1. "God's grace to Paul in verse 7 meant grace to the nations in verse 8. Paul's chains could well change his plans—his plans to go to Spain, or his plans to go around the Italian Peninsula, or to go back and see the saints in Corinth or in Ephesus. But Roman chains could not change God's plan."

2. "This doesn't mean that we shouldn't search, but that we'll never stop finding. There's always more. It means that Christ's riches are so many and so deep that they can't be fully cataloged or exhausted or listed entirely. They can't all be found out. They never end."

3. "Pray for me to be able to preach what Paul here clearly calls unsearchable. It's a daunting thing to be called to cover an infinite amount of territory, to guide through the unending ways of God's love to us in Christ, to share riches that are boundless."

4. "Even at best, I can only preach. God must reveal."

5. "God buries the workman, but His work goes on."

6. "God's glory is the point. The heavenly beings are the audience. The cross is the means. And the church is the display."

7. "Reconciliation with God becomes visible through reconciliation with man. Our new life in Christ is to bring us into the new society of the church. Hatred and division are what the spiritual authorities who were in rebellion against God had sown and had worked for, but now in the gospel and in the church it births, they see God's eternal purposes for peace and love accomplished."

8. "God has entrusted to His church the glory of His own name. This is a God-centered view of reality. Perhaps you've come this morning thinking that the point of life is your own comfort or your immediate happiness. But here we have presented an entirely other view of reality that's not centered on us and our desires, but is in fact a display of God's wisdom, of His glory."

9. "Friend, do you keep waiting for that sort of downhill slope coasting time in your spiritual life when things are just a little easier for a few weeks, a few months, a few years? What if that downhill slope time never comes? What if all of life is sort of a climb up against the gravity of sin and failing health, broken hopes and difficulties?"

10. "The chains of Paul and other preachers of the gospel would only be dim echoes of the nails of the cross. And the bonds of death which held the Lord Jesus only temporarily. All this suffering was the price which God would willingly pay. So dear were these people to Him."

Observation Questions

1. In Ephesians 3:7-8, how does Paul describe the way he became a minister of the gospel, and what specific task does he say was given to him?

2. According to Ephesians 3:9, what had been "hidden for ages in God," and what is Paul's role in relation to this mystery?

3. In Ephesians 3:10, to whom does Paul say God's manifold wisdom is being made known, and through what means is it being displayed?

4. What does Ephesians 3:11 reveal about the timing and nature of God's purpose, and in whom has this purpose been realized?

5. According to Ephesians 3:12, what do believers have "in Christ," and how do they obtain this access to God?

6. In Ephesians 3:13, what does Paul ask the Ephesians not to do, and how does he describe his sufferings in relation to them?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul call himself "the very least of all the saints" (v. 8), and how does this self-description connect to his understanding of grace and his former life as a persecutor of the church?

2. What does Paul mean when he describes Christ's riches as "unsearchable" (v. 8), and why is this word significant for understanding what believers have in Christ?

3. How does the sermon explain the purpose of the church in God's eternal plan according to verse 10? What does it mean that God's "manifold wisdom" is displayed to "rulers and authorities in the heavenly places"?

4. The sermon states that "the cross was to create the church" and "the church displays the spectacular wisdom of God." How do verses 10-11 support this understanding of God's purpose in redemption?

5. Why would Paul's imprisonment potentially cause the Ephesian Christians to "lose heart" (v. 13), and how does Paul's teaching about God's eternal purposes throughout this passage address that danger?

Application Questions

1. Paul viewed his suffering and imprisonment as part of God's plan to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. When you face unexpected hardships or disruptions to your plans, how can you practically remind yourself that God's purposes are not thwarted by your circumstances?

2. The sermon emphasizes that the church—believers united across ethnic and cultural lines—is God's masterpiece displaying His wisdom. How does this truth change the way you view your local church community, especially during times of conflict or discouragement?

3. Paul had "boldness and access with confidence" to God through faith in Christ (v. 12). What specific fears or feelings of unworthiness keep you from approaching God in prayer, and how does this passage encourage you to draw near to Him this week?

