Ephesians 3, and let's begin
reading in verse 1. For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner
of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if you have heard of the dispensation
of the grace of God which is given me to you, now that by
revelation he made known to me the mystery, as I wrote afore
in few words, whereby, when you read, you may understand my knowledge
in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known
unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles
and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs,
and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the
gospel. Now, you and I have been going
very slowly through this chapter. We saw there in verse 1 that
Paul not only was saved by the Lord, but the Lord did this amazing
thing. He put him in bonds because he
preached to the Gentiles. And Paul was writing to them
and said, Don't be worried about this. Don't be disheartened because
I've been a prisoner all these years. I'm not a prisoner of
Rome, he said. I'm a prisoner of Christ. I'm
here at the appointment of my Lord. And I'm here, he said,
for the sake of you Gentiles. I'm here because I am your Apostle. So he says, Rejoice in me. It's
for your good. It's for your good. And then
he tells them that the Lord had called him to preach this Gospel. This Gospel of God's grace in
Christ to them. And he tells us how he preached
it. We looked at that down there
in the other verses. That he preached it according
to the effectual working of his mighty power in verse 7. So we've
looked at a number of those things. And Paul mentions here, when
he's talking about the Gospel, and he's talking about Jesus
Christ, the whole thing that surrounds the gospel. He speaks
of it as a mystery. He just barely touches on it
here in these verses, but he mentions two of them. The first
one here in verse 4, whereby when you read, you may
understand my knowledge and the mystery of Christ. Then the second
one was there in verse 3, how by revelation He made known unto
me the mystery. And if you leave out those parentheses
and go to verse 5 and verse 6, you'll see what this mystery
is. Which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men,
as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by
the Spirit. And here's the mystery. that
the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and
partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel. So there's two
mysteries. And that's what we want to look
at just for a few minutes this afternoon. He mentions these
two, and I know that they're vital to one another. You talk
about the mystery of Christ. Well, you can't separate that
from what He does. It's all a mystery, but these
two are two different mysteries that he makes mentions of. And
let's look at these two right quickly. The first one, he says,
is the mystery of Christ. The very mystery of this person,
of Jesus Christ. Paul never got over it. Nobody
who knows him gets over the mystery of Christ. No man can say that
Jesus is Lord. but by the Holy Ghost. We can't
say it now, and they could not say it then. Somebody said, well,
He's not a mystery to me. It's because you don't know Him.
The Holy Spirit never opens your heart. When He opens our hearts
to know Him, we begin to say, what a mystery is this man, Christ
Jesus. Let's look at it this way. He
was a poor man. And to say that is to say the
least, a poor man. And this is what made him such
a mystery. He that was rich for your sakes became poor, that
ye through his poverty might be made rich. When we saw the
Son of God, when He stood in their midst, this is the thing
that confounded them the most. He was a man. And you know, to
look upon him, and I'll say this maybe with a little fear of being
misunderstood, to look at him, just to casually look at him,
he appeared to be not only average, but less than average. He was
exceeding poor man. When he had money, when he had
to pay his taxes, he had no money to pay his taxes. He got it out
of a fish's mouth. He had nowhere to lay his head.
He never owned a home. He often was in the house of
other people, eating or finding a place to rest. The Scripture
says women ministered unto him. He was indeed a poor man, had
no place to lay his head. And when you think about his
education, they said, well, this man has never learned letters.
You never found him in the seminars. The only time you find him among
the doctrines at all asking questions was when he was 12 years old.
They knew he never set it to feet of their theologians. He
was not an educated man in their seminars. He came out of Nazareth. We know what kind of place that
was, don't we? Even those who loved him said, can any good
thing come out of there? It was a lowlife place. They
looked down upon this country, a bad neighborhood. Some think
he was aging fast. He was just barely 30 years old.
And somebody said, well, you're not yet 50. He's just barely
30. He was probably aging fast. Looked older than what he really
was. The Scripture says he has no
form. That means he had no handsome
figure. He wasn't a beautiful man to
look upon. David was, but not Christ. He didn't stand out in a crowd.
