Ephesians 3, 8-12. 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, and whom we have boldness and access with confidence through
our faith in him. I pray that God's Word would
richly deepen your faith, would walk so close to your soul and
to your heart and to your mind today that you see Christ in
a fresh, new, merciful light. It is God's grace that allows
us to be able to see what the Scripture teaches. It is God's
grace that allows us to respond in faith and to repent of our
sin. It is God's mercy that gives us every spiritual blessing in
Christ Jesus. They are ours. Ours to proclaim. They have been given. And the
problem we have when we do not see that is that we have not
spent time with God and His Word to be reminded of those things.
The text that I want you to focus on primarily this afternoon is
this, verse 10. There's two big words. through the church, the metaphoric
wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities
in heavenly places. Now, when you see so that, you
have to back up and begin to ask, so what is he talking about?
So as we read the text, I want you to be very mindful that this
is a culmination. This is the glue. Last week we
talked about the power of God in creating the church and sustaining
the church and empowering the church to live holy. To display
this wisdom is why He does that. It is His power at work within
the church, within each one of us as God's children, and then
within the church corporately as we live together in unity
and in love and affection and in glory. It is this power that
enables us to be the people of God for the sake of His name
and for His glory. Now there's something within
this text there if you look, and I want to set this up and
then we're going to preach. So I'm going to set it up and then we'll
preach. There's a mystery. There's a
mystery here to me. Paul says, though, I am the very
least of all the saints. Paul has this mindset that many
people in today's church and in America would say, no, no,
no, no, no, Paul, you're not the least of anything. But Paul
was the least of all saints. He was the murderous. zealous
killer of the Christians. He was the one who attacked the
gospel of Jesus Christ with every resource he had at his disposal. Whether it be the power of the
Sanhedrin or the authorities of Rome, Paul, as Saul, went
into the cities and destroyed all that he could to take away
the gospel of Jesus Christ from the culture and the world. There
are a lot of souls of Tarsus in our world today who are fighting
against the church of Jesus Christ, who are fighting against the
gospel. And as we sit here and we contemplate that reality,
many of us are thinking about what those souls might be. Well,
it must be the government, or it must be the authorities, or
it must be this, or it must be that. No, Paul specifically clearly
says it is the work of the enemy. And it's the powers and principalities
of darkness, as we see over in Ephesians chapter 6. That is
the ultimate enemy of God. And that is who were, through
Saul, fighting against Christ. And that is who is still fighting
against the gospel, who is the enemy. We know him as Satan.
But the great news is that he's powerless over the church. My
grandmother used to always tell me, Satan is a roaring lion,
but he's had his teeth pulled out. I like that. I like that. I like the idea
of knowing that though a lion as fierce as he is, and as fierce
as he could be, and destructive as he is, his teeth against the
church have been pulled, his claws have been removed, and
he is nothing but a giant furry cat that looks ferocious. However,
he is a force to be concerned about. But how does the enemy
work? That's not my sermon for today.
The sermon is to look at the glory of God displayed in the
church. The manifold wisdom of God to be displayed to the church.
But it has to be understood that this power of God is being fought
against by the powers of darkness. The darkness of the enemy of
God. who was a created being, whose
power himself that he has, his own power, comes from God. How
stupid. It reminds me of the Jews in
John chapter 12, as they decided to murder and put to death Lazarus,
whom Jesus had raised from the dead. It's that ironic. This
is the very author of my power. I think I'll rise up against
God and say I will be like the Most High Elohim, and I will
sit on the throne of God, and I will put myself in equal plane,
is what the devil said. But He is a created being that
is owned by the Father. And so this power that fights
against the church today is very visible, and we may even see
that governments fight against the church. We see it in the
Saudi Arabias. and in India and in Asia. We see in Africa how
people are persecuted for their faith. We see in other parts
of the world where people are put to death by the hour when
they publicly proclaim Christ as Lord. And so we think, well,
this is coming to America. It probably will before time
ends. I pray that the church would
truly stand up and be prepared for such a battle. But I'll tell
you what I've observed in my years of ministry of how the
enemy comes against the church, and it's from within the church. It's from within the church,
from the deacons and the pastors and the members and the committees
and the things that take place. And you've got this politicized
environment where the church then becomes this organization
that is no better than the government itself, no better than the mafia,
no better than organized crime. It just has a different slant
with some kind of a moralistic righteousness that they can display
to the world. And then we think that it is
godly when it's actually satanic and demonic. So when we see these
things, we ask ourselves, who are the souls of today? They
may be you. They may be the people that live
in your home. The friends that you have in the church. It may
be the pastor that preaches down the street. It may be the deacon
that lives next door. who desire so much to have his
or her way in the means and the methods of the church that they
bring judgment of God on the people of God. And the judgment
of God on His people is not the judgment of damnation, but the
judgment of oppression, the judgment of just blindness, the judgment
of inability, the judgment of fruitlessness. Will people cry
out, give us a king? God gives them a king, and they
have to respond as they receive the just reward of what they
desired, which was, they thought, better than what God had provided.
