The Mystery of Christ - Brandon Scalf

All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter three.

Ephesians chapter three, and as you're turning there, I'm actually gonna read for you Acts chapter 26, starting in verse 12, so that we can think more deeply about who

Paul is and what he's about. If we're going to understand what Paul is saying, we need to understand where he's coming from.

In Acts 26, Paul is standing before Agrippa, and he is pleading his case, as it were, in an attempt to, we would say, maybe get out of prison.

But of course, we know that Paul's heart was ultimately that the truth of the gospel would be made known to the rulers and the powers that be.

And he says this, while so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests at midday,

O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me.

And when we had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

And I said, who are you, O Lord? And the Lord said, I am

Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise up and stand on your feet for this purpose

I have appeared to you, to appoint you a servant and a witness, not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which

I will appear to you, rescuing you from the

Jewish people and from Gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me.

So King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision, but kept declaring both to those in Damascus first and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea and even to the

Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God, practicing deeds appropriate to repentance.

For this reason, some Jews seized me in the temple and were trying to put me to death. Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day,

I stand here bearing witness both to small and to great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place.

The Christ was to suffer, and that as first of the resurrection from the dead, he was going to proclaim light both to the

Jewish people and to the Gentiles. You see here,

Paul had a heavenly mission that was given to him by the

Lord Jesus Christ himself, and that mission was to proclaim the unfathomable riches of Christ, and he followed it to the end.

He followed it to his eventual martyrdom, which would happen not too long after this conversation with Agrippa.

As he continues on in the conversation, he essentially launches himself into a gospel presentation as though he hadn't already done that and invites them to believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. And now we find ourselves in Ephesians chapter three.

And before we begin, I'm going to ask that you would allow me to pray for our time together, that it might be profitable and that we might see

Jesus more clearly and love him more deeply. Father, we thank you.

We thank you for yourself and all that you have given us. We thank you for your son

Jesus and the gift that he is to us, namely for the salvation that he has purchased for us and wrought in us by the power of his spirit.

And we ask now that you would help us to listen to your servant, Paul, and that you would cause us to bask in the glory of your gospel.

We ask all of these things in his meritorious name, by the power of your spirit.

Amen. Gravity is a very interesting thing. And what

I mean by that is gravity exists all around us. It is that thing which keeps us tethered to the ground as it were.

It's the reason we can put things on tables and they don't float away. But here's the interesting thing about gravity.

We don't know much about it. Well, we don't even understand how it works.

It is observable. That is, we can look at it and see that it does what we think that it does, but we can't explain the reason that it doesn't.

At least scientifically, we know, of course, that God causes all of these things to happen and sustains the world by the word of his power.

But from a scientific perspective, gravity or how it works kind of eludes us, so much so that on NASA's website to this very morning, says, if we are to be honest, we do not know what gravity is in a fundamental way.

We only know how it behaves. In other words, gravity, though it is observable, is quite honestly a mystery.

It is a mystery, at least in the modern English sense of the word.

In modern English, we understand mystery to be something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain.

In other words, when we think of mystery, when you and I think of mystery, it's oftentimes thinking of something that doesn't have an answer, unless we dig for it, and even then, we may not come to an understanding of that thing.

Well, today, in Ephesians chapter three, verses three through six, we're going to be looking at what Paul calls the mystery of Christ.

But the reality is, it's not actually a mystery because it's been revealed. But it is a mystery, and that matters.

So when we think about the word mystery from a biblical perspective, we have to understand it in its totality, or else everything's going to get lost on us, and it will lead us down wrong theological conclusions.

But the Bible is filled with these types of mysteries, so much so that books have been written on the mysteries of the

Bible. For instance, here are some book titles that might pique your interest. The Mysteries of the

Kingdom of Heaven, The Mystery of the Olive Tree, The Great Mystery of Christ and the

Church, The Mystery of Piety, The Mystery of the Rapture of the Saints, The Mystery of Lawlessness.

You see, the Bible has many mysteries, and they are not like the mysteries that we think about today when we think about them from a modern

Western idea. This word mystery is used four times in Ephesians chapter three alone, but it's already been mentioned in the book of Ephesians.

If you remember, when we looked at Ephesians chapter one in verses nine and 10, Paul began talking about this mystery.

As a matter of fact, he showed the end of that mystery. Look with me again at chapter one, verses nine and 10.

In verses nine and 10 of chapter one, Paul says that God made known to us, or to the

Ephesian church and us by extension, the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him for an administration of the fullness of times.

That is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in him.

So the mystery of God's will ultimately is going to end in this summing up of all things in Christ, things on heaven and things on earth.

And underneath that umbrella, there exists many different facets and things of that sort, parts and parcels, if you will, of the gospel itself.

But today we are going to look specifically at the mystery of Christ. But as we look at our text, we will begin to find that actually we've already talked about it at a length.

So if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy infallible and all sufficient word.

