Forgive the Only Option — David Ravenhill

Transcript

I did not awaken it, it awakened me. I read a bumper sticker many years ago that said, some mornings I wake up grumpy and other mornings I let him sleep in. I trust you have got over your grumpiness this morning.

It's good to be in the presence of God, isn't it? Just to worship Him, you every morning are His mercies. He daily loads us with benefits. Not just a meager little ration that will get us by, but daily loads us.

The prodigal said when he thought about the Father's house, he said, there's bread enough and to spare. Not just that Dad's got a little bit of bread, maybe I can twist his arm and get a slice, but bread enough and to spare.

Wonderful, isn't it? I want to continue this morning to sort of excavate a little bit for these next couple of sessions and then we'll move into another realm I trust. There is a portion of scripture there at the end of Matthew, Matthew 7, where Jesus talked about the two men that built their house, or their houses.

Building on the Rock Through Spiritual Excavation

One built on the sand, the other built it on the rock. And somebody said that in order to get to rock, you have to excavate everything between yourself and the rock. And I think we need to do that spiritually.

Whatever it is that stands between us and the rock. If we don't, then when the floods come and the storms rage, then the house will not stand. It may look good for a while in the good weather, when everybody's praising God and things are going well, it may look as good as anybody else's house.

But the storms come and they will test, again, the quality. It's interesting that if you look up in the dictionary, the definition of sand, it's fragments of fragmentary rock. I think we've tried to do a lot of building on fragments of truth.

We've built whole movements on one little grain of sand, faith. Whole movements on one grain of sand, prosperity. One whole movement on another grain of sand, but you put all those grains of sand together and compact them and you have a rock, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's dangerous to build on fragments. It's dangerous to build on sand. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. I want to speak to you this morning on the theme of forgiveness, because I am convinced after many years now of ministry, that one of the single greatest detriments to personal revival is the area of unforgiveness.

Revival is still a mystery to me. There's a sovereign element to it that I don't fully understand, I guess because it is sovereign. There is also man's side of seeking God, the hunger, the thirst after righteousness and so on.

But I do believe that we can have personal revival. I had the privilege of working with an older man of God back in the mid-sixties in New Zealand, by the name of Neville Winger. He has now gone to be with the Lord, a wonderful servant of God.

He told me the story of a friend of his who was a missionary in Borneo, that's East Malaysia, working there in the sort of the jungles of that nation, translating the scriptures. Working with him was a national worker.

It's no longer politically correct to call them natives, but a national worker. And as he was using this national worker to help him to select the best words and the way to write and translate the scriptures, they came across the portion of scripture there in Mark chapter 11, verse 25, when it says, When you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, in order that your father may forgive you.

And of course the missionary was concentrating on getting the right words and saying it in the right way, but when he said this, the national worker was pricked in his conscience and he said to the missionary, Why don't we do that?

The missionary didn't quite understand, because again he was concentrating on what he was doing, so the national worker again said to him, He said, Why don't we do that? He said, Why don't we do what?

He said, Well, why don't we do what this verse says? And realizing that God was speaking to this young man, the missionary said, Well, we have to walk in obedience to God's word. Consequently, this man went back to his village and then from his village went to a neighboring village and began to apologize, ask forgiveness, because over the years, over many years, there'd been tremendous animosity between these two villages.

There'd been all sorts of bloodshed, all sorts of abuse and pillage and thievery, even murder. And so he began to apologize. As a result of that, the Spirit of God was released in that particular valley and a revival broke out that impacted that entire region, all because one person was willing to go to a brother and ask for forgiveness.

There is tremendous power in forgiveness. Now, we don't kill one another anymore. We don't shed blood, although that is possible. But we simply kill relationships. We avoid one another, we move to another church, we no longer speak to certain individuals, no longer associate with certain individuals, we avoid contact, we begin to criticize and so on.

And yet, unforgiveness really is like a cord that ties the hands of God from working on our behalf. Here is God we talked about last night, the fact that He is the Creator of the heavens and earth, and yet this God with all of His power, all of His majesty, all of His greatness that we've been singing about is rendered, if you like, absolutely powerless by our unwillingness to forgive.

