate. And so that's the issue of this household, a grand estate, a large and wealthy family, and Paul asserts that we are beloved, adopted members of this family of God. Back in Ephesians 1:4-6, we have these words “in love,” speaking of God the Father, “in love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace.” It says in John 1:12-13, “As many as received Him, as many as believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” And then in Romans 8:15-17, “For you did not receive the Spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of son-ship or of adoption by which we cry ‘Abba Father.’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit, that we are the children of God. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs with Christ, co-heirs with Christ” and that's what we are.

Building: A Temple Rising

And the third image here is of a building that's rising and becoming more and more built up more and more glorious, a more and more elaborate structure all the time. This building, it says in verse 20 is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.” Now, this building has a long history, if you look back at the history of the Temple, and before that to the history of the tabernacle, the tabernacle was the start of this idea, of a place where God would dwell in the midst of His people and how God showed to Moses a vision of how it was to be built, and how he built this tent, this holy tent, this tabernacle, by the instructions and the vision that God had given Moses on the mountain. And so, he built it and when he built it, God came and filled it with His presence, with the glory cloud. And no one could enter the tabernacle because of the glory of God which filled the place.

And then how, centuries later, David once he was established as king in Jerusalem and all of his enemies had been defeated, and he's there, he says, "Here I am living in a palace of cedar, while God is still in a tent. I want to build a permanent dwelling place where God can dwell in the midst of His people." It was a good idea. David was showing initiative toward God, "Hey, God maybe you hadn't thought about this before. I'd like to think of this thing. This is something I want to do for you." I love it. And isn't it how sweet how God speaks to David, through Nathan the Prophet, kind of putting him in his place, but at the same time, greatly exalting him too. He says, "Are you the one to build a house for me? I'm going to build a house for you. And after you're gone, after you die, I'm going to raise up one of your sons and he will build a house for my name and his kingdom will endure forever and ever." Now, you know, he's not talking about Solomon, but he kind of is. It's like yes and no. He is talking about Solomon because when he sins, I will beat him, but I'll never take my love from him and you read about it, but he says that then there's this greater son whose kingdom will never end, and that's Jesus, and “He will build a dwelling where I will live in the midst of my people, forever.” And that's fulfilled in the Church of Jesus Christ that's the very thing that Paul is talking about.

Now, when Solomon built the temple, the same thing happened again in the 2 Chronicle 7 the glory of the Lord entered the place. And it filled the place and God's glory radiated there, and there was a symbol of God's desire to dwell in the midst of his people and fellowship with His people, but you know that the Jews, in subsequent generations and centuries, sinned and sinned and sinned some more and God sent them warnings but they wouldn't listen. And so at the right time, under the judgment of God, and the justice of God, it was time for the glory cloud to leave the temple of Solomon and to leave the people and then judgment to come. And it came and the Babylonians came and they acted it says in Psalm 74, “like men wielding axes and they chopped up all the carved wood and they burned it and they destroyed the temple, the place where God had met with His people.” So, still this yearning for a place where God could dwell in the midst of his people unfulfilled, but there is the son of David who's coming and he would build it, and Jesus is that one, and he has come to build this true, true dwelling place, and so Jesus came and died on the cross and He was buried on the third day, He was raised from the dead and He showed Himself to His disciples and appeared to them over a period of 40 days, and then He went up and ascended and He went through the heavenly realms and He went through, it says in the Book of Hebrews, “the greater and more perfect tabernacle that's not man-made, not built by human hands” and that's the true heavenly dwelling place where God will dwell with His people forever. And that's the work of Christ.

Church: God’s Dwelling Place

Now, the Church is the dwelling place of God. Look at Verses 21 and 22, “in Him,” Christ, “the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” That is what is going on around the world, does not matter what the lead story is, CNN, or BBC News, or any of the news outlets you follow. The number one story, every day, is the building of His Church. That is the story of human history. That's what's going on in the world, nothing else matters. This is the only eternal building that's getting built. This is it.

Peter gives us some other images here that help us to understand this a little bit better. In 1 Peter chapter 2:4-5, Peter says this, “as you come to Him, the living stone rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him. You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices as acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” So as each individual person in “every tribe and language and people and nation,” all around the world, comes to genuine faith in Christ, they become alive. They were dead now, they're alive. They are “living stones.” Kind of a paradoxical image, but we are then settled into a place in the wall of this spiritual temple that God had been reserving for us in particular, from “before the foundation of the world.” It's like a jigsaw, puzzle and only you can go there, you're the only one who can fit in there, and let me tell you something when it's all done, there'll be no gaps in the walls, amen. Every elect person will be saved, every jigsaw puzzle piece will be put in, and they'll all be there, how glorious is that? And we are living stones and we're set into the walls to be this holy temple rising, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the presence of God. That's what we are.

Peter has to go ahead and complexify the image because we're also a “holy priesthood offering sacrifices inside the structure.” That's true, another sermon, another day, but we are “living stones” and we have been quarried from Satan's dark kingdom by some special ops people, who have gone up over the walls of Satan's dark kingdom, they've scaled the walls. I picture like ninjas, or some kind of SEALS, Navy SEALS or something like that, and they're going up over the walls, and they're in enemy territory, and they're finding these dead stones, and by the Gospel they're bringing them to life and they're getting them out of there and they're “transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son,” and we’re settled into a wall and will be there forever. That's evangelism and missions. That's what's going on, and it's thrilling. It's thrilling. And I have no idea where I am in my notes. Alright, I'm sorry.

An Amazing Image

Ah, yes. The “apostles and prophets are the foundation of this building.” What does that mean? Members of God's household verse 20, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.” This is an amazing image. Every grand and glorious and lofty structure has to have a solid foundation, an immovable foundation. “It can't be on sand,” Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount, where it shifting and the structure is going to fall. We need something that will never move. And Paul says, "It's the apostle and prophets with Christ He as Himself as a chief cornerstone.” It's a challenging statement here especially since Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 3:11, “no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Christ Jesus.” It's like, what a minute, so is it Christ Jesus, or is it “the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.” Friends, it's not either/or. It's both/and. Christ Jesus is the foundation of this structure, it's true. But how do we have access to Christ Jesus, except by the words of scripture? By the words of the holy apostles and prophets, by this book, we come to know Christ. By the words of the apostles and prophets, the apostles and prophets mediate God's word to a dying world in the form of this book. That's how we know you. You don't know anything about Jesus, apart from this book.

And so, as the apostles were “eyewitnesses of His glory” as Peter says. as 1 John 1:1 says, “that which we have seen with our eyes, what we have handled, what we have interacted with concerning the Word of Truth, this we proclaim to you.” They were eyewitnesses, the apostles, and prophets. Peter was the rock on which Jesus would build his Church, not just his confession, but him as eyewitness and the other apostles having been with Jesus for three years and being able to testify to the world, “We have seen, and we testify that He is the Son of God!” And so, the apostles and prophets represent to me in this verse, scripture as it testifies to Jesus, the chief cornerstone.

Christ as Cornerstone

Now, what does it mean that Jesus is the chief cornerstone? Well, architects tell us that's the first stone you set and everything else gets its reference from that everything else goes in reference to Jesus, the chief cornerstone. It has to be perfectly proportional, it has to be 90 degrees if you want the walls 90 degrees, it has to be solid and everything else is based on Christ. So it's the same thing he teaches, in 1 Corinthians 3:11, “no one can lay a foundation other than one almighty God already laid a chosen and tested cornerstone.” Isaiah 28, that's Jesus.

Fitly Framed Together

And so, the “apostles and prophets” is the scripture's testimony to Jesus. When Jesus rose from the dead, comes to the upper room, appears to the disciples and He says, in Luke 24, "This is what I told you when I was with you. Everything must be fulfilled. That is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms, then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. So, as evangelists and missionaries, go out, they testify based on the words of the apostles in the history of Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament as they got ready for Jesus, and even the prophets of the New Testament. We'll talk about that when we get to chapter 3, as Paul says, "Now revealed to the apostles and prophets", and we'll get to that, but this is all the immediate Word of God revealed to the human race and we all, verse 21, are built together. “In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” I love the KJV in verse 21, "In whom", listen to this, "all the building fitly framed together", isn't that awesome? “Fitly framed together, groweth unto an Holy Temple in the Lord.” “Fitly framed together,” we are perfectly fit together in this holy structure Jews, Gentiles, believers in Christ alike all of us joined together. Now, in Ephesians 4:16, we'll get the same image with the body side. Ephesians 4:16, “from Him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up as each part does its work.” So, we're fit well together.

I was reading some time ago about the Taj Mahal, and in one of the walls, this is a magnificent structure, and in one of the walls, there is a flower, an inlaid flower, one inch square, made of precious stones, polished, set in the wall, think about it. One inch square with 60 different stones, 60 different hues and colors, etcetera, but yet set in there so perfectly that you can't feel anything. It feels like glass. I'm thinking, how long did they work on that flower? But that's the image I have. We are perfectly fit together in the wall, in perfect unity with each other, at least we will be in the end when God's done saving us. That's the picture we have here. This is God's final dwelling place. “In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”

The Spirit Indwells Us While We Wait

Now, there is an already and a not yet sense of this. We are already this, it's already happening, we are already one in Christ, we are already united through the Spirit, we can already assemble together with brothers and sisters all over the world, and we can worship God by the Spirit. It's already going on at the present tense. You are a building, indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, but you must know there's better and more yet to come. There's a not-yet aspect to this. And so, the Book of Revelation completes our study for the day before I get to applications and that is the picture of the New Jerusalem. "Then I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth, for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any seen. Then I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband." That is this structure, that's Zion, this is the heavenly Zion, that's the very thing that he's talking about here. It's not different, it's the same, the New Jerusalem is the church of Jesus Christ. "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying," Now, here's the key, " ‘Now, the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.’" That's what God has wanted all along. “I want a place where I can dwell together with my people.” That's it, that's the not-yet part. God will dwell in our midst, and we will see His face and the whole city will it be irradiated with the glory of God in Christ, and there'll be no temple in that city we're told, because “God and the Lamb and the church are the temple. All one together.” Alright, so that's the complex image we have here by way of application.

Are You on the Outside Looking In?

First, let me just plead with you if you know yourself to be an outsider of all of this. I plead with you, don't stay an outsider, you've heard the Gospel today of Christ crucified, resurrected, how all you need to do is repent and believe and you will immediately become a living stone having been rescued from Satan's dark kingdom, you will be set in a place that has been reserved for you “from before the foundation of the world,” for you. Just come to Christ. Don't leave here an unbeliever I plead with you, be reconciled to God.

Christians: Recognize the Majestic Picture of the Church

Christians, do you recognize the majesty of this work? Do you see the glory of it? Do you see how this makes life worth living? It really does. This work is worth doing, and this is glorious. Think about the Church. Think about these images. You're citizens of a holy nation, you are adopted sons and daughters of the family of God, and you are living stones in this amazing structure that's rising and becoming bigger and more glorious all the time. That's amazing, praise God for that. And so, if I could just say esteem the Church, think highly of the Church. This isn't like a club we come to on Sundays. Well, you know, I go occasionally, I come. “I'm in this and I'm in that and I go to church from time to time on Sunday morning.” This is the work God is doing in the world. So esteem the Church, be in the Church. “Do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, ”as it says in Hebrews 10:24, “some are in the habit of doing. But Let's gather together and encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Be a covenant member of this Church. If you're just a visitor, be a covenant member of a church where you live, be committed to the Church

Access to God

Also concerning access. I spoke of it in the middle of the sermon, I want to say it again. You have access to God now that you're part of this holy temple. Take advantage of it, and what's burdening you. What did you carry in here today? What are you struggling with? What are you worried about? Is it money? Is it a relational problem? Is a marital issue? Are you're struggling with sin, is there some sin issue, your guilty conscience, is that bothering you? You have access to the “Father by the Spirit.” Take advantage of it now. Cast your burdens on him in prayer. And don't just go in there and reference to your burdens pray for your brother and sisters. Find someone after, we're about done, we really are. Find someone and say, "How can I pray for you today?", and pray for him. “You have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

An Exhortation for Church Involvement

And let's get involved in this building project, what do you say? I'm not saying be involved in what used to be known as the Building and Grounds Committee, or find out what deacons are doing yard work in the church. I think the church looks great. I'm not saying there's not work to be done. Please don't, whoever's in charge of that be angry. That was a great recruiting time and you didn't take advantage. I'm trying to give you recruiting to a higher level. Get involved in the building of the Church of Jesus Christ use your spiritual gifts, Have a ministry, throw yourself into this building project be involved in evangelism and discipleship. Get your five lost people's names and pray for them and open the door to evangelism and witness.

And finally, can I just say, look forward to Heaven. Look forward to what it's going to be like to be in the New Jerusalem surrounded by the people of God, indwelt by God through His Spirit. Close with me in prayer.

Father, what a glorious passage is this. Ephesians is glorious, thank you so much for the things we're learning in this book, and I pray that we would not only just be members of this grand and glorious eternal building project, but that we would be laborers as well. We living stones in the wall, but also those special ops forces that scale the walls of the kingdom of darkness and rescue lost people. Help us to do all of that. We pray that in Jesus name, Amen.

So last week in Ephesians 2:11-17, we saw how Christ's death on the cross has demolished the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, by abolishing the Law with its regulations, thus making peace between Jews and Gentiles.” The Law of Moses excluded uncircumcised Gentiles from the assembly of the people of God. God Himself established that barrier. God set it up, and it did in fact keep the Gentiles out. But God also removed that barrier, in Christ, by establishing in Christ a new covenant in His blood, and welcoming anyone, Jews or Gentiles, into close fellowship with Himself. Jew and Gentile unity in Christ, therefore, is possible, it is promised, it is commanded as a result of this New Covenant in Christ.

Now today, the basic thesis or idea of this sermon is this: If barriers between people that God did set up have been completely removed by Christ, then how much more are barriers that God didn't set up get removed in Christ. That's the basic idea. It's a "how much more" argument. If barriers that God did set up had been removed, then how much more those He never set up. The dividing walls of hostility between people that destroy peace on Earth have been addressed at the cross. So Christ's death lays the foundation for the removal of every “barrier, every dividing wall of hostility,” resulting in a supernatural unity between Christians of all racial, and ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds.

Now, in this sermon we're going to address two of the most controversial, two of the hardest topics facing us in America today; the issue of racism on the one side, which has been very much in the news over the last year, but not just the last year. And then, the issue of immigration and illegal aliens, and other issues like that, which are very much in the news in this campaign. So, we begin by looking at our world, which is a world divided. We live in a bitterly divided world, with many dividing walls of hostility separating people. They're around us constantly. We think about racial conflict in the U.S. over the last year or more, honestly, over the last century and a half, honestly, even beyond that. The issues of race connected with police incidents led to open racial conflict in Ferguson, Missouri, and demonstrations in Baltimore, Maryland. It's given rise to the movement Black Lives Matter. The level of hostility between blacks and whites has been one of the greatest disgraces in American history, and continues to be a bleeding wound in our national identity. 

Sometimes, we must wonder if anything can ever heal the rift, the rupture, this wound between us. But honestly, black-white hostility America is not the only example of the deep divisions that continue to rend our world. What I'm going to call in this sermon, “us versus them,” the dynamic of us as a group versus them as a group is all over the world. Just go to the hot spots in the last century and you'll know what I'm talking about.

For example, if you went to the Balkans with a long history of racial and religious conflicts between Serbs, and Croats, and Muslims there have bubbled over again and again into war. And when that happens, then revenge creeps in, memories, bitterness, a steel curtain, a “dividing wall of hostility” comes between people. Or think about recent events like Russia's invasion of the Ukraine. Russian troops under the command of President Vladamir Putin. That is leaving scars between those people's national hostility and hatred that those actions have caused. In 1994 in Rwanda, there was a terrible genocide of the Tutsi people by the dominant Hutu majority. A 100-day period in which 800,000 people were slaughtered. Today, the survivors of that conflict live side by side in the same communities trying to forgive and forget, but they know what other folks have done to their loved ones, their ancestors, their relatives, husbands, wives, children, etcetera. Many in Korea and in China retain an intense hatred for the Japanese for the atrocities committed by Japanese troops during World War II, as well as ongoing historical revisionism in Japanese textbooks in which past events are not dealt with honestly. In Nanjing there's a massacre memorial dedicated to the memory of 300,000 Chinese people wantonly slaughtered by occupying Japanese troops. Many Chinese feel an obligation to hate the Japanese forever, a nationalistic obligation. Every year on December 13th in Nanjing, the date the massacre began, then alarms are rung throughout the city so that people will never forget.