As we look at chapter three, verses three through six, although I will begin reading in verse one, so we can see where we've been that we might know where we're headed.

This is the word of God. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you

Gentiles, if indeed you heard of the stewardship of God's grace, which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief, about which when you read can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets and the spirit that the

Gentiles, our fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen. Amen, go ahead and have a seat.

As we look at our passage, I want you to see the character and nature of the mystery of Christ.

And we are going to do that by examining four different realities.

The first reality, as we begin to unpack this mystery, is the mystery of Christ was divinely revealed by Paul.

The mystery of Christ was divinely revealed by Paul. If we look at chapter three, verse three, we're kind of jumping in the middle of a sentence.

In the middle of this sentence is being driven by what has come before, of course, and that is that Paul has identified himself as not an apostle like he has done in verse one of chapter one, but that he is, in fact, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.

That is, that he is seeing himself and his circumstances, that is, that he is imprisoned in Rome, not as being a prisoner of Nero, but of Jesus Christ, that his circumstances are existing underneath the umbrella of Christ's lordship.

In other words, what Paul is trying to get us to understand is that from his perspective, anything that happens to him falls on him by divine appointment.

That is, that the sovereignty of God is so governing everything that if he is bound in chains by Rome, they're actually

Jesus' chains. But not only that, he does so, that is, being imprisoned, not because he did anything wrong, but because he's preaching and proclaiming the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And he does so on behalf of the Gentiles.

So he is being self -sacrificial on behalf of other people. He is doing the work of God for God's people.

And he's doing this because he is, as verse two says, a steward of God's grace, which was given to him for them.

And of course, us, by extension. He's a faithful steward.

He's a steward who is carrying a message, and that message is not his message, but it's

God's message. And that is found in the word steward itself. The word steward is taken after the imagery of someone who cares for someone's house or belongings as if it were their own.

And so Paul is not an editor, as it were, of God's message. He is the messenger of that message who is faithfully carrying that out.

And as we read in Acts 26, before we began, even to the point of death.

But that thing that he is stewarding, that stewardship of God's grace is this very mystery of Christ.

This very mystery of Christ. And of course, what is it?

Well, let's go ahead and just state it on the front end. The mystery of Christ is found in verse six of chapter three.

He tells us that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

But if that sounds familiar to you, then good, because all it really is, is an expounding of what he's already said, which is why he says in verse three, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief.

He's already written about it. And he wrote about it in verses 11 through 22 of chapter two.

Now, of course, this throws critical scholars into a hissy fit. They say that there was other letters read to the churches in Ephesus, and maybe that's what he's referring to.

Or maybe since Paul was the one who wrote to the Ephesians, and he said, I wrote this, maybe he never went to the

Ephesians. So maybe it's not even Paul in the first place. And they start gathering all of this circumstantial conjecturing, if you will.

You could say evidence, but that's not really evidence. But logically and contextually, of course, he's speaking about chapter two.

That is that God in Christ has abolished the enmity.

The law of commandments contained in ordinances, verse 15, so that in himself, he might create the two and to one new man making peace.

So the idea here, the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel is really about the

Gentiles and the Jews becoming one person underneath a new covenant head, namely

Jesus Christ, the righteous. But this information is not stuff that he studied and came to the conclusion of.

It is something that was given to him by divine revelation, that is there was a divine initiative to give him information that he did not previously have.

As we looked at this word in time past, we gave it a definition. And the definition that we gave of revelation is the unveiling of that which was previously hidden in God and unknown to humans.

And speaking of this way and saying that this is what Paul has received is nothing new to the

Pauline vocabulary. In Galatians one, verse 12, he essentially says the same exact thing.

He says, for I neither received it, speaking of course of the gospel from man, nor was

I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

You see here, Paul received something that was not his own and he did not study to get it.

Jesus gave it to him. It was revealed to him by the person of the

Holy Spirit. But before that,

Jesus Christ himself on the road to Damascus, which we'll get to momentarily.

What this means is that Paul is carrying a message that is not speculation, it is revelation.

That is when Paul speaks, God speaks. Though we are reading Paul's words, they are really

God's words. And that is what he is trying to get the Ephesians to understand.

Paul is not interested in propping himself up as someone who should be looked at as superior to anyone else.

As a matter of fact, we have seen elsewhere in many other letters that Paul actually wants you to view him as the lowliest of the low.

He says in one occasion that he is the chief of sinners. He tells us that all of his, in Philippians, all of his doings as it were to become high up in the pharisaical system was rubbish.

It was scubalon. It was trash, literally dung. Paul calls himself the least of the apostles.

Paul is not interested in being lifted up as some high spiritual being who must be worshiped.

What he's trying to get people to understand and what he's trying to get the Ephesians to understand and what we must understand is that when

Paul spoke, or rather when he wrote, because we don't have access to Paul, we only have access to his writings.

We must understand those words carry with them divine authority.