We no longer have access to His forgiveness, we no longer have access to His grace, we no longer have access to His mercy, no longer have access to who God is because we are not willing to be like Him.

And so, we bind again God working on our behalf. Now, every believer here, and I know that's the vast majority this morning, we've experienced the love of God, the forgiveness of God, the kindness, the goodness of God, we sang about that again.

The fact that He took our place on Calvary, He became the substitute, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And yet, why is it that we are so reluctant to extend that forgiveness that was given to us to others?

And one of the greatest problems, I think, in the body of Christ is this unwillingness to forgive, unwillingness to be reconciled one to another. There's been far more churches that have split over unforgiveness, over bitterness, over resentment than there has been over false doctrine or any other single problem.

Bitterness, Resentment, and the Growth of Strongholds

This gentleman that I mentioned a few moments ago that I worked with in the early sixties had a saying, and he used to say to me, he said, David, we're all damaged goods. Somewhere in the course of life, we've been dropped, so to speak.

We've got our dents and our bruises. And I imagine we could start on the front row here and go and spend an hour or two or three or four talking about all the hurts and the disappointments and the bitternesses and the wrongs that have been done us.

The business deals have gone sour. The working with another brother that has turned and he's become now our enemy. Again, parents that have disappointed us, brothers and sisters that maybe have turned against us.

Again, all the hurts, the resentments. I imagine there's a tremendous amount of testimony that we can produce just in a congregation of this size this morning. We live in an imperfect world and those imperfect people, again, cause us pain and we've caused others pain as well.

And we need to know what it is to rid ourselves of all the bitterness that gets in our spirit, that root of bitterness. And not only defiles ourselves, but springs up and defiles many. I was thinking this morning when I was just looking over my notes that 22 years ago, my wife and I moved from New Zealand to Texas, lived there for just a little over a year and then went back to New Zealand and spent another 10 years there.

During that time, we built a house and my parents built a house and in the area where we lived, the field around the house, there were some small trees about this big, pine trees. I remember rooting those up with my bare hands and planting them just outside our house.

Those trees now are some 30 or 40 feet tall and I would challenge and defy anybody in this room to try and uproot what I uprooted 20 years ago or 22 years ago. They have grown, they've established a root system now that is so vast that it is impossible to uproot.

And so strongholds or rather footholds become strongholds. And unless we deal with those footholds in the early stages, they're almost impossible to be dealt with later on. And so it's important that we learn to walk in forgiveness.

The Capacity for Evil and the Danger of Revenge

It's amazing what we are capable of doing, isn't it? Even as believers, the bitterness that we can have, the anger that we can have, the resentment that we can have. Two years ago, I was traveling with the revival team from Pensacola.

We were staying in a hotel and as I opened the door of the hotel, there was the morning newspaper there that I picked up and later on that afternoon, I began to browse through it. And there was an article in the newspaper that I have a photocopy of here.

I have the original somewhere in my Bible. The title is, Dad. And then it says, Revenge led to baby's life, comma, death. Let me read you the article, June the 19th, 1999. On Father's Day, Amy Shainabaga found her infant son, Tyler, face down in his crib, dead.

Two days later, just hours after the baby's funeral, Ronald Shainabaga told his wife that he had killed their son. The next day, he told the police not only did he kill the boy, he planned the crime even before the child was conceived as a way of executing revenge on his wife.

Tyler didn't die of sudden death syndrome as the coroner had ruled. Shainabaga said he confessed to the suffocating his seven-year-old with a plastic wrap. He said it was revenge because Amy, before they were married, had refused to cut short a vacation to comfort him when his father died in 1996, three years previous.

Shainabaga said that he planned to make Amy feel the way he did when his father died. He married her, got her pregnant, allowed time for her to bond with the child, and then took the baby's life, according to an affidavit.

It goes on to say that Shainabaga said of his confession that on the evening of June 19th, he wrapped plastic wrap around his son's head and face and then left the baby's nursery to get something to eat and to brush his teeth.

Twenty minutes later, he said, he returned, removed the plastic, placed Tyler face down in the crib before he went off to bed. Amy Shainabaga, 29, had been working that night as a grocery cashier. When she came home, she went to bed assuming that Tyler was asleep.