I could go on and on. You know what I'm talking about, we live in a divided world, a world of “us versus them.” A deeply fragmented wall, fractured by sin and hatred, memories, bitterness, the “dividing walls of hostility.” This is the very thing that Jesus Christ came to remedy. By reconciling, vertically, sinners to God, and then as a result, horizontally, sinners one to another.

Now, God's plan for unity is established throughout the Scriptures, but we see it right in the book that we're studying. Look back at Ephesians 1:9-10. There in Ephesians 1:9-10, God talks about what He planned to do through Jesus, what His purpose is, in Christ. So look at verse 9, Ephesians 1:9-10, "And He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in Heaven and on Earth together under one head, even Christ." Now, that is so breathtakingly glorious and overwhelming that you could meditate on it the rest of your life. You probably have read over it several times, and didn't even notice it was there, you were more focused on the election and predestination verses that precede it a few verses before that. And your head was spinning, and you missed that one, what God is doing in verse 10 of Ephesians chapter 1. God is intending to “bring everything in the universe together under one head, Christ.” It's what He's doing.

So, as we said when I preached through in Ephesians 1, sin has had the effect of a fragmentation grenade in the universe, blowing things apart into bits. First and foremost, vertically, humans with God. Then secondly, horizontally, humans one from another. And then, thirdly, the physical creation, the universe around us, which is groaning in its bondage to decay, falling apart. Sin blew the universe apart.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ reverses and brings all things back together and makes them one, in Christ. That's what's going on in the world, that is the story of human history. This is the supernatural unity of the human race that only the work of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit can achieve. The United Nations cannot achieve it with all of its diplomats, its diplomacy, its rule and reign. No treaties can. No laws, we cannot look to the federal government or to local officials to do this. It's something that is vastly beyond any force on earth to achieve. The memories are too deep, the bitterness is too real, the hatred, the yearning for revenge. Conversely, the ongoing pride and arrogance that's at the root of racism. We'll talk about that. No external force, the United Nations, no human force can remedy that, it's impossible. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ can, it has, it's going on right now, and it will win in the end. So, I actually stand before you extremely filled with hope and optimism even though this is a dark topic. I'm looking forward to a world, New Heaven, New Earth, a New Jerusalem, in which there will be no racism and no divisions. God's going to win, and that's exciting, isn't it?

Perfect Unity Based on the Trinity

But Jesus died on the cross to bring about perfect unity between people. In John 11:51-52, it said that Jesus would “die for the Jewish nation, and not for that nation only, but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one.” Let's ponder that. Ponder that. That is what God is doing. So, how great is that unity that Christ is affecting? Well, it is perfect unity. Absolutely perfect unity in the pattern of the Trinity. If you look at John 17:20-23, just listen, you don't have time to look there, I'm going to be moving fast in this sermon. So if you're incredibly fast with your Bible or whatever, you can keep up, otherwise just listen. But there are just so many verses that teach about this unity. John 17:20-23. Jesus prays, He says, "My prayer is not for them alone," present apostles, "But I also pray for those who will believe in me through their message. That all of them may be one, Father. Just as you are in me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me that they may be one as we are one." Do you hear that? As we are one, it's a trinitarian pattern of unity. "I in them and you in me, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

So, if you look carefully at what Jesus prays for there, He's praying that all of them “may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” “All of them,” is all the elect. Those who will one day believe in Jesus through the message of the Gospel. Revelation 5:9-10, "And they sang a new song, ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.’ " That is marvelous, Revelation 5:9-10. So astonishing diversity along with a perfect heavenly unity. That's where we're heading.

Now, the unity between the Father and the Son is absolutely perfect. There's never the slightest disagreement, or shadow of conflict between the Father and Son. Never has been, isn't right now, and never will be; they are perfectly one. So what that means is, they agree about everything. I mean, down to the smallest detail. Jesus said in Matthew 10:29, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." That's the incredible detail of the mind of God the Father over everything. What I say to you now is, the Son agrees about everything the Father thinks about all those things. ‘You mean the Father and the Son have agreed how many hairs should be on my head?’ Yes! They are in total agreement, there's never been a disagreement about how many hairs should be on your head. You may disagree about how many hairs should be on your head, but the Father and the Son have never disagreed about how many hairs should be on your head. They agree about everything all the time. This is mind-boggling. That's where we're heading, with a multitude from every nation on the face of the earth. We’ll have that level of agreement about everything.

Disunity: Addressed in the Epistles

Now, unity in the churches then, is a huge issue in the Epistles. How many New Testament Epistles plead with the churches to be one, to be united, to get along with each other? Answer: Almost all of them. And frankly, probably if you look at it closely, all of them. For example, later in Ephesians, look at Ephesians 4. Just flip over maybe one page, verses 1-6. There it says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all." That's a strong appeal to unity in Ephesians 4.

But so also you see the same in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians was about a church ripped apart by factions and divisions. “One followed Paul, one followed Apollos, one followed Cephas, one group followed Jesus,” I don't know what that meant. Sounds good, I don't know, it sounds divisive, too. We're the Jesus party, don't know about the rest of you. And Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 1:10, "I appeal to you brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another, so that there may be no divisions among you, and that you may be," listen to this, "perfectly united in mind and heart." Perfectly united. Does the same thing in Philippians chapter 2. He says, "Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or in vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others." Unity. Same thing in Romans. In Romans 14, he deals with Jew/Gentile divisions over controversial issues; meat sacrifices to idols and special religious days and all that kind of thing, and he pleads for unity among Jewish and Gentile believers. It's an issue in all over the New Testament.

Unity Makes for a More Powerful Witness

Now, here's my point: The greater the unity within a church, the more power that church will have to preach the Gospel in that community. The more that unity is surprising and super naturally based, the more power will come in preaching the Gospel to that community. So, if you look again at John 17:22-23, as Jesus prays that they may be one as we are one, John 17:23, "I in them and you in me, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me." So, that's not talking about Heaven, that's talking about right now, as the world watches us and as we become more and more united, the world will want to know more about Jesus, will want to learn more about Jesus, because they know how hard it is for this unity to happen. It's something that just doesn't happen.

So, surprising unity glorifies Christ. So, in Palestine, if you have former Muslims and Jews converting and becoming Christians, and they're living out that unity in worship, let's say on a Sunday morning, that is a powerful witness to the Gospel and to the surrounding community. It shines in a very dark place. Just ripped apart by factions and divisions and dividing walls of hostility. And that's happening. Reading about the church in Bethlehem, the Baptist church in Bethlehem, look it up, it's an interesting place. Imagine being the Pastor, of First Baptist Bethlehem, Israel. Not Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I'm sure they're having a good ministry, too. But the focus there, it's amazing, putting the Gospel on display.

So in the Balkans, when Serbs and Croats and former Muslims come together and come to faith in Christ, and then shine with a supernatural unity, it just makes the Gospel more powerful in that community. In Korea when Koreans and Japanese Christians come together and worship, the same thing. So also in Durham, North Carolina. What would be the most surprising unity? I think it would probably be the issue of the black-white division, the African-Americans and Caucasian people coming together in a supernatural show of unity that will make the Gospel very powerful and shine in this community.

Gentile Exclusion

Now, let's go back to last week just to root all this in the text. I am preaching Ephesians 2:11-17, just in case you were wondering. “I thought we were an expository kind of preaching church though.” But I want to root it in that. So, home base for Ephesians 2:11-17 is Jew and Gentile unity. The spiritual work that Christ did to make Jews and Gentiles one stands as the pattern for all surprising unity all over the world. That's my basic thesis here. The Jew and Gentile issue was a special case in redemptive history, because it involved the Law of Moses. It involved God's direct action in separating people up. He put up the barrier, the dividing wall. It was erected by the Law of Moses, the Law of God. So that included dietary regulations, circumcision, other certain rules, a focus on genealogies, all those kinds of things, the Gentiles were excluded. And again, the basic thesis of my sermon, then if barriers between people that God did set up have been removed in Christ, how much more then barriers that God never set up have been removed by Christ? Christ's death lays the foundation for the removal of every barrier, every “dividing wall of hostility,” resulting in supernatural unity between Christians of every racial, ethnic, linguistic, national background. So how was it back in the day before we were Christians? Look at verse 11 and 12, "Therefore, remember that formally, you who were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men. Remember, that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world." That's what we were. We were aliens. We were strangers. We were outsiders.

How it is Now

If I can push it to one of the application points at the end, we were illegal aliens in the Kingdom of Heaven, we were. We were outsiders. There were laws against us. So what has happened then? Christ has come. Look at verse 13, "Now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Verses 14 and 15, "For He himself is our peace who has made the two one." That's what Christ has done. So Christ has brought us near, we are near to God. And being near to God, we are near to each other, near vertically, near horizontally. We've been brought near. Christ is our peace. First, we're at peace with God, “having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Romans 5:1. And then, horizontally at peace with each other as well.

What Christ Has Done to the Law

In order to achieve this, though, Christ had to do something to the Law, and He has. Look at verses 14 and 15, "He himself is our peace, who has made the two one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the Law with its commandments and regulations." Do you see that right on the page? These are strong words, very strong. The ceremonial laws, what excluded Gentiles from the Assembly of Israel. Do you remember in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down? Do you remember how residents of that area went out with sledgehammers and started pounding on that wall, breaking it apart, and later selling fragments of it with the graffiti for lots of money? But they were breaking down that wall, and what joy. Can I tell you, this wall was unbreakable by anyone but Christ, and He did it in an afternoon, in a single day, removed this forever. So look at the language. The language is powerful here. The ceremonial law that excluded Gentiles from Assembly of Israel. It required circumcision, established dietary regulations. It forbade intermarriage between Jews and the Canaanite nations. It required national unity among the Jews and annual pilgrimages. It upheld genealogies and the ability to prove that you were physically descended from Abraham. But this Law, this barrier, this dividing wall of hostility has been removed. Christ has destroyed the barrier. He broke it down, tore it down. He has abolished the “Law with its commandments and regulations,” abolished it. Hebrews 8:13 goes beyond and says He's made it obsolete. This is language that we would never dream to use of the Word of God, but Christ has done this. “Destroyed,” “abolished,” “obsolete,” and established in His blood a New Covenant that is the basis of our unity. And in the New Covenant these old racial distinctions are obsolete also. They're gone. They don't mean anything.

What Jesus Has Done to All His People

So what has Christ done? That's what He's done external to us. What has He done within us to bring about this unity? That's staggering as well. Look at verses 15-17. “His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God by which He put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to those who are near.” So, Christ has made us one, “He has made the two one,” our spiritual union with Christ is also a union with one another, a mystical, spiritual union we have with every true Christian all over the world. And He's made one new man out of the two. So this means we have been transformed. We're different men and women, different boys and girls. We have been changed. We've had the “heart of stone taken out and the heart of flesh put in.” We have been made new in our minds and in our hearts. That's the only way it can happen. We're “new creations.”

And so Jesus has made peace vertically with God, and peace horizontally with one another. Verse 17, "He came and preached peace to you who are far away, and peace to those who are near." And so, on that evening of the first day of the week, resurrection day, the greatest day in history, Jesus came to the upper room where the disciples were, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, came right in and stood in their midst. And then He said these marvelous words, "Peace be with you." And then He showed them His hands and His side. You understand the link between the two? Again He said, "Peace be with you." And so, our peace is blood bought. It's expensive. It's been paid for by the blood of Jesus on the cross. And by His resurrection, we are transformed. We're made new. So Jesus has put to death our hostility by the cross. How is that? By reconciliation, by reconciling us vertically to God through His blood. He has, as I said last week, reached down and taken the sword of revenge and hostility and bitterness right out of our hands. You understand He's done that?

Do you remember the parable of the 10,000 talents? Remember that? There's a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants, and there was a man there who owed him 10,000 talents; 750,000 lbs of gold. Some of you may collect gold, you don't have 750,000 lbs of it. The gross national product of the Roman Empire, that's what you and I owed before God, and God cancelled all that debt. But then that servant went out and found horizontally, found one of his fellow servants who owed him about a third of a year's wages. It's a lot. It's a lot of money. And he grabbed him and began to choke him, "Pay me what you owe me!", he said. And that servant fell on his knees and said, "Be patient with me. I'll pay it back." But he refused; would not forgive. Instead, he had that man thrown into prison until he should pay back all he owed. Well, the king hauled that guy back in. He said, "I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to, you worthless servant. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?" In anger, his master threw them into the jail to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. And Jesus said this, "This is how my Father will treat each of you if you will not forgive your brother from the heart."

Well, that reaches down takes and takes the sword right out of the hand, doesn't it? I cannot horizontally be unforgiving to anybody if Jesus vertically is going to forgive me for all of my sins. That's the power of unity. That's the power. Jesus has opened a door of access. Look at verse 17 and 18, "He came and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to those who are near. For through Him, we both have access to the,” same Father, “to the Father by one Spirit." So the same Father, same Son, same Spirit, same access, that's unity. That's what we have. So, we're at peace with one another, and we have access to the “Father by the same Spirit.” But we can't go into the Father's presence covered with the muck of unforgiveness, bitterness, and racism, and arrogance. We can't. We must give all that up.

How This Destroys Racism

So, how does this destroy racism? Well, racism is essentially self-worship. We worship our own skin. We worship our own culture. We worship our own particularities and differences. The cross destroys self-worship along with all idolatry. The cross humbles all lofty, arrogant, proud hearts; and racism is lofty, arrogant, proud in a matter of the heart. The cross enables, empowers forgiveness. The cross teaches the truth about race. For what is it? Acts 17:26, "From one man, He's made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole Earth. And He determined the time set for them, and the exact places where they should live.” So, we are genetically one. And God willed a marvelous, amoral diversity among us. We don't look all the same, thank God! We look different, we have different hair colors, we have different eye colors, we have different physiological things about us. But we also have been settled in different places on Earth and in various mountain valleys and other places, and allowed to just flourish and do culture and develop post Tower of Babel, some languages and other aspects of culture, and those are cultural issues of cultural diversity. Again, I am not using the word diversity the way some educators use it these days. I'm talking about amoral diversity, the differences that God delights in. So, color blindness is not part of my message here. We are different, and we will celebrate. I think we'll be different in Heaven. I think that's marvelous. And so, the ultimate end of this in Revelation 7:9-10, "After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every tribe and language and people and nation, standing before the throne in front of the Lamb, and they were wearing white robes, and they are holding palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'"

Long, Difficult History: Race-Based Chattel Slavery

Now, let's zero in on the special problem of racism in the United States. This is a long and difficult history, race-based chattel slavery is the basis of it. The first slaves came to the New World, to Jamestown in 1619 on a Dutch ship, which brought 20 Africans captured from a Portuguese slave vessel. Actually, the records aren't clear, they may not have been slaves, but indentured servants, as many poorer white people were, who came over across the ocean for economic opportunity, and they would sell themselves in indentured servitude for seven years, and then they would have their freedom. And so, the records would show of the white indentured servants, their names and then their date of release. But interestingly about the Africans, there was no date of release. So, that might have been right where it started, right there. Slavery was made legal in the colony of Virginia in 1640, though there are only a few dozen slaves at that point. But lucrative crops, like especially tobacco, greatly increased the desire for field workers in Virginia and other colonies. However, even at that point, most of them are white indentured servants coming from England, but The Great Plague and The Great Fire of 1660 in London wiped out a stream of indentured servants flowing to the New World. There was plenty of work to be done in old England at that point, and they didn't want to make the perilous journey, and they didn't need to be indentured servants. They could just work there. So, now what do the plantation owners do? And they turned at that point to chattel slavery among Africans, and the slave trade began in earnest at that point. And over the next 200 years, somewhere between six to seven million Africans were transported in inhuman conditions to America. The issue became intensely regional, as we know, leading to the Civil War.

