The Church: The Manifold Wisdom of God
Download MP3We're back in Ephesians. You want to turn to Ephesians chapter 3. There's anybody in our overflow room who wants to come in, we've got some seats available now that children have left. Seats up front. Ephesians chapter 3, we'll read the first 13 verses.
Joel Brooks:For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Jesus Christ on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have 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 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.
Joel Brooks:Of this gospel, 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 plan of the mystery hidden for ages, and God who created all things. So 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 realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. And whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.
Joel Brooks:So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. This is the word of the Lord. You would pray with me. Father, it's good to be here gathered among my brothers and sisters, humbling ourselves before your word, wanting to hear from you, father. So we ask that through your spirit you would speak to your children.
Joel Brooks:We would come to understand more and more just the family that you have put us in. That we would understand more and more the greatness of the salvation that you have worked in our lives. We'd understand with greater clarity what it means to be redeemed and restored, and to be the light of this world. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Chapter 3 is really just a continuation of the themes we've been looking at all through chapter 2. I remember a few weeks back as we were going through chapter 2, when we were hearing about how Jesus has broken down that dividing wall of hostility between 2 groups of people. And Jeff was preaching on that and I remember thinking, knowing that I would have to follow-up that message thinking, gosh, if I could just, if I could just think of some illustration or some example to to make this thought clear to us.
Joel Brooks:If perhaps we had some kind of giant wall that separated 2 groups of people. Maybe a mountain. Maybe a mountain that could separate 2 groups of people that I could use for an illustration, then I would have something to work with. Or if if only perhaps maybe I had, I could look at neighborhoods and see how lines have been drawn separating the haves and the have nots. Often, lines drawn to separate people of different economic levels or a racial divide.
Joel Brooks:Or perhaps if I could look at Birmingham and find where, we have different school systems drawn out to where we have those with great educations and we have those who are lacking, perhaps if there were such walls like that in Birmingham, then I'd actually have something to preach about. But I couldn't find anything. There there just it wasn't there. So I I'm at a loss. Paul's not at a loss for words.
Joel Brooks:So let's listen to him this morning. Paul gets excited here. It's kind of a theme through Ephesians. He gets excited and he begins gushing a little bit. And and as he gushes, he gets a little verbose.
Joel Brooks:And then he starts throwing grammar out the window. And that's what he does here. When we start chapter 3, he begins by saying these words, for this reason. For this reason. But then he mentions Gentiles.
Joel Brooks:And then he gets all excited, and he kinda just goes off for a for a number of verses. He completely loses his train of thought the moment he mentions Gentiles. The word gentile to Paul is like the word squirrel to a black lab. Alright? The moment you say that, I mean, he can't think of anything else.
Joel Brooks:He just he just has to go off and chase it. And that's what he's gonna do is chase this theme of gentiles being included in the family of God. And he does this for 11 verses. It's only when we get back to verse 14 that he once again he mentions, for this reason. I mean, so we got this huge aside here that Paul makes.
Joel Brooks:And I've often found that when I'm listening to speakers, whenever they say, can I just make a little aside? Normally, that's the most valuable part of the talk. And I think this just me by might be the most valuable part that we're finding in Paul's letter here. It's a beautiful aside. Verses 1 through 7, just 2 sentences, 82 words in Greek.
Joel Brooks:Once again, Paul just throws out grammar. And you really can't blame Paul for being so verbose and just gushing like he does and going through such, such of what we see as a tangent, even though he's already talked about this. He's already talked about Jews and Gentiles coming together, but when it comes up again, it's like he can't help himself again. And the reason is because Paul was forever changed on that road to Damascus. When he was on the road to Damascus and he met the living Jesus, his his blinders fell off and he got to see who Christ was, the living Messiah.
Joel Brooks:And everything changed for him there, and also the way he related to other people completely changed as well. His blinders went off as to how he looked at the Gentiles. The mystery was revealed to him. He began to see the Jews and Gentiles are now brothers and sisters, they are now co heirs with Christ. So in verse 3, Paul says that this is the mystery.
Joel Brooks:It's a mystery that was made, were revealed to him by direct revelation of God. Don't think of the word mystery here is like a puzzle, or an Agatha Christie novel, or Scooby Doo, or something like that. This is that's not the kind of mystery here. Mystery here means something that was hidden or something that was in the dark and now it's just been revealed. Now the lights have been turned on so you can see it.