She found his body the next morning, Father's Day. Shainabaga, who worked as a tire retreading center, told police he confessed because the image of his son's face, flat and purplish from rigor mortis, had haunted him.

Amazing, isn't it? What we are capable of doing. We get hurt. We allow that hurt to fester. We feed it. We entertain it. It grows. It becomes a root of bitterness. We plan revenge over a two or three year period.

Here is a man married that woman knowing, intending to get her pregnant, intending to allow seven months for the mother to bond with that beautiful little baby. All to get even. To make her feel the way he felt.

We have a story very similar. I won't go into it. But you know it, the story of one of David's sons who saw that his stepsister was violated, or his sister rather, violated by his stepbrother. He waited for two years.

During that two years, after everything had died down, he planned revenge. And after two years held a party. During that time of feasting and celebrating and so on, he took the life of his stepbrother.

The Lord’s Prayer and Forgiving Debts

We're capable of such incredible evil. And we have got to know what it is to walk in forgiveness. About 25 years ago, I sat under the ministry of David Duplassé. David Duplassé was referred to as Mr. Pentecost because of his desire to bring the body of Christ together.

And he was ministering on the Lord's Prayer. Matthew chapter 6. And he made this statement. He said, this is the most dangerous prayer that you can ever pray. And he was referring, of course, to verse 12 where we pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

We are specifically asking Almighty God to forgive us according to the standard of which we forgive others. He said that is the most dangerous prayer because it will be answered. The book of James has a verse that it terrifies me.

And it says that judgment will be merciless to the one that shows no judgment. Or no mercy rather. Judgment will be merciless to the one who shows no mercy. That is a frightening verse, isn't it? If anything should cause us to walk in constant forgiveness, we were asking God to soften our hearts, that verse should.

Knowing that one day you and I will stand before Almighty God and instead of mercy we will receive justice. Because we never extended the mercy that was shown us. I picked up a book a little while ago out of my father's library that is now mine.

And it was quotes from Oswald Chambers. An entire book where somebody has gone through all his writings. And under the heading of forgiveness he makes a statement. The forgiveness of a child of God is not placed on the ground of the atonement of our Lord.

That got my attention. Let me read it again. The forgiveness of a child of God, not a sinner. The forgiveness of a child of God is not placed on the ground of the atonement of our Lord, but on the ground that the child of God shows the same forgiveness to his fellows that God his Father has shown him.

In other words, after you are saved you can't come and say, Lord on the basis of the blood of Christ forgive me if we are not forgiving another person. The blood has no effect. It took me a while to sort of believe what he said.

Once you are saved it's no longer based on the atonement, but on whether or not you forgive. Again in Matthew 6, out of all the things that are mentioned in the Lord's prayer, Jesus could have very easily highlighted the kingdom.

Could have very easily highlighted the fact that his will is to be done. That we are to hallow his name. But instead at the end of that prayer Jesus said this in verse 14,. For if you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Interesting isn't it, that out of that great prayer, that most of us could say by rote, maybe even backwards, that the one single item that Jesus sort of highlighted and drew out of that was the matter of forgiveness when it comes to praying.

And said if you do not forgive, your Father will not forgive you. Hence the statement here of Oswald Chambers. Forgiveness then is based on whether I will forgive and release somebody else. And so the Bible is full again of exhortations to believers that we are to walk in forgiveness.

Releasing Others Through Mercy and Forgiveness

Luke chapter 6, it says, Be merciful, verse 37, Just as your Father is merciful, do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Pardon or forgive and you will be forgiven.

That word in the Greek means release. It can be translated divorce. It can be translated to send away. Release, let go of that thing. Whatever it is that is eating away at you, that thing that has sat there maybe for many months, maybe for many years, that deep resentment, that bitterness towards a parent, towards a brother, a sister, a workmate, where you've been violated in some way, let it go.

The best way I think to describe it, at least modern way, is to look at one of those helium balloons that are so popular these days at anniversaries and birthday parties and you know that that thing just automatically stays up there because of the helium.

And you know the moment you release it, it's gone. It's irretrievable. It just floats up and up and up and up and it's gone. There's no way that you can get back that thing. Why? Because you've released it.