1845: FBC Durham and the Southern Baptist Convention

In 1845, two things happened, relevant to us. The Southern Baptist Convention was founded that year, and First Baptist Church Durham was founded that year; 1845. Now, the SBC, The Southern Baptist Convention, was founded because of a split among Northern and Southern Baptists who were meeting together to foster missions, and to pool their resources for missions. But they couldn't agree on whether a slave owner could serve as a missionary and bring their slaves with them. And so, the Southern Baptists divided over that issue. That's our denomination. For me, growing up as an Irish Catholic in Massachusetts, not an awesome thing. I didn't know that at first when I got involved in the SBC. But isn't it amazing how the Lord said what God has made clean let no one call defiled? God has the ability to clean things up, and I'm grateful for that. Praise God for that. Well, we know about the Civil War reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, lots of history many of us know somewhat, some of us know very well.

The Civil Rights Era

During the Civil Rights era in our nation, the first half of the 20th century, began the focus of the Civil Rights Movement, the segregation that was involved there, blacks and whites were separated in society. Blacks couldn't use the same drinking fountains, attend the same theaters, eat at the same restaurants. Here in Durham, the Woolworths on 124 West Main Street was the site of a historic sit-in at a lunch counter, and Martin Luther King Junior was present at that time. This was one of the first presentations of non-violent, but direct responses to segregation laws, right here in our city. This pattern became a major strategy for Dr. King's non-violent approach to overturning unjust laws.

Now, in 1963, Dr. King, Martin Luther King Jr., was in prison, was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, for his involvement in a demonstration. And he wrote a letter from a Birmingham jail, April 16th, 1963. The letter was written to white clergy who were urging him to be patient and not take such radical steps against racial injustice. "Slow down, be patient." He wrote out of the passion of his heart. I'm going to quote some of it.

 "For years now, I have heard the word, wait. It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This wait has almost always meant never. We have waited for more than 340 years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it's easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will, and drown your sisters and brothers at whim, and when you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity, and when you have seen the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society, when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and you see tears welling up in her little eyes when she's told that Funtown is closed to colored children. And then you see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people. When you're forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness, then you'll understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope sirs you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience."

Are We All Racists?

There's a sense of urgency even now in our nation to address the issue of racism. I say that we Christians have the only answer, there is no other answer. This past year, I don't know when, but someone found a photo right from the steps of First Baptist Church, Durham, of two white men standing in suits with a serious look on their face and a black couple on the other side, and we don't know what's going on there, but what was happening here during those years? I wasn't here, most of you weren't either. I went through the phone book, the church phone book about six months ago to count the people who I still regularly expect to see attend worship here on Sunday mornings, whose date of joining FBC precedes mine, 57 of you. That number is getting smaller all the time. You know it can't get bigger. Think about that one, you'll figure it out. But there's a certain number of you that were here in those days. And it's difficult to look back. And there's two categories, always sins of omission, sins of commission, and it's hard, but that's what happened, that's where it was, and they are just questions. I don't know what this church was doing then. So it brings us to this poignant issue. Are we all racists? All of us?

So, talking to Matthew about this, he says, “Racism,” he calls me Doc, “Racism, Doc, racism sneaky, kind of hides in there.” Would it shock you, FBC, if I told you that I don't struggle at all with any temptations toward tobacco or alcohol use? Would that shock you? Well, I don't. I would guess that a lot of you could say the same thing. No big achievement. Some of you maybe couldn't. But it's no big achievement. Alright, well, would it shock you if on the other hand I said to you, "I don't struggle with pride at all."? "Thank God, I have learned to conquer my pride so completely, I know it will never trouble me again." Would that bother you? “Yes!”, alright, thank you. Can I get a witness, right? Yes.

Okay. Well then, apparently there are some sins that only some people struggle with, and we can honestly say “I'm not struggling with that,” I'm not saying I couldn't in the future, but it's just not a problem for me. And I need put no effort toward killing temptations in that area. But there are others that are so pervasive that we know that probably we struggle at some level. I think that racism tends more toward the second, not the first. It's more subtle than you may think. And just because you're not racist toward one category of people, doesn't mean you might not have a latent racism toward another category. So, it's sneaky and it's difficult. 

How it is Now

So, how is it now? Well, this church, FBC Durham, has grown a lot since the mid 60s. There are many fruitful ministries that cut across ethnic lines and put Christ on display. But the actuality is that there is a clearly dominant ethnic flavor to this church. If you don't know what I mean, then just take a minute and look around. See, everybody is too embarrassed to do it. But you know what you would see if you looked around. People who study these things sociologically say you have to reach a 20% level before you could genuinely be called multi-ethnic. 20%. If 20% of those that worship in a church on Sunday morning are not of the dominant ethnic background, the dominant, then you're multi-ethnic.

Also, statistics show that less than 7% of the congregations on Sunday morning are multiethnic. So that leads to a statement that I've heard, that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week in America, and it is so voluntarily. It's not like there are segregation laws on this, just people, and here we go, homogenous unit principle, you ready for this? People like to worship with people like themselves. Someone once said there should be a corollary to that, saying, "Yes, but they ought not be permitted to do so.” But what are you going to do? How do you stop it? I have yearned for years, to see FBC Durham to be a genuinely multiethnic community, and we're not, not yet. And just because we yearn to make it so it doesn't mean it will happen, it's very difficult to have it happen, it's hard. 

Now, I praise God that across an average year, not just blacks and whites, but many different ethnic backgrounds worship here on Sundays. It's fantastic, I love to see it. We have a flourishing international connections ministry, people from many different nations worship here as a result of that. The black and white issue is not the only one, I praise God that we have African-Americans that worship here with us. 

Application

But we have here a tremendous opportunity for ministry, and that's what I want to transition to now briefly, just some applications.

Come to Christ!

First and foremost, can I just plead with any of you that are here that are not Christians to come to faith in Christ? I am offering zero advice to non-Christians on the issue of racism. I have no advice. Now, you could say that's extreme. We can influence non-Christians. I think that's actually true, I think we can, we can be salt and light, but to the heart of the issue, only the Gospel can transform the human heart. So I am appealing even beyond the issue of racism, which is temporary, for the sake of your own souls that you flee to Christ while there's time, that you find forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ.

Self-Examination

Secondly, if I can just say to Christians, would you please take Psalm 139:23-24 and say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart on the issue of racism. Show me if there's anything in me that's offensive to you. O God, help me not assume I'm not racist in some way. Please God, drive it out of me. Please make me, as much as possible, heavenly in my outlook now, before I ever get to Heaven. I know, Lord, if you will do that, I'll be far more fruitful and effective in ministry. Make me heavenly, forgive me, God, for what I've done. Forgive me for things I've said. Forgive me for sins of omission, forgive me for sins of commission on the issue of racism. Please change me, God. Search me and know me."

Delight in What God is Doing Here

And then delight in and get involved in the kind of ministries that are going on here. There's a lot of good things you can do. International Connections. Any chance those brothers and sisters would like a little help? Talk to Ron Halbrooks and others. Chase, can you guys use volunteers? Yes, he's saying yes. If you would like to get involved in teaching English on Wednesday evenings or other forms of ministry, fantastic. One of the best things you could do is say, "We would like to host some internationals in our home, we'd like to have them over, we'd like to get to know them." Many internationals never visit a home. You'd like to get involved in that. 

Now, concerning racism, can I just tell you the very fact that overt racism could never be tolerated in this church is something to celebrate. If I ever, if the elders ever heard that anything like that ever happened, it would be a matter of immediate church discipline, and we should praise God for that. That's progress. So the spirit in which I'm commending some change to you is this, 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10. "Now, about brotherly love, we do not need to write you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other, and in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet, we urge you brothers to do so more and more." So, we're doing better than we were, but we can definitely be urged to do so more and more. That's all. So get involved. Get involved in International Connections, get involved in Prison Ministry.

In a couple of weeks, we're going to have a chance to hear a testimony from a brother in Christ who was saved in Prison Ministry. We need men, specifically men, to get involved in that ministry. So, pray for it and see if you can get involved in that kind of thing. There are so many things we can do in terms of City Outreach. Talk to Matthew, he'll tell you the kinds of opportunities that we have here. Let's see if we can more and more pray toward our church being genuinely multiethnic, pray toward the 80%-20%, pray toward the 20%, and then 25% and 30%, whatever God wills. Pray that God would make us a genuinely multiethnic church.

Matthew Hodges gave me a bunch of applications. Three pages, I think, Brother. If you want the full list, and it's good, alright. I'll tell you what, I'm going to bring these papers to the back of the church. I'm going to hold them in my hand until someone says, "I would like them." All you have to do is just promise to read them all. I don't have time to read them all, but I'm going to say a few things. The window for racial and ethnic unity at First Baptist Church is now open. Let's use it, let's employ this open window, this opportunity. Racism is a complex issue that needs the whole plan of redemption applied to it. It is easy to become defensive, deflective, and dismissive on the issue of racism. Don't let that happen.

One of the best ways to heal racial strife is to fellowship with Christians of different races. Let's find out African-American churches that are working well, here in our community, and let's pray for them and see if there's ways we can partner with them. We should go out of our way to befriend people of different backgrounds. We should be open to others who don't see the race issue the way we do. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. When we are in the very large majority, we do not even operate in the category of ethnicity, race. We are humans, they're the ones with the race problem. Don't think like that, that's not true.

Dealing With Immigration

One final word I want to say, and then I'll be done. It's the issue of immigration. What's called illegal immigrants, sometimes called undocumented immigrants. This may be the second most controversial "us versus them" issue facing us today behind racism. Lots of powerful political rhetoric going on right now from presidential candidates on this issue. I'm not saying their names, but you know who I'm talking about, saying very potent and clear things about illegal immigrants, and citing dangers of ISIS, and dangers socioeconomically to our health care system, all kinds of things, issues of fairness, etcetera. And many of those comments are finding presently a resonant chord in the evangelical community. So I know I'm probably on thin ice with some of you out there. Where are we going with this? So, help me not to fall through. I did that once when I was 11, it wasn't fun.

Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Life Committee, ERLC of the SBC, said this, "There are 12 million undocumented immigrants or aliens in our country. Our approach cannot be basically saying in Spanish or any other language, 'You kids get off my lawn.' That can't be our approach. This is a Gospel issue," says Russell Moore. “Jesus was a so-called illegal alien in Egypt when He fled for His life with His parents. In that way, he patterned the Jews who were, in some ways, undocumented aliens in Egypt. So much so that God said to Moses in Deuteronomy 10, "God executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing." Listen to this, “ ‘Therefore, you should love the alien, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.’" Deuteronomy 10:18-19.

Jesus said in the sheep and the goats, “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, I was naked and you clothed me." What was the next one? "I was a stranger and you invited me in." There are serious political issues, I do not deny them. Borders should be secure. Businesses should be held accountable to what they do with their undocumented workers. Some of them bully them and threaten them with deportation if they don't do what they say. The Bible has a lot to say about wages withheld from workers and issues of justice. So there are gnarly issues here, but there's also, do you not see it? An incredible ministry opportunity for us. 

Talk about the Hispanic community for just a minute. In our community, the numbers have risen since I've been here, in the 17 years from, I think, something like 2,000 to well over 30,000 in the year 2010, and probably far more than that now. I don't know. Estimates are about 80% of them are undocumented. They are not an issue. They are people. And the issues of legality are real. But as Richard Lan said it, “Our country is saying to the world two things: Borders closed, and open for hire.” Both of those things are going on right now. So it's not as easy as it may seem.

Ministry with Undocumented Immigrants

David Platt, in his book Counter Culture, spoke of a flourishing ministry a pastor friend named Tyler, and as a senior pastor in Arizona. Tons of illegal immigrants, tons of rancorous political debate, Tyler and a handful of people began just simply serving migrant workers in Arizona, giving them food, clothing. Personal relationships started to develop. They listened, they learned from the people that they were serving. He said this, "It wasn't long before people we were asking to help us began donating more than food, they began donating their lives." It led to the construction of a Community Center in a Latino neighborhood. At that Community Center, there are weekly English classes, after school programs, life skill training, Bible studies, and conversions going on, and discipleship going on. Tons of opportunities to share the Gospel and lead people to Christ. Also, tons of controversies and difficulties, too. What do we expect?

And so I'm asking that some of you who have a heart for this city, who have a heart for racial reconciliation, a heart for African-American connections, a heart for the Latino community, step up and say, "How can we begin serving? How can we begin ministering?" I don't know what the answers are. To me, this is the scariest part of the whole sermon; what are we going to do about it? Is it just going to be rhetoric, or are we actually going to act?" But I know this, in the end, every elect person will be standing around the throne, they'll be in a white robe, and they will be praising God. And no one's ethnic or socioeconomic background will in any way hinder them from being there. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the Gospel, thank you for the truth that we have in Ephesians 2:11-17, how Christ has made a way for us to be reconciled to God and to one another. Help us to find ministries in this community that will be fruitful evangelistically. For the praise of your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, for the next two weeks, we're going to be looking at this incredible passage of scripture that Chase just read, Ephesians 2:11-17. And it's a powerful text, I think, that gives us hope for some of the most poignant issues that are facing us even in this day. It's the only hope I think there is for racism, for dealing with the issues of racism in our country. We'll talk much more clearly and directly about that next week. But these problems of division in our world, and hatred, and hostility, and what this text calls a barrier dividing wall of hostility. These things can only be removed by the sovereign grace of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They cannot be removed by diplomacy, or government regulations, or United Nations, or any of those things. Those barriers, those dividing walls of hostility, will not come down that way, but only through the Gospel of Christ. The only hope for unity in our world is the Gospel, and this morning we're going to zero in specifically on the division between Jews and Gentiles. The Jew-Gentile division in the scripture and what Christ has done for that.

And I think the overwhelming majority of us who are here today, are Gentiles. There may be some of Jewish descent here, but the overwhelming majority of those that assemble on Sunday mornings to hear the good news of Christ, and to study the scriptures are Gentiles. And we need to hear what Paul is saying to us. What you just heard in the text. How it was for us as Gentiles. We need to understand the astounding work that Christ has done in bringing us as Gentiles, who were so far away from hope, so far away from God's work in redemption, in the world, and bringing us near in Christ, and we need to celebrate that. It's amazing. And this text has the power to do that. Paul here goes to the root of hatred and hostility between Jews and Gentiles, and shows us how the work of Jesus Christ on the cross has removed that forever among those that believe in Christ.

Gentiles’ Hostility Toward Jews

Now, from the Gentile side, there is the arrogance, and the military superiority, and the vicious persecution, and even genocidal mania that has stained the pages of history. We know that very well from the 20th century from the rise of Nazism, and its virulent anti-semitism, and 6 million Jews slaughtered in what they called the final solution of Auschwitz, and other death camps, but that wasn't the first expression of anti-Semitism in history. It's not the first time we see that hostility or hatred from the Gentiles toward the Jews. 

Throughout history, if you saw a fiddler on the roof, for example, there's a pogrom right in the middle of that in Czarist Russia. That gives you a sense of the history there. The Jews have been persecuted throughout the nations of Europe. They were persecuted during the time of the Inquisition. Going further back, the Crusades were focused not just on driving the Muslims out of Jerusalem, but also they were anti-Semitic in nature. And it goes all the way back even within the scriptures to what happened in the Book of Esther, as Haman was seeking some kind of a genocidal work on the Jews, wiping them out entirely. So, Gentile history of hatred for the Jews is well-established, along with their military superiority.

Hostility of Jews Toward Gentiles

But the Bible also makes plain the other side. The hostility of the Jews toward the Gentiles. The Jewish jealousy and hatred of the Gentile world as well. The arrogance, religiously. The fact that the Gentiles were, as the text says, "excluded from citizenship in Israel." They were cast out in effect by the Law of Moses, as we're going to talk about today. They were outsiders, and that had the tendency to make the Jews feel religiously superior to those that were inferior to them. They were the chosen people. Then, in the course of time, when the Jews rebelled against God's covenant, as God said they would through Moses, but when they rebelled in the Promised Land, against God's covenant, failed to keep it, God began to give the Jews over again and again to Gentile conquest.

