What is the Church – Ephesians 3:1-13

The reading today is from Ephesians 3, verse 1 to 13.

Ephesians 3:1–13

For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of 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 man 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 follow or 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 rich 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, and so reads God's word.

Welcome to you.

If you joined us while we were uh singing, my name is Mark, I'm the lead pastor here at City, and have the privilege of serving with the other elders and leaders uh at the church.

Uh, by uh way of uh reminder to you, if you've been in the uh City Church WhatsApp group where you get announcements, and Peter will uh say this again towards the end of the service.

If you are new and exploring uh being part of City Church and you want to know more about what City Church believes, uh we have the first of two new to city information meetings that describe the history of the church, the convictions of the church, uh how it is led, and what it means to be a member.

Those uh start today uh at 12:30 upstairs in the mezzanine.

And so if you uh are free and want to know more about City Church, uh come upstairs for about an hour after after the service, after you've had some chat and tea and coffee.

And uh it is the first of two.

Uh they they go together and you'll see why, because we give you a kind of information pack.

Those are those meetings are a prerequisite for those uh uh interested in becoming a formal member, and you'll get more information about that uh upstairs uh as well.

We're in uh week four of our uh series through the book of Ephesians, thinking about what the what the church is.

And if you walk the streets of Dublin, or indeed any European capital, you will walk past these uh relics of a time gone by.

Sometimes you'll walk past a place that is tumbled down ramshackle with uh a leaky roof where elderly people go in to say their prayers and light their candles.

In other parts of the city, you'll walk past and you walk past grand uh Norman or uh Greco-Roman or Gothic buildings that are open seven days a week for tourists to marvel at the architecture.

You'll stare up at high coal towers built in honor of people long since dead.

Places that have little meaning or significance for many of the living left today.

Still others you will walk past have the remnants of spirituality.

They've got the stained glass, they've got the pews, they've got the plaques on the wall, but there's bouncers on the door, and what they serve is not spiritual food, and what they serve is not spiritual drink.

You walk the streets of Dublin or any European capital, and there are these church buildings dotted around, throwbacks to time gone by, tourist traps or thirsty, quirky thirst quenchers.

Why are they there?

And why are so many of them closed?

There's lots of reasons for it, uh, but one of them is that many people view the church as just an utter irrelevance to people's lives.

It offers nothing to them.

It is, was in their mind a human institution whose time and influence has gone.

And some would say rightly so.

Or worse, if you ask people what they think of the church, it is a place that is equated with scandal.

Even Christians struggle with the church, either because of the emphasis on individual faith of you and Jesus, or because people have been hurt by the church.

And so there can be a priority given to my own personal relationship that leads us to say, well, actually, I love Jesus, but I don't really love the church, which is, as I've said before, is like saying I love Jesus, but I don't love what Jesus loved.

We live in a world that still yearns for certain things.

We live in a world that still yearns for a sense of belonging, sense of community.

It still longs for reconciliation, the healing of divisions that exist between us.

It still yearns for hope, for significance, for meaning, for purpose.

And we've started looking for it, for those things in all the wrong places.

In the passage that Arena read for us, Paul doesn't just make the case that the church is a nice add-on or a support group for Jesus followers.

No, he says that the church, our gathering here this morning and across the world, is central to God's plan in the world.

It is inextricably linked with what he is doing.

That is, bringing people from darkness into light, bringing people from despair into hopefulness.

The church is central to those plans in the world, it is central to history.

Because what's God is what God is doing through the church is creating a new community.

That's what we saw last week.

That Paul is making, or Paul, Jesus is making a new humanity, Paul tells us, by taking those who were once enemies and bringing peace.

And so bringing them into a new family where the guilty find forgiveness, where the lonely find belonging, where the ashamed find cleansing and hope and healing.

It all happens in and through the church.

Don't we all long for that?

Aren't we all looking for that in some sense?

Whether you call yourself a Christian or not, it's something that we all hunger for.

Only the good news of Jesus, only the gospel of Jesus, because gospel means good news, only the good news, the gospel of Jesus, creates a community like that.

That's why Paul, as he's writing, is prepared to go to prison and to suffer for it.

To suffer for this gospel.

He is willing to do this because he is convinced, and this is our first point this morning.

