God's Manifold Wisdom (Archived)

the following message is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthfortheworld.org I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians and to chapter 3 and we read from verse 7 to verse 13 feegans 3 verse 7 of this gospel Paul writes I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace which was given me by the working of his power to me though I am the very least of all the Saints this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places this was according to the eternal purpose that he is realized in Christ Jesus our Lord in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him so I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you which is your glory amen father we have some of our confidence in your word and because we know that it always accomplishes its purposes we turn to it with a great sense of expectation meters Lord where we are we pray you know as you made us you know exactly where we stand in these things we look to you in Jesus name Amen well our verse for this morning is verse 10 you can see that it follows on from verse 9 there's a comma at the end of verse 9 and 10 begins so that so that through the church Paul has been reminding himself and telling the Ephesians that when it comes to being a minister of the gospel he's absolutely amazed that he would have been entrusted with this privilege because he regarded himself as not being an obvious choice you say there he describes himself in verse 8 as the very least of all the sins but God's grace was shown to him his power was established in him and so he was enabled to preach to the Gentiles he says in verse 8 the unsearchable riches of Christ and then at the same time to bring to light for everyone notice this was not exclusive to Jew or to Gentile but for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things the Creator God has a plan from all of eternity and Paul was aware of the fact that he had both received a divine revelation to which he refers to in verse 3 this mystery was made known to me by revelation and he had at the same time received a divine commission which is really at the head of our seven of this gospel I was made a minister now I think it's very very important that we understand that as he thinks about this light shining out from him as he has given this commission to the world we remind ourselves that this is exactly what had happened to him in other words God's light is not about to shine through those who have not been illumined by the very light of God itself now if you turn just for a moment and I won't ask you to turn a lot of places but I think it's helpful to turn to Acts chapter 26 so that we might remind ourselves of Paul's testimony that he gives before King Agrippa and does with such clarity that nobody has any doubt about it and we just read a couple of verses 17 and 18 and this is this is him explaining to Agrippa that in his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road he was told that Jesus had appeared to him for the purpose to appoint him as a servant and as a witness to the things which you've seen me and to those in which I will appear to you and then here we go verse 17 delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you to do what to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me I would be possible for us to stop there and spend the rest of our time on that this morning the light of the gospel has shone into the heart of Saul of Tarsus it has shown both externally as it were such a bright light that it has blinded him and brought him to the ground but that light is actually smaller than the eternal light that is shone into his heart and now he realizes that when he goes out to proclaim this unsearchable gospel to the Gentiles and to proclaim this light for everyone it is in order that their eyes may also be opened let's just acknowledge that by nature our eyes are closed we are by nature blind it's not that we are here this morning as a group of individuals and all of us are in the same capacity by nature our eyes are closed to the truth of God therefore they need to be opened we live in the darkness and are in need of the light we are bound up in the realm of Satan and of his wrongful desires and designs and we are in need of the forgiveness of our sins now clearly this is something far more than simply deciding that we would like to become a little more spiritual than we have been in the past or we would like to get a little Church into our lives or we would like to rearrange our moral compass and so on what is being described here is something not that we do to put ourselves in a right position with God but what God has done in Christ to put us in a right position with him that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord and that light has shone into the darkness of Saul's heart and now he is preaching in such a way that others might understand the mystery of God's dealings and that they might believe the gospel and when a man or a woman believes the gospel when a man or woman is changed by the power of the gospel then it actually changes everything it doesn't change necessarily the way you tie your shoes or the way you work as an engineer in your office or whatever it might be but it changes our view of the world dramatically for some of us far more than others some of us have been living perhaps with a very cynical view of history for example we liked when we read that Henry Ford described history as bunk that he said he didn't care if Napoleon wanted to come here he didn't care what happened 500 or a thousand years ago he said I just don't care about any of that all I care about now is that you buy a moral team Model T Ford and you can have any color you want as long as it is black that's what we know him for history is bunk and any color as long as it's black well of course he's not alone in that kind of notion some of us because we didn't like history at school and