6. God's Secret Plan Revealed

Introduction

So we are continuing this morning in our series from the book of Ephesians called “God’s plan. Our Place in it”. As you heard from our text today, the Apostle Paul introduces this idea of God’s plan being wrapped in “mystery”.

And in our culture today, we love mysteries. The “mystery” is still one of the top genre’s in literature and cinematic story telling and has been since the Gothic novels of the Victorian era. But what is it about these “mysteries” that we enjoy so much?

In most “mystery thrillers” we are actually told “what” happened at the very beginning. Have you ever thought about that? They actually start at the end of the story that is going to be told. Then they introduce some detective or super sleuth who evaluates that scene. This character then walks us back through various clues to reveal “how they did it” and “why they did it” and ultimately “who-dun- it”

The “mystery” then is not typically about what happened, we get that up front, but the mystery is typically about who did it, how they did it and why.

Mystery: This was done. Who did it? How did they do it? Why they did it?

Tension

That is how our mysteries are told…but this is not exactly the same sense that the Apostle Paul is using the word even though we get our English word for mystery from the Greek language.

The Greek word is μυστήριον (mysterion) and while it does mean “mystery”, more specifically it means mystery in the sense of a “divine secret, secret doctrine or the counsel of God”. So before our understanding of the word was formed by popular mystery novels, mysteries were primarily held to be secrets that only God could reveal.

And this is something of an important distinction. Because today we understand mysteries to be something that a sharp mind can uncover with enough clues, evidence or time to think it through. But that is not how the mystery of our text was revealed to the Apostle Paul. He said, “...the mystery was made known to me by revelation...”.

Why does this matter? because this wasn’t Paul just saying, “You know, I thought about it and all the pieces came together so that it just made sense that this must be what God is doing right now. It must of been just one of those mysteries before but now I have figured it all out”

No, that is not what Paul means by “mystery” and it is a dangerous way to look at the idea as the Bible talks about it. Many people down through the ages and even today have claimed to have figured out some “mystery” about God, His character or His plans.

They put the numbers together. They put the dates in order. They connected the right people to the right places and now all these clues and codes have come together for them so they can reveal to us this new “mystery”.

Be weary of such claims. Test them against what we already know about God from His Word. Even if they point to Paul’s use of the word “mystery” to make their case, you can know that this is not what Paul means by “mystery”.

He means something bigger. Something much better. Something that transcends even the best puzzle-solving minds of our day. The revelation of God.

Because God’s plan is too mysterious for us to just figure it out with our human thinking. Isaiah tells us that the His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways. We don’t even know enough to ask the right questions, let alone look for the right clues or evidence. We are never going to “super-sleuth” our way into understanding God’s mysterious plan…but we don’t have to. Because God has revealed it to us through His Apostles. It is God’s plan and He is working it out so we can trust it. And we can follow Him into it.

That is what we will hear Paul teaching the Christians in Ephesus from our text today. So if you haven’t already, open up your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 3, page 977 in the Bibles in the chairs. I’ll pray and we will dive into these mysteries of God together.

Truth

Our first theme for this morning is that in

1. In God’s mysterious plan, He can use you no matter where you are. (Eph 3:1-6)

Remember Ephesus was this large and important Gentile city where Paul spend a considerable amount of time during his missionary journey and had quite a bit of impact. After three months trying to convince hard hearted Jews in the local synagogue about the good news of Jesus, he moved out to teach in a public court where so many Jews and Gentiles were hearing and then sharing the good news of Jesus that the book of Acts tells us that:

Acts 19:10–11 (ESV)

10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. 11 And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,

I love how the Bible is so clear here that the credit goes to God for these miracles and not to Paul, he was just the instrument that God was using in His plan to have this incredible impact in this important city.

And did you hear how the hearts of so many people were changed by the message of Jesus that it started to change the culture in Ephesus. The Gospel still has the power to do such things today.

But just like today, this change was embraced by some and opposed by others. Especially those who were making the most money from the old ways of doing things, which was worshiping the false god “Diana” at her elaborate Temple. So the idol craftsmen got together and caused a riot that Paul barely escaped from and it found him soon after departing from the city. You can read the rest of the story in Acts 19.

So now, a few years later, he is in the middle of writing this letter to these people, when he realizes that not everyone knows about where he is or about why his is there. So he starts to say in verse 1:

Ephesians 3:1 (ESV)

1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—

And then he pauses...for the next 12 verses...to make sure they are not confused by what he just told them. If you have your Bible open, you can see how he picks up again with this same opening phrase in verse 14…but we will get to that next week.