Children, would you look at me for just a second? The Bible that we read, the

Bible that your fathers bring out at family worship time, maybe the Bible that you carry around with you, those are

God's words. And if you understand that, that changes everything.

Because it's not just another story, it's God speaking to you.

And so we must treasure it. We must love it. And why wouldn't we want to read it? If God is speaking to us, why would we not want to hear from him?

Paul was not speculating when he gave these words to the Ephesians. He was revealing to them the very nature of what this mystery was that was given to him.

Now, there are a lot of things that can be said. There's a lot of payoff to be had, as it were.

But one thing that I will say before moving on is this. When we understand this, we understand that there's no such thing as a red letter

Bible. Here's what I mean by that. You can buy a

Bible that have Christ's words written in red. And there's some aesthetic beauty to that.

And if you want to own that so that you can find what Christ said at any one given moment without actually having to pour through paragraphs to figure out when

Jesus spoke and when he didn't speak, more power to you. But the reality is is that all words are

Christ's words because Christ is God and God has spoken in his word.

And this also guards us from lots of theological error. When we look at the culture, not only do we see, for instance, the alphabet people running rampant and talking about how homosexuality is okay, we also have certain, dare

I say, pastors who will try to make the same argument, but no, that is absolutely true.

And God sanctions it and he loves it. And I know your Bible says that homosexuality is a sin and so on and so forth, but those were

Paul's words. And Paul was just a person and persons make mistakes.

People can be bigoted. And we know that the

Bible is really not divine revelation passed down and stewarded but our musings on God as humans.

Well, Paul is obliterating that if you have not been paying attention in Ephesians thus far. Remember, just two weeks ago, we talked about how, for instance, the foundation of the church is the apostles and the prophets,

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, which taught us that the foundation is already laid, there's nothing to be built upon it, that when

Paul received revelation, we didn't need any more after that.

We have what God wrote and it's good enough, it's the best.

So when did Paul get this revelation? Well, there are many clues throughout the Bible as to when.

Maybe it was the Damascus experience that we read about in Acts 26, where Jesus kicks him off his horse and told him to go to the

Gentiles. Now, if you don't believe in God's sovereign election, though that's not the point of this story, just maybe pause for a second and consider

Paul's story. Paul was minding his own business, going after Christ's people, trying to honor

God, and Jesus disrupts him. And that's just saying it mildly, he kicked him off of his horse, caused him to go blind and made him love him and sent him to be his messenger.

Paul says before the foundation of the world, this was decided, he was appointed to this task.

In Galatians 1 .16, Paul makes it clear that God was pleased to reveal his son to him so that he might proclaim him as good news among the

Gentiles, that is the non -Jewish people, people that were not like him. Of course, we don't know if that's precisely when he was given this revelation.

It could have also been when he first returned to Jerusalem in Acts chapter 22.

And we see that in verse 21, he is given a very similar commission to take this revelation to the

Gentiles. He says, and he said to me, go, go, for I will send you far away to the

Gentiles. It's also true that this is something that could have happened over the course of time.

Maybe the revelation of this mystery happened at different stages. That's perfectly in alignment with the way in which progressive revelation works.

Certainly this occurred earlier in the Bible when Peter baptized the Gentile Cornelius and he was criticized by those in Jerusalem for doing so.

You can find that information in Acts chapter 11. Even in 49

AD, 16 years after the crucifixion and the inception of the church, the

Jerusalem council debated about the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church itself.

It took years to understand this new concept completely. But in this present passage,

Paul is helping explain fully what this mystery is. At this point, when he's writing this letter,

God's revelation has been established and it is being promoted throughout the world.

And he's doing so by Paul's willingness to die to himself, become a prisoner and proclaim his truth and his excellencies everywhere that he went.

So this mystery that was made known to him, however it might've been made known to him, was made known to him and it was a mystery.

Now, I've already talked about this a little bit, but let me revisit the concept of mystery here.

Because understanding this is very important. Because many churches that you might attend, especially here, say in the

Tulsa or Oklahoma City area even tend to define

Christianity or the teaching of Christianity as a mystery.

It's just something that we can't understand. Now, I hope as we have walked through the book of Ephesians and as we've done the

Trinity series in the evening that we're not susceptible to such silliness.

Christianity in one sense sure is a mystery, but in another sense it is absolutely not.

It is revealed, it is revealed. It is a stewardship passed down.

But these liberal churches and preachers and would -be teachers try to define

Christianity as a wonderful mystical experience.

Because after all, it is a mystery and they have turned Christianity not into something where truth and the spirit coexist, but they've turned it into a type of mysticism.

Christianity is a mystery, they say. You can't understand it, but you can experience it.

Now, that's the problem that we're dealing with, and the first century, another problem that was being dealt with were the cults, which is not much different than a lot of what's going on around us.

But they also talked about a mystery, but that mystery was reserved for the initiatives.

