God’s Manifold Wisdom (Part 2 of 2)

If you've ever watched someone weave a tapestry, you realize it involves thousands of threads woven together to create a design that is finally revealed at the end. Today on Truth for Life, we'll see how the unfolding purposes of God are similarly being woven together and displayed to the world through His Church.

Alistair Begg is teaching today from the book of Ephesians, and we're focusing on chapter 3 verse 10. 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't improve on it. I will use it.

Okay? So this is 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.

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. Now, in a quaint old hymn, you get something of an inkling of it. We've never sung this hymn, and in fact, I only know this one verse. It goes like this.

Well, it goes something 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, that Easter time, who is he in yonder stall, at whose feet the shepherds fall? I would 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? Are you talking 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. What is the play? Well, the play, written and directed by God, is the manifold wisdom of God. God's wisdom is multicolored, the way that flowers are multicolored. The beauty of the trees at the moment is just fantastic, isn't it?

Multicolored. Or your favorite embroidered cloth, or your wonderful woven carpet—that's the kind of idea, the multivarious dimensions of God's wisdom. The wisdom of God, which weaves through thousands of apparently unrelated threads, one glorious pattern. You see, we're very proud of ourselves and our wisdom by nature, aren't we?

We like to think that we know how things go. That's why we're always asking questions, and often sometimes rude questions. And really, you know, the questions that we ask are not as important as the questions the Bible asks about us. So, for example, who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?

Are you bigger and brighter than the God who created the heavens and the earth, who is weaving a thousand separate threads into a pattern and purpose, so as to unite all things in heaven and on earth? That the things that you long for in the United Nations, that the things that you're trying to do in your peace talks, that all the endeavors of man to try and make sense of our broken world and put it back together and restore it and fix it—have you ever thought to bow before the manifold wisdom of God? Who taught God the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge? Who showed him the way of understanding? The nations are like a drop from a bucket.

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. It's great, isn't it? You know, I was in the airport the other day, and you just stand and look at all those magazines. I mean, just, whoo!

I don't know how you make money on that stuff, but anyway, it's none of my business. But I just stand and look at that, and you've got People magazine and Us magazine and Self magazine and Me magazine and zicky-dicky, you know. And everybody's up there, and you look at that and go, Oh, boy, it must be terrific to be one of those grasshoppers. He sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He brings princes to nothing. He makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root on the earth when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom, then, will you compare me? says the Holy One. Now, you see, this is the great proclamation to the angelic host—the manifold wisdom of God, that deep, as Cowper says, in unfathomable minds of never-failing skill, he treasures up his bright design and works his sovereign will, so that the mystery of his purposes are revealed throughout history. You can imagine the angels looking down and saying, Who did he choose? Abraham? What did he choose Abraham? He's a pagan! Don't you think he would have chosen a nice, sort of, good fellow?

Wow, that's weird. Now, who've we got next? Isaac and Ishmael.

Oh. Jacob and Esau. Oh, Esau's a nice guy. He's hairy.

He's a hairy guy. Jacob's a smooth guy. Jacob's a twister. Jacob's always hanging around with his mom. Jacob is not the one you want, God.

He's a bad choice, I'm just telling you. Since when did God consult with you about his choice? You see, what is God doing in the mystery of the unfolding drama? He's actually pointing to the reality that ultimately dawns when the mystery hidden from the ages reaches its denouement, and he's making clear that this God operates in such a way that he does not call the righteous but he calls sinners to repentance. And as you see the unfolding story, which finally reaches itself in the cross, then you realize the manifold wisdom of God. When you look at the scene on the cross, it appears as though hell has won and heaven has lost.

But Paul, when he writes to the Colossians, he says, No, I know it looks like that. He says, But what he was doing on the cross was canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. None of us would be able to pay the debt we owe to God. We're so messed up. We've loved so many other things other than him. We haven't loved him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Even if we were to spend the balance of our lives trying to redress the balance, our indebtedness is so huge. Well, what was he doing? Well, he was canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. There was no record of debt against Jesus. Jesus kept the law to its T, in its perfection. He had sinned never. So what he was doing was he was setting it aside, nailing it to the cross, and listen to this, disarming the rulers and authorities and putting them to open shame by triumphing over them. In other words, he actually took the worst of evil against him and turned it on the heads of those who opposed him.