Joel Brooks:And that's what Paul says happened. So Jesus has come and Jesus has flipped on the lights and what was kept dark for many ages is now revealed. We can now see it And he says, the mystery is this, Gentiles are fellow heirs. Members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Gentiles are our brothers and sisters, in faith is what Paul says.
Joel Brooks:Full inclusion into the family of God. Now of course, this isn't a new idea to a Jew. This this idea has been around and it kind of percolates up throughout the old testament, But these have just been kind of hints. They've been shadows about Gentiles being included into the family. But what Paul is saying is here now in the church, we have actual experiential evidence as to what God is doing.
Joel Brooks:It can no longer be denied because it's right there in front of us. And so, when we have Acts 10 and we have Peter going and preaching at Cornelius' house, and there's all of these Gentiles present. And as he is preaching, the Holy Spirit falls on all the Gentiles just like it fell on the Jews at Pentecost. He says these words to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 about this experience. Says that, God bore witness to the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us.
Joel Brooks:And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed our hearts by faith. Now, we probably need to admit that as Gentiles being 2000 years removed from the whole Gentile Jew divide. That what Paul is saying here is somewhat lost on us. It doesn't quite seem as astounding to us, because we never got to experience that harshness of division. But it was real.
Joel Brooks:The signs of this division were everywhere. From the foods that they ate. The clothes that they wore. The holidays that they separated, the laws that they kept, everything divided the Jews from the Gentiles. I got to get a little picture of this, for a number of years when I was doing college ministry.
Joel Brooks:For 7 or 8 years, I would spend a lot of my summers in Northern Ireland. And when I was there, I would take a team of college students with us and we would we would minister in Northern Ireland, some of the neighborhoods where everything is divided by you're either Catholic or you're Protestant. And these are religious terms, but way more than being religious terms, they are cultural terms. That's really the divide. Their political divide is a cultural divide, but everything was was either Catholic or Protestant.
Joel Brooks:So you go into a town and, they would fly either the Catholic flag or the Protestant flag. You would go into a town and the sidewalks would either be painted orange, meaning they were Catholic, or they would be painted red, white, and blue, meaning they were Protestant. There were certain sports that only Catholics could play and other sports that only the protestants would play. And the few sports that they did play together, well, they each had their own teams. So, of course, Catholics had the Celtics, and you had the protestants who had the rangers.
Joel Brooks:Even the names of towns divided you. And so you could go to a town and you could either call it Catholic or Londonderry, if you were Protestant. So we would just go around saying, do you know where Derry, Londonderry is? We would say both names to so many towns. Even where you got your tattoos above the elbow, below the elbow, revealed which side you were on.
Joel Brooks:It permeated every part of life. And yet these people actually, they looked the same. They they have the same land. They look the same, yet culturally, they were completely different. And they they despised one another.
Joel Brooks:I remember the very first summer I took a team there and I didn't really know what I was doing, because I would not have done the same thing. And I think actually some of you were on that trip. But, we went into a town and we had about 200 kids come out to play with us. It was about a 100 protestants and a 100 Catholics' kids. It was a bad idea.
Joel Brooks:Just to pull all of this. They never got together, and we tried to organize soccer games. And it ended up with doing nothing but but breaking up people, breaking up all of these fights all day long. And I remember I had a team member there who actually had He kinda gone off to the side of a field and he was just shell shocked. I remember looking at him and his eyes were glazed over, and I said, what what's wrong?
Joel Brooks:Said, I've never seen hate like this. I've never seen kids just hate one another like this. And he couldn't understand it. It's like, we're in the same town. They look just alike, yet they despise one another.
Joel Brooks:And that gives you a hint of the Jew and the Gentile relationship. They would look alike, they would inhabit the same places, yet there had been this growing hostility to one another. They really did despise one another. And if you, for some unknown reason, you were a gentile and you decided you wanted to convert to Judaism and become a Jew, you could do it, but there was gonna be all these restrictions that would be heaped on you. All these things that you had to do and you were never really seen as fully part of the family.
Joel Brooks:You're kinda like the the uncle Eddie of the family. Alright? You know, you could pull your RV up, but you're you're gonna have to kinda stay there and the real family gets to sleep in here. Who'd want that? You you get a glimpse into this hostility between these two races, if you will.