Initiates, that is. The mystery was given to people who would become members of those cults.

And it was only then that they got that information, and maybe they wouldn't even get that information until they had maybe proven themselves to be worthy participants.

One modern example of this would say, be like the Church of Scientology. I don't know if anybody has studied that.

We don't have time to get into it at length, but essentially, that's how it works. The more money you give, the longer you're a part of it, the more secrets they give you about this religion.

And so we can see these two concepts, our modern -day kind of understanding of them, and then what

Paul is trying to seek to address in some capacity, and what he's doing is saying, it's not like any of that.

It's actually much different. It's a mystery, of course, that only people who are in Christ understand, but it's something that everybody gets to understand.

But before we get to that, let's back up and assert this reality, that if it is revelation, and it is something that we can understand, then that shows us that doctrine matters.

It shows us that words matter. It shows us that the Bible really is, in fact, something that we ought to give our lives studying, not just so that we would have more information, but that we might stand in awe of God.

You hear me say this quite often around here, that the Bible is not primarily ethical.

That is, it is not a manual on how to live your life. Now, it's not not that.

There are plenty of to -dos in the Bible, but the primary reason that Scripture is given is that we might behold our

God, that we might stand in awe of his work of redemption.

And that's what Paul is trying to do here. He has paused, remember? He's in the middle of an argument, and he has paused to tell us, before we even get to what we need to do, and he's gonna get into that, but we're not even,

I mean, we're already halfway through the book, and he's not told us one thing to do, except for what? If you remember, to remember.

In verse 12 of chapter two. Why? Because believing produces doing.

Believing produces Christians. Well, God makes Christians, and it's the believing that helps us do.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, a favorite around here, says it like this. Beyond all doubt, there is nothing which is quite so comforting, so reassuring to faith, nothing which is quite so exhilarated in the

Christian life as just to stand back and contemplate and to understand, in some measure,

God's great plan and scheme and purpose of redemption. And it's that very thing that is the mystery that Paul is holding forth.

And it's not weird to speak this way. Paul speaks this way in 1 Corinthians chapter two, verses six through 10, when he says, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are being abolished, but we speak

God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which

God predestined before the ages to our glory, which none of the rulers of this age have understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the

Lord of glory. But just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which has not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him.

But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

Paul says also in Galatians chapter one, verses 11 and 12, for I make known to you, brothers, that the gospel which

I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man, for I neither received it from man, nor was

I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So you see here, this mystery, though it is plain, given, is something that Paul has been given.

It has been revealed to him by God, and now it is his job to dispense it.

Why? Because the mystery of Christ was divinely revealed by Paul and to Paul.

And though God will reveal to us the mystery, hear me on this, if you haven't already heard me on this, he will not do so in the same way that he did it to the

Apostle Paul. Which brings me to my second point as we look at the nature and character of this mystery, which is that the mystery of Christ can be understood.

Look with me here at verse four, continuing on, about which, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

Now, of course, this little Greek phrase here is different in every translation that you look at. This about which, and the reason for that is because it's kind of confusing in the

Greek. But essentially what Paul is getting at here is he's trying to say, assuming you know, or taking for granted that you are aware of the fact, and you can read and understand my insight, into the mystery of Christ.

While one is reading or hearing read the passage in the previous context, he or she will understand it, they will perceive it.

Paul is assuming that the things that he has just said, namely in chapter two, verses 11 through 22, is something that they can, in fact, comprehend.

And of course, this points to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture. The clarity of Scripture.

Now that is, of course, which we'll get to in a moment, that some things are hard to understand, but the things that matter in the

Bible, namely that point to salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ, are readily available for us to comprehend, if we, of course, have been regenerated by the

Holy Spirit. Scripture is not hard to understand.

It's just hard to swallow. As a fact, even non -Christians, even to some extent, can exegete the

Bible and understand it in its context, and so on.

But more on that in just a moment. You see, Paul is concerned that these

Ephesians understand this mystery, and he is afraid, maybe, that they don't understand not only the mystery, but the reason that he is imprisoned.

What I mean by that is, this church might be thinking, why would he suffer in prison and eventually meet his end just to proclaim this thing, this information?

And we understand that because in verse 13, later on, and we'll get to that in the weeks to come, he explains what the mystery is and says, therefore,

I ask you not to lose heart at my afflictions on your behalf, which are your glory.

In other words, rest in this truth, understand why this truth has been proclaimed, and do not lose heart that I am here.

It's for your good. It's for the world's good. And if you understand the mystery, you understand that.

Reality. Not only that, maybe that's not true. Maybe that's too much conjecture.

Maybe me and other scholars who have solved this same thing, maybe we're reading too far into the text.

Maybe so. So a second thing that we could do is we could look at this as Paul's just trying to be a really good teacher.

He said what he wanted to say, he says it again, and then he is telling them what he's already told them.

