Father, we know You love us, and one of the reasons we know that
is because You've chosen to speak to us through Your Word.
So we pray that we would receive this word from Ephesians 1, not
as the Word from man, but as a word from Your very mouth.
We pray this morning that You would do what I can never do in
opening eyes, drawing hearts to You and sanctifying us, making
us more and more like Jesus. So open our eyes now to see
wonderful things in your word. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.
Our reading this morning is from Ephesians one picking up in
verse 7 and reading to verse 10. Paul writes in him we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses according to the riches of His grace which He
lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us
the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which
he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to
unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, you may be
seated. Our first sermon in Ephesians
was on January 4th, and it was that morning that one of my sons
asked me why? How do you guys talk for so long
about just a few words in the Bible?
I'd like to think he was in awe of what we do, but I think he
had a little different angle. So because now we're here on
March 1st, 2 months later, and we've just about made it through
10 verses, which I think is about 1.5 verses a week.
So you may have your own version of my son's question, but I
would encourage you not to ask the pastors a question, but to
ask Paul a question. Paul, why do you write such an
intro that makes our pastors have to talk for so long about a
few words in the Bible? And if Paul could answer that
question with one of our hymns, I think he would say, Oh, the
deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me, underneath me,
all around me is the current of his love leading onward, leading
homeward to his glorious rest above.
When we read Ephesians one, it's clear Paul has been swimming in
the ocean of God's love that that hymn describes.
He's been diving in and exploring all that he has in
Christ. And this intro is basically his
invitation to us to do the same, to get beyond the surface, to
dive to the depths and to realize everything in this ocean
is ours if we are his. My wife and some of you know,
loves the beach, loves the ocean.
I was thinking this week I just hope that she don't need
sunscreen in the new heavens and the new earth.
She doesn't just want a few minutes out there on the beach,
She wants to linger there and soak up the sun and feel the
sand between her toes and get in the ocean.
She dives in because she loves it and her time there has
changed her. Paul writes like this for much
the same reason. He knows the Lord loved him.
He can't get to the bottom of it.
He can't stop thinking about it, so he won't stop writing about
it and he dives in because the Lord has loved him and so he
loves the Lord and it changes him.
Has it changed you? In verse 3, Paul says blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us
in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Do you realize, friends, that every spiritual blessing in
Christ, if we have that, that means that God has blessed us
comprehensively from eternity to eternity.
In the last few weeks, we've seen how God has blessed us in
the past. He chose us in God in Christ
before the foundation of the world in love.
He predestined us for adoption as His children.
We've also seen how He has blessed us in the present.
We have right now redemption by his blood and the forgiveness of
our sins. And this morning we'll see how
God will bless us in the future as well.
Paul says God has made known to us the mystery of his will for
the future. And so today we're diving into
this ocean one more time to consider all that God has given
us in Christ and what it means for us.
So as we think about the mystery of His will, first I want to ask
what is the mystery? You see, Paul starts to talk
about the mystery at the tail end of what he starts talking
about in verse 7. And that's why we started in
verse 7. So follow along.
In the text, Paul says we have redemption through Christ's
blood. We have the forgiveness of our
trespasses, and this is not because of us, as if we might
think that we somehow deserve that.
No, it's according to God's grace and he wasn't stingy with
His grace. It says He lavished it upon us.
So in the process of redeeming us and forgiving us and
lavishing His grace upon us, He has also made known to us the
mystery of His will. So what does Paul mean by the
word mystery? It's a Greek word that actually
looks like it's English translation, which is helpful.
It's mysterion. Even you could read it.
But what kind of mystery are we talking about?
It's not a mystery like a cold case.
There are shows on TV about cold cases.
It's not a mystery like the abduction story that's been in
the news lately. These mysteries, they make us
think, well, if we could just get a few more clues, we could
figure it out on our own. It's not that kind of mystery.
Paul means a secret that God knows, but we don't know, and we
can't know unless God chooses to reveal it to us.
Think of Daniel chapter 2. That's where Nebuchadnezzar has
his strange dream, and he needs an interpretation.