Well, there's a mystery here, Paul says. And he's the very
least of all the saints. And he's the least of all the
saints because he murdered the saints. But then on his way to
murder the saints, as I spoke with one church this morning,
God saved him by grace. stopped Him and saved Him and
helped Him to see the glories of Christ, the deep, unsearchable
riches of the gospel. And so now that brings us to
this mystery. The mystery of God now, as Paul
says, this grace was given in order to preach to the Gentiles
the unsearchable riches of Christ. Now friends, let me explain something
to you. There are two thoughts of what
this means in theology or theological circles. One is that the riches
of Christ are unsearchable, unknowable, unreachable. And in other words,
they're ours. What are those riches? Well,
what does Paul say? In Him we have obtained an inheritance,
predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all
things according to the counsel of His will. He says that we
are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. He chose
us before the foundation of the world that we should be holy.
He predestined us for adoption as sons. He did a praise of His
glorious grace with which He blessed us in the blood. In Him
we have redemption through His blood, forgiveness of our trespasses
according to the riches of His grace. He gave us wisdom and
insight, making known to us the mystery of His will. So all these
things that we see, these are the immeasurable riches of Christ.
But at the same time, these are the benefits of Christ. And the
other mindset is that the unsearchable riches of Christ is the unsearchable
nature and the unsearchable, omnipotent nature of Christ Himself.
I say both work and they're fine with it. We should be fine with
it. But we should never at any time ask God's people, put the
benefits of Christ above Christ. And we should never worship life
except that we worship Christ as the eternal life. We should
never celebrate God for all that He's done except that He became
a man and bore the sins of the church so that we could be free. This is the mystery of God revealed.
This is the mystery of the unsearchable riches. And in verse 9 there,
Paul preaches to bring to light for everyone what is the plant
of the mystery, hidden for ages in God who created all things.
We dealt with that last week about the power of God being
shown and revealed through the creation of the world and everything
in it. And that it all exclaims His
glory. Unfortunately, sometimes when
people hear preaching such as this, they contemplate how boring
it might be. They contemplate how they'd like
to be someplace else. My word for them is to be someplace
else. Because if you don't want to
hear the truth of God's riches, then you don't want to hear the
lies. Well, maybe you do. Maybe you'd rather hear the lies
of the world than the riches of truth. Well, this mystery
of God revealed, it was revealed for a purpose. It isn't just
God shining Himself out there because He just wanted to be
seen. It's not just God saying, well,
there's something else I need to add to the narrative of history. Let me share my life. Let me
share my essence. Let me share myself. He does
it for a reason. This church, sometimes in our
hearts though, remains a mystery. The church in itself is a mystery.
And it remains a mystery in many of our hearts when we consider
the church to be man-made, man-held and man-centered. When we look
at the people of Christ and we start to ascribe what the church
is and someone asks us, what is the church? And we answer
that in our own subconsciousness and it centers around humanity.
Then we have missed the boat and the mystery of Christ and
the mystery of the church is still a mystery for us. It's
no longer a mystery to the saints. We've been shown the mystery
of Christ. We've been shown the riches of
Christ. We've been not only shown, but given the riches of Christ.
So therefore, we must also live in those. See, God has created
the church through Christ Jesus. At the spilling of His blood
and the crushing of His flesh, God birthed a people. What horror in my mind as I thought
and planned for this sermon this week. I thought to myself, what
horror comes to the glory of God when we as the bride of Christ
display all that we can do apart from what God has already done. I think it's an abomination to
His name. And we see what happens when
people defame His name. But thankfully, God is a God
of grace, as He teaches in Ezekiel 36 and 37, where He says, not
for your sake, but for My name's sake, I will make you a people.
I will cleanse you. I will bathe you. I will make
you righteous before Me. Not for your sake, because you
have defamed My name among your people. You have defamed My name
among the nations. And I will make My name holy
again. And I will cause you to walk in My ways. And I will put
My law in your heart. And I will help you walk in righteousness."
See, that's merciful God. Because if man has a free will,
then man can do anything he wants. A man can't do anything he wants.
And one thing man cannot do without God's grace is to see the beauty
of the Gospel and to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. When
we find ourselves in the throw of what I like to say, churchmanship
and not grace, we are a laughing stock to the world. It's no wonder
so many people leave the church and never come back, because
they see the utmost of hypocrisy, not in repentance. We ought to
see hypocrisy and then repentance. But we see the utmost of hypocrisy
as people claim to have the power of God within them, but then
they walk in the power of the flesh and deny the gospel of
Jesus Christ. See, God created all that exists.