He was less than average. No fancy clothes. No halo about
his head. Just a common, normal servant. And in the end, his own people
were so confused because they witnessed his being bound, he
was mocked, he was abused, and he was shamefully crucified. And why am I saying this? All
of this adds to the mystery of Christ. When you looked upon
Him as a man, this is what you see. An average man, dressed
average or less than average. A poor man. A despised man. A man of sorrow. Raised in a
despised neighborhood. And yet, this same man made these
staggering claims about himself. before Abraham was, I am. I and my Father are one. He looked at a man one day and
said, Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee. Who can forgive
sins but God? What a claim! I can. The Son
of Man can. No man knows the Father but the
Son, and He to Whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." You cannot
know God, this man said, this Jesus of Nazareth, unless I make
Him real to you. What a staggering claim. And
then he added to that, the Father don't judge any man. He's committed
all judgment to me. Well, who are you? Well, he says,
I'm the resurrection. I'm the life. And he said, nobody
comes to the Father but by me. And he made these claims about
having life in himself and giving life to whomever he pleased.
What kind of a man is this? Well, it's obvious if he's telling
us the truth, he's not an ordinary man, but he looks like it and
he acts like it until he starts speaking. And then you see something
else coming through, this tabernacle of flesh. You see this glory. You see this power in His words,
in His deeds. No, He's not an ordinary man.
Who is He? He's this mysterious man. Oh,
the mystery of Christ, the Apostle Paul said. A few hours before
His humiliating death, His disciples listened to Him pray. And I've
often wondered if they had any idea what He meant when He said,
Father, glorify Me with Your own self with the glory I had
with You before the world was. Before He came into the world,
He was. Before there was a world, He
was. Before there was time, He was. He is before all things. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God. He was there with God. Before
time was, He was with Him. But John says more than that.
He not only was with God, but He was God. Not a God. But He was the eternal God. Ain't that amazing? This Jesus
of Nazareth is God? Don't you love to say that? Jesus
Christ is God. I'm like Brother Todd. I just
love to repeat that. I sometimes go to prayer, and
that's what I call it. Oh, Jesus, my God. Jesus Christ,
my God. My only God. He's the only Creator. He's the only Savior. Hear, O
Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. And who is that? It's
Jesus. It's Jesus. Thomas was looking
upon Him after His resurrection, the holes in His hand and the
hole in His side. And he said, My Lord and my God. Somebody said Thomas was confused.
He was frightened and confused. No, the Holy Spirit had opened
his heart. And he said, I know who you are.
You're my God. You're my God. There's people
who believe in the virgin birth, yet they think the virgin son
was a mere creature. That he was God's creature, created
in time. But that's not the mystery of
Christ, brothers and sisters. The mystery of Christ is this.
That He that was conceived in the Virgin's womb, and He that
was nourished and developed there, and was born and washed and swaddled
and hanged upon the Virgin's breast, was the Ancient of Days. That's the mystery of Christ.
He is in His very humanity, yet the everlasting God. A virgin
shall conceive and bring forth a son. And what's His name? Immanuel. What does that mean? God with us. God with us. Mary put Him in her little bassinet,
laid Him on the floor, went about her business. And she had this
assurance. God was with her. God was with
her. Her son was God. He went down
to the temple when he was 12 years old and he talked with
those doctors and confounded them. Who was that with those
men? God with us. God with us. On the cross of Calvary, He was
forsaken of God, and yet He was God. Is that not a mystery? My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me? He never ceased to be what He
was, the eternal God, and yet upon the cross, God forsaken
God. What a mystery! In the tomb,
In His resurrection, in His ascension, at the right hand of the majesty
on high, He's seated there now, the mediator between God and
man, and yet it's still God with us. Ain't that a mystery? One God and one mediator between
God and man. And who is that man? He's God.
Nothing but faith, brothers and sisters, can lay hold of this.
Nothing but faith. The mystery of Christ. And the
Scripture teaches that our incarnate God is coming again. And the
church will say, this is our God. We've waited for Him and
He has come to save us. And He's the only God we'll see
when He returns. If you've seen me, you've seen
the Father. In Him dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead in His body. All the deity, all the sovereignty,
all the attributes of God are in His body in their fullness. And when He comes again, and
we look upon Him with the nails in His hand and the holes in
His side, we'll say, there's our God. There He is. God with us. Well, somebody will say, that's
not according to my understanding. That's not what I believe. I'm
not surprised. Are you surprised? I'm surprised
anybody would believe it. But I'll tell you what will stop
the unbeliever. I'll tell you the one thing unbelievers
need, the only thing that they need is this, is for the Holy
Spirit, the Holy Ghost, to open their hearts. No man can say
that Jesus Christ is Lord. He's just a man, a great man,
a prophet. But when the Holy Ghost comes
into the heart, then He's Lord and He's God. O glorious hour, it comes with
speed, when we from sin and darkness freed shall see the God who died
for man and praise Him more than angels can. Our incarnate God. The mystery of Christ. And Paul
said, that's who I preach. That's what I preach. And it
never got old. Here's the second mystery. You
find it here in the last portion of verse 3 and verse 5 and 6. And I mentioned it to you. That
Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ. You and I don't think
too much about this today. But I imagine we would think
more about it if we lived in that day. The Jews had no dealings with
the Gentiles. The Orthodox Jews looked upon
the Gentile as a dog. If he went about to convert the
Gentile to Judaism, the Gentile still wasn't fully accepted.
