A Minister of Mystery: Part Two

In Ephesians chapter 3, we looked last week at Ephesians 3, 1 through 7. This is the second part of something, but it's going to take a little bit of a different direction by just the nature of the text. And I'll Just mention to you now, theologically speaking, the doctrine of salvation is called soteriology. comes from the Greek word sozzo.

Soteros means save, to save sozzo. And the doctrine of the church is called ecclesiology. From the Greek word ekklesia, which means really meant an assembly or a gathering. Yeah. The first path.

of Ephesians is a wedding. between those two doctrines. It's a wedding between the doctrine of salvation and the doctrine of the church. The latter. coming along in what is to western Ears a little bit surprising.

Yeah. So salvation talked about in terms of the spiritual blessings that are afforded in Jesus in chapter 1, chapter 2, 1 through 10. You guys were with me and we saw the individual salvation that's afforded. Famous verses, for by grace you've been saved through faith, it's not of yourselves, right? It's a gift of God.

Not by works, so no one can boast, but we then find out in verse 10, where his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. And then in verse 11, it moves from an individual perspective of salvation to a corporate sense of salvation and what that means: that God would then give salvation to Gentiles like He did Jews, and He brings them in one new man. And then we have come to chapter 3, which is in many ways the outworking of the last part of chapter 2. But the surprising part is how tight, how close. Like dominoes, he is taking this and linking it to salvation.

in a way that is a little bit uncomfortable. if we're honest, for most of Western theology. We're not used to this. And that has to do with rhetoric and language that we have long used, that we grew up on, that we've not known outside, like we just say it. We talk about salvation in almost solely individual terms.

And so we think of it as something that is very personal to us, which it is personal to us, but we speak of it as our personal relationship with Christ. We talk about receiving him into our heart. We speak about it in terms of intimacy. We have songs, beautiful songs, that extol that very fact. And none of that in and of itself is wrong.

The problem is it's sort of like you're defining something and you're only telling half of the definition and you're not getting to the rest of it. And Ephesians 1 through 3 is trying to give you and I a holistic perspective of what it means when we talk about salvation and that salvation lands us in a place.

So last week, if you were in, I don't know if you come to the first service, I got a little fired up at the end of the service.

Somebody said to me afterwards, let us know how you really feel.

Okay. In the second service, I was probably a little less fired up. But Someone else made a comment as well.

So apparently, I'm an equal opportunity offender, which is good. But That It was just the beginning. For where we have to, and it's just the text, and I mean it, it's just with the text just leading us down a road. It's just telling us to go somewhere. And it's telling us.

to understand. to comprehend and grasp. The depth. of what it means. for your salvation.

to be emptied out in a local church. It's just that's simply where it's going. And so, to not teach about that very clearly would be to actually not teach the text of Scripture.

So, you're going to see it this morning. Um I'll give you a startling statistic. There's a book that came out last year called The Great Dechurching. Two pastors along with a sociologist, Christian sociologist named Ryan Burge. It teaches at I think it's northern Illinois or southern Illinois or Illinois somewhere in Illinois he's at.

And uh The book is filled with some pretty fascinating stats. I'm reading it now. But here's a startling one. When you think about the church and revival in America, you think First Great Awakening. Right.

Early portion of the 1700s. Second Great Awakening. About 1790 to 1840. And then The next sort of big kind of thing where you saw a lot of conversions were it was in the mid-20th century with the Billy Graham Crusades. I remember growing up and they were like on CBS.

Stuff like you imagine that today. Seeing that on CBS, that would be something else. But they were. According to the great D churching. More people.

Listen to this stat, and you got to think about this. More people have left the church. In the last 25 years, Then became Christians in the first, second, great awakening and all the Billy Graham Crusades combined.

Well in the last 25 years?

So since 1998 Basically. Or at the beginning of 2024. That has to kind of sink in for a little bit.

