The Marks of God's Salvation
Notes
Transcript
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.
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 has 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.
APTAT - Ask, Pray, Trust, Act, Thank
Introduction
Introduction
About 2,000 years before Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, God made a covenant with Abraham. While revealing what he would do, he told Abraham—still called Abram at that moment—that his descendants would be in a foreign land for four-hundred years. At the right time, God would deliver them from their enslavement. True to his word, God called a man by the name of Moses to be his deliverer. We find his calling in Exodus 3. Until now, Moses had been born in a tumultuous time, placed in a basket, reared by Pharaoh’s daughter as her own but nursed by his own mother. He ended up killing a man who was beating a fellow Hebrew and hid the man’s body. He had to flee for his life and became a shepherd in the desert.
While there, he saw a bush burning on a mountain but not consumed, and so he went to check out what was going on. While there, he saw the angel of the LORD, the pre-incarnate Christ in the fire. God appeared to him and commissioned him to deliver his people from their oppression. As he calls him, we see in this conversation that Moses thinks little of his abilities.
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
He didn’t think that anyone would believe him. He didn’t think he spoke well enough to be convincing. But God would show Moses that this wasn’t about Moses and his abilities. It was God who would be with him. It was God who would take his staff and turn it into a serpent. God would do all the heavy lifting because only God was powerful enough to do so. Moses only needed to be faithful to go. When Moses asked who it was that was sending him—surely the people would want to know—God revealed himself to Moses.
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
If you look in Exodus 6, you’ll find that God told Moses that the revelation of his name was a special revelation given to him, that was not revealed to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had hidden it from those of ages past. It was now given to those with whom he was delivering and making a covenant with. And the promises that he was making were absolutely unfathomable.
Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt,
and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’
On top of that, he promised that they would plunder Egypt in the process and that the people would give them their gold just to get rid of them. In delivering the people of Israel out of Egypt and giving him the Promised Land that had more treasures and wealth than they could imagine, God told Moses that he was doing this to show his might to Pharaoh and make his name known to the world.
But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand.
So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go.
But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
Now, let’s fast forward some 1300 years and there is a new man who has been commissioned. Only this time, he is not delivering God’s people out of a nation called Egypt, but out of state of darkness and death. And while it may look as if God is doing a new work—and in some ways he is—we see that God following the same kind of pattern in his making himself a people for his own.
As we open up Ephesians 3:7-13 this morning, I want us to understand the God-centeredness of our salvation, and so I want us to notice five marks of God’s plan in saving the Gentiles and forming the church under Christ the Head. The first mark we see is God’s power at work in his plan. The second is God’s proclamation. After that, we have God’s purpose, God’s provision, and finally God’s providence all working out God’s plan.
God’s Power
God’s Proclamation
God’s Purpose
God’s Provision
God’s Providence
God’s Power
God’s Power
The first mark of God’s plan in saving the Gentiles and forming the Church under the head of Christ is that it is done by God’s power—not man’s. Paul makes this abundantly clear in verse 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.
Paul rightly considered himself a minister of the gospel. In fact, the word that he used is diaconos which is where we get our word deacon from, but he wasn’t talking about an office or a position in the church. He was a deacon—a servant—of the good news of Jesus Christ. Remember what Paul had already written to the Ephesians just a couple of verses earlier. The revelation of the mystery was given to him so that he may proclaim it to others. He wasn’t the boss of the gospel; the gospel was the boss of him. He had no authority over the gospel message to tell it where it could and could not be proclaimed. The gospel propelled Paul forward to preach the good news to anyone who would listen. That why he told the Corinthians, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” It wasn’t just a privilege to preach, it was a stewardship, a responsibility, a calling.
