We're gonna be in the book of Ephesians if you'd like to turn there Ephesians chapter 3 again In our text we have Some certain truth about the Lord and his gospel And Paul refers to it as a mystery as a mystery as we heard the first hour about the revelation of Christ He also mentioned it being a mystery, but Paul says this

Romans 16 25 now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began.

What I believe about God, what I believe about the Lord Jesus Christ, what I believe about how God saves sinners must come from him. It's not something I can discover myself. I can't gain enough knowledge to come to the knowledge of the truth. I can't gain enough understanding to come to the understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't do anything enough in order for the Lord to reveal himself to me. It has to come from him, by him, according to his will, and all by his grace, or it won't come at all.

Now, the good news is he does reveal himself, as we heard the first hour. He does reveal himself. He reveals himself to his people. It's God's gift of salvation unto his chosen people.

This hour, I want us to look at the subject, the mystery of the gospel. That's what I've titled this, the mystery of the gospel. Let's read our text together. Ephesians three, verse one says, 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 toward you, that's a you word, how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery as I wrote afore in few words, whereby when you read, You understand why 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 into 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. whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effectual working of his power.

Now, do you see that word dispensation in, let's see if I can find it again. Verse two, if you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, that word dispensation means, and this is important, administration of a household or estate. administration of a household or estate. What he's saying is that it's the household of grace. It's the household of grace that he's referring to here. It's those that are in the household of grace also called the household of faith, which I'll refer to that too as we go. But this is given to God by His chosen people. This is given to the Lord's chosen people by God alone. This is how He reveals unto us His truth. By His own will and purpose He reveals that we are of the house of grace.

Now, The first mystery of the gospel is in verse two. And then in verse six, if you have heard of the household of grace, which is of God, which is given to you word. And then look at verse six, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs. That's your first mystery. Fellow heirs. How is it that the outcast, the dogs, as they referred to them as the Gentiles, the ones that had no hope of God or any hope of salvation whatsoever, have now been made fellow heirs with those who did have hope and salvation. How is that possible? We're fellow heirs. The good news is God chose not just those who had Jewish blood, but those which were given the same faith Not that God chose them because they were given the faith. They were given the faith because God chose them, whether they were Jew or Greek, whether they were Jew or Gentile, didn't matter. Didn't matter. And that's the only two, Jew and Gentile. If you're not a Jew, you're a Gentile. If you're not a Gentile, you're a Jew. There is no other options. This is how the Bible segregates it. So to be fellow heirs is a mystery. How is it that now we have been grafted in And he says in the same body, and we'll get to that next. But how is that possible? How did the Lord do this?

Well, the first part of this chapter is revealing God didn't say based upon Gentile or Jew at any point in time. He didn't choose Abraham because Abraham was a Jew. Abraham wasn't a Jew until God came to Abraham and said, I'm going to give you a covenant, and this will be a token of that covenant. And Isaac was born the firstborn Jew. Abraham would have been considered a Jew as well, but Isaac would have been the firstborn, his son would have been the firstborn Jew. And so what we see is that the promise that came unto Abraham was the promise of a Redeemer, a promise of a Messiah. It wasn't a promise that every single Jew or every single child that he had from then on was going to be redeemed, or it was going to be one of the elect of God. It was just that the promise of the Messiah, the one that would come that would save his people, would come through his lineage, would come through the lineage of the nation Israel.

There are those that believe physical Israel is God's chosen people. Well they were God's chosen people, but not unto eternal life. If they were, if ever one of them were chosen unto eternal life, then every Jew that's ever existed is going to be born again. So we know the choice of the Lord in choosing them was for His glory and for His honor in bringing the Messiah into the world. He chose that nation. He chose to give faith into Abraham that Abraham would believe. Abraham's an idolater. He's out here worshiping false idols. Abraham's a liar. Abraham's a trickster. Abraham's all, he told Pharaoh, he's like, yo, that's not my wife, that's my sister. He's trying to dodge and get out of trouble. That's who Abraham is. And yet God says he had faith. God gave him faith and it was accounted or reckoned unto him because God had made him righteous. God gave him faith because God had made him the righteousness in Christ. And that's the whole point here.