In actual fact, it's a bit like Joseph, isn't it? You intended this for evil, but God intended it for good. The manifold wisdom of God is such that for God to forgive sin, he has to do so in a manner that both declares his love and satisfies his justice. The forgiveness of sin is not an easy matter. It is not an easy matter for God, if we might say so reverently. Because he must now be true to himself as the God of love, and yet he must be true to himself as the one who has promised to execute his judgment upon sin. And in his manifold wisdom, he makes his own perfect, spotless Son to be our sin-bearer, so that he satisfies his perfect justice by executing his punishment on sin—that which we deserve—and declaring his love in the gift of Jesus a forgiveness that we don't deserve. That's why a hymn is so helpful, isn't it? How deep the Father's love for us! How vast beyond all measure that he would give his only Son to make a wretch his treasure! How deep the pain of searing loss the Father turns his face away, as wounds which mar the chosen one bring many sons to glory!

And in Sunday-school terms, he was forsaken in order that we might be forgiven. Now, the fact that you know that does not mean you have entered into the reality of it. If this truth dawns upon you, make it your own.

Tell him from where you're seated. Oh, I get it. You died in my place. I know what I am, and you know what I am. What a mystery! What amazing wisdom! That you would be both true to yourself in the execution of your justice and in the amazing expression of your love. Now, let's acknowledge again that to speak in this way is to speak in a way that's not on the agenda of the average person. I say to you routinely, and I believe it sincerely, that the kind of spiritual vibe of our extended community that is represented in our congregation is largely this. We live in a community of people who regard themselves as quite nice. Businessmen who are like the businessmen C. S. Lewis mentions in Mere Christianity.

They have white starch cuffs, they have their initials on their cuffs, they have nicely lit corner offices, and he said they are nice men lost in their niceness. So that the prevailing view is, if there is a God, and he is a good God, he will reward nice people if they just try their best. But loved ones, that falls down before the manifold wisdom of God, which finds its focus in the death of his son. In Corinth, when Paul went there, nobody actually was interested in this story.

And nobody by nature is any more interested in it in Cleveland than they were in Corinth. In fact, he was aware of the fact that certain groups, certain people, were asking for him to do sort of dramatic signs, and others were asking him to just really sound particularly wise and get involved with the rhetoric of the time and the understanding of philosophy and so on. In other words, they basically said to him, Just show the people what they came to see.

Just do for us what we're asking. And Paul says, No, I can't do that. He says, No, we have to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, which is regarded as absolute folly to the Gentile and is a stumbling block to the Jew. Finally, the spectators are the angels. The play is the manifold wisdom of God, and the players the church. Through the church.

This, I hope, really stirs you in a number of ways as this recurring theme is stirring me in these days. What Paul is making clear here is that the church is the final expression of the wisdom of God. The thing above any other thing that enables the angels to comprehend God's plan and purpose. That the church—that is, church with a big C. So today, this is church with a small C—parkside church, small C—which is part of church big C as we go out through our community and as we go into the greater Cleveland community and into Ohio and beyond and on and on and on, and we go into the great vast world that is out there. The church, this great purpose of God, is the sphere in which God makes his wisdom known, both on earth and in heaven. Now, let that settle in your mind for just a moment, especially if you're tempted to regard the church in contemporary terms. Men and women regard the church today, you know, it's not uncommon to read the report that says, you know, the church is on its way out, it is redundant, it is irrelevant, millennials have no interest in the church, there will be no church in the next century, and so on.

Well, there's nothing new in this. That's been going on all the way along through history. And in contrast to those assertions, the Bible tells us that the church is the very center of God's unfolding purpose in history. The church is.

Now, this, you see, ought to help you again with the elections. The church is the focus of God's purpose in history—church with a big C. Therefore, it is not the United States of America that is the focus of God's purpose in history. We're concerned, we're citizens.

But that's not God's concern. The nations—Isaiah 40—are like a drop in a bucket. Kings come, kings go. Presidents rise, presidents fall.