Again, and again, God would raise up Gentiles to come in from the surrounding nations and punish the Jews. You see this in the Book of Judges, you see God raising up the various nations that surrounded them. The Midianites, the Ammonites, Syrians, the Philistines, the Egyptians. And again and again, God would give the Jews into the hands of the Gentiles. The very thing that God said He would do as a curse in the Mosaic covenant, in the Old Covenant. He said this in Deuteronomy 28:25, "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You'll come at them from one direction, but flee from them in seven. You will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms of the Earth." And then again in Deuteronomy 32:21, God says this, "They, the Jews, made me jealous by what is no God and angered me with their worthless idols, so I will make them jealous by those who are not a people," speaking of the Gentiles. "I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding." So, you Jews made me jealous by your idolatry, then I'm going to make you jealous by giving you over militarily to the Gentiles. This is the very thing you said you would do in the song of Moses before they even enter the Promised Land. Ultimately, this was completed, consummated in some ways, by the exiles under the Assyrians, and under the Babylonians, as the Jews were driven out from the Promised Land militarily.

Then one succession of Gentile overlords after another rose up to dominate them even when a small remnant under Ezra and Nehemiah, came back to rebuild the Jewish presence in the Promised Land, they were still, as was said in those books, slaves in their own land. They were under Gentile domination. And that was very, very difficult. So you see some of that hatred in that history. It's interesting, even this morning I was looking at a couple of verses in Ezra and Nehemiah. It says in Nehemiah 2:20, as Nehemiah's just beginning his work of building the city wall around Jerusalem, some Gentiles come and show up and begin talking to him about that project, and this is what Nehemiah said to these Gentiles. "You have no portion, no right, and no claim in Jerusalem." Well, praise God we do have a portion, right, and claim in the New Jerusalem. Amen. We were outsiders. What was Nehemiah building? A wall. What was that for? To keep them out.

And then again in Ezra as they're starting to build the temple, in Ezra 4:3 says, "You have nothing to do with us in building this temple for our God in which we will worship." Again, spoken to the Gentiles. “You're outsiders.” Well, this attitude, this hostility, Jew toward Gentile, which is made much more fierce because they were, in effect, under Gentile domination, and slaves in their own land, came to a fever pitch in the New Testament. When God raised up Saul of Tarsus, converted him, made him the Apostle to the Gentiles, and he began to go from place to place, teaching that in Christ, the very things he's saying here in Ephesians are true, “we gentiles have become sons and daughters of Abraham. And that we're now included in the covenant, the new covenant in Christ.” The nationalistic Jews were extremely angry about that, those that had not yet come to faith in Christ. And they were enraged actually. Started riots in many cities in reference to Paul's ministry to the Gentiles. Well, you see that in Acts 21, when Paul's there and he's with a Gentile, and they assumed that he had brought this Gentile into the temple area, which was absolutely forbidden. And they started to try to kill him, and started a riot and all that. The Romans came in and rescued Paul, and they're bringing him to the barracks where they're going to beat him. Paul had a hard life. I mean really. What a ministry. But here he says, "Just a minute, I'd like to speak to the crowd." I just think that's amazing, Acts 22, it's a witnessing moment. A chance to share the Gospel. I mean, how he thought was amazing. But he stands up and he's sharing his testimony and for the second time in the Book of Acts.

We get the story of the road to Damascus, and how he's converted, and they're listing quietly, until he gets to one word. One word. And this is what it says, "Then the Lord said to me," this is Paul talking about his own testimony. They'd been quiet up to this point. "Go. I will send you far away to the Gentiles." The crowd listened carefully to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices, and shouted, "Rid the earth of him. He's not fit to live." And then they're shouting and throwing off their cloaks, and flinging dust in the air. One word sent them into anger, “Gentiles.”

So there's that Jew Gentile hostility. We've seen it both sides of the equation. Now, it is true that God had chosen the Jews and blessed them. They were in a very special way, the focus point of his redemptive work on Earth. He said at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:5-6, to the Jewish nation, "Now if you obey me fully and if you keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole Earth is mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." But it was for the purpose of blessing the entire world with the Abrahamic blessing. "Through you,” Abraham, “all peoples on Earth blessed," and I don't think they understood that. They didn't see that. And that theme had long since disappeared from the Jewish mindset, and from the Jewish way of life. In Christ, it is fulfilled. In Christ, it is consummated. “We Gentiles, who were once so far away have now been brought near” and are included in what God had always planned to do through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Well, that's all by way of introduction.

Remember What You Were, Gentiles

Let's look now very carefully at these verses that teach so much about our condition as Gentile believers in Christ. Let's begin in verses 11 and 12 where it makes it very plain that Gentiles, who are formally excluded and without hope, have now been brought near. We were formally excluded. We were on the outside, and without hope. Look at Verse 11-12, "Therefore remember that formally, you who are Gentiles, by birth, and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men. Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”

So Paul here calls on the Gentiles to remember what they were formally. We've already seen that earlier in the worship service today. The benefit of going back and remembering how it was. Now, Ephesus, these Ephesians, they were from the city of Ephesus. It was in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. And that was a Gentile region, a Gentile city, and a Gentile region. And they worshiped Pagan deities, like Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, whose image had supposedly fallen out of Heaven. And they built this huge temple to her, that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There was paganism, it was a pagan place, they worshiped idols. Their men were uncircumcised, as Paul mentions in this text. They were seen by Jews, by some Jews anyway, to be unclean dogs. "They were," verse 11, "Gentiles by birth” or more literally “Gentiles in the flesh." Their genealogy, their racial lineage, was Gentile, not Jew. Paul wants them to look back and to remember how it was for them as a nation, and group. Why is that?

Well, it's just a truth. And we've been seeing this again and again. The more you realize what you were before you were converted, the more joyful and thankful you'll be now and energetic in service to Christ. The more you know just how black, and dark, and distant all of that was, the better it is for you. I just love singing that song, Jesus, Thank You. Don't you? I leaned over to Daphne this morning? I said, "I love this song. It gives me a chance to tell Jesus, ‘Thank you.’ Just to say, ‘Thank you for saving me.’” And we've already seen this already, this morning, and earlier in Ephesians 2, how Paul has already brought their minds back. In verses 1-3, look, "As for you," he says, "You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. Spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” That's what we were. Remember how you were. Look back at how you were. Understand that condition.

Formerly Called “Uncircumcision” by the Circumcised

Now, he wants to tell these Gentiles even more about their situation. God had begun a work of redemption through the Jews. Think of the world like a dark howling wasteland. Like a blizzard in some mountainous region, and there's some light shining and a fire that started, and there's some food cooking, and there's this place of warmth, and you're in the blizzard. But it's like you can see the light, and then as you draw nearer you find that there's this huge wall erected around it. You are on the outside and there was a wall there preventing you from coming in. You couldn't be included, that's what he's saying. You were on the outside. Now, Paul himself was raised in a Gentile region. He was also raised in Asia Minor. He was in the city of Tarsus, 700 miles to the east of Ephesus, right along pretty much the same latitude, right across. And he knew what it was like to be surrounded by Gentiles. He himself was a Roman citizen and he understood this situation. So, he doesn't know how much these Gentiles knew about Jewish laws and regulations, but he's going to tell them. He's going to say, "Remember that formally, you who were called the uncircumcision." Alright, “Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised, by those who call themselves the circumcision.” You're seen to be outsiders by these Jews, “called uncircumcised by those who call themselves as circumcision.”

Now, to some degree, this statement here is a bit of a digression an aside. Paul's interrupting his thought and said, "There are some people who think hard thoughts about you and they call themselves the circumcision. These Jewish nationalists. I understand them, I was one of them myself at one point. And they call themselves the circumcision. They have a sense of spiritual superiority to you, hostility toward you. They have a certain hatred toward you, but their circumcision," Paul alludes to this, "their circumcision is merely external, and physical, it's not spiritual." He's going to talk about this in Romans 2:28 and 29. He says, "A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly. Nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise does not come from men, but from God." So that's a true Jew. Okay. They've had that inner-work of transformation by the Holy Spirit. It's a circumcision of the heart. They've been transformed. The very thing that happened in Ephesians 2:4-5. Go ahead and look at it. "But God made us alive even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up." That's another way of saying the same thing. That spiritual circumcision, by the Spirit, not by the written code, that hasn't happened to these people, they call themselves a circumcision and they're only focusing on the physical.

Okay, well anyway, you Gentiles, alright, what should we remember? Well, let's remember six devastating things about you in that condition. “Remember that at that time, when you were not a Christian. Back then, before you were converted, alright, you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the Promise, without hope, without God in the world.” Six different things that Paul says was true of us as Gentile, unconverted people.

Separate from Christ

So first he says, "You are separate from Christ, you are outside of Christ, you are apart from Christ, you are not in fellowship with Christ." Christ for us is everything. Christ is life, Christ is our hope. We have nothing apart from Christ. And so, when you are not a Christian you had nothing from Christ, you were separate from Him. Christ is the fullness of joy. He is life and power and peace and everything good in the universe. But more than that, you Gentiles, you didn't even have any promises or any hopes or any thoughts about Christ? You didn't have a heritage of waiting for the Messiah. You didn't even know about Him. You didn't know that one had been promised who would come would be the Savior of the world. You didn't have those kinds of thoughts. So you were separate from Christ. You had nothing like that. 

Excluded from Citizenship in Israel

And secondly he says, "You were excluded from citizenship in Israel." Citizenship, the language of citizenship is something these Gentiles would have understood, dominated as they were by the Romans, and there was such a thing as Roman citizenship. Paul himself was born a citizen of Rome,. And so being a citizen of Rome brought you certain rights and privileges. Certain advantages and benefits. Well, they were outsiders, they had no rights and privileges when it came to Israel. And why? Because the law of Moses kept them out, it excluded them, told them they were not permitted to enter the assembly of the righteous. They were outsiders. In Deuteronomy 23:2-3, it says this, “No one born of a foreign marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the 10th generation.” That's right in the law of Moses. “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the 10th generation.” When they came back under Ezra and Nehemiah, they were all about genealogies. You've read those books. Genealogy all the time. “Are you Jewish?” That's the question. And then in Nehemiah 13:1-3, it says on that day, the Book of Moses was read aloud and the hearing of the people and it was found written, “that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be entered into the Assembly of God.” Now listen to this, the kind of extension of this “when the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent,” everybody. So you might say, “Wait a minute. I'm not Ammonite I'm not a Moabite.” Well, you're included, excluded, included in the excluded. If you're not Jewish, you're out.

What's interesting though is honestly the entire Old Covenant was about exclusion, for everybody. Wasn't it? Wasn't the tabernacle, just a bunch of cloth walls that kept people out? Wasn't the Temple, a more permanent bunch of walls that kept people out? Wasn't it true that you couldn't enter the Holy of Holies, unless you were descended from Levi and descended from Aaron and it was the Day of Atonement, and you brought blood, and you better get out of there, quickly?  So there are these barriers, all of this. We'll get back to that in a moment. But God had set this up, He had set up this barrier, He had set up this dividing wall, He had set all of this up with its commandments and regulations. It excluded all uncircumcised people, from the sacred assembly. The Gentiles were outsiders. Look at Verses 14-15. Do you see the words there? “Barrier.” “Dividing wall.” See it? Verse 15, “the Law with its commandments and regulations.” That's what kept us out. The circumcision rule, the dietary regulations, all of the Jewish laws. Kept us out.

Foreigners to the Covenants of the Promise

Thirdly, foreigners to the covenants of the Promise, what is this? Well, God made a promise to Abraham, when He called him out of Ur of the Chaldees. “Leave your country and your people, and go to the land I will show you.” "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So that's a promise. Then He made him even more promises, He says at one very incredible time. It was night time, and He takes him out, God takes Abraham out of the tent and has him look up at the stars and he says, "Look up at the stars and count them if you can", then He makes him a promise, “So shall your offspring be.” “You're going to have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky,” that's a promise made from God to him. The very next verse is key to our salvation. “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” So you first have to hear a promise, then you can believe it. But the Gentiles had no promise made to them, none that we could believe. And then, it mentions the “covenants of the Promise,” “the covenants of the Promise,” and so in Genesis 15, that very same chapter He makes him the second word. “I'm going to give this land that you're walking on here to you and to your descendants forever.” So how do I know that I'm going to get it?  It's not looking too good right now God. So then God had him make a covenant. He had him have animals, and he sacrificed them, and laid them out and made a path between them, as that was a covenant cutting ceremony, and suddenly, mysteriously, this fire pot, representing the presence of God, moved between the pieces and in effect, God said “May I personally cease to exist, if I don't keep this promise to you, I will keep my promise to you, I will keep this covenant, you will get the land forever.” Well, that was Jewish though.

The Gentiles had no such covenant cutting ceremony, they had no covenant made with them. Nope, no such promises have been made to the Gentiles, their outsiders. God wasn't making them any promise at all. And notice, it's plural “covenants.” The second covenant I think that Paul has in mind is the covenant made with David, that God would raise up one of David's sons and seat Him on His throne, the throne of David, and he would reign forever and ever a king reigning over a chosen people, in an eternal land that would be theirs forever and ever. That's what God was doing through the covenants, but the Gentiles were outsiders. They were excluded from the covenants of the Promise.

Without Hope

Fourthly, they, “were without hope.” I would say just like Ephesians 2:10 I would say, there's very few days that go by I don't think about Ephesians 2:10, “that I am God's workmanship created to do good works today, which I want to do which God has prepared for me.” How about this one. That the non-Christians that surround us, the lost people are “without hope and without God in the world.” Think about that every day, think about what it would be like to go through life without hope and without God. It's inconceivable how much misery, human misery, is packed into these words. “Without hope.” What do people do when they're hopeless? Well, some of them kill themselves. Other people drown their sorrows in drugs and alcohol. Or in workaholism or achievements or material possessions, or entertainment, or sports. Because they don't have anything, and as they go on there's more and more sense of despair that just doesn't satisfy doesn't satisfy it's “Vanity of vanities, it's meaningless.”

Now, I think there are three types of hope. I've talked to people, non-Christians and Christians alike about this, and it just has to do with a time frame. Hope always has to do with the future. “Who hopes for what he already has?” We don't hope about past things. Hope always has to do with the future. What is hope? Hope is a feeling in the heart, a positive feeling that the future is bright. “I'm looking forward to the future, the future will have good things for me.” Okay? Time frame. First, let's start with eternity, that I'm looking forward to eternity. I'm not afraid to die, I believe in eternal life, and I think eternally, I'll be happy, eternal hope. No one on earth but Christians has any reason for eternal hope, none. Then there's long range hope. “I like how my life is going.” Might have to do with your career, might have to do with a long-term goal. Maybe you just got married, and you're looking forward to a beautiful life with your wife, with your husband. looking forward to that. Things are looking good for you down the road and from now until death, it's going to be good, long range hope. And then there's that short-term, immediate hope. “We're going out to eat tonight at my favorite restaurant. Looking forward to that! Future is looking bright. Short, short range future.”

What ends up happening is more and more non-Christians get down to that final one. More and more, and they just live for today. “Let us eat and drink and be merry, because I don't even know if tomorrow's ever going to come and if it does, it's probably going to be bad.” So that's what it means to be without hope. We have a God who has gone ahead of us, in time, and has basically said, “Not only have I been to your future and seen it. I've ordained it, I've decreed it, and nothing will stop it. Your future is bright. So be filled with hope. Be filled with joy.” We have that as Christians. Non-Christians, don't have that. “Without hope, and without God” means without God as a blessing. God sees everything they do. He is a constant watcher of men and women, He knows everything that we do, that's not it, that's like Hell. That's God. There to punish. God, there to curse. God, there to pour out wrath, not God to bless. That's what, “without God” means here, that God isn't making any commitment to bless you. He's made no promises to bless you. “Without hope and without God in the world.” The world is just Satan's world where Satan is in charge and dominant.

Can I just stop and just do an application here?  Do you not see how we have to be evangelistic in this world? Do you not see how we have got to reach out to non-Christians? We've got to see non-Christians that we live with differently, that these folks have no hope and we have hope in our hearts! Our centers are radiant with hope! By the way, you need to live that out, right? Just live out hope, just speak your hope all the time. Because somebody's going to come and ask you to “give a reason for the hope that you have,” so you have to be putting that hope on display. Amen?  So just put that hope on display and hopeless people will say, “What is going on with you?” They're out in the howling wilderness and it's dark and cold and you're like, sitting around a very warm campfire, eating well, and you're protected, and they're like, “I want in. How do I get in?” “Repent and believe in Jesus.” Well, they're “without hope and without God in the world” But now, He says, in verse 13, “In Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. But now,” isn't that almost exactly like, “But God?” Isn't that fantastic just like, “But God”? In verse 4, we have “But now.”