Now, there's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of reasons. Here's the church's contribution. It's not the only contribution, but a significant contribution is the hypocrisy that has become uh elevated in mainstream media. about church leadership.

That's a reason. That's a reason. This is one of the reasons why in a recent stat the people will trust all kinds of professions before they'll trust a pastor. That's sad to me. I mean, there was a day and age when you would actually, like, like remember Little House on the Prairie, who didn't trust Reverend Alden?

You know, I mean that guy's the most trustworthy guy in town. No longer. No longer. Um the world bec and the church has contributed to that. In significant ways.

There are other ways the church has contributed that are actually right. And what I mean by that is that culture has gone a direction. that is sort of a baptism of successive isms, and here's what I mean. Just take a couple of them for a moment so we get ourselves situated ideologically. We have long had individualism.

In fact, in some ways, individualism is an ism that America was built on. And so we look at things like the greatest generation had a seat of that. I mean, there's this incredible economic engine. I'm going to take care of my family. I'm going to, it's a land of opportunity, but it's the opportunity for me.

And so there's a place where there's a healthy individualism. But it's gotten baptized and gone really sideways. It's gotten baptized because when you take individualism and you add postmodernism to it, it doesn't do well together. Yeah. And they don't do well together because then you relativize an ethic according to an individual.

And the individual now conceives of themselves disconnected from a whole. That's what the two together do. And so, what happened then is that an idea called expressive individualism. mapped onto individualism. And now coupled with technology.

coupled with uh all of the social media capacities that we have. coupled with the fluidity of professional life and economic life. We now have a kind of notion that I am who I am and you should receive me as I am, no questions asked. In fact, if you don't, that's the great cardinal sin. That you've committed, the great cardinal sin you've committed.

I mean, we have right now. Our neighbors to the north, I don't know if you've seen this, but our neighbors to the north are moving to a direction legislatively, I don't know if it'll materialize or not and it'll actually come to fruition, but where you have certain things along the line that are deemed hate speech that actually could be punishable by life in prison. Like, we're seeing now the worst thing you can do is disaffirm. a human and the disaffirmation of somebody is is almost akin to physically assaulting and marring them. for good.

So expressive individualism's just taking on a a life of its own. Then when you have a world where you have a kind of pioneer spirit, a libertarianism on steroids, a kind of anti-authoritarianism, now you've doubled down in expressive individualism and you've rejected authority and then you have a consumeristic culture. Where now I'm just going to take not just you should receive me, but I get to take whatever I want and if I don't like what you're putting out, I'm out the door as quick as that. I don't want anything to do with it.

So the church has Given reason. And the culture is ready for all the reasons, and therefore we have this great de-churching that's happened. In fact, you even have writers who have sown the seeds of this.

So In a book that is In many ways, a really great book. I've quoted the book a number of times over the years. Um John Eldridge, who famously years ago became famous for writing Wild at Heart and Big men's ministry guy, and it's done a lot of good. Eldridge, in a book called The Journey of Desire, which is a lesser-known book of his, but uh was a a good book. Um in that book said from a Christian author may be the single worst thing I've ever read in print.

And I read it, I remember, I think I was in an airplane reading it, and I thought, no, he didn't. This is horrible. I wanted to stand up and jump out of the plane in a parachute. or without one after I read this. And here's what he said.

He's talking about The importance of desire in our lives, liberating us for desire, which has a certain place. In other words, his emphasis is not so much inappropriately on the idea that God made you as a creature of desire, which is true. And that you should Pursue that. Which enlivens your passions.

So far so good. Until I got to page 169. And then I got queasy. He says, those who have buried desire beneath years of duty and obligation may need to give all that a rest so that their hearts can come to the surface. Let me just pause here.

If you're in a job and you're doing some things that you don't like to do, here's my encouragement to you: keep doing them. It just doesn't keep doing them. That's part of what it means to be. Be diligent and work. Abandon all but the most essential duties for a while.