4. The Gordon family responded to martyrdom by sending more family members to preach the gospel to the very people who killed their loved ones. What would it look like for you to prioritize God's glory and the advance of the gospel over your own comfort or safety in a specific situation you currently face?

5. Paul's concern while in prison was not for himself but for the encouragement of other believers. Who in your life might be struggling or discouraged right now, and what concrete step can you take this week to encourage them with the truths of God's sovereign purposes?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 9:1-22 — This passage recounts Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus and his commission to preach to the Gentiles, providing the background for Paul's self-description as "the very least of all the saints."

2. Romans 11:25-36 — Paul explains the mystery of Israel and the Gentiles being brought together, concluding with praise for God's unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways.

3. Colossians 1:24-29 — Paul describes his sufferings for the church and his commission to make known the mystery of Christ among the Gentiles, closely paralleling Ephesians 3.

4. Isaiah 49:1-6 — God promises that His servant will be a light to the nations, foreshadowing the inclusion of Gentiles in God's salvation plan that Paul proclaims as now revealed.

5. 1 Peter 1:10-12 — Peter explains that prophets and even angels longed to understand the salvation now revealed through the gospel, reinforcing the theme that heavenly beings observe God's redemptive work.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Stories of Christian Courage Under Persecution

II. Jail Can Stop Paul, But Not His Message (Ephesians 3:7-8)

III. Jail Can Change Paul's Plans, But Not God's Plans (Ephesians 3:9)

IV. Jail Can Thwart Paul's Purposes, But Not God's (Ephesians 3:10-11)

V. Jail Can Separate Them from Paul, But Not from God (Ephesians 3:11-13)

VI. Call to Place Confidence in God's Eternal Purposes

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I remember just months ago sitting in a church in Alexandria, Egypt, observing older Christians who had been coming to that particular church for decades.

And I remember being amazed at their quiet and continuing courage.

It's not easy to live as a Christian in a Muslim nation.

Threats against Christians at many times and in many places have been real and sharp.

You can't help but wonder, what would I do if I was in her situation? If I were in his situation?

In 1857, from Alberton on northern Prince Edward Island, Canada, came young George Gordon.

He studied medicine in London and met and married a young woman named Ellen, and persuaded her to join him in taking the gospel to the island people of the South Pacific.

After a long journey, they landed on the island of Erromango, about 1,200 miles northeast of Brisbane, Australia. An island already well known for producing some of the first missionary martyrs of the South Pacific.

Gordon learned the language, he shared his medical skills, and established a good reputation for the new religion he brought as beneficial for the people. Gordon established a school. And while the Gordons were there, they were visited by John Paton, the well-known Scottish missionary. Laboring on a nearby island.

Gordon gave most of his time to translating the Bible into the language of the people. He felt that that was the longest lasting service he could do them. Though threatened and repeatedly told to leave the island, Gordon resolved to stay, that to do great things a man must live as though he never had to die.

After four years of living there in 1861, one day George Gordon was murdered.

And a few minutes later, his wife Ellen was murdered too.

When the news of the martyrdom reached the aged and sightless mother of Gordon, she cried out, My son, my son. And she wept.

His brother, James, a student for the ministry, was plowing when he heard the news.

And he immediately sent in an application to the Mission Board.

He asked them that he might be sent to take his brother's place on Eromango and preach the message of forgiveness and love to his brother's murderers.

Where do you get that kind of confidence? And courage, only by understanding more about God, about His presence and His purposes and His plans. We've been studying more about God through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. And one reason that Paul digs so deeply into the plans and purposes of God in chapter 1, and then he writes so compellingly about the radical power of the gospel in chapter 2, is he suspects, maybe even knows, that these young Christians will have heard that he has been imprisoned, arrested, jailed, at least put under house arrest. And he knows that that news of him being stopped, of his apparent misfortune of powerful opposition, could scare them, discourage them.

And so he wanted to prepare them by teaching them more of God and more of His plan and purposes so that they would not, as he says in chapter 3 of Ephesians verse 13, lose heart. Paul is writing, as I say, under the kind of house arrest we see at the end of the book of Acts in Acts 28. Perhaps, given his reference later in Ephesians to being in chains, this had worsened into a more sinister imprisonment. We know he was finally imprisoned in Rome before he was in fact beheaded. We think this is being written around 62 A.D. Let's just remind ourselves of what Paul has been teaching that we were considering the first part of last month.