When the Lord says in the scriptures, they are not all of Abraham, which are of Abraham. He's talking about our faith. the faith that the Lord gives His people today is the same faith that He gave Abraham back then. The same faith that He gave to Noah. The same faith that He gave to Adam. The same faith that He gave to Abel. The same faith that He has given to every single one of His elected sheep. Whether it be Old Testament or New Testament. Whether it be Genesis, or whether it be all the way to Revelation. It doesn't matter. It is the same exact faith. There is one faith, one Lord, one baptism. That's the good news of the Gospel, it doesn't change. What God requires now He's always required and He's not going to change. So what does it mean to be made fellow heirs? Before, if you wanted to have any part with the Jew, any worship of God in the temple or the tabernacle, then you had to become a proselyte Jew. That's the terminology, a proselyte Jew. Now a proselyte Jew was one that had to relinquish their lives as they know it then. They had to literally relinquish their family. They had to relinquish everything that they had. They had to move into the Jewish community. Israel, if you will, move in there. They had to become, if it was male, it would become circumcised. And then they had to follow all the ordinances in order to continue to be a proselyte Jew. So there was a way that you could become so-called Jew.

The Lord was talking to the Pharisees one time about this, and He told them, He said, you've strived all day to make a proselyte, and when you do, you make him twofold the child of hell that you are. What did He mean by that? Well, he meant that they were going about getting numbers and trying to get, you ever heard somebody saying, we're trying to get people saved as what they were doing. That's what they were doing here. You do this and God will do his part. Well, I'm going to try to get you to convert. And I'm going to say, how many of you converted a day? How many of you converted? And they were patting each other on the back. And he says, no, you may two fold the child of hell that you are. You haven't showed them who Christ is. All you've done is give them a bunch of rituals and standards and laws to live by. You haven't told them any good news.

And so a proselyte Jew was considered to be a Jew, but at the same time, those that were the covenant of promise, those were the covenant of promise were the ones that were given faith to believe the Lord Jesus Christ. Even back in, that's what Jesus Christ said. He told the Pharisees, he said, when Abraham saw my day, he was glad. When did he see his day? On Mount Moriah, whenever he was offering up his son, he saw the substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When that ram was caught in the thicket instead of his son happened to die. He saw what God was gonna have to do to his son, and then he saw the substitution of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, in that ram. So the ram took the place of the son entirely, so the son didn't have to die. He saw Christ that day. Isn't that glorious?

Paul is declaring that the household of faith is by faith, not sight. It's by faith, not sight. God is no respecter of person regarding creed, regarding nationality, regarding language, regarding skin color, regarding intellect, regarding any and all things about humanity. He's not respecter of person. He doesn't look at you and say, well, you have blue eyes, so I'm gonna, I choose you, and you have brown eyes, I'm not gonna choose you. Nothing like that whatsoever. God shows his people in the covenant of grace based upon one reason, grace and mercy. That's it, that's it.

The promise of the Messiah was given to the Jew but only some were given faith. And somebody says, well how do you know that all the nation of Israel isn't saved? Well I can give you a good example of that. You remember last Sunday we looked at, what was it last Sunday? Time just gets away from me and I know it is for you all too. We looked at the verses that said they go the way of Cain. The heir of Balaam go the way of Cain in the gainsaying of Korah. Remember we talked about Korah a little bit in the Old Testament. Korah wanting to be one of the prophets, Moses and Aaron were the priests. I'm sorry, I said prophet, I meant priest. Moses and Aaron being the priests. And they wanted to have part in that. I guess probably for self-worship, probably for look at me kind of thing. And they said, well, why should you be the priest? Well, we can be the priest ourselves. We can do it too. We're just as good as you are. And Moses and treated of the Lord. And they said, okay, well, here's what we're going to do. You offer up your incense. We'll offer up our incense under the Lord and whom he has respect for. Then we know who's going to be the priest.

God already spoke and said, Moses and Aaron were the priest. Moses knew that God opened up the earth. and literally sent 200 men and their possessions down to hell that day. Korah and Dathan was two of them. They were the leaders that started the whole thing.

What's my point? They were Jews. They were Jews. So if every Jew is God's chosen people, What are they chosen into? It was just for them, for the Messiah to come. It was for the promise of the Messiah. Is there Jews that are believers, elect of God? Absolutely unto salvation. Absolutely. I have no doubt. Cause he said, it's going to be every nation, every tribe, every kindred. We have no doubt everywhere, all over the earth. The number that no man can number. That gives me a lot of hope. And I remember that no man can number.