You still have to pay the bills, but everything you can jettison you should. Do nothing unless it reflects your true desire. Remember the Pharisees? Their religious activities deadened them to the point that they couldn't even recognize God when he stood before them. When our deepest treasure becomes our most dutiful burden, it really kills our hearts.

And then he said this. You might even need to give up going to church for a while or reading your Bible. I stopped going to church for a year. It was one of the most refreshing years of my life. I hadn't abandoned God, and I very much sought out the company of my spiritual companions.

What I gave up was the performance of having to show up every Sunday morning with my happy face on. When I read that I thought Um If you have a problem coming and putting on your happy face, Um Why would you abandon the church? That sounds to me like someone saying. I really want to develop my skills at my job, so I quit. I really wanted to face my deepest issues, so I ran away from them all.

I really wanted to get better at my marital relationship, so I separated. You don't get better by avoidance. You don't get better by walking away. You don't get better by vacating. Will your life be easier?

Of course, it's easier every time you vacate uncomfortability. But since when is easier better? Since when is the load road less traveled somehow less beneficial? And I read that and I thought, oh dear God, some people are going to pick this book up. And they're going to go, yes.

Oh, yeah. Because I felt this. I feel caged in. And now. I've been set free.

So I couldn't burn it because I needed it for an illustration. Nah. There's other parts of it I like. You gotta hold on to the good. But it's discouraging.

Because that's where a lot of people are. Hey. By the way, you don't go to church, you go to a Sunday morning event that's really important. But that's not the church. The church is the amorphous gathering.

It includes this. It includes it, by the way. But it's bigger than this. Um but if you're having a hard time. And if you don't really want to be here.

Let me just initially, before we even get into our message, say that's all the more reason you should come. I actually think the opposite's true. In my life, my experience tells me that when I feel like I don't want to do something, I almost always have to lean in and do it. Almost always. Because my natural bent is to Incline toward the negative.

It's not to incline toward that which ultimately liberates. You'll be freer. You'll be freer through the pain of growth. then you will by avoiding it. Ephesians 3, 1 through 7.

And we'll bic up in verse 8 for our sermon today. For this reason, Paul writes, I Paul, a prisoner of Christ. Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you've heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. Which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it's now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is.

That the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. And that verse we saw last week was the beginning of the wedding of soteriology and ecclesiology. I hope you see that. Gospel in a community, one new man, that he has discussed in chapter 2:11 through 22. Verse 7 of this gospel, I was made a minister.

according to the gift of God's grace, which is given to me by the working of his power. And now we're going to begin in verse 8. And yes, I have eight different things, but we are, and I mean this, I have to go quickly because there's eight of them, and so we'll move fairly rapidly. Verse 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. And to bring to light. I it's the word fotizo, like photo. Photon. To bring into the light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

Eight terms to help you remember the connection between the mystery and the people of God. Number one. Oh, I'm going to skip that. Number one. Proclaimed.

I want to give you a term, proclaimed. Um As we begin. The idea he starts with is that the church is the revealed mystery of God.

So you have Your salvation in Christ that comes and it comes to you who are Gentiles, he tells them. And now that salvation domino, so to speak, of Ephesians 2:1 through 10 falls immediately into 11 through 22 and presses you. into this one new Entity. this one new entity called the church. I want you to notice just a few things, though, in this text.

If you look in verse 8 again, look at Paul's self-perception. He's a proclaimer. Yeah. I'm preaching here. I'm teaching you about how this comes together.

And he describes himself as, he says, though I am the very. Least. In Greek, it's a comparative that's placed on top of a superlative.

So if you were to make it literal and it wouldn't make a lot of sense in English, you'd say something like, he's saying, I am the leaster. I'm the leaster of them all. That you thought there was the least, and there is the least, and then if you compare me to the least, I'm even leaster still. He's doubling this language of all the saints. He says in 1 Corinthians 15, 9, For I'm the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecute the church of God.