He created it all for one purpose. And that purpose is the seeing
of His glory. As God said, let there be light
in the very beginning, He is exposing Himself to what He has
made. And that light then becomes the person of Jesus Christ who
is the light to display the glory of God and the fullness of God.
We have seen the fullness of His glory in the person of Jesus
Christ, in the face of Christ. My friends, I'll tell you this,
if you don't see that as exhilarating, I pray that you would be saved
and that God would bring that joy and that overwhelming passion
and adoration for Him back to you. God said that He created
all things, and His clear purpose for the fullness of time was
to send Christ to display His righteous glory and grace. God
will put, as what we've already learned, all things under the
feet of Christ, who is the head of the church, which is His body. This body. We as a people are
part of the body of Christ when we sit with Christ, unified in
Him, glorified in Him over all things as His body, including
all that man seeks to satisfy his own longings, apart from
Christ's beauty and glory and worth. So the question that we
must ask in our preaching today is, what is the church? What
is the church? Well, it's simple to see what
God is teaching in Paul's writing. A people, as Peter says, and
copying and quoting out of the Old Testament in numerous places,
a people who were not a people who now are a people. So we get
sort of the byline for Grace Truth Church. We are people for
His glory, by His grace. We who were not a people are
His people. In Hebrews 8, verse 10, it says
this, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put
My laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God and they shall be My people. In 2 Corinthians
6, Paul pens, what agreement has the temple of God with idols?
For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will
make My dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be
their God and they shall be My people. In Ezekiel, the prophet
is speaking, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules
and obey them. God says, and they shall be my
people and I will be their God. The prophet Jeremiah echoes that
same sentiment. And they shall be my people and
I will be their God. Jeremiah 23, 38. In the Exodus
6, verse 7, I will take you to be My people and I will be your
God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God who has brought
you out from under the burdens of Egyptians. See, what we understand
from the Scripture is that God created all that there is for
the purpose of saving a people for Himself and condemning a
people who reject the truth of the Gospel. And this is how God
is glorified. God is glorified in the and the
saints and through their faith and through their repentance
because He gives it to them and He gets glory for it. And God
is glorified in the damnation of the wicked. He even teaches
us in Exodus when He's speaking about the Pharaoh, He says, I
have raised you up to show My glory. God raised Pharaoh up
as an instrument of destruction that God's glory might be seen
in the judgment of Egypt for the deliverance of His people.
For those who believe in Jesus Christ, We, the church, display
His glory and wisdom in that He became a man. He walked righteously
before the Father. He died willingly and gave Himself
as a ransom for many so that God could display His wisdom
and righteousness in forgiving sinners. And so what we see here
now is the whole of the cosmos was created. The cosmos is the
Greek word that is used for world in the New Testament. The cosmos
was created so that God would create a people. It was His eternal
purpose in Christ that Christ would come, securing redemption
of the people of God. Oh see, John writes, what kind
of love the Father has given to us that we should be called
the children of God. And so we are. And John writes
in the third chapter of his gospel, Jesus speaking to Nicodemus,
you know it is this, for God so loved the world that He gave
His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish,
but have eternal life. A better translation would be
something of this nature. God loved the world in this manner,
that His Son, the only begotten One, He gave, so that all the
believing ones, without exception, constantly exercising faith,
should not perish, but will have eternal life. That's a better
translation of the Greek. That's a better translation of
what God has done. In the manner of love, He has
loved us, that He gives us the ability to come and to repent,
and we who are believers are saved before the foundation of
the world. And we ought to praise God for
His glory and His grace. And see, those who have been
saved by this grace are the church of Jesus Christ. The world has
many churches, and many people claim to be the bride of Christ,
but no, they are not. They are no much the bride as
a harlot would be if you paid her by the hour to be a bride.
She may act the part, and she may look the part, and she may
even pretend to take a name, but she is not a bride. And neither
are the people who profess to be the Christians who occupy
the churches of America if they are not saved by the grace of
God. Friends, I'll be honest with you, we should make no mistake. The church will display God's
infinite wisdom as those under grace, as those under forgiveness
and redemption and mercy. And we must be unified in that
understanding. We must be unified in that knowledge
and in that power and in that wisdom. And we must be unified
in the mission that God has called us to. It is not to enjoy the
things that we create. It is not to be happy about the
things that we have. It is not to do these things.
