Talk 6 - Ephesians 3:1-13

0:00 So we're in Ephesians 3, this morning, the first 13 verses. So if you have your Bible and you want to open that up, or if you have your booklet, you'll have it in front of you there. But before we read that together, I want to ask you a couple of questions. Have you ever been for a job interview? How many people here have been for a job interview? You're allowed to, yeah, you're allowed to put your hand up at least. A little bit of interaction would be nice. Right, so you've been for a job.

0:23 Have you ever been asked any of these questions? I've been asked a couple of them before. So choose three words that best describe you. I remember being asked a question, I guess, and I was sort of going, well, I'm sweaty, I'm anxious, I'm nervous. Is that what you're after? Or what are your career goals? Well, I'm here standing and sitting in front of you. I'm after this job.

0:42 That would be a start. That would be good. And then the one, I hate this question, where do you see yourself in five years? I was hearing one story recently of one person who answered this question by saying, you're in your job. And I'm not sure whether they actually achieved what they were out to achieve, to be honest with you. And even these questions probably break us out in some sort of a cold sweat. But I'm going to ask you an even deeper question, an even bigger question this morning, just as we make our way into this passage. And that question is this, what is the purpose of your life?

1:20 What is the purpose of your life? Now thankfully I'm not going to ask you to tell me right now. This is for you to think about and reflect on, but it is a major question that I'm not sure we often think about. And this passage has a lot to say into that question. The shape of the talk this morning is going to be very, very simple. We're going to read this passage together. We're going to look at Paul's story, what he says about his own story. We're going to look at what he says about the church's story, And then we're going to come back to that question at the end, that question of the purpose of our lives.

1:57 So let's read together from verse one. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. That is the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I've already written briefly. In reading this then you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery which for ages past was kept hidden in God who created all things. His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

3:37 In him and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you therefore not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you which are your glory. So let's make our way through this together. You'll notice at the end of verse one a little dash. Paul says for this reason I Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles and And then there's this little dash. And that's to show us in the text that Paul is breaking into what he's saying here. So as you know, probably Paul would have dictated his letters to a secretary. The official title is called an amanuensis.

4:22 And this other person would have written down what he was saying. But as he dictates, he stops all of a sudden here. And he cuts off because he realizes as he says this, for this reason, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles, he realizes that there's something extra that he wants to say to them here before he continues on with the rest of the argument in his letter, with the rest of his thought flow. So just to say, all that we read here in these verses is a digression. It's a sidebar. It's a step away. And then in verse 14, Paul will step back in again where he starts again for this reason. And of course, an important question to ask is, Why?

5:06 Why does he feel the need to put this part in? Why did he cut in and say, hang on, there's something extra that I want to tell you here? Well, verse 1 and verse 13, the top and the tail of a section, make it clear that he feels the need to say this because of the fact that he is in prison. He's under house arrest in Rome. But even more so because of what he has heard about their reaction to that, their response to that. They are obviously deeply discouraged by the news that that is where he is. And he finishes then, I ask you therefore, as a result of all I say here, don't be discouraged. Listen to what I'm saying here, and don't be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

5:57 So the purpose of this section of the letter is really clear. It is to encourage, it's to strengthen, it's to fire up his readers so they've got the same mindset as him, so they've got the same perspective as him on his situation and on theirs. It's clearly to show Paul's own understanding of his own individual story within the pages of God's superlative story of what he is doing in history. is to show Paul's perspective, his own understanding of his own purpose within God's eternal purpose for his church, and how all this connects and interacts and overlaps and weaves together with their purpose in God. Their purpose is the church in Ephesus and the surrounding areas, and he wants to make it abundantly clear to them that he sees all of his own story and all of his own experience, including his current house arrest, he sees it all as part of the outworking, the outpouring of God's grace in his life, all inside that. So we want to look at a story then. What is it? What does he say here to them?

7:13 What does he remind them of here for the sake of their encouragement? Well, it's this, that God, in his generous grace to Paul, gave Paul a place in his own purposes. Very simply, God gave Paul a job to do. God gave Paul a role to play. By his grace, he saved Paul, like the rest of us, from his deadness and transgressions and sins and made him alive with Christ. But he didn't just save him from those things. As we've talked about already, He saved them for something as well, for a purpose. Paul says that much in verse seven.