So he sees himself as the bottom of the rank of the apostles, but then in 1 Timothy 1, 15 and 16, he says the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost. But I receive mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example of those who are to believe in him for eternal life. I don't deserve salvation at all, and I'm the worst of all sinners, but he came to me. He came to me.

He bestowed it.

So he moves from least of the apostles to I'm the chief of sinners. Here, the comparison in the verse, in verse 8, is the least of all the saints.

So Paul does not see himself in exalted status. He does not see himself as somebody who comes to the church to now be the one to tell them because he's figured it all out. He comes humbled at the fact that he would be able to do so and never disconnected from the dark side of his own past narrative. He's always in tune with that.

Now that makes him the kind of person that has the credibility to both encourage and admonish in the same breath. Because he can empathize, but he can also know what it is to move from darkness to light. And so, in the authenticity of that, he comes in his self-perception. And he says he's privileged to do it. He says this grace was.

To me.

So, this gift of the power of God, we've talked about that, so we don't need to belabor it, to preach to the Gentiles. And I'm not the biggest fan of this particular translation in the SV, the unsearchable translation. Riches of Christ, it's okay, but the idea here is not that there's so many riches in Jesus that we can never get to the end of the catalog. That's not really the intent of the term. And that searchable makes it feel a little bit like that.

Um Like if you said like the inexhaustible or something like that. But here's more what it's saying. It's not so much an emphasis upon you can't get through all the riches that Jesus has afforded you, which may be the case. It's rather the idea of unfathomable. The idea isn't that you can't get to them all.

The idea is even when you get to them, you can't get them. Even when you dwell on them. You can't touch the depth of them. It's not about breadth, it's about depth. It's about sky's the limit in terms of being able to grasp what it means that I would wake up this morning.

And I would be given life and breath and the mercy of being able to engage you all this morning. That you'd walk through that door this morning, and I'd be able to look at many of you outside of some of you who decided to walk through this other door. But there were people there. to greet you and I'm glad for that. But when you came through And I was able to say good morning to you.

Like That is only by grace. Not just the breath and the good morning, but that we get to welcome each other as brothers and sisters in the context of a community that'll go on forever. Like that's glorious. That's amazing. And I can't even get there.

I can't even understand the beginnings of that. I can't understand why God. In fact, it's sort of this oddity. It's funny because when you talk, if you engage atheists, one of the things you'll see with atheists is they think that Christians are rather narcissistic. And that Christians are narcissistic because the idea that this God who created everything, who's so vast, right, in the universe that continues, and they'll give you all the stats on the universe, which are awesome because it only proves the point.

But they'll tell you all these wonderful things. And they'll say, now, imagine you think. That that God is hung up on you? And the answer is yeah. It's awesome!

It's awesome and it has nothing to do with me. Because the sun is way cooler than I am. Li like like the moon is really much cooler than I am. The stars have a lot more to offer than I do. And yet you.

And yet you. And what it says is about him, but they don't get they're not grabbing. That they don't see the beauty and the majesty of that, the wonder of that. Of course, they don't. I don't even get it, it's unfathomable.

Why God would perseverate about me. It's unconscionable. But it's true. And this is what Paul's saying. I can tell you this, I can tell you this, I can tell you this.

And you might leave, Paul says, thinking, wow, woo! That's glorious. And he's gonna go, you know, you still don't get it. Yeah, I don't know. You understand how amazing it is.

The unfathomable. Riches. of Christ. And then to bring it into light. To bring it into light, the plan of God that's revealed here, right?

And we spent a lot of time on that.

Okay. For everyone, what is the plan, the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things?

So, Paul says, this is what I get to proclaim. The church is the revealed. Mystery of God. It's this two-part. He comes to bring gospel grace to you, and then he comes to cash you out with others into this community.

And now he's going to move. in that part of the mystery. Still a minister of mystery. He's just explaining now the other part of this, which has to do with the church.

So verse 10 is where a bunch of our points come from, and we have to just pay close attention to the language.

