GOD’S NEW COMMUNITY:

CREATED BY GOD AND FOR GOD

Ephesians 3: 7-21

INTRODUCTION

Would an unbiased observer, considering the history of the human race and the condition of the world today conclude that there is a good, loving and all-powerful God ruling over this world?   While there is much joy, much beauty and pleasure, yet hanging over everything is the dark cloud of evil, suffering and death.   Just in our own century millions of people have suffered and died at the hands of human savagery.   Simply listing names and places reminds us of millions of people who have suffered horrible deaths at the hands of evil people: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Rwanda, Bosnia, Roe vs. Wade, Jeffrey Dahmer, Sudan, Iraq, to name but a few.   Then, to the list of evil done by humans, we can add a growing list of “natural” evils, AIDS, SARS, cancer, starvation.   Then to these lists is the daily avalanche of suffering and death due to accidents and disease and pollution and incompetence.   Many millions of people, observing the random and seemingly universal experience of evil and suffering in the world have simply concluded that there is no God running this universe.   Many billions of others view this epidemic of evil and suffering and describe reality as the conflict between equally powerful forces of good and evil with evil often gaining the upper hand over the good.

What is interesting is that the Bible does not present a much more persuasive picture than what we observe in the world.   Just think about it.   The first two chapters of the Bible describe the world as God made it, a place of perfect peace, harmony and provision. However, by the third chapter of the Bible this perfect creation of God is despoiled through the cunning and treachery of creatures that God made, Satan and humans.   God, in order to restrain evil is forced to curse the good world he made and drive out human beings from the perfection they enjoyed at creation.   Immediately all hell breaks loose in God’s good creation.   One brother murders another and evil mushrooms to such an extent that God is sorry he ever created humanity and so he decides to wipe out every living thing.   While one man finds favor in God’s eyes, every living thing except for Noah, his family and the animals with him on the ark are destroyed in a worldwide flood.

Yet, even after this rather drastic manifestation of divine disapproval, evil reveals itself in this chosen family and then explodes across the scene of human experience once again.   God, from the moment of discovering the sin of Adam and Eve promises that he is going to restore the world and the people of the world to their original condition.   Yet, while God appears in the biblical record working in a few people’s lives, it rarely appears as if any progress is actually being made against evil and suffering.   He chooses Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and promises that he will make them into a great nation that will bring his blessing to all other nations.   Eventually their descendants do become a great nation but they do so as slaves in Egypt for 400 years.   He does bring them out of Egypt but a little over a year after he brings them out he almost wipes out the whole lot of them due to their persistent rebellion against him.   Only the desperate intercession of Moses keeps God from not destroying the entire Israelite nation.   While he doesn’t simply destroy them he does delay their entry into the land of promise for forty years until everyone who was 20 years old and more at the time of the Exodus is dead.   But even after he brings this nation, cleansed of those rebels, into the land of promise they prove just as evil and unreliable as their forefathers.   The book of Judges records some of the most wicked and disgusting accounts of human conduct in all of history.   Eventually, this nation that God chose as his treasured possession, after centuries of perverse rebellion with only a few periods where evil is not completely dominant is destroyed and sent into exile. Seventy years later a few thousand Jewish stragglers return to the Promised Land and develop a scaled back version of their religion and culture and talk about a future glory.   At the end of the OT, it appears that God’s work to overcome evil and create a people and a place like the perfect world he originally created has failed.   It appears that Satan, the tempter and despoiler of God’s good creation is actually winning.

Four hundred years after the end of the OT a man bursts on the scene with power and grace and it appears that God finally is going to do something about evil and suffering.   This man named Jesus heals every sickness and disease he encounters.   He resists Satan’s temptations and reverses Satan’s perverting of God’s good creation.   He rebuffs the religious hypocrites and is the catalyst of change in the lives of hundreds of evil people.   It appears that God’s agent for transforming the world back into the perfect and good creation that he intended has finally showed up.   However, after three short years of restoring work he is betrayed and murdered.   Again, a brief bright spot in the sordid history of the world is swallowed up in the darkness of human evil and suffering.   God’s power and love apparently are again quenched.   Once again it appears that Satan and the forces of evil have the upper hand.   Where is God?   Where is this king of glory and power who created the world?   Where can we see his hand at work restoring the world as he has so often said he was going to do?