And now we'll come to the second half of this passage in Ephesians chapter 3. Let me read beginning with verse 1, Ephesians chapter 3. If you're using the Bibles provided, you'll find this passage on page 977, page 977. Ephesians chapter 3.

1 Of this gospel I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace. Well, that's our passage, chapter 7, or verse 7. Let me start with verse 1 to give you the context. For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of 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 in 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 this might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places through the church. That is, the manifold wisdom of God.

I switched up the order there in verse 7, just followed the Greek order. But I'm using the ESV translation, which is a good translation. So that might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God. 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 faith in Him.

So, I ask youk not to lose heart over what I am suffering for your, which is yous glory.

Well, we see in that last verse why Paul is saying what he's saying to them, really in this whole passage.

So I ask youk not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is yous glory. He knows that their faith could fail, they could be so discouraged. That they would, as it were, faint along the way and not keep going as Christians. So Paul wants to put his tribulation and their tribulation in perspective. He wants to set it amongst larger objects, things that as great as his imprisonment may be, as great as the revoking of his rights as a Roman citizen in some ways, maybe, he knows of even greater matters, which will put things like citizenship and rights in their proper eternal perspective.

And so that's what Paul does. He shows them that they should not be discouraged or even ashamed by his imprisonment because it was, in fact, a kind of badge of honor. That they should wear, in the same way that they had come to see the cross.

Terrible violation of Jesus' rights. Unjust murder. Yes, all that's true. But they had come to see the cross primarily and fundamentally as an expression of God's love for them. Of his love for sinners.

And it is to that end that he reminds them of the great truths we see here in our passage, particularly in verses 7 to 13. Four observations to encourage you not to lose heart. Four observations to encourage the Ephesians and also to encourage you not to lose heart. Number one, jail can stop Paul, but not his message. Jail can stop Paul, but not his message.

Of this gospel I was made a minister. Paul says in verse 7, 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. Paul may have been hindered by jail, by imprisonment and confinement, but his message went on. His message was shared and believed and relayed to others. What Paul presents to them here is his own preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles.

We see that God's grace to Paul in verse 7. Meant grace to the nations in verse 8. God's grace to Paul in verse 7 meant grace to the nations in verse 8. So as Paul has said in the first verse, he's a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. And that was fleshed out particularly in the fact that Paul was called to be a servant, a steward of this great message.

God especially called Paul to serve the Gentiles by preaching the gospel to them. If you look up in verse 2 of chapter 3, Paul mentioned that the stewardship of God's grace, which had been given to him for the sake of the Gentiles, well now here in these verses, Paul tells them more specifically what that was.

Whose calling from God does not include some suffering.

More on that maybe in a moment. Note how prominent this theme of grace is. Paul didn't earn this special status. It was a gift. This special status was a status to serve, a call to serve.

The specific gift of grace that God gave Paul was to make plain, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ just last Sunday. We considered the account of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in Acts 9. Remember that? Paul was going to bind the Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem, but instead God captured Paul and bound him and brought him to his purposes. God commissioned Paul to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, even to the point that the one-time persecutor was willing to become the persecuted.

In order to pursue faithfulness in getting the Gospel to the nations. And that is what Paul is talking about here. Then and there, God called Paul the Pharisee to preach this new news, this very good new news to everyone, not just to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles. Paul was made a herald of the royal proclamation about how the Gentiles could share in the church and its privileges of inheritance It's family forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, bold access to God. All of these things were in the gift to the believer in Jesus Christ.

God called Paul to proclaim this to the nations. And that's why so many of us are sitting here this morning. This is how the nations would come in. The Old Testament rings with promises that this would happen. Remember God's words to Abraham, In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Or Isaiah's prophecy about how all the nations would flow to the mountain of the house of the Lord. Or about the day coming when Egypt would be called My people and Assyria the work of My hands. Or Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days, that He would be served by all peoples, nations, and languages. Friends, God's getting a hold of Paul and giving him this commission to herald the unsearchable, inexhaustible riches of His grace in Christ would be how all of these prophecies would come to be fulfilled. This is it in no small part by calling that Pharisee on that road.