He is convinced that the church, the community of God, is born out of, is the fruit of the gospel.

It's the fruit of the message of Jesus.

So point one, the church is born of the gospel.

And see the importance of that as we unpack verses three to six.

Please have some sort of Bible in front of you.

Maybe it's just on your phone.

If you have a physical one, I know it's kind of dark up in the corner, and so you need to use a phone, but if you can be following along, Ephesians chapter three with me.

If you're not sure where to look, just go to Google and stick in Ephesians 3 ESV, and that'll bring you to Bible Gateway, and you'll be able to follow along.

But uh let's pick up verse 3.

Paul is talking about how he is uh in a prisoner.

And he says, verse 2 assuming that you have heard of 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 uh 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 followers, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Three times, did you notice this strange word that Paul's talking about?

Three times he has the word mystery.

He's talking about a mystery, a secret.

What does he mean?

He said, no, it's not saying that it's some puzzle that needs to be solved, some Dan Brown-esque uh cloaked in in darkness and and codes to be broken, some dark Masonic knowledge.

No, the mystery that Paul talks about is something that was hidden in the past and has now been made known to all of us.

It is the mystery that through Christ's death and resurrection, Jews and Gentiles are united together into one forgiven community, that is the church.

That is the mystery that was hidden.

In other words, the gospel.

The gospel that Jesus would, in his own life, death, and resurrection draw together to himself a people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

Paul's saying that's not something that we could clearly see.

But now that we look at the Old Testament, now that we look at the world through the lens of Jesus, we see clearly this secret is now open, this mystery has been revealed.

God was always working to draw to himself a new community.

This is what he had always planned, ever since Ephesians 1, talking about the foreknowledge of God, the eternal plan of God.

The eternal plan of God was always to unite things under Christ.

That's chapter 1, verse 10.

The gospel doesn't therefore just create forgiven individuals, it creates a reconciled people, reconciled on two simultaneous axes.

Reconciled, first of all, to God through the forgiveness of your sin, and therefore, as a result, reconciled along horizontal earthly boundaries, whether that's ethnicity or class or culture or education level or income, whatever it is, that together Christ has made one united community.

Those who were divided are now fellow heirs, fellow members, fellow sharers in Christ.

Why?

How?

Because of the gospel.

The good news of Jesus gives birth to this new community, what we call the church.

And so answers the mystery of ages long of how God would bring together his forever people.

Imagine for a second you walk into some architect's studio, or you can look at our wonderful graphic that Kendall made, it's deliberately evoking that kind of architectural blueprint type image.

You walk into an architect's studio, and there are sketched out on the desk, there's blueprints for a grand new building.

Months go by and you see the scaffolding go up, and the scaffolding is wrapped in that plastic kind of tarpaulin material saying, coming soon.

It's all hidden behind the scaffolding.

And the day arrives when the scaffolding is taken down, and you can see for the first time the beautiful facade of this new building that the architect has created.

You walk inside through the doors and you see the extent of his attention to detail.

You see the architect's wisdom, you see the architect's skill.

The good news of Jesus is the blueprint for a new humanity.

And the church is the fruit, is the outworking, is the building that arises out of that blueprint.

The church is birthed by Christ's redeeming work.

This is extraordinarily important because what this means is it means that the church does not create the gospel.

There's this misapprehension, perhaps you've heard it probably in a university, that the message of Jesus is some cobbled together story done hundreds of years later by men who are wishing to exercise power over you.

In that view, the church, the gathering of people, is what is creating the gospel.

They're deciding what the message is.

But that's not what happens.

That's not what Paul is talking about.

He's saying that the truth of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his transforming power by his spirit is what changes hearts.

And as hearts are changed, people are drawn into a new community.

It is the gospel that gives birth to the church.

And because it is this way round, because the church doesn't get to decide what the gospel is, the church doesn't therefore get to redefine or change what the gospel is.

No more than the blueprints could be changed by the building.

Sadly, this is the very reason why many of the buildings that we might walk past in Dublin or any European capital lie empty and forgotten.

Because they forgot the gospel.

They forgot the transforming power of the truth that Jesus died for sin and was raised from the dead.

