The Mystery

Opening Illustration and Story

Going to church and meeting Guy that was a Prairie Ridge and recognized me

Talk about the impact we have on the world by bringing people to church

Paul's mission was to bring the gospel to the Gentiles and that is our mission now as a church. The word Gentile just means someone who isn’t a Jew. To my knowledge no one in here is Jewish so that means we are a room of biblical Gentiles. In the Old Testament, the Jews were God’s chosen people. Jesus came to extend that circle and made everyone his chosen people- both Jews and non-Jews,

Bring the gospel to the people of Mason City that are least likely to hear the Word of God

Pastor Paul preached on reconciliation between Jew and Gentile last week and the recurring theme in this letter to the church of Ephesus and really the entire New Testament is Unity.

The Apostle Paul is writing this letter while he is in prison for spreading the Word to the Gentiles

Essentially he is in prison for attempting to Unite people and tear down long existing cultural boundaries.

Who else do we know that was persecuted for tearing down cultural boundaries?

Jesus Christ.

Jesus ate meals with sinners.

He called a tax collector to follow Him and be his disciple

He sat and talked with women who were cast away from society and told them that there was a place for them in the kingdom.

Can we go into this Lesson today with a grateful heart

Thankful that we are included and that all of this was done for US.

Every one of US

Remember, we are the Gentiles that Paul is referring to in this letter.

Ephesians 3:1-13

Page 1666 in Pew BIble

PRAY

Fresh anointing and fresh perspective on this.

Read in the Message translation

This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.

As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.

This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!

All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!

What a fresh perspective on this

Maybe you are new to this and have never read this before, or you are well versed in this letter Paul wrote; either way, I want you to get a new perspective on this today.

My goal today is to answer three questions that came up when I was studying these verses.

What is the mystery?

What is the purpose of the mystery?

What does this mystery mean for me now?

First Key Point: What is the mystery?

In his imprisonment for Christ, Paul champions the cause of including outsiders in God's plan, a mystery now revealed through the Spirit to include all people, regardless of their past knowledge of God.

In our opening reading, in verse 2 Paul says,

“Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you,”

What Paul is saying here is that he was given a mission by God

God gave Paul a job to do here

Paul calls it, “the administration of God’s grace.”

Here in our reading today, that grace that God gave Paul for the Gentiles is called “the mystery of Christ,”

God made this mystery known to Paul by revelation.

That is how the word of God was written.

We have God's word here in our Bible.

God revealed His word to humans through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So Paul, in turn, wrote these letters to a primarily Gentile audience of new believers.

In verse 4 Paul tells us why He wrote them,

“So that in reading this, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.”

So to answer our first question here today, “What is the mystery”

The mystery is God's surprising and previously hidden plan to include everyone in His family, not just the Jewish people.

This means that whether someone has known about God for a long time or has never heard of Him before, they are all welcome to be part of God's family through faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ wasn’t an afterthought to creation.

It wasn’t like God made the world, put people in, they sinned and then He looked at them exasperated saying “Oh Great look at them. They messed it all up. My beautiful creation. Now what am I supposed to do?”.

No, God knew that his creation was going to need a savior.

Christ was there in the beginning. Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”.

He’s using the plural here, indicating He is the Godhead three in one. God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

And look at how far creation made it without disobeying God.

They have 1 thing they aren’t supposed to do. JUST ONE. Not eat from a particular tree in a garden of abundance.

And we barely get 2 to 3 pages into the beginning of the story when Adam and Eve eat from this one tree, disobeying God.

Folks, we are still in the introduction!

We have barely made it past the title page and we have sin entering the world.

That’s how great we are as humans at not sinning! But God doesn’t wipe all of creation out and start again.. Instead we find our first mention of Jesus coming to earth in Genesis 3:15 when God curses the serpent for tempting Eve and tells him “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel”. This points to the crucifixion of Christ.

Then satan seemingly wins when Christ dies on the cross.

Satan has struck the heel of Christ.

But we find that Christ crushes satan’s head when He comes back to life in three days and belief in Christ now atones for sins allowing believers to enter into that original relationship with God as it was in the beginning before sin.

So the mystery is that God always planned on including all of us through Jesus Chirst.