The Bible says release. And you will be released. Set free others and you will be set free. I find there are so many believers that are bound. God is wanting to release you. When I was pastoring, five years ago now, or a little, four years ago I guess, I had a number of people in my congregation that were going to see a counselor for marriage and they were talking about how great this man was.

Turned out that he was a Jewish believer, but he was charging $100 an hour and a lot of people that were in my congregation couldn't afford that. And so I called him up one day, introduced myself, I said, I've heard wonderful things about you, some of the people in my congregation have been to you for counsel and I made a suggestion to him.

I said, would it be possible for you to come and do a seminar and we will give you $500 for the afternoon and instead of just dealing with one person, we'll get as many people together as possible. The church will pay for it and you'll get some money out of it, but we have a lot of people that just can't afford your expertise.

He agreed and so the day was set. We advertised it and announced it. We had a number of couples in the church that came, I guess maybe 30 or 40, 50 couples showed up and he spent most of the morning speaking about forgiveness and he said, as believers, we really do not understand forgiveness.

And one of the illustrations he used, he said, you know, he said, I used to have a car, a particular car that was one of my favorites of all the cars I've ever had. He said, it was just a particular model that wasn't very popular and he said, I'd sort of fitted it out with some extra things but he said, I had to get rid of it.

And he said, I reluctantly had to sell it. It was just like an old coat. It just sort of fit right and felt right and everything about that car. He said, I love that car. But he said, I sold it. And he said, about three months later, he said, I happened to be in the parking lot of a particular mall and he said, there was my car.

And he said, as soon as I saw it, he said, there was this bond and he said, I just wanted to go over and look at it and he said, I was so tempted to open the door and just sit in it one more time. He said, it meant so much to me.

And he said, then I realized I didn't have a right to that car anymore. That I had signed off on that car. That when the person bought it from me, I signed the title deed and it was now in his name and it was no longer mine.

And I didn't have the right to go back and I had absolutely no claim on that car. He said, that's what forgiveness is. We sign off. We release. We have no claim whatsoever. It's gone. We don't keep mulling over.

Forgiveness as Obedience Rather Than Feeling

We don't resurrect it. We don't keep it in a file and pull it out and think about it. It's gone. We've released it. In 1969, my wife and I were living in California working with Youth of a Mission. And Winky Prattney, some of you know Winky.

I know he's ministered in this country. He was a very good friend of mine. I was the best man in his wedding many years ago now. And Winky and I were talking. He was outside the Youth of a Mission base where I was working and he actually lived there before he was married.

And he was opening his mail and we were chit-chatting and he opened a particular letter and he began reading the letter to me. The letter began something like this, Dear Winky, you may or may not remember me, but I'm the girl with the two mothers.

And then he began to tell me the story. He said, you know, let me tell you about this. He said about two or three weeks ago I was in Springfield, Missouri. I was taking some meetings. David Wilkerson was supposed to be there and for some reason had to cancel.

They asked me if I would come. Springfield is the headquarters, as you know, of the Assemblies of God in America and he was speaking at the Evangel College. And on the last night of his meeting, two girls came forward, asked if they could talk to him.

One had a problem, the other was there for sort of moral support. And this girl began to pour out her heart about her life. But she said, I have a problem. She said, I've been in the school now for whatever it was, six months or a year or something.

And she said, every single night at two o 'clock in the morning I wake up with this incredible fear. A fear that I just can't shake. She said, it happens every single night at two o 'clock. And she said, I'm so terrified.

A fear just comes into the room that grips me that I have to get up, put on the light, waken my roommate. We've got to pray for a while. It takes me ages to get back to sleep and so on. And she said, I just can't go on.

And then she began to tell her story. She said, I was adopted as a child. I've never seen my birth mother. The mother, my adoptive mother that took me. She said, I don't really feel treated me right and so on.

And she began to sort of pour out some of her problems. And as she did, God spoke to Winky and He said to this girl, He said, you know, God's just told me something. Two o 'clock in the morning represents your two mothers.

And unless you're willing to forgive them, you will continue to have this problem. And she was adamant. She said, I could never forgive them. I could never forgive my birth mother even though I've never met her because she rejected me.

She gave me up and so on and so forth. I could never forgive my adoptive mother because of the way she treated me, the injustices at least that she felt and so on. And Winky tried to reason with her that forgiveness is not a feeling.