He stops here because he perceives that carefully worded phrase might need some explaining. For one thing the readers might not know that they are getting this letter from prison. That might change how they feel about what is being said, but even if they had heard that Paul was in prison, they probably would have been surprised to hear that they had anything to do with putting them there.

Obviously Paul chose the language of this phrase very intentionally. The first thing for us to observe is who does Paul say has imprisoned him? What power? What authority? What King? Paul says he is a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

Isn’t that interesting? Here he has been falsely accused, arrested, dragged to Rome where he is awaiting his trial but he still does not take a victim stance.

He doesn’t say that he is a prisoner of Rome, even though they held the keys to the locks.

He doesn't say that he is a prisoner of Nero, even though he is there because he has appealed to Caesar

He doesn’t even say that he is a prisoner of the Jewish leaders, even though it was their accusations that put him where he is.

We are never a victim of our circumstances when we are obediently following Jesus. Because In God’s mysterious plan, He can use us no matter where we are.

And as mysterious as where Paul is, “a prisoner of Christ Jesus”, he also said that he was there in prison on behalf of the Gentiles.

Now remember that Ephesus was predominantly a Gentile city with deep Greek roots, but they had enough of a Jewish presence to merit a local synagogue so this letter would have been recieved by a mixed group of both Jewish and Gentile Christians.

So to in effect blame the Gentiles for his imprisonment would not do wonders for unity in the Church in Ephesus. So Paul stops to explain.

Ephesians 3:2–3 (ESV)

2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

I know “assuming” things is not really a good practice, but Paul is not acting on these assumptions here. He is declaring them first to make sure that they understand where he is coming from in what he is about to say. So God revealed this “mystery” or “mysterion” to Paul and...

4 When you read this, [he says] you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

In other words, I am writing all that I write here because of the mystery that has been revealed to me at this time and for this time. It was not known to God’s people in the past, but God has chosen to reveal it to us now through the Holy Spirit. What is this mystery? He doesn’t leave us guessing. He clearly lays it out...

6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

This is the message that put Paul “where” he was. It wasn’t that he declared Jesus to be the Messiah, there had been many who previously claimed to be the Christ who were not imprisoned in Rome. No, Paul was there in Rome because God gave him the responsibility of declaring the revealed Mystery of God’s plan: That through the Gospel Gentiles are made equals in Christ.

We don’t recognize how big of a deal this would have been for the Jewish population to accept. Up to this point, the prevailing view among Jewish people was that the Messiah would come as a military ruler who would so overwhelm the world with the power of God’s might that every tongue tribe and nations would bow before Him…and his people.

So generation after generation, persecution after persecution the Jewish people huddled together in preservation and anticipation of this great day when their champion would rise up and finally turn the tide of power in their direction. And it was a long, hard, road, but they were survivors, surviving on the promised inheritance that their conquering hero would bring to their people...

Do you see how Paul’s message would be so offensive to them? Why should “they” get anything good from “our” Messiah. “They” are not “us”. In fact, “They” have been trampling over “us” for generations and now you dare to suggest that what our God has promised to “us”, can somehow now apply also to “them”.

This IS the mystery. This is how Paul got “where” he is right now. It was not because of the Gentiles directly, but for their sake. In truth verse 6 is something of a summary statement of everything that we talked about last week from the second half of chapter 2. That together, Jews and Gentiles are being built together into a spiritual “Temple” in Christ and there need be no one on the outside anymore.

This leads to our second theme

2. In God’s mysterious plan, the gospel can reach you no matter who you are (Eph 3:7-8)

Paul continues to explain by saying...

Ephesians 3:7–8(ESV)

7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 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,

Remember Paul’s story? His testimony? He was a ranking Pharisee of great influence who persecuted Christians for what he saw as a violation of the plan for God’s people. And now he is given this new rank, as minister to the Gentiles.

The word “minister” here is the Greek word “diakanos” and it means servant and often times “table waiter”. And like a waiter humbles himself by filling the requests of those around the table, Paul has been charged to serve the Gentiles that he once despised. To humble himself by going to “where” they are and teach, preach, and reach them with the good news of the Gospel.

The Paul of a few year ago would have arrested the kind of man that he had become. But Paul was changed. He has become something new “in Christ” and Jesus appointed him as His Apostle to reach the Gentiles.

And what an awesome responsibility this was. He has been given the privilege to play a major part in reaching the largest group of people in the world. Have you ever thought of that? Talk about having a majority market share! The Jewish people were a small dwindling population and they were constantly giving him trouble, but the Gentile world extended endlessly in every direction.