We are to display the mission of God, which is to display His
wisdom. His manifold wisdom, His immeasurable
riches in Christ and manifested through Christ for the sake of
the church, for the sake of the elect that we might become a
people to display His glory. And the world looks by, and the
powers of the enemy looks by, and they say, wow, we've lost
the battle. Because look at the bride. Make
no mistake. The church is the outcome of
the mystery that is revealed through Christ, who is Christ
Himself alone. Christ is the mystery revealed,
and what Christ has accomplished and applied to His people. This
is the mystery. This thing that the Father has
done. These people that the Father has given to the Son and they
come to the Son. This amazing body known as the
church. Our purpose is to continue to
know this deeply and to grow in this truth deeply as the source
of our power, which is the gospel. The gospel. Paul says in Romans
1.16 that I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for
it is the power of God unto salvation, first to the Jew, then to the
Greek. We see the power of the gospel. We have boiled the power
of God down. to a specific message or story,
and we read it like we would a story about Santa Claus, or
a story about Little Red Riding Hood, or a story about something
we read in the newspaper, or a story from history, and we
read it and say, look kids, look guys, look friends, look church,
here's a story about what Jesus did. Great, now let's move on
to something greater. Friends, there is nothing greater
than the story of Jesus Christ, for it is not something that
Jesus has done. It is what Jesus is pleasantly
doing and is accomplishing the life of His people. And if we
are not living under the power of the gospel, we are dead in
our sins and we await the judgment of God on the day of reckoning.
That is the absolute truth. And there is no other gospel
except that we be anathemas, forever cut off, forever condemned,
forever damned, if an angel from heaven or if an apostle comes.
and preaches another gospel but that one. That man is a false
prophet and the judgment of God will be on his head and on all
who follow him. That is why the gospel is so
powerful. The mystery of God revealed is
the conduit of grace. The gospel message is the power
of God to put grace into my heart, into your heart, that you may
become alive in Christ. The gospel is the power given
to us to believe. The gospel is the power of God
given to us to repent and walk in building holy affections,
walk in righteousness, to have affection for Christ. The power
of the gospel gives us the power to be able to live as the church,
that we might be a display of the glory of God, a representative
of what God has done and His magnificent power to create something
from nothing, which is what He does when He takes a sinner like
me and He calls him a saint. He takes nothing and He makes
something out of it. And friends, if you have the
power to believe, if you have the power to repent, if you have
the power of God in you, you are a child of God. The power
of the Gospel gives us the power to love each other, to love our
enemies, to lay down our lives for those who hate us, to lay
down our lives as a husband, or a father, or a mother, or
a sister, or a bride, or a groom, or a brother, or a friend. And
with joy, we lay down our lives for the sake of another. It gives
us the power to adore and to worship in spirit and in truth.
and to see the Kingdom who is Christ, and beauty, and ray,
and power, and magnificence. It gives us the power to long
and hunger for the preached Word, to long and hunger for the written
Word, to long and hunger for the heard Word, and that we pray. And God gives us the power to
pray. And even when we're not able to pray, the power of the
gospel prays for us and that the Holy Spirit intercedes on
our behalf with moanings too deep for words. And He knows
the heart of all of His children. And He prays for us when we are
at the corner of our depression closet and we don't even want
to leave the house because we'd rather die than come in contact
with a human being. The Word and the power and the
Gospel of God prays for His saints. The power of God to live. as
a slave. A slave to righteousness and
not a slave to the flesh. The gospel is the power to understand
and know the depth of the gospel. To know the depth of the power
of God in our lives. And we don't walk around wondering,
what shall we do? It's clear to us as we dive into
the immeasurable depths of the riches of Jesus Christ and all
the benefits that He's given us, there is no There is no other
thing that satisfies our soul, and that is because the power
of the Gospel gives us the ability to revive daily and relive daily
faith in the incarnate Gospel in our lives as Christ is seen
in us and through us. And people look and they say,
what is wrong with you? And we can say, we're crazy for
Christ. We are going insane for the Gospel. And we are out of our minds and
we're out of this world. And nothing can change that because
the power of God in me is working. The gospel and the power of the
gospel gives us the power to walk in the unity of the Spirit
as a people and the unity of truth and the Spirit of God through
Jesus Christ. It gives us the power to walk
away from sin and to walk in righteousness and to make war
against sin and to hate sin and to hate wickedness. But even
when we confront it in the world and when we confront it in the
church, we do it as a recipient of grace with all humility and
spiritual maturity so that we know that if it weren't for the
grace of God, we would be just like them. The power of the gospel
gives us the power to make disciples with the same gospel. And just
pour it in like a circular drink. It just keeps pouring in that
living water, and it never has an end, and it never has a beginning,
and it continually pours. See, all of this comes from the
Word of God that we are now reading. All of that is there. Have you
seen it? Have you seen it? All of it's
there. That took too long. That was an introduction. All of this comes from the Scripture,
studying and meditating on this Scripture, without which we would
be putting our hopes and dreams on something else but Christ.
We would believe in something else. We would think we should
be a people. with our own power and our own
mind instead of what God has already established for us. We
will look, if we don't have that grace and that power, we will
look at what we think the church ought to be and we will organize
it in that manner. And we will miss the power of
God and we will stand back after decades and decades and decades
and we will be so proud of what we've accomplished and we will
look at it and it will be nothing but rotten, filthy garments.
