Kennystix's podcast
The Unfathomable Riches of Christ for All Peoples, Above All Powers, Through the Church
The following resource is from desiringGod.org. - The scripture passage for tonight's sermon comes from the book of Ephesians chapter three verses one through 13. It's Ephesians chapter three verses one through 13. If you need a Bible, there should be one in the pew in front of you and it's found on page 977. For this reason, I Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. Assuming that you have heard the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan 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, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. - Let's pray together. Father, I ask that the magnificence of your wisdom and the greatness of your church and the unfathomable wealth of your son and the broken, humble missionaries would all be made plain tonight. Would all be made plain on this Lord's day morning. Father, I pray for people in the evening service, the nine o'clock service, the 11 o'clock service, that they would sense your calling on their lives. To be taken up like a brush and paint on this canvas of the in gathering of your church. Lord, don't leave anybody out of this call whether they are senders or goers, I pray. Leave none disengaged, I ask. Now help me to be faithful to this word from the Apostle Paul and to speak it with humility and boldness and faithfulness. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. We're going to focus on verses eight through 10 in Ephesians chapter three and we're gonna move backwards through those verses from the display of the manifold wisdom of God in verse 10 back to the gathering of the global church in verse 10 to the preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ in verse eight to the service of God's ordinary missionary in the first part of verse eight. And the reason I'm going backwards is because I know what I want to end. I want to end on the missionary. I want to end on the one who small and messy and sinful and insignificant and insecure. Wondering how in the world they could ever be chosen anyway would be emboldened by this message to follow through with the stirrings of God in their lives to move towards missions. That's where I'm going. So let me tell you I'm gonna end. So it won't take you off guard and you won't have to make any snap decisions. In all of the three services that will be live and see this video nine o'clock in the morning and 11 o'clock in the morning and tonight, I'm going to summon everyone who is sensing God's leading now and in previous days to move toward short-term long-term missions to come to the front and stand here to be prayed for and to be given a card that will help connect you with those who can establish you and encourage you in this sense of God's leading. So that's where I'm going. That's the kind of invitation there will be at the end of all these services both evening and morning. Let's pray. Lord, I want you help again now as I move into this text. And so I asked that without in front of us in all these services, you would begin to awaken and confirm and encourage a sense of looseness from where people are presently, a shaking of the tree, a loosening of the roots. I pray that you would call up into consciousness just now things that you were doing years ago that some people have totally forgotten about. And now, this night and this morning comes back upon them with an unusual force that it had never died and what they thought was gone was not gone and I pray for some amazing career changes this weekend. In Jesus' name, amen. I want you to have a picture in your mind. The picture is of a great wise painter. The painting is huge. It's a huge canvas and there are many brushes, thousands and thousands of them, ordinary, messy. You've seen painter's brushes. The painter is God and I've put you in a pickle now because you know God can't be pictured. He's invisible, which is the point, right? He's invisible and that's why he's painting because it says in verse 10 he wants to display his wisdom. Well, he can't be seen and so he's painting just picture the canvas with a brush. Nope, there's an invisible hand in its moving. You see the brush, you see the canvas, you see the picture coming into being and no artist. But he's there and the point of the canvas is show his wisdom. That's what you're supposed to picture. The size of the canvas is the created universe. Picture that. Now I know I've put you in another problem because you can't do that because you're in it. You can't stand outside it and picture it. You're in it. You're on this canvas. You are being painted tonight, this morning. You're being painted. And so I'm asking you to do the impossible, envision God and vision this canvas, but do your best. We have to do this in order to figure out what's going on here. It's as old as the creation of the universe. It is as large as the universe. It is as durable as eternity. It will never go out of existence. This canvas called history in which the central drama is the preparation, Old Testament, salvation, New Testament and in gathering of God's people. That's where we live. The central drama, NBC, ABC, CNN, they're of a clue. They do not have a clue what the central drama is in Iraq or Uzbekistan or China. No, that you might not be duped by those whose eyes are totally blind to the main point of history, which is what this text is about. And it will all be painted with little ordinary broken, dirty, brushes called missionaries and Christians in general, but especially missionaries we will see. Now here's the reason that I'm commending this picture to your imagination. There's a word in the text that told me do that sort of. It's in verse 10, so that through the church the manifold marked that word. I'm coming back to it. The manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. That word manifold, the Greek word behind it, occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Old Testament or New Testament. It's a very unusual word. If you chop it in half and take off the prefix, then you can find it. And that little root part means wrought in various colors, diversified, intricate, complex, subtle. Its basic idea is varied in color. And then Paul puts a prefix on it, Paulu, which means many. And so now many colored, many intricacies, many subtleties to