And it was a calling according to the gift of God’s grace. We’ve seen this language before back in chapter 1 where Paul wrote that we had received forgiveness according to the riches of God’s grace which he lavished on us. And we saw how it was like going to Baskin Robbins, but not for those little pink spoons of creamy goodness, but rather the buckets of ice cream themselves. Our forgiveness—in accordance with God’s grace—showed that we had buckets of forgiveness placed upon us because there were buckets of grace in God’s storehouses. In a similar way, Paul’s calling to be a minister of the gospel is in accordance with the gift of God’s grace. This is an immense calling because of God’s immense grace. But it doesn’t stop with the calling. Remember this is to show God’s power. The grace of God to carry out his calling as a minister of the gospel was given to Paul by the working of God’s power.
Like Moses, Paul was the spokesman. They were were heralds—servants of God’s message. Moses was called to speak to Pharaoh and the Israelites; Paul was called to speak to kings and Gentiles. It would be God’s power at work through them and the message they carried. They had no power on their own. God’s power would turn a staff into a serpent and plagued the land of Egypt. God’s power would shut the mouths of those who mocked Paul and healed those who even touched a handkerchief handled by Paul. That was all God’s doing! It was God’s power that would deliver his people—either out of Egypt or out of sin. Moses and Paul were nothing without his power at work.
Beloved, the same is still true for each of us. While not all of us have been called to be evangelists, we have all been called to be ministers of the gospel—simply by the fact that we have received the gospel message ourselves. But we need not worry about failing or succeeding in delivering people from sin. That’s God’s power at work. We need only be faithful to the ministry that we’ve been given.
God’s Proclamation
God’s Proclamation
So the first mark of God’s salvation is that it is done in his power—not ours. But there is a second mark: it’s God’s proclamation that must be preached. We must be faithful to the ministry of the gospel which means that we must proclaim the very message that the gospel reveals.
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,
Paul considered himself the very least of all the saints. And wanting to emphasize his belief about his stance, Paul actually intensifies the superlative (least) with a comparative (er). Paul actually called himself the leaster of the least of all the saints. When we think of Paul, we tend to think of a super-saint. There’s Jesus, who is God in the flesh, and then there’s Paul. That’s how most Christians tend to think of Paul. But that’s not how he thought of himself. Elsewhere, Paul said he was the least of the apostles, but here he even puts himself below the lowliest of saints. He’s not expressing false humility here. It’s not that Paul is going, “aw, shucks, fellas; I ain’t nothin special.” Paul understood who he was before Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. He was a persecutor of the church—thinking he was doing the Lord’s work when he was actually going against it. Now, by the very power of God, he was doing the Lord’s work. He didn’t deserve to have the platform or the audience or the ear of those who would listen. It was all a work of God’s grace.
In the same way, Moses was nothing but a shepherd. He was a murderer of an Egyptian and a coward who ran for his life. Yet God used Moses—who could not speak well—to deliver his people from the hands of slavery. God would use Moses to reveal his covenant name, his covenant law, his covenant riches, and his covenant love to a people who had never known it. God would use Paul to reveal his covenant name, his covenant grace, his covenant riches, and his covenant love to a people who had never known it. Both would bring light to those who were in darkness. Both would bring deliverance to those who were enslaved. And they did it by proclaiming the word of the Lord to a people who had never known him personally. They would herald a mystery that had been hidden for ages, but each revealed in his own time—Moses to the Israelite and Paul, some time later, to the Gentile.
Imagine what would have happened if Moses had softened the message to Pharaoh in the same way many preachers soften the message to their hearers. “The LORD says to Pharaoh, ‘you’ve made a few mistakes in your life, but that’s okay. He can turn those mistakes into something amazing. Trust him by letting his people go. You’ll be glad you did.’” That’s not God’s message. It wasn’t what he told Moses to proclaim. It’s not what he told Paul to proclaim. It’s not what he has called on us to proclaim either. Telling others that God looks at them and wouldn’t change a thing as one so-called Christian song says is not the gospel message. There is no salvation in that message because if God looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing about me, then there’s nothing wrong with me. And if nothing is wrong with me, then I’m all good. And If I’m all good then I don’t need saving.
Brothers and sisters, we proclaim God’s message and trust in God’s power to bring God’s light to a people who are in darkness.