He would live and die a converted Gentile. He still wasn't allowed
to come over and worship with the Jews there in the court in
the temple. They had a court for the Gentiles,
did they not? There was still that division.
They weren't one, you see. And the converted Jew, they had an awful struggle accepting
these Gentile believers. as one with Him. You remember
the trouble that Peter had in Galatians chapter 2. Remember the trouble Peter had?
They just could not fully accept these Gentiles. Paul said, this
is the mystery, that they are one in Christ. We have these people today. We
call them dispensationalists. if you know what a dispensationalist
is. Most of them are pre-millennial. And I don't want to paint them
all with one wide brush. There are so many different opinions
among the people. Those dispensationalists, the
pre-millennialists, you can't paint them all with a wide brush.
But many of them today has the very same opinion that the Jews
had. And it's this. You better be
good to the Jews. Because the Jews are God's chosen
people. Have you ever heard that? The United States better never
forsake the Jews because the Jews are God's chosen people.
Have you ever heard people say that? Well, we should be good
to everybody. That's not my point. But my point
is this. If that nation over there is
God's chosen people, what in the world does that mean? Does that mean they're saved?
Does that mean they're not perishing? What does it mean to be God's
chosen people? See what I'm saying? But yet
that's what they profess. They say, well, there's a difference
between the Jew and the Gentiles. Because of their nationality,
they're a special people. They tell us also this, and you
hear all kinds of things like this, that the Lord Jesus Christ
came into this world, and He came to set up this kingdom,
to be a King. And He offered this kingdom to
the Jews. It was going to be made up of
Jews. And when they rejected Him, He had to revert to another
plan, to plan B. And what was that? Well, that
was the church, you see. Now, the church to them is like
this little parenthesis Christ came to the Jew and they
rejected Him, so then He converted Paul and gave him this gospel
to the Gentiles. And when the Gentiles are converted,
He's going to put that parenthesis there and turn back to the Jews,
and that nation is going to be saved. And it just gets all confusing
today. I had one lady today tell me,
the gospel that Paul preached is just to the church. It's just
to the church. And there's going to come a time
when all of Paul's gospel and all of Paul's pistols are going
to be set aside. And then the everlasting gospel
is going to be preached to the Jews. Now, we have people telling
us this. They call themselves dispensationalists. And it's so confusing. And the
reason I'm telling you this right here in verse 5 is one of the
verses that they use to prove all of this. This is one of the
proof verses. They said Paul's gospel and what Paul preached
was never even known before. That what he's preaching now,
he's preaching to the Gentiles, but that's not even the gospel
that's going to save the Jews when the church is raptured.
And they read verse 5, which in other ages was not made known
unto the sons of men. Then they stopped right there.
They stopped there. And they said, What Paul preached
was a mystery. It never was revealed before.
Nobody knew it before. The Old Testament don't even
say a thing about it. But they stopped too quick. Which in other
ages was not made known to the sons of man as it is now revealed,
as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by
the Spirit. Do you know the Scriptures everywhere
in the Old Testament predicted the salvation of the Gentiles?
Let me show you some places. Turn with me. Turn with me to
Genesis chapter 3. Turn your Bibles right quickly.
You have to turn quickly because I'm not going to dwell there.
Look at Genesis chapter 12 and look in Galatians chapter 3.
Look at Genesis chapter 12. As we were studying through the
book of Genesis, we saw this phrase mentioned several times.
Genesis chapter 12, verse 3. This is the Lord speaking to
Abraham. I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that
curse thee. And in thee shall all the families
of the earth be blessed. All the families. And when He
says this to Isaac and Jacob, He says it like this. All the
nations of the earth be blessed. Now look in Galatians chapter
3. Galatians chapter 3 and look in verse 8. Galatians chapter
3 and verse 8. And the scripture foreseeing
that God would justify the heathen through faith. Not just the Jews,
the heathens. He preached before the gospel
unto Abraham saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed. The same gospel Paul preached
is the gospel the Holy Ghost preached to Abraham. And it was
this, I'm going to justify the heathen. I'm going to save the
Gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ the Lord. Look in a couple
more places. Look in Isaiah chapter 49. Look
in Isaiah chapter 49. You remember when Paul was preaching
to the Jews? He was preaching, I think, to
Agrippa. And he says it like this. He said, Agrippa, they're
so mad at me. But he said, all I'm preaching is what Moses and
the prophets said should come. I'm not preaching anything new.