this painting called history, called the engathering of God's elect from all the nations, which is the main theme on this canvas. So I take my image of a painting from this word, which is all about multicolored. Now let's go. Backwards in four steps. The display of God's manifold wisdom, number one. Notice at the beginning of verse 10, the word so that. In other words, what's gone before has a purpose. Preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ, the making known of the mystery of God to everyone has a purpose. And the purpose is stated in the word so that following. So let's read the purpose of all this preaching, all this lifting up of Christ among the Gentiles. Here's the purpose. So that through the church, you ever thought the church wasn't important? You can't deal with this text. So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. That's God's goal. He created the world. He redeemed a people with a price, the death of his son, the resurrection of his son. He sent the Holy Spirit. He commissions missionaries. He's gathering his elect from the four corners of the world and from all the peoples of the world in order to do that. Namely, display his wisdom for all the angelic hosts of heaven to see. Look who the audience is. 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 canvas, this painting with all these little missionary types, this central drama in history of the preparation, salvation and in gathering of a people after his own name is all in order to make the angels the good ones and the bad ones stand in awe of the wisdom of God. You thought it was about you, didn't you? It isn't, not only, maybe not mainly. It's about these untold numbers of hosts of heaven. Fallen and warring in heaven and not fallen. So that the good ones could glimpse into grace which they've never known. No angel in heaven will ever sing amazing grace. They dare not, it isn't true for them. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch. No angel will ever say that. They may not sing it, it's our song, it's our joy. And so it says in 1 Peter, they stoop and long to see into what we know. They can only see it on the canvas. And the devils, they're called authorities and powers, chapter 6, verse 12. I think it's both good and bad powers in view here. The devils, they watch this come into being and what they get to see is the infinite wisdom of God by which they are defeated at the very moment they thought they had succeeded. The cross, we got him and the blood of the martyrs. We got him, you didn't get him and you didn't get them witness revelation to Tim. That's what they get to watch. There's something else going on here besides us. So summing up that first point, the final glory of the painting called History, Redemptive History, Missions. Just gotta stop here. I'll pick that sentence up in a minute. If this is true, if this point in the message is true, you gotta read some history of missions. Don't you? I mean, if it's all about displaying now, notice the now, it's all about displaying the now and in the age to come the magnificence of the wisdom of God and you don't know beans about the history of missions. How are you gonna praise him for what he's doing in history? Get Stephen Neil, the history of missions. Get Ruth Tucker from Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Go to Whelan in the bookstore and say the pastor said, we're supposed to read some history of missions. What do you recommend? That's a parenthesis, finish the sentence now. The final glory of the painting of missions is that every brush stroke will add to the infinitely intricate display of God's wisdom to the armies of heaven. I'm gonna hit this again and again missionaries, future missionaries, supporters of missionaries, not one single little stroke of your brush is ever wasted. He's a wise painter. He doesn't take brushes and make mistakes with them. Ever, ever, ever. I'll come back to that. Here's point number two. The gathering of God's global church. So we move now from the purpose of the display of God's wisdom to the means, namely the gathering of God's global church. Let's read, you see through the church in verse 10. We already said that. You see those words through the church. He'll display this wisdom. Now, what I want to stress is this church is being gathered from all the nations. Let's read verses eight and nine. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles. Now, Gentiles, what are they? Those are peoples who are not Jewish. So there they are. Those are the nations. Hittites, Jebusites, today. What, 12,000, 10,000, 8,000 unreached people groups, ethnic linguistic groupings. That's what's here. The unsearchable riches of Christ. I'm at the end of verse eight, beginning of verse nine. And, here it is again, to bring to light for everyone. Not a little group, not just Americans, not just the inner city of Minneapolis. We did an urban ministry thing. Yes, amen. Let's push that with all our might. But we are also doing a missions thing. We are a both and church on dozens of issues. And this is one of them. To everyone, everyone. What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God? And what is that? What are we taking to the nations? What are we revealing to everyone? What's the mystery hidden for ages in God? We are not left in the least dark about this. Look at verse six. It is so clear. Paul foresaw this sermon, as it were, and defined it for me very nicely. Verse six. The mystery is that the Gentiles, that is all these nations, are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. The mystery is that for 2,000 years, he focused on the Jews. My people, the apple of my eye, through which I will bring great blessing to the world. How, how, how? Answer through the unsearchable riches of Christ dying on the cross, rising again, sending missionaries to all the peoples and saying, if you believe the Messiah, you are a Jew. And therefore, you inherit all the promises. You inherit the world, you inherit the earth. Every Old Testament promise made is yours in Christ Jesus. We saw it in Romans 11, right? We saw Romans 11 go through the church to the very end point of Ephesians 3-10. Did we not? Of course, a lot of you weren't here, so you don't know what I'm talking about. So let me say it in a minute. We saw in Romans 11 that there was this tree, this olive tree with natural branches, the Jewish people and the covenant juices and promises flowing up into the people, and they didn't believe the Messiah and bridges were broken off and low and behold the gospel mystery. This is the mystery. Unnatural branches with skin and face like this, this weirdo, weirdo white face gets grafted into that Semitic trunk and starts drinking the riches of the covenant, which are the riches of Christ, the Messiah. And you know how the chapter ends? Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom of God. How unsearchable are his ways, how inscrutable are his judgments. That's Ephesians 3-10. It's all the same. God is in the business of preparing for a people by working with the Jews, of redeeming the world in the death of his son, gathering his elect through the work of missions. That's the theme of redemptive history. The church is the main historical reality on the canvas, because the church in its preparation, salvation and in gathering is the display of the wisdom of God. Oh, angels, join us or better. Let us join the angels in turning the world to praise. There are no wasted strokes in the church. He has gathering, he's gathering of people and he's gathering them with missionaries. May God be calling some of you. This is worth living for. Putting your little brush in the hand of the invisible, infinitely wise, omnipotent painter is one of the best places on planet earth to be. Point number three. What are the means, what is the means, by which the church is being gathered from the nations? Let's read verses eight and nine again. The answer is the preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ. To me, though I'm 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 mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. Missions happens by the preaching to the nations of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Missions happens by lifting Christ up and pointing people to him with words and actions that describe how valuable he is, how unfathomably rich he is. That's what missions is, it's making Christ known to the Gentiles, to everyone, this mystery. You're included, you're included, you're included. Just come to the Messiah, he bought you if you will have it. That's the gospel. What are the unsearchable riches of Christ? I got to this part in my preparation, I said, "I'm sure I'm going to do this in five minutes." This is a year's worth, this is a lifetime's worth of messages, is it not? So all I can do is point you to a couple of places even in this letter where you might begin to get a glimmer of what is meant here. I take you to chapter two, verse 12. Remember that you, and he's talking to these nations, these Gentiles in Ephesus. Which by the way is where my wife will be tomorrow. She's in Turkey, ministering to 300 missionary women. If you wondered, "Well, come, no, Elle's not "sittin' there with you." The answer is she's 8,000 miles away holding forth to strengthen the hands of 300 beat up missionary women in Turkey. So she's gonna go, she emailed me today and said she'd be in Ephesus tomorrow. Now where was I? Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth. This is what's true of the world, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. You weren't a Jew, and you'd have any stake in their promises or their salvation. Strangers to the covenants of promise, no hope, and without God in the world. That's the condition of the world to which we go. And the news that we bring, reading on down through 12 to 19, the crosses lifted up, unites in one man, all the nations and Israel. And then you get to verse 19, chapter two, verse 19. So then, you, you nations, you're Gentiles. You are no longer strangers and aliens. You are fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God. This is what you hold out to the world. You can become part of the covenant people called Israel. 2,000 years he made promise, after promise, after promise. A great king will come, he will establish you. There will be righteousness, there will be peace on the earth, in the news, in the kingdom. You can be them. 'Cause I'm the Messiah, Jesus says. You unite to me, you're in the people. Come, and all the promises are yes in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 1, 20. You will be an heir of the world, Romans 4, 13. Inherit the earth, Matthew 5, 8. Everything God is for us in Christ is ours. And everything is about Christ, and Christ is the sum of everything, so that everything will show you more of Christ, forever and ever and ever, which you can see in chapter two, verse seven. Chapter two, verse seven of Ephesians is one of the sweet, amazing pointers to the unsearchableness of Christ's riches. It says, so that in the coming ages, now that's a long time, that's forever. So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. You know what that verse says? It will take an eternity for God to be done showing fresh kindnesses to you for your pleasure. So I've given you two pointers to the meaning of unsearchable riches. One is to make you a Jew through faith in the Messiah so that all the promises of God are yes for you. And the other is to say, it will take forever for God to unload the riches on you. You think you were gonna be bored after 10 years? 10,000 years, you won't. There will be a new mercy every morning. It will stun you every morning forever. This is a rich Christ. Last point. When you summarize where we've been, in case you've been trying to follow and lost me. First, the display of God's manifold wisdom. Second, the means, namely the gathering of God's global church. Third, the means of that. The preaching of Christ's unsearchable riches. You with me? Lastly, the means of that. Dirty, broken, stained brushes for the canvas called missionaries. The service of God's ordinary missionary. They're really messy, they're really sinful, they're really broken, they're really ordinary, and they're just like you. Verse eight. 