And it does not please God. See, Adam and Eve sinned. Foundationally,
they sinned because they failed to believe in God's restrictions
for their good. They failed to believe that God's
plan was best and they put their own lusts and their own desires
and the things that were in front of them in their own eyes, they
put them first. And they said, we know what God has said, but
I believe by what I see. I look with my flesh and I see
what I see and I like it. And I know God said, but I think
it would be good for me. And that's the sin of Adam and
Eve, and it's the sin of the church when we put trust in our
own eyes and our desires. And in turn, Adam and Eve died,
and because Adam died and Adam sinned, all men died. If we continue
to ignore the salvation of Jesus Christ, yes, the power of the
gospel ignored in our lives and in the church is ignoring salvation.
We will find a harsh place of misery and judgment. So what
we see here in this is that we see God's wisdom, God's glory,
might and power will be seen in and through the church. The
question is, do you believe that? Do you truly believe that? And
if you believe that, you will live in that. Do you see what
I'm saying? Church, do not fall deaf to the message that you're
hearing today. It is not by coincidence that
you sit under this Word. that Paul wrote so long ago to
be fresh to your heart and mind today. It is not by coincidence
that every time you hear the Gospel that you have an opportunity
to hear it and an opportunity to ignore it. I pray that you
find power in what you hear. And by God's grace, you will
be given ears to hear. The purpose, so that... Now we
preach the text. So that... Oh, I'm in the wrong chapter. This mystery, am I there? No, I'm in verse
8, sorry. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints,
this grace was given in order that, I'm going to paraphrase,
I may preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. God's grace, God's power given
to Paul. We saw that this power was given
to Paul to suffer for the sake of the gospel. We saw last week
the power given to the church to create the church. Now we
look at the purpose of that power. Why is it there? The reason God
gave His power to the church is that it might preach the unsearchable
riches of Christ. How much preaching goes on? in
America. How much preaching goes into
your ears and in your heart on a weekly basis? And how much
of it is preaching of the gospel and how much of it is preaching
of the devil? Because there is only two fathers of preaching. The father of truth and the father
of lies. And so if any man, woman, child
stands before any audience, virtual, physical, And they preach something
that is different than this. They preach a gospel that comes
from the mouth of Satan himself. It's a harsh reality. And you know some people like
that. Heck, I used to be one of them in some areas. And in
ignorance, but by grace God opened my eyes to see truth. And I'm
thankful for that. To preach. Not only are we to
preach, but there's specific things that we are to preach.
We're to preach first, we see in verse 8, the unsearchable
riches of Christ. What are those? Redemption and
forgiveness and love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. Forgiveness constitutes... What
do I owe you? You see that? Somebody forgives
a debt, it means you owe something. That means you owe God eternal
punishment. You owe Him your flesh forever. He put that debt on Christ and
He satisfied His judgment against you and I so that we could be
called the children of God and be made the children and be adopted
as sons and that God could continue to be righteous as God. Instead
of just letting people get away with it, He paid for it. So to
preach the unsearchable riches of Christ as I've already detailed
earlier in the introduction. And the second thing we preach
is to bring the light of the mystery hidden. We bring to light
what was hidden. If something's hidden in a box,
we take the lid off and it's been brought to light. If the
book has been sealed up and never been opened, we open it and we
read the words and it has been brought to light. If it's been
hidden from our face and we find it, it's been brought to light.
The mystery of the gospel, the immeasurable riches of Christ,
this mystery is now revealed through Jesus, through His words,
and through the apostles who write His words. It is the only
source for you to live in power as a person of Christ, as the
church. That is the primary purpose of
the church in this way. The pressing purpose, rather.
Not the primary. The pressing purpose of the church.
What I mean by that is the one that is imminent. The one that
is right there. It's just very much on the tip
of the cliff and we've got to walk off. We must preach the
gospel. That's it. What should the church
be? What should we do? What are we going to do next
week? What are we going to do today? We're going to preach the gospel. What am I
supposed to be doing as a church member? I'm going to preach the
gospel. I'm going to proclaim the gospel. See, this is the
point. We stand on that precipice of this is the last moment. We
are in that place of last days. And we don't sit there and say,
well, one day when I'm older, one day when I'm more mature,
preach the gospel. Saul was saved, he preached the gospel. People
get saved, they love Christ. I said last week, the reason
people don't share the gospel is because they only share what
they love. And if you're not sharing the
gospel, you don't love the gospel enough. And I'm not preaching
to you, I'm sharing with you. There have been many opportunities
to share the gospel in my life, and I have ignored them. And by God's grace, we are convicted
of that. If God did not give us His grace, we'd walk blind
to it, that mystery. We'd just walk blind to it. So
we're to preach the gospel. That's the pressing purpose of
the church, the primary purpose of the church. Why do we preach
the gospel? Look at verse 10. So that through the church, The
metaphoric wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers
and authorities in the heavenly places. Now friends, let me tell
you something. Verse 11 says, this was according
to the eternal purpose in Christ that he realized in Christ Jesus.