But Paul, why didn't people know this before? If it was there
in the Scriptures, why didn't they know it before? Well, Paul
said, that's the mystery. It's been hid. We who study our
Bibles know something about that, don't we? You don't know everything
just because it's in the Bible. How many times have you and I
been reading the Bible and there it was, lo and behold. I've read
that a hundred times. I've never seen it. Why? It was
hid. Paul said all of this salvation
that was going to save the Gentiles, this Gospel that was going to
save the Gentiles, it was hid in the Old Testament. And we
see it now, and we say, how in the world did they miss it? Well,
it's only known by revelation. And that's what Paul said. He
made known by revelation to me. Look what he said in Isaiah chapter
49. And look in verse 6. This is what the Father said
to Christ. And He said, It is a lot thing that thou shouldest
be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore
the preserved of Israel. You're going to say, my elect
among the Jews. Yes, you will. But you're going
to do this too. I will also give thee for a light
to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends
of the earth. He's salvation to the Gentiles.
The light to the Gentiles. Now look over in Acts chapter
13. And I won't bore you with these. I'll show you this. There's
many more of them. You can look them up in your own Concordance.
But look in Acts chapter 13. The Apostle Paul quotes this
verse. And you remember the occasion
upon which he quoted. Acts chapter 13 and verse 47. He was preaching here to the
Jews. The Jews rejected him. And Paul said, I'm turning to
the Gentiles. And he quotes this verse of Scripture in Isaiah
chapter 49 and verse 6. In Acts 13, verse 46, Then Paul
and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary that the word
of God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing you
put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,
lo, we turned to the Gentiles. Then he quotes that verse, For
so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be
a light of the Gentiles. that thou shouldest be for salvation
unto the ends of the earth." So is the salvation of the Gentiles
some new thing? Why, no, it's not. It was just
a hidden thing. It had to be revealed. But here, here is one of the
things that those believing Jews had to further understand. Not
only had the old Scriptures The Old Testament predicted that
God would save the Gentiles, but when He did, they would be
one with the Jews. All nationalities, all distinctions
had been taken away. In Christ, there is no such thing
as Jew or Gentile, bond or free, or male or female. We are one
in Christ. Glenn told us that this morning,
didn't he? The vine and the branches, they're one. Oh, the sheep I
have, which are not of this fold. See there, Bruce, you missed
it. He just said it. Didn't he just say it? They're
not of this fold. And you're trying to tell us
they're one. But he says they're not of this fold. Would you please
be quiet and let the Lord Jesus preach? Don't you just hate it
when somebody interrupts him while he's trying to preach?
Let him finish his statement. Let him finish his preaching.
Don't interrupt him. People so apt to interrupt the
Lord Jesus while he was preaching. Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold, them I must bring, and they shall hear my
voice, and there shall be one fold. Not two folds, one fold. That's the mystery, ain't it? The Jews finally would settle
for twofolds. Finally, they settled for two
bodies. Finally, they settled for two people, one just a little
higher than the other. Well, yes, you're Gentiles and
you're saved, and that's a wonderful thing. But we're Jews and we're
on this higher plane. You're saved Gentiles, but you're
still not with us. You're still not one with us.
No, we're still Jews. And we're just a little bit more
saved than you fellows are. Sounds like the landmark Baptist
don't like to bless their hearts. Yeah, you're saved, but you're
not as saved as we are, you see. See, we're somebody, you know.
Because this distinction, we're Baptists. I wish those dear brethren
would come out of that themselves and lead their congregations
out of that. That's the same old attitude that was among the
Jews. We're on this higher plane. You're not quite equal with us,
you see. Why? What makes the distinction
between them? Well, we're Baptists. We're Baptists. Ain't that awful? Yeah, that's awful. Notice in our text. Look back
over in our text. This is a wonderful thing. Notice
how Paul says it here. In verse 6, look what he says.