What that means for you and I in the context of City Church, so you were to come out later and learn about uh how we what we believe and how we do things here.

I cannot require anything of you as your pastor that the Bible does not teach.

The gospel is my ultimate authority, and it keeps our leadership accountable.

It makes sure that our leadership is transparent.

I cannot, must not teach anything or require anything of you that is contradictory to or goes beyond the gospel or the Bible teaches.

See how good that is?

It means that the locus of authority is not me as your priest or your pastor, the locus of the authority does not lie in the church per se, it lies in the scriptures, and the church is born out of a faithfulness to the scriptures.

Do you see?

If the church is born of Christ's redeeming, reconciling work, then what does that mean for each of us?

Well, Paul uses this corporate language down there in verse 6.

It means that we are fellow heirs.

Together we have this great inheritance.

The inheritance ultimately is that God Himself is ours and that we are his eternally.

We are fellow sharers in that, equal participants, members of the same body, partakers of the same promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

We therefore cannot think simply of our spirituality in individual terms.

We cannot think of our walk with Jesus as simply just a Jesus and me thing.

Imagine a great uh blazing fire, great bomb fire that we might have at our church weekend away, where we sing around and sometimes toast marshmallows around.

Imagine what would happen if you took a log out of that fire and set it over here.

It would burn for a while, it would kind of flicker uh for a few minutes and then it would begin to smolder.

You might see some redness of the ember, some signs of former life, and then it would begin to smoke as it cooled, and then it would die away.

We cannot think of our spirituality, our walking with Jesus, what it means for us to grow in Christ, simply in terms of I am a log with the fire of the spirit.

No, no, no.

The log burns more brightly with the other logs in the context of the fire.

That's how we give light and warmth and hope and life to the world around us.

And so it creates in us a corporate sense, a corporate responsibility.

It creates in us a culture, therefore, of welcome and of hospitality, of service and of generosity towards one another and to the outsider.

The gospel is born, gives birth to the church.

Paul, as he goes on, he wants to actually, he wants to amaze us further.

And so he zooms out in the next verses.

Because he's making the case that if the gospel isn't just about Jesus and me, if the gospel creates a new community, the church, what's the purpose of the church?

What's the why for why the church exists?

We can understand some of the horizontal for welcoming, supporting, encouraging others being that that that firing, fueling place.

But that's not immediately where Paul takes us.

Paul zooms out and says the church is the very stage of cosmic history.

The church is the focal point of everything that God is doing in the world.

And that's what he tells us in the next verses.

And so our second point is that the church is the main stage of history.

If you were to ask someone, or if we were to go around the room here and ask, where do you think?

In the world, history is being made right now.

People might point to Washington or Beijing, Downing Street, maybe, Silicon Valley.

Few would say that history's central focus, the cosmic central focus, is a Sunday gathering of ordinary people in an Odeon movie theatre in the Darklands of Dublin But that's what Paul says.

Let me read from verse nine.

Maybe from verse eight, because it's the start of a sentence.

He says, To me, though I am the least of 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 be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So Paul's saying, the reason why I've been sent to preach the gospel, that gospel that draws together a new community, that forgives people, that unites them together, is so that God can put on display his wisdom, his glory, his might, his grandeur, his grace, his beauty to rulers and authorities.

Oh.

I think, well, Caesar in his context.

Physical, earthly rulers and authorities, but he goes on and adds another little phrase.

He says, in the heavenly places.

He's talking about spiritual rulers and authorities.

That's not, I would argue, how we tend to think of the purpose of church.

Most of all, most of us don't reflect on this all that often.

Why?

Well, because we're we're present people, we're physical people.

We have concerns that are part of the here and now.

Who are we going to love?

Where are we going to live?

What are we going to do?

The pressures and stresses of the day today.

But Paul here is saying something quite remarkable: that if you are part of God's church through the gospel, all of us are participating in something of cosmic significance.

To see that significance would therefore give our lives an aroma of the eternal.

It would shape every decision that we make and it would show others that there is so much more to our world than what can be seen.

I said that Paul was talking about rulers and authorities.

Who are we talking about here?

Who are these beings that God is displaying his wisdom to?

Who are these powers in the heavenly places?

Well, in the heavenly places means that they're in the spiritual realm, right?