This idea of Christ's riches being unsearchable.

As Paul calls them here, fits with how the Bible describes God again and again. It's the same idea we just heard in the passage of Job that Jen read. God there is called unsearchable. His actions are called unsearchable. Later in Job, his years are said to be unsearchable.

David says God's greatness is unsearchable. And Isaiah that God's understanding is unsearchable. And in Romans 11, Paul says, that God's judgments are unsearchable. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't search, but that we'll never stop finding. There's always more.

It means that Christ's riches are so many and so deep that they can't be fully cataloged or exhausted or listed entirely. They can't all be found out. They never end. This is the Christ that we serve. My Christian friend, God desires you to know the unsearchable riches that He has for us in Christ.

Forgiveness and reconciliation with God. A new life. Power over sin. The hope of eternity with Him. Forever.

All of this God has planned for you, Christian.

As Paul said to the Colossians, In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Forgiveness, adoption, eternal life, resurrection. Friends, by nature all of us have sinned against God. We've separated ourselves from God. We have taken God as our enemy, and yet God's That final word was not simply a dismissal of all of us as enemies, but yet a word of love as He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to take on humanity, to live a real life in a physical body, and to live a life of complete trust in His heavenly Father in service of Him.

And then He died on the cross specifically as a sacrifice in the place of All of us, what we should suffer because of our sin, He took instead for all of us who would have faith in Him and trust in Him. And God raised Him from the dead and vindicated all of His claims. You are now called to turn from your sins and to trust in Him. This new life is there for you.

Paul had great humility, in part because he had so much more of God's love and God's grace revealed to him. Paul said here in verse 8 that this great stewardship had been committed to him, he says, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints. Why would Paul call himself the very least of all the saints? Somebody want to guess?

Say again? Yes, he persecuted the church. 1 Corinthians 15, he says this explicitly. So he was someone who actually spent time, as we know last week from Acts 9, trying to end Christianity. So this wasn't just a vague sense of personal unworthiness like he'd been reading Thomas a Kempis, but this was actually his own understanding of how he had particularly sinned against God and against his church.

I think of part of the punch of Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, is when Pip finds out who his benefactor really was, a completely unexpected source, a person whom he had not regarded highly the convict, Abel Magwitch.

And then when he realizes that this is the one who's been his benefactor, he has a complete change in understanding. That pales. That story pales compared to what Paul must have experienced when he realized that this one that he had been persecuting, whose followers he had tracked down, was actually the Son of God and his followers the prized possession, the bride of Christ, the apple of God's eye.

For me, I know that my calling makes my sin and unbelief heavier for me. I can only imagine what Paul would have felt. For Paul personally, I think he tells us more of what he means when he says that he's persecuted the church. And though we're not apostles, each Christian has been given the gift of faith in Christ. We've had the gospel shared with us, and surely we want others to come to know God in Christ.

And that's why we're all concerned about evangelism. That's why we're all concerned about missions. That's why we're concerned to share the work of this congregation, the way we try to raise up pastors and help us in fulfilling the Great Commission. Friends, just a personal plea from me. Pray for me to be able to preach what Paul here clearly calls unsearchable.

It's a daunting thing to be called to cover an infinite amount of territory, to guide through the unending ways of God's love to us in Christ, to share riches that are boundless How do you do that?

Pray for me that I focus on Christ and that I preach into what God has for us in Him well, for your edification and for God's glory. Even at best, I can only preach God must reveal. Pray for God to use me and the other preachers here to reveal the truth of His gospel to your heart and to the hearts of others.

That need to know Him and His forgiveness in Christ. You know, until Christ returns, there will be other preachers after me here, but the message we pray and trust will be the same. God buries the workman, but His work goes on. Jail can stop Paul, but not his message. That was to encourage them then and us here now this morning.

So should this second observation from verse 9, number two, jail can change Paul's plans, but not God's plans. Jail can change Paul's plans, but not God's plans. Look at verse 9, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things. God's plan is to bring to light for everyone His mystery. Well, what is God's mystery?