And you may tell these dispensationalists this if you run into someone
that believes all of this. It reminds me really of that
old game that kids play sometime at the party, pin the tail on
the donkey. All of us have tried that and
did that. They draw this picture of the
donkey and they put him on the wall and you blindfold someone
and let him pin the tail on the donkey. Well, no matter where
you pin that tail, it just doesn't look right. You take the blindfold
off and pin that tail right where it goes on that donkey, and you
still say, that does not look right. And you know why? It's
not really a part of the donkey. It's a manufactured tail. And that's what some people think
about the Jews and the Gentiles. The church is just this little
parenthesis. The Jew, he's the real thing,
you know. He's the real thing. That's what
Paul's proving. Not only are they both saved
the same way, but when they both find themselves in Christ, all
distinctions are taken away. All of them. They're one in Christ. That's the mystery. That's the
mystery. That was a mystery then, and
it's still a mystery to a lot of people today. But look how
he says it in verse 6. This is the mystery, he said.
Look how he says it. That the Gentiles should be fellah
heirs. That's the first thing. Fellah.
You know what that fellah heirs means? Participants in common. Not just heirs, but fellah heirs. What does God have for a Jewish
believer that He doesn't have for a Gentile believer? What
is it that He's going to give the Jewish believer that He's
not going to give the Gentile believer? Nothing. They're the
same. They're the fellow heirs. This is what got old Peter. This
got Peter. He said, Lord, what are you going
to give us? We've forsaken everything. The
Lord said, I'm going to give you the same thing. I'm going
to give those Gentiles a penny a day. Ain't that what He said?
Peter said, that's not fair. That's not fair. Fellow heirs. It's that man that thinks he
deserves something that better examine himself. Be amazed that
you're not an heir at all. If you are, it's an heir of grace
and mercy, not merit. And notice this, and this is
how this literally reads. Not only should they be fellow
heirs, but fellow members of the same body. All of this reads
like that. Fellow heirs, fellow members, fellow partakers of
His promise in Christ. The same body. Paul mentions
this body different times in this book. Look what he says
in chapter 4 and verse 4. Look what he says about the body.
There is one body. See that? We're fellow members
of one body. And look what he says in verse
15 and verse 16 of chapter 4. But speak the truth in love,
and may grow up unto Him in all things, which is the head, even
Christ, from whom all the whole body, the whole body, fitly jointed
together and compacted by that which every joint supply fitly
jointed together." It's not a divided body. It's one body knitted together. And he says lastly there in our
text in verse 6, fellow partakers of His promise in Christ. Fellow partakers of His promise
in Christ by the gospel. All the promises of God are in
Christ Jesus. And they're the same to one as
they are to another. All of those who are in Christ by election
and in Christ by calling have these promises. They're
covenant promises. All shall know me from the least
to the greatest. That's what he says about his
elect. And you know Him, don't you? It doesn't matter if you're
Jew or Gentile, you know Him. I will sprinkle clean water upon
them and they shall be clean. That's a promise. I will put
My laws in their hearts and write them in their mind and I will
be to them a God and they shall be to Me a people. That's the
promise. Just as much to you as it is to anybody else. All
of those who are in Christ. This is the promise that He has
promised us, even eternal life. That's in Christ. Is there anybody
in Christ that don't have that promise? Not a one. Not a one. God has chosen the poor of this
world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath
promised to them that love Him. That's a promise. Blessed is
the man that has tried, for when he has tried, he will receive
a crown of life which God has promised to them that love Him."
A crown of life. Everybody, everybody in Christ,
the heirs, fellow heirs of the promises of God in Jesus Christ. You see these covenant blessings
and these covenant promises, they are made to Christ. They
are all made to Christ. God made them to His Son. And
therefore, they're not only sure to Him, but being sure to Him,
they're sure to everybody that's in Him. It don't matter who you
are. You may be the smallest. You
may be the most despised saint in this world. But the promises
are just as sure to you as they are to the greatest saints. Because
the promises are in Christ. In Christ. Ain't that a wonderful
thing to think about? The mystery of Christ. in the
mystery of being one in His body. Fellow heirs. The only distinction,
brothers and sisters, that matters are we in Christ. That's a distinction. In Christ. That's it. That's
it. In Christ. Get our minds off
of everything else. That's why we have fellowship
with blacks and greens and grays and reds and all nationalities. That's why the church, when she's
in fellowship with the Lord, always wants to take the gospel
for everybody. Everybody. Because they know this, that
when a man or a woman or a boy or a girl finds themselves in
Christ, that's my brother. That's my sister. They're one with me. We're one
in the same building. One in the same body. a vine
carrying all these different branches. Lord bless His Word.