And so all his wise men and magi are in trouble because they
can't guess it. He won't tell it to them, and so
they don't know it and they can't figure it out.
So Nebuchadnezzar asked Daniel, are you able to make known to me
the dream that I've seen and its interpretation?
And you remember Daniel's reply. No wise men, enchanters,
magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery
that the king has asked. But there is a God in heaven who
reveals mysteries, and he's made known to King Nebuchadnezzar
what will be in the latter days. And then Daniel says, this
mystery has been revealed to me. So Nebuchadnezzar's dream had to
do with events in history that would happen in later days.
No one could know those things unless God revealed them to him.
And that's exactly what God did for Daniel.
So we bring the same perspective to the mystery of His will in
Ephesians 1. As God's great work of
redemption unfolds, He reveals the secret of his future plans
to his people. Things we never could have
guessed that God is up to, but now he's made it known.
Sinclair Ferguson has this image that God's Old Testament
revelation is like scaffolding around a building.
So you've probably seen that in Dallas or New York or wherever.
There's a massive building going up, but it's surrounded by
scaffolding and you know something significant is
happening there, but you just can't quite catch it.
But when the scaffolding is removed, the mystery is revealed
and the glorious plans of the architect are made.
Now. So in the New Testament, it's
like God is removing the scaffolding and we see the
glorious plans of the architect of our salvation are made known.
And at the center of the mystery is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Think about the lyrics we sang this morning.
Come, behold the wondrous mystery in the dawning of the
King. He, the theme of heaven's
praises, robed in frail humanity, in our longing, in our
darkness. Now the light of life has come.
Look to Christ, who condescended, took on flesh to
ransom us. So we knew God was doing
something. You could see that in the Old
Testament. But it was a wondrous mystery
that He would come like this and live and die and rise again for
us. Paul actually uses the word
mystery seven times in Ephesians.
The most he uses it is in chapter 3 and it's in chapter 3
where he he says it's the union of Jews and Gentiles in in
Christ in the church. That's the mystery.
No one would have guessed that God would bring the Gentiles in
to join his people, the Jews. No one could imagine that God
would want a people from every tribe, tongue and nation.
But that's what he's doing in Christ.
It's a mystery now reveal in chapter 5.
It's the union of husband and wife in marriage.
That's the mystery. Paul says this mystery is
profound, that the two would become one.
But then he says, I'm saying it refers to Christ and the church.
No one would have guessed that marriage was about more than
marriage. We tend to think marriage is the
ultimate, but no, it points to God's desire to be one with his
people forever. That's what he's doing in
Christ. A mystery reveal.
But the union of Jews and Gentiles and the union of
marriage are really just like the preview of this main mystery
in chapter 1. So what is it?
Look with me at verse 9. He mentions making known to us
the mystery of His will in verse 9.
But then he tells us what it is in verse 10 to unite all things
in Christ, things in heaven and on earth and in between, as Paul
loves to do. He adds more phrases.
This is God's secret that we never would have guessed on our
own. Paul says it came to be
according to God's purpose. It was the Father's pleasure to
do this, and it was a plan that he set forth in Christ.
It wasn't something that we accomplished or that we did with
Him. At the center of the Father's
plan is the Son, and Paul says it was a plan for the fullness
of time. In Galatians we hear that in the
fullness of time, Jesus came to love us and give himself for us
to be born of a virgin. But now, in the fullness of
time, he'll come again to make all things new.
So friends, a day is coming when God will unite all things in
Christ. This includes his chosen people,
His created world, even angels who didn't fall.
Romans 8 says the creation groans for this day, for this
day of redemption. Do we groan for it?
It's hard to imagine it because we haven't seen it.
But we know from Revelation 21 and other passages that when
this day comes, God will dwell with us and we will be his
people, and he will be with us as our God, and we'll be united
with him in the ultimate marriage, in the perfect place.
It'll be the new heavens and the new earth.
It's the world we've always wanted.
And God, it says, we'll wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Imagine that the personal touch of that.
And death shall be no more, and all that's broken apart will be
put back together, and Jesus Christ will be King over all.
This is the mystery of his will to unite all things in Christ.