Joel Brooks:When Paul was arrested and he had to give his defense before a group of people. And so he gives his defense in Hebrew one time, in front of a whole group of Jewish people. And as he's defending himself, he's he's talking about how he used to, openly persecute Christians, kill Christians, how he met Jesus, how Jesus died, rose again from the dead, how he's following Jesus now, and people are following him. And it says that the moment he said, and God's now sent me to preach to the Gentiles. The moment the Jewish people heard that Paul said he was going to the Gentiles, they began to riot.
Joel Brooks:They said he had to shut up. I mean, just let that sink in. Paul could literally say, hey, I went around killing people. And they're like, mhmm. They're just quiet as he is describing him, persecuting a people.
Joel Brooks:Then he can even talk about absurd things about how he now worship somebody who died and then rose again and they're like, mhmm. But then he mentions, and I'm supposed to teach and proclaim this to gentiles, and they have a riot. It shows how deep that divide was, but now, he says Christ has broken down that wall of the There's no longer any distinction. And Paul says that the thought, the thought that this could happen never occurred to anyone. It was the mystery that had to be revealed.
Joel Brooks:And when it was revealed to Paul, he couldn't stop talking about it. And says, now he just He can't help himself. He talks about the, unsearchable riches in Christ. I love that. That phrase, He's preaching the unsearchable riches in Christ.
Joel Brooks:Hear me. If there had been any distinction now between Jews and Gentiles, preaching the unsearchable riches in Christ would have been insufferable for the Gentile. How would you feel if somebody came to your house? You invited them over to dinner. You know, you, you took up my, my sermon on hospitality last week.
Joel Brooks:You invite somebody over for dinner And they're really wealthy. And all they could do as they're at your house is talk about their wealth. They could talk about the Bentley that's in their garage, the the yacht that is at their beach home, how they're so sick of having to eat at hot and hot fish club again, you know, or Highlands. And they're just kinda going on When they do that, it's insufferable. I mean, you you just you can't deal with hearing that.
Joel Brooks:But everything would change if that person then says, Oh and it's all yours too. Everything I have is yours. Then it becomes an unsearchable good news. You realize they're not being left out. And the Gentiles realize they're they're not being treated like illegitimate children, but they are adopted.
Joel Brooks:They're part of the full family of God now. They don't get a partial inheritance, they get a full inheritance. And hear me, that's us people. This is us. We're the gentiles now being brought into the family of God who are receiving a full inheritance.
Joel Brooks:Paul is saying it doesn't matter your race. It doesn't matter your culture. It doesn't matter your social status. It doesn't matter the neighborhood you live in. In Christ, your family.
Joel Brooks:Now there is a number of reasons that God decides to do this. Make the Jews and the Gentiles one. But, Paul's gonna harp on one of these reasons in verse 10. Verse 10, he says, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Uses a word manifold, manifold wisdom.
Joel Brooks:That word manifold means, embroidered. It means multi layered, woven together. This woven together wisdom of God is now on display through the church. In other words, Paul is saying this, he says that the multicultural, multiracial church is the evidence of God's wisdom. That his wisdom is multi layered.
Joel Brooks:And so the picture goes something like this. Throughout history, we've seen God, He's been weaving something together. And so, you know, He He pulls together a thread of Abraham. Pulls together a thread from Isaac and from Jacob. He pulls it from Moses and from Joshua and from Isaiah.
Joel Brooks:And he's he's been pulling in all these threads and he's pulling one in from Nehemiah. And he's making something. But but now we see him, he's he's pulling in threads from Cornelius. He had pulled in a thread from Ruth. He had pulled in a thread from Timothy who had both a gentile and a Jewish parent.
Joel Brooks:You come to act 6 and you see all the deacons in the church, all of them have gentile names. He's pulling in all of these different threads together and he's weaving something. And we've As we're looking at him weaving all these different things, we're thinking what is he making? It seems there's no rhyme or reason to what God is knitting together, and then he stands back and he shows this beautiful tapestry woven of all these different cultures, all these different races. And he says, behold the church.
Joel Brooks:Do you see its beauty? Paul just can't get over seeing this. The mere existence of a multicultural church is evidence that God knows what he's doing. God knows what he is making. Let me ask you, what what color of the skin or what culture or race do you associate with Christianity?
