Did you ever wonder why?
Why is it called a hamburger when it's made out of beef?
Why do you put suits in garment bags and put garments in suitcases?
Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why do they lock gas station bathrooms—are they afraid someone is going to sneak in there and clean them?
Why do banks charge you a non-sufficient funds fee on money they know you don't have?
Why are they called apartments when they're stuck together?
Have you ever asked yourself why God does things? Some things are obviously great pieces of design work. The wings on a bird are amazing. So is the way that our legs and arms work. But what, exactly, is the point of a mosquito?
Some people say that we shouldn’t ask questions about why God does things, we should just accept things the way they are. But Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” In other words, even if God has not made something plain, that’s no reason not to try and understand it. It’s part of being human to try and uncover mysteries. But there are some things that we can’t search out, no matter how hard we try; things that need to be revealed, rather than discovered.
For instance, the fact that God is a personal being, rather than some kind of impersonal force, is something that has to be revealed. You can argue logically for some kind of first cause behind the universe, and many physicists would agree with you on that. But that’s a long way from the idea that the reality behind the universe is actually a living, personal being who loves and cares for the creatures he has made. That has to be revealed. Unless God tells us that about himself, we simply won’t know it. We can’t figure that out.
It’s the same with the Trinity. If God hadn’t revealed himself as one being, eternally existent in three persons, we could never have figured that one out for ourselves.
In the New Testament, something that once was hidden but has now been revealed is called a “mystery.” That’s a bit of a problem because the normal meaning of “mystery” in English is pretty close to the exact opposite. The dictionary defines a mystery as, “something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained,” whereas the New Testament uses the word to mean, “something that cannot be figured out, but has been revealed.”
In the passage we read this morning Paul goes off on one of his digressions. He’s just beginning to talk about his ministry to the Gentiles when he is quite literally overwhelmed with wonder at the message he has to share and goes of at a tangent. “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— (Here comes the tangent) 2 Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation.”
You may find this hard to believe, but this happens to me on a regular basis when I’m talking to people about Wentworth. People will ask me what I’m doing these days and I’ll say I’m pastoring, and then I’m off… I’m just so amazed at God’s grace to me in bringing me to this place, and what he is doing here, and the potential for ministry, that I will often just go off on a tangent when the topic of the church comes up. It’s like, “Wow, who would have thought that God would do that?” That’s where Paul’s at in Ephesians 3, “Wow! Who would have thought that God would do a thing like that?”
The
thing that throws Paul for a loop is, that
through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members
together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus
We’ve already talked about this quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. This verse is essentially a condensed version of the whole of chapter 2. What God has revealed is that, in Christ there is room for everyone to come to know God. Nobody is excluded. This is the good news – that’s what the word “gospel” means, good news. That we are included in God’s plans for humanity. That we can part of his family. That Jesus has broken down the barriers between us and God, and between us and each other.
For Paul this isn’t just a message, a body of information that he
can take or leave. It has profound personal consequences for his life. This is
something that we don’t always grasp. That truth has consequences. At some
point we have to get beyond sitting and nodding and saying, “that’s interesting.”
If it’s true we have to do something about it.
For Paul, he says that the result was that has become a servant of the gospel. That means that he serves the message, it doesn’t serve him. He does what’s best for seeing this message move forward. That’s why, elsewhere, he says he becomes a Jew to Jews and a Gentile to Gentiles, because that’s what helps get the message across to people.
Do we serve the gospel, or do we try to make it serve us? I would suggest that much of our “Christian Culture;” is about making the gospel serve us. Not just things like fish stickers, and gospel text fridge magnets, and T-shirts with Christian slogans – what Keith Green once called “Jesus junk.” When we see the gospel as only a solution to problems, with ourselves at the centre, we’re still making the gospel serve us, it’s still all about us.
I have to ask myself the same question every week when I stand at this pulpit. Am I serving the gospel, or am I making it serve me? Am I doing all in my power to make the message understandable so the Holy Spirit can take it and apply it to our hearts? Or am I more interested in crafting a nice sermon that people will appreciate and that will advance my own reputation?
Pray for me that I would serve the gospel, not the other way around.
For Paul, one consequence of this message, this revealed mystery, was a call to service. Another was humility.
One of my profs at college characterized Paul’s letters, only partially in jest, as saying, “That’s enough about Jesus, let’s talk about me.” We know a lot about Paul’s internal workings simply because he tells us about how he feels. I choose to think the best of him, that he’s seeking to be transparent with people so they’re dealing with the real Paul, not some mask that he puts up in front of himself.
So, as
soon as he mentions his call to be a servant of the gospel, something that could
be spun to make him out as something special, he counteracts that by saying
that the calling he has is, by the gift of God’s
grace given me through the working of his power. It’s all from God. God’s gift, God’s grace, God’s power. It’s not
about Paul. In fact, he describes himself as, less than the least of all God’s people.
I think Paul was truly amazed every time he reflected on the fact that God would use him. When he talks about himself in his letters, but it’s often with this sense of wonder that God would use him in this way. Remember what Paul was doing when God met him. He was persecuting God’s people, dragging them off to jail and at least approving of their murder. He never forgot where he came from. He never took any credit for what he became or what he had accomplished.