7:52 Listen to what he's saying. I became a servant. How often do we talk about becoming a servant or a slave? With excitement. I became a servant of this gospel. How? By the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. And he sees this clearly.

8:09 Although I am the less than the least of all the Lord's people, This grace was given to me. I was given, he says, this undeserved purpose in my life. I'm under house arrest that I don't deserve, but not in the way you think that I don't deserve it. I don't even deserve the privilege to be under arrest in the first place. It's all grace. Here's something that's true for all of us, in fact, not just Paul. And we need to wrestle with the implications of this. because so often we have a truncated gospel and we talk all the time, which is important, of course, about what it is that we have been saved from.

8:56 But we often don't talk enough of what we have been saved for. It's not only an undeserved gift from, it's an undeserved gift of purpose for our lives. And Paul makes his specific undeserved purpose very clear here. God, by his grace, intervened supernaturally in Paul's life and opened his eyes, revealing to him what he calls the mystery of Christ. He makes that clear here. He makes it clear too in a bit more detail in Galatians 1 when he says this. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preach to you is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any other man, nor was I taught it.

9:42 Rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. He was given special revelation, special insight into what he calls this mystery of Christ. Well, what is this mystery that he's talking about here? When we hear the word mystery, our own understanding of it can confuse us a little bit. we think of TV programs and books and all those sorts of things with the word or the title mystery in it. For example, whenever I was younger, some of my favorite books were the Enid Blyton mystery series. Love these stories. We're a little gang of kids called Fatty and the Five Find Outers.

10:32 Enid Blyton books have not aged well if you read the older versions of them. But Fatty and the Five Find Outers go around their village, and this village obviously had a really high crime rate, but they would go around their village and they would solve the mysteries of these crimes while drinking lemonade and eating cake and all whatever else anybody did and eating blatant stories all at the same time. And they would always beat the local policeman to solving the mystery, usually involving something like invisible ink or something along those lines. I loved these being solved, but the problem is, of course, that we come back to what Paul's here about mystery, and that's not what he is talking about. In Paul's language, and the Greek understanding of it, a mystery is not something that you have to discover by careful and painstaking study and logic and deduction in a sort of Sherlock Holmes type of way. It's something that you could never ever discover on your own, because even in your wildest dreams, you wouldn't be able to see it or discern it. Every time Paul mentions this word mystery in his letters, and he does it a lot, it's in Romans, it's in 1 Corinthians, it's in Colossians, it's in 2 Thessalonians, it's in 1 Timothy. He's talking about the completely counterintuitive gospel of Jesus.

11:56 This story of God come down among his people who lives and dies and rises again and invites people into relationship with him on no basis of their own merit, only as a gift. And here he's saying, I got to see this mystery. I came to understand this mystery only because God chose to reveal it to me. He handed me, if you like, the 3D glasses of the gospel of Jesus. And when I put them on, they transformed my perspective and my understanding of the whole story of God told in the Old Testament scriptures. So I saw the truth of the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. And that truth transformed my understanding of everything that had come before, of the law, of the sacrifices, of the Passover, of the Exodus, of the tabernacle, of the temple, to name just a few. I could see by his revelation what had long been hidden within them.

13:07 And as well as that, those 3D lenses of the gospel of Jesus also transform my understanding of where God is taking history as well. That plan too has always been in not since hidden in his word, but is now revealed through the lens of the gospel. And the key part of the mystery, the key aspect of that, that I, Paul says, have been given the purpose of preaching and given the purpose of making play and opening your eyes to, is what Gilbert was talking about last week from chapter two. It's the glorious mystery of the church. It's the mystery of us. that it was always God's plan from the very beginning through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, through his blood, that his salvation would encompass the whole world, every tribe, every nation, every people. It's emphasized in Revelation at the end of the story so much that Jews and Gentiles would be reconciled to God and each other, that together they would have of access to the Father through the one Spirit, binding them together, that together they would be made into this new creation, this new humanity of God, that together they'd be fellow citizens of his kingdom, that together they'd be built into this beautiful dwelling place for God by his Spirit.