Three days after the brutal murder of Jesus on a Roman cross a small group of individuals, his closest companions during his three years of public work, are visited by this same Jesus, resurrected from the dead.   He spends forty days on and off with this small group of men and women proving that he was indeed raised from the dead.   Fifty-three days after his crucifixion the leaders of this rag-tag group of 120 people, empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, stand in the streets of Jerusalem and declare that this Jesus, whom 50 days earlier was killed has been raised from the dead by God and is now seated at God’s right hand.   That day, over 3000 people believe what these apostles say and the church of Jesus Christ is born.

It is the claim of this letter of the apostle Paul to the local church located in the Greek city of Ephesus that God, through Jesus Christ, is overcoming Satan and all the forces of evil in the world.   This little letter is Paul’s declaration that despite appearances, God has destroyed, is destroying and will destroy Satan and all the evil in the world that he inspires.   Evil and suffering will not have the last word and in fact are right now being conquered by Christ.   God is displaying his awesome love and power in the world through the work of the resurrected and glorified Jesus Christ.   That is the message of this letter Paul wrote.   In chapter 3: 7-21 we are going to see three ways that God glorifies himself through Jesus.   We will see three ways that God reveals or displays his power and love that is conquering evil and restoring his creation to its original condition.   (NOTE:   after I got into this passage I realized I had bitten off way more than we could chew in our time together.   Therefore, we are going to look at two ways that God manifests his glory and then I will simply direct you to examine the third way on your own.)

MAIN POINT

God exhibits his awesome power and love by…

I.   Transforming sinners (vv. 7-9)

In chapter 2 Paul describes the miracle work that God is doing in Christ.   He is making dead people alive and he is creating a new entity, the church that is comprised of people who are vastly different from one another.   He is building his church by placing together in it, through the cross of Jesus Christ, people of every sort.   In chapter 3: 1-9 he is explaining how God is doing this work of building his church.   He is doing it through revealing to his holy apostles and prophets the “mystery of Christ”.   That mystery is that through the message of Christ’s death and resurrection in the place of sinners, God is making a new people out of the diverse people’s of the world.   All people, regardless of race or religion or economic status or social status become part of God’s family and heirs of all God’s promises through the good news of Jesus.

In vv. 7-9 Paul makes very personal what has been very global and abstract.   He reflects on how it is that he as an individual has gotten involved in this grand work of God that includes all of creation and has been going on for all of eternity.   He also explains what part he is playing in God’s work to restore his creation.   He became a servant of the gospel of Jesus, not because of anything he ever did but because of God’s free, sovereign, gracious choice of him and work in him.   In fact, as he points out in v. 8, his being appointed by God as an apostle to the Gentiles is nothing short of miraculous.   Paul refers to himself as the “least of all God’s people” because he at one time persecuted the church of God as he says in another place.   If you were going to pick out the least likely person to be the chief spokesman for the Christian church it would have been the apostle Paul.

I want to summarize what we know about Paul’s life and then ask you to consider with me if you would consider what God did to Paul, “a gift of his grace”.   Paul was as Jewish as you could possibly be.   He was born of orthodox Jewish parents.   His father was also wealthy and a well-connected Roman citizen in the city of Tarsus, located in present day Turkey.   He was raised according to the Jewish law.   He went to the most prestigious Jewish schools.   He was a Pharisee, the strictest sect within Judaism.   He was known as one of the preeminent young Pharisee scholars.   As a Pharisee, he was absolutely convinced that the Jewish people were God’s chosen people.   The only people who were acceptable to God were Jewish people who practiced their Judaism or those Gentiles who become Jewish and practiced Judaism.   He knew that those who claimed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, the eternal Son of God, were guilty of the worst sort of blasphemy.   To claim that a mere man was God, to assert that the Messiah was crucified and that the only people who were acceptable to God were those, whether Jew or Gentile, who had faith in Christ was more than he could handle.   He was furious with Christians and made it his personal responsibility to stamp out such wicked and ungodly teaching.   He cast his vote against Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and was involved in arresting, torturing and imprisoning numerous Christians throughout the land of Israel.   He was, as he says in another letter, the chief of sinners.