because of the way it was taught have concluded that that is the case but when we become Christians all of a sudden we get a peculiar interest in history and some have actually been rather nihilistic and atheistic in our perspective you may be here this morning and and you find yourself sitting happily as it were in the company of some of the modern atheists of our time fellows like Stephen Hawking who writes in one place if there is no God which of course he believes there isn't if there is no God and we have evolved by chance through millions of years then everything that happens good or bad must be viewed as simply the result of random pitiless indifference in other words there is no why question because there is no one to whom we may pose the question it's a lot like Einstein actually in his credo where he says what a strange thing it is that here we all are here by chance with no notion of how we came to be here or where we're going we're just eating and drinking and eking out our time trying to make sense of everything and that is at a fairly high level if you go down to a very low level you can go to the 60s and go to the kinks and you'll get the same thing from them remember we're living on dead-end street that's how it finished about twelve times in a row we're living on dead-end street we're living on dead-end street it begins along the lines of what are we what am i living for a two-room department on the second floor i mean what is this what is this about and it is an understandable quest and what the Bible says is that when we understand that Jesus is the focal point of history that he is the center and the circumference of everything that he is the Alpha and he is the Omega that he is the beginning of the end that he is the extended King he is the reigning Lord that in him all things hold together then suddenly we have a dramatically different view of the way in which for example the unfolding drama of our political campaign fits into the framework of things now the contrast you see between that kind of nihilism expressed by Hawking and the confidence expressed by Paul representing the Christian is quite dramatic for example if you just if you just go back to the first page of Ephesians 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 he chose us in him before the foundation of the world where am I and where do I fit in to the universe and what has he done go down to verse 9 may 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 no you say but surely surely Stephen Hawking was a very clever man was he not well there's no doubt that he was a very clever man well then shouldn't we just bow to his intellectual capacity he's brighter than you beg by a long way I mean we listened to you for years you don't even know how to calculate the circumference of a circle and he's a theoretical physicist I mean what do you know well if it were on human wisdom there's no question but that's what Paul had to find out himself he writes to the Corinthians the word that we preach is foolishness to those who are perishing to those who are being saved as the power of God because it's written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart that doesn't mean God sets aside human wisdom God is behind every scientific discovery for the good of man God is behind the whole progression of the Arts no where is the one who is wise where is the scribe where is the debater of this age step forward he says hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe so in actual fact irrespective of your intellectual capacity this morning there is no one in heaven or on earth more privileged than you or me as a humble believer because we have by God's grace come to understand the depth of this great mystery you see this changes everything that God from all of eternity his plan and his pattern was not Adam and Eve in the Garden of Gethsemane in the Garden of Eden but it was actually Christ in the gospel that according to the eternal counsel of his will he was going to unite all things heaven and on earth and now Paul is telling the Ephesians here how this is working out and particularly in relationship to the hosts of the Angels he has revealed himself in his church it is in his church that his power is displayed the power that raised him from the dead it is in the church that His grace is made obvious it is now in the church where his wisdom is set forward and that's our verse so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known now previously this was hidden for the ages but now made known to whom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places now when I was mugging this stuff up I read John start and he had a wonderful little analogy that so fixed in my mind that I decided that's fine I can't improve on it I will use it okay so there's what he says he says the world is is the theater in which God is at work and and what we have here are the spectators namely the rulers and authorities we have the play written and directed by God which is his manifold wisdom and we have the players or the actors in the program namely the church okay so we'll look at each of these in turn and we'll do it in reverse order alright first of all who are the spectators to whom is this being made known he says it's being made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places in other words the Angelica hours are spectators of the drama of salvation now let's just pause and acknowledge to that here we are at a very advanced place in modern technology some of you are even using your phone's right now as I speak and hopefully to good end but we have we've made tremendous advances and here we are a relatively sensible group of people and we've all gathered together we're turning to a book called the Bible we're going to read from a section of it which is written to a group of believers who lived in first century Ephesus what possible relevance could this have for us at all after all we are in the 21st century