Preached · February 4, 2018
Text · Ephesians 3
Introduction to the Ephesians study
Let's continue on in our study of the book of Ephesians. I invite you, if you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 3. And if you forgot to bring a Bible, maybe you don't own a Bible, that's all right. We have ushers who would love to hand you one, so if you just put your hand up in the air, someone can hand you a Bible. In those Bibles, we are on page 948, page 948. Again, a reminder, the words are not on the screen, so I really want you to be people of the Word, known as people of the Word of God, and open up those Bibles and follow along.
Over the past few weeks, we have been studying this wonderful book called Ephesians. The book of Ephesians was so important in the early church that there were actually a few manuscripts, a few copies of the book of Ephesians, that don't even include that opening section that says, "To the Ephesians." A few manuscripts dropped that part because it became a circular letter within the early church. So it was not just a letter to the Ephesians, it was a letter to the church as a whole. And it's this crucial book that explains what Jesus did, what Jesus was up to, and then our response to it. We have been talking about what Jesus is doing, and later in April and May, we'll be talking about our response to it.
Last week, Pastor Brandon talked about the fact that Jesus is making two groups one: that there were Jews and that there were Gentiles. He is bringing this into one new humanity. And Ephesians chapter 3 is a continuation of that theme, where Paul is really making his case about what God has been doing in the gospel.
Read all the instructions first
But before we read that, I want to ask you a question. Any of you ever put together any sort of Ikea furniture, or the stuff from Walmart that you kind of put together yourself?
So we are having a baby boy in April, which means our two-year-old daughter, Audrey, she is moving out of her nursery, and she has kicked me out of my office. My desk is now in a corner in the basement—the things that we do for our children. And she is moving into a room of her own with a big girl bed, and she has a dresser and a nightstand, which meant that we had to make a trip to Ikea and fill up the SUV with all of these flat boxes of wood that we had to assemble together.
And I know some of you men—I'm looking at you—I know some of you don't like to read the instruction manual. I'm not that kind of guy. I desperately need instructions in my life. When I look at a pile of pieces of wood, I need to be told how to put it together. And if you ever look at an Ikea manual, it's diagrams and charts, and there's very little words in it. It's just like numbers and letters, and insert one into A. But if you look at the first page of an Ikea manual, how to put together your furniture, it says, "Read all of the instructions first before assembling your furniture." Read all of your instructions first before assembling your furniture.
This is for a very good reason, because if you put together instruction number seven and you don't know what instruction number 73 is, there's a very good chance that you're going to do instruction number seven wrong. And then when you get to instruction number 73, you realize that you did instruction number seven backwards, and you're going to have to take everything apart until you can do instruction number seven. I know this because this happened to me last Saturday. It's important to read all of it first so you have an idea of where you're going, so the beginning makes sense. That's how Ikea furniture works.
Now, your Bibles are much the same way. It's important that before we make any sort of conclusions about what's in the first section of Scripture, we should probably read the entirety of Scripture so that the end can make sense of the beginning. Because if we don't do that, we're very likely to get some wrong ideas together about our theology, about what we believe about God, if we don't have the end in mind when we read the beginning. And that's the gift that we have in Scripture, that we have something that we can read from front to back, from beginning to end. We know what the end of the story is going to be. We know what Jesus has done on the cross and the resurrection. We know that Jesus is coming back to restore all of things. We know what the character of God is like because of what the character of Jesus is like. And so that helps us read the beginning of the story better.
Now, if you were a first-century Jew, or maybe a Greek or a Roman, and all you had was the Old Testament, it would have been very, very difficult for you to predict that the beginning of the story would have led to the end of the story. It would have been very hard to predict that. And in fact, that's what led to Jesus' death, because along comes Jesus, this poor rabbi and stonemason from Nazareth, who makes the claim to be the son of David, who's going to be on the throne of David over Israel, who also says that this son of David is going to die on the cross, that he's going to be the Messiah, not just for Israel, but for the entire world. And if all you had was the Old Testament, it would have been very, very difficult, almost impossible, to guess that Jesus would have been fulfilling all the promises that the Old Testament made, but doing it in a far better way than you ever could have guessed.