And if we see that now, we can ask a second question.
So why is this mystery so important?
Why does it matter what God is going to do in the future?
Well, in the world, it's natural to believe that history is going
nowhere. There's a view of history that
centuries roll on and on, and people really don't see any
overarching plan or purpose. But it's God's plan to unite all
things in Christ that changes our perspective on history.
GN Clark was a history professor at Cambridge in the 1940s and in
his inaugural lecture, listen to what he said.
There is no secret and no plan in history to be discovered.
I don't think he read Ephesians 1, he says.
I do not believe that any future consummation could make sense of
the irrationalities of preceding ages.
Do you share that view? What's your view of history?
When you think about wars and plagues and natural disasters
and genocide, or when you look around even today at recent
history, you see war between Ukraine and Russia and new
conflict between the United States and Israel and Iran, the
Epstein files, human trafficking, the ways technology
is impacting our world. It's easy just to look at
history in the current day and just say this is the summary.
Things are falling apart. Things are falling apart, so it
feels like we're lighting a candle in a hurricane to say one
day God will unite all things in Christ.
But friends, this is what God's Word teaches us.
In the beginning, God made Adam a representative head over
creation. So when Adam fell in Genesis 3,
it's like the contagion of sin touched everything.
So things did begin to fall apart and death seemed to be
winning. And that's the reality for so
many people around us. That's what they think, but it's
not the whole story. God has done something in
history to overthrow the reign of sin and death.
Think about first Corinthians 15 where Paul writes For as by a
man came, death by a man has come also the resurrection of
the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ all shall be made alive.
Adam failed as the head of humanity and we all feel that
failure, but Christ succeeded as the last Adam, and that's
massive. So if we're only united with
Adam, we're stuck in that world of death and decay.
But if we're united with Christ, we've been brought into his
world, life and healing. Think about our profession of
faith from Colossians 1. You can look at it if you like.
So we feel how things are falling apart, and it says in
Christ all things hold together. We feel like we lack a leader,
says he is the head of his body, the church.
We're not sure sometimes what life is all about.
And it says the risen Christ is preeminent in everything.
And when all seems lost, it says Jesus poured out his blood on
the cross to reconcile what to himself all things, whether on
earth or in heaven. So you can see the connection
between Colossians 1 and Ephesians 1, and you can see God
has actually already done the work.
Jesus has already died to reconcile to himself all things.
So when we look at the church or marriage, our own lives or even
pockets of society now, we can catch glimpses of how God is
bringing things together under Christ.
But a day is coming when we'll see the fullness of what it
means for God to unite all things in Christ.
My wife loves to do needlepointing and history often
looks like the back of a needlepoint canvas.
I don't know if you've seen this before and she actually does a
beautiful job with the back. So I thought of bringing one of
her canvases. So I was like, this is actually
too organized. So I'm just going to talk about,
but you see someone else's needlepoint and it's just knots
and mess and strings over here, and this is going under that and
you have no idea what's happening.
It's just confusion because you can't turn it over if you're
just looking at the back and see the picture that's actually
coming together. And in life and in history, when
we can't see the picture, there are really only two options.
One is to conclude that there is no picture and just give in to
despair. And the other option is to
believe and trust that God is weaving it all together and lean
into hope. So take this new conflict with
Iran as an example. It's a scary situation, and
we're right to pray for all the people involved for peace, for
God's glory. We long for people who have
lived in fear and been oppressed to experience freedom.
We long for the gospel to run free in the Middle East, but
we're wrong to think about our Lord as if he's in heaven
wringing his hands and saying, Father, what are we going to do
about this? Proverbs 21 one says the King's
heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.
He turns it wherever he will. Jesus, friends, is the King of
history and he's working everything together for his
glory, even when it doesn't make sense to us.
So big picture, the mystery of his will changes our perspective
on history and that matters. But then smaller scale, it
changes our perspective on our lives.
In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth famously says life's but a
walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour
upon the stage and then is heard no more.
It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
signifying nothing. But we know in our hearts that
this vision of life isn't true. God has written something into
our hearts. We know there is meaning.
We long for meaning and the meaning big pictures.