You who were once far away you have been brought near, and how amazing is that we're near, near to what? Not so much near to the Jews. Although we'll get to that.

You've been brought near to God. This infinite, high and holy God, the one who, as Daniel quoted earlier, “I live in a high and holy place.” “I live in a high and holy place,” but also with him who is contrite and “lowly in spirit,” “I live with people that are broken-hearted and that come to me through faith in Christ.” You've been brought near. This is the God who sits, “enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.” We were as sinners distant from God, and now we have been “brought near” and it says, “through the blood of Christ,” or “by the blood of Christ.” There is no salvation for us sinners, apart from the “shed blood of Christ,” we will never be done talking about the blood of Christ, it says in Leviticus 17, “the life of the creature, of the animal, is in the blood, and I've given it to you to make atonement for your sins.” Well, that was in the old covenant, but we learned in the new covenant that “the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin.” It was just a symbol, And “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” but blood has been shed for us, amen? Isn't that beautiful? “The blood of Christ has brought us near.” Jesus died on the cross, He shed His blood in our place that we, who were once distant might be now brought near to God.

Brought Near by Christ’s Bloodshed

Now, here's the key to the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility coming down.” We're going to talk much more about this next week. This is the key to the end of racism. This is the key to the end of the hostility between Jews and Gentiles. This is it. Christ has made us one. Look at verses 14 and 15, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.” Well, Christ is our peace. This section here, verses 14 and 15, begins and ends with peace, and so, Christ by His bloodshed on the cross has taken away the wrath of God. So, the peace horizontally takes a back seat to the first, and that is peace vertically with God. God was at war with us, we were His enemies, but now, in Christ, God has reconciled us to Him, through faith in Christ. And so we now have as we saw earlier, Romans 5:1-2, “we have peace with God” through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So vertically, we now have peace with God.

And so what that means is horizontally we are drawn close to oneness with one another. We, having been reconciled to God, we can be reconciled to each other. Look at verses 15 and 16, “His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two,” one out of two, “thus making peace and in this one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which He put to death their hostility.” So, the war is ended. The war is ended with us and God, and then with us and brothers and sisters in Christ, we are one with each other, we are reconciled to one another, we have been made at peace with each other. So he says that the two, Christ has now made one. Now, the key to that is our spiritual unity with Jesus, if you come to faith in Christ, you are made one with Jesus, look back at verses 4 through 6, “But God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ, with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.” Verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus.” We are one with Christ, And that's true of every single Christian on the face of the earth. We are one with Christ, all of us. It is impossible for two individuals to be each of them, one with Christ and not one with each other. We are in a status of oneness with Christ.

Now, we need to act like it in terms of our walk with Christ, in holiness. We are also in a status of oneness with each other, and we need to act like it and walk like it. And so on that basis, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are made one with each other, as well, one body united in Christ. Now, later he's going to say this in Ephesians 4:3-6, he says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope, when you're called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall, and through all, and in all.”

Unity Made Possible Only Through Christ

Now, there are some difficult passages to interpret in the Bible, but what's the main important word there? I think it's “one.” I mean It's kind of like you have to be dense, not to see it. One. There's “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” “One” hope we are one, we have all been made one in Christ. Now the way he does that is by transforming us individually, making us new men and women, new boys and girls. Look at verse 15, "His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, behold everything has become new.” We're changed, we're transformed and we're going to talk next week about racism and all of those issues. So much of it just has to do with the change of the heart, and covering of the history, and forgiveness, and all of those things God has done that for us, he has transformed our hearts and made us into new people. So, no longer Jew, no longer Gentile. Now with a new name Christian, A believer in Christ. Amen? One new man, one new work he's doing, it's the only designation that matters and the Spirit takes that hatred, that bitterness, that's based on history, based on actual sins that have occurred and takes it away.

Christ’s Miraculous Power to Change Hearts

I love the scene in the movie, Ben-Hur, one of my favorite movies, and there Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish man had had a Roman friend when he was a boy, Messala, but when each of them grew up Judah Ben-Hur grew up as it as a Jew, and very nationalistic and caring about his people, Messala grew up as a Roman and grew up very nationalistic, and caring about his people, they came back together after having an apart since they were teenagers, they could not be friends and Messala was bitter and negative toward the Jews, but wanted to use Judah Ben-Hur to betray his people And use him as an informant and all that, and Judah wouldn't do that.

So, Messala turns and punishes Judah Ben-Hur, sends him on a slave galley, takes Judah's mother and sister beloved, mother and sister and throws them in prison with no charges where they contract leprosy. Somehow God spares Judah Ben-Hur, brings him back but he is so seething with hatred at Messala, he can't stand him, he's filled with bitterness and rage over the history and what has happened, And then when he finds out that his mother and his sister have leprosy, and it's Messala's fault, it just goes off the charts. Messala ends up dying in a chariot race, but the hatred doesn't go away.  It's like a heat seeking missile, he's just looking for something, and he hates Rome, he hates the world, he hates everything, but he meets Jesus as He's on his way to dying on the cross. He actually watches Him die in the movie.

And he had met Jesus earlier, Jesus had given him some water when He was on His way to the slave galley. Now, he sees Him dying, and he hears Him say those words "Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing", and the blood flows down, and in the movie it was very powerful. And then he comes back, he's just a different man. And he said, "When I heard Him say those words, I felt Him reach down and take the sword out of my hand. That's What happens when Jesus makes you a new man or a new woman. He Just reaches down and takes the sword right out of your hand and you are one with somebody that you, in every other way would be an enemy with. That's the power here. And so Christ has done that, and it says in the text, he's done it by destroying “the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” Well, this was the last issue in the text. There were laws, there was a circumcision regulation, there were dietary regulations. Jesus, we are told here, has abolished it. Look at verse 15, he talks about the “barrier of the dividing wall of hostility,” verse 15, "By abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” He abolished them.

Hebrews 8:13 says that in Jesus, “in His blood, there's a new covenant and by calling this covenant new, He has made the old one obsolete.” So the old covenant is abolished. That's the text. It's obsolete. That's Hebrews 8:13. We now no longer are at any spiritual disadvantage uncircumcised we don't have to keep the ceremonial regulations, the dietary regulations. That “barrier, that dividing wall” has been removed. That horizontal barrier has been removed because the vertical one has been removed. When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and now “we have access to the Father by one Spirit,” so Jews and Gentiles who have come to faith in Christ, are perfectly one in Him. They just need to act like it, they need to live out that oneness.

Now, we're going to talk next week about how hard that is and more of those aspects. I would say that this text is the most powerful one that I know at getting at the root of racism and bitterness and division. We'll talk more about that next week. A few other applications, then we'll be done.

First, as Gentile Christians. Let's just stand amazed at what He has done. Just do what Paul says. “Remember how it was for you,” formally remember what you were remember the journey that God has taken you from remember how you used to be an outsider, and now you're in. Now, you're inside. Now, you're loved. Keep that in mind and rejoice. If you like, Jesus, Thank You, go home and sing it. Find another song then sing that one. Just praise Him and thank Him.

Secondly, Verse 18 says that “we now both Jews and Gentiles in Christ have free access to God through the Holy Spirit.” Take advantage of it. Come close to God. He has brought you near positionally, now come close in prayer, Bring your problems to Him, “Let us draw near to God, having a sincere heart and pure assurance of faith, as it says in Hebrews 10.

Thirdly, and I've already mentioned this and I'll say it again. Meditate much on the condition of people who are not yet converted. Think about the fact that they're “without hope and without God in the world,” have mercy on them. Last week I challenged the home fellowships to have each member identify five people that they know to be lost, that you're praying for by name. Okay, so I'm ready. Home Fellowship, I've got my names alright, I was busy this week meeting people, but let’s just let's reach out, let's get names of lost people and let's pray for them. And if perhaps you have a chance like Ben and some others of sharing the Gospel and reaching out, let's be bold, let's share.

And then finally, let's meditate on our supernatural unity, in Christ. We're going to talk much more about it next week, but this is the only answer there is for the kind of racial tensions and divisions there are in our country and in the world. Let's meditate on it, let's Get Ready. So I'd urge you just read this text over in light of some of the difficulties that we've been having, even in our nation and around the world and see the answer there. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the truth of the Gospel. We thank you O Lord that apart from Christ we had no salvation but now we, who are once far away have been, “brought near through the blood of Christ.” Lord I pray that there wouldn't be a single person here that would leave this place unconverted, today. I pray that they would trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and find in Jesus, the salvation that they need. And Lord, I pray for all of us who have already found forgiveness and unity and hope in Christ, that we would be filled with thanksgiving and that we would be filled with boldness to take the Gospel to those who are “without hope and without God in the world.” In Jesus' name, amen.

It's one of the biggest struggles I think that every person has in life, is a sense of purpose. You know, “Why am I alive?” “Why am I even here?” “Why do I live each day?” And people struggle with that. “What gives meaning to my Mondays and my Tuesdays?” “What is the remedy to the terrifying sense of aimlessness and purposelessness in life that kind of dogs my heels.” And that same idea led the wisest man who had ever lived on earth up to that point, King Solomon, as he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, and he looked around at the world that surrounded him as he looked at his own life, his own achievements. And he looked at all of those achievements and the power and the wealth and the pleasures and all of that, and He said in Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity, it's all emptiness, it's all meaningless.” As he looked at it. Now, we don't want to reach the end of a single day and feel that it was all vanity, it was all meaningless.

We don't want to live a single day that's empty of purpose. And praise God through His grace, we don't need to, isn't that awesome?  Every single day for us as Christians is a day just crackling with energy and promise with good works that are worth doing. I mean, eternally worth doing. And the more we meditate on Ephesians 2:10, the more joy that can come to us, and I hope the more energy and zeal and power through the Holy Spirit to live an active life of good works. For it says in Ephesians 2:10, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So, this idea is very powerful. There are a few verses that I think about every single day. There's a few of them, and I don't do it intentionally, I'm just saying they come in my mind. This is one of them, I think about Ephesians 2:10 every day. I think about it in the morning when I get up, and when I pray and say, “Lord, I want to do the good works that you prepared for me to do today. I want to walk in those good works. So Lord, give me a wise and discerning heart, show me what they are. I don't want to miss any of them.” I think we all have the feeling, and it's a mystery how Ephesians 2:10 fits into failure to do the good works but we know that we miss opportunities don't we? There are some things that we should have done and didn't do.

And I don't want that to be my life, I don't want that to be any single day, and I sure don't want that to be the cumulative effect of my whole life that I missed them. I missed the good works. And so I pray for that every morning I just say, “Lord, to help me to walk in that pathway of good works that you have ordained for me,” There are various types. There are some just grand and glorious big, good works that you might only do once in your life, and years later you'll be thinking about that good work and what God did and in and through that time, and never do it again. And then there are just those day-to-day mundane small good works that you may be tempted to despise and wonder why it's still your job and why somebody else doesn't do it, by now. But that God has set out for you to do everything's included for me in Ephesians 2:10. So it could be anything from a word of encouragement that you speak to somebody, you pick up the phone and call them. Or you just take a moment and pray for a situation you know about it in the church.

And no one needs to know about it. You don't need to tell anyone like Jesus said in Matthew 6, “you go into the room and close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.” No one ever knew about it, but you prayed for a brother or a sister, or a situation and God sees it and He knows, and He hears it. Or it could be right a check for a ministry, or something large or small, wouldn't matter. So all kinds of good works. And so, God has ordained these good works, and in the language of Isaiah, I think of a pathway of good works in which God says “This is the way, walk in it.” Like there are these golden steps that we're going  across, across the river of life, and we're just stepping from good work to good work to good work, and you can just live your life that way. This is the way, walk in it.

It's what glorious grace from God to arrange ahead of time, a life of good works that have eternal significance and to be able to join with God the Father in the work that He's doing. As Jesus said, “My Father is always at His work to this very day and I too am working.” And we as sons and daughters of the living God, we can say that God's at work. He's working in the world, always working and I have, by faith, joined in His work, and that is glorious.

There is also a sense in this verse, I think of craftsmanship, a sense of craftsmanship. We are God's workmanship, and the day is God's workmanship. The both of them and we're going to talk about that today, but there's a sense of craftsmanship. A little while ago, I came across a website that was talking about these expensive mechanical watches, from Switzerland and from Germany, and I came across one that cost 2.6 million dollars. For a wristwatch. Alright, now if I had 2.6 million, I would not invest it in a wristwatch. Imagine giving Jesus an account of that on Judgment Day, alright, enough said. But at any rate, this German watchmaker, Lange & Söhne, makes this one watch, it's called “The Grand Complication,” that's the name of the watch. And it takes a skilled craftsman, an entire year to make a single watch. And every part that goes into it, is hand-crafted the complexity is staggering. It has different chimes for different parts of the hour, 15 minutes, 30, 45 and the hour, a different chime, like it's a grandfather clock on your wristwatch. Imagine being at work, and the thing goes off and people are like, "What is that?” “Well, that's my new watch for 2.6 million dollars.” And the craftsmanship is amazing. It's got a calendar and it's got all of these things, it's all mechanical, it's not computer it's all gears and sprockets, and springs. And I just think about the complexity of it. And it's about that big and all of that fitting together, centuries of craftsmanship, but then I thought about this verse today. And we are more complicated than that. Vastly more complicated. And the craftsmanship that has gone into us is staggering, and the craftsmanship frankly, that's gone into the world around us, the complexity of how we as sons and daughters of God interact with other Christians and with non-Christians to achieve His eternal purpose is just staggering. It's exquisite craftsmanship.  So God has been crafting you and shaping you and molding you for this lifetime of good works and He continues to do it, He's doing it right now for me and for you. And He's getting us ready for these good works.

Salvation from Sin is Not by Works

Now, when we come to the issue of good works, again, we need to stop and just be careful of context here, don't we? And it's very important. I chose to divide Ephesians 2:10 from Ephesians 2:8-9, and from the larger section, that Andy just read. And so I think it's good for us to look back and understand where we just came from last week, Ephesians 2:8-9, “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So you really need to see the whole thing together. So we have to go back and remember what we talked about last week because it is so pernicious, and so powerfully magnetically attractive this idea of justification by works, or being saved by works, and it's just consistently dogging our hearts whenever we feel guilty, whenever we know we've sinned, we want to turn to our own works, and try to pay for our sins by good works, and that cannot be. “It says it is by grace you have been saved,” “have been saved.”

And so we said last week. Saved from what? Well, the answer is: Saved from eternal condemnation under the judgment of God, when it says in Revelation 20, that we will all be “gathered before this great white throne. And the court will be seated and the books will be opened and everyone that has ever lived will be gathered and we will all be judged, according to what we have done as recorded in the books, and by the Lamb's Book of Life and if anyone's name was not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they are thrown into the Lake of Fire.” So we could sum this up. To answer the question, “Saved from what?”, it's from the lake of fire that we deserve because of our sins. How can we be delivered from condemnation, how can we be delivered from Hell? And the answer is, it is by grace, through faith, faith in Christ, faith in the blood of Christ that you have been saved, and this is not of yourselves, he says, it is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. We can't emphasize this too much, although I don't want to just go off and preach last week’s sermon now because if Ephesians 2:10 is so glorious and beautiful, but we just need to understand that no amount of good works, no amount of the things that we could ever do in service to God can ever be used to pay for our sins. It is “through faith,” by simple trust in Jesus, by believing the words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this faith “is not of ourselves,” It doesn't originate with us, it comes from outside of us in, it's a gift of God. And it's not by works.

The Spiritually Dead Cannot do Good Works

Why not? Because Paul already said in Ephesians 2:1-3 that “we were dead in our transgressions and sins, even while we lived, we were enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil and we could not have delivered ourselves.” Our good works cannot deliver us from that bondage, that slavery. “We were by nature objects of wrath, but God because of His richness, of His mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions God made us alive with Christ. It is by grace you have been saved, and God raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus.” So that's God, God stepped in, “but God” intervened, God raised you from the dead. You couldn't have done that. That couldn't be by works, and that's the Gospel of free grace. We talked about grace, remember unmerited favor, and how that's a good starting point. There's an unmerited side and there's a favor side, how we said that those are infinite under statements. We deserved condemnation and wrath. So it's definitely unmerited. And it's not mere favor, but it's a river of blessings, “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,” a river of blessings that has come to us and will continue to come to us forever. It is by grace, it is God's settled determination to do us infinite good, we who deserve infinite punishment. That is grace. So that's salvation by grace, and “it's by grace we have been saved through faith, not of yourselves but it is a gift of God” and not by works. But though we have not been saved by works, the text most certainly asserts that we have been saved for works, for good works, Not by good works, but for our good works. “For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.”