No sooner are they planted than the wind blows over them and—gone. It makes perfect sense. That is not dismissive of the unfolding drama of political history. But it is so that the Christian person may see, Oh, well, if that is the case, then, number one, that this engagement with church with a small C ought to be increasingly important to me, increasingly precious to me, and my concern to see the planting of local churches should be a large part of my agenda, because this is the focus of God's purpose in the world—the church! Now, it's supposed to be as it becomes what God wants it to be—multicultural, diverse, united, multi-gifted. It's a new community, it's a new society. It's not a Jewish one, it's not a Gentile one, it's the church one.

He has made one new man out of the two. So we ought not immediately to be down on ourselves if we don't see church with a small C in Bainbridge, Ohio, for goodness sake. Where is Bainbridge? It's not exactly the center of, you know, multicultural diversity, let's just be honest. So we cannot chastise ourselves for not managing to become, like, the huge, variegated, multicultural picture of the church throughout the world. But we ought to know that deep in our hearts we would if we could, and we will if we can. And we're absolutely convinced about the fact that when God saves people, the issues of status and color and gender and race and all those things are obliterated in the gospel.

It's not like the person who comes from a Jewish background is no longer representative of Judaism—he is!—or that a Gentile is no longer a Gentile, or that a woman is no longer a woman or a man no longer a man, but that it is that those things are now radically altered in the cross, and that in the church this then is displayed to the world. It's just quite amazing. Belonging to Jesus, belonging to the church—there's nothing like it in the entire world.

There's nothing like it in the world. In fact, the thing that the world longs for and can produce is that which God has determined to bring to completion on the day when he puts together a company that no one can number from every tribe, nation, language, and tongue. God's manifold wisdom. The angels look down and say, Wow! And we look around and say, You mean you're gonna use us? Us?

Yeah. Last Sunday I had a little notion of it when I went out after the evening service, and I was immediately talking to somebody from North Africa, an Arabic speaker, and while we were engaged in conversation, someone else came along, a Portuguese speaker from Brazil, and then me trying to speak English from Scotland. But as I walked away, I said, How do you get this clever doctor from Brazil, this Arabic-speaking little Egyptian, and this funny little Scotsman, all together in this place, in this moment, at this time? And the answer is, according to God's manifold wisdom. All of the threads in the unfolding purposes of God—threads that we try and unravel to our own destruction, threads that we cannot always unscramble, and we're not sure how they all fit, but we may rest in this, that God knows best, and that his manifold wisdom, through the church, declared to the hosts of heaven, will eventually redound to his honor and his praise and his glory. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life with a beautiful picture of the church as a foretaste of heaven, diverse and yet united. Here at Truth for Life, we hear from men and women from every walk of life from all over the world who are deeply impacted by the teaching they hear on this program. There's a growing global audience that listens to Alistair's messages, often through their smartphones, and more people than ever are downloading and streaming free sermons from our website, our mobile app, and on YouTube. We thank God for the widening reach of this ministry, and we're grateful to you for your participation. You can join the mission of Truth for Life by becoming one of our monthly Truth Partners. Truth Partners are the very backbone of this ministry. They faithfully pray for God's word to do its work in the lives of those who hear Alistair's teaching, and they give each month so that people all around the world can learn from the free online sermon library. If you've benefited from Truth for Life, but you've listened in silence, we hope today is the day you reach out.

You can sign up online at truthforlife.org slash truth partner, or call us at 888-588-7884. When you partner with us in the ministry of Truth for Life, we're going to say thank you by offering you a copy of the book, Knowable Word, helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible. This is a short, simple book that provides a three-step approach for learning from the Bible. When you apply this proven technique, you'll find yourself less dependent on commentaries or online research or other supporting materials, you'll be more able to interpret the text of Scripture on your own. This book not only describes a particular learning method, but it provides illustrations using the opening chapters of Genesis to demonstrate how to make the approach your own. Request your copy of Knowable Word when you sign up to become a Truth Partner, or you give a one-time donation to Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine, thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we'll discover what causes angels to rejoice and demons to shudder. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.