God is uniting all things in Christ, and that means it
includes our lives too. Think of the mosaic style of
art. An artist will take these broken
pieces of glass or stone and marble and you look at these
things and say this is insignificant.
Like this is for the the trash pile.
Why would I even keep this? But then in the artist's hands,
they take all these broken pieces and put together
something beautiful, and you hold it in your hands or you see
it on the ground. And in so many ways, as we look
at characters in the Bible, in our own lives, this is what
God's Word is telling us. This is how God works.
We've sinned and we've been sinned against, but that doesn't
mean that our lives are meaningless now.
It's not a tale told by an idiot.
God doesn't throw away the broken pieces of our lives in
his hands. These broken pieces can become
something beautiful. It's all part of his plan to
make us more like Jesus. And so with Joseph in Genesis
5020, when he's talking to his brothers, we can say to those
who've heard us, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for
good. And with Paul in Romans 828, we
can say in any situation, and we know, we know that for those who
love God, all things, all things work together for good.
For those who are called according to His purpose.
Think about that. Knowing that God is at work in
all things helps us to trust Him with anything that He sends our
way in this life. New callings, closed doors,
afflictions, disappointments, deep losses.
Are you going through any of these things?
If you are, do you believe that God is with you and not just
that, That he's working in all things?
So life often feels like a song in a minor key.
There's so much sadness and tension.
You ache for the resolution, the mystery that God will unite all
things in. Christ tells us that one day
that minor chord will be raised to major and that sadness will
be turned to joy. And a resolution is coming that
will thrill our hearts for eternity.
It's the kind of hope that changes everything.
And so we ask one more question. What does this mystery mean for
us today? So when we began this series,
Mark shared a John Owen quotation with us.
Do you remember what John Owen said?
He said our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our
lack of effort, but our lack of acquaintedness with our
privileges. We don't understand all that we
have in Christ. We don't live in light of
Ephesians one. We're like the child of a
billionaire who's living on the street.
But friends, if you are in Christ, you are the richest man
or woman in the world. And this morning we've learned
of yet another privilege we have that God has made known to us
the mystery of his will to unite all things in Christ.
The problem is, feels like a future reality that doesn't mean
much today. And there are privileges in life
that are like this. So we can't ride the roller
coaster until we're this tall. We can't drive until we're 15 or
16. We can't vote until we're 18,
can't get married until we get married, can't have kids until
we have kids, can't withdraw from our retirement accounts
without a penalty until a certain age.
Some of those things are more fun than others.
We look forward to these privileges.
But the problem is, until we get there, all we hear is not yet,
not yet, Can't have that yet. But this is where our privileges
in Christ are different from our privileges in the world.
Because in Christ it's not just not yet, There's also an
already. Do we see all things united in
Christ? Not yet, but we already see the
beautiful beginning of this work.
So when we turn to Jesus and put our faith in him, our lives that
were once falling apart start coming together in him, and our
lives that were centered on money or work or pleasure or
sports or whatever you you chase, they find a new center in
Him. So one day we'll see that Jesus
is the organizing principle of the whole universe.
But even this morning he can rearrange our lives under His
kind rule. So it's true in our individual
lives. It's also true in our life
together as the church. On Sundays we gather as a church
family to worship the Lord, to remember that He is our head and
we are His body. And we're reminded that we're
united with Him and He puts us back together.
He literally as members of his body.
He remembers us. He unites us in Him.
And that's a preview of what he'll do one day.
We recently had this night of worship with the men of
Nehemiah. I know some of you men were
there. And that night, a number of
those men stood up to share their testimonies.
So through tears, they talked about how their lives had been
falling apart. And we heard stories of
addiction and brokenness and disordered loves, how these men
had lost all hope. And then they walked through the
door of the men of Nehemiah, and they met Jesus.
Jesus met them in that place and changed everything.
And it was so clear that night to all of us that only Jesus can
take our broken pieces and unite them together into this
beautiful mosaic of his grace. And friends, I will just tell
you, we're not different from the men of Nehemiah.
We have the same need, and God offers us the same provision.