and we're in Cleveland they were the first century and they were in Ephesus what are you doing and furthermore we are you know very advanced people and you're going to talk to us about angels and rulers and cosmic powers yeah yeah the reality of darkness the reality of evil in our world that is expressed at a very baseline level is representative of the cosmic drama that takes place in the heavenly realms it's not our purpose this morning to delay on this but so when Paul says that the manifold wisdom of God was going to be revealed to the angels to the rulers and to the authorities we have to determine whether the angels and authorities to whom he refers are the bad ones as in chapter 6 and so on we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places if that is the case and I don't know if it is because he doesn't say therefore since the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things it would be wise for me not to make a dogmatic assertion as to the identity of these rulers and authorities but to acknowledge that if it is that he has the bad ones in focus then he is declaring to them they have the declaration that their activities have been dealt a death blow in the death and resurrection of Jesus and as they observe what is going on ever since the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus they are able to see that their days are numbered and their influences ultimately limited and they will be able to conclude that since Jesus the ascended king determined that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it then they maybe in this instance in the now coming to an understanding of that fact after all the angels were wanting to look into these things having said that I think that it is more likely that he has in mind the good angels the angels who have been the companions of God in eternity the angels who are described by Peter in 1st Peter 1 as wishing they knew what salvation was really about in in first Peter brownie at about verse 12 or so he says you know the prophets wrote about this concerning this salvation the prophets wrote I think that's it and and so he he gives us a picture of the prophets Isaiah and the others standing on their tiptoes as it were look looking over the horizon looking into the future to see what will be the fulfillment of the things that they're writing how will it work out that the chastisement of our peace was upon him who who will be this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of sin of the world what does this mean that he will be the great Shepherd of the sheep and so on so the prophets are standing on their tiptoes looking forward and then he has a second picture he says and the angels interestingly they're hanging from the ceiling as it were they're hanging from the ramparts looking down trying to get their heads around what is going on with this salvation thing now in a quaint old hymn you get something of an inkling of it we've never sung this hymn and I fight I only know this one verse it goes like this well it goes something like this there is singing up in heaven such as we have never known as the angels sing of victory and the lamb upon the throne but when we sing redemptions story they will fold their wings four angels never knew the joy that our salvation brings so on Sunday nights when we sang mine mine mine I know thou aren't mine the angels are nudging one another as it were and saying how does that work that's quite remarkable but it is this is a it's an interesting exercise isn't it first of all to think of angels good ones bad ones in different ones and to think of them from this perspective I imagine that when we sing a song like every so often that Easter time who is he in yonder stall had whose feet the shepherds fall I think the angels would be nudging one another and that's exactly what we were thinking I mean we were dispatched to sing at his coming but we've often said to one another what's that deal have you talking about the Lord of glory shows up in a stable how how does this work who is he who on the tree dies in grief and agony the angels are looking down saying is this the lord of glory that the God the second person of the Trinity co-equal koi kernel with the father and the spirit has entered down into time thee as it were looked down on the cruel scenes of the cross where all hell has apparently triumphed over Christ and they catch their breath they are the spectators what is the play well the play written and directed by God is the manifold wisdom of God God's wisdom is multi-coloured the way that flowers are multicolored the beauty of the trees at the moment is just fantastic isn't it multicolored or your favorite embroidered cloth or your wonderful woven carpet that's the kind of idea the multi various dimensions of God's wisdom the wisdom of God which weaves through thousands of apparently unrelated threads one glorious pattern you see we're very proud of ourselves and our wisdom by nature aren't we we like to think that we know how things go that's why we're always asking questions and often sometimes rude questions and really you know the questions that we ask are not as important as the questions the Bible asks about us so for example who has measured the Spirit of the Lord or what man shows him his counsel are you are you bigger and brighter than the God who created the heavens and the earth who is weaving a thousand separate threads into a pattern and purpose source to unite all things in heaven and on earth that the things that you long for in the United Nations but the things that you're trying to do in your peace talks that all the endeavors of man to try and make sense of our broken world and put it back together and restore it and fix it have you ever thought to bow before the manifold wisdom of God who talked God the path of justice who taught him knowledge who showed him the way of understanding the nation's are like a drop from a bucket it