I don’t know what the numbers looked like back then, but as of 2020, the world's "core" Jewish population was estimated at 15 million. That isn’t too shabby, but it ends up being just about 0.2% of the 8 billion people in the world today. If the proportions were similar back then, that leaves a target group of 99.8% of the population of the world for Paul. How could he miss with a target so big?

But even though God had called him to be a “minister to the Gentiles” his heart still longed for his own people to know the “unsearchable riches of Christ too”. The revelation of this Mystery was not just giving the Gentiles something to celebrate. It was about bringing the life-giving message of Jesus Christ to people from every tongue, tribe and nation all for the glory of God.

This is our third and final theme for this week...

3. In God’s mysterious plan, the Church puts the wisdom of God on powerful display (Eph 3:9-13)

The Old Testament law did lay our a course for a Gentile to take steps to become Jewish, if they wanted to, but the Jewish people didn’t really advertise this. In truth, we don’t ever read of God commanding them to seek after converts, still some Gentiles, on their own initiative, sought to become Jewish and so their was a path to make this happen.

But that was about someone becoming Jewish, this “Church” thing was about both Jews and Gentiles together becoming something different. Early on there was a lot of conflict in the early Church because some Christians thought that all these Gentiles needed to first become Jewish and then they could follow Jesus as their Messiah.

But the “Mystery” that God revealed to Paul was that the resurrection power of Jesus reaches well beyond the Jewish people at .02% even they do play a very important role in God’s plan. God chose them to be a people for Himself and to be the people that our rescuer, the Messiah and Christ would come from. Even from the beginning we have hints of God’s plan to rescue all the world through His Mysterious Plan.

In Genesis we read of God’s promise to Abraham where God told him that

Genesis 22:18 (ESV)

18 ... in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

That is talking about Jesus. And then in the New Testament Paul says that this has been fulfilled in the Gospel message through faith in Jesus.

Galatians 3:8–9 (ESV)

8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Like a good mystery today, they had the end of the story. They new that all the nations would be blessed…they just didn’t know how it would happen until God revealed the mystery to them.

So Paul is excited to bring the good news of he Gospel to the Gentiles... and (verse 9)

Ephesians 3:9 (ESV)

9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things,

God created all things. It is His plan that He is unfolding for all of his creation. Including creatures like us who where created to live together according to His wisdom that it would rightly display His glory. That is what we are to be about Church!

10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Remember that heavenly places refers to the spiritual realm where there is a real battle going on between good and evil. And when the Church operates in the wisdom of God then it is a kick in the teeth of the devil!!!

There is nothing more threatening to the kingdom of darkness then when the local Church comes together to live in the unifying wisdom of God. If we would each check all our secondary preferences and priorities at the door and come into this place united in our desire to lift up the name of Jesus Christ alone then the forces of evil would be pushed back on their heels.

If we went a step further and came in here with eyes to see our brothers and sisters in Christ as the “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. then it would be more than just unassailable armor - that is a formidable attack force.

Remember that the Bible only gives us two times when Jesus uses the word “Church”. Once in Matthew 18 where He teaches us about how to handle conflict in the Church - to get us back to being united in Him again.

And the other is back in Mat 16 when Jesus asks the disciples who they say that He is.

Matthew 16:16–18 (ESV)

16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

When we come together “in Christ” and we operated as the church that He is building then it has a profound impact in the “heavenly places” and the strongholds of hell begin to falter. Because a church like that declares to the forces of evil that God’s promises are true, His plans are unfolding and their days are numbered. So Paul says of God’s Mysterious Plan...

11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. 13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

Application

So Paul’s rabbit trail laid an important foundation for the Church to hear before he moves on to tell them something even better. Which we will get to next week. But for this week lets consider what this foundation means for us. Both individually and corporately.

As we said last week, the Jew and Gentile divide was the point of tension at the time of Paul, but God’s Word speaks to us in our tensions today. Being that most of us are of the Gentile variety we could put ourselves in verse 6 which would then read...

Ephesians 3:6 (ESV)

6 This mystery is that [we] are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Stop and consider this revelation for moment. What does mean for you? What does it mean for us?

Some of us are still struggling with an “us” or “them” mentality that is based on our secondary preferences or priorities. We may look down on others who don’t seem to have the same “spiritual life” that we do…or…as your Pastor I think I see more of you who look down on yourselves, because you think that you seem to have the same “spiritual life” that others seem to. Either way is a win for the other team.

Ephesians 3:6 (ESV)

6 This mystery is that [We] are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Landing / Next Steps

The big idea is this. None of us is here by accident and none of us is unnecessary…so what does that mean for how you are doing church?

We will talk more about this mystery in our Table Talk groups, but let me invite the Worship Team up and I will pray for us.