God’s Manifold Wisdom (Part 1 of 2)

Whether you follow Jesus or not, He is the focal point of history.

And today on Truth for Life, we'll find out why understanding this truth should change your view of everything else going on in your life and in the world. Alistair Begg continues our study of the letter written by the apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus. I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians and to chapter 3, and we'll read from verse 7 to verse 13. Ephesians 3 verse 7. Of this gospel, Paul writes, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery, hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Amen. Meet us, Lord, where we are, we pray. You know us. You made us. You know exactly where we stand in these things. We look to you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, our verse for this morning is verse 10. You can see that it follows on from verse 9. There's a comma at the end of verse 9, and 10 begins, So that … so that through the church. Paul has been reminding himself and telling the Ephesians that when it comes to being a minister of the gospel, he's absolutely amazed that he would have been entrusted with this privilege, because he regarded himself as not being an obvious choice. You say there he describes himself in verse 8 as the very least of all the saints. But God's grace was shown to him, his power was established in him, and so he was enabled to preach to the Gentiles, he says in verse 8, the unsearchable riches of Christ, and then at the same time to bring to light for everyone—notice, this was not exclusive to Jew or to Gentile—but for everyone, what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things?

The Creator God has a plan from all of eternity. And Paul was aware of the fact that he had both received a divine revelation, to which he refers to in verse 3, This mystery was made known to me by revelation, and yet at the same time received a divine commission, which is really at the head of verse 7 of this gospel, I was made a minister. Now, I think it's very, very important that we understand that as he thinks about this light shining out from him as he has given this commission to the world, we remind ourselves that this is exactly what had happened to him.

In other words, God's light is not about to shine through those who have not been illumined by the very light of God itself. Now, if you turn just for a moment—and I won't ask you to turn a lot of places, but I think it's helpful to turn to Acts chapter 26 so that we might remind ourselves of Paul's testimony that he gives before King Agrippa and does with such clarity that nobody's any doubt about it. And we'll just read a couple of verses, 17 and 18. And this is him explaining to Agrippa that in his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road, he was told that Jesus had appeared to him for the purpose to appoint him as a servant and as a witness to the things which you've seen me, and to those in which I will appear to you. And then here we go, verse 17, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you. To do what? To open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

It would be possible for us to stop there and spend the rest of our time on that this morning. The light of the gospel has shone into the heart of Saul of Tarsus. It has shone both externally, as it were, such a bright light that it has blinded him and brought him to the ground, but that light is actually smaller than the eternal light that has shone into his heart.

And now he realizes that when he goes out to proclaim this unsearchable gospel to the Gentiles and to proclaim this light for everyone, it is in order that their eyes may also be opened. Let's just acknowledge that by nature, our eyes are closed. We are by nature blind. It's not that we are here this morning as a group of individuals, and all of us are in the same capacity. By nature, our eyes are closed to the truth of God.

Therefore, they need to be opened. We live in the darkness and are in need of the light. We are bound up in the realm of Satan and of his wrongful desires and designs, and we are in need of the forgiveness of our sins. Now, clearly, this is something far more than simply deciding that we would like to become a little more spiritual than we have been in the past, or we would like to get a little church into our lives, or we would like to rearrange our moral compass and so on. What is being described here is something not that we do to put ourselves in a right position with God but what God has done in Christ to put us in a right position with him—that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that light has shone into the darkness of Saul's heart, and now he is preaching in such a way that others might understand the mystery of God's dealings and that they might believe the gospel. And when a man or a woman believes the gospel, when a man or a woman is changed by the power of the gospel, then it actually changes everything.

It doesn't change necessarily the way you tie your shoes or the way you work as an engineer in your office, or whatever it might be, but it changes our view of the world dramatically—for some of us, far more than others. Some of us have been living, perhaps, with a very cynical view of history, for example. We liked, when we read, that Henry Ford described history as bunk, that he said he didn't care if Napoleon wanted to come here. He didn't care what happened five hundred or a thousand years ago. He said, I just don't care about any of that. All I care about now is that you buy a Model T Ford, and you can have any color you want as long as it is black.

That's what we know him for. History as bunk and any color as long as is black. Well, of course, he's not alone in that kind of notion. Some of us, because we didn't like history at school and because of the way it was taught, have concluded that that is the case. But when we become Christians, all of a sudden we get a peculiar interest in history. And some have actually been rather nihilistic and atheistic in our perspective. You may be here this morning, and you find yourself sitting happily, as it were, in the company of some of the modern atheists of our time, who writes in one place, If there is no God—which, of course, he believes there isn't—if there is no God and we have evolved by chance through millions of years, then everything that happens, good or bad, must be viewed as simply the result of random, pitiless indifference.