So that It's called a hena clause in Greek. You have different kind of clauses that start with so that or with this Greek word hina. And this is what you could call a purpose clause. He's saying that he comes and proclaims. Preaches revealing the mystery For the purpose of the revelation of the wisdom of God in the church itself.

That is, he preaches this gospel for what purpose?

So that The wisdom of God that he's about to talk about will be revealed. In the kind of thing. that the church is. The church was formed by God's clear intent. That is to say that if you think that he came and you say, he came to save me from my sin, You again are telling A true part of the story, but it's only a part.

He came to save you. for himself So that you would live in what Jesus calls the good news of the kingdom. That's how he talked about the gospel. the realm where God and Christ rules, and what is it that Christ rules right now? His church.

So he rescues you but doesn't just leave you. He doesn't just buoy you in the water. Instead, he brings you to the land of the church. And he places you there. It's the A and the B in the mystery.

It's the beginning and ultimately the end in many ways, because even as we go into glory, we'll go in as the church. We saw that. Last two weeks ago. About the new Jerusalem. And we will come as his bride.

in that context.

So what does that mean? Uh It means that I'm supposed to find new life. In the air? And within the movements. of this.

Love you. That's what I'm supposed to do. It's actually why if you are healthy. Um it's the just so you know, the only reason we do this live feed thing is because of people who are aren't healthy. They like physically can't come.

That's why we do it. There isn't any other reason we do the live feed. That we we we want you here. And the reason is you're not a consumer, you're a contributor. Contributors come.

Like like like like don't just hang out out there. Contributors come. Right?

So I've wrestled. This is fully candid. I don't know if I've even said this upfront before. I've wrestled with getting rid of the live feed. I really have.

And I don't because I want some people who can't be here physically to still be able to take in what God's doing here. But I've wrestled with it because I don't want it to turn you from. Two weeks here. Or rather, four weeks here to two weeks here. Because two weeks you can take it in someplace else.

It's not taking it in. We are contributors in the life of the body. You right now are contributing because you're attending through the power of the Spirit to the preached word of God. And there's engagement that happens in that. There's reciprocity.

You can talk to others in here about that this morning. You can pray with each other before you go out those doors this morning. You can grab a brother or sister and lift up needs before you leave. You can engage incarnationally this morning. There's something else that's happening here because the dynamism of new life in community is incarnational with each other.

And this is one of the purposes that Paul has for his whole preaching. It's still press people into this context. The church, pathway, the church is the avenue. By which God works. Look at your text.

He says So that Through he doesn't say in In Greek. Use the word dia through. That is, there's something that the church is being instrumentalized. Yeah. through the church.

The manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly. places. Doing something. Through The church. Let me just put up a series of things for you to just highlight.

Where's scripture that could go with all these, right? It's the church that forms the present temple of the living God. We saw that. That's Ephesians 2, 19 through 22. It's the church that Christ purifies, feeds, and care for us.

Where's that? He's going to talk about it in Ephesians 5, a text that largely we talk about only about marriage, and yet it's a lot about the church. and what Jesus is doing in regard to the church. It's the church. that holds out the truth.

1 Timothy 3, 15 and 16 point this out to us. It is a pillar and buttress of the truth. And it is the church where social ministry finds its best expressions. 1 Timothy 5, and you see the church serving widows. You see James call the church to remember orphans and widows.

You see, as our brother Chris comes up here, he's telling us this: why? He's telling us this because there's a great social ministry downtown. that is being led by competent people, and if you as an individual would like to be moved by the plights of those individuals, you could go serve in that. Not really. He's telling it to us because he's informing the church of the living God that is a pillar and buttress of the truth.

That our calling, which is what the Jerusalem leaders told Paul in Galatians 2:10, he said they commissioned me for ministry, and the only thing they said to me is: remember, the poor, the very thing I was eager to do, is part of the mission of the church.