This is the nature of teaching. The nature of good teaching, as Paul understood it, and as is always taught in every classroom and so on and so forth, is that repetition is key.

If you are gonna get your point across, you need to make sure that you tell people the truth, and you need to tell them what you told them and then tell them again.

And so Paul is not afraid to do that. In other words, it's as if he's grabbed his hands around their collar and is saying, listen to me about how amazing this grace is.

That grace from which I am suffering from, the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so not only do we see in chapter three that Paul is a prisoner, that he is a steward, but now we are seeing that Paul has been called to be a fountain of knowledge poured out onto other people for the sake of the

Lord Jesus Christ and their glory. He knows nothing, as I said earlier, of this religious status seeking so common in his day and of course in our day, and he is not seeking to do anything but to help them understand.

So the question then becomes, who can understand? If it had to be divinely revealed to Paul, why does he think that other people are going to understand?

Well, one, because he's made it plain in his writing. And that writing, as we have already established,

I hope is revealed to him by God.

His words are God's words. It's not his reflection on that word, it is

God's message. It's not his editorial debut, it is him heralding the truth of Almighty God.

And who can understand? Everyone can understand that he's speaking to, at least who he assumes he's speaking to.

Do you remember in chapter one of verse one, or verse one of chapter one, he tells us that he is

Paul, the Apostle of Christ Jesus to the will of God, and he is writing to who? The saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Children, would you look at me for just a second? Do you remember when

I said that all Christians are saints, right?

See, oftentimes you might hear of stories of great saints of old, or you might hear of your friends praying to Saint Mary, or different things like this.

Well, these ideas are really foreign to the Bible, that is, they're not true. Paul makes the case here that all

Christians are saints, that is, they are all set apart by God and for God through the work of God.

And so we are all saints, not because we have achieved anything, but because Christ covers us with his perfect work.

And so when God looks upon you, if you love Jesus, he sees a saint, he sees a beautiful, glorious child of God who is saintly because of Jesus.

So Paul is speaking here to the regenerate, and it is the regenerate, those who have been born again by the

Spirit. We talked about this when we looked at chapter two, and we looked at the but -godding of God in verse four of chapter two.

That is that God divinely intervened and caused dead hearts to be awakened. And it's those that receive

Paul's revelation that he received from God. They're not downloading

God's revelation, because remember, God has revealed it to Paul, and Paul is stewarding that revelation as he is expensing it.

And that's all I do on Sundays. That's all any pastor or preacher does on Sundays.

If you hear a pastor stand up in front of his pulpit and say, friends, today, I have a word from the

Lord for you. The first thing you should do is pick up your Bible and leave, or start preaching a biblical sermon.

Whichever you prefer. Or maybe that second option would be glorious. I don't know.

The only words that we have from God are the words that are written in this book that have been given to us by the prophets and apostles.

And it's this very word, this very revelation that God the

Holy Spirit illuminates. And it's those very words that God uses to chisel and mold us into the image of the

Son. In Hebrews, the word of God is likened to a sword that cuts us.

Because as 2 Timothy 3 .16 says, it is breathed out by God and it is profitable to equip us for all things godly.

But we do need the Holy Spirit's help. This is why I pray every time we begin. This is why Pastor Corey prays every time before I preach that the

Spirit might show up and illuminate the scriptures and give us revelation. This is why Paul prays in Ephesians chapter one, if you remember, in verse 17, that the

God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the full knowledge of him.

Interestingly enough, Jesus also prays a prayer much like this in Matthew chapter 11, verses 25 and 26.

He's praying to the Father and it says, at that time Jesus said, I praise you,

Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things, speaking about the things that he was proclaiming, from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Yes, Father, for this way was well -pleasing in your sight. So Paul prays for revelation and Jesus thanks

God, the Father, for hiding and revealing.

And so oftentimes, people that hold our position, namely the cessationist position, would say, well, you guys don't believe in the

Holy Spirit, you believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Bible. It's not true. As a matter of fact,

I think that we love, appreciate and honor the Holy Spirit more than those who would hijack the

Holy Spirit's name and do godless things in his name. Our God, as we have seen in the book of Ephesians so far, wakens dead sinners to spiritual life.

He has sent his message through the prophets and apostles and has guarded that.

And he then, through the preaching of his word, applies that, helps us to hear it, to love it, to see it in all of its clearness.

And what's beautiful about this mystery is not just that it's been revealed, not just that we can understand it, but it's understood by everyone.

There's no elite Christian. There are just all of us who need to be saved and who are being sanctified by his word.

And it must be those who believe that understand.

Augustine once famously said, the gift the believer receives is the sight for which his eyes did not see.

It's found in the Bible. And we have faith and we believe it and we see it and we're helped to see it and we love it, which is why you can study the

Bible your entire life and even be biblical scholars and so on and so forth and reject

Christ. I know countless people who have studied the Bible for a living and then abandoned the

Lord Jesus Christ. What keeps them? The Holy Spirit and his word.