14:38 He makes it very clear in verse 6. This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles, and as Gilbert reminded us last week, that's us, The Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Now how could a fervent, separatist, nationalist Jew who hated the Gentiles, hated the Gentiles, ever come to a conclusion like this through the powers of his own deduction? He couldn't. no he says only by God revealing it to him by his grace by the grace of God he's received this revelation and by the grace of God he's been commissioned with the task of sharing his good news this good news with the Gentiles of being the one who gets to preach and he's so excited about this of being the one who gets to preach the boundless riches of Christ that are on offer to them and making it plain to them how it has always been part of God's plan to bring those ones who were far off and draw them near through Christ's sacrifice, bring them into that glorious inheritance. And that's what he says.

16:01 How amazing is it? How amazing is it that I of all people, the least of the least of all the Lord's people. That's how Paul sees himself. He doesn't see himself as some hero of the field. So excited that he's been brought into this. How amazing is it that I've been gifted this purpose for my life to preach the greatest news in the world to you, to reveal to you this mystery that you who were excluded have now been brought into God's new creation humanity, that you've been made fellow citizens, fellow heirs, fellow living stones of this new glorious temple. How amazing is it that God has given me that purpose? That's my story, he says.

16:48 That's my purpose. And it's all grace. Every single part of it, it's all grace. And so if I'm imprisoned, if I'm under house arrest in Rome, that is grace too. and so I'm Christ's prisoner. Notice whose prisoner he is in verse one. He's not Rome's prisoner. He's not Nero's prisoner in his own understanding.

17:11 He is Christ's prisoner because by his grace he's saying it's God that is in control of my life, of my destiny. It's God's grace that allows me, borrowing words that he uses in Philippians 3, to participate in Christ's sufferings, to actually participate in this way, To follow the Jesus-shaped pattern of suffering and then glory. To know Christ in this experiential way is itself a privilege of grace. That's what Paul understands. And that's what he's trying to convey to them. And he's saying, I know my story. I know my purpose. And it's all grace, so don't ever be discouraged.

17:56 About my current situation. See my imprisonment from the perspective of heaven, not from the perspective of the world, because yes, I might be under arrest, but God is still on the move. The gospel is still on the move. My purposes in him are still being fulfilled. They can't be touched by arrest. They can't be touched by suffering. They can't even be touched by death itself. So don't be discouraged.

18:30 that's my story Paul says but then he goes on to tell them theirs and by telling them theirs he also tells us ours God is on the move in history God is working out his purposes in Christ he's bringing his story towards its culmination under Christ and by his grace Paul says he's given me a role within that. But he has also done the same for you. You together, he's saying, are part of the greatest building project, as Gilbert talked about before, that the world has ever seen or the world will ever see. You are part of God's new creation, of a new, reconciled, grace-filled, multi-ethnic, multi-national humanity. And together you've been given a glorious purpose, a glorious role within his eternal purposes. You have been saved from condemnation and death, but you've also been saved for a stunningly glorious eternal purpose. And look what he says in verse 10 about our shared, connected purpose. His intent was that now through the church, let me say that again in case you're going, is he really saying this?

19:59 Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. Here's what Paul's saying, the church of Jesus Christ, us as part of the wider church around the world, Jews and Gentiles as fellow citizens, members of one household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ himself as the cornerstone being built together into this dwelling place where God dwells by his spirit, that that church of Jesus Christ, those to whom Paul's writing in the first century and us sitting here today, we together are, for want of a better metaphor, God's PowerPoint slide to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms and emblazoned across us as a title is my manifold wisdom. my manifold wisdom that the angelic powers and authorities would be looking at us and would be saying to themselves isn't God so wise isn't God so wise now I know what you're thinking really? this is hard for us to get our heads around because we know ourselves we know our church we know all of these things so let's just consider this for a moment back in chapter one paul outlined god's ultimate purpose in christ you maybe remember this verse 8 verse 8 9 says with all wisdom and understanding he made known to us the mystery there it is again the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment.

22:06 God's all about timing. And here's what it's all about, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. This is where God is taking the story. We read the imagery of it in Revelation 22 earlier. And that's it. As Gilbert told us in the first talk, the whole story is moving towards its glorious finale where everything will be summed up is the sort of term that's used there, summed up in Christ, where everything, and we know about this, where everything that is broken, everything that is fractured, everything that is polarized and separated, everything that is marred and tainted from the very cells in our bodies to the state of creation from the enmity in our own personal relationships to the hostility between political factions,

23:09 from the hatred between different ethnic groups to the contempt between nations and it is not lost on me at all that we're talking about this today after a big election this week and as we remember on remembering Sunday as well all the wars that this world has gone through. That everything in the world that has come apart and fallen apart will be healed, will be restored, will be renewed, will be put back together, will be united, will be summed up in Christ. This imagery in Revelation 22 of life and healing and fruitfulness and light and peace flowing from the throne of God and from the Lamb. This is the set in stone unalterable climax of the story of God. And perhaps PowerPoint slide isn't the best image. Perhaps the metaphor of a tapestry might be more appropriate. The tapestry that God is using to show these rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms what he's done and what he's doing and what he's going to do where he's taking history is the tapestry of the church. It is us together.