So, you aren't being a good citizen when you bring a can here and a food drive. You're being a stone in a temple of the living God. When you do that. Because that's part of the mission of the church. is to do that.

We have to place ourselves in the narrative, not separate and individualize and micro our story out of the narrative. And when we do that, then we wonder why we feel disconnected. You have to place it back in. And he's pointing out here. The church Is that thing through which God works in the world?

He could have chosen any entity if he wanted, but he chose the church. He chose the church. Four. Pixelated. I just wanted to use that word.

The church gives a picture of the multifaceted wisdom of God. But I'm not really making that up, by the way. It's right here. You see the word manifold? You betcha that's not a word you use very much anyway.

So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God. The word manifold was used of uh Mainly artifacts, like Cloths. Garments. crowns that were woven together. with multiple colors.

In Polu Poikilas. is the Greek word. The last half of that, poikilos, is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament for Joseph's coat of many colors. It's m multicolored is the idea. He's speaking about the diversity of the church and that in the diversity is wisdom.

In the diversity is wisdom.

So so what what's that look like? How is the multifaceted wisdom? displayed in the church. Let me give you a few. Number one, it's cultural and ethnic diversity.

That's one way that it is. One way that it is is that we can worship the Lord through a variety of cultural and ethnic forms. We can rejoice as the church collective. In all different kinds of cultural dynamics and carrying different ethnic traditions and the like, and we can celebrate those. And we can celebrate the varying perspectives that emerged from that.

It's by its socio-economic diversity. This is something the early church struggled with. How do we know that? We know that because of the very institution of communion. The occasion for the institution of communion was basically pot luck or pot providence, depending on your theology, I suppose.

Dinners. Where in the church in Corinth are having these dinners, and the wealthy people are bringing, you can check out the context in 1 Corinthians 11, wealthy people are bringing. Food for themselves and enough food to spare for everybody else, but they're not letting anybody else eat it.

So, you got poor people in the church coming. They want to celebrate as well. They want to gather around this love feast, this dinner afterwards, where then they would remember the death and resurrection of Christ and His sacrifice for them. But they're not allowed, they don't have any food to eat. And He says to the wealthy, what's wrong with you guys?

Are you Chris? You mean you come and you celebrate the gospel that redeems your poor soul, and yet you hold on to your material wealth and won't share it with your brothers or sisters, so you're happy to marginalize the horizontal body and celebrate the vertical relationship you have with God? You're a hypocrite. And so that's his Institution of communion comes on the back side of that in his warning about disregarding the body. It's all about disregarding the local assembly and marginalizing one another so you receive the gospel, but you can't dispense it sideways.

And his counsel is then don't receive it here. Don't celebrate it here. You're not living consistently in that. James, same thing. James, different issue, but James and James 2 says, you guys have a problem.

You'll celebrate the wealthy, you'll bring them up and you'll give them these great seats and you'll seats of honor. You give them special treatment. That's not what the church is about. The church is for people who are broken. By the way, that means wealthy people who are broken, and it means poor people who are broken.

Brokenness is actually doesn't stop, by the way, based upon economic status. I don't know if you've noticed that. There's a lot of wealthy addicts out there.

Socioeconomic diversity. is something we would celebrate.

Something we would cherish and treasure.

Something we would hope. If you're a white collar person, I hope you feel accepted here. If you're a blue-collar person, I hope you feel accepted here. And I sure hope you don't think a whole lot about your collar. While you're here.

by its diversity of personality. I mean Look, we're all kinda weird. Uh we're all Strange Rangers. We all have our own, but that's good. That's good.

Because there's some weirdos that you need to reach that I just can't reach. And there's some weirdos I can reach that you just can't reach. They need a weirdo like your weirdo. We're all living in Portland one way or another. But it's diversity of gifting.

This is what he celebrates in First Corinthians twelve, Romans twelve. Right?