And they have to be regenerated in order to see it. There's a famous example of this, a guy named Bart Ehrman. You probably don't know that name and that's probably good.

But Bart Ehrman was a New Testament scholar, is a New Testament, is, I want you to pay attention to this, is a

New Testament scholar. And he studied underneath a guy named

Bruce Metzger who was the leading Greek professor of the last however many centuries.

A lot of our Greek Bibles and things like this happened underneath his direction and help.

He went to seminary, he studied greatly, he wrote many books on textual criticism.

And now he spends his life trying to convince people that the Bible doesn't actually say what it says.

How? He's read the Bible more than any of us and it's original language is tenfold.

Because he wasn't regenerate. God, the

Holy Spirit had not revealed the beauty and glory of the scripture to him, even though he could understand it, he didn't understand it.

Do you hear what I'm saying? And so we must always pray for God to soften our hearts and to show us beauty and glory in there.

That we might understand it and it can be understood both intellectually and of course spiritually.

And when I mean spiritually, I'm not saying that there's a hidden spiritual meaning in the text, I'm saying that we see it as what it is,

God's word, right? Like Paul has said in other places, that you received this word not as man's word, but as what it was,

God's word. So you're receiving it as God's word, that's how you truly hear it. What are the implications of this reality?

If Paul believes, and he does, of course, because he's writing it, that he has been given this gift of revelation and that it was his task to make this mystery, which has been revealed to him, known, and that he has this burden that they must understand it, he must understand something by way of implication, namely, that he was writing scripture.

We've already made the case, I'm not gonna try to make the case again. When Paul spoke, it was as if God was speaking, at least in the letter that he wrote.

But the thing that you must understand, and the thing that I hope you understand, is that Paul knew that to be the case. Paul knew that to be the case.

And we know this, one, because of the self -evident reality of what he's saying, but also

Peter, in the scriptures, make this claim as well, made this claim as well.

In 2 Peter chapter three, speaking of Paul's writings, he says, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, that is, salvation and so on and so forth, what

Peter was talking about, and which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort.

In other words, Peter is handing out credence that there are some things in scripture that are hard to understand, specifically in the writings of Paul.

And we know that he does that because he continues, says that because he continues on, as they do also the rest of scriptures.

And so, just like the other scriptures, Peter is saying, that people distort, and so on and so forth, and mar, they do to Paul's writings,

Peter says, to their own destruction. Peter, in his letter, just put

Paul's letter in the same category as every other book in the Bible, while they were still alive.

It's pretty mind -blowing, think about it. They knew they were writing scripture, and they knew they had revelation to dispense.

And so, the mystery of Christ has, was divinely revealed to Paul, the mystery of Christ can be understood, and thirdly, the mystery of Christ was previously hidden.

The mystery of Christ was previously hidden. Children, I have a question for you.

When you read the Old Testament, that's everything that happened, like, with Moses, right?

You know that name? Or Abraham, was everything in the

Old Testament telling us about what would happen in the

New Testament? Well, this text is gonna tell us, not exactly, not exactly.

Look with me here again at our text. In verse five, he says of this mystery, firstly, that it is the mystery of Christ, about which, when you read, you can understand my insights into the mystery of Christ, verse four, right?

Because it's all summed up in Christ, which in other generations, verse five, was not made known to the sons of men, as it was now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the

Spirit. Now, there are a couple of different ways to interpret this passage or this specific verse.

As a matter of fact, it's been interpreted these different ways by many different scholars throughout the centuries.

The question is, was God's plan from the beginning to unite the

Jews and Gentiles into one body? Well, in one sense, yes.

Well, actually, let me back up a second. Yes, that's always been the plan. We state that on the front end before we get too far ahead of ourselves or you hear something

I'm not saying. Yes, it has always been the plan. There's no plan B before the foundation of the world, the covenant of redemption, all of that that we talked about in weeks past, 100 % true, but the specific way in which the church now exists was not revealed to the

Old Testament prophets as it has now been revealed by the apostle

Paul. I'll say that again. It was not understood or not explicit in the text or in the prophecies that the

Jews and the Gentiles would exist in one body as they do as Paul is presenting it.

I'm gonna state something and then I'm gonna explain it. What we have in the Old Testament is shadows, types, and so on.

And what we see when we get to the New Testament is that shadow gave way to substance and then type to anti -type and promise to fulfillment.

In the mystery of Christ, truth does not replace it. Truth does not replace error.

Rather, it comes into its fullest flowering. So though there were hints and nuggets, it was not fully on display for us to see in the

Old Testament. There were shadows. They were pointing to the substance, namely Christ.

There were types that were fulfilled in the anti -type, namely

Jesus Christ, and promises that would also find its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Now, that said, let me back up. Certainly, in places like Genesis chapter 12 and in Genesis 22, there are promises of the nations being blessed by the

Jewish people. In Genesis chapter 12, it says, "'And

I will bless those who bless you,' "'I will bless Abraham and the one who curses you, "'I will curse, and in you all the families "'of the earth will be blessed.'"