In other words, there is no why question, because there is no one to whom we may pose the question. It's a lot like Einstein, actually, in his credo, where he says, What a strange thing it is that here we all are, here by chance, with no notion of how we came to be here or where we're going. We're just eating and drinking and eking out our time, trying to make sense of everything.

And that is at a fairly high level. If you go down to a very low level, you can go to the sixties and go to the kinks, and you'll get the same thing from then. Remember, we're living on Dead End Street?

That's how it finished about twelve times in a row. We're living on Dead End Street. We're living on Dead End Street. It begins along the lines of, What are we? What am I living for?

A two-roomed apartment on the second floor? I mean, what is this about? And it is an understandable quest. And what the Bible says is that when we understand that Jesus is the focal point of history, that he is the center and the circumference of everything, that he is the alpha and he is the omega, that he is the beginning of the end, that he is the ascended King, he is the reigning Lord, that in him all things hold together, then suddenly we have a dramatically different view of the way in which, for example, the unfolding drama of our political campaign fits into the framework of things. Now, the contrast, you see, between that kind of nihilism expressed by Hawking and the confidence expressed by Paul, representing the Christian, is quite dramatic. For example, if you just go back to the first page of Ephesians, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

Where am I, and where do I fit into the universe? And what has he done? Go down to verse 9, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth. No, you say, but surely Stephen Hawking was a very clever man, was he not? Well, there's no doubt that he was a very clever man. Well, then, shouldn't we just bow to his intellectual capacity? He's brighter than you beg, by a long way.

I mean, we've listened to you for years. You don't even know how to calculate the circumference of a circle. And he's a theoretical physicist.

I mean, what do you know? Well, if it were on human wisdom, there's no question. But that's what Paul had to find out himself. He writes to the Corinthians, the word that we preach is foolishness to those who are perishing, to those who are being saved. It's the power of God. Because it's written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. That doesn't mean God sets aside human wisdom. God is behind every scientific discovery for the good of man. God is behind the whole progression of the arts.

No. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Step forward, he says. Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. So, in actual fact, irrespective of your intellectual capacity this morning, there is no one in heaven or in earth more privileged than you or me as a humble believer, because we have, by God's grace, come to understand the depth of this great mystery.

You see, this changes everything. That God, from all of eternity, his plan and his pattern was not Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but it was actually Christ in the gospel. That according to the eternal counsel of his will, he was going to unite all things in heaven and on earth. And now Paul is telling the Ephesians here how this is working out, and particularly in relationship to the hosts of the angels. He has revealed himself in his church. It is in his church that his power is displayed, the power that raised him from the dead. It is in the church that his grace is made obvious. It is now in the church where his wisdom is set forward—and that's our verse—"so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known." Now.

Previously this was hidden for the ages, but now. Made known to whom? To the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Now, when I was mugging this stuff up, I read John Stott, and he had a wonderful little analogy that's so fixed in my mind that I decided, that's fine, I can improve on it, I will use it.

Okay? So there's what he says. He says, the world is the theater in which God is at work. And what we have here are the spectators—namely, the rulers and authorities. We have the play written and directed by God, which is his manifold wisdom.

And we have the players, or the actors, in the program—namely, the church. Okay? So we'll look at each of these in turn, and we'll do it in reverse order.

All right? First of all, who are the spectators? To whom is this being made known? He says it's being made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

In other words, the angelic powers are spectators of the drama of salvation. Now, let's just pause and acknowledge, too, that here we are at a very advanced place in modern technology. Some of you are even using your phones right now as I speak, and hopefully to good end.

But we have made tremendous advances. And here we are, a relatively sensible group of people, and we've all gathered together, and we're turning to a book called the Bible. We're going to read from a section of it which is written to a group of believers who lived in first-century Ephesus. What possible relevance could this have for us at all? After all, we are in the twenty-first century, and we're in Cleveland.

They were the first century, and they were in Ephesus. What are you doing? And furthermore, we are, you know, very advanced people. And you're going to talk to us about angels and rulers and cosmic powers? Yeah. Yeah. The reality of darkness, the reality of evil in our world, that is expressed at a very baseline level, is representative of the cosmic drama that takes place in the heavenly realms.