So we are clearly told that we're saved for good works. Good works cannot be used to pay for sins, but God when He saves us, by grace gives us a new nature, He gives us a transformed nature. And from that transformed nature flow a river of good works, or the nature hasn't been transformed. So we have been born again by the Holy Spirit of God. We have had the heart of stone removed, and we've had the heart of flesh put in. I love what it says in his Ezekiel 36:25-27. "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean." Oh, isn't that beautiful? You will be clean, “I will cleanse you from all your impurities. And from all your idols and I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you and I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh.” And now, listen to this, this is Ezekiel 36:27. “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

Now we come to the complexity of the role of the law in the Christians life. And the way I put all of this together is the law condemns us, and brings us to the cross of Jesus Christ, saying we can't save ourselves And so we despair our self-salvation, despair our salvation by works. We can't keep the law and so we come and throw ourselves to God at the feet of the cross, and we plead for mercy and we get it. And we receive full forgiveness and salvation by grace through faith. But then having done that we have received now, a new nature, a transformed nature and the Lord turns us back to the Law and says, Now by the Spirit, keep this law. It's beautiful, it's the best life you can ever live in Psalm 119, the whole Psalm, 176 verses are “Oh, how I love your law, and how beautiful it is and how majestic and how right it is.” So we're dead to the law and its power to condemn us, but now we now live the law, the moral law, the beautiful virtuous law the Ten Commandments, or the two commandments Take the two commandments Jesus said, “All of the law and the prophets hang on this that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and the second command is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.” So the Holy Spirit, then moves us to love God with all that we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves in ways that we've never even imagined.

Salvation by Works is no Gospel at All

Now, there's been so much controversy about this over the years, so much misunderstanding. Before the Reformation in the 16th century, the medieval Catholic church had a whole system of religious works, and a terrible confusion about justification and a false Gospel, honestly, that they were preaching, “which was no Gospel at all,” and the Lord raised up Martin Luther. And Luther tried to earn his own salvation by works of Medieval Catholicism, by becoming a monk, by scrubbing floors and doing penitential prayers and doing confessional, and all of these works of Medieval Catholicism. But all it did was make him realize the inner corruptions of His heart more and more and more and he just felt greater and greater condemnation, until at last, he finally understood the Gospel. In Romans 1:16-17 Paul writes, “I'm not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is from faith for faith just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.” And he finally understood that the righteousness of God there was not the righteousness by which, He condemned sinners, but the righteousness by which He saves sinners. It's a context issue, it's good news, it's the Gospel, and this righteousness of God is now mine as a gift to save me. He said, “Then at last, the Gates of Heaven flew open and I ran through I understood at last salvation.” Well, he spent the next number of years understanding more and more and preaching more and more on justification by faith alone, “apart from works of the law,” and he's preaching this, and being diligent and emphasizing this again and again, because they really needed to hear it, and He preached from Romans 4 about how “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” and he didn't work for it. It was just given as a gift. Preaching all of these things and they never tired of preaching “justification by faith, apart from works of the law.”

Spurgeon and Luther

Charles Spurgeon, and said they hit that same nail again, and again, and again, and again with their hammers, and so gradually became imbalanced, imbalanced on the issue of works, and it's easy to happen. And it shows up when Luther translated the Bible into German, and he came to Romans 3:28, which says, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the law,” he's stuck an extra word in there to help the scripture out a little bit. Hey, look, the scripture doesn't need help. If the Greek word is there, put it in there. If it's not in there, don't put it in there. Good. Just a good rule on translation. All you Bible translators. He stuck the word alone in there. “We maintain that a man is justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.” God wasn't hindered when Paul wrote Romans. If He wanted him to say alone, He would've, He didn't. But it got even worse when he came over to the Book of James. And James in James chapter 2, from verse 14 on to the end of the chapter is talking about the role of works and faith, and he's actually asking a different kind of question than Romans 3 and 4 is asking. And that is, “What kind of faith justifies you?” That's what James is dealing with there. He says a “faith that has no works is a dead faith, he says It's a demon faith, even the demons believe that there's one God but they shudder.” So James is dealing with what kind of faith, and the faith that produces no works is dead, it's demon faith, it's empty faith and it will not save you. Well, Luther couldn't handle some of the phraseology that James used. The person justified by faith apart from works, but James says, that Abraham was justified by works, and he just couldn't figure it out. How they're using the word slightly differently etcetera. And coming at it from a different angle.

Good Works Validate Justification

And that Luther did teach the place of good works in the Christian life and he understood it properly. He was so upset at James, by the way they've worked it out, they're friends now, everything's good. But he called them Jimmy in the German language, and all that, and he said he wrote an epistle of straw, and if he could, he'd have it out. Well, that's  disrespect for the word of God, and let me tell you something, when you come to two texts from the scripture that don't seem to harmonize, roll up your sleeves and work and pray. Don't throw one of them out. So, “we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works.” But James says yes, “but what kind of faith saves, the faith that produces a lifetime of good works.” Paul would say the same thing right? From Ephesians 2 8-10, wouldn’t he? That's what's going on here. So, good works validate justification, they prove it. They show that it happened, that you've been born again by faith, you're leading a transformed life. It's the issue of fruit. There's going to be fruit in your life. Good works equals fruit in other places. So John the Baptist said, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." If you've genuinely repented, you will have good works, you'll have fruit. Jesus said, "By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people ever pick grapes from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear a bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear a good fruit. Thus by their fruit you will recognize them." And then Jesus said "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven."

Plain Doctrine

And again, this is a very hard thing to understand, but we will not be justified by works, but we will most certainly be judged by works. It would be easier to understand if I change the word judge, to say he's assessed or evaluated. Is that a little bit easier to understand? We will not be saved by good works, but we will be evaluated on the basis of our works on Judgment Day. Many passages teach this, but most clearly Romans 2:6-10, "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life." Who's that? Christians. That's a description of the Christian life. People who by persistence in doing good are seeking for “glory, honor and immortality.” To them, He's going to give eternal life. "But for those who are self-seeking, who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." Who's that? Non-Christians. Then he says the same thing doubled up. “There will be trouble and distress for everyone, every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” Romans 2:10, “but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism.” So Jesus is a perfect fruit inspector, and He will inspect the fruit of your life. He will have the full record of your words, He'll have the full record of your deeds. And He will evaluate your heart perfectly accurately based on the works. But you will not be forgiven or saved on the basis of your good works. Does that make sense? Just evaluated. Was there saving faith? If so, there's definitely going to be these good works.

I've had to say that I don't want you drawing that back down on it. I see it in my own heart. You do something wrong, you have to do something right to make up for it. Don't do that, go to the cross, go and pray, ask for forgiveness, and then get up by the power of the Spirit, and start living a works-filled Christian life again. Alright now, God's workmanship is on us and around us concerning these good works and that's awesome, isn't it? It's really exciting. “We are God's workmanship created in Christ is to do good works.” So, that means that God prepares us for the good works, God crafts us, He shapes us, and without that craftsmanship in our lives, we will not do the good works. That means all of your good works are a display of God's glory. To God be the glory for all of the good works, because He got you ready to do them. Now, His workmanship is done through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. He makes us a new creation. We're born again, we're made new, created new, without that no good works are possible. So, wait a minute pastor, you're saying that non-Christians do no good works? Yes, that's what I'm saying. Non-Christians do zero good works because none of it's done by faith. And “anything that's not from faith is sin,” anything not done for the glory of God is sin. So, they do none. We now ,as Christians born again, we now can do good works. We're able to do good works, and that's awesome. Now, He then continues to work on us, to craft us for more and more good works. How is he do that, by pouring the Bible into you? Just pouring scripture into you by your daily quiet time, by the sermons that you listen to, the books you read, the conferences you go to, the conversations you have, Bible study groups you're part of, just everything you do alone and in groups. He's getting you ready by the ministry of the Word of God for good works. 

Fruit

And all of this is based on our union with Jesus Christ. Look at the verse again, “we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” So we are created new creations in Christ Jesus. It's all by union with Jesus. We do our good works in union with Christ by the Holy Spirit, not alone. Clearest passage on this is John 15, Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If anyone remains in me, you will bear much good fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing." That's powerful, isn't it? So as we abide in Jesus by prayer and by the Word, and stay close to Him and walk with Him by the power of the Spirit we'll do good works, we do it in Christ Jesus to His glory. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So God is working on us.

Both Sides of the Equation

Now, it's so cool about all this, is God works both sides of the equation. He works on us for the good works and He gets the good works ready for us. That is really exciting, isn't it. Clearest example of this in the Bible, I think, is in Acts chapter 10, the story of Cornelius and Peter, do you remember that story? So Cornelius was a Gentile, a Roman centurion, who was a God-fearing man, interested, very interested in the Jewish religion, fasting, praying, doing lots of good works, but not converted. And one day an angel appears to him, and said, “Cornelius your good works have come up as a memorial offering before God, send men to Joppa to find a man named Peter who's staying in a house of the house of Simon, a tanner, he will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved. So he's not saved by all of his good works, but an angelic messenger said, Now, go send to get this man Peter.” Alright, so that's God working that side of the equation.

Now, the next day, Peter gets up for his quiet time and he's having his quiet time, and putting one of those flat Middle Eastern roofs and he gets hungry. Isn't it funny how God uses little things, and so he's hungry and he asked for someone to make him a sandwich. Sorry, they didn't have sandwiches back then. Anyway, to make himself lunch or breakfast or whatever it was and while the meals being prepared he has a vision, he falls into a trance and has a vision, you remember. And how there was this large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners and the sheet contained all kinds of unclean animals and reptiles, and nasty things that Jews can’t eat. And the voice came from Heaven, "Arise Peter. Kill and eat." And Peter did what Peter does. He said, "Never Lord", four times he says, Never Lord, look it up. That was the last of the four. And that's after the resurrection, and the ascension into Heaven, “Never Lord.” Don't ever say, “Never Lord,” don't do that. Alright. If it's the Lord speaking and say “Yes Lord,” alright? "Never Lord, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." And the voice comes a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." God is able to declare foods clean, that were unclean before and he's able to make people clean who were unclean before, but he didn't understand all that, he's just like, "What is this?” And it happened three times. Then the men from Cornelius appear at the gate. And the Spirit tells him, "Get up Peter and go with these men, don't be afraid to go with them." So they traveled back and they get to Cornelius' house, which Peter as a law-abiding Jew, would never have entered that home, and would never have had a meal with them, wouldn't have had anything to do with them because they're unclean. He understood, “wait a minute, I get it.” And as he's preaching the message the Holy Spirit falls on them and they become brothers and sisters in Christ by faith in the Gospel. He said, “Now I understand that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who love him and believe him and do what's right.” And he learned a lesson there. He wasn't done learning, read about in Galatians 2, another day, we'll talk about, I already did, look on the Internet, I already preached that sermon.

God’s Good Works are “Prepared in Advance”

But yeah, he has not done learning yet, but God got both sides of the equation ready. Do you see that? He's doing that all the time, He's getting people ready for you, and you ready for those people. I don't just mean in terms of missions or evangelism everything. It could be another Christian brother or sister who's got a need, and He's getting her ready or him ready for you and you ready for that person, and it's just beautiful. God prepares these works in advance. Andy did a great job of emphasizing that. I mean, God has gone ahead of us. I like that it's redundant, “prepared in advance.” You know, that's redundant, don't you? All preparation is done advance. Imagine if your friends came, and there was no meal ready and you're like, what's going on and all that, and it's like maybe your friends say, “I thought we were coming in for dinner.” “Oh yeah, we're going to prepare it after you leave.” Well, that doesn't make any sense. Alright, preparation happens ahead of time, but Paul strengthens it with some extra phraseology, and says “God has gone ahead of you and gotten everything ready.”

So I had this picture in my mind a number of months ago of how at Lowes you can do these kits, like you can go make a bird feeder, and you get there and everything's laid out. All of the pieces are cut. There's this little dish with the right amount of glue, and you've got all the tools, and just put it together. Do you like it like at Christmas time especially Christmas Eve. “Some Assembly Required,” isn't that cool? No, it's not cool. Not at 3 in the morning. Some Assembly Required, “tab A,” “slot B,” and all that. By the way, never put tab A in slot B, that's the problem. Put tab A in slot A please, alright. As a mechanical engineer, I had to say that. At any rate, some assembly required, these good works, we have something to do with them. God wants us to put it together and do it and it's awesome. It's very, very exciting. So every day the day is a masterpiece of good works, the day as I said, crackling and sparkling and filled with possibility, and energy and good things worth doing.

So how far in advance does God get these good works ready? Minutes? Hours? Years? Centuries? Yes, all of the above, the complexity is beyond the brain to calculate. When it comes to, let's say, the mission field for example, there are many stories told of traditions, tribal stories passed down from generation to generation that got that tribe ready to hear the missionaries to come. Don Richardson tells the story in Peace Child, the Sawi people in Irian Jaya who had a tradition of a peace child, where warring tribes would exchange the son of the chief, and as long as that child was alive there could be reconciliation piece between the tribe. He used it as what he called the redemptive analogy. A way to explain the Gospel. They've been doing that for time immemorial. They didn't know when they started that. That was worked in providentially in that tribe. I heard another story, once of another tribe in a jungle area and they had passed down a prophecy by word of mouth of a man with yellow hair was coming with leaves with some kind of writing on it that would come and tell them the way to know the Most High God. Is there any chance that missionary is going to be bald or red-headed? No! Yellow hair. Imagine the mission agency, they don't know about the prophecy, they know nothing, and they're like, “Yeah, I like this guy, he's got yellow hair.” That's their requirement for the job, but God got that tribe ready to hear the Gospel in advance even, I don't know, centuries in advance or it could be just an individual encounter that God prepares.

When we were missionaries in Japan, I had the experience of going, every Saturday, I would go to Takamatsu and I would take a train from Tokushima to Takamatsu and teach the Bible in English there, and then I would take the train back. And one thing I noticed on that train ride is that Japanese people didn't like sitting next to me. And listen, I was looking after my hygiene, I was doing what I needed to do whatever it was necessary but it just, I frequently had an empty seat next to me. The train could be crowded. So after a while, I kind of liked it. I actually used it, just put my books there, I had a little more space and it was good. But you know, until one day, a young man came, college-age, and asked if he could sit next to me, Japanese man. I said “Sure.” So I moved my books, and he sat down, and we got in a conversation. It turned out his mother is a Christian, but he's not a Christian, not yet, and he had questions about Christianity. He didn't sit down to talk about Christ, he just sat down. But we got into an incredible conversation about an hour long train ride and it led to many other Bible studies and he eventually came to faith in Christ and he said, after that happened, he said, "I think it was God's work in my life that I sat next to you on the train. I'm usually very shy, and I don't talk to strangers. And so God was working in him and in me to get us ready for that encounter.

“That We Should Walk in Them”

And it's a pathway of good works, it says literally that we should “walk in them.” The NIV just simply says for us to do. I like "walk in” better so I like quote the NIV until I get to the end of that verse and say that we “should walk in them.” Is that okay? Anyway, that's what I do. “For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So, again, I get this picture of like tunnel vision, and this is the road ahead of me and I need to do these good works, this is how I'm going to make my way through my life. And Mondays works are not Tuesdays works and Tuesdays works are not Wednesdays works, and I can never go backward and do yesterday's works and I honestly can't go ahead and do tomorrow's works. I've got today's works to do today. And so we need to redeem the time, don't we? We'll get to that in Ephesians 5, but we need to make the most of every day, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” So what kind of good works?  

Two Categories

Well, he didn't say what kind, but I'm going to break them into two categories.  Here in our church, we talk about the internal journey and the external journey. The internal journey is sanctification, or growth in Christ-likeness, growth in holiness, sanctification and good works. And then the external journey, is works you do in service to other people. You could say external, what either external to me, it could be both Christians and non-Christians are external to the church is non-Christians as we're reaching out. Okay, so two categories that I'm commending to you. Sanctification and service. Those are two main categories of good works that God wants you to do, that you should walk in, or another way to put it would be works of growing and works of going. So if you like the alliteration, I will give you two versions of alliteration. Sanctification and service if you like the letter S, growing and going if you like the letter G, and you like the rhyme. But the point is that you would be “growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ” internally and going out to serve other people in whatever way God has determined. Both are needed.