If you were to ask Paul, “How do you know that God is in the business of restoring his creation to its original condition?   What evidence is there that God is loving and powerful?”   One of the things that he would point to is his own life.   How do you explain the transformation of this enemy of Jesus and his church renouncing his Jewish heritage, his prestigious position within Jewish culture, to become a follower of Christ and one of the chief spokesmen of the message about Jesus?   How do you explain Paul abandoning a life of wealth, power, prestige and self-righteous certainty to become an itinerant preacher with no home, no pay, often subjected to torture and imprisonment?   He explains it by saying that God, contrary to all expectation and contrary to what he deserved, powerfully worked in his life so that he loves Jesus and loves to tell others about him, more than he loves anyone or anything else.   His hatred for Christ and Christians has been transformed into passionate love for Jesus and Christians.   He has forsaken everything in order to know Jesus.   The reason he has forsaken all to know Jesus is because God changed his heart.   What is amazing about Paul’s description here is that he views his current life, beset as it is with physical discomfort and social rejection as a gift of God’s grace.   He is so amazed to be loved by God, that Christ took upon himself God’s anger against his many sins, that he can only describe his life as a gift from God.   No one prefers a life of hardship over a life of comfort unless the hardship is in order to obtain some superior good.   That is how Paul views his life.   His present discomfort is not even worth comparing to the glory that he will receive when the Lord Christ comes again.

But notice also the description Paul gives of his work.   He is making known the unsearchable riches of Christ and he is making plain the administration of the mystery of Christ that God did not reveal at any point in history until he revealed it to his apostle’s and prophets and through them to the church.   Paul views himself as a person in possession of wealth that is beyond comprehension that he is trying to give away to others.   He is seeking to explain the enormous wealth that God has made available to everyone who will trust in Christ.   He is like a merchant who displays his wares so that people will come and buy.   He is like a football fan who seeks to explain how incredible the quarterback of his team plays the game.   He wants people to see Christ as the great person that he is so that others will esteem Christ just as he does.   He is making plain how God administers or applies what Jesus has done so that all who will come to Christ become members of God’s very own family.

God’s great power and love are being displayed as sinful people like Paul, like you, like me turn from our sin and our demand to be made happy here and now and trust, love and obey Jesus Christ.   You can see that Satan is not going to have the upper hand when all is said and done because right now, in this very room, there are individuals who have forsaken sin and embraced Jesus Christ as a treasure chest of holy joy.   The presence of people who trust in Christ rather than money for their security lets you know that God is powerful and loving and is working to return the creation to its original condition.   The transformation of men and women who love to be loved into people who love to love is evidence of God’s great mercy and power.   Not all of us beat up and persecuted Christians prior to our conversion like Paul did.   Not all of us are going to be or are supposed to be missionaries and pastors.   But all who belong to Christ have been transformed as a gift of God’s grace by the working of his power so that what they used to love, sin, they now hate and what they used to hate, God as revealed in Jesus Christ, they now love.

God exhibits his awesome power and love by…

•  Transforming sinners

•  And by…

II.   Displaying his wisdom in the church (vv. 10-13)

Verse 10 begins with “in order that”.   Verse 10 expresses the result of transformed sinners making known the unsearchable riches of Christ and making plain the administration of this mystery.   In other words, the result of the gospel being proclaimed is that the manifold wisdom of God is made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms through the church.   Preaching of the gospel creates the church and the church then displays the manifest wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.   There are three questions we need to answer in order to understand what Paul is saying here.   First, who or what are the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”?   Second, what does it mean to say that the “manifold wisdom of God is made known”?   Third, why does Paul say this?