Well, that there is salvation for every kind of person, Jew and Gentile, through faith in Christ. That's what Paul is saying here in verse 9. You see, the bigness in the beginning and end of the verse, at the beginning we see it's God's plan for everyone, and at the end of the verse that the one who had always known this was the Creator of all. So the plan for all was in the mind of the one who made all. But this breadth of God's loving concern is why we as a church give so much of our attention and prayers and efforts and money to making sure people around the world hear the gospel.

That's why we prayed a few minutes ago like we prayed. That's why we hope to speak with a pastor from Lebanon tonight when we gather again at five. That's why we are tonight going to share something about our time together this last week with representatives of other churches where we're united in trying to take the gospel around the world. This is so much of the work of Nine Marks. What a joy it was for me and others at the Nine Marks booth to see friends from China and India and Peru and Singapore and Kenya and Venezuela and so many other places around the world, even our interns from last month.

Are now headed to various places like China and Canada and the United Kingdom. Pray that God change our State Department's mind and that our intern from Belgium will be allowed to join us in August. But then in the center of this verse is the surprising part, that this plan to be known and believed now by all was once It was a mystery. It was previously unknown to man. Here's the limitation, the tension.

God's plan to all, for all, was previously unknown. But now the effect of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles was to bring to light for everyone, bring to light in the sense not merely of inform, but of enlightened convert. The fog lifts. The darkness scatters. When Paul was before King Agrippa and recounted what happened to him on the Damascus Road, he recounted how God had called him to open the eyes of the unbelievers.

So Paul would refer to the God of this world having blinded the minds of the unbelievers. He would write to the Thessalonian Christians that you are not in darkness, brothers. So to bring light for everyone in the sense to make all see, to make it plain to people from all over the world, to see them become enlightened about the economy, the dispensation, the administration of God's mercy for them through Christ. This was God's plan, to make known His plan of the mystery hidden for ages. So Paul's chains could well change his plans.

His plans go to Spain. Or his plans to go around the Italian Peninsula. Or to go back and see the saints in Corinth or in Ephesus. But Roman chains could not change God's plan. If George Gordon is killed, God may have a James Gordon behind him.

Your trials and mine sometimes direct our steps to the urgent care when we weren't planning on spending the evening there. Or to a new apartment. Or to a job because ours just unexpectedly ended. Or to a change in friendships. These are strange steps that we would not have picked and yet sometimes in God's kindness looking back we can see how he sovereignly directed our steps for his good purposes, better purposes than we ever had in those changes or saw at the time.

These changes never derail God's plans.

These Ephesians needed to see this and understand this so that their faith would not quake and quail and fail under the fear of Paul's imprisonment. And what it did mean and might mean for them. They needed to know that jail could change Paul's plans, but not God's. And they should be encouraged by that. And they should be encouraged by a third observation.

Number three, jail can thwart Paul's purposes, but not God's. Jail can thwart Paul's purposes, but not God's. Look at verse 10.

So the plan is the way you're going to get there. The purpose is why you're going to get there. What you're doing when you're there. Look at verse 10. So that, and this is where I'm following the original word order, so that this might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places through the church.

What's to this? The manifold wisdom of God. Here we see that God's His purpose is to display His manifold wisdom through the church. So this gospel preaching up in verses 7, 8, and 9, this gospel preaching that Paul is called to, it results in what? It results in the church of Jewish and Gentile believers, one new man, as he put it back in chapter 2, verse 15.

And this displays to the spiritual rulers The manifold wisdom of God. Paul's purpose was part of God's larger purpose. God's intention in the gospel was to display His wisdom to the heavenly realms. Some wisdom is about smaller, more immediate issues in our lives. For example, if you lack wisdom about some situation in your workplace or at school or something going on in your family.

We read in James 1:5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

But the wisdom that Paul is referring to here is something much more than that. Paul calls it the manifold wisdom of God. And it's an unusual word. It means literally a lot of colors, many, many colors. You could imagine a a rainbow, or yesterday I was looking for new highlighters because my sermon texts that I highlight when I'm working on the text are old and they were running out of ink, so I stopped at a store to look for new highlighters and my goodness, there are so many highlighters and so many colors and so many ideas that could be captured in this color or that color.