God’s Purpose
God’s Purpose
But those are not the only two marks of God’s plan to save Gentiles and forming the church under Christ as the head. The third mark is this: God’s purpose which shows himself to be wise among the angelic beings.
When Moses was called to deliver God’s people from Egypt, we found that it was so that Pharaoh would know his power and the world my know his name. But as we move from a physical deliverance from a tangible slavery to a spiritual deliverance from an intangible one, we see that the effects are seen and understood in the spiritual realm.
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 has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Those words, “so that” are crucial. Any time you see these words in Scripture, you should pause and give extra time to what comes next. They reveal to you purpose or reasons for why something is happening. Why is it that Paul proclaims God’s word through God’s power? It is so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known… There is so much to unpack and not a lot of time to do it. So let’s start with the word “manifold.” Don’t think of manifold as simply “a lot.” God has a lot of wisdom. But think of manifold more like many-folded. In other words, there are many layers folded over one another. One translation used the word “multifaceted.” That’s a good word. The idea is that God’s wisdom comes at us in every direction. There is nothing that God has not covered in his wisdom. Nothing was skipped when it came to his redemptive plan. Nothing was overlooked. He hit salvation every-which-way he could and he did it brilliantly and wisely.
And it is “through” the church that it is seen. Think back to chapter 1; we saw that Jesus was summing up all things under himself. We each had a puzzle piece that we brought down and the children put the pieces together to show how we are part of God’s plan to bring the entire universe—things seen and unseen—together under the dominion of Christ. We, the Church—his body—and he our Head working together to show the world what God is up to. “Well,” Paul says, “it’s not just the world that will see this. God intends to show his manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” This is done “through” the Church. The church is God’s instrument that shows his wisdom! How do we know that Mozart was a musical genius? Is it because someone told us? No. It is through his music. How do we know Michelangelo was an artistic genius? Through his painting of the Sistine Chapel and his sculptures of David, Moses, and the Pieta. How does creation—seen and unseen—know that God is all-wise? Through his Church. Creation declares God’s glory and the cross declares his power, but the Church displays his manifold wisdom. Angels and demons look upon the Body of Christ—of which we are a part—and they see an all-wise God at work.
Let us not forget that all that Paul was writing here was in the context of the unity of the Body. Jesus broke down the dividing wall of hostility on the cross so that we would be one new man. Paul is the minister of that gospel so as to bring the Gentiles into the Body. This Body shows the world and the heavenly realm that God is wise and that his purposes are being accomplished. What do you think that means for the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places? If we’re talking about the elect angels—the good ones, it means that they glorify God for all his wisdom! If we’re talking about the demonic, it means that they recoil as they are reminded that they have lost the war and give homage to Jesus who sits on the throne above all.
So church family, our unity—whether in the local body or the universal body—by the very purposes of Go, is meant to bring his praise and glory! If that is so, then what does it mean if we aren’t united? What does it mean if allow of differences, grudges, careless thoughts, deeds, and words to divide us? What does it mean for the lone-wolf Christian who says they don’t need the church? Do these not in some way diminish the glory due his name? Like Isaiah once said about Israel—that they cause God’s name to be despised among the nations, are we not causing it to be despised in the heavenly places? Are our disagreements really worth more than the praises of our God?
God’s Provision
God’s Provision
God’s plan to save the Gentiles and form his Church under the feet of Christ is marked by his power, his proclamation, and his purpose. But it is also marked by his provision.
When Moses lead the people out of Egypt, God provided a way for them to meet together. The two would converse and strength would be given so that Moses could confront Pharaoh or even the obstinate leaders of Israel once again. Paul remarked that in similar fashion, we all have access to God.
in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.
Let’s not forget that sin is an act of cosmic treason—it separates us from God. The reason that the Jew had to offer sacrifices over and over again was because they sinned over and over again. But Jesus took our sins once for all as the writer of Hebrews pointed out. There are no longer any treasonous barriers that keep us from having access to God. No demonic entity can thwart our prayers to the Almighty. We have boldness as regards our speech and access as regards our stance. God has provided this for us in Christ.
