The Great Mystery
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason, Sunday, November 2, 2003
Ephesians 3:1-7
1I, Paul, am a prisoner of Christ Jesus because of my preaching to you Gentiles. 2As you already know, God has given me this special ministry of announcing his favor to you Gentiles. 3As I briefly mentioned earlier in this letter, God himself revealed his secret plan to me. 4As you read what I have written, you will understand what I know about this plan regarding Christ. 5God did not reveal it to previous generations, but now he has revealed it by the Holy Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets.
6And this is the secret plan: The Gentiles have an equal share with the Jews in all the riches inherited by God’s children. Both groups have believed the Good News, and both are part of the same body and enjoy together the promise of blessings through Christ Jesus. 7By God’s special favor and mighty power, I have been given the wonderful privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News.”
RuthAnn loves mystery stories. She enjoys the development of the characters involved in the mystery and as long as they are believable, she will continue on. She also likes to try to figure out the mystery presented by the writer as he weaves together his story and challenges the reader to solve the mystery. The mysterious secrets hidden away in the story present an enjoyable challenge to her.
God understand this quality of human life. And because he does, he has hidden mystery in every aspect of life itself. Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings to search things out.” We never fully understand anything. There is always something, some element that we simply don’t understand. For example, we talk a lot about love, joy and life itself. But we don’t really know what they are. They are basically mysterious to us. They are essential to our lives, to our existence but we don’t know what they really are.
In the physical realm, the quantum theory in physics has at its heart a hidden principle of indeterminism. It states that we can never discover the whole truth about anything; there is an element of hidden information about every subject we might go into.
It is mystery that makes life entrancing, fascinating. In our text for today, the Apostle Paul briefly states the mystery that lies at the heart of all life. He has been talking about this all along, but now for the very first time Paul fully states what that mystery is. Notice how he does this:
He begins with the phrase, “For this reason…” in verse one and then gets side tracked with the really good stuff about the mystery until the end of verse 13. Then he continues his first thought on into verse 14 “For this reason…” What he is writing about in this parenthesis captures his thoughts and he simply follows where they lead him and then suddenly he is back where he began and picks up the thought he started with.
In our introductory thoughts here, we need to note something of Paul’s perspective: He refers to himself, as “I am a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.” It is striking that there is no place, where Paul refers to himself as a prisoner of Caesar. You might wonder why this is so; why does he say it in this manner.
Paul saw that Jesus and not Caesar has the final say about him. The duration of his imprisonment was not going to be determined by Caesar, but by the Lord Jesus! Jesus is in control of history. Paul sees Jesus as John the Apostle did: seated on a throne, holding the reigns of government in his hands. He wants the Christians in Ephesus and all the others who will read this letter to understand that he is going to be fine even though he is pacing back and forth in the house in which he was chained to two Roman soldiers. He was unable to come to them personally and Paul wants them to understand that he is a prisoner of Jesus Christ and when it pleased God to release him he would be free.
Think for a moment. What might we be missing if Paul had not been imprisoned? He had time to write his letters to the believers all around the Mediterranean Sea. Our New Testament might well have been much shorter if Paul had not been a prisoner of Christ Jesus. He tells the Ephesians here that they are benefiting from his arrest and imprisonment.
Paul, then, begins to help them to see that he is a steward of God’s grace. A steward was a servant to whom certain responsibilities were committed. His job was to give out what he had received by revelation from Jesus Christ himself to others. That ties us into his teaching about his authority. He makes is clear that Jesus himself taught him the principles of the Kingdom and that his apostleship was in no way inferior to all the others. (Galatians 1:12 makes this clear to us.)
Paul makes it clear to us that he has special insight into the mystery of Christ (Ephesians 3:4). It is as if he is saying, “You can understand that I have great grasp and understanding of what this mystery is, that it is really the secret of all things, toughing everything in life. It is at the heart of all human existence. It is the mystery of the goal toward which God is moving, in human affairs.
Jesus Christ is at the heart of all things.
Have you ever wondered why we never seem to be able to solve any of the problems facing mankind? We are being swamped by our inventions. We have air pollution created by the cars we make that are designed to make our lives easier to live. We glut our highways and pollute our air. We don’t know how to solve the problem presented by this. We also have millions of people crammed into our cities who are impoverished. The economic pressures of the modern era force them to live in places like this and we don’t know how to solve that problem. We don’t know how to feed the world, stem the tide of broken marriages, or end the hostility and hatred that takes the lives of millions of people every year.