Joel Brooks:It's a question we need to ask, church. What is it? I mean, can you pick 1? Is is Christianity white? Or is Christianity black?
Joel Brooks:Or is Christianity brown? Is Christianity American? Is it European? Is Christianity African? Is it Asian?
Joel Brooks:Is it South American? Did you know that in 13 years in 13 years, China will have more Christians than any nation on earth? You you can't you can't pick a country. You can't pick a race. You you look all across the world and you see followers of Christ everywhere.
Joel Brooks:And what God is doing is he's knitting together in this beautiful tapestry of every tongue, tribe, and nation called the church. All peoples coming together to follow Jesus, and our jaws should drop at the unity of the church and what God is presenting before us. The multicultural church testifies once again to who God is and what he is doing. And hear me, Jesus just isn't uniting together different races. He's uniting together all things in which race is just one of the things.
Joel Brooks:So in Ephesians 1, if you remember Paul had already introduced this idea of unification. Paul often, if you're familiar with his letters, usually in his first few sentences, he kinda outlines where he's going for the rest of the letter. And he's already talked about Jesus unifying all things. And so we read this. It's hard to know where to begin because it's a giant run on sentence.
Joel Brooks:Verse 7. He says, in him, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, Which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. 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.
Joel Brooks:All things in him. Things in heaven and things on earth. So Christ isn't just uniting Jews and Gentiles together. He's not just uniting races together. He's uniting together all things.
Joel Brooks:And the reason he's pulling together all things is because everything falls apart. Everything is falling apart. Really, if you think about it, death, disease, divorce, poverty, war, all of those are just things that are falling apart. You know, if you think about it, what what is disease and what is death? Well, it's your body falling apart.
Joel Brooks:That's what it is. As you get older, you feel this. I I feel this more and more. I keep wanting to get back to normal and now realize there is no more normal. I used to go down the steps, not even long ago.
Joel Brooks:And I knew which steps really creeped each morning and I get up before the kids and so, I made sure, you know, like to not touch those steps. And I was like a ninja going down these steps. And I could jump over the ones that don't creak, land like a cat. You know, just keep going down. Now literally, it's my joints creaking that wakes up my children.
Joel Brooks:And it takes me about a minute, as I hold on to the wall. Why? Well, the body is falling apart, joints are falling apart. They once were whole, but now they're broken. War is the result of when peaceful relationships between nations fall apart.
Joel Brooks:Racism is when you are no longer united, but you are now divided by the color of your skin. Divorce is when marriages fall apart. It's when hearts are broken and no longer whole. When someone is emotionally distressed, we say they're on the verge of a nervous, what? Breakdown.
Joel Brooks:That they are falling apart emotionally. We talk about how their life is now in pieces. We use this imagery all the time. The moment Adam disobeyed God, the moment he did, everything broke. Everything that once was whole now was fractured and now it's just been falling apart and falling apart.
Joel Brooks:First, it was Adam's relationship with God, and then it was his relationship with others. And we could try as much as we want to pull it together. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Keep it together. Put up a good front, but you can't.
Joel Brooks:You can't. We all feel it how we are falling apart. No one here can fix themselves. No one can make their lives whole. But now, what we read here is in Christ, he's putting it all back together.
Joel Brooks:Our relationship with God is restored. Broken hearts are now healed. Broken relationships are now brought back together and restored, And this is all happening through the church. Remember, this is all about the church, And Paul here is saying that the church is where this healing and restoration is seen. It's where divided things are being brought back in and unified.
Joel Brooks:It's where the broken pieces are once again being made whole. The church is the evidence that God is giving to the world just who Jesus is, And that he's the one who unites all things together. And and the pulling together of racism and all the multi cultures there, the pulling them together as one, is just one evidence of it. I heard Tim Keller, he said this about the church. I thought it was an interesting analogy.
Joel Brooks:He said, the church is the pilot show that the world gets to watch. It's the pilot show that the world gets to watch. We're that first episode, and the world is looking at us, seeing if they wanna keep watching. Is this something that they wanna they wanna devote their time and energy to watching? Is this something that they wanna be a part of?