Well, God's love can't change, so to assume that he loved all of Israel at one time would assume that he stopped loving all of Israel at one time, and that's just not true. God cannot change. It means his love is irrelevant in salvation. But those whom he does love, he has placed He has placed them in the household of faith as fellow heirs of the promise. What was the promise? Redemption, salvation, salvation from your sin, salvation from yourself, righteousness, holiness, truth. These are the promises that came with the Lord Jesus Christ. And this was the promise that Abraham was looking to. He wasn't looking to just the physical blessings that the Lord promised him. Although he did say, I'm gonna make your, your family great, your nation is going to be great as the sands of the sea, the stars of the sky. He was talking about the spiritual family. He's called Father Abraham to the believer because he's the first one that the Lord gave the promise of the Messiah to.

That being said, we don't say it in a sense of adoration. We just simply, that's just who he was in general. You understand what I'm saying? Those who the Lord loves, he's placed in the household of faith before time ever began, electing them into eternal life. That's very important.

I want you to look at six again. Look at this, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, fellow heirs. They're then given the same faith that the heirs had, the heirs of promise. This is what the heir is. They're given the same faith as the heirs of promise. They're given the same faith as Abraham. They're given the same inheritance as David. They're given the same exact, uh, reward as Samuel, as Samuel in the Old Testament, as Isaiah, as Jeremiah, all the old prophets, the same exact reward, the same exact faith, the same exact, and what is all of that? It's Jesus Christ. That's what the reward is. That's what we want. That's what we have to have. This is our hope. We're given the same benefits. We are the adopted sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The scripture talks about us being grafted in. I don't know if any of you all, I'm sure some of you have. Grafting is whenever you take one branch from one tree that bears fruit and another tree and you cut it a certain way and you put them together and that tree brings forth a new fruit. That's a hybrid of the two. Well, that's what he's saying. We were Gentiles, outcasts, dulled. We're sticks in the gutter. We're dried up from the roots. The Lord took us and grafted us into his son. He says, I am the true vine and you are the branches. And the fruit that you yield comes from him. It comes from him.

Her fellow heirs in Christ, what a mystery of the gospel. What a mystery. God's people are not just saved, they're made one with God himself. One with God in the household of faith, all by his grace.

Now second, notice verse six, the second thing, the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body. That's the second part. We're of the same body. Well, he says this, what body, first of all, would be the question, what body? But he says this in Romans 12, for as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ and every one member's one of another. Can you explain that? How are God's elect one with Christ and one with each other as members of the same body?

Scripture says that he's the head, listen to this Colossians 1, and he is the head of the body of the church who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in all things he might have the preeminence. He is the head of the body. So we have been made one with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm going to get to that in just a second. But I want to say this because he is the head, his righteousness is the body's righteousness. Do we see that? His holiness is the body's holiness. His, uh, everything about him is in the body as well. So when the Lord sees us, he sees the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you meet somebody, I mentioned this before, I think when you go to meet somebody or you think of somebody, you don't probably think about their hands or their feet. Maybe you do. I don't know. I don't. I think about your face. If I'm thinking about somebody, I think about their face, the details of their face, because that's how you identify a person. A lot of mistaken identity can happen by walking up behind somebody. I've done that a couple times at Walmart, run up to a curly haired woman and it's not my wife. Sorry, ma'am. But if I saw her face, I would have known better. So when the Lord sees his son, He sees the face and here we are in the body as part of the Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly righteous. Isn't that glory? He doesn't see us. He sees us in him. Now that's a mystery. That's a mystery. Only the Lord's people can rejoice in that and say truth, Lord. I don't understand it, but that's glorious because that means your righteousness is my righteousness. You're finished work. That's my sanctification by your spirit. You get all the glory in this.

How is it that all this can be? Well, the Lord prayed in the garden, Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. What was that cup? Well, it was the cup of damnation. It was the cup of guilt, our guilt, cup of shame, our shame, the cup of separation, our separation. And the agony that he would have to endure wasn't just about the crucifixion. It was about how he was going to have to be separated from his father. He said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He had never been forsaken before. You know why he was forsaken? So that you and I would never be forsaken. So that his people would never be forsaken of God. That's why. That's why.

What a mystery that he bore our sin in his own body on the tree. Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 5.21, for he, God, hath made him to be sin. And that word for us, the next two words, that's in italics. So it actually says made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

What does that mean? Well, If you take somebody's punishment, if you take somebody's punishment, you can suffer the consequences of that punishment. If they are guilty of something and you take their place, you can suffer the consequence for their guilt, but you cannot bear their guilt. You cannot bear their sorrow for doing it. You cannot bear their shame for having sinned. Do you see that? You can't, that's just not possible. You can't enter into that because I took your place, Yet, I don't feel what you felt, the guilt that you had, the shame that you had. I don't feel those things.

