What a Mystery (Part 1 of 2)

How is it that someone can read the Bible or hear it preached and yet it just doesn't make sense to them? Why would anyone not believe the good news of the Gospel?

What's missing? We'll find out today on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg is teaching a message he's titled, What a Mystery. We're going to read from the Bible in Acts chapter 22.

I invite you to turn there. Paul is given the opportunity to address the people, and Luke records the event, Brothers and fathers, hear the defense that I now make before you. And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even more quiet. And he said, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, as all of you are this day. I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished.

As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And I answered, Who are you, Lord? And he said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. Now those who were with me saw the light but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me. And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said to me, Rise and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do. And since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came to me, and standing by me said to me, Brother Saul, receive your sight.

And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. And he said, The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the righteous one and to hear a voice from his mouth. For you will be a witness for him to every one of what you have seen and heard.

And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name. When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me. And I said, Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving, watching over the garments of those who killed him. And he said to me, Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.

Amen. Well, I invite you to turn back to Ephesians, which is where we're studying. Ephesians chapter 3. Let me just read these verses again, the opening verses, and then we'll pray. Ephesians 3, 1, For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for 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've 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 has 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, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Father, we ask for the enabling of the Holy Spirit as we study these verses together. Grant that we might enter into all that you have for us as you instruct us from the Bible. And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, surely no one was more amazed at the grace of God than Saul of Tarsus. We read earlier from Acts chapter 22, and I hope that your breath was caught by the way in which he acknowledged his part in the persecution of the Lord Jesus Christ, when he says, And I said, Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. It wasn't that he had just a sort of marginal interest in Christian things.

He detested it. And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him. And it was in that context that the Lord spoke to him and said, Go, for I will send you away to the Gentiles. And as we acknowledged this morning, this is an extraordinary choice of an apostle to reach the Gentile world.

From a human perspective, it would seem almost as if the Lord could not have chosen a more unlikely person to go to the Gentiles—he who had been so opposed to everything that was represented in their quest for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I always like to imagine these various heroes of the Bible joining us in worship, and if he were to join us, I know that he would enter wholeheartedly into our singing, and would have sung this song with us just now, and would gladly have sung along, I know not why God's wondrous grace to me has been made known, nor why, unworthy as I am, he bought me for his own. And as we saw in the opening couple of verses this morning, Paul identifies himself as a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of the Gentiles, and he knows, he assumes, that they have heard that he is also a steward of the grace of God.

Grace, he points out, that was given to him in order that it might be for them. And you will see that he takes it that his readers are aware of this, and aware also, in verse 3, of how the mystery was made known to me, he says, by revelation, as I have written briefly. Now, this mystery—the word mystery—comes a number of times here in the text. There in verse 3, again in verse 4, the insight into the mystery. In verse 6, this mystery is, in verse 9, the plan of the mystery hidden for ages.

So clearly, this is a very important word, and it is important for us to understand what it is that Paul is referencing when he speaks of this mystery. Some of you, like me, enjoy mystery stories. You have enjoyed them since childhood, if you're like me. I was thinking about it this afternoon as I was pondering the word again, and I was a great fan of Enid Blyton, and she wrote a series of mysteries—I think they were called the Barney Mysteries—and they all began with R. Yeah, with R. So you had the Ragamuffin Mystery, you had the Rocking Down Mystery, you had the Roulaby Fair Mystery, you had the Rattatat Mystery, you had the Rub-a-Dub Mystery, and they featured Roger and Diana and Snubby and a new friend that they had made called Barney. You can tell it was highly intellectual stuff, just from the thing. But I loved those mysteries, and I devoured them. That's why I remember them, and I would try and figure out the ending, the puzzle that was represented.

Why has Snubby gone down in the basement and never come back up again? There must be some explanation for this. And that love of mystery has continued.

I've devoured the Ellis Peters books, if you know her, P. D. James as well, and it continues to this day. And essentially, what's involved in the reading of those mysteries is trying to unravel a puzzle to, by human reason and deduction, try and get ahead of the storyline, as it were, so that you might figure out the answer to the question. Now, it is important for us to recognize that that is not the way this word mystery, which appears here, misterion, in Greek, is being used by Paul. In fact, nothing could be further from that. This word mystery, and the way that Paul uses it here, is used of something that actually cannot be deduced by human wisdom.

The normal mystery book, you can try and figure it out. No, says Paul, the mystery to which I'm referring is something that you cannot come to by unaided human wisdom, but you can only get to it by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. So when he uses this terminology, he is speaking about truth that is hidden from human knowledge, human understanding, but disclosed by the revelation of God. Or, if you like—and I just try and remind myself by using language like this—it is truth arrived at not by speculation, nor actually by investigation, but by revelation. And Paul is clear about this always and in every situation.