And all of that is just the faintest little echo of the variegated glory of God's own wisdom. You see, He can be wise in this way and then in that way. He can be wise by doing this and wise by doing that. He can be wise now and wise then. He can be wise in a way that's obvious in a way that's subtle.

He can be wise in a way that's public in a way that's private. He can be wise in an ending variety of ways. Friends, I don't know of any place in the Bible that gets closer to God giving a mission statement for history, indicating what He's about and answering the question why. God's reason or intention for doing what He is in the church is here stated simply and directly. But don't let its simplicity or its directness mask the grandeur of the vision here.

This is the reason why God has done what He's done in creating the church as He has. He says here in verse 11 that this has been His eternal purpose. This is the reason why He's done what He's done in Christ. This is, it seems, the reason why God created the world. To display His manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, that's the principalities and powers, angelic and demonic, the hosts of heaven and hell.

Paul has already referred to the evil power up in chapter 2, verse 2, as the prince of the power of the air. Remember we looked at that. He'll mention them again in chapter 6, verses 10 to 12, with language very similar to the language here. He's already mentioned them in chapter 1, verses 20 and 21. Even God's spiritual opponents can't help but marvel at the wisdom He has exhibited in saving His people by His Son.

But this would include those allied to Him as well, the angels. Even angels could be staggered and amazed by what God has done in the church. All creation will be astounded at the wisdom of God. Calvin called this world the theater of God's glory. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 1, he wrote, this world is like a theater in which the Lord presents to us a clear manifestation of His glory.

The theologian Herman Bavinck said, the earth is the stage of God's miraculous acts. Here the war is fought. Here the victory of God's kingdom is won, and angels turn their faces to the earth. According to Paul here, This is all perhaps even more for the heavenly beings, fallen and unfallen, than it is for us. All of history is a pageant, a parade, a beautifully choreographed dance which cannot be finally understood by us, at least not fully, not while we're in it.

Do you understand what Paul is saying here? He seems to be saying that God's eternal purpose has been to display His wisdom to the heavenly beings by creating the church of Jews and Gentiles through Christ, making his followers one, as Jesus prayed in John chapter 17 specifically. In no small part, God's wisdom is shown through the church being given a unity that reflects the unity of God. God's glory is the point.

The heavenly beings are the audience. The cross is the means. And the church is the display.

I'm going to say that again. God's glory is the point.

The heavenly beings are the audience.

The cross is the means and the church is the display.

We could summarize it like this: the cross was to create the church. The church displays the spectacular wisdom of God. Reconciliation with God becomes visible through reconciliation with man. Our new life in Christ is to bring us into the new society of the church. Hatred and division are what the spiritual authorities who were in rebellion against God had sown and had worked for, but now in the gospel and in the church it births, they see, God's eternal purposes for peace and love accomplished.

Finally, His purposes prevail and His wisdom is manifested and He is vindicated in it all.

Paul's great concern for the church is that the church manifest and display the glory of God, thus vindicating God's character against all the slander of demonic realms, the slander that God is not worth living for. God has entrusted to His church the glory of His own name. Now this is a God-centered view of reality. Perhaps you've come this morning thinking that the point of life is your own comfort or your immediate happiness, instant relief of your pain or tips on some kind of job advancement. But here we have presented an entirely other view of reality that's not centered on us and our desires, but is in fact a display of God's wisdom, of His glory.

God's ultimate purpose is to glorify Himself, and it is the core of our fallen natural inclination to hate this. And so to work to rob God of His glory by obscuring it, by trying to distract from it, and to take it to ourselves or distribute it to other of God's creatures. But through Christ, through this creation of the one new man in His body, God works to glorify Himself despite us. At our rebellion, even to glorify himself by redeeming us out of our rebellion. I think that the more we grow in grace and spiritual maturity, the more we hunger to see God glorified.

We rejoice in gifts even that we don't have ourselves, simply because we see God giving them. And Him giving them for people to realize His goodness in giving them. And to see more of Him in the fact that we don't happen to have that gift doesn't mean anything to us compared to the fact that that gift is there and it's been given and it's glorifying God. That's what we desire to see. Christians, when you hear this, when you begin to see this in Scripture, then you're called to trust God.