Do you understand that the eternal purpose of God in creating everything
that exists was that Christ would come and empower a people to
proclaim His glory. So the church only needs to bother
itself with displaying the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4.6, one of my most favorite verses in the entire
world, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness,
has shown in our hearts, listen to this language, has shown in
our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let's just sit on that for a
minute. This is an eternal purpose. God's
wisdom is seen in the church. God's wisdom is seen because
the church exists. The church doesn't have to do
anything. If it just exists in power, God's glory is seen. And
who is it seen to? The powers of this age. The powers
and the principalities of the heavenly places. Where is that?
If you go over, you don't have to go there right now, but if
you go to chapter 6 of Ephesians, Paul seals the deal in this rhetoric.
He seals the deal in his argument. And he uses the exact same language.
The powers. and principalities of darkness. This is not the governments.
This is not the powers. This is Satan and his minions
who look at the church and that it exists, he knows he's done. Has won! Because the church is. See, that's it. So then, what
our response is, is to forever preach that and proclaim that,
not just in how we live in righteousness. That's coming. We've already
seen that. He saved us in order to present
us holy and blameless on the back of Christ. But, so... Where
did I go? I don't remember where I went. I lost my train of thought. That's
alright. So, in the eternal purpose of
Christ, let's just go there. So go. Yeah. Not just because
we exist, Satan knows he's defeated. Not in that we serve and we worship
and we love and we work and we grow. Those are overshadowing
aromas of what God has done for the church. These are the natural
expectations. If I light a fire, it's going
to burn. If I shoot a gun, it's going to fire. If I take a breath
in and I breathe out, there's a chemical exchange between oxygen
and carbon monoxide. Deoxide. Which one is it? Dioxide. Yeah, let's not have cars running
out of my body. Combustion engine. I feel like that sometimes. And
so in that, now, this natural process of what God has created,
it produces the fruit of godliness. It produces disciple-making.
It produces unity. It produces sound doctrine and
theology. It produces students of the Word
and seminarians from age 1 to 301. People who are truly saved
when they get a taste of the riches of Christ and His Word,
they cannot get over it. They will never get over it.
It will ruin their lives, and hallelujah, it does. So this pressing purpose to preach,
this primary purpose to proclaim. I've got alliteration going on
there. Proclaim the wisdom of God. It is the purpose for which
He created all things. And look at verse 12. How? In
whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith
in Him. What? So, I ask you not to lose
heart over what I am suffering for you, which is for your glory.
Now I'll close with this. Christ Jesus gives us power and
boldness and courage. So what does that teach us? That
means if our pressing purpose is to preach, we preach with
courage, we preach with boldness. We do not, and if you see Hebrews,
we do not shrink back. What is that shrinking there?
In the context of what the writer of Hebrews is teaching, it means
to shrink back from professing our faith in public. Do we shrink back? We're in a
room, we're at a restaurant, we're someplace, and I'm not
saying you've got to be like these two guys and stand over the cross in the
middle of the room and throw tracts out. If God calls you,
do it, or you'll be disobedient. Somebody comes up and you're
talking with them, and you know the conversation is moving to
spiritual things, and you know that God has put in your soul,
and you feel it! You know it's there! And you
go, well, I'm not going to say anything about Jesus because
I'm going to freak out! You have boldness and courage
to express it. You know why? We can't do it.
For those who are truly the saints of God, the reason we can't do
it is because we don't have enough grace and have enough gospel
power in us because we use the Word of God like a 9-1-1 road
map. We use it as I like to say, the
vitamin popped in Scripture. I've got my 300 verses that I
love for my specific things and my specific needs. I've got my
B12 and I've got my love vitamin. Depression vitamin, all these
things. And I'm just going to keep that. That's dear to my
heart. That's good. Have those things. But if you're living
off of supplements, you're not eating. You're starving. And just sustaining. I call that life support faith.
Just barely making it. And if you ever have to run a
sprint, you pass out before you've got five steps. We ought to preach
with boldness, because this is a powerful purpose. We ought
to preach with courage. What kind of courage? What does
that mean, courage? That means there is no fear.
No fear. And with this no fear, that means
we have a constant, absolute assurance. We have a deep understanding
that what God has promised and what God has provided is done.
And we rest in that. We walk in that. God's wisdom
is a display of His glory. God's wisdom is that He saw a
way and planned a way and then created it. He didn't create
it. and then discover a way. He didn't
create a hope in one way, and then Saul had to do another.