You need to know this.

So Christians believe this, right?

This isn't just me being slightly weird or melodramatic.

We are Christians are supernaturalists, okay?

We have to make our peace with that.

We believe in a guy who was homeless, who came back from the dead.

Okay?

We are supernaturalists.

There is a world beyond the world that we can see.

And so all that we have been taught about our world being a material, physical, closed system is not part of the Christian framework.

There is that which is seen and that which is unseen.

Much like Tolkien and his work and Lord of the Rings.

Yes, I got to mention it.

There's the seen realm and the unseen realm.

And so he's talking about rulers in authority, spiritual beings that are unseen.

Now here's the question: are they good or bad?

Are we talking about angels?

Are we talking about demons?

I think, and this is something that I had to kind of wrestle with this week.

I think Paul's talking about demons.

I think he's talking about evil powers, because it's the same words that he uses in chapter two when he talks about Satan being the prince of the power of the air.

The word authorities is antichristus, the antichrists.

And it's the same word that he uses in Ephesians 6 when he talks about the uh the armor of God being worn by the Christian that you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one.

So I think that what Paul is saying is one of the things the church does is the church shows the evil powers of the unseen world the manifold wisdom of God.

Why?

Let's keep going.

These powers exist, they exist in the spiritual realm, and they wreak havoc in our world.

This is what we saw in chapter two.

People are captive to those dark spiritual powers, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is in work of the sons of disobedience.

This evil captures, distorts, divides, and destroys.

It has an impact on people.

And what Paul is saying is into that darkness, into that hopelessness breaks the light of the gospel.

The curtain is pulled back, spiritually speaking, and the mystery of God is revealed for every satanic stronghold and opposition to see that Satan is not Lord of this world, but the risen Christ is.

Furthermore, the church shows that Satan's dividing, destroying work will not endure forever.

That through the death of Christ he is defeated, and that people are freed from despair by forgiveness.

This means the relationships are mended by Christ's reconciling work, that death no longer reigns because it was defeated at the cross.

The church is the real world moment by moment declaration of the victory of Jesus over every dark power.

It is the proof of Jesus' words during his earthly ministry that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Therefore, look around you.

Do not despise the church as ordinary or incidental or as a nice add-on to your spiritual walk.

Do not diminish your part in it.

A Sunday gathering in a rented theater may not look impressive to the world, but in God's eyes, it is the center stage where he declares his wisdom.

He declares the victory of raising his son from the dead to every watching power that would wreak havoc in us and in your life.

So every time we sing, every time we pray, every time we break bread together and welcome one another in Christ's name, we are declaring to the cosmos that Jesus reigns.

It also means that for you, as an individual part of the church, that your decisions matter.

Your decisions to forgive, to love, to follow Jesus with costly obedience, to welcome the stranger, and to give hope to a friend.

Nothing is wasted, nothing is unseen, no act of service, no word of encouragement, no patient act of love does not serve to declare to the watching powers that you belong to Christ, that He is yours and you are his forever.

This conviction fuels every part of us and friends, it fuels our mission as a church.

One of the things that City Church is unapologetically and irrevocably passionate about the planting of new churches, of the establishing of new communities that declare the wisdom of God to the principalities and powers of the unseen world.

It is through the church that that hope is put on display.

It is through the church that people are moved from death to life as they hear the words of the gospel.

It is as new communities of forgiven and reconciled people are established in Dublin and beyond that our dark world catches a glimpse of light and life and hope.

I don't know where all of you are at with Jesus.

I imagine that some of you here are still figuring things out.

And we're really glad that you're here.

This is an invitation to participate in the grand eternal story that has been unfolding since God said, Let there be light.

And that will continue until Jesus returns.

It is an invitation to you to give your life to something of cosmic eternal significance that is far greater than yourself, that lifts you from hopelessness and despair, gives you a meaning and a significance that endures forever.

Gives you a transformed heart and a new community.

It's an invitation not to stand on the sidelines, to be part of this glorious community at the center of cosmic history.

Do that by trusting Jesus.

Put your faith in him and be part of this great eternal drama.

That God is working, that he will work in you and through you.

Finally.

And the church, thirdly, is the home of the Christian life.

It's where we do this life together like that log in the fire.