He isn’t putting on a show of false humility. Neither is he simply putting himself down. I don’t think Paul suffered from low self esteem. He knew his abilities as an organiser and as a leader – that’s why the Sanhedrin had sent him to Damascus to shut down those Christians in the first place. He’s simply following his own advice in Phil 2:3 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.”
Paul
realises that because he understands this message of Christ he is called to
serve it, and serve it humbly. So he has a strong sense of obligation, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ, 9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this
mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
This was Paul’s call, to preach the gospel of Christ, with all of its richness, to the Gentiles. I’m sure it burned in him in the same way that Jeremiah experienced it in Jeremiah 20:8-9 “So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”
What is your call? What is it that burns in your bones and won’t let you alone until you fulfill it? For Paul it was preaching. What is it for you? In college there was a young woman who had a huge heart for broken and wounded people. We were able, as a group, to affirm what we saw in her and that encouraged her to go into chaplaincy. For other people it’s teaching, or serving, or reaching those on the margins. All of these things grow out of God’s grace that comes to us in Jesus. Each one is a valid expression of what God has done in our lives.
When Paul came to faith in Christ, God didn’t make him a different person. He was still Paul; forceful, a leader, an organiser, a bit abrasive at times, but now he had a new direction, as a servant of the gospel. What is your call that grows out of the gospel? There has been a feeling in the church that the call to preach is somehow higher or better than any other. That idea has been encouraged by a lot of preachers, and by the fact that much of the New Testament was written by a preacher, namely Paul. But the gospel is proclaimed in ways other than our words. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”
We’ll get into the question of gifts and ministries in the fall but, for now, I would encourage you to reflect on what it is that burns in you as an expression of the gospel, and seek ways to fulfil that call.
We started out with the question, “Why?” and at various points in Ephesians 2 and 3 Paul gives us reasons for the things that God does. In Eph 2:7 he tells us that God has saved us and made us his children in Jesus, not primarily for our own good, but “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” It’s not about us. It’s all about God.
[There’s a worship song called “Above All” that I really quite like, except for the last line. Speaking of Jesus going to the cross it says, “You took the fall and thought of me, above all.” Actually, the Bible doesn’t say that. The New Testament almost always says that Jesus went to the cross “for us,” in the sense of in our place. But when it comes to reasons, it speaks of other things like him looking to the joy set before him (the joy of serving the greater purposes of God) and it says here that he did it to show off his Father’s grace and goodness “above all.” We are saved to glorify God.]
Then in Eph 3:15 we’re told that his purpose in breaking down the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, “was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” In other words it was to stop us fighting each other and fighting God.
And in
Ephesians 3:10 we’re told why God has revealed this mystery – this new thing –
that all of humanity now, potentially, has access to God. It says that, 10
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should
be made known
So what is the purpose of the church? To have meetings on Sunday mornings? To run Bible studies? To run the drop in and the Out of the Cold programme? To run youth and children’s programmes? To get people saved?
Those are all good things to do, but they aren’t the purpose of the church. According to this text, the purpose of the church is nothing less than to make known the manifold wisdom of God. Just like the intake or exhaust manifold on a car engine has many pipes that run into one, so God’s wisdom has all kinds of different aspects but it’s still one, and the church’s purpose is to display God’s wisdom. Is there any greater calling?
[My first job when I arrived in Canada was working for Young Drivers of Canada. Not as an instructor; I managed the car leases, installed the dual brakes, and cleaned and stocked the classrooms. In my resume it reads, “Assistant to the Manager.” Actually I was a general dogsbody.
I heard the training videos so often that I can still repeat some parts of them, like “look well ahead and check your rear view mirror every 5 to 10 seconds.” As you probably realise, one reason instructors focus on “looking well ahead” is because that helps keep the car going in a straight line. If you start focussing on what you’re doing inside the car – the speedometer, the gas gauge, changing gear – the car starts to weave.
Your speed, how much gas you have and the gear you’re in are important, but they’re not as important as looking where you’re going. After all, you got in the car to go somewhere, not check the gas gauge.]
The things the church does; outreach, teaching, evangelism, are important, but they’re not the purpose of the church. We need to get away from this idea that the church is here to fulfil my needs, or the needs of those around us, or to carry on a particular ministry. Those are important aspects of our task, but our purpose is to display God’s wisdom, to bring glory to him.
And it isn’t just to display his wisdom to the people around us. It says that we’re here to display God’s wisdom, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. God wants all of creation to know what he’s like and he chooses us to make that known, even to spiritual being far more powerful than we are.
This is why I believe in the church. Not because we’re anything special in ourselves. Not because of what we can do or accomplish in the world. But because God has revealed that the church is at the centre of his purposes for all of creation. Jesus died to give birth to the church. The Holy Spirit lives within and works through the church. And the church really is the hope of the world.
This
is why I worked to see churches planted among Afghans and in Central Asia. Not
just to see individual believers come to faith, but to see churches planted.
Because, His intent was
that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.
You may think that you’re nobody important, that we’re just a struggling little church, in a struggling neighbourhood, of a struggling city. At one level that may be true, 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong…(1 Cor 1.27) And, amazing as it may be, he has chosen us to display his wisdom in the world.