And so this is the problem that Jesus ran into. It's a problem that eventually Paul and all the apostles and church planters of the first century run into, because Israel doesn't want to let go of their past, because they haven't read the end of the story yet. And Greeks and Romans don't want to be a part of that past, because they have bad assumptions about it. So this is what gets Jesus killed. It's what gets Paul into trouble with his fellow Jews and Peter into trouble with his fellow Israelites, because they're writing the end of the story. And this is what Ephesians 3 is all about. It's talking about how the promises of the Old Testament are coming true in ways that we would have never expected.
Reading Ephesians 3
So with that in mind, let's stand together for the public reading of God's Word. And then we'll pray and we'll dive in. This is what Paul writes in Ephesians 3. He says, "For this reason"—so a little bit of commentary as we read. Paul is referring back to chapter 2. For all the things I talked about in chapter 2, "I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles"—and then my translation has a big dash there. So everything that we're going to read in verses 2 through 13 is kind of a big parentheses, and Paul's going to get back to his thought in verse 14, which is next week, when he says, "For this reason," a second time. So everything in 2 through 13 is kind of this big parentheses.
For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of the Gentiles—surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation. God made this known to me, as I have written briefly already. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's apostles and prophets.
In other words, what has been said in the Old Testament was a glimpse, a shadow of what is to come, but God has fully revealed it now in the apostles and the prophets. Keep going.
This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. And although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through him, in faith through him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.
Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the gift of your Word, the gift of your Scriptures, which reveal mysteries which were hidden before but are now revealed to us in Christ. And so, Father, we pray that today your Holy Spirit would illuminate your Word for us, that you would make it shine into our hearts, into our minds, our souls, and our bodies, that we may be able to live out the truth of your gospel, to proclaim your gospel with boldness and courage. God, as we are entering into your throne room today, may we do this with confidence, knowing that you are a good God and desire good things for your children. God, would you help me to speak your truth with humility and yet with the boldness of an apostle of Jesus. Pray this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated.
Paul in prison
So I want to remind you that the book of Ephesians was written from a prison. Paul has had a pretty rough go of it since he's turned his life over to Jesus. And so this Paul is one who's been beaten and broken and shipwrecked and imprisoned and jailed for the name of Jesus. And he is currently in Rome encountering house arrest, which is not like the Martha Stewart form of imprisonment. It's still a bad go of it, okay? He's still in chains. He's still surrounded by guards with spears and swords. And the only provision that he is going to get doesn't come from the state, doesn't come from the Roman government. It comes from his friends. And so if his friends don't come through, he's not eating today. If his co-workers don't come through, he's not drinking today. Most Roman prisoners died in prison because they didn't have friends and their family had probably disowned them, and so they died of starvation or thirst. Paul, fortunately, has a network of fellow believers who are sustaining him in his imprisoned state.
And he writes this letter to the church. And if you haven't noticed yet, this book almost reads as poetry. He kind of gushes about the gospel. As Brandon would say, he lavishes in it, right? This is poetic work. He's so celebratory about the goodness of God and the goodness of what God has done, all while riding in chains. So keep that in mind as you read this. Paul's life has consequences. Paul's belief has consequences for him.
Now, what are the beliefs that Paul has? Well, we read in verse 10 that God's intent is that now, through the church, God's wisdom should be made known to rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. And so rulers—those who are in places of power, those who are in seats of the government or town council, or those who are in charge of the prison, those who have any sort of power in this world—the authorities in the heavenly realm, so that includes the spiritual realm, demons and principalities and spirits that want to fight against the gospel. And Paul's in prison because he believes that this wisdom of God, the gospel, the good news, needs to be in front of these rulers and powers.
For Paul, his faith, what he believes, is not private. It's deeply personal. It sits deep within his soul. It affects everything in his life, but it's not private. He believes that it needs to be not just proclaimed to rulers, it needs to be confronting the powers that be. It needs to be confronting the way the world works now. Like we talked about in December with Mary's song, the Magnificat, it needs to be taking rulers from their thrones. It needs to be preached to everyone everywhere, including the powers that be.