It's the obedience to the will of God. He suggested that she call or write a letter. And she said, no, I can't do that. And so the conversation basically was over. He had to dash off and catch a plane or something.

And so here it was two or three weeks later and he is reading this letter. Dear Winky, you may or may not remember me but I'm the girl with the two mothers. The letter went on to say how that night with the help of her roommate, she did what was the hardest thing for her to do.

She wrote a letter releasing her mother. Winky had told her, don't draw attention to the wrongs of your mother. Draw attention to the fact that you had a wrong attitude towards her regardless of how she treated you.

Mother, I'm sorry for the way I've responded to your love. I'm sorry for not being the child that I should have been and so on and so forth. Please forgive me. She said her mother then responded and I don't have all the details.

I was talking to Winky just recently and he said, you know, somewhere I must have that letter. He said, I'm a bit of a pet rat. And he said, I know I put it away somewhere. I would love to get a hold of that letter but it detailed how the mother gave her a contact with her birth mother, her natural mother.

And she had contacted her birth mother for the first time in her life only to discover that her birth mother was a Christian and that her birth mother was looking for her. And she was saying, for the first time in my life I'm going to meet my birth mother.

She was all excited. You see, the Bible says release and you release God to work on your behalf. God's hands are tied until we forgive. Here was this girl again crippled, if you like, in her spirit with bitterness, with resentment.

And God was saying, listen, if you're going to be my child I want you to demonstrate my nature, my character. I forgave you, forgive others. The Bible talks a lot, obviously, about forgiveness. Moses prayed and he said, Lord, show me your glory.

God’s Glory Revealed in Forgiveness

How many of you would like to see the glory of God? I think sometimes we misunderstand the glory of God. We think it's some sort of big, you know, shimmering cloud that moves into a meeting and sort of startles everybody.

I don't think so. It may be that. But when Moses said, show me your glory, God revealed his nature, his character, the essence of who he was. He said, Moses, stand here in the cleft of the rock and my glory, as it passes by, I'll declare it unto you.

And there in Exodus, God spoke and it says, the Lord passed by and proclaimed, the Lord compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.

That's the glory of God. A God of grace, a God of mercy, a God who abounds in loving kindness, who forgives iniquity, who forgives transgression, who forgives sin. He's coming back for what sort of a church?

A glorious church. Man's sin and what came short of the nature of God. And so, He's going to reconform us into the image of His Son, the glory of God. We need to demonstrate God's nature and character.

The psalmist says in Psalm 103, who forgives all our iniquities, who heals all our diseases. He forgives all. And we need to walk again in that same forgiveness, releasing, forgiving all. Ephesians says, be tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.

And whether you turn to the Old Testament or the New Testament, God is always a forgiving God. Even in the Old Testament, God taught the nation of Israel to forgive. Oh, I know we think of the eye for an eye and the tooth for a tooth.

Loving Enemies Through Practical Mercy

Let me give you a scripture, Exodus 23, verse 4 and 5. One of the laws, if you like, that God gave to the nation of Israel. And He says this, If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.

Now, notice here you are, walking along a road, and you see your enemy's ox or his donkey. Today, that would be the same as his car, his mode of transport, his means of livelihood. Not only was it transport, it was his tractor.

This was an agricultural country. So, if you meet your enemy's ox, you return it to him. That is not natural. After all, this is the man that has despised you, this is the man that has swindled you, this is the man that has betrayed you, this is the man that has criticized you, this is your enemy.

This man hates you, you hate him. And you're walking along and you notice, here's his donkey or his horse. And you think to yourself, naturally speaking, ha ha, this is great, I'm three miles from home, it's five miles from my enemy's house, by the time he wakes up in the morning, he won't be able to get to work on time, he's going to be fired or whatever, you know.

Maybe he'll never find his donkey, maybe he'll never find his ox, his tractor, he won't be able to plow his fields anymore, it serves him right, ha ha ha. You know, and possibly you pick up a rock and throw it at the thing so it gallops off even a little bit faster and further.

That's a natural response, it's your enemy. Get even. The last thing you want to do is take that ox and bring it to the one that you hate. He goes on to say, if you see the donkey of the one that hates you, lying helpless under its load, you shall surely refrain from leaving it to him.