There are many people who are analyzing what has gone wrong and who are trying to figure out what we should do to fix things and there are not answers. Why can’t we get things fixed? It is because Jesus is at the heart of everything. Every problem of life finds its final solution in Jesus Christ. But those who have not turned to Jesus Christ cannot grasp the answer because they have never dealt with the heart of the problem, the great secret of all things. The key to the mystery is Jesus Christ.
In verses 4-6 Paul gives us a brief summary of this great mystery: 4As you read what I have written, you will understand what I know about this plan regarding Christ. 5God did not reveal it to previous generations, but now he has revealed it by the Holy Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets. 6And this is the secret plan: The Gentiles have an equal share with the Jews in all the riches inherited by God’s children. Both groups have believed the Good News, and both are part of the same body and enjoy together the promise of blessings through Christ Jesus.
We note the fact that the mystery was partially hidden in the past. That is the great men and women of the Old Testament did not fully understand this mystery. Many of them were able to see into the future well beyond their years, but there were secrets hidden from them that would not be revealed until Christ came into our world. When he came, he began to unfold the mystery and to reveal it to us. The Old Testament revealed the fact that there is something inherently wrong with humanity that cannot be cured by our making a few resolutions. Something has gone so terribly wrong that the only thing that can fix it is death itself. God used the Old Testament to prepare us to be able to be ready to believe it.
What then is the mystery?
It consists of this truth: That the Gentiles are fellow heirs with, fellow members of the same body with, and joint partakers of the promise of Christ Jesus through the good news. What is interesting here is that Paul makes up some new words to explain what this mystery is all about.
You will find these words no where else in the New Testament other than right here: He says that when Jews and Gentiles come to Christ they are literally joint heirs, joint bodies and joint partakers.
- Joint heirs:
- This has to do with possessions. Here he is touching on the whole problem of man and his universe, the dominion of man over the world and the reason we can’t solve our worldly problems.
- Creation, the old creation as we know it, is gripped by an unbreakable law. It is the Law of Thermodynamics. This is the law of decay. It is the law of entropy. This law states that everything is running down, deteriorating. There is no way that we can break this law. Paul on the other hand makes it clear that Christ is in the process of making a new creation that is not subject to this law. It has already begun.
- The old is passing away and the new kingdom is coming and Jews and Gentiles are heirs together of all the promises God has made to us.
- Joint Members of one body.
This touches us at the level of our relationships. Why is it that we cannot get along with each other? Why do we fight with each other? Why are there so many family break ups?
Why is there so much hatred and resentment and anger and bitterness . It is because people are living in the flesh, under the old creation and in sin. When we begin to walk in the Spirit we can love, forgive and begin to reach out in love to others around us. Life as we live it can be transformed right now, as we become joint members - Jews and Gentiles one body in Jesus Christ.
Finally, the Apostle Paul touches on the matter of power in the phrase of joint partakers of the promise concerning the Holy Spirit who comes to live within us to empower us to do everything God wants us to do.
A transformation is taking place as God joins Jew and Gentile into the body of Christ.
We who believe in Jesus Christ are no longer part of the old creation, but part of the new program God is working out and bringing to pass.
May God help us to make all of this personal in our own lives.
Let me close my thoughts today with this:
Alfred Nobel, after whom the Nobel Peace Prize was named, was originally known for something quite different. He was originally known for his invention of dynamite, the explosive substance nations would utilize in war. How he decided to channel his energies in a more positive direction is an interesting story.
It seems that Nobel was drinking his morning coffee while reading the newspaper one day. As he turned to the obituaries to read what was said about his recently deceased brother, he was shocked to read his own name in the paper. The Newspaper had inadvertently printed Alfred’s name instead of his brother’s.
He received a further shock when the great scientist read that if he had died, all the world
would remember him for was “the invention of a deadly explosive.” At that point, Alfred
Nobel determined that he would use his fortune to reward those who would dedicate their
Lives to the furtherance of peace.
How do you want to be remembered?
As Paul was a steward of the grace given him and the message that Jews and Gentiles are joint heirs, joint members of one body, and joint sharers of the promise of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for us, so are we!
The challenge for a steward is being faithful with the responsibility shared. May our Lord find us faithful!