Paul's gospel: nasio and one new humanity
Now, what is Paul's gospel? Well, to Rome, what mattered most of all was where you came from. The Latin word is nasio, N-A-T-I-O, nasio. It's where we get the word "nation." And for a Roman or a Greek or a Jew, it was your origin, where you came from. And where you came from determined, gave fate to where you were going. And so the city in which you were born, the color of your skin, whether you were male or female, whether you were an elite, an academic elite, a ruling elite, a landowner, or maybe you were a servant, or maybe you were a slave—your nasio, your origin, where you came from, mattered and set where you were going to go.
For Jesus, nasio, origin, seemed to matter very little. Jesus would go around from town to town. He would start in Galilee, he would start in Palestine, he would start in Israel, but then he would take a trip across the Sea of Galilee to the other side where they were Gentiles, or he would go up to Caesarea Philippi and minister and do miracles and preach to them. And in his group of disciples, a group of 70, 72, he had a mix of fishermen and tax collectors, of landowners and of servants, of men and—God forbid—of women too, who were all associating and all being known as disciples—mathetes is the Greek, learners from the rabbi Jesus.
And so Paul, he's looking at the life of Jesus, he's looking at what Jesus accomplished, and he decides that he's going to dedicate his life to what Jesus did. And so Paul goes from city to city, town to town, continent to continent, Asia to Europe, and starts creating these groups, these gatherings, these ecclesias, these churches, that were known for being fellowships of different kinds of people.
And so all the things that Rome said should never mix—the rich should never mix with the poor; men should never be alone with women, or men should never be meeting with women; slaves and landowners can't be in the same place together, they can't be having social time together; people from North Africa really shouldn't be hanging out with people from Italy, who really shouldn't be hanging out with people from Greece, who really definitely shouldn't be hanging out with people from Israel—all those things that Rome and Greek culture had set up as firm, set boundaries, Paul goes to a town like Corinth or Ephesus and he starts preaching the gospel and then creating these ecclesias, these communities on mission together, where all of a sudden, men and women are sitting together in the same place, someone's living room. All of a sudden, rich people and poor people are gathering at one table and eating together. All of a sudden, landowners and slaves are being reconciled, and they're calling each other brothers and sisters. They're being known under one name, the name of Jesus.
This is what Paul dedicates his life to: bringing people from the different castes of society, from the different levels of society, and bringing them together around one table in the name of Jesus. Rome hates this. They call Paul—and this is eventually how Paul gets beheaded and killed—they call Paul a hater of humanity. That was his official condemnation from a judge: a hater of humanity, because anybody who loves humanity would not do what Paul was doing. Anybody who loves humanity would keep people separate where they belong. And this is what gets Paul imprisoned and eventually gets Paul killed.
For Paul, his gospel was a gospel of inclusion, of breaking the social code of the day and bringing people together under the name of Jesus. For Paul, his gospel is that through Jesus, God is removing distinctions of race and removing distinctions of most kinds. In Galatians 3, Paul writes that in Jesus, there's no more male or female, there's no more Greek or Jew, there's no more barbarian or Scythian. In Jesus, we are all one together.
Reading the Old Testament in light of the new
Paul's gospel has social implications for who we associate with, for who's in the aisle at your church service, for who's allowed inside the doors, and who we invite into our homes. It has social implications. It also has implications for how we are now today meant to read the Old Testament, because the Jews weren't all that different from the Greeks and the Romans. The Jews, they read their Old Testament, they read the prophets, they read the law of Moses, and what they got out of it is that they were to never, ever be associated with any Gentile ever.
Now, this is not actually what the Old Testament says. God intends for Israel to be a light to the world, and that nations would come to the temple, come to the presence of God, and worship at God's throne. There's actually this scene in the book of Isaiah called the banquet of Yahweh. It's where the writer in Revelation eventually gets his image for the marriage supper of the Lamb. And there's this scene in Isaiah where Isaiah pictures this big table where the Jews are gathered, the Jews have been restored, but all the other people of the world are at this table together as well, dining with the divine, supping with God.
Well, the Israelites, they wrote commentaries and they wrote paraphrases of their scripture, just like we have paraphrases and commentaries today. And so there's one particularly famous one called the Targum, and it's an Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible. And so they read Isaiah, they read about this marriage supper, this supper that brings all people of the world together, dining with God, and they say, in kind of the notes, "But it's a trick, because God is just going to shame the Gentiles and throw them out and let them burn in hell." They hated the imagery of Jews and Gentiles being together so much that they would actually change what the Scriptures said to fit their own personal agendas—something that we would never do today, right?