When you look around at a church, though any individual church will have its faults and foibles, I understand that. But when you look around at a church, you are seeing God's masterpiece. That thing which He has been about as the supreme demonstration of His skill, His wisdom, His character, His glory. And this is His eternal purpose, we read here. And this is what He has accomplished in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amazing language. Language much more full than anything that we can fully plumb. Language that begs for you to spend some more time in it, meditating on the glory of God, His justice and His mercy, His love and His wrath, His severity and His generosity.

Friend, do you keep waiting for that sort of downhill slope coasting time in your spiritual life when things are just a little easier for a few weeks, a few months, a few years?

What if that downhill slope time never comes?

What if all of life is sort of a climb up against the gravity of sin and failing health, broken hopes and difficulties? What then? Well, you can go to religions or public teachers or churches that will lie to you. Tell you just to see everything's always good if you just have the faith to confess it.

Or you can realize the truth that God has put in His Word to sustain you and encourage you, to cause you to bring Him glory as you age to the glory of God. As you relinquish opportunities, to his praise, as you trust him with gifts you don't have, as you rely on him in times that don't seem really obvious to you what you should do. Paul knew that these Ephesians needed to know this and understand this. Jail could thwart Paul's purpose, but not God's. And we need this kind of confidence, too, if we would continue.

To follow the Lord today. We need to move on from the great distances brought into our minds by the telescope of this text 310 as we have faintly scanned the furthest reaches of God's purposes as we've considered what it was that Paul preached to the Gentiles. To consider now one more observation from the last few verses in our passage. The observation is this, number four, jail can separate them from Paul. But not from God.

Jail can separate them from Paul, but not from God. Look at verse 11.

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. Friends, here we have Paul's point in chapter 3. God commissioned Paul to bring people to himself through spreading the news about Jesus Christ.

In verse 11, we see that God's eternal purpose is realized in Christ. All of God's marvelous wisdom is centered on the person and work of Christ Jesus our Lord. He is the one that all of our confidence is in. In verse 12, Paul summarizes the purpose played out in the life of the individual. Through the message Paul preached, God would bring us to Himself through faith in Christ, that last phrase, through our faith in Him.

And by this faith we are in Christ and being in Him, we have His boldness and His trust to have free access to come near to God with confidence. Christ has died for us and so we believe in Him.

We are united to Him by faith, and so we draw near to God.

Members, come back and join us at 5:00. We're going to be praying together. That's what the Lord's Day is for. Come and pray with us. We're going to be praying for new deacons.

We're going to be praying for a pastor from Lebanon. We're going to be praying for various people in stages of their life. Praise God for all the ways we can, with confidence, Go into the presence of God and ask because of what Christ has done. Friend, can you imagine coming to God with such confidence of His goodness towards you? Some of you sitting here can't imagine ever going to God like that.

You look religious enough on Sunday morning when you come to church, but in your heart you quail at the thought of really turning up in the presence of God, thinking, who am I? Why would He listen to me? You know, it was the prospect of this goodness of God that completely undid John Newton. When he was in a hardened state, it appeared as a slave trader on a slave ship, his eye opened to a verse in the Bible, Luke 11:13, where Jesus said, if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And when Newton was struck by the possibility of God's goodness, even to someone like him, he was completely undone.

Friend, God is that good, even for someone like you. That's why Christ has died. None of us are here today because of our own righteousness. We're here only because of the righteousness of God in Christ for us. This is what has been effected through God's amazing plan in Christ.

And so Paul says in verse 13 that they should realize that his, Paul's, absence It's because of his preaching. His absence is because of the same message that brought them near to God. Paul was not one of those preachers who was just on when the eyes of man were on him. But by God's grace, he seemed to have a keen desire to seek the good of these young Christians, even when he was absent from them. So we see here that Paul desired to encourage these Gentile Christians.

We see in verse 13, so I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Paul desired these Christians not to be discouraged because of my suffering for you. Likely they had heard he was in prison. They certainly knew it after he called himself a prisoner up there in verse 1. He'll mention it again in verse 4.

Over in chapter 6, verse 20, he calls himself an ambassador in chains. But his saying that his sufferings were for them wasn't meant to discourage them.