is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers it's great isn't it you know I was in the airport the other day and you just stand and look at all those magazines I mean just I don't know I don't know how you make money on that stuff but anyway it's none of my business but I just stand and look at that and you got People magazine and odds magazine and Self magazine and me magazine and Zeki take you do you know and everybody's up there and you look at heck oh boy it must be terrific to be to be to be one of those grasshoppers he says about the circle of the earth as inhabitants are like grasshoppers he brings princes to nothing he makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness scarcely are they planted scarcely sown scarcely has their stem taken root on the earth when he blew blows on them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble to whom then will you compare me says the holy one now you see this is the great proclamation to the angelic host the manifold wisdom of God that deep as Cowper says in unfathomable minds of never failing skill he treasures up his bright design and works his sovereign world so that his the mystery of his purposes are revealed throughout history you can imagine the angels looking down and seeing who did he choose Abraham what he choose Abraham he's our pagan don't you think he would have chosen over a nice sort of good good fellow wow that's weird now who've we got next Isaac and Ishmael Oh Jacob and Esau while Esau is a nice guy he's hairy he's a hairy guy Jacob's a smooth guy Jacob's a twister Jacob's always hanging around with his mom Jacob is not the one you want God he's a bad choice I'm just telling you since when did God consult with you about his choice see what is God doing in the mystery of the unfolding drama he's actually pointing to the reality that ultimately dawns when the mystery hidden from the ages reaches is the new mom and he's making clear that this God operates in such a way that he does not call the righteous but he calls sinners to repentance and as you see the unfolding story which finally reaches itself in the cross then you realize the manifold wisdom of God when you look at the scene on the cross it appears as though hell has won and heaven as lost but Paul when he writes to the Colossians he says no I know it looks like that he says but what he was doing on the cross was canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands none of us would be able to pay the debt we owe to God we're so messed up we've loved so many other things other than him we haven't loved him with all our heart soul mind and strength even if we were to spend the balance of our lives trying to redress the balance our indebtedness is so huge what was he doing well he was canceling the record of debt that stood against us with it's legal demands there was no record of debt against Jesus Jesus kept the law in it to his tee in its perfection he had sinned never so what he was doing was he was setting it aside nailing it to the cross and listen to this disarming the rulers and authorities and putting them to open shame by triumphing over them in other words he actually took the worst of evil against him and turned it on the heads of those who opposed him in in actual fact is a bit like Joseph isn't it you intended this for evil but God intended it for good the manifold wisdom of God is such that for God to forgive sin he has to do so in a manner that both declares his love and satisfies his justice the forgiveness of sin is not an easy matter it is not an easy matter for God if we might say so reverently because he must now be true to himself as the God of love and yet he must be true to himself as the one who has promised to execute his judgment upon sin and in his manifold wisdom he makes his own perfect spotless son to be our sin bearer so that he satisfies his perfect justice by executing his punishment on sin that which we deserve and declaring his love in the gift of Jesus our forgiveness that we don't deserve that's why I him is so helpful isn't it how deep the Father's love for us how vast beyond all measure that he would give his only son to make a wretch his treasure how deep the pain of searing loss the father turns his face away as wounds which Mar the chosen one bring many sons to glory and in in Sunday school terms he was forsaken in order that we might be forgiven now the father you know that does not mean you have entered into the reality of it if this truth dawns upon you make it your own tell him from where you're seated I get it you died in my place I know what I am and you know what I am what a mystery what amazing wisdom that you would be both true to yourself in the execution of your justice and in the amazing expression of your love now let's acknowledge again that to speak in this way is to speak in a way that's not on the agenda of the average person I say to you routinely and I believe it sincerely that the kind of spiritual vibe of our extended community that is represented in our congregation is largely this we live in a community of people who regard themselves as quite nice businessmen who are like the businessmen CS Lewis mentions in mere Christianity they have they have white starts cuffs they have their initials on their cuffs they have nicely lit corner offices and he said they are nice men lost in their niceness so that the the prevailing view is if there is a God and he is a good God he will reward nice people if they just try their best but love once that falls down before the manifold wisdom of God which finds its focus in the death of his son in Corinth when Paul went there nobody actually was interested in this story and nobody by nature is any more interested in it in Cleveland than they were in Corinth in fact he was aware of the fact that certain groups certain people were asking for him to do sort of dramatic signs and others were asking him to just really sound particularly wise and get involved with the rhetoric of