But even though it says that, we must understand the mystery that was not known to the prophets who spoke such words before the

New Testament era has now been revealed in the holy apostles and the prophets. And accepting this view does not exclude the fact that there were no references to Gentile blessing.

I just read you one of them. Or even Gentile inclusion,

Gentile inclusion within Israel itself.

For example, in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 34, we see, "'The sojourner who sojourns with you,' "'that is, someone who is not of Israel's descent, "'shall be to you as the native among you, "'and you shall love him as yourself, "'for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

"'I am Yahweh your God.'" So in the Old Testament, there is certainly this idea that Israel would eventually expand to the point and have us, at least in some sort of way, bless all other nations.

There's also evidence in Scripture that one day, or even at that day, that if someone was to come in from outside of Israel, that they would be welcomed.

But they would be welcomed, and here's the rub, as Israelites. They would be welcomed as Israelites.

Before the coming of Christ, it was understood that this would only happen as Gentiles became

Jews through proselytizing. Converting, that is.

Certainly, back then, a Gentile could approach the God of Israel, but he had to do so not as a

Gentile, but as an Israelite. And now

Paul is saying something that is wildly different, and he's repeating himself, because what he understands, which is something that we don't readily understand, is how diametrically opposed

Israel was to the Gentile world and the Gentile world to the Jewish population. And he's trying to get to the point across, the barriers have been broke down.

The gospel of Jesus Christ has obliterated everything, and here's the most amazing thing about it.

He hasn't caused Gentiles to become Jews, and he hasn't caused Jews to become Gentiles. He has, what, according to verse 15 of chapter two, made one new man out of the two.

He's made one out of the two. And this is new information.

This is wild information. The Old Testament teachings that relate to this mystery can only be understood clearly, and hear me on this, in light of what the

New Testament teaches about this. This is what's called progressive revelation, and it helps us to understand the meaning of other

Old Testament passages, only because they are explained properly in the

New. This is one of, though I love my Presbyterian brothers and sisters, this is one of the downsides, for instance, of their hermeneutic.

They read into the new the old, but the hermeneutic of the Bible is we read the new into the old.

In other words, the new helps us to interpret the old. Amen? Let me prove it to you.

Hebrews 11, 39 and 40 says, and all these, speaking of faithful men, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us, they would not be made perfect.

Or more clearly, in 1 Peter 1, 10 through 12, concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the

Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.

It was revealed to them, those who prophesied in the Old Testament, right? It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you.

And these things, which now have been declared to you through those who proclaim the gospel to you by the

Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Wow, Peter is telling us that the prophets of the

Old Testament were prophesying of the gospel of Jesus Christ that would eventually come.

They weren't serving themselves, but us. And so what the

Old Testament had concealed, the New Testament now reveals. This further revelation, once again, turns shadow into substance, type to antitypes, promise to fulfillment.

And everything that existed as a seed, as it were, is now bloomed like a full flower.

And Paul is given the full gamut. And Jesus does it all.

Paul, where Israel failed, he stood his ground. Where Israel, God's chosen son, rebelled,

Jesus Christ, the new Israel. In other words, there's this new entity underneath this new covenant head that is one new man, and that is the church.

That is the church. And so the church is not the new

Israel, which is why we don't do the same things that they do. We don't do the same sacrificial system.

We don't adhere to all of the priestly garb and so on. We don't hold to every law that they held to.

We're allowed to have bacon. We're allowed to eat shrimp. We don't baptize our infants.

Why? Because there's one new man. We're under a new covenant, and the church is not the new

Israel, but a very distinct body of believers made up of both believing

Jews and believing Gentiles. Wow.

And so one way to think about this is the church is not the new

Israel, but it is the eschatological fulfillment of Old Testament Israel.

Israel acted as a type and a shadow pointing to the substance that is Christ and his church.

That is the mystery. The mystery, that is not really a mystery at all.

It is revealed, put on front street, as it were. In Christ, it's in him.

Moving on. Man, time just flies, doesn't it? The next thing that I want you to see after we have examined thus far that the mystery of Christ was divinely revealed to Paul, that it can be understood, that it was also previously hidden, but now is made manifest by the revelation that was given to Paul, I want you to lastly see the mystery of Christ is through the gospel.

Through the gospel. Look with me here at the last verse in our section.

It says in verse five, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit.

So the spirit gave it to the apostles and prophets. And we don't have time to stop there and talk specifically about what apostles and prophets are, but two weeks ago,

I preached an entire sermon on apostles and prophets. And if you want to know more information, please download our app and get on there and check that out.