It's not our purpose this morning to delay on this. But so, when Paul says that the manifold wisdom of God was going to be revealed to the angels, to the rulers, and to the authorities, we have to determine whether the angels and authorities to whom he refers are the bad ones, as in chapter 6 and so on—we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places—if that is the case—and I don't know if it is, because he doesn't say, therefore, since the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things, it would be wise for me not to make a dogmatic assertion as to the identity of these rulers and authorities, but to acknowledge that if it is that he has the bad ones in focus, then he is declaring to them—they have the declaration—that their activities have been dealt a death blow in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And as they observe what is going on ever since the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they are able to see that their days are numbered and their influence is ultimately limited, and they will be able to conclude that since Jesus, the ascended King, determined that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it, then they may be, in this instance, in the now coming to an understanding of that fact.

After all, the angels were wanting to look into these things. Having said that, I think that it is more likely that he has in mind the good angels, the angels who had been the companions of God in eternity, the angels who are described by Peter in 1 Peter 1 as wishing they knew what salvation was really about. In 1 Peter, at about verse 12 or so, he says, you know, the prophets wrote about this. Concerning this salvation, the prophets wrote.

I think that's it. And so he gives us a picture of the prophets, Isaiah and the others, standing on their tiptoes, as it were, looking over the horizon, looking into the future, to see what will be the fulfillment of the things that they're writing. How will it work out that the chastisement of our peace was upon him?

Who will be this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? What does this mean, that he will be the great shepherd of the sheep and so on? So the prophets are standing on their tiptoes looking forward. And then he has a second picture, and he says, and the angels, interestingly, they're hanging from the ceiling, as it were. They're hanging from the ramparts, looking down, trying to get their heads around what is going on with this salvation thing. Now, in a quaint old hymn, you get something of an inkling of it.

It goes like this. There is singing up in heaven, such as we have never known, as the angels sing of victory and the Lamb upon the throne. But when we sing redemption's story, they will fold their wings, for angels never knew the joy that our salvation brings.

It's an interesting exercise, isn't it? First of all, to think of angels—good ones, bad ones, indifferent ones—and to think of them from this perspective. I imagine that when we sing a song like every so often at Easter time, Who is he in yonder stall? At whose feet the shepherds fall? I think the angels would be nudging one another and going, That's exactly what we were thinking. I mean, we were dispatched to sing at his coming.

But we've often said to one another, What's that deal? Have you talked about the Lord of glory shows up in a stable? How does this work? Who is he who on the tree dies in grief and agony? The angels are looking down, saying, Is this the Lord of glory, that the God, the second person of the Trinity, coequal, coeternal, with the Father and the Spirit, has entered down into time? They, as it were, look down on the cruel scenes of the cross, where all hell has apparently triumphed over Christ, and they catch their breath.

They are the spectators. You're listening to Truth for Life, and that is Alistair Begg with a message he's titled God's Manifold Wisdom. We'll hear more from Alistair on Monday. If you are finding these lessons in the book of Ephesians profitable, you'd like to share them with a friend or with folks in your church, all of Alistair's teaching can be downloaded or shared or watched for free through our mobile app or on our website at truthforlife.org. You can find our current series by using the search feature and keying in A Study in Ephesians. Alistair has been teaching from volume four. Let me remind you that if you'd like to own Alistair's teaching through the entire book of Ephesians, the complete series is available for purchase on a USB at our cost of just $5.

This is a convenient way for you to listen to the messages in your car as you travel to and from work. You'll find the USB in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Now, in addition to the daily Bible teaching you hear on this program, we also carefully select high quality books we can recommend to you to help you better understand scripture. And the more we study the Bible, the more we realize it's a book about Jesus. Today's recommendation, a book titled Knowable Word, will help you see Jesus in every book of the Bible as you study on your own. It covers topics like the keys to understanding what you're reading, how the passages fit together, how to apply the Bible in your life. This particular method of Bible study will be a great help to you as you seek to learn God's Word either on your own or together with a small group. Ask for your copy of the book Knowable Word today when you give a donation online at truthforlife.org slash donate or if you'd prefer you can call us at 888-588-7884. By the way, the methods taught in the book Knowable Word are great to utilize when you study the Bible together as a family. This is a great book to give to your sons or daughters as they learn how to study the Bible on their own. In fact, the author has taught this method of Bible study to students as young as middle school age. If you request a copy of Knowable Word with your donation and you'd like to purchase extra copies, you'll find them in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. They're available to purchase at our cost of $7 while supplies last.

I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us to study the book of Ephesians this week. Hope you have a great weekend and can worship together with your local church. On Monday, we'll get an exciting peek at God's vision for his church. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.