24:39 We are his glorious illustration to them. Even if we don't believe it ourselves. And this idea of manifold wisdom probably works better when we think about a tapestry. I like to think when I read this that Paul in his mind was thinking about Joseph and his coat of many colors when he talked here. Might not have been, but I like to think that. And the Greek translation of the adjective for Joseph's coat was the word poikolos. But the Greek word Paul uses here for God's manifold wisdom is polypoikolos. Not simply multicolored, but multi-times multicolored.

25:24 As the rulers and authorities are spectators of the church, they see this tapestry that God is weaving. They see God reconciling people to himself and each other in Christ. they see different ethnicities and people groups and backgrounds they see hostility being dismantled they see hatred being transformed into forgiveness and love they see little signs little signals of restoration in hearts they see relationships being healed They see dignity being restored. They see honor being shown even to the weakest and to the least. And these grace-filled, grace-shaped people, they see living out their heavenly citizenship together, breaking bread together, worshiping together, praying together, enjoying God together, approaching his throne with freedom and confidence together. loving one another and serving one another and forgiving one another. And as they spectate, we have an audience.

26:53 As they spectate, they watch on and they say, yes, it's far from perfect. And we know that. And God knows that. And Paul knew that. Just think of what he said. to the church in Corinth, for example. But he says, yes, it's far from perfect.

27:16 They say it's far from perfect, but it is beautiful. I can see the outline of what it is that God is doing. I can see where God is taking history. I can see why Jesus had to come and die and be raised from the dead to make this new humanity, this new creation of God's possible. and those rulers in the authorities and the heavenly realms would have been wondering for so long why did this happen? What is God doing? Sending his son and crucifying him and all the rest but now they see in the church it makes sense to them and they say I see it. I see his manifold wisdom on display here.

28:09 That's the purpose that we have been given together as the church. Back to that question that I posed at the beginning then. What is the purpose of your life? And as I've been thinking about this in light of this passage, I've been challenged on a couple of fronts. I'll just share those with you. The first is this. I'm deeply challenged by Paul's perspective. by his mindset on his own situation, that he is so captured by his understanding of God's grace in his life, so captured by it, that he is just bowled over, that that grace extends to give him and his tiny little life a place in God's eternal purposes, that he gets to have his story have a place in God's grand narrative,

29:06 that he gets to be a single thread in the tapestry that God is weaving together. What an amazing gift of grace it is, he says, to preach, to serve, to sacrifice, to suffer, and to struggle, even to be imprisoned, if it is all part of what God is doing, what God is weaving, what God is building. And I can imagine Paul praying, thank you God that in your grace you allow me to suffer for you, you allow me to suffer for these Gentiles, you allow me to suffer for your purposes. Thank you that you have brought me into that privilege by grace. I'm struck. Does my understanding of God's grace get so far as my purpose? Am I captured in the same way by his grace to say, God, I'm so amazed that you have saved me from condemnation and from death, but I am also so amazed that you have saved me for your purposes.

30:21 What a privilege it is. Whatever place you give me within those. How amazing that you welcome me into those. and into that story. Secondly, I'm deeply challenged at this. How much the individualism of the cultural sea that I swim in, that we swim in, has influenced and shaped me. Because if I'm being honest, so often I'm far more obsessed with my own individual tapestry, with my own individual story, than I am with God's.