But our Lord, listen to this, He bore the shame of the sin of His people. He says in Hebrews chapter 12 too, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endeared the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

You can't feel in shame, you can't feel shame unless you feel the weight of guilt. Our Lord owned his people's sin. Talked about the terrors of God compassing him about. Why would the terrors of God compass the Lord Jesus Christ about if he had not been made guilty? Why would the Lord execute his son if he had not been made guilty? And that's the mystery. That's the mystery. He was made guilty for your and I's sake that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

It's described like this as his sorrow and Isaiah 53, surely he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him. We esteemed him not stricken smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him with his stripes. We are healed.

How can you bear grief and sorrow for something you cannot enter into? Brother, I say this reverently, but he felt the ugly that we are, the ugly that we are, and the sin of his people. If God crucified his son and Jesus Christ was not made guilty, he crucified him unjustly, unjustly. The Lord Jesus Christ had to be made guilty. It's that simple. His soul was made an offering for sin and God was satisfied. Now that's a mystery. That's a mystery.

He endured the complete separation from God. Isaiah 59 says, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sin have hit his face from you that you will not hear. Why would God hide his face from his son? If he was not bearing our sin on the cross, on the tree? He was, that's the mystery of the gospel. the Lord Jesus Christ taking our sin unto himself, owning them as the substitute surety, and making us the very righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that is a mystery. Talk about undeserving, unfathomable love, amazing grace. That's the only explanation he would do such a thing for a worm such as I and you. That's a mystery, isn't it? The mystery of the gospel. Imputation, that's what we're talking about here, as if God, some men believe God just pasted the sin onto him. That's not true. They don't know the definition of imputation. Imputation means the act of ascribing or attributing something, often fault, blame, or credit to a person or cause. Our blame was attributed to Christ. Do we see that? He took the complete ownership of the sin that we are the sin of his people. They're laid to his account.

You know, you enter into your doubts and your fears. You read in Psalm 38, you read Psalm 22, and several other Psalms, you'll see whenever Christ was on the cross, the things that he was experiencing, the things that he was enduring. He actually talks about him owning the sin, but it says that what he was feeling, the terrors of the Lord came passing him about, he said, The whole death has come to take hold on me. Thy terrors have come past me." He talks about having all the torments of, yet here's the most interesting part. He knew and felt my doubt and your doubt, but he never doubted God. Think about that. That's the interesting part, that's the mystery, isn't it? He felt the weightiness of the sin that we are, yet he himself was the perfect sacrifice before the Lord, perfect sacrifice.

He took complete ownership of the sin of his people. He felt our guilt, our shame, our terrors that were due us. Yet through the blackness, our covenant head made us the very righteousness of God. He made us fellow heirs in the same body. In the same body. Scott Richardson said one time, that imputation is not pasted on. I like that. I like that. It's not pasted on. God is just and the justifier because of the substitutionary work of Christ. What a mystery. What a mystery.

What a mystery. Lastly, I want to read our text again together. 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 has given me to you, to you, Lord, how that by revelation he made known unto 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.

Where have I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. That last part in verse six says partakers of his promise in Christ Jesus by the gospel. What's the promise? What's the promise? Glorification. That's the promise, glorification. He said, if I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also. That's a mystery, isn't it? That's a mystery. We'll be made like him, the scripture says. Brethren, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Paul says this, the sufferings, for I reckon the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. The glory that's there right now, that's the glorious part. He's going to reveal Christ in you. The hope of glory, when we drop this robe of flesh and we wake, we're gonna awake in his likeness. Perfect, perfect. We walk by faith, the faith of Christ. God's people have been born, born again, born again. We've been given faith to believe God, the new creature in the heart. A new nature that lives by faith, looking to him in all things. With his spirit and dwelling as we walk by faith, not sight. What a mystery.

Here's the three. Verse six, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body, partakers of his promise in Christ Jesus. Oh, I'm sorry. I went too fast. That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. This is the mystery of the gospel. We're fellow heirs. We are partakers of the same body and partakers of his promise. It's the mystery of the gospel.

Let's pray. Father, I pray you take this and bless it to our understanding for your glory. In Christ's name, amen.