Hands and feet, mouths, and ears, and eyes, and all these things that the church is gifted with. But the final one's important by its diversity coalescing in its unity around the gospel. That is also how the wisdom of God gets displayed when I appreciate you. It gets displayed when I say, man. It's good to have you.

As you. and receive you. in that way. not as a sinless individual, but as a sinful saint in a community trying to live for the glory of God. with sometimes hard edges and sometimes soft spots all abounding.

Presentation: The church displays the wisdom of God.

Now, this is going to be weird. I bet you did not think, I've got to get to church because those angels are watching. I got we gotta worship today. Because I don't want to disappoint the angels.

Well, you might be surprised what the Bible says about this. He says, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers, authorities, in the heavenly places. That's not Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Um It's not.

Now, it is used of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 1 Timothy 2, the phrase rulers and authorities, but not here. Here, this idea of heavenly places coupled with rulers and authorities. Indicates angelic beings, and it indicates, by the way, if you just survey heavenly places five times. Throughout Ephesians. It indicates that it refers to spiritual realms, those populating spiritual realms, and those populating spiritual realms.

Both good and evil.

So it's used in Ephesians 6 in spiritual warfare terminology, rules and authorities in heavenly realms or heavenly places.

Now This has to do with the recategorization of how we think about it, because sometimes I think from if you grew up in the church from early on, you're sort of placed in a realm where you conceive of like heaven. Up up. Out. Hell Down. Away.

Out. Apart. Good, bad, and you have this kind of concept. And yes, there's a real heaven, and yes, there's a real hell. But understand that the moment we speak of heaven and hell, we're not going out within our dimensions anywhere.

We're going to a different dimension of existence. What you should know is that there are angels hearing the sermon this morning. And if that weirds you out, I'm sorry. You just need to get a new epistemology, a new way of knowing, because it's true.

Now, I don't know. What they look like. And I don't know where they are. Although with George, you look very angelic. I don't know.

But what I do know is the present. Because the Bible points out to me repeatedly. that they are. Right?

Let's just we'll take a a quick tour. 1 Corinthians 4, 9, 4, It seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of a procession like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe. to angels as well as to men. Why would he even care to mention that?

Because it fits a larger theology of his. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head. This isn't about head coverings. The text talks about that. The point that he's talking about is domestic order being reflected in ecclesiological order.

But here's what I want you to see in the text: angels are watching the local gathering. That's the point he's making. Angels are watching the local gathering. They care about my ethical life as I land in this place and space. 1 Timothy 5:21, I charge you in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels.

to keep these instructions without partiality and to do nothing out of favoritism. Have you ever once thought I should obey the Lord? Because angels are watching me. Does it ever occurred to you that real localized spiritual beings are watching you disobey God on a regular basis. And that you're not alone, even when you are privately in front of your computer.

It's you and some angels. Like you have to think that through. You have to think that through. Hebrews 12, 22. And 23 and 24.

But you have come to Mount Zion. To the heavenly Jerusalem. We saw this a couple weeks ago, but I want to emphasize a different portion. The city of the living God, you've come to thousands and thousands. What what?

of angels. Enjoyful assembly to the church of the firstborn.

So where are the angels? But the church. See it? Mm-hmm. Whose names are written in heaven, you've come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of the righteous men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

One final text: It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you, by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. Here's the point: angels are literally among us, and they are learning about salvation. By observing the church worshiping and growing. Angels are not omniscient.

Angels are not omnipotent. Angels are not omnipresent. They are finite spiritual beings in a different dimension of existence who are watching this dimension and are learning, as one commentator points out. The church is graduate school for angels.

So we come together. And there's more than just us. that this is about. It's a presentation. of the wisdom of the sovereign God in the heavenlies.

Number six, the church is the intended result of the work of Christ very quickly, verse 11. This was according to the eternal purpose that he He has now realized in, and I really want you to just emphasize and see that title. Christ Jesus. Our Lord. He's realized it in Christ, the anointed one, in Jesus, this anointed Messiah who's fully man, our collective, the church, Lord, one who reigns over us.