He planned it, and created it, and established it, and decreed
it, and thus it was. And the church displays its glory
by the mere existence. Let me give you in closing ways
the church displays. Well, there's a long list. Displays
the glory of God. Displays the wisdom of God. As
I've already said, the church displays the wisdom of God just
that it exists. God has created a people. The
stress comes when we really start to identify who truly are the
professing Christians and who are those who are possessed by
the Holy Spirit. See, God has an inheritance. We don't inherit
God. He inherits us. That's the inheritance. We are the passive... What do
you call that? I don't know. We are the passive
pieces of rock at the bottom of the barrel. And God picks
us up and takes dead rock and gives it life. And there's a big difference
between those who... See, rocks might say, I'm a Christian. I'm
a Christian. I'm in the Christian spot. I'm in the Christian cart.
I'm in the Christian church. I'm not going into all that sin,
see, because rocks really don't move much. They don't go anywhere. They sort of sit there. Of course,
you're not sinning because you're stagnant. But you are sinning
because you don't love God more with all your heart, mind, soul,
and strength. So you violate the first commandment. And then there's
those Christians who are alive, and they exist, and God is glorified
in their existence. And there's a big difference
between the professing church and the church that is possessed
by God. A big difference. Here's some of those. I believe
there needs to be unity. You know what? Unity is not the
lack of stress, trouble, or arguments. Unity is standing in the same
place while you fight about it. Unity is walking down the same
line while sometimes you go to blows over misunderstandings.
But unity is walking in the power of the gospel when you do come
at odds relationally. Not just relationally in the
church. Unity in doctrine. Unity in truth. God's wisdom
is displayed in the worship of the church. We worship God, not
church. You know, a lot of times, Christians
worship church. We worship pastors. We worship
churches. We worship doctrines. We worship
stuff. We worship methods. We worship
all sorts of things, but we don't worship Christ. And it's evident
because we don't love the Word. And when somebody gets in there
and says, let's grow in the Bible, we go, I'm not one of those people.
I say, you're not a child of God? I mean, that's what I want
to say sometimes when people say that. I'm not one of those
people. But that would be rude. Because I used to believe that. We don't
want to bother the average Christian with all this doctrinal stuff,
with all this deep teaching. Why do we want to go verse by
verse through the Bible and take six years to finish three verses?
Why do we want to do that? Because that's where the power
is. Because I'm going to tell you, by God's grace, I am very
creative when it comes to putting together a talk. You could throw out three words
and I could talk for two hours. Extemporaneous speech. I love
that stuff. Debate? I don't care if I know
anything about it. I'll pretend I do. And you'll
believe my statistics because I'll make them up on the spot.
If you don't believe me, ask my
family. It's always 83 or 87 or 92 or something. You know,
percent of something. I don't believe a thing you're
saying. We ought to be unified. We ought
to worship. We ought to love the church. Do you love the church?
I had somebody tell me years ago as I was a pastor on a church,
I love this church. I love this church more than
you do. And I touched her on her shoulder and I said, well,
sister, I thought I was part of this church. So if you don't
love me more than you love yourself, or you love the idea of this
church existing as an organization, you don't love anything. Oh,
that was not a good thing. Her husband had a sort of thing
to say to me after that. But I was sincere. The wisdom
of God is displayed in the love of the church for itself, in
spite of our differences, in spite of our little problems. We work through them. We die
for people. Our children, they drive us crazy
sometimes, don't they? But we love them anyway, and
we give them everything they want to a degree, everything
they need and did some. We want the best for them. We
ought to love each other as Christ loved the church. We display
God's wisdom when we grow, when we grow in love, when we grow
in worship, when we grow in knowledge, when we grow in grace. We display
the wisdom of God. We display the wisdom of God
when the church exists gospel-powered and gospel-centered. We display
the wisdom of God when the church exists with a mind and a heart
for missions and evangelism. There's no such thing as saying,
well, we're going to have our holy huddle in the hell with
everybody else. Because that's exactly what we're saying when
we don't share our faith. Or if we don't have a heart for
it. We may not know how. We're going to remedy that. And
you may share your faith twice a year. Some of you may share
your faith twice an hour. That's up to the Spirit of God.
Not my guilt on you. You don't leave guilty. You leave
free because Christ is free. He set you free from guilt. If you can't forgive yourself,
then you don't believe in the gospel. The church displays the wisdom
of God when we have a passion for His glory above all things.
We long to see Him lifted up. When people talk about, oh, we
just love you. We just love your church. We
just love your ministry. It's not about us. It's about Him. Let's decrease that He may increase,
as John the Baptist said. His followers were upset that
all of their disciples were leaving them and not following John and
walking and teaching with John, but were following Christ. And
John's like, that's who I came to proclaim, you moron. That's
how I would have said it. John didn't say it like that.