And so Jesus comes along and he says in the book of Matthew, "I'm going to take what was intended for you, and I'm going to give it to the world." And Paul comes along in the book of Ephesians and Galatians and Romans 9 through 11 and says, the gospel, the good news, is not meant for just one people group. It's meant for the world.
Dispensationalism: bad theology can kill
Now, when I read books like 1 and 2 Timothy or Titus, books written to pastors, there's this phrase that Paul keeps bringing up to the people that he's mentoring, and he says to them, "I want you to protect the church against false teachers and false teaching," which is really a difficult calling for anyone who's called to preach the Word, because we all fall to what can be bad teaching. I'm susceptible to it. There's probably a third of what I think is true that's not true. I just don't know what third it is. There are things that we hear on the radio, we see them on TV, we read a book, and it's presented in a really compelling way, and so we fall prey to this false teaching. And my job is to come to the church and try to correct it and protect against that. And I have mentors and pastors in my own life who do the same thing to me, and I have to submit to their wisdom and their authority. And what I'm asking today is that you might be willing to do the same.
But there is a teaching in the church that came about in the 1800s. It's called dispensationalism. What dispensationalism teaches is that there are two separate covenants, two separate timelines that God has for the world. One intended for the nation of Israel and one intended for the church. And so dispensationalism teaches that all that Israel ever wanted—restored to their homeland, their temple being rebuilt, sacrifices being started up again—that is what God wants for Israel, and God wants a whole separate list of things for the church, because they're two separate groups. That's what dispensationalism teaches.
And today's main idea, today's main thought, is that right theology can bring life. It ought to restore the world, it ought to reconcile people to one another. But bad theology can literally kill. Bad theology can literally kill.
Recently, our government said that they wanted to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and folks who are working on peace in the Middle East, peace between Israel and Palestine—well, I'm sorry, people who were working on peace, they didn't celebrate, they did the opposite of celebrate, they decried it, because it was going to bring violence between Israel and Palestine. It was going to bring bloodshed. And the group who adhere to something like dispensationalism, they are the ones who celebrated this, because anything that brings violence or bloodshed in the Middle East just brings us one step closer to the coming of Jesus. If we could just get rid of the Palestinians, dispensationalists would say, finally Israel can build their temple, and then finally God's timeline for the end of the world can get kick-started. And so you end up with a theology that literally celebrates death and violence. This is a problem.
Our sister denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, has this to say about dispensationalism. They write:
Dispensationalism is a faulty theology that leads to a pragmatic political problem: the establishment of the state of Israel. Dispensationalists believe that both new and old covenants are now in play at the same time, and thus they believe that the wrath of God falls on anyone who advocates any foreign policy prohibiting Israel's acquisition of all the land promised under the old dispensation.
It continues:
In this understanding, the Palestinians are once again Canaanites—which in other words means they deserve death. While we can appreciate, we can emulate the Christian Zionist love for the Jewish people and support their right to exist as a nation, we cannot force God to act on the basis of a covenant that long ago served its purpose in leading humankind to Christ.
In other words, the opposite of dispensationalism isn't anti-Semitism. It's not that we want to see the people of Israel be destroyed, but we don't want to see the Palestinians be destroyed either. You can put the yard sign in your front yard that says, "I stand with Israel," as long as it's paired with a yard sign that says, "I stand with Palestine."
He has made the two groups one
Because look at what Paul says, starting back in Ephesians 2, verse 12. He says, "At that time you"—so Gentiles, those who weren't Jewish—"were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near." Verse 14: "Jesus himself is our peace. He has made the two groups into one. He's destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. He has set aside the law with its commands and regulations. Jesus' purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross. He came and preached peace to those of you who are far away, peace to those who are near, and through him we have access." Verse 19: "You are no longer foreigners and strangers, you're fellow citizens with God's people and members of his household."
In Ephesians 3, verse 6: "The mystery is that through the gospel Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus."