You shall surely release it with him. Here again, you're outside, you know, some store, supermarket, whatever they had in those days, and your enemy is inside, the man that hates you, it says. And the donkey has collapsed because of the heat of the day and this man has overloaded this beast of burden to the point where it's collapsed and you know that it's just a matter of minutes before it's going to expire because of the weight of the load lying on it.

It's struggling. And again, the natural response is, ha ha ha, serves him right. He's in there drinking, should be looking after his animal. I don't have anything to do with this, you know. Thank God, vengeance is mine, Lord.

You know, and you stand there watching this thing just sigh its last almost. The last thing you want to do is take the burden off it, get it back on its feet and return it to the master. You see, God is a God of forgiveness.

Even in little things like this. And we have many, many illustrations of that, don't we? Proverbs 25. If your enemy's hungry, feed him. But Lord, I'd rather starve him to death. Get rid of the problem.

If your enemy's hungry, keep him alive. Lord, I don't want to keep my enemy alive. If he's thirsty, give him water to drink. In so doing, you'll heap burning coals of fire upon his head. Now, you know, for many years I thought, you know, this is where you do something nice to somebody that hates you so you make them really feel miserable.

In other words, your motivation is, you know, this is your enemy and he's done all sorts of nasty things to you and so you bake him a cake and present it with a big smile on your face. But inside, you know, you're really making him just feel worse.

Nothing to do with that. I read in a book on customs and culture of the Old Testament or the Bible where what would happen is that men would be out in the fields, out in some of these desert regions and at night time, of course, they would light a fire.

The fire was there to cook over, to protect them again from the elements, to ward off any sort of predator, lions or bears or whatever. And it was a means, obviously, of staying alive in many ways. But occasionally the fire would go out and if the fire went out, you could literally, you know, succumb to the coldness of the night and have problems.

Again, you were not able to feed yourself. Various predators could come and maybe take an animal from the flock, if not, take your own life. And what you would do then, you would look if your fire went out and maybe there on the horizon was another camp and you would see the embers burning and so you would make your way over and you would ask if you could have some coals.

And that person then would give you some coals from the fire. You would put those coals in an earthenware pot as they still do in many countries and put that pot on their head like they do in Africa and other places.

And you would walk back again, that mile or two miles back to your camp and you would rekindle your fire. It was a means, again, of staying alive. We keep burning coals of fire on somebody's head. We keep them alive, we sustain them, we bless them.

Oh, this is our enemy. But this is the law of God. You see, we've been taken out of the kingdom where we can have revenge, where we can get even and we've been brought into another kingdom, a kingdom of kindness, of forgiveness, of mercy, of grace.

We've got to learn to operate in those kingdom principles. And we have numerous, again, illustrations there, the book of Hosea, God demonstrating to Israel His willingness to, time after time, woo back this bride that was forever committing adultery and, of course, we have it expressed through Hosea.

Joseph, Job, and the Witness of Forgiveness

We have the story of Joseph, after 13 years of being betrayed, hardship, 13 years in prison in which he was in irons. He was afflicted, the Bible says. The Word of the Lord tried him. He was in chains.

I imagine that he thought maybe at certain times of the year, you know, this is the time of my brother's birthday, this is dad's birthday, this is, you know, whatever, this is all these various days when the family would be together.

He could have very easily grown extremely bitter. I've been deprived. Seeing my nieces and nephews, I've been deprived of this, I've been deprived of that. I wonder if my father's still alive. I wonder if my mother's alive.

I wonder what's happening at home. I wonder, you know. And that resentment could have built and built and built and built and built and, of course, his brothers expected that after they realized who he was.

And they concocted a plan. You know, dad said, by the way, dad said before he died that you need to forgive us, basically. And Joseph is able to say, listen, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

What a beautiful demonstration again of releasing. We've got to learn to do that. And so God is looking for a people through which He can demonstrate again His glory, His nature, His character. We are to be the proclaimers of the excellences of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

I've been reading a book lately, just grabbing it here and there, but there's a chapter dealing with the sort of eternal purpose of the church. And part of that eternal purpose he mentions is from Ephesians there where it says that now through the church may be made known to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God or the ways of God.