He didn't say moron. He says, that's what the bridegroom
gets the bride. I bring them to the knowledge
of the truth through preaching. And when they see the bridegroom,
then they leave me because I'm following him too. See, that's
the point. And so we have a passion for
God's glory. We have a passion for discipleship and discipline.
They go hand in hand. As we grow to understand deeper
the mercies and the power and the riches of God, and to grow
in His Word, and to grow in worship, and to grow in affection, we
also grow in looking at each other's lives as a cautionary
measure of going, brother, I love you, and I see you walking in
the wrong direction. Come back. And when someone rejects
that discipline, Then the church gets involved, and if they continue
to reject that discipline, they're ejected from the church, Paul
says, for the destruction of their flesh, so that they may
be saved. That's a dying necessity. Don't
judge me! That's why I hate that. I hate
when I hear people say that. Don't judge me! Jesus says, judge! Judge the church! But don't judge
lest you be judged, and when you judge another, judge at the
same measure that you'll be judged. You will be judged that way.
Do you judge that? But before you go digging the
speck out of your brother and his eye, you get that log out
of yours and then you dig in there to help him with the speck.
And all the while, when you get that log out, you've still got specks
all in yours. So you understand the pain you're in and understand
the position you're in. You're not better than him. You're
walking with him. That's the judgment that the church ought
to give. The problem is Christians think they ought to judge the
world. The world does what it's supposed to do. Sins. Let them. Preach the gospel, preach repentance,
and call it sin. And if it be God's will, they
will hear the gospel and then repent of their sin and believe
in Jesus Christ. The problem with evangelism today is we want
decisionisms, we want cards filled out, we want aisles walked, and
we want people to change their behavior. You know, if you just
give your life to Jesus, you just need to get off them drugs
and give your life to Jesus. You just need to get out of that
bed and give your life to Jesus. You just need to stop feeling
that way and give your life to Jesus. Folks, that's a lie. Jesus doesn't want that life.
The life that comes and tries to fix it all. Oh, I'm going
to straighten up. Jesus doesn't want that life. Jesus says, I
came for the sick, not the... He says, I came for sinners,
not righteous people. The church displays the wisdom
of God through the preaching of the Word, through the study
of the Word, through the reading of the Word, through divine supernatural affection
for enemies, When they operate as a functioning
biblical church in its leadership and its operation and its discernment. When we operate in holiness and
obedience to God. And finally, as we close, when
we do all this with joy. Joy. When we suffer with joy
in Christ alone. That's the point. That's the
mystery. That's the culmination of the
mystery that the world can see. The devil sees it and knows because
we exist. The world sees it as we grow
and continually glorify God and display His wisdom and our joy
through living in the same world that everybody else lives in.
And they go, are you on something? I say, yes. I'm on grace. I'm on the power of God. And
bless God, if you repent and believe, you can suffer with
joy just like me. But as long as you keep looking
for your way, you'll never find it. It's faith alone in Christ. Our vision, mission, statement.
For our churches, we desire to be a people for God's glory as
worshipers in spirit and in truth, who live, listen very carefully,
live as though we have received grace upon grace and display
the power of the gospel in our lives together while evangelizing
the world with the fullness of joy that is found in Christ Jesus
alone. That pretty much sums up everything I've been preaching.
That's about a 12-year sentence. As God brought me through the
ringer and put me to the place of the joy that I have is in
Christ alone. And yeah, it wanes sometimes.
Sometimes I feel like my stomach's been punched out. But I'll be
honest with you, the power of God, the power of the gospel
is sufficient. Nothing can knock us down. The call is, do you believe that?
Do you trust in Christ? Do you trust in the gospel of
Jesus Christ? Have you repented? Are you repenting?
Will you continue to repent? Have you believed? Are you believing?
Will you continue to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ,
which is the power to save you? And is God calling you to be
a part of this congregation as we move forward to prove to the
world that the devil has lost and that God has won? Let's pray. God, we are grateful. I don't have any other thing
to say, Lord. We're grateful. We're grateful that You have
saved us and brought us into a relationship with You through
Jesus Christ. You have prepared us for Your
glory. You have prepared us for all the riches of Your immeasurable
bounty. God, You save us from the foundations
of the world. You effect that salvation through
the hearing of the gospel, and it is evidenced by a life of
repentance and faith in Christ alone. Lord, we thank You. Help us to be a people, individually
a person, and corporately a people that display Your glory. Father, that display Your glory
in such a way that the world is baffled. God, as we leave this place,
as we leave this building, we know that the church goes out
into the world, but we are not of this world. Father, use us
and use us up for Your name. Bring to faith those who are
among us who are lost. And send us out to proclaim that
message to those who are lost around us. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.