All that work, Messiah incarnation. Rulership. cashes out in that little pronoun. Our Our, because we are this collective product as a result. You see it, by the way.

I'll give you a verse, you see it tucked away in. For the grace of God, famous verses. Appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, to live self-control, to bright, godly lives in this age, waiting for our future, a blessed hope, the appearing of the great glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who, number one, gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness. But watch, purpose of His death. To purify for himself a people for his own possessions who are zealous for good works.

The A, your salvation to redeem you. The B, a people. This is the intent, the purpose. For Christ's Work. Verse 12.

in whom we have And you get these three terms. Boldness. Boldness. The word for boldness was coined in Greek of the free speech of the Athenians in their government.

So think of your right of free speech. That found its political origins in the Greek experiment of governance. In the Republic. And that free speech, which had with it in that culture, a kind of sense of. Frankness.

A sort of rawness, a kind of tell it like it is. was the idea. You even risk, in a sense, the offense. That's some of what was intended in that idea in the Athenian culture. You say it.

And that's the term he uses. You come to God how? boldly. It says with access. With confidence.

See these three terms? He's bundling them all together to just communicate one central idea: that the church has rightful access to God because of Christ. But that rightful access is a privilege, and that rightful access is the kind of thing where you come into a room that God says you belong. You ever get uncomfortable if you read your Bible, if you were to place, like, if you talk to God the way Moses talked to God? Yeah.

Moses really gets at it with God.

Now, I'm not telling you to be disrespectful in how you talk to the one who made you. Job learned the hard way not to do that. But Job also was honest. Uh Moses. Wrestled.

Didn't play games, shared what was really going on. The point isn't. That somehow you ought to walk on a knife edge with that. The point is, you actually can do that. Respectfully.

Because he says that that's what he wants from you. That's what he wants from you. Like I want a relationship with people in my family where they don't feel like they're on eggshells with me Nobody wins in that. I don't want them to talk to me feeling like we have gamesmanship. I don't want to have to ask nine times four different ways to get an answer.

I want him just to tell me. And the reason is that They know that I love them and I know they love me. We can handle honesty. A lot better than we can handle gamesmanship. The Lord would like you to just be honest.

Just be honest with him. Share your heart with him. And he's saying here: the church is the kind of entity that can do that because of what Christ has done. We have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him because we have put our lives before Him and trust Him.

So I ask you, verse 13. Final point. Not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you, which is your glory. Praise. The church glories in the fruit of suffering for the sake of the gospel.

I read this first and I thought, what does he mean when he says that? I ask you. Not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you. Where is he in prison?

Okay, I get that part, but then he says, which is your glory? What? How is Paul being in prison there? Glory. Because In the orchestration of God's economy, The advancement of his kingdom moves on the backs of suffering saints.

And the fact that people suffer So that others can receive the good gospel of Jesus Christ is not something that those people should feel bad for. They should instead say, God, you are so merciful that you spurred the hearts of people. to be willing to endure for me. I have nothing but praise for you. You glory.

In the result, Paul isn't in prison going, Can you believe it? I sacrificed for these people and look at this mess I'm in. He says, guys, rejoice. Are you kidding me? We have eternity together.

What's a little pain here and there? When we can celebrate forever. Together to the praise of His. Glory. So And my counsel to you is Contribute, love, lean in, own the mission of the church.

Global, yeah. Local? This church, yes. As God, would have you Be just a Christian. That's just what it means to be a Christian.

It just means that you're somebody who loves the work of God's kingdom and you love what he's doing as the mystery, the light of his mystery is being unfolded through the manifold wisdom. of a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-class, multi-personality, weirdo-laden church. Father, I ask that you would bless us and that you would help us to honor, glorify, praise your name in every way. that you would be the one that we seek and serve. And that we would celebrate you by celebrating together as your body.

In Jesus' name, amen.