So this was given to them. It wasn't revealed in other generations to the sons of men, that is humans, but it was revealed to the holy apostles and prophets in the spirit, not through study or human acquisition, that the

Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Now, I don't know if you guys remember this, but many weeks ago, when we were talking about how we have been risen with Christ, how we ascended with Christ, you remember

I said Paul created some Greek words there, where we do that in Christ, we ascend in Christ, we are risen in Christ.

And so Paul was so consumed with this idea of union with Christ that he invented some words.

Well, that's kind of what's happening here. It's not exactly the same, but it's kind of like what's happening here.

He's saying the same word you see here, at least in the translation that I'm using, this word fellow. Now that there's this church, this new body of believing

Jews and Gentiles that have made one new man, they are fellow heirs. We are not heirs to theirs, they're not heirs to ours, we're fellow heirs.

Same thing, fellow members, members of Christ's body. We're not members of their body, they're not members of our body, we are members fellowly, if you will.

And that we are partakers of the promises in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of course, he is pointing back to what he's already talked about, namely in chapter two.

And chapter two, when he tells us to remember that we used to be cut off from the people of God, that we need to remember that as verse 12 says, that we are without Christ.

We were alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

And Paul is saying, here's the mystery of Christ. You get it all, you get it all, but you get it all one way and one way only.

And that is in Christ and through the gospel. In Christ and through the gospel.

You see, Israel acted as a type of the shadow of things to come because they were a state, as it were.

They existed as a people. And to be a part of that group, you had to be circumcised. You had to have certain dietary restrictions, do certain things, act certain ways.

And of course, that's the same in the New Testament. We have a sign, though it's not that one. It's for specific people, right?

But it's not for Israelites. So in the New Testament church, all of that stuff is true, but it's not the same as that.

It's this new thing and it's in Christ. And Paul loves this imagery.

He loves to talk about our union with Christ that we as believers are bound in up in him. You can think about this like Christ is the sphere in which his people exist and inhabit these promises.

And the gospel itself is the instrument God uses to bring about that group of people.

Here's why you and I are so different from one another and the people are so different than you. You don't have to be around heritage very long to find out that we are a ragtag group of people.

None of us act the same, come from the same place, have the same income, so on and so forth.

We look differently, we act differently, we talk differently. And the reason for that is because we are united by Christ through the gospel, not by all of these other things.

We're not united by our favorite basketball team. We're not united by the things that we like to do.

We're not, it's Christ. And it's his blood that binds us together. That's how this new man was procured, right?

Verse 16 tells us that he made this new man by reconciling both the Jew and the

Gentile into one body, to God, through the cross. Through the cross.

And this is precisely how he ends here, through the gospel. The gospel, though it encompasses more than the cross, finds its substance in the cross.

A church that we used to meet at when I planted, the first church that I ever planted, had a red door.

And many Lutheran churches have red doors. And the reason that they have red doors, and I didn't know this before I asked because I was blown away by it.

I was like, that's very hideous and also kind of cool at the same time. I was like, it doesn't fit with anything else.

So I don't love that. But like, I'm also a punk rocker deep down in my heart. So I'm like, yeah, that's, red's cool.

And like, it's very in your face. And I was talking to the guy who owned the building at the time.

And he was like, well, there's theological significance to this. And I was like, now

I'm really interested, right? So why is your door red, you know? And he says, well, the reason that we paint the doors red, and I'm thinking to myself, why was this never in a history book

I read? I don't understand. And he's like, the reason that we do this is because it reminds everybody that when we enter through these doors, it's only by virtue and merit of the

Lord Jesus Christ. It's only through his blood. It's only through the gospel that we can come and be a part of this community with these people.

And it's through the cross. Paul is saying that we become fellow heirs, fellow members, and fellow partakers of the promises.

It's famously said that every yes and amen is found in Jesus Christ. But we only get those yes and amens in Jesus Christ.

Why? Because he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. So you know what?

Every time that you see a coexist bumper sticker or you are tempted to think to yourself, all roads lead to God, remind yourself of these things.

Friends, the beauty and glorious church that Paul is going to tell us in Ephesians 5 that Jesus died for, is made available only through his blood.

And one of the things, if we don't pause to consider, is this is really important to Paul, which means it's really important to God, which means it should be really important to us.

So if we find ourselves thinking to ourselves, the church is really not that big of a deal. The church is not really something that we need to be involved in.

The church is not really something that we need to give ourselves to. Might I ask you that why did

Paul happily suffer, and bleed, and eventually be martyred? Why did

Jesus die? He died to procure and purchase a people for himself and to put forth this new body of believing

Jews and Gentiles. And we are the recipients of it, and we get to be a part of it.

And so Paul, from henceforth, is going to begin to unpack more about what the church looks like and why it's so beautiful.

But pause there and remember, it was enough that Paul suffered to speak about this mystery for him.

Jesus died for it, according to Ephesians 5. Might we lean in and begin to see the beauty and glory of God's church, which is, according to this text, the mystery of Christ that is given to us in Christ, through Christ's cross.