Now, concerning the internal works, you are to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” you are to “grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ.” How do you do that? Daily quiet times. Get up and have a time in God's Word every day, and have a time in prayer every day. Also you're to grow by being a covenant member of a good, local church and receiving the benefits of the Body of Christ as they pour into you, as people hold you accountable, as people speak into your life and you do the same, so good works of growing that will feed your soul. You have to, by the Spirit. Romans 8:13, "by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh.” That's a work you have to do, if you're tempted in some area of lust, or weakness, or sin, you have to work and put that sin to death that's something you do by the power of the Holy Spirit. So those are works of sanctification.

And then there are works of service. So everyday life, just deeds you do with your hands, with your mouth, with your feet, things you do to serve others, and they could be menial and mundane. It could be just everyday stuff you do around the house. It could be like emptying the dish-washer or loading the dishwasher. It could be vacuuming, it could be chores. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God,” the name of Jesus Christ. Do even the most menial things, those are some of the good works that you do. And we don't neglect them. But we also do good works toward other Christians by means of our spiritual gifts and so we're going to get to that later. I'm not going to say much about spiritual gifts now, but Ephesians 4, is all about it. But there it says in Ephesians 4 that, “to each one of us grace has been apportioned as Christ measured it out,” that Christ has given you. Each of you, a spiritual gift package, by which you can serve other brothers and sisters in Christ and advance the Gospel. And so you need to know what your spiritual gifts are and do your spiritual gift ministry.

And there are other things that don't have anything to do directly with spiritual gifts but just ministries of care and compassion for other Christians, ministry of mercy. Going to visit people in the hospital, making a meal for a couple that just had a baby, or it has a medical need, there might be works of financial generosity where you see a financial need and you meet it financially. Home fellowship starts tonight. The works of just getting the house ready and hosting a home fellowship are good works that God's prepared in advance for you to walk in, beautiful works that bless others. Works of hospitality.

Then there's works of evangelism and missions, reaching out to lost people. And that's something I just have a heart for in our church, that's the future of our church that we would grow and flourish more than ever before. In works of outreach of evangelism, external journey ministry. I am yearning for us to help, like the elders, to help people become better evangelists in their world. It's staggering to me, all the different mission fields you folks are going to go scatter to this week. All the workplaces, and schools, and neighborhoods, and malls, and shopping areas, and all these things. You're going to go throughout this week, and it is up to us to prepare God's people for works of service, “so that the body of Christ can be built up,” it says in Ephesians, get you ready for that.

So one of the things that I would commend to you is the idea in terms of evangelism, say, "Lord, I want to be a witness. Would you please today give me someone to talk to? Just give me someone to talk to. And Lord, make me alert to it, I pray for that, and I want to be faithful, I'm willing to be bold but I don't need to even share the Gospel, I just want to talk to somebody knowing that my desire is to be evangelistic, but I want to just be more social, more outgoing and connect with somebody. Connect that also if you would with a challenge I'd like to give to each member of our church. That a year from now, somewhere between now and a year from now, you will develop a list of five people that are lost, you know them to be lost, by name that you're praying for, for them to come to Christ. I'm not saying you should evangelize them. I'm kind of saying that, we'll get to that another time, but I'm just saying that you're praying for them now, that's all, you're just praying for those five names. Now if you say, "I don't have five names,” then just go get them. Go to the same convenience store every week until you know the name of the person who's there on Monday evenings, find out what his name is or her name is. Ask if there's some way you could pray for them. They'll usually tell you something, even if they shut you down, you can still get their name. And just they're one of your people and then just until you've got five, all of us can do this. And then Home fellowships, I urge you to just hold each other accountable, who are you five? Well, I've got two, great praise God. Be positive, no guilt, just positive. Great. Who are you two? I'll pray for you for those two. So, we're going to do in our home fellowship this year and it's something I want to urge you to do. We are God's workmanship created for evangelistic good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to walk in. At some point as you're pleading with God to send some missionary or evangelist to this person, it might be you and God might just work that in your heart. So, assess yourself. As you listen to this sermon, assess yourself.

It says in 1 Timothy 6:18, “they are to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous, and ready to share.” Talking about the rich there, but I think it's true there. Are you rich in good works? That's what I'm asking you, just look at your life. Are you rich in good works? Do you feel a sense of excitement about God crafting you to do a specific array of good works today and in your lifetime? Do you look at every day as unique in terms of God going ahead of you, preparing good works for you to do? Are you doing the daily good works of internal holiness, daily quiet time, Bible intake, prayer, putting sin to death by the Spirit, is that happening for you? Are you feeding on God's word? And are you using your spiritual gifts? Do you have a spiritual gift ministry here at FBC [First Baptist Church of Durham]? Are you doing a pattern of good works? If not, just find out, say, "Lord I want to, give me a ministry here,” and then evangelistically reaching out, as I've shared. Close with me in prayer.

Father, this is such good news, it's such a blessing to know that you have eternally significant, good works for us to do that we're not justified by works, we are no more children of God because we do the good works than before we did them, and we're no less if we should miss some, and we feel terrible, and we ask forgiveness for being selfish, or we're cowardly and not doing the good works, but Lord, we're secure, we're children of God, but Lord, we want to please you, and we want to do these good works. Lord, open our eyes to them, and help us by the Spirit to walk in those good works in Jesus' name. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Ephesians 2:8-9. The main subject of the sermon is how we are saved by grace through faith alone.

Amazing, amazing grace, “how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now, I see.” That's the beginning of the most famous hymn in the English language written by John Newton in 1779. It was a New Year's Day sermon, he was going to preach. You remember that time when King David wanted to build a house for God, and God told him through Nathan that He was actually going to build a house for him. That He was going to raise up one of his sons from his own body who would sit on his throne and ultimately, we know, he was speaking about Jesus Christ, the son of David, who would be Savior of the world, and would build an eternal house or temple for God that would last forever, and ever. And David had a glimpse of that, I don't think he fully understood it. But he was absolutely overwhelmed by this, and he sat down before God and said, "Oh Lord, what can I say? Is this your usual way of dealing with men?” Well, John Newton thought about that and he just thought about His own life and he wrote the words to Amazing Grace. He thought about what God had done in saving him. He was a man who had walked in debauchery and wickedness. He was born of a godly woman, a mother who was pious, but who died and when he was young, five or six years old, his father was godless, impious, and a man of the sea, and John Newton became a sailor and without any kind of moorings in the Gospel, he ultimately just turned his back and became an apostate, became impious and wicked, and lived a life of debauchery. You may think it harsh, what He said, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. But actually, no word, or combination of words can accurately capture how repugnant, how repulsive, how disgusting is any unconverted sinner in the eyes of a holy God. In such were all of us. So the word wretch is an understatement.

This God, “who dwells in unapproachable light,” “who is Himself light without any shade of darkness at all.” This God who sits on a holy throne who loves righteousness and justice, with a passionate zeal hotter than the sun. This God who hates wickedness, with a hatred that is beyond any words I could put to it, His love for righteousness and His hatred for wickedness is the foundation of the throne sits on. This God saw this man, John Newton, as a sailor turn away from what he had been taught by his mother, who lost all his morals, becoming openly blasphemous casting off all fear of God. No fear of reprisals, no fear of judgment. Lived the debauched life of a sailor soon involved in the slave trade, became interestingly little more than a slave himself, on an island off the coast of West Africa, Sierra Leone for almost two years. So pitiable was his state that some of the other African slaves used to smuggle him food because they were afraid he would starve to death. That's how bad was the treatment he received. Then suddenly, by the providence of God, a man who knew his father sailed by that island, came in contact with the inhabitants there, rescued Newton and took him on board his ship. Serving on another slave ship.

All of this just continuing his own life of rebellion, and wickedness against Almighty God until March 21, 1748. A storm so violent, it lasted over 36 hours, huge waves crashing over the ship filling the ship with water. Newton down below, pumping and pumping and pumping trying to just keep the ship of float running around doing various tasks the captain told him to do. Captain told him to go do something, and before he could do he changed his mind and said, "I want you to go get a knife. He needed a knife, the man who took his place immediately washed overboard and drowned. Newton saw it knew that could easily have been him who died. Should have been me, he thought. Once the storm eventually abated, he started thinking about his own mortality his own life, his own death, his soul, and he began to search out the Bible. It's interesting in the middle of that storm this godless man cried out from something inside. “Lord have mercy on us!” But where does that come from? But he knew he needed mercy, from God, but he couldn't find it, he didn't have any faith. He had no faith. Then he came to a place in Luke 11:13, which promises that God will give the Holy Spirit to any who ask Him, and he found some hope in that verse, and began to ask that God would give him the Holy Spirit. He began to see God fervently and God used those experiences to bring him to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And then over the next number of years to a more and more increasingly solid theological basis.

Why Grace is Amazing

So, what's so amazing about grace?  That's what we've come to this morning in Ephesians 2:8-9. What's so amazing about grace? Isn't it incredible, how easily we get bored with truly wonders things? It must be part of the sinful condition of the human heart, that we can get bored with stunningly beautiful, amazing wonderful things. I wonder, this morning, if the Park Rangers at the Grand Canyon see the Grand Canyon with the same sense of wonder at the first day, they began their job. I mean, I wonder if all over the world people come tours, and they talk to the park range is like "Yeah, it's pretty good, it's awesome." You're bored with the Grand Canyon what's the matter with you? But how much worse is it for us ever to become bored with the grace of God in Jesus Christ?  I've heard this one before.

So what is so amazing about grace? Well we come to Ephesians 2:8-9, which teaches us these things. “It is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast.” So what is grace? It's been mentioned again and again in this second chapter of Ephesians. Repeatedly mentioned. Last week, we had a whole sermon on how God, in the future, will be displaying His grace forever to us, showing us more and more aspects of it. But what is it? Well, a number of people early in my Christian life, they gave me this simple definition, it's helpful it's a starting place. Grace is unmerited favor. Have you heard that one before? Unmerited favor. “Unmerited.” What an infinite understatement! Dear friends, “favor”, what an infinite understatement, dear friends! Take the second one. Let's talk about favor, what have we already learned in Ephesians, about the favor that God has shown us in Christ?

Look back one chapter. Look at Ephesians 1:3. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms listen to this, with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” We already have them now. Well what are these spiritual blessings? Well, full forgiveness of all sins, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, reconciliation with a holy God. Not merely reconciliation, which is the repairing of a broken relationship, but that we actually are adopted into the family of God, we Christians have become sons and daughters of the living God, we have a permanent place in the family. And we have received the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit “as a deposit, guaranteeing our full inheritance.” We already have all of these things we have Jesus as our elder brother, our King, our Savior, our advocate at the right hand of God, interceding for us. All of these blessings are already ours in Jesus. That's now. That's present. What about the future? We'll look at Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays that the “eyes of our heart would be enlightened” so that we would know among other things, “the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.” In other words, that you would know you Christians how rich, staggeringly rich you are in terms of your inheritance, what is still to come for all of you. How rich you will be when at last you see it. So that's favor. Remember, grace is unmerited favor, there's favor.

What about unmerited? Well, look at the beginning of this chapter, Ephesians 2:1-3, and we'll learn about unmerited. "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath.” So those verses say that we were dead spiritually, even while we lived, living dead. That we were enslaved to the world, to Satan who is a powerful being, and to our flesh in it's lusts and we could not break free. We were, the scripture there says, by nature, intrinsically, who we were, objects of wrath. That's unmerited. We deserved wrath, we deserved condemnation, “but God”, verse 4, “being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us. God made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in our sins. It is by grace you have been saved.” So, Paul has already said this, but he comes back to it now and emphasizes it. So I want you to be amazed at this. Start with unmerited favor and then ramp it up by a million, a factor of a million, on both the unmerited and the favor side. And you will be as I've been all morning, truly happy, I mean, truly energized. Enjoy what God's done for you, that's my desire. I just want you to be amazed at God's grace for you.

Okay, I wrote all that this morning, all of that. Now we get to the real sermon. Okay, so buckle in, alright. That was all this morning. I was like God, it's not good enough, there's got to be more. Alright, but not more time. I've got my clock here, I'm aware of it, alright so. But we are saved by grace and I want you to be amazed and stunned at that. I want you to just have these things roll over you and have a sense of the greatness of it. And what we're going to do is we're going to just walk through this step by step, we're going to go piece by piece. We're going to start with the idea of saved. Alright, what does it mean that we are saved?

“Saved? From What?”

What does that mean, saved, saved from what? And then we're going to go to how can we be saved, positively. We're going to just walk through what the scripture says about that, how we can be saved. And then negatively, we're going to look at how we can not be saved based on this text. And then we're going to begin only begin to look at why we are saved this week. We're going to finish it next week on why we are saved.

Okay, so let's start with saved, saved from what? From what do we need to be saved? Now, we need to understand the weight of that word “saved” or “salvation.” I mean we should not underestimate this. If you're sitting in a library, and your pen rolls off the table, and some passerby reaches down and picks it up, you'll say, "Oh you saved me. Thank you." And they'll look at you like you're weird, because you would be weird. We don't use that type of language for something so small. It involves some danger, some great danger when we use the words “salvation” or “saved.” Conversely, if you were swimming out in the ocean and there was some kind of a rip tide, or current and you started going under, and you knew you couldn't make it and you started to cry out, but your mouth is filling with water and you can't even get the cry, and then you black out, then you wake up and there's some person pushing on your chest. And you spit a bunch of water out of your mouth and you look up in their face. Then it would be reasonable for you to say, “You saved me, you saved my life, thank you.” So saved. So there's got to be some kind of great danger. Now, many people do not feel the need for salvation, they don't have any sense of danger. They're not afraid of death, they're not afraid of Judgment Day, they're not afraid of Hell, they're not afraid of any of the things the Bible says we should fear. They think they're fine, we live with them all the time. Later in Ephesians 2, it's going to say that they are “without hope and without God in the world,” but it also seems many of them are just without fear in the world too. They don't have any sense of concern about it. They’re totally satisfied with their lives, no sense of impending danger they fear nothing about the future, they're complacent about their spiritual condition. The essence of this attitude is a complete denial of the truths of the existence of God is a holy judge, and the coming of Judgement Day that there is something after death. Maybe they're atheists, maybe they're materialists. Maybe they're nominalists, you know, with a light veneer of religion on it. They're effectively living out daily "Let us eat and drink and be merry. For honestly I don't even know if tomorrow will even come." The mirage that may never even come. We live for today, for right now.

So, from what do we need salvation? Well we've already seen it. Verse 3 is enough for me. “Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath,” but all of those other things, before that, we need salvation from it all. We need salvation from our own wicked, sinful tendencies. We need salvation from Satan, this powerful,  invisible force. This king, this evil tyrant who will not let anyone go unless he's compelled to do so. And from this evil, seductive world system that surrounds us all the time. We need to be saved from this, and from the “wrath to come,” we need to “flee the wrath to come.” There is a wrath to come, the Bible says it plainly, and it says in Hebrews 9:27, "It is appointed to each one of us to die, after that…” See right there, die, and after that. There's something after that. Oh yes, “judgment,” “judgment.” What then? Well, Revelation 20:12-15, “and I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was open which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books and the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead they were in them and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lake of fire is the second death.” The first death is physical second death is eternal death in Hell. “And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the Lake of Fire.” So, if you're asking, “saved from what?”. From that. Saved from that. From being condemned to eternity, in the lake of fire because of your sins that you've committed as recorded in the book of God, saved from that. So how can we be saved from that?

The World’s Answer: Works

Well, I am going to immediately go borrow from the latter part of the sermon, and bring it up here. Now then, the most immediate answer given by people is “works.” They may have some sense of danger, some sense of the sinfulness of their lives but their answer is good works. Every religion in the world that's not Christianity, is a religion of work, really just works. All of them.