But rather was intended to help them understand that they are part of the mysterious wisdom of God in bringing the message of redemption to the Gentiles, to the nations. And so are things which these young Christians should actually glory in as treasures and honors given to them by God. The chains of Paul and other preachers of the gospel would only be dim echoes of the nails of the cross. And the bonds of death which held the Lord Jesus only temporarily. All this suffering was the price which God would willingly pay.

So dear were these people to Him.

So the Ephesian Christians and others who benefited from Paul's ministry weren't to be worried. Paul's imprisonment as a part of God's plan to get the gospel to the Gentiles was part of God's plan. It didn't mean that the local officials or even the Roman emperor were about to defeat God's purposes. They would not defeat God's purposes. That would not be happening.

They did not need to worry about that.

Again, some religions would look at Paul and would just tell him to confess those chains away, speak a better reality, walk out of the prison. Ignore it all as unreal, but Christianity is not like that. The Bible teaches us that suffering like Paul being chained is real, very real, but that the suffering of this world is temporary and that no such temporary sufferings can change God's righteous character or thwart His sovereign purpose. You see there in verse 13 that little so, so, Why is it there? To point back to God's great plan behind and beneath all adversities.

These great matters that Paul has just been talking about and that we've been considering. Paul has shared all this with them so that they would not be finally discouraged by his own sufferings or by their own or by anyone else's because God was accomplishing his purposes. No chains could bind God. No bars prevent him.

I was also struck, as I meditated on this, with Paul's concern for these Ephesian Christians. There he was in prison for preaching the gospel. He could have been pitying himself. He could have been angry at God. He could have been writing letters to the local Christians asking why it was that their church had no prison ministry.

There's lots of stuff he could have done to find fault with others. Maybe somebody did something stupid that led to his arrest.

But that's not what Paul was doing. Paul was caring for others. He was writing to some other young Christians, desiring their encouragement, even while he himself was undergoing such adversity. And yet this which sounds so strange to the people in the world, this selflessness and concern for others, begins to sound normal the longer you know Christians. By God's grace, such a concern for others is a normal part of what it means to truly be a Christian.

Paul's suffering is for you, he says up in verse 1, a prisoner on behalf of you Gentiles, which is your glory, here in verse 13. Paul's imprisonment itself is of no inherent value to these Gentile believers. What it represents. His willingness to take the Gospel to them, to explain and even defend them to Jewish believers and to secular authorities, despite opposition and misrepresentation from his fellow Jews, could cost him his freedom and did. And it is this, Paul's willingness to forego his own comfort and even his own freedom that is such an ornament an honor to the Ephesian church and other Gentiles as well.

The prize of their salvation and God's glory by means of it is well worth this price to the apostle.

Paul was reminding them that jail could separate them from Paul. But not separate them from God.

You remember the Gordons that I mentioned at the beginning of the message. George and Ellen were stopped in their mission to the island of Eromango. After four years of living there and loving the people and translating the Bible, they were murdered.

When George's younger brother James heard about it, he expressed a desire to go and continue his brother's work.

He knew that even his brother's death had not ended God's plan for the gospel to go to the Eromangans. And in fact, his brother James did follow him there and did see fruit. But in the strange providence of God, James too was martyred there.

News of the martyrdom reached Canada, and they were at first afraid to tell his mother.

And when the story of her second son's death was told her? She quietly exclaimed, I wish that I had another boy to send, that the heathen may receive salvation.

What gives a woman that kind of confidence and courage?

Only in knowing the difference between God and His servants. And in trusting that God will provide for and protect His servants perfectly to fulfill all His good purposes. Whether that's the Gordons on Eromango, or Paul under arrest in Rome, or young Christians in a city in Asia feeling isolated and scared, or you today.

Where is your confidence?

In times of temptation and fear, your confidence isn't ultimately in friends or family or preachers like me. Your confidence is in God, not in your plans or purposes. But in His, that He will hold you fast. Let's pray.

Lord God, you, know those things that cause us to be tempted to draw back or fear or stop following youg?

God, will youl hearten us by this view of youf in youn mighty majesty, in youn manifold wisdom, in youn plan and purpose to bring glory to Yourself? Strengthen us. Keep us. In the faith, trusting you, we pray for Jesus' sake. Amen.