He was clear about it in his own case. That's why we read from Acts chapter 22 one of the places where we have the record of Paul's encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. And when he recounts that event later on, before Agrippa—which you'll find, actually, in Acts chapter 26—when he's addressing Agrippa and giving his statement concerning his following of Jesus, he says at one point, in the ninth verse, he says, Agrippa, I myself was convinced—I was convinced—that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority, but when they were there, we put them to death, and I cast my vote against them. I punished them often in all the synagogues. I tried to make them blaspheme. And in raging fury against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

I was convinced that I ought to do many things. And here's the point. He would have continued to do these many things were it not for the fact that he had been set apart, he had been saved, he had been converted as a result of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And no matter where we go in the writings of Paul, we find that this is his emphasis. For example, when he introduces his letter to the Galatians, he says, For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel.

For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it—I didn't get it in a seminary—but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And then he goes on to say, Because if you think about it, you know about my former life in Judaism and how I persecuted the church of God violently. God, he said, set me apart. In fact, he says dramatically in verse 15, but when he who had set me apart before I was born… Wow!

Before I was born. So in other words, God set him apart to be the apostle to the Gentiles, not because of anything that was in him in terms of his background or his characteristics. But it was God's purpose from eternity that Paul would fulfill this role. When he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were possibly before me. But I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

So the point is important, and it is at the same time straightforward. One final reference in order to drive it home to us—familiar material, I think, for some of us. We often quote these verses. He is explaining to the Corinthians, when he writes in 1 Corinthians, how men and women will never come to the truth of the gospel on their own. They will never come to the truth of the gospel on their own. I resist the temptation to digress in the realm of apologetics—which, of course, have a valid place—not in convincing people of the truth of the gospel but in unsettling people's view of the world.

Because there is no way that you can argue somebody to faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul makes it clear. He says, among the mature—this is 1 Corinthians 2 6—among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him, these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. Now, you see, this explains why educated men and women are able to pick up the Bible, to read it, to make all kinds of deductions from it, and never actually to bow before Jesus Christ and acknowledge him as a Savior and a King. There's hardly a week goes by when somebody says to me, Well, why is it that people would simply not believe?

Well, the answer is, because the God of this age has blinded their understanding and their minds. And the only way that they will ever come to an understanding of the gospel is a result of God's amazing grace and goodness. It is tremendously humbling.

And it is at the same time reassuring. Because if the burden were to be laid upon the proclaimer of the gospel to take the veil from the eyes of those who are unbelieving, the burden would be unbearable. But the promise of the Bible is that the entrance of God's Word actually brings light.

But men and women do not come to it by their unaided human wisdom. The story of the gospel is that God has taken the initiative and broken through that impenetrable barrier in the person of his Son, and in his Son discloses to us the glory of his name. Again, it is a truth which humbles us. It is a truth which glorifies God. I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart, or how believing in his name wrought peace within my heart.

But I know whom I have believed. Now, that is the song of every genuine Christian. The genuine Christian is not going around saying, You know, I understand this perfectly, and it's no surprise to me.

After all, I was magna cum laude in my group, and I've investigated a lot of philosophy, and I've discovered these things, and I'm big on spirituality, and so on. No, the Christian is saying, It is a mystery to me. Oh, how the grace of God amazes me. Now, when Paul says that he's written about this briefly—back to our text in Ephesians 3—he says, You know, I have actually mentioned this, assuming that you've heard of the stewardship of God's grace, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I've written briefly, the end of verse 3. I take it that that is simply a reference to earlier in this particular letter, that he's not referring to anything other than that which has appeared before—perhaps particularly verses 6–10 of the opening chapter, where he speaks of having redemption through the blood of Jesus, the forgiveness of our trespasses, and so on. And then he says, making known to us the mystery of his will according to the purpose which he set forth in Christ. And he says, You know, I have had this made known to me. I have written briefly about it. And then in verse 4, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. Now, don't let's just immediately scan over. When you read this, you will discover this.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think that Paul would be surprised, if it were possible for him to drop in on us tonight, do you think he would be surprised that we are reading his letter that he wrote two thousand years ago to the believers in Ephesus? Now, some people would say yes.

I hope you wouldn't, because it'd be the wrong answer. But some people would say yes, that Paul would have had no concept whatsoever, that what he was dealing with would have this lasting value. I don't think that actually stands up to the scrutiny of Scripture at all. Paul would not have been surprised. He would not have been surprised to discover that we're reading it, nor would he have been surprised to discover that many of us are believing it or that we are seeking to apply it. Because Paul himself was aware of the fact that he, as an apostle, as one who had seen the risen Christ, as one who had received the revelation of Christ, as one who was inspired by the Spirit of Christ, that Paul himself understood that his letters actually carry the authority of God, in the same way that the Old Testament Scriptures carried the authority of God. We're taking a close, careful look at the mystery of the Gospel with Bible teacher Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

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