But I do want to take a moment and help us to understand the end of this verse. In the Greek, Paul actually says that we have boldness and access with confidence “through the faith of him.” What has long been debated is whether “of him” is objective (our faith in him) or subjective (his faithfulness). The ESV translators chose to use it objectively: “our faith in him,” and for many good reasons, but I think the NET translators have it right when they translate it
in whom we have boldness and confident access to God because of Christ’s faithfulness.
The reason I side with the NET translators is mainly because Paul was no stranger to using the words, “in Christ.” He does so throughout the text. Why would he not have written that our faith was in Christ at this point unless he was intending to say that Christ was the subject of faith and not the object of it. We have access because Christ is faithful in his saving and mediating roles.
So church family even when your faith is weak, even when your confidence is at its lowest point, you still have access to God—not because of how strong your faith is but because of our faithful your Savior is.
God’s Providence
God’s Providence
And so we see then that Paul leads us into an encouragement not to lose heart. God’s plan to bring Gentiles to salvation and form the Church under the feet of Christ is marked by his power, proclamation, purpose, and provision. But there is one last mark of his plan: his providence. Even when the ministry doesn’t go as expected, we can trust in God’s providence.
So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.
Paul equates his personal suffering with the Ephesians’ (and Gentiles in general) corporate glory! His burden is the Gentile’s blessing. Thus, the Ephesians ought not lose heart. Remember that Paul mentioned that he was Christ’s prisoner on their behalf back in 3:1. Those weren’t just words; he meant what he was saying. This was all part of God’s providence so that the gospel’s revelation of the mystery of the riches of Christ would get to those who had no place in his kingdom. It was only through his suffering that the people would hear.
Beloved, we live in a time where Christians are under the impression that we aren’t suppose to suffer. Yet, the Bible tells us the exact opposite. Jesus himself said that if the world hated him, it would hate us. Paul wrote that all who seek to live godly lives will be persecuted. John said that he was a partner of the kingdom and of the tribulation. God’s providence makes a beeline right through suffering. It doesn’t bypass it. But in doing so, it produces greater fruit than we could imagine even in this life—whether for ourselves or for others. Paul’s imprisonment brought liberty to the Ephesians. What might your affliction do for others?
And it doesn’t mean that we suffer only for evangelism’s sake. Satan is constantly seeking to cause us to lose heart over any kind of suffering—sickness, abuse, neglect, loss, and so many other ways. But this is why we do not look at the present affliction, but rather focus on what God might produce from it. Rather than waiting simply for the suffering to end, we wait for the Lord to act. Because it will always be for his glory; it will always be for our good, but it will often be for our brother/sister’s gain.
As Isaiah promised
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Beloved we have taken a long, hard look at what Paul wanted his readers to know. In God’s plan to bring about salvation to the Gentiles and form the Church under Christ’s feet, Paul mentioned five marks of God’s plan: his power, his proclamation, his purpose, his provision, and finally his providence. What God did physically through Moses for the people of Israel, he did spiritually through Paul for the people of the world. Such is the love and wisdom of our Father.
So when we feel defeated in our evangelism efforts, let us remember that it is by his power that salvation is granted.
When we are tempted to soften the gospel message, let us remember that it is his proclamation that we preach.
When we want to maintain old grudges and divisions, let us remember that his purpose was to bring unity for his own glory.
When we think that we have lost access to his throne, let us remember that Christ’s faithfulness provides us access—not our own.
And when we are tired and losing heart, let us remember that God providentially brings affliction in order to bring glory.
So brothers and sisters, let us live as those who were once strangers and far off, but who have now been brought near—in Christ to the praise of his glory.
Prayer
Our heavenly Father,
Grant us to live and minister in your power, proclaim your message, work toward your purpose, and trust in your provision and providence. May unity of Highland View and all of its members bring you glory on earth and in the heavenly places.