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. Now there are two reasons why Paul said I'm the least. I'm a brush that he should never have picked up. One is he persecuted the church, hating Christians, murdering Christians, throwing Christians into jail and being told by the living Christ, you're doing it to me. If there was any brush in history that should never been picked up to paint with, by the living God with his holy hand, it was the brush called solvatarsus. And God picked it up. He never got over it. He never got over it. Have you ever gotten over being picked up, made a Christian? He just never got over it. That's the first reason. And the second reason he put it here for you tonight, this morning he put it here for us so that we would be emboldened that in our ordinariness, in our awful past, how many times we have failed him, we would hear Paul and we would say, hmm, hmm, is that what you're doing? You're causing him in verse eight to put, I use the least to paint with on this canvas is so that I would feel some hope that there's a place for me in missions or in sending. I think so. I think that's exactly why he's here. This is the bulletin and on the back of it are the brushes. When I just wanted to pull this out here to say something really strong, I said it already, I'll say it one more time. When God picks up a brush, broken brush, stained brush, dirty brush, didn't put it in the turpentine, turpentine when you're supposed to, it's all hard, seemingly useless. He picks that brush up. Some of them are so small because this painter paints little details on the mission field. Some of them are painted with yellow and orange and their successes and triumphs. And some of them are painted with dark colors, gray and those are the sufferings and the failures. You think he makes mistakes in his painting? There's never been a stroke ever put on the canvas of redemptive history by any of these sinners on the back of this sheet that will not redound to the glory of the wisdom of Jesus Christ, not one. I hope as I end, this sounds encouraging to you because I think one of the reasons people don't stay on the mission field and don't go to the mission field is because they feel so absolutely useless and insignificant before or when they're there. It just doesn't seem like it's worth it. It doesn't seem like anything's happening. This text is in the Bible to help us remember that though I am the very least of all the saints, this brush was ugly, this brush was unworthy, he picked it up and did what he had to do to start painting with it. And you may say, well, yes, sure, that's the apostle Paul, that was a big, wide brush and indeed it was. No beautiful painting has ever been painted with big, wide brushes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe at the walker, sorry. But not great paintings that display to the armies of heaven, the infinitely intricate wisdom of God. No way, there must be little, teeny, finely pointed brushes and they may just put one and then die and it's essential, it's essential. God puts it there, so I'm done. And here's the way we're going to end, like I said, we would. I'm addressing now three services and I'm aware of this, so those of you who are watching this video, please listen carefully on Sunday morning as well as those of us who are here tonight. In a moment, I'm gonna say, walk to the front and I wanna make sure you know who I want to come and who I don't want to come. I want to put it in such a way so that the sitters will be committing an act of obedience and the comers will be committing an act of obedience and there are no alternatives like disobedience. Now I know there are three ways to respond. One, goer, two, sender, three, disobedient. I'm not asking the disobedient to do anything. I'm only giving you two alternatives. I hope the Holy Spirit will create that as a possibility. One would be comers, one would be sitters. Let me give you the meaning for both. To sit in a moment when I say come would mean I wanna be really engaged with my heart and mind in appropriate ways in sending, supporting, encouraging, however God leads. That's what sitting with me. Coming means, I wanna say this carefully, lest everybody come. If I said, are you willing to go, I think everybody should come. I don't want everybody to come. So I'm gonna narrow it down. I wanna say if in this service in previous weeks and in previous years, you sense an unusual leading of God to look toward seriously, to look toward a cross-cultural mission, short-term, long-term, vocational, that's who I'd like to come. And I realize it's a tad ambiguous since God's leading to take a serious look and seriously consider looking toward, I know there's ambiguity. That's okay, that's okay. The Lord can handle the ambiguity of that. I think I'll add to the invitation, those of you who are already missionaries, don't you join us at the front, just so we see the whole thing that God is doing. Now, those of you who are watching this on video, Eric is there. And in addition to Eric in the first service, nine o'clock service, Jan Corbel will help him. And those of you who are in the 11 o'clock service, Kerry Hoyleen will help him. But Eric is gonna take my place at the pulpit as soon as this video is over and lead the service to a conclusion. But I want you to stay with me until I issue the invitation. And I'm gonna pray before I do that. So don't go away until after I pray. Let's pray. Lord, no pressure here at all 'cause you know what sitting will mean and what coming will mean and both will be absolutely right if people are yielded to you. But Lord, you know my heart and the point of this text as I see it is pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers, simple brushes in the hand of God who will add their strokes here and there around the world to a canvas that has as its theme the upholding of the unsearchable riches of Christ and the in gathering of your elect from all the peoples of the world through the power of the Holy Spirit on the preaching of the word and the display in the church for the demons and the angels to see and worship with white, hot admiration. And so I asked Lord that you would do your work to put people on the road towards short term, midterm and vocational missions. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. - Thank you for listening to this resource from desiringGod.org. If you found it helpful, we encourage you to enjoy and share from thousands of resources on our site including books, sermons, articles and more available free of charge. DesiringGod.org exists to help you treasure Jesus more than anything else because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
John Piper | God uses ordinary brushes to paint the world with the brilliant colors of his saving glory.