Have you looked to Jesus? Have you trusted in Him for your
salvation? Do you believe He's the only one
who can hold your life together and give you what you've been
looking for so many other places?
The fact that God will make all things new one day should give
us great hope. But it's not just a future hope,
because God can make us new even today.
So knowing the mystery of God's will should first of all give us
hope. It should also give us peace.
Sometimes people hear about what we're talking about in
Ephesians, one God's sovereign plan, election, His plan for the
future, and they say, how Can you believe this stuff?
My response is, how can you not? If you don't believe God is in
control, how can you even get out of bed?
If you think life is meaningless, like why do
anything at all? And if it's all dependent on
you, if it's all up to you, how can you even take a step?
That's terrifying. How can you not be overwhelmed
by work and school and sports and parenting?
How can you not be anxious about politics and war and artificial
intelligence? Without Jesus at the center of
our lives, how could we ever have peace?
But with Him, how can we not have peace?
Because we don't know what to do without anything.
But He knows what to do with everything.
He doesn't promise to protect us from all the trouble and
suffering that comes in this life, but in the midst of all of
it, He gives us His presence and His peace.
So, knowing the mystery of His will, it should give us peace.
We can sing. This is my Father's world.
Oh, let me never forget that though the wrong seems OFT so
strong, God is the ruler. Yet finally knowing the mystery
of his will helps us to live with passion for God's glory in
all things. We don't always hear the message
that God cares about the whole world and he cares about our
whole life. But when I read that he's going
to unite all things in Christ, it sure seems like he cares
about all things. Romans 1136 says.
For from him and through him and to Him are all things.
So of course God cares about our personal salvation.
What could be more important that than believing that God so
loved the world that he sent his only Son, that we would not
perish but have eternal life? But believing the gospel of
Jesus Christ isn't the end. It's actually the beginning of a
whole new life, and this new life in Christ by his grace
depending on him. It's about living through Him
and for Him in all things. So if there's any part of your
life where you don't want to live for His glory, you don't
want Him to unite that part of your life under His headship.
Hear the call today to turn to Him and let Him bring it all
together in Christ. Dive into the ocean of His love
and consider all your privileges in Christ.
If we're His, He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in
Christ. We've been chosen and adopted.
We've been redeemed and forgiven.
We know the mystery of His will. And when we bring all of this
into everything we do, what happens?
We start to see Christ as Lord and King and head over every
part of life. And we long to live for His
glory in every part of life. Our public life and our private
life, our work life and our home life, our church life and our
community life. And so we see the joy that
whatever is happening this afternoon, it's by his grace and
for his glory. And we go to work tomorrow,
we're caring for our family tomorrow it's by His grace and
for his glory. And whether we're alone in our
room or with people, we want to live for His glory in all
things. Paul writes in First Corinthians
10/31. So whether you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
And in Colossians 317, he tells us, whatever you do in Word or
deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks
to God the Father through him. So why can we live like this?
Because we know the end of the story.
And knowing the end of the story gives us this invincible hope
and also a peace that surpasses all understanding.
And so we can run this race with joy and with passion.
Looking to Jesus, we know that this is our Father's world and
we want to love it and live in it as Jesus did, until that
sweet day when He unites all things in heaven and earth in
him. Let's pray.
Father, these are deep waters, and so we thank you for
revealing to us the mystery of your will.
We pray this morning that we would see how amazing it is that
we know one day You will unite all things in Christ.
We pray this morning for those who don't know You that they
might be united with You today by faith, that they would look
to Jesus, that they would trade their sin for your salvation,
trade their brokenness for the beautiful work that you want to
do in their lives. We pray for those who do know
Jesus, Lord, that they would have the hope that comes from
knowing the end of the story and the peace that comes from being
united with You now and forever. And Lord, I pray that you would
give us grace to look to You this week and to realize how
sweet it is to bring our whole lives under Your kind rule, that
we might live for Your glory. Whatever we do, eating or
drinking or whatever we do, that we would give it up to you and
we would give thanks in Jesus name.
This is your world. Lord, we pray that you would
give us grace to be your ambassadors and your instruments
in it. We pray in Jesus great name,
Amen.