Joel Brooks:So in this pilot episode, the world should see broken pieces being made whole. They should see the church loving one another. They should see racism ceasing. They should see people at peace with one another, forgiving one another, and it should make them want to be a part of that. Now, I know what some of you are thinking.
Joel Brooks:It's like, oh my gosh, if the church is the pilot show, you know, the season's cancelled. Like, you know, who who in the world wants to keep watching that? Because we know who we are. It's not like Paul had this, you know, rose colored glasses he put on when he saw the church, and when we just finished studying first Corinthians. We know what the early church was like.
Joel Brooks:Paul knows that the church is flawed, deeply flawed, but he still believed in the church. He still said that when the when the when the world sees us, even with all of our flaws, what we're doing is so unique and so profound, it points to Jesus who is healing this world. And can I just say this that I feel like I've been harping on this for the last couple weeks, but for for those of you who think, still think, after all these weeks, that you can be a growing Christian and not be a part of a church? A local church and give yourself to local church. You need to realize that like, a category like that, growing Christian, not part, not a member of a church, that category did not even exist in Paul's mind.
Joel Brooks:He could not fathom that. Because how can everything we've been learning be on display? It's through the local church, whether it's this church or another church, but you give yourself wholly to the people of God. And then you become that pilot show that the world gets to watch. Now Paul says here that, the church testifies to God's wisdom.
Joel Brooks:I love this. But look at who it's testifying to. Look at this, read again, it's in verse Where are we? Verse 10? Yeah.
Joel Brooks:He says, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known, you expect him to say to the world, but he doesn't. He says, to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This is one of those times I get really irritated at Paul. It happens a lot. Martin Luther used to say, I'm fighting with Paul, but I'll win.
Joel Brooks:But it's one of those times I just get really irritated with him, because he here he just he just kinda casually mentions, we're testifying to these rulers and these authorities in the heavenly places, and then he walks away, drops the mic, and you're wondering like, what what What do you mean? And we know from later in the letter that these rulers and these authorities in the heavenly places are not just what we would call, like angels, good angels, but these are the evil principalities of the air. These are the This is the devil. This is Satan. This is the host of angels aligned against the Lord.
Joel Brooks:He's saying that the church is a witness against them. That they are watching us. In other words, he's saying the church here has a not just a testimony to the world, but it's got a cosmic testimony that God is presenting the church as evidence to Satan that he won. He goes, Satan, you wanna know that I won? Look at the church.
Joel Brooks:Look at how they're loving one another, how they're serving one another. Look how I'm pulling together all these different races. Look at the church. We are the evidence being presented that says God has won. Do you feel that when you gather together?
Joel Brooks:I as we go through all of these things, as we listen to God's word, as we sing, as we give our tithes and our offerings, as we serve in the nursery, or or help park cars, or help usher people in, we do all these things that make up church. You might think, oh, I'm just kinda doing church. There's nothing about what we do that is boring or inconsequential. We are testifying. Testifying, not just outside these walls, but on a cosmic level that Jesus is victorious.
Joel Brooks:Look, there are many reasons the church should not exist. I mean, I I can think of 100. I mean, we've had 2 1000 years of persecution from every side. We've had all sorts of false teaching, both from when it within and without. We've had conflict from within and without.
Joel Brooks:We've had all of these different cultural changes happening all around the church. I I can give you hundreds of reasons why the church should not exist, yet it's 2000 years strong and it is thriving. Our very existence is evidence that Jesus has won and that the gates of Hades don't stand a chance against the church. I think we've literally done everything we can to destroy the church, and we're still here. Because it's Christ's church and he is the one preserving us.
Joel Brooks:Every time we gather together and we do all the simple things that I just mentioned, Reading the words, singing and praying, realize the testimony that you are having, not just to outside these walls, but to the world. And I hope you feel that on Sunday mornings. What's happening here is nothing short of an answer to Jesus's prayer in John 17. Father, make them 1. Make them 1.
Joel Brooks:So that when the world looks at them, they might know that you sent me. Do you would pray with me. Father, I pray every person here would realize they're a living stone being built up into the house of God. Every person here will realize that they are a thread being woven together into a beautiful tapestry. Lord, that we would live interconnected lives with one another.
Joel Brooks:We would love one another well. Lord, I pray that you would use your church to restore and to heal all of the broken pieces of this world. Until everything is united together under Christ. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