First , who are the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms?   These words are used four times in the book of Ephesians.   Let’s look at each of these occurrences: Eph 1: 19b-21, 2:2, 3:10 & 6: 10-12.   Paul is referring to hostile satanic or demonic beings who dwell in the heavenly/spiritual dimension and who have influence over and in this world.   Notice especially in 2:2 that Satan is described as “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”   Satan is actively and aggressively seeking to despoil God’s good creation.   He is ferociously seeking to tempt humans and to promote all manner of evil in every way that he possibly can.   He has many schemes and strategies that he uses to this end.   However, the church, which is created by God through the preaching of the gospel, displays the manifold wisdom of God to these evil, hostile powers that are working to promote disobedience and sin in the world.

Second , what is the “manifold wisdom of God” that is made known to these hostile forces through the church?   How does the church display this wisdom of God?   In order to understand what Paul is getting at here I want you to think with me about the chaotic situation that currently exists in Iraq and the enormous task that we, the U.S., have taken on in this country.   Iraq is a country that is deeply divided along religious, economic, ethnic and political lines.   The only way this country existed as a country under Sadaam Hussein is through the use of force.   “Peace” was enforced through intimidation and fear of death.   Simply getting the various parties in the country together to talk with one another is a huge undertaking.   There are many groups and individuals in the country who are looking for every opportunity to promote themselves and to put down and even destroy their opponents.   Additionally, much of the population is either hostile towards or at least suspicious of the U.S.   They don’t trust us and many Iraqi’s hate us.   The job that has been given to Mr. Bremmer, the U.S. proconsul in Iraq has been described by just about everyone as the most difficult job on the planet.   What he is aiming at creating is a just, harmonious, peaceful, tolerant, democratic culture, friendly to the U.S., in a country that has never experienced anything close to this and with many forces working contrary to these ends.   If the U.S. succeeds in promoting a just and harmonious democratic culture in Iraq, we will be hailed as a very wise and powerful government by the rest of the earth.

On a very small scale this represents the condition of the entire universe in relation to God.   It is his stated goal to create a people, a nation made up of people from every culture, language, race, economic status, religious background who delight to live with one another and with him in perfect peace and love forever.   These people that he is trying to get together hate one another and hate him.   The world he is going to recreate is beset by far more devastation and corruption than the infrastructure of Iraq.   In addition, in order for him to have anything to do with us he must figure out a way to do it without compromising his justice.   How can he forgive, love and promote to positions of trusted leadership in his kingdom people who have been at war with him and who have committed atrocious war crimes against him and his people? How does he escape the charge of being a corrupt judge who rewards the wicked, who lets the guilty go free?

The church of Jesus is the seed, the evidence, the beginning of the restoration that God is going to consummate when Christ returns.   Every local church, made up as it is of sinners who hated God and people, expresses the great wisdom of God.   He, by killing his own Son, has satisfied his justice and made it possible for him to accept into his family men and women who have committed the most heinous crimes against him.   By the death of his own son he has destroyed everything that separates humans from one another.   The cross is the great leveler of human society.   The cross of Christ puts every human being on the same footing.   All are sinners and all are in need of a Savior.   No other human distinction matters.   The cross eliminates all ground for human pride and prejudice.   By his cross he makes it possible for human beings to forgive one another and to love one another without expecting anything in return.   It is in the church alone that humans who are complete strangers and who have no reason to love each other and many reasons to distrust each other and even hate each other, are brought together by the cross of Jesus Christ.   The existence of the church proclaims to the hostile rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms that God has made a way to overcome their evil designs.   By the cross of Jesus, which creates the church and is the center of the church’s life, God has planted his new community on enemy territory to live contrary to the ways of the world.   The church is God planting a rebel cell in enemy territory pointing ahead to the day when the entire creation will be renewed and all of his enemies will be completely destroyed and the whole earth will belong to Christ and his people.   The church exists as the one community on earth that is gathered together by the cross of Christ and around the cross of Christ.   Our existence points to the power of God in the death of Jesus reconciling the world to himself.   The cross is the instrument of restoration and our existence shows the wisdom of God in the cross.