And so you have to read the end of the story to make sense of the beginning of the story. If all you take is the beginning of the story, then you will end up with a story that says that all Israel ever gets is to be their own people group in one specific plot of land, and that's the end of the story. But the entirety of the story says Jesus proclaims it's much better than that. God is going to restore and reconcile the entire world. He's going to make the two groups one. There's no longer going to be distinctions between Israel and everyone else. There's one people of God, what Romans calls the one true Israel, and they inherit not just a strip of land along the Mediterranean, but the world. That is the gospel that Paul is preaching, and the gospel that got him imprisoned.
Our sister denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, had a separate report on Israeli and Palestinian relations. They sent 10 pastors along to the West Bank, and they wrote this. They said:
Israeli control of the West Bank is oppressive and pervasive and dehumanizing. The restrictions on mobility, the ruthless expropriation of land held for generations by Palestinian farmers, the pervasiveness of the wall here were all much more oppressive than anything we expected. It appears to be a systemic attempt to make life in the West Bank miserable, and much more than an attempt at genuine security for Israelis.
And if you have a worldview that says Israel deserves this land no matter what, then it doesn't matter how oppressive they are to the Palestinians, it's their land. The Palestinians become like Canaanites again, who deserve to be kicked out. But the gospel of Jesus says no, there is a covenant that includes all people everywhere, and it's much bigger than a strip of property along the Mediterranean.
The Reformed Church, this church's denomination, writes this about Zionism. They say:
From a Reformed perspective, Christian Zionism and dispensationalism are not only faulty readings of Scripture, they've proven to be great hindrances to a just peace and stability in the Middle East. The Reformed Church in America has consistently called for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, strongly recognizing the right of Israel to exist and to have security, as well as strongly affirming the Palestinian desire for a secure and independent homeland of their own.
The church leading racial reconciliation
Our faith, what we believe, our theology, what we think about the Old Testament and the New Testament and how they get along together, has real-life implications. Right theology can bring life, and bad theology can kill. And so if we get this wrong, if we misunderstand what Jesus and what Paul taught about this covenant with the world, then we end up cheering for violence that grieves God. We end up cheering for division that grieves God. And that cannot stand. And so that's why Paul writes, even bound in chains, "No, he has made the two groups one." And this has implication for not just a strip of land 5,000 miles away, it has implications for how the church is to be known in the world, and right here in Okoboji and in our nation.
The church is to be a place where all divisions cease, where every tribe and tongue and nation can come into the throne room of God with boldness and confidence, as Paul writes. The church ought to be a place where there's no hint of division, no hint of creating multiple groups, but we're all known as one body, one family under Christ Jesus our Lord. The church ought to be standing against any form of division that it can. To say that one people group or one nation has more rights than the other one, that's simply called racism. In fact, the church is to lead the world, to lead the way in the racial reconciliation of the world.
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says this. He says, "If our churches are still divided in any way along racial or cultural lines, our very grasp of the meaning of Jesus' death and the gospel should be called into question."
If the church is in any way known for being a place where division exists, then Paul would say we haven't grasped the gospel yet. If our churches are known in any way where racism is okay, where we can say that one people group is better than another people group, where one group of people has more rights and privileges than another group of people—if that is what we are known by, we have failed to understand what Jesus did. He has taken the hostility and nailed it to the cross, and now he has made one new humanity within himself.
Good theology brings life. Yes, bad theology can kill. It has real circumstances in the real world. But right theology, what we think about God aligning with what is true of Scripture, can bring healing to a world that needs it desperately.
For Paul, a Paul who was shipwrecked and beaten and bruised and imprisoned for preaching a gospel of unity, it was all worth it, because he writes in verse 12, in Jesus and through faith in Jesus, we can approach God with freedom and confidence. And so even in the dark stink of a dungeon and a prison, Paul is at peace, because he is in the throne room of God. And God will take that throne room and one day extend it to the entire world, for what is true of heaven is true of our planet.
Prayer
I invite you to stand as our worship team comes forward. Let's pray together.
Almighty God, we thank you for a gospel that brings us together. A gospel that's not about racial superiority, it's not about keeping things divided, it's about being united in Jesus, the name that is above every other name. So Father, would you help us, would you empower us by your Holy Spirit to be a church known for bringing people together, for being a church of reconciliation? And God, would you help us to know the whole of your story, to understand the Old Testament in light of the new, to understand the world in light of who Jesus is, what he has done? And may we be a Jesus kind of people. In Christ's name, amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