That was done for us, the gentile

Now that we know what the Mystery is, time to look at the point of it, Right

Our second question I want to answer is;

What is the purpose of the mystery?

The purpose of this mystery is to show the world God's incredible wisdom and love.

By including everyone, God demonstrates that His plan has always been to bring people together, regardless of their background or past, and to offer them the same love, help, and promises through Jesus.

When God sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for us,

As i covered in my sermon a few months ago about the death of Jesus,

When Jesus died, the veil tore in the temple that seperated us from God.

This not only brought us back into relationship with God,

But it also broke down the wall dividing the Jew’s and Gentiles

In biblical times there was a division between Jew and Gentile

This division was hostile

Paul before his conversion, was called Saul

He was a Jew, a pharisee to be exact, taught by one of the most prominent rabbis in the land.

And he basically hunted and killed Christ followers.

Talk about a schetchy past

In verses 7 and 8 we see that Paul was made a servant of this Gospel by God’s grace through the working of His power.

That grace and power were so mighty that Paul, the former confident Pharisee

Considered himself, the least of all the saints.

You see, when Paul met Jesus, he was greatly humbled

Here in our reading today, Paul calls himself, “a prisoner of Jesus Christ”

Even through Paul was writing this letter while in Prison himself

Paul knows that he is no prisoner of man.

When your in the will of God, the negative circumstances of your life happen with God’s purpose in mind.

And God’s purpose was that “the least” of the saints would proclaim the immeasurable riches of Christ.

Like Paul, I learned while in prison, that i was called to be a servant of Christ

That means where He sends me and what He tells me to do, I wil do

Once i realized that and dedicated my life to Christ, I was completely changed.

I began to see hope in my life again and a purpose

That put purpose to the pain i had been feeling.

I might have been in prison, but i was serving God and that gave me freedom

You see there is freedom in the kingdom

The mystery has been revealed to us, and we now know that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and have eternal life

We are all included and loved by God

So what does this mystery mean for us now?

For us today, this mystery means that we can all have a relationship with God through Jesus.

It means that no matter who we are or where we come from, we can receive the same love, forgiveness, and hope that Jesus offers.

This is not based on a feeling

This is a biblical truth that exists whether you feel it or not

Guilt, shame, and regret are all tactics the enemy uses to try and keep you from experiencing that.

This mystery also calls us to share this message of inclusion and love with others, so that they too can know God's amazing grace.

I think we do a great job of that here as a church

Bringing people to church and showing them that they are included and loved

Just like the guy i talked about in my opening illustration

Who got to church because we picked him up

We don’t know the full impact we have on people

We just have to get them to Jesus and let him do the rest

Remember we were all once lost and alone in the world

Until someone got us to Jesus

We certainly cant do anything to earn His love and acceptance

He just loves us because He is LOVE.

We're called to love others the way Jesus loves us.

This means extending that love to people who might be difficult to love and welcoming those into our church who may not fit the typical mold of a Christian believer.

In God's kingdom, there are no barriers based on race or color; nothing can keep you out of God's family.

Regardless of your background, we're all included, and I'm thankful for that because I certainly wouldn't be here if it were based on my past.

Nothing in your past can keep you from belonging to God.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says

“..if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation: The old is gone, the new is here.”

God is demonstrating the beauty of his Kingdom.

He is stitching people from every race, every ethnicity, man, woman and child together into a beautiful work of art.

The Church, that masterpiece, is demonstrating to the spiritual world and the physical world what God’s kingdom looks like.

It is a demonstration to the angelic realm of God’s manifold wisdom.

It is a demonstration to satan of God’s victory and satans defeat.

It is a demonstration to the world of what it looks like when heavenly values operate in history.

—-------------

Conclusion

God broke down the division between Jews and Gentiles.

Ending years of hostility.

Through the Gospel both have been brought into one body of Christ, reconciled to one another.

We are all fellow partakers of grace.

On equal footing before God.

If you've been brought into God's family through the blood of Christ.

The color of your skin doesn't matter.

Regardless of your race, you get the same spiritual DNA given to every other believer, it’s put inside you by the Spirit as soon as you are born into the family of God.

Friends, we have the same father and sit at the same table.

Once you come into the body of Christ, you come in as an equal.

There are no insignificant people in God's army.

We are all important.

And we are all loved by Him

God Bless You

PRAY