31:05 the truth found here in this passage is that I have the grace-filled offer bought by the blood of Christ let me say that again I have the grace-filled offer bought purchased by the blood of Christ but it is an offer of a glorious eternal purpose but it's to be a thread in the tapestry of God's story, it's not to have a tapestry of my own. And I like how theologian and historian Carl Truman puts it in his book from a number of years ago now, actually, a book called Fool's Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread. And I like using this because he's a lot grumpier than I am. And so I get to be grumpy through his words rather than actually, because you know, I would be much nicer than this. I would put it more kindly than this. But listen to what he has to say about this. the belief that we are special is by and large complete tosh most of us are mediocre make unique contributions only in the peculiar ways that we screw things up and could easily be replaced as husband father or employee by somebody better suited to the task

32:23 however far too many Christians have senses of destiny that verge on the messianic the confidence that the Lord has a special plan and purpose just for them shapes the way they act and move now I certainly believe each individual has a destiny what concerns me is the way in which our tendency to think of ourselves as special and unique bleeds over into a special destiny whereby the future, or at least the future of myself, comes to be the priority and to trump all else. Put bluntly, he says, when I read the Bible, it seems to me that the church is the meaning of human history. But it is the church as a corporate body not the distinct individuals who make up her membership. With the church, the destiny of the whole is greater than the sum of the destinies of individual Christians. My special destiny as a believer is to be part of the church. And it is the church that is the big player in God's wider plan, not me. my special destiny as a believer is to be part of the church it's not a question of the purpose of my life as an individual which is how everything is framed for us it's a question of the purpose of our lives as they are bound up together as they are weaved together,

34:13 beautifully displaying the manifold wisdom of God. You can't make a tapestry with one single thread. And God is weaving this together. Different colors, different hues of color, different thicknesses of thread. into this glorious picture, into this glorious purpose. And by his grace, and if we get this, we should be falling down in worship as we understand this, that through Christ's sacrifice and by his grace, we each get welcomed in to be a thread in his manifold wisdom tapestry. Or if you want the other metaphor, we each get to be a living stone in the glorious temple he is building. Our purpose is not found in our individuality.

35:24 It is found in who we are together. And here's the thing. When we get this, the freedom of it is so liberating. The weight that an understanding like this, if you get it, lifts off your shoulders. The freedom to not have to weave your own tapestry. The freedom to not have to write your own story and make it better than everybody else's. the freedom to not have to put your life on display and say look at me and look how successful or beautiful or how much I've achieved or any of those things

36:16 the freedom is incredible to not have to create our own identity which is what is destroying so many people today in our own culture but there's also a freedom in relation to the church as well to be found here because we're able to say this the church isn't for me God by your grace I recognize that I am for the church the church isn't here to play its part in my tapestry that's not the important picture by your grace I'm here to play my part in your tapestry The church isn't here primarily to fulfill me. By your grace, I'm here to fulfill my role in your church. And when we see it this way, well, it doesn't really matter whether you want me to be, I don't know, the blue thread of a teacher or the red thread of a home group leader or the green thread of a prayer team member or the yellow thread of a creche helper or the purple thread of a drummer or whatever, the orange thread of a PowerPoint operator or all of these different things. Because it's what we are together is important, not the individual threads.

37:42 It's what you, God, are doing as you weave the threads together that is important. It's what he is doing that is beauty, that is wisdom, that is purpose. And if we get this, it can totally flip. any individualism and any consumerism that we bring into the church. Here's the truth. The church is at the heart of God's purpose for the world. We are at the very heart of God's purpose for the world, stretching all the way to that imagery in Revelation 22. And the question for all of us then is this.

38:24 How much is the church at the heart of our purposes in our lives? Is it central like it is to God's? Or is it shoved down here in a tiny, tiny little corner of the tiniest little bit of space that's left over once we've worked out all the other things that we want to be the purpose of our life? It's an important question to ask because the reality is we're the ones missing out if we don't see this clearly. In his amazing grace, God has given us the amazing privilege of being part of what he is doing in and for eternity. He has saved us for being the church together. The display of his manifold, multi-times, multi-colored wisdom and the question is how are we responding to this gift of grace and stepping into it let's pray together as the band come back father what amazing grace it is that you have saved us

39:47 that you have saved us from what we deserved from condemnation and from death and you have brought us into life and freedom and meaning and hope and purpose. Father, thank you that you have also saved us for that part of your grace is purpose. Purpose to be found in and among your people. Father, help us to make sense of our own individual stories in the light of your grand purposes. Help us to grasp the grace that it is to be a single thread in the tapestry that you are weaving together for eternity. help us to see just the freedom of being able to step into that and let go of the pressure of writing our own story help us to grasp our purpose in you and in your story we pray in Jesus name, Amen