Notice that in v. 11, God has always planned on overcoming the forces of evil in this way.   From all eternity he has been thinking about River Hills Community Church and Bethel Baptist Church and Christ Presbyterian Church and Bubbling Springs Church in Mongolia and every local church that is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus as the cornerstone.   Every local church manifests the wisdom of God in making a way for sinners to live in loving fellowship with one another and with God through the cross.   Every local church is vitally connected to God and living in his presence through the work of Jesus.

Why does Paul want us to know this?   Verse thirteen tells us why he wants us to know this.   He writes this because he is in prison.   He is one of God’s primary spokesmen for the gospel and he is in prison.   He is suffering because of his proclamation of this message that is forming the church.   It would appear that in Paul’s own life Satan and the forces of evil are winning.   The power and love of God seem to again be defeated in the life of Paul.   How can God be successfully restoring the world, defeating evil when Paul is suffering so much?   How can there be a God of love and power running the universe when a man like Paul who has given up every worldly comfort in order to serve God is in prison and has suffered so much abuse at the hands of evil people?   Paul’s answer is that his suffering, rather than casting doubt upon the love and power of God, confirms it.   His suffering is for the sake of the church.   His suffering is the means by which the gospel comes to the church and thus creates the church.   His suffering is the glory, the evidence of the greatness of the church.   As he says in Col. 1, his suffering completes the suffering of Jesus and results in the formation of the church.   As he says in 2 Timothy, “I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.”  

Paul’s letters are full of this language.   Suffering is not simply an unpleasant side effect of preaching the gospel of Christ in a world dominated by evil.   Rather, suffering is the means God has appointed to confirm and promote the gospel.   What displays the all satisfying power of the gospel of Christ more: when people with full bellies who live in beautiful homes with healthy and happy children praise God and extol his greatness, or when people beat up for preaching the gospel and thrown in a filthy prison with no trial sing hymns through the night?   What reveals the amazing love of God more: when a church is formed and flourishes in an open culture like ours or when it is formed and flourishes in spite of the brutal repression of the government as in China?   Nowhere does the Bible tell us to go looking for suffering.   However, the presence of suffering in the church is no evidence that the church is not the neon sign of God’s love and power in the world.   Rather the suffering of the church and of those who work for the church is the means God has appointed to create it and display his great love and power to the world.   The suffering of the church and of the church’s emissaries are the glory of the church.   They are the chief instruments God uses to build the church and manifest his greatness to and through the church.   The wisdom of God is shown in the church by his transforming the experience of suffering.   Suffering no longer calls into question God’s love but makes his love more apparent as the suffering of God’s people both creates the church and causes the church to worship God for his love in Christ.

God exhibits his awesome power and love by…

•  Transforming sinners

•  Displaying his wisdom in the church

•  And by…

III.   Making his love known to the church (vv. 14-21)

As I said at the beginning we don’t have time to unpack this amazing prayer that Paul prays for the church.   Let me just point out three things about the prayer.   First I want you to notice that Paul’s prayer is a response to what God is doing in the world.   His prayer is not the cause of what God does in the world.   Paul begins his prayer with “for this reason”.   What is the reason he prays?   The reason he prays is because God, through Christ, by means of the preaching of the gospel is forming the church to display his wisdom to the hostile forces in the heavenly realms.   Paul prays because of what God is doing.   Prayer is a response to what God is doing, it is not the cause of what God is doing.   Second, notice that what Paul asks God to do is to cause the people of God to be taken up with the love of God for them.   The center of Christian living, the focus of Christian hearts and minds is the great love of God for us in the suffering of Jesus Christ for sinners like us.   Finally, notice that the church that most clearly reveals the glory of God is the church that is taken up with the love of God for sinners.   Here is the center of our life together.   This is the reason for our existence as a church.   This is the means of our living together as a church.   We are to be so enamored with and consumed by this amazing love that we are taken up with God and so reveal his glory to angels, demons and all of creation forever.  

God exhibits his awesome power and love by…

•  Transforming sinners

•  Displaying his wisdom in the church

•  Making his love known to the church

Heb 13