the time and the understanding of philosophy and so on in other words they basically said to him just show the people what they came to see just do do for us what we're asking and Paul says no I can't do that he says now we have to preach Jesus Christ in him crucified which is regarded as absolute falling to the Gentile and there's a stumbling block to the Jew finally the spectators are the angels the play is the manifold wisdom of God and the players the church through the church this I hope really stirs you in a number of ways as this recurring theme is stirring me in these days what Paul is making clear here is that the church is the final expression of the wisdom of God the thing above any other thing that enables the in JAL's to comprehend God's plan and purpose that the church that is Church with a big sea so today this is church with a small sea Parkside Church small sea which is part of Church big sea as we go out through our community and as we go into the Greater Cleveland community and enjoy Ohio and Beyond and on and on and on and we go into the great vast world that is out there the church this great purpose of God is the sphere in which God makes his wisdom known both on earth and in heaven now let that settle in your mind for just a moment especially if you're tempted to regard the church in contemporary terms men and women regard the church today you know it's not uncommon to to read the report that says you know the church is on its way out it is redundant it is irrelevant Millennials have no interest in the church there will be no church in the next century and so on well there's nothing new in this that's been going on all the way along through history and in contrast to those assertions the Bible tells us that the church is the very center of God's unfolding purpose in history the church is now this she's he ought to help you again with the elections the church is the focus of its purpose in history church for the big sea therefore it is not the United States of America that is the focus of God's purpose in history we're concerned we're citizens but that's not God's concern the nation's Isaiah 40 I like a drop in a bucket Kings come Kings go Presidents rise presidents fall no sooner are they planted then the wind blows over them and bomb it makes perfect sense that is not dismissive of the unfolding drama of political history but it is so that the Christian person may see oh well I if that is the case then number one that this engagement with church with a small C ought to be increasingly important to me increasingly precious to me and my concern to see the planting of local churches should be a large part of my agenda and my desire to see Andrew James go down to Uruguay and be involved in planting churches in Uruguay is not because we have got some you know particular unique agenda for part sight church but because this is the focus of God's purpose in the world the church now it's supposed to be as it becomes what God wants it to be multicultural diverse United multi gifted it's a new community as a new society it's not a Jewish one is not a Gentile one as the church one he has made one new man out of the to it so we are not immediately to be down on ourselves if we don't see Church for the small sea in Bainbridge Ohio for goodness sake where is Bainbridge and not exactly the center of you know multicultural diversity let's just be honest so we cannot we cannot chastise ourselves for not managing to become like the huge variegated multicultural picture of the church throughout the world but we ought to know that deep in our hearts we would if we could and we will if we can and we're absolutely convinced the fact that when God saves people the issues of status and color and gender and race and all those things are obliterated in the gospel it's not like the person who comes from a Jewish background is no longer representative of Judaism yes or that a Gentile is no longer a Gentile or that a woman is no longer a woman or a man no longer a man but that it is that those things are now radically altered in the cross and that in the church this then is displayed to the world it's just quite amazing belonging to Jesus belonging to the church there's nothing like it in the entire world there's nothing like it in the world in fact the thing that the world longs for and can produce is that which God has determined to bring to completion on the day when he puts together a company that no one can number from every tribe nation language and tongue guards manifold wisdom the Angels look down and say Wow and we look around and say you mean you're going to use us us yeah last Sunday I had my son he had a little notion of it when I went out after the evening service and it and I was immediately talking to somebody from a from North Africa an Arabic speaker and while we were engaged in conversation someone else came along a Portuguese speaker from Brazil and then me trying to speak English from Scotland but as I walked away I said how do you get how do you get this clever doctor from Brazil this arabic-speaking little Egyptian and this funny little Scotsman all together in this place in this moment this time and the answer is according to God's manifold wisdom all of the threads in the the unfolding purposes of God threads that we try and unravel to our own destruction threads that we cannot always unscramble and we're not sure how they all fit but we may rest in this that God knows best and that his manifold wisdom through the church declared to the hosts of heaven will eventually redound to his honor and his praise and his glory this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living learn more about truth for life with alistair beg visit us online at truth for

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 10,228

Keywords: Alistair Begg, The Church, God’s Will, Redemptive History, Atheism, Ephesians

Id: zE3zju67DBI

Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2016