Paul concludes in verses 12 and 13 by having us think about this more.

If the gospel creates the church by forgiving and uniting people who were once hostile from diverse backgrounds, and if that new community is the center stage of human history, then Paul says, Well, what should that new community look like?

What should mark that new community?

I didn't mean to say my point at myself while I said my name.

That was a baby.

What should mark the new community?

He tells us in verse 12, in whom, that is in Jesus, 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'm suffering for you, which is your glory.

What should mark our life together?

Paul says boldness and access with confidence.

He wants you this morning to be so assured of your privileged access to God that you have through faith in Jesus?

What does he say?

Or what does that say about what faith does?

How would that change your life?

Well, it gives boldness.

What is your relationship with God?

Do you interact with God as a slave or a son?

Does a slave have a right to wake up the master in the middle of the night?

No.

But the son does.

The daughter does.

We are sons and daughters.

What are we saying about?

God can make us sons.

God can make us daughters.

No more fear.

No more hiding.

Boldness.

Access.

That means for you in your life, your walk with Jesus, you can pray honestly, even if the words are hard.

You can confess fully.

You can speak openly because God is your father.

Access with confidence.

The door is open.

It's not just kind of cracked ajar, and you've got to peek around with fear and trembling to kind of see what mood dad is in.

The door is wide open.

Not only for a few, but for every believer.

And so we pray with confidence.

With confidence that he hears us as we cry out to him.

That's what we're going to do on Wednesday night.

On Wednesday night of this week, all of the community groups come together and we have our whole church prayer meeting.

Come and pray with this sort of boldness, knowing that you have confident access to God who is your Father?

Paul concludes by talking about his sufferings.

And it forces us to ask the question: what sort of life makes the wisdom and grace of God shine brighter in us?

What sort of life confronts and confounds the powers of darkness in a way that they cannot comprehend?

Is it a life of perpetual victory and success where we walk each day from one triumph to the next?

Well, that was not Paul's experience.

Paul began in verse one by saying that he is a prisoner.

He's riding from a jail cell, chained to a wall in a dank Roman jail.

And now, having told them of the great assurance that they have in God, he says, Don't let my sufferings shake your faith.

In fact, he says, My sufferings are, and this is an interesting phrase, for your glory.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that Paul is saying, as I suffer for the gospel, it will give you more confidence in that what I told you was true.

It will give you more confidence in the gospel.

And so you'll be drawn deeper into the unsearchable riches.

That was his prayer in chapter one, into the unsearchable riches that God has for you.

And isn't that true of our witness?

You many of us have been have been strengthened by older saints, older Christians.

And it has not been by observing their seasons of success and victory, but seeing how precious Jesus becomes to them in seasons of suffering and trial and grief.

Seeing their patient obedience, their perseverance, though wave after wave after wave of suffering and sadness breaks over their back.

That is what strengthens our faith.

And if you find yourself in a season like that, that is where others will be strengthened in their faith because of what God is leading you through.

Sufferings strengthen resolve and give courage.

Christ shows his more near presence when we walk with him in trial.

So suffering and glory are therefore not contradictions, but together part of God's plan of drawing a people to himself.

Paul's imprisonment built the church.

Our sufferings advance the gospel.

The Christian life that we live out together, therefore, is one of cross-shaped confidence, you might say.

Confident that no suffering, no trial, no grief can ever take away who we are in Christ.

Confident that one day all of our chains will give way to greater glory.

And so we learn to see the glory in our weakness now.

How God often works most powerfully when his people appear most fragile.

And so we expect that following Christ will involve costly obedience.

We do not lose heart in those trials.

We persevere, knowing that he strengthens us as we follow him.

So, brothers and sisters, as we finish, do not look down upon or despise the church, or see her as incidental, or support group, or a social club.

She is the very stage on which God is showing his wisdom and the beauty of the gospel to the unseen realm and through our words and actions to the seen world too, to the people around us.

The church is the community that rises with the life-giving Christ.

He is its head and he sustains her.

And so Sunday by Sunday, as we gather here and as we scatter week by week across the city, we get to show one another and the world the wonders of his love for us, the goodness of his grace towards us, and the hope that he has for all who turn to faith in Jesus.

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