Islam follows the five pillars of Islam, they're all spiritual works. Buddhism seeks enlightenment, freedom from karma by ascetic practices, good deeds, the prayer wheel. Hinduism is a religion of works. Cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons are just feeding people a series of religious works that they have to do. Many Roman Catholics throughout history, even up to this present day, have not understood the true Gospel of grace have not understood justification by faith alone apart from works, and are seeking to be justified by a combination of Jesus and their own religious works, but in the end, their own works are more important than what Jesus did as proven by the Doctrine of Purgatory and the indulgences that can get you out. Jesus wasn't enough. If you had some money, that'll be enough. Works!

Gandhi’s Works Righteous Theology

Other people think that perhaps it's maybe one big, seriously good work that pays for it all. So like the spiritual quest, like the Knights of the Round Table going to find the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from. And if you can find it and drink from it, you'll have eternal life. And it represents that quest for the one good work that pays for all of your sins. The Crusaders would do that. You know, almost like, a little bit like the Christian, so called Christian version, of the Jihad. You know, if you could go and die in fighting the infidels in rescuing Jerusalem, you could go to Heaven. So it's the one good work that supposedly pays for it all. Maybe some of you have seen the movie Gandhi which came out a number of years ago, and in that it tells a story about Gandhi. After the Indian subcontinent became one nation, it was ripped apart by Hindu-Muslim war and fighting. And Gandhi, who was just revered by everybody in India, started a fast unto death to try to put the whole nation at peace.

And it seemed to be effective, but toward the end of the fast, a man came up, a Hindu man came up and threw him some bread and demanded that he eat. He said, “Here, eat! I'm going to hell for smashing the head of a Muslim boy, but I don't want your death on my soul, as well, so eat.” “Why did you do it?” asked Gandhi. “Well, because the Muslims killed our son.” Gandhi sees the man's unbearable guilt, remorse over killing the Muslim child, and so gently tells him this, "I know a way out of Hell. Go find a young boy, make sure he's a Muslim boy, and raise him up as your own son. But be sure you raise him as a Muslim." Well, that's Gandhi's theology. I disagree that that's the way out of Hell. I disagree that any works you can ever do are the way out of Hell. What I'm here is to preach the works of another, of a savior, of Jesus and by Him, there's a way out of Hell. By His works, not by ours. That's the way out.

So the world says, "We are saved by works." We'll get back to that concept later on, I'll just mention that point in passing. How then are we saved? Well, first, just the grammar here is powerful. “For by grace are you saved” or “you have been saved.” You see, either of those translations, they're both valid. But I like the idea of, have been saved. It's a little clearer of something that's happened in the past that has present implications. It's a done deal for you, oh Christian. You have been saved, you're saved. Now that's powerful. And this is incredible, because he's writing to these Ephesian Gentiles who were raised up in paganism and who were there frequenting the cult of Artemis of the Ephesians, and all of the immorality and sexual impurity, and all of the wickedness that went with that lifestyle and some of them involved in black magic, black occult side, and all kinds of things going on. They were saved out of that, out of that paganism and out of that wickedness, they have been saved from that. Now, here I believe it's important to know Paul is not giving that comprehensive view of salvation that we know is Biblical, that salvation comes to us in stages, justification, sanctification, glorification. But here we've got that past tense language, “you have been saved.” Other times, you'll talk about, you are being saved, and then other places you will be saved. There's this ongoing work of salvation. But we could really zero in on justification and everything that happened at the moment of conversion. All of the spiritual blessings you got when you trusted in Christ. And you've been set free from death, even set free from sin. You are guaranteed to go to Heaven.

You've been adopted into the family of God. You have been saved. I love what it says in John 5:24, Jesus speaking these words, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my words and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life." Not will have it, has it now. "And will not be condemned, he has crossed over from death to life." You have crossed over now, and you'll never go back, you'll never slip back from life to death, that cannot be, you have been saved. How sweet is that?

How We are Saved and How We are Not

Now, meditate on that. Well, how did that happen? Well, Paul tells us how it did happen and also how it did not happen. So there's a positive and a negative side. So I'm going to give you a quick summary of what he says, how it did happen. It happened by God, it happened by Christ, it happened by grace, it happened through faith, it happened as a gift from God, it happened by the workmanship of God on you and it happened by the creation of God.

By God

So, first by God. God, the Father, is the initiator of your salvation. He determined to save you. So I believe that everything starts with God the Father, it all flows from Him. God saved you. God stepped in as we saw in verse 4 a few weeks ago. But God, that's God the Father, God determined to save you.

By Christ

Secondly, by Christ, he determined to save you by Christ, and not apart from Christ. Apart from Christ, there is no salvation, there's no other way to be saved. “No other name under heaven given to men, by which we must be saved,” Acts 4:12. But look, just at Ephesians 2:5-7, look how Christ saturated those verses are. “God made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved, and God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Verse 7, “in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressing his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” That's five times in three verses. Strongly emphasized. So God the Father saved you by His son, Jesus Christ, and no other way. And so, by the shed blood of Jesus, the work on the cross, His substitutionary atonement in your place, that's how you have been saved. And there is no salvation apart from Christ. And if I can just say, dear Christian friends who live here in this country, we need to batten down the hatches on this one, because the storms coming, on the exclusivity of Christ. We are going to be assaulted by the pluralists that surround us, and the post-modernists that surround us to say, there are many different ways to get to Heaven, and there aren't. Jesus is the only way.

By Grace

Thirdly, we are saved by God, by Christ, and by grace. “By grace are you saved by faith.” Now, we've already said grace is unmerited favor. Unmerited favor is, you go down to the mall and you take a $20 bill out of your wallet and give it to a total stranger, that's unmerited favor. What we have in Christ is infinitely bigger than all of that, as I've already said. This is the way I define grace. Grace is the settled determination in the heart of God to do you good, infinite good, you who deserved infinite punishment. Kind of covers it. And I would add now, I've added to that, all of the blessings that flow from that settled determination. In other words, just putting it simply, God's determined to do you good, and He's going to show you a river of blessings in order to get that good done to you. Isn't that incredible? I mean, that God has that disposition toward you when you deserved wrath and judgment? That's grace. And so, it is by that, “by grace you have been saved.” And we should never get tired of grace, never get tired of talking about it. Paul never got tired of it. In 1 Corinthians 15:10, he says, “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” I just want you to say that, I want you to say that day after day. “By God's grace, I am what I am.” And only that, but to see God's grace in everything that happens to you, everything that you might even call difficult or an affliction, or even every blessing. All of these things are rivers of grace that are coming to you to get you saved, finally, in the end to finish the salvation, as I mentioned earlier.

Through Faith

And next he says, it is “through faith,” “through faith.” It's not on account of faith, okay? That would make faith something that God rewards with salvation. Some people have that faulty view, that basically faith is the thing that God's looking for and he rewards it or merits it with salvation. That's not what's happening here. Faith is not meritorious. You don't deserve anything because you have faith. What is faith? Well, I've said before, faith is the eyesight of the soul by which you receive spiritual light and blessings, the grace that God's given you, like sight receives light, right? So you have the eyes of your heart enlightened or opened to see what is true. So you see the truth about God, you see who He is, His holiness, His righteousness, His love, His wrath, all of it, you see that, and you see Christ in your mind's eye, you can see Him crucified, dead, buried, raised on the third day, you can see that, you know, it's all true. You can see yourself in the light of God's law, you know you're wicked and a sinner and you need salvation. So you see it all, you see it.

And by that the blessings flow into your life. It's seeing the blessings of God. But I think it goes beyond that. There's also an appropriation of those blessings to yourself. Like here's the feast now you're eating of it, you're taking it into yourself, like light coming into your body. Jesus said, “if your eyes are good, your whole body will be filled with light.” So if your faith is good, your whole life is filled with blessing. So by faith, you receive these blessings. And there's nothing meritorious about it at all. Next he says, it's a gift of God. It's a gift of God, it's just a free gift. God wants to give you all of this as a gift, free of charge, he'll pay for it all. Now, it's not clear grammatically, what exactly is the gift of God? One of two possibilities. Either it is the whole thing, which is salvation is a gift of God, it is a gift of God, not by works, or it's specifically the faith that he immediately mentioned. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this not of yourselves, is a gift of God." I don't think we need to choose. I'm about to choose in a minute.

But in general, I don't think we have to choose because it's both true. Salvation is a gift of God, the whole thing and faith is a gift of God. And so, like John Newton said, "I once was blind, and now I see. The ability now to see is a gift of God. It doesn't come by your works, you couldn't do anything to make it happen. So I do think that it's good and helpful to think specifically here, my faith has been given me specifically given to me as a gift from God. He gave me faith. I didn't have it before I once was blind, but now I have it. And so, God gave me faith, I didn't drum it up. It wasn't laying dormant and I suddenly used it, I didn't have it, it was given to me as a gift. And I think we know it comes at the moment of hearing God's Word, doesn't it? Romans 10:17, "Faith comes by hearing the Word,” the Word of Christ. So as you hear the Gospel, faith comes. The eyesight of the soul pops up, and you can see Christ crucified, and yourself as a sinner and you see it, and you've been seeing it ever since. And what's so beautiful, faith has a gift of God, the same God who gave you the faith to begin with, will most certainly sustain the faith inside you, until you don't need it anymore, when you finally see him with your own eyes. You won't need faith in Heaven, you'll just see Him. Faith is all about seeing invisible things, but God's going to sustain your faith every day, until the day you die or Christ returns, isn't that wonderful? I think what it means, “He who began a good work and you will carry it on to completion.” He who gave you faith will keep sustaining your faith. So it says in Hebrews 12:2, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." Or as he says to Simon, "Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail." And it won't. So he's going to sustain your faith as a gift of God.

By the Workmanship of God

Next, as a workmanship of God. Now, we're going to get more into verse 10, next week, God willing. But it says, "For we are God's workmanship.” You are most certainly saved by works. There's no doubt about it. But they are the works of God, you’re God's workmanship. He has crafted you, He has shaped you like a craftsman. He has gotten your soul ready for salvation. He was working on you before you were converted. He knew what you needed, he was putting things in place. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" He said, "It's hard for you to kick against the goads. There's prompting Saul. I'm pulling on you, I'm drawing you, I'm working on you." He's working even before you're converted, He's working and working and doing things around you. Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him," and he's drawing the individual working on the person and He is a craftsman of your soul. He is that painter who knows how to mix just the right pigments and hues and then knows how to do that painting. He's the sculptor that knows exactly what to carve so that he can make you look exactly like what He wants you to be. He is crafting you, He is working on you, you're His workmanship.

By the Creation of God

And then finally by the creation of God, look at verse 10, again, "we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus." You are a new creation. Like God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He was saying to you, let there be Christianity in your life, let there be faith, let there be salvation, and there was. And “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come,” 2 Corinthians 5:17. Well, that's how we are saved. How are we not saved? Well, we're not saved of ourselves. “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves” or “up out of yourselves.” You did not originate your salvation, you do not up and save yourself. You didn't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, saying “Well, I'm in trouble with God. I better do something about that.” “You were dead in your transgressions and sins.” This didn't come from yourself, it didn't originate with you. As it says in Romans 9, "It does not therefore depend on the man who wills, or on the man who runs." It doesn't depend on your will and it doesn't open on your effort, “but on God who has mercy.” So, it's not of yourself, and it's not by works. Your works cannot save you as I said in the Bible for Life class this morning. You know what's a shock to non-Christians? To find out not only will God not accept your good works to pay for your sins, you don't have any. You have zero, even if He did. “There is no one righteous, not even one. No one who understands, no one who seeks God, there is no one who does good, not even one.” Jesus said, "No one is good but God alone." So it's not by works. And it's always works that people bring forward. Sinners bring it forward, like that Pharisee when he's praying near the tax collector. Pharisee prays, Luke 18, "God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, like, you know, prostitutes and sinners, and like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get.” See it's work, that's what people always tried for, the works. Not by works.

Not of Yourself

Alright, so that's how we are saved and that's how we are not saved. Why are we saved? Two things quickly, first, so that we may boast not in ourselves, but in God. And so that we may work for the rest of our lives for His glory, not for the forgiveness of our sins. Now, we're going to talk much more about the lifetime of good works God has for you to do, God willing next week. I love Ephesians 2:10. So there's just too much to do in one sermon, so we'll do that next week. But God saved you so that you would not boast in yourself, as inevitably you would have done if you were saved by works, inevitably you would have boasted forever, and God just didn't want to hear that from a multitude greater than anyone could count. “I'm not listening to that forever.” As it says in 1 Corinthians 1:31, "Let him who boast, boast in the Lord.” You'll have your mouth so filled with praise for Jesus, “to Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.” You'll be saying that forever, “let him who boast, boast in the Lord." That's why he saved you, so that you would worship Him, and so you would work for him. And we'll talk more about that next week.

Come to Christ

So applications quickly before the Lord's Supper. I plead with you to come to Christ. I plead with you to come to Christ. I plead with you as I've done many times this morning to “flee the wrath to come.” You may not have thought when you came in here, that there's a wrath to come, but there is most certainly a wrath to come, flee it by faith in Christ, not by works. I say that most tenderly to you. We're about to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Do not come, if you're not a believer, if you haven't testified to your faith in Christ by water baptism, don't come. Don't come to the Lord's supper, it's for Christians. But I'm pleading with you instead to come to Christ. You don't have to move, you don't have to get up or come forward to do anything, you just have to believe, close your eyes, look at Christ crucified in your mind's eye and say, "I deserve to die, but Jesus died in my place, I trust in you Jesus."

Be Instructed Again on the Gospel of God’s Grace

Now, to you who are Christians, just go back again to the Gospel, and stop trying to save yourself by works. It's just amazing how seductive works is. Whenever we feel guilty, inevitably we revert to works first. Shut it down. It is only “by grace through faith” that sins are forgiven. That's it. Only the blood of Jesus can wash away sins, not works. So understand, just understand, Christianity, and then understand how grace results in thankfulness, just thank God for saving you. And how it results in humility so that no one can boast, just be humble then, be a truly deeply humble person. And worship Him, praise Him, just praise God more than you do, just sing to Him, and just live a life of praise and thankfulness, and understand the security and assurance you have in Christ. This is a secure thing, you are secure in Christ, forever, and rejoice in that.

And this should make us far more gracious to others, don't you think? Far more gracious. In 1997 Philip Yancey wrote a book, What's so Amazing about Grace? Which I quoted earlier, without giving him credit, but what's so amazing about grace? He wanted the rest of the title to read this: “And why don't Christians show more of it?”  So that's really what the book seems to be about. Why are we so harsh in our presentation to the sinning world? John Newton was one of the most incredibly gracious people to the lost that I've ever read about in church history. He never forgot how lost he had been, and he put it in one sermon, this is amazing, he said, "Imagine you're part of a group of people walking along the road and all of you fall into a pit, and you can't get out. Suddenly a well-wishing passerby sees you down there, all of you, and reaches down and pulls you up out first. Imagine you then turn and start criticizing the people who are down in the pit, because they're in the pit." How does that make any sense? They're in the pit, they're “without hope and without God in the world,” show them kindness without letting up on the Law and the Gospel that will save them or use another analogy. Suppose blind Bartimaeus now having recovered his sight goes and gets a stick and starts to beat all the blind people he meets. That's what it looks like when we don't show grace to the as yet unconverted. Let's show them love. God draws us by the bands of human kindness. We need to just be a loving church, without giving up on the truth of the Gospel, and of the law that backs it up. And then toward other Christians. We just need to remember that other Christians are saved by grace, just as we are, and be forgiving. We have been forgiven 10,000 talents, don't choke one another over 100 denari.

Evangelism/Missions

And finally, evangelism and missions, we get to share this good news to this community, amen, and to the ends of the earth. We need to be active. So if I could just urge you, get into a grace conversation with somebody that you think is a non-Christian, you may find out that they're Christian, then you can have fellowship. But if you find out that they're not Christians, just let's get into grace conversations with people, let's talk to them. Let's tell them what happened to us and how glad we are that Jesus saved us.

Now, we have an opportunity to celebrate the Lord's Supper now, which is fantastic. We get to do this periodically and this is a time for us to come together as Christians and to remember, look back at what Jesus has done, and to look around at the Body of Christ and the grace He's showing us now. But then, look ahead at the feasting we're going to do it in the Kingdom. So let's pray, and then we'll have the Lord's Supper. Father, thank you for the chance we've had today to celebrate your amazing grace. O Lord, I pray that you would please now, just give us more grace, give us the grace of a rich experience in the Lord's Supper by the Holy Spirit, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.